Chapter Text
“ My cards are on the table, I'm here tonight
But I don't need anything from you
Down on the bowery, the changing lights
And I'll still be waiting here for you ”
- Broken Bells
* * *
Harry Potter — The Boy Who Lived Not Just Once but Twice — was going back to Hogwarts for a make-up seventh year. The news was all over the headlines, splashed on the front of every Prophet in big letters and bold font. The saviour of the Wizarding world, who had nobly spent a portion of his summer helping to rebuild those sections of Hogwarts which had been destroyed during the war, would be returning amongst a rather large group of his peers under the heading of “eighth-years,” and for a reason which Harry himself could not quite understand, it was all anybody could talk about.
He’d been able to avoid hearing too much about it when he’d actually been on the grounds helping out, but much to his chagrin, the end of the war had brought about not the peace he’d anticipated but a throng of interviews and meetings and trips to the Ministry. The relief was still there, of course — his scar never stung, a cloud of death no longer hovered just above his head, and despite the loss of so many friends and family, all anybody wanted to do was rejoice in the company of those who had survived.
Still, interview after meeting after press conference after interview became tiresome, particularly to a boy who had never appreciated the spotlight in the first place. Yet Harry endured it, because that was what he did. That was what he had always done; but finally, on the first of September, just four months after that bloody battle which had only solidified what seemed to be the eternal glory of one Harry James Potter (whether he liked it or not), those meetings and interviews and photographs were left behind at King’s Cross, on the pavement of platform nine and three-quarters.
The students would talk, and he wasn’t dimwitted enough to think it wouldn’t be made a big deal of at the start-of-term banquet, but at least he’d be back at Hogwarts.
At least he’d be home, and a few months into the school year, Harry had no doubt in his mind things would begin to fade back to normal — whatever that meant.
It looked just as it always had.
Sitting beside Ginny and across from Ron and Hermione in one of the carriages being led towards the castle by a couple Thestrals, Harry thought if he hadn’t known about — if he hadn’t been a part of — the battle which had raged inside those walls and on the grounds surrounding it last May, he might not have known anything had happened at all. In spite of the sadness which gripped his heart at the sight, he was filled simultaneously with an overwhelming sense of gratitude, and for the first time in a very long time, excitement.
“Looks like nothing happened, doesn’t it?” Ron spoke, plucking the words directly out of Harry’s thoughts. His head was turned towards the castle, body twisted so he could get a good view out of the small carriage window, and the statement made both Ginny and Hermione look as well. Hermione appeared contemplative, while Ginny merely cuddled herself closer to Harry, who had an arm draped across her shoulders.
They hadn’t officially gotten back together, but it certainly felt inevitable, and in all honesty Harry appreciated Ginny’s willingness to let the pieces fall back into place in their own time. There was, after all, no rush these days.
The crowd seemed depressingly thin as they walked up the stairs leading to the oak front doors, making Harry think painfully of how many students had died trying to defend their school. It was Hermione who reminded him a whole fleet of first-years were in a boat with Hagrid at that very moment, almost as though she had lifted the top of his head off and peered at the thoughts swirling around inside.
More likely she had simply read what he was feeling on his face — she had become quite good at that.
As they stepped into the Great Hall, Harry saw a combination of familiar and unfamiliar faces; Snape’s old spot was conspicuously occupied by a bald professor with a thick beard circling his mouth, and as McGonagall had been made Headmistress, her old spot was also taken. McGonagall herself was sitting in the middle, where Dumbledore had always resided.
As Harry had predicted, once the first-years had been Sorted and seated, McGonagall made a special point to address the Battle of Hogwarts in her rather long-winded speech, singling Harry out and forcing him to endure a round of applause for which he put on a smile he’d been practicing all summer, although he couldn't have spoken to its authenticity.
“You almost looked like you enjoyed that,” Ginny snickered, and this got a laugh out of Ron as well as a knowing smirk from Hermione. Neville, oblivious to Harry’s discomfort, had been clapping the loudest of anyone in the Hall, but Harry couldn’t find it within himself to be annoyed by it. A number of other Gryffindors — Dean and Seamus, namely — had taken it upon themselves to hoot and holler simply because they knew how much it would irk him. But it hadn’t just been the Gryffindors; even the Slytherins had been clapping, save for a small few closest to the door, which Harry immediately identified as Malfoy, Zabini, Parkinson, Bulstrode, Goyle, and Nott. It didn’t bother him the way the applause did, but it did make him curious. After all, he’d vouched for them himself when the question of whether or not to let them return arose, and as for Malfoy … well, he would have been behind bars along with his father had Harry not personally attended the trial and spoken on that ungrateful prat’s behalf.
When dinner and dessert had been cleared away and the first-years had been collected by their respective House’s Prefects, the rest of the students were dismissed, and there was a great scraping of chairs and pounding of feet as everyone headed for the entrance hall at once. Harry and his friends lingered at the table to wait for the traffic jam to pass, and looking around the Hall, he saw that many of the other eighth-years had elected to the do the same.
“You know,” Ginny began, nodding inconspicuously towards the Slytherin table, “you would think some of them might at least attempt to look a little bit less like a bunch of snakes considering they’re only here out of the goodness of Harry’s heart.”
Harry snorted derisively. “Think they’re probably bitter at the moment; don’t be too hard on ‘em, Gin, most of them really didn’t have anything to do with it. It was their parents, not them."
“Except Malfoy,” Ron added helpfully, glaring across the room at the subdued blond in question and shaking his head. “Still don’t know what got into your head, mate. You did enough for that two-faced git when you saved him from the Fiendfyre.” A look from Hermione made Ron’s cheeks tinge with pink, and he added a mumbled “Just saying” under his breath.
Harry merely shrugged. He wasn’t sure himself why he’d personally vouched for his once arch-nemesis at Hogwarts, why he’d faced a trial as big as Draco Malfoy’s — the press, the interviews, the photographs — just to keep him out of Azkaban, and further, to allow him to come back to school and finish his education. That Dark Mark was still on his arm — it always would be — but all Harry could ever see was the face of a terrified child on top of the Astronomy Tower who’d never in a million years have been able to do what Snape had stepped in to do for him. A child who’d been forced into Voldemort’s ranks, and furthermore, who’d not given Harry away when he’d been captured even though Harry knew in his gut Malfoy had known it was him kneeling on the floor of Malfoy Manor.
“It’s like Professor McGonagall said in her speech,” Hermione said as they finally stood up from the table, “the time for judgments and picking sides is over, Ron. We need to start putting the past behind us so we can begin the process of healing.”
Harry lagged a little bit behind the others, even Ginny, who had caught up with a friend from her own year. He looked again across the Hall towards the Slytherin table, and to his surprise, he found Malfoy looking back at him this time. The eye contact held for only a few seconds before Malfoy looked away, and by the time Harry had gotten to his dorm and climbed into bed, he’d forgotten about it entirely.
It took Harry even less time than he'd expected to get back into the swing of things — the professors made that terribly easy. Slughorn had come back to teach Potions, and that was all right, but because Professor McGonagall was now Headmistress the students had a new Transfiguations teacher, Professor Cliodna Kettleburn, and she was nearly as strict as McGonagall had been. Harry supposed that was why she’d hired the woman. It was only the first week and so far they’d been given homework in each class, the worst of which was a full-blown essay from Kettleburn and a monumental amount of reading from Slughorn. Thursday afternoon, Hermione had scuttled away to the library to start on her essay as soon as they’d finished their last lesson of the day.
“Blimey,” Ron was saying, shaking his head after Hermione had planted a soft kiss on his cheek and told him she’d meet up with them in the common room later. “It’s like we never left, innit? She’s right back at it; next thing you know she’ll have colour-coded schedules for us again, eh, Harry?”
“We do have our N.E.W.T.s this year,” Harry reminded him, an amused grin on his face when Ron groaned. They’d begun walking in the direction of the stairs that would lead them up to the seventh floor, Ron’s shoulders drooping under an invisible weight.
“Don’t suppose we could play the ‘we-saved-all-your-arses-from-dictatorship-under-a-Dark-Lord’ card, do you?”
Harry laughed. “I somehow doubt it. And I’m pretty sure it was me who saved all your arses — all you did was snog Hermione over an armful of Basilisk fangs."
Ron elbowed Harry hard in the ribs, but the two of them were both laughing — it was the carefree laughter of kids at school with nothing more serious to worry about than the mounds of homework they’d been given, and for that, at least, Harry was grateful.
As they were passing Flitwick’s classroom in the Charms corridor, Harry saw students filing out the door with sour looks on their faces, and given that it was eighth-year Slytherins and Ravenclaws, he ascertained he would be wearing a similar expression when he left Charms tomorrow sagging under what he was certain would be another mountain of homework.
“Oi,” Ron nudged him, gesturing with his chin in the direction of a small spectacle that Harry quickly realised involved Malfoy and another student whose name he didn’t know — a seventh-year, perhaps, judging by his size and vague familiarity. His uniform tie bore Slytherin colors, and though he must have been younger than Malfoy he was at least twice as big; Harry wasn’t surprised to see that in spite of the fact that the hulking figure had gotten Malfoy nearly pressed up against a wall, Malfoy was still sneering up at him in a way that invited nothing but trouble. “Looks like not even the Slytherins are happy to see him back, eh? Even Zabini’s leaving!”
Harry saw that Ron was entirely right. Pansy Parkinson had stuck around, if only to nervously look on from the side, but all the other Slytherin eighth-years either didn’t care or weren’t in the mood to join in, even if it meant standing up for one of their own.
How very Slytherin, Harry thought privately.
Ron wasn’t moving, probably because he wanted to see the show, but Harry had planted his feet for a different reason, and his hand had already moved to his wand. He may not have liked Malfoy, but he hadn’t vouched for him just to watch him get bullied the whole school year.
“You shouldn’t’ve come back, Malfoy,” the blond’s tormentor growled, and when he stabbed Malfoy in the chest with his wand, Harry’s hand tightened on his own. "You should be rotting in Azkaban next to your murderer father."
Ron, beside him, seemed to have sensed Harry's posture.
“Harry, what’re you doing?” he hissed. “Don’t get in the middle of it, it isn’t your job —!”
“I’m not gonna let that kid hurt him, Ron, I don’t care if it is Malfoy, he —”
Harry’s sentence broke off when Malfoy pushed the larger boy’s chest in response to the wand that was being held on him, though it didn’t do much more than startle the other Slytherin and put an angrier look on his face. “Well I did come back, Conway, so why don’t you shove off and take your ugly, trollish face somewhere that I don’t have to look at it.” And with that, he wriggled free of the trap and began stalking in Harry’s and Ron’s direction. Harry was a little stunned to see that Malfoy’s head was down, and because of this he didn’t see who he was walking towards.
He was maybe five feet away from them when Harry, who was on high alert, whipped out his wand only a millisecond later than the boy Malfoy had called Conway, but that millisecond was enough. He yelled “Expelliarmus!” and the boy’s wand flew out of his hand, but not before a flash of purple light had shot out of the end and hit Malfoy squarely in the back, throwing him to the ground.
Everyone who had been watching came a bit closer and Harry saw Professor Flitwick come running out of his classroom just in time to hear Malfoy first begin moaning and then howling with what sounded like excruciating pain. While everyone else only watched with wide eyes, Harry’s instinct had him on the ground with Flitwick beside Malfoy, turning him over only to see something horribly disturbing happening to his face: it looked like what Polyjuice Potion felt like, Harry thought, watching with his jaw open as Malfoy’s face started slowly but very noticeably shifting, like the bones beneath it were rearranging themselves.
Flitwick didn’t have to say anything for Harry to spring into action, lifting Malfoy off the floor and running in the direction of the hospital wing while Flitwick followed, yelling “Out of the way! Out of the way!” as they went. Harry was so focused on getting to Madam Pomfrey that he didn’t notice it wasn’t only Malfoy’s face shifting underneath his pale skin, and once they had gotten there Madam Pomfrey took Malfoy and shooed Harry away.
He stood outside the Infirmary with his heart beating fast, feeling helpless now that there was no more he could do, and a little angry at himself for not having acted faster back there. But he supposed at the very worst, Malfoy would have to spend the night growing bones back or something the way Harry had done in his second year.
An hour later, settled into their familiar spots in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room, Harry and Ron were trying to describe what had happened to Hermione so she could figure out what hex had been used.
“Doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard of,” she shrugged, looking upset by the fight that had happened within the first week, but much more interested in the notes she was taking out of an enormous, dusty old tome she’d checked out of the library. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. Maybe it’ll even teach Malfoy to try keeping his head down for once, especially seeing as he's particularly unpopular at the moment.”
With no definitive answer forthcoming, Harry and Ron both acquiesced to begin working on their homework, although they gave up after only an hour and a half and elected to play chess instead. It was, after all, only the end of the first week of term — there was no need to push themselves yet.
At a quarter past one in the morning, as Harry closed the curtains of his four-poster and lay his head down on the pillow, he thought again of Malfoy, and wondered if Madam Pomfrey had cured him yet.