Fairy Lines and Frozen Steam
For creeping softly underneath
The door, when all the lights are out,
Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe
And knows the things you think about.
He paints them on the window pane,
In fairy lines with frozen steam;
And when you wake you see again
The lovely things you saw in dream.
â“from Jack Frost, by Gabriel Setoun
Big, strong, and thick were the three words often used to describe Vincent Crabbe. Big obviously referred to his size â“Crabbe wasnât especially tall, but his arms were thick and his shoulders were broad, and he gave off such an air of lumbering immensity that anyone who met him came away with the impression of sheer bulk. He was strong too. Strong because he carried his and Dracoâs books to class every day, strong because the thick arms and broad shoulders were not just for show, strong because of his massive crushing hands and large feet. Crabbe was strong in the same way giants are strong â“because they have no other way to be.
The last one, though, was not necessarily true. Crabbe wasnât thick. Oh, he couldnât make heads or tails of schoolwork, and his reasoning skills were non-existent, but that didnât make him completely stupid. Crabbe saw things other people didnât see, couldnât see. Other people lived on the surface of life, too caught up in their own heads to notice what was around them. To other people, a tree was just a tree. To Crabbe â“who never had much going on in his head anyway â“it was the home of a lithesome dryad, her hair hanging in leafy strands down her back, her bark-colored skin furrowed and rough.
Crabbe knew, because the dryads had been his only friends when he was younger. Before Draco Malfoy and Gregory Goyle it had been only Mother, Father, and Vincent in the enormous Crabbe Manor. It had been lonely there, with Mother always rearranging the furniture and Father trying to toughen up his only son. So the young Vincent Crabbe had fled to the withered orchard in the back of the Manor. That was where gnarled old dryads told him that he ought to pick hardwood for his wand, so it would be as strong and sturdy as Vincent himself. In their branches he was shown to notice what others missed â“the different shades of green on a leaf, how the same type of trees could each have unique bark. And it was the dryads that taught him that the quickest way to be left alone was to do what others wanted; a tree that refused a graft would be hacked into kindling, while a tree that accepted it was left to grow as normal.
But the dryads couldnât leave their homes, and they certainly couldnât travel to Hogwarts with Crabbe when he turned twelve. Their lessons he took with him, but he could not bring the tree women themselves. So after the house elf had packed his trunk, and he was packed onto the scarlet steam engine, he practiced what his father had taught him â“scowling at anyone he saw, cracking his knuckles if they looked too friendly, and chuckling darkly when they ran off. Still, he hoped someone would come and talk to him before the train ride was up. His actions made him feel braver, but lonelier than before.
That was when a small blonde boy swaggered in. He was unimpressed by the scowling and looked dead bored when Crabbe cracked his knuckles. âAre you done?â he asked coolly.
âHuh?â Crabbe asked, confused. Why wasnât this pale kid running like the rest of them? Crabbe could practically eat him for breakfast.
âIâm not impressed by your display of brute strength,â the boy said, sitting down across from Crabbe in the compartment. âAre you Mr. Crabbeâs son?
Vincent was still trying to figure out what impressed meant. And brute. And display. âUh...yeah?â
âGood. My father wished me to speak with you. Iâm Draco Malfoy.â
Crabbe blinked. Who?
âDraco Malfoy? Son of Lucius Malfoy? Heir to the Malfoy estates?â the boy asked, as if Crabbe was supposed to exclaim âOh, yes! I remember now.â
âHuh?â
âSo Father was telling the truth,â the boy muttered darkly. âListen â“my father is friends with your father. Theyâve...done business together. My father wanted me to speak with you to see if we could be...friends.â
Crabbeâs heart leapt. Friends? He wanted friends. His father had told him to make friends, and the dryads had told him to listen to his father. Sort of. âYeah. Friends.â
The boy smirked. âExcellent. And since youâre so much stronger, youâll protect me, wonât you? Be my bodyguard and all that?â
Crabbe thought. Bigger trees often protected smaller ones from the wind. Yes, he could protect this pale boy. He would protect his friend. âYeah. Protection.â
The boy smirked. âCome meet my other...friend, Gregory Goyle. You and he are two of a kind.â
And that was how it had begun. Gregory was slow, Draco dismissive, and everyone else plain scared, but Crabbe barely noticed that. He had friends. And they were friends; Draco said so all the time. And even when Vincent did get lonely, all he had to do was go down to the lake and talk to the merpeople.
They didnât speak the same language, but they didnât need to. Crabbe brought them shiny bits of metal and sparkly rhinestones, they gave him crowns woven of seaweed and shells of rainbow hues. It was from them he learned that giving transcended all barriers and a smile was the same in every language. It was they who taught him that things only have as much value as you give them â“a sewage pipe was as valuable to Crabbe as the galleons he carried. And it was from the merpeople that he learned that sometimes your best friends arenât the nicest ones, but the ones who do whatâs best for you.
Crabbe loved almost all of Hogwarts. He loved his dorm and he loved the common room. He loved his house â“Slytherin, because he wanted to be with his friends â“and he loved the Great Hall. He loved the meals and the grounds, the merpeople and the castle itself. But Crabbe did not like his classes. He didnât understand what the teachers meant, couldnât do his homework, and never seemed to be able to keep up with the class. When he had just mastered one charm, everyone else seemed to have learned three more. He wasnât smart enough.
It was Professor Snape who called him into the Potions classroom one day after dinner. âMr. Crabbe, you are currently failing all your classes,â the Slytherin Head of House said coldly. âYour father will be very displeased to hear of this. What do you have to say for yourself?â
His father? No, his father couldnât hear of this! Vincent had tried so very hard to make him proud â“with Draco and his friends, with being tough and mean. He couldnât disappoint his father now!
Crabbe opened his mouth, then shut it, his shoulders slumping. Excuses didnât work with Snape. Lies were the same as signing your death warrant. The absolute truth was the only thing Snape accepted, or at least a really, really good piece of brownnosing. âI donât understand, Professor Snape,â Crabbe murmured sadly. âI fall so far behind, and by the time Iâve caught up, everyoneâs already ahead again.â
Snape leaned back in his chair. âAnd why is that?â
âIâm thick,â Crabbe said mournfully. âDraco says so, and itâs true.â
âYou place a great deal of weight on Mr. Malfoyâs opinion?â Snape asked as if it was a laughable idea.
âHeâs my friend!â
Snape sighed. âMr. Crabbe, youâre failing your classes. I will not allow one of my Slytherins to fail his classes, especially one that has the potential to scrape passing grades. Ignore Draco Malfoy, Mr. Crabbe,â Professor Snape crumpled up a piece of paper, making it vanish. âYour father will not hear of this if you report to this classroom every evening and spend the time working on what you need to accomplish for class. I will help you. You are dismissed.â
Crabbe stood, his heart overflowing with gratitude for the teacher. âThank you, Professor,â he managed to grunt.
Snape gave him The Look. It was whispered by the other Slytherins that when Snape gave you The Look, he was seeing into your very soul. âDo you know what happens, Mr. Crabbe, if one tree is overshadowed by another? No? The smaller tree will never grow to its full potential, because the larger does not allow it to get any light. It is in your best interest not to be the smaller tree. One would think your dryads might have taught you that. Dismissed, Mr. Crabbe.â
Vincent Crabbe never knew what Professor Snape had meant by that. All he knew was that Snape helped him every evening, explaining again what Crabbe had been baffled by in class. He never aided Crabbe in writing essays, or completing homework (that would be cheating, Crabbe knew that) but he repeated and demonstrated until Vincent got it, or at least until he thought he got it. And though Snape never said anything, and Crabbe never mentioned it, the two formed an odd, subordinate-superior type of friendship. Crabbe felt that â“even if Snape didnât like him â“at least the man acknowledged him as a human being. Snape wasnât nice, but he treated everyone with the same harsh manner regardless of their family or grades. He was fair, and that was what counted.
Of course, Crabbe could never have put any of this in words. He wasnât a very wordy person â“grunts, threats, and snarls were about the limit of his vocabulary. But he did know the language of the delicate, icy pictures that drew themselves on the windowpanes every frosty night. He never saw the wintry artist, only woke to admire his fragile, sugar-spun creations. The pictures taught him about ephemeral beauty, how stunning something so fleeting can be. They showed him that even something dreadful â“the winter nights when he wished he had mastered warming charms â“could yield something exquisite. And they taught him that anything worth wanting cannot last.
It was a wintry day when Crabbe awoke to find Draco missing from the dorm room. It was their sixth year, near Christmas, and Draco bore the Dark Mark on his forearm. Things had changed so quickly â“the three of them had gone away the year before with reputable names, fortunes, and hopes that everything would blow over. They had returned with convicted fathers, frozen assets, and cold, clutching despair in their hearts. Even Goyle, who barely scraped failing grades, could be seen with longing on his face. Life had changed, and not really for the better.
Crabbe pulled on his robes, thumping down to the common room to look for the missing Malfoy. He was there, alright; sitting alone in his green pajamas, staring into the fire with a pensive, almost painful look on his face. Crabbe had caught him like this a lot, with the same bewildered and hurt expression. The Prince of Slytherin had been cast down from his throne, and now he didnât know what to do with himself.
âDraco?â Crabbe grunted.
The blonde boy didnât answer.
âDraco?â
âWhat am I going to do, Crabbe?â he asked softly. âHe might as well have asked me to...to catch one of Looney Lovegoodâs imaginary creatures!â
Oh. The Task. That had been on Dracoâs mind a lot lately. Crabbe didnât know what it was â“just that it was near impossible and involved Gregory and Vincent being Polyjuiced into girls for a few hours a day. âUm...I donât know.â
Draco seemed to come out of his trance. âRight, why am I asking you? Youâre the dense one.â He smirked that predictable smirk of his.
Crabbe wanted to hit him then. Wanted to break Dracoâs nose, or black his eye, or something. He wanted to prove to Draco that he was more than a hunk of muscle; that he knew just as much as Mr. Heir-to-the-Throne Malfoy. He wanted to tell Draco everything â“about the dryads, about the merpeople, about Snape and about the frost pictures. Crabbe wasnât dense, he wasnât thick. The dryads had shown him to see what others couldnât. The merpeople had given him gifts from a world Draco would never enter. Professor Snape believed in him, and he read messages in delicate, glittering pictures. Crabbe wasnât thick, just...different.
But Vincent Crabbe did not black Dracoâs eye, nor did he break that perfect, Malfoy nose. Instead, he wandered over to the window, admiring the icy portrait trapped by the window frame. Written there, in gleaming silver, was the one truth that every person longed to know. Draco Malfoy would spend his whole life unaware of its existence. Severus Snape would know it to be true of others, but think it impossible for himself. And Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived and Chosen One, had known it all along.
Written in icy script on the glass of the window were eight simple words:
You are more than others say you are.
And Vincent Crabbe smiled, because he knew it was true.
Fairy Lines and Frozen Steam by Fabula_propono
Chapter Notes: In The Serpent's Pit is a series of one-shots, character studies into the notorious Slytherins of the Harry Potter series. The first installment is Sleep, the second is Choosing Time, but as they are one-shots, they do not need to be read in order to make sense. With that said, enjoy!