Lupin nodded, and stood up. Draco looked at him apprehensively as he approached, and when he laid a hand on the boy's shoulder, Draco looked every so slightly panicked, as if he wasn't sure what to do. 'I know there are things you aren't telling me,' he said gently. 'And I know it can't be easy…but you can tell me anything, I hope you know that, and it will remain in my strictest confidence.'
Draco raised his face; the glare from the window struck through his fair hair, firing it to individual strands of white light. He had his father's coloring, and all his mother's beauty, but somehow, Lupin thought, he looked like neither of them: only wholly somehow his own person. 'There is one thing,' he said.
'What is it?'
'Something Dumbledore told me,' Draco said. 'But it's about Harry's parents, so you might not want to hear it.'
'About James and Lily?' Lupin asked, drawing his hand back.
'Uh-huh.' Draco's face was impassive, but the gray eyes begged for understanding. 'How…how well did you know my father, back in the seventies?'
'Not well at all,' Lupin said, wondering where this was going. 'I knew of him. Everyone knew of Lucius Malfoy.'
'You know he sat on the board at the Daily Prophet,' Draco said, and Lupin nodded. 'He was also wholly responsible for the running of certain of the smaller magazines…the Malfoy Park Banner, of course, and the Hogsmeade Gazette…'
Lupin simply looked at him, curiously. 'Yes, and?'
'And very few people knew he ran the Hogsmeade Gazette. After Peter Pettigrew graduated from Hogwarts, it was one of the few places to offer him a job..'
'Right,' said Lupin slowly. 'Right, he was a reporter…'
'And that put him in my father's pocket, although he didn't know it at the beginning, apparently. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but at some point early on my father arranged that certain sensitive papers be discovered in Pettigrew's desk,' Draco said. 'Papers that tied Pettigrew into the illegal exportation of dragon's blood. You know the penalty for that, especially in those times: he would have gone to Azkaban for life without trial, or gotten the Dementor's Kiss immediately.'
'Yes,' said Lupin. 'I know. And I think I see where this is going.'
'My father blackmailed Pettigrew into turning informant against his friends. He drew him into the Death Eaters…my father was the one who was responsible for the plot against the Potters…the Secret-Keeper idea…he turned Harry's parents in to the Dark Lord…and he went with him that night in Godric Hollow. He was there when they died,' Draco finished, and slumped back slightly against the wall, as if this recitation had exhausted him.
Lupin held himself silent for a long moment, thinking. None of this, really, was that surprising: certainly it was nothing he would have put past Lucius Malfoy, who, it had always seemed to him, sat at the Dark Lord's right hand. However, in the context of Harry's new relationship with Draco and all things Malfoy, it was disturbing indeed. 'And you haven't told Harry?'
Draco shook his head. 'No. Dumbledore only told me a few weeks ago, and since then…there hasn't been an opportunity, really,' which Lupin knew was only half-true.
'You're afraid that he'll react badly.'
'Wouldn't you react badly?'
'Harry knows his parents are dead,' Lupin said bluntly. 'For a child to grow up knowing his parents are not just dead but were murdered….he's already had the worst of it, don't you think?'
Draco seemed to consider this. 'He's very angry,' he said. 'Especially now…and its sort of an uncontrollable rage. I don't know how to explain it, but I can feel it. When he was younger, Voldemort always came after him, looked for him, but now, if he could, I think he'd go after the Dark Lord on his own…it's that kind of anger.'
'And you don't want to make him more angry? Or are you worried he'll focus his anger on you? Because he won't, Draco — Harry knows you aren't responsible for the things your father did.'
'Maybe not, but it seems a little stiff to ask him to come and live in a house owned by his parents' murderer,' said Draco with a bleak sharpness, and Lupin stared at him.
'But your father's dead,' he said. 'That house has passed to you; you own it. And when you turn eighteen, if you choose, you can rip it down brick by brick.'
A shadow passed across Draco's face. 'Right,' he said. 'Because my father is dead.'
Lupin didn't know quite how to respond to this. Draco seemed to have shut himself off, his brief confiding mood having passed. 'If there's anything I can do…'
'It's all right,' Draco said. 'There's nothing you can do.'
When Hermione received the owl from Draco asking her if she would see Harry that day, she'd thought about it a long time. She'd just come from talking to Ron, and felt wrung out…but she had to see Harry. She needed to. She agreed to meet him later, in neutral territory — Ron's empty room.
She sent the owl back to Draco. Then she looked around her room. Then she began to pack.
She was nearly finished when the clock struck noon, and she straightened up from her packing. She hadn't eaten in almost a day, and felt dizzy when she stood too quickly. She regarded her haggard reflection in the mirror with a sense of distant dismay. An attempt to apply a lip-reddening charm only made her look more washed out, so with a sigh, she straightened her cardigan and headed out the door.
Ginny and Draco were waiting outside Ron's room when she got there.
Draco was leaning against the wall, Ginny sitting on the floor at his feet.
She had a book on her lap, but she wasn't reading it. They both looked at her and Ginny smiled waveringly; Hermione smiled back as best she could, not wanting Ginny to think that she was in any way angry with her because of the situation with Ron.
Then she opened the door and went in. The door swung shut behind her, and she was alone in the room with Harry.
He was standing next to the bed, with its colorful counterpane, holding on to one of the bedposts. He looked up as she came in, and for a moment his eyes lit up with relief. Then they darkened, and he looked down at the tops of his boots.
Hermione turned and shut the door on Draco and Ginny, who were waiting in the corridor. She turned to face Harry, and took a deep breath.
'Hello, Harry,' she said.
The sound of her voice seemed to galvanize some electric response inside him. His head went up, and he crossed the room to her. She didn't move.
He reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, and she stiffened. Slowly he lowered his arm. 'Hermione…'
Her voice was raw with exhaustion. 'What?'
'I'm so sorry,' he said.
She just looked at him. She could tell he meant it. He looked half-desperate to make her understand: he was very pale, and the eyes behind the glasses were intently green. She noticed, vaguely, what he was wearing: a black sweater that was at least three years old, with frayed, far too short cuffs that showed his thin wrists. It was a sweater Ron had given him; she wondered what that meant.
He seemed unnerved by her silence. 'I know now. I know it wasn't you — '
'Draco told me,' she interrupted shortly. 'I'm glad you listened to him.
God knows, you wouldn't listen to me.'
'No — it wasn't like that.'
'It was exactly like that.'
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'You're right.'
The tone of his voice made her look at him again, and she was startled at what she saw. He looked pale, tense, unhappy, but he was there — present in a way he hadn't been present in months.
'I'm right?' she echoed.
