Be Careful
11: Who You Think About
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco roused out of the trance-like state that long flights tended to induce in him. Someone was shaking his shoulder.
"I’m your relief," Lyssa Potter said, holding out a gloved hand. "Come on in and warm up. Professor McGonagall’s got a fire going at the stern."
"Thanks." Draco took the proffered hand and swung himself aboard the ship, then supported Lyssa as she clambered out to the broom he’d just left. The fog was gone from around the ship, he noticed, and a half-moon was up, casting enough light to see their surrounding clearly.
Not that there’s much to see. Clouds, clouds, and more clouds.
Most of the passengers in the cabin were asleep, heads on one another’s shoulders or laps. Professor Dumbledore had leaned back in his chair and was snoring faintly, the milky-white orb still on his lap. The group at the front of the ship was smaller than it had been, and most of its members had been riding brooms when the ship launched. Now they held mugs with steam rising from them and talked quietly, watching cloud peaks slip past beneath the ship.
I could use something to drink.
Draco turned and headed for the back of the ship, the stern, where flickering firelight beckoned. The group back here was much larger, with Professors McGonagall and Riddle both present. She had a large pot in her hands and was pouring from it into the mugs the students held out for her, while he was sitting back by the railing with Ginny Weasley, who seemed upset about something.
Not my problem.
He tapped the shoulder of the first person who came to hand, which happened to be Neville. "Where do you get one of those?" he asked, pointing to the mug Neville was holding.
"Usually we conjure them. Saves washing up. But there should be a few spares around if you need them."
"No, I can do that." I hope.
Draco drew his wand and concentrated, sketching the outline of what he wanted in the air with the wand’s tip. A shiver ran through the air and through him, and then he was holding a blue-glazed mug in his left hand, the walls a touch uneven but still serviceable.
What do you know. Practice does pay off after all.
He joined the line snaking past the fire and watched as Ginny left Professor Riddle, only to be replaced by Meghan. Everyone was wearing winter cloaks—everyone including him, he discovered when he looked down. Someone must have conjured it onto him while he was flying.
"Wonder where the Patronus-stuff went," he murmured half to himself.
"We don’t need it when we’re up this high," Neenie answered, peering around Harry and Ron to see him. "Dementors float, but they can’t fly. As long as we can get high enough off the ground, they can’t get at us." She laughed. "Some people think we should live on ships like this. Have our homes and our schools and… everything up here, and only go down to the ground if we have to."
"Might be fun to start with," Ron said, "but I’d get bored of it pretty fast."
"Besides, the houses would have to be small to fit on the ship, and that means the rooms would be even smaller." Harry stretched out his arms expressively. "I prefer my space, thanks."
"Dementors are really that bad, then?" Draco asked. "That there’s people seriously suggesting everyone should live where they can’t come?"
"Oh, yes," Ginny said from behind him. "That bad and worse."
"Worse?"
Ray turned from where Professor McGonagall was pouring for him. "They shouldn’t have been able to break our wards," he said quietly. "There’s a thousand years of magic in the Manor. A thousand years of love and friendship and happiness. Everything dementors hate. But they still got in."
"And it’s not your fault, either," Hermione added, lowering her chin to glare at Draco.
"What? I didn’t say—"
"You didn’t have to. I know you were thinking it."
Draco groaned. "You’ve known me a week and you can already read my mind?"
"Yes," Hermione said simply.
"That’s not fair."
"Who said life was fair?" Ginny bumped Draco with her elbow. "Move up."
Draco took a step forward, filling the place Ron had just vacated. His mind slipped back in the conversation, to what Hermione and Ray had said.
She seems so sure I didn’t give the dementors the opening they needed, but what else could have done it? What else changed in the last week that would have let them in against a thousand years of the stuff they hate?
He snorted under his breath. All right, I suppose it’s a bit egotistic of me to think I’m Dark enough to let them in all by myself against that much Light magic. And Mum said that enough dementors in one place can make magic itself start to fail. They probably just threw warm bodies at the wards—or cold bodies, I don’t think dementors are warm—until they got through. And once they were inside…
A shudder ran through him that had nothing to do with the cold of the air here above the clouds. If I hadn’t stopped when I did, if I had decided it wasn’t worth looking back, if I’d kept going…
Mum would have been the first one Kissed. He saw again her limp figure, the dementor’s hands reaching out for her, lifting her towards its dark maw. They probably would have found me next, and the little kids upstairs. Another shiver, imagining darkness closing in around him to the sound of terrified wailing from the nursery. Then finally, when there were enough of them inside, they’d have gone after everyone in the ballroom…
"A-hem," said a familiar voice.
Draco looked up. He’d reached the front of the line without noticing it, and Professor McGonagall was holding her pot poised over his mug. "Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?" she asked briskly.
"Hot chocolate, please." Draco repositioned his hands on the mug as the liquid filled it. "Thank you, Professor."
To his surprise, she smiled at him. "My pleasure, young man."
I guess being married loosened her up some…
Oh, no, not you again. Draco stepped aside to let Ginny have her turn and deliberately took a sip of the hot chocolate without blowing on it first, to let the pain in his mouth and throat supersede the mental images which were trying to take over his mind once more. This is not home, and Professor Riddle is not the Dark Lord.
But he is looking at me. And waving me over.
Draco followed the beckoning hand and seated himself in the chair he’d seen Ginny and Meghan using earlier. "Yes, sir?"
"You seem troubled, Draco."
Draco shrugged. "I’m all right, sir."
"I understand." Professor Riddle picked up his own mug from its place on the railing and sipped from it. "I just wanted you to know that I don’t only teach at Hogwarts. I also offer counsel to the students, if they need it or want it. Give them a fresh perspective on events, without them having to worry that their words will be repeated. Several people have asked to speak with me tonight, and I’m sure more will approach me when we arrive and they can do so without being watched. Since you hadn’t mentioned anyone at your Hogwarts who performs that function, I thought you might be unaware of it." The mug went back in its place, into a circular cut-out on the railing which fit it perfectly. "So, now you’ve been told."
If there is such a thing as a tipping point for insanity, I believe I’ve just reached it. Excuse me while I execute a mad dance and scream at the top of my lungs.
Or perhaps I’ll just sit here and stare at my drink.
"Draco?"
"I have Dark magic on me." The words came more easily than he’d expected.
"Yes, I’d heard that, but not anything specific."
"Mum told you?" Draco looked up to see Professor Riddle nodding. "She said it’d left a stain on my soul—that she and Aunt Andy could help me keep it from spreading, but not take it off all the way—and I was worried that…"
"That you might have contributed to the wards falling at Fidelus Manor?" Professor Riddle finished. "I hardly think so, not unless the magic has been active in the last week. If you feel comfortable letting me see it, I may be able to tell you that here and now."
Draco took another sip of the hot chocolate, blowing on it this time, then set his mug down on the railing and pulled up his left sleeve. "Here it is," he said.
And now I know I’m mad. Showing the Dark Mark to Voldemort—or to the bloke who could have been Voldemort—and expecting him to… I don’t know, cure it? Take it off me? Or at least fix it so it doesn’t poison my magic forever.
Professor Riddle pulled a pair of glasses from a pocket inside his cloak and put them on. Draco had to suppress a snicker as his mind supplied the image of the Dark Lord attempting to wear glasses.
They’d fall off his face…
"May I?" the Professor asked, his hand hovering over Draco’s arm.
"Yes, sir." Draco crossed the fingers of his right hand behind his back. If the Mark started to hurt, if it changed color even a bit…
Professor Riddle’s fingertips touched the place on Draco’s skin where the snake emerged from the skull’s mouth.
Nothing happened.
"Odd," Professor Riddle said absently, tilting his head to one side, then the other. "Very odd."
"What is, sir?"
"Whoever laid this on you, and you notice I’m not asking, he’s quite a good wizard. The craftsmanship in this spell is astounding. Evil, of course, but expertly put together." Professor Riddle took his hand away and folded up his glasses, sliding them back where they’d come from. "It has not, by the way, been active in the last week, so I would say it and you are free from suspicion in the matter of the wards."
A weight lifted from Draco’s heart he hadn’t known was there. "Thank you, sir."
"You are quite welcome." Professor Riddle sat back in his chair, his eyes unfocusing slightly as though he were thinking hard. "Strange," he said half-audibly. "It looked familiar, somehow…"
Draco gulped.
Don’t say anything, his instincts hissed. He won’t thank you for it. Just let him keep wondering, and you keep quiet!
He deserves to know, said a more reasonable-sounding voice. And he might be able to get it off better if he knew exactly who put it on.
Draco picked up his mug again, using both hands to keep it from spilling onto his lap. "Professor," he said. "There is one thing I think I ought to tell you."
Tom Riddle stood at the prow of the ship, staring ahead into the distance. He’d laid a Zoned Silencer around himself, then cut down the shielding spells to let a bit of wind through, enough to push his hair back from his face, ostensibly enough to make his eyes water. As cover stories went, it would do.
Footsteps beside him, and Minerva was there, looking out over the clouds even as he was. "I’ve warded them all to keep them safely aboard," she said, the wind carrying her words to him on a small side-eddy. "With the extra spell Cecy told me about on our traveler, to be sure he doesn’t enter dream state by accident. He may not be as rested as the others when we arrive, but we can’t risk him slipping across the worlds at this point."
"Of course not." The normality of his voice surprised him. He had expected a harsh croak, or perhaps a smooth and icy tenor with a hint of a hiss about it.
Minerva’s eyes darted to him for a second, then returned to their former place. "He’s told you, then."
"Yes." Tom bit the final consonant off, painfully short. "And you already knew."
"Cecy told me what she suspected. Neither of us knew for certain."
"Now you do." He dared not look at her, or over his shoulder at the main body of the ship where a blond boy slept in a cabin seat, a brown-haired girl asleep on his lap and a blond woman resting her head on his shoulder. "Now I do."
"Tom." Her voice commanded his attention as surely as it did for any of her students, and he turned to look at her. Her profile and hair gleamed silver in the moonlight, and the lenses of her glasses flashed briefly opaque before revealing her eyes again, fixed on his. "You are not he."
"I could have been."
"But you are not." Each word was carefully and separately pronounced. "You have made your choices. They have led to this man you are. He made his choices, and they took him down a path very far from yours."
"Is it?" Tom lifted his hands and regarded them, thinking of the memories Draco had allowed him to see. What would it be like to have fingers so long, skin so pale, a face out of nightmare and a snake’s eyes, a mind that thought of nothing but its enemies’ downfall and a heart—
Two smaller hands closed around his. "Do you consider me a fool, Tom Riddle?" Minerva asked in a tone that informed him he’d better give her the right answer.
"No."
"I’m so glad to hear it." Minerva closed the distance between them, still holding his hands in hers. "Consider, then, that I married you. That I bore your child. That I continue to put up with you year after year—fifty of them, in fact, this coming fourth of October."
Tom smiled in spite of himself. "‘Since I know men often have trouble recalling important dates,’" he quoted, "‘I think we should be married on my birthday. It will give you twice the chance of remembering.’"
"And you have remembered. Every year." Minerva released the grip of her right hand to reach up and brush a piece of hair out of Tom’s eyes. "Occasionally you’ve needed a little help, but you have remembered."
Tom reached up and caught her hand, returning it to its partner between them. "Because I knew what you would do to me if I dared to forget."
"Oh, nonsense. I like your company too much to exile you to the couch for more than a week. Or perhaps two."
"I was referring to your habit of docking Slytherin exactly as many points as I give them on any particular day."
"Really, now. I’ve only done that once or twice."
"A year." Tom disengaged his left hand to slide that arm around his wife’s shoulders. "But I daresay they always deserve it."
"Indeed they do." Minerva settled herself next to him. "Indeed they do."
They stood in silent companionship and watched as the clouds broke ahead to reveal the stone towers of their home on the distant horizon.