Chapter 3: A Meeting and a Conversation
It was about two days after Snape had sent the letter, and Harry, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy, and Ginny were in the kitchen eating breakfast when McGonagall walked in; the only evidence of her inner turmoil was the harsh set of her face.
“Potter,” she barked, “I need to speak with you.”
Harry stood up, confused, and walked out after her. As soon as he was out of the kitchen’s hearing distance, she wordlessly handed him the letter.
As he read the letter, his face became cold and set. He didn’t believe believe anything Snape said for a moment.
“No,” he said, attempting to speak his confused thoughts, “there’s no way—he couldn’t have—he’s a liar—do you actually believe him?”
“Well, I think we should have a meeting like he—” She stopped abruptly when she saw the look on his face. She got angry. Hadn’t he trusted Malfoy? Was trusting Snape that much different?
“Don’t look at me like that, Potter—you have to admit everything he says makes sense.”
“Well,” Harry conceded, “most of it could happen... Except for his excuse for not writing before now. That’s a lame excuse if I’ve ever heard one...” He trailed off as he thought of something. “We could ask Malfoy. He would know if Snape were telling the truth!”
“Potter, you aren’t thinking straight! How can you trust him?”
“You’re the one who’s talking about trusting Snape! Don’t you think it’s weird that two days after Malfoy comes, Snape writes a letter? Snape probably wants to kill him!”
“How would Snape know Malfoy’s here?” McGonagall asked as she regained her composure.
He thought about that. That at least was true: it wasn’t as if Malfoy had owled the Death Eaters to tell them his location. “Still,” he said slowly as he tried to figure the whole thing out, “do you really want to invite him into where Malfoy is?”
“I’m not going to invite him here,” McGonagall said, fed up with this whole conversation. “I just want to have a meeting.”
Harry sighed. “Well, I would like the have a full meeting again...”
Draco couldn’t believe Potter invited him to come to the meeting.
He still hasn’t told me what it’s about, though, he thought.
Then he heard Ginny storming about. She’d been so angry when Potter told her she couldn’t come.
Draco had said to her in his blunt way, “I can’t believe I’m allowed to go and you’re not.”
She smiled shakily at him, still very angry Potter had started to act like a father—ordering her around and everything. “Thanks, Draco.”
He wondered what she was saying thanks for. Then he knew: for understanding.
The meeting was held in the large kitchen. Though Draco had eaten in the kitchen for every meal since he got there, she thought that it looked larger than ever before. He shrugged, figuring it had been magically enhanced. He sat down next to Potter, where he had been told to. Although Potter was civil to him now, he would still have rather sat by anyone else.
His opinion changed when Mad-Eye Moody took it upon himself to sit next to the former Death Eater.
Instantly, Draco tensed. He had never forgotten how Moody had turned him into a ferret fourth year. He also knew Moody would never trust a former Death Eater. He sighed and knew that Potter was a much better person to sit by than Moody.
He was right to be nervous. Moody never took his magical eye off him, as if expecting him to Avada Kedavra everyone in sight.
Gods, Draco thought, if Potter—the guy who has hated and distrusted me for over six years—trusts me now, you would think Moody could accept it too.
As a Slytherin, he hated being watched or stared at for extended periods of time. He barely noticed the dozen or so other people who filtered into kitchen and the surprised looks they gave him. They had all heard that Draco was living at the headquarters, but none of them had been able to believe it until they actually saw him.
When McGonagall saw that everyone was present, she told them about the letter.
Draco listened with rapt attention, his knuckles and face growing more and more white as the letter came to a close. He managed to contain his emotions, as most Syltherins would, but everyone there could easily tell his opinion from the set of his face.
Potter spoke next about how he didn’t believe Snape and told his personal experience of seeing Dumbledore killed, which only about a quarter of them had heard.
After Potter finished, he beaconed Draco to tell his story.
Draco made his back as straight as possible, removed all trace of expression from his face, and forced his mind off Moody’s magical eye.
“The summer before sixth year, my father was sent to Azkaban. The Dark Lord, probably to punish him through me, made me a Death Eater and gave me an impossible task: to kill Dumbledore.” His story continued for a few minutes.
He tried to conclude, but was unsure how. “I knew it was impossible to kill Dumbledore when I started. But I had to be loyal to my family. Oh, I now what you’re probably all thinking: that I abandoned them to come here. But, the way I saw it, I couldn’t be loyal when I’m dead. And for the same reason I couldn’t kill Dumbledore, I also couldn’t kill Potter.”
He sat back abruptly. Everyone was silent. He thought he had made a good impression; he thought he had made them see things his way.
He was right. People were looking at each other and nodding. They believed him. Inexplicably, this was very important to the Slytherin. He had never before cared what others thought, but it now seemed of vital importance to him.
Potter, who was now the unofficial head of the Order (mainly because everyone knew that he was on a secret mission that was the key to winning the war, even though they had no idea of the specifics), refused to allow Snape anywhere near them. McGonagall said that she was going to correspond with Snape for a while, so really nothing at all was decided.
Later, after the meeting, Harry said that he, Ron, and Hermione were going to leave again on a so-called mission. Draco had no idea what he was talking about, but he saw that Ron and Hermione’s faces had both become hard and set, so he guessed it wasn’t exactly going to be fun.
He glanced at Ginny and saw her face. She was worried. He could tell. If he were Potter, he would have gone and comforted her even if he had broken up with her.
Gods, Draco thought. Potter sure is a jerk to Ginny. His thoughts broke off as he wondered why he actually cared. His thoughts ran on as he was still unable to realise the truth. Well, she really is a good kid. She’s nice, but not goody-goody. She deserves someone better than Potter.
He shrugged, warning himself not to get attached to anyone, and went up to his room.
About a week later, Draco, Ginny, Moody, and Molly eating dinner. The rest of the Weasley family was at work, and it was impossible to tell where anyone else could be at any given time.
“This will be a cozy dinner,” Molly said cheerfully while heaping their plates with spaghetti and salad.
Moody sighed. “There wasn’t an assignment for me tonight, so I guess I’ll make the best of it. This looks good, Molly.”
Molly, Ginny, and Mad-Eye chatted for a few minutes, not saying anything too important; Mrs. Weasley still couldn’t bring herself to trust Draco, and, of course, Moody was still too aware that there was a former Death Eater among them and barely kept his magical eye off Draco for a moment.
Draco couldn’t take it a second longer. Anytime Moody was in the house he felt like he was being watched, because he obviously was.
He got up and was about to storm out when he stopped and suddenly knew that to fit in he had to make an attempt to be polite. “Thank you,” he said curtly as he walked out, unable to be any more curteous.
“Now look what you did, Moody,” Draco heard Ginny say as he closed the door.
Draco went up to his room and laid down and stared up at the ceiling. He could stand everyone who had come into the house in the last week except Moody. He and Mundungus Fletcher had gotten along the best. Perhaps that was because Dung was such a Slytherin and was the one person who Draco could fully understand. They would laugh and scheme things that would never happen, but anytime Moody came in, they both shut up. That was another thing they shared—a fear and suspicion of Moody.
Just then his thoughts were interrupted as Ginny knocked at his door and poked her head in.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
He nodded and sat up, his back resting on the headboard.
“I’m sorry about Mad-Eye. You know how he is.”
“Ginny,” for some reason Draco never had any problems calling the youngest Weasley by her first name, “I just hate how he stares at me. I mean, even Potter trusts me, and we all would have agreed that trusting a Malfoy would have been impossible for Potter a week and a half ago.”
“Draco, can’t you call Harry by his first name?” Ginny asked with a pained expression on her face.
“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” Draco asked, knowing she was trying to tell him something.
“How can I not be? I mean, I know he broke up with me and everything, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about him.”
“Are you in love with him?” Draco had no idea what possibly possessed him to ask that question.
Ginny, in turn, had no idea what to answer. She wanted to say that she did, and yet at the same time knew that she couldn’t truthfully say it. She shock her head slowly. “I want to think I’m in love with him, but I have a feeling it might just be a crush.”
Draco nodded slowly. “I can’t say that I know what you mean, since I’ve honestly never had a serious girlfriend.” He saw her open her mouth and anticipated what she was going to say and dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I don’t like Pansy and never have. She was just... there, if you know what I mean.”
Ginny nodded. “Harry seems so perfect, but really he isn’t. It annoys me how he always tries to be the best at everything. And why did he have to break up with me, I mean all he said was—”
“He told you he didn’t want you to get hurt, didn’t he?”
Ginny looked over at him in surprise. “How did you know?”
Draco smirked, but not in a mean way. “I know Potter, Ginny, and I think you can do better... But I guess I might be prejudiced.”
She laughed. The sound made him smile and put him infinitely better mood. “Just a little bit.”
Then Mrs. Weasley knocked at the door. She looked in and saw Draco and Ginny sitting facing each other at opposite sides of the bed and sighed inwardly. She had a feeling she knew what was happening and didn’t like it... Harry was such a nice boy, after all...
“Ginny, M—Draco,” Molly had difficulty calling Draco by his first name, “Harry, Ron and Hermione are back.”
Molly closed the door behind her and went downstairs to reheat dinner.
Ginny got up and looked back at Draco. “Thanks for listening. I hope you don’t mind, but I might be talking to you a lot since Harry, Ron and Hermione are always gone.”
Draco didn’t answer the request. They both knew that they would be talking regularly. “And I’m sorry Harry’s too stupid to realise what he’s missing.” Draco found himself saying the second thing in their conversation that he hadn’t meant to say. Ginny was just... Ginny. A beautiful, intelligent girl who was part of a family that he could no longer think of as blood traitors.
Ginny’s smile revealed her inner turmoil. She no longer knew what she felt. She left, softly saying good night to the man she had just left behind.
Draco resumed the position he had been in before Ginny walked in, this time confused instead of angry.
It was about two days after Snape had sent the letter, and Harry, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy, and Ginny were in the kitchen eating breakfast when McGonagall walked in; the only evidence of her inner turmoil was the harsh set of her face.
“Potter,” she barked, “I need to speak with you.”
Harry stood up, confused, and walked out after her. As soon as he was out of the kitchen’s hearing distance, she wordlessly handed him the letter.
As he read the letter, his face became cold and set. He didn’t believe believe anything Snape said for a moment.
“No,” he said, attempting to speak his confused thoughts, “there’s no way—he couldn’t have—he’s a liar—do you actually believe him?”
“Well, I think we should have a meeting like he—” She stopped abruptly when she saw the look on his face. She got angry. Hadn’t he trusted Malfoy? Was trusting Snape that much different?
“Don’t look at me like that, Potter—you have to admit everything he says makes sense.”
“Well,” Harry conceded, “most of it could happen... Except for his excuse for not writing before now. That’s a lame excuse if I’ve ever heard one...” He trailed off as he thought of something. “We could ask Malfoy. He would know if Snape were telling the truth!”
“Potter, you aren’t thinking straight! How can you trust him?”
“You’re the one who’s talking about trusting Snape! Don’t you think it’s weird that two days after Malfoy comes, Snape writes a letter? Snape probably wants to kill him!”
“How would Snape know Malfoy’s here?” McGonagall asked as she regained her composure.
He thought about that. That at least was true: it wasn’t as if Malfoy had owled the Death Eaters to tell them his location. “Still,” he said slowly as he tried to figure the whole thing out, “do you really want to invite him into where Malfoy is?”
“I’m not going to invite him here,” McGonagall said, fed up with this whole conversation. “I just want to have a meeting.”
Harry sighed. “Well, I would like the have a full meeting again...”
Draco couldn’t believe Potter invited him to come to the meeting.
He still hasn’t told me what it’s about, though, he thought.
Then he heard Ginny storming about. She’d been so angry when Potter told her she couldn’t come.
Draco had said to her in his blunt way, “I can’t believe I’m allowed to go and you’re not.”
She smiled shakily at him, still very angry Potter had started to act like a father—ordering her around and everything. “Thanks, Draco.”
He wondered what she was saying thanks for. Then he knew: for understanding.
The meeting was held in the large kitchen. Though Draco had eaten in the kitchen for every meal since he got there, she thought that it looked larger than ever before. He shrugged, figuring it had been magically enhanced. He sat down next to Potter, where he had been told to. Although Potter was civil to him now, he would still have rather sat by anyone else.
His opinion changed when Mad-Eye Moody took it upon himself to sit next to the former Death Eater.
Instantly, Draco tensed. He had never forgotten how Moody had turned him into a ferret fourth year. He also knew Moody would never trust a former Death Eater. He sighed and knew that Potter was a much better person to sit by than Moody.
He was right to be nervous. Moody never took his magical eye off him, as if expecting him to Avada Kedavra everyone in sight.
Gods, Draco thought, if Potter—the guy who has hated and distrusted me for over six years—trusts me now, you would think Moody could accept it too.
As a Slytherin, he hated being watched or stared at for extended periods of time. He barely noticed the dozen or so other people who filtered into kitchen and the surprised looks they gave him. They had all heard that Draco was living at the headquarters, but none of them had been able to believe it until they actually saw him.
When McGonagall saw that everyone was present, she told them about the letter.
Draco listened with rapt attention, his knuckles and face growing more and more white as the letter came to a close. He managed to contain his emotions, as most Syltherins would, but everyone there could easily tell his opinion from the set of his face.
Potter spoke next about how he didn’t believe Snape and told his personal experience of seeing Dumbledore killed, which only about a quarter of them had heard.
After Potter finished, he beaconed Draco to tell his story.
Draco made his back as straight as possible, removed all trace of expression from his face, and forced his mind off Moody’s magical eye.
“The summer before sixth year, my father was sent to Azkaban. The Dark Lord, probably to punish him through me, made me a Death Eater and gave me an impossible task: to kill Dumbledore.” His story continued for a few minutes.
He tried to conclude, but was unsure how. “I knew it was impossible to kill Dumbledore when I started. But I had to be loyal to my family. Oh, I now what you’re probably all thinking: that I abandoned them to come here. But, the way I saw it, I couldn’t be loyal when I’m dead. And for the same reason I couldn’t kill Dumbledore, I also couldn’t kill Potter.”
He sat back abruptly. Everyone was silent. He thought he had made a good impression; he thought he had made them see things his way.
He was right. People were looking at each other and nodding. They believed him. Inexplicably, this was very important to the Slytherin. He had never before cared what others thought, but it now seemed of vital importance to him.
Potter, who was now the unofficial head of the Order (mainly because everyone knew that he was on a secret mission that was the key to winning the war, even though they had no idea of the specifics), refused to allow Snape anywhere near them. McGonagall said that she was going to correspond with Snape for a while, so really nothing at all was decided.
Later, after the meeting, Harry said that he, Ron, and Hermione were going to leave again on a so-called mission. Draco had no idea what he was talking about, but he saw that Ron and Hermione’s faces had both become hard and set, so he guessed it wasn’t exactly going to be fun.
He glanced at Ginny and saw her face. She was worried. He could tell. If he were Potter, he would have gone and comforted her even if he had broken up with her.
Gods, Draco thought. Potter sure is a jerk to Ginny. His thoughts broke off as he wondered why he actually cared. His thoughts ran on as he was still unable to realise the truth. Well, she really is a good kid. She’s nice, but not goody-goody. She deserves someone better than Potter.
He shrugged, warning himself not to get attached to anyone, and went up to his room.
About a week later, Draco, Ginny, Moody, and Molly eating dinner. The rest of the Weasley family was at work, and it was impossible to tell where anyone else could be at any given time.
“This will be a cozy dinner,” Molly said cheerfully while heaping their plates with spaghetti and salad.
Moody sighed. “There wasn’t an assignment for me tonight, so I guess I’ll make the best of it. This looks good, Molly.”
Molly, Ginny, and Mad-Eye chatted for a few minutes, not saying anything too important; Mrs. Weasley still couldn’t bring herself to trust Draco, and, of course, Moody was still too aware that there was a former Death Eater among them and barely kept his magical eye off Draco for a moment.
Draco couldn’t take it a second longer. Anytime Moody was in the house he felt like he was being watched, because he obviously was.
He got up and was about to storm out when he stopped and suddenly knew that to fit in he had to make an attempt to be polite. “Thank you,” he said curtly as he walked out, unable to be any more curteous.
“Now look what you did, Moody,” Draco heard Ginny say as he closed the door.
Draco went up to his room and laid down and stared up at the ceiling. He could stand everyone who had come into the house in the last week except Moody. He and Mundungus Fletcher had gotten along the best. Perhaps that was because Dung was such a Slytherin and was the one person who Draco could fully understand. They would laugh and scheme things that would never happen, but anytime Moody came in, they both shut up. That was another thing they shared—a fear and suspicion of Moody.
Just then his thoughts were interrupted as Ginny knocked at his door and poked her head in.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
He nodded and sat up, his back resting on the headboard.
“I’m sorry about Mad-Eye. You know how he is.”
“Ginny,” for some reason Draco never had any problems calling the youngest Weasley by her first name, “I just hate how he stares at me. I mean, even Potter trusts me, and we all would have agreed that trusting a Malfoy would have been impossible for Potter a week and a half ago.”
“Draco, can’t you call Harry by his first name?” Ginny asked with a pained expression on her face.
“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” Draco asked, knowing she was trying to tell him something.
“How can I not be? I mean, I know he broke up with me and everything, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about him.”
“Are you in love with him?” Draco had no idea what possibly possessed him to ask that question.
Ginny, in turn, had no idea what to answer. She wanted to say that she did, and yet at the same time knew that she couldn’t truthfully say it. She shock her head slowly. “I want to think I’m in love with him, but I have a feeling it might just be a crush.”
Draco nodded slowly. “I can’t say that I know what you mean, since I’ve honestly never had a serious girlfriend.” He saw her open her mouth and anticipated what she was going to say and dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I don’t like Pansy and never have. She was just... there, if you know what I mean.”
Ginny nodded. “Harry seems so perfect, but really he isn’t. It annoys me how he always tries to be the best at everything. And why did he have to break up with me, I mean all he said was—”
“He told you he didn’t want you to get hurt, didn’t he?”
Ginny looked over at him in surprise. “How did you know?”
Draco smirked, but not in a mean way. “I know Potter, Ginny, and I think you can do better... But I guess I might be prejudiced.”
She laughed. The sound made him smile and put him infinitely better mood. “Just a little bit.”
Then Mrs. Weasley knocked at the door. She looked in and saw Draco and Ginny sitting facing each other at opposite sides of the bed and sighed inwardly. She had a feeling she knew what was happening and didn’t like it... Harry was such a nice boy, after all...
“Ginny, M—Draco,” Molly had difficulty calling Draco by his first name, “Harry, Ron and Hermione are back.”
Molly closed the door behind her and went downstairs to reheat dinner.
Ginny got up and looked back at Draco. “Thanks for listening. I hope you don’t mind, but I might be talking to you a lot since Harry, Ron and Hermione are always gone.”
Draco didn’t answer the request. They both knew that they would be talking regularly. “And I’m sorry Harry’s too stupid to realise what he’s missing.” Draco found himself saying the second thing in their conversation that he hadn’t meant to say. Ginny was just... Ginny. A beautiful, intelligent girl who was part of a family that he could no longer think of as blood traitors.
Ginny’s smile revealed her inner turmoil. She no longer knew what she felt. She left, softly saying good night to the man she had just left behind.
Draco resumed the position he had been in before Ginny walked in, this time confused instead of angry.
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