History of the World Volume XI Chapter 17 The Rule of Turpin – Rewarding Power
Elevation to the third tier of society was never meant to be a political achievement. Rather, elevation was meant to be a recognition of power and an invitation to alliance. Over time political leanings made their way into the process. To help level the playing field, Turpin masterminded the creation of the divination stones to identify those of his subjects with true exceptional power. No matter your political or family connections, if the divination stone determined your strength to be anything but elite, the third tier was and to this day still is forever beyond your reach...
Another day dawned in which Severus had not even seen his own bed. Stifling a yawn he leaned low over the ream of calculations that proved the theorem his taskmistress Mabel had set him the evening before. Scrawled in his slanted handwriting, the answers stared up, simple and neat and perfect.
"Calculate them again," Mabel ordered. She snatched the scroll off his workspace, and stuffed it onto a pile in her arms. "Get there by a different route. Don't reuse this theorem's solution."
"Wait. Why do you need the same problem solved again a different way?" Severus asked. The mathematics Mabel kept throwing at him was complex and it was obvious that she had to painstakingly phrase the questions so that they were apples and oranges, rather than the true topic she was investigating. "That solution is correct and it won't change if I change my methodology."
"Maybe it won't, but I need a better answer," Mabel said. Sighing and obviously flummoxed, she settled into a nearby chair. The area of her workroom that she'd set aside for Serverus was neat as a pin, stark contrast to the chaos that lurked in every other corner of the room. "I have outlier problems, you see." She pointed to one of her heavily marked bell curves. "This would be much easier if you were third tier outright, and I could tell you what we're doing." With a conspiratorial grin she pulled her chair a little closer. "Can you keep a secret, Serverus?"
Snape almost laughed at that question. Could he keep a secret? Yes, but he wouldn't be able to keep hers. "I can keep a secret."
The line dividing the group home children from the wizard-raised had virtually vanished by the time Halloween rolled around. They all wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and read the same books. Harry was just beginning to feel comfortable in his niche in the class when the Halloween festivities were announced. Everyone had to wear their dress robes, and with a change of clothes the old lines reemerged.
Harry stood in front of the mirror, fastening his last button and tried not to sigh too dejectedly. The school issue robes were well cut and of the finest quality. Their only real flaw lay in the sickly purple colour used for accents. He was practically used to the first-year color scheme, but some of the other kids were getting away from the purple tonight. The wizard-raised kids had their own dress robes and dresses.
Draco, for instance, had a set of tailored black robes that practically screamed expensive. With his hair slicked back and his scar he looked positively wicked, at least that's what Harry heard Lisa Turpin say as she passed him and Ron without even a glance in their direction.
Managing to look lost and ill-fitted all at once, Ron snorted at Lisa's back. "Wicked? Please. He's vetoed."
"Ron, why are you wearing the school issue robes, anyway? Didn't your mum pack you three or four extra sets of dress robes?" Harry asked.
Ron just rolled his eyes and shook his head. "You assume that because she sent me dress robes that they're better than the school issue ones. I'll let you have a look but no laughing, okay." Over at his trunk, Ron scanned the room to make sure everyone was occupied and paying him no mind before he opened it. The monstrosity in antique lace that he presented almost cheered Harry up.
"They're awfully frilly," Harry said. Though he fought against it, he couldn't contain a sputtering laugh. "Sorry."
Ron stuffed the ugly robes back into his trunk and made a face at Harry's inability to not laugh. "I hear frilly was fashionable a few decades ago when my mum was setting her fashion sense."
"Either that or she doesn't like you very much," Harry choked out.
Ron punched Harry's shoulder once, then a couple times more for good measure. While he was pummeling his laughing friend, Hermione poked her head into the boy's dorm and headed over to Harry and Ron. She looked the perfectly presentable little witch in her purple dress with puffed sleeves and a calf-length skirt. She crossed her arms over her chest and surveyed Harry and Ron critically. "Have you seen the dresses the other girls are wearing, Susan and Padma and Millicent? You'd think they were twenty five and living in Milan with those clothes."
"You didn't even mention Lisa," Harry said. He nodded toward the girl and her diamond bedazzled frock that should have been completely out of place on an eleven year old. He could hear Hermione grinding her teeth in frustration. "Come on, you look nice. Purple is practically your colour."
"If purple is my colour then Lisa Turpin is a Muggle," Hermione said. She stepped forward toward Ron and his eyes grew big as though he thought she was going to flatten him. "Your tie is crooked." With a brutal twist she pulled it straight. "So why are you wearing the school issue robes?"
"Solidarity," Harry said, and his face was almost straight. "Right, Ron?"
"Yeah, solidarity," Ron grumbled.
Hermione looked at him, her expression midway between shock and disbelief. "Solidarity, really? How uncharacteristically noble."
Albus straightened his ornate red robes and brushed a floating Chinese lantern out of his eyes so that he could get a better look at the crowd. A wide variety of high-ranking witches and wizards were invited to the Halloween festivities for the Class I school. Many found other things to do with themselves, but this year's showing was reasonable. Sheriffs, governors, legionnaires, and even a smattering of third tier delegates, bothered to stop in for a sip of wine and a peek at the next generation of their peers.
The district's sheriff, Lucius Malfoy, worked the room systematically, his cool smile and elegant robes communicating more clearly than his voice how much he thought of himself and his place in society. He was most likely here for his son, in a round about sort of way. His son was nearly the top of his class. It looked good to the third tier when your powers bred true. Of course, Albus had heard a rumour that the youngest Malfoy had run afoul of his Dark Arts teacher early on and earned himself a Veto. That had to have rankled the good sheriff.
On the opposite side of the room with the grey-beards, a witch with a mass of white hair piled atop her head chatted amiably. Her name was Melinda Potter, a retired Public-Works Governor by trade and a socially active crusader by hobby. Albus didn't count her as one of his rebels but that was only because she worked in the open, attempting to fix a system that was fundamentally flawed. They were kindred spirits even though he dared not associate with her. He couldn't walk up to her and tell her how much he enjoyed her last position paper, or tell her that he'd seen her son recently and even given him a promotion in their little rebellion. Albus Dumbledore was too respectable to associate with radical-minded witches like Melinda Potter. He had to stay back and mingle with the safely stodgy educator crowd.
Albus didn't have the hands-on time with the students that he used to, and the miniature portrait composite of the class was his only point of reference for the first year students that would be attending. Smiling, Albus stepped closer to the composite and tried to match the students with the mingling parents.
Some were obvious, like the Malfoys or the Longbottoms, but others were more of a challenge. Albus tried to guess a potential parent for each student even knowing that a fair percentage of them were raised in the group home without parents. One of the portraits, a bright-eyed young man with wild brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, caught his attention. If he hadn't recently had an audience with James Potter, the resemblance might not have struck him as remarkable, but Harry Green had to be a cousin to the Potters in some way or another. He could practically be James' son.
"Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests, please join me in welcoming the first year students of Class I," Headmistress McGonagall called. Conversation around the room suspended and polite applause broke out as the students were led forward in a double line. After the applause had died away, McGonagall made a shooing gesture and they scattered into the room, those with parents heading for them post haste and those without heading to a wall so they could huddle together seeking safety in numbers.
While most of the first year students were glad to get out of the spotlight and let the upper classmen make their entrance. Draco headed into the crowd of adults apprehensively. He hadn't seen his father since everything had happened, not since before the sorting and his Veto. Maybe saying that his father would kill him for making the mistakes he had was an overstatement, but he was bound to be upset. Seeing his father again in a public place might help get through the initial part, the angry part.
Some kids might expect their father to embrace them at a reunion following several months absence, but Draco was just hoping things remained civil. He could hold his head up and sneer at the high-placed witches and wizards who were staring at his Veto. He had enough pride for that, but he didn't know what he'd do if his father lost his temper in front of everyone. How would he hold his head up then?
Lucius was chatting idly with a pretty third tier witch who seemed rather bored with her situation. Draco hung back waiting for the conversation to reach its natural end, and when his father was alone he came forward. "Father."
There had been no return letter after Draco wrote him about the Veto, nothing. His father's expression betrayed no emotion now. He gazed at his son dispassionately and in a perfunctory manner, examined the slash in his cheek. Gripping Draco by the chin he turned him one way, then the other. "Riddle never liked me, not since he tried to force that cow acolyte of his into my Sheriff position. He took that dislike out on you. Everyone knows it," Lucius said. "Wear this mark like a man. Never let it wear you."
His father was speaking just loud enough so that the witches and wizards around them could overhear his parenting, and Draco's stomach dropped to his knees. Why did everything have to be about impressing everyone else? His father's carefully rehearsed words of comfort did little to assuage his hurt, but they were helpful in another way. Draco had wondered where he would find the pride to face the people in this room after his father rejected him, but he understood now that even a number two son bearing a Veto had value, if only as a cross to bear in front of his friends. Draco's spine stiffened and he met his father's eyes easily. "Yes, father."
Across the room in a tight gang with the other group home kids, Harry and Hermione leaned against a wall and watched the drama playing out between Draco and his father. Draco had said his father was going to kill him, but their interchange seemed remarkably cool from Harry's perspective, too cool really. When you looked around the room at the other kids with their parents, there were hugs, physical closeness, and smiles. Harry had always wanted parents, a mother and father, but he didn't think he'd want Draco's parents, at least not his father.
"Chilly over there, isn't it. Almost makes you thankful you're an orphan." Hermione said.
"Hey, I’m not necessarily an orphan," Harry said. "I could have a pair of living Muggle parents out there. You don't know."
"Do you know how rare it is for a Muggle couple to produce a witch or a wizard? You really think there's a happy couple out there that had two, or have you forgotten about your little sister? The only way you have a living Muggle parent is if you and your sister have wizard fathers..." Hermione trailed away suddenly hesitant to complete the bit of logic out loud. Harry's cheerful smile was gone and his hands were curled into fists at his sides. Some Muggle girls who didn't have family, husbands, or a trade made their living the old fashioned way, and some of them had wizard clients. Those girls sometimes had two or three magically inclined children before their profession caught up with them. Girls like that rarely lived long healthy lives.
"Why don't you finish saying what you mean, Hermione? You obviously don't have any trouble thinking it," Harry said. He stared at her coldly, daring her to say those things she was thinking about his mother. She didn't speak though. She returned his stare, her normally sharp gaze wide-eyed and apprehensive. Harry still remembered his mother in a vague, abstract kind of way. He even dreamt about her sometimes. For her to suggest such things about the faceless warmth that held him in his dreams was the most offensive thing Hermione had ever said to him. "My mother loved me, and she was happy. Me and my sister weren't unplanned accidents that made her life more difficult. We were wanted. Whether she's a living Muggle or a dead Witch, she isn't what you think she is."
Harry straightened his robes. He nodded perfunctorily to the other group home kids and cut through them into the crowd. Hermione watched her best friend go, knowing full well that she should follow him and apologize. She'd just insulted the memory of his mother. He didn't have anything tangible to hold onto and she had to go attempt to mutilate his fantasy. Sometimes she was so stupid.
"Hermione, there you are," Ron called. "See Mum, Dad, this is my class partner, Hermione Granger. Hermione, this is my mum and dad."
Turning toward Ron, Hermione bit back every caustic comment that came to her mind. She'd caused quite enough trouble with her mouth tonight. "Hi," Hermione said. "Nice to meet you."
Ron's parents were exactly like she'd imagined them from what he had told her over the term. Mrs. Weasley was plump with rosy cheeks and robes that weren't even close to fashionable, while Mr. Weasley had a bright smile and kind blue eyes.
“I say, Ron has had quite a lot to say about you in his letters. Getting along better with the Flobberworms, are you?” Mr. Weasley asked.
Hermione bit her lip and refused to get angry. He had the quiet helpful air of a man with advice. “Ecology has been fine lately, thanks.”
Ron stared at her, shocked at her calm response to his father’s less than tactful reference to her Ecology issues.
“Arthur, please. This is not a night to be talking about school. They’re here to celebrate and relax and maybe meet some new people.” Molly turned and started applauding with the rest of the crowd. “That will be the fifth years. Come on, we need to see about George.”
“They got a letter from the office of the Legion. Fred is apparently alive and well and enrolled in some specialized training that’s too top secret for us to know anything about,” Ron said. “They’re really eager to let George know that Fred’s okay.”
“That’s good news,” Hermione said. Her voice cracked dangerously, and she pressed her lips shut, determined not to cry.
“So where’s Harry? I want him to meet my parents.”
The fountain outside was filled with fairy-lights. Their sparkle glowed through the gentle ripples of the water, illuminating the surrounding gardens for several meters in a waving many-coloured glow. It was cold enough outside that the party hadn’t moved into the garden at all, and the display went largely unappreciated. Draco stared at the fountain without really enjoying the beauty in front of him. He was too wrapped up in his life and problems to absorb anything as abstract as a whimsically lit fountain. At least outside he could get away from the stifling press of humanity. He didn’t have to endure the stares of the curious or the pity of his father’s friends. Circling around for a nice secluded spot, he found the last person in the world he wanted to see.
Sitting with his head almost between his knees, Harry was staring down. Draco considered walking way now, before he was noticed. He fled the party looking for solitude, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t just walk away from his partner and rival in a vulnerable moment. Getting the upper hand with Harry Green might actually improve his mood. “What are you doing, Green? Shouldn’t you be inside, schmoosing your way to the third tier. They’re going to think you don’t like them.” A pair of red-rimmed eyes looked up at him fiercely, and Draco took a step back.
“You really think I care if they like me? I don’t need them,” Harry said. “I don’t need those politicians, the professors, Hermione, Ron, none of them. I don’t need you either right now, Draco. You should go back in there. They threw the party so you could dress up in your fancy robes and hobnob with your parents and their friends. If they could have left the rest of us behind, they would have.”
Draco snorted, enjoying the moment. Green’s unending good cheer had begun to seriously wear on him. It was good to see him upset for a change. “You don’t even need your friends anymore? Which one of them made you cry, Green? I bet it was your little girlfriend, the savage. I bet she did something really offensive. She strikes me as the type.”
Harry had already shifted his weight to throw the punch before his mind even registered that Draco would love an attack. Draco would get his number one ranking, and Harry would be off to Class II before his nose had stopped bleeding. Fortunately, Draco hadn’t expected a couple of taunts to earn a fistfight, and his instincts saved the both of them. When Harry swung, Draco backpedaled over a hydrangea bush.
Deprived of his target, Harry breathed heavily and stared down at Draco. "Don't call her a savage!" Hermione wasn't a savage. She was honest and blunt, but she was part of his family, the only family that really mattered. Parents that he would never know, living or deceased didn't matter, not really. Hermione mattered.
"You're lucky you didn't land that punch, Green," Draco said. He rolled free of the broken bush and came to his feet, brushing at his rumpled robes. "You would be on your way to Class II right now. Not that a number one ranking is going to do me much good anymore. I thought we had a truce partner. Does this mean the war is back on?"
"If you can't be civil to my friends, then yeah, the war is back on," Harry said.
"Those friends that you don't need?" Draco sneered at Harry's flushed face and shook his head pityingly. "The only thing I can't understand is how the divination stone could have given a confused hypocrite like you the number one in our class."
"You're still mad about that, aren't you? It eats you alive that I might be better than you, doesn't it?" Harry stepped up on the edge of the fountain and gestured broadly. "Someday, when I'm on the third tier, I'll be sure to look you up. Whatever you're doing on the second tier, I'm sure it will be very fulfilling."
First removing his cloak and his gloves, Draco turned to Harry an angry glint in his eyes. For an instant he was sorry that students weren't allowed their wands at this celebration, but then he changed his mind. Some battles felt better fought tooth and nail. "This may get me declassified, but I don't even care." With a kamikaze dive, Draco tackled Harry into the fountain.
"Come quickly! It's Harry and Draco," Milicent squealed. She didn't pause as she clip-clopped her way past the group home kids' corner of the room in her impractical shoes. "In the fountain, no less!" she added over her shoulder.
"Fon?" Ron mumbled. His mouth was stuffed beyond capacity with finger foods. Hermione didn't wait for him to swallow. She dragged him by the arm toward the gardens and the growing throng of people gathered there. Being among the shortest people there, they had to jostle their way through the crowd to the very front before they could see what was happening. She heard them though long before her eyes confirmed it.
Harry and Draco were half-submerged in the fountain, arms linked together like a pair of companionable drunks. They were singing off-key at the top of their lungs.
"I'm Henry the eighth, I am. Henry the Eight, I am, I am. I got married to the widow next door. She's been married seven times before, and everyone was, Henry, Henry!"
"Harry," Hermione called. "What are you doing?"
"Not Harry, Henry," Draco said. The two boys descended into peals of laughter as though this were the funniest thing they'd ever heard.
"Are they drunk?" Ron asked. "The bloke at the refreshment desk wouldn't give me any Firewhiskey."
"And well he shouldn't," Mrs. Weasley said. She thumped Ron lightly on the shoulder as though he should know better. "It'll be the fairy-lights that have those two going. Someone needs to fish them out, but they'll have a devil of a time not getting a good dose themselves the way those two are splashing around."
Hermione was considering heading for the fountain and helping Harry herself, when an adult finally took some initiative. An old man with a long gray beard came forward with his wand extended.
"Allow me," Albus said. "Accio fairy-lights!" With an almost giggly swirl, the multicolored lights broke out of the water and zoomed toward the watching crowd. Anxious not to become intoxicated, most of the onlookers fled inside. Hermione, Albus, and a handful of others stayed behind.
"Fairy-lights are only intoxicating if mixed with water. Otherwise they're just pretty," Hermione said to no one in particular.
"Quite right," Albus replied. He smiled at the bushy-haired girl who he recognized from her portrait in the class composite. That a first year student had already begun to amass that kind of trivial information was rather impressive. "Miss Granger, I recognize you from your portrait." Albus offered her his hand with a smile.
"Well, I don't know you, sir," Hermione said. She didn't take his hand. Harry and Draco had chosen a new song and had begun singing again. "Are they going to be all right?"
"Of course," Albus replied. "Some time and some sleep and they will be just as they were."
Dearest James,
I hope this letter finds you well. After the green glow in the forest and the curse that followed, I was worried beyond belief. Your letter is the only thing that saved my sanity. You may as well know that you are in a lot of trouble. You lied to me to get me into London and safely away from what was coming. Don't bother denying it. Your parents got your letter after I came calling. To exact my revenge, as I promised I would, I have taken on a new mission. If it weren't so top secret, I might tell you who I’m working with and toward what ends, but I will have to leave it simply that I'm on an adventure with an old friend.
You may write to your parents if you wish to reach me, as I will continue to call on them while I'm in London, but I may or may not remain at our house.
Please be safe James. I will write when I can.
All my love,
Lily
Carefully folding the letter for rereading later, James tried to control his urge to climb on the nearest broom and fetch Lily back from this dangerous adventure she had hinted at. Dumbledore had promised to find something relatively safe for Lily to occupy herself with, and he'd have to trust that the old man wasn't double dealing him. James consoled himself that the phrasing of the letter was too playful for there to be any real danger. She was just taking her revenge for his patriarchal scheming with a pen.
Probably...
Still pondering the ambiguous details of Lily's letter, James was caught off guard when Sirius barged into his tent. "I heard it, but I didn't believe it. The crazy bat put you in charge of the lot of us," Sirius growled.
"Believe it. You are supposed to salute me soldier," James said. There were no salutes between them though. They embraced, Sirius clapping James hard on the back in congratulations. "I wasn't sure when your lot would be back in camp."
"My lot has been playing our old game," Sirius said. "There were some choice shipments moving through the South of France and our glorious leader requested my team's finesse. Of course, I've been spitting vinegar since I found out that you fellows had another Reaper run-in while I was tooling around a few thousand miles away."
"I don't know if run-in is the right phrase. They lobbed a long distance attack, and we ran for cover," James said. He hesitated to tell Sirius everything, that the Reapers sent their curse out of revenge, that they were celebrating Gluto's rebirth. "They remembered you and that you killed one of them."
Sirius went very still. "Did they? Well there are five more to get out of the way. Next time we have an altercation, we'll just have to make sure there aren't any Reapers left for reprisals."
"There may still be six actually," James said. "They said something about Gluto's rebirth. That was the Reaper you killed, right? Death may not be an ending for them."
"If death isn't an ending, how are we supposed to deal with them?"
Surrounded on all sides by mountains of dusty parchments, Lily blinked her abused eyes and squinted down at the document she was supposed to be skimming. When Remus invited her to join him on his information gathering assignment, she'd imagined something more glamorous and dangerous. A few years on the front lines and you got used to the excitement of it. This work of Remus' was mind-numbing.
"Lily, how is it coming along over here?" Remus asked. He poked his head around a particularly tall mound of parchments and smiled at her. "Find anything of interest?"
"Not really," Lily replied. Screwing her face up, she sneezed four times in rapid succession. "I assumed that top secret information gathering would be more action and less dust."
"It's a common misconception, but you have to start somewhere." Remus held up a partially disintegrated parchment and grinned. "We have a lead though, and we're hitting the road, or the sky at least. Have you ever been to South America?"
Lily couldn't help herself, she laughed. Had she ever been to South America? No, but the empire was under the impression that she'd spent most of her adult life there trying to stop the local Aztec government from practicing human sacrifices on their Muggles. "Yes and no. I haven't been, but everyone thinks I have."
Harry groaned and wrapped his pillow around his head. There was a terrible pounding between his eyes like a deranged horse trying to kick its way out from the inside of his skull. "I'm dying," he moaned.
"Serves you right," Ron said. "You played sing-along with Malfoy all night long. You don't know how close we all came to locking you two out for the evening, and letting you sing outside the girl's dormitory."
"Why didn't we do that?" Dean Thomas groused. "Someone should really have done something."
Harry peeked out from his pillow looking for Ron. Sitting on his bed with a book open in his lap, Ron did look tired, but Harry had no recollection of singing especially with Malfoy. "I don't sing," Harry whispered.
"No you don't, but you tried," Ron said. "Oh how you tried. Now get up. Some breakfast will make you feel better, and I'm hungry."
Cautiously, Harry removed the pillow from his face, and the lights had him wincing sensitively. "What happened to me? Did Malfoy do something to me?"
Ron shrugged. "Neither of you was in any condition to point fingers, but you were found in the main garden, splashing around in the fountain. Of course they stocked the fountain with fairy lights for the party, and that sent the two of you to happy-land where everything is cause for singing and laughing."
"Really?" Harry squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember, but the night was a fuzzy blank. Opening and closing his mouth experimentally, the rotten cottony feeling of his tongue left him a little nauseated. The thought of breakfast brought bile to the back of his throat. "I can't go to breakfast right now, Ron. If I apologize for the singing, can I just take a shower and go back to bed."
"Fine," Ron said. "But I'm not going to study group today. You can explain to Hermione about no one getting any sleep."
The shower was a good idea. Harry wandered in feeling like a zombie, more dead than alive, and after a half hour of hot water pounding on his head, he almost felt human again. The dorm was nearly deserted when he made his way back. Draco had returned, and was sitting on his bed. There were dark smudges under his eyes. According to Ron they both experienced the same magically induced high last night. Harry knew how bad the aftermath felt and he stopped by Draco's bed to recommend the shower. Draco was staring at a neat pile of black ashes lying on his coverlet. "Are you okay?" Harry asked. "The shower made the ache fade back a bit, if your head's still pounding."
"Do you remember last night?" Draco asked. "Any of it?"
"Not really," Harry said. "I mean, we went to happy-land via the fairy-light express according to Ron. Do you remember?"
"I remember fighting," Draco said. "I called you a hypocrite."
Like a peg finally falling into the right sized hole, Harry's memory clicked. "Then I implied I was better than you, and you tackled me."
"The happy-wave hit. Then you started the singing," Draco said.
Harry chuckled and nodded. "We must have looked like complete morons. We're never going to live this down."
"Good," Draco said. He brushed at the ashes at the foot of his bed, the remnants of the howler his father sent him. Lucius had already left the party before their display in the fountain, but he heard about it after the fact, and he was not pleased. Well Draco was tired, tired of being insufficient, tired of doing his best and never achieving what his father needed. "I'm finally through worrying about appearances."
Draco jumped down off the bed and rolled his sleeve up. "Have you checked your right arm?"
Frowning, Harry rolled up his sleeve. "Wicked...when did we do this?"
"I'm not sure. Some time before the happy wore off," Draco said.
A matching pair of coiled golden serpents were etched in spell-art on their forearms. Harry and Draco held their arms up so that the tattoos were next to each other. "Does this mean the war is off?" Harry asked.
"For now, but wars can be fun. Let's start one together sometime." Draco rolled his sleeve back down and cocked his head at Harry speculatively. "I promise to lay off your friends, if you promise to help me with my next war."
Harry nodded accepting that concession. "As long as it isn't against my friends, I'm in."
Author's Note:
A light-hearted chapter to follow the macabre one, I think it adds balance. As for Harry and Draco, my outline did not plan their burgeoning friendship but they have hijacked my keyboard and had one sing-along. Who knows what they'll do next?
Comments? Criticisms? Let me have it.