Call Me Psyche - Dramione

14

Shell Cottage was a love nest meant for newlyweds, but for the moment, it was more crowded than cozy. All of its exhausted, wounded, mourning, malnourished occupants were settling down to rest for the night. With Ollivander and Griphook in each of the spare bedrooms, Luna and Hermione slept in the garret while Ron, Harry, Dean, and a supremely uncomfortable Draco crammed into the sitting room.

The boys duplicated both of the sofas and stacked them like bunk beds, one hovering over another. As soon as it was done, Ron vaulted into a top bunk and pretended to fall instantly to sleep while it rocked and swayed like a boat. Harry waved Dean into the bed below Ron before climbing into the bunk above Draco, like a guard mounting a tower to watch over a dangerous charge.

With the lights out, the silence in the room was restless, tense, each one of the bunkmates wondering how bad it would be if they just got up and left to sleep alone on the beach in the stiff March wind. If Bill hadn't warned them about the alarms on the protection spells hemming them all safely inside, they might have done it.

Harry cleared his throat. "So did Hermione have any luck with your aunt's wand?"

It took a moment before Draco realized Harry had been addressing him. "Uh, yeah, a bit. She was too tired to try very much," he said, tossing from his stomach onto his back, speaking to the bottom of Harry's bed. "But she did produce a Lumos."

"Great. So why do you have to sound annoyed about it?" Ron snapped from the other bunk.

Draco bit back a counterattack, his tone barely even. "Because she struggled, and I've never seen her have trouble with any spell, let alone a beginner-level one."

"Trouble how?" Harry pressed.

"Trouble controlling the light," Draco said. "It was sparking and popping, like the wand was trying to scare her off, like when you meet a bad lapdog that won't stop snarling. The light was like that – not really dangerous but still hostile."

"Not good," Dean mumbled. "Small wand control problem like that could turn into a big problem if she tried anything tricky. And something tells me the lot of you are itching for exactly that."

He was right, of course.

Something was working in Harry's mind. "We all saw the way that wand jumped when you accioed it," he said, still talking to Malfoy, working to keep the remark from sounding like an accusation. "Does its allegiance depend on family loyalty?"

"I've been wondering the same," Draco said, not saying anything more about how the wand quieted at his touch. "Bellatrix wasn't the first person to use that wand. It's been in the family for generations. It's part of a set of three. My mum and her sister have its counterparts."

Ron thrashed on his sofa. "What, like copycat ripoffs of the Deathly Hallows?" he said.

Harry sat up so fast his head hit the ceiling. "What? Hallows? Are they?"

"Of course not," Draco said, his voice rising. "They don't have power over death. They're just antiques. Like that cloak of yours, Potter."

Harry felt no better, sitting up with his head bent against the ceiling. His heart was racing and he forced himself to take a deep breath. No, it was impossible for Voldemort to have failed to notice if Bellatrix's wand was the Elder wand. Malfoy was telling the truth. Harry lie back down, impatient for morning to come so he could get back to their mission.

Ron, on the other hand, was very much in the moment. He was leaning over the edge of his bunk, sneering at Malfoy. "Or maybe the problem magic in that bloody wand isn't something warm and fuzzy like a family connection," Ron was saying. "Maybe that wand came to your hand so eagerly when you summoned it because of what both you and dear auntie have got on your arms."