Be Careful
101: How You Win Or Lose
By Anne B. Walsh
Flexing the fingers of his left hand, Draco noted absently that the action seemed to horrify Harry, and wondered if this could be how he was supposed to win the duel.
The psych-out effect. Awesome, if true.
As if he didn’t realize what he was doing, he made a loose fist and stretched his thumb, then tucked it in and extended his index finger.
“We get it, your hand works,” Harry snapped. “Quit messing around and let’s duel.”
Draco allowed the next finger in line to pop up in answer. Harry glared. Ron and Ginny both had to turn around. Luna watched everyone with her head tilted to one side, running her finger down the side of the soul flask, which she was now wearing around her own neck.
Hermione sighed, kicking Ron in the ankle. “That’s enough,” she said, ostensibly to him but directing a sharp glance at both Harry and Draco as she spoke. “We need to get on with things. Duelers to the center.”
Here goes nothing. Draco stepped forward and saluted Harry, wand held upright in front of his face. Harry returned the courtesy stiffly but not grudgingly.
“Turn,” Hermione ordered.
Both of them pivoted on a foot and stood back to back.
“Five paces.”
The wall of their miniature Room stretched to accommodate them.
“Wands at the ready.”
I have to win. I have to win. Draco licked his lips and readied a Stunner.
“Three! Two! One!”
Draco whirled, bringing his wand around, only to hear Harry shouting “Expelliarmus!” before Draco could even see his opponent.
How did he—
The spell slammed into his shoulder and sent him sailing backwards to crash into a wall which must have developed padding at lightning speed. His neck was kinked painfully from the impact, and he suspected his left shoulder would have a bruise of great splendor adorning it tomorrow. His right hand, when he got it up to look at it, was covered with red patches of brushburn from the force with which his wand had been torn away.
And none of that would matter if I’d just won like I was supposed to. But I didn’t, I lost again, and now everything’s going to go wrong and it’s all my fault...
“You did it,” a voice breathed into his ear, and Luna’s gray robes cut off his vision of the rest of the world. “You were perfect, you did it just like you were supposed to.”
“Perfect?” Draco accepted Luna’s hand and hauled himself into a sitting position. “Luna, I was supposed to—”
“Lose,” Luna cut him off. “You were supposed to lose, but you couldn’t know that because then you wouldn’t try, and you had to try. You had to try and you had to lose, and that’s exactly what you did.” She beamed at him. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“I can think of a few other words for it,” Draco said slowly. “Was it really necessary?”
“Yes, it really was.” Luna took off the soul flask and hung it around Draco’s neck, lowering herself down in the process to whisper in his ear.
After a moment, Draco nodded. The story was fragmentary, and he’d want it expanded later, but he thought he understood enough now to go on with.
Also later will be the obligatory moaning and groaning over being the Master of the world’s most notorious wand for nearly a year and never getting a chance to use the thing. But for now, I have work to do. And it starts by saying...
“Ow.” Draco leaned his head carefully back and to the left, wincing. “Good thing we did this in the Room of Requirement. A real stone wall’d have broken my neck at that angle. As it is...” He got his feet under him and stood up, rolling his shoulders back. “Be stiff tomorrow, but no harm done.” A smile sneaked onto his face unbidden as he looked down the room at Harry, who seemed almost surprised to find himself holding two wands. “Good shot, Potter. I knew you were fast, but I didn’t know you were that fast.”
“I’ve been practicing.” Harry held out the hawthorn wand. “This is yours.”
Draco shook his head. “Not anymore. You took it away from me when I didn’t want you to. That makes it yours. You can give the Weaslette hers back now, she may need it tonight.”
“I’m underage,” Ginny said automatically, but she took the wand Harry extended to her. “What do you mean, tonight?”
“Are we getting rid of that or not?” Draco pointed at the diadem Horcrux, which Hermione had now laid down in the center of the stone floor. “Because if we are, and it’s the last one like you think, then a certain person is vulnerable for the first time in quite a while. I can’t be the only one who wants this damn war over with. Why not tonight?”
For answer, Harry drew Gryffindor’s sword from its sheath on Ginny’s back and held it out to Hermione, who grasped its handle awkwardly. “That’s right, it’s my turn,” she said, mustering a smile. “I’d almost forgot.”
“Kill it before it talks,” Ron urged her. “Two is enough.”
“Right.” Hermione took two steps forward, screamed like a banshee, and brought the sword down across the diadem with a clang and a shower of sparks where silver clashed against stone. The diadem, too, screamed, a thin and twisted sound, which was cut off short as Hermione struck again and the tarnished circlet snapped in half.
Ron whooped and punched the air, Ginny and Luna applauded, and Harry grinned at Hermione. She returned the expression, shakily, and pressed the sword into Ron’s hands when he closed the distance between them. “Can you put it back?” she asked. “I don’t know if I can, with—”
“Course I will.” Ron kissed her forehead. “You were amazing, Hermione.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s only the truth,” Draco said, shooting a look at Luna. She nodded and turned towards Harry and Ginny, beginning a high-speed conversation about how her father had a theory about the places that You-Know-Who might like to hide. Ron, returning the sword to its place, joined in, and Draco sent a silent request to the Room, which materialized an invisible barrier between the two groups.
“Sometimes the truth is frightening.” Hermione sat down on nothing, which became a chair halfway down. “Like the truth about you and me. Are we really—”
“We are.” Draco did the same across from her. “I take it they don’t know.”
Hermione laughed. “You saw how well Harry took everything else about you. He didn’t need to know this. Nor did Ron or Ginny.” Her face grew thoughtful. “They may never need to know. I don’t see why they should. Do you?”
“Now that I think about it, no.” Draco hitched his chair a bit closer to Hermione’s. “It would bother them unduly, and especially tonight they don’t need distraction. Maybe someday you’ll let it slip, but for now it’s our little secret.” He opened his left hand and laid it, palm up, on her knee. “Let’s get started.”
Our little secret. Yes, that’s one way to describe the knowledge that Hermione Granger is no longer a Muggle-born. That the Malfoys are only going extinct in the male line, instead of plain old extinct, when I make that final jump. That, in short, I made that mad story I told come true.
It had seemed logical to him. The ferecarne from which his prosthetic arm was made had molded itself to his body, which was why it responded so well to him. If Hermione’s body had more in common with his own, the ferecarne should react better to her.
So I proposed a blood-bonding to her, and after the first “Eurgh that’s disgusting” reaction, she took it surprisingly calmly. Probably because if there was one thing I could do to prove to her I wasn’t putting this on for her benefit, it was offer to adulterate my precious pure blood with her “muddiness.” We made the exchange, let it settle in, and now...
Hermione laid her right wrist in Draco’s palm. “Ready when you are,” she said.
Draco closed his fingers around the wrist, shut his eyes, and began the set of thought-commands his mum had helped him work out for this moment. Let go of me, he mentally directed the lower half of his prosthesis, feeling it disconnecting from the upper half in response to his thought. You belong to my sister now. Be what she needs. Serve her as well as you serve me; do her bidding in all things; give her back what she lost at my hands. Go to her, and go to her now. So let it be done.
A muffled gasp from Hermione brought Draco’s eyes open. He looked away hastily from the writhing flesh on her lap. “Don’t fight it,” he said, working towards a persuasive tone, equal parts coaxing and commanding. “You want this, you need it. Let it happen. I know it feels strange at first but it’ll be over soon and you’ll be happy about it, you’ll see...” He stopped, frowning. “Is it just me, or does that sound like I’m doing something to you that’d make Weasley want to hex my balls to the moon?”
“It does, a bit.” Hermione actually giggled, though the sound was strained. “I’m glad he can’t hear it. Do you think he’s noticed we’re gone yet?”
“Not if Luna’s doing her job. Which I’m sure she is.” Draco nodded in satisfaction as the ferecarne swarming around Hermione’s wrist settled into a shape. “There we are. Does that feel like you remember?”
“It—what—” Hermione stared at her right hand, then tentatively lifted it to her face and touched her forehead, her lips, her chin. The fingers tangled in her hair, then dropped to the shoulder of her robes. “It does. It truly does. It’s my hand, my wand hand, I have it back again—”
“Speaking of which,” Draco interrupted before the tears he could see threatening had a chance to emerge. “A proper wand hand deserves a proper wand.” He dipped into his inside pocket and pulled out the one piece of salvage he’d brought away from Malfoy Manor with him. “I believe this belongs to you.”
Add to the list of things I never thought I’d see but I’m glad I did: Hermione Granger literally speechless with joy.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything to them at all,” Draco said, bringing Hermione partway out of her reverie over her restored wand and hand. “We’ll just go out there and see how long it takes them to notice.”
“But your poor arm...” Hermione gestured vaguely to the remains of Draco’s prosthetic. “Won’t they see it?”
“They didn’t notice when it wasn’t there at all, I’m betting they won’t when it’s only half there. Besides...” Draco looked down at the stump and trained his will on it, grinning as it turned the angry red he wanted. “I’ve got a plan for this.”
So to speak when it’s really Dumbledore’s portrait who had the plan, and Luna who told it to me. It sounds like the maddest thing I’ve ever heard of, but so would this whole year if I hadn’t lived it. Besides, a little madness is a small price to pay for Mum’s happiness.
He grinned to himself. Not to mention, Mum gave Luna something that means I can fool His Dark Evilness himself, and screw with dear Headmaster Snape’s head but good. This is going to be fun.
“Do you want me to tie that up?” Hermione asked, pointing to his stump.
Draco blinked. “How’d you know?”
“You have to be making it look like you’re hurt for a reason, and it isn’t for us, because we know you’re not. So you’ll want it covered until you get to the people you do want to think that it’s hurt, and having it bandaged would help even more to make them think that.” Hermione waved her wand in three careful curves and conjured a clean white bandage around the stump, talking all the while. “It’ll also hide that you don’t have the Mark anymore. How did you do it while you were here at school? Keep your sleeves down all the time, like Snape always did?”
“Mostly.” Draco pulled the bandage tighter. “But just in case, I had it on there anyway, but hidden. It was heat-activated.”
“Heat?” Hermione knotted her brows for a moment, then laughed. “So you could put your other hand on it like it hurt, and then it would show up!”
Draco bowed slightly. “You have it exactly. Now, shall we rejoin the others and get ready for the great big nasty battle we’re going to have tonight?”
“That sounds lovely.” Hermione sketched a smiley face in the air with lines of light. “But how can you fight? Harry has your wand.”
“Oh, I think I know where to get another one.” Draco snickered under his breath. “And it goes along with a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for months now.”
Father deserves to know I’m not leaving him entirely alone in the world.
That is a conversation I shall just adore writing. And no, you haven’t heard about Draco’s plan yet, but you’ll find out what it’s about soon enough. More soon—I’m not about to stop now!