Chilled Legacy

Chilled Legacy IX

A/N: EARLY UPDATE AS PROMISED. Sorry in advance for the future update...
UM ANYWAY...
Enjoy

-laura

Chilled Legacy IX

Breakfast was quite. Neville's absences loomed over them like a shadow.
Draco's was more evident—even if he wasn't much of a talker—thanks to the group of students asphyxiating them with their questions.

Hermione hadn't yet gotten over the damage her spell caused. Ron kept taking the fault when people asked questions. Harry was sure he was trying to make her feel better (and it truly was his fault when looking at specifics), but this only made Hermione feel worse. The one question they couldn't answer was how they'd survived.
It wasn't so much the spell that was used that was difficult for Harry to explain, but the person that cast it. The question kept echoing in in his mind like an incomplete song—why would Draco Malfoy save them?
Regardless, they stuck to the story—the Slytherin had used wandless magic to save them.

It was funny how the world worked, Harry thought.
A larger group of students had been there to witness his act of heroism then. Their eyes had seen, yet their minds still needed confirmation that any of it had been true.
Harry politely told them to give them back their oxygen and the group slowly disbanded.

"Do you think he'll still help us?" Ron asked.

Hermione glared at him.

"What? It's a legitimate question."

There was silence for a moment.

"Alright, fine. We're all dying to know why," Ron blurted. "I don't see the mystery. We saved him once; he was probably just returning the favor, right? It's not like we owe him anything."

The words sounded like his, but Ron didn't. Maybe if it had been him alone under the fire he could've meant them, but he hadn't stopped holding Hermione's hand since they sat down. She was alive because of their former bully, and Harry could sense Ron was grateful just as he was that both his friends had survived.
Maybe there wasn't any fuzzy feeling inclining them to be friends with Malfoy, but for the moment throwing a single insult at him felt impossible. All the current actions had been piling up in front of them, the stack finally high enough for them to take notice.

All the countless hours of training, sitting with them at breakfast lunch and dinner to explain step by step basic concepts of heat magic only to later withstand dismissively cold glances of inexistence, stealing from his parents, and—more importantly—holding his tongue.
They hadn't failed to notice the absence of blood traitor and mudblood in the average conversation. Even when insulted by Harry's various friends, there had never come a single retort. It was more of a resigned whatever to the constant jibes, but still—what the bloody hell was happening with him?

"I think we should go see Neville now," Hermione said.

Harry and Ron looked at her.

Harry smiled, not at her, but at the situation. "That's code for let's go see if Malfoy lived, right?"

***

Draco awoke suddenly. His dreams had been a messy array of nightmares, each with the same end—his sole presences among frozen corpses.
His whole body burned considerably less since yesterday's incident. Now he only looked pink, as if his body had suffered terrible sunburn.
Astoria had stayed overnight, her head still resting on the bed. He leaned his sore arm to per her head when he heard a soft, cold whisper. "Good morning."

Draco jerked up, biting on his tongue to keep from crying out. Just a meter above him was Moaning Myrtle, staring down at him with an undecipherable expression. Sadness? Anger? Disgust? Worriment?