Be Careful
90: Whom You Challenge
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco awakened on Friday morning with a rasping sound in his ears and a feeling of warmth against his right side. Opening his eyes, he lifted the blanket draped over his hammock to discover the source of both sensations.
"That’s odd," he said aloud. "I don’t remember ordering a mini-me."
"Rooooaaaaar," mumbled Dragon Charlie without waking up.
Somebody giggled.
Draco fixed Abby with a glare. She returned it with the sweet serenity of the person who can hold her challenger’s breakfast hostage against his good behavior.
"All right, I’m up." Draco swung his legs out of the hammock and flipped the covers off Dragon, who grumbled in his sleep and reached down for them. "Oh no you don’t," Draco said, and flipped the hammock over. The Room of Requirement obligingly sprouted a padded floor in the impact area, but Dragon still hit hard enough that his yelp of indignation was mostly driven out of him.
"You deserved it," Abby informed her little brother, beginning to pour tea. "Mum says the Ministry’ll probably give up today, Draco."
"Huzzah for that." Cracking his back, Draco headed for the bathroom. "Thought they’d never leave. That’s one thing no better on the one side than the other."
"Luna told me once about little blood-sucking things called Polyticks," Dragon said, sitting up. "She said they get everywhere and make the Ministry stupid no matter what world you’re in."
"She’s probably right." Draco shut the door and allowed himself a brief moment of wishing it had been Luna in the hammock with him, Luna with her soft hair and her warm lips and her—
All right, you pervert, there’s kids out there. Keep it clean. Remember, she’ll be here as soon as Harry and company are ready to move, and that shouldn’t be any later than Walpurgisnacht.
The thirtieth of April had been the last day on the list of dates Abby had foreseen in her one session with the TVP. Since the other three had proved true—St. Luke’s Day had seen Ron stomping out of the tent in the woods and netted Draco his chance at the cup, Christmas Eve had reunited the Trio and destroyed Nagini and Draco’s Mark, and Good Friday had brought down the house in the most literal way possible—Draco had no question in his mind that this final date would bring the maddest year of his life to a close.
The only question is, will I finish everything I need to do before then?
While brushing his teeth, Draco considered his to-do list. It was daunting, not for its length but for the vagueness of the items on it. Retrieving the diadem from the Room of Hiding was still impossible, because the Room of Requirement at his original Hogwarts could (as he had discovered after a rather tense morning earlier in the week) either generate a secret exit elsewhere in the castle so Snape’s troll tattletales wouldn’t catch him or take on its alternate identity. It couldn’t do both.
And I can’t figure out why I wanted to look at that soul flask. Except maybe to verify that it can’t be powered by any spell I know, or any that my friends know either. I’m starting to wonder if it’s spell-powered at all, or if it has to run on some other kind of magic...
He dried his face, hung up the towel, and left the bathroom. Abby was rolling her eyes as Dragon poured a lavish amount of cream into his tea. "Leave some for the rest of us, brat," Draco said, snagging the creamer from above. Dragon stuck out a tongue covered in chewed-up eggs.
"Ewwww," Abby protested. "That’s disgusting."
Dragon promptly treated his sister to a huge, open-mouthed grin.
"Ewwww!"
Ah, family. Draco sat down and began serving himself. Can’t live with ‘em... oh wait. Yes I can.
"Sit," he said through a bite of porridge, forestalling Abby’s attempt to jump up and smack Dragon upside the head and Dragon’s preparations to hit her back first. "That’s unless you want me to make seatbelts on the chairs. I can, you know."
Both Beauvois subsided, though they continued to cast poisonous glances at one another through the remainder of the meal. Finally, Abby crossed her eyes at Dragon, who sucked in his lips back at her, and everyone laughed, cementing a peace treaty.
"I brought this," said Abby, pulling a small mirror from her pocket as the remains of breakfast disappeared. "Aunt Cecy’s got the other one, she said she’d turn it on as soon as things got interesting."
As though it were choreographed, a knock sounded on the door at this point. "Go away, nobody’s home!" yelled Dragon, and the door opened to the sound of laughter. Students flooded inside, not only Draco’s friends and their siblings but a great many others. He gathered from the noisy babble, as Harry and the Weasleys set the two-way mirror to broadcast its image onto the wall and magnify the sound it gathered from the other side, that the Ministry officials had not been making themselves popular the last few days.
"They keep looking at us like you’d look at cattle," said Pansy Parkinson with an expressive shudder. "And asking if we’ve decided who we’re going to marry. Going on and on about how we have a ‘sacred duty’ to spread magic through the world so that fewer people fall prey to the ‘dreadful scourge’ of dementors." She smirked. "One of them offered to introduce me to her Muggle nephew. I told her I’d love to meet him, and introduce him to my Muggle boyfriend who just happens to be a boxing champion."
Draco laughed at this, remembering with a strange mixture of nausea and nostalgia the way the Pansy of his original world had fawned on him the year before. And stayed well away from me this year, just like everyone else. Well, almost everyone...
Past Pansy’s shoulder, a pair of familiar faces caught his eye. Daphne Greengrass and a girl who could have passed for his new friend Story’s twin stood hand in hand, giggling together.
"I should know this already," he said tentatively to Pansy, "but..."
She half-turned and followed his line of sight. "Well, I’d hope you know the older one," she teased. "The younger one is Astoria."
The younger one—of course, I’m an idiot, they’re sisters. I knew that. Or I should have.
Endless childhood lessons on pureblood families and possible matches rose up to reproach him; Draco made a mental face at them. You don’t matter anymore. I picked my girl already, and I picked her because she’s funny and smart and beautiful and because she believes wonderful things. She could be half-blood or Muggleborn and it wouldn’t matter one bit...
Except it will. The realization made his stomach drop. Even if we manage to make that last jump, if we get here together, unless I can figure out what I’m supposed to do and get rid of the dementors for good, that marriage law is going to pass. Which would mean Luna and I can’t ever get married.
As if I needed more motivation to get it worked out, and soon.
"Shh!" Ginny waved frantically at the crowd. "It’s starting!"
People quieted down and turned to watch. The image on the wall, though rather distorted, was unmistakably Professors Dumbledore, Riddle, and McGonagall, forming a courteous half-circle around a small, dumpy woman in a cardigan the color of freshly-chewed bubble gum. Draco wondered for a moment where his mum was, then realized she was carrying the mirror and obviously couldn’t appear in it at the same time.
Stupid me.
"I don’t know what to tell you, Dolores," Professor Dumbledore was saying in his gravest tones. "It seems that the young man you’re looking for is simply nowhere to be found."
Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge gave Dumbledore a sharp look, then switched it to McGonagall when it had no effect. After a few seconds trying to outstare the Transfiguration professor, she opted to bypass Riddle entirely and switched to a point directly above the mirror, meaning the assembled students got a good look at her wide and toadish face. Raspberries, hisses, and other derisive noises abounded, and Umbridge frowned as though she could hear them—
Wait, I think she can!
Draco peered towards the front of the room and caught Ron’s eye. "She can hear us," he mouthed, pointing at the mirror. "Kill the sound."
Ron looked confused for an instant, then nodded and jabbed his wand at the mirror. Umbridge’s frown intensified, though, and Draco thought Ron had got it wrong until he realized the sound had died down. Something else was causing Dolores Umbridge to look as disgruntled as she could possibly look, which was quite disgruntled indeed.
Something like, perhaps, a delicate little Healer being not so delicate as she looks?
"I find it so interesting, Madam Black," Umbridge said after a few more moments of staring. Draco heard Meghan hiss between her teeth, and clenched his own at the implied insult delivered by Umbridge’s ignoring his mum’s real title. "This contract between you and Master—Malfoy, is it?"
She withdrew a scroll from her cardigan pocket, and Draco growled under his breath as he recognized it. How dare she touch that?
"Obviously he exists, since he signed the contract. But I have searched the records most carefully, both magical and Muggle, and I can find no previous appearance of that name. It is almost as if, in fact, he did not exist until you adopted him!" Umbridge gave one of her vacuous little giggles.
"A most ingenious paradox, is it not?" Mum replied calmly, her fingers just visible in the top of the mirror’s frame. "I assure you, Madam Umbridge, my son does indeed exist."
Draco grinned as his mum returned the insult to the Ministry toad with interest.
"Then why, Madam Black, can we find no trace of him here at Hogwarts, where I have been assured he has been a student for the past year?"
"Because, Madam Umbridge, he feels absolutely no sense of obligation towards your precious Ministry, and he decided that instead of allowing himself to be questioned when he has done no wrong, he would prefer to disappear!"
"Ah-ha!" Umbridge pounced. "So you know where he went!"
"Have I said that?" Mum’s voice turned glacially cold. "I never said that, nor do I mean it. I have no idea where Draco is at the present time, and neither do his teachers, as they have told you before. He told no one where he was going, he simply went, and I tend to believe that he will return if and only if he feels safe in so doing. When that happens—no, if it happens—if you still have questions for him, request that he come to the Ministry to answer them, and he will consider that request as the young gentleman I know he is."
All eyes turned to Draco. He hooked a thumb at the mirror. "Her words, not mine."
"We cannot take the time for the niceties of requests and considerations," Umbridge lectured. "Hundreds of innocent people are in danger from dementors. Thousands could be Kissed this very night. We have reason to believe your son holds the key to stopping this menace, and we will not rest until we have it safe in our possession!"
"Come now, Dolores," said Professor McGonagall irritably, "do you really think any of us would hide such a thing? If Draco holds any such key, it’s likely to be some action only he can perform, not simply a piece of knowledge anyone could use."
"And this is magic, not Muggle chemistry," Professor Riddle added. "Success or failure may hinge on having the proper person in the proper place at the proper time." He emphasized the last few words heavily. "We have reason to believe that the proper time is not yet. Soon, but not yet. Draco has other tasks he must perform before the time is right."
"So." Umbridge looked from one of them to the next, her toady little eyes glittering strangely, as with excitement. "This is your final answer, is it? You refuse to give him up to me—to us? To the Ministry of Magic, the lawful magical governing body of our land?"
"We cannot give up to you what we cannot find ourselves," said Dumbledore. "That is our final answer. Not refusal, but inability to comply."
"It amounts to the same thing." Umbridge’s voice grew silky-soft. "How long have you been planning this, Dumbledore? How long have you been hoping for an opportunity to stand alone, to try your rights as holder of the castle? To see how many would come to you, and how many would remain loyal to the Ministry?"
"Causing a power struggle in our ranks at this point would be disastrous." Dumbledore’s calm seemed boundless, washing even through the mirror link and quieting the rebellious murmurs of the assembled students. "We must stand united against the dementors, or we will become as they."
"If you really believe that, I suggest you produce the Malfoy boy in short order," Umbridge said, drawing herself up to her fullest height and eliciting quite a lot of giggles from the girls in the audience. "Otherwise you’ll have dementors at your gates within the week, and not one speck of help from us will you get."
And with a swish of her pink robes, the Undersecretary swept out of the scene.
The mirror went blank, and Harry removed the spells and reclaimed it as the students started discussing what they’d heard. Draco leaned casually against the wall and let it envelop him, then bulge out to form a tiny room around him. Abby slipped in after him, coming to his side to rest her head against him and put her arms around his waist.
"They can’t have you," she whispered, the plural pronoun encompassing the whole world outside Abigail Beauvoi and those she deemed worthy. "I won’t let them."
"Good to know." Draco tweaked one brown curl. "I don’t know why I didn’t just ask Mum to fix my sleep so I stay in the world where there’s no one looking for me..."
Abby tilted her head to look up at him.
"All right, all right, I do know," Draco admitted. "It... it feels wrong there now. Nothing intrusive or big, but it’s there. It’s nothing that happens, it’s more like something missing. Like a sound or a feeling that stops being there."
"Family," said Abby with certainty. "It’s the feeling of family. You joined ours almost a week ago, remember? And it made you stronger, your soul, your magic. It’s why the dementors noticed you all of a sudden, because your magic got strong." She smiled at him. "Because you have all of us to help you. You’re one of us now, even more than when Aunt Cecy adopted you."
"That does make sense." Draco cuddled the girl to him, musing idly how far he’d come since the morning he’d awakened to her startled scream.
I never thought then I’d even like it here, much less belong. But I do. There’s a place for me here, me and Luna, and none where I was born. So it’s here we’re coming, and here we’ll find a way to stay, and stay together.
Somehow.
Though it might be all right staying behind, as long as Luna was with me. We’d make it work there too. Somehow.
"The world you came from might be dark, but it still has light," Abby murmured, as though she’d read his mind. "Even when I visited it with you, Luna was there to save us from the dementors..."
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, Luna didn’t tell you about that?" Abby grinned cheekily. "I guess I get to tell, then."
"Yes, you most certainly do." Draco sat down on the floor, pulling Abby into his lap. "Tell away, and don’t leave anything out, on pain of tickling."
Abby squealed once from the mere mention of the word and began to tell.
Author Notes:
I’m back. Went to see The Pirates of Penzance with family Monday night. It had some gags I may incorporate into the end of this story. Review lots and that end will come sooner than if you don’t. Or maybe I shouldn’t put it like that...