Ah, going away parties. Vague recollections of posing for disgraceful photographs and the distinct urge to take to my bath and wash away the shame. With bubbles!

This is the last post brought to you from my green homeland, for tomorrow I go away, and I get to read Thrones of Jade on the plane! I've been saving it. I fear I will stumble weeping into penelope_z's arms pathetically inquiring why bad things happen to good dragons.

I bid you adieu, my dears. I am off to the bubble bath and then two more parties tonight. I may not return for some time.



Chapter Seventeen

Mr Weasley had received an anonymous Owl asking him if he knew Malfoy’s whereabouts.

“Someone’s been talking,” Mr Weasley said to Harry. “I don’t know who the Owl was from. Could’ve been someone in the Ministry. Could have been the Death Eaters. It was all right before Lucius Malfoy was back in favour, but now people are talking about the parents, and starting to remember there’s a son.”

“I can take him away,” Harry said. “I won’t put all of you in danger.”

“I’d be delighted to see the back of him, Harry, to be frank with you,” Mr Weasley said tiredly. “But we all discussed it. Molly’s very set on keeping him, at least until he’s a little – and Charlie and Ginny are, too. Besides, don’t worry too much about danger. We have you in the place, don’t we?”

Harry thought it was meant to be a joke, but it fell a little flat. “I’d go, too,” he said quietly.

“Harry, I didn’t mean that!” Mr Weasley looked extremely harassed. “You’re always welcome here, you know that, and besides – Ron would go with you. His mother and I want to keep him under our eye. Everybody stays for now. I just thought you should know.”

Malfoy came down the stairs at that point drying his hair with a towel, which gave his hair the general shape and appearance of tinsel that kittens had been playing in. Harry grinned at the sight of him, but Malfoy looked very serious.

“What should we know?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Mr Weasley said in that quick way he spoke to Malfoy now, as if he was afraid he might slip up and say something unkind if he did not get the words out fast.

He walked out and Malfoy looked after him with an odd expression. It occurred to Harry that what Mr Weasley had to say mightn’t have come as much of a surprise to Malfoy.

Harry hadn’t thought much about the whole Cabinet incident when it was going on, since the fact Death Eaters were in Hogwarts and Malfoy was working for Voldemort had been the things occupying his mind. He remembered now, though, how Dumbledore had praised him: how Malfoy, unsupported by the side he had chosen, under the eye of the only man Voldemort ever feared, had come up with his plan and worked to accomplish it.

Malfoy was already talking about Grimmauld Place. Malfoy was already planning.

Harry was going to talk to Malfoy about said plans later that night, but he found Charlie already in the room sending last-minute Owls about the importing of the Norwegian Ridgeback into the country, and Malfoy curled up in his blankets like a damp kitten.

“Please bore me to sleep, Charles,” were the first words Harry heard through the half-open door.

Charlie said, grave and a little tender: “The Spotted Four-Wing dragon is bred as a curiosity, and is no good for practical purposes. Rimbaud Bones bred it originally as a racing dragon, and thought to make his fortune when a litter of four-wing babies were produced, but the breed was found to have so few brains that the four wings have an unfortunate tendency to get tangled up in flight.”

Malfoy smiled and tucked his cheek against his hand, eyes falling closed.

Harry left them, and went downstairs. He was still trying to turn matters over in his head properly – what they hoped would be the destruction of the seal tomorrow, where they should look for the Hufflepuff Cup, when Malfoy thought he’d be ready to face down Nagini. And then on top of that there was this new, odd thing. It had happened so suddenly, and yet – he’d promised Narcissa a while ago, and he didn’t think he would mean to keep the promise the way he did, before the Pensieve or the handshake or Malfoy being stunned about winning a race. Only here was the promise, and here was the problem: how to make Malfoy happy.

The answer came with a knock on the door, and Harry opening the door on the chain to see a wild night, rain silver against the black sky, and the black glaring eyes of Professor Snape.

For a moment he just wanted to close the door, but he opened it.

“Potter,” Snape said with a sneer. His thin face looked almost gaunt now, and the sneer reminded Harry of a skull, his lips skinning back to show violently yellow teeth. He limped into the hall.

He limped, and in spite of the fact Harry was there and so he was sure Professor Snape was trying to look as strong as he could, he winced with every step. He was reminded of Lupin telling them how Snape had protested Narcissa’s execution, and got the Cruciatus for his pains, again and again. He wondered how much it had cost Snape to get away now.

Snape kept staring at him, and Harry realised he did not intend to ask for Malfoy. He might have come crawling here from Voldemort’s stronghold in order to see him, but he was too bitter and too proud even to make a simple request addressed to Harry Potter.

Harry hated him. He always had. And he’d spoken for Snape, already: he owed him nothing. But there was this new responsibility to think of.

“I’ll get Malfoy,” he said, between his teeth, as Snape stared balefully and silently at him. “And you should – go sit down in the kitchen.”

He bounded up the steps before he had to see Snape’s no doubt hateful reaction to his words, and promised himself a reward. Two flights of steps and then he opened Malfoy’s door.

Charlie broke off mid-sentence, and Malfoy’s eyes flew open.

“Malfoy,” Harry burst out. “Snape’s here. He’s here!”

He got his reward. Malfoy’s whole face was illuminated with a sudden wild light. He sprang up from his bed, threw his covers on the floor and ran from the room without saying a word to either of them.

Harry went to warn everyone not to disturb them in the kitchen. Then he thought it over, and wondered if Snape was going to be exactly comforting. He thought he might just check.

He put on his Invisibility Cloak and he went and pushed the kitchen door open. Malfoy was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his arms, and he said as Harry looked, in a fierce muffled sort of way: “Go on.”

“I could not walk by then,” Snape said precisely, as if pity did not occur to him. “I lay on the ground and watched them. She wept and she knelt and she begged and she performed every trick she could think of, to get them to spare her. She would have lived, if she possibly could have. I do not want you to think she ever gave up.”

Harry did not see why Snape was telling Malfoy awful things about his dead mother. But Malfoy lifted his wet face and looked almost uplifted.

He remembered the screams the Dementors had brought back for him. His mother had begged, too. Narcissa Malfoy had not wanted to leave her son.

Besides – he remembered the cold practical look her beautiful face used to wear. She would have thought she could be more use alive than dead. She would have knelt. She would have promised anything.

Harry didn’t know what he thought of that.

“When she saw it was no use, she gave it up,” Snape said. “She stood and took the Curse full in the chest, looking directly at your father’s eyes until she died. She did not betray my position. She did not look at me. She passed no message on to you. She endangered nobody for the sake of sentiment, she stood alone and took the punishment alone. She claimed to the last that she had no idea where you were, and she claimed to the last that she was loyal to the Dark Lord, and that she would have betrayed you if she did know. There was no last stand. There was no open defiance.” His pitiless voice grew no warmer as he said: “Your mother was a very wonderful woman. Wonderful. She had them all fooled.”

Malfoy’s shoulders gave a convulsive shudder.

Snape’s hand hovered over his shoulders but did not land. He had dragged himself all this way, still racked with pain, to see this boy and tell him how his mother had died, and now he was here he was not able to give him the slightest sign of tenderness.

It felt very strange, for a moment, to pity Snape.

“If you want me,” Snape went on in his dry hard voice, which gave no sign that he had ever lifted a hand and almost touched Malfoy’s shoulder, “to tell you how your father took it-”

Malfoy lifted his face again, and did not look even slightly uplifted. He looked insulted.

“Him!” he said, like a cat spitting. “No. I don’t want to hear anything about him.”

“Draco-” Snape began.

“He did it, didn’t he?” Malfoy demanded. “That’s all I need to know.”

His whole face quivered with fury and despair, moving like water which could utterly change its face as it moved.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said with a painful effort, his cheeks going brilliant pink. “I’ll pull myself together. I have things to say to you – real things. Serious things.”

He got up and banged out of the room, going for the Weasleys’ bathroom, almost barging into Harry on his way and never being aware of Snape’s hovering hand on his shoulder. Harry stepped away when Malfoy came out, and then took a moment to think. As a result, he took off his cloak and stepped into the kitchen.

“Making a cup of tea,” he said, smiling but not looking in Snape’s direction. “You know,” he said, clattering about with cups and sugar tongs. “Malfoy thinks a lot of you. I’m sure I don’t know why. It wouldn’t kill you to – be a little kind to him.”

He chanced a look at Snape, who was standing possessively clasping the back of the chair where Malfoy had sat. Snape gave him a look that was pure poison.

“Your concern for Mr Malfoy is deeply touching,” he said. “Doubtless you were displaying your tender care for his wellbeing when you slit him open from his throat to his gut, and left him bleeding out on a bathroom floor.”

Harry dropped the sugar. Tongs, metal bowl and spilled sugar all fell at his feet.

“Professor Snape,” Malfoy said, his voice very quiet. “Don’t.”

He stood in the doorway, his face damp, and looked steadily at the teacher he most admired though the colour in his cheeks was rising fast. Harry remembered what he had seen earlier that night: that one of Malfoy’s instincts was to offer protection.

“Potter,” Malfoy went on, still quiet. “Go.”

Harry went because it was costing Malfoy something to stand there and speak for him against Professor Snape, and he did not want Malfoy to pay any more. He went up the stairs and he clenched the shimmering material of the Cloak in his fists. Malfoy was totally incomprehensible so often, and now Harry understood and wished he didn’t: he didn’t want to be protected, unless he could protect in his turn.

If he wanted to do that, and he did, then he needed to know more. He went back downstairs, and he found Malfoy standing up and arguing with Snape.

“Don’t tell me he pitied me,” Malfoy was saying about someone. “Don’t tell me he valued my life over the life of Katie Bell or Ron Weasley. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he felt it, and I don’t believe anything he felt ever affected what he did. He never liked me. He never pitied me. He never dropped a kind word to me or anyone in my house until he had a use for me.”

“He was a remarkable man!” Snape said, his voice ringing.

“Oh, he must have been,” Malfoy said. “You loved him. Potter loved him. I’ve never seen you two agree on anything else. But I didn’t love him, and all I want to know about him now is: am I right? Did he have the use for me I think he did?”

Snape spoke between his teeth, and answered: “Yes.”

Malfoy looked at him with clear pleading eyes. Harry’d always thought that Snape and Malfoy got along well because they were, in essentials, alike: loathsome and malicious. He’d dismissed them, as a pair, easily enough. Now as he looked at them it struck him how different they were, Snape dark and lonely and reminiscent of a hungry, ragged vulture, and Malfoy standing there with his vivid pallor.

Malfoy had never seen fifteen year old Snape, but Harry had. It struck him that greasy, lurking Severus Snape would have wanted very badly to be a pureblood, to be popular, to have charisma to draw people to his side, and that it must have meant a lot to Snape even now he was past wanting those things, to be admired by someone like that.

“Will you help me?” Malfoy asked beseechingly.

“I wish to God you would keep out of this!” Snape said. “You’re wearing the Horcrux. I have a plan for you. You have a part to play, and until then you could be completely safe. That’s what she would have wanted. Isn’t that enough for you?”

Malfoy said: “No. Not any more. Will you help me?”

Snape answered hoarsely: “Yes.”

Malfoy closed his eyes and said, “Thank you very much, Professor Snape. Will you-” he stopped and looked awkward now. “Will you sit down now, sir, and have – a cup of tea or something? You’re not – you don’t look well.”

“No, Draco, I cannot stay in order to regale myself with the Weasleys’ tea,” Snape said, dryly. “Every moment here is another moment of danger.”

“Then go,” Malfoy said at once. “Do you think I want someone else to die for me?”

Snape nodded, and began painfully to limp his way out of the Burrow. Malfoy stood and looked at the place where he’d been.

“Thank you for coming, Professor,” he said in a bleak sort of way.

Snape glanced at him, nodded and went to the door. Not by word or look did he betray the feeling that had lifted his hand and kept it hovering over Malfoy’s shoulder. Malfoy stood with his back turned until Snape’s shuffling, halting footsteps on the crazy paving outside faded into silence.

Harry waited a decent amount of time until he could go in and clear up the sugar.

“Potter,” Malfoy said in an odd voice. “You talked to Blaise, earlier.”

Harry wanted to say that Malfoy had enough on his plate without worrying about some crush on some horrible smirking Slytherin, but he just nodded.

Malfoy’s face was pinched when he asked: “Did he mention me?”

“He said,” Harry said reluctantly, “that you were likely to find more favour with the other side these days.”

He expected Malfoy to look disappointed, or worried, or upset. Something like that – he didn’t see why so many people tortured themselves about romance and things, when there were so many more important things to deal with.

Malfoy smiled, and said: “That’s what I thought.”

*

The next day was the day set for destroying the Horcrux.

Ron and Hermione were coming, of course, and Charlie was needed. Ginny had demanded permission to come too, and Harry had asked Malfoy.

“No,” Malfoy said, sitting poring over some papers that he guarded jealously with one arm whenever people approached. “No, I can be more useful here. Good luck, Charles. Hurry back, Potter.”

The day at was cold but the sky was clear, the conditions as good as they were likely to get in early October. They all walked towards the dragons’ camp, set where it had been in the Hogwarts grounds in the time of the Triwizard Tournament, and felt as optimistic as they could.

Ginny had her hand tucked in the crook of Charlie’s elbow. Ron and Hermione walked in step together. Harry felt a little apart from the rest, with the weight of that little silver seal in his pocket.

They were met by the other dragon keepers, spare, scarred and leather-clad people who looked at them with cheerful inquiry and clapped Charlie on the back, welcoming him as one of their own.

“Chosen lad, aren’t you?” asked a woman with an eyepatch, as their group all went into the copse.

“Well,” Harry said. “Yes.”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” she went on comfortably. “Charlie can keep any beast he likes in check. He’s our little prodigy.”

“You’re making me blush, Melisande,” Charlie called over.

“He’s got a grip like iron and thighs that could crack coconuts,” Melisande went on blithely.

“Not in front of my baby sister I don’t,” Charlie said.

“Even our bad-tempered little one won’t be much of a problem.”

Harry wished he shared Melisande’s confidence, but just then three dragonkeepers brought out an enormous black animal. He towered above them all, chains binding him in all their hands, and it looked as if it would be about as much good chaining a castle. Harry stared up into fiery nostrils, like the turrets of a castle set on fire, flames licking out through the windows.

Hermione quavered: “N-Norbert?”

“Is that what you called him?” Melisande inquired. “We call him Bugger.”

“He’s changed a bit since we saw him last,” Harry observed weakly.

Charlie put down Ginny’s little hand, and strode over to the massive, heaving bulk of Norbert. He looked approximately the size of pea beside him, as he took the reins of Norbert’s harness in two strong hands.

Holding the dragon’s harness seemed to light up his whole face. He wrapped the reins with one swift motion around his forearm, and then he called out in a strong joyous voice.

“Let him fly, boys!”

The dragonkeepers let go of Norbert’s chains and he shot upwards at once, like an enormous rocket into the sky. Charlie took out his wand, spelled himself firm on the ground, and when the reins tautened Charlie pulled on the harness, cords standing out in the muscles of his arms. Charlie grunted with the effort, and every line of the harness on Norbert’s body quivered. Norbert’s flanks heaved.

Then he plummeted back down to earth. Charlie laughed as Norbert hit the earth, lightly for such a huge beast, and leaped sideways fast as lightning when Norbert slammed his heavy tail against the ground.

There was a storm of clapping from the other keepers.

“We’ve missed you, Charlie boy!” yelled Melisande. “Mind you, it was worth coming back to get these modifications on the dragon harness. The kid who helped you with that must be quite something.”

Charlie, grinning and feeding a sulking Norbert jerky as big as his arm, grinned even wider and said: “He is.”

“Nice to hear about a wizard who can do something practical for a change,” Melisande said. “You’re a bit like helpless babies, sometimes.”

“I beg your pardon?” Hermione asked.

“Oh, I’m not denying the burn salve comes in handy,” Melisande went on. “I’m a Squib, myself.”

“And you work with dragons?” Hermione asked faintly. “Big huge enormous – those dragons there?”

“Thinking I might get myself burned up or tossed off?” Melisande grinned. “Nah. It’s all luck, with dragons. Don’t have to be magical. You’ve got to be lucky. And you’ve got to be good.” She clapped Harry on the back and Harry almost fell over. “Now it’s your turn,” she said. “Don’t worry. Charlie’s the best.”

Charlie grabbed a wing and hauled himself up on a haunch, running along a dragon’s back as big as a wall. Harry got on his Firebolt and kicked off.

He mounted up, then turned spinning in the clear cold air, and watched the dragon spread its wings out like two great banners from a castle, and launch all that scaly majestic mass out into the sky. His wings beat, huge and black, blocking out the sun, and Harry hovered in midair, squinting to make out the small dark shape of Charlie against the scales.

Norbert’s eyes as he flew directly at Harry were enormous slabs of quivering jet: his nostrils were tunnels, and through his half-open mouth his great teeth glittered.

“Harry, now!”

Harry grasped the seal of Gryffindor in his fist, held it tight against his palm for a minute, and then threw it up into the air as hard as he could.

The seal flew up, glittering in the cold sunlight, as if it could never fall.

It never did fall. Charlie did something with the harness that infuriated Norbert, and he opened his mouth and let out a fierce jet of fire, a moving crackling surge that seemed to consume half the sky. Harry flew his broom down as fast as he could, racing the heat, and he still felt the hairs on the back of his neck scorching.

In spite of that, he looked up, and saw the tiny silver glint of the seal swallowed up in red fire. By the time the sky was clear of everything but ashes, the seal was gone.

Harry circled lightly down for the last few feet, and when he landed on the ground he was still looking up at the gently drifting ashes.

“Two down,” he said out loud.

Two down, and one more safe at the Burrow, and a plan to kill another. They were making some progress.

Ron reached him first, and pummelled him enthusiastically on the back. Hermione flew at him, enveloping him in the cloud of her hair, and then let him go almost immediately so Ginny could take his place.

Then Norbert came crashing down to earth, with Charlie cheerfully swearing and using endearments by turns. The other dragonkeepers rushed to help him and clap him on the back, and then somehow Charlie sprang off the dragon and their two groups had become one hysterical happy gang. Harry was pretty sure Melisande kissed him.

Norbert had finally come in useful.

They all went down to the Hog’s Head, and Melisande bought a round of Firewhiskies. Harry waved his away, not wanting to get into kissing Pansy Parkinson for the war effort in front of Ginny. They all sat around a little table and talked a great deal about very little. Ron and Hermione were on either side of Harry, Ron making jokes and Hermione earnestly talking about the scientific nature of dragonfire and how they had achieved success. Ginny sat on a stool beside Charlie and grinned over at Harry and looked pretty as a picture.

It was all a good time, until he remembered Malfoy saying, Hurry back. He’d addressed Harry specifically. It sounded, now Harry was calm and taking the cunning Slytherin mindset into account, like a message.

Part of the understanding that they had now, as Harry saw it, was that if Malfoy wanted him Harry had to go to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I have an – errand.”

Ron and Hermione caught the tone of his voice, and did not question him. Ginny looked at him with bewilderment and some distress, and he stooped and awkwardly kissed her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, for her ears alone. “I’m sorry – you look nice today.”

She looked nice most days, but these days he was too busy to think about things like that. Today he’d done enough so he could, and he was enjoying it, looking at her, being with his friends – but he’d made a promise.

He left for the Burrow, and he saw that he'd been right to come when Malfoy met him at the door and said breathlessly, "Come on, before they all get back. You promised to help me."

"I did," Harry said warily.

"Then I want you to loan me a t-shirt," Malfoy told him.

"I was expecting something a little more dramatic," Harry said, but they went upstairs and Malfoy came into Harry and Ron's room, making a dreadful face at the mess on the floor. Harry opened the wardrobe to find something Mrs Weasley had ironed, since he had a feeling Malfoy would be horrified if Harry offered him something off the clothes heap on the chair.

He doubtfully offered him a white t-shirt, hoping that Malfoy would then explain what part a shirt had to play in his fiendish plots.

Malfoy undid his own shirt without comment - thin, pale, strong shoulders, glittering necklace, raised scar - and pulled the t-shirt on. He emerged looking ruffled and more determined than ever.

"Now," he said. "I want you to take me to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. And once we're there - I want you to trust me. Can you do that, Potter?"

Harry answered: "I can try."

They Apparated to Grimmauld Place, and Harry told Malfoy how to find Number Twelve. Number Twelve burst softly into existence as Malfoy stared.

Malfoy tilted his head at the tall stone steps, and did not comment on the shabby flaking black paint of the door. He did look rather appreciatively at the twisted serpent doorknocker.

Malfoy strode up the steps, seized the knocker, rapped imperiously on the door and said, "We're here to see the Order of the Phoenix."

The great door creaked open a chink, and a voice from the gloom beyond said peevishly, "Well, you can't. They're all in a meeting. Go away."

And the door began to creak shut.

Harry caught Malfoy's elbow and said, "That's all right. We'll break a window."

Malfoy looked utterly affronted. "We will not!"

"Why not?" Harry asked. "It's my house."

"It's the principle of the thing," Malfoy informed him, and rapped on the door more imperiously than ever.

The voice behind the door said: "I told you-"

"What's your name, man?" demanded Malfoy, and reminded Harry of nothing so much as Lucius Malfoy talking to Mr Borgin in his shop.

The voice sounded somewhat taken-aback. "Cyril Prenderghast. I'm the doorkeeper for the Order of the-"

"Do you know who we are?" Malfoy swept on, sounding on the verge of an aristocratic tantrum. "This happens to be my ancestral home. This happens to be his actual home. How dare you not let us in!"

Cyril the doorkeeper said uncertainly, "Well-"

"Besides which," Malfoy added crossly, as if he'd just remembered: "this is the Chosen One. Standing out here in the rain. D'you want to take responsibility for that? What if all the Chosen washes off?"

Harry made an inquiring face at Malfoy, but Malfoy was too busy being a lunatic to respond.

Malfoy rapped on the door a third time, apparently just to make his point. "Do you want to be reported?" he demanded, and did not mention to whom he would be making this report.

Cyril Prenderghast, who turned out to be a small wizard with eyes that looked like they were constantly peering over walls or through chinks, opened the door.

"Or we could do it your way," Harry allowed.

"Please sign your names in the ledger, then," he said in a plaintive tone.

Malfoy grabbed the large, dusty book Cyril was holding and tucked it under his arm. "We'll announce ourselves," he said.

“I didn’t say anything about announcing-”

Malfoy swept past him, Harry walking fast to keep at his side. He saw Malfoy was breathing fast and was a bit worried he was about to have a panic attack.

“You knew they were having a meeting,” he said in a low voice.

“I eavesdropped on Mr Weasley,” Malfoy answered, his voice sounding a little tight. “And I knew Charlie wouldn’t be here.”

“What,” Harry said. “What are you going to do?”

Malfoy tried to smile at him, but the smile quivered and failed on his lips. “You’ll see. You’re going to help me?”

Harry reached out, awkwardly, and hit Malfoy twice, in rapid succession and too hard, on his shoulder. Malfoy managed to hold onto his smile more firmly.

Then Malfoy crashed through the doors into the room which Harry and his friends had spied on with Extendable Ears more than two years ago. As the Order of the Phoenix turned and stared he made quite sure of their attention by taking the ledger from under his arm and hurling it on the table. It slid down the smooth oak and almost hit Kingsley Shacklebolt in the chest.

Malfoy stood at the end of the table, looked around at them all with a cold eye and demanded: “Do you know who I am?”

Shacklebolt stared at the ledger in front of him, then said in a deep, calm voice: “Certainly. You’re Draco Malfoy, the young Slytherin who let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. And you’re a fugitive from justice.”

“That’s right,” Malfoy said. He was still breathing hard, but there was colour in his cheeks now, his eyes were glittering, and he looked as if he was almost enjoying himself, or at least caught up enough in the reckless moment not to care whether he was afraid. “Ask me why you’re not going to turn me in.”

“Because you have the Horcrux!” Mr Weasley said hotly.

Malfoy flicked the chain out from under the collar of Harry’s t-shirt with a small smile, and let the heavy gold locket slide down the thin material of the shirt until it hung suspended around his neck, the snake of Slytherin carved there for all to see.

“So what?” Malfoy asked. “You can lock me up in prison, you can watch me night and day. You can turn me in and keep the Horcrux quite safe. The Ministry would thank you for it. You’re not going to leave me loose because of the Horcrux. You’re going to keep me because you have a use for me.”

“Oh, lad,” Mad-Eye Moody sneered from the left hand side of the table. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t you?” Malfoy inquired, tilting his head towards Moody. “Dumbledore thought so.”

Mad-Eye Moody climbed heavily to his feet and almost roared. “Don’t you dare talk about him!”

“Let Malfoy finish,” said Harry.

“Potter,” Mad-Eye said, bristling. “This scum is the reason Death Eaters, for the first time, got into Hogwarts! He betrayed his school. If it wasn’t for him, Dumbledore could have died with some dignity, if he had to die!”

“Sit down,” Harry said. “Shut up. And listen to him.”

He pushed Mad-Eye with both hands and, perhaps out of pure astonishment, Moody fell backwards into his chair.

“Thank you, Potter,” Malfoy said. “He’s right, you know,” he went on to Moody. “You really should listen to me. You’re seriously under-rating me. You don’t know half what I’ve done.

“I sent a cursed necklace into Hogwarts, and it caught a girl called Katie Bell. I sent a bottle of poison to a teacher, and it almost killed Ron Weasley. Either of them could have died. It would have been my fault. And all the time, Dumbledore knew – Dumbledore knew - I was responsible. He kept me in the school. He did not tell me he knew. He let me go on with my plans, with the proof before him, with first Bell and then Weasley before him showing him that if he let me go on, someone innocent might be killed.”

Mr Weasley had gone first red, and then white. “If you’ve come to speak evil of Dumbledore-”

“No,” Malfoy said, leaning forward with his arms folded. “I’m not. He was very clever. He had a reason for everything he did. I let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. I met Dumbledore on top of the tower – and I meant to kill him. He offered me mercy. He offered me protection for myself and my – and my mother. He told me he had kept me at school so I could be safe from the Dark Lord, and could make my choice.”

“He was a great man,” Shacklebolt said in his even way. “I am afraid I do not have his compassion.”

Malfoy laughed in his face. “Compassion,” he said. “Why should he feel more compassion for me than he did for Ron Weasley? Why should he pity the guilty enough to risk the lives of innocent people? It’s monstrous. It’s unfair. It makes no sense. He didn’t act out of compassion. He acted to win a war – to win a weapon for the war. He wanted me spared, he wanted my loyalty, because he had a use for me. It’s the only reason that makes any sense!”

“What use,” Mad-Eye Moody asked, his scarred lip curling. “What possible use could Albus Dumbledore have had for a creature like you?”

Malfoy laughed again, a wild little laugh, as if he was almost out of control, but not quite.

“What use did he have for Severus Snape?” he asked.

There was stillness, and in the encouraging silence Malfoy pursued his point.

“Do you know how hard a spy is to find?” he went on. “Not just any spy. Not someone who could go in by virtue of what he is, like Lupin. A Death Eater. If you carry the Dark Mark, you’re trusted. When he puts the Dark Mark on you, he can see into your mind. You have to mean it, when you take it. You have to promise to be his body and soul. Not one of you could do it. Not one of you could believe it. And having believed it enough to sign away your freedom, to have your body branded with your master’s name, who could change their mind enough to serve another master?”

Malfoy lifted his left forearm, held it above his head like a trophy so they could all see, and as Harry saw the black snake and skull in the light he realised why Malfoy had wanted to borrow a short-sleeved shirt. The Order drew in its breath at the sight of the mark, in horror or simply in outrage, but in silence. Malfoy stood panting and triumphant as he looked and them and said:

“There’s been only one person in thirty years. There’s only been Snape.”

He had them now, caught serious as the older students had been caught laughing when Malfoy was young and acting out for them.

“And even Snape,” Malfoy said, his mouth twisting. “He’s not a pureblood. All the Dark Lord’s favourites are purebloods, because he wants so badly to be one. My Aunt Bella is his pet. My father has just proved his loyalty beyond question and been taken back into favour. I have a pureblood friend, a new Death Eater, who sent me a message that I would be taken back into the fold. I have connections Snape couldn’t make. I have connections I was born into.

“Dumbledore wanted a new spy. If Snape was ever caught you would be lost. Dumbledore wanted to recruit me. He kept me in the school because he knew I could be very, very useful. And I will be.”

“And we’re going to trust you, just like that?” Mad-Eye scoffed. “Let you walk back to Voldemort with his trinket around your neck? You’d be like a dog bringing back a bone! You’re the image of Lucius Malfoy.”

“Funny,” Malfoy returned. “You’re the image of a Death Eater who tortured me when I was fourteen years old. Does that make you the same person?”

It was Hestia Jones who spoke next, her small voice clear. Harry looked at her neat, shining black hair and remembered that she had seemed to admire Snape: she did not have such an unfriendly look about her. She simply looked practical.

“Your point is taken, Mr. Malfoy. Leaving aside your father’s record, all the same – I cannot say yours inspires confidence. You admit you swore yourself to You-Know-Who. You say you almost killed two people.”

“Snape will speak for me,” Malfoy said. “And-”

“I will, too,” said Harry, and looked around the room. “If anyone’s interested in what I have to say,” he said lightly, into the ensuing quiet.

Kingsley Shacklebolt, sitting like a judge at the top of the table, spread both his hands and delivered his judgement.

“What you say may well be true. What you offer could be very valuable,” he said, in his gravelly voice. “But by your own showing, even though Dumbledore knew what you were up to, you got the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. You seem to be a young man of great resource, Mr. Malfoy. And it has all been used for the other side. You were sly enough once. Can you give me – not a witness – but a single reason why we should trust you now?”

The room which held the Order of the Phoenix seemed to hold its breath. Malfoy, playing his part to the hilt, did not hesitate for a moment.

“I can,” he said. “You can trust me because you will be paying me for my services. Dumbledore would have kept my mother safe. That’s what he would have used to insure my obedience. None of you can reach my mother now. I have a new price.”

“I might have known it,” Mad-Eye growled, and across the board Harry saw people’s faces change in agreement with him. “Take the boy out of the Death Eaters, but you can’t take the Death Eaters out of the boy. We’re not the side you want. We’re not the sort who offers fame and riches and eternal life. Those are Voldemort’s promises. None of us fight to be great, to be placed above the others. That’s the kind of dirty ambition you see all on the other side.”

Malfoy’s face changed, went livid for a moment, and Harry wondered why and then remembered the way Malfoy had talked on the train to Hogwarts in sixth year, saw that Malfoy knew he’d had those ambitions, and knew what had come of them.

“All on the other side?” Harry asked, lifting his voice to distract attention from Malfoy. “You wish. I’m not saying Umbridge was one of us, but she wasn’t working for Voldemort either.”

When he looked back at Malfoy, Malfoy had recovered himself.

“Anyway,” he said in a quiet voice. “That isn’t the sort of price I meant. That isn’t what I want at all.”

“Mr Malfoy,” Shacklebolt said. “May I ask, then, what you do want?”

Malfoy leaned forward, his right hand on the table with his left still hanging, the Dark Mark there to be glimpsed by anyone who cared to look. The Horcrux was still out and glittering. Malfoy’s voice was deadly soft, and cold.

“I want Lucius Malfoy,” said Draco Malfoy. “And if you can’t deliver him to me whole, I want his head on a plate!”