HP fic: The Translation Job for hd_inspired (H/D, 1/2)
Art by naadi
hd_inspired Goes Back to School
Title: The Translation Job
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Summary: What if Harry used a different curse on Malfoy, back in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom? The Prince’s book was full of spells, and this time, Harry simply picked another spell. Again, he had no idea what it would do.
Word count: 11,511
Author’s notes: Written for the hd_inspired “Back to School” Fest. Prompt no. 36 by magelet: Good old potions accident/misfired hex/etc. that gives either Harry or Draco a change in how others perceive them. As in, they totally still think the way they do normally and nothing has changed on the inside, but whatever their actions or words are, people on the outside keep misinterpreting it to be something else. Good or bad or whatever is up to the author. Additional words: bunnies, Giant squid, Mrs. Norris.
The first and last parts in italics are directly taken from JKR’s HBP (p. 488f and 596 of the Bloomsbury British edition for Children, Bloomsbury, 2005).
I apologise for the misuse of Greek and for writing something that might not fit the prompt entirely, because I was too stupid to think up a situation in which the hexed speaker wouldn’t realise from the reaction of the others what was wrong with him.
Beta(s): Thanks to tuulia81 and jaelle_n_gilla for listening and to ayes_sid for her wonderfully detailed, fast and patient beta-job. She pushed me to write a better story and made it fun!
Concrit and feedback are always welcome.
The Translation Job
“Call no man a foe, but never love a stranger.”
(Stella Benson)
Choose a Language
Outside the bathroom, Harry pressed his ear against the door. He couldn’t hear anything. He very quietly pushed the door open.
Draco Malfoy was standing with his back to the door, his hands clutching either side of the sink, his white-blond head bowed.
“Don’t,” crooned Moaning Myrtle’s voice from one of the cubicles. “Don’t ... tell me what’s wrong ... I can help you ...”
“No one can help me,” said Malfoy. His whole body was shaking. “I can’t do it ... I can’t ... it won’t work ... and unless I do it soon ... he says he’ll kill me ...”
And Harry realised, with a shock so huge it seemed do root him to the spot, that Malfoy was crying - actually crying - tears streaming down his pale face into the grimy basin. Malfoy gasped and gulped and then, with a great shudder, looked into the cracked mirror and saw Harry staring at him over his shoulder.
Malfoy wheeled round, drawing his wand. Instinctively, Harry pulled out his own. Malfoy’s hex missed Harry by inches, shattering the lamp on the wall beside him; Harry threw himself sideways, thought Levicorpus! and flicked his wand, but Malfoy blocked the jinx and raised his wand for another -
“No! No! Stop it!” squealed Moaning Myrtle, her voice echoing loudly around the tiled room. “Stop! STOP!”
There was a loud bang and the bin behind Harry exploded; Harry attempted a Leg-Locker curse that backfired off the wall behind Malfoy’s ear and smashed the cistern beneath Moaning Myrtle, who screamed loudly; water poured everywhere and Harry slipped over as Malfoy, his face contorted, cried, “Cruci-“
“OMILIKA FIDII!” bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly.
Malfoy staggered from the force of the spell as it struck him squarely in the chest.
And … nothing happened.
Then Malfoy straightened up, panting slightly from the impact. “What was that, Potter? Resorting to useless spells now, are we?” He wiped his hair away from his face with the back of his hand, whilst keeping his wand trained on Harry at all the times. “For a moment there, I thought that you were going go gut me alive.” He sneered. “But then, that’s a move not noble enough for you, is it? All the better for me, if you haven’t got it in you.”
With the immediate tension of the battle between them having been broken, Harry scrambled to his feet, his wand arm still pointed at Malfoy. “Better for you, indeed. Not all of us can be cowards and traitors.” He gave a shrug and indicated over his shoulder towards the door. “I’m off, Malfoy, and you better not follow me. You hear that?”
Malfoy snorted. “I think you’ve got this the wrong way around. You’re the one who keeps stalking me, remember? Maybe no one’s let you in on the big secret yet, but I’m not part of your fan-club.”
Harry took his time and gave Malfoy the once-over. Dark circles under his eyes and a blotchy nose stood starkly out on his otherwise pale face. Malfoy looked like shit, in spite of his biting remarks.
“This is getting old. I have better stuff to do.” Slowly, Harry started to back away, step by step, like someone retreating from a wounded animal, not sure whether it would lash out any moment. The enormity of the spell’s failure had begun to sink in and made him almost shake with anger.
Once in the corridor, he broke into a run towards Gryffindor Tower. Most people were walking the other way; they gaped at him drenched in water and fired question after question, but he answered none as he ran past.
He felt betrayed; it was as though a beloved pet had turned against him. What had the Prince been thinking, to copy such a useless spell into his book? It had clearly been marked ‘To Confuse Your Enemy’, but it did nothing alike. If anything, it had given Malfoy time to recover, and it was only Harry’s luck and Malfoy’s preference of talking instead of fighting that had saved him in the end.
“What happened to you?” Ron was standing at the top of the stairs to the boy’s dormitory, staring at Harry’s soaked trousers.
“I had a little run-in with Malfoy in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.”
Ron’s eyes widened and a grin broadened his face. “You did? So? Did you hex each other?”
“You bet. Malfoy was about to Crucio me so I used one of the Prince’s hexes, but it didn’t do a thing. Can you believe that?” Harry fumbled for a dry pair of trousers and began to change.
Together, they went back into the common room, where Hermione and Ginny were anxious to listen to Harry’s story. Harry hadn’t even noticed them earlier in his frantic run up to the boy’s dormitory. With everyone so keen to hear from him, Harry was eager to recount his encounter with Malfoy.
“You did what?” Hermione rounded in on Harry. “Harry, don’t tell me you used an unknown hex on Malfoy? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: the Half-Blood Prince is a dangerous person. What if the curse seriously hurt someone? You could have killed Malfoy.”
“Come on, Hermione!” Ron groaned and rolled his eyes. “Give Harry a break! It’s not as if Malfoy’s an angel, is he? For god’s sake, he tried to attack Harry with the Cruciatus curse. It was pure self-defence,” he finished triumphantly.
Hermione wasn’t persuaded as easily, though. Harry had to listen to another round of Ron and Hermione bickering with each other while Ginny threw him sympathetic looks. She was decorating her Charms essay with pictures of Kneazels and bunnies frolicking in the margin. Harry smiled inwardly. Not that he wasn’t used to his best two friends acting like they did, but Ginny’s renewed attention made his heart break out in a wild gallop. Not even hunting the Snitch on his broom felt so good.
In the end, they decided that while it had been stupid to use a hex with an unknown result, nothing bad had happened. Every time Hermione went all McGonagall on them, Ginny sprang to Harry’s defence, and that alone had been worth the whole commotion.
***
Draco stayed long enough in Myrtle’s bathroom to convince her that she couldn’t tell anybody what had happened. She returned after Harry left: her face pearlier and her eyes huge behind her thick glasses. He talked to her endlessly, but she continued to shake her head.
“I don’t understand you,” she said again and again. “Stop talking like that. It’s not very nice of you, after all I went through.”
How typical of Myrtle to only think of herself! In the end, Draco pleaded one last time and, as a distraction, asked her to visit the Giant Squid. He left the bathroom hoping for the best. It wouldn’t help his cause if she spread the news; it was important to let people know his version of the events.
He found Pansy sitting in the common room, busy writing her Potions essay.
“You won’t believe what happened to me,” Draco began his tale.
Pansy looked up, seeming slightly startled. Instead of launching herself onto him like she usually did, she stayed in her seat and eyed him warily.
“Pardon?”
“Potter just attacked me.” There was no need to tell the exact place and circumstances of his encounter with the Golden Boy. “We duelled. And when I was about to finish him off for good, he used a spell on me that had simply no effect. If he’s all Dumbledore’s got up in his sleeve, the Dark Lord’s already won.” Pansy had worried enough about Draco’s silence in the last few months. It would do them both good to let her hear such positive news.
“Are you making fun of me?” Pansy’s voice interrupted Draco’s happy musings.
“Pansy? What’s wrong? Stop glaring at me like that, will you? Can’t you see nothing bad happened?”
“Draco, whatever you’re playing at, stop it! This is some idiotic game of yours, isn’t it? I don’t know how you could think talking like that could be considered funny. Maybe tomorrow you’ll act like your usual self again. I clearly hope you will.”
She gathered her quill, parchment and books from the table and stormed from the room. Draco stared after her, bewildered. What was eating her? “Women,” he murmured, more to himself than to anybody else. Then he made his way to the boys’ dormitory. No one else bothered him. Vince, Greg and Blaise were all fast asleep, and Theo was in the bathroom. Draco went to bed without another strange encounter.
***
Pansy didn’t appear at breakfast, so Draco had no opportunity to ask her about her bewildered reaction the other night. It wasn’t like she was avoiding him; Pansy sleeping in was nothing out of the ordinary. His dorm-mates, on the other hand, acted a little weird. When Draco asked Greg to pass him the butter, it earned him a dark look instead, something so unusual that Draco almost dropped his knife. Though, when he had finally had enough and deigned to reach for the damned butter dish himself, Vince handed him not only the butter, but his favourite Orange marmalade as well.
“That’s better,” Draco hummed to himself, thickly layered his toast with butter and marmalade, and took a hearty bite.
Their first lesson that morning brought another Defence Against the Dark Arts class. Snape swept down on them like a hawk, more ill-tempered than ever for some reason. Draco grinned. Even though Snape was pressing him hard these days to reveal his secret, he still favoured Draco in his classes. So when Snape asked the students to sum up the properties of Inferi for another time, Draco confidently put up his hand and started to tick them off his fingers.
He only stopped when he heard one of the Gryffindor girls scream.
“Ten points from Gryffindor! Compose yourself, Mrs Brown,” came Snape’s voice, unperturbed as ever. “There is no need to panic.”
“Professor Snape, she’s afraid! And for good reason.” The Mudblood rushed to defend her fellow house-mate.
Draco had to suppress a snort. When would that bint ever learn that acting like a fool and butting into other people’s business was only going to cost her House Points?
“This, Mrs Granger, is not upon you to decide. Anyone acting childishly in my class will get points taken from their house. Another ten points from Gryffindor for twice interrupting my lesson,” Snape snapped. “This is Defence Against the Dark Arts, as you may have noticed, had you not all been too busy filling your heads with nonsense. So it might be worthy to study how not to panic, when things unusual or out of the ordinary happen.”
Snape, Draco decided, had a point. But what was all that rubbish about ‘unusual’?
“Why is everyone acting like I’ve grown two heads all of a sudden?” Draco asked. “Are Gryffindors really that dumb that they don’t know it’s common for students to answer questions in class?”
Snape eyed him closely. “If my guess is correct, then you, Mr Malfoy, have no idea what has happened to you, have you?”
Draco stared at him in confusion. Was this another trick to gain his confidence? Snape must be getting desperate. He felt his professor’s gaze bore into his eyes, tugging at his mind with brash questions. Draco wouldn’t let Snape enter his thoughts. He averted his eyes and closed his mind firmly against the intrusion, just like Aunt Bella had taught him to do. With so many witnesses around them, Snape gave up quickly, but spoke up once again.
“You’ve been hexed with the Omilika fidii, Mr Malfoy, and to my knowledge there exists no counter-curse. You must suffer the consequences until it wears off on its own.” He smiled thinly at Draco.
“Hexed? I don’t understand.” Images of Potter in soaking wet trousers flashed through Draco’s mind. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”
“Let me explain, Mr Malfoy. I, as well as the rest of this class, can’t understand a word you’re saying.” He paused, clearly waiting for his message to sink in. “That is, there might be one person who can.” His thin smile widened, and he turned to the Gryffindors, who stared at him with dawning horror on their faces.
“I’m quite sure that you, Potter, can translate Mr Malfoy’s words for us, can you not?”
Potter stood, red cheeks burning in an otherwise deadly white face, and said nothing.
“Can’t you, Potter?” Snape demanded with a lot more insistence.
“I- yes, Professor Snape. Yes, of course. Why can’t anyone else?” Potter blabbered like the idiot he was.
Snape’s icy silence could have cut through glass.
And then understanding broke through to Potter. He looked like someone had told him his favourite Quidditch team had just won the championship and simultaneously hit him in the stomach with a Bludger.
“He’s- but that can’t be ... Can it?”
“Can it, Potter? You tell me,” repeated Snape, his voice dangerously soft.
“Parseltongue, Harry! He’s speaking Parseltongue!” shrieked Granger.
“Your moments of inspirations are highly uncalled for, Mrs Granger,” said Snape. “Another ten points from Gryffindor for interrupting my lesson once again, and being an insufferable know-it-all.”
Draco slumped down further in his seat. Now he had the explanation for Pansy’s angry reaction yesterday evening, and for Greg’s irritated glares at the breakfast table earlier today. Nobody heard anything but hissing sounds whenever Draco opened his mouth to speak! Unlike with Potter in second year, nobody had a way of connecting his hissing to that of a snake’s - there had been no snake around for others to see what Draco could do. His friends might have thought that he was making fun of them. While the brainless Gryffindor must have feared he was going to transform into a snake or become the next Dark Lord.
Talking to snakes - last year Draco would have found this cool. Right now he felt devastated. He needed to be able to communicate on his own, and here he was, incapable to communicate at all. He might be still able to get into the Room of Requirement, but he couldn’t order Vince and Greg to watch any longer.
“... our expert in that particular field will have to help you out,” Snape’s voice interrupted Draco’s glum thoughts.
Potter sprang to life. “What?”
“Pardon me. Mind your tongue, Potter. You will help translate Mr Malfoy’s words for us. As you might have noticed, he is capable of understanding common English, so all you will have to do is convey the meaning of his hissing to anyone he wishes to communicate with. After the lesson, I shall inform the Headmaster of Mr Malfoy’s condition, and I’m certain that he will not object to this solution. I’m sure you would not want me to investigate the circumstances of Mr Malfoy’s state any deeper.”
Potter the Parselmouth, given the task of translating for Draco. Draco looked at Potter, who looked almost as miserable as Draco felt himself. Under different circumstances, he would have enjoyed Potter’s distress and bossing him around. It had been fun in second year, when Potter had been forced to skin Draco’s shrivelfigs. But now? Draco knew that Potter had been tailing him all the time. Draco’s task was cumbersome enough; all he wished was to be left alone.
***
“Harry,” Ron groaned that night at dinner, “it’s almost like you’ve been made Malfoy’s personal house elf!”
The Great Hall was buzzing with students discussing the events of the morning.
“Let’s not even think about it,” Harry muttered glumly.
“So at least now we know what the spell does!” exclaimed Hermione. “It’s turned Malfoy into someone who can only speak Parseltongue. And the spell’s addled his mind so that he can’t tell the difference any longer.”
“I wonder why he’s still able to understand what we say, though,” said Ron.
Harry shrugged. “No idea and, frankly, I don’t really care, either.”
Hermione’s eyebrows shot up. “Honestly, don’t you two ever listen? Snape told us that the Omilia spells are a family of spells that affect only the language-production part of the brain. The spell to make you understand Parseltongue is Katanoisi fidii. Varying the second part of the Omilia and the Katanoisi, one could alter the brain to understand and produce any language - that’s how translation spells work. Fascinating, isn’t it?”
“But I used-“
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Ron.
“-Omilika fidii, not Omilia!”
“Just a moment, Harry, I’ll get to that in a minute.” Hermione straightened and leaned forward in her seat. “For example, Ron, if you ever needed to have a quick conversation with a French wizard, you could use Omilia galikae and Katanoisi galikae and wouldn’t need a translator.”
“Then why don’t people use the spells all the time, and still bother with learning French?”
“Oh, isn’t it obvious? Think of what’s happened to Malfoy! The spells change your ability; you can speak and understand French, but you lose all your English. You wouldn’t want that, would you? And more so, any high-frequent switching between two or more languages could end in massive cellular damage to the brain.”
“Oh. But if these are all legal translation spells, I don’t understand why the Prince’s marked the Omilika fidii as one to confuse an enemy,” Harry said.
“I checked the library on translation spells this afternoon. The Prince must have altered the standard Omilia to the point that it couldn’t be broken. And more so, the fidii-part makes it a Dark spell because it’s directed at Parseltongue and not a human language like French or German. The spell’s adjustments to languages like Mermish, Fairy or Gobbledegook are discussed as a grey area - think about the injustice against other magical beings! But of course a wizard or witch would get confused when they were suddenly able to talk to snakes-“
“Especially when surrounded by others who’d be afraid of them being Parselmouths and connected with the Dark Arts,” Harry added, nodding heavily. He had had more than enough personal experience with the irrational reactions to someone being able to talk to snakes.
“But- wait a moment! I talked to Malfoy in the bathroom. Does that mean I used Parseltongue? I don’t think I did - or at least I hope I didn’t.”
“That’s where the difference between Omilia and Omilika comes into play. The person hexed with Omilika fidii would still understand their usual language, and therefore not realise the difference. The poor guy wouldn’t even hear himself hissing - just like you Harry, when you’re talking Parseltongue. What a nasty hex!”
“Hermione!” groaned Ron. “Don’t forget that it’s Malfoy we’re talking about.”
“I wish I’d used a different hex on him, though.” Harry interjected. “One that wouldn’t have given Snape any ideas of connecting me with ‘personal translator’ for Malfoy. I bet he’ll love chasing me around in class.”
“But Snape’s right, Harry,” Hermione objected. “No one else can do the job better than you. Or at all, for that matter.”
“As if Malfoy can’t write!” Ron exclaimed, while voraciously attacking a chicken’s leg. “Honestly, Hermione, sometimes I think that you’d even try to find an excuse for why a Dementor sucks people’s souls.”
“Eww, Ron, can you please stop doing that? Chew with your mouth closed.” Hermione scrunched up her nose. “And to answer your statement yes, there is an actual theory on that. Did you know that they were once Veela?”
Both Harry and Ron groaned in unison, which indeed prevented Hermione from giving them another lecture about whatever theory she had recently read.
“Look on the bright side. You might get a bit of fun out of it,” Ron said while he and Harry were awake in their four-poster beds that night, unable to sleep.
“How does that work?”
“Well, you could translate whatever he says into rubbish. That’d show him.”
“Sounds like fun. But then all he’d have to do is write a note saying I’m translating utter crap and accuse me of lying.”
“Damn. Yeah, you’re probably right.” Ron shifted on his mattress. “Pity. It would’ve been a dream come true, wouldn’t it?”
Harry laughed and felt lighter than he had in ages. Translating for Malfoy would be an unwelcome burden, but then being able to discuss the ongoing events with Ron would give him enough chances to laugh away his distress - something that Malfoy wouldn’t be able to do. Harry couldn’t imagine Malfoy trusting him with personal messages for his friends. The job would definitely focus around school stuff.
***
Malfoy, as it turned out the next day, wasn’t able to write as much as a word. He hissed in anger when he picked up his quill and failed to copy the instructions on the board. He could draw lines and dots without a problem, but as soon as he tried to cover a word, he got stuck. The letters were garbled and looked more like the drawings of a pre-schooler than the writing of someone capable of reading and writing for the last ten years. When Harry casually told Malfoy this, the other boy glared at him.
“Having the time of your life, Potter? You can mix up whatever I want to say and I won’t be able to stop you. I mean, I can’t even tell anyone that you were the one responsible for that bloody hex!”
“How does it feel to be at another person’s mercy, Malfoy? Isn’t this the perfect opportunity for you to practise your service at the feet of Voldemort?”
Harry grinned when he saw Malfoy flinch. “You can’t even stand his name now, when you share his ability to talk to snakes? What a piss poor Death Eater-in-training you make!”
“What are you two fighting about?”
Harry looked up.
Snape was standing inches away from the desk Harry had to share with Malfoy. He looked positively livid.
“I do not see any reason for the two of you to cause such a ruckus in my class. Potter, either you have something to translate, or you should both be working in silence on your assignment. I see no reason for you to discuss matters of any other proceedings; you wouldn’t have anything competent to add to the conversation. So which is it? What are you keeping from me, Potter?”
“Tell him you’re the one who hexed me,” Malfoy hissed at Harry’s side.
“Answer me, Potter.” Snape’s voice was colder than running through a ghost.
“I won’t!” Harry answered Malfoy in Parseltongue.
“Stop hissing this instant! Twenty points from Gryffindor for showing disrespect towards a teacher. And you will answer my question. Now!”
Harry’s thoughts raced. He had to come up with something, anything, to appease Snape. “Malfoy was simply angry because he couldn’t even write a single letter. I told him not to get himself worked up about it,” he said and then added, “Professor Snape,” for good measure.
Snape glared at him and then addressed Malfoy. “Is that true? You can simply nod or shake your head.”
“If you don’t agree, I’ll tell him that you hang around the Room of Requirement all day long. He’d love to know that, don’t you think?” Harry muttered under his breath.
If looks could kill, Harry would have turned to ashes long ago.
Malfoy nodded towards Snape, indicating that he needed no further attention from him.
“I’ll make you pay for this, Potter,” Draco said moments later, while he handed Harry the chopped liver.
“You do that,” said Harry, his voice sounding eerily calm even to himself, and he threw the liver into the bubbling cauldron.
Listen and Repeat
Over the next few weeks, Malfoy didn’t try anything stupid again. He was quiet in class and in the times between lessons he kept mostly to himself. It suited Harry just fine. Baby-sitting Malfoy was bad enough, but it would have been absolute torture with Malfoy talking all time. Harry hated the fact that he had to translate for Malfoy even at meal-times. The first time Harry had sat down with Malfoy at the Slytherin table, there had been uproar, only calmed down by the double intervention of Snape and Dumbledore himself. It was the one thing Harry and Malfoy could actually agree on: Malfoy had no intention to talk about any other subject than school as long as he needed Harry to translate his sibilants into words.
At the beginning all the Slytherins tried to make him communicate, but Malfoy turned them away. On his better days he resorted to nodding or shaking his head, whereas he simply ignored them on his worst. Finally, they gave up.
“Fine!” exclaimed Parkinson, after another attempt had gained her nothing but a cold-shouldered treatment. “Have it your way! Just remember to give me a hint when you can talk again, won’t you?” She had abandoned every attempt at lovesick simpering and was pouring fury all over Malfoy. “Never mind that I actually care about you!”
Harry watched Malfoy closely.
There was such an air of ease on his face that it could only be forced. His shoulders were drawn almost painfully tight and he stared ahead, unblinking for so long that Harry’s eyes watered merely from watching him.
And for the first time it occurred to Harry that maybe Malfoy would have liked to talk to his friends, and that he was probably miserable about being isolated from them. Malfoy had never seemed like the type to confide in anyone; he probably preferred minions to friends, so naturally he would rather keep his worries to himself than try for a semi-functional exchange under a Gryffindor witness. Harry himself would have done the same, were their positions reversed.
At times, Malfoy also kept disappearing. He would simply slip away from Harry after class and Harry wouldn’t meet him until their next lesson. It was unnerving, especially because Harry first feared that Malfoy used the Room of Requirement in those periods. But when he checked on the Marauder’s Map, he found the dot labelled with Malfoy’s name not gone, but rather parading up and down the seventh-floor corridor.
When the tiny dot stayed transfixed in one place without moving about, a gleeful smile hit Harry’s lips. Malfoy wasn’t able to get into the Room for some reason.
But even though Malfoy couldn’t keep Crabbe and Goyle around any longer to stand guard for him, and even though he wasn’t able to enter the Room any longer, he still managed to emerge unseen by Harry. So, while Harry was constantly compelled to trail behind Malfoy in class, he couldn’t use their enforced closeness to find out what Malfoy was really up to.
***
Draco had not felt this alone in his life ever before. Admittedly, he was constantly followed around by Potter, but at the same time he was constantly shunned from his friends, too. Not that he had wanted to confide in them before he was cursed, but at least he could have listened to their banter and joined in their jokes, however faint-hearted. He missed Pansy’s devoted cuddling, and would have even welcomed Vince’s angry refusal to take Polyjuice Potion for another time.
It was foul: Potter was the only person who didn’t shy away from him as soon as Draco opened his mouth to speak. Draco had noticed how everybody flinched in class whenever he hissed at Potter. It was an ingrained reaction to snakes and to their connection with the Dark Lord. Even the Slytherins were no exception. Only idiot Potter, Boy Wonder and Hero-in-Training talked to him like nothing bad had befallen him. Actually, they had exchanged more civil conversations in the few last weeks than in all the six years they had known each other. If one could call Pass me the roots of Mugworth, will you? or Tell McGonagall that the correct answer is thirty-five seconds civil conversations. It turned out that the fastest Transformation had been below fifteen seconds, and his answer earned him another full-front preach by that Gryffindor harpy. But at least Potter’s translation had been correct. Not that Draco would have had any means to prove it had Potter decided to wrong Draco’s answer. Draco suspected that attacking Potter bodily in class would have earned him yet another detention and laughter from everyone on top of it.
So Draco hissed at Potter while the students shuddered in their seats, and then Potter translated Draco’s words to the frosty looking teachers, who nodded, while looking at Draco as if it were entirely his fault. His nerves had been worn thin a long time before this. So many times, he decided to not say anything at all.
Pansy’s pain was hard to watch, but at the beginning of the third week and after another harsh rebuke, she eventually resigned to her fate and turned her hurt first into vitriol, then disinterest. Vince and Greg pointedly ignored Draco when he set about to go to the Room of Requirement. Draco knew a lost fight when he saw one, and had always tried to keep away from those. He would deal with both of them when things were back to normal and he could talk again.
To make matters worse, Draco couldn’t even get into the Room. The last of his hopes were shattered when he faced the blank wall in the corridor of the seventh floor for the first time after getting hexed. He walked up and down, his mind focused on a single thought - I need the Room of Hidden Things, I need the Room of Hidden Things, I need the Room of Hidden Things. It had worked before, like a charm, but it didn’t work now. Thinking alone didn’t do the trick, and whenever Draco tried to murmur, he failed likewise. The wall obviously didn’t understand Parseltongue, and the hex must have messed with his mind as well, changing his thoughts into something other than English, even if Draco himself didn’t feel the difference.
His attempts were futile, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying. Maybe it was because he had no other options left, but he kept returning to the seventh floor again and again, walking the corridor, thinking and hissing and refusing to give up, until he reached breaking point. Devastated, he slumped down the wall, legs drawn to his chest. His eyes stung and his stomach cramped up so that he almost doubled over. He forced himself to take deep, steadying breaths, while his fingers curled into fists, betraying his efforts, and an angry sound tore from his lips. “I can’t do it. I can’t work on it. Why- why-?” He hugged his legs and rested his head on his knees, so that they dug hard enough into his eyes to prevent himself from collapsing even more. “I’m so- a- afraid ... I don’t want to die,” he whispered, and knew that even if he sat in the Great Hall and screamed the ugly truth right into the faces of everybody, no one would understand any of his words.
He didn’t know where else to go. Sanctuary was not an option. He had no other place to work on his assignment, for all his tools were hidden in the Room of Hidden Things, along with the Vanishing Cabinet. He couldn’t ask any of his friends, for none of them could understand his hissing. And Potter was even less of an option. Couldn’t he ask him, though? Draco considered the idea for a moment and then snorted. It was a sign of how desperate he felt if he was contemplating Potter’s help with the task of bringing down Dumbledore.
Oh, the irony of it all! All year long, Potter had wanted to find out, but Draco had been too clever for him. And now, when Draco was so close to the finish, Potter still had no clue. Whereas Draco, who had wanted to be left alone all year, was now truly and unbearably alone, with no one left to help him. He felt like someone stranded on an uninhabited island, with a hungry shark patrolling the coast line. When the caretaker’s ugly cat appeared and hissed maliciously at him, she only reminded him that he had not just one guard watching his every step, but many.
***
Harry never noticed that he had stopped using English when talking to Malfoy. Malfoy’s constant hissing provided as much inspiration as a snake’s picture. It had always been on the verge of impossible for Harry to realise when he was talking Parseltongue, and he only noticed the difference this time when Ron stared at him incredulously in Charms.
“You can still talk English to me, Harry,” Ron told him with a forced grin, once Flitwick had left and they were packing up their things.
“Erm- sorry, Ron. I didn’t realise-“
“I know you didn’t. You never do. Especially not when talking to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you go Parsel on him all the time.” Ron looked much more serious, and Harry felt a shiver running down his spine. “What’s the point, Harry? I can’t understand a word you’re saying. And it’s not as if you need to keep everything you say to him a secret. Or do you? Tell the truth. Do you?”
“Don’t be daft, Ron.” Harry laughed and punched him on the shoulder to chase away his friend’s concern.
“I’m not being silly. It’s only that-“ Ron broke off, as if unsure whether to stir the waters or not.
“What is it?”
“You almost look as if you’re friendly when you talk to him these days. You haven’t become friends with the git over the last few weeks, have you?”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous, really. I’m doing what needs to be done for that translation job, that’s all. And I use Parseltongue because I sometimes forget that I’m even speaking it at all. You know how I get - give me a snake, and I’ll start to hiss.”
Ron laughed, still a tad uneasy. “So you still think Malfoy’s an annoying git? You aren’t chumming up or something?”
“Well, he doesn’t say that much, to be honest. He hasn’t tried anything since the first day. He acts almost civil. But it’s not as if we’ve become best mates or anything.”
“Just remember, he’s still a Malfoy and he still follows You-Know-Who. I don’t want you to get hurt, is all.”
It was only later that day, when Harry watched Malfoy sit among the other Slytherins in the Great Hall, that he realised how shunned Malfoy was. He didn’t laugh with his friends. They didn’t address him any more. When Crabbe passed around the jug of pumpkin juice, he put it down beside Malfoy’s plate in such a casual way, as if Malfoy wasn’t even there and there was no other spot on the table to place it. Harry saw Malfoy’s hand creep forward and touch the jug, almost as if he had to assure himself of his presence before he dared to take it and pour himself some juice. It was then that Harry felt something akin to compassion for Malfoy. The emotion was uncomfortable, even inappropriate, and Harry hastened to shut it down.
Part 2