Chapter Text
Delphi jerked upright, startled and disoriented. At the garden table beside her, seated like a little prince in one of the antique ebony-and-ivory chairs passed down the Malfoy line, her cousin Draco snickered.
"Whatever will mother say about your manners?" he asked, casting a sly glance toward their guest at the table. Theodore Nott peered back dispassionately, visibly unamused. "I would remind you that you're supposed to be making a good impression, but of course it's already far too late for that."
Delphi sighed. "I'm too tired for your nonsense, Draco. Leave me alone."
Indeed, Delphi had not been sleeping well since the summer started. After nearly ten full months away, she was back here at her aunt and uncle's manor in the countryside, far away from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and ever since she'd gotten off the train, she'd been restless. She missed her friends, who could not come to visit her here; she missed her little snake, Boros, who had chosen to stay at Hogwarts without her; and most of all, she missed being able to get through an entire night without waking up in a cold sweat from some nightmare filled with fanged stone monsters, Dark and hungry mirrors, and limbs that refused to listen to her commands.
"What a terrible hostess," Draco said, shaking his head. "Just shameful."
Rolling her eyes, Delphi looked over at Nott. "Tell him to quit it, would you? Maybe he'll listen then. I'm sure you've no more interest in this than I do?"
Nott scoffed. "Absolutely none."
It was what Delphi had been expecting, of course, but it was still a relief. It was not unclear to her, after all, why boys like Nott and Blaise Zabini and even thirteen-year-old Oswald Macnair and fourteen-year-old Edgar Avery were being invited 'round this summer. Aunt Cissy, Draco's mother, was playing matchmaker for her niece, trying to introduce her to a nice pureblood boy before she ruined her reputation with the likes of Harry Potter or Ronald Weasley.
That was a ridiculous thought, of course, but one that would cause any good pureblood mother to worry. At first glance, Delphi's male friends weren't terrible prospects—not that Delphi would ever think of them that way, thank you very much—considering Ron and Neville were purebloods and Harry was the most famous, celebrated boy in the wizarding world. But worse than being just Gryffindors, which was already a small mark against them, they were blood traitors; Harry's mother had been Muggleborn; Neville's parents had been tortured into insanity by Delphi's own; and the Weasleys were an impoverished walking joke to "proper" society.
Forget Aunt Cissy. Delphi's Lestrange grandmother would skin her if she ever so much as looked at one of the boys that way.
...which brought her back to the likes of Nott, Zabini, Macnair, and Avery. But if nothing else, Delphi at least had to appreciate that Narcissa was the one arranging awkward little dates for her, not Madame Lestrange. Leaving it up to her grandmother's judgment would surely see her trapped alone with someone truly awful. Or, at absolute worst, her cousin Draco himself.
She wondered occasionally how old she would be before she had to start worrying about the possibility that her grandmother would try to arrange a marriage for her. Rare though they were, Delphi certainly wouldn't put it past the old woman. And she would not be going along with that.
"Kneazle got your tongue?" Draco's voice broke into Delphi's worries. "I'd say you look lost in thought, but that would require you had a brain."
Without his Hogwarts peers to bully and needle, Draco had turned quite a lot of his childishness toward her these past weeks.
"I'm tired," she repeated. "And none of us want to be here. Daydreaming is certainly more interesting that listening to you, anyway."
"We could fly," Draco suggested, but of course neither of the others would have gone for that. Delphi was no great fan of brooms, and she hadn't seen Nott touch one since his supremely unenthusiastic showing in Madam Hooch's lessons last year.
"We could go to the library," Delphi suggested instead. "I've found all sorts of interesting stuff in there lately."
That, at least, was true. Within two days of coming home to the manor, Uncle Lucius had taken Delphi into the manor's gorgeous, envy-inducing library, its mahogany shelves brimming with antique magical tomes from around the world. Growing up, she'd gone through many of them—books on magical theory, books on old fashioned pureblood traditions, books on wizarding superiority and theories of magical origin, even diaries of long-dead Malfoy ancestors. But that day, Lucius had placed a hand on Delphi's shoulder and led her toward the reading nook at the back of the room, tapped his wand in a quick staccato beat against the wall, and revealed for the first time one of the manor's many secrets: a separate, smaller library of books best kept away from prying eyes.
Dark Arts books.
"I trust you to use your judgment with these," Lucius had told her, and she had readily assured him that she would. Then she'd immediately gone to work connecting each and every book to the network she'd designed during the previous school year; by linking books together with a spell of her own invention, she would only ever need to carry one of them with her. This master book, then, could be used to access the pages of any single other book connected to the network.
It was the thing Delphi was most proud of, if truth be told—and it meant that even if ever Lucius found cause to revoke her access to the secret Malfoy library, he would not truly be able to take its knowledge from her.
But she hadn't told Draco about what his father had shown her. She would have today, perhaps, if not for his reply: "The library?" he asked with a sneer. "You and that mudblood are obsessed."
Delphi's face contorted into a snarl. Another of the things that Delphi was proud of was her ability to keep up with Hermione Granger, the other candidate for the best student of their year. But unlike Delphi, Hermione's parents were Muggles, and there was no more offensive word for that than 'mudblood'.
Which, of course, was exactly why Draco chose to use it.
"Shut your mouth before I shut it for you. Hermione's a better witch than you, anyway. And you don't hear me insulting your awful friends, do you?"
"You insult them all the time," Draco said, dispassionate in the face of her fury. Nott snickered. "Besides, I wouldn't think you'd be so interested in sticking up for that lot anymore."
"Excuse me?"
Draco's lips curved into a mean little grin as he glanced over at Nott, as if to double-check that the other boy was listening to whatever cruel thing Draco planned to say. "You think I haven't noticed? I've seen your mail. You're writing Potter, but he's not writing you back. And those letters from Mudblood and Weasel are showing up less and less, too. Just how long do you think they'll keep you around if Potter decides he doesn't want to be your friend anymore?" He smirked viciously at her, clearly delighting in this perceived slight. "Seems like maybe mother's been wasting her time after all. You realize that's why she's been inviting Nott and Macnair and the rest over, of course? I overheard her on the floo with your grandmother a few weeks ago. The old bag's furious at the thought that you might give it up for Potter or Weasley before too long, but of course if Potter's lost his interest in you, then I don't think we need to worry about that."
Delphi's jaw hung. She couldn't believe her ears, couldn't believe that he'd talk like that to her face, let alone in front of one of their classmates. But she didn't disbelieve him, not at all; if anyone in the world was going to say such awful things about her, of course it would be her grandmother.
But Draco wasn't done. He turned to Nott, his eyes glittering with satisfaction. "You know they actually let slip last year that they'd hoped she and I might wind up getting married?" His gaze flickered back to Delphi, and she watched him look her over in quick appraisal. She knew damn well that he was just doing it to get under her skin, just to hurt her feelings, just to embarrass her in front of someone he wanted to impress—knew, moreover, that at twelve he was still as disinterested in girls as she was in boys and had probably never once actually looked at a girl in that way before—but it still hurt. Her cheeks heated; a heavy weight seemed to settle in her gut, knowing that she'd just been assessed and resoundingly dismissed. "As if I'd ever let them marry me off to a blood traitor like her."
Delphi stood, shoving her chair backward with such force that it toppled over behind her. She pushed past its uprooted legs and stormed from the garden, trembling in what she hoped was rage instead of hurt.
The crack of apparation heralded Dobby's arrival in Delphi's bedroom shortly after dinnertime. "Miss is not coming down to dinner," the little house elf said, his enormous eyes even rounder than usual as he stared up at her. "Mistress is telling Dobby to come get her."
Delphi, sat atop her mattress with a her network book in her lap, didn't even look up. A house elf, of all things, wasn't even worth the effort. "Tell her I'm not coming," she snapped, turning the page with the most dismissive aura she could manage.
She could feel Dobby staring at her for a long moment and knew perfectly well that he was weighing his options. Technically, Delphi counted as one of his masters; she was part of the family by blood, and Lucius had officially taken her in as a ward when her parents had been sent to Azkaban. But she wasn't Dobby's master in the way that Aunt Cissy was—and that meant Dobby needed to obey her over Delphi.
But unless Narcissa had actually told him to overpower her and drag her downstairs, then Dobby would be loathe to cross that line. So, content in her decision to stay right where she was, Delphi ordered, "Get out of my room," and the elf disappeared with a crack.
When Dobby did not reappear to force her down to dinner and the minutes ticked by until the table had no doubt been cleared for the day, Delphi could admit that perhaps it wasn't her best idea ever. Aunt Cissy had a strict rule about the table; if you didn't show up to eat, you weren't going to get to eat until the next meal, and that meant Delphi was going to have to ignore the growl of her stomach until breakfast tomorrow morning.
Only in retrospect did she realized she hadn't actually hurt anyone but herself by not showing up.
Ah, well. She'd head down to the kitchen in a bit. Dobby would have strict instructions not to feed her—possibly even to prevent her from feeding herself—but that wasn't going to stop her this summer. She had a wand now.
Around nine o'clock, at which point Delphi was sure that the Malfoys would all be safely out of her way in their respective bedrooms, she ventured out of her own and headed down the stairs. She'd learned as a young girl how to sneak around the place with expertise, knew where the little tricks and traps for catching wayward children lay. She knew not to go down the main staircase after midnight because the steps would snag and hold her feet as if in tar; knew to slide down the bannister instead. She knew to skirt around the light of the fireplace in the west den, because after the rest of the manor lights went out, that flame would draw her to it until she found herself staring into the burning green depths of it and found herself hypnotized into going back to bed. She knew not to go outside for the sheer fact that the albino peacocks that wandered the grounds would shriek at her and give chase if they caught sight of her moving around in the dark.
When Delphi made it to the kitchen, there was no sign of anyone. That surprised her a bit; she'd honestly have expected Dobby to have been tasked with guarding the place to try to make sure Delphi didn't get around the food rule.
Maybe Aunt Cissy was getting a bit more lax now that Draco and Delphi were older? That certainly didn't sound like her.
No matter the reason, Delphi made full use of the opportunity and helped herself to enough fresh fruit to fill her stomach. She didn't dare cook anything; the stove would surely catch someone's attention. (And it too might have some curfew-enforcement spell on it; she'd never tested it to find out.)
After Delphi was finished eating, her peach pits and apple cores tossed carelessly into the garbage, she turned her attention to her other reason for being out of bed: the little parcel she'd wrapped up and addressed that afternoon.
"To Harry Potter," the brown paper package read, and so of course she'd gone out of her way to make sure none of Malfoys saw it.
Getting a birthday present for a friend her aunt and uncle didn't approve of her having in the first place had not been easy. Moreover, it had taken her quite a bit of time to figure out what Harry might want. Shopping for, say, Hermione would have been easy; all she would've had to do is comb the library for a book the other girl might like and send it along. Shopping for Neville had been easy; she'd ordered him a fairly expensive magical plant a week ago, a lovely purple flowering thing that had medicinal properties, smelled wonderfully, and emitted a quiet, very pretty birdsong once it bloomed. Even a gift for Ron would have been simple; she would've just given him enough money to treat himself to something nice and still have a bit left over to take the edge off the Weasley's back to school shopping.
But Harry? Harry was a problem. Harry lived with Muggles, ones that apparently hated magic, and that put a lot of Delphi's ideas right out immediately. There also wasn't much point in trying to get him something Quidditch related; it wasn't like he could play over the summer, and her letters to Hermione and Ron had made it clear that Quidditch had been the focus of their gift ideas, too.
Still, she had wanted to get him something special. Something that could actually help him get through the summer away from Hogwarts. Something that could make being trapped into the Muggle world for two entire months less horrifically dull. And she was pretty sure she'd found just the right thing.
It had not been cheap. In fact, it had wiped out Delphi's savings completely. Every galleon she'd saved from every birthday, every Christmas, every other special occasion—250 galleons in total—had been sacrificed to buy it. But the minute she'd seen it, she'd been sure Harry would love it. And now here it was in her hands, wrapped up and ready, and Delphi felt oddly warm and fuzzy as she imagined the look on her face when Harry opened it.
She was so lost in thought, indeed, that she failed to notice she was no longer alone.
"What're you doing?" came Draco's sharp whisper as she reached out toward the owlery door.
Delphi whipped around, fingers tightening around her precious cargo, and glared at her cousin. "Mailing something," she hissed. "Go away."
"In the middle of the night?" Draco asked, one silvery brow arched. "What's it, love letters to Granger?"
Delphi didn't dignify that with a response. She turned back toward the owlery door and pushed it open; when she stepped inside, he followed her, much to her dismay.
She tried to avoid letting him peep at her present while she tied it to her favorite owl's foot with a thick twine. But the Malfoy owlery was not the large, open space that the Hogwarts one was; it was instead a very tiny room, just large enough for a few owls and a house elf or two, not two pubescent wizards. Draco pressed himself in close to her, trying to peer over her shoulder at what she was doing; she blocked him best she could, but—
"Is that for Potter?"
Delphi accidentally jabbed her elbow into his gut. "No," she said, opening the window for the owl, Persephone, to fly out.
"Is it his birthday or something?" Draco's eyes narrowed. "Is that why you were going through your gold a few weeks back? What on earth did you buy him?"
"None of your business." She pushed him toward the door. "Now get out of my way and be quiet before we both get caught out of bed."
"Like you're not used to that," he said. "Got a lot of practice back at Hogwarts, didn't you?"
"Move, Draco."
Scowling, he did. He let her steer him out of the room, and she shut the door behind them; she didn't want either of the adult Malfoys to know she was sending their owls off to Muggle houses. She didn't like to think about the lecture—or even the possible punishment—that Lucius might have for her about that one.
"How much did you spend?" Draco asked. "More than you spent on my present, I'm sure."
He was right, of course. Right by far. She'd gotten a talking-to from Narcissa when she'd gotten home from Hogwarts; apparently, Draco had snitched that she hadn't gotten him a gift for his twelfth birthday, and Narcissa had set that right immediately with a shopping trip to Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. After wandering around, bored, in a Quidditch shop for a while, Delphi had eventually just bought a little pouch of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder (so he could more effectively sneak around the manor after bedtime), an antique cursed monkey's paw (which he would no doubt pass along to some unlucky first-year next year as a 'good luck charm'), and a recently-severed rabbit's foot (which would probably buy him a few weeks of slightly improved luck) from Borgin and Burke's. All together, it had been less than twenty galleons—far cheaper than what she'd spent for Harry.
Far less than Draco had spent for her birthday, too, as a matter of fact.
"Does it matter?"
"No, but—wait, damn—" He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her with him around the corner, peering back down around the corridor.
Dobby had just appeared at the other end of the corridor they'd just left behind. He was as miniscule and grubby as usual, with his goggling eyes and raggedy pillowcase. But his slight frame was burdened, something large and boxy filling his bony little arms.
Delphi felt outrage flood her before she'd even fully processed what she was looking at.
"Is that—?" Draco asked, but she cut him off, ripping herself free of his grasp, and stepped back around the corner.
Dobby's eyes went impossibly wider.
"What the hell are you doing with Harry's gift?"
Dobby shrieked, spun on his heel, and took off, the box holding Harry's present held high above his head.
"What the f—?" Draco began, but Delphi didn't wait for him. She was already barreling down the hall after Dobby, her wand raised and ready as her robes billowed behind her like a black cloud. She could hear Draco's footsteps chasing after her a moment later, and she raced faster, determined to get her gift—Harry's gift—out of that monstrous little thing's hands.
It helped that she thought she knew where he was going. Dobby had a little spot that he was allowed to keep for himself up in the attic, a little elf-nest of sorts that neither she nor the Malfoys ever bothered to visit. Dobby had always been a fairly trustworthy elf, albeit a bit of a inept one from time to time. He'd burn a dinner on occasion, fail to clean something fast enough, make too many servings of a meal 'by accident' and sneak a bit of the food for himself. But as far as anyone knew, he'd never done anything like this.
This was the kind of thing that meant clothes. Or worse.
At the steps to the attic, they caught him. The attic stairs were at the very end of a long corridor, a straight shot that Dobby raced down in a frenzy, and Delphi seized the opportunity.
Much though she would've liked to send him flying, she had to be careful with Harry's gift. "Leviosa!" she snarled, and the box floated up toward the ceiling. Dobby's fingers grappled against the brown paper packaging, scrambling for purchase. He fell to the ground with a crash, and Draco appeared to have quite forgotten his wand; he launched himself forward, grabbing Draco by the ear and wrenching him up onto his feet.
"Have you lost your mind?" he demanded, sneering down at the wicked little beast. "Did you seriously steal that? She'd already given it to Persephone! What'd you do, snatch the owl right out of the air?"
"More importantly, why?" Delphi asked, carefully positioning herself beneath her package as she let it slowly float downward into her waiting arms. "Why in the bloody world would you steal this? Do you even know what it is?"
Dobby gulped. "I is not knowing anything, miss."
Draco rolled his eyes. "I order you to tell her the truth. Why did you steal that?"
Even with Draco holding onto Dobby's ear, forcing the elf's face to stay directed toward his own, Dobby avoided meeting his eyes. He stared down, eyes as round as Christmas baubles glistening wetly. "Dobby did not want it to reach Harry Potter, sir."
Draco and Delphi shared a look. "Did one of the Malfoys put you up to this? Or my grandmother?"
Dobby tried to shake his head and only managed to yank his ear painfully. Wincing like a beaten dog, he offered a panicky, "No, miss, no one is putting Dobby up to anything! Dobby... is just doing his best?"
It was the worst justification she'd ever heard for anything. A house elf was not supposed to 'do its best'—it was supposed to do its job. And it certainly wasn't supposed to randomly decided to steal things.
"How—?" Draco started, then shook his head. "You know what, no. I want to know exactly what it is we're dealing with here. I've never even heard of a thieving house elf. What else have you stolen?"
"Nothing, sir!"
"What else have you taken that doesn't belong to you?"
Dobby gulped. "Dobby has not taken anything."
"This," Delphi said, gesturing toward her package, "says otherwise. What else have you taken?"
"Nothing that belongs to miss."
Draco sighed heavily. "This is getting us nowhere. Shall we go get father?"
It was more camaraderie than he'd offered her in nearly an entire year. This was certainly shaping up to be a very strange night, indeed.
"No," Delphi said, shaking her head. "I want to go up to his little hidey-hole and check for myself. If he took this, there's no way it's the only thing he's taken. He's lying."
"Right, then," Draco said, and he pulled out his wand. There was a hard glint in his eyes, some mix of excitement and self-satisfaction. "Lead the way, elf."
Dobby's giant, bat-like ears drooped as he turned back toward the attic door. He ascended the stairs with all the defeated indignity of a man climbing up to the gallows, and Delphi glared at his back as he walked. She couldn't believe this. She had never even heard of a house elf acting this way, and why, if Dobby had suddenly lost his mind or something, had Dobby decided to steal her stuff? Was it just that she wasn't technically a Malfoy? She didn't think she'd done anything to him to make him want to hurt her like this, had she?
His bony little hand pushed open the attic door, and Draco and Delphi swept into the musty, dim-lit space after him, trying to keep their footsteps light enough that they wouldn't wake Lucius and Narcissa. In the back of Delphi's mind, a horrible thought bubbled up: had Dobby been told to do this? Had Lucius or Narcissa ordered him to prevent her from contacting Harry? Had he taken the gift simply because the Malfoys didn't want her to give it, and had they ordered him not to tell her the truth if confronted? Something about that sat wrong with her. It wasn't just the prospect of being betrayed like that by her aunt and uncle. She knew they didn't approve of her friendships, and she would be hurt if not terribly surprised to learn that they were doing everything they could to discourage her from maintaining them. But to use Dobby as a scapegoat, to deflect Delphi's anger onto someone just following orders...
She wanted Dobby to have chosen to do this himself—wanted to hate him for it instead of her family—even as each progressive step toward his nest made her more and more dreadfully sure that the Malfoys had put him up to it.
"Well," Draco whispered once they neared the far corner, its little mess of blankets bunched into a lumpy, no doubt uncomfortable bed, "show us what you've been hiding."
Dobby's hands were trembling as he sank onto his knobbly knees and reached beneath his piled blankets. When he pulled back, the only thing in his grasp was a stack of letters.
"You've been stealing our mail?" Draco asked, shocked. "Why on earth—?"
"Draco," Delphi whispered, her gaze fixed on the topmost address. She recognized that handwriting; more importantly, she was close enough even in this dim-lit room to read the name. "It's not our mail."
"What?" He strode forward, snatching the pile from Dobby's hands. The elf squeaked and shrank back, collapsing onto his makeshift bed like he expected it to protect him. "Whose is it, then?" His gaze fell to the paper, and his eyes went wide as he scanned the words. "Why on earth have you stolen Harry Potter's mail?"
Dobby cringed again. "Not stolen!" he protested uselessly. "Only borrowed."
Delphi sighed. This was getting them nowhere. "Dobby, you can either tell us the truth or we'll have to go get Lucius and Narcissa. I think you'd prefer to deal with us."
Draco glanced at her, then looked back down at the letters, his brows furrowed in consideration. "Yeah," he said finally, returning his attention to Dobby. "That's right. You know perfectly well what my parents would do if they caught you with Harry Potter's letters. So tell us the truth about what's going on, and maybe they won't ever have to find out about it."
Dobby swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing in his narrow throat. "Harry Potter... must think his friends have forgotten him."
Draco and Delphi exchanged puzzled glances. "Er, as amusing as that sounds from an 'I-can't-stand-Potter' perspective," Draco said, "why do you want him to think he doesn't have any friends?"
Dobby clapped his hand over his mouth and shook his head, ears flapping furiously. He made a little groaning noise, like he was in some fierce fight with himself, before reluctantly lowering his hand. "Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts this year!" he exclaimed, then promptly stuffed his knuckles in his mouth.
"Sounds good to me," Draco said, and Delphi slapped him on the arm again. "Alright, alright, Delphi, fine! Why would a house elf care if Potter returns to Hogwarts?"
Dobby's little yellow teeth pressed into his skin for a moment before he reluctantly drew his hand away; Delphi could see little crescent-moon marks where he'd bitten himself, but at least he didn't appear to have drawn blood. "Dobby remembers how it was when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was at the height of his powers. Harry Potter survived the Dark Lord, and Harry Potter has been a beacon of hope for the dregs of the magical world! Dobby cannot let Harry Potter go to Hogwarts this year!"
"But why?" asked Delphi.
Dobby shook his head. "I cannot say, miss. Orders."
"Orders?" Draco repeated. "As in, you know, orders? From your master?" Delphi was as confused as he was, and when he looked at her for confirmation, she shrugged helplessly. "My parents have something to do with this? Why Potter can't go back to Hogwarts?"
"Yes, sir," Dobby said shamefully, and his head hung so low that the tip of his long nose brushed against the blankets. "I cannot tell you more, just as I could not tell him—" He gasped, eyes widening impossibly further, and balled one little hand into a fist to smash against his own head.
Delphi couldn't believe it. "Him?" she repeated. "Him who? You don't mean Harry?"
"You haven't been to see Potter, have you?" Draco sounded positively floored by the thought of it. For her part, Delphi too was shocked by the prospect of the Malfoy house elf sneaking off to visit the Boy Who Lived in his Muggle home.
This time, Dobby had two hands over his mouth, and he trembled before them, seemingly from the effort to resist answering a question from his master. Not that Draco was going to let him get away with it.
"I order you to answer, elf."
Dobby dropped his hands in despair. "Dobby thought that if he could merely reason with Harry Potter... Dobby should not have stolen the letters." He made another move, this time to smack himself in the forehead with his open palm, and Delphi caught him by the wrist to stop him.
For a moment, all three of them were silent, everyone staring in surprise at Delphi's fingers curled around Dobby's thin wrist. Flustered and a bit confused by why she'd done it, Delphi pulled her hand back; rather than hit himself again, Dobby let his arm fall. "What happened?" she asked. "You talked to Harry? What did he say? Did you tell him what Lucius and Narcissa have to do with this?" A horrible thought crossed her mind. "He didn't agree to stay home from Hogwarts this year, did he?"
"No, miss," Dobby said faintly. "Harry Potter would not listen. But Dobby did his best to keep him safe."
Draco nodded curtly. "Well, then, that's everything taken care of, isn't it? You did your best, Potter didn't listen, and now you can stop stealing letters and packages and we can all move on with our lives."
Dobby said nothing and merely stared at the floor. "No, wait," said Delphi. "You just stole my package a few minutes ago. If you already went to see Harry at some point this summer and he told you no, why keep your plan going? You're not still trying to convince him that he doesn't have any friends and needs to stay away, are you?"
"No, miss. Dobby is not trying to convince him anymore. Dobby took care of everything."
Draco's white-blonde brows skyrocketed. "Took care of everything?" he repeated. "What in Salazar's name does that mean?"
Dobby's frail little body trembled from the effort to hold back the truth from one of his masters. Delphi kept a tight grip on her wand as she waited for him to lose the fight. Finally— "Dobby has gotten Harry Potter into trouble!" he burst out in a wail so loud that Delphi dove forward once again, clapping her hand over his mouth. Draco and Delphi stood frozen for a long, silent moment as they listened for any other sounds in the manor. Surely Dobby's squeaky little shriek must have woken Lucius and Narcissa. Surely one or the other would come storming up the stairs any minute now to find out what was going on.
But the seconds ticked by and neither blonde appeared, so Delphi finally pulled her hand away from Dobby's face, wiped her palm on her robes, and frowned down at the elf. "Be quiet if you don't want to be caught!" she whispered sharply. "And stop trying to hit yourself while we're talking to you!"
Dobby's little fingers twisted into the hem of his pillowcase, wringing the threadbare fabric like a sponge. "Dobby is sorry, miss. Dobby is sorry for yelling. Dobby is sorry for getting Harry Potter into trouble! Dobby has already punished himself for it! And Dobby will punish himself again later!"
"You do that," Draco said. "But more importantly: what kind of trouble did you get Potter into, exactly? Not the kind that involved him catching you and finding out you're our house elf, I hope?"
Delphi cringed, imagining what the fallout would be if the Ministry were to find out that the Malfoy house elf had done something to try to keep the Boy Who Lived from getting back to Hogwarts. But if Dobby understood the gravity of that possibility, there was no way to tell; he was just as wide-eyed and fearful now as he'd been this whole time. "Dobby thought that if... if Harry Potter might get in trouble with the Ministry, then perhaps..." There was a tiny ripping sound; Dobby's fidgeting hands had just torn a hole in his pillowcase. "But Dobby did not know the Muggles were just as cruel—"
He broke off suddenly, both fists rising up to pummel against his own skull in rapid succession, and Delphi frowned at the implication of what he'd left unsaid. As cruel. Had he been about to compare Harry's Muggles with Dobby's own family? It was an absurd comparison to make, if so. Dobby was a house elf; the Malfoys owned him. Harry and his Muggles were at least both human, and they certainly didn't own him. If they were being cruel to him...
"Cruel in what way?" she demanded. "What have they done? And how do you know about it?"
"Dobby—" the elf gasped between hits, "went—back—to—check."
"Didn't she say to stop hitting yourself while we're talking to you? So leave off for a minute, would you? You can get back to it on your own time."
Delphi glanced in her cousin's direction, his words striking her as... unnecessarily harsh, perhaps? She wasn't sure what to make of it. Dobby deserved to be punished for what he had done, surely. But watching him do it... more than just being annoying, Delphi found it rather uncomfortable. Had she ever thought so before? She didn't think she had. So what was that about? He was just a house elf, and he'd done something wrong. He deserved to be punished. He did. But then why did she get nothing out of seeing it? Why did she had this inexplicable urge to make him stop—to make him go?
Maybe it was just that a house elf's punishment was something meant to be done away from the master's eyes?
"You've been to those Muggles twice?" Draco asked. "You can't be serious! You can't just sneak around whenever and wherever you—"
"That doesn't matter right now!" Delphi interrupted. "Dobby, what have they done to him? What could they possibly have done to make you think it would keep him from coming back to Hogwarts? Muggles couldn't—" A horrible thought crossed her mind. "They haven't hurt him? They haven't—"
For the first time that night, something else seemed to overtake Dobby's fear. "Dobby would never be letting anyone hurt Harry Potter!" he said, his little frame straightening in indignation.
"Then what did they do?" Draco asked, his voice oddly unsettled. Delphi glanced over at him quizzically, and she found to her surprise that there was a very strange, almost frightened look on his face. "They're just a couple of Muggles, aren't they?"
"But Harry Potter is living in their home, sir," Dobby said. "And Harry Potter is being too young to do magic at home. Dobby is not thinking that Harry Potter's family likes his magic. Dobby did not know that using his magic would make them punish Harry Potter!"
"Punish how?" Delphi pressed, her jaw clenched now from the effort to keep control of herself. With every word that Dobby uttered, she was more and more sure that Harry's aunt and uncle had done something horrific to him, no matter what Dobby claimed to the contrary.
"Harry Potter is being locked up," Dobby said, and once again his posture sagged, his little shoulders sinking down until he was practically caving in on himself in apparent shame. "There is a lock on Harry Potter's door, and there is bars on Harry Potter's window. But Harry Potter is not going back to Hogwarts! Dobby saved him."
Resisting the urge to shake the little beast—to demand that he tell her what exactly he 'saved' Harry from—Delphi turned instead to her cousin. "They're keeping him like a prisoner. Muggles. Keeping Harry Potter locked up." She turned back to Dobby. "Does he at least have his wand?"
"What would it matter?" Draco asked, his voice still stuck in that strange, nearly stricken tone. "You heard him—students aren't allowed to use magic outside of school, and since he's living with Muggles, he can't get away with pretending that it's just his mum and dad, like we can." (Delphi decided against taking the opportunity to remind him that her mum and dad were every bit as locked up as Harry apparently was.) "Even if he has his wand, the Ministry won't let him use it. He'll get expelled. And if he doesn't use it to get free, the Muggles won't let him go back to Hogwarts, which is pretty much the same thing. He's stuck." He eyed Dobby speculatively. "I'm almost impressed."
"Well, I'm not!" Delphi said, outraged now to the point of nearly forgetting to keep quiet herself. "We've got to do something! You—" she said to Dobby, "—have got to do something! You can't leave Harry to rot!"
Draco waved a hand. "Dumbledore won't let them get away with it. When Potter doesn't show up at the school, I'm sure that old coot will take care of his favorite Gryffindor hero. Just like he cheated to give him the house cup."
Now was not the time for pettiness; Delphi ignored the swipe about the house cup. (Frankly, she still wasn't particularly thrilled about that trick, herself.) "Start of term is a month away, Draco! We can't leave him locked in a room in some Muggle house for an entire month!"
"So what? How do you propose to fix it?"
Delphi looked pointedly at Dobby. "Easy. You are going to take me to that Muggle house, and we are going to get Harry out of there."
"Wait one minute!" Draco exclaimed. His eyes had gone nearly as wide as Dobby's. "You can't do that! You won't be able to use magic there, either. How exactly do you plan to get him out?"
"Dobby, can you Apparate into that house without getting caught, or what?"
"Dobby can, miss."
"Alright then," Delphi said. "That settles it." She tightened her robes around her, wishing she'd had more time to prepare for what she was about to do. But even unprepared as she was, she could hardly contain her excitement. Not only was she going to see Harry again—she was going to rescue him. The thrill was palpable, and the stakes were blessedly so much lower than the last time Harry had needed her help in dire circumstances.
This time, she promised herself, she wasn't going to be left with nightmares.
She held her hand out to Dobby. "Take me to Harry Potter."
Dobby stared at it for such a long moment, immobilized by indecision, that Delphi realized belatedly he might refuse her. Whether it was that the Malfoys had expressly forbidden her from leaving the manor or that he simply didn't have to obey the Lestrange niece of his Malfoy masters she couldn't be sure, but it looked like he wasn't going to—
Dobby's tiny hand fell into hers, his palm light as a feather atop hers, and it struck Delphi with a kind of muted, inexplicable surprise that his skin felt no different than a human's.
He nodded once in silent acquiescence—
—and Draco made an aborted noise of protest behind her, his hand falling on her shoulder to pull her away from the elf—
But it was too late. Delphi felt the initial tug of Apparation in her abdomen, then the horrible squeeze against her body as magic drew her through space within the span of an instant.
When the room finally stopped spinning, it was an entirely different room. A bedroom, in fact, strangely fashioned with weird Muggle things she didn't recognize.
And Draco was still right behind her, his hand on her shoulder.
The second he got his bearings, he fell away from her, scrambling backward as if it might save him from what had already happened. The last place in the world any Malfoy wanted to be was in a Muggle home, but there was no undoing his mistake now. He'd just have to wait for Dobby to take them back. Delphi would've laughed if she didn't think it would provoke him.
Mostly blind and clearly frightened, Harry launched upright in his Muggle bed, startled from sleep by the crack of Dobby's apparation. "Dobby?" he whispered, half-baffled and half-furious. He scrambled for his glasses, slapped them carelessly onto his face, and blinked helplessly. "Malfoy?"
Delphi glanced at her cousin. He looked utterly horrified by his predicament, but he didn't take the opportunity to say anything awful, so she turned back to Harry and offered him a very self-conscious smile. "Hi," she said, giving him an awkward little wave. "Er, sorry to startle you, but—"
"What's going on? How did you get here?" Harry looked a bit overwhelmed. He affixed Dobby with a mild glare. "What have you done now?"
"He's here to apologize," Delphi said. "And to fix things. He told me what he did. And if he's not sorry, he's going to be."
Harry blinked at her, perhaps too tired to comprehend the situation? Then his gaze fell back to Dobby. "The Malfoys are the horrible family you were talking about?"
Delphi's jaw dropped, her face flushing crimson. "You—? What did you tell him?" she hissed at the elf. "We're not—I mean, we—well, I—" She shook her head, wrenching her thoughts from the rut. "You're the one who's been horrible, you little twerp! Apologize!"
Dobby's head hung, his shoulders slouched like he wanted nothing more than to shrivel up and disappear. It was a terribly pathetic sight, one that tickled something in the back of Delphi's memory. What did he remind her of? She couldn't quite place it.
"Dobby is sorry, Harry Potter," he said, his voice complete misery. "Dobby only wished to protect Harry Potter."
Harry scoffed. "Great job you did there," he whispered harshly. "They've never kept me locked up this long before. They're furious about that hovering charm you used, and the Ministry thought it was me! I'm probably not getting out of this room until I turn eighteen, thanks to you!"
Delphi's eyes flickered toward the bedroom door. Somewhere beyond it slept a set of Muggles who honestly thought they could keep the Boy Who Lived from the wizarding world. Her fingers toyed with her wand; she itched to go teach them a lesson.
"Eff that," she said, turning back to her friend. "You're not their prisoner. If Dumbledore knew about this, he'd put a stop to it. And wait, what do you mean they've never kept you locked up this long before? How often do they lock you up?" Harry looked away, ashamed. As if he was the one who had done something wrong! "This is horrible, Harry. Come on, get dressed; we're leaving. And we're never coming back."
Harry's eyes brightened at that, some of the tension leaving his body. It made him look a little more familiar, a little more like the boy that she'd left only a few short weeks ago. But— "Harry, you've lost weight. Aren't they at least feeding you?"
He had already been so small, so slender. Now he was positively gaunt, his cheeks hollowed inward and his arms thin as twigs as he pulled himself out of the bed and began tugging a pair of jeans and a sweater on over his pyjamas. He didn't look up at her, and he answered with a false lightness, "They feed me. They won't unlock the door, though. They just stick it through there." He nodded toward the bottom of the door, and Delphi's stomach did a little flip as she spotted a weird little door-within-a-door at the bottom of it, barely big enough for a kneazle to have slipped through. "But they won't let me let Hedwig out to hunt, so some of what they give me goes to her."
Delphi spared a glance in her cousin's direction, trying to distract herself from the realization that Harry was starving in these Muggles' care—and found to her surprise that Draco looked every bit as disturbed as she felt, his gaze captured unblinkingly by the flap in the door. When at last he drew his attention away, Delphi watched his eyes roam toward the window, and when she followed, she had to look quickly away. Dobby had been right; there were bars on Harry's window, as if he were in Azkaban for the sole crime of being an orphaned wizarding child at the mercy of Muggles.
Delphi had grown up thinking that she'd hated muggles and mudbloods and half-breeds and all—and suddenly she understood that never once in her life had she ever felt true hate before.
She felt it now.
"Where's your trunk?" she demanded, and she winced at the way that Harry flinched beneath the harsh tone of her voice. "What did they do with it?" she asked again, more gently.
"It's downstairs," Harry said. "Locked up in the cupboard beneath the stairs." He hesitated, as if there was something else he wanted to say but couldn't find the nerve to say it. It suddenly occurred to Delphi that Harry must not have his wand; she wondered, halfway to panic already, if the thing he didn't want to tell her was that they had done something to it. Snapped it, even, in their rage.
"Dobby, can you—?"
"No!" Harry's vehemence startled her. "The letter I got from the Ministry said I'd be expelled if there was any more magic in the house. Apparently they can't tell the difference between Dobby's spells and mine, so..."
Draco breathed out sharply through his nose, like he would've laughed at that if he'd been in better spirits. Delphi cast him a glare. "They haven't noticed his apparation, though, have they? Otherwise, they'd know about more than just the—what'd you say it was, a hovering charm?—that he used. Dobby, I want you to apparate into that cupboard and get Harry's stuff, then get back up here quick. The crack will probably wake them up. Will they come to check on you?"
"They'll come to threaten me, I'm sure."
"Alright. Harry, grab Hedwig. Dobby, go get Harry's trunk." Dobby cracked away. "Anything else?"
Harry shook his head, but Draco was the one who answered aloud. "Yes," he drawled, as if she was very slow indeed for not having thought of whatever he had. "Where exactly do you propose we take him? I hope you can imagine how mother and father would react if we showed up with Harry Potter in tow?"
Delphi rolled her eyes. "I'm not taking him back to the manor, you dunce." Merlin forbid. "We're going to Hogwarts."
The joy on Harry's face was gratifying, though her reflective pleasure was cut short by the crack of Dobby's return—and a wordless shout of rage from somewhere else in the building.
"Hurry," Harry said, grabbing Hedwig's cage. She hooted her indignation as he jostled her around, heading toward an already over-laden Dobby. "That'll be Uncle Vernon."
Delphi reached out for Harry's hand, feeling an odd little flicker of (was that embarrassment? but why?) something when their fingers curled around each other's. Her other hand went to Dobby's shoulder, gripping his bony shoulder in what she hoped was a good balance between not clinging tight enough to hurt him but also not so loosely that she might lose her hold when he Apparated, and she felt Draco scramble to grab her shoulder, clearly panicked at the possibility that he might be accidentally left behind this time instead of accidentally dragged along.
"Take us to Hogwarts," Delphi said, and then her gut lurched—the world pressed in around them—and the cool air of a Scotland summer enveloped them.
They were in the courtyard, and above them, the stony height of Hogwarts loomed.
Delphi beamed, giving Dobby's shoulder a grateful little squeeze on impulse, and then a warm blush bloomed across her cheeks as Harry's hand fell away from hers so he could instead pull her into a tight hug.
Draco fled from them, his hand immediately abandoning her shoulder as he backed away, but Delphi didn't mind. She was too focused on how skinny Harry felt when she wrapped her arms around him in kind. She was almost afraid of hugging him too tightly; he seemed to have all the substance of a baby bird, delicate and profoundly breakable.
She meant what she'd said: she was never letting him go back to that horrible family. They'd starved him all summer—all his life, potentially—and he felt like a skeleton in her arms.
Harry drew away, his attention turning to Dobby and his trunk, and Delphi's neck craned back as she looked up at the castle. Home sweet home, she thought, and indeed she felt a surge of belonging as she started up the steps toward the massive oak front doors.
Harry, Draco, and Dobby trailed behind, all of them clearly far less certain than she.
The castle was stuffy on the inside, the vast expanse of the entrance hall dark and silent save their footsteps and their voices. The doors creaked shut behind them, cutting them off from the meager moonlight, and Harry gasped horribly when Delphi drew out her wand and muttered, "Lumos."
This time, Draco did snicker. "Relax, Potter. Just because we're not supposed to be doing magic doesn't mean we're going to get caught."
In the bright circle of wandlight, Delphi watched Harry quirk a jet black brow. "The Ministry knew someone used magic back at the Dursleys the moment Dobby did it." His expression went quizzical. "Except the teleportation."
"The what?"
"Oh," he said, blushing a hint, "the, er, apparition or whatever you called it? Muggles call it teleportation. They use it in their sci-fi shows." He grew only more flustered beneath their blank stares. "Er, stories about the future and space and stuff? ...never mind."
"Right," Draco drawled. "Well, here's the secret, Potter: the Ministry doesn't have to nanny most students like that. When it comes to students like you, they just want to make sure you're not terrorizing the local muggles or anything. The rest of us have, you know, parents to make sure we don't get out of line."
Delphi glared. Already, Draco was back to one of his favorite taunts, as if 'teehee, you're an orphan' was actually funny instead of just cruel. But Harry, perhaps because he was simply so thrilled to be free, just let it wash off of him like he'd hardly heard it. "So we can use magic here?" he asked. "Even though it's the summer?"
"Until we get caught," Delphi said, grinning. "I'm sure Filch is lurking around here somewhere. But what we need to do, I think, is go find Dumbledore. I'm sure he'll be happy to let you stay here, but we should also see if he can't do something about that warning you got from the Ministry. It wasn't your fault; Dobby cast that spell, not you, and it's not fair for you to have that on your record."
Draco rolled his eyes, but when they headed off down the corridor, he followed them in obedient silence.
They walked along like that for some time, eyes and ears alert for any sign of Filch, his pesky cat, or any of the teachers. There was nary a glimpse of anyone, nor a sound. No movement, no shadows, no voices, no footsteps. Just Hogwarts all to themselves.
Delphi never wanted it to end. She felt so at home in the castle—had such a swell of warmth in her heart at having returned—could hardly bear the thought of—
Halfway down a corridor two-thirds of the way to Dumbledore's office, all four of them came to a dead, horrified halt as a black-clad, narrow figure turned the corner and froze at the sight of them.
It was Snape.
Delphi flinched, her thoughts spiraling back to the last time she'd come across him unexpectedly in the corridors. A horrible little sound escaped her lips—a deeply embarrassing sound, she would realize later—and Draco glanced at her with a look of concern that she might have appreciated if she hadn't been so preoccupied.
Breathe, she told herself, somewhat hysterically as Snape stalked toward them, wand aloft. Breathe. You're fine. You're not—
Delphi ignored the urge to go for her wand. She didn't need to make this worse; having her wand in her hand could only escalate things. It would put Snape even more on edge, and it would probably make the encroaching memories worse.
Instead, Delphi pulled her hand away from the pocket where she hid her wand, and she gave her professor an awkward little wave.
Draco's look of concern deepened; it couldn't have been clearer that he thought she'd gone insane.
"Hi?" Delphi tried. "Erm, happy summer?"
Snape said nothing, his angry black eyes surveying her a moment before flickering just for an instant toward Dobby and Draco. When his attention turned to Harry, though, it lingered there; Delphi watched him scan the boy in his entirety, and she wondered if he could see the evidence of Harry's mistreatment in the boy's slight, malnourished frame.
Eagerly, Delphi searched her professor's face for that flash of recognition—of understanding and of outrage—that would lend her the vindication she thought she'd need to get through this.
But Snape's face was utterly unreadable.
"The four of you will follow me to the Headmaster's office," he all-but-whispered instead, and Delphi shuddered, having forgotten how desperately in trouble this man could make a student feel with only a few decibels of sound. "Now."
None of them dared argue. Nor did they point out that they'd been heading there regardless.
Snape marched them ahead of him, his wand still drawn but pointed at the floor. Delphi couldn't seem to keep herself from glancing back over her shoulder every few seconds, each time half-expecting to find it pointed at her back.
She accidentally caught Snape's gaze a few times, but if he wasn't going to say anything about her apparent paranoia, then neither was she.
They paused only for a moment at the familiar gargoyle. "Sherbert straws," Snape hissed, and the statue sprang out of the way immediately.
As the four of them climbed the circular staircase with Snape at their heels, a little flicker of doubt sparked in Delphi. From the very moment she'd first heard that Dobby had done something to Harry, she'd felt only righteous indignation and the need to fix the problem. Now that the prospect of talking to Dumbledore was about to be realized, though, she couldn't help but think back on the conversation she'd had with him at the end of last term.
He had allowed Harry to face Quirrell, the Stone's protections, and even the Dark Lord himself.
What evidence was there that Dumbledore hadn't decided to allow Harry to face whatever his Muggle family did to him, too?
She didn't know what motive the old man might have for such a thing, but she still didn't really understand his motive for letting them face the Dark Lord last year, either.
Whatever was going on here, at the very least Delphi was going to make sure that Harry didn't have to go back to that horrible Muggle house. And if Dumbledore wouldn't let him stay at Hogwarts, that just meant she'd have to get more creative.
As her imagination filled with increasingly wild notions about how to go about convincing the Malfoys to let the Boy Who Lived stay at their mansion for the summer, the door to Dumbledore's office opened in front of them, and all five of their oddly misfit group stepped inside.
Dumbledore was seated at his desk, his enormous red feather quill scratching away on a long scroll of parchment. He glanced upward when he saw them in his periphery, said, "Back already, Sev—?"
And then double-took. It was perhaps the most genuine response Delphi had ever seen from him.
Suddenly grave, the old man set down his quill and made his desktop empty with a wave of his hand. "I must say, this is a surprise."
"I caught them in the halls," said Snape. "Heading this way."
"We were coming here!" Delphi said quickly, hoping desperately that Dumbledore's words last year—the bit about how he'd hoped for an increased bond of trust between them—would help her now. Grabbing Harry's hand, she dragged him toward the headmaster's desk and sat down in one of the vacant seats. Harry took the other, and with another wave of Dumbledore's hand, a third chair appeared. Draco eyed it disdainfully for a moment before he deigned to join.
Snape, of course, went to stand at Dumbledore's right-hand side, lurking just behind him like some kind of horrible ghoul as he scowled in his students' direction.
(Dobby lingered near Harry, trying and mostly succeeding in not being noticed by any of them.)
Delphi's explanation rushed on. "Harry got a letter from the Ministry, sir. They told him he'd be expelled if he did any more magic, but he didn't do any magic in the first place. The Ministry blamed him for something he didn't do, and the Muggles—" She broke off, glancing toward Harry. "You should tell him."
Harry looked oddly overwhelmed, like he would've preferred anything else in the world than to have been asked to do this. Delphi didn't get it. She'd seen him barrel head-first into his own potential doom last year, so why did he look prepared to run away right now?
"Er... well, sir, I met this house elf, and—"
"Dobby is so sorry, sirs!" the elf suddenly wailed, causing half of them to jump. "Dobby only ever wanted to protect Harry Potter!"
Delphi couldn't help her fascination at the way Dumbledore's expression warmed with compassion when he turned to the house elf. Was that genuine, she wondered, or was he merely trying to manipulate the little thing? If it was the latter, he needn't have bothered; so long as Draco was here, Dobby could merely be ordered to tell the truth. He didn't need to be persuaded to do it.
"That is very noble of you, Dobby," the old man said kindly, and of course that meant he had to wait for the elf's renewed histrionics to subside before he could go on. "But I'm sure you understand that there are a great deal many people who want to protect Mr. Potter. Do you know of some threat that the rest of us don't?"
Dobby did something very strange. His posture lifted, his little body shifting to puff his chest out and square his shoulders as if he was gathering up all of his determination and resolve—
—and then it all withered away in an instant, any and all confidence fleeing from him in a heartbeat. His shoulders slumped, his ears drooped, and he smacked himself hard in the forehead with two open palms.
"Stop that!" Delphi said sharply. "Stop punishing yourself. If you know about something that's threatening Harry, you must tell Dumbledore. Draco, tell him!"
Dobby turned wide, horrified eyes to the youngest of his masters. "That is not being a good idea!" he squealed, then pinched himself hard on the upper arm (presumably for having the audacity to offer his owner advice). "House elves is not supposed to share secrets, sirs!"
Draco stared at Dobby for a moment, something wild about his expression. His eyes were wide, there was a pink tinge to his cheeks, and he was breathing just a bit too hard; he seemed... overwhelmed? Delphi didn't understand.
"Don't say another word, you horrible little—" Draco began, but Dobby cut him off with another wail.
The little elf threw himself onto the ground, writhing as if in pain and battering his hands against the floor before reaching up to tug at his own ears hard enough that Delphi feared he might actually rip them off.
There was a look of abject horror on Harry's face, and Delphi couldn't take it anymore.
"Dobby!" she yelled, and when he didn't answer her, she hauled him upright herself and seized him by the wrists, holding them safely away from the rest of his battered body. "Knock it off! You're embarrassing us."
The restraint was met with struggle; Dobby tried again to beat himself, his little arms flailing within Delphi's grip, but she held him still.
Only once he finally stopped and went quiet did Delphi realize the shift in the atmosphere of the room. It wasn't just that all eyes were on the ridiculous display that Dobby had made of her; it was that she knew that was judgment in everyone's eyes. Draco, of course, was as used to Dobby's antics as Delphi was, and for what it was worth, he appeared entirely unbothered by them. But Harry had a look on his face as utterly appalled as any she'd ever seen, and Dumbledore was the very picture of a disapproving grandfather. Even Snape, who had been at the manor at least enough to get a vague idea of what Dobby was like, was sneering down at Delphi and the elf like he wanted nothing more than to banish them from his sight.
For a split second, Delphi was deeply ashamed by her sheer inability to control the elf. It was unbelievably uncouth to have to put one's hands on a house elf. They were so far beneath wizards, especially purebloods, that touching them in any capacity was almost always out of the question. To physically restrain a house elf was simply bizarre.
But that, of course, was not the reason for those looks on Harry and Dumbledore's faces, and Delphi's own face burned crimson as the reality of the situation sank in.
It wasn't that she needed to be ashamed of how she was handling Dobby's behavior. Harry and Dumbledore were horrified that Dobby was punishing himself in the first place, and Merlin only knew what they must think about the Malfoys—and about Delphi herself—for letting him devolve into such a vicious routine in the first place.
And the Malfoys, Delphi realized with a sudden surge of nausea, didn't just tolerate it from Dobby; they encouraged it. How often, after all, had she seen them remind him of some minor error, just to get him to punish himself that much more.
...and how the hell had she never once questioned it before?
Horrified, Delphi let go of Dobby's wrists and backed away from him, crossing her arms tightly over her chest as if by making herself slightly smaller, she might be able to make herself disappear. "Draco, tell him to stop punishing himself."
Something about her voice—even she could hear the change, that sudden detached lifelessness—made him comply. She was once again met with something resembling a look of concern out of him, and then he said firmly to Dobby, "You're useless when you're battering yourself like that, so save it until we get home, would you?"
It wasn't what she'd been hoping for, but she supposed it would have to do.
There was another (thankfully briefer) awkward silence.
Then, with a sneer sour enough to curdle milk, Snape shattered it. "If you're all quite finished, this is much more serious than a wayward house elf with grand notions of heroism. The fact of the matter is that these three—" He positively glared at Harry, Delphi, and Draco. "—have completely circumvented all our security measures. If they can use a house elf to take Potter out of his home, then anyone can."
Dumbledore hummed quietly. "But who would think to?" he asked softly. Then— "Regardless, you're right, Severus. Harry, while I understand the impulse to reunite with your friends and return to school as soon as possible, you must understand that the safest place for you is with your—"
"There were bars on his windows."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop; it was quite possible that it actually did. Snape, who was often eerily immobile (when he wasn't otherwise occupied with moving vastly too quickly and quietly so as to better sneak up on the unsuspecting), had gone quite frozen, one of his hands gripping the back of Dumbledore's chair so hard that his knuckles were stark white. Dumbledore's expression shifted from 'kindly authority figure' to something stony and masklike. "Bars, Miss Lestrange?" he asked, perfectly toneless.
Delphi nudged Harry, urging him to answer in her place.
"Er... it's not—" he tried. "Well, my aunt and uncle are always rather, er.... They don't like magic."
Delphi suppressed the urge to sigh her exasperation. Instead, she launched into the argument that Harry was apparently too unassertive to make for himself.
"I've never seen anything like it," Delphi said. "They had him locked in a bedroom. Hedwig was locked in her cage; it looked like he hadn't been allowed to let her out even to clean it since he got off the train. All his school stuff was locked away in another room—including his wand!—and there were bars on the windows. I'm not even sure if they were feeding him or letting him go to the bathroom or—er—"
Too late, she realized she wandered into painfully awkward territory, and now she wasn't the only one blushing. "I just mean... well, we had to get him out of there. I don't know if Dobby's right and there's some reason he shouldn't be here, but he absolutely shouldn't be there." Delphi steeled herself to look right into Dumbledore's eyes. "He's not going back to those monsters. I won't let you send him back there."
That sentiment, of course, seemed suddenly painfully absurd. There was little to nothing that Delphi could do if Dumbledore decided to send Harry back to the Muggles that had abused him. She could appeal to the Malfoys, perhaps... maybe try to convince Lucius to go to the Minister on Harry's behalf? Or maybe Dobby could help Harry hide out in the classroom Delphi had used herself all last year?
To her relief, Dumbledore met her words with an indulgent smile. "Harry will not be going back to his aunt and uncle's home tonight, rest assured," he said, as much to Harry as to Delphi. "I think I can find a suitable alternative for the rest of the summer. But next year, Harry, I am afraid you will need to return."
Delphi was so outraged she almost leapt from her seat; only Draco's hand suddenly clapping on her shoulder kept her down. "He shouldn't have to go back at all! They were—they were abusing him!"
Draco's fingers tightened on her shoulder; Harry was positively beet-red.
"It does sound," Dumbledore said gravely, "as if that might be the case. "Nevertheless, they are his only family, and forgiveness—"
Disbelief made Delphi reckless; what little filter she had between her mind and her mouth failed entirely. "You're telling me about the importance of forgiving family?"
Draco made a strangled noise beside her, as if he had swallowed a gasp at the very last second, but Delphi didn't spare him a glance. She was glaring at Dumbledore, trying to figure out what it was that she could possibly be missing here. Why in the name of Merlin would he want to send Harry Potter of all people back to a family of Muggles clearly willing to harm him?
Who cared if they were technically his family?
"Forgiveness," Dumbledore said with surprising gentleness, "is as much for ourselves as for those who have wronged us. It is never something that we owe, but it can often help to soothe the soul. And—" He turned his attention to Harry, leaving Delphi feeling summarily dismissed. "—I am afraid I must insist. At the end of the upcoming school year, you will return to your aunt and uncle's care. For the next few weeks, though—during which you can be assured I will be having a conversation with them about their parenting techniques—I believe I know just the place for you."
"Where?" asked Harry. "Hagrid's?"
He sounded so eager about the prospect, but Delphi knew that couldn't possibly be it. Hagrid's hut was on Hogwarts grounds, after all, and Dumbledore had already said that Harry wouldn't be able to stay at the school. But the excitement in Harry's voice was... well, Delphi wasn't sure how to describe it, but it made her smile in spite of herself.
Quite accidentally, though, she caught Snape's gaze. She didn't know why she'd suddenly captured his sharp attention, but the meeting of their eyes immediately wiped the grin off her face.
"Not Hagrid's, no," Dumbledore said, shaking his head with an affectionate smile of his own. "If you would all be so kind as to wait a moment?"
He stood, pushing his ornate, high-backed chair from his desk, and approached the fireplace on the far side of the office. Atop the mantle sat a golden pot that Delphi had assumed might be a tiny urn or something of the sort; but when he opened it and scooped out a small bit of powder that he tossed immediately into the flames, she realized what it truly was.
It could only have been Floo powder, for the gently burning orange fire suddenly blazed a brilliant green and Dumbledore said, "The Burrow!" before plunging his head inside.
Harry was immediately up on his feet with a horrible cry, already moving to go help the headmaster before Delphi realized why he was upset. She grabbed his arm not a second too soon and hauled him back.
"He's fine," she said quickly, marveling silently at how strange and frightening the wizarding world must be to Muggleborns and the Muggle-raised like Harry and Hermione. "It's safe. Floo powder lets you travel through fireplaces. He's just talking to someone. ...what's the Burrow?"
"No idea," said Harry, looking very bewildered and a bit overwhelmed as he sat back down. "Can't be worse than the Dursleys, though." She watched his gaze flicker past her, first toward Draco and then toward Snape. When he looked again at her, he offered up a little smile that she couldn't help but mirror back at him. "Thanks, though. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't shown up." Another wary glance toward Snape, who stood as silent and still and scary as a gargoyle watching over them, and then he went on, "They've never been quite that angry with me before. I mean, they've locked me in my cupboard for a day or two before, but never—"
"Your what?" Snape demanded before Delphi even had the chance. She clicked her jaw shut; it had fallen agape in horror.
"Er... cupboard?" Harry repeated. "You know, one of the big ones... that Muggle houses have under the stairs... sometimes?" He had gone very red again; it was quite clear that trying to explain this horrible notion to Snape of all people was the very last thing he wanted in the world. But Dumbledore's head was still in the fire, and Delphi and Draco were waiting for an explanation as surely as the potion's master was, so there was nothing at all to stop Snape from pressing for it.
"Your cupboard under the stairs," Snape said in a tone that Delphi knew was dangerous even if she didn't quite know what it threatened. "...and in what sense, exactly, was it your cupboard?"
Harry actually looked a bit affronted. "Well, they gave it to me, didn't they? Didn't want to waste a room on a freak."
Snape's lips pulled back in a sneer, and Delphi was sure that he mouthed some silent word that she couldn't quite make out. A curse, perhaps? Something too profane, possibly, to say aloud in front of students?
"Your aunt—" Snape began, but Dumbledore's sudden movement in the fireplace stopped him. The older wizard had withdrawn his head from the flames, which shrank and warmed back into a familiar orange color.
"Well, Harry," Dumbledore said pleasantly, having missed the newest tension in the room, "I believe we have found the place for you! Mr. and Mrs. Weasley have generously agreed to welcome you into their home until the start of term."
Harry broke out into a wide grin, clearly thrilled; Draco seemed to be barely suppressing the urge to gag theatrically. "Ron's parents?"
"The very same," said Dumbledore. The smile he gave Harry was indulgent and fond; Delphi found it a struggle to keep a very similar grin off her own face. After what she'd seen at that Muggle house, Harry more than deserved whatever happiness he could get.
Not that she wasn't a bit envious, too. In some other reality, perhaps it might have been her own home that Harry could have guested at. But in this one, unfortunately, the Malfoys would almost certainly never let that happen—and they'd surely die before they let her join him at the Weasley's home.
"Now!" said Dumbledore, still beaming. "Our last bit of business, I suppose, must be to get everyone back where they belong. But not, I'm afraid, before I impress upon you all the importance of never doing a thing like this again." Delphi opened her mouth, eager to remind him that they'd saved Harry tonight, but Dumbledore didn't pause long enough for her to get in a word. "Miss Lestrange. Mr. Malfoy. What the two of you did tonight was noble indeed, and I am sure Harry is very grateful. But as our dear Professor Snape has pointed out, you have poked a terrible hole through our security. It should not be so easy for students to escape their homes in the dead of night and abscond to Hogwarts, no matter their motivation. I am afraid that I must warn you that your methods will not work again, and I must emphasize how unwise it would be to retry them. If anything of this severity ever happens again, you must let an adult handle it; do not take matters this grave into your own hands. It is not a student's job to handle situations like this themselves. That, I assure you, is what your teachers are for."
Delphi bit her tongue and hoped she wasn't glaring. She'd never heard such bunk; if someone else had been willing or able to get Harry out of that situation, they would've done it.
And there was still a part of Delphi that suspected Dumbledore knew exactly how bad those Muggles were.
"Yes, sir," she said begrudgingly, and he nodded. If he thought she might be lying, he apparently decided to give her the benefit of the doubt; as it was, she wasn't entirely sure whether she was telling the truth, herself.
"I didn't even want to do this in the first place," Draco added, though Delphi noticed that he looked at Snape as he spoke.
Next, the headmaster turned to the still-cowering house elf. Dobby had been blissfully silent for a while now, and thankfully he was no longer punishing himself. But Delphi could hardly stand to look at him; just glancing in his direction was making her sweaty and panicky and oddly ashamed, and she couldn't wait for that to go away.
"As for your part in this, Dobby," said the old man, politely ignoring the way the elf squeaked and wrung his pillowcase upon hearing his name fall from Albus Dumbledore's lips, "it is very kind of you to be so concerned with Harry's well-being. But in the future I must ask that you, too, leave his protection up to me. I can assure you that there are few things more important to me than young Mr. Potter's safety, and there is, if I flatter myself, perhaps no one in the world more capable of protecting him than I. Should you ever again discover a threat against him, I must ask that you bring the information to me. And if you know anything else about the threat you believe might be facing him now, I would invite you to confide in me now."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Dumbledore, sir," Dobby squealed as if in agony. He actually looked a bit light-headed; Delphi watched skeptically as he swayed on his feet for a moment, and only when Harry reached out awkwardly to steady him did she realize that was probably what she should have done.
She really, truly hated Dobby tonight. He had her whole brain spinning in circles.
"Well, then," Dumbledore said, clapping his hands together. "I suppose it is time for us all to go our separate ways. It's quite late; our beds await us all! Severus, I trust you will make sure that Miss Lestrange, Mr. Malfoy, and their delightful elf make it back home safely?"
Delphi glanced at Snape to find that he too had glanced at her. She looked quickly away. "And what am I to tell the Malfoys?" he asked.
Delphi bit her tongue, not quite so reckless as to say what she was thinking. "Tell them what you think is best," Dumbledore said. "You know the Malfoys far better than I; you certainly have a better idea of how they would react to knowing what their children did tonight."
The subtext was clear, or at least so Delphi thought: if you think Lucius and Narcissa might commit a murder upon finding out that their heir and their ward went gallivanting off to deal with Harry Potter and a house full of Muggles, feel free to keep the secret.
Briefly, Delphi wondered if Draco would agree to that.
But surely he knew as well as she did what awaited them if Lucius and Narcissa ever found out what had happened tonight. The discipline of pureblood parents made truly furious, after all, was something to be feared indeed.
"Very well," Snape said, and he marched forward in a sudden swirl of billowing black fabric. Delphi had only a split second to wonder how it was that he managed never to trip himself will all that dramatic swooping about before he was barking, "Let's go," at her, Draco, and Dobby, and she had no choice but to hurry out of her chair, give Harry the quickest of hugs and a "See you in September!", and rush after Snape on the heels of her cousin and his elf.
Delphi really hoped that Snape wasn't going to tell Lucius and Narcissa the truth.
Snape led them from the school in silence, and the lecture Delphi feared might be coming never showed. Perhaps this was a moment of mute fury for him, she guessed, or perhaps he merely planned to vent to Dumbledore later about how idiotic they all had been.
Because he clearly thought they had all been imbeciles.
Delphi didn't care, though. She knew she'd done the right thing. Dobby had lost his mind so thoroughly as to try to keep Harry out of Hogwarts, and it had cost Harry what little freedom the Muggles gave him. The only thing to do had been to save him, and so of course she didn't care what Snape or Dumbledore or the Malfoys or anyone the hell else had to say about it.
As soon they were off the grounds and past the edge of the anti-apparation wards, Snape seized them both, one of his hands clamping down viselike upon their upper arms. Delphi flinched but did not manage to shake herself free before she felt the horrible press of apparation. The world shifted, the dirt road leading from Hogwarts down to the village of Hogsmeade disappearing in an instant to be replaced by the towering gate to the Malfoy's manor.
Dobby appeared with a loud crack! behind them.
Snape let go of them in an instant, apparently no more pleased with having to touch them than they were comfortable with being touched; he lifted up his wand in the direction of the gate, and Delphi wondered momentarily if he could get past the wards. Had Lucius set them up to recognize his old school friend turned potion master? Delphi wasn't sure, but she knew it was a bad idea for Snape to try; if he got past the wards tonight, the Malfoys would know he'd been in the manor. They'd find out that Delphi and Draco had not been safe in their beds tonight, and if they found out where they'd gone... well, Dobby would be lucky if all he got was clothes, and Delphi and Draco might find themselves shipped off to Durmstrang after all.
"Dobby can take us inside," Delphi said quickly. "You don't need to—I mean, they don't need to know about... do they?"
Snape stared down at her, black eyes like unfathomable, bottomless pits. His sneer was far less inscrutable. "If you ever again attempt anything like what you did tonight," he said softly, staring so hard at her that she feared he was looking right into her soul, "you will have far greater things to worry about than what your aunt and uncle have to say. I will personally see to that."
"We won't, sir," Draco said quickly. "I didn't even want to—"
"Nobody made you come," hissed Delphi. "Don't act like I forced you." Draco's mouth snapped shut, his jaw tensing. He turned away from her, glaring off into the distance like it had slighted him.
Content that she'd shut her cousin up for at least a little while, Delphi returned her attention to Snape. "May we go, then?"
As incapable as ever of hiding his distaste for her, the professor nodded begrudgingly. "Go," he said, "before I change my mind. Should Lucius or Narcissa ask me about tonight, I will not lie for you."
It had never and would never have occurred to Delphi that he might. "Thank you, sir," she said, as polite as she could manage, and then thrust her hand out toward Dobby. "You heard us."
Dobby took her hand tentatively; Draco too begrudgingly offered up a limb, still not so much as glancing in their direction.
There was another crack! of apparation, and at last they were back in the manor, all three of them standing in a line along the corridor that led to Draco and Delphi's bedrooms.
Delphi pulled her hand away from the elf quickly; Draco was even more vehement about ripping himself free from them, and as he stomped off down the hall without so much as a parting word, Delphi called, "Goodnight," rather sarcastically after him.
Hard as it was to wrap her mind around it, she truly did not understand her cousin anymore.