Be Careful
19: Who You Say You'll Be
By Anne B. Walsh
As breakfast wound down, Draco noticed most of the Hogwarts-age contingent headed out one of the side doors. "Where’re they off to?" he asked Abby.
"Ou-sigh," Abby said through a bite of eggs.
"Don’t talk with your mouth full, you’ll choke. Outside, yes, I knew that. What for?"
Abby swallowed. "Don’t know," she said. "Harry said upstairs that he had an announcement and he wanted everyone out on the lawn to hear it."
"Does everyone include me?"
"That’s a silly question. Everyone means everyone." Abby drained her goblet of pumpkin juice and set it beside her empty plate. "We’d better hurry if we don’t want to get stuck at the back."
"Lead the way, then." Draco slid off the bench and bowed, making Abby curtsey back and giggle before she followed the crowd out the door and through a hallway onto one of Hogwarts’ side lawns.
The skyship on which the refugees from the Beauvois’ ball had arrived—last night, it was only last night, it feels like so much longer ago—was grounded near one of the walls. A surprisingly large crowd of students sat in front of it.
Of course, if everybody’s got a family the size of the Potters or the Beauvois, there’d be more students. The castle’s big enough, that’s for sure. Draco sat down along the left side of the crowd, Abby in front of him, and watched Harry jump up onto the rail of the skyship, holding out his arms for balance.
"What’s that doing down here?" he asked Abby.
"Don’t know. Shh."
"So we all know we’re probably here for the rest of the summer," Harry said loudly, eliciting a few raspberries and boos from the audience. "Which means we’re all going to get sick of each other before the school year even starts. Unless!" He flung up a hand in an obviously overdone gesture, getting a few laughs. "Unless we have something to do with ourselves!"
"Like what, extra homework?" shouted someone from nearby. Draco turned in time to see one of the Slytherin boys he hadn’t known from the dorm the night before. Except he looks more familiar now that he’s awake…
"Wrong family," Harry shouted back. "You want the Beauvois."
"What, and get in Weasley’s way?" called the other stranger, sitting beside his friend. "I like my bits where they are, thanks."
The crowd’s eyes turned to Ron, who went red but still managed to look smug.
"No, I had something a bit more fun in mind," Harry said, walking along the railing of the skyship. "Something with style. Something with class. Something with pirates."
"Pirates?" Draco repeated, the word lost to his ears in the crowd’s confused murmurs.
"Yes, pirates!" Harry leapt from the railing to the roof of the cabin. "We have a ship, so we should have pirates. But we need pirates with skills beyond the ordinary. We need…" He threw his arms wide. "Singing pirates!"
A ripple of laughter swept through the crowd, but not the ‘look-at-the-nutter’ laughter it would have been at any gathering Draco had ever attended. This sounded more anticipatory, as though Harry had just let them all in on some big joke and they were waiting their turn at the punchline.
"And I," Harry declared, assuming a noble pose, "shall be that glorious thing, a Pirate King!"
This combination of words struck a distant chord in Draco’s memory. There used to be this broadcast on the wireless Mother would listen to in the afternoons, about the music written by wizards that had been stolen by Muggles and passed off as their own work… I don’t know how true the stories were, but I remember a song about a pirate king…
"A Pirate King?" said a voice from the door. Draco, along with the rest of Harry’s audience, turned to see Ray and Neenie, still looking a bit wan but moving well. It was Ray who had spoken, and Ray who now hurried across the lawn to stare up at Harry, looking down imperiously from his high perch. "Are you truly the Pirate King?"
"I am." Harry jumped down to the deck. "Do you want to become a pirate, lad? I’ll take you on as my apprentice if you do!"
"A pirate." Ray frowned. "I don’t recall if that’s what my father wanted me to become. My nursemaid knows. Nursemaid!"
"Yes, young master?" Hermione bustled over to Ray’s side.
"Was it a pirate my father said he wanted me to be?" Ray scratched his head. "Or was it something else?"
"Oh dear, oh dear." Hermione looked back and forth between Harry and Ray. "I can’t be sure—my hearing is imperfect, as you know, young master…"
"Make up your minds!" Harry waved a hand at the two of them. "My pirate ship sails on the evening tide, with my loyal crew aboard." He glanced over his shoulder, then did a double-take at the empty ship. "My crew! Where’s my pirate crew? I’ll have their livers if they’ve all deserted…"
"Here we are!" shouted Jonathan Beauvoi, jumping to his feet. "Your pirate crew, ready to serve! Right, men?" he appealed to the audience.
"Aye!" "Right you are!" "Pirates forever!" Twelve or so boys leapt up. Blaise was one of them, to Draco’s amusement, as well as Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Anthony Goldstein.
"To the ship, then!" Harry beckoned his crew forward. "And you?" he said to Ray and Neenie.
"I do believe my master did say to apprentice his son to a pirate," Hermione said, though she still looked uncertain. "Will you take the dear lad, then? And myself, to care for him until he is old enough to do for himself?"
"If you’re willing to wash and cook for the crew as well, you’ll be welcome aboard our ship!" Harry held out his hands to pull Ray and Neenie aboard. "Come, let’s away! Away to a life of piracy!"
Ray took the offered hand and swung aboard, then hesitated visibly, looking over his shoulder. "But what if I don’t like being a pirate?" he said. "When will I be free again?"
"On your twenty-first birthday, like any apprentice, silly boy," said Hermione, patting his head in a motherly way. "And then we can be married, and happy forevermore!"
Ray gave her an up-and-down look that said more than words could have. "Is there not some lovely young maiden who will rescue me from this sad fate?" he pleaded with the audience, leaning over the rail.
"Wellllll," drawled Ginny, standing up, as did about a dozen other girls. "I would, but you’re a pirate. They’re so uncouth. And always away from home. No, I don’t think I can love you." The other girls shook their heads sadly.
"I’ll even take a girl who isn’t so lovely, one who thinks she can’t get a man!" Ray started to look panicked as Hermione simpered at him. "Just not her, please…"
Meghan huffed loudly and sprang up, along with another dozen girls, all looking highly indignant. "For your information, we don’t think our lives revolve around getting men!" she informed him, looking down her nose at him, quite a feat considering the height difference and his elevation on the skyship’s deck. "And we’re not ugly, either!"
"I didn’t mean to say that you were!" Ray clutched at his hair. "Is there not even one of you who can love me? Just one?"
Ginny’s group rippled, and out stepped Luna. "I shall love you, young pirate," she said, smiling up at Ray. "If you think such poor love as mine may help to save you."
"Poor love? How could one as beautiful as you give poor love?" Ray clasped his hands against his chest and sighed like a man besotted. "I shall treasure you always, my lady. But you and your lovely sisters must be careful, so that my boorish shipmates never catch sight of you—they would carry you off and marry you against your wills, and you would never see your home again…"
"They would not dare," Luna said, holding her head very high. "Our Papa is a Major-General!"
"Yes!" Neville came to his feet, smiling broadly. "Yes, I am a Major-General! A modern Major-General, I’ll have you know!"
"And I am sure that you, my only love, will find the help you and my dear Papa need to keep us safe from such terrible pirates." Luna looked adoringly at Ray.
"Help," Ray mused, leaning on the rail. "I have it! I shall call for the police! Police, ho!"
"Who wants the police?" Ron marched forward three steps and saluted. "Police here!"
"Call your men into line, please, sergeant," Ray requested.
"Policemen!" Ron bellowed. "Fall in!"
"Fall in what, sir?" shouted back several male voices, more or less in unison.
"Stop trying to be smart!" Ron berated them. "That’s my job!"
The audience fell about laughing.
When Draco got enough breath back to sit up again, eleven boys stood side by side in front of the skyship, Ron fussily rearranging them until he got them into the order he wanted. This achieved, he turned back to the ship and saluted again. "Policemen assembled, sir!"
"Pirates stand ready!" called Jonathan from his place halfway up the mast.
And when that thing got a mast I have no idea…
Draco craned his neck and finally spotted Fred and George Weasley, wands in hands, standing behind the skyship and sculpting it to look more pirate-worthy. As he watched, one twin added a crow’s nest and the other the netting leading down from it to Jonathan’s current position, and Jonathan immediately climbed the rest of the way up to it.
I don’t know that I’d trust my life to something those two made that quickly.
Still, that does look like fun.
"Sisters, are you ready?" Luna asked the two groups of girls. Giggling assents came back to her, and she beamed at the ship. "The young ladies are prepared!"
"What about musicians?" Neville turned to look at the audience. "If the pirates are to sing, they will need players to accompany them!"
"Well, I suppose we could be tempted into it," said the Slytherin who’d heckled Ron earlier, leaning back on his hands.
"If someone asked us very nicely, that is," his friend who’d teased Harry added. "And gave us a quarter of the gate."
Neville raised an eyebrow. "The show’s free."
"Pfeh." The first Slytherin waved away such airy concerns. "It’s the principle of the thing, Longbottom."
"You’re a Hufflepuff," the second added, his voice rich with tolerance for such a menial state. "You wouldn’t understand."
"Here," Ray called from the ship, slashing a cross through the air with his wand. A piece of wood with a hinge on it appeared, and he tossed it towards the two Slytherins. "Quarter of the gate. Are you going to play or what?"
"Might be fun," said the first Slytherin, catching the wood and Vanishing it with his own wand.
"We’ll need help," said the second, looking over his shoulder. "Anybody willing?"
Several hands went up. The Slytherin pointed at some of their owners, who moved up to join him and his friend.
Harry climbed nimbly to a spar the twins had added a few moments before and stood up on it. "Thank you, Major-General Stanley," he proclaimed, gesturing grandly to Neville. "So let us be off to the coast of Cornwall!" A bundle of black cloth came flying at him from Ray’s general direction, and he caught it easily. "To become…" He unfolded the Jolly Roger and displayed it proudly. "The Pirates of Penzance!"
Policemen, pirates, ladies, musicians, and audience cheered.
"We open the first night of school!" Harry shouted over the noise. "Be prepared, it’s not much time! I know most of us know the show, it’s only been a year and a half, but don’t assume the next person over knows what they’re doing! Help them out!" The cheers began to die down, and he seated himself on the spar. "Now, the first thing we’re going to need is—"
A loud crack announced the arrival of a house-elf, carrying a large basket and clad in a towel with a crest Draco knew.
And I think I’ve seen the elf before too. Just… not like this.
"Kreacher?" he said dubiously.
"You know him too?" Abby said over her shoulder. "He’s fussy, but he cooks well and he always makes sure my bed is turned down the way I like it when I stay over with Susie."
"Mistress is sending Kreacher out with the songbooks little masters and mistresses will be needing," the house-elf said, peering around at the assembly. "If the masters and mistresses who will play in the orchestra will tell Kreacher where to find their instruments, Kreacher will go to fetch them as well."
A loud groan went up from the students. "Are we that predictable?" Ray demanded.
Kreacher looked up at the ship. "Mistress said only to say that she was young once too," he said. "If masters and mistresses would please come to get their books…"
"Mistress," Draco mused aloud as the players and musicians surrounded Kreacher. "That’s… Aletha Black, right? Aunt Letha?"
"That’s her." Abby leaned back through Draco’s knee, grinning at the shiver that went through her. "She loves music and plays. She directs most of the shows that happen here during the year."
"Is she a teacher too?"
Abby nodded. "She teaches elementary Potions. I’ll have her this year. Are you still taking Potions?"
"Mm-hmm," Draco said absently, trying to get his half-recognition of the two strange Slytherins to solidify as it had for Professor Riddle.
Of course, given his counterpart, this’ll probably be just as bad.
"You’ll have Professor Snape, then." Abby’s shiver this time had nothing to do with being crossed with Draco. "I don’t like him. They say he threatens to quit his job every year. I hope he does before I have to take advanced Potions."
So Snape’s still teaching Potions. Dumbledore’s still Head. McGonagall’s still doing Transfiguration, though there’s probably others too because there’s more students now. Strange to see things so different, and still so much the same as they are back where I’m from…
Kreacher, who had disappeared, reappeared with another house-elf, both clutching guitar cases. The Slytherins accepted them with nods and sat down on the grass. Flipping the lids open and slinging their instruments’ straps over their shoulders, they started to tune up.
All right, if things are so much the same here as they are back there, I need to think about my dorm. Who sleeps in there? Me, Zabini, Nott, and…
"Oi, Vince, Greg!" called Ron from the side of the ship, where he was consulting with Harry about something. "Do the Duel for us, mates, go on!"
The names snapped Draco’s train of thought into focus, and he stared aghast at the two Slytherins, one of whom was now picking out a jangling melody while giving his opposite number a challenging grin.
I should have seen that coming.
The other boy matched the grin and echoed the melody on his own instrument.
Vince. Vincent Crabbe. And Greg. Gregory Goyle.
The resemblances were obvious, now that he knew what to look for. The differences—
They look intelligent. I’d say that’s what threw me off.
The melody passed back and forth between the two guitars, speeding up as it went, until the two were playing a swift-fingered duet.
But what would have happened to the blokes I know if they hadn’t been told from the time they were kids that they’d never be anything but muscle, not to try to think too hard? They wouldn’t have turned out like this, but maybe they wouldn’t have been quite as thick as they are…
The students standing around Vince and Greg were clapping in time to the music, a few of them dancing in place.
Too hard to figure out right now. Draco yawned. Maybe in the morning I’ll understand it better.
He lay down where he was and closed his eyes, the lively music accompanying him into sleep.
If he had looked at his watch, he would have seen that it was eleven o’clock.
Narcissa froze in place as Draco stirred.
So soon? It is only one o’clock, and the dose Lucius set for him was nine hours…
She slipped quickly out of the room and relocked the door.
He must have drunk the potion very early in the afternoon. Likely trying to forget the fight.
I wish I had that luxury. But I must try to placate Lucius. If he will not relent but insists Draco must remain where he is until he ‘learns better’, if Draco retains this new strength he has found, then they may remain at odds forever.
We cannot have that. Not if we are to survive this war as a family.
She had done what she could to ensure Draco would live comfortably for however long Lucius’ edict lasted—a new door in his bedroom led to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, and his bookcase had been enchanted to bring him any volumes he requested from the Manor’s library. Now it was time to see to the other side of the equation.
As abhorrent as I occasionally find that duty, I knew what I would be expected to do when I married Lucius. I can hardly cavil at it now.
Head high, Narcissa descended the stairs.
Far away, Cecilia Black dreamed of a world where she and her love were the true and only parents of her son, where evil was defeated and hope ascendant.
For the first time in her life, such a dream looked as though it might someday come true.