Avail

Harry loves his godfathers. It isn't that Harry's not grateful, because he is, but it's all just a little too much for him. He thinks he understands why Sirius is so fond of the big gestures, and there aren't many ways to top getting a Firebolt for Christmas. Booking Harry's favourite band for his birthday has to be about it. And it does show Sirius has been paying attention and isn't just giving it the old college try in making things up to him (even though Harry tries to tell Sirius he doesn't really have anything to make up for). Like the band: Harry thinks he's mentioned the Bhane Sidhes maybe once during that week when Seamus was holding hostage his copy of Quidditch Through the Ages until Harry returned Seamus's record. But sometimes it's just a little bit too much, like Sirius inviting all of fifth year over to the Ides. It's a bit--well, it's invasive, and he'd say that aloud if it wouldn't hurt his godfathers' feelings. The last thing he'd wish for is everyone to invade his private sanctuary. Though to be fair, Moony has gone to exquisite lengths in preparing the garden with tents and tables so there's no real reason for anyone to actually be inside the Ides. But still, Harry hasn't even had a chance to discover all of the secret passages in the Black house; it's just starting to feel like home and already it's being overrun by practical strangers. He doesn't think he could name half the people from Gryffindor, nevermind all the rest he's not even sure he's seen before. But he has to appreciate it, or at least what it means, and he's sure he will in about a week once everyone's gone home and the memories have sufficiently faded.

It's surprising, a little bit, that so many people bothered to come. But it's a party, one with famous live entertainment to boot, so he supposes it doesn't mean much. Almost everyone he's made eye-contact with has given him a "Happy birthday!" in varying degrees of cheer and sincerity, at least. Lavender and Parvati, whom he had hardly expected to voluntarily speak with him again after their little display in June just after the body hit the floor, had made a point of giving him their presents in person on the spot. It had been tools for divination, of course; Lavender had thoughtfully included a guide-book with the Gryffindor-coloured runes and Parvati tried to instil a sense of how easy and natural it was to see forms in the smoky ball. It was Parvati's comment, buried under a mountain of her chatter, that had struck a chord with him. The condescendingly disappointed-yet-hopeful "Perhaps now you've got nothing to fear in your future you'll pay more heed to it" had left him feeling a little achy inside and vaguely uncomfortable. It sort of indicated to him that people did an awful lot more thinking about him than he'd rather hoped they did.

Not that it was exactly avoidable, especially after the deluxe special evening and weekend editions of the Daily Prophet dedicated entirely to "Harry Potter's Triumphant And Complete Defeat Over The Dark Lord". Harry hadn't even been able to finish the rushed evening edition put out the day he'd done the deed. It was the sense of inevitability fulfilled, that everyone had known it was going to be him that ended things with Voldemort and were just so relieved about it, that set his nerves on edge. Mix that with far too many overestimations of his ability and there was no way he was able to wade through the rest just for the sake of knowing what else they were saying about him. Besides, during his attempts he could just imagine Draco Malfoy reciting some of the more florid articles back at him with sweeping arm gestures and mock-breathless gasps before collapsing against one of his oversized bookends and succumbing to hysterical laughter.

Just what he needs, more ammunition. Of course it wasn't enough that Harry had killed Malfoy's lord and master--and Voldemort had indeed been that, despite what Malfoy's father tried to do at the last minute to attempt to show he wasn't an evil Death Eater. Like Lucius Malfoy had fooled anyone; what kind of person on the right side would kill himself before being questioned by the Ministry? Everyone knew he'd just been desperate to stay out the reaches of the Dementors. After the first couple days of the siege, before the shield went up, Harry had gotten enough of a sense of what Sirius went through in Azkaban to have a tentative understanding of why Lucius Malfoy did it. But it's not like Mr Malfoy wouldn't have deserved it. Not after what he did to Ginny, what he didn't do for Harry in the graveyard, and for all the things Harry doesn't know about but is sure were perfectly awful.

He wishes he knew where Ron and Hermione have gotten off to; he lost them when Ron had gone to get something to drink and Hermione went along, too. He hopes they hadn't left because Parvati had been making those eyes at him while instructing him on the importance of doing daily consultations with the Ball (and he could hear the capital letters in her voice that meant This Was Serious Business And He'd Better Take Heed) because that would be really, really embarrassing, not to mention off-base. Ron ought to know better, but the encouraging smiles Hermione had been giving him were just too much. He can't imagine going out with anyone, much less Parvati, who was almost a whole head taller than him and would never let him alone until everyday he did all six fortune-telling activities she currently held in vogue. She's pretty, he reckons, in a girly, frilly way, with a strong Indian nose and large dark eyes, but she just isn't....

It's kind of embarrassing, thinking about girls and being with girls. He doesn't, on the whole, and Ron's infatuations are usually the wordless drooling kind that saves them both the trouble of having to discuss things like that. He doesn't know why Ron likes all these girls, though he notices they've all long hair and sharp features and long, frilly robes; they're nothing like Hermione, whom Harry is still sure he likes best of all. He doesn't think Ron knows this, though.

Well, they'd agreed to meet back up in Harry's room if they got separated, so maybe they're in there. Also, it'd be nice to get away from the crowds of people in the party proper. And even if he doesn't find them, maybe he can lie down for a moment and shut his eyes for a bit.

There are only a few people scattered across the hallways; a cluster of boys he thinks are probably Ravenclaws stand around outside the kitchen. As he mounts the stairs he's struck by the quiet, a first since he's arrived, and it's enough to sharpen his hearing and set him skittering. Not that he has a problem with quietness on principle, but when he knows there should properly be more outward signs of the raucous party carrying on outside it's enough to be disconcerting. It's like he's passed into water, the way the distant music's suddenly muffled itself--of course it's probably a spell. If it's meant so Sirius and Moony could escape the horror of the party then he's kind of awed that they'd pretty much abandon the grounds to the whims of well over a hundred teenagers.

It could be magic, though. He'd felt a tingle sparking up from his fingertips to his elbows, coming back from the Weasleys' to the Ides, and maybe that was him adjusting to anti-mischief spells. Though if there is such a spell, it's a miracle the Weasley twins have survived so long without someone figuring out a way to make the effect permanent.

It's nice, though, the almost-quiet interrupted only by low, murmuring voices coming from--in front of his bedroom? Crabbe and Goyle stand in front of the door muttering to each other, both clad in nearly identical black robes. The sight is so weird that he can only stare for a moment. He hadn't even realised they'd bothered to show up to the party, much less that they'd be skulking about in the bedroom hallway of all places.

"Hey," Harry says, disgruntled. "You're not supposed to be here."

Goyle turns and stares at him. "It's Potter," he announces to no one in particular.

"Um, yeah. Look, can you just go downstairs with everyone else? That's my room," Harry says. "What're you even doing--where's Malfoy?" he asks suspiciously, breaking off in mid-sentence once he realises what's missing.

"Uh, nowheres," Crabbe says, giving Goyle a look.

Dread mixes with justified outrage in the pit of his stomach. "Bullocks to that!" Harry exclaims, reaching for the doorknob.

"You can't!" Crabbe protests.

"It's my room!" he argues back, yanking open the door.

Harry has had all of perhaps two seconds to ponder what unspeakable horrors Malfoy could have possibly visited upon his room in the absence of supervision. Never mind the prohibition against underage magic, Harry fully expects to find all of his furniture on the ceiling for a start, perhaps lacquered in Slytherin silvers and greens. When he sees his drawers firmly in place, their contents unstrewn across the floor, the dread curdles to panic. When his eyes settle on Draco Malfoy sitting at the foot of his bed idly examining his fingernails, Harry finds himself tense and jumpy without the anticipated release by completely justified hollering.

Harry stares. When nothing bursts out of his closet with a roar, he clears his throat. "Malfoy. Err.... What are you doing in my room?"

Malfoy turns his head and raises his gaze in a measured motion Harry desperately tries to find insolent but can really only classify as indolent. "Some of us have a taste for music, Potter, and forcing me to listen to that shrieking, commercialized mess amounts to little better than tying me down and casting Cruciatus."

Harry bristles; the Bane Sidhes have a wicked edge for cello and harpsichord, and besides, Malfoy's too much of a priss to have decent taste in anything. "No one's making you stay. You're welcome to go home," Harry grits out.

Malfoy's smile is slow; it's not a friendly gesture but it's so weird to see Malfoy looking at him like this that Harry has to shift his weight to dissipate at least some of his discomfort. "I was invited," he says. "It would have been rude not to come, especially seeing as how you've finally earned your title as saviour of the wizarding world." Malfoy sounds like he's trying to be civil except that he's Malfoy, he's incapable of such a thing; trying would probably cripple him. He smirks at Harry, his expression just short of contemptuous, his teeth in such perfect alignment Harry thinks he wants to hit them. "Besides, I would hate to do anything that might offend your godfathers--God knows it'd be a tragic end for the Malfoys if I ended up kibble for mongrels."

The sweet, clean coolness that washes over Harry might be relief. Before he might have had some sort of obligation to Malfoy that precluded him from being outright nasty to him but Malfoy's skipped past the unpleasantries directly to the stabbing and the screaming. "Take that back," Harry growls, stalking forward.

Malfoy is unperturbed; he tilts his head back as Harry's closeness warrants and doesn't even have the common decency to look alarmed. "I suppose my rent and bleeding flesh would be rather more wet than the word 'kibble' indicates," he muses, his calm amusement only faltering when Harry grabs him by the collar.

"Don't you bloody dare badmouth my family," Harry says, his voice shaking. "At least Sirius and Remus are decent people. Your father--."

Malfoy abruptly gets to his feet, shoving at him violently. "Don't you talk about my father!" he yells, voice cracking in the middle. His face is bloodless, his eyes are wild, and it's worth it to have mentioned his father. Malfoy deserves everything he gets, especially when he thinks he can go around insulting all and sundry.

"Remus survives living as a werewolf and Sirius is talented enough to be an animagus. What's your father done, Malfoy? Does offing himself before the Ministry can come take him away qualify for greatness in your family?" Harry snarls, his hands in fists tightly clenched at his sides. "Yeah, real great, I can see why you're so proud--"

"My father," Malfoy says, his voice low and tight, "was the one to alert the Ministry. If he hadn't broken ranks, no one would have ever found out about the siege at the school until we all went and died and there was no one left to keep the defences."

"Fat lot of help that was! The Ministry is who brought the protective field down and let Voldemort into the school in the first place! That was probably part of the plan!" Harry yells.

"Well, what are you complaining about? You got to save us all just like everyone expected! Don't tell me you're not happy you didn't disappoint everyone! The Dementors would have been the death of us all and if something hadn't broken--"

"Don't act like your father was such a bloody martyr! You admit he was a Death Eater, and I saw him stand by and watch while Voldemort tried to kill me! Your father was the one to get the Chamber of Secrets opened in second year--"

"That's a lie!" Malfoy yells, his face staining a deep roseate pink that Harry's never seen on Malfoy before. He suddenly realises he likes it this way. "My father was in over his head but he never tried to kill--."

"You mean he didn't brag about it to you? Unleashing Voldemort's spirit on an innocent girl so she'd take the blame?" Harry says, watching Malfoy's expression crumple, his lips pressing into a thin white line.

Malfoy stands stock-still. "You swallow whatever rubbish Dumbledore feeds you," he says, his voice reedy and high. "You don't know. My father did what he had to do to keep the Dark Lord from killing him but he didn't murder anyone. He's better than that."

"Your father died a lackey," Harry spits, and is almost surprised when Malfoy's fist connects with his nose and sends him stumbling back into his desk. "Oh, ow, ow, ow," he moans, reaching up to touch his nose. His hand comes away painted with blood, a bright red colour he hates having gotten used to.

Malfoy falls down to sit on the bed abruptly, staring at him and shaking out his hand. "I can't believe I just hit you," he says, his voice more hesitant and full of awe than Harry's ever heard it before.

"Oh, no?" Harry says, fumbling through a drawer for a handkerchief to try and bate the flow of blood, or at least keep it from staining his clothes.

"Look, Potter," Malfoy begins, rubbing his hands together. "Don't talk to me about my father."

"Don't tell me I'm deluded when you're living in just as much a dream world as I am," Harry retorts. It's too late to hit him back, he figures, and Malfoy's already gotten what he deserves.

He probably loved his father.

Malfoy looks back up to meet Harry's gaze once more. This time there is no trace of a smile or a smirk across his sharp features. "We all do what we have to do to survive," he says quietly.

Harry doesn't know what to say to that. It's not worth fighting with Malfoy over what a bastard his father was; Lucius Malfoy is dead and what does it matter to Harry what Malfoy wants to think? It's not like there's a new Dark Lord for Malfoy to go join up with. "It doesn't matter," he says with a shrug.

"I didn't mean to hit you," Malfoy says, his voice clear.

Harry has to stare; that almost sounds like Malfoy meant it to be an apology. He wants to ask, but figures he'd just get himself hit again. "Yeah, well, you're probably feeling it as much as I am. Your thumb's supposed to be outside of your fist when you hit someone, you know."

"Of course you know all about the vagaries of fisticuffs," Malfoy says, rolling his eyes in disgust.

Harry chokes back a laugh. "You didn't really just say 'fisticuffs', did you? Tell me you didn't."

Malfoy glares. "What does it matter, Potter?"

Harry's grinning now, he can't help it. "I guess it doesn't." He doesn't really have anything else to say after that but Malfoy keeps looking at him and all he can do is keep looking back. Malfoy keeps looking and staring but no, he can't bloody say anything to Harry, can he, he's too far above that sort of thing.

"Malfoy," Harry says.

Malfoy raises an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Get out of my room," Harry says, standing up.

"And just when I was starting to feel comfortable," he drawls, rising from the bed. "Don't bother seeing me to the door; I'll make my own way downstairs," he says. It's so obvious he would never in a million years offer anything of the sort that Harry doesn't really have anything to say to that.

"Don't rush back or anything," he says to Malfoy's back. The blond turns and smirks at him before closing the door behind himself, leaving Harry alone in a room oddly silent and still.

Well. So, no Ron and no Hermione, but Draco Malfoy was alone in his room doing God-knows-what. There's something roiling in the pit of his stomach at the thought, that Malfoy's been poking around in his stuff or just seeing what Harry's really like, and with a speed born of paranoia Harry buries his face into his pillow and inhales deeply. It still smells like the outdoors from being laundered yesterday, so at least Malfoy can't think he's some kind of filthy layabout, or at least not from his bedding.

Stupid Malfoy. He's going to have to rip his room apart and search for hexes and curses before he'll be able to sleep again.

He flops onto his back in a spread-eagle position, staring at the ceiling. Something digs into his back; he jumps back into a sitting position--could this be a plant of Malfoy's? Rucking back the bedspread, Harry breathes a sigh of relief to see it's only his photo album--

His photo album, left open. He left his photo album out and Malfoy was in his room and Malfoy could have taken it, or ripped out pages, or scribbled rude things across his parents' faces. Pushing his glasses up to the very bridge of his nose, Harry examines the book--it's slightly squashed, though that's to be expected from lying on it. The album is open to a photo of his father's Quidditch team winning the Cup; he expels a breath he didn't realise he was holding when he sees the only mark is a smudged thumbprint near the edge of the page. The picture itself is unmolested: it shows his dad hoisted atop Sirius's shoulders, holding the shining trophy up as high as his arms will stretch. Peter Pettigrew, in black school robes, is waving his arms in adulation, shouting something Harry can't read from his lips. Harry shudders at the sight of the boy who would grow up to betray his best friend to the Dark Lord and wonders why on Earth he left the book open to that spot; without Peter on the team it was easy to find more palatable pictures of his father's sports triumphs. The photo isn't even from the Marauders' seventh year, either, where the final against Ravenclaw took nine hours and the Gryffindors breaking three broomsticks before their eventual win. Instead the few opposing members visible are clad in Slytherin green and looking nauseous, and--is that Snape?

Harry peers closer at the dark-haired teenager in green; the boy tracks James with unbridled loathing. Upon closer inspection it's definitely Snape, the hateful expression and hooked nose unchanged despite all these years. Seeing this picture he gets why Snape can't just let his grudge against James go when dealing with Harry; his hate for Harry's father is obvious even through a simple picture. There's an obsessive quality in how Snape holds his whole body tense, like an arrow pulled back in a tightly-strung bow just waiting to be unleashed; he's so focused he completely ignores the blond Slytherin next to him leaning in to talk directly into his ear--.

There's something familiar about the blond. Long, white hair is pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck and when he turns away from Snape to stare off with amused disgust the sharply cut features offered up to the sky are unmistakable: the blond is Lucius Malfoy.

It's so weird to think of that man as having once been as young as Harry himself, going to school and playing Quidditch and merely existing before that day he dropped Tom Riddle's diary into Ginny's cauldron. He just seems like the kind of person who was one day carved from stone and animated, someone who wouldn't ever change. He doesn't seem like a father, the sharp-edged man who could be so calculatingly cruel, he doesn't seem capable of basic human emotion. But then Harry remembers the anger in the bookstore, remembers seeing him give back Ron's dad just as much as he got, his snarling face gone bone-white just like that of his son.

So that's what Malfoy's going to grow up to be like: a vulgar base under a cold veneer that never quite warms. Lucius Malfoy is--was, rather--a politician, though, and Harry can't quite imagine Malfoy being charming enough for that. There would always be something to offend his delicate sensibilities, something to set him off and set him sneering, and nothing would keep everyone from seeing the monster beneath.

There's a monster within each of the Malfoys; the father just had more practice at concealment than the son. Malfoy was so desperate in his attempt to tell Harry otherwise about Lucius Malfoy but Harry isn't blind; anyone who could condemn a school full of children to death on the whims of a madman is beyond redemption.

Condemn the school--

Malfoy was still at school in May when Voldemort brought his creatures to the castle walls. Funny how the children of convicted Death Eaters had slowly been trickling away all of fifth year but Malfoy still remained. If Lucius Malfoy tattled on anyone it wasn't to save them all, it was to save his son, but what kind of a villain leaves him in danger in the first place?

Well, he was a Malfoy. That's obvious.

Harry closes the photo album and shoves it under his bed for safekeeping; he's got to go and find Ron before he depresses himself out of a happy birthday.