8 Chapter 5

Harry decided, after a couple days thought, that it didn’t feel right not telling McGonagall there was an animagus on the grounds. Had he been younger, he may have waited a bit longer, but since he had learned just what kind of people hid in the wizarding world, well, he couldn’t reconcile putting Hagrid and McGonagall and anyone else on the grounds in danger. He would have to swallow his pride and tell McGonagall sooner rather than later, although he was no closer to knowing the wolf’s identity than he had been a week ago. Plus, now that he was grown, maybe she would let him help tackle the problem instead of insisting he stay on the sidelines. Though that had hardly stopped him in school.

It felt so wrong, in fact, that Harry had barely been sleeping.

He took back to roaming the hallways at all hours of the night, avoiding a certain section of the dungeons with all his might, but ending up there inevitably. He had felt the strange presence in the hall twice more. The feeling of being watched, apanied by that same tug, that same feeling of waiting for someone else to speak. But no one ever did, and he never saw anything that gave him pause, so he chalked it up to the feeling being what he wanted feel. That didn’t explain why he had only felt it a few times and not every time he entered the Slytherin section of the dungeons, but if he ignored that, it was a good enough explanation as any. In his inability to sleep, he found himself dressed and ready for the day by six in the morning, deciding to head down to the kitchens and eat something before heading to McGonagall’s office. When he got to the kitchens, he found he didn’t have much of an appetite, settling for a cup of coffee. He worried that it was too early to go see McGonagall just yet, and decided that there was no harm in going by the Slytherin dungeons again. Just to look. As he rounded the corner to the dungeons, he heard the faint click of footsteps. He stopped just at the edge of the corner, not daring to look, listening. He wasn’t sure why he was hiding, but he felt that whoever wasing had just as little business being there as he did.

“Sepultura” a familiar female voice said firmly. He heard the clicking of bricks and turned to see the tail end of green robes disappearing into the Slytherin doorway.

McGonagall.

Harry stood, frozen, waiting to hear the doorway open again, but it did note. He waited ten minutes, then twenty, and still she did not exit. That settled it for him.

Whatever she was hiding in there, he was going to find out. Tonight. The animagus could wait.

“I don’t see what’s so hard about staying away from him,” McGonagall started again, pacing across the old Slytherinmon room.

“He won’t let me!” Dracoplained.

“Then disillusion yourself, Malfoy! He can hardly pester you if he doesn’t know you’re there!”

“I have been!”

“Then I don’t understand the problem!”

“I think it would be better if—”

“Mr. Malfoy. There is nowhere for me to send you. Apart from your parents, I am the only one that knows the truth. You know I can’t send you off of the grounds. You’ll surely be found out. As for Mr. Potter, the poor boy was withering away and I had Albus Dumbledore’s portrait in my ear telling me that I can’t let a boy with such potential waste it. I don’t care how much you dislike him, or whatever feelings of animosity you may still harbor, I won’t turn him away simply because you don’t want hi—”

“That’s not why!” Draco yelled, suddenly, startling even himself. It was the loudest he had been in years. He didn’t know he was capable of such a noise still.

McGonagall stilled. “Then why, Mr. Malfoy?” she asked stiffly.

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“I can’t stand to see him like this,” Draco admitted, quietly.

“Well, in time, it will get better,” she assured him. “Once he starts teaching.”

“I don’t know that it will.”

“Don’t be so contrariwise,” she chastised.

“I found him, the first night, standing outside the Slytherin dungeons. Talking to dead people and crying. And by dead people I mean specifically me,” Draco started slowly. “And how he misses me.”

McGonagall opened her mouth to speak and then closed it, looking rather like a fish.

“I’ve already brought so much pain into his life,” Draco continued, “That I was never able to amend. I think it will ruin me to see him so torn up like this when I could so easily fix it, if only things were a little bit different. I think I can only hold up for so long before I ruin everything. It’s already almost more than I can bear.”

McGonagall was silent for a moment that stretched on for what felt like eternity. It was the closest Draco had ever been to admitting everything out loud.

“You never hated him, did you?” she asked gently.

Draco smiled back at her weakly.

“No, I suppose you didn’t. I suppose that was another act to please your father.”

“I suppose it was.”

He couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see the sorry look on her face.

Finally she said, “Let me figure out what I can do. We’ll meet the same time tomorrow.”

Draco nodded.

When she left, he looked around at his room, feeling a bit of melancholy sink into his stomach. He reckoned they wouldn’t be his rooms for much longer. Not if he got his way.