been because he was angry. He had not said Hermione's name either, referring to her only as 'she' and 'her' when he absolutely had to. Despite Draco's light words about desensitization he was, on some very deep internal level, badly frightened by Harry's reaction to everything that had happened. He would never have admitted it to himself or anyone else, but he was.
'I just want not to remember all of that,' Harry finished. 'You know. Just for tonight, because it's Sirius' party and I don't want to ruin it by being miserable. I ought to be happy for him, and I am, it's just…' Harry closed his eyes, and for a moment, held his breath. Eyes shut, his eyelashes brushed the tops of his cheekbones in fine black penstrokes. 'I'm so tired,' he said finally, wearily. 'It's such an effort, acting normal.'
'It's just a night,' Draco said.
'I know,' Harry replied, opening his eyes, 'and then there's the next night, and the night after that, and I have to get through them all, and I will — I will. It's just tonight — tonight is special. It's Sirius, you know?'
His last sentence hung in the air with a plaintive sound. Draco did indeed know. Sirius was indeed special, even more so now when Harry felt he had so little left to depend on. Draco cleared his throat. 'No,' he said. 'I won't do it.'
Harry struggled into a sitting position and stared. 'Why not?'
'Because I'm not trained to do Memory Charms. Because they can backfire. You might lose the wrong memories, or lose your memories altogether.'
'But I thought you — I mean, with all that Dark Arts training…'
'Memory Charms aren't a Dark Art!' Draco almost yelled. 'And I can't believe you'd be dim enough to think that if they were a Dark Art, I'd go about practicing them on you!'
Harry looked startled. 'I…'
'Sirius would kill me, for a start,' Draco said angrily. 'Anyway, think how it'd look if, in the middle of the party, you forgot his name or something.'
'Oh, all right. I reckon I see your point. But there must be something…'
'How about a Cheering Charm?' Draco asked grudgingly. Internally it was his opinion that asking Draco Malfoy for a Cheering Charm was not unlike asking Snape for a love potion, or Filch for a pink-iced birthday cake. 'It couldn't do you too much damage.'
Harry shrugged. 'Can you do one?'
'It's bloody third-year magic, of course I can do one.'
'I suppose I meant, will you do one?'
Draco sighed. 'Against my better judgement, yes I will. But not right now.
I need to look them up, and anyway, I don't want you going around grinning like a lunatic all afternoon.'
Harry grinned — in a calm and un-lunatic-like manner — and rolled off the bed, landing lightly on his feet. 'Thanks. I'll come back before the party, then.'
'What joyous news. Potter — '
Harry turned. 'What?'
'Nothing.'
Malfoy Manor was so huge, Harry thought crossly, that he wished Sirius would just break down and draw a Marauder's Map for the place. He seemed to be able to find his way around fairly well when he didn't think about it — probably another leftover from the botched Polyjuice spell, an echo of the little bit of Draco still lodged at the back of his skull. Hey there Malfoy, he thought with dark amusement as he approached a drafty intersection of two corridors, which way do I go?
He went left, partly because instinct told him to, and partly because Draco was on his mind and he associated Draco with all things leftwards and sinister. The turn brought him to another corridor, this one lit by candelabras in jade brackets. It didn't take a Hermione-level genius to realize he was in the Green Wing — green tapestries depended from the walls, and the floor was overlapping tiles of white and green marble.
Green, green and more green. Bleh, Harry thought. At least he was going the right direction, however. The conservatory was in the Green Wing.
He ducked past a sour-faced Malfoy ancestor glaring from a green-framed portrait and around another corridor, and there he was, in the conservatory.
Harry looked around him in quiet wonder. He knew Draco's family had money. They were money, almost the richest wizarding family in England.
But he himself was possessed of such an abstracted nature, especially lately, that he had never really paused to think about, or notice, the Manor's grandiose interiors. Probably because most of the house, while impressive, was coldly ornate without being beautiful; the conservatory, however, was beautiful. The walls were tinted glass, rising high above his head, and the pale winter sunlight poured through, turning the air to a silvery- gold haze. Hyacinths floated atop still pools of water. Huge trees rose overhead, wreathed in melancholy moss; there were palms, tree ferns, a pine and a giant bird-of-paradise plant. And of course, this being the home of the Malfoys, one wall was devoted to carnivorous plants which Harry recognized from Herbology class: among them sundews, butterworts, pitcher plants, Venus flytraps and bladderworts.
He whistled through his teeth, and the sharp sound echoed off the glass. It recollected him to his task. Quickly crossing the conservatory floor, he knelt down by a freshly turned bed of earth, like an altar boy kneeling at a railing. He reached into his cloak, and began to draw the objects he had brought with him out, one by one, placing them on the marble floor by his right knee.
He had no idea what he was doing, really; he was proceeding almost entirely on instinct, but then what he was trying to reproduce was an instant of the most instinctual magic he could imagine. So the objects he had brought with him had not been collected with a specific purpose in mind, exactly. They were simply what seemed to him right at the time: the Pensieve Draco had given him for his birthday and the album Hagrid had once given him full of photos of his parents. The eagle feather quill that had been his twelfth birthday present from Hermione. A playful line drawing Sirius had once sketched for him, showing the Gryffindor team on their broomsticks. A letter from Lupin.
He had wanted to bring something Ron-related as well, but had been unable to look at any of the gifts his best friend had once given him. He could have forced himself, but it would have required a soul-searching he felt himself incapable of. He didn't want to think too much about what he was doing. Thinking might destroy the fragile web he was weaving here, a web spun out of instinct, love and desperation. It was as if the instructions he was following had been laid down for him in dreams. He had not consulted any spellbooks, had not been to the library. His mouth twitched as he imagined how horrified Hermione would be by what he was doing.
Hermione. The thought of her brought a sour taste to the back of his throat. He looked at the small scatter of objects on the floor at his feet, then stretched out his right hand. 'Apparecium incendio,' he whispered, and a fire leaped up from the stone floor in front of him, making him jerk his hand back quickly. It was hot, hotter than a normal fire. He waited a moment to see if it would spread, but it remained contained within a small, inviolate space about the size of his own outstretched arms making a circle. Keeping his mind blank, he took the eagle feather quill and hurled it into the heart of the fire.
The flames burned blue for a moment. Harry took hold of Sirius' sketch, and tossed that in as well. The letters from Lupin followed, the ink showing up black and brilliant as the pages crumbled away into ash.
Harry lifted the photo album — hesitated a moment — threw it in. Tears he was unaware of spilled from his stinging eyes as the fire turned a violent azure color, flared up, and went out, leaving a handful of ashes behind.
Harry took the handful of ash, and slowly sifted it through his fingers into the bowl of the Pensieve. His heart was beating hard against his ribcage.
The inchoate white smoky stuff inside the Pensieve turned to scarlet, and began to swirl faster, like angry thunderclouds.
Harry reached into his back pocket, and took out his much-used pocket knife. He flicked the blade open, wrapped his fingers around it, held out his hand, and squeezed tightly. A zinging silvery pain shot up his arm, and
