He'd already hurt Harry Potter. It might be the only time Draco ever got to hurt him, and he would have to hold to that one memory for the rest of his life.
Let him keep screaming.
Harry dropped the remnants of his hacksaw to the ground. The brass hinges had proved impervious, not even scratched, and Harry was beginning to suspect that even the desperation act of trying to Transfigure acid or explosives would have failed to open this door. On the plus side, the attempt had destroyed the hacksaw.
His watch said it was 7:02pm, with less than fifteen minutes left, and Harry tried to remember if there were any other sharp things in his pouch that needed destroying, and felt another fit of tears welling up. If only, when his Time-Turner opened, he could go back and
And that was when Harry realized he was being
It wasn't the first time he'd been locked in a room.
Professor McGonagall had already told him the correct way to do this.
...she'd also told him not to use the Time-Turner for this sort of thing.
Would Professor McGonagall realize that this occasion really
Harry gathered up all his things, all the evidence, into his pouch. A
When he was done, Harry glanced down at his watch. 7:04pm.
And then Harry waited. Seconds passed, feeling like years.
At 7:07pm, the door opened.
Professor Flitwick's puff-bearded face looked rather concerned. 'Are you all right, Harry?' said the squeaky voice of Ravenclaw's Head of House. 'I got a note saying you'd been locked in here -'
Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis
J. K. Rowling coils and strikes, unseen; Orca circles, hard and lean.
Draco waited in a small windowed alcove he'd found near the Great Hall, stomach churning.
There would be a price, and it would not be small. Draco had known that as soon as he'd woken up and realized that he didn't dare enter the Great Hall for breakfast because he might see Harry Potter there and Draco didn't know what would happen after that.
Footsteps approached.
'Here ya go,' said Vincent's voice. 'Now da boss ain't in a good mood today, so ya'd better watch your step.'
Draco was going to skin that idiot alive and send back the flayed body with a request for a more intelligent servant, like a dead gerbil.
One set of footsteps went off, and the other set of footsteps came closer.
The churning in Draco's stomach got worse.
Harry Potter came into sight. His face was carefully neutral, but his blue-trimmed robes looked oddly askew, as if they hadn't been put on quite right -
'
Harry raised his left arm, as though to look at it himself.
The hand dangled limply from it, like something dead.
'Madam Pomfrey said it's not permanent,' Harry said quietly. 'She said it should mostly recover by the time classes start tomorrow.'
For a single instant the news came as a relief.
And then Draco realized.
'You went to Madam Pomfrey,' whispered Draco.
'Of course I did,' said Harry Potter, as though stating the obvious. 'My hand wasn't working.'
It was slowly dawning on Draco what an
He'd just taken for granted that no one would go to the authorities when a Malfoy did something to them. That no one would want Lucius Malfoy's eye on them, ever.
But Harry Potter wasn't a frightened little Hufflepuff trying to stay out of the game. He was already playing it, and Father's eye was already on him.
'What else did Madam Pomfrey say?' said Draco, his heart in his throat.
'Professor Flitwick said that the spell cast on my hand had been a Dark torture hex and extremely serious business, and that refusing to say who did it was absolutely unacceptable.'
There was a long pause.
'And then?' Draco said in a shaking voice.
Harry Potter smiled slightly. 'I apologized deeply, which made Professor Flitwick look
