Author Name: creamtea-from-FAP
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: PS/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OoTP, HBP.
Genre: Book 7. Adventure, thriller.
Main Character(s): H. D. Beta: Anise. Some test-reading by SUM.
Ship(s): Ships are touched on as part of the narrative, but the story isn't about the ships. Ships are: H/L, D/Hr. These ships: H/G, R/Hr, D/G are included – but not in a good way!
Summary: ALT BOOK 7: Love potions; emotional shoot-outs, expulsions, hex-fights, fist-fights, kidnappings, bank-jobs, secret weapons and castle-battles. And … Draco!
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Chapter 40
The silence resounded throughout the great arching space, and then there was a last, grubby scuffle as remaining Death Eaters struggled and were overcome by the more determined and more practiced Order and Aurors.
Most Death Eaters were caught and disarmed, but the smart ones took a chance and – Disapparated.
As the last struggling Death Eaters were subdued, Harry simply stared, slack, at where the great whirling light had been. There was nothing to show it had ever existed. Nothing to show it had swept up dozens of people and annihilated Ginny Weasley. Not even a burn-mark on the wall.
And he had set that weapon off.
Far behind him was the last – pop! - of Apparition as a final Death Eater escaped.
Harry didn't even bother to turn around.
Death Eaters had Disapparated? So, the wards were down now: could Scrimgeour have sent the bombs and buried the Chamber after all, but he'd come to save Harry instead? Of all the people who had died for him, Scrimgeour – possibly the worst of the lot – was the only one who had done it after the job was done, after Voldemort had been defeated. He had done it when The Boy Who Lived no longer mattered.
Since his mother and father, many people had died for or because of The Boy Who Lived, but Scrimgeour – devious, ruthless, grinning, pragmatic Scrimgeour - was the one who had died for Harry Potter.
And for that – after the night he'd had, after all the deaths he'd seen – for that, Harry felt his eyes well-up and he started to silently weep.
'… sometimes you have to do an awful thing to attain a worthwhile end, Harry …'
And Harry too had done that: he had set that weapon off because at the time he had done it, there had been no other option.
He'd just have to forgive himself.
People about him were starting to come out of the shock and mill about.
Horribly, body-parts strew the Chamber: not just the hands and forearms Rufus Scrimgeour and Malfoy's father.
Ministry figures tentatively picked the two hands up, was there even enough left to give either of them a burial.
Harry tried to not think of where each man might be now.
Or Ginny Weasley.
Remus bent and put Harry's wand in his limp hand, curling his fingers about it. Remus then stood nearby, not looking at Harry but just there as an unobtrusive presence, a comfort if required.
It occurred to Harry in a blank sort of way that Remus did not even know about Tonks.
Tonks was sitting on the floor against a wall, head down and crying, still driving off anyone who came near her: she knew what she'd done, she was someone else who would have to try to come to terms with the way things were.
Remus looked at her, then looked away.
Someone was picking Hermione up from the floor and trying to examine her for injury – particularly where she'd been shot in the chest by the spell … 'A few bruised ribs, no real damage …she's wearing a Basilisk vest – Minerva McGonagall gave it to her …'
A clever woman protected by a snake.
Hermione was jabbering, '… a Basilisk – a Basilisk – but snakes can turn into dragons, and it's dragon' blood …'
She was making little sense and the Aurors shushed her.
Away to one side, Bill was murmuring, congregating with some other very capable-looking young men who had been fighting there: fellow Cursebreakers whom Harry vaguely recognised from the wedding. He numbly wondered how they'd been able to use their wands.
There was the pop of in-bound Apparition now as Ministry figures arrived.
Away down the Chamber, an argument broke out.
"I think we'll take the box and the ring."
"No, I rather think not."
The Auror's wrist was gripped by a tall, thin, red-haired young man in pin-stripped robes. "I think they will be coming directly into Ministerial custody, which right now – with the death of the Minister – means me."
Percy Weasley firmly detached the Auror's hand from the combination of the box and the ring. He beckoned to a man over to his right – it was Kingsley Shacklebolt, sporting a split lip and a gash down one side of his face.
Kinglsey had been there too.
"Here, Shacklebolt, you take it."
"And who's he to get it?" the first Auror objected.
"Your new boss."
Percy, determinedly indicated the back wall of the Chamber, "Ever since the report that the last one when hurtling through that disk."
Percy turned to Kingsley, explaining. "Ministerial Protocol No. 19 (d) (ii): in the event of the death of a Minister and without the Wizengamot's first post-mortem convention, the Ministerial Secretary has representative authority. Currently, that's me. In the next few hours the Wizengamot will meet but," he thrust the box and the ring at Shacklebolt, "you're the Head of the Auror Dept. until somebody tells you otherwise."
Ministerial figures were Apparating in from all over now.
A slightly shambolic-looking figure stepped up, it nodded at Percy.
"Perce."
Percy started then nodded back.
"Dad."
"Nice move with the Goblins, son – I only just heard."
There was a small pause and then a stiff smile.
"Thanks Dad."
Percy Weasley had gone behind everyone's back and, instead of fighting at the lake, had taken the Ministerial seal from Scrimgeour's vacant desk and had gone to Ragnor – the leader of the Goblins - to cut a binding deal, cementing it with an impress of the Great Seal. Unauthorised, Percy had gotten the Cursebreakers back in the fight.
"What did you offer them, son? Liberties? Enfranchisement?"
"Pension rights."
Harry would have laughed if he could have brought himself to do it.
Sitting on a stone bench set into a side-wall, Romilda Vane slumped over, wand beside her, leaning on her elbows, hands and wrists dangling into the gap between her knees. She had a swelling lump on her temple and looked like she'd been in several fights.
She glanced up, astonished, as a flash of a particular shade of red moved by: Ron had limped up toward his dad and elder brother.
He was alive after Remus had told Romilda that he was dead.
Eyes wide, face washed clean by a dawning hope, Romilda's mouth shifted soundlessly as she made to half-rise, but then Hermione, having struggled up from the floor, hurtled into Ron almost knocking him off his feet – frantically burying her head in his shoulder, crying.
Ron started for a second and almost as a slightly mechanical reaction, put his arm about her.
"I knew I was right – I knew I was right."
Harry dully knew that could be no-one but Hermione: death all around her but now that the immediate danger had passed, her prime concern was to prove that 'she was right'.
Just like she had been over the 'Half-Blood Prince'.
"It was the locket – the locket." Her voice was snuffling, wet and squeaky. "It was a picture of Rowena Ravenclaw and Slytherin in Slytherin's locket. He loved her you see – even though she wouldn't have him. She was a Muggleborn. So the weapon couldn't have been against Muggleborns because he'd never have done anything to hurt her. It was to annihilate all those who were unworthy. I knew I was right."
She wailed anew and pressed her face into Ron's shoulder.
Harry wondered if all that meant they were back together? Ron was a hero now – he had proved it - was that enough to buy him Hermione's ongoing respect? But if that was what it took … well, you couldn't save someone's life every day …
Watching Hermione and Ron, Romilda heavily sat back down again. Her mouth quirked and, looking away to one side, she spat out a gobbet of blood from a loose back-tooth and wiped her mouth, continuing to stare away into a corner.
Harry numbly wondered if Ron really knew what had just happened to Ginny? Did he even know about his Mum?
A Ministerial aide hesitantly approached the three Weasleys, murmuring something. All three looked at him utter incredulity, as though he must surely be quite mad.
Then Mr. Weasley gave a sharp, high, cry, Hermione looked up and about her unhappily as Ron brushed her off and stormed alone from the Chamber, not looking left or right.
He was in such a hollow-eyed, refusing temper, he didn't even see Harry, he clearly didn't even feel the pain in his leg.
Hermione stared after him.
Ron must have heard about his mum and sister.
Harry wondered if Ron would hold it against him: if he hadn't set that weapon off then Ginny Weasley wouldn't have been killed shutting it down.
At one end of the Chamber, near the shattered doors, an Auror picked up the fallen, blackened tiara. He held it tentatively at arm's-length, as though afraid it would go off in his hand. This time, Percy Weasley, staring distraught and disbelieving at the aide, did nothing to demand that he put it back.
Voices could be heard as people hesitantly inspected the tiara '… what happened? Apparently she was wearing it. Did it have any effect on her? … seventh child … usually can do wandless magic, but there were no reports of any extra power manifesting with her …'
But wandless magic -? But … in the kitchen when the sugar bowl shattered, when the coals had spat from the fire, when Romilda Vane's stuff had been found ripped asunder in her locked trunk … those things had all happened when Ginny Weasley had been in a dreadful temper.
When she'd sealed that breach into the howling, white waste, she had sported the worst temper Harry had ever seen her in.
Quiet murmurs filtered through the air as people contemplated the box, the ring and the space where the weapon had erupted '… Devil's Door … Dark Road … Scholomance …?'
At that, even Kingsley Shacklebolt – now holding the box and the ring, looked extremely uncomfortable.
As though dismantling the detonator from a bomb, he gingerly removed the ring from the box. After a second of tentative pulling, it came away with a quiet click – like two magnets being pulled apart.
The Scholomance? Yes, because that was why Hermione had recognised the box: she had seen it in a book at Durmstrang guarded by that vampire Brethren.
In the middle of the Chamber, people avoided the twin effigies of Bellatrix and Narcissa. A few gave them uncomfortable glances, but no-one wanted to touch them. There were whispers from those who flicked glance at the statues: '… that'll be something for the Unforgivables …'
Harry registered it: some-thing.
They were talking about Malfoy's mum and auntie.
And now his dad was dead too.
He didn't even know about Kreacher yet.
Malfoy had lost all his close family in the space of two minutes: and one of them he'd sent into that cavernous white waste himself. He'd slashed Lucius Malfoy off Hermione … but really, who knew what exactly would have happened if they'd hit the disk together?
Would Malfoy be forever torturing himself with the thought that if he hadn't done it, then linked to Hermione, the engine might have rejected Lucius Malfoy and that he'd still be alive and here?
Effectively, Malfoy had killed his dad for Hermione Granger. He'd lied to Voldemort for her, he'd protected her as much as he could, and he'd killed for her: twice.
Harry looked about him silently. He felt somehow invisible, viewing events as though he wasn't really a part of them, just some ghostly spectator. He felt that if someone were to pass close-by, then they might walk right through him.
He caught sight of Malfoy sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up, his arms around them, his eyes blank. Neville and Theodore stood nearby, trying not to look as though they were hovering. Crabbe and Goyle stood there, heads to one side as they watched him, almost mewing at him.
Malfoy's eyes held no mirrored glinting now.
Had Harry just imagined that intense mirrored sheen he thought he had seen?
He noticed that although Malfoy had done dreadful things for her – on the spur of the moment some of the time, possibly unthinkingly, possibly even unwillingly - that Hermione did not seem to want to look at him. Harry recalled what Voldemort had said: that she considered him beneath her – but was that despite what he'd done for her or … because of it?
Was it that Malfoy's very existence reminded Hermione of what had been forced to do to extract her from the results of the mess she'd made? Because Hermione had things to reflect upon too: if she hadn't been dosing Harry, he would never have gone out with Ginny Weasley, there would never have been a potions-sweep that drove Ginny out of Hogwarts, the Death Eaters would have had no reason to kidnap her.
Ginny Weasley had been down in that Chamber because of the mistakes she had made, but also because of Hermione's mistakes.
Harry saw that Hermione's gaze roved away from Malfoy, but he could sort of understand why: Malfoy presented a frightful sight.
His father's scarlet arterial blood was still upon him. Sprayed across his pale face and silvery-white hair.
Scarlet and silver: Gryffindor and Slytherin.
He and Harry had acted together in the end – more or less – but God, what an appalling price Malfoy had paid.
Down the Chamber, there was a brief struggle as Snape was dragged along between two Aurors – clearly they either didn't know that he had killed Voldemort or didn't care, believing that it was simply a last-minute switch of sides to save his skin.
Harry twitched, moving to try to speak, but Remus flicked him a glance, took in Harry's shocked condition, and did it for him: "Snape's a member of the Order – put him down."
The Aurors looked at each other, confused, but still gripped the struggling Snape.
"Put him down," growled out Remus. "Dumbledore vouched for him with Harry before – before he died on the tower." Which was technically true but glossed over an awful lot of uncomfortable detail. "Professor Dumbledore's painting is safely on the Durmstrang ship, he'll awaken soon and when he does he can tell you himself."
"Before he died? How does that count? Snape was the one who killed him!"
Snape, glaring eyed and snarling mouthed, wrenched himself free of the recalcitrant Aurors, who looked to snatch him again.
"Because the Professor made him do it."
Everyone stilled as Harry spoke.
Harry's voice was alarmingly flat. It was the first time he had spoken since the weapon had gone off. "He made him promise." Harry gazed at the Aurors without expression. "If you re-examine that Necrotopsy, you'll see that poison and a fall killed the Professor – Scrimgeour said so - not an AK. The Professor's painting will tell you that when it comes-to."
Scrimgeour said so … the magic words. The Aurors moved off unwillingly, still shooting Snape resentful looks.
Snape now beheld Harry with a look that was both wary and resentful, he wasn't sure what Harry knew, wasn't sure what Dumbledore had told him.
Snape stalked off, giving Harry a look of distrust and distaste.
Auror attention drew about Malfoy, with people shooting him looks and muttering.
As with Snape, they weren't minded to simply accept that he had changed sides – or possibly they didn't want to believe it? Having a blackened enemy was always so convenient if one wished to regard oneself as pure-white.
But another Ministerial aide came up, looked at Malfoy, then at the Aurors, and shook his head.
Harry caught the murmurs: '… Minister Scrimgeour – ex-Minister Scrimgeour – vouched for him … went down in the Chamber …had some sort of plan …'
"The last thing the wizarding world needs right now is factionalism." Percy Weasley's voice was trembling – he had heard about his mother and sister – but he was still stepping in to make his point. "We need unity, and Malfoy – because of his birthright, his family name, and tonight's actions - is the symbol for Slytherins the wizarding world over. If we reject him, we reject them, it's that simple. We can't afford to reject them. We can't have this 'us and them' mess building up again."
Percy shot a red-eyed look at Harry, his eyes were very wet, the tip of his nose very red, his voice very thick, but he still spoke.
"Harry has let me know that one of his conditions for supporting the fair reputation of the wizarding government, is a full pardon for Draco Malfoy from any crimes committed hereto."
It was a lie, Harry hadn't opened his mouth at all, but it was a necessary lie. They couldn't have divisive arrests now.
As the Aurors looked at Malfoy, Harry kept his mouth shut, nodding at Percy.
"Fine. It's agreed, then," Percy confirmed.
His voice sounded terribly tight.
A well-fed looking Ministry figure in shiny shoes and an expensive suit took a look over at Malfoy who was still slumped against the wall.
"We can use him anyway. From what I hear, with a bit of training he'd make a fabulous asset: we always need Wizards who are prepared to be …ruthless. He was prepared to kill his own father, apparently …"
Harry felt a jolting spike.
Were they implying that Malfoy would somehow be some government killer – what did they politely call them – operatives?
Malfoy had killed because he'd had to do it!
"He's got to be free to do as he chooses," Harry's voice was a yelp, as though his voice-box had stopped working properly, had rusted up. "Not free to be your puppet. Our choices are what make us, not someone else's choices for us!"
The Ministry official liked at him as though didn't quite get it, "Well as the Head of Legal Affairs -"
Percy interjected.
"The press will be onto this soon. I think we'd like Harry on-board before they come, wouldn't we? I think we'd like Minister Scrimgeour's memory to be that of a man who had died a hero?"
And not as a kidnapping killer.
Percy continued, his voice sounding very strained, as though he was fighting back a terrible urge to weep.
"I'm sure no-one would wish for a probing press, instability and … mass sackings."
At that last, the other official looked flustered.
"Well. Of course. Yes. Quite."
Percy waived a wand at his Ministerial Portfolio and a lengthy piece of parchment appeared in mid-air: Malfoy's pardon.
After a look at Malfoy, the Head of Legal Affairs hurried signed it with a shaking hand.
xxxx
Oddly, despite all that had happened, very little time had been lost from even the first term of the new school year, and with all the surviving students back at Hogwarts now, the school righted itself as did the Ministry
Millicent Bagnold – long retired but still active - was re-appointed as Minister of Magic. She was the interim, comforting, consensus appointment: someone nobody objected to and everyone could at least make a show of supporting.
As Ron pointed out, in any case her appointment suited a lot of people: she was of an age where in a few years she would retire again, and so everyone was content to have her where she was, using the time to position themselves for promotion in the scramble when she left.
The school-children all heard rumours about the Chamber: that it had been sealed from the school again but was under constant Ministry monitoring. The tiara, the locket, the cup the ring and the box had all disappeared inside the Ministry.
Oddly, they could not take the sword even with repeated efforts: it refused to come out from the stone.
In the end it had been left there, glinting in the low, greenish light of the sealed-off and silent Chamber.
The school settled. With Ernie dead, surprisingly – or maybe not surprisingly at all - Neville was appointed Head Boy.
His Gran had given a crowing interview to the Prophet, singing his praises and comparing him to his father.
Neville had almost cringed with discomfort.
The school now had a commemorative plaque in the Great Hall, listing the names of all those who had died in the 'second war'. Harry noticed that Malfoy always sat facing away from it. In contrast, Ron had made himself stare at the printed line showing his sister's name until his eyes had burned, unblinking, and then watered, and then gone red, and then … had stopped watering.
If he ever held Harry in any way responsible for what had happened, he never said it. He and Harry shared many a quiet hour playing chess or out on the Quidditch pitch just rhythmically lobbing Quaffles back and forth to each other – with Harry on a school broom.
He'd gotten his Cloak back – it had been found amidst the rocks by the lake – but his Firebolt had been irreparable.
Whenever she passed it, Hermione had looked at the plaque uncomfortably and then hurried past it, head in the air.
She had been made up to Head Girl again, her expulsion revoked. Some children muttered, disgruntled, at her re-appointment to the Head position, but it would have been embarrassing not to – she had been instrumental in the Chamber - and it was all about politics.
The Daily Prophet had run article after article on the events leading up to Voldemort's downfall – some of them even written by Rita Skeeter.
The meaning of Harry's scar had been pored over obsessively. The rebounded Avada with Voldemort was a matter of public record. There were even mutterings that Harry's scar had been some kind of unintended Horcrux, created that far off night at Godric's Hollow.
Likewise, the now-revealed prophecy had all been obsessively pored over in the press, tying it all to Hero Harry!
But Harry was never so sure. He thought the prophecy could have been about a lot of people – or a lot of people all acting together. A Power the Dark Lord knew not? He had been given the scar, and some connection to Voldemort which had rebounded on him but … Malfoy had his amended, dragon-infused blood and that had mattered too – Harry knew something had gone on with that Basilisk, and there were mutterings among the staff occasionally. Plus Malfoy's unholy deviousness and stubbornness were also a power of sorts. Ron, Neville, Theodore had loyalty and courage – and that had counted enormously too. Hermione had her intelligence. Ginny had her ferocious will and untapped power which had slammed the door on hell.
Luna had always had her faith: faith in Harry, 'I know you have it within you somewhere…' and he had, but in such an unexpected, almost random way. And that was the worst part about it: if he had been some inadvertent Horcrux, then to defeat Voldemort, all he had ever had to do, was die.
If Luna hadn't stood in front of him in the churchyard, the destruction of whatever had been in his head would have happened anyway.
Harry was another one who couldn't look at the plaque.
Harry knew that the Order had been in quiet talks with the Ministry about Harry, about his scar, about his ability to set the weapon off … the blood of an Heir. But as McGonagall had smartly pointed out, all talk of 'heirs' was utter nonsense and always had been. If Slytherin had fathered two children who'd each had two children who'd each had two children down and down through the centuries, then even if 99 of them had died out along the way then there'd still me millions of people walking around who were descended from him, and there weren't even a million wizards in the whole of Britain!
It would be a shock if anyone – like Hermione - wasn't 'the blood of an Heir'.
In any case, Harry found it of no interest, and after a short while did not even find any interest in the aesthetically pleasing fact that his once livid scar had faded to a fine silvery line.
Ron and Hermione had settled into some sort of coupledom, but Harry felt it couldn't last. After a short period where Ron could do no wrong, reality had re-asserted itself and now they were increasingly sliding toward their old ways of grudging against each other, with Hermione fault-finding and Ron resentful.
You couldn't save someone's life every day after all.
Because Ron was not as adept as Hermione in Potions, whenever the class had to pair up, Malfoy was allocated with Hermione.
Despite the fact that they should have done extremely well, the many explosions from their workbench sometimes weren't magic-related.
Harry had once heard Malfoy hiss: "You and the Weasel, stuck back together again? I thought you had more guts Granger!"
Which at least was improvement on what Malfoy usually said: nothing.
He seemed permanently angry.
Harry had once tried to talk to him about the events of that night, about the battle. Malfoy had shrugged him off and stalked away.
It was not a help that at the re-start of school there had been an inaugural, commemorative feast – almost a second start for things – at which the Sorting Hat had been brought out to sit on the teachers' dais as an emblem of the school ethos.
Half-way through the feast it had silenced the Hall by beginning to sing of its own accord: a song of unity, singing that it refused to divide the pupils any longer.
To a rising buzz of astonished conversation, most peoples robes and House insignia changed colour while they were actually wearing them: the Hat had resorted randomly and then … almost un-noticed in the rising swirl of voices as people looked disbelievingly down at their robes, the Hat disintegrated.
Round eyed behind his spectacles, Harry saw that Malfoy – of all things – got allocated to Hufflepuff … the house of the good all-rounder, always willing to give a half-way decent chap a second chance …
Malfoy, jaw clenched, had closed his eyes for long seconds in utter disgust.
Harry knew that Remus and Tonks had split up. No tears or recriminations – apart from possibly self-recriminations – thy had each simply wanted to get as far away from each other as possible. All each saw in the other now, were their own failures. The 'relationship' had not broken up 'messily' because there had never been anything genuinely there to break up.
Tonks had gotten a year-long sabbatical from the Aurors.
Many quietly expected that she'd never come back.
Snape had regained the post of Professor of D.A.D.A. His lessons were terse but rewarding. He and Harry kept a distance from each other though, and now in contrast to before, during lessons Harry felt not that Snape was covertly watching him, hoping for him to slip up so he could dock House-points, but that Snape was trying his best to ignore him, pretending that Harry wasn't there.
Harry had never told anyone what Professor Dumbledore had told him. Uncomfortably, he hadn't wanted anyone knowing about Snape and his mum, any more than Snape did – but he supposed for rather different reasons.
Harry's statement about the fall and the poison had been corroborated and Snape had been rehabilitated, although many still did not trust him.
Professor Dumbledore's sleeping portrait had finally awoken in a flurry of blurted instructions about Horcruxes.
It had come as rather a surprise to him that it had all been sorted in his absence.
Harry had visited the Professor's portrait often at first, but as time had passed he visited less and less until – feeling guilty nonetheless – he had stopped completely – it had made him feel uncomfortable.
He still kept the miniature of Phineas Nigellus on his though: propped by his bed it was better than an alarm clock with Nigellus snorting at him to 'get up in time for lessons'.
Their career choices had come up as topics: Ron still wanted to be an Auror. It was an open secret that he'd get accepted into Auror Training even if he never passed a single N.E.W.T. in his life. He'd escaped the Aurors at The Burrow He had held Tonks to a draw. He had escaped the Inferi, crawling up on to a far side of the lake shore, swearing insults. And he had managed to stop Harry from getting killed. No matter what his theory marks were ever going to be, he'd proved he could do it where it counted.
Hermione was going into the government, there were rumours about the school about the Unspeakables.
In a talk with Remus, Harry had told him that he wanted to be a doctor.
Remus had looked surprised – hadn't he always wanted to be an Auror?
But being an Auror had always been Ron's ambition first – though he had voiced it hesitantly as though others would scoff at the very thought of someone like him even trying for it. Harry had only jumped on the idea because it had sounded cool.
But now he didn't want to be one. There were too many ill-associations. He didn't want to ever be in a position where he might have to kill anyone. So … he didn't want to be an Auror, he didn't want to be part of the government … but a doctor? His N.E.W.T.S. fitted and … he supposed he still had a 'saving people' thing after all.
As Ron had once said, you needed the same N.E.W.T.S. to be an Auror as a doctor, so Harry didn't even have to change courses. As Ron had also once said: I bet St. Mungo's take any idiot in the end …
No-one knew what Malfoy wanted to do or be. As time dragged on, his behaviour grew worse and his marks dropped. He missed increasing numbers of lessons and often he did not hand in homework at all. It was as though he thought that school was an encumbrance to get through, fit only for those too naïve for real life.
"Besides – what do I need a job for, I've got money."
He did too, Harry quietly reckoned that Malfoy was probably the single richest person he knew. He had all of his grandfather's inheritance, everything from his parents, including his mother's private wealth, and he had inherited from his aunt.
Malfoy had gotten money and property aplenty, but that night in the Chamber he had lost everything else.
Early on, he had demanded that Harry take him to Grimmauld Place and Harry had wondered if he wanted the house back. But Malfoy had simply stalked up the staircase, taking the elf-heads off the wall with a curious gentleness. He had Disapparated without acknowledging Harry.
It had emerged later that in the high-walled extensive city-garden of Malfoy's London house that he had built a tomb where he had interned Kreacher and the remains of all those other elves. It had been carved with silver-gilt letters: The Elves of the House of Black.
Apparently, 'Crabbe and Goyle' were at Malfoy's country property: the Wiltshire manor of the Malfoy family. 'Crabbe and Goyle' had the run of the huge grounds and their own purpose-built, and very comfy, cave.
It was rumoured that Malfoy visited often, but that he hardly ever went inside the manor itself.
Harry offered his hand to Malfoy in the corridor one day, wanting somehow to confront him, to shake him out of his anger and apathy.
Malfoy had turned him down.
"Look Malfoy, if I'd taken your hand that time on the train in first-year, things would have been totally different. Let's just .. try again!"
"Potter," Malfoy had turned and faced him, "I really don't care. So I offered you my hand in first-year and you picked Weasley over me: big deal. At this point I'd rather not be reminded of my own failings in offering and of your sheer bad taste in refusing."
Pansy Parkinson – unharmed from the battle for the castle – had approached with a misery-faced apprehensiveness, looking needily at Malfoy.
Malfoy had swiveled on his heel, striding off.
"Oh for god's sake," he said to no-one in particular, "the last thing I need is a fucking girlfriend."
The one girl he had told himself he wanted, had never wanted him …
Harry had stared after him, wondering how much of what Voldemort had flung at Malfoy was true.
Things had snapped when Malfoy had, in a fit of undirected anger, actually sworn at Snape during a D.A.D.A lesson – one of the few classes he still regularly attended.
He and the dark-eyed, sallow Professor had stared at each other: it had been hard to say which of them had been more shocked.
The next day, muttered gossip could be heard in every corridor: Malfoy had left the school.
Hermione had cried out, shocked, when she'd heard. "But he can't do that! He can't!"
But he had.
Tortured by the thought of what he had done to his father, of what had happened to Ginny Weasley, of what had been said to him by and about Ginny Weasley …
Harry supposed Malfoy could join the club – the club of those who tortured and berated themselves, and possibly each other, over what had happened.
It had quite a lot of members.
Harry supposed their futures depended on what they each chose to do about it really …
xxxx
In some other white, formless, barren waste, a place of no sky, no sea, no earth, of no boundaries whatever so that no-where was everywhere and everywhere was no-where, the same figure simultaneously made its way toward to different men, each isolated in a cool white space, each missing a hand.
Most people went mad in this space in hardly any time at all. But these two were strong, and the figure had been given so few new souls in such a long time …
As the same figure reached each man simultaneously, it made a show of politeness. It smiled. These were to be negotiations: each of these handless men understood negotiations.
The figures smiled before each man: polite, cool - determined.
"I am about to make you an offer, and if you are wise, you will accept it …"
AUTHOR'S NOTE: well, it's been quite a way - for those of us who got this far. I may or may not sequel. Clearly though, I'm thinking about it, as this last chapter was just as much 'set up' as 'wind down'. If I do write a sequel, it won't appear for many months and ... will feature Draco heavily and be straight D/Hr (which I think I've set up well enough to be convincingly resolved in its own twisted little way). All the other characters will be there, but the emotional core will be D/Hr. It will involve Unspeakable Bookworm!Hermione having to team up with Unbearable Assassin!Draco as they battle government deceptions, shady power-figures - and each other - in the race to save the world from the effects of the Resurrection Engine. Oh - and did I mention Draco's stolen Bugatti Veyron?
Those who don't like Draco in 'The Road To Hell' really wouldn't like him in ... 'The Torture Club'.
If I do it, once again I will publish as creamtea-from-FAP.
Bye-bye.