Chapter Text
Once upon a windy, rainy April day in northern Scotland, the entire population of Hogwarts sat in the Great Hall, eating, chatting, and complaining about their professors. The Golden Trio, as they were dubbed by various well-wishers and those who believed in the prophecy, sat at the center of the Gryffindor table. Harry Potter, aged sixteen and a half, was at the very middle of the table, with his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger to his right and left. For the moment, there was an awkward silence between them as they ignored the topics of Ron’s relationship with Lavender, Harry’s use of a mysterious and possibly illegal potions textbook, and Hermione’s panic over the final exams looming in the quickly approaching distance.
Due to the silence from his best friends, Harry was forced to overhear (and to try very hard to ignore) gossip from the other students in his vicinity.
“Oh, Draco Malfoy just looks so dreamy!” whispered a younger student, talking very quietly since she sat near Malfoy’s sworn rival. She glanced over at Harry, who hadn’t been able to keep his lips from turning downward in a scowl, and gave him a small glare. “Well, he does!”
“Who wouldn’t fall for—” her friend waved her fork in a motion that encompassed Malfoy’s body, her piece of pie almost falling into Harry’s plate “—that?”
Under his breath, Harry muttered, “Who would?”
It wasn’t that Harry was upset that this specific group of girls had finally stopped talking about Harry’s own looks (he was damn happy about it, actually) and moved on to someone else’s. His problem was that their new choice of topic was downright disturbing. Draco Malfoy, evil Slytherin and eternal pain in Harry’s arse, was nowhere near dreamy. In fact, he was extremely suspicious and the son of a confirmed Death Eater, as well as a possible (and probable, as he’d told his friends many times) Death Eater himself. Harry’s feelings for Malfoy were very clear: hatred. Not that the facts mattered when compared to his looks, according to what felt like every girl in her second year and up said.
Harry glared at as he stuffed mashed potatoes in his mouth to keep himself from yelling at the underclassmen as they once again swooned. His dinner was being ruined by Malfoy again, and the bastard wasn’t even here to ruin it himself.
“He’s a bloody Slytherin,” Harry said to Ron and Hermione. “That should be enough to hate him. And he’s suspicious, too.”
“The only thing suspicious is why you keep stalking him,” Hermione elected to say. “And it’s not like he’s a troll,” she added wistfully. “I wish some people could be as classy as he looks.” She pointedly did not look at Ron, but Ron blushed angrily all the same.
“He looks like a pretentious arse,” Harry grumbled as his friends got into another argument. Draco Malfoy was a pointy, unattractive git, and Harry would swear by it any day of the year.
*
In between Harry’s near-constant observation of Malfoy, which led him to conclude that Malfoy liked to take long walks around the school and school grounds, eat toast with raspberry jam, and stay locked in the Room of Requirement for hours every weekend, he also found time to study Voldemort’s past with the Headmaster. After Dumbledore had ignored him during his fifth year, Harry was glad to be on good terms with his Headmaster again. He even enjoyed their studies, even though they didn’t study spells or defenses like he would have been keen on. And it was on one of these meetings, only a few days after Aragog’s funeral, that Harry received another piece of bad news: Voldemort had struck the Order’s headquarters.
“But they were under Fidelius,” he said, grasping for straws. The Fidelius Charm was the most powerful secrecy spell he knew of. Harry was shaken after hearing the news, and Dumbledore looked outwardly worried as well. To hear that Voldemort had broken it was devastating. If he could break a spell as powerful as Fidelius, who knew what kinds of spells he could break next? Could he break the wards around Hogwarts? Or Harry’s mother’s protection? “How could he even get in?”
“The spell wasn’t broken,” Dumbledore answered with a sigh. He sipped at his tea for a long moment, as if unsure of what he was saying. “It seems that one of our own members was compromised. Nothing was taken, that we’re aware of, but your house-elf Kreature was found dead inside the house.”
“It was Snape,” Harry said quickly. “You know he’s been working for Voldemort all along, and trying to help Malfoy, and—” He stopped there, because like always, Dumbledore wouldn’t listen to him. He wouldn’t listen to how treacherous and cruel and evil Snape was. And now because of Snape, Sirius’ house couldn’t be used as a safe house, and Harry wouldn’t be able to go back there just in case something had been done to it. Snape would’ve even done it gleefully, just to get back at Sirius one last time.
“Severus could not have showed the way to Voldemort. He was bound by the Fidelius Charm as strongly as you were. He is loyal to the cause, just as any member of the Order of the Phoenix. I wish you would keep that in mind, my boy,” Dumbledore replied. Harry noticed he didn’t say what Snape had been doing when the house was attacked, or give him any proof of his innocence. Dumbledore just expected Harry to trust him in this as in everything else, but Harry couldn’t do that. He refused to just blindly trust a man who hated him and betrayed his parents, just because Dumbledore believed he still had some good in him.
Loyal to the cause, my arse. Maybe to Voldemort’s cause, but not mine, he thought, but knew better than to say it. He didn’t want to be lectured on how he should change his mind about Snape.
“What happened to Kreature?” Harry asked instead.
Dumbledore’s face gentled, and Harry tried to keep from scowling. So what if he’d decided to be mature about Snape and not keep trying to disparage him. But he also felt oddly pleased, that Dumbledore noticed he was trying to grow up. Never mind all the things Dumbledore wouldn’t tell him—he valued the Headmaster’s opinion above almost everyone else’s.
“I believe it was the Killing Curse,” Dumbledore replied. They both resolutely didn’t mention that this was another person—or sort of a person—Harry knew who had fallen to that curse. He wondered if Kreature’s last moments had been anything like his parents’. If he had cursed Voldemort, or Snape, or whoever had killed him, or if he had begged for mercy. “His death was fast, and without torture.”
Harry couldn’t say he grieved for the house-elf that had ratted Sirius out to the other side, but he was still saddened by his death. Kreature was one of the few ties to Sirius he had left, even if it had been an unwilling tie.
While Harry thought, Dumbledore added, “The house appears to have been searched for something. I do not know if the object or the information they were looking for was found, but the house has been compromised. We won’t use it as a safe house any longer.”
It made sense. Sirius would’ve been happy they were finally moving out of the wretched place. “I guess you’re using the Burrow now? Is that safe for the Weasleys?”
Shaking his head, Dumbledore said, “It is not, but we are only infringing on the Weasleys’ kindness for a short time while we look for other options.”
Dumbledore carefully lifted the Pensieve from its shelf once again, along with a familiar stoppered vial. “And now, Harry, I will show you one last memory before I ask you to join me in the search for a horcrux. I had wished to wait, but there is no time. If Voldemort attacked the Headquarters, he may have uncovered information on one of the horcrux locations. We will go after it tonight.”
Harry nodded grimly. This was what he’d been waiting for all year: finally learning something real from Dumbledore. It was going to be a little dangerous, too, but Harry wasn’t going to worry when he finally had Dumbledore at his side on one of his adventures.
Harry left Dumbledore’s office with a heavy heart, feeling both delirious with expectation of that night and sick with worry for the future. Although Dumbledore had seemed only mildly perturbed at their meeting, Harry knew that behind his calm manner was worry that they would not get to the horcrux in time. That was why they were going that very night instead of later, after Dumbledore had more time to plan. He was also grateful that Dumbledore had kept his promise to bring Harry to uncover the horcrux. If something went wrong, Dumbledore would have at least one loyal wizard (even if Harry was still young and half-trained and didn’t know as many complex spells as an older wizard would) with him.
Since he had no time to do anything tonight, Harry decided to hold off on asking Hermione to help him research the Fidelius Charm more thoroughly. He had to meet Dumbledore in two hours, which meant he had time to put on something warm, dig up his invisibility cloak (not hard, since he frequently had it in his pocket or schoolbag), and check up on Malfoy. So like most days, he followed a winding staircase to the Room of Requirement.
Though this time, Malfoy was coming down the staircase as Harry walked up. Harry wished he had put on his invisibility cloak first—that way he could easily follow Malfoy to wherever he was going now, instead of having to scan his map and double back.
Malfoy looked the same as he ever did: his black school robes perfectly pressed, his hair gelled down neatly, the rest of his body a total wreck. He’d noticeably given up using a glamour on himself. Dark circles had taken over his eyes, his face was a blotchy mess of reds and whites, and his robes hung off his too-thin frame. In all, he looked like a walking mess.
Harry knew Malfoy’s mission, whatever it was, wasn’t going as planned. If it was, he would be gloating and bragging and acting like he owned the world—not becoming paler and more withdrawn each day.
And he was holding the gaudiest crown Harry had ever seen. He held it between the fingers of his left hand, careful and wary at the same time. Harry would have done the same—the crown looked like it could infect you with ugly. Maybe it was the result of a messed up spell of Crabbe’s or Goyle’s.
“Making a present for your master?” Harry asked, almost imitating Malfoy’s sneer. The snot barely glanced at him, which was weird. Usually Harry got some sort of angry response from his rival.
“Go to hell, Potter,” Malfoy tonelessly replied, shoving past him.
Harry watched him leave, then returned to the Gryffindor tower and followed Malfoy’s movements with the map until he had to meet Dumbledore. All Malfoy did was stop by the Slytherin common room and take a long, looping walk around the castle.
*
Three hours later, Harry stumbled into an alley between The Three Broomsticks and Zale’s Roses, a horcrux in his pocket and Dumbledore holding on to his arm. He silently prayed that Dumbledore wasn’t dying. He couldn’t die, couldn’t die just for a horcrux, no matter how important it was. But when Harry apparated into the alley, he was immediately assaulted by the noise in the streets of Hogsmeade. There was shouting all around them, the sounds of battle and spellcasting. Above him was a bright green symbol of a skull with a snake crawling out; they had raised the Dark Mark over the village.
From what Harry could see from their hiding spot, there was a whole mass of Death Eaters attacking the village. He could see Madam Rosmerta across from the alley, being Crucio’d by a masked Death Eater. He was about to run and help her, but in a pause between the Death Eater’s spells, she struck, stunning him and binding his body.
“Professor!” he whispered as loud as he dared. “What do we do?” They wouldn’t be able to get to Honeyduke’s or the Haunted Shack without being attacked, and they had no other means of transportation.
Dumbledore focused his watery eyes on the scene. He still looked like he was just barely hanging on to consciousness, but Harry was glad for any evidence that showed Dumbledore was still alive. If only Madam Pomfrey were with them… Hell, he’d even take Snape, and be civil to him, if he would just help Dumbledore through this. “Harry, do you remember the path to the village? There is an elm tree on the road. The wards start just a meter beyond it. Imagine appearing before it. Hurry, they may be attacking Hogwarts as we speak.”
After a moment of concentration, they were at the tree, away from the fighting at Hogsmeade. Harry could still hear fighting in the distance, could still hear screams and shouting. He wanted to help badly, but if Hogsmeade was that bad, Hogwarts could be even worse. The castle seemed calm at a distance, but Voldemort could already be inside. There was no Dark Mark over the castle, unlike the one over the Three Broomsticks.
Half-supporting each other, they raced toward the castle, coming nearly to the wards when a half-translucent white barrier rose from beneath the ground and ascended high above their heads. It shimmered in the air as it closed around the entire castle in the largest half-circle Harry had ever seen. Then, after encircling the entire castle, the barrier disappeared as quickly as it had risen, leaving no trace of it being there at all.
Harry reached out to touch the place where it had been, wondering if he could go through it, but Dumbledore held him back.
“Wait for now,” Dumbledore cautioned, pulling out his wand.
“But—” my friends are inside. They could be being tortured, or dying, or…
“Your promise, Harry,” Dumbledore reminded him, then tapped his wand against the barrier. Light red runes appeared in the air, spreading from the point his wand touched to farther than Harry could see, wrapping around Hogwarts like the barrier had. Whatever Dumbledore had done had caused the barrier to show itself. Harry tried not to worry about how much Dumbledore’s hand shook or how he was still physically supporting his mentor. He concentrated on the fact that he couldn’t hear anything from inside the castle. He didn’t see the flash of spells or faces in the windows. He didn’t hear fearful screams or dark voices yelling, “Crucio!” The castle was quiet, unharmed.
But with the way Dumbledore’s face instantly paled at seeing the runes, Harry knew it couldn’t be that easy.
“What is it, sir?” Harry asked anxiously. “Can we go through?”
“We cannot. This—this is a hostage curse over the entire castle—and a very dark variant of it. Harry, stay here. Whatever happens, do not let my wand leave the barrier.” He kept his wand tip touching the barrier, chanting in a language Harry didn’t understand, but that didn’t matter because Ron and Hermione and everyone in the castle was going to die if Voldemort managed to take them hostage. Harry hadn’t even known wizards could do such a thing. Voldemort must have somehow altered Hogwarts’ wards, or found a loophole that let him do something like this.
“Elves!” Dumbledore suddenly called, and nearly a hundred elves appeared at once. For a moment Harry could see the shimmering, translucent shackles that bound the house elves to Hogwarts. Either he was delirious from the effort of apparating them across the country, or Dumbledore’s chanting was powerful enough to reveal any and all magic in the area. “Put every person in the building in their beds, if they aren’t already. Nothing sharp must be around them, lest they hurt themselves when the ward activates.”
“What are you going to do, professor?” Harry asked.
“I can change the wards. They’ll still be kept hostage—asleep until the victor claims the castle—but I can make it nearly impossible for anyone to get inside. My boy, you will have to find a way to save them.”
“Can’t we help them? Yell, send an owl, anything?”
Dumbledore closed his eyes. “It’s too late; the first stage has taken. I don’t know how he’s doing this; by all rights, the spell should be achieved by twelve adult wizards spaced at even intervals just outside the wards, funneling their magic for as long as the hostage spell is needed, but I see no one.” By the end of his sentence, his voice started to waver. “Hold up my hand, please.”
Harry did, trying not to shake because this was too important to be afraid, and continued to hold it up as the runes on the barrier started turning darker. Harry had never seen Dumbledore struggling with magic so much that beads of sweat ran down his face. Dumbledore ignored his offer of help when Harry asked if there was anything else he could do. Harry wasn’t sure he even heard him.
“Potter!” a voice yelled. Harry looked up and saw that beyond the runes, Draco Malfoy was running towards them.
Not now, Harry thought. What was Malfoy doing out here?
He twisted, reaching into his pocket to grab his own wand, which he pointed at Malfoy with his left hand. He couldn’t fight like this, not when he needed to hold up Dumbledore’s wand and body, but he could still point a wand at Malfoy.
But if Malfoy was going to try to curse them, he was taking his sweet time with it. He stopped outside the barrier just across from them. He bent down, resting his palms on his knees and breathing heavily, catching his breath from what Harry guessed was a long sprint from the Slytherin dungeons. Why had he come outside? It was past midnight. By all logic, Malfoy should’ve been asleep in his bed, unable to go out because of Snape’s nightly patrols.
Through his pants for breath, Malfoy said, “I can help you, Potter. The Dark Lord—he—I want to join the other side.”
Harry stared at him blankly. “What kind of idiot do you think I am?” Did Malfoy really believe he’d fall for this? “You’re a bloody Death Eater. This is just a trap. You’re spying for Voldemort, or your father, or whoever.”
In his arms, Dumbledore’s body sagged. His chanting, already broken and quiet, turned to a whisper. Harry couldn’t breathe. Dumbledore was going to die. And if Dumbledore failed, if the whole castle became Voldemort’s hostages, even more people would die. Voldemort had no use for muggleborn and blood traitor hostages, after all. It was either their lives or the lives of everyone in the castle, and Harry knew without a doubt what Dumbledore would want him to do. Harry would never be able to live with himself if Ron and Hermione died in there.
“Dammit, Potter, for once your life just say yes,” Malfoy pleaded in a tone Harry had never thought he’d hear from him. “I didn’t know. I thought what I did would just let the Dark Lord inside, not take over the whole castle. Please, I tried to help, but it wouldn’t work. It was already too late.”
Malfoy looked more sincere than Harry had ever seen him, and was nearly begging, while Dumbledore was almost dead. They were all alone in the darkness, the moon bright above them, illuminating Malfoy’s terrified gray eyes.
Harry hated him. He hated everything that Malfoy represented: the kind of person who could do whatever he wanted, things that hurt people, and then wanted a second chance. He didn’t believe Snape had changed after his Death Eater days. Lucius Malfoy certainly hadn’t, no matter what he’d told the ministry for so many years. Malfoy was no different.
But Dumbledore, the man who was dying in Harry’s arms, would’ve given him a chance.
For Dumbledore, Harry said, “What do I have to do?”
“Just agree.”
“I agree. But if you’re doing this just to trick us, I will Stun you so hard you’ll never wake up again.” And agreeing to Malfoy’s help certainly wouldn’t make Harry trust him.
Malfoy began to say something, but choked on his words. His hands flew to his throat, massaging it, while his wide gray eyes locked with Harry’s. Harry almost instinctively reached out to help him, like he would for anyone else, but he remembered Dumbledore’s words in time. In the back of his mind, it registered that Dumbledore had stopped chanting completely.
Harry watched Malfoy gulp in fear, watched his eyes close and his body fall over in place, watched his body be caught and apparated away by a quickly appearing house-elf, one who looked on the verge of passing out himself. He imagined Ron and Hermione doing the same in the tower. They’d probably stayed up late just to make sure he got back okay. It looked like he wouldn’t get back to Hogwarts tonight. Or maybe ever.
The runes had stopped darkening, staying a dark red color. Dumbledore’s wand dropped from his hand, and his entire body crumpled like Malfoy’s had only a moment before. Harry dropped down on his knees and rested Dumbledore’s head on his lap.
“It’s done. The spell is active,” Dumbledore said in a raspy voice. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t even trying to open them.
“Sir, don’t talk, I’ll get help,” Harry told him. He was starting to tremble himself. Where was Dumbledore’s wand? It had fallen somewhere, but Harry couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see anything except Dumbledore lying there, barely moving.
“My boy, you must go to Loch Orsare. Key… in my pocket. And remember the horcruxes. There are only four more. The locket, the snake, two others… And—”
His voice dropped to a whisper, lower than Harry could hear. Harry didn’t know if that was because Dumbledore’s voice had faded, or if the pounding in his ears had grown too loud.
“Professor,” Harry said, his voice strangled. Or maybe he’d said something else. He didn’t know.
He took Dumbledore’s wrist and felt for a pulse. For a moment, he thought he felt Dumbledore’s heartbeat, but it was only his shaking hands. There were tears in his eyes when he finally realized Dumbledore was dead.
Harry looked back at the barrier, thinking stupid thoughts of running across to find his friends. What did it matter now that Dumbledore was dead? Harry had escaped death so many times. Maybe he’d do it once more. Maybe his mother’s lingering protection would shield him from falling asleep.
It was only because he was looking so closely that he noticed the ground had begun to move. Just in front of the wards, the Hogwarts lawn spread open, blades of grass growing taller. The grass thickened, became vine-like, and grew until it was a few centimeters wide. Then, as though the barrier was solid to it, it wrapped around the barrier and grew toward the sky building over the barrier.
In mere minutes, Hogwarts was covered completely by the vines. Then the vines grew large thorns, and small flowers, and weaved closer and closer together until Harry couldn’t see even a little of Hogwarts. A green dome had formed over Hogwarts and the place that Harry called home was engulfed completely.
Dumbledore’s final attempt to protect Hogwarts.
Harry sat there, unmoving, until he heard voices. Spurred into action, he draped the invisibility cloak over himself and Dumbledore—Dumbledore’s still, unmoving body, he thought with a silent sob—and listened to what the newcomers were saying.
“The hostage curse worked, I can feel it,” Bellatrix Lestrange—he would know her voice even in the dark—said.
“My son—he fulfilled his duty?”
“More than that, Lucius. The Dark Lord will be pleased with him. But… I don’t know what this defense is. We must alert him of it immediately.”
The pair apparated away.
When he was sure they left, Harry closed one hand around Dumbledore’s wrist—it was still warm, and he didn’t know why that surprised him but it did—and the other around Dumbledore’s wand. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t allow the Death Eaters to find Dumbledore’s body or to find Harry himself. He’d have to apparate again, hopefully without splinching himself this time, either.
He couldn’t even use magic to lift Dumbledore’s body properly. The last thing he needed was the ministry trying to find him in addition to the Death Eaters. And who knew who was watching Harry’s ministry file. But—did apparition count as underage magic? A letter hadn’t arrived after he’d apparated to Hogsmeade, and it had been at least an hour since.
It doesn’t matter, Harry thought. Hogwarts was under siege. If the ministry wanted to go after him, it would have to do it after the war. Both it and Harry had too much to do now.
He’d go to the Burrow. It was the safest place he could think of, now that Hogwarts was out of the question.
And… Mr. and Mrs. Weasley would no doubt have a shovel somewhere and would know the proper rites of burial. Harry had never even gone to a funeral before. He had no idea what Dumbledore would have even wanted—for all he knew, his mentor could have preferred cremation, like his phoenix familiar. He knew Dumbledore would have wanted the Weasleys at his funeral, though. They could even summon the Order and have a proper gathering. Kingsley would say the Order oath, Mrs. Weasley would cry, and the twins would set off some discrete fireworks. Then they would actually plan the rescue of Hogwarts.
He apparated down the street from the Weasley’s house, far enough that if there was someone watching the house, they probably wouldn’t have heard his pop of air displacement. He knew almost immediately that something was wrong when he didn’t see the roof and top floors of the Burrow in the distance.
Harry’s heart skipped a beat.
No. No—they couldn’t have—no—
But when he ran down the street and onto the Weasley’s property, the Burrow was only a pile of ashes. Under the moonlight, Harry saw a few things still recognizable in the rubble—Mrs. Weasley’s clock, half melted and charred, all hands on mortal peril; Mr. Weasley’s car tools in the place where the shed used to be; a soot-covered Bludger that wasn’t even trying to fly away—but everything else was too blackened to tell what it had been. Even the chicken coop had been burned down.
Harry didn’t see any bodies, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Cold shivers ran down his spine. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley couldn’t be dead. Harry had only just seen them that summer, not so long ago. They couldn’t be dead already. Not when Dumbledore had just died. He had to believe they were alive somewhere and had only gone into hiding.
Staring at the burned down husk of the place Harry had thought of as a second home, Harry tried to remember if he knew where any of the other Order members lived. But it was futile; as well as he’d gotten to know Remus and as friendly as he was with a couple others, he just had no idea. For Merlin’s sake, he didn’t even know where Bill lived!
Shaking, trying not to panic, Harry left quickly. He couldn’t stay here, where Death Eaters could so easily come back.
He chose a location wildly, instinctively, and settled on the Forest of Dean, where the Dursleys had once gone camping.
He appeared on a small hill in the middle of the forest. As a child, he’d gotten lost here, and the Dursleys had almost left without him. But now, Harry was too exhausted to remember that day, or to even be scared of the wild animals around him. Harry laid Dumbledore on the ground, covered him with his cloak, and collapsed a fair distance away. He didn’t even have the energy to start a fire.
It wasn’t fair for Dumbledore to lie there, unwept by the majority of the nation. Harry couldn’t even give him a proper burial. He couldn’t dig through the cold ground without a shovel, and couldn’t get a shovel one without magic or money. He was useless at the moment. All he could do was rest his head on the ground and swear to himself that Dumbledore’s sacrifice had not been in vain. And, if it was true, if the Weasleys were dead, they would be avenged.
He slept restlessly, waking up many times expecting the comfort of the Gryffindor tower, only to find the silver thread of his invisibility cloak and the person it covered and tear up again. By morning, he had no tears left to cry. It wasn’t fair that he was the only one crying—everyone should cry for such a great man’s death—but he couldn’t do anything about that. Not yet. He finally fell into a deeper sleep in the early morning, the faint sunlight on his eyelids making him think of his bed in the Gryffindor tower.
In his dream, he was in the common room again, standing beside Ron and Hermione and drinking butterbeer after winning a Quidditch game. Ron and Hermione were there with him, laughing about something. They were all on good terms again. Ginny was sitting nearby, teaching her pigmy puff to jump through hoops. Dumbledore was up in the castle somewhere, alive and whole. Harry couldn’t imagine being in a better place.
“This is exactly what I thought you dreamed of, Potter,” a familiar voice sneered. It felt wrong in his happy, comfortable dream.
Harry didn’t turn around, wanting to go back to how things were, but Ron and Hermione and the rest of the partying Gryffindors stood frozen. The only moving person was someone who Harry didn’t want to dream about.
“Get out of my dream, Malfoy,” he said, unable to muster the energy to really yell at Malfoy like he deserved. He was just tired. Tired of people dying, tired of not having his friends nearby. Tired of the world.
With a snort, Malfoy snapped his fingers and all the other dream-figures in the room disappeared. “Gryffindors make me itch,” he said in explanation, taking his friends’ place on the couch as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Looking more closely, Harry noticed that Malfoy looked a lot more like he had last year than this year: more filled out, less pale, without dark circles around his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Harry asked. If this was really Malfoy (and it had to be, because Harry didn’t dream about evil Slytherin gits—or at least he wouldn’t admit to dreaming of them), then he looked very awake for someone stuck inside Hogwarts.
“You agreed, remember? That I could help you. Well, you were agreeing to this. I’m going to be asleep until you, or someone more reliable, wake the castle up. I might as well use the time well.” The bastard even looked a bit smug at finding a loophole that got him out of Hogwarts, even if it was just into someone else’s dreams.
Harry clenched his fists, trying to keep himself from punching Malfoy. As much as he wanted to punch him, he needed to know what he was after. And how he was here in the first place, provided Harry’s grief-stricken mind hadn’t dreamed him up. “Use your time well? While everyone I know is stuck there, at Voldemort’s mercy?”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, Potter,” Malfoy said with a wave. Then, as he caught Harry’s utterly un-amused expression, he sat up, and even moved over so that he wasn’t in the place Hermione and Ron had been sitting seconds ago. “Dumbledore saved them, didn’t he? He stopped Voldemort from being able to get inside.” But his voice was unsure.
Malfoy didn’t know, Harry realized. He didn’t know if the castle had been taken. “Did you know? Did you know he was planning to hold the whole castle hostage? Probably kill off anyone whose blood doesn’t meet his standards?” Because if Malfoy had known, and still did nothing… Harry didn’t know what he’d do. He’d always thought only Voldemort deserved death, but someone who had sentenced little innocent muggleborn first years to death wasn’t much better.
“No!” Malfoy yelled. He even sounded honest. “All I was ordered to do was smuggle objects in and bury them around the castle. That’s all. I swear on my life, Potter, that’s all I did. I realized too late what was going to happen. I tried to stop it, that’s why I was outside, but he only gave me a ten-minute window to get out. I swear, I didn’t know. I thought—I thought Dumbledore would be there to stop him. That it wouldn’t work.”
“How do you even expect me to believe you even fucking care? You were fine with just letting him in. Breaking apart Hogwarts’ protections. But what, now you’ve seen the light?” Harry asked skeptically. There was a chance Malfoy was innocent, but there was an even bigger chance that he was trying to trick Harry into believing him.
“It’s not right, to win a war this way,” Malfoy said. “And I haven’t been on the Dark Lord’s side in years. But—he threatened my family, took my father’s wand, took over our home, what was I supposed to fucking do?”
“Not become a Death Eater,” Harry growled. He knew it for certain, now, with the way Malfoy paled and jerked away. But the satisfaction of knowing he’d been right wasn’t there. His friends were in danger of dying, and Malfoy was the one who’d caused it. “Damn your family. There are hundreds of innocent children inside Hogwarts—”
“Right, like you would’ve turned on your family so easily, is that right, you—”
“Fuck off, Malfoy. I don’t need your help.”
Malfoy sneered and drew back. “Fine. Enjoy life on the run, Potter.” He disappeared without a sound, and the denizens of Gryffindor tower reappeared, but Harry couldn’t make himself forget about the world outside the dream anymore; the people around him were only disappointing shadows of their real selves. Nor could he forget the very real panic he’d seen on Malfoy’s face that night on the Hogwarts grounds.