The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

Chapter 7: The Minister's Eulogy

When Hermione woke up, Malfoy was gone.

His absence was the first thing she saw. As she squinted out through the mouth of the cave at a brilliantly blue circle of sky the size of a Galleon, she realized there was no longer a dark shape huddled by the entrance.

No Transfigured pillows. No sheets. No tall body facing purposefully, almost petulantly away from them.

Hermione was on her feet within seconds. No, she thought, hurrying to the entrance as quickly as she could without waking Harry and Ron. Surely Malfoy hadn't left. Thoughts of the Map and the Cloak occurred to her, but she'd curled up with the beaded bag in her pocket, wanting to ensure that the diadem was protected. When she touched her pocket, the heavy lump was still there, so he couldn't have taken anything.

She poked her head out of the cave. Hogsmeade lay fifteen minutes' walk ahead, at the bottom of a rocky, winding path, and already she could see movement in its streets. The funeral was to begin later that morning.

Malfoy was nowhere in sight.

He's gone for a walk, she told herself. That's all. He's gone for a walk further up in the mountains to clear his head.

It wasn't very convincing. He'd wanted to leave ever since they'd arrived the previous afternoon. Had his worry for his parents increased overnight to the point where he'd gone off to find them himself? It wasn't such a ludicrous idea. He'd betrayed Voldemort for them, after all.

"Malfoy?" she said, not daring to raise her voice too much. She wasn't sure whether sound echoed in these foothills. "Malfoy—are you there?"

A long moment of nothing but wind.

Hermione was about to reenter the cave when a low voice said, "Why, Granger? Afraid I ran off and gave you away?"

She let out a slow breath and turned toward his voice. "It's a good thing you didn't," she said. "It would have been—"

"—stupid, yeah, I know. Which is why I'm still here."

Malfoy's Disillusionment receded, and he faded back into view from foot to crown: the robes wrinkled from sleep, the hands cradling a dark wand, the narrow shoulders slumped against a boulder on the hillside. As his face reappeared from pointy chin to white-blond hair, she looked at him for a moment too long, frowning. She thought he looked different somehow. Less familiar. At Hogwarts, his face, his demeanor, everything about him had been little more than an avatar for her dislike. Now she looked at the scrape on his temple, the one he'd received when he'd knocked her to the ground, and instead of seeing the injury, she felt the collision. She glanced into his colorless eyes, which were cold and bright in the morning sun, and remembered the destabilized look he'd worn in Ron's room when she'd looked at his Mark.

It was like a kind of facial blindness, she thought, averting her eyes. Parts of him had become invisible to her, or at least inscrutable.

"Right," Hermione said. "I didn't think you ran off to hand us in, by the way."

"Oh, really? Not even a little bit? Didn't check that bag of yours to make sure I hadn't taken that Cloak?"

Hermione flushed. "I—that's not—"

Malfoy let out a humorless laugh. "Thought so."

"You'd have done the same thing," she said defensively. "You keep thinking the worst of us, too, when all we've done is try to help you."

He thought for a second, then shrugged, smoothing his hair back into place.

Hermione sighed. This was very productive. "I'm going to go into the village and get our supplies. Tell Harry and Ron where I've gone when they wake up, please."