Second Time Around

You just can't win

"Cause you light up the path

And I don't care

Go on and tear me apart"—Sky full of stars, Coldplay

"BLACK STILL AT LARGE"

Sirius Black, possibly the most infamous prisoner ever to be held in Azkaban fortress, is still eluding capture, the Ministry of Magic confirmed today...'

BUMP

Draco looked up from his newspaper as the train shook from side to side in the pouring rain. Across him in the Hogwarts compartment sat Goyle who was pigging out on the sweets that he'd recently purchased from the trolley lady while Crabbe was asleep. Theodore Nott sat beside him with another novel. Sometimes Draco suspected that Nott read almost as much as Hermione. Almost no one would ever be able to read as much as Hermione. Blaise Zabini sat with some other Slytherins in another compartment. Draco counted himself lucky for life's little miracles. They were on the return trip to Hogwarts for their third year.

Draco turned back to his own newspaper.

'While Muggles have been told that Black is carrying a gun (a kind of metal wand that Muggles use to kill each other), the magical community lives in fear of a massacre like that of twelve years ago, when Black murdered thirteen people with a single curse.'

And with that he grew bored and put it away to stare out the window.

All the papers could talk about was the breakout of Sirius Black. Apparently, he was a notorious murderer wanted across the whole of wizarding England, even across Muggle England.

Despite the ministry's involvement in last year's events with the Chamber of Secrets, there were no stories in the Daily Prophet. Probably didn't want to admit that they sent the groundskeeper, Hagrid, to Azkaban, accused of setting a giant basilisk on four Muggleborns, including his own Hermione.

Draco repressed a shudder, not wanting to be spot by Nott or the others and have it reported back to his father.

Lucius Malfoy would never know that his seemingly stupid and arrogant son was in fact keeping a horde of secrets from him.

Like the fact that last year Draco had lead a group of Gryffindors willingly into the Slytherin common room. And that he had spent an evening camped outside the Gryffindor common room. That he was part of the group that had gone into the Chamber of Secrets and slayed the ancient familiar of Salazar Slytherin, stopping it from its sole duty of ridding the school of Muggleborns. That Draco himself was the one who plunged a basilisk fang through the diary that Lucius slipped into Ginny Weasley's cauldron and held the soul of Lord Voldemort.

That he valued the life of a single Muggleborn girl, above all else - even his own life.

Luckily, his father was too pre-occupied during summer with ministry work as it worked itself up into a frenzy over Black's escape. On top of that, he was still fuming over the diary and the embarrassment of being tricked into setting free his own house-elf.

Dobby had nothing to do with Draco. While he thought the little creature miserable and pathetic, he never abused it, seeing no fun in mistreating a creature who practically asked for it. But he delighted in his father's humiliation.

Draco's loyalty to his father was not much compared to Hermione. And he still resented his father for being part of the reason why Hermione spent almost half a term petrified.