Especially Our Enemies

Update 10/05/05: As per the new rules, I\'m adding a disclaimer here.
Disclaimer: Pursuant to copyright law, I acknowledge that I own none of the characters, concepts, or other related material in Harry Potter. I make no money from the writing of fan fiction based on the property of others.

**Fortune cookie say: We can learn from everyone, especially our enemies.**

We buried him at Hogwarts, the only place he ever truly thought of as home. Hermione and I planted a little hawthorn tree over the grave and held each other. We clung to each other in those desperate weeks, and with all that was happening it was too frightening to let go. So much had changed. She was the only thing that hadn’t been taken from me; I had lost everyone. And when the dust had settled, and we were safe again, I noticed she still had fear in her eyes.

“Ron, I think I might be pregnant,” she told me. She hadn’t cried yet, but when I broke down she couldn’t stop herself.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. I started to laugh.

“It’s wonderful,” I said, pulling her to me.

Somehow I thought that a baby would fill the hole he left. We both did. For a while I was engrossed in the wonder of it, watching Hermione get plump and glowy. Chaz was so helpless and little and redheaded, and I fell in love with him immediately. It felt so strange to me to realize he would be starting at Hogwarts in just a few days. I walked out across the Quidditch pitch, looking at Harry’s tree. It had been thirteen years since I patted that tiny sapling into the soil. The flowers had all dropped off, but the berries were just coming in. I used to walk out there in the evenings and watch the sun go down and pretend he wasn’t gone.

When Chaz was three, Hermione and I began to feel the aching void again. We dragged our little boy on a long vacation to South America, because England was where our pain was. It was then that I first thought about separation. But when we got back from our weeks in the steamy jungles Hermione was pregnant again, and when our daughter was born I couldn’t bear to leave her.

Eleanor was so sick that first year. Since Hermione had a solid job at the Ministry, I stayed home with our babies and took care of them. We could barely afford it, but we didn’t want to send them to Hermione’s parents or a daycare. Chaz was my little soldier. He never complained, even when Eleanor screamed and cried for hours on end and I couldn’t leave her alone. He would sit with her when I was practicing with my scruffy Quidditch club, although I could never focus on my game with them on the sidelines. I jogged over to check on them one day and a recruiter came over. He seemed uncomfortable with the baby in my arms and the little boy holding my hand, but he invited me to the tryouts anyway.

We sold the Burrow and moved into a nice house in Kent, near the Arrows training camp. For a long time we were too busy to realize that we had lost each other. She was spending so much time in London, and eventually got her own little commuter apartment there. We hired a nanny to take care of the kids and I left on tour with the team for two months without a break. Even after that I was home only occasionally, and never for long. There’s no excuse for what I did, but I want to be clear I never meant to do anything to betray my wife’s trust. When I married Hermione, I would have punched any man in the face who said I would be unfaithful to her. Even now I can’t believe it. But looking back I realize I’d been thinking about it for a long time. Hermione had had a rough time with Eleanor, and ever since we’d been very reluctant to touch each other. She wasn’t really interested, and I had to admit I wasn’t either.

His name was Douglas, and he was our team manager. He was a fellow’s fellow, joining in pickup soccer with the Quaffles when we made pit stops and going out to bars with us when we won. Douglas had dark hair and green, green eyes. I had never felt so alone before, and when I told him that over a couple of drinks I would not have imagined that we would end up back in my hotel room together. I also wouldn’t have imagined that a man’s touch would feel so good. For the first time in almost five years I felt whole.

Douglas and I carried on our affair in secret for almost a year before he got a transfer. It was time for him to move on; he was young and inconstant, still exploring his possibilities, and I let him go with only a little regret. Once he was gone I realized how blind I had been. What he had given me was some sick kind of connection with Harry from beyond the grave, and sometimes when he was kissing me I thought of that one kiss my friend and I had shared, just before he died. His lips had already been cold and pale with shock, and he grabbed me to him before I could make him lie back.

“I love you, Ron,” he said.

“Quiet, mate,” I told him. He listened. It was the last thing he ever said to me.

We got back from our second season and I barely recognized my kids. Especially Eleanor, who had been so very tiny when I left. But I was so glad to see them, and so very glad to see Hermione when she came home from work. That night we made love for the first time in I don’t know how long.

“I miss Harry,” she said in the darkness, as we lay together under the sheets. Her body was warm and soft against mine, so different from Douglas’ and so wonderfully Hermione. I remembered why I had loved her, before the war, and why we had stuck so close in the dark time after Harry died. He had succeeded in killing Voldemort, and we had all thought it would be over, but we were so wrong.

“I miss him too, baby,” I said, touching her hair. In the quiet times of the war, I would soothe her like this. She had cut all her hair off then, leaving only a soft, short bristle. It was long again, tangled and sweaty from before, and I carefully worked out a tangle.

“I want to quit my job and stay home with the kids,” she said, looking up at me.

“Okay.”

It was so good after that. I never told her about Douglas; he wrote me a letter a while later telling me how well his life was going, working with the Belgian national team. I wrote him back, wishing him well, telling him unsubtly how much better Hermione and I were doing. I hoped he would take the hint.

The Arrows had been through a dry patch, but two years after they recruited me we got a new coach and things took off. It took us awhile, but in my fifth season we made it to the World Cup. Life had never been better. I had a beautiful wife whom I had rediscovered, two fantastic kids, and a dream career in professional Quidditch. Of course it had to change.

We were six hours into the final match. I don’t remember much of what happened before, or any of what happened after, but they tell me it was almost too fast to see. I still have the Bludger in my office, signed by both teams. It struck me down and into the stands, where I bounced down three rows of support girders. They brought it to me at St. Mungo’s. I broke more bones than anyone they’d ever seen survive, the doctors told me. When my shoulder hurts and it’s going to rain, I think how lucky I was. My left hand is still sort of numb, and I keep it tucked into the pocket of my robes. They took one of my shoulder blades and grew me a new one, and they told me I might never ride a broom again. My Quidditch career was most certainly over.

I sat around our house for about three months, staring hopelessly at the walls. Chaz would sit with me sometimes and watch me. He was strangely wise and quiet for eight.

In the third month I got an owl with the Hogwarts official letterhead in its talons.

“Open it, Daddy,” Chaz said softly. It might have been the first time he’d spoken that day. I opened the letter.

When Hermione came home, I was still staring at the letter. She gently took it from my hands.

“Have you read this, Ron?” she asked. She’d been spending a lot of time at work since my injury. When she was home it was always questions. Had I eaten? Had I showered? Was I wearing fresh clothes? She trusted Chaz to take care of himself and Eleanor, but I was a different story.

“Read it,” I said hoarsely. Hermione set down her briefcase and looked at the letter.

“Madame Hooch is retiring,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“And they want you to come take her place next year.”

“That’s right.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

Lying in bed that night, trying to ignore the aches down my left side, I looked at her.

“How can I take that job? I can’t even fly anymore.”

“You don’t know that. You haven’t tried yet. Besides, you can still referee the games from the officials’ box. Plenty of clubs do it that way.”

“I don’t know…”

“Ron, sweetie, I want you to take this job,” she said. She got up and went into the bathroom.

“Alright, I’ll owl Minerva back in the morning.” I rolled over on my side. Hermione wasn’t finished.

“I’ve been offered a job in America,” she said, “With the Ministry delegation over there. I think I’m going to go.”

That took me a moment to process.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“About two weeks ago. I was trying to find the right time to tell you.”

“What about the kids? If I’m going to work at Hogwarts, they’ll need you to be here with them.”

“I want to take them with me,” she said.

The silence yawned between us. She came back from the bathroom and sat down beside me.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

“There’s someone else,” I murmured.

“Now wait a minute, Ron,” she said, stumbling over her words. Hermione was always a terrible liar.

“It’s okay, Hermione.” I sat up. “I’ll take the job at Hogwarts. You go to America. I can have the kids over the summers.”

“Ron, let’s talk about this,” she said.

I touched her mouth.

“Is he good to you?” I asked. She nodded. “And he’s in the States, isn’t he.” Another nod.

“Oh, Ron, I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “You were in the hospital for so long, and then you were just silent.”

“It’s okay.” I pushed her down into the pillows and lay back down on my side.

I thought she had gone to sleep as I lay there awake, but she touched my shoulder gently after half an hour.

“Ron?”

“I miss Harry,” I said.

“I miss him too, baby,” she said, and then she kissed me, and I kissed her back with the first pangs of emotion I’d felt since the accident. It hurt so badly to touch her, like her skin burned my fingers, but just like our first time we made love in tortured silence because we needed to forget everything else.

I sat under the little hawthorn and opened up my journal. This was the third volume; one for each year I’d been at Hogwarts. It was like an open letter to Harry, in a way, and I wrote in it every day. I wrote for a few minutes, saying nothing in particular but wishing desperately that I could say it all to his face. As the shadow came over the pages, I closed it. I hadn’t heard footsteps. I looked up into serious gray eyes.

“They said you would be here, but I came out anyway,” he said. I expected him to sneer, but his face remained neutral. He was wearing one of those black high-collared robes Snape favored, though it had an easier time of slimming his form than the Potions Master’s.

“I heard you took the Defense job.” I put the journal in my robes and stood, dusting the grass debris from my clothes.

“They wanted me to teach Dark Magic at Durmstrang,” he said, turning half away. I saw that he was holding a black bundle in his gloved hands.

“Why didn’t you?”

“A man cannot run away for all his life,” Malfoy said, kneeling. He unwrapped the bundle and tipped a pile of small fragments onto the plaque.

He must have heard the breath I took as I tried to ask.

“It’s his. My father took it from his corpse before the Order got to him.”

Malfoy stood and folded the square of velvet. His gloves made rustling sounds against the fabric. The wind picked up for a moment, pushing his hair to one side. It resisted, bristly as a hedgehog. The scent of his hair product wafted across me, and the smell of his cologne. He wore Cauldron, one of Armani’s wizard lines, just like Douglas.

“He wasn’t dead,” I protested.

“I didn’t know that,” he said quietly. I looked up at the sky; the gray clouds I had spotted earlier were ominously darker and closer than before, and I could smell the moisture. My hand tingled expectantly. Malfoy and I walked back towards the castle.

“I missed this place,” he said, in that death whisper. It sent a painful chill down my spine.

“It’s the one thing that’s never changed,” I said, unsure what else I could say. Malfoy nodded. I wanted him to smirk at me, make some snide comment, just so I could be sure it was him. He sighed.

“The people change,” he said. He turned and looked at me and his eyes speared my heart. There was something there that was dangerous in its intensity. I used to hate those eyes, when we were boys. It was like they could read my deepest feelings so he could exploit me. I looked away.

We walked up to the castle and the rain started pattering softly down.

“Malfoy,” I said, as he headed towards the dungeons. He looked back. “Welcome back.” My voice was pathetically weak in my ears. Malfoy nodded cordially and walked down the staircase. His face had not once shifted to reflect any emotion. I shook the ice from the back of my neck and went upstairs to my quarters.

It poured down raining throughout the afternoon and evening, and on into the night. It was still pounding down on the stone walls and the slate roof when I woke up the next morning. I was supposed to meet Hermione and the kids in Diagon Alley in a few hours, and I shuddered at the idea. My left side was so sore I could barely stand, and I downed a vial of something that Hermione had recommended. She used it for her migraines, and it made the pain subside to a dull ache. I could live with that. At least it wasn’t cold yet.

Hunched like an old woman, I made my way down to breakfast.

“Back bothering you, Ron?” asked Minerva, from her seat at the head of the table. I sat down and took a cup of coffee.

“Back, shoulder, arm, leg, neck,” I muttered. “Bloody rain.”

“War injury?”

Malfoy’s hair had black tips dyed into it that morning, and it stood up in the back like a cartoon character’s might. He sipped his coffee and looked at me expectantly.

“Quidditch,” Snape murmured. He always managed to make it sound like a dirty word. The old man hadn’t softened any since I was a student. He had grayed noticeably since then, but his eyes still burned a hole in my back whenever I walked away from him. We never exchanged harsh words, though, because each of us could remember a time when the other had saved his life.

Malfoy nodded curtly and turned back to his breakfast.

“He was hit by a Bludger in the World Cup three years ago,” said Dooley, the Transfiguration teacher. When Minerva became Headmaster the previous year, he had stepped into her position. He was young and rather silly. “It was all over the news.”

There was a pause.

“You can’t tell me you didn’t hear about it,” Dooley insisted. “They thought it would be the first professional Quidditch death since 1947.”

“Well then, Professor Weasley was very fortunate,” Malfoy said softly. “I’m afraid I was out of the country at the time and heard nothing at all about it.”

An uncomfortable silence prevailed. I had a second cup of coffee and excused myself. The fireplace in the professors’ lounge was connected to the Floo network, and I stepped out in Diagon Alley just on time.

I didn’t have to be back until seven, when Minerva and the other Heads of House expected me for a meeting to discuss the incoming class. I was terrified to be made Head of House, but it had proven one of the best experiences (and biggest headaches) of my life. The older students called me “the old man” because of my stiff shuffle in the winter, but I knew they meant no disrespect. Thinking of them made me smile as I walked into the Leaky Cauldron.

“The kids haven’t eaten,” Hermione said breathily as they came in, ten minutes late. “Our portkey was delayed at Kennedy.”

Hermione had cut her hair at her chin, and was wearing it straightened despite the wet weather. She was possibly lovelier at thirty-four than at fifteen, when I first realized I had a thing for her.

“We’ll take care of that,” I said, standing. “Oh,” I whispered, looking at my children.

Chaz smiled at me shyly and accepted my hug. Eleanor, eight and all grown up in her mind, refused me.

“Where’s my little girl?” I asked, looking around at eye level.

“Right here, Daddy!”

“Where could she be?”

“Daddy, I’m right here!”

Amelia tugged on my sleeve and I looked down.

“Oh my goodness,” I said, picking her up. My arm protested, and Hermione gave me a look when I winced. I smiled at her unconvincingly.

“The porky made my tummy all woozy,” Amelia said. “But I’m hungry now.”

I had been very surprised that first summer, when I walked across the concourse at La Guardia, to see a new bundle in Hermione’s arms.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she’d said. We didn’t know if she was mine, but I didn’t have the heart to refuse her. And despite his earlier insistence that he loved kids, Hermione’s someone else had deserted her before he could even meet Amelia.

Now Amelia was three and old enough to travel by portkey, and she was seeing England for the first time. Eleanor could probably remember Diagon Alley from when she was little, and we’d brought Chaz there quite often before we moved to Kent. I remembered my first time in the strange place and hoped Amelia would love it just as much.

“How are you guys?” I asked, as we all sat down. Hermione ordered for the kids and Amelia settled in my lap, staring around at the odd assembly of patrons.

“Crookshanks lost his tail,” Amelia said. Her accent was distinctly not British, and I sighed inwardly.

“He got hit by a car, the stupid blighter,” Eleanor muttered. I frowned at her tone, but was secretly a little satisfied at her word choice. My children could still be Britons!

“Well did Mommy fix it?” I asked, looking at Hermione.

“I decided it would be a lesson for him,” she said, smiling sadly.

“He’s an awfully old rascal to be getting into trouble. What was he doing in the street?” The grizzled tom was unknowably ancient, but magical creatures tended to live unusually long lives. That is, if they didn’t get themselves killed like he’d tried to do so many times. I couldn’t help but recall the Death Eater owl he took down single-handedly, intercepting a very important message…and partially devouring the messenger.

“Sleeping,” Amelia said, grinning.

“I see.”

I looked at Chaz, who was listening intently but had said nothing. Hermione and I caught glances and she shrugged.

“So, Chaz,” I said, shifting Amelia to the other leg. “Are you excited about school?”

“Sure,” he said.

“What House do you think you’ll end up in, sweetie?” Hermione asked.

“I don’t think it’s up to me,” he said simply. Their food arrived and he picked up his glass. It fizzed a little more than a Muggle drink might. The wizarding community in America was a lot less distinct than back home, but one universal was Lufting’s Magic Cola. I found it tickled my nose a bit too much.

“You could be in Gryffindor like your mum and dad,” I suggested.

“Eh,” was his only comment. I shrugged and turned back to Amelia, who was staring down her plate of borfin root fries. A very normal-looking sandwich sat beside them, but she stared at the bright green chunks of root with an odd look on her face. I pushed her curly brown hair out of her face.

“They taste just like french fries,” I told her, picking one up, “And if they’re very fresh, like these seem to be, they wiggle a little when you bite into them.” I bit off the end and made exaggerated yum noises. She took one and nibbled off the end.

“That tickles,” she giggled. Hermione smiled fondly and sipped her tea. Eleanor was sullenly poking at her meal with her fork, but it seemed to be disappearing at a satisfactory rate. Finally the children had cleaned enough food from their plates, and we all went out into the drizzle. Hermione had not brought an umbrella, and I gave her mine. Amelia raced ahead, followed at a sedate and watchful pace by her brother. His longer strides meant he caught her quickly, and he took her hand. Amelia gamboled around him in a circle, singing some strange little ditty about puddles.

“Look at that crowd,” Hermione said, as we neared the bookshop.

“I know you’ll want to help Chaz with his books,” I said. “I’ll take the girls and get out of your way.”

“Don’t you want to spend some time with him?” she asked.

“I will later,” I said, smiling. She still seemed hesitant.

“Do you remember when you were pregnant with Chaz, and we came down here together during the school rush?” She smiled fondly, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “We went into the book shop, even with all the crowds, and you pointed out a couple with their son. You said, ‘Can you believe someday that will be us?’”

Hermione pressed her lips together tightly, squeezing my arm.

“The girls will just get bored in there anyway,” I said. “I’ll take them for ice cream, and then we’ll probably visit the pet store.” I kissed her on the cheek and sped up to catch the girls.

Chaz turned over Amelia’s hand to me, and he and his mother disappeared into the bookstore.

“I don’t see why Chaz has to leave us and go to Hogwarts,” Eleanor said, pouting. Hermione had written to me some months before and told me she was worried that Eleanor had no magical abilities. To lose her brother, who had all but raised her in the early years, to a magic school was probably a little more than she could stomach.

“It’s time for him to start growing up, baby,” I said. She took my hand and I couldn’t help but feel a warm bloom. “Don’t you go rushing yourself trying to follow him, either. When my older brothers went off to school, I made myself crazy waiting for the day I could go too.”

“I didn’t know you had brothers,” Eleanor said suspiciously.

“Oh, my, yes,” I told her, lifting Amelia gently by the hand over a puddle. She squealed delightedly. I did a drying spell on them both and myself before we walked into the ice cream parlor. It was sometimes strange to me, using such complicated spells on an everyday basis. When I was a boy I despaired ever being good enough to use something like a drying spell.

“Really?”

“I had quite a lot of them, actually,” I said, queuing up behind a young witch holding a large lizard. “There was Bill, and Charlie, Percy, and the twins, Fred and George.”

“Were you the baby?” Amelia asked, looking up at me.

“No.” I hadn’t realized it would be so painful talking about them; there were tears in my eyes, and I wiped them quickly away. “I had a little baby sister, just like you, named Ginny.”

Eleanor looked far away for a moment. Her middle name was Ginevra, and I wondered if she would figure it out.

“Why don’t we know them?” Eleanor asked. “Did you guys have a fight or something?”

We moved forward to the counter and I let the girls order before I answered. The three of us went to a table and I licked my spoon for a moment.

“I’m sure you’ve had to learn about the war here in England,” I said. She nodded. “Well, your mother and I, and my whole family, fought in it.”

“Mommy’s parents didn’t,” Amelia said. “She said it’s cuz they’re Muggles.”

“Exactly right,” I said, poking her nose gently.

“And?” Eleanor asked. I took a deep breath.

“All of my brothers, my sister, and my parents were killed in a raid,” I finally said, swallowing hard. Technically not true; Percy was killed months before, by someone in the Ministry who had decided he was no longer useful. But they were too young to need the details. Too young to know about the tortured bodies we found littered around the Burrow when we returned there after a reconnaissance mission. Too young to hurt the way I did.

“Wow,” Eleanor breathed.

“Which is why I want you girls to remember that you love each other very much.” I looked each of them in the eye sternly and they nodded. “I fought with my brothers every day, you know, and sometimes I forgot how much I cared about them.”

We ate our ice cream in silence for a few minutes. Then Eleanor spoke up again.

“I heard you tell Mum we were going to the pet store,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Do they have mousies?” Amelia asked.

“I’m sure they do,” I told her, smiling. “It’s also where your mum found Crookshanks.”

The rain had paused briefly when we left the ice cream parlor. When we entered the pet store the old shopkeeper recognized me and smiled warmly. I waved back.

“Now, girls,” I warned, kneeling in front of them, “I want you to be careful not to touch any of the animals without asking me or the lady at the counter, okay?”

“Okay,” they chorused.

“Some of these beasties might nip off the end of your finger,” I said, putting Amelia’s hand near my mouth. She squealed and smiled and I released her hand. “Go look around.”

I chatted idly with the witch at the counter, looking at the cage of rats and feeling pangs of nostalgia.

“And he turned out not to be a rat at all, actually,” I was telling her, as the bell on the door rang. I turned and saw that Hermione and Chaz were sopping wet.

“Done already?” I asked.

“It’s a lot easier when you’re not dragging two Muggles or a whole pack of Weasleys around,” she said, taking off her jacket. Even with the umbrella she had gotten drenched. She dried herself and Chaz. The shopkeeper said hello and Hermione gave her a little report on Crookshanks, which she liked.

“Where are all your books?” I asked Chaz.

“We had them sent up to the room,” he said, looking at the large cage of owls.

“I see.”

“Mum said you might buy me a pet,” he said.

“She did, eh?” I asked, looking at her. She shrugged and took the girls out the back door, opening the umbrella and braving the wind and wet.

“See you back at the hotel,” Hermione called, and the door slammed shut behind them.

“Well then, my fine fellow. What would you like? An owl, perhaps?”

“Aren’t they kind of expensive?” Chaz asked.

“Don’t worry about that.” I knelt in front of him and admired his black school robes. They were new; there was a sense of pride in that. “Let’s splurge.”

“Can I look around for a while?”

“Sure.”

I kept a respectful distance as he perused the shelves of cages and tanks. My son was careful and observant, and I could almost hear the ticking as his mind worked over the various possibilities. Finally, he came back to me.

“Have you decided?” I asked.

“I don’t need an owl yet, do I? I could always use yours.”

“True,” I said, smiling. “Bugsy is still flapping strong.”

“Then, I think I’d like a rat.” Chaz screwed up his face. “If that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay,” I said. Scabbers had been a great pet before he turned out to not be a rat. I watched Chaz hold and examine each rat in the cage before selecting a sleek brown-and-white with curious eyes and twitchy whiskers. The witch at the counter praised his choice.

“What’s his name?” I asked. The rat’s fur was soft, and I cuddled him in my hands. His twitchy whiskers tickled my fingers and he nibbled gently on the end of my thumb.

“How about Ferdinand?”

“That’s a fine name for a rat,” I said, handing him back.

Chaz tucked the rat into his pocket, where it looked quite comfortable, and led me out into the street, where it is still pouring rain. He surprised me by taking me into Quality Quidditch. When he left England, Chaz wasn’t the least bit interested in the sport.

A couple of customers recognized me and I patiently signed a few autographs. I picked up a tin of broom polish and let Chaz flip through some books.

“You’ve got a birthday coming up, don’t you?” I asked.

“October the twenty-ninth,” he said absently, watching a Seeker race past the stands in a photo.

“Do you have a favorite team?”

“Do you?”

I laughed.

“I was always a Cannons fan.”

“Did you ever play for them?” He shook the hair out of his eyes. Hermione had mentioned that he’d been trying to grow it out in one of her letters. That’s a look I gave up some years ago, but Chaz was of course still experimenting with his hairstyle.

“You probably aren’t old enough to remember the day I got spotted by a recruiter,” I said. “But the Arrows found me at one of those neighborhood games I used to play.”

“You got to go to the World Cup with the Arrows,” he said, “But then you broke your shoulder.

“And quite a lot of the rest of me,” I said, smiling.

“Do they have any of your old jerseys?” he asked. I flinched a little; he said joisey now. Maybe the months at school will help regain what’s lost of his British accent, I thought. I looked over the rows of folded replica jerseys and had to laugh.

“How about I give you a real one? I’ve got a few around, you know. A real jersey with real dirt on it, and maybe even some blood.”

“Ew,” he said, wrinkling up his nose. He was smiling, though.

Chaz showed me his new textbooks with pride, and I noticed he had enticed Hermione into buying a few extras. He was so like her in that respect; they both had a strange and insatiable hunger for new knowledge. Chaz was so impossibly quiet and shy, though, which Hermione certainly had not been. I wasn’t sure where my son had gotten that quality.

Finally I had to say my goodbyes. They would be spending the night in Diagon Alley and then traveling to the Grangers’ house until Chaz had to meet his train. I stepped out of the fireplace back at school and dusted myself off a bit. The faculty lounge was quiet and dark.

My meeting was uneventful, and when we had finished I walked out to the covered walkway that faced the Quidditch pitch. There was a bare sliver of moon, and I put my wand out to look up at the stars. Off in the darkness, Harry’s tree was probably quivering slightly in the breeze. It was nights like this that we used to love to sneak around the castle. I leaned against the rail and sighed.

“Why does everything seem so much simpler in the dark?” I asked myself, looking into the black above me. The stars twinkled back at me. It wasn’t very helpful.

“It is an illusion.”

I started violently. I looked around; Malfoy was nowhere to be seen. After a moment, he stepped out of the darkness of the castle corridor.

“You bloody scared me,” I accused.

There was that simpering smirk. He walked to the rail beside me and took a deep breath.

“Were you wandering around the halls in the dark?” I asked. I realized he hadn’t had his wand out when he came through the doors.

“I don’t need much light anymore,” he murmured, crossing his arms over his chest.

I think he sensed how dumbfounded I was. His eyes were very cold in the silver light, and his hair glowed surreally.

“When I swore my allegiance to the Dark Lord, he began grooming me as an assassin.”

I’ve never heard anyone not a Death Eater refer to Voldemort as the Dark Lord.

“I was blind for almost a week after he cast the Illumens spell on me,” Malfoy said softly, eyes focused on some distant point across the field.

This strange, hollow creature was not the petty Draco Malfoy I had grown up with. That boy was a two-bit bully, cruel and unsophisticated. I had never been afraid of him in school; now I felt a clutch of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I’d seen the list of deaths attributed to this man.

Malfoy turned and walked away from me, and I realized his footfalls were completely silent.

“I have something to give you tomorrow,” he said, his voice a whisper in the wind. “I found it today as I unpacked my things.”

“What is it?” I asked, hesitant.

“Something my father took from your sister. He liked to keep trophies,” Malfoy murmured, walking into the castle and disappearing once more into the darkness. I shuddered.

“Your sister had a lot of fight in her,” Lucius Malfoy said, leering. “It took two of my men to hold her down while I had my way with her.” He spat on my chest; the guards took him by the arms and dragged him towards the manacles in the center of the room.

“You’re weak, Malfoy,” I told him. “You need to see the look on my face to make it real for you, don’t you?”

He snarled.

“You Weasleys are all the same,” he growled, fighting against the hands that held him. “You think you’re better than everyone else, but you’re just filthy Muggle-loving traitors!”

“Get this over with,” Seamus said, standing firmly beside me. I felt him gently touch my elbow, where Malfoy couldn’t see, and I silently thanked him.

“Lucius Malfoy, you have been condemned to death by Dementor’s kiss.”

I lit my wand and walked back to my quarters.

My dreams that night were filled with my sister’s screams.