Platinum Dragon Wizard - 617/618 |
As the saying went, enemies’ eyes turned red the moment they met.
Just like Remus Lupin and Fenrir Greyback below. The two of them were locked in a bloody fight, as if only one of them would be leaving alive.
Though Draco had long since stopped paying attention to them...
Compared with Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley meeting in the sky, though, the atmosphere was different.
Their positions were opposed, they had always disliked each other, and even their children had clashed countless times, yet at this moment neither of them showed any intention of making a move. They simply remained locked in a standoff.
The reason neither side attacked right away was probably because Draco and Ginny were together.
Until the situation was clear, both sides were wary of acting rashly...
So whether it was Draco or Ginny and Luna seated behind him, all of them could clearly feel that everyone’s eyes were on them.
Like they were the center of the stage.
Ginny Weasley, on the other hand, sitting behind him, seemed a little at a loss. Maybe it was her first time being in this kind of situation.
Or maybe it was because of the wary, suspicious looks Pansy and Astoria were sending her. Her face stiffened slightly, and she instinctively glared back.
Especially after Pansy voiced the question everyone was wondering about, Ginny suddenly looked a little guilty.
Pansy parted her lips in flustered disbelief, her eyes darting between the two of them.
“Draco, you would not happen to...”
“......”
“......”
To be fair, that strange pause, combined with the odd silence around them, was more than enough to make people misunderstand.
Sure enough, Ginny noticed the disbelief on her brothers’ and parents’ faces, along with a kind of suspicious look that made her feel embarrassed and irritated for no reason.
What exactly were they suspecting?
Things were not like that at all!!
And with Pansy looking so shocked, as if to say I knew it, anyone who did not know better would really think Ginny had done something.
At that, Draco waved a hand at Pansy in annoyance.
No one knew what that little gesture meant, but Pansy clearly did. She immediately ducked her head and obediently shut her constantly muttering mouth...
Lucius, meanwhile, ignored the little exchange between Draco and the girls. The moment he confirmed Draco was unhurt, he shifted his attention to Arthur Weasley in front of him.
“It seems your side is not in very good shape.”
It was obvious that Arthur Weasley and the other wizards looked exhausted from overusing their magic. Some of their robes were even torn to shreds, exposing wounds left behind by magical attacks.
Clearly, Arthur Weasley and the others had just gone through a hard battle...
“Lucius... what are you here for?”
“I do not believe I am obligated to answer that. Rather than that, are you not going down there to help?”
“Hmph. That is none of your concern. Until I know what you are after, I will keep my eyes on you.”
Neither side had attacked, and the other wizards were also keeping themselves in check, but the tone of their voices and the wariness in their expressions were full of tension, along with a hint that they were itching to make a move.
In this kind of atmosphere, it would not have been surprising if either side attacked in the next second.
But compared with Lucius’s relatively calm tone, Arthur Weasley’s every move seemed restless.
After all, their companions below were still fighting the enemy...
He wanted badly to go down and help, but facing Lucius, a man who could be called his lifelong rival, Arthur Weasley could not let down his guard. Especially when they still had a person in the other side’s hands.
Yes, a hostage.
His concern had clearly thrown him off. He had misunderstood something.
Forcing himself to pull his gaze away from the battlefield below, Arthur Weasley narrowed his eyes at Lucius Malfoy across from him.
“Tell me what you want.”
“Oh.”
Realizing the other man seemed to have gotten the wrong idea, Lucius suddenly turned his head to look at his troublesome son.
To be honest, when he had first seen Draco together with Ginny Weasley, even Lucius had been stunned by the scene.
After all, that combination was even more shocking than that Muggle-born girl appearing out of nowhere and knowing Draco.
The Weasleys, after all, were a fallen family. Poor, and having abandoned pure-blood pride...
As if he had read the meaning in his father’s eyes, Draco raised a fist to his mouth and coughed lightly.
“Ahem. Pansy, give your Broomstick to the Weasley behind me.”
“Huh? Oh. Got it.”
Pansy froze for a moment when he called her name, then her face lit up as she flew toward Draco.
Strangely, Ginny Weasley, who should have been happy to get away from Draco’s side, did not look pleased at all. Instead, the moment she saw Pansy approaching, a faint trace of hostility flashed across her face.
Ginny herself did not notice that reaction, but the surrounding wizards saw it very clearly...
Seeing that, Lucius frowned deeply, but in the end he said nothing to stop it.
Worth mentioning was that Narcissa, standing nearby, seemed oddly excited for some reason. It was as if she had just witnessed something amusing, and a mischievous smile appeared on her face.
Arthur Weasley, on the other hand, did not think too much about it. He only let out a huge sigh of relief, then watched expectantly as Ginny, looking very unwilling, swapped the Broomstick beneath her with Pansy Parkinson.
At this point, any clever wizard had already realized that the situation had not gotten so bad that it would lead to an all out fight...
And that was exactly what Draco wanted.
Staying silent and letting everyone believe he was holding Ginny and the others hostage really could have brought some useful advantages, but Draco did not think now was a good time to make an enemy of Dumbledore’s side.
And since Lucius had not stopped him, he was clearly accepting the way things were developing.
That said, once this was over, as Draco’s father, Lucius would definitely be having a proper talk with him about all this.
Especially about why Draco was here in the first place, and why he was flying around in the sky with two young witches behind him...
...
Although Lucius had a long list of questions he wanted to sit down and ask his troublesome son, he knew this was not the right moment. In the end, he withdrew his gaze from Draco.
That deep look made Draco, who had no idea what his father was thinking, feel his eyelid twitch a few times.
Lucius’s cold, sharp eyes settled on Arthur Weasley across from him, then he lifted a hand and gave a small wave toward the wizards on his side.
That bold motion nearly made Arthur Weasley attack on the spot...
But in truth, it was not a signal to strike. It was an order for them to rein in the restless magic they had been holding back.
Wands lowered.
No voices of objection.
That was what Arthur Weasley and the others saw.
It had to be said that when it came to magical strength, Lucius did not really have the kind of dazzling record that could truly awe or intimidate others.
Compared with Dumbledore and the Dark Lord, his reputation in the wizarding world was hardly on the same level. But when it came to prestige among his own side, he truly fit the role of a leader.
With just a tiny gesture, those arrogant noble wizards, the sort who looked down their noses at everyone and were prideful to the bone, all obediently suppressed the magical fluctuations they had been holding in check.
That alone was enough to show everyone exactly how high Lucius’s status was among them.
At the very least, if Voldemort wanted to achieve the same result, he had to rely on overwhelming power and brutal punishment, ruling his followers through fear and pressure before he could barely manage it...
Arthur Weasley was no fool, so he naturally caught the meaning in that small gesture.
And precisely because he understood it, he found it even harder to comprehend.
Why?
Was this what pure-blood pride and thinking looked like?
Were they not just a faction brought together by shared interests?
Without some higher ideal as a foundation, they should have been nothing more than a mob.
That was what he thought, but he did not show it. He merely gave Molly a look, signaling her to have the others lower their wands as well.
Both sides knew perfectly well that now was not the time to tear things apart...
...
Compared with the stiff atmosphere between Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley, the mood around Draco and the girls felt almost a little too relaxed.
There was still tension, of course, but it was clearly a very different kind...
After all, Pansy had now taken Ginny’s place, and without the slightest hint of shyness, she was openly hugging Draco while looking down haughtily at Ginny Weasley, who for some reason was gritting her teeth.
As for Luna, who had slowly drifted to Ginny’s side, she was glancing back and forth between the two of them with a blank, dreamy expression. It was impossible to tell whether that airy gaze had noticed anything at all.
But one thing was obvious.
The way Pansy acted made it look as though she were baring her teeth at some stray dog that had suddenly wandered into her territory.
That provocative look was impossible for Ginny to miss.
And that stray dog... no, Ginny, should have felt relieved, as though a burden had finally been lifted. Yet for some reason, what rose in her heart instead was a faint sense of resentment, along with an injured feeling she did not even realize she had.
Even though the Broomstick she was now riding was a far more expensive new model, and much more comfortable as well.
For some reason, deep down it still felt as though she had lost something to Pansy...
Sneaking a glance at Draco, who had not said a single word and had not looked her way even once, Ginny tightened her grip on the broom handle until her fingers nearly turned white.
“Hmph.”
“Hmph.”
Pansy, who had been half dazed by Draco’s scent and the hard feel of his stomach, heard that slightly sulky huff and immediately answered with one of her own, a sound that came out almost like a cute little snort in Draco’s ears.
At the same time, Astoria, who had also come up beside Draco, guided her Broomstick closer and softly asked the question she had wanted to know for some time now...
Only after watching Ginny Weasley fly farther away, making sure no one else could overhear, did Astoria finally ask,
“What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“Do not play dumb. You know exactly what I am asking.”
Draco blinked in surprise.
Astoria, who usually carried herself as though she were very mature, always standing a little way off and watching with a smile no matter what he did, was unexpectedly forceful this time.
She was smiling, but it still gave Draco a strange sense of pressure...
And that was not all. Behind him, there was also one very restless little fool.
A growing softness pressed against his back.
The way she clung to him so naturally and skillfully, without the slightest concern, was enough to make anyone think that if Draco’s parents were not nearby watching, Pansy might have thrown her whole body onto him already.
“Exactly. Why did you not bring me with you?”
“That really is the part you are focusing on? I should have expected that from you, Pansy.”
“Do not change the subject!”
Even a well behaved little dog knew how to rebel against its master now.
Draco raised a brow, surprised, but he quickly realized why Pansy and Astoria were acting so differently from usual.
Even though he could not see Pansy’s face, the little head pressed tightly into his back and the strength of her arms around him said more than enough about how worried and unhappy she was about what he had done...
“You... all knew?”
Astoria rolled her eyes, and Pansy answered in a muffled voice,
“We did not see how you dealt with those Death Eaters, but we saw very clearly what just happened between you and Weasley.”
“Actually, it was Lockhart who warned us, which is why we went to find Mr. Malfoy. As for who dealt with those Death Eaters, I do not think there is any wizard besides you and Snape who knows Sectumsempra.”
From just those few sentences from Pansy and Astoria, Draco immediately understood why they had appeared here.
Aside from the wounds, which made Sectumsempra easy enough to identify, the rest had clearly come from outside information.
That guy did it on purpose?
He should have guessed it earlier.
Thinking back now, Lockhart really had never mentioned anything about what was happening on Lucius’s side.
Without even realizing it, Draco had assumed his father and the others would not make it here in time, and so he had never considered his father’s faction as possible support.
Just as Draco began wondering what exactly Lockhart’s purpose had been, Remus Lupin and Barty Crouch Jr. below also noticed what was happening in the sky.
At some point, the two sides that had been tangled together in battle had already pulled apart again.
They were not fools.
When faced with another force whose intentions were still unclear, neither side was willing to keep fighting the other to the death without regard for the consequences.
Even reckless Gryffindors would not do something like that...