Tea and No Sympathy

Chapter 4

When Draco snaps awake the next morning in front of his desk, still trembling from a half-remembered erotic dream, and sees the time-turner glowing even more brightly, at first he doesn't believe it.

He must still be in a dream – only this time, it's a nightmare. He fixed things. It's impossible that this is happening. Absolutely impossible.

Maybe, he reasons, the time-turner is glowing because . . . because of built-up time, or something. He didn't use it, did he? But, at the same time, he did. So the paradox has sent it funny. That doesn't mean that he's still stuck in the loop though. He is absolutely not still stuck in the time loop, with no way of escaping other than destroying the time-turner . . . which would probably destroy him too.

But when he enters the dining room, he sees his mother. She's reading the paper, and the headline reads: MALFOY HEIR TO PROMOTE UNITY WITH MUGGLES.

He is, Draco thinks. He absolutely sodding is still stuck in the time loop, damn and blast it all.

"Good morning, dear," his mother says, setting the paper aside and looking at him with sympathy. "Are you nervous about your speech?"

"No," Draco says gloomily, and tucks into his breakfast. He's not nervous because he's not going to give it again – what would be the bloody point? It would be just as much use to go back to his room and lock the door and create his own bloody commemorative issue of Witch Weekly – he has enough newspaper clips of Potter secreted away in odd corners of his room, after all. And at least that way, he'd get an entertaining wank out of it, before he burned the fucking thing to show Potter what he thinks of him.

He has a wild, self-destructive urge to go to the Palace of Westminster and just wank in front of the real Potter – right there in the Lords Chamber. It would have no consequence, after all; he could do it every day, for the rest of forever, apparently, and it would still have no consequence.

But no. Draco sips his sweetened tea to try to excuse the heat that's rushed to his face. It would be just his luck if today is the day the time loop ends; time is unpredictable, and it's possible the loop will just collapse in on itself eventually, without his assistance. It's not a risk worth taking.

Besides – his father would be in the room. A greater mood killer has never been invented.

After he's finished his breakfast, and he's in a fit state to stand up, he goes back to his bedroom and wonders what he should do. The time-turner pulses from the far side of the room, and he glares at it. But he has to do something, and he's never been the type to give up, whatever people like Potter might think of him.

Should he seek help from his mother and father? The thought makes him wince. He can just imagine how pleased his father would be to learn what his son has done, and how disappointed his mother would be. And what good would it do? His father isn't exactly an expert in time travel. No one is. It's widely known that the Ministry brought a halt to their time travel experiments back in 1899, when a time-travelling research witch caused untold damage to the life paths of all she met and died herself from premature aging when she returned to her own time.

Draco has read all about it. He wonders now – a bit fucking late – why it didn't put him off his own experiments. It seems big-headed now, risking the lives of everyone he's come in contact with, just to suppress a newspaper headline or two.

It would, he thinks, have been far more straightforward just to bribe everyone involved. Potter's exit could have been excused as a toilet break, and the mass walkout as a fire alert.