Canary Creams and New Yellow Paint - (DRARRY)

Chapter Twenty-One

He wishes it were more of a comfort.

"Cheer up," one of Professor Lupin's portraits says. He's the only one paying them any attention. "It's never as bad as it seems."

~

That night, Draco tosses and turns in bed. The Invigoration Draught has had the nasty side effect of making it impossible for him to sleep. He should have forgone it like Blaise.

But he knows that's not the real reason he's still awake. Never before has he done something he's so sure is right, only to feel so awful about it afterwards.

It unnerves him, too, to think about the letter Madam Pomfrey penned in reply. 'Are you sure these are the only potions you need?'

Carefully worded, he's sure, in case the Aurors read it. But why? What was she alluding to?

Besides all that, he's still worried about Scorpius.

"We can best the Ministry," Scorpius had said, in the late part of the evening, when everyone but the two of them and Potter had gone to bed. "It's been done before."

"We're already in a load of trouble," Draco replied. "Don't go making it worse. I'd like to get us out of here with at least a sliver of our freedom left."

Scorpius scowled, but his dark eyes still held that hopeful shine. Somehow, the day hadn't beaten the stubbornness out of him. "That's up to you. But I'm telling you what I'm doing, and that's fixing this."

"Don't you still want the job? If you make them your enemy—"

"I have to show them that I'm not going to let anything stop me from helping magical creatures. Either they'll respect it or they won't."

Potter's magical eye had followed Scorpius as he left the sitting room. His other eye was trained on Draco.

"This is going to be bad," Potter had said.

"I suspect you're right."

"You're not going to do anything to stop it?"

Draco remembers then with great clarity how high Scorpius held his head as he exited the room.

He'd said to Potter, "The best thing I can do now is support him well enough that he'll let me minimise the damage when the time comes."

Potter hadn't said anything, but his magical eye had swivelled to face Draco too, and Draco felt the weight of it pushing on him.

"It'll be fine, Potter. It'll be ... it won't be worse than anything I did at his age."

Now, sleepless, Draco slams his hand into his pillow, adjusting it for the thousandth time. How can Scorpius honestly think he's still got a shot at this job? How can he want this job? More importantly: what does Draco have to do to convince him this is a bad idea? Defying the Ministry might work out splendidly for people like Potter, but Scorpius is a Malfoy, through and through. If Draco had ever had a single doubt, it would have been quashed watching him schmooze people at the moor.

Draco rolls out of bed, finally giving up. He just wants to get away from all of this for a minute, but there's nowhere to go.

Draco takes the stairs down to the second floor two at a time, stopping at the bottom only because he has no idea where to go. He can't see very well in the dark, and since the Aurors confiscated their wands, he can't cast a Wand-Lighting Charm. At the far left end of the hall, the knob of a door twists. Draco backs into the shadows bracketing the walls, waiting.

No one comes out.

He peeks around the wall once more. The door swings open entirely, but no one steps out.