A Soul to Keep

CHAPTER FIVE

"Oh, I have a plan"

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"Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history."

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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"What the hell was that, Draco?" Matilda asked, anxiously running over to the hallway. She wanted to make sure that Pansy had, in fact, retreated to their room and was not returning to present further displays of her brand new psychosis.

Draco was still clutching the chair in front of him, protecting himself from the memory of his old friend and her... episode. He looked even more enraged than he had the night before; and rightly so - he seemed to be having an astonishingly terrible day.

"It's bullshit!" he suddenly yelled in response, somewhat too late. "Everyone knows... no one knows. Do they Blaise?" he asked, turning to the other boy who looked as if he was preparing to run for his life.

"I, er," he spluttered under the pressure, "I'm just lost, Draco."

"Exactly! No one knows..." He trailed off, tipping the chair back and forth on its wooden feet. "Not even Granger..."

"And so it shall remain, my son," Dumbledore said, stepping gracefully into the common room. Snape, who was holding a small vial of blue liquid in each hand, followed sullenly behind.

Draco froze and quickly cleared his face of any trace of emotion. "Headmaster," he said coolly, glancing over at Matilda as she stepped aside for the Potions Master. Even during a crisis such as this, she made every effort to prevent him from touching her.

"I do believe that Ms. Parkinson may require the expertise of our Professor Snape." Dumbledore told him. He patted the confused young man on the arm as he walked by, Snape giving both Malfoys curt nods as he followed the older man.

They quickly passed the silent students and turned down the hall, heading to Pansy.

"I'm still lost," Blaise grumbled.

***

As Pansy pointed her wand at her best friend, she could feel the Dark Lord's excitement coursing through her mind and body. The ice water in her veins coursed through her limbs, sending chills up her spine, urging her on to action, screaming for her to obey. The rest of the room faded to black as she stared at the horror-struck boy at the other end of her arm.

She had only meant to scare Draco, only meant to make him shut his mouth, to stop him from saying those things in public. She needed him to stay away from Potter, she needed to keep them as far apart as she could, and he was not making things easy for her.

"Crucio him!" the Dark Lord screamed from inside of her, "Bring them both to me!"

Her arm was stinging with the bitter cold, the glacier in her chest thudding against her ribs and threatening to shatter before all of this was through. She could feel him pulling her, beckoning. If she had let loose the curse and then walked around the bar to touch Draco as he lay paralysed with agony on the filthy ground, he would have been pulled along with her.

And then Potter would have found him.

He would have risked his life to save the boy that had insulted him, hexed him, hurt him, injured him, and he would have been killed along with Draco for his efforts.

The room was getting hazy. She had lost all sensation except for the solid block of ice inside of her arm. She was losing grip on her surroundings, she felt increasingly ephemeral as the pulling from within her gained strength.

"Do it, Pansy!"

She let her wand fall and allowed him to take her.

*

Lucius grabbed her around the waist and threw her down the basement steps the moment she arrived in the house. She could not understand how she had appeared within the wards that had always surrounded the property, but he was in front of her and then all around her and his grip on her body was crushing as he lifted her from the ground and tossed her down the three flights. She had landed in a broken heap at the end of the Dark Lord's wand.

By the time Pansy was released and she had stumbled out of her own front door, it was nearing three a.m. She sobbed bitterly as every muscle in her body shook traitorously and refused to move as quickly as she needed them to.

She vowed to never again consider the Cruciatus curse as an option.

She stumbled beyond the wards surrounding her family's property and disapparated to Hogsmeade. There she rested, curled up in front of a small cafe, clutching pitifully at her bruised ribs in the soft morning rain. She was certain that she would never be fully able to muster the strength to move from that spot, but Pansy knew she wouldn't be safe until she returned to Hogwarts.

Somehow the drained and weary girl managed to haul her useless limbs up the incredible slope and she forced them to drag her through the gates, to pull her into the warm embrace of the impenetrable castle wards. And there she collapsed.

After some time, an old, gentle voice called her name from nearby.

"Professor Dumbledore?" she asked thickly through tears and a swollen lip.

"Why don't we get you to the infirmary?" he said soothingly.

He did not enquire as to where she had been. He did not ask how she had become so gravely injured, nor by whose hand it had occurred. He did not comment when she caught him staring at her forearm. He brought her parchment, ink, quills, envelopes, and two owls when she had asked it of him, ignoring the irritated tusks of Madam Pomfrey.

If he had heard her charm the penmanship as he walked away, he hadn't said a word.

***

Pansy was torn from her reverie by the sound of her bedroom door opening quietly. She sighed; she thought she had locked it. She did not want Matilda in there with her, peering nosily through her curtains and asking questions about things that were none of her business. She felt her face redden when her thoughts returned to the scene she had just made in the common room. It was all so unbearably embarrassing.

But she was certain that everyone could see it; the mark that shone out through the fabric of her robes like a beacon of enslavement, drawing the stares of the headmaster and a good number of the professors. She had no idea why she hadn't been expelled; surely this sort of thing was against school policy. They couldn't allow some sort of extremist cult bubbling up among upper year students, sweeping through the corridors like an infectious disease.

She had needed to warn Draco about all of this; it was vital for him to keep away from Potter, to keep away from her. He needed to know that, he needed to be safe. And she knew that it was in his self-centred nature to assume that all enigmatic utterances concerned him exclusively, so she had vented her fears until she felt faint and exhausted and had terrified the idiot boy along the way.

Perhaps he would finally understand. Perhaps he would survive this.

She was shocked to hear the gentle voice of Dumbledore flowing softly through the barrier around her bed, calling out to her yet again. "Pansy?" It was barely more than a whisper, and he slid the curtains away.

He smiled kindly and moved aside to allow room for Snape, who stood stiffly next to him with a look of perfect unease contorting his glistening face. He was holding a small vial of some cloudy, blue potion in either hand and shook each of them occasionally, sending thin streams of murky grey swirling slowly through the opaque liquid. Whatever it was that those vials contained, it appeared chalky and viscous and she hoped very much that it was not some sort of sedative that she was going to have to force down before they dragged her off to St. Mungo's.

"I understand that there is a great deal going on at the moment, Ms. Parkinson," Dumbledore said, smiling and taking a seat on the edge of the mattress.

Snape shuffled his feet and cleared his throat uncomfortably. He looked anywhere but at the bed and soon began eyeing the door longingly. It seemed very fitting to Pansy when she took a moment to study the trapped expression on his face that they should be sitting in the castle dungeons.

The headmaster smiled at her and continued, "I believe our Professor Snape may be of some assistance to you."

***

Matilda was more than a little pleased with herself when neither Draco nor Blaise noticed the way Pansy had been gripping at her forearm as she babbled her stream of nonsense in their general direction. It stirred up vivid memories of a certain family trip to Hogwarts in her fourth year; of her own parents doing the very same thing during the Triwizard Tournament before departing for their master without so much as a goodbye.

So she was rooming with a Death Eater, she decided, and the only one in the school, as far as she could tell. She was more than a little intrigued. And just a little disappointed in her as well: no one would have been able to see it if Pansy hadn't been favouring her arm like a wounded animal. Death Eaters were supposed to be discreet about their Mark, and Pansy was practically flashing it at them like a new tattoo. Luckily for her, Draco seemed to think that whatever it was concerned him specifically.

Matilda, not one to give up on a mystery when an even more impressive one presented itself, hoped that Draco's it concerned Harry as well.

Presently, Draco had yet to vacate his post behind the armchair. He was watching Matilda intently, and appeared to be formulating conspiracy theories as his left eyelid twitched, giving him a look of perfect lunacy.

She knew that he was waiting for her to speak, to say something nonsensical that had nothing to do with either he or Harry, but she rather preferred watching silently as his blood boiled.

"Gah!" he finally burbled, throwing his arms up above his head, and then dashed down the hall after the professors. The sounds of a shaking doorknob and a fist thudding against a door coupled with several angry obscenities filled the air as he discovered that he was locked out of Pansy's room.

"I doubt they're speaking about you, dear cousin," Matilda assured him once he had childishly stomped back down the hall.

Draco sneered at her. He suddenly looked hurt and frightened and very young. "How could you possibly know?" he scoffed, the volume of his voice increasing rapidly. "Did you happen to discover some sort of latent magical talent overnight? Can you hear their words, Matilda? Can you see their thoughts? Because last time I checked, you were practically a Squib!"

"You're a Squib?" Blaise asked her, looking quietly aghast.

"Malfoys are never Squibs!" Draco yelled at him and stamped down his own hallway, locking himself away.

"Damn," Blaise said, watching helplessly as he was locked out of his bedroom. "I wanted to change my shoes."

Matilda gave him an odd look.

"What? Like either of us have any idea what just happened, anyway. I have blisters."

"Ah, I've been suffering from the very same nuisance lately, Mr. Zabini," Dumbledore said, stepping back into the room with Snape close behind him.

The headmaster, Matilda noticed, had a way of slowly sweeping into a room that made everyone present stop whatever it was they were doing to watch him, as if at any given moment he was bound to perform the singularly most spectacular feat of magic of all time. She stared at him expectantly as he came to stand before her.

"Ms. Malfoy," he continued in characteristically cheerful tones, "I'm afraid that I'm going to have to rob you of your roommate for a short while."

"Where are you sending her?" Blaise asked quickly, sounding sincerely concerned. "Not home!"

Dumbledore placed a weathered hand on the boy's shoulder, layering a variety of comforting expressions on his already smiling face. "Where else?" he asked rhetorically, "I believe that she may need some time with her mother."

Snape looked thoughtful right then when he opened his mouth and then shut it immediately, appearing to think better of speaking at all. He cleared his throat instead.

"Calm yourself, Severus," Dumbledore told him softly. "She will be perfectly safe in her own home."

Blaise seemed vastly unimpressed with this state of affairs. "With all due respect, sir," he persisted with very little indeed, "I sincerely doubt that she would want to go home. You don't know her mother."

"Oh, but I do, Blaise. And, if you wish, you may visit her during the Hogsmeade weekend next month. Oh! And here she is."

Pansy had a maudlin air about her as she shuffled into the common room, staring intently at the only empty patch of wall, and joined the adults as they moved toward the door. She was dragging her trunk heavily behind her and leaving two thin, parallel scratches on the grey stone of the floor as if marking a path out of the dungeons and to freedom as she went. The three of them left without a word.

"Are they gone yet?" Draco called from behind his locked door before Matilda could consider the scene that had just played out around her.

"Yes," she shouted back, forgetting to hate him for insulting her earlier.

"Good," he said, strolling back into the common room. "I'm going to rescue her tomorrow, you realise." He headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Blaise demanded, sounding panicked that yet another one of his friends was about to abandon him.

"For a walk."

"With Harry?" asked Matilda, suddenly recalling having been called a Squib.

Draco didn't reply as the door slid shut behind him.

*

Draco kept his word, and from morning through night on Sunday, he tried and failed at least a dozen times to escape the school walls and make his way to Pansy. Unfortunately, at every turn he found himself in close proximity to one professor or another, his every attempt foiled by their ever-watchful eyes. He was trailed like an escaped prisoner through the halls by tiny professor Flitwick, who easily concealed himself in the crowds of students of average height. Snape stationed himself in the Slytherin common room, claiming that a spilled potion in his office had turned the oxygen in there into a poisonous fume. McGonagall spent the day teaching a remedial fifth-year Transfiguration lesson in their corridor in which the students were changing suits of armour into soaring walls of shrubbery and creeping vines that wove tightly over the door. At meals Dumbledore watched the Slytherins intently, smiling graciously at all of them, and by the time supper was over Draco was livid.

"It's like they don't trust me," he hissed to Matilda as they made their way back to the dungeons. "Don't they have anything better to do than stalk me? Honestly, they have a school to run. This is not playtime! There are papers to be marked, lessons to be prepared, Hufflepuffs to be tutored!"

She didn't reply. Supreme annoyance had a chokehold on her and she couldn't have spoken to the twat if she had wanted to. Draco had dragged her out of bed at the crack of dawn that morning and demanded that she help him escape in his most authoritative impression of Lucius. He had looked so pathetic then, tired eyes blazing with futile determination as platinum hair fell like a stylishly dishevelled veil over them. He was like a well-groomed soldier being sent on a rescue mission to a dinner party of war.

"Why are we even bothering?" she had asked, stifling the urge to strangle him with tie of her dressing gown. "She hates us both."

"No she doesn't, you silly cow," replied Draco, turning the shower on and locking her in the bathroom.

Having returned to the dungeons after dinner, he beckoned for Matilda to follow him to his room. Since she had no plans for the evening, she reluctantly complied. She was pleased to see that the boys' room was somewhat smaller than hers was as she plopped down at the desk in front of the only fireplace.

"Not a word," Blaise whispered to her, motioning to the hearth. She couldn't suppress a smirk when she nodded to him as he settled on his own bed.

"Since you're there, Matty," Draco said in a most official tone, "take this down." He produced a piece of parchment and placed it in front of her, beside the quills and ink, and commenced pacing pompously.

"Oh, of course," she replied in a way that told him she would do no such thing.

"There is a letter to be written for Pansy before I leave for Quidditch practice and it is not going to write itself!" Draco complained. "Blaise, you like taking dictation... don't roll your eyes at me! Tell me I'm wrong, then!"

"Fine," Blaise sighed. "One pun from either of you, though, and I'll feed a love potion to Weasley and have him owling you both marriage proposals for the rest of the term."

Draco clutched at his chest and looked absolutely affronted. "That is not funny!"

Blaise shrugged. "I didn't mean to be," he murmured, grinning. "I think someone's knocking on your door."

"No they're not, you've lost your mind. Take this down: Dearest Pansy, although you appear to have gone ma -" the knocking was much louder this time and was quickly followed by Gregory's head poking timidly into the room.

"What, what, what? Can't you see I'm dictating here?"

"Uh," Vincent said, following the other boy in and looking as if he couldn't have defined the word dictating if his life depended on it. Both of the boys were holding thick beater's bats. "They cancelled practise."

Draco looked at him as if he had just spoken another language. "No they didn't."

"Ravenclaw," Gregory explained helpfully.

"New seeker," Vincent finished.

"Fine," Draco spat and gave another one of his imperious waves. The beaters obediently backed away and left the room.

"How the hell am I supposed to owl this to her now? If one of us leaves the dungeons we're going to be assaulted by every member of the faculty!" Draco flopped heavily down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, sighing deeply.

"Remind me why we're doing this in the first place?"

"Because, Matilda," he replied disdainfully, as if explaining a basic concept to an unpleasant child, "she is our friend."

"She tried to curse you!"

"Yes, well she didn't do it, did she?"

"I've never known you to be forgiving, Draco," Blaise quietly remarked.

"I've never known her to change her mind mid-curse," he shot back. "Something is happening, Blaise, and great pains are being taken to keep me safely in the dungeons and far away from it. She's my friend and I think she needs my help."

Blaise rubbed his temples and appeared to be biting his tongue. "How very Gryffindor of you," he muttered.

"If I was Gryffindor, I'd have jumped off the North Tower by now in some silly attempt to fly to her house."

"So what now, then?"

"Oh, I have a plan," Draco assured him.

Whether this plan did in fact exist remained a mystery for the rest of the month. The three Slytherins continued to be trailed by various members of the teaching staff for another week, yet Draco made no further attempts to escape the castle once their guard let up. He informed Matilda and Blaise several times a day that he was formulating a brilliant plan, but soon neither of his friends paid him any mind. He prattled endlessly on about the senility of his bird making it impossible to contact Pansy, for surely the school owls were being monitored and were therefore a liability to him. He made no mention of his earlier attempt to contact her in that very way.

By the Saturday morning of the October Hogsmeade weekend, Matilda was quite certain that Draco had not come up with a plan of any sort.

***

"Do you want anything?"

"No."

"A glass of juice?"

"No."

"Soup?"

"No."

"You should take some soup."

"I do not want any soup, mother."

"Lulu! Can you bring up some soup?"

"Do not call me that, Pamela."

"The soup?"

There was a pause. "I'm sending an elf."

"Thank you, Sweetie!"

Pansy could hear Lucius grumbling to himself at the bottom of the stairs and the frightened yelp of Scoots as he was kicked up them.

Pamela fluffed her daughter's pillow for the umpteenth time that hour and began fussing with the peach lace trim of Pansy's nightgown. "You don't eat enough, darling," she said, taking hold of her jaw and turning her face from side to side. "Too thin, it makes you look like a pug. It's been a month of home cooking and you look as if you've actually lost weight. If you intend to marry Draco - "

"I intend no such thing!" Pansy interrupted, tearing her face from her mother's hand. "Especially not since... and his father..." she trailed off. She wanted to say that she could never marry Draco because he was preoccupied with a certain Saviour of the Wizarding World at the moment, and that if for some reason she did, it would practically be incest now that Lucius was, was, with Pamela. But she could not bring herself to upset her mother again, not now that she had stopped lamenting. And that meant there was no way for her to complain about the overabundance of violent-tempered Malfoys in the Parkinson household.

She had missed her mother's ridiculously giddy smile much more than she was willing to admit. She had longed to see Pamela's face light up with her uninhibited and uncontrollable sort of joy when she put on something pink with ribbons and lace and a handsome man held her possessively while she wore it. That woman's constant slaphappy state almost made Lucius' presence in Pansy's home tolerable. Almost, until he wandered into the bedroom every dozen hours or so and took hold of her arm, staring at the black stain on her pale flesh.

"So clear," he would mumble with more excitement than she would have liked, "perfectly visible at all times." Then his moribund grey eyes would meet hers and he would say with a kind of detached wonderment, as if studying some exotic animal, "You must be in so much pain all of the time."

And she was. For the first two weeks at home, she had not been able to move from her bed without her mother's aid for the pain radiating from her forearm. Snape's chalky blue potion-balm had barely been of any help at all, and she soon gave up on it altogether.

But Lord Voldemort had yet to enter her home again. He had not sent orders or even threats, for that matter. As far as she could make out from the bits of Lucius' loud, angry rants, the Dark Lord had disappeared completely for some time by then. She had no idea what could possibly be done to lessen the ache and she began to fear that something had gone horribly wrong with the spell.

That was, until the last week of September when the pain slowly began to ebb. Finally, on the first Saturday of October, she woke up from an afternoon nap to a faintly unpleasant tingle in her arm and Pamela forcing soup on her while bleating, 'Marry your friend, Pansy. Marry Draco.'

"Scoots has brung up Mess Pansy her soup," said the timid house elf from the doorway.

"Thank you, Scoots," Pamela said. "You may leave it on the table."

"Yes, Messus Pamela."

"Of course you want to marry Draco," she continued. "You should really wear the robes that I send to you, mauve really is your colour, darling. You have my complexion; we're irresistible in pastels. Remember how nice you looked in those robes I gave you for the Yule Ball?"

"No! I mean-"

"Oh, I know, darling. You're just upset that he hasn't owled you since you've been home."

"Well, no, I'm just. No, I don't think... See, his owl is senile and," Pansy decided it was best not to make any further attempts at coherent speech. His owl was senile, after all. And he hated using school property; he felt that he was much too sophisticated to use anything for the general public, and would rather throw fits until he was awarded a new bird.

That and she had followed up seven months of estrangement with an attempt to publicly curse him.

Pamela softly stroked Pansy's hair and cooed, "I know, honey. Boys can be so thoughtless sometimes."

"The door!" Lucius bellowed from downstairs, breaking the moment. Pamela was quickly on her feet and running to answer it.

***

"Up!" Draco roared in her ear. "We have to leave early! My plans are about to come to fruition!"

"Sweet mother of fuck!" Matilda shrieked a little incoherently. "Am I going to have one day this term where I can get up on my own?"

"No," Blaise told her from the doorway. "Shower, breakfast, leave, and then Draco's brilliant plan for rescuing the most murderous of his mates. Move."

"Yes, exactly. And nice alliteration, by the way."

"Thank you, Drakey."

By now Matilda had shuffled her way across the room, and for the second time in less than a month, the tie of her dressing gown was presenting itself as a remarkably attractive choice for a weapon. Quashing any thoughts of the homicidal sort, she prepared herself for a very long day of asinine plots and temper tantrums.

*

"Does every trip to this godforsaken village involve mud?" she wailed as Blaise saved her from slipping into a monstrous brown puddle in front of some horrid little candy shop. "Does it stop raining here?"

"Shut up, Matilda, and help me find Harry. Potter. Harry Potter." Draco commanded disjointedly.

"For fuck's sake, Draco! Tell me he's not part of your plan!"

Blaise giggled at her a bit. "Calm down, Matty. You're not being very ladylike."

"To hell with ladylike, Blaise! I'm coated in filth up to my ankles and it's raining all over me!"

"It's raining on everyone. Matilda, is it?" It was Hermione. She and her posse, meaning Ron and Harry, calmly sidled up next to them in the street. Of course they would have no problem with the grime.

"Excellent!" Draco beamed at everyone, clapping as he does when feeling gleeful. "Did you bring it, Potter?"

Harry looked reluctant. "Well yes, but... I don't know, Malfoy."

Draco ran an impatient hand through his hair. "You're going to have to be more specific than that, Wonder Boy. What you don't know could probably fill the whole of Hogwarts."

"Malfoy!" Ron warned.

Harry ignored him and continued. "I don't like the idea of just handing it over to you."

"Are you aiming for an invitation?" Draco asked, rolling his eyes. "Because you said only three people could fit under it."

"Well, I would feel better if I was there. And if you think that acting like a shit in front of your friends is going to make me want to jump up and rush to your aid, you're very wrong."

Draco bit his lip. "Your sidekicks can't come then."

"What are you talking about?" Matilda interrupted them.

Harry ignored her as well. "Neither can yours, then."

"Oh?" said Draco. "I think Matilda should, she's Pansy's roommate. They're very close. Like sisters, really."

Harry appeared to mull over whatever had just been proposed. "Fine," he agreed, nodding. "Fine, Matilda can come. There's three."

"But Harry!" Hermione cried.

"No bloody way!" Ron called out.

"Oh, this is spectacular!" Draco exclaimed. "See you tonight, Blaise." He grabbed Matilda's hand and led her into a well-lit and very public-looking alleyway, Harry at her heels.

"That's fine," Blaise yelled after them. "Just leave me here with them, then." No one bothered to answer him and the remaining Gryffindors simply walked away.

"Pull it out, pull it out!" Draco chimed excitedly once they came to a halt. "I want to see it!"

This sounded mildly sexual and Matilda wasn't entirely sure she was willing to go through with this after all.

Harry issued a defeated sigh and slid his backpack off. He reached in and pulled out what looked like a large piece of shiny fabric.

"We're going to rescue her with drapery?" Matilda asked sarcastically.

"Have some patience," Harry told her as he threw the fabric over his shoulders and disappeared from the neck down. "It's an Invisibility Cloak," he whispered impressively, as if his floating head wasn't in plain view of everyone in the village.

"Okay," she said expectantly. Like she had never seen an Invisibility Cloak before.

Draco grabbed at thin air and threw the cloak over himself as well, then pulled her along underneath.

"Duck, Malfoy, our feet are showing," Harry told him.

"Our feet!" Matilda griped. "My entire side is showing. This won't hide three people."

"Well, it hid all of us when we were younger," Harry mumbled thoughtfully.

"Younger means smaller, genius!" Draco snapped, tearing the fabric off of them. "What are we going to do now?"

"Well, we could just hold it up in front of us like a screen when we get to her house," suggested Matilda.

Draco grunted. "Don't be ridiculous, this is an Invisibility Cloak not an Invisibility Curtain!"

"Oh no, Malfoy, that works," Harry informed him. "I've tried it before."

"Marvellous!" Blaise said, appearing in the alley and scaring the living hell out of the other three. "I can come too, then."

Harry did not look happy about this. "Well, then Ron and Hermione can come too. It's only fair."

"Six people cannot all fit behind this thing," Blaise told him, stretching the cloak out in demonstration. "And they already took off. Hand-in-hand, just fucking adorable." He made a face and laughed. "So how did you convince him to lend you this thing, Draco?"

Harry bristled. "I am not lending it to anyone."

Draco nodded. "I asked nicely."

"Right," Matilda muttered.

"I did! I can do that from time to time, and with only mild physical discomfort. Plus, he owes me a favour anyway."

"Must be a big one."

Harry was looking uncomfortable and glanced up at the sky as if gauging the time of day by the position of the sun. "Can we get going?" he urged.

"So what's the Master Plan, kids?" Blaise asked, not technically ignoring the nervous Gryffindor to his left.

"We are going to disapparate out of Hogsmeade for Pansy's house," Draco explained.

Matilda nodded impatiently. This was all going very slowly. "So what, then we're just going to knock on the front door and squeeze in past her mother behind the cloak?"

"Precisely!"