Green Eyed Monster | Draco Malfoy

88. By Any Other Name

Chapter 88 - By Any Other Name

Though I doubted whether or not I had actually slept, I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes. I wasn't ready. Or to be more frank: I wasn't ready to face the day. After yet another night of such restless sleep that even my dreams didn't dare visit, I was not ready to face what I had to do today.

Today I was facing the Death Eaters.

Today I was breaking into Hogwarts.

And last night I hadn't been able to sleep - not necessarily surprising, but still upsettingly unfortunate. The expression 'I'll sleep when I'm dead' seemed too inappropriate to use, but it had a disturbing ring of truth to it this morning.

I refused to open my eyes. I refused to admit I was awake and that today had come.

"Is Audrey awake?"

"Not yet, I'm letting her sleep - she'll need her energy."

It was a wasted effort, though I appreciated the sentiment. I could hear Bill and Sirius mulling around in the kitchen, trying to busy themselves as they waited for the nightly watch to return. I took my time to wonder who had taken last night's shift as the Order spied over Hogsmeade. Usually Sirius and I were the ones to take the graveyard shift, watching through the streets and trying to find trends in the Death Eater's movements - but not last night. Not in preparation for today.

At one point, three days ago, we had watched while Dolohov stumbled out of the Three Broomsticks and had the sobering realization that Voldemort was calling on him by use of their handy, tacky little tattoos - the immediate reaction of Apparation all throughout the town was instantaneous.

That's the reaction when they think they've found Harry Potter, after all.

And that had been it - the defining moment in our week and a half of scouting out Hogsmeade, Hogwarts and Diagon Alley - it had been that moment when we realized my plan would work.

Not without a lot of risk, of course. We were taking a risk being out in public, nevertheless expecting that the Death Eaters would be intelligent enough to come after us as we'd planned...and I wasn't necessarily sure of that. They had hired Montague - they clearly weren't working with any form of logic that we at the Order could follow.

So after we were decently confident about the first part of the plan, it had been time to get Ginny back on the mirror to detail every part of that side of the plan. It was a simple five-step mission:

Step one: I needed to get in.

Step two: I needed to get the sword.

Step three: I needed to watch the memory.

Step four: I needed to get out.

The fifth step, if at all possible, would be to destroy Snape's office for sake of my sanity - but that was really all dependent on time and how much attention I had drawn to myself with the earlier part of this plan. So maybe it wasn't a simple five-step plan, but I was hoping it would be a successful one.

There was an artistic kind of irony to all this planning. It was an irony that sat heavily in my jaw and made it ache as if I had eaten something too sweet. I mean, it was strange wasn't it, that I - Audrey Potter - was waltzing into danger like this. Here was Harry, keeping such a low profile after his Ministry break in and because he was finally listening to me and being subtle...so now I had to be conspicuous. I had to be the obvious and reckless one.

I didn't like his ways when he was doing it and I hated it even more when I was forced to take over.

How had he lived this way for so long?