Be Careful
71: Which Story You Trust
By Anne B. Walsh
"Malfoy?"
Draco turned, stepping to one side to let the flow of student traffic proceed around him. "Yes?" he said to the petite blonde Slytherin in her mid-teens who had addressed him.
"Are you responsible for this?" the girl demanded, holding out a photograph. Draco accepted it, looked at it, and immediately had need of the acting skill he was cultivating in the otherworld.
I didn’t realize someone brought a camera. Serves you right for trying to patronize me that one time, Nott... you, too, Greengrass, anybody dumb enough to think Dark magic is just an artistic choice...
"I don’t know why you’d think I had anything to do with it," he said, handing the picture back to the girl.
"Well-played." She slid the picture into a small envelope, which she tucked into one of the books she was holding. "You give the impression that you weren’t involved without ever stating it outright, so technically, you’re not lying. Very clever."
"They don’t give these out for nothing," Draco said, tapping his House crest. "I don’t think I caught your name."
"I don’t think I threw it."
Draco brought up his closed fists and tapped his wrists together at right angles, a Quidditch referee’s sign for a blocked shot. The girl smiled and tossed her hair over her shoulder in a strangely familiar movement. "I’d better get to class," she said, glancing around at the hall, empty except for them. "And so should you. Say hi to Daphne for me, if she’s not still hiding in her dorm."
She turned and took three steps away, then looked over her shoulder. "For the record, Malfoy, I know you did it. I saw you."
A stab of panic shot through Draco, but he kept his face impassive. "And I’m not in the Head’s office why?" he asked, leaning against the wall nonchalantly.
The girl shrugged. "Because it was funny. Because it made sure two of our Housemates didn’t get blamed for what someone else did wearing their faces. And because I’ve been looking for a way to break up dear Daffy-waffy and Nott-Very-Bright for weeks now, and you did it for me." Her smile appeared again, wide and bright and a trifle mocking, as though she knew a joke she wasn’t going to share. "I owe you lunch for it. Next Hogsmeade visit?"
"It’s a date. Metaphorically speaking," Draco added quickly as the girl raised an eyebrow at him. "Am I allowed to know your name now, or do I have to keep guessing until you get my first-born child?"
The other eyebrow joined its friend. "Was that a proposition, Malfoy?"
"No, it was a botched story reference. Never mind." Draco scrubbed his knuckles against his forehead. Keep your worlds straight, dimwand, they don’t know Rumplestiltskin around here. "Your name? Please?"
"Call me Story," the girl said quietly, her eyes fixed on his face. "Since you seem to like them so much."
And before Draco could ask anything else, she was gone.
"She likes you," Luna said with certainty as Draco took his hand away from the TVP.
"How do you know?"
Luna tapped the corner of her eye significantly. "I know."
"Right. Seeing. Don’t you think she’s a little young for me, though?"
"She won’t always be."
Something in Luna’s tone caught Draco’s attention. He turned to look at her straight on. "What is it?"
"She... and you..." Luna made a vague motion in the air. "There’s something around you both. I don’t understand it. I’ve never Seen it before."
"Well, whatever it is, it’s going to have to go away." Draco snagged Luna’s waist and pulled her closer to him. She came without resistance. "Because I’m going to be gone myself, very soon now."
"Not that soon," said Abby, who was lying across a beanbag in the back of the room, reading her Charms text upside down. "Not until Walpurgis Night, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember." Draco kissed Luna on the cheek. "But still, that’s only a few months away. What could happen in a few months?"
Abby and Luna both looked at him for a moment. Draco tried to return the stares, but besides the numerical disadvantage, he had to keep turning his head to keep both girls in view. Finally Abby began to giggle, setting Luna off, and Draco scooped his fiancee into his arms and trotted across the room to plop onto the next beanbag over from his adoptive little sister.
"What would I do without you two?" he asked as Abby scrambled over to claim her hugs from both of them.
"You don’t want to know," said Abby promptly.
"What if I do?"
"You don’t. You really, really don’t." Abby leaned up to whisper something into Luna’s ear.
"She’s right," said Luna, sharing a brief smile with Abby. "You don’t want to know."
"Behold the tyranny of the so-called weaker sex." Draco tried to get up, but the weight of reclining females on him was too much. "Guess I’ll stay here, then."
"I guess you will." Luna tickled his nose with a tendril of her hair. "And maybe if you’re a good boy, we won’t take pictures of you all squashed down and helpless..."
"So, been any good books lately?" Draco asked, handing a butterbeer across the table.
Story looked down her nose at him. "Is that a sample of your sense of humor?"
"No, it’s a sample of my awful pick-up lines. I know hundreds. Want to hear another one?"
"No, thank you, one was quite enough." She uncorked the bottle deftly, tapped her wand against it to heat it, and took a drink. "What do you do when you’re not embarrassing your Housemates?"
"Well, I’m a part-time pirate at the moment," Draco said, uncorking his own bottle. "But I’m going to night school to be a hidden hero helper, with a side specialty in appearing to be a junior evil bastard. It makes the big reveal at the end so much more dramatic, you know?"
The girl stared at him for several seconds, her lips slightly parted. At last, she found her voice. "Either you are completely mad..."
"Or?" Draco prompted when he felt the pause had gone on long enough. "Finish your sentence. Stories should have closure."
Story snorted a laugh. "You’re not what I expected, Malfoy," she said.
"Yeah, that makes two of us." Draco blew across the top of his butterbeer bottle, making a long, low sound like the whistle of the Hogwarts Express. "I didn’t think anyone else in my House was..."
"Sane?" Story suggested. "Not all of us agree with our parents on everything, you know. Some of us like people from other Houses." Her face hardened. "Or did."
"You?" Draco asked quietly.
"Her name was Natalie." Story’s voice had gone flat, and she was gripping her butterbeer as though wishing it were someone’s throat. "She was a Gryffindor. She was Muggleborn. She was my friend. And she is dead." Her head came up, fire in her eyes. "Someone is going to pay."
Draco leaned forward, pitching his voice to carry only as far as the girl. "Do you know names?"
"One. Only one."
"One is all I need." Draco smiled slowly. "Just call me... the collector."
Collecting information, at the moment. But I’ll be able to move onto debts soon enough. Maybe even settle a bit of my own.
Draco ducked a Bludger and shot up the pitch, keeping his eyes open for the telltale glint of Snitch gold. His team was slated to play the Gryffindor Fun Team next week, and Captain Artemis Moon had cautioned them all against thinking it was a pushover.
"Remember, they’re all good at trick flying," she’d said, pushing her dark hair out of her slanted eyes. "They’ve tricked better teams than us into giving up points, or even the Snitch. Don’t let it happen to us."
Let some poncy Gryffindor get away with my Snitch? Ha, fat chance. It’s mine, all mine, and I’ll show them that!
Draco wove his broomstick in and out of the goalposts, drifting lower on each circuit, until finally his feet were hovering just above the grass. One hand went lazily out, paused for a moment, then struck. "Gotcha," he said with satisfaction as the Golden Snitch beat its silver wings uselessly against his fingers. "Game over."
High above, Artemis blew her whistle, signaling her players to come in. Draco turned to see red-robed figures walking down from the castle, broomsticks over their shoulders.
Our practice time must be up. Good thing, too. I have three essays to finish and that dead-wood-to-living-plant Transfiguration practical for McGonagall, and all my flowers keep coming out wilted...
As the Gryffindor players drew nearer, a face at the back of the group caught Draco’s eye. Cheerful and bright, topped with gingery-blonde hair, and she was pushing through the crowd to come towards him—
"Natalie McDonald," she said, holding out her hand to him. "Seeker."
"Draco Malfoy. Same." Draco shook the hand of the girl whose counterpart’s murder he’d promised—was it just yesterday?—to help avenge. "Want it?" He held out the Snitch.
"Thanks." Natalie accepted the tiny ball, straightening a bend in one of the wings with her wand. "Do you know my boyfriend, Graham?" She nodded towards a dark-haired boy climbing into the stands. "He’s a fourth year, like me, but a Slytherin." A giggle, as she half-turned to wave at the boy. "I don’t think he knows who to cheer for this time!"
"He’ll work it out," said Draco, peering up at the boy. Sure enough, the features were familiar, in the vague way of someone often seen but seldom looked at.
Now as long as that carries over, I’ve got another member of Story’s "some of us," and one who’ll be hungrier for revenge even than she is...
"So what would he do without us?" Abby asked Luna over the plans the two were drawing up for their future with the boy in question (it had been decided that Draco and Luna would have four children, two boys and two girls, and that Abby would come to live with them as soon as she finished Hogwarts, since by that time they would need the extra adult around).
"Marry that girl we saw him with," Luna said. "That’s what the funny look around them is. I worked it out a day or two ago, after I checked a few other things."
"Brr." Abby shivered deliciously. "I’m glad he has us. She doesn’t look very nice."
Luna nodded. "He’d be a little bit happy," she said. "But not very."
Abby sat up straight, her eyes sparkling. Clearly she had just Seen something. "And he’d give his son a worse name than his!" she proclaimed.
"Who would?" said Draco, coming into the room.
Luna shut the notebook they were writing in as Abby bounced up to hug Draco. "You would," she said, beaming up at him. "If you never met us, you would."
Draco frowned. "A worse name than mine? Is that even possible?"
Abby leaned up, and Draco down, until she could whisper in his ear. His eyes went wide. "No."
"Yes." Abby nodded sagely. "Really and truly."
"Dear God, that’s bordering on child abuse!"
"Bordering?" said Luna sweetly.
Hermione later claimed she’d been able to hear them laughing from the other side of the castle.
"I was cleaning out my wardrobe last night," Draco said to Luna later that night, pulling a battered book from his bag. "At the other Hogwarts, the one we came from. Thinking ahead, for when I won’t be there to do it anymore."
"And you want to save the house-elves work. How nice of you."
"No, I just want to be sure I don’t leave anything valuable behind. But that’s beside the point. I found my old Astronomy text—well, I say found, it fell out on my foot—and it opened to this page." Draco flipped open the book to the place he’d marked with a bit of parchment. "A list of meteor showers, and when they happen. There’s one coming up, and Professor Sinistra said it looks like it’s going to be a good one this year. Would you like to go out and watch it?"
Luna smiled. "Yes, please. On one condition."
"What’s that?"
"I want to do it in the world we came from. To have one last memory from there, before we come here forever." She stroked his jawline tenderly. "One perfect night, with you."
"How can I say no to that?" Draco turned his head and kissed the caressing fingers. "One last memory it is. Dress warm. It’s going to be a chilly night."
No real points for guessing who Story is. Canon, after all. Points, however, for figuring out what might happen to Draco and Luna on their chilly night out! More story as soon as I can write it!