"Bringing Back the Dead" (Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, OC)
Author: Anonymous
Prompt: After the war, Draco finds out he has a squib sibling. He wants to get to know to him/her and turns to Harry for help, seeing he is the only one of his acquaintances that knows the Muggle World. / feuerfunke
Title: Bringing Back the Dead
Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, original character. Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Swearing (once)
Word Count: 8653
Summary: After the war, the Ministry of Magic decides to integrate Squibs more fully into the wizarding world. This has consequences for the Malfoy family, leading Draco to ask for Harry's advice . . .
Author's notes: I wrote the first draft of this without looking to see what J. K. Rowling had revealed about the Malfoy family on Pottermore, but am relieved to find that my view of them seems to fit quite well with hers. I have added a couple of details from her information. Otherwise I think it's quite self-explanatory. Many thanks to W for her very perceptive beta-reading.
'I'm having lunch with a friend,' Harry Potter informed the Aurors' Office, pulling on his coat. 'Don't know how long I'll be, but it might run on a bit. I'll be in the Leaky Cauldron if anyone wants me.'
'OK Harry,' said Gawain Robards. 'Looks like a quiet afternoon - take your time. We'll get in touch if we need you.'
As he hurried through the streets of Muggle London, Harry wondered about his choice of words. Draco Malfoy was not exactly a friend - indeed, Harry would once have described him as an enemy without a second thought. But since then Draco had failed to kill Dumbledore, and had tried to save Harry's life twice - or so Harry thought - and of course Harry had actually saved Draco's life, and Draco's mother in turn had saved Harry, and, in short, things had got a whole lot more complicated. So, when the Malfoys were put on trial after the end of the Great War, Harry had agreed to give testimony on their behalf. He had surprised himself with how eloquent he was, and as a result all three had escaped Azkaban, being allowed to remain at Malfoy Manor subject to a series of wards and hexes if they attempted to contact certain people or visit certain places. Harry had been impressed that they had not attempted to claim this as their due, or to make further demands on him. Instead they had simply been grateful - Lucius in a rather florid but apparently heartfelt speech, Narcissa with a very charming smile, and Draco simply saying, 'Thanks, Potter, I really appreciate it,' without quite looking him in the eye. Harry had also been surprised - and pleased - that they had then left him alone. He had certainly wanted no more contact with them - even for someone of his standing, it was best not to have too much to do with known dark wizards. In the four and a half years since the trial, he had gradually stopped thinking about them.
So the owl that arrived in Grimmauld Place in the spring of 2003 was an unpleasant surprise. It was an Eagle Owl, a gigantic female, which arrived when Harry was having breakfast, provoking a hiss of disapproval from Harry's owl, Brumas. It could only have come from the Malfoys. With a sigh, Harry opened the letter it was carrying. It was short.
'Dear Harry,' it read. 'A certain difficulty has arisen in connection with the proposed Wizard/Muggle Relations Act 2003 (Integration of the Paramagical) and I would appreciate your advice and help. I would be very grateful if you would be able to find time to meet me (perhaps for lunch?) to discuss this. Yours, Draco Malfoy.'
Harry could not imagine how an act making provision for Squibs (or Paramagical Wizards, as they were now to be known) to be fully integrated into wizarding society would affect the Malfoys, but he had agreed, suggesting a date a couple of weeks away in order not to give the impression that he was at Draco's command.
He had then borrowed a copy of the act from Hermione, who was more than happy not only to lend it to him but also to talk him through its main points. She had been a junior member of the team that put it together, and was very proud of it. In anticipation of its becoming law, she was also helping Mrs. Weasley to make contact with her Paramagical cousin Bob Prewett, and to welcome him into the wizarding world. She was full of the problems and opportunities this posed.
'I wonder why Draco wants to know about it?' she asked. 'Do you think there can be a Paramagical witch or wizard in his family?'
'A Malfoy Squib?' replied Harry. Hermione glared at him.
'Harry, you know you mustn't . . .'
'OK, sorry. I know - it's just a bit hard to remember sometimes. And come on, the Malfoys, having to go around with someone Paramagical - can't you just see it?'
Hermione insisted that it wouldn't be funny at all, but Harry could tell that the thought amused her as much as it did him.
Draco was already in the Leaky Cauldron when he arrived, sipping a butterbeer at a table near the fire, and attracting stares and occasional whispers from the other customers. He seemed aware of the attention, and to shrink away from it - indeed, he looked smaller than Harry remembered, his silver-blond hair thinner and less bouffant; even his expensive robes did not hang so well on him. Altogether he seemed to lack confidence. He may have escaped Azkaban, but Harry knew that he had been unable to find a job. The Malfoy fortune was still amply large enough to support the family, but it could not be an enviable life.
Harry Potter had never been one to bow to the prejudices of the wizarding world, and he thought he saw a way to do some good. Walking up briskly to the table, he held out his hand, smiled and said loudly, 'Good to see you, Draco. How are you?'
For a split second Draco looked furious at his condescension, then all the pride of a wizarding pedigree that allegedly went back to Merlin himself kicked in, and he rose to his feet, smiled icily, shook Harry's hand, and said, 'I'm very well, thank you, Harry - how are you?'
That set the tone for the next few minutes. Harry replied that he was well and asked after Draco's parents, and Draco commented on a couple of recent successes of the Aurors' Office with a remarkable lack of sarcasm.
It was not until they had ordered food that Harry said, 'Well, what did you want to see me about?'
Draco sighed and looked down. 'It's the new statute,' he said.
'So you said.'
'Well . . .' Draco seemed somewhat embarrassed. 'When this statute was announced my parents . . . seemed a bit concerned, and took a lot of interest in it, and then when it was passed they told me that . . . um, I had a twin brother but he, er, died young - and now with this statute we will obviously have to bring him back into the family, you see, and, um . . . I was hoping you might be able to help me talk to him.'
Harry was horrified. Necromancy was one of the darkest of the dark arts - he was deeply sorry for the Malfoys' loss, but he could not help them to do this.
'Umm,' he began. 'I don't really think that the statute is meant to include dead members of your family - I mean, it's meant to be about Squibs really. Perhaps if you had a ghost in the family, but even then . . .'
Draco's lip curled scornfully. 'Oh, you are thick, Potter.' Harry noticed the 'Potter'. 'Severin isn't actually dead. Dying young is what families like mine say when a child turns out to be a Squib. Look,' he explained patiently, seeing Harry's shocked face, 'of course you don't want to have a Squib in the family - it makes you look like there's a weakness, something wrong with your bloodline, so you say he died young, and you send him away.'
'Send him away?? Away where?'
'To my Uncle Hector - well, he's Dad's cousin really, he . . . '
'Died young?' suggested Harry.
'That's right - so he was sent into the Muggle world, to another relative who died young, and he's a merchant banker in . . . the City, I think he said, which doesn't just mean London, apparently, although that's where he lives. Is that right?'
'That's right,' said Harry gloomily. Trust a Malfoy to be a fat cat.
'And he and his wife were asked to adopt Severin, and bring him up. Don't look at me like that - we didn't abandon him. Dad's been giving him an allowance - paying for his education too, of course. Have you heard of a school called Eton?' Draco asked anxiously. 'Is it a good school?'
'Is that where he went? Yes, it's a good school.' Harry tried not to think of Little Whinging Primary.
'Good. It's just that it seemed so odd to me that you should have to pay. Uncle Hector told Dad that if you didn't you went to a state school with all sorts of criminals and scum, and you learned nothing, but I wasn't sure that he wasn't just trying to get money out of him. But that's what you have to do, is it?'
'Yes,' said Harry. There was so much wrong with what Draco had just said that it simply wasn't worth beginning to try to put him right. And no doubt that was what this Uncle Hector believed, anyway. 'Let me get this straight,' he said. 'You have a twin brother who is a Squib, and who has been sent to live in the Muggle world, with a cousin of your father's who is also a Squib?'
'That's right.'
'And he's called Severin?'
'Severin Arcturus. He was Severus originally, but Uncle Hector thought that that wouldn't really work in the Muggle world.' Draco sounded quite smug.
Harry felt like telling him that Severin wasn't much better - especially with Arcturus as a middle name. How on earth had the poor child survived school? He contented himself with saying 'Snape can't have liked that. I assume the child was named after him?'
'He said it was typical, apparently.' Draco smirked; Harry could imagine Snape saying it. 'But he agreed with Uncle Hector - he didn't think it would work in the Muggle world either.'
'And what is he doing now? Is he in the City too?'
'No, that's a bit of a sore point. That's what Uncle Hector wanted for him, but he did well at his university - that's a sort of school you go to after school, if you're a Muggle, apparently - I don't understand what they have to learn that is so difficult, perhaps all the stuff they have to use because they don't have magic? - but anyway, he did really well, and they wanted him to stay on and do research or something, and Dad was prepared to pay, so he is doing something called a PhD. In medieval history.'
'He must be clever then,' Harry said, 'if he's doing a PhD. I take it you aren't identical twins?'
'Well no-o, obviously,' replied Draco. 'I'm not a Squib, am I?'
'So which university is he at, then?' asked Harry, adding nastily, 'Oxford or Cambridge?'
'Cambridge,' said Draco innocently. 'Are there only the two, then? Uncle Hector made it sound like there were more.'
'And you knew nothing about him? How long has he been living with this Uncle Hector?'
'Since he was a baby.'
'But how on earth did your parents know he was a Squib at that age?'
'They asked Snape of course, you idiot. When a child is born in our family we always ask the Head of Slytherin to check to see that he is in the Hogwarts book, and if he isn't, then . . .'
'. . . he dies young,' finished Harry. How like the Malfoys to assume that the Head of Slytherin had nothing better to do than run errands for them.
'Precisely,' said Draco, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. 'Dad and Mum have had regular reports from Uncle Hector, but I was too young to remember him, and he was told that his parents were killed in an accident, so neither of us knew anything. But the Ministry of Magic have been snooping around, and have told us that this new act means that we have to welcome him back into the family or else. So Dad has had a word with Uncle Hector and he has . . . explained things to Severin, and . . . apparently he is delighted he has a twin brother and wants me to come and see him and . . . and I thought that you know all about Muggles, you know the sort of questions they would be likely to ask, and I wondered if you would come with me?'
There was no mistaking the desperation in that request. Draco would clearly be unable to cope with the Muggle world - equally clearly he was afraid of meeting the brother his family had wronged so badly. Harry did not feel any sympathy at all for him. The Malfoys in their arrogance had brought this problem on themselves - let them deal with it. But then he thought of Severin, saddled with a weird name, told that his parents were dead, and then told that they weren't, that they had just sent him away because they were ashamed of him. His own introduction to the magical world had been difficult enough, but to have to learn about it from people like the Malfoys, to be related to them, to think that they were in any way typical . . . Besides, a small and mean part of him wanted to watch them have to deal with this.
'I'll do it,' Harry said.
Two weeks later, as they apparated into a quiet side street close to Cambridge city centre, Harry was regretting that decision. How could he relate to someone whose guardian was a merchant banker, and whose experience of the Muggle world was of Eton and Cambridge? Ginny had thought that he was mad to be doing anything for the Malfoys, and had predicted that this Severin would turn out to be just as arrogant as Draco. Harry had to admit to himself that he thought the same.
Draco was not helping matters either. He had turned up late, dressed in expensive Muggle clothes - sent by Uncle Hector, apparently. It was very obvious that they were brand new, and equally obvious that he had no idea how to move in them. Indeed, he had already complained several times about how uncomfortable they were. Now he looked around at the houses of Muggle Cambridge with suspicion and disdain. Harry told himself for the nth time to think of Severin - but even that seemed less of an inducement. He smiled grimly to himself.
'Here we are, Trinity College,' he said a few minutes later, looking up from his map at an elaborate gatehouse set back from the street.
'Nice,' said Draco appreciatively. 'Who's the statue of?'
'Henry VIII,' replied Harry. 'He was a Muggle king. He probably founded the college or something.'
'No it isn't,' said Draco as they got closer. 'It's Edwardus Tertius. See, it says so: "Edwardus Tertius fundator aule regis". I thought you knew about Muggles!'
'Most Muggles don't know all the kings,' said Harry hotly. 'It's like the Chief Warlocks of the Wizengamot - you learn the names at school and then you forget them again. Edward III was another king - earlier than Henry VIII.' He tried to sound as though he was absolutely sure of that. 'The kingship goes from father to son, so they all look alike - they're very easy to mix up.'
'So can you tell me why he's holding a wand, then?'
'It's not a wand. It's a sceptre. It doesn't actually do anything, it just shows he's the king.'
Draco wrinkled his nose at the statue. 'Why on earth would holding something that looks like a chair leg show you're the king?'
'It's tradition - like having a cat or a toad shows you're a wizard. And it's nothing like a chair leg.'
'What a stupid tradition,' said Draco. 'But I like the building. Almost wizardly. Come on.'
Feeling very ignorant and very plebeian, Harry followed him.
'Hello?' The young man who opened the door looked exactly like a younger version of Lucius, although his silver-blond hair was an untidy collar-length bush, and he was wearing jeans and an old jumper. His eyes widened when he saw them, and his face broke into a most un-Lucius-like grin. 'You must be Draco? How good to meet you at last!' Before Draco could react, Severin had swept him into a bear-hug, which Draco returned feebly. 'And this is . . .?' He held out his hand to Harry.
'This is my friend, Harry Potter.' Harry noticed the almost imperceptible hesitation at 'friend'. 'He grew up with Muggles - that's people who aren't wizards - so I thought he might be able to help you understand our world better.' If Draco was nervous, it wasn't showing in his voice.
Severin smiled. 'Pleased to meet you, Harry. Do come in, both of you. Would you like some coffee?'
The size of the room took Harry by surprise. For some reason, he had been under the impression that student rooms were small, but this was a good-sized sitting room. And it was a sitting room too - an open door in one corner showed a glimpse of a smaller bedroom beyond. Both were very untidy. Severin swept some books off a couple of chairs and busied himself with an electric kettle, asking after their journey as he grabbed milk and coffee. It was not until they all had mugs in their hands that he sat down, smiled, and said, 'So I'm not an orphan after all, then?'
'No,' replied Draco stiffly. 'I'm very sorry . . . we're very sorry, but please believe that we did it for the best. It's . . . it's very difficult for people like you in our world, you see - you need magic to do anything, you'd have to depend on other people helping you all the time . . . and so we've got into the habit of setting you up in the Muggle world. We really thought you'd be happier there, you see . . . I've got a letter from Mum and Dad, explaining it all.' He pulled a letter out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Severin, who ripped it open eagerly. A photo fell out - Lucius and Narcissa, smiling and waving. Severin's eyes widened in shock. He picked it up gingerly.
'Are these . . . are these our parents?'
'Yes.' Draco smiled.
'Is this some sort of communication device? Hello?' The figures in the photo continued to wave happily. 'They're not . . . alive? In this picture I mean.'
'No. It's what we call a magically induced simulacrum. They move, like the real people would, and they'll obey simple commands - stand still, that sort of thing. But they don't have any real feeling. You could burn the photo and you wouldn't have killed anything.'
'That's good to know. Stand still then.' Severin addressed the photo. Lucius and Narcissa froze. 'Oh, I don't like that pose - move again, please.'
'It's better like this.' Draco pulled out his wand. 'Finite incantatem.' The Malfoys stopped moving, Lucius with his arm round Narcissa, both beaming out of the picture with parental pride. 'There you are.'
'Thank you. I'm sorry - it just seems more normal to me that way. Now I can put it on my mantelpiece.' He did so, and stood smiling at it for a minute. 'I always thought I must come from a very special family - to have given me such a wonderful name, to start with. But I never dreamed that they would be wizards.' He turned to Draco. 'And was that magic that you did just then?'
Draco nodded.
'With . . . with a magic wand?'
Draco grinned and pulled it out. 'Here you are. Hawthorn wood and unicorn hair.'
Severin took it from him, nervously. 'It's . . . got a sort of buzz to it. Like electricity.'
'That's because you're my brother - you've got an affinity to it. If you were a real Muggle you wouldn't feel anything.'
Severin looked at Harry. 'Do you . . .?'
'Yes.' Harry handed it over. 'Holly and phoenix feather.'
'Ah, yes. This one buzzes less, I think - because we're not related?' Harry nodded. 'But I can feel it, just a little. And there really are such things as phoenixes and unicorns?' Both Draco and Harry nodded vehemently. 'That's . . . that's rather hard to get my head around. This family is going to take some getting used to.'
He turned his attention to the letter, and read for some minutes in silence. Then he folded it up and put it away.
'Uncle Hector explained all this. And I can quite understand why you had me adopted - I can see that I'd be a burden in your world, and I know that would probably make me miserable. And I have been very happy - Uncle Hector and Aunt Frances couldn't have been kinder, and as you can see I've got a great life here. But - but I would have loved to know my parents.' He swallowed, and went on. 'I've always wondered what they were like - I've never even seen photos before. I thought they'd died in a car crash, and they've been alive all this time!' His voice was raw with emotion.
Harry had a sudden uncomfortable flashback to Hagrid shouting at the Dursleys for telling him a similar lie. But his parents really had died - when, if not how, the Dursleys had told him. How terrible to find that they were alive and hiding themselves from you!
Severin was continuing. 'And I wish I'd known I had a brother - I've always envied boys at school with brothers and sisters, and a twin - how cool is that? Even if I couldn't live in your world, couldn't we have met, sometimes? Couldn't you at least have - oh I don't know, let me come for Christmas or something? Didn't you wonder about me, sometimes - what I was like, what I was doing?'
Draco shook his head. 'They didn't tell me either.'
Severin made an angry gesture with his arms. 'So they've been fooling us both? Wouldn't you have liked to have had a brother?'
'Yes.' Draco nodded slowly. 'It would have been fun. But it just wouldn't have been possible. The wizarding world . . .' He looked helplessly at Harry.
'The wizarding world . . .' Harry repeated. The wizarding world would have been fine with this, he thought, it's just your arrogant pure-blood supremacist family who wouldn't. But he couldn't say that, even though he half wanted to. He couldn't think what to say.
Draco could. He looked at Harry again, and then with a courage that surprised him took a deep breath and said, quickly and harshly, 'It's not the wizarding world - or at least it is the wizarding world, but mostly . . . mostly it's us. We thought you would want to live in our world, you see, and we would have found that . . . embarrassing, I suppose. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.' He looked miserably at the carpet, his hands between his knees.
'Embarrassing?' Severin sounded like Lucius at his most icy.
'People would have said . . .' Draco swallowed wretchedly, 'my friends would have said . . . that there was something wrong with us. If we had non-magic people in our family.'
'I see.' Severin's voice would have frozen hell. He sat for a few minutes, furiously running both hands through his hair, as though he wanted to pull it out by the roots. Draco stared at the carpet - close to tears, Harry thought. He himself would have given anything just to be able to apparate away from the whole scene. He had thought that it might be funny to see the discomfiture of the Malfoys, but it wasn't, it wasn't at all.
Suddenly Severin shook himself like a dog and straightened up. Looking carefully out of the window, he said, 'Actually, I do see, I think. One of my friends here, David, has a sister who has Down's Syndrome. I've met her, she's a nice girl, but David says that when they were growing up he and his brother got all sorts of grief at school - people would say that the whole family was somehow "mental". Is that what you are saying it would be like?' He looked very severely at Draco.
Draco met his brother's eyes. 'Yes, I am saying that it would be . . . something . . . like that. You would be . . . like your friend's sister.'
'Whereas here, I'm fine. I can function very well, and nobody is pointing and laughing. And nobody is pointing and laughing at you on my account, either. So what has changed?'
Briefly, Draco explained the new act.
'So we're not the only ones?'
'No.' Draco looked at Harry.
'Certainly not,' he said. 'In fact, my wife's family have a cousin who is an accountant. He did know about them, but never had much to do with them before. We had dinner with him and his family just last week.' And it was a disaster, he added to himself.
'So what you're saying is that it will look good for your . . . my . . . our parents if you take me back. Is that it?'
'Yes. No.' Draco looked down. 'I don't know what Mum says in that letter?'
'That a day hasn't gone by without her thinking about me, wondering where I was, what I was doing . . .'
'That's all true.' Draco leant forward, eagerly. 'She's really missed you, she's been so excited at the thought of seeing you again. She talks of you all the time. Uncle Hector sent her a photo, and she does nothing but look at it. Please meet her, at least - it'll break her heart if you don't. And Dad too - when I told him that you' - he nodded at Harry - 'said that Severin must be really clever, he was so proud. He's got all the family papers out - we came over with the Conqueror, you know.'
Severin laughed. 'Yes, I did know that. We're in Domesday. But I didn't know we had papers.'
'Going right back to original charters from the Muggle king to Armand de Malefoy.'
'You're kidding!' Severin's eyes lit up - then became solemn again. 'And you?' he asked. 'Do you want me - or will I just be an embarrassment?'
Draco leant further forward. 'Yes,' he said simply. 'I . . . wasn't sure at first. I . . . don't know any Muggles. I didn't know what you'd be like. But now - yes, I'd really like to get to know you.'
Severin bit his lip and Harry could see his eyes glistening. Without a word he reached over and hugged Draco, and they sat like that for some time, while Harry looked awkwardly at the furniture. Then they pulled apart, sheepishly.
'Sorry,' Severin said. 'It's not every day you meet your long-lost twin brother, you know. By the way,' he turned to Draco, 'which of us is the older? Uncle Hector couldn't remember.'
'You are.' Draco grinned. 'By twelve minutes.'
'OK then, little brother - you have no idea how good that sounds - and little brother's friend, how about I show you the college, and then take you punting?' He got to his feet. 'Now,' he put on a tour-guide voice, 'Trinity College is the largest and richest college in either Oxford or Cambridge, and was founded in 1546 by Henry VIII . . .'
'Told you,' whispered Harry to Draco.
'What?'
'I thought that statue on the gatehouse was Henry VIII, but it seemed to say Edward III.'
'Ah - when he founded the college he did so out of a lot of smaller colleges and halls, one of which was founded by Edward III - that's why it says that. By the way, did you notice that he's holding a chair leg instead of a sceptre? A student swapped them in the nineteenth century for a joke.'
Behind Severin's back, Draco stuck his tongue out at Harry.
The tour of the college proved rather embarrassing for both Harry and Draco. Harry had heard of Sir Isaac Newton, but Draco had not, which shocked Severin, and several other famous alumni drew a blank with both. Finally when neither of them had heard of Sir Christopher Wren (who had apparently designed the college library) he laughed and said that he wished he could introduce them to the Master: 'His whole life starts and ends with this college. It would do him good to realise that the entire world doesn't revolve around it.'
Nor did they fare much better when it came to the punts. They were all named after things that came in threes, apparently, and it was only after some hesitation that Harry told Draco that he thought that a musketeer was a sort of old-fashioned soldier, and that The Three Musketeers was a book.
'Have you not read it?' asked Severin. 'I can lend it to you, if you like. It's very good, and The Count of Monte Cristo's even better. There must be all sorts of books you can lend me - ancient wizarding adventures, that sort of thing. It'll be great fun to read them! Oh, and do you like Shakespeare?' he continued, pushing the Musketeer out into mid-stream. Harry had never seen any Shakespeare - Draco had never even heard of him. Severin was horrified, and said that they must come to the college production of Twelfth Night at the end of term - he would be playing a character called Malvolio. 'You've really never heard of Shakespeare?' he kept asking, appalled, and both Harry and Draco felt quite chastened.
But they were able to prove their worth by the end of the afternoon. The river was crowded, full of visitors who had never punted before, and even Severin's undoubted skill could not enable them to steer their way through the mayhem. Draco and Harry looked at one another, then took out their wands, and began to gently deflect other punts out of their path.
'Is it you doing that?' asked Severin, as one particularly inept tourist shot out in front of them, and then, to his own surprise, turned downstream in a graceful curve. 'If so, could you keep on please?' So they did.
Then, when they were almost home, disaster struck. Coming out from under a bridge, Severin raised his punt pole - and one of a group of young men standing on the bridge reached out and grabbed the top.
'Here, let go!' yelled Severin, twisting the pole furiously as he felt the punt glide away from under him.
'Nah! Fucking students, think you're so great!' jeered the young man, holding on tight. Then suddenly he dropped the pole as though it had burned him, and the punt shot forward, with Severin struggling to keep his feet.
'What the . . . ??'
'Stinging hex,' said Harry triumphantly. The young man was glaring at them, nursing his hand. His friends continued to shout insults. One of them was leaning on a large ornamental stone ball on the parapet. Out of the corner of his eye Harry saw Draco smile and raise his wand . . .
There was a cry from a woman in a punt, and she steered for the bank as the stone ball began to slip from its place. Other punters looked up, and within seconds the river had emptied. The young man who had been leaning on the ball grabbed it with both hands, horrified, as it started to rock to and fro. Severin, who had recovered his balance, turned round.
'No!' he said, laughing.'No, that's brilliant, that's so funny - look at his face! - but you really mustn't. Please stop it now!'
With a final twist of his wand Draco made the ball give two more violent jerks, then it settled back into place as if it had never moved. The young men fled.
'I call that real teamwork,' said Severin with satisfaction, as the Musketeer glided under the last bridge and back to port. 'All for one, and one for - oh, hang on, I'm going to have to explain that, amn't I?'
Harry did not see much of Draco over the next few weeks. It was a busy time at work and he had turned down the invitation to Twelfth Night, reflecting that after all, Draco and Severin seemed to be getting on perfectly well without him, but he knew from Draco that the entire Malfoy family had gone, and, to Harry's surprise, had enjoyed the play very much. Draco in particular had been so enthusiastic that Severin had invited him to a professional production of Hamlet in London. Shortly after that Harry had met him in Diagon Alley and he had been unable to stop talking about it.
'Why did we not know about this?' he had demanded, as if his family had not been instrumental in keeping the Muggle and wizarding worlds apart. 'Who would have thought a Muggle could write like that? I mean, I thought Twelfth Night was good, but Hamlet! It was just . . . just like he was writing about me! How could a dead Muggle writer know me like that?' He reddened.
Harry, to change the subject, asked how Severin was getting on with his parents.
'Great,' said Draco airily. 'I mean, well, the first time they met Dad was all awkward and formal and Mum burst into tears and said he was her little boy and she'd never stopped thinking about him, and that was, well, really embarrassing for everybody - poor Sev didn't know what to say - but then he asked Dad about the family history and Dad told him all about it, and promised to show him the archives when he came for dinner, and since then he's been down every weekend going through everything with Dad and telling him how the Malfoys fit into Muggle history - you know, before the Statute of Secrecy and everything - and Dad's absolutely fascinated by it all. He was always trying to get me to take an interest in the ancestors, but I could never really remember who was who, so he's absolutely charmed with Sev. And Sev reckons there's a lot he could use for his doctorate, and even write books about - for Muggles, without mentioning the wizarding side of things of course. So Dad said why didn't he write books for wizards as well, and he's seriously thinking about that.'
Harry could just see that - Severin the famous historian, the successful Squib, the poster boy for the new act, launching his books in Flourish and Blotts with Lucius hovering proprietorially in the background. He thought of Arthur Weasley, reading up so enthusiastically about accountancy, asking the Prewetts endless questions about the Muggle world, desperately trying to put them at their ease, failing miserably. How on earth did the Malfoys do it? It wasn't fair.
'He's even found a Potter,' said Draco, mischievously, looking sidelong at him. 'A Muggleborn who worked at Gringotts with the goblins in the sixteenth century, who made loads of money, and married one of the Malfoy daughters. He's going to tell you all about it.'
Great, thought Harry. He was related to the Malfoys. He had always vaguely known that he must be - after all all wizarding families were related to one another to some extent - but he really had not needed to know the details right now. A Muggleborn Potter - the first wizarding Potter from the sound of things - marrying a Malfoy, to legitimize himself perhaps, and the Malfoys being quite happy to marry one of their daughters to a rich Muggleborn! A few years ago they would have died rather than admit such a thing; now they joked about it. His mood was not improved as he returned to work.
But he did mention the discussion to Hermione, and she came into his office the next day with a battered family copy of Hamlet and a thoughtful expression. Harry's expression was thoughtful too, when he read it - some of the soliloquies in particular reminded him of the tormented Draco he had seen in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom all those years ago, or on top of the Astronomy Tower, trying and failing to kill Dumbledore. He wondered if he was being a little harsh. After all, if Draco was developing a love of Muggle culture he could hardly turn round and say that all Muggles were vermin, and that, surely, could only be a good thing.
But Draco's relationship with the Muggle world was destined to get a lot closer. A week or so later Harry found him in the Leaky Cauldron, wearing a Muggle suit and eating lunch. He jumped as Harry put his hand on his shoulder.
'Going to a fancy dress party?' Harry asked.
'I'm applying for a job, if you must know.' Draco blushed furiously. 'Uncle Hector suggested it to me - with his bank. The interview's this afternoon.'
'What!! You're applying for a job with a Muggle bank? But why on earth . . .?' Too late he realised that in his shock he had spoken much more loudly than he meant to.
'That's right - tell the whole world, why don't you?' Draco looked miserable. He waited until the rest of the customers - most of them anyway - had lost interest and gone back to their conversations, then continued in an undertone. 'I shouldn't have come in here dressed like this, but I just - I don't know - I wanted to be somewhere I knew, somewhere wizardly, to give myself confidence. It's not even a proper job, it's something called an internship, it's not paid, but if they like me it could lead to a proper job later, Uncle Hector says. And he's trying to be helpful - he's been so decent over the business with Sev, how could I refuse - and,' he looked Harry straight in the eye, 'it's not as if anyone's ever going to give me a proper wizarding job, is it? Not with my reputation. I might as well do this.'
There was nothing Harry could say to this. Draco was quite right - no reputable wizard would ever employ him. Bizarre as it might seem, the Muggle world was his only chance. He wished him luck as warmly as he could, and left.
The next Malfoy Harry saw was Severin. He came into the office one day, explained that he had been working in the Ministry archives, and asked Harry if he would be free for lunch. Harry was meeting Ginny, Ron and Hermione, but suggested that Severin come too. So at lunchtime he found himself in the Leaky Cauldron, introducing Severin to his wife and friends.
'Don't tell me - you two must be Weasleys, right?' said Severin. 'Dad's been telling me about the old families, and he says that all Weasleys have red hair and freckles.'
Harry caught Ron's eye. The words 'and more children than they can afford' hung unspoken in the air - but from his behaviour, it would seem that Severin had heard only good of the Weasleys, and was genuinely delighted to meet them. Once again, Harry had the odd feeling of the Malfoys adapting to a changing world. 'So how's your brother?' he asked, when they had all introduced themselves and settled down.
'The financial wizard?' said Severin, laughing. 'He's doing really well - everyone seems very pleased with him. Uncle Hector is so proud - reminds me every five minutes that it's a good thing that someone in the family isn't a head-in-the-clouds academic. I keep asking Draco if he's using magic at work, but he swears he isn't.'
That's a lie, said Ron's eyebrows to Harry. Severin didn't notice.
'And how are you liking the wizarding world?' Hermione asked him, seriously. He smiled.
'It's fascinating,' he said. 'Not what I expected at all. Very interesting the way it sort of parallels . . . our world in some ways and not in others. I'm really enjoying learning about the history - it explains so much that I didn't understand before. I've been in the Ministry archives this morning, and I've found some amazing things. Would you believe that it was a wizard who founded the Templars?' Puzzled faces met him. 'They were an order of knights who took vows like monks. Very controversial, very mysterious, and there are a lot of things we don't really know about them. But from what I was reading this morning it would seem that they always had a core of wizards, and they were founded by a wizard, a knight called Godric Gryffindor - and you will know about him, because he's very famous in your world, I believe.'
Four Gryffindors beamed with satisfaction.
'And of course I know about him from our family archives, because he was very close to our family - we held some of our land from him, and, in fact, I now find that Drogo and Serlo de Malefoy were among his first six wizard Templars. What? What's the matter?' He looked round at the shocked faces. 'You're looking at me like Dad. When I started translating documents for him, he used to say that they couldn't possibly say what I said. Now he says that they will really revolutionise what we - you - know.'
Again Harry felt uncomfortable.
'And I'm sure that that can only be a good thing,' said Hermione, bravely. 'But apart from that, how are you getting on?'
'Fine. Mostly it's just great to have my parents and brother. And that's enough for me really. I mean, it's nice to know your world, but I'm never really going to be part of it. Although I do love it.' He paused for a minute. 'But it's also very odd to me. I can see why you would want to hide your magic, but I don't understand why you seem to have cut yourself off so completely from the Muggle world. Why, Draco didn't even know about the war!'
The blank stares that greeted this suggested that Draco was not the only one.
'Who are we at war with?' asked Ron carefully.
'With Iraq,' said Severin. 'Mesopotamia, I mean - we call it Iraq. And it's over - sort of. We won. We invaded in March - allegedly because they had powerful weapons that threatened us, but of course we've found nothing there, as quite a lot of us could have told you all along. It was all for the oil really - we use oil for a lot of our machinery, like cars and things, and they have lots of it. And I've been marching and protesting, and writing letters, and so have lots of other people, but none of it did the slightest good - and it is just really odd to me that none of you know anything about this at all. And then there's our culture. I've been taking Draco to plays and operas and concerts, and he's absolutely fascinated by them, and neither of us understands why he hasn't come across them before. I mean, why do you not read? You don't seem to have much literature of your own, and yet you don't read our stuff? Why not? Why would it not interest you?'
'Well, it's all about Muggles, I suppose,' said Hermione. 'Why would wizards want to read about people who can't use magic?'
'For the same reason I'd want to read novels set in seventeenth-century France, or nineteenth-century New York, or modern day Nigeria, or whatever. Because we're all different but all human, and it's fascinating to look into other people's cultures.' He turned to Ginny. 'Are you not interested in how other people live?'
'I don't really read much,' she replied. 'But I'd be interested in Muggle sports. I used to have a boyfriend whose family were Muggles and he talked a lot about football.'
'We've been through this before,' said Harry. 'It's very dull compared to Quidditch, very one-dimensional.'
Ginny shook her head stubbornly. 'Dean didn't think so. And I'd love to see a match just to be able to judge for myself.' She looked hopefully at Severin.
'I'm not a big football fan, I'm afraid. And it's the wrong time of year. But tell you what, how about tennis?' He explained briefly. 'That doesn't give you a good idea - there's a lot more skill involved than that. But Uncle Hector gets tickets for Wimbledon - that's the really big tennis tournament here in London - every year. Why don't you come with us?'
Hermione quickly said no, explaining that she had seen tennis before and that sports didn't really interest her, but to Harry's surprise both Weasleys were enthusiastic, and he agreed to come too, curious to see what his friends would make of it. So it was that he found himself part of a small group enjoying Hector Malfoy's hospitality in very good seats for the Wimbledon men's singles final.
Hector and Frances Malfoy turned out to be genial hosts, and, to Harry's great relief, much less intimidating than Lucius and Narcissa. Draco was one of the party, along with Astoria Greengrass, with whom he seemed to be very friendly. He had changed a lot since Harry had last seen him - gone were the stubble and the lacklustre hair, and he now looked thoroughly at home in his Muggle clothes. Astoria too seemed very aware of how good she looked in her summer dress, and behaved as though she had never worn anything else. Draco kept taking her to meet 'guys from the bank' at the changes of ends, and came back with oracular pronouncements about the tennis - 'Marcus says . . . Charlie says . . .' like an expert among experts.
Initially annoyed, Harry felt his anger melting away during the course of the afternoon, and turning to amusement. You would never have known that this was the Draco Malfoy who had expressed such contempt for Muggles - he and Astoria had fitted themselves into the upper-class Muggle world as if they had never lived anywhere else, while the Muggle-loving Weasleys were happy, but clearly slightly out of place. This, Harry realised, was a fundamental truth about Malfoys - they adapted, and they always came out on top. Resenting it would be like resenting Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. And actually he did not resent it. He remembered Draco as he had been only three months before - shabby, defeated, humiliated. Would he really prefer that to the cheerful and self-confident young wizard here this afternoon? Oh, Draco could certainly be a pain - Draco would always be a pain. But a Draco who raved about Muggle plays and operas - and Muggle sport, to judge by the enthusiasm with which he was explaining the rules of tennis to Astoria - was surely preferable to a Draco who plotted and indulged dreams of pure-blood coups.
And then there was Severin - obviously delighted that he was bringing so much pleasure to his new friends. To think that Harry had worried about him being patronized and looked down on by the Malfoys! In wizarding history he had clearly found something that he could relate to, and also something that had led to a remarkably equal relationship with his father. He had found a family and found a research subject - was it really so bad if Lucius was using his discoveries to advance the Malfoy cause once again? Harry thought that Severin had enough integrity not to let him put forward anything that was not true and provable - and if the Malfoys really had once been among the closest friends of Godric Gryffindor, then perhaps it was time for the wizarding world to know that. Far from being a barely tolerated embarrassment, Severin seemed to be managing his two worlds with remarkable ease.
Harry leant forward to hear what he was saying to Ginny.
'So why are you saying that Federer has wizarding blood but Philippoussis doesn't? Because he's better?'
'No.' Ginny was trying to work out what she meant herself. 'That's not what I'm saying. There - look at that shot! How can you say he's not good if he can hit shots like that? It's not a matter of talent, of what he does, it's the way that he does it - it's a style, a grace, a flair. I can't explain it, but if you're a witch or a wizard, you know. Just as I knew the moment I saw you that you had wizarding blood. It's something in the way that you move, I think.'
'And this knowledge that I had wizarding blood had nothing to do with the fact that I look very like my father and brother?' Severin was laughing.
'No, nothing at all.' Ginny was laughing too. 'Ron, help me out here. You think this Federer is from a wizarding family, don't you?'
'Oh absolutely. You couldn't mistake it. Wow - what a shot!' Ron broke off to applaud. 'There, Sev - did you see that? Only a wizard could have done that!'
'You're saying that he's an actual wizard?' asked Severin, incredulous.
'No. What I'm saying is that somewhere in his family, generations back - he probably doesn't know it himself - you will find a Squib.' Harry noted with amusement that, away from Hermione, Ron dropped the new term. 'And behind that Squib there will be a wizarding family. Oh, and that the magic may well come out again in the future - if he ever has children, he might be in for a surprise.'
'Really?' Severin was interested. 'If I have children, might they be wizards then?'
'Yes, or your grandchildren, or your great-grandchildren, or your great-great-grandchildren. You never know when or how the magic is going to come out - but it's always there, always something that's part of you.'
Severin looked very gratified.
'Well, I'm still not sure that I believe you about Federer. Draco, do we know anything about wizarding families in Switzerland?'
Draco made a face. 'Dad might.'
'I'll ask him.' They sat back. Play had resumed again.
'This is wonderful,' said Ginny, after the presumed wizard had executed a few more breathtaking shots. 'Thank you so much for this, Sev. We must invite you to the Quidditch world cup next year.'
'Yes,' said Ron. 'It's in Iceland - they've got the most amazing team.'
'I'd like that,' replied Severin. 'Draco's been telling me all about how he used to play for his house at school.'
The Weasleys looked at one another.
'Yes,' Harry found himself saying. 'We had some great contests, didn't we Draco?'
Draco laughed. 'That would be one way of putting it,' he said. 'OK, another tie-break it is. Finish this in three, wizard!'
'You think he's a wizard too?' said Severin in despair. 'I give in. Come on, Swiss wizard - finish this now!'
Yes, thought Harry, that would be one way of putting it - and perhaps not the way that best expressed how he - and Draco - had felt about it at the time. But for the here and now, on a summer Sunday afternoon with friends, as they cheered on the honour of the wizarding world in the person of Roger Federer, perhaps it was as good a way as any.
Prompt: After the war, Draco finds out he has a squib sibling. He wants to get to know to him/her and turns to Harry for help, seeing he is the only one of his acquaintances that knows the Muggle World. / feuerfunke
Title: Bringing Back the Dead
Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, original character. Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Swearing (once)
Word Count: 8653
Summary: After the war, the Ministry of Magic decides to integrate Squibs more fully into the wizarding world. This has consequences for the Malfoy family, leading Draco to ask for Harry's advice . . .
Author's notes: I wrote the first draft of this without looking to see what J. K. Rowling had revealed about the Malfoy family on Pottermore, but am relieved to find that my view of them seems to fit quite well with hers. I have added a couple of details from her information. Otherwise I think it's quite self-explanatory. Many thanks to W for her very perceptive beta-reading.
'I'm having lunch with a friend,' Harry Potter informed the Aurors' Office, pulling on his coat. 'Don't know how long I'll be, but it might run on a bit. I'll be in the Leaky Cauldron if anyone wants me.'
'OK Harry,' said Gawain Robards. 'Looks like a quiet afternoon - take your time. We'll get in touch if we need you.'
As he hurried through the streets of Muggle London, Harry wondered about his choice of words. Draco Malfoy was not exactly a friend - indeed, Harry would once have described him as an enemy without a second thought. But since then Draco had failed to kill Dumbledore, and had tried to save Harry's life twice - or so Harry thought - and of course Harry had actually saved Draco's life, and Draco's mother in turn had saved Harry, and, in short, things had got a whole lot more complicated. So, when the Malfoys were put on trial after the end of the Great War, Harry had agreed to give testimony on their behalf. He had surprised himself with how eloquent he was, and as a result all three had escaped Azkaban, being allowed to remain at Malfoy Manor subject to a series of wards and hexes if they attempted to contact certain people or visit certain places. Harry had been impressed that they had not attempted to claim this as their due, or to make further demands on him. Instead they had simply been grateful - Lucius in a rather florid but apparently heartfelt speech, Narcissa with a very charming smile, and Draco simply saying, 'Thanks, Potter, I really appreciate it,' without quite looking him in the eye. Harry had also been surprised - and pleased - that they had then left him alone. He had certainly wanted no more contact with them - even for someone of his standing, it was best not to have too much to do with known dark wizards. In the four and a half years since the trial, he had gradually stopped thinking about them.
So the owl that arrived in Grimmauld Place in the spring of 2003 was an unpleasant surprise. It was an Eagle Owl, a gigantic female, which arrived when Harry was having breakfast, provoking a hiss of disapproval from Harry's owl, Brumas. It could only have come from the Malfoys. With a sigh, Harry opened the letter it was carrying. It was short.
'Dear Harry,' it read. 'A certain difficulty has arisen in connection with the proposed Wizard/Muggle Relations Act 2003 (Integration of the Paramagical) and I would appreciate your advice and help. I would be very grateful if you would be able to find time to meet me (perhaps for lunch?) to discuss this. Yours, Draco Malfoy.'
Harry could not imagine how an act making provision for Squibs (or Paramagical Wizards, as they were now to be known) to be fully integrated into wizarding society would affect the Malfoys, but he had agreed, suggesting a date a couple of weeks away in order not to give the impression that he was at Draco's command.
He had then borrowed a copy of the act from Hermione, who was more than happy not only to lend it to him but also to talk him through its main points. She had been a junior member of the team that put it together, and was very proud of it. In anticipation of its becoming law, she was also helping Mrs. Weasley to make contact with her Paramagical cousin Bob Prewett, and to welcome him into the wizarding world. She was full of the problems and opportunities this posed.
'I wonder why Draco wants to know about it?' she asked. 'Do you think there can be a Paramagical witch or wizard in his family?'
'A Malfoy Squib?' replied Harry. Hermione glared at him.
'Harry, you know you mustn't . . .'
'OK, sorry. I know - it's just a bit hard to remember sometimes. And come on, the Malfoys, having to go around with someone Paramagical - can't you just see it?'
Hermione insisted that it wouldn't be funny at all, but Harry could tell that the thought amused her as much as it did him.
Draco was already in the Leaky Cauldron when he arrived, sipping a butterbeer at a table near the fire, and attracting stares and occasional whispers from the other customers. He seemed aware of the attention, and to shrink away from it - indeed, he looked smaller than Harry remembered, his silver-blond hair thinner and less bouffant; even his expensive robes did not hang so well on him. Altogether he seemed to lack confidence. He may have escaped Azkaban, but Harry knew that he had been unable to find a job. The Malfoy fortune was still amply large enough to support the family, but it could not be an enviable life.
Harry Potter had never been one to bow to the prejudices of the wizarding world, and he thought he saw a way to do some good. Walking up briskly to the table, he held out his hand, smiled and said loudly, 'Good to see you, Draco. How are you?'
For a split second Draco looked furious at his condescension, then all the pride of a wizarding pedigree that allegedly went back to Merlin himself kicked in, and he rose to his feet, smiled icily, shook Harry's hand, and said, 'I'm very well, thank you, Harry - how are you?'
That set the tone for the next few minutes. Harry replied that he was well and asked after Draco's parents, and Draco commented on a couple of recent successes of the Aurors' Office with a remarkable lack of sarcasm.
It was not until they had ordered food that Harry said, 'Well, what did you want to see me about?'
Draco sighed and looked down. 'It's the new statute,' he said.
'So you said.'
'Well . . .' Draco seemed somewhat embarrassed. 'When this statute was announced my parents . . . seemed a bit concerned, and took a lot of interest in it, and then when it was passed they told me that . . . um, I had a twin brother but he, er, died young - and now with this statute we will obviously have to bring him back into the family, you see, and, um . . . I was hoping you might be able to help me talk to him.'
Harry was horrified. Necromancy was one of the darkest of the dark arts - he was deeply sorry for the Malfoys' loss, but he could not help them to do this.
'Umm,' he began. 'I don't really think that the statute is meant to include dead members of your family - I mean, it's meant to be about Squibs really. Perhaps if you had a ghost in the family, but even then . . .'
Draco's lip curled scornfully. 'Oh, you are thick, Potter.' Harry noticed the 'Potter'. 'Severin isn't actually dead. Dying young is what families like mine say when a child turns out to be a Squib. Look,' he explained patiently, seeing Harry's shocked face, 'of course you don't want to have a Squib in the family - it makes you look like there's a weakness, something wrong with your bloodline, so you say he died young, and you send him away.'
'Send him away?? Away where?'
'To my Uncle Hector - well, he's Dad's cousin really, he . . . '
'Died young?' suggested Harry.
'That's right - so he was sent into the Muggle world, to another relative who died young, and he's a merchant banker in . . . the City, I think he said, which doesn't just mean London, apparently, although that's where he lives. Is that right?'
'That's right,' said Harry gloomily. Trust a Malfoy to be a fat cat.
'And he and his wife were asked to adopt Severin, and bring him up. Don't look at me like that - we didn't abandon him. Dad's been giving him an allowance - paying for his education too, of course. Have you heard of a school called Eton?' Draco asked anxiously. 'Is it a good school?'
'Is that where he went? Yes, it's a good school.' Harry tried not to think of Little Whinging Primary.
'Good. It's just that it seemed so odd to me that you should have to pay. Uncle Hector told Dad that if you didn't you went to a state school with all sorts of criminals and scum, and you learned nothing, but I wasn't sure that he wasn't just trying to get money out of him. But that's what you have to do, is it?'
'Yes,' said Harry. There was so much wrong with what Draco had just said that it simply wasn't worth beginning to try to put him right. And no doubt that was what this Uncle Hector believed, anyway. 'Let me get this straight,' he said. 'You have a twin brother who is a Squib, and who has been sent to live in the Muggle world, with a cousin of your father's who is also a Squib?'
'That's right.'
'And he's called Severin?'
'Severin Arcturus. He was Severus originally, but Uncle Hector thought that that wouldn't really work in the Muggle world.' Draco sounded quite smug.
Harry felt like telling him that Severin wasn't much better - especially with Arcturus as a middle name. How on earth had the poor child survived school? He contented himself with saying 'Snape can't have liked that. I assume the child was named after him?'
'He said it was typical, apparently.' Draco smirked; Harry could imagine Snape saying it. 'But he agreed with Uncle Hector - he didn't think it would work in the Muggle world either.'
'And what is he doing now? Is he in the City too?'
'No, that's a bit of a sore point. That's what Uncle Hector wanted for him, but he did well at his university - that's a sort of school you go to after school, if you're a Muggle, apparently - I don't understand what they have to learn that is so difficult, perhaps all the stuff they have to use because they don't have magic? - but anyway, he did really well, and they wanted him to stay on and do research or something, and Dad was prepared to pay, so he is doing something called a PhD. In medieval history.'
'He must be clever then,' Harry said, 'if he's doing a PhD. I take it you aren't identical twins?'
'Well no-o, obviously,' replied Draco. 'I'm not a Squib, am I?'
'So which university is he at, then?' asked Harry, adding nastily, 'Oxford or Cambridge?'
'Cambridge,' said Draco innocently. 'Are there only the two, then? Uncle Hector made it sound like there were more.'
'And you knew nothing about him? How long has he been living with this Uncle Hector?'
'Since he was a baby.'
'But how on earth did your parents know he was a Squib at that age?'
'They asked Snape of course, you idiot. When a child is born in our family we always ask the Head of Slytherin to check to see that he is in the Hogwarts book, and if he isn't, then . . .'
'. . . he dies young,' finished Harry. How like the Malfoys to assume that the Head of Slytherin had nothing better to do than run errands for them.
'Precisely,' said Draco, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. 'Dad and Mum have had regular reports from Uncle Hector, but I was too young to remember him, and he was told that his parents were killed in an accident, so neither of us knew anything. But the Ministry of Magic have been snooping around, and have told us that this new act means that we have to welcome him back into the family or else. So Dad has had a word with Uncle Hector and he has . . . explained things to Severin, and . . . apparently he is delighted he has a twin brother and wants me to come and see him and . . . and I thought that you know all about Muggles, you know the sort of questions they would be likely to ask, and I wondered if you would come with me?'
There was no mistaking the desperation in that request. Draco would clearly be unable to cope with the Muggle world - equally clearly he was afraid of meeting the brother his family had wronged so badly. Harry did not feel any sympathy at all for him. The Malfoys in their arrogance had brought this problem on themselves - let them deal with it. But then he thought of Severin, saddled with a weird name, told that his parents were dead, and then told that they weren't, that they had just sent him away because they were ashamed of him. His own introduction to the magical world had been difficult enough, but to have to learn about it from people like the Malfoys, to be related to them, to think that they were in any way typical . . . Besides, a small and mean part of him wanted to watch them have to deal with this.
'I'll do it,' Harry said.
Two weeks later, as they apparated into a quiet side street close to Cambridge city centre, Harry was regretting that decision. How could he relate to someone whose guardian was a merchant banker, and whose experience of the Muggle world was of Eton and Cambridge? Ginny had thought that he was mad to be doing anything for the Malfoys, and had predicted that this Severin would turn out to be just as arrogant as Draco. Harry had to admit to himself that he thought the same.
Draco was not helping matters either. He had turned up late, dressed in expensive Muggle clothes - sent by Uncle Hector, apparently. It was very obvious that they were brand new, and equally obvious that he had no idea how to move in them. Indeed, he had already complained several times about how uncomfortable they were. Now he looked around at the houses of Muggle Cambridge with suspicion and disdain. Harry told himself for the nth time to think of Severin - but even that seemed less of an inducement. He smiled grimly to himself.
'Here we are, Trinity College,' he said a few minutes later, looking up from his map at an elaborate gatehouse set back from the street.
'Nice,' said Draco appreciatively. 'Who's the statue of?'
'Henry VIII,' replied Harry. 'He was a Muggle king. He probably founded the college or something.'
'No it isn't,' said Draco as they got closer. 'It's Edwardus Tertius. See, it says so: "Edwardus Tertius fundator aule regis". I thought you knew about Muggles!'
'Most Muggles don't know all the kings,' said Harry hotly. 'It's like the Chief Warlocks of the Wizengamot - you learn the names at school and then you forget them again. Edward III was another king - earlier than Henry VIII.' He tried to sound as though he was absolutely sure of that. 'The kingship goes from father to son, so they all look alike - they're very easy to mix up.'
'So can you tell me why he's holding a wand, then?'
'It's not a wand. It's a sceptre. It doesn't actually do anything, it just shows he's the king.'
Draco wrinkled his nose at the statue. 'Why on earth would holding something that looks like a chair leg show you're the king?'
'It's tradition - like having a cat or a toad shows you're a wizard. And it's nothing like a chair leg.'
'What a stupid tradition,' said Draco. 'But I like the building. Almost wizardly. Come on.'
Feeling very ignorant and very plebeian, Harry followed him.
'Hello?' The young man who opened the door looked exactly like a younger version of Lucius, although his silver-blond hair was an untidy collar-length bush, and he was wearing jeans and an old jumper. His eyes widened when he saw them, and his face broke into a most un-Lucius-like grin. 'You must be Draco? How good to meet you at last!' Before Draco could react, Severin had swept him into a bear-hug, which Draco returned feebly. 'And this is . . .?' He held out his hand to Harry.
'This is my friend, Harry Potter.' Harry noticed the almost imperceptible hesitation at 'friend'. 'He grew up with Muggles - that's people who aren't wizards - so I thought he might be able to help you understand our world better.' If Draco was nervous, it wasn't showing in his voice.
Severin smiled. 'Pleased to meet you, Harry. Do come in, both of you. Would you like some coffee?'
The size of the room took Harry by surprise. For some reason, he had been under the impression that student rooms were small, but this was a good-sized sitting room. And it was a sitting room too - an open door in one corner showed a glimpse of a smaller bedroom beyond. Both were very untidy. Severin swept some books off a couple of chairs and busied himself with an electric kettle, asking after their journey as he grabbed milk and coffee. It was not until they all had mugs in their hands that he sat down, smiled, and said, 'So I'm not an orphan after all, then?'
'No,' replied Draco stiffly. 'I'm very sorry . . . we're very sorry, but please believe that we did it for the best. It's . . . it's very difficult for people like you in our world, you see - you need magic to do anything, you'd have to depend on other people helping you all the time . . . and so we've got into the habit of setting you up in the Muggle world. We really thought you'd be happier there, you see . . . I've got a letter from Mum and Dad, explaining it all.' He pulled a letter out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Severin, who ripped it open eagerly. A photo fell out - Lucius and Narcissa, smiling and waving. Severin's eyes widened in shock. He picked it up gingerly.
'Are these . . . are these our parents?'
'Yes.' Draco smiled.
'Is this some sort of communication device? Hello?' The figures in the photo continued to wave happily. 'They're not . . . alive? In this picture I mean.'
'No. It's what we call a magically induced simulacrum. They move, like the real people would, and they'll obey simple commands - stand still, that sort of thing. But they don't have any real feeling. You could burn the photo and you wouldn't have killed anything.'
'That's good to know. Stand still then.' Severin addressed the photo. Lucius and Narcissa froze. 'Oh, I don't like that pose - move again, please.'
'It's better like this.' Draco pulled out his wand. 'Finite incantatem.' The Malfoys stopped moving, Lucius with his arm round Narcissa, both beaming out of the picture with parental pride. 'There you are.'
'Thank you. I'm sorry - it just seems more normal to me that way. Now I can put it on my mantelpiece.' He did so, and stood smiling at it for a minute. 'I always thought I must come from a very special family - to have given me such a wonderful name, to start with. But I never dreamed that they would be wizards.' He turned to Draco. 'And was that magic that you did just then?'
Draco nodded.
'With . . . with a magic wand?'
Draco grinned and pulled it out. 'Here you are. Hawthorn wood and unicorn hair.'
Severin took it from him, nervously. 'It's . . . got a sort of buzz to it. Like electricity.'
'That's because you're my brother - you've got an affinity to it. If you were a real Muggle you wouldn't feel anything.'
Severin looked at Harry. 'Do you . . .?'
'Yes.' Harry handed it over. 'Holly and phoenix feather.'
'Ah, yes. This one buzzes less, I think - because we're not related?' Harry nodded. 'But I can feel it, just a little. And there really are such things as phoenixes and unicorns?' Both Draco and Harry nodded vehemently. 'That's . . . that's rather hard to get my head around. This family is going to take some getting used to.'
He turned his attention to the letter, and read for some minutes in silence. Then he folded it up and put it away.
'Uncle Hector explained all this. And I can quite understand why you had me adopted - I can see that I'd be a burden in your world, and I know that would probably make me miserable. And I have been very happy - Uncle Hector and Aunt Frances couldn't have been kinder, and as you can see I've got a great life here. But - but I would have loved to know my parents.' He swallowed, and went on. 'I've always wondered what they were like - I've never even seen photos before. I thought they'd died in a car crash, and they've been alive all this time!' His voice was raw with emotion.
Harry had a sudden uncomfortable flashback to Hagrid shouting at the Dursleys for telling him a similar lie. But his parents really had died - when, if not how, the Dursleys had told him. How terrible to find that they were alive and hiding themselves from you!
Severin was continuing. 'And I wish I'd known I had a brother - I've always envied boys at school with brothers and sisters, and a twin - how cool is that? Even if I couldn't live in your world, couldn't we have met, sometimes? Couldn't you at least have - oh I don't know, let me come for Christmas or something? Didn't you wonder about me, sometimes - what I was like, what I was doing?'
Draco shook his head. 'They didn't tell me either.'
Severin made an angry gesture with his arms. 'So they've been fooling us both? Wouldn't you have liked to have had a brother?'
'Yes.' Draco nodded slowly. 'It would have been fun. But it just wouldn't have been possible. The wizarding world . . .' He looked helplessly at Harry.
'The wizarding world . . .' Harry repeated. The wizarding world would have been fine with this, he thought, it's just your arrogant pure-blood supremacist family who wouldn't. But he couldn't say that, even though he half wanted to. He couldn't think what to say.
Draco could. He looked at Harry again, and then with a courage that surprised him took a deep breath and said, quickly and harshly, 'It's not the wizarding world - or at least it is the wizarding world, but mostly . . . mostly it's us. We thought you would want to live in our world, you see, and we would have found that . . . embarrassing, I suppose. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.' He looked miserably at the carpet, his hands between his knees.
'Embarrassing?' Severin sounded like Lucius at his most icy.
'People would have said . . .' Draco swallowed wretchedly, 'my friends would have said . . . that there was something wrong with us. If we had non-magic people in our family.'
'I see.' Severin's voice would have frozen hell. He sat for a few minutes, furiously running both hands through his hair, as though he wanted to pull it out by the roots. Draco stared at the carpet - close to tears, Harry thought. He himself would have given anything just to be able to apparate away from the whole scene. He had thought that it might be funny to see the discomfiture of the Malfoys, but it wasn't, it wasn't at all.
Suddenly Severin shook himself like a dog and straightened up. Looking carefully out of the window, he said, 'Actually, I do see, I think. One of my friends here, David, has a sister who has Down's Syndrome. I've met her, she's a nice girl, but David says that when they were growing up he and his brother got all sorts of grief at school - people would say that the whole family was somehow "mental". Is that what you are saying it would be like?' He looked very severely at Draco.
Draco met his brother's eyes. 'Yes, I am saying that it would be . . . something . . . like that. You would be . . . like your friend's sister.'
'Whereas here, I'm fine. I can function very well, and nobody is pointing and laughing. And nobody is pointing and laughing at you on my account, either. So what has changed?'
Briefly, Draco explained the new act.
'So we're not the only ones?'
'No.' Draco looked at Harry.
'Certainly not,' he said. 'In fact, my wife's family have a cousin who is an accountant. He did know about them, but never had much to do with them before. We had dinner with him and his family just last week.' And it was a disaster, he added to himself.
'So what you're saying is that it will look good for your . . . my . . . our parents if you take me back. Is that it?'
'Yes. No.' Draco looked down. 'I don't know what Mum says in that letter?'
'That a day hasn't gone by without her thinking about me, wondering where I was, what I was doing . . .'
'That's all true.' Draco leant forward, eagerly. 'She's really missed you, she's been so excited at the thought of seeing you again. She talks of you all the time. Uncle Hector sent her a photo, and she does nothing but look at it. Please meet her, at least - it'll break her heart if you don't. And Dad too - when I told him that you' - he nodded at Harry - 'said that Severin must be really clever, he was so proud. He's got all the family papers out - we came over with the Conqueror, you know.'
Severin laughed. 'Yes, I did know that. We're in Domesday. But I didn't know we had papers.'
'Going right back to original charters from the Muggle king to Armand de Malefoy.'
'You're kidding!' Severin's eyes lit up - then became solemn again. 'And you?' he asked. 'Do you want me - or will I just be an embarrassment?'
Draco leant further forward. 'Yes,' he said simply. 'I . . . wasn't sure at first. I . . . don't know any Muggles. I didn't know what you'd be like. But now - yes, I'd really like to get to know you.'
Severin bit his lip and Harry could see his eyes glistening. Without a word he reached over and hugged Draco, and they sat like that for some time, while Harry looked awkwardly at the furniture. Then they pulled apart, sheepishly.
'Sorry,' Severin said. 'It's not every day you meet your long-lost twin brother, you know. By the way,' he turned to Draco, 'which of us is the older? Uncle Hector couldn't remember.'
'You are.' Draco grinned. 'By twelve minutes.'
'OK then, little brother - you have no idea how good that sounds - and little brother's friend, how about I show you the college, and then take you punting?' He got to his feet. 'Now,' he put on a tour-guide voice, 'Trinity College is the largest and richest college in either Oxford or Cambridge, and was founded in 1546 by Henry VIII . . .'
'Told you,' whispered Harry to Draco.
'What?'
'I thought that statue on the gatehouse was Henry VIII, but it seemed to say Edward III.'
'Ah - when he founded the college he did so out of a lot of smaller colleges and halls, one of which was founded by Edward III - that's why it says that. By the way, did you notice that he's holding a chair leg instead of a sceptre? A student swapped them in the nineteenth century for a joke.'
Behind Severin's back, Draco stuck his tongue out at Harry.
The tour of the college proved rather embarrassing for both Harry and Draco. Harry had heard of Sir Isaac Newton, but Draco had not, which shocked Severin, and several other famous alumni drew a blank with both. Finally when neither of them had heard of Sir Christopher Wren (who had apparently designed the college library) he laughed and said that he wished he could introduce them to the Master: 'His whole life starts and ends with this college. It would do him good to realise that the entire world doesn't revolve around it.'
Nor did they fare much better when it came to the punts. They were all named after things that came in threes, apparently, and it was only after some hesitation that Harry told Draco that he thought that a musketeer was a sort of old-fashioned soldier, and that The Three Musketeers was a book.
'Have you not read it?' asked Severin. 'I can lend it to you, if you like. It's very good, and The Count of Monte Cristo's even better. There must be all sorts of books you can lend me - ancient wizarding adventures, that sort of thing. It'll be great fun to read them! Oh, and do you like Shakespeare?' he continued, pushing the Musketeer out into mid-stream. Harry had never seen any Shakespeare - Draco had never even heard of him. Severin was horrified, and said that they must come to the college production of Twelfth Night at the end of term - he would be playing a character called Malvolio. 'You've really never heard of Shakespeare?' he kept asking, appalled, and both Harry and Draco felt quite chastened.
But they were able to prove their worth by the end of the afternoon. The river was crowded, full of visitors who had never punted before, and even Severin's undoubted skill could not enable them to steer their way through the mayhem. Draco and Harry looked at one another, then took out their wands, and began to gently deflect other punts out of their path.
'Is it you doing that?' asked Severin, as one particularly inept tourist shot out in front of them, and then, to his own surprise, turned downstream in a graceful curve. 'If so, could you keep on please?' So they did.
Then, when they were almost home, disaster struck. Coming out from under a bridge, Severin raised his punt pole - and one of a group of young men standing on the bridge reached out and grabbed the top.
'Here, let go!' yelled Severin, twisting the pole furiously as he felt the punt glide away from under him.
'Nah! Fucking students, think you're so great!' jeered the young man, holding on tight. Then suddenly he dropped the pole as though it had burned him, and the punt shot forward, with Severin struggling to keep his feet.
'What the . . . ??'
'Stinging hex,' said Harry triumphantly. The young man was glaring at them, nursing his hand. His friends continued to shout insults. One of them was leaning on a large ornamental stone ball on the parapet. Out of the corner of his eye Harry saw Draco smile and raise his wand . . .
There was a cry from a woman in a punt, and she steered for the bank as the stone ball began to slip from its place. Other punters looked up, and within seconds the river had emptied. The young man who had been leaning on the ball grabbed it with both hands, horrified, as it started to rock to and fro. Severin, who had recovered his balance, turned round.
'No!' he said, laughing.'No, that's brilliant, that's so funny - look at his face! - but you really mustn't. Please stop it now!'
With a final twist of his wand Draco made the ball give two more violent jerks, then it settled back into place as if it had never moved. The young men fled.
'I call that real teamwork,' said Severin with satisfaction, as the Musketeer glided under the last bridge and back to port. 'All for one, and one for - oh, hang on, I'm going to have to explain that, amn't I?'
Harry did not see much of Draco over the next few weeks. It was a busy time at work and he had turned down the invitation to Twelfth Night, reflecting that after all, Draco and Severin seemed to be getting on perfectly well without him, but he knew from Draco that the entire Malfoy family had gone, and, to Harry's surprise, had enjoyed the play very much. Draco in particular had been so enthusiastic that Severin had invited him to a professional production of Hamlet in London. Shortly after that Harry had met him in Diagon Alley and he had been unable to stop talking about it.
'Why did we not know about this?' he had demanded, as if his family had not been instrumental in keeping the Muggle and wizarding worlds apart. 'Who would have thought a Muggle could write like that? I mean, I thought Twelfth Night was good, but Hamlet! It was just . . . just like he was writing about me! How could a dead Muggle writer know me like that?' He reddened.
Harry, to change the subject, asked how Severin was getting on with his parents.
'Great,' said Draco airily. 'I mean, well, the first time they met Dad was all awkward and formal and Mum burst into tears and said he was her little boy and she'd never stopped thinking about him, and that was, well, really embarrassing for everybody - poor Sev didn't know what to say - but then he asked Dad about the family history and Dad told him all about it, and promised to show him the archives when he came for dinner, and since then he's been down every weekend going through everything with Dad and telling him how the Malfoys fit into Muggle history - you know, before the Statute of Secrecy and everything - and Dad's absolutely fascinated by it all. He was always trying to get me to take an interest in the ancestors, but I could never really remember who was who, so he's absolutely charmed with Sev. And Sev reckons there's a lot he could use for his doctorate, and even write books about - for Muggles, without mentioning the wizarding side of things of course. So Dad said why didn't he write books for wizards as well, and he's seriously thinking about that.'
Harry could just see that - Severin the famous historian, the successful Squib, the poster boy for the new act, launching his books in Flourish and Blotts with Lucius hovering proprietorially in the background. He thought of Arthur Weasley, reading up so enthusiastically about accountancy, asking the Prewetts endless questions about the Muggle world, desperately trying to put them at their ease, failing miserably. How on earth did the Malfoys do it? It wasn't fair.
'He's even found a Potter,' said Draco, mischievously, looking sidelong at him. 'A Muggleborn who worked at Gringotts with the goblins in the sixteenth century, who made loads of money, and married one of the Malfoy daughters. He's going to tell you all about it.'
Great, thought Harry. He was related to the Malfoys. He had always vaguely known that he must be - after all all wizarding families were related to one another to some extent - but he really had not needed to know the details right now. A Muggleborn Potter - the first wizarding Potter from the sound of things - marrying a Malfoy, to legitimize himself perhaps, and the Malfoys being quite happy to marry one of their daughters to a rich Muggleborn! A few years ago they would have died rather than admit such a thing; now they joked about it. His mood was not improved as he returned to work.
But he did mention the discussion to Hermione, and she came into his office the next day with a battered family copy of Hamlet and a thoughtful expression. Harry's expression was thoughtful too, when he read it - some of the soliloquies in particular reminded him of the tormented Draco he had seen in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom all those years ago, or on top of the Astronomy Tower, trying and failing to kill Dumbledore. He wondered if he was being a little harsh. After all, if Draco was developing a love of Muggle culture he could hardly turn round and say that all Muggles were vermin, and that, surely, could only be a good thing.
But Draco's relationship with the Muggle world was destined to get a lot closer. A week or so later Harry found him in the Leaky Cauldron, wearing a Muggle suit and eating lunch. He jumped as Harry put his hand on his shoulder.
'Going to a fancy dress party?' Harry asked.
'I'm applying for a job, if you must know.' Draco blushed furiously. 'Uncle Hector suggested it to me - with his bank. The interview's this afternoon.'
'What!! You're applying for a job with a Muggle bank? But why on earth . . .?' Too late he realised that in his shock he had spoken much more loudly than he meant to.
'That's right - tell the whole world, why don't you?' Draco looked miserable. He waited until the rest of the customers - most of them anyway - had lost interest and gone back to their conversations, then continued in an undertone. 'I shouldn't have come in here dressed like this, but I just - I don't know - I wanted to be somewhere I knew, somewhere wizardly, to give myself confidence. It's not even a proper job, it's something called an internship, it's not paid, but if they like me it could lead to a proper job later, Uncle Hector says. And he's trying to be helpful - he's been so decent over the business with Sev, how could I refuse - and,' he looked Harry straight in the eye, 'it's not as if anyone's ever going to give me a proper wizarding job, is it? Not with my reputation. I might as well do this.'
There was nothing Harry could say to this. Draco was quite right - no reputable wizard would ever employ him. Bizarre as it might seem, the Muggle world was his only chance. He wished him luck as warmly as he could, and left.
The next Malfoy Harry saw was Severin. He came into the office one day, explained that he had been working in the Ministry archives, and asked Harry if he would be free for lunch. Harry was meeting Ginny, Ron and Hermione, but suggested that Severin come too. So at lunchtime he found himself in the Leaky Cauldron, introducing Severin to his wife and friends.
'Don't tell me - you two must be Weasleys, right?' said Severin. 'Dad's been telling me about the old families, and he says that all Weasleys have red hair and freckles.'
Harry caught Ron's eye. The words 'and more children than they can afford' hung unspoken in the air - but from his behaviour, it would seem that Severin had heard only good of the Weasleys, and was genuinely delighted to meet them. Once again, Harry had the odd feeling of the Malfoys adapting to a changing world. 'So how's your brother?' he asked, when they had all introduced themselves and settled down.
'The financial wizard?' said Severin, laughing. 'He's doing really well - everyone seems very pleased with him. Uncle Hector is so proud - reminds me every five minutes that it's a good thing that someone in the family isn't a head-in-the-clouds academic. I keep asking Draco if he's using magic at work, but he swears he isn't.'
That's a lie, said Ron's eyebrows to Harry. Severin didn't notice.
'And how are you liking the wizarding world?' Hermione asked him, seriously. He smiled.
'It's fascinating,' he said. 'Not what I expected at all. Very interesting the way it sort of parallels . . . our world in some ways and not in others. I'm really enjoying learning about the history - it explains so much that I didn't understand before. I've been in the Ministry archives this morning, and I've found some amazing things. Would you believe that it was a wizard who founded the Templars?' Puzzled faces met him. 'They were an order of knights who took vows like monks. Very controversial, very mysterious, and there are a lot of things we don't really know about them. But from what I was reading this morning it would seem that they always had a core of wizards, and they were founded by a wizard, a knight called Godric Gryffindor - and you will know about him, because he's very famous in your world, I believe.'
Four Gryffindors beamed with satisfaction.
'And of course I know about him from our family archives, because he was very close to our family - we held some of our land from him, and, in fact, I now find that Drogo and Serlo de Malefoy were among his first six wizard Templars. What? What's the matter?' He looked round at the shocked faces. 'You're looking at me like Dad. When I started translating documents for him, he used to say that they couldn't possibly say what I said. Now he says that they will really revolutionise what we - you - know.'
Again Harry felt uncomfortable.
'And I'm sure that that can only be a good thing,' said Hermione, bravely. 'But apart from that, how are you getting on?'
'Fine. Mostly it's just great to have my parents and brother. And that's enough for me really. I mean, it's nice to know your world, but I'm never really going to be part of it. Although I do love it.' He paused for a minute. 'But it's also very odd to me. I can see why you would want to hide your magic, but I don't understand why you seem to have cut yourself off so completely from the Muggle world. Why, Draco didn't even know about the war!'
The blank stares that greeted this suggested that Draco was not the only one.
'Who are we at war with?' asked Ron carefully.
'With Iraq,' said Severin. 'Mesopotamia, I mean - we call it Iraq. And it's over - sort of. We won. We invaded in March - allegedly because they had powerful weapons that threatened us, but of course we've found nothing there, as quite a lot of us could have told you all along. It was all for the oil really - we use oil for a lot of our machinery, like cars and things, and they have lots of it. And I've been marching and protesting, and writing letters, and so have lots of other people, but none of it did the slightest good - and it is just really odd to me that none of you know anything about this at all. And then there's our culture. I've been taking Draco to plays and operas and concerts, and he's absolutely fascinated by them, and neither of us understands why he hasn't come across them before. I mean, why do you not read? You don't seem to have much literature of your own, and yet you don't read our stuff? Why not? Why would it not interest you?'
'Well, it's all about Muggles, I suppose,' said Hermione. 'Why would wizards want to read about people who can't use magic?'
'For the same reason I'd want to read novels set in seventeenth-century France, or nineteenth-century New York, or modern day Nigeria, or whatever. Because we're all different but all human, and it's fascinating to look into other people's cultures.' He turned to Ginny. 'Are you not interested in how other people live?'
'I don't really read much,' she replied. 'But I'd be interested in Muggle sports. I used to have a boyfriend whose family were Muggles and he talked a lot about football.'
'We've been through this before,' said Harry. 'It's very dull compared to Quidditch, very one-dimensional.'
Ginny shook her head stubbornly. 'Dean didn't think so. And I'd love to see a match just to be able to judge for myself.' She looked hopefully at Severin.
'I'm not a big football fan, I'm afraid. And it's the wrong time of year. But tell you what, how about tennis?' He explained briefly. 'That doesn't give you a good idea - there's a lot more skill involved than that. But Uncle Hector gets tickets for Wimbledon - that's the really big tennis tournament here in London - every year. Why don't you come with us?'
Hermione quickly said no, explaining that she had seen tennis before and that sports didn't really interest her, but to Harry's surprise both Weasleys were enthusiastic, and he agreed to come too, curious to see what his friends would make of it. So it was that he found himself part of a small group enjoying Hector Malfoy's hospitality in very good seats for the Wimbledon men's singles final.
Hector and Frances Malfoy turned out to be genial hosts, and, to Harry's great relief, much less intimidating than Lucius and Narcissa. Draco was one of the party, along with Astoria Greengrass, with whom he seemed to be very friendly. He had changed a lot since Harry had last seen him - gone were the stubble and the lacklustre hair, and he now looked thoroughly at home in his Muggle clothes. Astoria too seemed very aware of how good she looked in her summer dress, and behaved as though she had never worn anything else. Draco kept taking her to meet 'guys from the bank' at the changes of ends, and came back with oracular pronouncements about the tennis - 'Marcus says . . . Charlie says . . .' like an expert among experts.
Initially annoyed, Harry felt his anger melting away during the course of the afternoon, and turning to amusement. You would never have known that this was the Draco Malfoy who had expressed such contempt for Muggles - he and Astoria had fitted themselves into the upper-class Muggle world as if they had never lived anywhere else, while the Muggle-loving Weasleys were happy, but clearly slightly out of place. This, Harry realised, was a fundamental truth about Malfoys - they adapted, and they always came out on top. Resenting it would be like resenting Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. And actually he did not resent it. He remembered Draco as he had been only three months before - shabby, defeated, humiliated. Would he really prefer that to the cheerful and self-confident young wizard here this afternoon? Oh, Draco could certainly be a pain - Draco would always be a pain. But a Draco who raved about Muggle plays and operas - and Muggle sport, to judge by the enthusiasm with which he was explaining the rules of tennis to Astoria - was surely preferable to a Draco who plotted and indulged dreams of pure-blood coups.
And then there was Severin - obviously delighted that he was bringing so much pleasure to his new friends. To think that Harry had worried about him being patronized and looked down on by the Malfoys! In wizarding history he had clearly found something that he could relate to, and also something that had led to a remarkably equal relationship with his father. He had found a family and found a research subject - was it really so bad if Lucius was using his discoveries to advance the Malfoy cause once again? Harry thought that Severin had enough integrity not to let him put forward anything that was not true and provable - and if the Malfoys really had once been among the closest friends of Godric Gryffindor, then perhaps it was time for the wizarding world to know that. Far from being a barely tolerated embarrassment, Severin seemed to be managing his two worlds with remarkable ease.
Harry leant forward to hear what he was saying to Ginny.
'So why are you saying that Federer has wizarding blood but Philippoussis doesn't? Because he's better?'
'No.' Ginny was trying to work out what she meant herself. 'That's not what I'm saying. There - look at that shot! How can you say he's not good if he can hit shots like that? It's not a matter of talent, of what he does, it's the way that he does it - it's a style, a grace, a flair. I can't explain it, but if you're a witch or a wizard, you know. Just as I knew the moment I saw you that you had wizarding blood. It's something in the way that you move, I think.'
'And this knowledge that I had wizarding blood had nothing to do with the fact that I look very like my father and brother?' Severin was laughing.
'No, nothing at all.' Ginny was laughing too. 'Ron, help me out here. You think this Federer is from a wizarding family, don't you?'
'Oh absolutely. You couldn't mistake it. Wow - what a shot!' Ron broke off to applaud. 'There, Sev - did you see that? Only a wizard could have done that!'
'You're saying that he's an actual wizard?' asked Severin, incredulous.
'No. What I'm saying is that somewhere in his family, generations back - he probably doesn't know it himself - you will find a Squib.' Harry noted with amusement that, away from Hermione, Ron dropped the new term. 'And behind that Squib there will be a wizarding family. Oh, and that the magic may well come out again in the future - if he ever has children, he might be in for a surprise.'
'Really?' Severin was interested. 'If I have children, might they be wizards then?'
'Yes, or your grandchildren, or your great-grandchildren, or your great-great-grandchildren. You never know when or how the magic is going to come out - but it's always there, always something that's part of you.'
Severin looked very gratified.
'Well, I'm still not sure that I believe you about Federer. Draco, do we know anything about wizarding families in Switzerland?'
Draco made a face. 'Dad might.'
'I'll ask him.' They sat back. Play had resumed again.
'This is wonderful,' said Ginny, after the presumed wizard had executed a few more breathtaking shots. 'Thank you so much for this, Sev. We must invite you to the Quidditch world cup next year.'
'Yes,' said Ron. 'It's in Iceland - they've got the most amazing team.'
'I'd like that,' replied Severin. 'Draco's been telling me all about how he used to play for his house at school.'
The Weasleys looked at one another.
'Yes,' Harry found himself saying. 'We had some great contests, didn't we Draco?'
Draco laughed. 'That would be one way of putting it,' he said. 'OK, another tie-break it is. Finish this in three, wizard!'
'You think he's a wizard too?' said Severin in despair. 'I give in. Come on, Swiss wizard - finish this now!'
Yes, thought Harry, that would be one way of putting it - and perhaps not the way that best expressed how he - and Draco - had felt about it at the time. But for the here and now, on a summer Sunday afternoon with friends, as they cheered on the honour of the wizarding world in the person of Roger Federer, perhaps it was as good a way as any.