Draco Malfoy's Dirty Little Secret

Chapter 50

I ran my fingers over the scar of Bellatrix’s teeth on my shoulder. Madame Pomfrey had been able to fix my broken ribs and fingers, but she was not able to stop the bite from scaring. She had cut down straight to the bone. It was a wonder that I hadn’t bleed to death. Kam didn’t have anything but a scratch on her face, which was easy to fix. Hermione and Ron were practically unscratched and were just worried about us. Harry had almost no injuries as well and actually caught me outside when I fainted from the loss of blood. Sitting there at the funeral was killing me. It was just too much to handle. I mean, Dumbledore was gone forever.

Hogwarts would never be the same.

“What’s on your mind?” Ron asked as he sat down beside me and slipped a brotherly arm around me.

I leaned my head on his shoulder with a smile. “Nothing is going to be the same,” I mumbled. “Everything is going to change, and I don’t know if I like it.”

“Everything was going to change anyway, Court,” he said against my hair. “No matter if everything that did happen didn’t happen. Nothing would be the same. We would still need to fight for our freedom, and you would still be without Draco.”

“I know, but Hogwarts was the one place that wasn’t supposed to change,” I sighed.

Hermione sat down on the other side of me, tears glistening on her face, but she had a smile on it. “Talking about Hogwarts? I hear that it’s going to close,” she leaned on me, and I was still leaning on Ron. “I can’t bear the idea that we might never come back,” her voice grew softer. “How can Hogwarts close?”

“Maybe it won’t,” said Ron. “We’re not in any more danger here than we are at home, are we? Every where’s the same now. I’d even saw Hogwarts is safer; there are more wizards inside to defend the place. What d’you reckon, Harry?”

My eyes shifted upward and caught Harry, who looked a little aggravated and depressed. “I’m not coming back even if it does reopen,” he said.

Ron gaped at him, but Hermione said sadly, “I knew you were going to say that. But then what will you do?”

“I’m going back to the Dursleys’ once more because Dumbledore wanted me to, but it’ll be a short visit, and then I’ll be gone for good.”

“But where will you go if you don’t come back to school?” I asked Harry.

“I thought I might go back to Godric’s Hollow,” he muttered, and I smiled. “For me, it started there, all of it. I’ve just got a feeling that I need to go there. And I can visit my parents’ graves; I’d like that.”

Kam showed up on Harry’s left, and he put his arm around her with a small smile. Hermione sat up, and I did as well, but Ron didn’t take his arm from around me. That was a good thing because I felt that if he would’ve pulled away from me, I would just collapse.

“And then what?” Ron asked him.

“Then I’ve got to track down the rest of the Horcruxes, haven’t I?” said Harry, his eyes upon Dumbledore’s tomb. “That’s what he wanted me to do, that’s why he told me all about them. If Dumbledore was right – and I’m sure that he was – there are still four of them out there. I’ve got to find them and destroy them, and then I’ve got to after the seventh bit of Voldemort’s soul, the bit that’s still in his body, and I’m the one who’s going to kill him. And if I meet Severus Snape along the way,” he added, “so much the better for me, so much worse for him.”

There was a long pause. I wanted to just lash out and tell him what a good guy Snape was, but that wasn’t going to help. Snape had been the one to kill Dumbledore and was on everyone’s bad list, but he wasn’t on mine. As long as he was helping Draco and me, then he was alright in my book, and I just happened to know that Draco must’ve thought the world of him.