And it was time and past time to ask Draco Malfoy what the other side of that war had to say about the character of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
Chapter 47: Personhood Theory
There comes a point in every plot where the victim starts to suspect; and looks back, and sees a trail of events all pointing in a single direction. And when that point comes, Father had explained, the prospect of the loss may seem so unbearable, and admitting themselves tricked may seem so humiliating, that the victim will yet deny the plot, and the game may continue long after.
Father had warned Draco not to do that again.
First, though, he'd let Mr. Avery finish eating all of the cookies he'd swindled from Draco, while Draco watched and cried. The whole lovely jar of cookies that Father had given him just a few hours earlier, for Draco had lost all of them to Mr. Avery, down to the very last one.
So it was a familiar feeling that Draco had felt in the pit of his stomach, when Gregory told him about The Kiss.
Sometimes you looked back, and saw things...
(In a lightless classroom - you couldn't quite call it unused any more, since it'd seen weekly use over the last few months - a boy sat enshrouded in a hooded cowl, with an unlighted crystal globe on the desk in front of him. Thinking in silence, thinking in darkness, waiting for an opening door to let in the light.)
Harry had shoved Granger away and said, I told you, no kissing!
Harry would probably say something like, She just did it to annoy me, last time, just like she made me go on that date.
But the verified story was that Granger had been willing to face the Dementor again in order to help Harry; that she had kissed Harry, crying, when he was lost in the depths of Dementation; and that her kiss had brought him back.
That didn't sound like rivalry, even friendly rivalry.
That sounded like the kind of friendship you usually didn't see even in plays.
Then why had Harry made his friend climb the icy walls of Hogwarts?
Because that was the sort of thing Harry Potter did to his friends?
Father had told Draco that to fathom a strange plot, one technique was to look at what ended up happening, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.
What had ended up happening as the result of Draco and Granger fighting Harry Potter together... was that Draco had started to feel a lot friendlier toward Granger.
Who benefited from the scion of Malfoy becoming friends with a mudblood witch?
Who benefited, that was famous for exactly that sort of plot?
Who benefited, that could possibly be pulling Harry Potter's strings?
Dumbledore.
And if that was true then Draco would have to go to Father and tell him everything, no matter what happened after that, Draco couldn't imagine what would happen after that, it was awful beyond imagining. Which made him want to cling desperately to the last shred of hope that it wasn't all what it looked like...
...Draco remembered that, too, from Mr. Avery's lesson.
Draco hadn't planned to confront Harry yet. He was still trying to think of an experimental test, something that Harry wouldn't just see through and fake. But then Vincent had come with the message that Harry wanted to meet early this week, on Friday instead of Saturday.
And so here Draco was, in a dark classroom, an unlit crystal globe on his desk, waiting.
Minutes passed.
Footsteps approached.
The door made a gentle creak as it swung open into the classroom, revealing Harry Potter dressed in his own hood and cowl; Harry stepped forward into the dark classroom, and the sturdy door closed behind him with a faint click.
Draco tapped the crystal globe, and the classroom lit with bright green light. Green light projected shadows of the desks onto the floor, and glared back at him from the curved chair-backs, photons bouncing off the wood in such fashion that the angle of incidence equaled the angle of reflection.
At least that much of what he'd learned wasn't likely to be a lie.
Harry had flinched as the light went on, halting for a moment, then resumed his approach. "Hello, Draco," Harry said quietly, drawing back his hood as he came to Draco's desk. "Thank you for coming, I know it's not our usual time -"
"You're welcome," Draco said flatly.
Harry dragged one of the chairs to face Draco across his desk, the legs making a slight screeching sound on the floor. He spun the chair so that it was facing the wrong way, and sat down straddling it, his arms folded across the back of the chair. The boy's face was pensive, frowning, serious, looking very adult even for Harry Potter.
"I have an important question to ask you," said Harry, "but there's something else I want us to do before that."
Draco said nothing, feeling a certain weariness. Part of him just wanted it all to be over with already.
"Tell me, Draco," said Harry. "Why don't Muggles ever leave ghosts behind when they die?"
"Because Muggles don't have souls, obviously," Draco said. He didn't even realize until after he'd said it that it might contradict Harry's politics, and then he didn't care. Besides, it was obvious.
Harry's face showed no surprise. "Before I ask my important question, I want to see if you can learn the Patronus Charm."
For a moment the sheer nonsequitur stumped Draco. Good old impossible-to-predict-or-understand Harry Potter. There were times when Draco wondered whether Harry was deliberately this disorienting as a tactic.
Then Draco understood, and shoved himself up and away from his desk in a single angry motion. That was it. It was over. "Like Dumbledore's servants," he spat.
"Like Salazar Slytherin," Harry said steadily.
Draco almost stumbled over his own feet in the middle of his first stride toward the door.
Slowly, Draco turned back toward Harry.
"I don't know where you came up with that," said Draco, "but it's wrong, everyone knows the Patronus Charm is a Gryffindor spell -"
"Salazar Slytherin could cast a corporeal Patronus Charm," Harry said. Harry's hand darted into his robes, brought out a book whose title was written as white on green, and so almost impossible to read in the green light; but it looked old. "I discovered that when I was researching the Patronus Charm before. And I found the original reference and checked the book out of the library just in case you didn't believe me. The author of this book doesn't think there's anything unusual about Salazar being able to cast a Patronus, either; the belief that Slytherins can't do that must be recent. And as a further historical note, though I don't have the book with me, Godric Gryffindor never could."
After the first six times Draco had tried calling Harry's bluff, on six successively more ridiculous occasions, he'd realized that Harry just didn't lie about what was written in books. Still, when Harry's hands opened the book and laid it out to the place of a bookmark, Draco leaned over and studied the place where Harry's finger pointed.
Then the fires of Ravenclaw fell upon the darkness that had cloaked the left wing of Lord Foul's army, breaking it, and it was revealed that the Lord Gryffindor had spoken true; the fear they all had felt was not natural in its source, but coming from thrice a dozen Dementors, who had been promised the souls of the defeated. At once the Lady Hufflepuff and Lord Slytherin brought forth their Patronuses, a vast angry badger and a bright silver serpent, and the defenders lifted their heads as the shadow passed from their hearts. And Lady Ravenclaw laughed, remarking that Lord Foul was a great fool, for now his own army would be subject to the fear, but not the defenders of Hogwarts. Yet the Lord Slytherin said, "No fool he, that much I know." And the Lord Gryffindor beside him studied the battlefield with a frown upon his face...