Be Careful
85: Which Parts You Speak
By Anne B. Walsh
Luke the mongoose followed his nose upstairs to the bedroom where his aunt sat watching over her sleeping daughter and grandson. She raised inquisitive eyebrows as he took his human form and shut the door. "I had thought you would want to listen."
"They’re trying to work out the chronology of it now." Draco arched his back, stretching his shoulders, which always felt stiff after a stint in his Animagus form. "Put together everything I’ve done, every time they’ve seen me or been affected by me. Since I know it all already, it got boring. So here I am." He held out his arms and plastered a hopeful expression on his face. "May I?"
"Be careful with his head," Aunt Andromeda warned, getting up. "His neck—"
"Isn’t strong enough to support it yet, I know." Draco sat down in the chair and accepted little Teddy, cradling a white-tufted head in the crook of his arm. "Really getting into the Metamorphmagic, isn’t he?"
"He likely enjoys having one thing wholly under his control." Aunt Andromeda was watching him with the steady, exploring gaze of a Healer. "You are not what I expected, Draco."
"If I had a Knut for every time someone’s said that to me this year..." Draco shrugged minutely, so as not to disturb the sleeping baby. "Not that I need the money."
Aunt Andromeda smiled. "True enough. Is the answer to the conundrum anything which can be explained in the time we have?"
"Probably not. But I’m working on making sure it gets explained to everyone involved before this is all over." Which number has just gone up by three, four if you count Teddy. But that won’t be too big a problem, I don’t think.
"Then I shall wait." She leaned on the back of the chair, regarding Teddy’s face as it crinkled in sleep and his hair began to blush red. "As shall we all."
Her right hand rested for a moment on Teddy’s forehead. Draco frowned. Had he, or had he not, seen her thumb move in the otherworld’s sign of protection?
That has to stay a ‘maybe’. I didn’t get a clear look. But—
The hand rose to Draco’s own forehead and flicked a few strands of hair back to their proper places. The side of the thumb brushed against his skin, two quick strokes at right angles.
That’s no maybe, and no accident either. I have a few questions I need to be asking Mum tomorrow...
Those two thoughts, ‘Mum’ and ‘tomorrow,’ sent Draco’s mind hurtling in enough directions to be at right angles to itself, and he heard the footsteps outside the room only just in time. Aunt Andromeda snatched up Teddy and Luke the mongoose darted under the bed as a soft knock sounded on the door.
Better stay under here until no one’s looking, then slip out and back down to Luna.
"Are you finished, then?" Aunt Andromeda’s voice asked. "We are protected?"
"As safe as can be," Lupin answered. "No one who isn’t already here will be able to find us unless I tell them where."
Luke muffled his sniggers in his tail.
"We’ve worked out a spell to use on ourselves for the party, too," Harry added. "A variant on the Tongue-Tying Jinx. It’ll make sure we don’t say anything by accident that we shouldn’t."
"Like certain names?" Aunt Andromeda said dryly. "Not that I think even a Trace could defeat a Fidelius, but I would prefer not to wager my life on it."
Luke risked taking a peek. Harry’s color was rising, but he was holding his temper in check admirably.
"Andromeda, please," said Lupin in mild reproof. "Let’s not quarrel tonight."
What a good idea.
Luke slipped out from under the bed and shot between Harry and the lintel of the door, already halfway down the stairs before he heard Lupin say, "What was that?"
That, my dear professor, was your biggest security risk.
Not that you know that, or ever will.
At least, not until there’s no more need for security.
"Malfoy may have called what I said about Hermione’s hand melodrama, but he listened anyway," Ron said. Two cups of the punch he’d mixed with Tonks’ help had taken the rough edges off the world, so that his only problem was sticking to the story he and Hermione had worked out for Harry and the Lupins about what had happened in, and to, Malfoy Manor.
Hermione’s got a harder job than I do. Everything Malfoy did for me, I can pin on Luna.
"Obviously," said Harry, slurring the word just a touch. He was working on his fourth cup of punch, though Ginny was keeping him well-supplied with food to offset it. "How did you get free, and downstairs? And what about a wand?"
"Luna cut me loose after Malfoy shoved me in with her." Ron grinned at the girl, who looked up from her lap-mongoose and returned the expression. "And she, or maybe I should say her friend Reflection, found these little amulet things. Have a look." He unlooped the cord from his neck and handed it to Harry. "That one’s dead, I used it up, but I think Luna’s is still live—"
"Two more uses," Luna clarified. "I used the first one getting out to the boundaries quickly."
"What does it do?" Lupin asked, leaning closer to see.
"It changes you into your Animagus form," said Ron. "Even if you don’t know what it is. Mine’s a hawk, so all I had to do to get down to the ground was glide." The experience of flying with his own wings was not one he was going to forget in a hurry, even if the first few seconds had been sheer terror. "Luna had to shove me out the window, though. I wouldn’t’ve gone otherwise."
Tonks snorted in amusement, Harry and Ginny laughed aloud, and Lupin’s lips twitched. "Is your form winged as well?" he asked Luna.
"A snowy owl." Luna passed her empty cup to Tonks, who was the official guardian of the punch bowl. "The amulets have been very useful."
"I’d imagine." Harry stole a piece of Ginny’s cheese, narrowly dodging her smack. "How’d you meet this Reflection, anyway? Does he really look like Hermione?"
"Where did you hear that?"
Harry pointed to Lupin, who shrugged. "It was the way Dean described him to me," he said, handing his own cup to Tonks for a refill. "‘As if Hermione had a brother,’ was the way he put it."
Hermione laughed aloud this time. "To hear Draco talk, you’d think I did," she said. "And he was it. I can’t imagine why he’d set his heart on me like that..."
"I can," said Luna, taking another slice of apple and breaking it in half for Luke. "I got to know him well, staying at his house so long. I even know things about him he doesn’t know himself."
"For example?" said Andromeda, sitting in a chair a few feet back from the main circle of the party, but with a cup of punch and a plate of food beside her.
"He’s always wanted to be friends with Hermione." Luna popped the other piece of apple into her own mouth. "It’s part of the reason he was so horrible to you all the time at school," she said around it. "And to you two," she added to Harry and Ron. "He was envious of you, because you could be near her and he couldn’t."
"Not without betraying everything his family stood for," Tonks said. "So he kept niggling at it in his head until he found some way he could be around her. Sounds properly pureblood to me."
"Malfoy’s a little bit mad. We knew that." Harry drained his cup and handed it over. Ron noticed Tonks murmur a charm over it before she gave it back, and hoped it had removed some of the alcohol. "What about Reflection? What’s he to the Malfoys? What’s he to Hermione, for that matter?"
"To Hermione, and all of you, a friend," said Luna. "To the Malfoys, a relation they didn’t care for. They never turned him out, but they never did much for him either, so he was quite lonely by the time we met. He can wear a lot of different faces—it’s part of the reason he chose the name he did for Potterwatch—so he picked one for Dean that he thought Dean would trust."
All of it true, and none of it coming near the whole truth. Ron hid a smile in a bite of scone. Luna, you’re a star.
"All right, so we’ve got Luna down at the wards with Harry and Ginny," said Tonks, sketching a rough map in the air with her wand. "And because Reflection’s connected somehow to the Malfoys and you’re engaged to him, you had a little bit of power over them. Enough to get past."
Luna nodded. "We’d hoped I could let Harry and Ginny back in, but it didn’t work like that."
"Not surprised. And we’ve got Ron coming in from outside, where he meets Wormtail and gets his wand off him." Tonks added a few stars and squiggles coming off the little cloud in the hallway that signified the fight. "And Hermione in this front room, with my wonderful cousin Draco, his mummy and daddy and auntie, and Fenrir Greyback and his gang of Snatchers..."
She trailed off, looking significantly at Hermione, as was everyone else.
You can do it, Ron willed his girlfriend silently. Stay as close to the truth as you can and you should be fine.
"I don’t really know what happened," Hermione said, crumbling a crisp between her fingers. "Draco kept talking and talking, all about how he would make me believe he was my friend, and then my brother, and you know what’s frightening? I would have. If he’d done what he talked about, I would have believed him."
Harry made a rude noise. "Come on, Hermione, we all know better than that. You, believe Malfoy’s your brother? I’ll believe Wormtail’s a hero before that!"
"He had some good points, Harry." Hermione met Harry’s gaze calmly. "Maybe not good right now, when I know that they’re coincidence and pureblood cant, but if he had Obliviated me, if he had been able to take advantage of Stockholm Syndrome—that’s what happens sometimes in hostage situations, when the hostages start to think well of the people holding them," she added for the benefit of the purebloods in the room. "If he had been friendly enough, and I had been there long enough, I would have been desperate for a connection to anyone or anything. Even Draco Malfoy."
"What made you scream?" Ginny asked. "We heard you all the way down at the boundaries."
"He threatened my parents." Hermione stared into her punch. "He said I would kill them, on his orders, and that would ‘purify’ my blood." The sneer quotes were nearly tangible. "And that I would smile as I did it. That made me angry, angrier than I’ve ever been. I screamed. And the floor started shaking."
"Not just the floor," said Harry. "The ground outside, the whole house, everything was moving."
"Quite a powerful voice," Lupin commented.
"Yes, but it wasn’t mine." Hermione looked up. "Not the scream, that was mine, but the voice with the power. This is going to sound utterly mad, but I heard someone speak to me while I was screaming, just as clearly as I can hear any of you."
"What did they say?" asked Tonks, who looked fascinated. "‘Good scream, keep it up’?"
"Something like that." Hermione smiled wanly. "And then it told me to command it, to tell it what I wanted done—‘who you wish crushed,’ was the way it was put—and I did."
"And as a result, my oh-so-dear sister Bellatrix is in St. Mungo’s and will not be leaving there for at least a week," said Andromeda smugly. "I visited her there, as part of my errand. She looks most uncomfortable, and is taking it out on her husband and brother-in-law."
"My heart bleeds for them," said Ron, getting a refill on his own punch. "We already know the Malfoys made it out, though You-Know-Who did for one of them later..." He realized an instant too late how callous this sounded. "Sorry," he said to Andromeda over his shoulder.
Andromeda shook her head. "Never apologize for reminding us where the true blame lies in these deaths." She seemed to be directing her words past him, and Ron followed her line of sight with his eyes and came up with—
Luna? But that’s ridiculous, Luna wouldn’t blame herself for Mrs. Malfoy dying... so then who...
"What about the Snatchers?" Ginny asked, taking over the conversation. "Harry, you said you saw Greyback?"
"He was badly burned, but if they bother to take care of him he’ll probably live." Harry glanced apologetically at Lupin, who sipped his punch as though this topic bothered him not at all. "The other Snatchers... I don’t think any of them got out. Or Wormtail."
"I didn’t want to kill anyone," Hermione whispered, her eyes on her feet. "I just wanted to get away."
Luke the mongoose scurried out of Luna’s lap and into Hermione’s, where he sat up and delivered himself of what sounded like an entire lecture in chitter, complete with a scolding paw shaken under Hermione’s nose. By the time he finished, everyone was laughing, even Hermione.
"Thank you," she said, handing Luke back to Luna. "You’re right. I never killed anyone. I knocked some walls down on top of people, but that was to keep them from stopping us escaping, not to kill them. The house falling was outside my control, and not everyone who was trapped inside died."
"And if Lucius had helped Narcissa instead of pulling her away, perhaps they could have saved everyone," Luna added. "But no one is ever told what would have happened." She smiled her special smile, the one Ron associated with some pronouncement about the upcoming lead article of The Quibbler. "Except sometimes they are."
Luke nuzzled her hand, then yipped in surprise. Startled, Ron looked up. The light outside was fading.
When did it get so late?
"Yes, you had better go," Luna said, exactly as if Luke had spoken. "Come back soon. I miss you when you’re not here."
"Go?" said Harry, frowning. "Luna, what’s..." He trailed off as Luna stood up and went to the door, opening it. Luke shot out through it, and Luna closed it again.
"Luke comes and goes as he pleases," she said, returning to her place. "Don’t worry. He won’t give us away."
The round of laughter had a brittle edge to Ron’s ear. If what he was starting to suspect was true, then Luke could give them away.
But if it’s true what we worked out while Lupin and Harry were doing the Fidelius, then he won’t. He’s on our side now.
Ron was glad he wasn’t going to have to be the one to try and convince Harry of this. He had the feeling, somehow, that it would likely be a losing battle.
So more conversation and party there were, but Snape’s Patronus there was not. Next time, I promise. Also next time: Draco finally gets to see his mum again, and we find out why he chose the form-name he did. Thanks for hanging in there with me, folks!