Be Careful
27: What You Act Like
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco arranged himself on the seat and made sure his attitude was firmly in place.
That business on the Astronomy Tower? Unimportant, over and done with, and no one's business in any case. I may not be a leader now, but neither am I anyone's toady.
A chuckle started in his chest, and he allowed a sardonic grin to get out. His last bodily visit to the other world had ended with him being roped into reading a number of the smaller ones bedtime stories. I am the whatever-that-was-the-Manor-showed-me that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.
The Manor's library hadn't had a copy of the book which contained that particular story, but another book by the same author had been available. Draco fished it out of his schoolbag now and flipped it open to the place he'd left off.
"Remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep." Maybe I'm not going out hunting, but my nights are when I'm going to be living. Days are for getting through. Surviving, by any means necessary.
The door squeaked. Draco looked up, doing his best to keep the calm confidence on his face even as it slid out of his insides.
Let's hope those means don't have to include groveling…
"Mind if we sit here?" asked Theodore Nott, his tone half-serious, half-mocking. Crabbe and Goyle hulked behind him, and shadows moved in the dim light of the corridor beyond.
He's not sure how to handle this any more than I am. Give him something to work with. Polite, but distant. "Plenty of room." Draco swept a hand across the two benches, swinging his feet down from where they'd been perched but retaining a fair swath of the seat for himself in a controlled sprawl. "How was your summer?"
"Enjoyable." Nott put his owl's cage on the rack above his seat and took the place by the window. "Yours?"
Draco considered how to answer this for a moment, while Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, and Millicent Bulstrode joined them in the compartment. "A learning experience," he said finally.
Nott snorted. "Learning experience? Are you angling to be a professor now?"
"There are worse things to be." I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure they exist. "Especially with the new leadership at Hogwarts."
"Yes, I was so happy to hear about that," Daphne said, tossing back her blond hair. "Finally, a Headmaster who won't stifle us! If our natural inclinations are towards the Darker magics, we should be free to explore those realms, with guidance from those who have gone before!"
Draco intercepted his disbelieving stare and stored it away for later, along with the words which had provoked it.
Everyone's always nervy the night a show goes up. It'll do us good to laugh—break the tension a bit…
Somehow, that thought, juxtaposed with the faces and voices of his Housemates of six years as they chatted about their summers and reestablished their pecking order, brought home the bizarre precariousness of his position.
I'm alone here, more alone than I've ever been. I don't believe what they do anymore, but I can't let anyone know that. And how long can I act the part of the supercilious junior Death Eater before I fall back into it for real? It'd be easy—I've had seventeen years to get it ingrained, and less than two months’ practice being anything else…
He looked down at his book. I don't know if this is going to work out. Having a foot in two worlds nearly tore Mowgli apart. Eventually he had to go back to the world where he was born.
Of course, that meant he had to leave behind the ones who raised him…
That was the message he was going to take from The Jungle Books, Draco decided. Not that he couldn't make the leap into the other world, but that he had to do so.
And from that standpoint, it's perfectly fine for me to be thinking as if I've always lived there. But while I'm here, I need to stay… He smiled to himself. In character.
This sounded tricky, but Draco thought he could pull it off. It helped that a great deal about the ‘Draco Malfoy’ that the world had known before this summer had been false to begin with.
It was a mask then, it'll be a mask now. But there are three important differences.
One, now I know it's a mask. I didn't before.
Two, now there's something under the mask. Which there didn't used to be.
And three, now I have a place and time I can take the mask off.
The chatter in the compartment was winding down. It sounded as though the other Slytherins had worked out a tentative hierarchy. Draco wasn't sure what place they'd assigned him, but as long as they weren't expecting him to crawl to any of them, he didn't care.
Disinterested is the way to go, I think. As if this were all beneath me, or behind me already. As if I were sure how it will all end.
As if it really were nothing more than a story or a play.
Or a dream.
He turned the page and began to read "Kaa's Hunting".
The Sorting Feast was a travesty.
The Sorting Hat, brought out by a grim-faced McGonagall, did not sing, but merely awaited the arrival at the wooden stool of the line of first years before beginning its job in brisk, no-nonsense tones. It finished quickly, as there were fewer first years than Draco could ever remember seeing before.
Maybe because there aren't any Muggleborns?
Professor Snape, now officially Headmaster Snape, gave a short speech in which he mentioned how honored he'd been to serve under Headmaster Dumbledore, "misguided though I believed some of his policies to be." When he finished and sat down, the tables filled with food, and the feast began.
This is creepy. Draco helped himself to a slice of ham and a spoonful of potatoes. No one's talking except us.
Indeed, the Slytherins were making enough noise for at least two Houses, but that didn't disguise that the Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs were all eating in wary silence, casting hostile looks towards the boisterous Slytherin table.
Has anyone noticed it but me?
None of his Housemates seemed aware of the other Houses’ silent enmity, but as Draco turned back to his food, movement at the high table caught his eye. Snape was leaning over to Slughorn, emphasizing whatever he was saying with short and choppy gestures, nodding first towards the Slytherins, then towards the rest of the Great Hall.
The teachers see it. They'll deal with it. No more need to worry.
But even the Hogwarts food, as excellent as always, couldn't take the edge of nervousness out of Draco's stomach.
An awful lot goes on around here that the teachers never hear about…
The feast over, Draco got to his feet. "First years, this way!" he called aloud, waving a hand over his head. "Slytherin first years!"
"Only kind there ought to be," said one of the boys, shoving his way to the front of the crowd. His dark hair was combed slickly back, and he swaggered as he walked. "I wouldn't give a bucket of werewolf spit for the other three Houses. Put together."
What an insufferable little—
Wait a second. That used to be me.
Draco couldn't keep the rueful smile from his face, and decided to put it to good use.
"You think so?" he said, crossing his arms and looking down at the boy, who seemed taken aback that someone was answering him. "I thought so once, when I was your age. But some of them over there are pretty good with their wands. And six out of seven of them know more magic than you do."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of dark blonde hair.
The boy scoffed. "My dad's been teaching me magic since I could walk! I know more than a third year!"
"Which leaves the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh years who could still beat you with one hand tied behind their back," Draco countered. "All it takes is a trick you don't know, or a spell you're not expecting. Underestimate your enemy, and you're the one who falls. Always assume they're better than they are." He grinned. "If nothing else, it means you'll prepare to a level where you can crush them instead of just winning."
The boy's eyes flashed with excitement at this last sentence. "I want to crush Mudbloods," he said, looking up at Draco worshipfully. "Teach them they're not allowed to pretend to be witches and wizards when I'm around. Will we learn how to do that?"
"Eventually," Draco temporized. "You have to work on the basics first. But then yes, I think you will learn some crushing." He turned to head for the doors.
The blonde hair he'd seen resolved itself into Luna, standing very still a few seats away and gazing past him with her face displaying a mixture of curiosity and—
Is that disappointment?
Some part of him clamored that he had to run to her, to explain what he was trying to do, to justify himself, but he held back. That'd be suicide. Maybe not literally, but for the image I'm trying to cultivate, it might as well be. I can't care what she thinks of me, not if I want to make a difference this year and eventually get home for good when the Dark Lord goes down—
Luna's eyes swung back towards Draco's and met them.
Draco froze, transfixed. Blue-gray was all there was, all there would ever be—he was being weighed, measured, and somehow he sensed that he had not been found entirely wanting—
Luna turned away, and Draco shook himself. "See, that's a Ravenclaw," he told the boy behind him. "Don't get in an argument with them. They forget more every day than you'll learn in a year. The only way to beat them is to kick them in the shins while they've got their heads up in the clouds."
A ripple of snickering spread back through the Slytherins, and Draco started walking again, waving at the first years to follow him. "Hufflepuffs, now," he said over his shoulder. "You have to take them out on the first spell, because if they get a hold of you, they'll never let go. Don't know when they're beaten, and sometimes they'll come back and surprise you long after you thought they were done."
"And what about Gryffindors?" the boy asked, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. "How do you beat them?"
Draco snorted. "Get lucky. Gryffindors are hard. But if you can outthink them, make them think you're going one way when you're really going another, most of the time you can win."
"I'll win every duel I have," the boy bragged. "There won't be anyone who can stand against me!"
This is already getting old. Draco unobtrusively slid a hand inside his robes and found his wand's grip. I hope I didn't grate this badly on the prefects when I was a firstie…
"Not even any of you will be able to beat me," the boy went on, looking around at his Housemates. "But I won't beat you too badly. Not as badly as I'll beat—"
Draco spun, wand in hand, and struck a dueler's pose in front of the startled first year, who went cross-eyed trying to see the tip of the wand, an inch from his nose.
"You won't beat anyone if your mouth is making so much noise you can't hear your opponent cast," he said softly. "Let's get down to the dorms. Tomorrow you'll have classes, and you can let your wandwork do the bragging for you."
The boy gulped and nodded. His face had gone pasty white, and the bravado in his eyes was gone, replaced by a sick fear.
He must think I'm actually going to hurt him…
Draco slid his wand back away and saw some of the fear lift from the boy's brown eyes, but its shadow was still there, and Draco's stomach clenched at what that meant.
He must have been told the prefects and teachers can do anything they want to him.
And I'm not sure he's wrong.
"Let's go," he said, turning back towards the dungeon stairs. "I need some sleep."
Safe within his bedcurtains, Draco allowed himself a brief moment of shivering.
First years shouldn't be afraid of their own House's prefects. That's just wrong.
Not that anything about this day has been particularly right.
But he knew the quickest solution to that.
Live the day over again, the way it ought to have been…
He'd been pleasantly surprised that Lucius did not insist the Dreamless Sleep Potion go with him to school. Then again, if he happened to wander off in his sleep while he was at Hogwarts, that was no skin off Lucius’ nose.
He might even be able to use it to score points on Snape, if the opportunity arose.
Which it won't.
Draco crawled to the head of the bed, burrowed under the covers, and settled down to sleep. Then, remembering, he parted the curtains just enough to grab his wand and tuck it into his pajama pocket.
I have clothes and books there, but I don't have an extra wand. Have to be sure to bring it back, though, it'll be hard to get another one…
A small stab of guilt hit Draco. Despite his new power over the Manor, the only thing he had done to help Ollivander through the entire summer was to open a small air shaft into the cellar where the wandmaker was being held. He'd have fresh air and a bit of sunlight on some days, and the shaft would close itself if anyone else entered the cellar and open again as soon as they left.
Still, maybe I should have done something else. Like, oh, let him go…
Sanity reasserted itself. He's in no shape to travel alone, and I can't exactly go with him. There'll be an opportunity to help him more at some point. I've done what I can for him for now.
It's time to do something for me.
He yawned hugely and shut his eyes.
Time to go home.
Draco woke up falling.
His yelp of surprise was cut off short as he impacted with the fluffy green rug which had materialized over the stone floor he was used to.
Doesn't make it any softer, though.
And it was not masking the snickering coming from behind him.
"Very funny," he grunted when he had enough breath to do so. "Thought you'd give me a special wake-up call, huh?"
"Just wanted to remind you why you're glad to be back," Ray said cheerily.
Draco growled, but his heart wasn't in it. "I know where you sleep," he said, shoving himself upright.
"I sleep where you sleep. Mostly."
Draco turned and gave his friend a lazy smile. "There are a world of possibilities in that little word ‘mostly.’"
"Great." Ray's shoulders sagged. "Remind me not to pick on you anymore."
"I won't have to. When I'm done with you, you never will."
Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do to him…
Draco slid the question to the back of his mind for later thought. Right now, he had a day of rehearsing to get through, culminating in the Sorting Feast—a real one, this time—and the show.
Here's hoping I don't fall on my face.
But even if he did, the worst that would happen would be a few indulgent chuckles and a hand held out to help him up.
He'd made it home. It was time for life to be good.