Chapter 8 -  'Til Lips Spill It.

"Draco?"

Had he heard his name? Draco rolled over his back and tried to ignore the strands of hair stuck to the side of his face.

"Draco, wake up, will you?"

Wake up? No, he didn't want to wake up now. A green-tinted light shown persistently through his eyelids and he draped an arm across his face to block it.

"Draco Malfoy! Wake up before I have to get my wand out!"

He smiled sleepily without moving an inch. "What's the problem, Parkinson?"

She pulled his arm away, making angry noises all the while. There was that green light again- he screwed his eyes closed tighter against it and turned his head to the side. His cheek felt warm against the floor, pleasantly sun-baked. "What's the problem? You are the problem! Leaving me to guard all night while you slept your lazy arse off. What if they had found us up here?"

"And how would they do that?" he laughed. He peered up at her through barely open eyes and caught hold of her hand to pull her down. She gave a small shriek as she fell across him.

"What the bloody fuck do you think you're doing?" she said angrily. He could tell, though, that she didn't mean a word of it; her body curled against his and conformed to his shape like a glove. A purr found its way into her voice.

It was all too simple. Pansy could be so easy to maneuver sometimes.

Draco laughed again, easing her off him onto the floor. "Sleep in, will you? It's lovely up here."

"Ha!" Oh, now he had done it- intentionally, of course. She narrowed her eyes and sat up, indignant. "I, for one, plan to do what we were sent for," said Pansy in a high voice. She then fell obstinately silent, refusing to say another word.

"I swear, Parkinson," he muttered. Rising, Draco inhaled sharply and pressed a hand to his chest; the wound he had gotten from Harry's spell hadn't yet completely healed. He looked to see if Pansy had noticed (she hadn't) and continued. "Relax."

She ignored him.

"Pansy," he cajoled. "Come on, now, don't be like that. Our lord won't mind if we sleep in a little before we start the task."

She tossed her hair and laughed scornfully. "Just because you're already his favorite doesn't mean the rest of us can take it easy too!"

Ah, that again. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't give that to me," she said, hands on her hips. "Why aren't you ever serious, Draco Malfoy?"

"Again, no idea. You absolutely baffle me." He looked up at her with his eyes half-closed, playing idly with a silver chain around his neck. Attached to it and tucked into his shirt was the pocket watch he had stolen for Potter at the inn. It had seemed too heavy to hang around his neck at first, but he hadn't felt right leaving it anywhere else. Now, he was used to its weight; he had even fallen into the habit of playing with it while he talked. "I'm nobody's favorite at all- except yours, perhaps."

"Perhaps," she replied, a bit of a chide in her voice. Still, she spoke softly and appeared gentler than she had before.

Draco smiled, propping himself up on his elbows. He tilted his chin back and appraised her. "Settled down, then? Let's go."

She crossed the floor- her footsteps clicked faintly against the colored glass. When she had reached the center of the room, she pried up a wide, translucent green pane and heaved it to the side with Draco's help. Uncoiling a rope ladder allowed them to descend into the menagerie.

It was emptied now, of course, and had been since the ministry had seized the property. All the beasts the family kept here had been auctioned off or donated to zoos across the world. Still, the lingering smell of animals remained in the air- Pansy pinched her nose as she climbed down. She had complained for most of the night about a stench that he could barely smell anymore.

Soon, they had passed the barred cages and emerged outside. With a look upwards, Draco could see the green-glass pyramid perched on top of the menagerie. Though it seemed to be just a decoration, the pyramid was actually a hidden room. Unbreakable Charms made it sturdier than it looked.

Two stone sphinxes guarded the building. These two had given the ministry some problems- though they stayed frozen as Draco passed, and acknowledged Pansy with only a lazy flick of tails. Allies of the Malfoy family, thought Draco, stay safe.

He turned the sphinx on the right, who smiled slyly at him and gestured once with one great stone paw. Draco kissed her in reply (Pansy glared), then stepped back, waiting.

The sphinx opened her mouth- wider and wider she stretched, until Draco could have hid himself inside of her. Reaching his arm in up to the shoulder, he grabbed what he had came for and drew them out by their handles; two brooms, his own and Harry's.

Pansy neatly plucked the Firebolt from his hand. "I'll take this one."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "What gives you the right-"

But she had already mounted and was up in the air. "I'm not going to let your vendetta against Harry Potter get in the way of our job," she called. He sighed, swinging a leg over his broom, and followed after her.

They rose higher and higher. Pansy flew sharply upwards, nearly vertically. Draco was less afraid of being seen, but still- there was a chance.

"All right there, Parkinson?"

"If you are."

Any chance is mortal danger when you're a spy.

Dear Hermione,

Viktor Krum. I bet it's your dear Vicky, isn't it?

- Harry

Dear Harry,

Nope. Don't you think this is getting old?

~Hermione

Dear Hermione

Not at all.

- Harry

Dear Harry,

Let's talk about something else.

~Hermione

Dear Hermione,

Fine. What about the progress they're making out there? How much longer do you reckon I've got to stay holed up?

- Harry

Dear Harry,

Well we haven't been told much, but...I suspect they've nearly finished. Is it that bad in there, Harry?

~Hermione

Harry looked from the folded note in his hands to the ceiling. "Yes...and no," he wanted to tell her.

It wasn't so much the rooms that bothered him. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of floor, he could see all the luxuries that Draco had been brought up with. The golden Gobstones that Harry had wanted. A bookcase lined with books and a dresser filled with fine clothes. More Quidditch equipment than one little boy could ever use, though Draco's prized Nimbus 2002 was now missing from his collection. With every glance, Harry caught things that he had missed before.

No, what made him restless was this solitary confinement. He felt like he was being punished rather than protected and he often wondered whether Sirius had felt like this...when he had been alive, anyway.

But this was Sirius's condition in Grimmauld Place multiplied by a thousand. Harry had no human contact besides notes, saw no human faces other than the pictures in Draco's old storybooks and a Malfoy family portrait hung above the bed. One of the lowest points in his life was when he tried speaking to them, though the entire family remained obstinately silent and left for long periods of time.

When they actually appeared, Harry was kept under constant scrutiny. Draco was around age eleven in the picture, wearing his new Hogwarts robes and smirking proudly whenever he got the chance. It was exactly how Harry remembered him, when they had met for the first time. Carrying those robes on that skinny frame as if the world should be kissing the hem.

He brought his focus back to the paper. Hermione's words were slowly fading from the parchment; with the tip of his feathered quill in the corner of mouth, Harry thought for a moment before jotting down a few words.

Don't worry about me was what it read. I'll survive.

Dropping the quill into his lap, Harry picked up his wand and tapped the parchment once. The words vanished, just as they were meant to. Clever Hermione had set up this system early on, as a birthday gift to Harry. If its resemblance to Riddle's diary bothered him at all, he didn't say so.

Hermione's reply soon returned. You always do.

Harry reread it uncertainly a few times before writing back. Do you mean something by that?

A long silence followed. At least, Harry had come to think of them as silences. The truth was, he didn't think he'd spoken three words in the past day.

I always mean what I say. I never go back on my word. Or don't you remember?

He could hear shouting outside and it worried him. Frowning against the sound, his eyebrows furrowed downward, Harry quickly scribbled a reply. I don't remember you ever saying that.

You may have been asleep at the time. Yes...you were sleeping.

In fact...it sounded like it was Hermione shouting. It couldn't be, she was writing to him right now. She would have said if something was wrong.

Hermione? Is everything all right out there?

His eyes darted around the room, his shoulders tensed, his hand drew instinctively towards his wand- just waiting for that reply.

Something the matter, Potter?

Harry jumped up- the paper floated to the floor, just at his toes. He could hear Hermione shouting for him from outside. She knocked at the door first and then pounded, a persistent thud thud thud that seemed to echo in his head again and again. A feeling of sick dread rose in his gut.

Something was, in fact, the matter. Something, somebody, somehow- his mind was racing, the long silence had turned into paranoia. How had anyone intercepted their system?

Don't make me worried about you.

"Who are you?!" Harry shouted- of course, no one heard, he was shouting at the empty air.

Shouting now, are we? I can hear you from here.

"Come out and face me, Malfoy!"

Ignore me, then. You'll get what's coming to you soon enough. See you at dinner, if you're not already dead.

Harry scrambled for his quill, damn that feather, slipping through his fingers, he was almost there, just another inch-

 - but the words soon faded. The paper was blank and silent.

So silent.

So silent it made Harry wonder if he could possibly...want Draco to come back.

He stared at the paper for a while, not noticing when the quill fell from his fingers and left a trail of ink on his leg. The parchment was empty. He didn't see or care about this. He saw only the script, a sharp, pointed hand that was nearly as neat as Hermione's, trailing tails and flourishes and death all at once. A memory on the page.

The parchment never worked properly after that, no matter how long he had Hermione trying to repair the spells.

"Why do you do that?" Pansy asked suddenly, sending him a sharp look.

"What?" Draco glanced up from his parchment.

"Stare like that. At the paper. There isn't even any writing on it. It makes you look so foolish, staring at an empty piece of parchment." She snatched it from his fingers, probing suspiciously. He let it go without a fight.

Finding nothing, she sniffed and pitched it back at him. "I don't like it."

"What do you want me to do then, Parkinson?" He sneered, stretching forward to tuck the paper into a small wooden treasure box. When he closed it, Pansy could hear the soft clicking of gears that would only unlock again for the hand that put it in.

Draco propped himself up again on his elbows and gave her a scornful smile. "Stare at you?"

She hoped then, scowling, that the candlelight wasn't bright enough to show the blush on her face. It was barely enough, as it was, to catch the familiar green accents of the glass pyramid. The result was a gold-green that muddled into brown or black around the shadows.

Draco, sitting right up to the candle, was tinged gold, and the pocket watch around his neck gleamed hypnotically bright. It swayed slightly when he moved and it often made Pansy feel dizzy when she looked at it. Often she was tempted to wrench it from his throat.

But instead she wondered. He had started wearing it when they had been assigned to spy on the activity in the Estate, but she had never once seen him open it to check the time. At least, never while she was around. Nor would he take it off during the day. At night he would lock it away in his treasure box, listening closely to the clicking gears before he was assured enough of its safety to sleep.

In all likelihood, Draco never noticed that Pansy watched him do these things. Maybe it was his arrogance. He was never as cunning as he seemed to think. But Pansy did notice, and if she had been a Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, or even a Ravenclaw, she wouldn't have thought twice about it. The watch could be an expensive heirloom, passed down the Malfoy line. It could be another gift from his father.

But Pansy was a Slytherin. She saw that, though the watch had been recently well- repaired, the color of gold plating was uneven and even looked rough at some points. That the style of the small gold clasp did not match the body of the watch itself.

No Malfoy would let an heirloom fall into that sort of condition.

"Now let me ask you something." A drawl sliced through her thoughts. Pansy pulled her gaze from the pocket watch and up to Draco's eyes. "Why do you do that?"

She smiled wryly. "Do what?"

He held the watch up by the chain and swung it side to side. "Stare at this ugly thing. It makes you look concerned."

She reached over the candle and caught the watch mid-swing, startling Draco. He looked up at her for a moment, a puzzled arch to his eyebrows, and then let go of the chain.

"I've just been wondering," she began slowly. Her fingers traced slowly along the watch's edge. She would need to be cautious in her choice of words. "When did your father decided you needed another watch?"

"You think my father has taste like this?" he sneered. "I could take that as an insult."

So that was the wrong approach. "That's not what I meant," she said hastily.

"Yeah?" He tilted his chin up to look across at her defiantly. "Are you sure?"

She couldn't think of what to reply. All she could do was stare across at him; the candlelight flickered balefully across his pale features, his narrowed mocking eyes. A smile sat awkwardly on his lips as if trying to soften the blow after having forgotten how to be soft. They say that candlelight softens imperfections, but the light only brought his out more starkly.

He pulled the watch neatly from her fingers and held it in his hand again with a fond expression. "You want to hear the true story then?" She nodded numbly. Draco smiled, tipped his hand to give her a better view, and then opened the clasp.

Pansy nearly shamed herself. She could barely keep from gasping.