CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Professor Snape was standing in precisely the same spot he had occupied the last time that Draco awoke in the Infirmary.
"You're alive, then," he said harshly, by way of greeting. Draco pushed the pale tangle of his hair back out of his eyes and sat up, blinking sleepily. Glancing around he saw that they were alone in the room. He was pleasantly surprised to see that his bedside table was still piled high with flowers and, it appeared, the entire contents of Honeydukes. Evidently that had not been a dream after all. Having successfully warned Dumbledore in time to avert Voldemort's attack, Draco and Harry had been welcomed back like conquering heroes. Professor Snape, utterly against all expectation, had greeted Draco's arrival with a bone-crushing embrace which evidently embarrassed him as much as it surprised everyone else, and had promptly swept away without saying a word. Draco hadn't seen him since.
"Sorry to disappoint you, sir," said Draco, his tone uncharacteristically tentative. The Potions Master pushed himself away from the wall with his shoulders, his hands still deep in the pockets of his robe, and stepped towards the bed. He was scowling ferociously.
"Not at all," he said. There was a brief pause, whilst Snape's dark brows drew together. He seemed to be searching for the right words. After a moment he sat down stiffly on the end of the bed and glared at the wall. "I think perhaps - it is possible that I owe you an apology, Mr Malfoy."
Draco blinked. "It seems that hallucinations are a side effect of Madam Pomfrey's medicines. I could have sworn you just offered to apologise to me, Professor."
Snape's glower intensified still further. "Mr Malfoy, kindly shut up. If you cannot refrain from making snide remarks I may forget my impulse towards courtesy and content myself with poisoning your soup."
"Sorry, sir," said Draco swiftly. "Um. Apology accepted." There was a frosty little pause. "Might I ask exactly why you're apologising, though, Professor?"
Snape examined the pile of sweets with an expression of disfavour. He was, Draco realised, trying to avoid looking at him. "I am afraid that I have not done you justice, Mr Malfoy. It seemed to me entirely implausible that you should be able to escape from your father and his master and make your way to Hogwarts unassisted. I was sure that you were here under false pretences, or at least working as their puppet. I was in error. Indeed, I remained shamefully oblivious to Mr Finch Fletchley's perfidy and was fool enough to throw the two of you together, which was precisely what Lucius Malfoy wanted. Although I dare say that Lucius was unaware of quite how easily Finch Fletchley would be able to, ah, work his way into your confidence."
"Oh," said Draco, suddenly feeling sick. "Yes. That. Well, apology accepted."
"So I should hope." They stared at one another. Draco wondered whether they would ever be on the friendly terms they had once enjoyed. It seemed like they ought to be friendly, but an awful lot of things had changed over the past few years. "I am - I am happy to see you looking well, Mr Malfoy. No doubt the headmaster will wish to be apprised of your condition - and I believe that there is a rather unpromising Gryffindor who would like to speak to you." He raised his voice. "Mr Longbottom? Stop lurking around outside, for the love of Circe. I haven't turned him into a frog." Neville gave an involuntary laugh, and to Draco's surprise Snape almost smiled. "Besides, I have far more important things to do than waste my time with invalids." Draco glanced over at the door and smiled when he saw Neville peering sheepishly around one edge of the door frame. "Good morning to you, Mr Malfoy. I shall let your - wholly extraordinary choice of friend fill you in on events at Hogwarts in the wake of your precipitous departure." He rose in a swirl of dark robes and stalked off to the door. Neville bobbed out of the way, and then a moment later he ventured into the Infirmary on his own.
"Grape?"
Neville's voice snapped Draco out of his reverie, and he glanced up to see the other boy crossing the Infirmary floor. Draco looked at the crumpled bag Neville was holding out and smiled. Neville sat down and then jumped up again, reaching into his pocket and producing a bunch of sunflowers with a flourish. Draco laughed. Light poured out of the flowers. Neville grinned shyly.
"I transfigured them myself," he said. "They were candles."
"Good grief." Draco surveyed the flowers, half expecting them to sprout horns or turn blue. They did neither. "Well done you, Neville. Miracles will never cease."
Neville watched him carefully and then waved the bag of grapes again.
"Grape?" he repeated, hopefully. Draco tried to smile.
"How disarmingly wholesome. Very Neville Longbottom." Neville rolled his eyes and after a moment Draco did smile. "This potion Madam Pomfrey's got me drinking has played merry hell with my tastebuds; so far I've established that tea tastes blue, chocolate frogs taste of anchovies and liquorice tastes like a violin playing B flat. I can only imagine what grapes will be like."
"Try one and see?"
"Go on then." Draco plucked a grape a little shakily and popped it into his mouth. The room was very quiet around them. "Violets," he announced after a moment. "Who would have guessed?"
"Sort of like Bertie Bott's Beans," said Neville helpfully. "Only it's the whole world that's tasting unexpected."
"Hmm," agreed Draco. He drummed his fingers on the bedside table and stared at the bag of grapes. "So Justin's at the Ministry, then?"
"Yes."
"Right. Good. Fine. He didn't - do we have any idea why the hell he did all this?" Draco's voice broke slightly. He wasn't looking at Neville, because he was fairly sure that if he did look at Neville he was going to embarrass himself still more than he had already, one way or another.
"Other than because he's a complete cunt, you mean?" asked Neville. Draco gasped, and stared at Neville in spite of himself.
"Neville!"
"Am I wrong?"
"Neville Longbottom!"
"Don't get me started," said Neville. He looked like he meant it. Draco felt oddly flattered by the vicious expression on Neville's face.
"So much for the much-vaunted Hufflepuff loyalty, then," he muttered, picking up the bunch of grapes again and examining it carefully. "Treacherous bastard should have been in Slytherin, Muggle parentage be damned."
Neville sighed. "Well, to be fair - and it kills me to say this - he was being loyal, in a way." Draco stared. "To his family. Just not to us. The long and the short of it is that he thought we were going to lose the war and that You Know Who was going to win, and over the summer he cut a deal with your dad. Ever the pragmatist, Justin Finch Fletchley. God knows how he first contacted the Death Eaters, but he did."
Draco stared at Neville blankly. "But why in Merlin's name did he think this was a good idea? He's a - he's Muggle-born. The Death Eaters want to wipe out Muggles and Muggle-born wizards. It's their raison d'etre." His voice cracked. "Did he not get the memo? Did he think they just wanted to give all Muggles a jolly good talking to? This is ridiculous."
Neville sighed. He helped himself to a grape and started rolling it absently between his finger and thumb. "Not so ridiculous. Tom Riddle wasn't a pureblood, and Justin knew that." Neville shrugged. "He thought that he'd be one of the first to be killed if Voldemort won -- unless he gave them a reason not to kill him. A good reason. And who would suspect a Muggle-born Hufflepuff of sending coded letters from Hogwarts to the Death Eaters? It was the perfect cover."
"But Voldemort would have killed him anyway," said Draco, with absolute certainty. "How could he have doubted that? Why would he - oh, fuck. I don't want to think about it. Damn."
Neville squeezed Draco's forearm sympathetically, and then looked embarrassed. "Yeah, You Know Who would have killed him, I reckon. But Justin thought that he was getting some kind of leverage." Draco stared at him blankly and Neville shrugged. "A lot of the Muggle-born wizards have been scared living with their families during the summer - they know the truth behind all these attacks on Muggles, even if the Muggle media keeps putting it down to freakish natural disasters. He was scared, the little toad, and he thought he could save his arse this way. He didn't mind throwing the rest of us to the wolves so long as he and his family were going to be okay. People do this kind of thing more often than you'd think. Muggle history's full of it. Come to that, wizarding history's full of it too. Most people aren't very brave."
"You are," said Draco, without thinking. "Potter is."
Neville looked pleased, and slightly embarrassed. "Well, we're Gryffindors," he said. "Comes with the territory. Dash in where angels fear to tread and all that. We put the fool into foolhardy." There was a little pause. "You're pretty brave yourself, though. For a Slytherin."
"I'm a freak," said Draco decisively. He ate another grape and nodded. "Clearly."
"Tell me something we don't already know."
"Sod off." There was a companionable silence while they both munched on grapes. "Still violets," Draco said, after a moment.
"Hmm."
"Why didn't they guess sooner? If he was sending letters to the Death Eaters? Isn't it rather obvious? And why didn't he get caught, if he was doing all this spying?"
Neville rolled his eyes. "When did I become the fount of all knowledge?"
"You're here, aren't you? And you do know, don't you?"
"Well, yes. And yes." Neville grinned, and then his smile faded. "After you'd vanished, and the shit comprehensively hit the fan, Professor Snape fed him Veritaserum and he sang like a lark. Spilled everything. The clever thing was that he was sending coded letters inside the letters back to his family and they were posting them on to another address for him using Muggle post. He made it look like they were letters to Muggle friends, but in fact they were going to a post office box which was enchanted to work as a portkey on the inside, and so all his letters were being whisked off to Voldemort via the Royal Mail." Draco nodded knowledgably.
"Muggle owls," he said, in the tone of an expert.
Neville smiled. "That's right. Most of the spying was being done by the ghosts, and Justin was relaying the information they gathered back to Voldemort. When you arrived here, it was completely unexpected. They wanted to get you kicked out of Hogwarts, because Voldemort wanted you back so he could make an example of you, and this was the only place you were safe from him." Draco shivered. "They were basically making it up as they went along, and not doing a terribly good job of it. Finally your father ran out of patience and owled him a port key."
"The snitch."
"The snitch," agreed Neville.
"Bastard," said Draco with feeling. They both helped themselves to more grapes. "So - it was all a lie, then. All along." Draco's voice was carefully even. Neville looked worried. "Just like my father said. Not that I thought I'd found true love, or anything ridiculous like that, you understand. But - well. I thought Justin did fancy me. For me. And even like me, a little." There was an awkward pause, while Neville visibly wracked his brain for something useful to say. Draco shrugged. "Let that be a lesson to me. It's always about using people."
"Don't say that," said Neville, furiously. "You're wrong. You're completely wrong. I mean, yes, he was in it up to the neck, but that doesn't mean everyone's always out for what they can get. It doesn't. It just means that Justin was a self-serving little gobshite. But he fooled us all, even Dumbledore. Even Snape. Not just you. And as to fancying you - well obviously he fancied you. "
"Hmm," said Draco noncommittally. Neville made a frustrated noise.
"Anyway, bugger Justin." He caught Draco's eye and they both laughed at the same moment. "No," gasped Neville, some minutes later, when his breathing was even again. "No, you know what I mean. Forget about him." He looked at Draco very hard. "Don't you like Harry?" Draco promptly inhaled the grape he was eating, and Neville had to pound him on the back. Draco blessed the effectiveness of Madam Pomfrey's potions; being thumped on the back would have been excruciating six hours earlier. "Um. Sorry about that," Neville said at last, looking sheepish. "Are you okay?"
"Mmph."
"Sorry. Um. But, Draco - Harry likes you. A lot. He knocked ten bells out of Dean and Seamus just for taking the piss out of you and Justin, back before all this blew up. He's spending all his time chasing after you rather than spending time with Ron and Hermione. I've never seen him like this. Ever. You're the reason things went wrong with Cho. He really likes you, Draco."
Draco shifted uncomfortably, remembering the way Potter had flinched at his touch. "We're something like friends now. Maybe. But that's all there is to it, Neville. Don't look at me like that! It's true. He isn't interested now." Draco's attention was fixed on the bunch of grapes, to all appearances trying to select the very finest possible grape of all. "And even if he were, the last thing I need right now is to get mixed up with another bloke." There was a slight frown of concentration on his face until at last he plucked one grape that met some secret set of criteria. It looked the same as all the others, to Neville's distracted eye. Draco popped it in his mouth and nodded appreciatively. "Delicious," he said. "Strange, but delicious."
"You're alive, then," he said harshly, by way of greeting. Draco pushed the pale tangle of his hair back out of his eyes and sat up, blinking sleepily. Glancing around he saw that they were alone in the room. He was pleasantly surprised to see that his bedside table was still piled high with flowers and, it appeared, the entire contents of Honeydukes. Evidently that had not been a dream after all. Having successfully warned Dumbledore in time to avert Voldemort's attack, Draco and Harry had been welcomed back like conquering heroes. Professor Snape, utterly against all expectation, had greeted Draco's arrival with a bone-crushing embrace which evidently embarrassed him as much as it surprised everyone else, and had promptly swept away without saying a word. Draco hadn't seen him since.
"Sorry to disappoint you, sir," said Draco, his tone uncharacteristically tentative. The Potions Master pushed himself away from the wall with his shoulders, his hands still deep in the pockets of his robe, and stepped towards the bed. He was scowling ferociously.
"Not at all," he said. There was a brief pause, whilst Snape's dark brows drew together. He seemed to be searching for the right words. After a moment he sat down stiffly on the end of the bed and glared at the wall. "I think perhaps - it is possible that I owe you an apology, Mr Malfoy."
Draco blinked. "It seems that hallucinations are a side effect of Madam Pomfrey's medicines. I could have sworn you just offered to apologise to me, Professor."
Snape's glower intensified still further. "Mr Malfoy, kindly shut up. If you cannot refrain from making snide remarks I may forget my impulse towards courtesy and content myself with poisoning your soup."
"Sorry, sir," said Draco swiftly. "Um. Apology accepted." There was a frosty little pause. "Might I ask exactly why you're apologising, though, Professor?"
Snape examined the pile of sweets with an expression of disfavour. He was, Draco realised, trying to avoid looking at him. "I am afraid that I have not done you justice, Mr Malfoy. It seemed to me entirely implausible that you should be able to escape from your father and his master and make your way to Hogwarts unassisted. I was sure that you were here under false pretences, or at least working as their puppet. I was in error. Indeed, I remained shamefully oblivious to Mr Finch Fletchley's perfidy and was fool enough to throw the two of you together, which was precisely what Lucius Malfoy wanted. Although I dare say that Lucius was unaware of quite how easily Finch Fletchley would be able to, ah, work his way into your confidence."
"Oh," said Draco, suddenly feeling sick. "Yes. That. Well, apology accepted."
"So I should hope." They stared at one another. Draco wondered whether they would ever be on the friendly terms they had once enjoyed. It seemed like they ought to be friendly, but an awful lot of things had changed over the past few years. "I am - I am happy to see you looking well, Mr Malfoy. No doubt the headmaster will wish to be apprised of your condition - and I believe that there is a rather unpromising Gryffindor who would like to speak to you." He raised his voice. "Mr Longbottom? Stop lurking around outside, for the love of Circe. I haven't turned him into a frog." Neville gave an involuntary laugh, and to Draco's surprise Snape almost smiled. "Besides, I have far more important things to do than waste my time with invalids." Draco glanced over at the door and smiled when he saw Neville peering sheepishly around one edge of the door frame. "Good morning to you, Mr Malfoy. I shall let your - wholly extraordinary choice of friend fill you in on events at Hogwarts in the wake of your precipitous departure." He rose in a swirl of dark robes and stalked off to the door. Neville bobbed out of the way, and then a moment later he ventured into the Infirmary on his own.
"Grape?"
Neville's voice snapped Draco out of his reverie, and he glanced up to see the other boy crossing the Infirmary floor. Draco looked at the crumpled bag Neville was holding out and smiled. Neville sat down and then jumped up again, reaching into his pocket and producing a bunch of sunflowers with a flourish. Draco laughed. Light poured out of the flowers. Neville grinned shyly.
"I transfigured them myself," he said. "They were candles."
"Good grief." Draco surveyed the flowers, half expecting them to sprout horns or turn blue. They did neither. "Well done you, Neville. Miracles will never cease."
Neville watched him carefully and then waved the bag of grapes again.
"Grape?" he repeated, hopefully. Draco tried to smile.
"How disarmingly wholesome. Very Neville Longbottom." Neville rolled his eyes and after a moment Draco did smile. "This potion Madam Pomfrey's got me drinking has played merry hell with my tastebuds; so far I've established that tea tastes blue, chocolate frogs taste of anchovies and liquorice tastes like a violin playing B flat. I can only imagine what grapes will be like."
"Try one and see?"
"Go on then." Draco plucked a grape a little shakily and popped it into his mouth. The room was very quiet around them. "Violets," he announced after a moment. "Who would have guessed?"
"Sort of like Bertie Bott's Beans," said Neville helpfully. "Only it's the whole world that's tasting unexpected."
"Hmm," agreed Draco. He drummed his fingers on the bedside table and stared at the bag of grapes. "So Justin's at the Ministry, then?"
"Yes."
"Right. Good. Fine. He didn't - do we have any idea why the hell he did all this?" Draco's voice broke slightly. He wasn't looking at Neville, because he was fairly sure that if he did look at Neville he was going to embarrass himself still more than he had already, one way or another.
"Other than because he's a complete cunt, you mean?" asked Neville. Draco gasped, and stared at Neville in spite of himself.
"Neville!"
"Am I wrong?"
"Neville Longbottom!"
"Don't get me started," said Neville. He looked like he meant it. Draco felt oddly flattered by the vicious expression on Neville's face.
"So much for the much-vaunted Hufflepuff loyalty, then," he muttered, picking up the bunch of grapes again and examining it carefully. "Treacherous bastard should have been in Slytherin, Muggle parentage be damned."
Neville sighed. "Well, to be fair - and it kills me to say this - he was being loyal, in a way." Draco stared. "To his family. Just not to us. The long and the short of it is that he thought we were going to lose the war and that You Know Who was going to win, and over the summer he cut a deal with your dad. Ever the pragmatist, Justin Finch Fletchley. God knows how he first contacted the Death Eaters, but he did."
Draco stared at Neville blankly. "But why in Merlin's name did he think this was a good idea? He's a - he's Muggle-born. The Death Eaters want to wipe out Muggles and Muggle-born wizards. It's their raison d'etre." His voice cracked. "Did he not get the memo? Did he think they just wanted to give all Muggles a jolly good talking to? This is ridiculous."
Neville sighed. He helped himself to a grape and started rolling it absently between his finger and thumb. "Not so ridiculous. Tom Riddle wasn't a pureblood, and Justin knew that." Neville shrugged. "He thought that he'd be one of the first to be killed if Voldemort won -- unless he gave them a reason not to kill him. A good reason. And who would suspect a Muggle-born Hufflepuff of sending coded letters from Hogwarts to the Death Eaters? It was the perfect cover."
"But Voldemort would have killed him anyway," said Draco, with absolute certainty. "How could he have doubted that? Why would he - oh, fuck. I don't want to think about it. Damn."
Neville squeezed Draco's forearm sympathetically, and then looked embarrassed. "Yeah, You Know Who would have killed him, I reckon. But Justin thought that he was getting some kind of leverage." Draco stared at him blankly and Neville shrugged. "A lot of the Muggle-born wizards have been scared living with their families during the summer - they know the truth behind all these attacks on Muggles, even if the Muggle media keeps putting it down to freakish natural disasters. He was scared, the little toad, and he thought he could save his arse this way. He didn't mind throwing the rest of us to the wolves so long as he and his family were going to be okay. People do this kind of thing more often than you'd think. Muggle history's full of it. Come to that, wizarding history's full of it too. Most people aren't very brave."
"You are," said Draco, without thinking. "Potter is."
Neville looked pleased, and slightly embarrassed. "Well, we're Gryffindors," he said. "Comes with the territory. Dash in where angels fear to tread and all that. We put the fool into foolhardy." There was a little pause. "You're pretty brave yourself, though. For a Slytherin."
"I'm a freak," said Draco decisively. He ate another grape and nodded. "Clearly."
"Tell me something we don't already know."
"Sod off." There was a companionable silence while they both munched on grapes. "Still violets," Draco said, after a moment.
"Hmm."
"Why didn't they guess sooner? If he was sending letters to the Death Eaters? Isn't it rather obvious? And why didn't he get caught, if he was doing all this spying?"
Neville rolled his eyes. "When did I become the fount of all knowledge?"
"You're here, aren't you? And you do know, don't you?"
"Well, yes. And yes." Neville grinned, and then his smile faded. "After you'd vanished, and the shit comprehensively hit the fan, Professor Snape fed him Veritaserum and he sang like a lark. Spilled everything. The clever thing was that he was sending coded letters inside the letters back to his family and they were posting them on to another address for him using Muggle post. He made it look like they were letters to Muggle friends, but in fact they were going to a post office box which was enchanted to work as a portkey on the inside, and so all his letters were being whisked off to Voldemort via the Royal Mail." Draco nodded knowledgably.
"Muggle owls," he said, in the tone of an expert.
Neville smiled. "That's right. Most of the spying was being done by the ghosts, and Justin was relaying the information they gathered back to Voldemort. When you arrived here, it was completely unexpected. They wanted to get you kicked out of Hogwarts, because Voldemort wanted you back so he could make an example of you, and this was the only place you were safe from him." Draco shivered. "They were basically making it up as they went along, and not doing a terribly good job of it. Finally your father ran out of patience and owled him a port key."
"The snitch."
"The snitch," agreed Neville.
"Bastard," said Draco with feeling. They both helped themselves to more grapes. "So - it was all a lie, then. All along." Draco's voice was carefully even. Neville looked worried. "Just like my father said. Not that I thought I'd found true love, or anything ridiculous like that, you understand. But - well. I thought Justin did fancy me. For me. And even like me, a little." There was an awkward pause, while Neville visibly wracked his brain for something useful to say. Draco shrugged. "Let that be a lesson to me. It's always about using people."
"Don't say that," said Neville, furiously. "You're wrong. You're completely wrong. I mean, yes, he was in it up to the neck, but that doesn't mean everyone's always out for what they can get. It doesn't. It just means that Justin was a self-serving little gobshite. But he fooled us all, even Dumbledore. Even Snape. Not just you. And as to fancying you - well obviously he fancied you. "
"Hmm," said Draco noncommittally. Neville made a frustrated noise.
"Anyway, bugger Justin." He caught Draco's eye and they both laughed at the same moment. "No," gasped Neville, some minutes later, when his breathing was even again. "No, you know what I mean. Forget about him." He looked at Draco very hard. "Don't you like Harry?" Draco promptly inhaled the grape he was eating, and Neville had to pound him on the back. Draco blessed the effectiveness of Madam Pomfrey's potions; being thumped on the back would have been excruciating six hours earlier. "Um. Sorry about that," Neville said at last, looking sheepish. "Are you okay?"
"Mmph."
"Sorry. Um. But, Draco - Harry likes you. A lot. He knocked ten bells out of Dean and Seamus just for taking the piss out of you and Justin, back before all this blew up. He's spending all his time chasing after you rather than spending time with Ron and Hermione. I've never seen him like this. Ever. You're the reason things went wrong with Cho. He really likes you, Draco."
Draco shifted uncomfortably, remembering the way Potter had flinched at his touch. "We're something like friends now. Maybe. But that's all there is to it, Neville. Don't look at me like that! It's true. He isn't interested now." Draco's attention was fixed on the bunch of grapes, to all appearances trying to select the very finest possible grape of all. "And even if he were, the last thing I need right now is to get mixed up with another bloke." There was a slight frown of concentration on his face until at last he plucked one grape that met some secret set of criteria. It looked the same as all the others, to Neville's distracted eye. Draco popped it in his mouth and nodded appreciatively. "Delicious," he said. "Strange, but delicious."