Sendoff Part Two
Draco missed the days when he went to Sheila the Psychiatrist to relax. He missed entering the cool office and lying down and telling her all the horrible things that had ever happened to him in his life…. and a few things that hadn’t happened too. He missed talking for hours with barely an interruption.
He really missed not being followed everywhere by Harry Potter. It always ended up interfering.
“You were NOT almost killed!” Potter said.
“I most certainly was!” Draco snapped. “I was eleven and they sent me into the Forbidden Forest with an incapable maniac! What kind of school does that?”
“The kind that prepares you for the real world. Just because we weren’t pampered doesn’t mean that-”
“Pampered?” Draco said, his voice rising to an alarming pitch. “Pampered?! I could have been murdered by that thing! I could have been eaten by any number of vicious beasts trying to find my way back to the others! You make it sound as though I’m upset because Hogwarts didn’t offer the services of a manicurist.”
“Come on, Malfoy,” said Harry with a wicked smile. “There’s no way any murderous beasties could have caught you, you were running way to fast for them.”
Draco leaped from his couch and grabbed a glass paperweight from Sheila’s desk, intending to throw it at Harry’s head. Well, more like through Harry’s head.
“Draco!” Sheila said loudly.
He stopped and looked over at her in surprise. He’d practically forgotten she was there.
“If you please,” she said, indicating the paperweight. Draco set it back in her desk. “Thank you.” She looked back and forth between them for a long moment. “Have the two of you ever considered couples counseling?”
Draco and Harry looked at her and then each other, horror written clearly on their faces. They both spoke at once.
“You must be insane!”
“We are NOT a couple!”
“Yes, of course,” Sheila said. Rather too smoothly, Draco thought. “But I still think that you might benefit from joint sessions, especially since Harry seems to come to all of our appointments anyway. I can give you a price estimate if you like. I have many other patients who I counsel together. It’s especially popular with Muggles.”
Draco was confused. “How do you know that?”
“Well, I see Muggle patients as well as wizards, Draco.”
“What?” He looked around the room uneasily. “In this same room?”
“Yes,” said Sheila patiently.
Draco thought about this. “Do they lie down on the same couch?” He pretended not to hear the disgusted snorting sound that Potter made. How unattractive.
“Yes, Draco, on the same couch. Do you have any feelings about that?”
“No,” said Draco quickly. “No feelings…. I just think that, perhaps, some of your patients might appreciate a separate couch, that’s all.” He sat down gingerly on the very edge of his seat. Potter was rolling his eyes but, really! The whole place was contaminated with Muggle germs!
“Do you know you’re talking out loud?” asked Potter with interest.
“Oh,” said Draco. “I meant contaminated in a good way,” he said delicately.
“Look,” she said, “I know enough about your history not to be offended, so how about we just move on?”
Draco nodded. “Of course.” He was quiet for a minute, thinking. “It’s just, how do you understand what they’re talking about?”
“Who?”
“The Muggles.”
“I’m Muggleborn, Draco. I grew up in a Muggle household so, naturally, I understand them quite well.”
Draco stared at her, dumbstruck. He’d been telling all his deeply personal thoughts to a Mudblood. He felt dirty.
“Again,” said Potter, “with the talking. That’s really the sort of habit you should try and break.”
“I’m sorry,” said Draco, flushing. “But isn’t that the sort of thing you should put on the card?”
Sheila’s face was as impassive as ever, but Draco thought she looked a bit tense about the mouth. “I think out time is up for today.”
Outside on the sidewalk, Draco glanced speculatively back at the door. “She seemed so normal,” he said, a little sadly.
“She is normal, Malfoy. You’re the one who’s a freak. That’s why you go to her, remember?”
“Dying hasn’t agreed with you, Potter. You’re just more embittered than ever, aren’t you?”
“Only because I’m stuck here with you.”
Draco sneered. “Well, you can piss off any time you like. It’s not exactly a treat for me either.”
“Fine,” Harry said. His shadowy figure suddenly vanished from beside Draco.
“Are other ghosts allowed to do that?” Draco wondered aloud, and then caught himself and scowled. It figured that Potter would have special abilities in the ghost world just like he’d had in the real one. He probably got all sorts of special ghostly allowances made for him. Now that Draco thought about it, Potter didn’t look nearly as colorless as normal ghosts.
Draco decided not to think about it. Instead he would enjoy this time without Potter by….
His mind was blank. He didn’t have enough money to go for lunch. He had no friends he could go visit for the afternoon. He could wander around Diagon Alley, but he was sure to be recognized and a few hours of being glared at while people whispered behind his back and spat at his feet didn’t sound particularly appealing. Draco stood alone on the sidewalk, feeling silly.
In the days since Harry had appeared, Draco had forgotten to think about how limited his existence had become, but now it all came flooding back.
In the end, he just returned to his flat. Potter wasn’t there and Draco was horrified to discovered that he was almost disappointed.
Was he really that lonely?
*
The real reason Draco had started going to Sheila was the dreams.
He knew that a lot of people involved in the war suffered from nightmares. He’d certainly seen enough to freak out the subconscious of any normal person. He tried buying different potions but none of them seemed to work, and the most powerful dreamless sleep potions had to be prescribed. He thought about trying to brew one himself but, seeing as he hadn’t touched a cauldron since he left school, he decided to make an appointment instead. Sheila gave him the potion after just one visit, thanks to Draco’s vivid descriptions of the horrific nightmares that supposedly plagued him.
And after that he’d just kept going.
He got a prescription written each month and in between…. Well, it was nice to vent. There weren’t many people around for him to talk to at the time. Sometimes he pretended Sheila actually cared about his life. About him, a little.
The problem was there had never been any nightmares. Well, there had been, but Draco had just never been bothered by them. They only came occasionally, and they weren’t about anything he didn’t relive in his mind everyday anyway. What bothered him were the happy dreams. The ones he woke up from sobbing because things would never be the same again. Those were the dangerous dreams. Those were the ones that made Draco hate his miserable, meaningless life.
But he didn’t have those anymore. Now he didn’t dream at all.
*
Draco had checked all the books on Hermione’s list out of the library the day after she had given it to him. He read all of them cover to cover, and then read them again. He found nothing that seemed particularly helpful. There was a lot about famous ghosts and why they stuck around, but nothing about what you should do to get rid of them. There was just a lot of old tosh about ghostly “feelings”, and spirits passing on “when the time was right.”
“Maybe I should, exorcise you,” Draco said doubtfully.
“But I’m not possessing anyone!” Harry said indignantly.
“Well, no, but it would probably make you go away.”
“It would send me to hell!”
“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Draco said. “The actual spell isn’t very clear on where you get sent.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” Harry said sarcastically. “I can’t believe Hermione wrote that book down.”
“She didn’t,” Draco told him. “I went back and checked out more books yesterday because none of hers had anything helpful to say.”
“Well, that one’s not helpful either,” Harry said firmly.
“Fine,” said Draco with a sigh. “We’ll just keep it as a last resort.”
The problem was that none of the books seemed to know anything about the inner workings of the ghost world. Perhaps because ghosts themselves weren’t very clear on it. Whenever Draco tried asking him questions about where he’d been before he became a ghost, or what it felt like, or if he had any special abilities, Harry got very cagey.
“Look,” Draco finally snapped, “I’m not trying to pry your deepest secrets from you. I’m just trying to find something that will help us. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Of course.”
“Then stop being so shifty!”
“I’m not being shifty,” Harry protested. “I just don’t know all the answers. The things I know are sort of…. blurry. They don’t make any sense to me.”
All Draco could do was keep reading.
*
“Why do you think the papers haven’t done a story about this yet?”
Harry shrugged. “I s’pose no one’s noticed.”
Draco considered this. “People must be complete idiots then, because you follow me all over the place and you look the same as you always have. Besides being able to see through you.”
“Are you really complaining? If the paper ran a story on this there would be no escaping them. You’d have Rita Skeeter knocking down your door to get an interview!”
“No,” said Draco, “I’m not complaining. I just think it’s a bit odd, that’s all.”
*
Draco had forgotten about the pamphlet until he grabbed it out of a drawer to use as a bookmark. He didn’t think anything of it until Harry said something.
“What’s that?”
They were sitting at the table with about ten different books spread out across it. Actually, only Draco was sitting; Harry was standing looking over his shoulder. The air surrounding him was cold and Draco kept shivering.
“Oh,” said Draco, “Shacklebolt gave it to me ages ago.” He explained about the school for morons and how insulted he was that Shacklebolt had even given it to him.
“Why didn’t you do it?” said Harry.
“Weren’t you listening? I wasn’t interested.”
“Well you should be. It’s practically impossible to get any job worth having without your N.E.W.T.S. I was going to get mine after….” His voice trailed away. “In any case, you should sign up for classes.”
Draco scowled. “You don’t get to boss me around, Potter.”
But Harry wouldn’t let it go. “What if there’s something we were supposed to learn in seventh year that could help us now?”
“Then Granger would have told us about it. I’m sure she knows the seventh year textbooks by heart.”
“Yeah, but what if there’s some sort of spell you need to know to send me back? You won’t be able to do it because you’re too much of a snob to go to a few classes. It’s beyond me how even now you think you’re better than everyone else, Malfoy.”
“I would punch you,” Draco said coldly, “but I’d hate for my hand to get a chill as it goes flying through your face.”
“We’ve been looking through books for weeks now! Aren’t you ready to try something else? Besides, if you passed you’d be able to get a new job. I can’t believe you haven’t done this before now.” Harry looked at him curiously. “Are you afraid you won’t pass?”
“No! I’ll take your stupid test, Potter. And I’ll do better than you ever would have done.”
“You’re only saying that because you know there’s no way I can prove you wrong,” said Harry in an infuriatingly calm voice.
*
Draco was afraid of taking the test, but not because he was afraid of failing. He was worried about who else might show up to the prep classes. After all, there had been a lot of students in his year that hadn’t finished school for one reason or another. What if they were there?
It was this thought that caused Draco to sign up for the night classes. He thought those would be the least popular. He was right. There were five students including Draco and he didn’t recognize any of his classmates. To his surprise there was one girl who looked to be about his own age. Her name was Tatiana, but Draco decided not to hold that against her.
The lessons were easier than he’d thought they would be. It was just a simpler, condensed version of Hogwarts minus walking a mile to get to each class.
“We should study together sometime,” Tatiana said to him.
Draco was so surprised he said yes.
*
“Did you go to my funeral?” Harry asked him one day.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To see what it was like.”
“And?”
“It was exceedingly boring,” Draco sneered. “Just like you. Fitting, really.”
Harry’s eyebrows drew together in a worried sort of way. “It was rather boring, I guess.”
Draco looked at him sharply and Harry looked back.
“I wasn’t really that boring, was I?”
“No,” he said. “You weren’t.”
Harry’s eyes glinted as though he had known what Draco was going to say all along.
He got like that sometimes. Mostly he acted normal; as though he wasn’t really a ghost at all. But sometimes he seemed so solemn and otherworldly that Draco didn’t know what to make of him. He wondered if the normal Harry was an act, something he did to fit in and make Draco feel more at ease with his presence. Draco rather hoped not.
Another disturbing case of Harry’s paranormal knowledge was revealed when Harry asked what had happened to Lucius after the war.
“He’s dead,” Draco said shortly. He didn’t like to think of his father much.
Harry said nothing for a moment. He looked as though he was trying to remember something very important. “No,” he said slowly. “No, he isn’t.”
Draco stared at him in shock. “How would you know?”
Harry looked confused. “I don’t know, I just…. I just do.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Draco tonelessly. “He might as well be. He got the Dementor’s Kiss. I’ve been petitioning the courts to give him the death penalty, but there’s a rather long list of people doing the same for their relatives.” Draco’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Imagine that, begging to have your father put down like a dog.”
“You did your best, Draco.” It should have felt condescending, but it was like Harry wasn’t even really speaking. He sounded too old and foreign to be himself. “You did everything you could to save your family.”
“Yes,” Draco sneered, “that makes me feel ever so much better. I did everything I could and yet my whole family still died.”
Harry’s strange mood wasn’t broken by Draco’s tone. “But you survived,” he said.
“I suppose you think I should live life to the fullest in their honor?”
“You don’t know how lucky you are, Malfoy,” Harry said, sounding more familiar. His eyes were very dark
*
When Draco was eight years old he’d decided he wanted to have a pumpkin juice stand. He’d gotten the idea from a comic that Crabbe had given him, The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. He got each new issue by owl post, and Draco collected them. Crabbe didn’t really mind, he only looked at the pictures anyway.
Accordingly a table was set up at the end of the drive leading up to the Manor and Draco stationed himself there with several pitchers of ice cold pumpkin juice, prepared for a day of booming business. Of course, the nearest house in the village was three miles away and no one seemed to think high noon on a July day was the perfect time for a stroll.
Draco sat there for what seemed like ages. He straitened the white table cloth, rearranged the glasses, and watched glumly as beads of water ran off the pitchers of juice. The ice had melted within the first fifteen minutes and when he poured himself a glass the liquid was decidedly warm.
After about an hour, when Draco was beginning to despair of ever having a customer, a line of house-elves made their way down the drive to his table. For ten minutes, Draco was gloriously busy preparing cups of luke-warm juice and ordering the elves to drink it. Each one gave him a galleon for his troubles.
After that Draco decided that, all in all, it had been a successful day. When his mother came down shortly after to check on him, he nonchalantly showed her the stacks of gold coins he had piled carefully on the table.
“Very good, Draco,” she said. Her voice was cool as it always was, but the corners of her mouth were turned up.
Draco had planned on going out again the next day, but his father came home and Draco abandoned the idea. Lucius wasn’t very tolerant of Draco playing games.
A few weeks later he’d found the pile of comics Draco had hidden away in his room.
“I won’t have you reading this filth, Draco,” he’d said. His voice was cold. “Do you understand?”
Draco nodded.
“Good.” He raised his wand. “Incendio,” he said, and the pile of comics was consumed by flames. “I won’t have Muggle stories in my house. Only wizards who aren’t pureblood or aren’t proud of their heritage would stoop so low as to consort with their kind.”
“I’m proud, father,” Draco said. “I’m proud to be a Malfoy.”
“Then you must act like it.”
He was very glad his father never found out about the pumpkin juice stand. His mother never said a word.
That had been Draco’s one and only experience with self employment. Or real employment of any kind, before his father taught him that those who were forced to work were common. Malfoys were not common.
And yet now Draco worked for the Ministry, doing a job that wasn’t really a job at all. It was just a sham. Draco’s life wasn’t common; it was a joke. And aside from setting up a pumpkin juice stand in front of his apartment building, he had no ideas for how to turn it around.
And yet Harry kept needling him about it.
“Why don’t you work somewhere else? Anywhere else!”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Draco said, “I don’t exactly have the most impressive credentials.”
“You don’t need credentials to be a store clerk.”
“Like anyone would really hire me! I usually get thrown out of shops once the owners realize who I am.”
Harry shrugged. “Make it difficult for them then. Change your name. Dye your hair.”
Draco was so insulted by these suggestions that he ignored Harry for the rest of the day. He was very surprised to discover this actually bothered Harry.
That night when Draco sat down to eat supper he stood leaning against the counter, staring. Could ghosts actually lean Draco wondered? Shouldn’t Harry go straight through the counter? In any case, he appeared to be brooding over something.
“Do you mind not staring?” Draco snapped. It made him nervous. It was the first thing he’d said to Harry in hours.
“It was only a suggestion!” said Harry angrily. “You didn’t have to throw a fit.”
Draco put his fork down slowly. “I’ve hurt your feelings, haven’t I?” he said. “I can’t believe it!”
“My feelings are not hurt.” Harry said stiffly.
“They are!” said Draco happily. “You’re peeved because I haven’t been speaking to you!” He laughed. “I think you might be getting too attached to me, Potter.”
Harry’s face changed and Draco suddenly felt as though he’d said something horribly wrong. “I think you might be right,” he whispered, and disappeared.
Draco was left feeling very confused. “Who’s throwing a fit now?” he shouted into the empty air.
*
That night he dreamt of Harry.
He shouldn’t have. He hadn’t dreamt in months. The potion had always worked for him before.
In the dream, Draco got up from his bed and walked through the door to the main room. It was daytime and the light was so bright that the white of his flat seemed unreal; there was such a glow about it that the edges of everything seemed to blur.
Harry sat on the couch, which struck Draco as odd, since Harry never usually sat down anywhere at all. Not since death. He had a piece of rope in his hands, as though he’d just finished braiding it himself.
Draco walked over to stand next to him and, as he did so, Harry stood up so they were facing each other. Draco couldn’t see through him at all.
“Here,” said Harry, holding out the rope. “It’s just enough to hang yourself with.”
Draco reached out and took it. Their fingers brushed impossibly for the barest instant.
“Thanks,” he said.
Part three soon to follow… because LJ is a bitch and the whole thing won’t fit into this post! Ah well.