Dolor Draconum

Chapter the Seventeenth

Draco stared at the parcel at the bottom of his bed. Not from any member of his family, that shoddily wrapped misshapen lump in second hand paper and fraying string. He approached it cautiously. He wasn't surprised he had missed it when he woke up; it was well disguised amongst the messy bedclothes. Looking around, there was one at the foot of Harry's bed, and another at the foot of Ron's. Suspicion began to creep over him.

The others were all awake now, and unwrapping presents. Draco swallowed, trying to ignore the dull ache in his chest. The one present sat forlornly at the bottom of his bed. He didn't want to unwrap it. It didn't matter what it was, it was all he was getting.

Ron glanced up as Draco left the room hurriedly. "You know," he said casually, "I almost feel sorry for the guy."

"I know what you mean," Harry said. "I didn't understand why Hermione was being nice to him, but I know how it feels to wake up on Christmas morning and watch other people open their presents without anything to open yourself."

Ron grimaced. "Do you s'pose we should, you know, do something?"

"What could we do?" Harry said pragmatically. "Do you want to give him a Christmas present?"

Ron laughed. "No way," he grinned. "But perhaps I'll stop rubbing last summer in his face," he said, sobering up. "I've been more than cruel to him recently."

"What do you mean?" Harry frowned, cocking his head to one side, glasses crooked on his nose. "What did you do?"

"What? Oh, nothing!" Ron said hurriedly. "Hey, what jumper did mum knit for you this year?"

"Gryffindor lion, as usual," Harry said, pulling it on. The static made his hair stick up on end. "You?"

"Maroon, naturally. Hey, is that what I think it is on Malfoy's bed?" Ron crawled over and picked up the package. The old paper gave way, and a green and grey jumper unfolded. "I forgot I told her he was staying here over the break. I must have mentioned it in the letter I sent with Ginny's and my presents for the family. I guess she feels sorry for him."

"You unwrapped my present," a shaky voice came from the doorway. A combination of recently shed tears and tears yet to be shed made the voice crack and waver. Ron jumped in guilty horror.

"I didn't mean to," he spluttered. "I just picked it up and it fell apart."

"You unwrapped my present," Draco repeated, not moving from the doorway. "You utter, utter bastard."

"You unwrapped his present?" a voice came from behind Draco. He jumped and spun around. Hermione and Ginny stood in the doorway, Cho and Orla hovering a little further down the stairs, not sure whether they should join the others or not. "What were you thinking, Ron?" Hermione demanded.

"I didn't mean to!" he protested again. "It just fell apart. I only picked it up to check if it was what I thought it was."

"That was my only present," Draco mumbled sulkily, finally moving back into the room to let the girls in.

"It's from mum!" Ginny squealed when she caught sight of the jumper. "You've got a Weasley jumper!"

It was grey, with a few silver strands sewn in, and a pale green dragon on the front. Draco looked at it, not sure whether to reject it out of pride or put it on out of gratitude. Aware that rejecting it would probably cause forcible expulsion out of the window, he slipped off his dressing gown and pulled the jumper over his head.

"No fair!" Ron muttered, "It suits him! How come he gets a Weasley jumper that flatters him?"

Draco shot a half-hearted smirk at him, and climbed wearily on to the bed. Already this was shaping up to be one of the worst days of his life, though playing power games with Terry had improved his mood a little. Seeing Ron and Harry looking like tea cosies also helped, reminding him that not only did the Malfoy family have pride, they were also blessed with the aristocratic ability to look good in whatever they wore. It wasn't so much a shape thing as an attitude.

Hermione perched on the end of Harry's bed, and Ginny on the end of Ron's. Cho looked around and settled for the floor, while Orla climbed onto the fifth, empty bed in the room. Terry's tousled head emerged from his nest of bedclothes for the second time that morning. He had opened his presents after speaking with Draco, then fallen asleep again. He squinted across the room.

"Oi, Malfoy, is it still raining out there?" he grunted. No one noticed Ron's abrupt pallor, and he managed to keep from collapsing out of the bed in sheer horror.

Draco glanced through the window. "Looks like," he sighed.

"Ugh," Terry summed up everyone's reaction in a monosyllable. He squinted around the room. "Hey, are those girls?" he asked to no one in particular.

"I thought we had that conversation earlier," Draco said smoothly. "Birds and the bees, and all that. They say if nothing happens by the time you're sixteen you should see a healer." Terry's pillow hit him square on the side of the head, the thump muffling Ron's horrified squeak at this further proof he hadn't been dreaming.

"Why are girls here?" Terry asked.

"Ginny and I always come up, if we're here over Christmas," Hermione explained. "We exchange presents with Harry and Ron."

"And make certain we don't get a lie in," Ron was sufficiently recovered to add.

"Huh," Terry grunted, and keeled over backwards. Cho jumped to her feet, but before she could reach Terry's bed he had started snoring again. Harry clenched his fists at her concern, an action that almost made Draco laugh out loud. Oh, if Harry's crush really did fancy Terry! A few hints to Terry, and he could get a real love triangle going on there.

Hermione didn't know about the early morning chat, but she felt she knew Draco well enough to translate that gleam in his eye. She had no intention of letting him play with anyone's feelings like that, though she did make a mental note to introduce him to the concept of Soap Operas, if he ever became more Muggle tolerant.

That thought made her heart flutter in a way she didn't like. It implied he was becoming more her tolerant. He had kissed her, more than once now, and he seemed to be softening towards Muggles. It was his prejudice that made all this so hard. That and her hatred of most things Malfoy. It was strange to think that only a term ago, she'd hated all things Malfoy, not most. He was changing, she hoped. She didn't like to think she might be the one changing.

An idealistic part of her wanted to believe it was her duty to convince him to abandon his prejudice, using any available methods. A practical part of her roughly pointed out that she just wanted an excuse, any excuse, to kiss him again. It was like some dreadful perversion admitting she liked Draco Malfoy, like confessing she fancied Peter Pettigrew in his rat form.

She shook herself, and smiled brightly at the dormitories usual occupants. "I have something for all you boys," she declared. "Of course," she added more self-consciously, "I'm afraid Ron and Harry's presents are a bit bigger." She shrugged apologetically and handed out the garishly wrapped parcels.

Despite some immediate excitement, Draco quickly decided that by 'you boys' she couldn't possibly mean him. They'd barely exchanged two words since Snape had interrupted them in the hospital wing, and Draco had a suspicion that what Hermione would have done to him if Snape hadn't appeared would have been far worse than the mortifying embarrassment.

He was staring distantly at the ground when Hermione held a parcel under his nose. It took his eyes a few seconds to readjust from the garish red and gold carpet to the garish red and gold paper. He reached up and took it, fingers brushing Hermione's ever so slightly. His heart skipped a beat, and he looked up, expecting to meet her eyes and see his excitement reflected in her face.

She was looking behind her, talking animatedly to Ron about the set of 'dictate' quills, which were like Quick Quote Quills but more accurate, she had given him. It took all of Draco's self control not to crush the delicate parcel. He pulled it from her grasp and she glanced down at him.

"Thank you," Draco said, keeping a tight control of his voice.

Hermione frowned. At first Draco thought he'd offended her ('good!' part of him insisted vehemently) until he realised it was concern that was tightening her face muscles.

"Thank you," he repeated, voice much softer. "I didn't expect this. I haven't got you anything."

She smiled. "Oh, that's okay. I wasn't expecting anything. Go on, open it!"

Draco glanced down at the package. He wasn't sure how Muggles wrapped parcels without spellotape to mould the paper to the gift, and judging by the creases and crinkles in the paper Hermione had used some Muggle method of wrapping. He found a seam in the paper, but he couldn't touch it. He frowned. His fingers glanced across some slippery, smooth surface, the texture in utter contrast to that of the paper. He ran his fingers across until he found an edge, and began to pick at the transparent strip. He succeeded in pulling it away from the paper and it stuck to his fingers.

Hermione sighed. "You're one of these people who saves the paper, aren't you?" she said teasingly. She sat down next to him on the bed.

Draco glanced around. Harry was talking to Ginny about her parents, while Orla and Cho were discussing their presents. Terry was still asleep. Only Ron was watching them. Draco flashed him a smarmy grin, guessing immediately that the look of pure agony on his face was due to jealousy, and then tilted his head and flashed his smoothest, silkiest, most charming smile in Hermione's direction. As if on cue her cheeks pinkened and she ducked her head, only looking at him through a curtain of hair.

Draco carefully peeled the tape away from the cheerful paper, forcing a laugh when it clung to his fingers and feigning incompetence so that Hermione had to help him extract himself from it. Eventually, after much such flirting, he unfolded the paper.

It wasn't a dragon. That alone was enough to produce a genuine smile from Draco. Sitting in the palm of his hand was a tiny glowing projection of a single constellation. Hermione had taken the image from the Astronomy tower; in one of the corners you could see the characteristic crenulations.

"There was a family tree in Sirius's house in London," Hermione explained, "and I noticed how many of your family have names based on constellations. I hadn't realised there was a set of stars called 'Draco' before then. I suppose it's almost as creative as some dragon based trinket," she added with an ironic grin.

Draco smiled. "Actually, it's the first time anyone's ever realised. I should have known it would be you," he grinned.

Terry, who had woken up again, had clambered over onto Draco's bed. "Sirius? Sirius Black? You're related to Sirius Black?" he asked Draco. "The mass murderer?"

"Not something the Malfoys publicise," Draco muttered, glowering at him. Suddenly his irritated frown froze, and he turned abruptly back to Hermione, now with a confused frown in its place. "What on earth were you doing in the Black house in London?" he almost yelled. The whole room went silent. Ron and Harry glared at Hermione, who went scarlet, but everyone else's attention was still focused on Draco.

"You're related to the madman?" Cho asked, horrified. "I suppose it must run in your family," she said in a strained voice. "I mean, your father is a Death Eater too."

"Other side of the family," Draco snapped. "Sirius Black is related to my mother. Cousins, I think."

"So you're doubly likely to turn into an evil killer," Orla asked.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Hermione yelled, leaping to her feet. "There's nothing to prove that kind of thing is even inherited! Draco is entirely separate from his family. He is not his father. He is not Sirius Black, who, coincidentally, didn't do it. He is not going to turn into a Death Eater, or betray us to Voldemort, or start killing people randomly."

Hermione's outburst was overblown and out of proportion, and she waited for someone to call her on it. But Ron was on his feet too, then, shouting back, equally vehemently.

"Not going to be a death eater? Not going to side with You-Know-Who?" he near shrieked. "Have you forgotten who you're talking about!?! Draco Malfoy. Malfoy, Hermione. The most prejudiced, bigoted, arrogant, mudblood-hating, hateful git on the face of the planet!"

"Yes, Ron, name calling, because that's going to help," Hermione snapped back sarcastically. "You don't know him! Okay, yes, he's prejudiced. Very prejudiced. And I know he hasn't exactly been a nice guy, well, okay, he's been an utter bastard to all of us. But..."

"But what?" Ron asked nastily.

"Oh shut up," Draco said tiredly. "Fine, I'm a bastard. No one's disputing that. Yeah, I'm prejudiced. Yeah, I'm rich and proud of it. Come to think of it, there's not much I'm not proud of. I'm smart, rich, talented, good looking, a good flier, pragmatic and modest," he smirked. A nervous laugh ran around the room.

"Perhaps that's why I'm prejudiced," Draco went on again. "I'm arrogant, and I have every right to be. The only thing I'm not proud of is my family, as you may have gathered. But it's not as though I ever spent a lot of time with my father, or any of the Black side of the family. I'm not going to run around slaughtering everyone who can't trace their family back through forty generations of wizards. I'd get my house elves to do it." There was another laugh, but it was even less certain than the first. Draco didn't even bother smile to show he was joking.

He stood up and began to pace around the room, hands tucked in the pit of his back like some intellectual academic. "There are two areas of thought on the inheritance of homicidal tendencies. Some say you inherit it like you inherit red hair," he gestured at the Weasleys. "Others say you learn it from those around you, like accents," he glanced at Seamus's posters. "Of course, you can't tell, since most people are brought up by their blood parents or relatives."

He stood in front of the door and crossed his arms across his chest. "I know what you all think of me," he said coolly. "You think I'm a coward. You think I'm going to kill you. Is there anyone in this room apart from Miss Granger with the intelligence to put two and two together and not come up with two?" he asked scathingly. "I admit, I'm not good with violence, or blood, or danger. My father always despaired of me when he took me hunting. So do you honestly think I'd have the nerves to kill anyone? I don't, and I hope I never reach a point where I have to find out."

Ron was the first to speak up. "What if you didn't have to kill? When the basilisk was killing people you went on and on about how you hoped it would kill all the Mudbloods in the school." His voice was steady and cold, anger under control but still visible, like a caged beast. "You-Know-Who has posts for many kinds of people, I imagine. Don't you share the same aims? A pure-blooded society?"

Draco leant back on the doorframe. "Yes and no," he said eventually. "Not by killing people, but I do think it's, well, disgusting to have wizards breeding with Muggles. I've nothing against Muggles, as long as they stay in their little world, away from 'our type'. I think Mudbloods shouldn't be made aware of their power, or if they must be only because they need to learn to control it. Mudbloods are a risk to our society. Our culture is being irrevocably altered, destroyed even. And more and more Muggles are learning about it. How long before one decides to make it common knowledge that wizards walk among them?

"It's not because they'll want magical solutions to their problems. A few laws and that would be dealt with. No, do you know why the ministry want us separate? Fear. We have so much to be afraid of. The killing curse only kills one person at a time, and wears out the wizard after a few goes. A machine gun can mow down hundreds in minutes, and all you need to keep going is more bullets. Look to the past. Muggles are prejudiced, they fear those that are different. Anyone who read Rita Skeeter's articles will be aware that Potter's foster parents are far from tolerant of his power." He shot a pointed look at Harry.

"Well, that is true," Harry was forced to admit. "But there are loads of people out there who'd be fine with wizards and witches. Many would welcome it! You're judging the population by a few. You're no different. You're just as racist," he accused.

"Yes," Draco said simply. "But I wouldn't dream of going to the lengths some Muggles have gone. If Voldemort had had access to gas ovens, or been willing to use them, Britain would be an all wizard state. And jealousy would only add fuel to the racist fire. Muggles would want to know why some of us are blessed and some aren't. They'd all want to marry wizards in the hope of having magical children. They'd do Dunah testing and cut us open to see what made us different."

"DNA" Hermione coughed subtly. "DNA testing."

"Suppose they couldn't find a cause," Draco went on. "They would resent us, hate us. Or worse, suppose they did find a cause. Suppose they found a way to make everyone a witch or wizard. We had Voldemort, and Salazar Slytherin, I guess. They have Nero, Caligula, Napoleon, Gengis Khan, Stalin, Hitler... Imagine some of the machine/magic syntheses. Nuclear warheads crossed with the killing curse. Machine guns that spray stupefy across the battlefield." He waved his hand expansively, as if to cover every possible weapon and every possible dark arts spell. Orla was looking scared, Ginny and Cho apprehensive, Terry and Harry dubious. Ron and Hermione? Ron's face was carefully blank. Hermione looked irritated.

"What are you arguing, Draco?" she asked crossly. "What are you responding to? The accusation that you're prejudiced, or that you're going to join with Voldemort? Or are you just playing Devil's Advocate?"

"What?" Draco looked baffled.

"Arguing for the sake of arguing," Hermione explained. "I see your point, about joining the wizarding and the Muggle worlds. We all do. But you're taking extremes, and the benefits of such a union could be just as easily argued. You grew up being taught that this kind of prejudice is right, but it isn't. Draco, you must see that it isn't!"

"My prejudice is justified," Draco contradicted her, but not unkindly. "It's not just the way I was brought up. Some of the arguments I was presented with as a child are frankly ridiculous. But some make sense. I disagree with changes to our society as a result of this mixing of blood. I'm a conservative, I suppose. But I don't think killing all the Muggles, Mudbloods and Squibs is the way forwards. It will just draw attention to the wizarding world and Muggles will perceive us as a threat. And eliminate that threat."

"No..." Orla murmured.

"No," Hermione said decisively. "The ministry has an agreement with the Muggle government as it is, and besides, Voldemort will be defeated."

"And we'd all feel a lot better if you stopped using his name," Terry ground out. "You can't call him You-know-who like the rest of us?"

There was a knock on the door. Draco spun around and fell into Professor McGonagall's arms. She righted him with an amused look.

"Professor Dumbledore was getting worried," she informed the dormitory. "No one has come down for breakfast, and it's almost dinner time."

"We missed breakfast?" Ginny asked, aghast. "Oh no!"

For the first time the morning since the girls had arrived in the dormitory, the laughter was neither nervous nor forced.