Black Truth [READ DESCRIPTION]

chapter thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-Two: Wildfire News

Harry had never seen the student body of Hogwarts as attentive as when Dumbledore announced the four day suspension of twenty-three students from the school. No names were mentioned, though as Harry looked around the Great Hall it was rather obvious where the gaps in the houses were. As his eyes had done countless times during the day, he sought out Draco who was sitting calmly at the breakfast table. He had briefly appeared in the Great Hall for meals on Sunday, but had insisted on going to classes on Monday.

"Harry, you look more upset than Malfoy," Ron muttered. "Relax. If Malfoy was going to break down, he would have done it already."

"I think he's doing the right thing" Hermione added. Harry looked at her in surprise. "The faster you get back into your life after an incident like that, the better it is in the long run. People find the routine of their lives helps them move past it."

"But that routine has been broken already, hasn't it?" Ron asked around a mouthful of eggs.

"Yeah, because normally Draco gets a letter right about now," Harry muttered.

Hermione winced and Ron tried not to look sympathetic for his long time rival.

"What about you and Malfoy?" Hermione asked after a minute. "Why aren't you two in trouble?"

"I don't know. Dumbledore didn't say." Harry shrugged "But if I had to guess, I would say that he didn't want to draw attention to it."

"Hmm?" Ron frowned in the midst of drinking his pumpkin juice.

"Oh I get it!" Hermione exclaimed before adding in a much quieter tone. "As long as he keeps you and Draco out of it, then nothing about Voldemort is exposed to the school."

"Kinda like he did when Malfoy's... dad showed up in Hogwarts?" Ron asked.

"Exactly."

There was a rustle of wings throughout the Great Hall as the mail began to arrive. Harry's eyes snapped towards Draco, but the blonde looked... well, he looked like he did normally, yet he was much too tense for him to be acting truly normal. Also, his clothes made any pretense of "normality" disappear faster than an invisibility spell.

Draco wore what Hermione had informed him as traditional mourning clothing in the Wizarding World. Underneath his outer school robes, he wore clothing of the colors found on the Malfoy family crest, colors that represented the Malfoy family. Clothing of those colors would only be worn on three occasions, Hermione said: when there was a birth, when there was a wedding, and when there was a death. The occasion was specified by the armbands worn on the cuffs of the robes blue or rose for a birth (depending on the gender of the baby), white for a wedding, and a dark blood red for a death. Draco's cuffs were so dark red that it was hard to tell where the black of his robes ended and the red began, and looked so bloody that it seemed as though he had dipped his robes in his own blood.

Draco had gone to Snape that morning to get permission to violate the school uniform in such a way. Snape had let him without hesitation.

"Harry… you should look at this," Ron said in a voice that told Harry something was wrong.

Harry looked at the paper in Ron's hand and groaned. "I guess they made the death public?"

"Not just that Harry," Hermione told him, looking over from where she sat perusing another student's paper. "Look at the first and second pages."

Wincing Harry took the paper and scanned the headline on the first page.

Lucius Malfoy Found Dead With Dark Mark Blazing Over Malfoy Manor