Sitting down across from McGonagall in her office, Draco felt the familiarity of the situation wash over him. Hope she doesn’t start yelling again, he thought as he smoothed his wrinkled robes with his hands, conscious of how filthy he must look.
“I expect you are ready to explain why Miss Weasley is in the Hospital Wing,” McGonagall began as she sat back in her high backed chair, her hands clasped together on the desk as she raised her eyebrows expectantly. “She was very lucky that Madam Pomfrey was able to heal her so quickly, and that you were there to help her, but I won’t award you special honours just yet. I want to know exactly how something like this could have happened.”
He recounted the events of the previous day from opening the door to the classroom to running to the Hospital Wing with Ginny in his arms, leaving out details such as why he was there in the first place. The Headmistress pursed her lips suspiciously. Standing from her seat, she walked toward a cabinet and retrieved a small stone basin, then came back to set it in front of Draco.
“Show me,” she said simply, remaining standing behind the desk as she gestured to the empty vessel.
Starring at it, he realised what she wanted him to do, but he had never had a Pensieve before. He felt safer with his thoughts in his own head, and had never bothered asking for one. Having failed to yet learn the spell to retrieve a memory, he sat slightly embarrassed as he continued to ogle the basin.
“Oh for Merlin’s sake, you should have learned this charm by now. Simply concentrate on the memory you wish to procure, place your wandtip to your temple, then use the nonverbal incantation ‘Recordatio,’” she instructed impatiently as she mimed placing a wand to her own temple with her pointer finger.
Draco obliged, and then watched uncomfortably as a long, silvery strand of liquid vapour left his temple, guiding it to rest in the Pensieve where it immediately began to swirl.
McGonagall gestured towards the basin with her hand. “After you.”
Slightly abashed at being ordered to enter his own thoughts, he shot a look of disdain at her before leaning towards the vessel head first. He found himself falling into it, swirling with the vapour until he landed on his feet behind himself, opening the door to the classroom. McGonagall landed beside him, and immediately followed his memory self into the room. Draco grudgingly followed, as he didn’t want to watch the scene again.
The evil laughter, the scream, the crash of a body on stone, it all unfolded exactly as it had happened, and he found his emotions, so easily concealed behind his superior demeanour his entire life, exposed painfully obviously on his memory self’s face. The rage towards Crabbe and Goyle as he cursed each of them, the fear for Ginny’s life as he picked her up and ran away with her, all on display for anyone to see, and he felt humiliated at his lack of composure.
As his memory self ran for the door, another scene flickered to life briefly, overlapping the classroom scene, barely a second long, but Draco knew exactly what memory it was. He saw the bright sunlight, the hospital beds, and the two students embracing in front of him, one on a bed and one in a chair, their blond and red hair clashing together as they explored each other’s mouths.
As quick as it had come, the memory was gone, and he and McGonagall were back in the classroom as it dissolved around them, the initial memory complete. Finding himself hurtling back into his chair, Draco landed hard on his backside, his cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
“Next time you extract a memory, you will have to be more focused,” McGonagall lectured, back at her desk with a slight smile adorning her face.
Scowling at her amused expression, Draco took either side of his chair and propelled himself upward to tower over her.
“You saw what they did to her, they should be expelled!” he exclaimed as he glared icily at the Headmistress.
McGonagall’s eyes narrowed during his outburst, and when he was finished, she stood wordlessly and circled her desk. Draco took a step back, expecting her to lay into him for shouting, but she then walked to her open door, shot a silvery shape out of her wand, then walked back to her chair, sitting calmly.
“I’ve sent for Professor Slughorn and the two students you speak of. They will be expelled and sent home by tonight. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mr. Malfoy; I am glad that you appreciate the intolerability of the situation as much as I do,” she finally responded as her stern gaze met his glinting grey eyes.
Breathing heavily, he stared at her for a moment. “So, that’s it? They’re gone?” he asked apprehensively.
“Yes, Mr. Malfoy, that’s it. You may take your memory back, and don’t hesitate to inform me again of any such matters.” She gestured towards the Pensieve before pulling out two blank pieces of parchment, bewitching two quills to write the same print simultaneously across each of the pages.
Clumsily, he lifted the trailing end of the vapour to his temple with his wand, where it sucked itself back into his head. Shaking off the creepy feeling the process gave him, he turned to leave. At the doorway, he stopped and turned back around.
“Thank you, Professor,” he mumbled, feeling strange as he offered his piteous form of gratitude.
The quills paused.
“I know that turning in former friends is not easy,” she said as she set her wand down, and he looked her in the eye, “but times like these will really show you the difference between the man you used to be, and the man you want to be. Take Gregory and Vincent’s example that you made the right choice.”
His mouth set in a grim line, Draco gave her a quick nod of acknowledgement before he shut the door behind him and descended down the steps.
News of Crabbe and Goyle’s expulsion, as well as Ginny and Draco’s involvement, swept throughout the school alarmingly fast. By the end of the day, Ginny had recounted the story numerous times, how she had been cornered by the Slytherin brutes, how Draco had swooped in and saved the day, until Madam Pomfrey threw a right fit, chasing everyone out of the infirmary and forbidding any other visits.
Through the many questions, Ginny answered all of them pertaining to the fiasco the day before honestly, hoping to gain favour for Draco in the eyes of the students. Most were sceptical, assuming she had been spellbound by him somehow in order to disguise his true intents, but she insisted that he had changed, that they had recently become friends, and he had saved her life when he didn’t have to.
“Just think about it,” she had been explaining to a group of Gryffindors, “Why would McGonagall trust him enough to let him come back? It’s because she wants to protect him from the Death Eaters. You-Know-Who himself tried to kill him, but he got away. Draco has a price on his head as much as Harry now.”
“But wouldn’t he try something extreme, to get back the Death Eater’s support?” Colin Creevey asked from her side.
“No, definitely not, he’s too angry that they killed his mother, he wouldn’t go back to them,” she answered with a shake of her head.
“Does he have the Dark Mark?” a fourth year girl with curly brown hair quipped from the end of the bed, her balled fists covering her mouth and her eyes wide.
Suppressing a shudder, Ginny answered, “No, he doesn’t.”
“How do you know he’s not lying about everything, that he hasn’t been undercover the entire time?” Neville asked darkly from the back of the group, arms crossed over his chest, clearly unconvinced.
Ginny pursed her lips, knowing that Neville would be difficult to influence given his past dealings with Death Eaters and his belief that Draco had been one of them.
“I’ve seen the change in him, and he’s as determined to see You-Know-Who fall as anyone else here. You don’t need Legilimency to really see how much he hates the whole lot of them. They–” She stopped herself, not sure how much she should say. Not wanting to give away too much of his private life, and trying to encourage the new image of Draco the hero, she chose her words carefully at times. After a moment, she finished her thought, “They truly ruined his life, and he realises that now.”
In response to that last comment, the girls of the crowd uttered soft noises of sympathy, clearly looking for a reason to forgive the remorseful, former bad boy of Hogwarts for his transgressions. It wasn’t a secret that Draco had been a hot subject for gossip amongst the young witches for the past few years, being one of the more popular choices in schoolgirl fortune-telling games like ‘Who will you marry?’ and making cootie catchers. With each wave of giggling first years, it seemed as if the young Malfoy grew even more into his pristine good looks and his ruffian attitude, oblivious to the titters behind small hands and the scampering of feet if he were to glare in their direction.
The boys of the group just looked conflicted, as if they were still attempting to come up with excuses for Draco’s change in behaviour because of their past unpleasant dealings with him, but they also wanted to trust Ginny’s judge of character.
Only Neville’s expression remained stubbornly dubious to Ginny’s perseverance, but not only due to his doubt in Malfoy’s abrupt transformation. He had noticed the glow in her soft eyes as she described in detail how Malfoy had saved her life. The smile that adorned her face was laced in a subtle form of excitement he had only seen when she spoke of one other wizard, a boy shoved into manhood in his attempt to save the world from an evil that until only a few months ago, Malfoy had answered to.
Neville shook his head in disbelief at the quick round of amnesty going around for the traitor responsible for the wreckage of the castle, and the death of its Headmaster. He could tell she was too far gone, practically smitten by all the rubbish that git fed her about his mother’s tragic death and his change of allegiance; Neville knew that he couldn’t possibly care for anyone but himself, let alone the woman that gave him life.
It was about that moment when Madam Pomfrey had had enough of the commotion, and shepherded everyone towards the door with startling ferocity.
Ginny sat back against her pillows as she watched her friends leave, wondering how Draco would ‘find her’ with the nurse guarding the door. An absurd fantasy took shape in her mind as she drifted off to sleep, involving a dragon wearing nurse’s robes, and Draco, clad in medieval Muggle armour, fighting for entrance to Hogwarts with Gryffindor’s sword as she, the princess, called down helpful hints from the Astronomy Tower as to where he should plunge his blade.
Stealing cautiously down the corridor, Draco had every intention of paying Ginny a surprise, late-night visit now that everyone was gone. As he rounded the last corner to the Hospital Wing, he met the last face he would have expected to see patrolling the corridors at night, almost knocking right into him.
“Oi! Watch it, Longbottom!” Draco hissed as he stumbled backwards, attempting to keep the volume in his voice down.
“Out of bed at this hour, Malfoy? It’s too bad you don’t have a house to deduct points from,” Neville sneered, pointing his lit wand in Draco’s face. The amount of atypical confidence emanating from the clumsy Gryffindor was enough to generate a longing in Draco to duel right then and there, putting him back in his place, but he had more alluring matters to attend to.
Noticing the glinting Prefect badge pinned to Neville’s robes, Draco scoffed, “They made you a Prefect? Well I guess someone had to replace Weasel and that Mu– er, Granger. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do. Don’t hurt yourself with that wand; you may actually get some magic out of it.”
Shoving Neville out of the way, Draco continued down the hall.
“She may buy your piss poor story,” Neville called after him, causing Draco to stop in his tracks, one hand already bracing against the infirmary door, “but I don’t believe a word of it. If you hurt her, I swear to Merlin I won’t have any trouble with an Unforgivable Curse, you can count on it.”
The words ‘if you hurt her’ stuck with Draco for a moment, and he turned them over in his mind. An image of Ginny’s tear-filled, mournful brown eyes framed in glowing red hair flashed across his inner vision, and he felt a tug in his chest at the thought of himself being the cause of it. I’m turning into a bloody sap. What the hell is wrong with me?
Snapping out of his fuzzy reverie, he kept his eyes on a spot lower on the door than where his hand still rest, aware of Longbottom’s await for the typical, sardonic retort.
“I won’t hurt her,” Draco responded soft, but harshly.
Neville’s eyebrows contracted in puzzlement at this response as Malfoy pushed his way quietly into the Hospital Wing.
Author notes: The chapters are coming more slowly now that the chapters I've posted is catching up with the chapters I've written, so I apologize! The next chapter will be a good one! ;-)
Next chapter: Wintry Dances and Whispered Confessions
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