Fic: Shadowed Lives (26 of 29, HP)

[bookishwench]

The time leading up to the exams flew so quickly that it seemed like only a single day had passed and suddenly it was the night before the exams. The study group had crammed for two hours, then called it quits in favor of a decent night’s sleep. Unfortunately, wanting to sleep and actually sleeping were two different things, and Draco found himself staring at the canopy of his bed for much too long. Lists of spells, incantations, and potion ingredients, interspersed with the occasional image of his parents shaking their heads in disappointment if he came in anything other than first in his year, floated agonizingly through his brain.

Eventually, he gave up, getting out of bed and wandering blearily into the common room. A few older students were there, some poring over books, others staring into the darkness and looking exhausted. No one spoke. Draco half-collapsed into a chair near the fire and watched the flames for a while. Something about their flickering must have finally lulled him into a stupor, and he nodded off and began dreaming.

He was in the rose garden at home, the white blossoms at their peak, and Pansy was there. She had a paintbrush and a very large bottle of a peculiarly bright green nail varnish. She was painting the roses with it.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked.

“The house-elf said I shouldn’t do it, so I am,” she said. “I like green. White is only for brides, and I’m not one yet. I’ll wash it off when I am. Then the real colors will be shown for everyone, not just the paint on top.”

Leaving her to her chosen task, Draco walked up the gravel path to the manor, but he inexplicably found he was standing outside one of the Hogwarts greenhouses instead. He opened the door, and a crowd of Flutterby Bushes burst into song. He didn’t recognize the melody, but it was horribly offkey and made his teeth ache.

“This is all wrong, and it’s your fault,” Professor Sprout said, appearing at his elbow. “One hundred points from Slytherin for ruining these rare singing specimens!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Draco argued, terrified.

“Of course you didn’t,” Sprout said, “that’s why you’re guilty. You were supposed to do something. Now, you’ll just have to be useful in a different way.”

She pulled out a spade and dug an enormous hole in a single scoop, then picked him up by the waist and casually plopped him in as if he weighed no more than a feather. He found he was unable to move, and she was filling up the hole again.

“You should have studied more about dirt!” she called out, then laughed. “If you knew the right spell, this wouldn’t have happened!”

“So what’s the right spell!” Draco yelled.

“Ask Pansy,” Sprout said, putting the shovel over her shoulder and walking away, whistling merrily.

“Pansy!” Draco hollered, desperately trying to claw his way out of the hole and hoping his voice would carry all the way to the garden outside.

“Right here,” said her voice, but he couldn’t see her. Then he realized a literal pansy had opened up next to the hole, and its purple and yellow markings looked weirdly like Pansy’s face.

“Do you know the spell to get me out of this?” he said, trying to sound calm.

“Of course,” the flower said. “We covered it in study group.”

“Fantastic! What is it?”

Pansy opened her mouth and enunciated very clearly, “Ég er ekki blindur en þú ert það.“

Draco stared, slack-jawed, then said, “Was that Esperanto?”

Pansy shook her petals then closed up and sank bank into the ground.

“I’m going to be late for the exam if I don’t get out of this hole! Help! Somebody!”

Suddenly his parents appeared next to him, casually sipping tea from a pair of upturned skulls.

“Are we out of sugar, dear?” his mother asked, stirring the drink with a tiny silver spoon.

“It’s not the popular choice anymore,” his father replied. “Try this instead.”

He took a jar of pickled eggs from his robes and poured them into the skull.

“Mother? Father? Please, help me?” Draco asked.

“No,” his father said, not bothering to look at him. “You should have done as I told you. A disobedient son is worse than a blood traitor because you haven’t the excuse of inherited stupidity.”

“I can still pass! I can still come in at the top of the class! I just need a boost!” Draco yelled as they walked away.

The ground was now starting to suck him under like quicksand, and he didn’t dare so much as breathe since every movement threatened to pull him under. He could feel his heart racing, sweat pouring down his face. This was it. He was going to die in Greenhouse 5 and his body would turn to mulch for the stupid singing Flutterby Bushes.

“Grab the rope, Drac,” said Hermione’s voice.

“What rope?” Draco said, and one suddenly appeared in front of him. He bit his lip, knowing he shouldn’t accept help from a Mudblood.

“If you don’t, it will swallow you whole,” Hermione said. “You know that.”

“I’m covered in dirt,” he said.

“Yes, your whole family is,” she said. “Grab the rope. You can’t get clean in there.”

“Where are you? I don’t see you.”

“I thought you couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

“This once, I’ll make an exception!” he said. “Where are you?”

She slowly came into focus, looking exactly as she had on the Hogwarts Express the first time he had seen her. She was holding the other end of the rope.

“Now pull yourself out,” she said. “You’re the only one who can.”

“I tried before! Nothing happened!” he said as he sank deeper, the mud now up to his shoulders.

“But you were alone then. You aren’t now. And the roses won’t hurt you, even the green ones. They’ll try to, but they can’t,” Hermione said.

“What the bloody hell was in that sandwich I ate for dinner!” Draco wailed.

“Roast beef and truth,” Hermione said calmly. “Also, far too many onions. Now hurry up like a good boy or Filch will use your head for a scrub brush in the dungeons.”

That actually seemed plausible. Draco grabbed the rope and began pulling himself through the mud, which was much easier than he expected. In moments, he was able to climb out of the hole and stand next to Hermione.

“There,” she said. “That wasn’t so difficult. But the rest of it will be.”

“The rest of it? What else am I supposed to do in this stupid dream?” Draco said, looking around wildly. “Kill a Basilisk or something?”

“No,” Hermione said. “You remember what we saw the night of the dead unicorn?”

He wasn’t likely to ever forget that. He stared at her and said nothing. She gave him a look that was part pity, part worry.

“The centaurs were warning us that he’s coming back, Drac,” she said. “You know who I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” he said, but it was a lie.

“You know who,” Hermione said, then she repeated herself slowly. “You know who.”

Her eyes seemed to bore through him until he shuddered, realizing she had just given him the answer.

“But this is only a dream,” Draco managed to get out. “It’s not real! Pansy isn’t painting flowers green, and my parents haven’t replaced the pewter goblets with people’s heads, and you’re nothing but a figment of my imagination caused by the stress of these stupid, pointless, torturous exams! You’re only here because—”

Even in his dream he couldn’t say it. She was here because he missed her.

“Some dreams are more than dreams,” she said quietly. “The answer you’re looking for is a pineapple. You’ll remember.”

“A . . . pineapple?” he said uncertainly.

She nodded and disappeared. Then a very large thestral, which he was terrified to realize he could see, came out from behind the bushes, holding a pristine white rose from his parents’ garden in its mouth. It dropped the flower at his feet.

“It’s your choice,” the thestral said in Dumbledore’s voice. “Do with it what you will.”

He didn’t know exactly why he was doing it, but he picked it up and threw it angrily into the mud. The scaly tail of a massive snake shot out of the earth and grabbed it, pulling it beneath the surface.

“I just want to go home,” he muttered, crouching beside the mudhole and ashamed to feel tears on his face. “Why can’t I go home again, even when I’m there?”

“You know why,” said Hermione’s voice, and he abruptly awoke to Blaise shaking him.

“Draco, get up! The test starts in ten minutes!”

“WHAT?!” Draco shouted. “Where’s my pineapple!”

Blaise looked at him like he’d lost his mind, then said, “I’m getting to class now before I’m late too.”

Thankfully, Draco had fallen asleep in his school robes, so all he had to do was grab his bag and run out the common room door. He sprinted so hard towards the first exam that he thought his lungs were going to explode. At the very last turn before the History of Magic corridor, he automatically slowed to a walk, ran a hand through his hair to hopefully make it look casually and purposefully disheveled, and then strutted towards the class as though he hadn’t a care in the world. The rest of the Slytherins were already gathered outside of the door.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it, Draco,” Pansy said.

“No problem,” he said. “What’s the point of standing about and waiting about outside the door?”

He glanced at her hand that was holding her quill and realized with a sickening thud that her fingernails were the exact shade of bright green that she had been painting the roses in his dream. Obviously, he thought, she must have been wearing it yesterday and he had subconsciously picked up on the detail. Still, that shade was so piercingly bright that it seemed like he would remember it. He decided to risk finding out.

“New nail varnish, Pansy?” he asked.

She flushed with pleasure then babbled, “Yes! Mummy sent it to me in this morning’s mail to calm my nerves. I loved it, so I just had to put it on at once. I used a Quick Drying spell to set it. I’m very good at that one. If only our exams were on something useful like that, I wouldn’t mind getting full marks on every one.”

Draco smiled, but someone observing closely might have realized he looked a little shaken.

Binns had probably been using the exact same exams for the last several decades, but the greatest challenge in the questions about goblin rebellions and the history of cauldron production was staying awake for the whole thing. Draco caught both Goyle and Crabbe starting to nod off about ten minutes in. He considered hitting them with something to wake them up, but as he was tapping his pocket for a spare Knut, Goyle suddenly started scratching his ear. There, on his right index finger, was the ring. It gave him an odd feeling, but he decided to ignore it and get back to the parchment in front of him.

At last, Binns allowed them to leave with a bland, “Your examination results will be posted in your house common room next week.” The class period had lasted twice as long as usual, and roughly half of them hadn’t made it through without falling asleep. In fact, Nott was so far into dreamland that Millicent had to whack him on the back with her textbook to wake him up.

Draco fairly ran to the Great Hall, absolutely starving after having no breakfast. Lunch was huge platters of sandwiches of every sort. He grabbed a chicken, a roast beef, and a toasted cheese, then shoved them down his throat so quickly that he was done by the time that last Slytherin entered the hall. That was Pansy, who primly sat across from him and pulled a compact out of her sleeve, delicately powdering her nose.

“Well,” she said, snapping it shut, “that exam was dreary.”

Draco grunted his agreement but was more interested in grabbing a ham sandwich to add to the growing collection in his stomach.

“We’ve got Charms next,” Nott said, grimacing. “Wonder what Flitwick is going to have us do.”

“At least it won’t be an explanation of why the centaurs joining the rebellion of 1602 was a turning point in magical history in eastern Spain,” Draco said.

The whole table fell oddly silent, staring at him.

“What?” he said. “Do I have mustard on my chin or something?”

“You actually knew the answer to that one?” Pansy said, looking startled.

“Well, yeah,” he said.

“I spent ten minutes just trying to figure out what Binns was asking us to do on that one,” Blaise said. “I gave it up as a bad job and skipped it.”

“We did cover it in study group,” Draco said, feeling strangely guilty that he’d gotten it and no one else apparently had.

“I got it,” Goyle said, and now all the heads swiveled in his direction, including a shocked Draco.

“Really?” Crabbe asked.

“Not in such fancy words, but yeah,” Goyle said. “It popped into my head. Just like magic.”

The ring flashed on his index finger in the candlelight hanging over their table, and Draco winced at the thought of what his father would say if he knew what he’d done. He chose to ignore that feeling and instead crammed two more sandwiches down his throat along with a goblet of water before he grabbed his quill and took off down the corridor towards Charms, getting there before anyone else.

“If Goyle winds up scoring higher than I do because of that stupid ring, Father will disinherit me and leave the manor to my third cousin Orion,” Draco muttered to himself. “Stupid.”

The rest of the class slowly appeared, still in various rumpled states and with lingering crumbs on their faces and robes. Flitwick, predictably, opened the door a few minutes early with a bright and encouraging smile.

“Good afternoon,” he piped in his high voice. “I’ll be having each of you come in one by one to perform a charm we have studied, and then you may be excused. The rest of you must wait your turn in the corridor. However, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Flitwick waved his wand once and a line of benches appeared. In a kind gesture that Draco found weirdly touching, they were lined with comfortable cushions in silver and green. Millicent flopped down on hers gratefully, and the rest followed suit.

“Try not to be too nervous,” Flitwick said. “I have faith that every one of you will pass. Now, who would like to go first?”

Draco took a deep breath and, deciding to get some of the Malfoy honor back, raised his hand. Flitwick looked surprised.

“Very well, Malfoy,” he said. “Right this way.”

Draco attempted a casual, unconcerned saunter towards the classroom, but his palms were sweating so badly he nearly dropped his wand before shutting the door behind him. Flitwick sat at his desk and motioned for Draco to come nearer.

“You see this bowl of fruit?” Flitwick said.

“Well, obviously,” Draco shot at him nervously, looking at the arrangement of pears, apples, grapes, and bananas. “It’s the size of a Niffler, so it’s a bit hard to miss.”

“Quite,” Flitwick agreed. “You are to choose one of them and make it dance across my desk.”

Draco felt himself go deathly pale. Dance? He could remember the charm, the wand movement, everything necessary for the spell to work, but while he had been tutored in formal dance since the time he could walk, he couldn’t imagine a piece of fruit performing the mincing steps. What he could picture perfectly was sending an apple into an uncontrolled spin and having it shoot across the desk and blacken Flitwick’s eye as Draco watched helplessly.

“But… they don’t have feet?” Draco said pathetically.

“No,” Flitwick said. “You’ll need to be a bit creative. Oh, here’s another one. Must have rolled out of the bowl.”

He reached under his desk and produced a pineapple, adding it to the rest. Draco abruptly remembered his dream from last night, and his sweating increased. He wanted to pretend that it meant nothing, but he knew what he was supposed to do.

“I’ll take the pineapple, sir,” Draco said.

Flitwick nodded and placed it on the center of his desk, then sat back.

“Take your time,” he said. “No need to rush.”

Draco concentrated on the pineapple as he moved his wand with precision, and slowly, the fruit flipped over so that the leaves of its crown were resting on the desk. Another hand movement and the words “Tarantallegra pineapple!” and suddenly it began to move. Two of the leaves, acting as legs, moved in a perfect recreation of the Saltare, a dance Draco had always rather liked. Another pair of leaves performed the accompanying hand and arm motions, leaving the fruit itself balanced above, resembling an out-of-proportion head. The pineapple swayed, turned, flicked its leaves, leapt into the air, and followed every figure of the dance perfectly, ending in a deep bow.

“Oh, well done!” Flitwick said, actually clapping his hands delightedly. “What a splendid use of the fruit’s natural shape to conform to the movements. An excellent choice, Malfoy! I could practically hear the music accompanying it. Very, very good!”

“Thank you, sir,” he said, smiling and letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“You may leave through the other door and return to your dormitory or get some fresh air on the grounds, but don’t speak to any of the others until after they’ve completed the exam. Understood?” Flitwick said.

Draco nodded and went out the door and off to the grounds, deciding to sit by the lake and try to enjoy the warmth of the day. He felt a hundred times better now that the first tests were out of the way and he’d managed not to do anything stupid, but he kept thinking about the dream from the previous night. What were the chances of a pineapple showing up in his Charms exam? He strained his memory, trying to think whether maybe one of the other students had found out something and blabbed it to the rest of the Slytherins so that maybe he’d picked up on it subconsciously, but he knew he was grasping at straws. His heart sank.

“He isn’t coming back,” Draco muttered to no one, then turned to look at the school.

Hogwarts seemed like the safest spot in the world, but he knew that there were any number of dangers wrapped around its walls. Voldemort wasn’t one of them, though. Surely he couldn’t have survived that spell all those years ago. He must be long dead. The dream was only something brought on by stress, connecting his fear of failing his exams to his fear of the Dark Lord.

But I’m not supposed to fear him, Draco reminded himself. His parents had assured him over and over again that Voldemort was dangerous only to idiotic blood traitors and Muggles.

And Mudbloods.

His stomach clenched uncomfortably.

“This is stupid,” he muttered, tossing a stone into the lake and watching the ripples spread out over the dark water. “Nothing strange is happening. And even if it is, it’s not my business.”

Draco spent his afternoon cramming his head full of information for his exams in Transfiguration and Potions the next day. That night he fell into bed and dreamed of absolutely nothing until he blessedly woke on time.

To his surprise, McGonagall’s exam was fair and straightforward. All he had to do was turn a mouse into a snuffbox. Concentrating with keen focus, he waved his wand, hitting exactly the right pattern of movements, and in a small puff of wispy green smoke, the little rodent disappeared, and in its place stood an exact replica of a snuffbox that his great-grandfather had once owned and that currently sat on his father’s desk: gold, black, and emerald green, patterned in white roses and little grinning skulls. Picking it up, even McGonagall couldn’t repress a smile.

“Full marks, Malfoy,” she said, examining it carefully before returning the mouse to its original form. “A splendid job.”

“Thank you, Professor,” he said. He threw his bag over his shoulder and practically ran from the room.

Snape had them brew up something, obviously, but the sheer audacity of making it a Forgetfulness Potion was almost too much even for Draco. This was the first exam that the whole class took at the same time since History of Magic, and the first one with the Gryffindors. Draco caught himself glancing over at Potter’s cauldron, which was smoking slightly less perfectly than his own and Granger’s, which both could have made the cover of Spells and Potions Weekly. But hers was better than his. There was no denying it. He stared at the beige potion in his own cauldron and willed it to glimmer more, but nothing helped. Granted, Longbottom’s potion exploded just then, spattering shocking orange goop on the ceiling, the floor, and Snape’s robes, which did put things in perspective. Draco took the opportunity to look over at Crabbe’s and Goyle’s progress. Crabbe’s potion looked passable, but Goyle’s seemed to be well above average. The ring glimmered on his finger again as Draco watched, and he silently told himself that at least his own potion still looked better than what Goyle had concocted, even with cheating.

The next day held only Herbology. This one met in one of the large classrooms, a change of pace from the usual greenhouse atmosphere, and once again both the Gryffindors and Slytherins were mixed together, though they automatically sat on opposite sides of the room even without being told. Professor Sprout walked in carrying a huge stack of papers so tall her head wasn’t even visible behind them.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said, then began passing the exams out as she spoke. “We’ve had enough practical applications in class this year, so I want to see how you handle explaining what you’ve learned. This will be in essay format, and there are five questions. You may choose any four you wish and write on those. You have until noon to complete your work. There now, does everyone have a paper? Very well, you may begin.”

Draco quickly flipped over the exam and gripped his quill tightly as he read the selection of five questions.

1. Fully explain the use of dragon dung as fertilizer as it relates to wizarding agriculture. Include a discussion of Scandinavian trade agreements for raw materials.

Draco barely refrained from saying “ew” out loud, but he knew the material fully and quickly circled the question as one of his choices.

2. Discuss the history of Euterpe Mudgewump’s Ultragrow Potion and its disastrous effect on the nine varieties of Wartfeather Dandelion. This should address the legal penalties against her.

He frowned. He’d studied this, was sure he knew the answer, but he kept confusing Euterpe Mudgewump with Eunice Midgewater, and he wasn’t sure which one the Wizengamot had locked in Azkaban versus snapping her wand in half and forcing her out of the wizarding community. He put a dot next to that one.

3. Compare and contrast the Flutterby Bush with the Fanged Geranium. Pay particular attention to any dangers to life and limb in their domestication.

Draco managed to turn his snorted laugh into a cough. That one would pose him no problems at all from personal experience.

4. Give a full history of Devil’s Snare as it relates to the attempted murder of the King of Sweden in 1248.

At that, Draco stopped cold, and a horrible thought occurred to him. His mind was a complete blank. Absolutely nothing occurred to him at all. He mentally flipped through all of his notes, and he couldn’t remember a single solitary reference to an attempted regicide in Sweden. Was it possible that it had been discussed in class while he was in the Hospital Wing after the Fanged Geranium attack? One lesson had a whole question to itself on the final exam? It seemed like that couldn’t be possible. He put an X through number four, relieved that he only had to write on four of these. The first and third were no problem. If he wracked his brain, he could probably do the second one as well. Hopefully the fourth option would be something he knew.

5. Write out everything you have learned about dirt.

Draco’s head dropped forward in defeat. A question literally about dirt? He should have known. Still, as embarrassing as it was for a Malfoy to admit, he had indeed learned a large amount about dirt this year. That should be enough to answer the question.

Two hours passed, and when at last he was fully satisfied with his essays, he strode quickly to Sprout’s desk and put his parchment on the pile. As he turned to go, he noted that Hermione, who was writing so fast her hand was almost a blur, had already filled one full roll of parchment and was several feet into a second one. Potter and the Weasel were exhausted, Pansy was studying her nail varnish, Nott looked confused, Crabbe seemed ready to cry, and Goyle… was beaming at the paper, writing without what appeared to be a care in the world, the ring invisible under the cuff of his robes.

Draco wondered if he had been a fool to give Goyle that ring. If Goyle actually managed to beat his marks, he would be mortified, and his father would never forgive him. Still, the idea of not doing the work on his own or getting caught cheating made him cringe. Besides, he thought, he didn’t need help. He was a Malfoy, and Malfoys were smart enough to rise to the top without help.

Mostly, he added mentally. The pride of having Malfoy blood in his veins wasn’t as satisfying as it had once been. He chose to ignore that feeling and go back to the Slytherin common room. With any luck, the house-elves would have put out an array of nutritionally disastrous treats in celebration of the end of exams.

He was right. By the time Nott, Goyle, and Pansy came in, Draco was on his third cauldron cake and washing it down with his second butterbeer.

“How did you all do?” Draco asked.

“Great!” Goyle said.

Nott gave him an odd look, then sat by the fire and stared pensively into the flames, saying nothing. Pansy took a pumpkin pasty from the pile of food and plopped down into a chair next to Draco’s.

“I think I scraped enough to pass, which is what I was aiming for,” Pansy said, nibbling on the crust. “I actually knew most of this one, well, except for number four.”

Nott’s head turned towards her.

“You didn’t know that one either?” he asked.

“Never heard of anything about the King of Sweden and didn’t even know there was such a thing as Devil’s Snare,” she said without the slightest trace of concern. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know it, Theo?”

“No,” he said. “Draco?”

“I thought it must have been something Sprout went over when I had to see Pomfrey,” Draco said.

“It wasn’t,” Nott said, then rubbed his forehead. “I think I know what happened.”

“Yes, it’s called panicking during an exam,” Pansy said with a giggle.

“No, it was a trap,” Theodore said. “Sprout put in a fake question so that anyone who was cheating would be exposed.”

“Pfft, what’s the point of that?” Pansy said. “They’ve already put anti-cheating charms on our quills and use all sorts of protections. Everyone knows that.”

“Yes, but there are always rumors about things that you can use to slip past them,” he said.

Draco looked over at Goyle. He’d gone white as a sheet.

“Goyle?” Draco said. “What—”

“Was there really a plot against the King of Sweden and we just didn’t study it?” Goyle blurted out. “Couldn’t someone have just known about it because they read it somewhere?”

“I don’t think it ever happened,” Nott said. “Ask Zabini.”

Blaise was just entering the room now.

“Are you discussing the answer to number four?” he asked.

“Yes!” Draco said. “Did any of that ever happen?”

“No,” Zabini replied confidently. “My mum is distantly related to the Swedish royal line, so she made me study all this tosh since the time I was old enough to talk. Sweden had a king in 1248, but nobody knows his name. There’s a two century or so gap in the recordkeeping around then, even in the wizarding world.”

“So it really was a trap question,” Nott said, sounding impressed. “Rather sneaky of Sprout. More Slytherin of her than Hufflepuff.”

But Draco barely heard him. He watched Goyle’s face go impossibly whiter before he shot out of the room and through the door leading to the dungeons.

“What was all that about?” Pansy said, though she was still staring at her nails and didn’t sound particularly interested.

Draco didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all before leaving to go back to his dormitory a few minutes later.