Color and life was coming into the Potters' faces even as Draco looked at them, the woman straightening, her cheeks flushing, her eyes fixed on Draco. But it was the man who spoke first.
'You are only the second living person we have ever seen in this place,' said James. 'And that you would be Lucius Malfoy's son -
that seems a very strange chance. I suppose I should tell you that your father and I are old enemies.'
'That's all right,' said Draco. 'My father and I are old enemies as well.'
The spirit of Lily Potter tugged at her husband's sleeve. James looked down at her, then back at Draco, and Draco braced himself, knowing what James was about to say.
'If you're Lucius' son, you must go to Hogwarts. And if you go to Hogwarts — do you know our son? His name is-'
'Harry,' Draco finished. 'Harry Potter.'
Lily pushed forward. She was standing in front of James now. 'So you do know him?' Her voice was light and wavering and very pretty.
'Yes, I — he — Everyone knows Harry Potter,' said Draco. What are you doing? said a little voice in the back of his head. Tell them more; tell them you know him well, that he's nearly your brother, that he's your friend — and more than that — that he's your enemy -
because he's that as well.
I can't, he said back. I just…can't.
'Everyone knows him,' Draco said again, defeated. 'He's famous.'
'Yes,' said James. 'That's what the last living person we talked to said. But he knew very little else.' He seemed to sigh. 'There is no time in this place. An hour could be a minute, a moment a year. I could not believe it when he told us that Harry was eleven years old.' He raised his black eyes to Draco. 'If he is at school he must still be a child…how old is he now?'
Draco couldn't look at him. 'My age. Sixteen.'
'Please,' Lily interrupted. 'Could you tell us about him? Just a little bit?'
Draco looked at her, and saw how his blood had brought her back to an almost lifelike appearance. Her face had come into clearer focus, her hair, flaming red, almost the same lovely shade as Ginny's. The green eyes that were Harry's looked at him, entreating, begging him for something he didn't think he could give.
He cleared his throat. 'What do you want to know?'
'Everything,' she said rapidly. 'Is he happy? What does he do on an ordinary day? What is he like?'
Draco found himself looking down at the transparent, rushing river, wishing he could just disappear into it.
'I — well, I don't really know him that well, and — '
Lily gave an echoing, disappointed cry. 'But you go to school with him — you must at least know what he's like?'
He glanced up and looked at Lily, and then at James, which meant that James snapped into clearer focus too, looking terribly, eerily like Harry, and both the spirits were looking at him with hopeful expectation —
Oh, God, this is horrible, Draco thought. What can I say? Why couldn't I be Ron or Sirius, someone who actually knows him, someone he cares about, I'm the last person he would want talking to his parents. The LAST person.
'Harry is…' He looked away. 'He plays Quidditch for Gryffindor,' he said. 'He was their youngest Seeker in a hundred years. He'll be team captain next year, and…'
Draco trailed off. He could tell by the way the spirits were looking at him that this was not the kind of information they wanted.
He felt speechless, which rarely happened. If it were me, he thought, what would I want to hear? But that floored him, never having been a parent (fortunately, he thought) he couldn't even imagine. So instead he tried to call up Harry in his mind — not the way Harry looked, but the way Harry was, the memory of what it was like to think the way Harry did, to very nearly be Harry.
He shut his eyes. 'My father,' he said, hearing his own voice echo beneath the susurration of rushing water, the impatient rustling of the spirits. 'My father used to talk a lot about honor, the honor of our family, the honor of our bloodline and our name. But in my life, I never saw my father do an honorable thing. I thought honor was just a term, like lineage or patrimony, that meant you'd been around for a while. But it's a real thing, to have honor. And Harry has it. Harry is the first person you would want on your side in a fight, and the last person who would ever do an untruthful or an underhanded thing. Harry has more integrity than anyone else I have ever known.'
The spirit of Lily Potter turned away from him, and buried her insubstantial face in her husband's insubstantial chest. Feeling as if he had said atrociously the wrong thing, Draco looked fearfully at James, who looked back at him, wavering and half-transparent, and put an arm around his crying wife. 'You're a friend of his,' he said.
'Aren't you?'
'Sometimes,' admitted Draco. 'I'm sorry,' he added, not exactly sure if he was apologizing, or simply expressing sorrow.
'Don't be,' said James. 'I understand.'
And Draco rather thought that James did understand.
'You're fading,' James went on, looking at Draco closely. 'Someone is calling you back.'
'I'm sorry,' he said again.
'No. It's a good thing. You can take a message with you.'
