Chapter 230 - Ripples on the Lake of the Heart

"I've always envied you, Draco."

Polaris meant every word. Not a syllable of pretense.

"Envy me?" Draco said with a self-deprecating laugh. "I don't follow, the great and famous Miss Prince."

"Let me guess — are you envying my family for making every wrong decision? Or envying me for having to do the impossible just to prove my incompetence? Or maybe envying me for being called a coward, mocked as useless and weak?"

The Death Eaters sneered at them. Those damned Gryffindors looked down on him too.

In front of enemies and arch-rivals, Draco would never let a trace of defeat show. But Polaris was not an enemy, much less an arch-rival.

Polaris was... someone who loved him.

He couldn't find the words for what he was feeling. He didn't like where he was. He couldn't change any of it. The future was a fog, like the haze that settles between distant mountains and swallows everything whole.

His father was out of prison. Things should have been better. But the aftermath of failure was like a fishbone wound in the throat. The bone was gone. The wrongness lingered.

"I don't think I can ever fully understand what you're going through, but I've been trying." Polaris braced her hands on the grass behind her and turned her head toward him. "Right now you've got your quills up, thinking I must see you as less than you were. But the truth is, I've always envied you. Your family."

"Honestly, I found you pretty annoying at first. At the long tables in the Great Hall, you were always boasting about things that made no sense and couldn't possibly happen — like dodging airplanes on a broomstick."

"Ahem!" The color that flooded Draco's pale face was pure, mortified red. "Who still digs up old chestnuts like that and roasts them all over again!"

Polaris burst out laughing.

"The first time I felt something other than annoyance toward you was also in the Great Hall." She reined in her teasing smile. "Back then, your mother was always sending you loads of packages."

What was so special about that? Draco didn't see why it would change anything for Polaris.

"I assumed you hadn't packed properly and she was sending toiletries." Polaris gave a soft laugh. "But the packages were full of your favorite snacks, toys you loved, and even a dragon plushie."

"Pansy Parkinson said that when you were little, you brought it everywhere you went, Mr. Drakon. Rather like your own name, isn't it."

Draco stared at her in disbelief and raised his voice: "Would someone please do something about that loose-lipped woman!"

Polaris covered her mouth and couldn't stop laughing.

At first Draco kept denouncing Pansy Parkinson. Then, before long, he was simply watching Polaris's face, remembering how long it had been since he'd seen her laugh like that. Even if he was the punchline.

Polaris laughed herself out and went quiet.

"Perhaps you never noticed," she said, "but that year I didn't receive a single package. Only Christmas presents."

That... he genuinely hadn't noticed.

Back then, Draco was too busy making Harry Potter's life miserable to pay attention to whether some ordinary girl classmate received any post at all.

"Because by that time," Polaris said, her voice even, "my birth parents had long since left me."

Draco went still. The countless times he had taunted Potter for having no parents came back to him all at once, and his gaze slid away.

"Back then," Polaris said, lowering her head, "you told your mother there was no need to send so many things to school. She insisted anyway."

"The thing you wanted to refuse was the very thing I would have given anything to have. I really do envy you, Draco. Everyone knows how much your parents love you."

Even if that love showed itself in Draco being completely spoiled.

"No matter what happens, you never abandon each other. You forced yourself to attempt murder for your father's sake. Your mother went to Professor Snape for yours. Your father demanded the Ministry execute the Hippogriff for you. Your mother fell apart when your father was imprisoned."

That was a lot to take in all at once, and Draco couldn't quite keep up. He had never imagined that Polaris, powerful, formidable Polaris, as everyone knew her to be, actually envied him. And he had never imagined she knew about the Unbreakable Vow. But then, this was Polaris. Nothing she knew should surprise him.

"Er —"

His first instinct was to feel proud of how much his family loved each other. He caught himself fast, remembering her situation, and forced the impulse down. "Maybe," he said quietly, "if you're ever willing, it could be your family too."

"That would be very hard." Polaris dismissed the offer with calm, clear logic.

"You're unwilling?" Draco's voice went up. "I was just saying it casually. Feeling sorry for you, all alone, "

"I'm afraid your parents wouldn't accept it." Polaris cut off his retreat.

Draco stopped mid-sentence. He blinked once, then waved a hand with elaborate unconcern. "What's the big deal? Whatever I've ever wanted to do, my mother and father have always been fully supportive!"

"Including the rocket crossbow?" Polaris said, out of nowhere.

Draco's hand froze in midair. He scrambled to recover: "My mother just thought the broom was too fast. Unsafe! Only Potter, with no one to look after him, ahem, I mean, only someone as reckless as Sirius Black would let Potter play Quidditch in a way that courts death."

Polaris looked away, toward the Black Lake. The waterline had dropped. Bubbles drifted up through the surface at long intervals and disappeared.

"You see," she said with a sigh, "you already know. Your mother won't agree to everything unconditionally. My existence goes against everything your family has always believed."

Draco pursed his lips and muttered, "Even if it's you, she's known about the two of us for ages. And look, she hasn't done anything."

"Oh?" Polaris looked at him, surprised. "Since when?"

"Last year." Draco spread his arms and dropped back onto the grass. "My mother said that as long as I'm happy, she doesn't care about the rest."

"Polaris, you clever people," he drawled, self-satisfied, "always projecting years into the future and worrying yourselves sick over things that haven't even happened."

Polaris lay down slowly and rested her head on his arm. "Idiot."

Draco had no idea that this was Narcissa Malfoy's expedient measure, nothing more.

At the time, Draco had been carrying an immense weight and was near collapse. Under those conditions, anything that could ease her son's suffering even slightly, a mother who loved him that much would only ever choose to accept it.

But what about now? What about later?

Polaris was certain the indulgence wouldn't last. She would need to become more formidable. Stronger. More valuable. Enough to outweigh the Malfoy family's convictions about blood.

Stronger. Polaris let her eyelids fall, her gaze dark and unreadable.

Out of nowhere, she remembered Neville twisting in agony during Defense Against the Dark Arts.

That had been performance. She knew it without question.

But she also knew, with equal clarity, that if she had let herself go, truly cast without restraint, Neville would have had no defense. 15 seconds. That was all it would have taken to leave him like his parents.

Curses that powerful, Polaris could list five or ten without thinking, and execute every single one to its fullest extent.

She slowly closed her hand into a fist. She didn't understand it. She possessed this much power. Why should she still have to swallow indignity?

From the moment she entered Hogwarts, she had been subjected to Dumbledore's character tests. And what she had done hardly counted as anything truly wrong, was Hagrid raising dangerous creatures at school supposed to be a mark of noble character?

Why did she have to endure the prejudice of the DA members and the Order of the Phoenix? Why did she have to waste an entire summer hiding and running with Dumbledore? Why, when Death Eaters came for her, was she not allowed to strike back?

And now, because of blood, she was facing a future where she might have to lose Draco.

...

The thoughts swarmed through her mind like Cornish Pixies loosed from a cage.

Mercy. Kindness. What had any of it ever given her, or the people she loved? Why should she hold it like something precious?

If Professor Snape had been a little less decent, if he had acted like the Carrows, doing as he pleased with no restraint, he could have spared himself a great deal of pain.

Those people called him a murderer. Voldemort's lapdog. Fine, then. He might as well have made it true.

"Tired?" Draco asked softly. "Let's go back to the castle."

Polaris lifted her head. "What do you think of what I did today?"

"Today?" Draco asked. "You mean using the Cruciatus Curse on Longbottom?"

"There's nothing else worth mentioning, is there?"

"No, nothing else." Draco was quiet for a long moment. "In my personal opinion, it didn't seem like your style."

"How so?"

"Crabbe's pissed you off before." Draco spoke slowly, as though working it out. "Pansy Parkinson thought you'd turned him into a horned toad and were planning to take his hands and feet. But you didn't. You just put his shrunken toes back the way they were."

"Harper's pissed you off too." At this, Draco allowed himself a gleeful smile at the rival who had never stood a chance. "You made him stink unbearably, and you could have cured it, which means you had something worse ready and chose not to use it. I'm fairly certain you had a dozen ways to make it permanent."

"All in all, you restrain yourself in a way no Slytherin really should." Draco said. "If I were as powerful as you, Potter would know exactly what it means to be finished."

The greater the power, a familiar voice seemed to surface in Polaris's mind, the greater the need for restraint.

She couldn't place whose words they were. She let them go.

---

On the other side of the castle, Ginny sprinted into the Hospital Wing, ignoring Madam Pomfrey's "No running in here," and yanked the white curtain open at Neville's bed.

She was still catching her breath. She had braced for the worst.

Neville was lying there, looking up at her, perfectly blank.

"You're, okay?" Ginny's voice dropped steadily as Neville raised a finger to his lips. "What happened? Seamus said Polaris used the Cruciatus Curse on you in Defense Against the Dark Arts. I couldn't believe it — I still can't—"

"More or less." Neville spoke in slow, careful bursts that nearly set Ginny's nerves alight. "But she didn't torture me."

Neville had thought this through.

The first pair called to duel had been Crabbe and Seamus. Seamus had no reason to expect the Cruciatus Curse. No preparation, no resistance.

If it had been left to Amycus Carrow, with Crabbe showing no mercy on the other end, there was no telling what could have happened. Some things couldn't be undone.

"So she volunteered to duel me instead." Neville suspected that wasn't an accident. "Hermione's said it before, her control over magic is extremely precise. She must have been certain she could cast the Cruciatus Curse without causing me irreversible damage."

No one else in that room would have been a better choice. Because of his parents, Neville knew the Cruciatus Curse better than anyone. Years of hatred toward the Death Eaters had built something in him, a resistance, deep and bone-level.

Ginny shook her head slowly. "I still don't understand how she did it. It's almost, it's almost impossible."

The Cruciatus Curse required a genuine desire to inflict suffering. So how had Polaris managed to hold that intent and act on it without actually breaking anyone, and still pull back at the right moment?

It was as contradictory as Polaris Prince herself.

But the plan had worked. She had used an Unforgivable on a Gryffindor, disrupted the class, and kept Amycus tied up with Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing for the rest of the period.

"She gave us a warning." As the new leader of the DA, Neville felt the weight of it. "This week we have to find ways to train the members, willpower, resistance to Dark magic. Polaris bought us one escape. There won't be another."

"I wish Harry were here." Ginny's voice softened. "He's always been the best at this."

"I miss Harry too." A shadow crossed Neville's face. "I hope he's alright out there. Those of us at school, we can't be the ones who hold him back."

"Ginny, how did you reach Polaris last time? Do you think you could ask her if she has any methods for resisting Dark magic?"

If she said it was luck, Neville wouldn't believe her. But if she was going to find Polaris... wait. Moaning Myrtle. She could pass a message through Moaning Myrtle.

Ginny almost laughed. No wonder Hermione trusted her. Polaris was a genuinely reliable ally, the kind you didn't find twice.

---

That reliable, powerful ally was currently doing something very unreliable.

Back at the castle, Polaris felt the itch take hold the moment she was through the door. She wanted to take out the Dark magic she knew and work through it. Practice it properly.

She had pushed those rebellious, dangerous thoughts back down. They'd stayed down.

But the pull toward Dark magic had not gone with them.

Honestly, the way Polaris saw it, magic was magic. Studying Dark magic was no different from studying any other discipline. It just happened to be more powerful. More dangerous.

That was all.

➤ Next: The Influence of Dark Arts