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Now The Shining Sun Is Up






“I was protesting.” Malfoy’s voice was full of aggrieved dignity.

“Alright.” Harry made another mark on the file. “You have a thing against Ministry statuary.”

“No. I have a thing against the Ministry.” Malfoy came up to the desk and tapped his finger on the file, not even really looking at it. “Make sure you write that down on your very important papers.”

“Whatever,” Harry said, shutting the folder.

Trust Malfoy to want his criminal record to look dramatic.

“And just what did you think chaining yourself up would change about the Ministry?” Harry asked.

Malfoy shrugged. “You have to admit it was a significant improvement to the décor.”

“Do I really?”

“Come on. Live a little. Offerings of human flesh always spice things up.” Malfoy paused. “And serve as reminders of the immutable nature of mortality. You could be sacrificed to pagan gods any day. So, you know. Live a lot.”

“Okay.” Harry opened his file again. “So you were offering your flesh? Is that what we’re calling it now? List of charges,” he muttered, sifting through the papers. “List of charges. Here we go. P-R-O-S-T-I-T—”

“Only in your dreams. Oh, or if someone named Roxana is asking. Or Bridget. Or Azniv. She’ll sound kind of foreign.”

Malfoy might’ve slipped off to his happy place there, for a moment.

Harry resisted the urge to bang his head against a wall.

“Where was I?” Malfoy shook himself. “Oh yes, my sacrifice on the altar of injustice.” Draping himself over a chair, he deigned to explain. “You see, we—me and many others—are appalled at the discrimination of our system. We were to be united in bondage as a mass statement of protest against the Ministry. We won’t stand for inequality! We are for the rights of puppies and unicorns and Pygmy Puffs, and we demand—”

“These others you say are with you,” Harry interrupted, before Malfoy could wax further poetic. “Shall we invite them to join us for tea?”

“Don’t be silly. You never put in that order for extra crumpets like I asked.” Malfoy flapped away Harry’s distinct lack of amusement. “Didn’t you notice they aren’t here? Goodness. And here I thought you were an Auror. Aren’t you supposed to have keen powers of observation and such?”

Harry recognized that smile from school. Now that it was turned on him and not to suck up to their professors, Harry realized Malfoy never actually expected anyone to believe all his bollocks. He just expected them to let him off anyway because he was . . . irresistible. Or something, Harry didn’t know. People weren’t actually charmed by that.

No, really. They weren’t.

“So, what?” Harry asked. “You forgot to pay these other people to be your friends?”

“They got held up, I suppose.”

“And you went through with it anyway? Chaining yourself to a statue in the middle of the Ministry all by your lonesome? Not much of statement. More like an embarrassment.” Harry couldn’t help being annoyed at having to write up charges on absurdities. “Like to make a fool of yourself, do you?”

Malfoy’s smile flickered, but when he spoke his tone was light. “I’m hurt. You would know the answer to that question if you remembered me at all from school. I guess you just never noticed me. No, I don’t blame you.” He put up a staying hand. “You were so big and important and world-saving; of course you would never notice little old me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I noticed you, Malfoy.”

“Really? Because I stay up at nights, worried about whether you did.”

“Obviously. Since you did all that stuff to get me in trouble when most times I couldn’t be bothered to remember you existed.”

“Can you forget I exist now?” Malfoy asked hopefully.

“You don’t care what other people think,” Harry said, too surprised by it to remember to tell Malfoy to shut up. In fact, it was like Malfoy was coming into sharp focus, like maybe Harry’s glasses weren’t so smudged or maybe he was waking up some more. Like he was seeing something new, something that wasn’t paperwork or annoying gits who had to be processed or goose chases that ended in changing nothing.

“Sure,” Malfoy said, but didn’t sound so.

“But you can’t care what the Ministry thinks, either. This wasn’t about injustice or whatever, since it’s not as if one bloke chaining himself up in the Ministry is going to start some kind of movement anyway.” Harry shook his head, and Malfoy went back to looking like Malfoy, his washed out skin and hair not so very different from the beige carpet and gray file cabinets. “It’s always about getting attention with you.” He tried not to sound as weary as he suddenly felt.

Malfoy stood up again. “Well spotted. Now can you just give me my sentence and lock me up?” Malfoy glanced with wide eyes at the closed door. “Unless my sentence is listening to your vast untold wisdom. Dear God, have you no mercy?”

“Sit down.”

“Really, Potter? So hungry for company you lock criminals in with you? You’re even crazier than I—”

Harry stood up suddenly, fists on his desk. “Sit down,” he said again, angry because he couldn’t see straight, or was it the other way around?

Malfoy looked startled. “What’s that?” His voice was softer somehow. “A nerve?”

But he sat down.

“Look,” Harry said. Back on subject. “Why’d you do this? Did you even think about the consequences? Do you people ever think about anyone but yourselves when you—” Back off subject. Harry clenched his jaw for a moment and then let it go. “What do you have against the Ministry? Despite that it’s full of bureaucrats and incompetents.” Back off— “What is it this time? Did the Minister’s hippogriff, like, peck you, or something?”

Malfoy blinked. “You’re really asking me this.”

“You’re right,” Harry said sourly. “The Minister doesn’t have a hippogriff. Was it a big dark scary forest?”

“You really don’t know what’s going on. You really don’t even . . .” Malfoy looked tired, suddenly. It made him seem smaller in the chair.

It made Harry feel smaller also, like there was something vital he had missed.

“Well, this has been fun,” Malfoy said suddenly. “We should do it again—never. Possibly ever, but now I’ve got to run. I must get to Jimbo.”

“Jimbo?”

“That’s my future cell mate.”

“Um. Right. Here’s a thought. What if his name isn’t Jimbo?”

“Then obviously his parents named him wrong.”

“What if you don’t even have a cell mate?”

“Then I shall imagine one.”

“Jimbo.”

“He’s very fit, by the way. And what we do in the privacy of our public cell is our own business. Don’t be a bigot, Potter.”

“Malfoy,” Harry said, realizing he still didn’t see something.

“Right then.” Malfoy stood. “Mustn’t keep Jimbo waiting. Off we go.”

Harry stood too.

“I’m eager to visit my cell,” Malfoy rambled. “I’m thinking of putting a nice little throw rug by the latrine, and hanging drapes over the bars. Jimbo so loves a jolly gingham print.”

Harry shook his head in frustration. “I just want to know what people like you think they’re doing, is all.”

“People like me?” Malfoy turned back, sounding interested in spite of himself.

“You know . . .” Harry had to loosen his jaw again to say it. “I don’t actually think you’re that bad a bloke.”

“Stop; I’m blushing.”

“I just think you make bad choices. And it’s not even all your fault. Your parents—”

“You don’t talk about my parents.” Malfoy’s voice was suddenly low. He was closer than before.

They were at eye level. Harry wanted to look down on him. “Whatever. I just mean, you’re ignorant—” he went on right over Malfoy—“and selfish, but you’re not cruel. Maybe in petty ways, but when it comes down to it, you don’t actually want to physically hurt or torture anyone. You’re not evil. And I think most people are like you. They don’t actually want to do anything wrong or commit crimes, they just don’t think . . .”

“Poor Potter.” Malfoy was looking at him almost thoughtfully. “No really, poor Potter. Living in a world full of Malfoys. Not evil enough to kill or let die in Fiendfyre, but not good for much else. Doesn’t the in-between suck?”

“I didn’t say—”

“What we really need is a villain of the piece. Hey, I know, make it out to be me after all. Me and other former Death Eaters. You could take away our rights, our jobs, our homes; you could start up talks about sending us all to prison or interning us in—”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.

Malfoy clucked his tongue. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? When the world doesn’t give you all the dark packaged in a nice neat lord that you can slay. When all the world gives you are human beings. Don’t you sometimes wish Voldemort was alive and you were the Chosen One so you could save us all?”

No.

No, Harry never thought of that, never wished it, even in dreams—in nightmares—

Where he was the one with the cold red eyes who wanted to remake the world in an image he could bear, a place where he could save them all from despair.

“Of course you’d say that,” Harry snarled. “Weren’t you a big fan of some dark lord or other? I seem to remember that.”

Malfoy looked away.

Take that, Harry thought savagely, but it was a strangely empty victory.

Malfoy walked over to the chair again and sat down. “Alright,” he said. “Fine. Tell me what the good choice is.”

“What?”

“Since I’ve made such bad ones in the past.” Malfoy’s expression was carefully neutral. “Say I have a problem with—with things that the Ministry is doing. How would someone who’s not . . . let’s see—ignorant and selfish and pettily cruel—go about fixing that?”

“Lots of people don’t like the Ministry’s policies,” Harry said, annoyed by Malfoy’s act. “But we don’t go around making public disturbances or anything.”

“Go through the proper channels. Why didn’t I think of that?” Malfoy gushed. “Thank you so much. You’ve been such a big help; I don’t know what I’d do without—”

“I’ve never gotten along with the Ministry either. What, you think you’re different, special?” Malfoy was just like all those others. They never did horrible, far-reaching things like the Voldemorts and Grindelwalds, who thought only of the world. They did small things, selfish things, stupid things, because they thought only of themselves.

In the end, there were too few Voldemorts and Grindelwalds to make the world so dark. There was just enough of everyone else.