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Water from a Stone	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14853 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Three—The Endless and Necessary Battle

            Harry opened his eyes, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed. He was in the hospital wing, he knew from that one glance. He didn’t look at a lot of ceilings, but on the other hand, it didn’t require much intelligence to tell the hospital wing from, say, the ceiling of the Gryffindor common room.

            I bet whoever threw that jug or whatever it was at me doesn’t have that level of intelligence.

            Harry smiled to himself. He hoped it was a grim smile, though without a mirror he wasn’t sure. It might be slightly mental, depending on any potions that Madam Pomfrey had already poured down his throat. But he had a plan, and it was a plan that would work out nastily for everyone involved if they didn’t try to stop the person who had hurt him.

            He groaned tragically and raised himself on one elbow, rubbing the back of his head. As he had thought, he had a large knot from where he was thrown into the wall, and a raised tender spot on his forehead where the thing had struck him.

            “Mr. Potter!” Madam Pomfrey was hovering next to him, biting her lip and looking at him as if she assumed that he’d try to play Quidditch in the next second. “Lie back down!”

            Harry only groaned again, as if he was in too much pain to pay attention to her instructions, and took a quick scan of the hospital wing. McGonagall and Slughorn stood a few beds away, turning around to face him as if startled out of a conversation. Perfect.

            “Mr. Potter.” McGonagall recovered faster from the shock, at least, and strode over to him. “Are you all right?”

            “Not really,” Harry whispered.

            “He had a concussion, which is healed now,” Madam Pomfrey interrupted. “But I’d like to keep him overnight for observation. The potions will take a longer time to work on the superficial injuries—” which made no sense, and made Harry suspect that she was covering for something else even before her next words “—and pressure on them or exacerbating the injury could hurt him worse.”

            Even she doesn’t trust them to keep me completely safe from other students who want to harm me, Harry thought, looking up with some satisfaction into McGonagall’s wide eyes. That must hurt.

            “Mr. Potter, I am sorry you were injured,” said McGonagall formally, as though apologizing to a teacher or someone else equal to her in rank. That definitely wasn’t the way she treated him yesterday, Harry thought. He didn’t know what had caused the change, but he was going to use it, because the oath and his outrage wouldn’t let him do anything else. “We do have the person who did it in custody, and the Aurors have already investigated.”

            “Really?” Harry asked. “That was a quick investigation. Who was it, and why did you feel that you had to call in the Aurors instead of just disciplining him or her the way you would any other student?”

            McGonagall blinked as if she didn’t understand why he was asking those questions, but admitted, “Mr. Matthieson, the prefect who attacked Mr. Malfoy in the Great Hall yesterday. It seems that he didn’t like you humiliating him, and so he cleared off one of the larger plates and threw it at you. The Aurors were involved because he is of age. But they found that he hadn’t used Dark magic, and so Mr. Matthieson remains in the school, though of course he has a month of detentions.”

            Harry shook his head slowly. That caused the knot at the back of his head to hurt and Madam Pomfrey to cluck, but Harry couldn’t have cared less about both of those right now. “And so the punishment I used to get for talking back to Snape, he gets for trying to kill me.”

            “He didn’t try to kill you, Mr. Potter!” McGonagall said, drawing herself up. “Don’t be ridiculous! It was a stupid and childish thing to do, but there is no reason to assume it was undue malice on his part.”

            “Yeah,” Harry said, folding his arms and sitting up. Madam Pomfrey put her hand on his shoulder, but Harry looked at her, and her hand fell away like a burned butterfly. Harry told himself to memorize that configuration of his eyes and eyebrows if he could, since apparently it was his best scowl yet. “Except that if he’d taken me out of the way for a while, caused more damage than he did, it would leave the Slytherins fair game.”

            McGonagall sighed. “I have told you, Mr. Potter, that none of us realized the extent of the persecution that was happening on their part. The Slytherins will be protected.”

            Harry laughed sharply. “I’m sure they’ll be really relieved to hear that, especially when someone can assault the Boy-Who-Lived in the middle of breakfast and get away with it. I’m sure they’ll trust every one of your promises.”

            McGonagall tried to exchange a glance with Slughorn, as if she assumed that he held the answer. Slughorn didn’t respond, though, or look at her. He was watching Harry instead, in a silence that Harry thought he understood.

            “Mr. Matthieson is not getting away with it,” McGonagall said. “I told you, his month of detentions—”

            “But that’s not going to be enough for him,” Harry said. “Not for someone stupid enough to attack me over this in a public place. He’ll do something else, and you won’t be able to punish him because he won’t use Dark magic, and he’ll do it again, because for him, the pleasure outweighs the punishment. You’ll treat him like a child, and in the meantime, he gets to make Hogwarts a hostile environment for other children.” Harry was proud of himself for remembering the phrase “hostile environment” from one of Hermione’s lectures about bullying a few years ago.

            Of course, at the time, Hermione had been lecturing him and Ron about going after Malfoy. Harry tried to bury that memory. Everything had changed, and he knew better. Brooding on his mistakes from his past wouldn’t do anything to protect the Slytherins now.

            “I do not know what you expect us to do.” McGonagall rubbed her forehead as if she were the one who had a scar connecting her to a dead Voldemort there. “We have given him the largest punishment we can.”

            “Expel him,” Harry said. “Snape used to tell us that that was the punishment for an assault on another student. Hermione told me that it was in Hogwarts, A History. And he’s done it not once but twice now, and probably more than that, since no one deigned to notice what the Slytherins were suffering.”

            “That punishment has not been applied in some time,” McGonagall said. “If it had been, you would have been expelled in the past, Mr. Potter.”



“I know,” Harry said. “I was a righteous little shit most of the time I was here.” McGonagall had the “Language!” expression on her face, but Harry charged right on, not giving her the chance to scold him. “But I never got the impression that you would have tolerated people beating up on and tormenting the members of one House, either. So make a change now. Expel Matthieson. Say it was because he attacked me, not because he attacked Malfoy. Not enough people care about that right now.” I’m going to change their minds, but it will take some time. “It fits, and I think a lot of people will be happy to see him go.”

McGonagall exchanged a look with Madam Pomfrey this time. She seemed to be looking for some kind of evidence that Harry was too exhausted or in too much pain to make this kind of demand, but Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips and gave a judicious little shake of her head.

            “What’s the matter?” Harry raised himself further, and ignored the way his head suddenly ached as though someone had smacked it. “Why are you so reluctant to do this? Matthieson isn’t all that special, Headmistress. If Malfoy had done this, I think you would have expelled him at once. Why are you hesitating now?”

            McGonagall gave a sigh that came from the bottom of her toes. “I had hoped that things would return to normal after the war,” she murmured. “I had hoped that a few assaults on the Slytherins were only the natural result of anger and depression and would calm as the students’ emotions did. I did not want to disrupt the usual course of things.”

            “In trying to be too fair, you were unfair,” Harry said. “Expel him.”

            He knew no one else would ever have got away with demanding this of McGonagall. But he had saved the sodding world last year, and she was the one who had started treating him like he had a right to demand things when he woke up. Being the Boy-Who-Lived ought to come in handy for once, instead of being an unwanted burden.

            “He is quite correct in his application of the school rules, Headmistress,” Slughorn said in his fawning voice. “The punishment is not always the same, but the Headmistress does have the right to expel a student, particularly with a public assault such as this.”

            McGonagall had at least always made her decisions quickly. She nodded. “Very well, Mr. Potter. Mr. Matthieson will be expelled.”

            “Thank you.” Harry lay back down and closed his eyes. “That makes me feel safer.” And it’ll make things a little easier if people see someone who attacked Malfoy and other people get in trouble for it.

            “Does it.” McGonagall’s tone was dry, not a question, and she left the hospital wing without waiting for a response. Madam Pomfrey began fussing over Harry, and Harry opened one eye to look at her.

            “What happens if the oath summons me out of bed right now?” he asked.

            She sighed. “I don’t know.” For a moment, she smoothed her hand over his hair, and Harry felt a little bad for using her. On the other hand, while she’d healed the Slytherins, probably, she hadn’t tried to stop the bullying or find out what was going on, and Harry wouldn’t have had to be in this situation if she had. “I suspect you would have to go. But try to be careful.”

            Harry nodded, and watched as she bustled off in the direction of the cabinet where she kept most of her potions. Then he realized Slughorn was still there, and looking at him.

            Harry glared. “So what’s your excuse? They were torturing and hurting the members of your House, and you didn’t call them on it? Were you blind, or just standing in the corner and watching because it was well-connected students doing it?” Not that Harry had ever heard of Matthieson, and he didn’t think the students he had stopped last night were particularly powerful, but he still didn’t know all that much about the political structure of the wizarding world.

            Slughorn nodded. “I should have been a better Head of House.” He didn’t offer any excuses, and after a short time, Harry realized that he wouldn’t get any. “I am glad that someone like you is defending them. They deserve that.”

            “Will you help me?” Harry demanded.

            “What can I do?” Slughorn blinked and looked around the hospital wing as if he expected the answer to the question to materialize from the walls.

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Tell your students not to wander outside their common room at night. Tell them to travel together; I think the bullies are a lot braver when they find them alone. Tell them that I’d like to teach them how to defend themselves, and anyone who wants to learn should meet me tomorrow night at eight on the seventh floor.”

            Slughorn blinked rapidly for a few seconds. Then he said, “I can certainly do that. I will.” He looked thoughtfully at Harry again. “You didn’t have to make this oath.”

            “I made it out of ignorance,” Harry said. “Not because I suddenly discovered some soft spot for Slytherins. Tell them that, if anyone asks.” It probably wouldn’t encourage the people who were afraid of him, but at least it might make them think he hadn’t done it to get close to them and then betray them from the inside, or whatever scary reason their twisted minds had come up with.

            Slughorn smiled. “That doesn’t matter to some people,” he said cryptically, and slipped off before Harry could ask him what that meant.

            Bloody Slytherins and their bloody riddles. Harry punched the pillow into shape and lay down, closing his eyes. He’d got a bit of sleep earlier, he reckoned, but being unconscious was no substitute for real rest. He’d just have to hope that the oath didn’t wake him up in the next little while.

*

            “Potter.”

            Harry opened his eyes and slowly turned his head, clutching his wand under the blankets. He knew that voice, and there was no good reason for the owner to approach him in the middle of the darkened hospital wing unless he meant to attack Harry.

            Malfoy stood in front of his bed, his hair brighter with moonlight, his arms folded (of course). He looked at Harry slowly and contemptuously. Harry yawned in his face and rolled over on his side to go back to sleep.

            Malfoy pinched one of his feet. “Wake up. I want to talk to you.”



            “And because of that, I should stay awake?” Harry opened one eye. “Why? You haven’t given me any indication that this won’t be another session of insults, and since I was up most of last night saving skinny Slytherin arses, I need my rest.”

            Malfoy looked as if he was biting his tongue. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I just want to talk about what Slughorn told us today, and what you said to McGonagall. She was the one who expelled Matthieson in front of everyone at lunch. She said it was because of the attack on you, but a lot of people took it as a favor to us, too.”

            “Oh, she did it already, then?” Harry smiled, and didn’t care if the smile was nasty and sharp. This was Malfoy, after all. He probably would stumble around in confusion before a polite smile. “Good. I didn’t want her to wait.”

            Malfoy tilted his head slowly from one side to the other, as if he wanted to imitate a rainbow’s arch. Or, for all Harry knew, that was a secret arcane gesture that would make his life miserable. Really, he didn’t care. Slytherins could wrap themselves up in their riddles and vanish for all he cared.

            Except that might make the oath hard to fulfill.

            “You made her expel him?” Malfoy’s voice was hushed. “How did you do that?” Then, before Harry could even make a pretense of answering, he closed his eyes and held up one hand in front of him. “Wait, don’t tell me. Because you’re a Gryffindor and she was the Head of Gryffindor, and you’re the Golden Boy and she does what you bloody well please.”

            The bitterness in his voice snapped Harry out of the half-sleepy daze he was still in. He had hoped for a slightly civil conversation with Malfoy, but of course that wasn’t happening. If Malfoy tried, he would start sneezing, since he was obviously allergic to politeness.

            “She didn’t want to expel him at first,” Harry snapped. “She just wanted to give him a month of detentions—because she wants so badly for everyone and everything to go back to normal, as if that could be the case after a bloody war. I made her change her mind, yeah, because she was guilty over what happened to me. But she didn’t fall over herself to oblige me. She never has. She was harder on Gryffindors than other Houses because she didn’t want us to embarrass her.

            “And another thing, Malfoy.” Harry leaned forwards. Malfoy’s mouth was hanging open, and this might be Harry’s best chance to say what he needed to without the prat interrupting all the time. “I hate the attention I get. I know, I know, you’d like it, and therefore I must, because you judge everyone by your narrow little standards that couldn’t hold half the things I learned during the last year. But I don’t want this attention. I didn’t want to swear this oath. I didn’t want to fight Voldemort. I didn’t want to be the Boy-Who-Lived. If I had a choice, I’d like to grow up with my parents alive, thanks, and live a normal life, and only have Snape hating me, if anyone did. Even you wouldn’t hate me, because you wouldn’t have cared about getting in good with the Chosen One and you wouldn’t be hurt when you realized I wouldn’t let you manipulate me. Besides, why do you care why Matthieson was expelled, as long as it benefits you? So take your suggestions about loving the attention and sod off.”

            He stopped, panting. Malfoy looked at him with eyes as big as moons. Harry had the impression that, for once, he had managed to surprise him.

            Then Malfoy muttered, “I said that you’d never understand. But perhaps you would, if I explained.”

            Harry rolled his eyes and flopped back down on his pillow. “I don’t care about your explanations,” he said tiredly. “I don’t care about you. Go away.”

            Malfoy wrapped an arm around his stomach, for some reason, as though something hurt there. But his voice was steady when it came out, which only proved that the gesture had nothing to do with Harry. Perhaps he had indigestion from eating his pride all day long. Harry hoped so. “Slughorn told us about your offer of a defense class. Was that genuine?”

            “Yes.” Harry rubbed his eyes. He was absurdly tired. He wasn’t kidding about wanting Malfoy to go away, either. “I’ll teach you what I taught Dumbledore’s Army, so that you can at least defend yourselves. Just keep in mind that using what I teach you on other students preemptively could get you expelled like Matthieson.”

            “And you’re doing this because it would make it easier for you to defend us?” Malfoy spoke as if he was edging out over an abyss and the breath of one little word would be sufficient to tip him over.

            “Of course,” Harry said. “Why else would I be doing it?”

            “I know why I would hope you’re doing it.” Malfoy’s voice was even more tentative now. “Should I tell you?”

            Harry stared at him. “How many invitations do you need to fuck off before you take me seriously?”

            “Shut up, Potter, I’m having a Gryffindor moment,” Malfoy said, and the shock of that was enough to make Harry sit with his mouth hanging open, so that Malfoy could rush ahead. “I’d hope that you were doing it because you had some compassion for what we suffered last year. I’d hope that you were doing it because you were sorry for leaving Slytherins out of your little group in the first place. I’d hope that you were doing it because you know that not all of us are the same, and you can’t blame the first-years for what I might have done.” He ended in a rush and went back to his arms-folded plus staring combination, which seemed to be his secret weapon to make Harry explode with frustration.

            Harry rubbed his forehead. He was remembering how strongly he hadn’t wanted to go into Slytherin as a first-year, and that was before the war happened. What about the kids who were Sorted this year, after the war, and maybe crying because they thought of themselves as evil?

            “The first and the third reasons are true,” he said at last. “Not the second. Need I remind you that the year I started Dumbledore’s Army was the year that you and a lot of other Slytherins joined the Inquisitors’ Squad, and thought it was funny when Umbridge tortured me?”

            “Never funny,” Malfoy said. “I cared too much about it for it to really amuse me.”

            Harry raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess. You wished you were the one holding the wand.”

            “Sometimes, yes,” Malfoy said. “And what does that tell you, Potter?”

            “Listen, Malfoy,” Harry snapped, “I also don’t care about your perverted fantasies about orgasming to the sound of someone else’s screams under the Cruciatus.”

            Malfoy cocked his head to the side and stared at him in owl-eyed silence. Harry looked back, and then they mutually decided to pretend that that statement had never happened.

            “I wanted you to pay attention to me,” Malfoy said. “Perhaps it was impossible for you to put me into Dumbledore’s Army at the time, but you could have spared a few more nods and glances for me than you did.”

            “You were a git,” Harry said. “And you weren’t being bulled then, either. What would have made me pay attention to you?”

            “The same decency that made you swear the oath this year.” Malfoy paused again, as though whoever was telepathically feeding him sane thoughts had had a coughing fit. “Or is that decency something you only developed after the war?”

            Harry shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about what his and Malfoy’s relationship had been like in the past. It would only bring up uncomfortable thoughts. “Will you encourage the others to become part of this group, then? Because I think many of them are too stubborn or afraid to do it.”

            Malfoy nodded. “And I’ll be the first one there.”

            “Wait, wait a minute,” Harry said, wondering both why Malfoy thought he’d be included and how he could have promised a Defense group for the Slytherins and not thought Malfoy would be involved. This was probably the fault of him and his stupidity more than it was Malfoy’s, Harry admitted glumly to himself. “Who—I mean, what can you possibly have to learn from me?”

            The grin that overtook Malfoy’s face then was completely unexpected, not least because Harry hadn’t known he knew how to do that.

            “Bravery,” Malfoy said. “Compassion. And yes, how to do things like cast a Patronus and use the Shield Charm correctly. Mine still fails me two times out of three.”

            Harry looked at him and waited for the ridiculousness of that idea to penetrate his thick skull. But Malfoy carried on looking helpful and alert, and Harry decided that he would just take advantage of whatever transient good mood Malfoy was in and hope that it still endured tomorrow evening.

            “Be on time,” he said. “And if anyone disrupts anything or attacks me deliberately, then out they go. I’m not going to put up with people trying to get revenge on me when I’m trying to protect their arses.”

            “Most of them are coming around to Slughorn’s point-of-view now,” Malfoy said calmly. “That your presence is useful and can help us win back a good reputation, or at least the ability to survive in the school on a day-to-day basis.”

            “Er,” Harry said, unsure how Malfoy could go from being personal and open to sounding sensible and detached so quickly. On the other hand, nothing about what Malfoy had said this evening made sense anyway, so at least this change fit right in with everything else. “All right. If anyone else shows up at the door, I’ll kick them out, but I’ll probably bring in a few of the Gryffindors who were in the Army so that they can help you demonstrate the spells.”

            “Why?” Malfoy was himself again in a minute, bristling and looking as if he’d like to blast Harry’s head off for a simple suggestion. Harry was relieved. His life already had a sufficient quota of oddness, thank you.

            “Because I can’t do everything myself,” Harry said patiently. “And because I don’t know how many of you are going to show up. You’ll learn faster if there’s a large group and I’m not trying to work personally with everyone there.”

            Malfoy nodded and spun away on one heel, then paused near the doorway of the hospital wing to add over his shoulder, “Don’t bring anyone who’s bullied us in the past few weeks.”

            “D’you think I’m stupid?” Harry asked indignantly, and realized a moment later the perfection of that straight line.

            In the end, it seemed it was too perfect for Malfoy to take advantage of. He simply looked back over his shoulder, waited to make sure Harry absorbed what he could have said but didn’t, and then left.

            Harry flopped back down again and frowned at the ceiling. So Matthieson was expelled and the Slytherins would probably come to this Defense group, but he would have to try to convince Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville to come with him and behave nicely, and then he would have to mediate back and forth between a roomful of paranoid Slytherins and suspicious Gryffindors.

            Maybe the disappearance of just a few obligations from his overcrowded life was all that he could hope for, though.

            He let himself drift off, because the question of why Malfoy had revealed those personal details, had smiled at him, and wanted to participate in the group at all wasn’t pressing enough to keep him awake.

            He was curious about it, though, all the same.

*

            SP777: Well, in this case, it wasn’t Terry who hit him in the face, but I’m glad that you thought it was funny!

            I work in academia.

            polka dot: I doubt many of their families have as much money as would be needed to pay for expert teachers, even if they have enough to build a school.

            thrnbrooke: If the professors had refused to deal with it, then the DA would have. But luckily, Matthieson isn’t going to be the problem; it’ll be the other people who think like him.

            Elypsis: Thanks! At least Harry did get some sleep in this chapter.

            Clau: The Slytherins have their reasons, but Harry isn’t going to learn about them until the next chapter.

            Harry is going to try and force some of them to be helpful in the next chapter, and he has already guilted McGonagall and Slughorn along.

            Petalsoft: Thank you!

            Sarah: Thanks for reviewing!
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Water from a Stone