Twenty-Four Hours

Twenty-Four Hours

Chapter Eleven

By Michelle Malfoy

"Wait," said Harry. "How can we be sure that he" - he pointed to Draco - "is really on our side? I mean, last I heard, he was threatening us with telling his stupid father that we were escaping that godforsaken castle."

"Yeah," Draco agreed, "but I'd do anything for Michelle. I'm not sure what came over me back at the castle. Maybe I was the Imperius curse, maybe it was something else. But I realize now that I have a special gift of magic and Michelle needs me just now. My father has had me as a tool to bend to his will all my life. Now I see that there's so much more to accomplish on the side of light. All I can say is, I'm sorry it took me so long to figure that out."

Draco looked up, finished with his speech. He was shocked to see that Harry, Hermione, Ginny and Michelle were all gaping at him. "What?" Draco asked, completely perplexed. He was also slightly annoyed that his lovely little speech had not been applauded.

"That was almost... intense of you," Hermione finally said in a choked voice. Harry, Michelle, and Ginny were nodding, looking wide-eyed and completely bewildered.

"But good," Michelle added quickly.

"I know," Draco replied, with not a trace of embarrassment. "I'm amazing, aren't I?"

"Oh, shut up," Michelle scoffed, touseling his hair. "It's really nothing to be all proud about."

"Yeah," Harry injected, "something to be proud of is defeating Voldemort... what is it... seven times? I've lost count." Hermione snorted, while Draco looked quizzical.

"Seven? I thought it was only three or four," he admitted.

"You heard about when he was a year old," Ginny assumed, "and then the Sorcerer's Stone too, right?"

"A loosely based rumor," Draco sighed. "I heard something like... er... I heard that you were... uh..."

"Yes?"

"I heard that you broke into the Slytherin dungeons and found the Sorcerer's Stone behind a mirror," Draco blurted out. Hermione and Ginny glanced at Harry awkwardly.

"No," Harry said quickly, "that's not what happened."

"Thank god," Draco breathed. "I was so scared I'd catch Gryffindor germs" - Harry slapped him - "that I had to get it replaced. I mean, you know how I am with mirrors."

"Yeah," Michelle chimed in, "he uses the mirror twice as much as I do. And ask anyone, preferably Gemma - I use the mirror a lot."

"Gemma?" Harry asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "She is sooo annoying."

"I know," Draco said excitedly, sounding, in Hermione's opinion, rather like Parvati. When she voiced this opinion, however, Draco looked so disgusted that she had to laugh.

"Parvati wouldn't do that," she laughed, indicating his scowl. "She claims it would 'ruin her complexion.'"

"SO," Michelle said loudly, "what did happen with that Sorcerer's Stone?"

"And the Chamber of Secrets," Draco added, remembering some odd rumors. Ginny looked horrified when he uttered that statement, and Harry frowned.

"Don't talk about that in front of Ginny," Harry hissed in Draco's ear.

"Why?" Michelle asked suspiciously, having overheard.

Ginny, whose eyes were now red and blotchy and face tearstained, sniffled a bit. She gave Harry a small nod, allowing him to tell the story, and Harry began. "Well," he sighed, "it all started in my first year. That was the Sorcerer's Stone story. Malfoy," he added, just to acknowledge the fact that he was still referring to the Slytherin by his surname, "you know all about how the Chamber of Secrets story was in second year, don't you?"

Draco nodded, memories forming blurrily in his mind. He recalled screaming, 'Enemies of the heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!' at the top of his lungs. He remembered owling his father day after day, pleading for information on the Chamber and its last opening. And he remembered one day when Goyle and Crabbe had been acting very oddly, and Crabbe seemed to have been developing red hair in place of brown bowl-cut that he had always had.

"Yeah," he replied.

"But I don't," Michelle pointed out.

"Well then," Harry groaned, "I'll have to start in the beginning, then. The Sorcerer's Stone incident was in first year, as I said before. And it all began when Hagrid mentioned a guy named Nicolas Flamel..."

* * *

"Hang on!" Draco yelled. "What the hell were you making Polyjuice Potion for?" Harry smiled guiltily; Hermione weakly.

"Er..." Harry began, "weweregonnasneakintotheslytherinroomtointerrogateyou," he blurted out in the same tone he had been speaking in when he had asked Cho to the dance. Draco, however, got the gist of what Harry had said, for his eyes widened.

"You what? I mean, I know what you said, but... oh," he said, a grin slipping onto his face. "You thought I was the heir of Slytherin, didn't you?" He smiled his old grin, a nasty little malicious smirk, but Harry knew he was only joking. Ginny, however, didn't take it as a joke.

"They did," she admitted, tears streaming down her face once more. "But you want to know who it really was?"

"Yeah!" exclaimed Draco, but Michelle, being the type who would always magically Bind the last chapter of a book together so as not to be tempted to read the end, stopped him.

"Come on, Draco, it's like a mystery. Let's figure it out for ourselves."

Draco appeared to be pondering this foreign concept, then said, "Nah. Who was it?"

"Guess," Hermione said with an uncharacteristically wicked grin. Draco looked puzzled. "The heir of Slytherin... come on, Malfoy, you can do it..."

"Er... I know it wasn't me," Draco ruminated. "What other Slytherins have half a brain? Or at least half a brain cell... er... Zabini?"

"No," Ginny wailed.

"Not Parkinson, she has that restraining order thing from just about everyone in the school... er... Gemma?"

"She wasn't even here in your second year," Hermione scoffed.

"The heir wasn't in Slytherin," Harry suggested to Draco.

"He wasn't?"

"She wasn't," Ginny corrected him.

"Oh," Draco sighed. "Then... Macmillian! I always knew he looked shifty!" He punched his fist into the air as if he had just discovered that Muggles could fly without broomsticks or other magical methods.

"Not a Hufflepuff," Ginny sobbed. "And by the way, Macmillan really is a guy. I know he doesn't look it, but he is."

"Chang?"

"Not a Ravenclaw."

Draco stared at the Gryffindors in front of him, his eyes flicking back and forth as if trying to detect untrustworthiness. Little did he know that his own father had done much the same thing to Michelle just a month and a half ago. "Bell? Johnson? Spinnet? Patil? Brown?"

"I give up," Draco finally screamed after several minutes of guessing.

"It was two people, kind of," Harry said, "but one was being possessed, and the other one... oh, here's a clue. The other one was the only living descendant of Salazar Slytherin, who happens to be able to speak Parseltongue."

"Potter!" Draco laughed gleefully. "You're the only Parselmouth on the pla- ... oh." Realization hit Draco like a bludger in the face. "Who was He possessing?" Draco asked, saying 'he' as if it were capitalized.

"Me," Ginny wailed. Michelle looked very put out at that, for she had had been hoping for someone more exciting, such as Percy Weasley (whom she had seen once on Take-Your-Daughter-To-The-Ministry-Day with her father at the Ministry of Magic. He had been playing with little figurines that looked suspiciously like male porcelain dolls, and they were wearing frilly petticoats and other old-fashioned females' clothing.) or Justin Wood, a Beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. That last match seemed so far back in time.

"Oh," Draco sighed.

* * *

"So Sirius Black... is dead?"

"Yeah."

"And... he was your godfather?"

"Yeah."

"And he was... not evil. Well, I knew he hadn't worked for Voldemort; I would've heard of him. And I knew he hadn't been the Secret-Keeper for your parents; everyone knows that's Peter. Who, by the way, isn't dead."

"Good job, Malfoy, way to state the obvious," Harry applauded.

"Well, I knew he was dead," Draco admitted. "And I knew he was your godfather. But you never know when a Death Eater is lying. I mean, Aunt Bella is always lying about something or another, but when she kills a Dumbledore Supporter, you'll never get her to stop bragging. It's actually rather depressing."

"Know who that reminds me of?" Hermione asked with a false laugh.

"Malfoy," Harry and Ginny chorused, while at the same time, Michelle said, "Draco."

A loud BANG echoed against the wall, and Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Michelle, and Draco spun around to see Professors Snape, McGonagall, and Varossa standing in the doorway.

"Hey, Professor," Draco said in his innocent voice. Snape shot him an 'I'm-not-going-to-fall-for-that' look.

"What happened here?" asked McGonagall breathlessly.

"Harry," Professor Varossa said calmly, "what is going on?"

"Well, Professor," Michelle said in a sweet voice that nobody argued with, a.) because she was a first-year who happened to look like an angel, and b.) because she knew Dark Magic. "First of all, Draco and I aren't evil anymore." Her voice had lost the angelic quality and was now hoarse and trembly. Harry could not recall ever hearing the girl's voice like that.

"Okay..." Varossa said. "Since when were you evil?"

"Let us handle this," Snape snarled, pushing Varossa out of the room and locking the door hastily. "Now," he muttered as he heard the Professor's footsteps die away, "just what is going on?"

"Well," Michelle continued, "Draco and I found Dumbledore's will. He's... he's dead. And these ruins are the work of Death Eaters."

"Death Eaters wouldn't be so broad," McGonagall commented, eyeing Lucius's handwriting on the walls suspiciously.

"Oh," Draco said sheepishly, "my father wrote that. It's his handwriting." He pulled a piece of parchment out of his pocket that was written in the same delicate cursive as the writing on the wall. As McGonagall tried to get a closer look, Draco snatched the paper away and stuffed it back into his pocket.

"This is the will," Hermione said, handing the new Head of Hogwarts the will they had found in the desk.

After a few minutes, McGonagall exclaimed, "I'm Headmistress!" in a very strangly uncharacteristic tone. She seemed to have forgotten her formal nature.

"Spectacular," Snape drawled. A moment later, however, he exclaimed, "I'm Deputy!" in a girlishly excited tone.

"Varossa? Head of Gryffindor?" Snape spat a moment later, disgusted.

"Cho Chang? She's in the Department for the Transfiguring of Magical Artifacts," McGonagall observed. "As Deputy, Severus, you may send her the letter."

"No, you're the former professor," Snape pointed out. "She'd want to hear it from you."

"I could send it," Harry suggested hopefully. The professors ignored him, but after a moment Draco smirked.

"I'm glad you still fancy her, Potter. Some things never change." Harry half-scowled at Draco, but was also confused. If Malfoy had known about his crush on Cho, wouldn't he have made it common knowledge, way back in their fourth year? With a wry smile, Harry decided that that might have prevented rather... unpleasant occurances with the former Ravenclaw seeker.

"You can read the back," Draco told his Head of House when he was done reading the actual will.

Snape turned the paper over and squaked loudly. "You're expected to save the world?!?" he demanded, rounding on Draco and Michelle. "Hmph."

"Look who's talking," Draco snapped back. He walked up to Snape, rolled back the man's sleeve, and indicated the ugly black mark resting there. "Don't be stupid, Professor. I've known you since I was five because you were always coming to talk to my father and with the Dark Lord."

Snape slapped him hard across the face. McGonagall looked stunned. Her eyes flipped from Snape to Draco and then quietly she said, "Since he was five? Severus, you told us that you had stopped working for - for them - before Draco was even born."

Snape muttered something indistinct. "Didn't quite catch that, Professor," Draco said. "Mind repeating it?"

"Yes, I do mind," Snape snapped. "And don't talk about things you don't understand."

"You know," drawled Draco, "why is it that that seems to be adults' catch phrase?"

"Rita Skeeter said it to Hermione once - " Harry began.

"And he - Snape, I mean - said it to me once," Hermione added, glaring at Snape as though the memory still brought a lurch to her stomach.

"What's the matter, 'Mione, still think you know everything?" asked Ginny, playfully punching the girl's shoulder. 'Mione' was Ginny's own special name for Hermione, nobody else ever called her that. Hermione shrugged, as though she wasn't quite sure yet if she knew everything or not.

A moment later, Professor Varossa ran back in. "Severus - Minerva," she panted, her hands resting on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. "It's... it's the Dark Mark." All the occupants of the room stared at her. "It's right above the Forbidden Forest... just where some kids were having Care of Magical Creatures."