Chapter 82: A Portrait Slashed by Fate
When Harry and Ron escaped exhaustedly from Professor Snape's one-day "Potions Classroom Compulsory Labor Marathon", dusk had already enveloped the spires of Hogwarts.
They spread themselves out like pancakes on the common room armchairs, and it wasn't long before Hermione arrived from Hogsmeade and rained sweets down on them.
"Draco bought it for you. He got a little bit of everything." She said with a smile, her face flushed by the cold wind.
"Merlin's stinky socks! Is that even a little bit?" Ron exclaimed, his mouth hanging open. He was covered in candy, like the candy tree in the window of Honeydukes.
"Say 'thank you' to him for me," said Harry, who had several Pepper Urchins stuffed in his mouth and looked very hungry.
"I've already told you," Hermione said with a smile. "How was your day?"
"It couldn't be worse. Snape, that greasy old bat!" Ron said, his temper rising. He gritted his teeth, grabbed a frozen mouse candy, and chewed it with a "crunch" sound. "We did manual labor all day! We scrubbed dozens of cauldrons and cleaned up all kinds of sticky slugs and animal offal, and Harry even got scolded and deducted five points for being distracted."
Harry didn't seem to want to discuss this tragic topic. He pinched a piece of marshmallow and asked Hermione, "Did you go shopping with Draco? How was it?"
"It's fine," Hermione said cheerfully. "I'm having a great time."
Draco was the most considerate guide in the entire Hogsmeade village. He noticed her discomfort and calmly eased her nervousness about her first visit to Hogsmeade. He patiently introduced her to all the new and exciting shops that she had no idea where to go. He took care of her meticulously, keeping her away from Dementors and trolls, so that she would never be frightened again. In the end, she completely let go of her awkwardness and thoroughly enjoyed the bustling Hogsmeade village.
At this moment, Ron grabbed a liquorice wand and examined it. He asked Hermione, "How is Hogsmeade?"
"Oh, apart from those patrolling Dementors that make me feel uncomfortable, everything else is pretty good. There are so many candies at Honeydukes, you really should go and see it... There are a lot of people buying rotten eggs, burp powder and flying bugs at Zonko's Joke Shop... The butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks is especially delicious... Of course, the most worthwhile place to go is Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes." Hermione looked very excited and counted on her fingers.
"What did you say?" Ron gasped, pausing from his sword-fighting stance with Harry, using liquorice wands as swords. "Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes? George and Fred really opened it?"
"You knew about this?" Hermione looked surprised.
"During the summer vacation, they were always mumbling about it, about applying for a patent or something... I'd occasionally hear a word or two... but I didn't expect it to happen so soon..." Ron asked, confused, stuffing the jelly slug stuck on his collar into his mouth. "The question is, where are they going to get so many Galleons to open a store? Mom and Dad definitely don't know, and they'll never agree to it."
"I don't know either. But they do make a big fuss about it. You really should go and see it." Hermione shrugged, indicating that she had no idea.
She turned around, looked around for a while, and stopped the red-haired girl who came hurriedly from the girls' dormitory. "Oh, Ginny, you're just in time. This is the miniature puff that Fred asked me to bring you. It's called the pygmy puff..."
"Thank you!" Ginny said in surprise, taking the two little things from Hermione.
Then, she glanced at the two boys who were happily rolling around in the candy pile by the fireplace and asked Hermione, "Aren't you going to the party? It starts in five minutes."
Harry and Ron reacted immediately, stood up immediately, dropped the candies on their bodies to the ground, and hurriedly squatted on the ground to pick them up.
"Are you wizards or not?" Hermione shook her head and said "Pack!" to the candies on the ground.
The candies immediately jumped back into the packaging and were neatly stacked.
"Hermione, that's a beautiful spell!" Ginny said in an admiring tone, following Hermione out of the Fat Lady's portrait. "The last time I saw a tidying spell this beautiful was when my mother cast it... Oh, you can never expect boys to cast a tidying spell properly..."
"Can't we count on it..." Hermione repeated in a low voice, and couldn't help but think of the first year when Draco had used this spell to arrange the wizard chess pieces neatly.
The reason she was so proficient in the spell was thanks to him telling her the little tricks and practicing with her.
However, they had no time to discuss this. All the Hogwarts students came from all over the castle, queuing up at the door with great joy and noise, and then filed into the Great Hall decorated with hundreds of pumpkins with candles.
One of Hermione Granger's weaknesses was that when the queues at the entrance to the Great Hall split into two or three, she could never get ahead. Someone always squeezed in before her, and her upbringing didn't allow her to rudely push others aside.
There were complaints from the back of the line behind her—"What are the people up front doing? Why aren't they moving?"—but there was nothing she could do.
She was so anxious that her face flushed red, until the boy who was coming towards her stretched out his arm to stop the next line, raised his pointed chin to her, and said briefly: "Go in."
"What are you doing?" Zacharias Smith, who was stopped next door, said angrily and glared at Draco.
"Smith, if I were you, I'd consider whether my tutor had been taken away by a Dementor," Draco said coldly. "Haven't you learned the saying 'ladies first'?"
Zacharias watched as the brown-haired girl smiled at the nosy Slytherin boy and walked through the door first with a red-haired girl.
He muttered angrily words like "bad luck, Muggle-born" and tried to catch up, but was overtaken by Malfoy, who elbowed him and made him stagger.
"Just wait!" Zacharias threatened. "When Quidditch comes—"
"Yeah, I'll wait." Draco said lazily, giving him a malicious smile.
Hermione Granger had a good appetite tonight, and she took a little of everything on the table, even though she had already been well fed by Draco in Hogsmeade.
Drinking her warm pumpkin juice, she looked up happily and saw that above her head, a group of live bats were flying around and circling on the ceiling of the auditorium, which was brewing a storm, and the flaming orange banners were twisting their bodies in colorful ways like water snakes.
"Hermione, I never expected that," Ginny asked her, "Are you very familiar with that Malfoy? He actually let you go first."
"Oh," said Hermione, "he's my study partner."
"You have a Slytherin as your study partner?" Ginny said in surprise, almost knocking over her pumpkin pie.
Hermione shrugged, took another sip of the sweet pumpkin juice, and her eyes slid across the table, slightly lost in thought at the boy with a somewhat cold expression.
"Oh, Ginny, relax," Ron said to his sister in a familiar tone, grabbing a pumpkin pie. "You have to consider the reality. No Gryffindor with any self-respect would want to partner with her. She'll try to correct every mistake you make - from the tone of your spells to the way you swing your wand, and she'll nitpick the length of your essay and the handwriting until you feel ashamed or furious."
"Oh, so you sent her there to cause trouble for the Slytherins?" Ginny said, as if she had suddenly understood something. She imagined Hermione bossing the arrogant Malfoy around and couldn't help laughing. "Will Malfoy go crazy? Will he want to cast a curse on her every day?"
"Oh, that's not the case. They don't seem to have had any unpleasantness." Ron said doubtfully, turning to ask Harry beside him, "Draco has a bad temper, doesn't he? He is quite patient with her, and can actually tolerate -"
"That's because he's absolutely flawless! Everything he does is perfect!" Hermione said proudly, coming back to her senses. "I haven't had a chance to find fault with him yet!"
"Is this why you haven't been interested in being his study partner lately?" Harry asked with interest. "Because you can't find any faults? Can't show your strengths?"
"No!" said Hermione, blushing slightly. "I just wanted to help Neville..."
She simply had to change her study partner out of concern for her own health.
Even so, he was her favorite study partner. It would always be him, always be him.
She glanced at him across the dining table and subconsciously smiled at him.
The night was pleasant, at least that's what Draco thought.
Today, he put down a huge stone in his heart. Sirius Black was no longer a threat, but could become a helpful ally; the joke shop he invested in the Weasley twins opened smoothly, and the "money prospects" looked considerable; not to mention, the two Horcruxes were destroyed one after another not long ago, and his plan to "trip up" the Dark Lord was proceeding smoothly and in an orderly manner.
He glanced towards the front of the hall and saw that the Hogwarts ghosts were performing the finale.
He didn't watch Nearly Headless Nick act out his own near-headless experience, but just stared at the Gryffindor table overflowing with laughter and joy.
Hermione said something to Harry and Ron, and gave him a crooked smile across the crowd.
He felt that everything was going in the right direction.
However, fate always likes to play jokes.
When Draco returned to the Slytherin common room, greeted a few burping students, and was about to go back to his dormitory for a good night's sleep, he heard the headmaster ask them to go back to the hall.
"Hurry up! Draco—" Blaise yelled at him, roughly pulling the yawning Pansy out of the common room first, "I heard someone broke into the castle!"
This gave him a bad feeling.
Draco followed Blaise and Pansy into the Great Hall as the Slytherin team entered. The long table they had just used for dinner was already neatly placed against the wall. Hundreds of soft purple sleeping bags lay obediently on the ground, waiting for the students' favor.
Students from Badger House and Eagle House also came over and were talking around the Gryffindor students.
"The Fat Lady's portrait has been slashed—" the Gryffindor boy, camera in hand, shouted in the middle of the crowd, his face lighting up with excitement. "I just took a picture of her."
"Colin, that's not funny! You see, it's because someone tried to break into the Gryffindor common room!" Ron's sister Ginny Weasley retorted.
"Who?" Susan Bones, a round-faced Hufflepuff girl, asked from the edge of the crowd.
"Oh, Susan, it's Peter Pettigrew. The Fat Lady said so herself!" Neville Longbottom, who was standing beside her, said in a frightened tone. He felt in his pocket and suddenly asked in a panic, "Have you seen my wand?"
"Oh, Neville, did you leave it in the common room again..." said Seamus Finnigan, the Cauldron Slayer, sympathetically.
"This is outrageous!" Draco couldn't help but say.
"Yeah, how did he do that?" Goyle's face was filled with horror. Crabbe beside him also looked pale, clutching his praline candy in his hand, unable to speak.
Draco paused, turned and left the group without continuing the conversation.
What he really wanted to say was, why on the same day, even if Sirius Black did not appear, the portrait of the Fat Lady still suffered the fate of being scratched?
The hand of fate is stirring the clouds. It is trying to make certain things happen according to the established track.
Draco's inner alarm sounded again. Perhaps he had been living in such comfort lately that he had lost the vigilance he had when he was first reborn.
How could he think that the world had been completely changed?
Admittedly, he has changed many things, but fate seems to still be operating according to a certain inertia.
The escape of the prisoner of Azkaban, the scratches on the Fat Lady's portrait, all of these have traces in previous lives.
Were the changes brought about by his interference meaningless?
Are there some established things that will not be disturbed by his interference?
This hypothesis made him shudder and he dared not delve into it further.
The candles were extinguished. The only thing flickering was the starlight on the ceiling. Crabbe, next door, was snoring, his praline brittle dropping to the floor with a clatter, a noise so loud it was enough to dispel any sleepiness. Goyle was grinding his teeth unconsciously. Farther away, Blaise and Pansy seemed to be whispering.
The auditorium is not a good place to sleep in any sense of the word.
Draco frowned, quietly picked up his sleeping bag, and walked away from the group of people making noise, towards the far wall in the dark.
"Who is it?" When he was about to reach the wall, he heard a familiar girl's voice asking with a hint of nervousness in her voice.
"It's me." He said softly.
"Draco, this way." The tension in her voice disappeared, replaced by cheerfulness.
In the dim light cast by a nearby silver ghost of a deceased Victorian figure, Draco saw the shadow of Hermione's arm waving at him.
He felt relieved and walked closer to her. He placed the sleeping bag on a small open space next to her and crawled in with his clothes on.
It's very quiet here. Most of the students gather in the center of the auditorium, and few people want to sleep near the walls.
"You - why are you lying here alone?" Draco turned his head and could only see her shadowy outline in the darkness.
"I want to be quiet for a while. I can't sleep." She looked up at the starry sky on the ceiling and said quietly.
What happened today was too complicated and too sudden. She felt mixed emotions and vaguely uneasy.
"I see. I'm a little uneasy too." He couldn't see her clearly, but he accidentally touched a strand of her hair that had escaped from the sleeping bag on the floor.
Curly hair. A little tough, a little smooth. He stroked it gently, not wanting to let it go.
She didn't notice that her hair had become a hostage in the boy's hands, and she said with lingering fear: "Today was really thrilling. Who knows when Peter Pettigrew entered the castle? Maybe he ambushed in the castle during the day, or directly in Harry's dormitory. We were in the common room at that time, but fortunately they were busy eating the candy you gave them and didn't go back to the dormitory! Fortunately, no one was hurt..."
"...except the Fat Lady," Draco said thoughtfully.
"Oh, yes. Except the Fat Lady," she whispered.
Draco was silent for a moment, pondering the Fat Lady's fate.
"Draco, I don't think I've thanked you for everything you did today. You accompanied me to Hogsmeade and introduced me to those things... I knew nothing about that place, not as familiar as you do..." She broke the silence and said hesitantly.
Draco's thoughts were momentarily interrupted by her whisper. He smiled in the darkness. "I'm happy to accompany you."
Hermione smiled in the darkness too.
After a whole day of the clamor and bustle of Hogsmeade, they seemed to have had no time for quiet conversation, and the stillness at this moment was particularly moving.
"Oh, I have to thank you. At that time at the door, you let me go first." She said quietly.
"What else?" Draco said with amusement, "Should I ask you to wait at the door?"
"You can just ignore me. Just like them—" she said lazily.
"I can't ignore you." He said gently.
"Oh. I see." Hermione said, feeling a little happy.
When she could no longer see his seductive face and could only hear his gentle voice, she became much less wary.
Her "heartbeat syndrome" was finally under control and in a relatively calm state, no longer bombarding her like it did during the day.
"Draco, are you scared? I mean, Peter Pettigrew?" she said, trying to turn her head and face him.
"No." Draco stared at a twinkling star on the ceiling in a trance.
"He's dangerous, isn't he?" She asked with a note of worry in her voice.
"He's a coward." He tried to soothe the worry in her voice.
"Will he break in again?" This speculation made her uneasy.
"No," he comforted her.
"I really don't know how he got in and how he escaped." She was a little puzzled. "Are Dementors useless..."
"Yeah," Draco said, "it seems to be useless."
The barrier formed by Dementors is useless to Animagus.
"And the Dementors—" Hermione said softly, recalling the rotting, decaying, dark creature she had encountered during the day, "It was so scary..."
"Don't be afraid... they are far away from you..." His voice was slow and soft, as if he was afraid of scaring the shy stars in the sky.
Hermione yawned.
She was puzzled to find that she seemed to have entered sleepy mode; she was clearly tense and had no desire to sleep before.
Why, suddenly I am no longer nervous?
"Draco, aren't you sleepy..." she asked him with a hint of tiredness.
"Not sleepy yet." His voice was as light as sparkling water, soothing her ears.
She reached out sleepily, found his hand, and gently held it.
With her brain tired and exhausted, she followed her instincts and listened to her heart instead of deliberately avoiding it as she had done before.
Warm and soft hands, Draco thought, letting her hold them.
"See, that's much better," she murmured contentedly. "When I was little, if I couldn't sleep or was feeling down, Mom would always hold my hand like this and stroke my hair."
Draco chuckled.
He turned sideways and leaned towards her, gently stroking her hair with his free hand, as if he was stroking a small animal.
He didn't know if this method could cure insomnia or depression.
But at least he wasn't in such a bad mood now. Maybe it would help.
"Go to sleep, go to sleep." He said to her in an inaudible voice and continued to touch her hair.
Hermione tried to continue speaking, saying that she actually wanted to persuade him to sleep, but only a few soft murmurs came out.
The sleepy girl held the boy's hand tightly, her breathing gradually calmed down, and she fell into a peaceful dream.
At dawn, Draco woke up confused.
He didn't expect that he could actually fall asleep on this cold, hard floor without even having a nightmare.
How did he forget last night's thoughts about the Fat Lady's fate?
He closed his eyes, trying to get back into the vortex of thinking, but the sweet smell of green apple suddenly invaded his nose.
The sensory cells awakened. The stomach was empty, the brain was silent.
He reluctantly opened his sleepy eyes and was surprised to find that the sleeping girl was in his arms.
Or rather, he held her whole sleeping bag, and she inside it, tightly in his arms, just as he had hoped in Honeydukes, hugging her back tightly and tightly, with an involuntary smile on his face.
Hermione, this sweet little girl who was completely oblivious to her situation, buried her face in his neck lovingly, her fingers tugging at the front of his shirt, her hair scattered all over him, the corners of her mouth slightly raised, as if she were having a sweet dream.
How did she get into his arms? Draco swallowed his saliva and looked around guiltily, only to find that the students were still sound asleep. Occasionally, a few coughs could be heard in the distance, coming from the prefects and ghosts on night watch.
He was secretly thankful that no one noticed when he saw Ms. Grey quietly floating over, glancing at him with a knowing look, then slowly left with a faint smile.
Draco felt uncomfortable all over. For a moment, he felt like a bad student who had been caught.
A faint blush rose on his face, but he had no time to care.
He hurriedly and gently removed Hermione's slender fingers that were clutching his collar one by one - and at the same time soothed her unhappy groan by stroking her hair - and tucked her sleeping bag in, wrapping her tightly like a dumpling.
That's right. She was so tightly guarded that no one could see her sweet, innocent smile.
That's too dangerous.
Draco muttered to himself as he tiptoed out of the Great Hall and followed the floating Ms. Grey into an empty and dark hallway.
Ms. Grey glanced back at him, confused, and asked, "What are you doing? Following me?"
"No, Ms. Grey, I have something I want to share with you," he said.
"What's the matter?" she asked warily.
"Not long ago, two other pieces of his soul were destroyed," Draco told her. "I thought you might want to know about that."
"The other two?" Ms. Grey's gentle and ethereal voice turned sharp. She rushed in front of him, and her usually elegant and beautiful face twisted in an instant.
"Yes." Draco was startled by her sudden change in expression and tone, but he tried his best to remain calm and stood still.
"Oh, Merlin's briefs, he's a devil—" Ms. Grey muttered, slowly exhaling like a deflated ball, "and a fool at the same time."
"What do you mean?" Draco asked.
"Splitting the soul..." Ms. Grey turned and gazed at the distant mountains outside the window. "It's not something you can do arbitrarily. No one can precisely divide a soul into equal parts. When you split it, all your characteristics at that time will be reflected in the split soul, like another you."
Draco looked at her in confusion, his heart moving slightly.
"That means every split—it's a process of turning one into two," Ms. Grey said softly.
There was a long silence.
A cricket in the cracks of the bricks that had not yet frozen to death chirped in a drawling voice, like some kind of humorous background music.
"You mean—" Draco said in shock.
"The first time, he split his soul in half. The second time, he only had 1/4 of his soul left." Ms. Grey's face was distorted. She couldn't believe that she had been deceived by such a fool.
"But he still has a third, a fourth..." Draco continued, his eyes suddenly widening, completely shaken off the sleepiness, and he suddenly felt cold all over. "He - how much of his soul is left in himself?"
"I don't know." Ms. Grey's face returned to calmness, even a little indifferent. "It depends on how many times he splits."
"How many times..." Draco chewed on this sentence and gradually lost his words.
"Ha! Now I understand why he was defeated by a baby..." She laughed mockingly and floated away, leaving behind a meaningful sentence, "His soul is fragile, even weaker than a baby's... He is so broken that he can't even support his body. His soul must be suffering from the pain of being broken all the time."
Draco stood there, stunned beyond words. Is this the truth?
His worldview was like a stack of building blocks, which were shaken and shattered to the ground by Ms. Grey's analysis.
He remembered what his grandfather Abraxas had once said to him: "The rupture of the soul will bring irreversible and permanent damage, moodiness, lack of judgment, and will become more and more out of human form..."
If things go as Ms. Grey expects...
So, there is finally a reasonable explanation for the fact that the Dark Lord's personality became more and more weird and his face became more and more distorted in his later years.
With such a fragmented soul, he can no longer be called a human being, but a hideous and broken monster.
How could such a monster lead those pure-blood wizards with beautiful dreams to restore glory?
What else does this monster, who is constantly immersed in the pain of ruin, want except killing?
Draco stood on the windy porch, feeling cold all over.