'Yeah, I know,' said Harry calmly.
Lupin looked at him sidelong, reflecting that Harry seemed, in a lot of ways, surprisingly confident for his age; he wondered if that was a recent development, and how much of it was traceable to his relationship with Hermione — which, ironically enough, seemed to be the one thing he wasn't terribly confident about.
'I guess this is one of the downsides of being a Magid,' Harry said. 'I mean, the sword wouldn't have any interest in me if I wasn't one, would it?'
'There are always drawbacks to power,' said Lupin. 'It's a good thing to know.'
'Don't listen to him about you being powerful,' said Hermione, poking Harry in the side with her finger. 'You've got a big enough head already.'
Harry looked solemn. 'Power? Ambition? The Jedi craves not these things.'
Hermione giggled. Sirius and Lupin looked at him as if he were insane.
Harry forced his face back into a serious expression. 'Never mind.
Let's get started.'
It was nearly dawn when Severus Snape arrived home. He had been kept a long time at St. Mungo's, speaking with the mediwizards about Dumbledore's treatment, and an even longer time with his debriefing at the Ministry. He mounted the steps of his home slowly, seeing the clear red light of the rising sun chasing the darkness back above the trees in the distance. It was morning, and as it often did when he was very tired, the Dark Mark on his arm ached like a long-healed wound.
He felt something slightly off-kilter the moment he crossed the threshold. His house was still, dark, lightless, as he had left it — but there was something subtly wrong. He drew his wand out of his sleeve and moved quietly down the hall, his ears pricked for any noise.
Halfway down the hall, he heard a noise. But it wasn't any kind of noise that he had expected.
It was music.
And it was coming from his own living room.
Curiosity and indignation overcame native caution, and Snape strode the rest of the way down the hall, not bothering to try to mask his footsteps. At the end of the hall, he swung to the left and threw the door open.
A bizarre sight met his eyes. The room was almost as he had left it -
furnished with heavy wooden chairs, stiff and uncomfortable, the walls lined with books, the floor very dusty, any light that might have found its way in through the windows blocked by heavy canvas drapes. The only difference was that in the middle of the room, in the center of the small circular Persian rug of which he had always been rather fond, sat Draco Malfoy.
It took a moment for Snape to recognize his favorite student out of his black Hogwarts robes, dressed plainly in jeans and a t-shirt, both of which were a little too big on him. He looked calm and not the least bit startled to see Snape. He had one hand held out, and in the dimness of the room it took Snape a moment to decipher what he was doing — and then another moment for it to sink in. He held his hand palm up, and hovering a few inches above his fingers was a circular black disk — a record. It was spinning rapidly, as if on a turntable, and music was coming from it.
Snape couldn't help himself. He stared.
'Bach,' said Draco, looking calmly up at Snape. 'The Goldberg Variations. That's quite a collection of Muggle music you've got. I never would have guessed you were such a big Bay City Rollers fan.'
Snape stared at his erstwhile student and shook his head. 'Mr.
Malfoy,' he said coldly. 'Would you like to tell me what you're doing here? Desperate to do more research into love potions, are you? Or were you simply curious about my record collection?'
Draco looked at him blankly for a moment, then smiled. There was something odd about that smile, Snape thought. It wasn't the smile of a teenage boy. It wasn't even Draco's usual nasty smile. It was something else again. 'I thought maybe you could help me,' he said simply.
Snape shook his head again. 'Help you? Why would I want to help you? How did you get in here anyway?'
Draco smiled. 'I can do a lot of things,' he said, glancing up at the still-spinning record hovering above his hand. 'A lot of things I never knew I could do. Like with this record, for instance.' He looked sideways at Snape. 'I cut through the lock on your front door. Then I repaired it. It's as good as it ever was. I didn't damage anything.'
'That's not the point. The point is that you shouldn't be here. I can't imagine what you're doing here and I don't much care. You may be one of my own House students, but this is a bit much, as I'm sure you'll agree. I suggest you go home.'
'I can't go home,' said Draco, who appeared to have acquired the shamelessness of real desperation. 'You have to help me.'
'Why do you want me to help you?'
'Because,' said Draco simply, 'you won't tell Sirius Black where I am.'
'Black was worried about you today,' said Snape, not in a particularly kindly tone. 'It strikes me that he and the rest of your family would be perfectly happy to help you. Why don't you go to them?'
'Because they don't understand,' said Draco, scrambling up on to his knees. 'They're all the same — Sirius, Harry, the rest of them -
they're all good, they've always been good. They don't know any other way to be. To them evil is something to be despised and held at arm's length, not something that walks beside you every day and every night of your life. They don't know how to fight it because they've never had to fight it. But you know,' and when he looked up and Snape saw his face made younger by shock and exhaustion, he remembered suddenly the baby Draco had been, fifteen years ago when his father had brought him wrapped in blankets to Death Eater meetings, and even Voldemort had remarked upon the peculiar color of the boy's hair, the silver color of his eyes. This one is marked for something special. Not that special, Snape thought, as a term used by the Dark Lord, necessarily meant anything particularly good. 'You were evil, but you came back,' said Draco. 'I thought you might understand. I thought you might tell me how you did it.'
