"You must face reality," Snape calmly advised. "Think strategy, Draco, and prepare yourself to be interrogated. Rumours about your involvement have no doubt already reached every House in Hogwarts."
Draco glared at Snape for a moment, then wiped furiously at his eyes. "What rumours? Nobody saw me except Pansy and whoever hexed us... oh, no... I'm really in it deep."
Lost by the turn in the conversation, Harry gestured for someone to explain.
"Whoever hexed me will be busy planting little seeds of suspicion everywhere. They'll make sure the Aurors come to the 'right' conclusion." Draco swallowed hard, one hand sliding into his trouser pocket and fishing about. He swiftly checked his other pocket, and when his hand came up empty fluidly swore, "Fuck, fuck, fuck! They took my wand, the motherfuckers--"
"Draco, impulse control!"
The Slytherin boy snapped his eyes shut and gritted his teeth.
Snape waited, but when Draco said nothing further, went on, "No doubt the conspirators will plant it in some compromising location. Most likely, they used it to cast additional hexes on Miss Parkinson once they had you both in the Owlery. Your own wand will incriminate you."
"No, it won't," Draco disagreed, opening his eyes, something like agony coating them as his dart glanced from Snape to the headmaster, and back. "I... um, just trust me, it won't."
"I think you'd better explain," Albus insisted, the command gentle yet firm.
Draco hesitated a moment, and then, as if knowing himself lost, groaned, "I... ah, well... I was reading this book of Severus', about kinship potions, and I..." Draco hung his head in his hands. "I found one that keyed magical items to one family name." Defensive, he muttered, "It wasn't Dark Arts, not exactly."
"Not exactly?" growled Snape.
"Well, I was just dabbling, really--"
"Dabbling!"
"Can you stop repeating me, Severus?"
Dumbledore cleared his throat and directed a stern glance at both father and son. "The consequence for Mr. Malfoy's dabbling can wait until the matter of Miss Parkinson's death is resolved, is that clear?"
"I should have just let Pansy take the Mark," Draco groaned. "What good were all those letters I wrote her? All they did was get her killed!"
Harry recognised that tone of voice; he'd heard it enough inside his own mind. "Draco, whatever happened in the Owlery, it wasn't your fault--"
Draco shook his head. "She wanted to break with the Dark Lord's supporters here, Harry. She died for no other reason than because she came to meet me--"
"She was bait," Harry quietly insisted. "Pansy's wanted to lure you into the open so the others involved could grab you and take you to Voldemort!"
Harry wasn't prepared for Draco to suddenly start yelling.
Blond hair flew in all directions as the Slytherin boy violently shook his head, "You weren't in that closet with us, Potter! You don't know anything! She loved me, she did! She cried when she saw me after so long, and Pansy never cried! And if she was bait, if she was with them, huh, then why'd they kill her, eh!"
"They double-crossed her is all--"
Snape stepped between the two boys. "The girl has passed on, and for the moment, I see no advantage in debating Miss Parkinson's true loyalties," he sternly announced.
Good point, Harry thought, deciding a radical change of subject was in order. It was no wonder Draco's emotions were seesawing all over the place. The girlfriend he'd wanted to reconcile with was dead, and he was implicated; the man who had raised him had arranged it all; and as if that wasn't enough, he was in trouble with Snape for his poor judgment and with Hogwarts for his dabbling. "Let's just get your burn seen to," Harry suggested. "Everybody seems to have forgotten that but it probably needs some salve or something. Can you take off your shirt?"
"Well, of course I can take off my shirt," Draco scathed, undoing the two buttons that hadn't ripped free earlier. "I'm hardly incapacitated. It's just a little--" As the silk fabric slid off his shoulders and he looked down, the Slytherin boy gasped.
"It looks pretty bad," Harry agreed in a level voice, deliberately understating the case. The burn was enormous, a furious crimson splotch almost the size of a dinner plate, the whole of it puckered and blistered. It was a miracle Draco hadn't complained more, but maybe the shock of hearing that Pansy had died had blunted his awareness of the pain. "I'm sorry the amulet hurt you--"
"I'd think you'd be delighted, considering," the other boy huffed, glancing down at his chest and then back up at Harry. His eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. "Why in Merlin's name is your eye already so... black?"
"I'm afraid that bruised tissue doesn't react well to being flung in and out of Petrificus!" Snape harshly returned. "And neither do magically healed eyes take well to being pummelled! We'll be lucky if Harry doesn't go blind again!"
Draco's lower lip began to quiver, but then resolve seemed to fill him and it firmed. "Oh, very good," he snarled. "It's not punishment enough that I got my g- girlfriend killed? Go on, make me think I've blinded Harry! Make me think I'm as bad as Lucius! You're not Head of Slytherin for nothing, are you, Severus--"
"So you think I speak in jest, do you?" Snape ground out, his eyes blazing anger by then. "You think I haven't healed his eye because I've not had the time to fetch a potion? Are you an utter imbecile? Perhaps you have suffered some brain damage, you completely irresponsible twit--"
"That's enough!" Harry shouted, hoping to calm them both. "He shouldn't have hit me, and his paltry little sorry hardly makes up for it, and he sure shouldn't have wrecked Sals' box and scared her right back into hiding in the Floo, but he's my brother and I love him, so enough said, all right?"
Dead silence descended, broken only when Draco gasped, "You... excuse me, you what me?"
"I thought you were going to be thrown from the Owlery, remember?" Harry bit out, glaring because Snape had raised an eyebrow at the sudden declaration. Defensive, he insisted, "When you think someone's about to die, you... realise things."
Suddenly embarrassed, Harry ducked his head down to look more closely at the huge swath of burn marring Draco's chest. "The books I consulted didn't mention anything like this ever happening. Let's get it healed so it won't scar over. I'm not sure Scaradicate Salve would work on this." He looked to his father for confirmation.
Snape jabbed his wand toward the furious scarlet tissue and frowned. "It's akin to a curse scar in a way... magically induced..."
Draco, Harry noticed, looked a bit ill, though he had enough presence of mind to object, "Scaradicate Salve healed those needle pricks on Harry after Samhain, and they were magical in nature, weren't they? Lucius made the needles heat up?"
"Physical heat," Snape discounted that. "This injury isn't primarily physical. If it were, the burn would match the shape of the amulet instead of being so widespread." He quickly performed a slightly longer examination. "Waves of magical energy running amuck caused this. It's really quite odd... at any rate, if left unhealed, the resultant scar may well be permanent. Nonetheless, I must insist the burn remain until this entire matter is resolved."
Harry frowned. "I know you're angry, but um... that's a really bad way to punishing Draco for hitting me--"
"Merlin's balls!" Snape yelled. "First he thinks I'm misdirecting him about the prospect of blindness in that eye, and now you suspect I want to see my own son scarred? The pair of you are fit for nothing but sheep fodder!"