A Soul to Keep

CHAPTER THREE

Expelliarmus

The evening was cold and blustery, yet Matilda was thankful to be released, at least temporarily, from the labyrinthine dungeons and able to walk freely in the evening air. The clouds had departed finally, leaving the star-strewn sky and full moon naked and glowing brightly above them, mercifully lighting the mountainous and rocky slope that they were currently negotiating to escape the wards around the castle.

She was doing her best to fight off visions of a tattered set of perfectly ebony robes flapping at the sides of a slick-haired and angry Snape as she defied gravity as best she could to avoid tumbling down the steep hill.

"What do you mean you can't apparate yet?" Draco moaned at Crabbe, giving him a look of utter revulsion.

"My birthday's not until October, and I haven't learned, and I don't want to get splinched, and-"

"As if a license and a bit of training would actually be enough to prepare you to apparate!" Draco snapped back at him. "What was I thinking, assuming that Vincent Crabbe would be able to do something that simple? Where was my mind?"

"You don't even know your own friend's birthday, Draco?" Matilda drawled, coming to stand beside the two boys at the base of the hill.

"Darling, I don't even know yours," he said with a smug little grin. "I have logged away but one birthday, and that is the most important of them all."

"Oh let me guess." Blaise rolled his eyes as he reached the growing crowd of sixth and seventh year Slytherins.

"You needn't, Blaise. I have only learned my own, as it is the day that officially belongs to me. It is my day. Mine." He jabbed his finger deeply into his chest and continued, "Or as I like to call it, The Christmas in April."

"Uh huh."

Matilda had heard this before. He actually did call it The Christmas in April, ever since he was six and realised that the real holiday in December was coincidentally in celebration of someone's birth. The comparison was cemented when he noticed that on both days he was given more presents than usual.

"Are we going to stand around all evening, or are we actually going to Hogsmeade tonight?" Matilda asked, feeling cold and very aware of the mud that they were standing in.

"What about me?" Crabbe asked quietly, looking more confused than hurt.

"Don't be thick, Crabbe. Goyle will walk with you, obviously," Draco said in a cheerfully patronising tone, patting the great oaf on his ham-like forearm in a complete shift of attitude. "The rest of us will meet you there, I'm sure Blaise will buy you a drink."

Blaise snorted in disbelief. "No, no: I don't buy people drinks, Draco. They are bought for me, especially by very drunk Hufflepuffs." He shook his head somewhat mournfully and whispered to Matilda, "You have no idea what that much liquor does to a boy," before disappearing with a loud snap.

Draco impatiently grabbed her hand and, with great and multiple sounds akin to cracking fingers, she found herself in a small pub, surrounded by half-wasted Hufflepuffs and scandalised looking waitresses.

***

In May of Pansy's sixth year, Hogwarts fell under a profound silence for the first time in over five years. There were no fights in the Great Hall, no insults in the corridors, no glares across crowded classrooms.

Of course, the tension was at an all-time high.

Nonetheless, Pansy was feeling much better. She hadn't been home since her birthday, meaning she hadn't seen Lucius who was still hiding out with her mother. The band remained loose enough around her neck to breathe comfortably and she couldn't feel the Dark Lord inside of her mind at all. She had begun smiling again, laughing at cruel jokes and Hufflepuffs, and tossing her hair casually as she walked.

Draco had put on an act much like her own, and she desperately wanted to remedy their friendship before the summer holiday. She knew him very well and was certain that if she sat down beside him at breakfast and complimented his hair, he would light up and reform their friendship with a bear hug.

But she would never do that. She could not shake the nagging fear that she would be forced to betray him and their friendship at any moment. She couldn't bear the idea of being responsible for the death of a friend. Somehow, she justified the possible future in which she was a murderer by remaining detached from him. If she kept away, she would never become a monster.

She allowed herself to quietly wish him good luck as he left to get ready for the quidditch match against Gryffindor that afternoon.

He nodded stiffly in thanks.

***

"Excellent!" Draco said, probably to himself, clapping his hands and bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. "Who wants a butterbeer?" And with this, he disappeared as fully into the crowd as his white-blond head would let him. Matilda set about looking for Blaise.

The lights were entirely too low in The Three Broomsticks, Matilda thought. The raucous music was far too loud, the floor was splattered with some offensively sticky substance, the reek of pipes - of various sorts - was suffocating, the dance floor was packed with grinding teenagers in tight, shiny clothing... This place was perfect.

An obnoxious Hufflepuff boy that she recognised from Astronomy attempted, and failed, to hit on her as she walked by, only managing what sounded like, "Whassa girlike you commeeroffen?" before belching and falling into the lap of a giggling, pigtailed girl of his own house.

That was distressing, she was sure she felt what could have very well been a drunken hand on her backside. There was no doubt some kind of smudge on her trousers and she shuddered at the thought of what its origin may have been. Those Hufflepuffs would touch anything, by the look of them, and now it was smeared across her favourite clothes.

"BLAISE!" she shouted as she spotted him at a large booth with three other Slytherins. She shoved her way through a few extraordinarily inebriated strangers, hoping that they weren't smothered in some sort of grime as well. "Do I have a filthy handprint on my arse?" she asked, spinning around to give him a look.

He eyed her curiously with the slightest hint of amusement. "No, honey. I think that cloud of smoke you wandered through is having its way with you." He stood up and motioned for her to sit down. "I need to sit on the end, I'm watching for something," he added as if answering a question.

"Oh? Someone in particular?" she inquired innocently. This boy was a bit of a slut, from what she'd gathered. It was wonderful. And was that glitter in his hair? She was going to have to ask him how he got his eyeliner so straight across his upper lid. She began to worry that he may have actually been prettier than she was.

"Actually," he said, wearily eyeing the boys across from them. They were currently taking turns with a single shot glass and an enormous, half-empty bottle of firewhiskey. "I'm expecting the Terrific Trio," he whispered directly into her ear.

Really! Was this some sort of Slytherin orgy thing that she had yet to be informed of? If so, she was very intrigued, if not a little disturbed by the delighted twinkle in her new friend's eye.

"Trio?" she asked coyly.

"Potter, Weasley, and Granger. Haven't you met them?"

Oh.

"Only Harry," she said, shrugging.

"Hhharry!" the very drunken boy beside her said, exhaling what had to be the stench of hell heavily across her face. His long, hooked nose was very red and his sunken cheeks were equally flushed. "Since when do we call him Harry?"

"I'm sorry, darling, I didn't catch your name," Matilda said sweetly.

He looked confused. "Uh," he said, looking to his friends for encouragement. "Nott. Theodore Nott."

"Well, Theodore," she said, resting a hand on his bony shoulder, "We call him Harry because that is his name, as Theodore is yours. And my condolences, by the way."

Theodore looked pathetically perplexed. Both of his friends snorted and then hooted elatedly as one of them poured another shot. Lovely boys. Hopefully she would never come across them again.

"I suspect that Granger will stay at school and study, though," continued Blaise as if their conversation had not been cut off at all.

"Which one's Granger?"

"The one with the bushy brown hair. Hermione Granger. The redhead's Ron, you can guess his last name."

"Yeah, his brothers run the joke shop down the street," one of Theodore's friends informed them. "You ever been?"

Matilda contemptuously eyed the frizzy blond mop of hair that hung into his eyes and turned back to Blaise. "The girl?" Blaise nodded.

"She's kinda hot in a bookish sort of way," the third, previously silent boy declared.

"Tell me that it's the fire whiskey talking, Sutherland, and you just didn't call the Mudblood hot," Theodore whispered. "And don't let Malfoy hear you say that; he'd skin you alive."

"He can't deny that she's good looking," Sutherland slurred defensively.

"He would deny it, have you disowned somehow, and then make sure you were kicked out of Hogwarts," Blaise agreed.

"Fine. I'll keep my mouth shut about it."

There was no way in hell that Draco found Hermione attractive, even Matilda knew that and she'd been at the school for five days. If he happened to acknowledge her continuing existence at all, it only occurred when Harry was around and mainly entailed taunts and generally foul, attention-grabbing language. However, Matilda reflected, if Harry happened to walk past on his own, which was a very rare occurrence, Draco watched him with a sort of rapt attention that could be best described as depraved.

She was suddenly very anxious for the three of them to arrive.

The thick wooden doors promptly burst open and Blaise sat up as tall as he could in his chair, patting her shoulder excitedly. A large crowd bustled in out of the cold and promptly made their way to the bar in a hum of blended conversations with occasional bursts of shouted expletives.

"Well, shit." Blaise slumped back into his seat and jerked the bottle out of the blond boy's hand. Taking a long swig of firewhiskey and coughing loudly, he glared at Vincent and Goyle's looming figures as they lead the pack of Slytherins into the cramped room. "Why aren't they here yet?" he said testily, picking at the chipped wooden corner of the table.

"Who, Potter and them?" Theodore asked slowly, causally taking the bottle back and carefully pouring another shot. He was spectacularly sloshed. "They came in while you two were talking, they're over there." He pointed a flaccid and shaky hand in the general direction of the other side of the bar and laughed. "Even I saw that," he added under his breath.

"Ooh!" Blaise exclaimed, jumping to his feet and dragging Matilda with him. "We have to get those stools at the bar!" His firm grip on her hand was mildly uncomfortable as he hauled her as quickly as he could through the gyrating crowd. Seating himself gracefully and hissing an insult at a stunned looking sixth year that appeared to be threatening to consider taking the empty stool beside him, he motioned for his friend to join him. "Sit down, Matty!" He laughed, "Hurry, the show's about to begin!"

"What show? What are you on about?" Matilda stretched up in her seat and attempted to peer through the crowd. There must have been one hundred people packed on to what they had made the dance floor for the evening, and it was several seconds before a shock of red hair and a frizzy ponytail came into view, making their way over to where they were seated.

"How did those Slytherins get firewhiskey, anyway?" Ron asked, eyeing the rows of butterbeer with distinct dissatisfaction.

"You don't want firewhiskey, Ron," Hermione told him sagely, materialising at his side, which was, coincidentally, Matilda's side as well.

Harry was hanging back, shuffling his feet and shooting occasional and wary glances around him. He made brief eye contact with Matilda and smiled feebly, probably unsure of her attitude toward him. She smiled back: she wasn't sure either; she'd have to decide after she saw whatever this show was about to be. And it had better be spectacular; she was building it up in her mind and getting her hopes up like mad. She wanted either obscene public displays of affection or an outrageously brutal duel. It had to be one or the other.

Was he looking for Draco? He had better be, but she could see her cousin's hair just as easily in the pulsing crowd as she had been able to spot Ron's. Nonetheless, Harry seemed to be getting desperate. His glances were soon long and drawn out scans of the room around him, his hands shoved deep into his pockets with the sort of pathetic nervousness of a schoolboy in love. Or danger. There was really no way of knowing.

Do something! You hopeless, doe-eyed, infuriated or very possibly smitten, Gryffindor fool!

Matilda briefly wondered if he'd ever studied Occlumency and, assuming he hadn't, whether she would be able to crawl inside of his mind if she concentrated hard enough on him. She had actually managed to fail every single Legillimancy test she had ever taken at Durmstrang, but imagined that, as she was feeling a pressing need to perfect the art at the moment, she could pull it off in this particular situation.

He gave her a look of pure alarm when he noticed her squinting at him; her face screwed up with profound intensity.

Nothing. He was like a brick wall; a shivering, nervous wreck of a brick wall that appeared to be eyeing the drinks on the bar.

She was losing patience with the entire situation.

"Oh! Oh!" Blaise stabbed both index fingers through the air and toward a large group of people along with each exclamation. A white blond head was making its way over to them, soon accompanied by a rather contented looking face and eventually a body covered in very tight black clothing. Either Draco had not seen the three Gryffindors at all yet, or he was doing a marvellous job of hiding his excitement. Or his rage. Whichever. Either was fine as he was looking tipsy and therefore, if he was at all like every Malfoy before him, volatile.

"Blaise!" He shouted once he was standing somewhat too close. He smelled like a sanitised Theodore Nott, and his reddened eyes hinted of firewhiskey as well.

Blaise pulled his hands back swiftly and rested his elbows on the bar behind him with his signature grace. "There you are," he said, "I thought you'd have abandoned us by now."

"I thought you'd have run off with some Hufflepuff tart by now," Draco quipped, sounding sober yet swaying ever so slightly. He noticed the look Blaise was giving him and snorted scornfully. "You like it," he said, waving a quelling hand.

Blaise smiled at Matilda and shrugged.

She was getting frustrated. She decided that she had unwittingly surrounded herself with the excessively cryptic and the selfishly drunk. She was yet to have been offered a beverage of any sort, and if she was expected to endure the ridiculous level of suspense she found herself grappling with, she was going to have to become very drunk very soon. She pulled a shot of some pink, syrupy liquor from Blaise's hand and he turned to buy himself a second one.

They had better hurry the hell up, she thought crossly as she threw the sweet liquid back; it was hot and smoky in there and she was sure the fog of smoke, sweat and alcohol fumes was doing foul things to her skin. She could feel her pores clogging.

Draco eyed the tiny, empty glass in her hand bitterly and took three quick steps toward the bar to order one of his own. As he thrust his hand forward, it collided against another with a loud smack that was audible above the music from where Matilda was seated.

"Watch it, Potter," Draco hissed maliciously and rubbed the back of his hand.

"Watch yourself Malfoy," Harry snapped back.

Draco smiled. "But that's what I have you for, love."

Harry angled his head ever so slightly to regard the other boy askance, no doubt hoping for an incredulous expression. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me, Potter, it's not that loud in here."

Matilda perked up. Did she hear the makings of a duel?

"Are you implying something?" Harry asked heatedly, raising his voice.

"I wouldn't, see, it would be lost on you," Draco replied at the same volume.

"Hex him, Harry!" Ron suddenly shouted. Harry jumped and looked at his friend as if he had unexpectedly apparated to his side.

Hermione crossed her arms and shook her head maternally.

Draco slowly slid his wand from wherever the hell he had managed to hide it in that outfit, and pointed it at the centre of Harry's chest.

"Yes, Harry," he said slowly, "hex him, Harry."

The Gryffindor's head slowly turned back to Draco and his wand was out and at the ready before his eyes could have had time to focus properly. A crowd of his housemates began to form behind him, all of them pulling out their own wands and appearing perfectly willing to defend their friend to the death.

This was exciting.

"Think you can beat me this time, Malfoy?" Harry asked, smiling broadly and looking cocky as hell.

Draco opened his mouth, looking absolutely incensed and ready to strike with a characteristically vicious curse, when a higher, female voice cut through the scene.

"Expelliarmus!" Pansy shouted from the other side of the bar and Draco's wand exploded from his hand, landing neatly in Matilda's lap.

What was this? No! Pansy was robbing her of her battle sequence!

Several Gryffindors laughed nervously, while a few Hufflepuffs looked rather confused and began to wander back on to the dance floor.

"What the bloody hell was that, Pansy?" Draco shouted. His thin face was crimson with rage and he seemed on the verge of leaping over the bar and throttling her.

She said nothing and tucked her wand neatly into her boot.

"Pansy!" he shouted again.

She was silent.

"Are you that desperate for attention?" he asked furiously. "Are you that lonely? Who do you want, me or Potter?"

Pansy drew in a sharp, pained breath and slid her wand from her boot once again. She pointed it at Draco. He jumped as he watched her do this and fumbled blindly in Matilda's lap for his own wand, keeping his eyes fixed on the other girl.

She opened her mouth and made a simmering sound something like, "Cccc..."

It appeared as if the curse had caught in her throat and she blinked back what could have been tears as her arm folded up against itself. She looked frightened and confused, like she was lost and alone in a foreign place. She let her arm drop, followed by her head, and, with a loud snap, she was gone.

The inn had fallen silent as it could. The music continued to reverberate against the walls and throb within their bodies, but no one moved or made a sound. The crowd of Hufflepuffs on the dance floor stared lamely at the empty space that had, until recently, been occupied by Pansy. Draco stood perfectly still, shaking with rage. Finally, Seamus Finnigan whistled with awe.

***

The game went down on record as one of the shortest in Hogwarts history. Madam hooch blew the whistle and both teams took to the air, streaking through the rain as red and green blurs, fumbling the slick quaffle and dodging bludgers that materialised suddenly out of the haze of rain.

They were playing for less than three minutes when Potter spotted the snitch hovering far beneath him, three feet or so in front of Pansy's box. Draco spotted it seconds later and took off just as the other seeker began to move toward it.

Potter was closer, he was faster, he was going to catch it first. It was only logical.

But then he had slowed.

Draco didn't seem to notice until the tiny golden ball was hovering within arms reach of him and he looked up to see Potter sitting behind it, thoroughly soaked and shivering, regarding him thoughtfully.

Neither of them moved for a split second that dragged on for an eternity as the crowd of students went wild with frustration in the stands. Finally, Potter thrust his arm out and Draco immediately followed suit. But Potter strayed completely out of character when he quickly drew his hand back in. Draco was visibly shocked when his fist clamped shut and the tiny golden ball began flapping around in his fist.

He had won the game against Gryffindor for the first time.

Potter smiled and flew away.

Pansy couldn't help but wonder if this was his mawkish way of saying goodbye. She was certain that, if it was, he didn't know Draco as well as he thought he did.

The Prince of Slytherin stormed into the common room an hour after the game; white hair sopping wet and plastered to his scowling, crimson face. He looked murderous as he hurled his broom at Goyle, his uniform at Crabbe, and insults at anyone that dared congratulate him. He thundered down the hall and locked himself in his bedroom for the duration of the night.

The band was so tight for the next week that Pansy barely had breath enough to walk to class.

***

She didn't return to their room that night.

Matilda kept her bed curtains open and flopped awkwardly around on the mattress, trying to get comfortable while maintaining a clear view of the door. Masses of jumbled thoughts kept her awake as they bounced uselessly around in her soggy mind and she sighed heavily when she decided that a few moments of lucid thought wouldn't kill her.

She wondered if Pansy had been about to Cruciatus Draco, or if she simply suffered from some sort of nervous speech impediment.

She pondered what could have made Pansy decide not to aim at Harry's wand instead.

She contemplated the reasons Pansy may have had to act like a complete tit and whether it was simply to ruin the only piece of real fun she'd had all goddamn week.

She considered the pros and cons of hiding under her bed sheets and springing out from beneath them, shooting curses wildly in every direction in a deluge of nightclothes and sweet, sweet revenge as Pansy stumbled in, exhausted and blissfully ignorant of her roommate's awesome power.

She mulled over her sheets themselves and speculated that they may have been woven of some foul blend rather than of the pure cotton that she had been assured they were.

It wasn't until nearly five a.m. that Matilda allowed sleep to close in on her.