"But you just helped a mudblood," said the fifth-year girl. "How's that supposed to look good?"
Draco's throat closed up. His brain was experiencing a hideous malfunction during which it couldn't think of anything to say except the truth -
Then, "It's probably some kind of tremendously clever scheme Malfoy's got going," said a fifth-year boy. "You know, like in The Tragedy of Light, where everything that looks like a setback is part of the plot. And it ends with Granger's head on a stick and nobody suspecting that it was him."
"That makes sense," someone said from further down the table, and there was a lot of nodding.
"Do you know what the boss's up to?" Vincent muttered in an undertone.
Gregory Goyle didn't reply. In his mind he could hear very clearly his master's voice, saying, I can't believe I believed every word of that, the day the rumor had started about Salazar Slytherin showing Potter and Granger where to find bullies.
"Mr. Goyle?" whispered Vincent.
Gregory Goyle's lips shaped the words, Oh no, but no sound came out.
Hermione had left lunch early that day, for some reason she hadn't felt hungry. Those few seconds of horrible humiliation had kept burning through her mind, over and over, the feeling of her face squishing into the mashed potatoes and then being thrown through the air and then the Slytherin's boy's voice saying 'Apologize to me'... it might have been the first time in her whole life that she'd felt like hating someone. The boy who'd thrown her (Marcus Flint, they'd said his name was) and whoever had cast the tripping Jinx on her in the first place... she'd felt it, for one horrible instant she'd wanted to go tell Harry that if he started getting creative on her behalf, she wouldn't object.
She hadn't been a minute out of the Great Hall before she'd heard the sound of running feet behind, and turned to see Daphne racing toward her.
And listened to what her Sunshine Soldier had to say...
"Don't you understand?" Daphne's voice was barely below a shriek. "Just because someone's nice to you doesn't mean they're your friend! He's Draco Malfoy! His father's a Death Eater, all the parents of all his friends are Death Eaters - Nott, Goyle, Crabbe, everyone around him, do you get it? They all despise Muggleborns, they want everyone like you to die, they think you're good for nothing but being a sacrifice in horrible Dark rituals! Draco is the next Lord Malfoy, he's been raised from birth to hate you and he's been raised from birth to lie!" Daphne's gray-green eyes stared fiercely at her, demanding assent and understanding.
"He -" Hermione said falteringly. She remembered the rooftop, the awful jolt as she started to fall, Draco Malfoy's hand grabbing hers and holding it so hard that she'd had bruises afterward. She'd had to tell him twice before he finally let her fall. "Maybe Draco Malfoy isn't like them -"
Daphne's whisper was almost a scream. "If he doesn't end up doing you ten times as hard as he just helped you, his life is over, do you understand? I mean Lucius Malfoy would literally disinherit him! D'you know what the chance is that he's not up to something?"
"Tiny?" said Hermione in a small voice.
"Zero!" hissed Daphne. "I mean none! I mean less than zero! I mean the chance is so small that you couldn't find it with three Magnifying Charms and a Point-Me spell and - and - and an ancient map and a centaur prophet! Everyone in Slytherin knows he's plotting to do something to you and doesn't want to be suspected, I heard someone say he was seen pointing his wand at you just before you tripped - don't you see? This is all part of Malfoy's plan!"
Draco sat eating his steak with roasted cauliflower florets and Ashwinder sauce (it wasn't made from real Ashwinder eggs, it just tasted like fire), trying not to laugh and trying not to cry.
He'd heard about plausible deniability, but hadn't realized how much it mattered until he found that Malfoys didn't have any.
"You want to know my plot?" said Draco. "Here's my plot. I'm not going to do anything and then the next time people think I'm plotting something, they won't be sure."
"Huh..." said the fifth-year boy. "I don't think I believe you, that doesn't sound cunning enough to be really it -"
"That's what he wants you to think," said the fifth-year girl.
"Albus," Minerva said dangerously, "did you plan all this?"
"Well, if I did snap my fingers under the table, I wouldn't just tell you that -"
The Defense Professor's quavering hand dropped his spoon into the soup again.
"What do you mean, set you up?" said Millicent. The two of them were sitting cross-legged on Daphne's bed, having come there straight from the Great Hall after lunch. "With my Seer's eyes that stare through Time Itself, I saw you winning."
Daphne stared at Millicent, her own merely mortal eyes rather narrowed at the moment. "That boy was expecting us."
"Well, yeah!" said Millicent. "Everyone knows you're hunting bullies!"
"Hannah got hit by a really painful hex," Daphne said. "She had to visit a healer, Millicent! If we're friends you should've warned me!"
"Look, Daphne, I told you -" The Slytherin girl paused, as if trying to remember something, and then said, "I mean, I told you, what I See has to come to pass. If I try to change it, if anyone tries to change it, really terrible, awful, no good, extremely bad things will happen. And then it'll come to pass anyway. If I See you getting beaten up, I can't tell you that, because then you'd try to not go, and then -" Millicent stopped.
"And then?" Daphne said skeptically. "I mean, what happens if we just don't go?"
