Dolor Draconum

Chapter the Eighth

Everyone was talking about Malfoy's mad dive when Hermione got back to the common room. Most people agreed he'd only caught the snitch by accident, and it was his team's fault that he'd fallen, and wasn't it a pig that they'd tied instead of Hufflepuff winning. Hermione just nodded and agreed with whoever accosted her as she made her way across the common room, determine to get to her dormitory and just go straight to bed.

When she got there she found she wasn't at all tired. The sound downstairs would have kept the most solid sleeper awake, coupled with a nagging concern for Malfoy's welfare and guilt for even caring. Sitting cross-legged on the bed in her pyjamas, she raised her wand.

"Accio knitting," she called. The beginning of the first of many elf hats sailed into her lap.

She sat and knitted in silence, enjoying the feeling of accomplishment each time a garment was finished. She'd knitted her parents Christmas presents last year, which had gone down well. She would have done the same for Harry and Ron, but she didn't think they'd have appreciated it quite so much. After all, they knew where she was getting the practise, and they didn't approve of that.

Hermione frowned at her knitting. Why could no one else see the good she was doing? Slavery was bad, no matter what the reason. Dobby was perfectly happy being free. If the other house elves could just give it a try. Tears of frustration began to crawl down her cheeks.

"Mistress Hermione, don't cry!" a voice chirped. Hermione jumped and turned to see Dobby sitting on the edge of the bed, holding out a very dirty handkerchief. Hermione wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and to her relief Dobby put the handkerchief away.

"Why can't the other elves be happy, like you?" Hermione asked quietly. "You like being free." She opened her mouth to ask how many her hats had freed, but she got a better look at what Dobby was wearing and almost started to cry again. Every hat, every sock, every scarf... Dobby grinned at her through layer upon layer of wool.

"Mistress Hermione, the other elves asked Dobby to tell Hermione not to put out the clothes any more," Dobby said seriously. "They are getting most offended."

"I'm trying to free them," Hermione said desperately.

"That's why they be getting offended," Dobby said sagely.

"It's social conditioning, that's what it is," Hermione said angrily. "They're brought up to want to be slaves. If house elves grew up without that stereotype to conform to I bet they'd revolt against being slaves."

"Maybe," Dobby said cautiously, a little taken aback by Hermione's sudden mood change.

"If you ever have children, if any of the elves here ever have children, you have to tell them that being free is better. That every living, thinking creature has a right to be free! That they don't have to clean up after humans!" Hermione demanded vehemently. "You have just as much right to be looked after and to look after! You deserve freedom of choice!"

"And if house elves chose to work?"

"You deserve freedom of speech! You deserve freedom of all kinds!"

Dobby sighed. He appreciated what Hermione wanted to do, but he wished she could see it from their point of view. Slaves had to be looked after. They had to be fed and sheltered and cared for when they were sick. Free people didn't. House Elves liked to work, and they liked the security their work provided them. The only thing that made Dobby different was his work for the Malfoy's. There was no security working for them, very little food or shelter or health care.

This line of thought made Dobby remember something else. "Mistress Hermione," he interrupted her again, "there is a new house elf here, also free, also from the Malfoy home that Dobby came from."

"Is he, or she, pleased to be here? Pleased to be free?" Hermione asked fervently, eyes bright.

Dobby stared at his feet. "In a manner of speaking, Mistress Hermione. She, her name is Mitty, is pleased to be here, but not pleased to be free."

"I don't understand."

"She is pleased because her young master comes here, and she wants to look after him. She is most worried about him. She said she saw you with him, Mistress Hermione, and she would like to talk to you. She wants to make sure he is just fine."

"Draco Malfoy? He is far from 'just fine', but I'd like to talk to her as well," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"You are not to talk to her about being free," Dobby cautioned, "She will not take that well. She is in denial."

"Denial? About being free?" Hermione looked perplexed.

"She thinks Master did not mean it, that he only did it so she could come here and look after him. He does not even know she is here yet." Dobby led Hermione out of the dormitory and through the common room. Harry watched as Hermione and Dobby passed through the portrait hole. He nudged Ron.

"Hey, Hermione's going off with Dobby. You don't suppose she'd got some new plan for SPEW?"

"Probably," Ron said despondently. He didn't resist as Harry pulled him through the portrait to follow Hermione and Dobby. "Hey, is he still wearing all those clothes she knitted?"

"Looks like."

"Weird."

"Yeah. Come on, they're going to that room near the kitchen's, I'll bet. I wonder if they're going to see Winky?"

"You know, there was cake back in the common room. It had 'Malfoy splat' written on it. I wanted some cake."

"We'll ask the house elves for some, okay?"

"Oh, okay."

"We'll even ask them to put 'Malfoy big splat' on it, if you want."

"Well, when you put it that way..." Ron grinned.

* * *

Mitty was sitting on the cold stone floor, surrounded by the clothes Hermione had knitted which Dobby couldn't fit on himself. She was meticulously sewing Slytherin 'S's and Malfoy crests to them. Hermione didn't have the heart to tell her they wouldn't fit Draco.

"Hello?" Hermione said softly. "I'm Hermione. You must be Mitty."

The house elf raised her head to stare at Hermione with cold, calculating eyes. Hermione shivered involuntarily. It wasn't an observation to share with Draco, but this house elf reminded her a great deal of Lucius Malfoy.

"Yes, I am known as Mitty," the house elf said stiffly. Hermione couldn't work out what was odd about Mitty's speech until she continued, "I am worried about Master Draco. I hear you've spoken to him."

"You refer to yourself in the first person!" Hermione said suddenly. "You're the first house elf I've met that does that," she added quickly.

"I was well brought up," Mitty said coolly. "Tell me, is Master Malfoy alright?"

Hermione was somewhat taken aback by Mitty's tendency to order her about. This is what she wanted for the house elves, surely, but it was such a difference from the usual servile attitude that it put her off a little.

"Well, I think he's getting a bit better," Hermione said hesitantly. "He doesn't say much, and he seems really emotionless. Everyone is avoiding him."

"Except you," Mitty pointed out. "You have been a good friend to Master Malfoy, and I am very grateful. When he was so lonely he tired to hurt himself. If I had not been there he would not have come back to Hogwarts this year."

"So I heard," Hermione said quietly. "He won't talk about it at all."

Mitty frowned. "I will tell you," she said eventually, "so you can help him more."

Hermione settled herself more comfortably on the stone floor. The chance to find out what had happened to Draco over the summer was one she couldn't pass up, and all of her attention was focused on Mitty. That's why she didn't notice the extendable ear being slipped under the door by Ron and Harry, who were sitting in the kitchen eating cakes and pastries.

* * *

"It was the first week in summer," began Mitty, "when Mistress Malfoy decided to leave. She always loved her son, or acted like she did, so it came as a surprise to us. Certainly came as a surprise to Master Malfoy. He asked what he had done wrong, begged her to come back, promised her could change.

"She said she didn't have a husband, so she didn't want a son. She said the men had to stick together. She said he was just like his father. She said she wanted to be free. She'd had enough of being a trophy wife; she wanted to be a free woman. She said he was old enough to look after himself. She said he'd be okay without her.

"She said she loved him, and she said good-bye.

"Master Malfoy was very upset. He kept saying he could take care of himself, and that he loved the freedom to do what he liked, and he'd never liked either of his parents anyway. He researched ways to kill Harry Potter, collecting all the worst curses he could think of. He blamed Harry Potter for everything you see.

"We were used to this, we let him be angry with Harry Potter. He was always ranting about how Harry Potter hurt him, how Harry Potter made life hard for him, how everything was Harry Potter's fault. Harry Potter was why Slytherin didn't win the Quidditch Cup. Harry Potter was why he didn't ace his OWLs. Harry Potter was why his father was in prison.

"But then, one day, he said, 'what if it's my fault?'

"We were worried for him then. He stopped talking, even to the portraits. The portraits thought he was a model Malfoy, they liked him. His father never thought Master Draco was a model Malfoy. He thought he was too squeamish, and interested in the wrong activities, and all sorts of things. Master Draco would spend hours talking to the portraits, who made him feel better.

"Now, all Malfoys have believed in Pureblood supremacy, and Draco was well brought up. He believed what he was told to believe. He did what he could to further the cause. Before he was born, one of the portraits questioned the Dark Lord's method of getting power, and Master Malfoy had it burnt. The screams were terrible. Master Draco doesn't know it, but that's why his uncle isn't in the portrait gallery.

"Master Draco would talk to the portraits whenever his father beat him. He would talk about how unfair it was, and how he tried his hardest, and how he upheld the Malfoy name as well as he could. They would tell him that he was doing well, but his father would still beat him because he wasn't doing well enough. He wanted a perfect son, and Master Draco wanted to be perfect for him. He practised sneering and sarcasm and wit. None of his hobbies were perfect enough, so he took up hobbies his father had had in his youth. He worked so very hard, and when he still failed to be perfect he would sit and cry in the portrait gallery.

"When his father was arrested, he didn't need to try and be perfect any more. He didn't have anything to do, because he never did anything except try to be perfect. When he decided that actually his mother's departure was his own fault, that he hadn't been perfect for her either, he stopped visiting the portraits. They were the only company in the house he had, but instead he would sit alone in his room for days and days. He stopped eating, most of the time. He kept trying to call his mother, but she refused to speak to him.

"Master Draco decided to visit his father in prison. Dementors scared him silly, but he went anyway. I went with him, you see, to watch him and carry his things. He met Masters Crabbe and Goyle there, visiting their fathers. They told him they blamed him. They told him that his father had been the ringleader and the one who told the others what to do. They didn't want to have anything to do with the son of a master criminal. Their mothers had forbidden them.

"I wasn't allowed to go in when Master Draco met Master Malfoy. All I know is he went in full of pain and sadness and worry and hope, and he came out empty. I don't know what his father said to him, but Master Draco didn't shed a single tear after that. He said he'd rather be a Black than a Malfoy, when I pressed him. He said no one wanted him, no one liked him, no one loved him, and he could finally see why.

"One day not long after we couldn't find him. I had made special cheer-up soup for him, with chuckling charms in it, but he wasn't in his room. We searched the house for him, but he was nowhere to be found. There are many of us working there, but no matter how hard we searched, we couldn't find him. He had been an accident-prone baby, so there were wards on the windows and balconies to stop him falling to his death and all the knives automatically blunted when they touched his skin. Nothing on the grounds could hurt him because he had Malfoy blood. Everyone had always assumed this meant he couldn't hurt himself either.

"I was searching his mother's room when I heard a strange sound coming from the wardrobe. Mistress Narcissa, you see, has a very big wardrobe. It's almost as big as her room, and very tall so her cloaks don't touch the floor and get dusty. So I went to check the gnomes hadn't got in again, and there he was standing on a chair with a belt tied around his neck. As I watched he kicked at the chair and fell. I made the belt undo itself and told him that you weren't supposed to wear belts around your neck, but your waist. He collapsed to the floor and yanked it off and threw it at me, and I caught it. He yelled a lot and burst into tears, throwing himself on the bed.

"'I can't even commit suicide right,' he was crying. 'Father is right, I'm not worthy of the name wizard, let alone Malfoy.' It was his mother's closet, where she had kept her most precious things: her clothes. She had taken all her precious clothes, but she had not taken Draco. I think he was hoping she would appear and save him, and care about him. He was very angry and shouted a lot and threw things. I apologised that he wasn't dead, but he said that wasn't why he was angry.

"Master Draco had suffered from depression before, but his father thought it was just another sign of weakness and beat him for it. Master Draco used to spend hours in his room, doing nothing, thinking nothing, sometimes crying for no reason. His mother used to cheer him up. I suppose things were just happening that would make him depressed, and not having anyone to cheer him up just finished it off.

"He wouldn't talk to anyone about what he had tired to do. His failure seemed to make him even more upset. When he went for three days without eating at all we called St Mungo's and they sent someone to talk to him. Master Draco threw him into the pond when he started talking about 'cries for help'. Master Draco is quite capable of looking after himself, you see, as his parents used to go on holiday and leave him with us in the house when he was younger. He was always very well behaved. He is very well behaved now, and he started eating and sleeping like a normal person again, to appease us.

"When he was suicidal at least he was something, but after he went back to being empty. He might as well be dead, for all the reaction we could get out of him. When his mother called him using the Floo network he wouldn't speak to her, and he didn't want to visit his father ever again. He only came back to school because I asked, poor thing, because I said he needed to be around people. He said he wasn't fit to be around people, but he might as well go because we were getting on his nerves.

"I've been watching him here, and he's still empty. The only time he's not quite so empty is when you're with him, Mistress Hermione. Sometimes he's angry, sometimes he's sad, sometimes he's okay, but he's always more than just empty. He dreams about you, sometimes. You hate him, but you care for him, and he's confused."

"He's not the only one," Hermione sighed.