"Thank you," Lucius Malfoy said, staring at the ground.
Before him stood Arthur Weasley, who had brought Draco back.
Lucius stood at the entrance to his ornately decorated striped silk tent, a rare flush of colour rising on his pale, stiff, defiant face.
"You are welcome." Mr Weasley likewise looked down at the ground, plainly rather uncomfortable at Lucius's brief, unusual show of gratitude.
Lucius cleared his throat awkwardly, looked up, and glanced at Arthur.
Offering thanks to a mortal enemy, in every sense of the word, a blood traitor with entirely opposed views to his own, was neither something Lucius Malfoy was good at, nor something he enjoyed in the least; had anyone within pure-blood circles known what he was doing at this moment, they would very likely have mocked him for years to come.
"Well, then, I shall be off."
Arthur Weasley said to him, with a rather odd smile, glancing once at his son as he did so.
For some reason, Lucius detected a note of malicious satisfaction in that expression, though he could not quite work out its source.
Arthur Weasley, could he possibly be... plotting something? He pressed his lips together, eyeing him warily.
However, the tall, thin, red-headed wizard did not linger, nor say another word. He had already turned and walked briskly away.
"Oh, yes, until next time," Lucius called after him.
He rested his hands upon his snake-headed cane, watching Mr Weasley's retreating figure with a mixture of surprise and unease, still wondering just what the man could be up to.
After a moment, Lucius suddenly recollected himself. He turned and fixed his son, missing for half the night, with a stern look.
Good, no arms or legs missing... though his hair was dishevelled, his face pale, his clothes crumpled, and his shoes thick with mud, as though he had been rolling about in the grass of the Forbidden Forest itself.
"Come back inside with me, now!" Lucius said coldly, stepping first through the striped silk doorway.
Narcissa had been waiting for them inside. The moment Draco stepped into the tent, she rushed over and hugged her long-missing son tightly. "Draco! At last... thank Merlin!"
Her face was utterly drained of colour, a few strands escaping from her elegant chignon. The exquisite gown she had worn to the banquet was already somewhat creased.
Narcissa spared not a single thought for her usual elegance. She kissed her son's forehead firmly, her blue eyes brimming with tears, and hurriedly checked over his hands, his arms, his legs. "Oh, Draco, are you hurt?"
"No, I am fine, Mother." Draco obediently let his mother look him over, and gave her a smile.
"Thank goodness you are all right, thank goodness!" Having checked him thoroughly and found him unharmed, just rather dishevelled, the worry on Narcissa's face at last began to ease.
"Explain yourself!" Lucius, already settled into an armchair in the sitting room, said to Draco, his expression icy.
"Oh, Lucius, do not be so hard on him!" Narcissa shot Lucius a look, then drew Draco down to sit beside her on the sofa, her tone softening.
"Draco, tell your mother where you went. Do you have any idea how worried we were, rushing back to find you gone from the tent... I did not dare go anywhere... your father searched half the night, looking for you everywhere..."
Lucius gave a cold snort. Draco noticed then that his father's usually immaculate, flowing hair had come loose in places, and that he looked rather worn out.
"I am sorry, Mother..." Draco looked down at the toes of his shoes, doing his best to look pitiful.
"I heard something had gone wrong outside, and I was frightened, so I ran into the woods along with everyone else..."
"Hmph!" Lucius sank back into his comfortable armchair, saying dismissively, "Your mother has spoiled you thoroughly! Frightened by such a trifling thing, no backbone at all..."
"He is still a child! Of course he was frightened!" Narcissa stroked Draco's hair fondly. "He must have gone through such an ordeal tonight..."
His mother's hands were warm, gentle. This, quite suddenly, brought a genuine tear to eyes that had remained calm and composed all night. He had spent the whole night running about, gripped by fear and dread, and had even been sneered at publicly by Barty Crouch, all while forcing himself to hold on.
If Hermione's protection tonight had already begun to crack the icy shell around his heart, then now, his father's clumsy concern and his mother's gentle words finally brought that hard shell crashing down entirely.
"Do not be so pitiful about it! Explain to me why you were brought back by that blood traitor Arthur Weasley?" Lucius looked over his dejected son, his eyes flashing, his tone offhand.
"Something happened... I ran into some of my Hogwarts classmates..." Draco wisely avoided naming which classmates, sniffed, and told his father, "Afterwards, someone nearby conjured the Dark Mark... Ministry officials arrived one after another... he was one of them. Once it was all over, he brought me back."
"Draco, did you see who conjured the Dark Mark?" Lucius's face showed both doubt and fear at once. "Did you see who it was?"
"No, it was too dark, whoever it was got away," Draco said briefly.
"Tell me more about these Ministry officials. Has someone been giving you trouble?" Lucius rubbed his temples, plainly irritated.
"Only one... Barty Crouch... believed I had conjured the Dark Mark," Draco said, his expression blank.
Narcissa froze at this, and took her son's hand with concern... she found it rather cold.
"Ina," she summoned an elderly house-elf, "make your young master a cup of hot cocoa, at once."
The elf, hearing this, bowed immediately and hurried off to prepare a hot drink for her mistress's poor, tormented son.
Meanwhile, on hearing that Crouch had dared give his son any trouble, Lucius sat bolt upright, saying sternly, "He dared!"
"He certainly dared. He even pointed the tip of his wand at my face." Draco said calmly. "Mother, do not worry, I am quite all right. Mr Weasley spoke up for me, as did a witch from the Ministry, in a woollen dressing gown."
"Who was that?" Narcissa breathed a small sigh of relief and pressed on.
"She had a square jaw, wore a monocle, thick eyebrows. She seemed to know Crouch fairly well; she called him 'Barty,' not by his surname," Draco recalled. "She said her niece was in my year."
"That would be Amelia Bones," Narcissa said, thoughtfully. "The Bones family was once a distinguished one, though sadly their numbers have dwindled, leaving only her and her niece to rely upon each other now. I really must thank..."
"Now, Cissy, do not forget how the Bones met their end. They will hardly welcome you with open arms." Lucius wrinkled his nose, and pressed his son further. "Anything else? What else happened?"
"Afterwards, my classmates spoke up for me too..." Draco gave them a rough account of the scene: the house-elf Winky found holding a wand, and the conclusions the Ministry officials had drawn from it all.
Hearing this, Narcissa's face filled with distaste. "That petty, vindictive Crouch! Using his position for personal spite... He himself has a mountain of troubles of his own, and yet he dares cast doubt on Draco!"
She was furious that her "precious son had been falsely accused, in front of everyone."
Lucius ground his teeth for a moment, malice flashing in his eyes.
"Barty Crouch... is he not the man most protective of his own reputation? Hmph... house-elves running about with other people's wands, breaking wizarding law, and all under Crouch's own lax management, quite the scandal for the Ministry... That sounds like rather good news to me!" he said, ominously.
By now, Narcissa had regained some of her composure. She glanced lightly at her furious husband. "Yes, let us do exactly that. I know a journalist... Rita Skeeter, or some such name." She handed the hot cocoa to Draco, and watched him drink it.
Lucius looked at his wife and nodded.
He suddenly looked up again, his cold gaze settling on Draco, and asked, suspicious, "Which classmates, exactly? Not Gryffindors, surely?"
"Harry Potter," Draco said calmly.
Bring Harry into the conversation, and Lucius was bound to lose his temper over it. He had always harboured a strange sort of unease about Harry, believing him some exceptionally gifted future Dark Lord in the making.
Unexpectedly, Lucius did not give up so easily, but simply snorted instead. "I dare say some Weasley children were involved too, were they not? Otherwise, why would Arthur Weasley have troubled himself to see you all the way back here?"
"I cannot choose who I happen to run into of an evening, Father," Draco said, without lifting his eyes, still sipping at his cocoa. "Nor can I choose who Harry Potter chooses to befriend."
Lucius frowned, seemingly lost in thought. He stroked his snake-headed cane and said slowly, "Tonight, in the Top Box, I kept an eye on him. The famous Harry Potter... he seemed rather ordinary to me, no different from that blood traitor Weasley boy... and not even the most promising of the Weasley children, at that."
Draco felt a flicker of surprise, though he kept his expression carefully neutral, glancing at Lucius.
Unexpectedly, his father had taken the opportunity to observe Harry closely... Draco had assumed his father had spent the whole evening devoting his attention entirely to courting Ministry officials in the box.
At the time, his own mind had been entirely fixed on Hermione, and he had paid little attention to where his parents' eyes had actually been.
What exactly had Harry and Ron done tonight, that seemed so out of the ordinary? Losing their composure in front of the Veela, perhaps, and was that really so unusual? Nearly every official in the box had behaved rather badly, the moment the Veela appeared.