Fic Post: Finding Elvis Chapter 3b
Jun. 28th, 2005 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciroccojOK, here's part 2 of the third chapter, which got too long to put into one post.
Chapter 3b - Accounting
"Mr. Potter, did you get that werewolf position paper done?"
"What? And it's Harry, please, Rowena."
"The werewolf paper - it's due today, the Subcommittee On Lycanthropic Legal Issues needs it for their next meeting-"
"Right. Yes, it's here..." Harry burrowed into his papers, finally finding the scroll and handing it to Rowena, a new hire in the department.
"What's that?" Rowena pointed to a small stack of Muggle-looking papers on Harry's desk.
"Muggle police forms."
"Really? What for?"
"One of the subcommittees - administrative things with Muggle law enforcement."
"Oh," Rowena went back to her perusal of Harry's werewolf paper. "My goodness, Mr. Potter. It would take me forever to write anything like this."
"I've had a bit of practice," Harry said dryly, and Rowena, too fresh out of Hogwarts to sense his weary cynicism, nodded enthusiastically.
"It shows, it really does. It's like you can almost write this kind of thing in your sleep."
"Almost."
"Would - would you mind if I show you my leprechaun reports? I keep thinking they don't look professional enough."
"Would you like me to turn them into Ministry-ese for you?"
"Oh that would be wonderful - thanks!!" and Rowena flitted down the hall.
Harry looked at the forms in front of him. He'd gone to the closest Muggle police station last night, used a combination of low-level Confundus and Obliviate spells, and asked the officer on duty how he could go about finding out the criminal record of a potential new employee.
Not that Malfoy had made a big deal out of that part of his past - in fact, he'd talked about it with little or no emotion, whether bitterness, regret or shame - but something in Harry just refused to take his word for it. Perhaps Malfoy had been up to other nefarious behaviour, with Death Eater splinter groups, and just made up the Muggle criminal past as a pity cover so that Harry wouldn't look too closely at those years. Perhaps he had been in the Muggle prison system, but only hiding there. Harry realized that if that were the case, there wasn't much that Malfoy's Muggle record could show that would help Harry determine that, but still wanted to at least make sure official records agreed with what Malfoy had said.
So he'd gone to the police station, picked up some forms, was going to fill them out, and would make sure he had a spell ready to convince the officer he talked to tomorrow that he had the "necessary credentials and authority" to get information about David Bergsen from their files.
And what would he do if he found that Malfoy hadn't been lying? That he'd really spent the first six years after the war battling drug addiction and the Muggle justice system?
What would that mean?
Harry looked at the pile of work on his large, elegant desk, in his large, elegant office, denoting prestige, authority and respect. All things that he had now and Malfoy didn't. How fair was it that Malfoy had to settle for the salary of a bookstore clerk and a small flat, while Harry had all of this, and a lovely, spacious, apartment? Yes, Harry had risked and lost a lot in the war - friends and colleagues, peace of mind, and sleep not plagued by nightmares. But Malfoy had lost so much more - family, friends, money, social position, magic... his entire life.
Why was Harry here, and Malfoy there?
I'm assuming he's telling me the truth, Harry reminded himself. Which is not a safe assumption to make with any Malfoy, including Draco. They were very good at lying.
Of course, Harry was pretty good at it himself. Takes one to know one, he supposed idly, filling in the "Reason For Requesting Information" box on the police form with "Position applied for requires trustworthy employee, large amounts of money involved."
Their conversation last night had spanned various topics and had even become rather pleasant, Harry thought. Malfoy seemed interested in what was going on in the wizarding world - who was still alive, who was doing what, what Muggle things had leaked into their world, what Hogwarts was like these days, all sorts of things. Harry had tried to downplay some of the good parts; after all, there was no point in making Malfoy feel bad about what he couldn't have any more - but Malfoy didn't seem bothered by what he was missing. The only thing he hadn't seemed terribly eager to hear about was Quidditch, which Harry glossed over fairly quickly.
So they'd talked. They'd talked for a long time, not exactly like old friends, but like friendly acquaintances. Malfoy had finally looked at his watch and commented that he needed to get home and get dinner started, and hadn't seemed put out when Harry mentioned that he might drop by again.
"Sure, sounds good. Nice talking to you, Potter," he'd said, and then he'd headed out.
***
"Malfoy, why did you leave the Death Eaters?" Harry asked three days later, sipping his coffee casually.
Malfoy pressed his lips together. "I wondered when that would come up."
"It's come up."
"Yeah."
Harry waited.
"Are you going to answer?"
"You know... it's not really - there wasn't really any one reason," Malfoy said evasively.
"There were people who never believed you really switched sides, you know."
"I know."
"You didn't give a reason, at the time, did you?"
"I did. Said Voldemort struck me as a crackpot who would be better suited to training cats to fly in diamond formation than leading wizarding society."
"True enough," Harry chuckled. "So, what brought you to that realization?"
"Potter, you know what the man was like. He was a complete lunatic."
"But surely you must have known that before-"
"Before I took the Mark myself?" Malfoy finished for him, and Harry observed once more how Malfoy's eyes never strayed down to his forearm, even once. "I was seventeen. My father had made every decision for me since the day I was born, and I looked up to him and believed everything he said," he shook his head, his eyes darkened. "He told me our world was in danger of dying because of people like Hermione Granger, polluting our blood and our culture, bringing their dangerous ideas, exposing us to Muggles. And Voldemort was the one leader who was willing to protect us from our own foolishness. That's powerful stuff for any child to grow up with."
"If it was so powerful, how did you end up rejecting it?"
"He was insane. The things he did and said - the, the way people acted under him, the way he brought people like my father to their knees... it was terrifying."
"You didn't turn, though, for a long time. You were an active Death Eater, by your own admission, for three years."
"Yeah."
"It took three years to realize that Voldemort was crazy?"
"No. It took three years to act on the realization."
"Pansy Parkinson seemed to think there was more to it. It sounded like something specific changed your mind."
Malfoy suddenly seemed very interested in the gouge patterns on the table before them. "Yeah."
"She also said that you both rejected Voldemort without necessarily embracing the other side."
"Yeah."
"Care to explain that?"
Malfoy idly followed a small scratch mark with his finger, up and down a couple of times. "No."
Harry stared at Malfoy, still disinterestedly tracing the small gouge, and had the distinct impression that Malfoy was trying to call his bluff. If Harry really was here representing the Ministry, would he allow Malfoy to just decline to answer something as vital as his reason for defecting?
He looked down and stirred his coffee. If he backed off, would Malfoy answer anything else, or just walk out? And if he pushed, would Malfoy answer anything else, or just walk out?
He finished stirring his coffee and cleared his throat. "All right, then, answer me this one, because nobody else seems to know: what made you step out that night, and face down Zabini?"
Malfoy frowned curiously. "Why's that important?"
"Celsus and Pansy both seemed to think you knew what would happen if you did. Why would you risk yourself like that?"
Malfoy scowled. "Do you know how old Celsus' children were, Potter? Five, three, and one. Ginevra Grisenwold was pregnant with her second. And Gimbol Smith had a wife in St. Mungo's, for god's sake. And not one of them could so much as cast a Patronus - I was practically the only semi-competent combat-trained wizard in that team. Most of them were only there because we needed the bodies so badly by that point in time and besides, we were only supposed to be medical back-up. We weren't even supposed to be in combat. Nobody expected Zabini's group to appear where we were." Malfoy shook his head. "If I hadn't stopped him, he would've swept right through and torn the first team to pieces. And a lot more people would've died."
Harry realized his own fingers were white on the edge of his cup. He knew all of this. He knew it. But it was different hearing it straight from Malfoy, and he felt ashamed of his doubts. Even more ashamed to realize that he still had doubts, despite everything. That he was still looking at Malfoy's indignation for signs that it was all bluff.
Bluff for what? Obviously the curse had been permanent. Obviously he hadn't been working with Zabini. Right?
"Besides, I knew Zabini," Malfoy said grimly. "Grew up with him. I knew what he could and couldn't do, better than anybody else there. There wasn't anybody else who could've delayed him long enough for the first team to show up."
"You don't know that," Harry pointed out. "You could've waited to see whether anybody else in your team could take him down."
"Yeah. And then explain my waiting to Celsus' children, or Gimbol's widow." He shook his head. "I had the abilities we needed, and I didn't have any real reason not to step forward. I didn't have a family or children or a home - or anything else left to lose. I'd already lost all of that in the bloody war."
"You still had Pansy."
Malfoy smiled humourlessly. "We were mostly just friends. I knew if Zabini killed me, I wouldn't be sorely missed by anybody. A big part of me even figured it might not be a bad thing."
Harry frowned.
Malfoy's gaze dropped to his coffee cup. "It was war, Potter, remember? It didn't just take lives. It took away the will to live. I didn't have much left by the end," he said shortly. "Surely you'd seen that kind of thing in others at the time. From what I heard, you were pretty close to that point yourself."
Harry swallowed hard. Yes, he had been. He hadn't known it was that obvious. But the pain and the losses and the dead and near-dead had brought him to the edge of despair near the end. His own behaviour during the final battle with Voldemort had had far less to do with heroism and more to do with hopeless recklessness than he liked to admit, even now.
"Did Zabini know you'd turned?" Harry asked, backing away from a topic that had no right to still feel so raw so many years later.
"I think so. He had no idea I'd be there, but I think he knew I'd gone over. That was another slight advantage I had over the others in my team: just my identity was enough to rattle Zabini." He took a sip of his coffee. "Although not as much as you'd think. The pureblood and Slytherin and Durmstrang lot used to joke amongst ourselves, 'If you don't like your cousin's political allegiance, just wait another five minutes.'" He shook his head ruefully. "Blaise's own brother had switched allegiance twice. And did it again, before the war ended. So I doubt I shocked Blaise too badly."
"Blaise's brother? I didn't know he had one."
"Andrew Zabini, two years younger than Blaise. Went to Durmstrang. Their parents wanted as many political connections as they could make." Malfoy smiled grimly. "There was a man who blew wherever the wind told him. Not a principled bone in his body. He would've changed his allegiance for thirty Galleons by the end."
"You knew him, I take it."
"Yeah. One of the stupidest and cruellest people I ever met. And I was a Death Eater; that's saying quite a bit."
"Didn't he end up in Azkaban?"
"No. Should've. He was acquitted of all charges in the end. And if the Wizengamot had any clue of what else he got up to that he was never charged for, they would've tracked down a Dementor just to hand Andrew over to him. You should've seen him after he won his case. Bloody arrogant git. You'd think he'd just been declared Grand Mugwump instead of acquitted because the witnesses to his crimes had wound up mysteriously dead."
Harry nodded, vaguely remembering an Andrew Zabini being acquitted of something. He'd had no idea he and Blaise were that closely related; he'd figured him for a third cousin or something. There were so many trials at the end of the war, though, that nobody could've kept track of all of them.
"Did Pansy or her sister keep in touch with people on the other side?"
"Oh yeah, she and Juniper had a cousin, Francis, who was a Death Eater, though a very minor one in the power scheme."
"Francis Carstairs?" Harry dredged up the name from the depths of his memory.
"Yeah, that was him."
"I think he died in Azkaban, eventually."
"Doesn't surprise me. Bloody miserable place."
"Did you ever go there?"
"Yeah, visited my father a few times. I swear every time I was in a Muggle prison I'd listen to the other blokes complain about it and think they were lucky they didn't know how good we had it."
Harry had no idea what to say to that. He'd received the information from the police; 'David Bergsen' had indeed spent six years in and out of prison, following his father's footsteps with a little less flair, arrested for theft and drug dealing and a host of other minor offences. All while Harry himself had been steadily climbing at the Ministry.
"Well, now that we've bloody well depressed the hell out of this conversation," Malfoy said with forced cheer, "Go back to what you were telling me about computers. They're really using them?"
Harry grabbed the topic change gratefully. "Yeah, not as much as Muggles, but they're getting fairly popular among the younger set."
"And the older ones are convinced it's the end of wizarding as they know it."
"Of course."
"And the young ones keep pointing out how they're changing the things so they're unrecognizable to Muggles."
"Of course."
"How?"
"You'd have to grab one of the youngsters and ask them. One of my assistants, Rowena, practically has hers trained to sit up and beg. I'm still scared of the bloody things."
"The books I gave you not helping?"
"Yeah, they do, but it's still really foreign. Learning to transform rats into water goblets wasn't this hard."
Malfoy laughed. "I know, I was always convinced they were evil. Literally. Jilly nearly had fits trying to get me to learn how to use them."
Harry laughed too, but his laughter sounded hollow to him, as did the rest of the conversation as he and Malfoy traded tales of computing incompetence. Like it was all happening to a person sitting in a room far away. Because unbidden, Harry's memory had provided him with another part of the Andrew Zabini story: Hermione had told him about Zabini's acquittal at Harry's twenty third birthday party. July 31. Which was about three months after Malfoy claimed to have left Pansy Parkinson's house and gone Muggle for good.
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2a
- Chapter 2b
- Previous Chapter: Chapter 3a
- Next Chapter: Chapter 4a
- Chapter 4b
- Chapter 5a
- Chapter 5b
"Mr. Potter, did you get that werewolf position paper done?"
"What? And it's Harry, please, Rowena."
"The werewolf paper - it's due today, the Subcommittee On Lycanthropic Legal Issues needs it for their next meeting-"
"Right. Yes, it's here..." Harry burrowed into his papers, finally finding the scroll and handing it to Rowena, a new hire in the department.
"What's that?" Rowena pointed to a small stack of Muggle-looking papers on Harry's desk.
"Muggle police forms."
"Really? What for?"
"One of the subcommittees - administrative things with Muggle law enforcement."
"Oh," Rowena went back to her perusal of Harry's werewolf paper. "My goodness, Mr. Potter. It would take me forever to write anything like this."
"I've had a bit of practice," Harry said dryly, and Rowena, too fresh out of Hogwarts to sense his weary cynicism, nodded enthusiastically.
"It shows, it really does. It's like you can almost write this kind of thing in your sleep."
"Almost."
"Would - would you mind if I show you my leprechaun reports? I keep thinking they don't look professional enough."
"Would you like me to turn them into Ministry-ese for you?"
"Oh that would be wonderful - thanks!!" and Rowena flitted down the hall.
Harry looked at the forms in front of him. He'd gone to the closest Muggle police station last night, used a combination of low-level Confundus and Obliviate spells, and asked the officer on duty how he could go about finding out the criminal record of a potential new employee.
Not that Malfoy had made a big deal out of that part of his past - in fact, he'd talked about it with little or no emotion, whether bitterness, regret or shame - but something in Harry just refused to take his word for it. Perhaps Malfoy had been up to other nefarious behaviour, with Death Eater splinter groups, and just made up the Muggle criminal past as a pity cover so that Harry wouldn't look too closely at those years. Perhaps he had been in the Muggle prison system, but only hiding there. Harry realized that if that were the case, there wasn't much that Malfoy's Muggle record could show that would help Harry determine that, but still wanted to at least make sure official records agreed with what Malfoy had said.
So he'd gone to the police station, picked up some forms, was going to fill them out, and would make sure he had a spell ready to convince the officer he talked to tomorrow that he had the "necessary credentials and authority" to get information about David Bergsen from their files.
And what would he do if he found that Malfoy hadn't been lying? That he'd really spent the first six years after the war battling drug addiction and the Muggle justice system?
What would that mean?
Harry looked at the pile of work on his large, elegant desk, in his large, elegant office, denoting prestige, authority and respect. All things that he had now and Malfoy didn't. How fair was it that Malfoy had to settle for the salary of a bookstore clerk and a small flat, while Harry had all of this, and a lovely, spacious, apartment? Yes, Harry had risked and lost a lot in the war - friends and colleagues, peace of mind, and sleep not plagued by nightmares. But Malfoy had lost so much more - family, friends, money, social position, magic... his entire life.
Why was Harry here, and Malfoy there?
I'm assuming he's telling me the truth, Harry reminded himself. Which is not a safe assumption to make with any Malfoy, including Draco. They were very good at lying.
Of course, Harry was pretty good at it himself. Takes one to know one, he supposed idly, filling in the "Reason For Requesting Information" box on the police form with "Position applied for requires trustworthy employee, large amounts of money involved."
Their conversation last night had spanned various topics and had even become rather pleasant, Harry thought. Malfoy seemed interested in what was going on in the wizarding world - who was still alive, who was doing what, what Muggle things had leaked into their world, what Hogwarts was like these days, all sorts of things. Harry had tried to downplay some of the good parts; after all, there was no point in making Malfoy feel bad about what he couldn't have any more - but Malfoy didn't seem bothered by what he was missing. The only thing he hadn't seemed terribly eager to hear about was Quidditch, which Harry glossed over fairly quickly.
So they'd talked. They'd talked for a long time, not exactly like old friends, but like friendly acquaintances. Malfoy had finally looked at his watch and commented that he needed to get home and get dinner started, and hadn't seemed put out when Harry mentioned that he might drop by again.
"Sure, sounds good. Nice talking to you, Potter," he'd said, and then he'd headed out.
"Malfoy, why did you leave the Death Eaters?" Harry asked three days later, sipping his coffee casually.
Malfoy pressed his lips together. "I wondered when that would come up."
"It's come up."
"Yeah."
Harry waited.
"Are you going to answer?"
"You know... it's not really - there wasn't really any one reason," Malfoy said evasively.
"There were people who never believed you really switched sides, you know."
"I know."
"You didn't give a reason, at the time, did you?"
"I did. Said Voldemort struck me as a crackpot who would be better suited to training cats to fly in diamond formation than leading wizarding society."
"True enough," Harry chuckled. "So, what brought you to that realization?"
"Potter, you know what the man was like. He was a complete lunatic."
"But surely you must have known that before-"
"Before I took the Mark myself?" Malfoy finished for him, and Harry observed once more how Malfoy's eyes never strayed down to his forearm, even once. "I was seventeen. My father had made every decision for me since the day I was born, and I looked up to him and believed everything he said," he shook his head, his eyes darkened. "He told me our world was in danger of dying because of people like Hermione Granger, polluting our blood and our culture, bringing their dangerous ideas, exposing us to Muggles. And Voldemort was the one leader who was willing to protect us from our own foolishness. That's powerful stuff for any child to grow up with."
"If it was so powerful, how did you end up rejecting it?"
"He was insane. The things he did and said - the, the way people acted under him, the way he brought people like my father to their knees... it was terrifying."
"You didn't turn, though, for a long time. You were an active Death Eater, by your own admission, for three years."
"Yeah."
"It took three years to realize that Voldemort was crazy?"
"No. It took three years to act on the realization."
"Pansy Parkinson seemed to think there was more to it. It sounded like something specific changed your mind."
Malfoy suddenly seemed very interested in the gouge patterns on the table before them. "Yeah."
"She also said that you both rejected Voldemort without necessarily embracing the other side."
"Yeah."
"Care to explain that?"
Malfoy idly followed a small scratch mark with his finger, up and down a couple of times. "No."
Harry stared at Malfoy, still disinterestedly tracing the small gouge, and had the distinct impression that Malfoy was trying to call his bluff. If Harry really was here representing the Ministry, would he allow Malfoy to just decline to answer something as vital as his reason for defecting?
He looked down and stirred his coffee. If he backed off, would Malfoy answer anything else, or just walk out? And if he pushed, would Malfoy answer anything else, or just walk out?
He finished stirring his coffee and cleared his throat. "All right, then, answer me this one, because nobody else seems to know: what made you step out that night, and face down Zabini?"
Malfoy frowned curiously. "Why's that important?"
"Celsus and Pansy both seemed to think you knew what would happen if you did. Why would you risk yourself like that?"
Malfoy scowled. "Do you know how old Celsus' children were, Potter? Five, three, and one. Ginevra Grisenwold was pregnant with her second. And Gimbol Smith had a wife in St. Mungo's, for god's sake. And not one of them could so much as cast a Patronus - I was practically the only semi-competent combat-trained wizard in that team. Most of them were only there because we needed the bodies so badly by that point in time and besides, we were only supposed to be medical back-up. We weren't even supposed to be in combat. Nobody expected Zabini's group to appear where we were." Malfoy shook his head. "If I hadn't stopped him, he would've swept right through and torn the first team to pieces. And a lot more people would've died."
Harry realized his own fingers were white on the edge of his cup. He knew all of this. He knew it. But it was different hearing it straight from Malfoy, and he felt ashamed of his doubts. Even more ashamed to realize that he still had doubts, despite everything. That he was still looking at Malfoy's indignation for signs that it was all bluff.
Bluff for what? Obviously the curse had been permanent. Obviously he hadn't been working with Zabini. Right?
"Besides, I knew Zabini," Malfoy said grimly. "Grew up with him. I knew what he could and couldn't do, better than anybody else there. There wasn't anybody else who could've delayed him long enough for the first team to show up."
"You don't know that," Harry pointed out. "You could've waited to see whether anybody else in your team could take him down."
"Yeah. And then explain my waiting to Celsus' children, or Gimbol's widow." He shook his head. "I had the abilities we needed, and I didn't have any real reason not to step forward. I didn't have a family or children or a home - or anything else left to lose. I'd already lost all of that in the bloody war."
"You still had Pansy."
Malfoy smiled humourlessly. "We were mostly just friends. I knew if Zabini killed me, I wouldn't be sorely missed by anybody. A big part of me even figured it might not be a bad thing."
Harry frowned.
Malfoy's gaze dropped to his coffee cup. "It was war, Potter, remember? It didn't just take lives. It took away the will to live. I didn't have much left by the end," he said shortly. "Surely you'd seen that kind of thing in others at the time. From what I heard, you were pretty close to that point yourself."
Harry swallowed hard. Yes, he had been. He hadn't known it was that obvious. But the pain and the losses and the dead and near-dead had brought him to the edge of despair near the end. His own behaviour during the final battle with Voldemort had had far less to do with heroism and more to do with hopeless recklessness than he liked to admit, even now.
"Did Zabini know you'd turned?" Harry asked, backing away from a topic that had no right to still feel so raw so many years later.
"I think so. He had no idea I'd be there, but I think he knew I'd gone over. That was another slight advantage I had over the others in my team: just my identity was enough to rattle Zabini." He took a sip of his coffee. "Although not as much as you'd think. The pureblood and Slytherin and Durmstrang lot used to joke amongst ourselves, 'If you don't like your cousin's political allegiance, just wait another five minutes.'" He shook his head ruefully. "Blaise's own brother had switched allegiance twice. And did it again, before the war ended. So I doubt I shocked Blaise too badly."
"Blaise's brother? I didn't know he had one."
"Andrew Zabini, two years younger than Blaise. Went to Durmstrang. Their parents wanted as many political connections as they could make." Malfoy smiled grimly. "There was a man who blew wherever the wind told him. Not a principled bone in his body. He would've changed his allegiance for thirty Galleons by the end."
"You knew him, I take it."
"Yeah. One of the stupidest and cruellest people I ever met. And I was a Death Eater; that's saying quite a bit."
"Didn't he end up in Azkaban?"
"No. Should've. He was acquitted of all charges in the end. And if the Wizengamot had any clue of what else he got up to that he was never charged for, they would've tracked down a Dementor just to hand Andrew over to him. You should've seen him after he won his case. Bloody arrogant git. You'd think he'd just been declared Grand Mugwump instead of acquitted because the witnesses to his crimes had wound up mysteriously dead."
Harry nodded, vaguely remembering an Andrew Zabini being acquitted of something. He'd had no idea he and Blaise were that closely related; he'd figured him for a third cousin or something. There were so many trials at the end of the war, though, that nobody could've kept track of all of them.
"Did Pansy or her sister keep in touch with people on the other side?"
"Oh yeah, she and Juniper had a cousin, Francis, who was a Death Eater, though a very minor one in the power scheme."
"Francis Carstairs?" Harry dredged up the name from the depths of his memory.
"Yeah, that was him."
"I think he died in Azkaban, eventually."
"Doesn't surprise me. Bloody miserable place."
"Did you ever go there?"
"Yeah, visited my father a few times. I swear every time I was in a Muggle prison I'd listen to the other blokes complain about it and think they were lucky they didn't know how good we had it."
Harry had no idea what to say to that. He'd received the information from the police; 'David Bergsen' had indeed spent six years in and out of prison, following his father's footsteps with a little less flair, arrested for theft and drug dealing and a host of other minor offences. All while Harry himself had been steadily climbing at the Ministry.
"Well, now that we've bloody well depressed the hell out of this conversation," Malfoy said with forced cheer, "Go back to what you were telling me about computers. They're really using them?"
Harry grabbed the topic change gratefully. "Yeah, not as much as Muggles, but they're getting fairly popular among the younger set."
"And the older ones are convinced it's the end of wizarding as they know it."
"Of course."
"And the young ones keep pointing out how they're changing the things so they're unrecognizable to Muggles."
"Of course."
"How?"
"You'd have to grab one of the youngsters and ask them. One of my assistants, Rowena, practically has hers trained to sit up and beg. I'm still scared of the bloody things."
"The books I gave you not helping?"
"Yeah, they do, but it's still really foreign. Learning to transform rats into water goblets wasn't this hard."
Malfoy laughed. "I know, I was always convinced they were evil. Literally. Jilly nearly had fits trying to get me to learn how to use them."
Harry laughed too, but his laughter sounded hollow to him, as did the rest of the conversation as he and Malfoy traded tales of computing incompetence. Like it was all happening to a person sitting in a room far away. Because unbidden, Harry's memory had provided him with another part of the Andrew Zabini story: Hermione had told him about Zabini's acquittal at Harry's twenty third birthday party. July 31. Which was about three months after Malfoy claimed to have left Pansy Parkinson's house and gone Muggle for good.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 02:55 pm (UTC)Hee. Thanks :) :) :)
I just hope it has a kick@ss finish!
Yeah, me too ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 12:16 am (UTC)One thing that I love about this story is your description of the war's effects on people. I think you capture all the conflicting emotions the war must have provoked very well in all the retrospective conversations.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 05:46 pm (UTC)Well, I'm not quite done, but close enough :) Should be done the last chapter by the end of the week.
One thing that I love about this story is your description of the war's effects on people.
Thank you! That's great to hear; it was something I really wanted to get across.