Dolor Draconum

Chapter the Fifteenth

Term was ending, and Draco Malfoy was sitting in the hospital wing packing his things. He didn't care what Madam Pomfrey said, he was going home. Until some member of staff treated him like an adult and told him what was going on, he was going to act like he didn't know there was any legitimate reason for him to stay.

Madam Pomfrey bustled in, followed by Professor Dumbledore. Draco froze, in the middle of folding up his underwear. Part of him was deeply embarrassed, but another part merely assumed that it was Dumbledore's place to be embarrassed, not his. He continued to fold after nodding his acknowledgement of their presence.

"Mister Malfoy, I suggest you pause for a moment," Dumbledore placed his hands on the lid of the suitcase. "I don't know about you, by I find unpacking even more dull than packing, especially if there aren't any souvenirs or the risk of finding class A drugs smuggled into the case while you weren't looking," he smiled. Draco looked blank. "You're not going anywhere," Dumbledore said, a little more sharply. "Please, sit down." He closed the case, narrowly missing Draco's fingers.

Draco sat on the bed. "No one has given me a reason to stay," he pointed out. "Every time I ask questions, no one answers them. You think I have no idea what's going on."

"Aside from the fact you're still legally a child and can't be allowed to live along like that, I have more 'personal' reasons for keeping you here."

Draco frowned. "No one did anything over the summer," he said accusingly. "I'm an underaged wizard. If it's illegal for me to be without an adult for so long, why didn't anyone do something?"

Draco wasn't happy, he realised, that he'd been alone. He had convinced himself he was, but if someone had come in and started running his life for him, he wouldn't have put up more than a token protest. He wanted someone to tell him what to do. He understood, now, why adults were always telling kids that they didn't want to grow up, now matter what the children themselves thought.

"You're mother flaunted an ancient law about the Malfoy lineage. The head of the Malfoy family takes over as soon as his predecessor is dead, imprisoned, or wearing a tutu." Draco remembered that rule well. He'd spent months quizzing the portraits to find out which one of them had taken up ballet. There are been a lot of shifty looks and exchanged glances. "And this patriarch can be any age, and is exempt from the rules applying to Underage wizards. I think originally it was just to allow you to do magic, but when Ministry tried to force her to take you with her when she left Narcissa waved the documents in their collective face."

Draco's eyes darkened. He'd given up questioning his mother's reasons for leaving, but some part of him still cried 'why' each time he thought about it. She really hadn't wanted him.

"So you can't make me stay," he said, trying to sound defiant. He had a sinking suspicion he sounded more regretful than anything else.

Dumbledore looked into Draco's grey eyes and sighed. The boy wanted him to reject that, to tell him he had to stay at Hogwarts. Give him a reason and he'd stay, he wanted to, he just didn't want to want to.

"No, but if you want to survive you really ought to," Dumbledore told him solemnly. "I mentioned I had a personal reason for you to stay. That reason is my desire to see you live."

"I knew it," Draco said dully. "I am dying. You could have just said," he added bitterly. He tried not to be surprised that Dumbledore actually did want him alive. Maybe Hermione was right about the old man.

Dumbledore looked astonished. "Where on earth did you get that idea? You're in perfect health."

Well, Hermione might be right to a certain extent. Draco wasn't dissuaded from his idea that Dumbledore was senile and possibly insane. He had to be to think playing dumb like that would honestly convince him he wasn't dying? He glowered at the venerable head master.

"Stop it. Just stop it!" Draco snapped. "Stop lying to me, stop evading my questions! Wea- I overheard, okay? Madam Pomfrey doesn't want a dead student on her hands. You're keeping me here and you're making me drink this potion; did you think I wouldn't figure it out?" He had started to shout. "Why couldn't you just tell me? It's all so obvious! Every time I ask you look confused or pretend you don't know what I'm on about! I'm sick of it!"

"You're not dying," Dumbledore reiterated. "Where did you get that idea?"

"The potions, the enforced convalescence, the fact that I heard people saying it!" Draco cried.

"You're not dying," Dumbledore repeated again, the hint of irritation creeping into his voice. "You're father has escaped from Azkaban."

"...Oh." Draco managed.

"Indeed. No one's quite sure how he did it yet, but only one guard, the one who brought him food, was killed. Of course, there aren't dementors at Azkaban anymore," Dumbledore sighed, "and no one's quite used to that yet."

Draco's jaw dropped. "So, I'm fine?" he asked in a small voice.

"Perfectly so, Mister Malfoy," Dumbledore smiled warmly at him. "We just want to make sure you stay that way. As long as you're here we know that you are safe. Your father can not easily access these grounds, though it's probably best if you stay close to the castle anyway."

"Not dying," Draco repeated. He stared at his feet for a few moments, trying to put himself back together. In the past few days everything had done an abrupt about turn not once, but twice. He'd been fine, then he'd been dying, then it turned out he was fine after all, if in mortal danger. He couldn't quite wrap his head around the source of the mortal danger yet. Everything that he'd been told had changed, but everything he had thought couldn't be reversed so easily.

"The media don't know yet," Dumbledore said sternly. "Keep this to yourself, understand?" Draco swallowed and nodded. The headmaster could be frightening when he chose to be. Though who am I supposed to tell anyway? he thought bitterly.

"So, I suppose I better unpack?" Draco stood up and started to reach for his case. One hand fumbled the list he had written earlier from his pocket.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of keeping you up here over Christmas," Dumbledore beamed. "No, you're staying in the Gryffindor common room."

Draco sat down again. "Nnngh..." He began to shred the parchment, or tried to. Parchment never shredded quite as easily as paper, especially the thick expensive stuff embossed with the Malfoy header. He screwed it up and tossed it back and forth from hand to hand.

"Due to the potential of war, the ministry has cut our budget. Since so few students are staying over Christmas we're keeping you all in a single house. Gryffindor happens to be easiest to heat due to its position over several other rooms that will remain heated over the winter, while most of the other common rooms and dormitories are more detached from the main part of the school. In addition, more Gryffindors are staying than any other house."

"Let me guess, Potter and the Weasleys," Draco said snidely.

"And Miss Granger," Dumbledore added.

Draco smiled. Perhaps staying in the Gryffindor common room wouldn't be so bad after all.

The look in Dumbledore's eye suggested he knew why Draco was smiling.

* * *

It was the last day of term, and as Professor McGonagall stepped through the portrait Neville barrelled past her, half an hour late for the last train as it was, tossing apologies over his shoulder. McGonagall hoped his grandmother would be willing to collect him. He didn't live too far away, not like some of the others. If Harry, for example, had to rely on being dropped off and picked up he'd never have made it to Hogwarts. The Dursleys were hardly likely to have been willing to make the full day's drive, even if it meant getting rid of him for the better part of a year. And they wouldn't have found Hogwarts anyway, not in a Muggle vehicle.

McGonagall felt for the boy, she really did. To lose so many people so close to him, and to grow up as he had. She was worried about how well he appeared to be coping this year. His temper had been shorter and his moods darker, but McGonagall suspected that they were just the dark clouds visible before the storm really broke. She strode and stood, stiffbacked, in the centre of the room. She knew her news was hardly going to be received with pleasure. Better break it to them slowly.

"Has everyone who isn't staying left?" she asked, looking around the room.

"Neville was the last," Harry told her.

"Good," she said dryly. "Though I wish it weren't my student who was last to leave. The other houses are already empty."

"Empty?" Ron asked. "You mean only we're staying this year?"

"Not quite." McGonagall sighed. "Thanks to the ministry, all of the remaining students will have to stay in one house."

"Who's staying?" Hermione asked. Ron shot her a pained look. They both knew who almost certainly would be staying. It wasn't as though he had a family to go home to.

"There are no Hufflepuffs, but you will have three Ravenclaw guests and one Slytherin," they were informed.

"Draco Malfoy," Harry, surprisingly, guessed aloud.

McGonagall nodded tersely, watching for their reactions. Ginny looked resigned and shot worried looks at her brother. Harry was angry, obviously, but he too was looking at Ron. Hermione looked very carefully blank, though McGonagall thought she might be a little nervous. She was very studiously not looking at anyone.

Ron was staring at Professor McGonagall in open-mouthed horror. "No!" he groaned. "No way."

"I hope this isn't prejudiced inter-house rivalry," she scolded. "That is frowned upon by the school."

"We don't mind Ravenclaws or the Hufflepuffs," Harry said hastily, "it's just, well Slytherin?"

The look on Professor McGonagall's face implied she agreed, but she couldn't say it out loud. "It's only one student," she reassured them.

"It's Malfoy!" Ron wailed.

"They're staying here," Harry said, aghast, "in our dormitories?"

"In your dormitory," McGonagall said sharply. "Really, you must make an effort to get along."

"But he'll kill us! Or we'll kill him!" Harry spluttered, not thinking about what he was saying.

"I sincerely hope not," McGonagall said frostily. "This is a chance for Gryffindor to display its generous and welcoming nature. I hope you make all of our guests from the other houses welcome."

"'Generous and welcoming'?" Ginny whispered. "If we were that we'd all be in Hufflepuff."

"And if we were in Hufflepuff we'd be made to stay here, with them, anyway!" Harry hissed back.

"No one from Hufflepuff is staying," McGonagall reminded them loudly, making it perfectly clear that she had heard every word Ginny and Harry had exchanged. "Very few students are staying this winter, even fewer than usual."

"Surely, with Voldemort free, they'd be safer at Hogwarts than at home," Hermione pointed out. She was sitting by the fire with a book on her lap.

McGonagall's lips thinned when she heard Hermione use You-Know-Who's 'real' name. "That is up to the parents," she pointed out, her exasperated tone indicating that she agreed with Hermione. "The most recent news is that Voldemort is in America. None of the wizarding families moved there, so there is very little wizarding blood. He knows this; he knows we have no one to contact to hunt him down there. It is very rare for a witch or wizard to be born into a family that has no history of wizard blood whatsoever. In fact, if you look at every ancestor until you reach, for example, the time of the Founders, you'll find that every witch or wizard today has at least one magically inclined ancestor from an established wizarding family."

McGonagall frowned suddenly. She'd told the children rather more than she had intended too about Voldemort's activities. They were all members of the Order of the Phoenix, but they were also all still children. She didn't approve of Dumbledore's decision to tell Harry of the prophecy, but that was up to him. She supposed that knowing Voldemort was half a world away counted as reassuring, but she still felt uncomfortable revealing anything to the more junior members of the Order of the Phoenix without prior approval. Oh well, she sighed internally, they always seem to find out anyway.

"I hope you will all co-operate and share the Christmas spirit with our guests, she said firmly. "I will return to speak to all of you this evening, once your guests have settled in."

As she left she found Draco Malfoy, Terry Boot, Cho Chang and Orla Quirke all waiting outside of the portrait hole with their things.

"The password is 'Holly and Ivy'," she told them, "I hope my students make you welcome." And she left them to it.

"I feel almost sorry for you," Terry commented to Draco. "They hardly sounded pleased to have you staying, did they?"

"I'm hardly pleased to be staying here," he sneered, staring contemptuously through the hole. "I'd even stay in your dormitories rather than here."

"Oh, thanks," Cho snapped sarcastically. "Come on. I'm not standing out here all night."

When Cho climbed through the portrait hole, Harry went red. When Draco arrived, Ron turned beetroot, though for an entirely different reason.