A Saviour Uncaused (Harry Potter, Drarry)

Sage or Savage?

Chapter 6

Sage or Savage?

“Have you finished it?”

Harry was in half a mind to hex Ron to the next millennium. Of course he had just barely finished the Potions essay due in thirty minutes.

The attention of his red-haired friend was spread between talking to Harry, zipping his bag, going down the stairs and anticipating breakfast. Harry was not surprised when Hermione’s rather shrill greeting caused Ron to jump out of his skin and nearly tumble to the bottom of the stairs at her feet.

“For Merlin’s sake, woman,” hissed Ron. He zipped his bag so furiously that the zip went off track and he threw his bag over his shoulder.

“Good morning to you, too, Ronald,” Hermione tossed at him, disgusted. She started towards the portrait hole. “Morning, Harry. I’ve got so much to do today. There simply aren’t enough hours in a day. Don’t know how many times I’ve said that…”

“Only about five hundr--”

“You know I was thinking,” interrupted Hermione with haughty dignity, “I should try that thing again of sleeping first then waking up and studying later. I should do that... But a girl needs her sleep, you know...”

“And you need to get along with organising Quidditch practice, Harry,” said Ron. “Have you decided on a date for the try-outs?”

Harry thought he should expect Ron in the queue for the try-outs. “Haven’t thought much on it yet,” he answered shortly.

“Oh. Okay,” said Ron, sounding highly disappointed at Harry’s response. “So in your opinion, who do you think has a chance, though? I mean, when you saw them in action last year. I think—maybe—you could have a rough idea of the Gryffindor team or something by now...?”

Harry kept quiet and counted every alternate cobblestone sliding under him as they trooped down the corridor. Hermione made an irritated noise as she brushed past them through the huge doors of the Great Hall.

“Of course what else can boys talk about? It’s not as if your whole lives don’t revolve around it... I swear if Malfoy spent as much time talking Ancient Runes as he did Quidditch he’d actually outdo me for once. I can’t imagine what always being in second place feels like...”

The latter half of Hermione’s sentence died as a paranoid burble as her brain caught up to whom she was referring. They crossed made their way to the Gryffindor table. Harry cast his eyes in the direction of the Slytherin table. The sleek, platinum-blond cap was always easy to spot, but he could not see it. Malfoy was not there. They took their seats and started loading their plates and filling their glasses.

“Blimey, Snape first thing in the morning,” moaned Ron. Several bones cracked in his back as he yawned and stretched. “It’s like my nightmare never ended because I’m still gonna see a seven-foot bat flying at me first thing in class.”

This attempt at humour had an effect on neither Harry nor Hermione; the tension between them was thicker than ever. Luckily Seamus decided to make a loud entrance at that point. Harry blushed and met his food more squarely.

Minutes later they entered the Potions classroom. Harry was sure Ron’s and Hermione’s hearts were thundering as violently as his; he could feel his throat throbbing.

“Quiet down and find your seats,” Snape ordered the class. When the students swiftly subsided he continued, after his eyes darted to the empty seat next to Zabini, “As you should be aware, today is the due-date of your assignment. You will send your assignment to the left of your row and keep quiet as... let’s see… Potter collects them.” 

Harry had to shake himself to make sure he had heard properly. Hermione jabbed him and widened her eyes to prompt him into action: he jerked out of his seat. He caught Snape staring at the empty seat in the first row again. Only when he was halfway up the class did Harry realise that Snape had chosen him to collect the papers because it had naturally been Malfoy’s job. But he was dead. 

By the time he had bundled up every essay in the classroom and presented them to Snape, who had sneered at him and gestured towards his desk, he had survived being catcalled, jeered, called names and molested when someone rain their finger through his crack (Snape had done well to ignore this, of course). Finally he arrived His pulse had nearly frozen when he had arrived at Zabini’s desk. When he had finally arrived at Zabini’s desk with a heightened pulse, he had then collected what he thought was a very long essay thickness was second only to that of Hermione.

“I see Mr Malfoy’s not with us,” said Snape, his voice icy and soft at once. He spoke dispassionately, enquiring as far as his capacity of teacher allowed. Clearly there was no love lost between him and Malfoy. “I wonder if you have arranged to hand in his assignment and take notes for him, Mr Zabini, while he enjoys a few more hours of sleep after a hard night’s partying?”

“He isn’t feeling too well, Professor,” replied Blaise Zabini, who smirked and crossed his ankles under his table. The other Slytherins stared at Zabini as though asking themselves why he was even bothering to answer their Head of House.

“I see,” said Snape after a moment before he declared, “He will see receive no grade.” Harry thought Snape was under the delusion he was getting one back at Malfoy for his many acts of open disrespect. Snape did not realise that whatever he did now could not hurt Malfoy in the slightest.

“He was complaining about his head, sir,” said Zabini with a wry smirk. “Don’t know what got into it.”

Harry stared at the dark cropped hair of the Slytherin. What he had mistaken as a voluminous, rambling essay had been in fact two essays. It only made sense, for Zabini was no overachiever (Snape had the greatest enjoyment in reading their marks aloud). Zabini was covering up Malfoy’s murder.

From this point on Ron, Harry and Hermione stared at Malfoy’s empty seat as though demanding his appearance there while Snape went on about the invention and development of the Draught of Living Death. 

“...But of course one cannot play dead forever. It is up to you to create a potion that will challenge precisely this. Brew Living Death—or attempt to do so at least without losing another cauldron, Longbottom and Weasley—in the next hour with the recipe I provide on the board. Note the modifications that are not in your Naelblume textbook. Given the potion’s notorious difficulty, I will permit you to work in groups of two or three. Begin.”

Harry was watching his friends. The truth seemed to be finally sinking in. Ron was frowning at the front end of the classroom where most of the Slytherins sat to absorb their House leader’s insults at the Gryffindors behind them. As Harry watched Ron, he thought he could hear the whistling steam, the whirrs and the cogs turning in Ron’s head. His friend was seeing the Slytherins in a whole new way. Harry, too, looked to the Slytherins. They had no boundaries, their potential was unfathomable and that frightened him and he was certain that it frightened his friends as well. The Slytherins were now not merely teenage students in a magical school. They were discrete, calculating entities, each with a startling potential for murder. Behind the bored and rude expressions was hidden a capability to kill. They had no right to sit amongst students and act as them. 

It did not feel to Harry that he was in the innocent confines of a school. They had murderers in their midst. Yet here Harry sat gazing at the green-and-silver knotted ties… another perfect day of classes...

“It was Blaise,” he told Ron with the aim to personalise the murder rather than have his friend pin it on a faceless, diffuse mass. Ron nodded and looked at Zabini. They did not speak and worked quietly on their potion until Neville melted his fifth cauldron, at which point he received his loudest and most embarrassing dressing down by Snape, who was perhaps always looking for every opportunity to stamp his authority after his own House had turned on him. After Snape replaced the cauldron, lit Neville’s flame himself and called Hermione to partner with him, he stormed off, greasy hair flying. Upon the loss of their best brewer, Harry sloshed some of their potion in his own cauldron before Ron could destroy it.

“He’s always been a shady character, that one, hasn’t he, though?” observed Ron, one eye on Zabini and the other on his own potion, which did not help: the inside of his cauldron still looked like a marsh. “Can’t sort of figure him out yet after all these years. He was chummy with Malfoy for one thing.”

Harry noticed that Ron had stopped using derogatory names to refer to Malfoy after Sunday. 

While Ron was looking away, the sludgy goo in his cauldron rose high enough to eat up his wooden spoon. When Ron turned back to his potion, he seemed mildly surprised of the result. He walked over to the rubbish bin, dumped the destroyed wooden spoon and took a new one from the general cupboard as though losing a wooden spoon to a potion was as daily and trivial a hazard as tripping over a crack on a pavement.

Before Hermione came over to them they heard her instruct Neville, “Just leave it to simmer and don’t do anything to it… Why’ve you got separate cauldrons?” she asked them. But when she glanced into Ron’s cauldron she seemed to answer herself. “Right. We’ll use Harry’s.” They spilled out Ron’s disaster of a potion and worked on Harry’s.

“We have to tell someone,” said Hermione quietly after some time. Her arm shook as she stirred the potion, the colour of which was turning from a velvety gridelin to a thickening black. “Or we have to do something.”

Harry leant on the table and tried to breathe slowly.

“When’s Dumbledore coming back?” asked Ron. Dumbledore was something of a hero to him.

Anger quickly rose inside Harry. “He can’t help us now, he’s useless.”

“Don’t say that, Harry,” chided Hermione. She went on in a whisper of indignation. “You can’t judge Dumbledore on this one thing after—and when you know he always believes you no matter what you say! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

There was an element of truth in what she said, but Harry was not in the mood to appreciate it. “We have to do something. Besides, Dumbledore’s busy wherever he is.”

Hermione glared at him for several seconds before she turned her attention back to the potion. “I think I have something,” she said softly after a moment. “A plan.”

The enormous relief that enveloped Harry all but overwhelmed him. Any plan was a start. He could not express his gratitude at Hermione. 

“What is it?” rapped Ron, his blue eyes sparkling at her.

Hermione tipped in a teaspoon of moon dust in the now greyish potion, and finally it turned a stagnant, darkest black.

Unfortunately Hermione being with Ron and Harry meant Neville was left to his own woeful devices. In quick time the students working around him had given him a wide berth after he melted and burnt a couple more cauldrons even after Hermione’s instruction, and the potions fumes coming from them were awful and ominous.

“Hermione!” Harry urged.

“I need to go to the library!” she hissed.

Harry threw his arms up, making a strangled noises.