The Golden Wand [Harry Potter/Percy Jackson]

Chapter 53: Annabeth's Secret

Hermione POV:

Needless to say, Drew Tanaka had a lot more students to deal with after the trial. Just as Krum had promised, we had all become a little too fucked up to function for a while. It was the first time in my life that I haven't wanted to go to my lessons. Some people were fine - Hazel and Adrian seemed pretty unaffected by the ordeal - whereas others had taken it a lot worse than the rest. Annabeth seemed to have been affected worse than anyone else, but she wouldn't ever tell me why. I had a feeling she was hiding something from me - from all of us, even Percy - but I couldn't tell what it was. 

So, after a week in the hospital wing when all of us finally stopped crying, we were told the truth about the trial. 

Obviously, the man we had spoken to during the trial wasn't Fontaine - just an actor who was used to try and make the situation seem more believable. The woman, also an actress, had to embody someone that had caused us a lot of grief in our lives; in Annabeth's case she had pretended to be Annabeth's mum; in Percy's case she had been a woman named Mrs. Dodds (an old enemy of his, apparently); and in my case the woman had claimed she knew where my parents were. It had been traumatic, to say the least. 

The next thing we were told was that the people we had to choose between weren't real - Draco and Ron were merely figments of my imagination. So they were never there, begging for their lives, being tortured before my eyes. None of it had been real. 

The whole point of the challenge, it seemed, was to NOT use the killing curse. No matter how much we were goaded and persuaded, we were not allowed to use that spell. None of us had... apart from Draco. I watched the footage of his trial; he had been given the choice to kill either me or his mother (his real mother was currently locked away in Azkaban, but at the time he had really thought it was her) and he hadn't even hesitated. He hated his mother; because she didn't love him, because she neglected him, because she had stood aside when his father abused him, because she had convinced him time and time again to become a dark wizard. So killing her hadn't seemed like a difficult task at all, to Draco, and he had done it with a smile. I had to look away from the screen when I watched him do it, and - although I would never tell him this - I struggled to look at him for about a week. 

Draco was angry that he had lost. He thought it was unfair that he had been put against his mother - someone who he could claim was actually evil. He would say "That trial was bullshit; I was put against a prisoner of Azkaban, a dark witch, and you were put against your ex-boyfriend? That's so unfair."

I think what Draco struggled with most was the stares he received from other students when he walked down the corridor. It was hard to distract him from them, and even harder to talk over the whispers - "stay away from him, he used the unforgivable curse, he's evil", people would say. Eventually, he stopped walking through the corridors of Hogwarts and apparated to each of his lessons. The worst thing was that he could no longer stay in the Golden Suite, and since he didn't want to be seen around school he would spend his days confined in the Slytherin common room. I would join him as much as I could, but the common room was a cold and dark place and he was never in a good mood. He always ignored me when I invited him to the Golden Suite. 

Sometimes, he would be jealous. "Everyone in this school hates me because I was tricked into using the Killing Curse, but Golden Girl Annabeth Chase gets to beat the living shit out of her actress and her adoring fans applaud her over it?" He scowled one afternoon. I took my time to think of a response. 

"I guess its just... Annabeth's done so much, you know, in terms of fighting dark wizards and saving the world - people kind of idolize her. I bet she could do anything and they would praise her for it."

"As opposed to me - Draco Malfoy, son of dead Lucius and imprisoned Narcissa, nephew of Bellatrix. I've done nothing good in my life apart from bully a few people when I was younger, and now that shit's gonna ruin me forever. I didn't choose my family, but nobody cares about that part. Anything I do from now on will be seen as evil because I come from an evil past. Nobody knows the half of it - they don't know that I was abused, that I was made to do half the things I did. Even if they did know they probably wouldn't care," he spat.