'I already explained this.' Lucius' voice was toneless. 'They're from a Slashing Hex. I got them in a duel. I don't have to tell you with whom. It's my business. My father told me — '
'I have no interest in what your father might have to say on this topic.'
Dumbledore's voice was sharp as razor wire. 'The interest of the school is in you and your well-being. These are the aftereffects of necromantic magic. The physical signs of the toll it takes.'
'Are you accusing me of practicing dark magic at school?' Lucius' gray eyes blazed. 'My father — '
'I am not accusing you.'
'Then what?'
'Tom Riddle.' Dumbledore's voice was edged with softness, but unyielding nevertheless. 'He is a friend of yours, isn't he?'
Lucius paled markedly. 'He is not.'
'But you know him.'
'Everyone knows him. He's Head Boy.'
'I would venture to say you know him better than most.'
Lucius' expression was unreadable. 'If you have something to say about Tom Riddle, Professor, perhaps you should say it to him.'
'And what makes you think I have not?' Dumbledore asked. 'I am not a fool, and I know what Tom Riddle is. I have tried to talk to him. Merlin knows, I have tried. But there are some tasks that are impossible, and that is one of them. He is set in what he is, unchangeable. But Lucius, you are not. You are thirteen years old, and that is young to hear what I have to tell you, but it is the truth: the decisions you make now will affect the rest of your life.'
Lucius sat still; Dumbledore could see the thin chest rising and falling quickly under the flannel pajama top. When he spoke at last, there was scorn in his voice. 'You know nothing about Tom,' he said. 'And nothing about me. You think if you tell me he's not my friend, you can get me on your side. Well, you can't. You've never seen anyone like Tom before and it scares you, because you know that no matter what happens, he'll win in the end. He's more powerful than any other wizard at this school — '
'Tom is very clever,' Dumbledore said. 'But he is also very young. Has it occurred to you that he may be overestimating his power?'
'Has it occurred to you that you might be underestimating it?'
Dumbledore looked at him with weary surprise. He wished he could be more amazed at this small child with the deadly-looking injuries, his soft little boy's voice, not yet broken, saying these ugly and distasteful things.
But he was not amazed. He had known Malfoys before Lucius.
Preternatural unpleasantness simply ran in their blood.
Lucius went on. 'Tom has the right ideas. He wants to change the world, and he will. And there will be a place for me in his world — he's promised me that.'
'And you believe his promises?' Dumbledore's voice was grave. 'He will abide by them only so long as he has use for you, Lucius. He feels nothing for you, or for anyone. There is no friendship in him. Only hate and resentment, the marks of which you bear for him. When crisis comes, he will sacrifice you along with all the rest.'
Lucius' expression was flat. 'That is my lookout, then,' he said. 'Not yours.'
A rattling noise interrupted Dumbledore's next remark. It was the sound of the curtains around the bed being drawn back, the silver rings clinking together. Dumbledore turned around to see Madam Pomfrey standing behind him, a tall, dark-haired boy at her side. The Head Boy badge gleamed at his chest.
Tom Riddle.
'Pardon me for interrupting, Professor Dumbledore,' said Tom, his voice as smooth as oil. 'But Professor Coulter has requested Lucius' return to the Slytherin dormitories.'
Dumbledore glanced at Madam Pomfrey. 'Poppy?'
She looked unhappy, but nodded. 'He's well enough to leave, if he keeps his bandages on. Those cuts will take weeks to heal, though. There's absolutely no spell that can hurry the process. Not with cuts like those.'
Tom's voice was soothing. 'We'll take care of Lucius while he's recovering,' he said. 'Don't trouble yourself.'
'We?' Dumbledore echoed.
Tom smiled. So Lucifer must have smiled, Dumbledore thought, upon waking after the Fall to find himself the master of an unpopulated Hell.
Only Tom still looked like an angel, and Lucifer had not. 'His friends, of course.'
'Of course,' Dumbledore said, and, raising his eyes to Tom's, gave him a measuring look. For a moment they locked eyes, Tom returning Dumbledore's searching gaze with an affectedly innocent stare. Tom had very unusual eyes, often the topic of discussion among the Hogwarts girls: so dark a blue they were nearly black, the iris seemed to meld with the pupil, giving his eyes a peculiar, almost blind look. They appeared shrewd sometimes, blank others, knowing always. But they could not quite manage innocence.
It was Tom who looked away first. 'Lucius,' he said, and held out a long-fingered hand towards the younger boy, index finger crooked in an imperious gesture. 'Are you coming?'
Lucius, in the process of hurling his robes on over his infirmary pajamas and quickly buckling his boots, looked up and nodded breathlessly.
'Almost ready, Tom — wait for me?'
'Yes,' said Tom, and lowered his hand. His blue-black eyes were suddenly full of some secret amusement. 'I'll wait for you.'
'You know, Draco,' Hermione said, looking wearily at the fair-haired boy in the infirmary bed, 'sometimes you make it awfully difficult.'
'To resist my manly charms? Yes, I know,' said Draco, currently engaged in resolutely pulling all the feathers out of an overstuffed pillow Ginny had lent him. Tiny white feathers tangled in his fine fair hair, stuck to his eyelashes, sifted down onto the shoulders of his blue silk pajamas. 'You must be strong, Hermione, for all our sakes. I've been told that breathing exercises can help.'
'To feel sympathetic towards you, is what I was going to say,' Hermione corrected him primly. 'And now you have proved my point. Plus, you are ruining that pillow.'
'It was tubby,' Draco said, yanking out another handful of feathers and tossing them into the air. 'I can't sleep on tubby pillows.'
Hermione snorted. 'Spoiled,' she said, succinctly.
Draco grinned at her through an obscuring rain of feathers. Hermione hugged her book to her and tried not to smile back, not wanting to encourage him. Draco had been in the infirmary now for almost three days, ever since they had arrived back at Hogwarts. They took it in shifts to sit with him, all except Seamus. (Seamus had offered to sit with Draco one day, but upon his arrival in the infirmary, Draco had nonchalantly hurled an entire box of bandages at his head.)
Hermione had assumed Draco was being forced to stay in the infirmary by Madam Pomfrey, but now she was beginning to wonder. He really seemed to be — well, enjoying himself wasn't it exactly, but he wasn't moping around, either. She got the impression that he had been, somehow, running himself ragged for weeks and weeks and now, he was resting from it. His old playfulness had come back, and he unmercifully teased or flirted with everyone who came near him — odd behavior for someone under a tentative death sentence, but there it was. She had never thought she'd actually see anyone tease Snape before, but Draco managed it. He flirted with Madam Pomfrey, who had given him nearly every pillow and extra blanket in the empty infirmary, and who allowed him to wear his own silk pajamas instead of the infirmary's standard-issue flannel stripes.
Ginny and Harry, meanwhile, were constantly bringing him books, food, magazines and anything and everything they thought might be either diverting or helpful. Hermione was convinced that one day she would arrive in the infirmary to discover them fighting over who had earned the privilege of staging a sock puppet revival of Death of a Salesman at the foot of the bed for Draco's amusement.
Meanwhile, Draco presided over it all like an ailing prince of the realm, accepting the attention as if it was his due, all rumpled hair and sprawled gracefulness and wide silvery eyes with foot-long lashes that seemed to get
