BANALITY : Draco Malfoy

82

The press is now outside of the gates to the Parkinson estate. I was spotted in the ministry of magic when I went to meet Blaise. His charges are in The Daily Prophet. People know that he has been offered a deal but the public doesn't know about the charges he has avoided. People know that he unlawfully held me, that he erased my memories, and that he concealed me. While they don't know about the torture, there is panic in the press. If a bad actor wanted to try, they might be successful in taking every memory of magic from young muggle-borns. I don't know why people seem to care that much. Obliviation exists. If any witch or wizard really wanted to hurt you, they could do it in an easier way.

I think what scares people is that it is unclear why Blaise did such a thing. The press is trying to figure out why, any which way that they can.

"What wizards have seen you and Draco together?" Pansy asks in my doorway again, on Tuesday.

She has cleaned up quite a bit since we first met. Her black hair is a sleek bob, her skin clear and her make-up precise. The natural order of her world appears to be mostly there. However, my presence in her house is surely causing her to cake on more make-up under her eyes. The bags are barely hidden.

I laugh, "why do you care? If you don't know about the threat, you don't have to stop it from hurting me. That's the nature of the vow."

"It would be easier to prepare for when they do become known to me," Pansy blows a stray hair out of her face.

"I think you're being proactive because you like me," I shrug.

I find myself closing a book I've been looking at on tracking magic. It's not all that complex, provided someone is cloaking themselves from being tracked. Draco is most certainly cloaking himself. Rather than dwell on that, I engage with Pansy.

"You know, without harming you, I can make your life much more miserable," Pansy says. "The vow did not mention psychological harm."

"Talking to you is enough psychological harm," I say, and mean half of it. Pansy Parkinson is easily hateable, but she is also likable. I like to hate her, and I hate to like her.

"Who knows about you too?" she persists.

"I told you, those weeks were off limits," I say. "I don't have to tell you about anything between my arrival in Hogsmeade and my arrival in Derry."

"Okay, outside of then," she says.

I sigh, putting down my copy of The Daily Prophet, "Terrence Boot, but he isn't going to say anything. I suspect Anthony Goldstein knows, but I have no proof. Seamus might know too, if he's clever enough to put together the story based upon the questions that Terry asked him."

"Finnigan is not clever," Pansy says, then pauses. "Goldstein is smart though. He might be a threat."

"I doubt Anthony Goldstein wishes me harm. Besides him and Terry, the only other people who found out aren't going to be an issue," I say.

"Well, I know Aberforth Dumbledore knows," Pansy shrugs, smirking. "I read the papers too. He said he saw Draco and some witch back in Hogsmeade in early November. If I wanted to know, I could probably search his head to find out if he saw anyone else meet up with you and Draco."

I scowl at her, and she laughs. It's much less of a cackle than her laugh has been the other times that she catches me in a trap. Instead, it's almost genuine.

"Please, I don't care enough about you to get caught tampering with the memories of Aberforth Dumbledore," she shakes her head. "People will start to think that I'm Blaise's accomplice, and then I'm going to have put in a lot of work to avoid Azkaban. If I'm going to Azkaban, I'd rather it be because of a crime I actually did commit."