Draco Veritas

through his cramped muscles.

He wondered vaguely at the fact that the bird had managed to find him.

He would not have expected anyone to be able to find him where he had gone, but then this was one of his father's owls, bred to his own blood, and besides, they were the best owls money could buy.

What he had been holding in his hand dropped to the ground with a metallic clang as he reached to take the letter strapped to the bird's leg.

His hand hurt badly, and it took several tries before he was able to unfasten the letter and open it. Only later did it occur to him that perhaps he should have used his other hand for the task.

The light coming through the narrow window above him had begun to dim. Late afternoon, then. Draco stretched his legs out along the stone floor, ignoring the shrieks of protest from his cramped joints, and read the letter he had spread out on his lap.

Draco, He has left you then, as I expected he would. I told you once you were wasting your time to barter your destiny for the friendship of a boy who would never like you; you have gone one better than that, and thrown away your life. You never did know when enough was enough.

That aside, I am not writing to merely to upbraid you. Severus will not find the antidote he seeks for you. I can tell you that with utter honesty.

Your only hope for survival, indeed, for salvation, rests with me. I am your father. I gave you life once, and am prepared to do it again. The Dark Lord has vowed to me that he will see it done, and indeed, with the aid of the Worthy Objects, it can be done.

In exchange for my aid to you, I expect a token of your subsequent unswerving loyalty to me. Should you see reason at any point in the future, and I expect that you will, send back to me the seal ring I gave you, the mark of our family. By that token I will know that you have come to your senses, regained your familial pride, and are prepared to once again stand on our side.

Consider quickly, Draco. The time you have for this decision is not much.

It should be an easy choice. When last we spoke, it appeared to me that you thought you had discovered something worth dying for. Can you still say the same?

Your Father, Lucius Malfoy

Draco looked down at the letter for several long moments. He scrubbed the back of his bruised and dirty hand across his eyes, and read the letter again. Then he turned it over, Summoned a quill to himself, and wrote across the blank back of the parchment three short sentences in what looked like silvery ink. It was not ink.

Dear Father.

You have proven that you can make me die.

But that's all you can make me do.

Draco.

The physical act of writing hurt too much for him to want to write anything lengthier. Besides, Draco felt he had little more to say on the subject. He would hear back from his father on this topic, he was quite sure. This letter had been the opening salvo in what promised to be a most unpleasant exchange. Not that Draco cared. In comparison to the other letter he had received that day, the missive from his father seemed as gentle as a pat on the head.

He strapped the letter to the owl's leg, and watched it fly out the open window and into the late afternoon sky beyond.

* * *

Once inside King's Cross, Harry debated briefly what to do with his baggage — he wasn't keen on hefting an enormous bag that held half of his worldly possessions in it through Diagon Alley all day. Especially once he realized that the words GRYFFINDOR SEEKER were still embroidered across the side of the bag in yellow thread. He'd have to do something about that.

Harry remembered Draco telling him, You suck at incognito, Potter, and shrugged wryly to himself.

He wound up storing his bag in a locker, which took the last of his Muggle money. He'd have to walk to the Leaky Cauldron, but he didn't mind much, the exercise would hopefully wake him up. He pulled the wrapper off a Scrumdiddlyumptious bar and nibbled it thoughtfully on his way to the station exit (having conscientiously shoved the wrapper into his pocket, as it wouldn't do to have the Muggle porters encountering the moving pictures on the enchanted plastic.)

The exit escalator took Harry past a bank of mirrors. It took him a moment to recognize himself, and then he stared. The boy looking back at him from the mirror's flat surface, with his Muggle clothes — jeans and trainers, zip-up blue rain jacket, worn white t-shirt — his tangled black hair, his face looking strangely naked without his glasses, seemed for a moment a stranger. And the clothes, which he had dug out of the back of his closet, looked so aggressively Muggle. They made him think of his past self, the Harry who lived with the Dursleys, the Harry who ached to belong somewhere, anywhere other than where he was.

Harry, who had found the place where he belonged, and then left it in order to save it.

And that was another thing. More than anything else, he thought to himself, he looked young and defenseless. Without his robes, without a wand in his hand, without his scar or the badge of his House, he looked like any teenage boy. Half gawky adolescent and half defenseless child. A little boy with a chocolate bar in his hand. And he was supposed to save the world.

He wished abruptly that Draco was there, because Draco would tell him that he was being stupid. It wasn't as if he'd wandered arbitrarily into the business of world-saving, he'd been born to it, bred to it, was uniquely marked for it. Blood, inheritance and choices had made him what he was.

Every choice he had ever made bringing him to this place and to the points beyond it. It didn't matter that he looked like a boy. He was more than that, and he'd have to learn to accept it.

You're being stupid, Potter, he said to himself, as he reached the top of the escalator and tossed the rest of his half-eaten chocolate bar into the nearest bin. All those years poncing around like you're the Chosen One and now you're trying to get out of it? Would it help if I got you a Harry Potter, World Savior nametag you could wear around the house so you don't forget?

The voice in his head had a slight drawling quality to it. Although Harry knew his inner monologue was not nearly as funny as Draco would have been under the same circumstances, he grinned faintly to himself anyway as he walked out of the station. It helped a little, if not by much.

* * *

It was three o'clock in the afternoon and Hermione had just finished cleaning up the mess in the common room. Hours had passed since she had finished with Snape in the Potions dungeon. He'd forced her to make the antidote mixture no less than five times until her methodology was perfect. Hermione had almost enjoyed the experience. She had always liked being able to lose herself in the solution to a problem. It was not until she left the dungeon, a box filled with the ingredients needed to make a fortnight's worth of antidote in her arms, that she'd again faced the fact that Draco was still missing.

A second thorough search of the castle had turned up nothing. The Slytherin dungeons were empty and there was no reply when she banged on Draco's door. She'd horribly annoyed Madam Pomfrey by showing up twice at the infirmary door tearfully inquiring if Draco had come by and had scandalized Filch by appearing in his office to beg for his assistance.

He'd sent her away smartly. She'd wanted to see Dumbledore, but Filch had grumblingly told her that Dumbledore had been called away to the Ministry.

In despair, she'd set herself to the task of cleaning up the common room.

She didn't want to think about what Draco might be doing, and she didn't want to think about Harry. Therefore, she needed something to do.

Otherwise, it was too overwhelming.

Cleaning up took less time than she had expected. Having cast the last Reparo charm on a smashed lamp, Hermione rose to her feet — And almost dropped her wand as the portrait door swung wide open, and Draco stepped into the room.

Hermione stood frozen for a moment, completely unsure what to do. She stared at him. And he looked back