Always Something - Dramione

Chapter Nineteen

"Malfoy, what am I reading?" Hermione said.

He was still mostly asleep, rolling over in bed, tossing an arm across her lap where she sat on the mattress beside him. "I'm sure I don't know, love."

"Come have a look. I still don't trust my memory when it comes to identifying people. But I'm fairly sure this is a photo of our Castora."

He hummed, eyes not yet opened, nestling his face into the side of her hip. "There are photos of Cassie all over the house. You're probably right."

"No, not here in the house. Here in the newspaper."

All at once, Draco was sitting upright, blinking over the awful, cheap yellow parchment of the morning's Daily Prophet. This time, the newspaper was open not to the gossipy fourth page but to the third page, the one running the series on the pitfalls of today's youth. In the night, in response to yesterday's item on the dim possibility of the Muggle problem of truancy coming to Hogwarts, someone had contributed a photo of a pair of teenagers they'd spotted on the train out of Hogsmeade, heading toward the Muggle station in Newcastle in the middle of the school week. The girl's face wasn't visible, her portion of the frame filled by what was either a very small freshly thatched roof or a head of bushy blond hair.

"It looks like her," he agreed, rubbing his eyes. "But it can't be. She's not coming back until tomorrow, and Griselda is bringing them. They wouldn't come early, on a train. There's no reason, no way."

"Look at the boy. That is not our Pollux," Hermione said, "though it may be someone else we know. I can't quite tell but..."

The boy's face was fully visible. He was the true subject of the photo, gazing at the girl leaning against his arm. She was so still she must have been asleep, and the photo was looping, over and over, as the boy pushed a tendril of hair out of her unseen face. His expression was that of unguarded, utter infatuation. Far from being the vindication of the newspaper's claims about the bad character of the rising generation, the photo made for a touching, sympathetic tribute to what is beautiful and inspiring about being young, even when caught up in something foolish like running away from school.

That the photographer had captured this sentiment so perfectly would have made the photo remarkable all on its own. But there was more to it, and Draco and Hermione had noticed it right away, even if most of the reading public wouldn't. With a pair of glasses and a little less of his mother's good looks, the boy in the photo would have been a near perfect lookalike for one of the most famous living wizards in Britain when he was sixteen. Draco sneered, with a ferocity Hermione hadn't seen in him since they were in school, as he named him.

"Potter."

"Yes. Then it's definitely Cassie," Hermione said, pushing her way out from under the bed linens, summoning her clothes. "If that's James Potter, then his girl is our Cassie. She mentioned him as a friend and asked if she could bring him along to meet us at the manor by train last time we saw her. I told her no, but she doesn't seem to have taken that for an answer this time 'round."

Furious, Draco was getting dressed himself. "James Potter? How old is he?"

"I'm not sure."

Draco swore. "How did he get her out of Hogwarts without anyone stopping them?"

"He's Harry's son. He'll have his ways." She said it in a voice like an apology.

"Cozied up with our girl under a crusty old invisibility cloak, dating under one of the deathly hallows. I should have taken it off him when I had the chance." He swore again. "And where is Potter, anyways? What's the point of being an Auror if you can't control your own kids?"