"He..." Harry gasped, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth. So strange to feel the shock convulsing first one muscle and then another. He'd known for five years that Draco Malfoy was going to kill somebody someday; the other boy had a vicious streak, Harry had told himself, more times to count. It was just a matter of time.
But the Draco who had become his brother... well, he was still Draco, complete with all the faults and flaws his last name implied, but for all that, he was different, too. The map, after all, didn't tell the whole story, did it? Harry moved the ice to a new position on his eye as he tried to reason out the truth.
"Oh.... God... it... do you think it could possibly have been, er, self-defence?" he choked out, looking to his father for reassurance.
Snape just stared back, his eyes black and hard, challenging Harry to answer that for himself.
Which the boy did. "But... why would Draco need to push her out? Even if she was... attacking him, he could handle it without it coming to that. And... I can't think he was startled or something by an attack from behind..." Harry's gaze frantically scanned the map, this time hoping to see someone else... someone else for the Aurors to arrest. "Oh, no. There's nobody else there..."
Feeling like he was grasping at straws, Harry murmured, "Maybe it was some kind of accident?"
A derisive glance, that time. "Did your fool of a brother also dismantle my wards by accident?"
Harry frowned at that. "But Dad... how could he dismantle your wards at all?"
"Draco intuits magic. Quite skilfully, at times."
"I know, but still... your wards?"
The Potions Master scowled down at the map. "Invincibility is a myth. Whatever can be warded can be unwarded."
"Imperius," Harry said, that time his tone more definite as he moved the ice pack to let his eye rest, as Snape had said. "That's it, right? Somebody cursed him while he was in the closet, or something, and they're making him do this--"
"Draco could not dismantle my wards while under Imperius," Snape scowled. "Forging a gap through them would require highly complex magic and a fair dose of intuition. You'll note that Darswaithe was given a portkey for that very reason, not that he had any intuition to begin with."
"Pansy, then--"
"Miss Parkinson unwarded the windows herself so that she might be thrown outside?" A harsh noise resounded through the Potions Master's teeth. "Or did she do it under Imperius? Stop grasping at straws and look at what is right before your face!"
Harry did.
Draco's dot was moving now, backing slowly away from the windows. Had the Slytherin boy lingered so long because he was restoring the wards he'd somehow managed to take down? Erasing the evidence that might point to him, obscuring his magical signature? Harry's heart dropped somewhere into the region of his toes, and throbbed there painfully. It was clear enough what had happened up in the Owlery, but that didn't mean Harry understood it.
"He... but why would he kill Pansy? He was excited to get the letter, thought she might be... uh, falling for him again."
"Perhaps he discovered that her renewed interest in him was nothing but a ruse to get him from the rooms."
Impulse control, thought Harry, remembering the way Draco had kicked Dubby. No doubt about it; Draco had a violent side. The last time he'd been angry with Pansy he'd almost killed her, and this time... Harry looked at the place where Pansy's dot had been, and felt positively nauseous. Pansy had never been his favourite person, of course, but to think that she was dead, just like that?
Draco had apparently finished whatever needed doing in the Owlery. His dot began moving, heading across the expanse of the room and then creeping down the stairs. He moved slowly, as though aware that he could be heard if not seen. Some other students were climbing the stairs now; Draco stopped moving completely and flattened himself against the wall to let them pass.
Harry leaned over closer, peering with one eye at the map Snape was holding. A Ravenclaw, a couple of Hufflepuffs, and then the names Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger trailing up the Owlery stairs. To Harry's horror, the two Gryffindors actually stopped right alongside Draco, as though they could smell him... but then they moved on, upwards toward the Owlery, where Harry had said Draco would be. How could a dot look so angry? But Ron's did; it was moving in a jerky manner, as though Ron were pounding up the stairs, and Hermione's wasn't much better. Draco's dot, in contrast, seemed calm and collected, moving slowly but surely.
What if Ron and Hermione had sensed him strongly enough to pull off the invisibility cloak, exposing his presence there for all to see? Harry suddenly felt ill. "Shouldn't we go bring him back, now?"
Snape's mouth was a straight line, his angry gaze not leaving the map for an instant as it tracked Draco's progress. "I thought you understood. Why do you think I'm merely watching? I'm loath to startle him when he's trying to hide beneath that cloak. It might publicise the fact that he's not where he ought to be."
So they were going to let Draco come to them... That made sense in the circumstances. Draco would be all right; he did have the cloak, after all. Still, Harry felt sicker than ever as he nodded, because by then, his father's plan was perfectly clear.
They were setting up an alibi.
They were going to claim that Draco had never left the dungeons, that he'd been with Harry the entire afternoon...
That story had one problem though. Well, besides Veritaserum. "Ron and Hermione know the truth," Harry groaned out loud, his stomach filling with acid at the mere thought. Ron, who would like few things better than to send one Draco Malfoy to Azkaban. "I told them I thought Draco had gone up to the Owlery, even. They'll think they've just missed him, or something, but they know for certain that he wasn't here where he belongs when the.... um, accident happened."
Snape's eyes were still following Draco's route. "Call it murder, Harry."
"Oh, God," Harry moaned again, feeling like he'd been saying that far too much. On the other hand, it wasn't every day that he saw someone he cared about commit... even in his own mind, he couldn't quite say the word.
Snape was merely watching the map, his features taut.
"Um, you're taking this awfully calmly," Harry cautiously observed, wondering if that meant his father was completely over his withdrawal from purple loosestrife. He wasn't sure it was the right time to ask a thing like that, though.
"Giving vent to anger would hardly be the best strategy," Snape returned, but Harry wasn't blind. Or not yet, at any rate. There was a muscle ticking in his father's jaw. Snape wasn't calm at all, not inside. But he was controlled, because right now they had to keep their wits about them so that they could help Draco.
Harry wasn't the only one who loved the Slytherin; he knew that.
He laid a soft hand on his father's arm as they sat there together and watched Draco's progress on the map. He was still making his way down the long, long staircase that led from the Owlery. Harry almost wished they could go out there and get him; it was torture to wait like this, but Snape was right. They had to go about this like Slytherins would. With stealth. Making it clear to the castle that Draco had snuck out was practically a death sentence, considering his history with Pansy.