Chapter Text
London. Paris. Bucharest. Tehran. Kabul. New Delhi. Kathmandu.
Draco can’t remember having been in so many cities in less two days ever before. He can’t remember ever wishing to do anything like that either.
There’s a stinging headache threatening to bloom in his temples; his hands are tender from grasping his broomstick on the long flight from Europe to Asia; his stomach has churned so many times while touching Portkey after Portkey that he’s had difficulties keeping down their last meal for the whole day.
But he’s not going to complain. If Ginny Potter is not going to complain, he isn’t either. And even if she was complaining, Draco wouldn’t be, because their other companion, the old Lovegood, looks like he’s on a school trip, excited and chatty; he keeps looking around himself as if he’s having the time of his life.
As if they’re not all there for the worst task that they’ve probably ever had the misfortune to undertake.
“Mrs Potter.” The man who welcomes them at the Ministry of Magic of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal is short and dressed in red, cheeks battered by the sun and skin peeling from his nose like the paint off an old wall.
“Mr Shrestha,” Potter replies, and Draco can’t help noticing that that’s probably the first time he’s heard her voice since they left London.
The Minister for Magic greets Draco and Lovegood as well; his hands are calloused and warm, but he almost doesn’t look at them when he shakes theirs. Draco can’t help feeling bothered by the dismissive behaviour of the Minister, but he’s too exhausted to complain.
They’re guided through some small corridors decorated with colourful flags and pictures of the Himalayas until they reach an office where they’re offered tea and some dodgy looking sweets. Draco sips the tea and refuses the sweets.
“I don’t think I have to remind you that you don’t have jurisdiction in this country,” says the Minister placidly, his accent thick.
Potter presses her lips together. “We don’t have jurisdiction in England either,” she replies dryly. “That’s why I am here while my husband is back at home.”
The Minister nods slowly before opening a drawer and sliding out a small file. “They were last seen a month ago,” he says straight away, “in the Solukhumbu District.” He opens the file and skims through it, almost bored. “They checked in to a guesthouse in Gorakshep, eight days before their disappearance. According to the man who runs the place, they used it as their base for nearby excursions.” He looks at Potter, expression grave. “According to him, they wanted to move higher, over 20,000 feet.” He tilts his head from one side to the other. “According to him, they were looking for the himamānav.” His nostrils flare. “The Yeti.”
Draco closes his eyes for a brief moment, feeling suddenly cold and uneasy, he flexes his fingers spasmodically around the cup in his hands.
“I know,” says Potter firmly and when Draco opens his eyes again she’s looking at the Minister with a dark expression on her face.
“Hunting the himamānav is forbidden,” states the Minister curtly, “our Mountains protect their creatures.”
“They aren’t hunting it!” protests Potter. “They’re studying it!” And Draco can’t help wincing at the use of the present tense.
The Minister keeps his expression calm. “Mrs Potter,” he says quietly, “you know why you’re here, right?”
She swallows but raises her chin up in the air and Draco can’t help looking at her and wishing that he had an ounce of her determination. “To find our children.”
“Their bodies,” corrects the Minister, “and identify them.”
“Don’t say that,” she snaps. “They’re not dead.”
“Of course they’re not dead,” Lovegood chirps, his voice as cheerful as if they’re talking about cake. “My Luna said they’d all be home this summer for Dirigible Plum picking; she loves them so much and Lorcan and Lysander, too, you know.”
Potter turns to look at him; her determined expression quivers for a bit before a small, tired smile appears on her lips. “Exactly, Xenophilius,” she says weakly, as if he is a child and she feels the urge to agree with everything he says just to keep him happy.
He does look happy when Draco glances at his pale face, but then suddenly he looks very interested in the Nepalese sweets and seems to get lost in thought again.
The Minister glances at Lovegood as if he thinks this one escaped from the Nepalese equivalent of the Janus Thickey Ward, then looks back at Potter. “A search party was sent to try to locate them,” he goes on.
“I know,” replies Potter thickly. “You didn’t find anything. You looked in the wrong places.”
The Minister shakes his head. “We found something,” he replies, looking down at the file again. “Four wands, six sleeping bags, four quartered backpacks with most of their content lost, three jackets.” He pauses for a second before looking up. “And blood.”
Potter is shaking her head furiously now, looking dangerously on the verge of a breakdown. She has looked so composed and calm for the whole journey, and Draco couldn’t explain how she could keep herself so cool until that very moment. She thinks they’re still alive, she really does.
He feels the urge to say something, because Potter seems unable to contribute any time soon, and Lovegood is better if he’s kept silent. Draco clears his throat, but the Minister beats him to it.
“They left your children’s belongings at the guesthouse,” he says. “The Sherpas involved in the search party sent an owl with a detailed description of what they found, but were unable to send the items themselves.”
“How could they leave their things in the care of Muggles?” growls Draco suddenly, his voice throaty. “They’re going to sell them because they don’t know what they are! Throw them away! Ruin them!” He feels a strange, suffocating anger smother him. Those are his son’s belongings they’re talking about. Do they even understand what they mean to him?
“We didn’t, Mr Malfoy.” The Minister is still calm despite the two British people that have just snapped at him. “The man who runs the guesthouse is a wizard, and so were the Sherpas involved in the search. We wouldn’t dream of involving the Muggles where the himamānav is concerned. They’ve done enough damage in the past.”
Draco opens his mouth to retort something, but nothing comes to mind. The Minister is more concerned with a fantastic beast rather than six British citizens who have been killed in their mountains, and Draco feels a surge of hatred for that calm and collected man.
“We,” starts Potter, her voice cold and calm once more, “are going to look for them ourselves.”
The Minister nods slowly. “You will need a trekking permit for the Himalayas,” he says, opening an inkbottle and dunking a quill in it. “Food, trekking equipment, a map, maybe a Sherpa to lead you through the most difficult passages, camping e—”
“All we need is a set of Portkeys,” Draco interrupts him, his voice nervous, “that will bring us to this guesthouse.”
The Minister looks from Potter to him, an eyebrow cocked. “Portkeys don’t work in the Himalayas,” he states. “The configuration of the region is such that the high mountains won’t allow for the wide-ranging magic needed to make a Portkey effective.”
“So?” asks Draco harshly. “What are you saying? That we have to climb our way to the peaks on foot?”
The Minister nods, slowly again, as if he is talking to someone who doesn’t understand English that well. “You can get a Portkey to Lukla,” he says. “That’s the highest point where they work.”
“Thank you, yes,” says Potter quickly. “We’d like to book a Portkey for tonight, as well as all the necessary for a successful trek. We’ve got money.”
The Minister shakes his head. “We need to issue you a trekking permit first,” he states. “It’ll be ready by tomorrow at five in the morning. In the meantime, we’ve booked you three rooms at the Khyāh Inn for tonight.” He finally closes the file and hands over the list to Potter. “You’ll find all the necessary for a successful trek at the inn. A Ministry employee will wake you up at four tomorrow. Please, do check that you have everything I wrote on that list and in case you find that something is missing let the employee know.”
Potter nods, her eyes trained on the list.
“Mrs Potter…”
She looks at the Minister, her face a mask of alabaster. She probably doesn’t want to hear anything, but luckily the Minister seems to know what to say. “Good luck,” he murmurs, standing up.
They stand, too, Potter and Draco; he has to tap Lovegood on his shoulder to make him aware that the conversation is over and they’re going to have dinner – hopefully – and then they’re off to bed.
They shake the Minister’s hand. Lovegood attempts to hug him, too, but Potter drags him away, taking his hand and securing it between her arm and her side. They’re ushered to the main door, where a short wizard guides them outside and then through cold side streets that smell of spices and cows.
For the first time since they have been hauled into that city one hour before, Draco manages to get a good glimpse of it. Even though the sun is setting, even though the walls of the houses around him are tall and dirty, even though he doesn’t want to look at anything at all. He can’t help himself.
The city seems to be painted with hundreds of shades of maroon and brown and ochre. The streets open on squares and the squares are surrounded by temples. People hurry past, cows clog corners, peddlers scream the names of the crap they sell in a language Draco doesn’t understand.
Everything seems so foreign and different that for a moment Draco thinks it’s all a dream. Yes, come morning he will wake up in his bed at the Manor, with Astoria still asleep by his side, and Scorpius still alive and having breakfast downstairs before his shift at St Mungo’s starts.
He blinks as he is roughly pushed through the battered door of a shack, only it’s not a shack, it’s their inn, the Khyāh Inn. The acre smell of sheepskin and something that Draco hopes is not going to be their dinner saturates the air.
They’re escorted to their rooms, under the curious gaze of Nepalese and foreign wizards and witches. Some of them are there on holiday, though Draco can’t think why.
Potter is given the chamber closest to the bathroom, but she lets Lovegood have it instead. She gets the room next to Draco and disappears inside without even looking at him.
Draco pushes his own door open and walks inside. The chamber is dimly lit, smells of old covers, and doesn’t look that clean to him. He takes a deep breath and closes the door at his back before inspecting the place. There’s a chest of drawers, a bed, and a bedside table. The window is closed and he can’t be bothered to open it; he doesn’t care what lies beyond it. Probably just another wall.
There’s a knock on the door and, before he can even turn, steps echo inside the room and then the door closes again.
“Do you have everything?” asks Potter, her voice steady and hard as a rock.
He turns to look at her. She’s standing there enveloped in a colourful jumper and with a pair of slightly torn jeans. Is that Muggle fashion? It’s ridiculous. “I don’t have anything,” he replies.
She rolls her eyes and draws out her wand. In a moment the room is properly lit by a dozen candles. “You have to check, Malfoy,” she says, her voice annoyed as she makes her way towards the other side of his bed and picks up something from the floor. She puts it on the bed, and Draco finally sees that it’s a backpack.
“Check,” she commands, standing up and taking out the same list that she has been given by the Minister. “Trekking equipment, sleeping bag, camping equipment, food, water bottle, walk—”
“I haven’t even opened it, Weasley,” he snaps, walking towards the bed.
“It’s Potter,” she snaps back, glaring at him over the list.
He knows, he’d just wanted to annoy her. He feels like an idiot for doing it at this moment, but she’d waltzed into his room, barking orders, and he knows she’s nervous, but he is, too. His son is dead, for crying out loud.
He huffs and finally fumbles with the backpack. “Trekking equipment,” he repeats dryly as he draws out some ridiculous-looking mountain clothes and shoes, “sleeping bag, camping equipment, food, walking stick.”
“No water bottle?” she asks anxiously.
He pushes his hand deep inside and searches, until his fingers touch something cold. “Yeah, it’s here,” he says, taking it out.
She sighs in relief. “Good. I’ll check on Xenophilius, then we should have dinner and turn in, we’re waking up at four in the morning tomorrow.”
“I know, I was there, too,” he lets her know curtly.
She folds the list and gives him a jerky nod before she turns away and walks towards the door once more.
“You don’t really think they’re alive, do you?” He can’t resist asking. He should keep quiet, he knows that. The last thing he wants is for her to start crying in his room and him having to comfort her.
She stops and turns her head a bit; he can see she’s biting down hard on her bottom lip, as if to stop it quivering. Finally, she turns to face him. “Of course they’re alive,” she hisses. “Why else would we be here?”
To identify their bodies, he wants to say, but the words die on his lips and he just nods.
She doesn’t nod back, just turns away from him and walks out of the room. The door slams with so much force that the water bottle falls to the floor with a loud thud.
Draco is still awake at four in the morning. The knock from the employee comes as a relief, since he can finally get up from the bed and leave that reeking place. He folds his clothes meticulously and places them at the bottom of his backpack, then he dons the trekking equipment. He doesn’t know how to wear most of the things he has been given, but he’s going to wear them all wrong rather than let Potter know that he needs her assistance.
He stuffs his backpack with all the things he found inside the night before and he’s surprised at how light it feels when he puts it on his back.
His stomach rumbles. He’d refused dinner the night before, put off by the dodgy-looking soups and the disgusting curries. Potter had hissed at him to eat, surely afraid that he would have a fainting spell the following day and slow down their ascent, but he’d hissed back to mind her own business and stormed out of the dining room.
Breakfast isn’t much better, but he’s starving and feels dizzy now, so he sits opposite Potter and is glad that Lovegood is scribbling in a little notebook.
“Eat something,” she says, probably using the same tone that she uses for her children. “You need to have enough energy to trek until this evening.”
He shoots her a glare and pours himself something that looks like porridge. He tries to cover it with something that looks like honey, but when he grabs the first bite he discovers they are neither.
He swallows with great difficulty. The taste isn’t bad, but he doesn’t like not knowing what he’s eating. “What time are we arriving at the guesthouse?” he asks as he tries to swallow more of that concoction.
Potter looks at him, her face unperturbed. She looks like she’s trying to decide whether he’s serious or not. She licks the remnants of the non-porridge from her lips before talking. “In a week, Malfoy,” she replies calmly.
He feels his jaw actually slacken at that piece of information. “Beg your pardon?” he rasps out.
She searches in her backpack, draws out a map of the Himalayan treks, and lays it on the table, turning it around for him. “We’ll get a Portkey to Lukla,” she explains, tapping her finger on a spot she has circled before sliding all the way up to a small village in the middle of nowhere. “And we need to get to Gorakshep where the guesthouse is.”
“And we can’t do that in a day?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.
“Suit yourself,” she replies coldly. “It’s more than a 13,000 foot drop.”
His nostrils flare. “We could use brooms.”
“At that altitude? You’d faint and fall,” she informs him. “Trekking is the fastest and safest way to get there.”
“How is it the fastest way to get there when we have to drag…” He nods jerkily towards Lovegood’s bent head. “With us?”
Potter raises her head until her chin is almost at his eye level. “We’re not going to leave him behind,” she says tersely, and pauses a moment before standing up and nodding at his breakfast. “Finish up, we’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”
After breakfast, the Ministry employee takes them to their Portkey - a broken cup the colour of the dirty walls of that city - bids them goodbye and good luck, and then disappears back inside the inn.
“It activates at five o’clock,” announces Potter, and they are all touching it at four fifty-nine. At five, Draco starts to feel the stomach-churning sucking sensation and, before he can brace himself, he is gasping on the muddy ground of some pigsty. He gulps down air and it’s cold and smelly and different from the air he has breathed all his life. It feels more rarefied, as if he needs more oxygen to breathe and can’t find it around him.
Potter is already standing up next to him; she Scourgifies herself and helps Lovegood to his feet.
“Marvellous,” chirps Lovegood. “A smooth and warm landing. Our journey is definitely starting off on the right foot, isn't it, Ginny dear?”
“Yes, Xenophilius,” replies Potter, a weary smile on her lips. “Let me help you clean up a little. Stand still. Scourgify. There you go. Have you put on your socks? Are you warm enough in that? It’s going to get colder and colder as we ascend.”
“Oh, yes,” he replies, nodding knowingly. “We’re definitely going to encounter snow before we get to Gorakshep.”
Potter nods back, then looks at Draco. “Are you going to stay there all day?” she asks frostily. “We need to go.”
Draco blinks at her words. He is still crouched in the mud, his trekking clothes are chafing his skin, and he doesn’t seem able to breathe properly. For a moment, he is tempted to tell her to go without him, he’ll find a way, he’ll pay someone to bring back his son’s body, and her daughter’s, too, if she wants, and the bodies of Loony Lovegood and her family. He’s rich; money buys anything.
But he’d promised Astoria. He will bring Scorpius’ body back himself. He owes that to his son.
He pushes his hands in the mud and stands up, searching for his wand in one of the many pockets of his clothes.
“Scourgify.”
He jerks his head towards Potter, who is pushing her wand in her pocket and drawing out the map.
“I don’t need your help,” he grits through his teeth.
“A thank you is fine,” she replies without even looking up at him. “We need to go. Our first stop is Phakding, and if we keep a steady pace and don’t stop too often along the path we should arrive at our lodge early this afternoon.”
“Early this afternoon? Why don’t we continue to the next one, then?” growls Draco as they make their way out of the pigsty and onto an uneven village street. “It might have escaped you, Weasley, but this is not a pleasure trip.”
She stops and turns to look at him, her eyes ablaze. “It’s Potter,” she spits, “and we can’t continue to the next stop because we need to acclimatise ourselves to the altitude and the air.” She narrows her eyes as she looks at him. “Don’t worry, Malfoy, the fact that you’re here reminds me constantly that this is not a pleasure trip.”
He narrows his eyes, too, but Lovegood places one of his wrinkly hands on Potter’s shoulder and draws her away, starting to chat about the yakows and what spectacular animals they are, and too bad they have put Extension Charms on their backpacks, because he wouldn’t have minded having one for their luggage.
Draco follows them in silence, kicking little stones out of his path like a pouty child.
It’s six o’clock in the morning and the air is so cold it hurts.
They walk for hours, through forests, past tiny streams that come from the melted snow, over suspended bridges. Lovegood chats all the time and jumps from left to right, pointing out that colourful moth or that herd of yakows. He greets all the people they encounter on their path, wizards and Muggles alike, commenting on their Muggle devices so loudly that Potter has to shush him and drag him away more than once.
They stop in all the tiny villages they find on their path, to drink the sweet lemon tea and use the foul-smelling toilets that have Draco missing his own bathrooms at the Manor.
He has to admit – to himself – that the view is spectacular, though. Distant mountains are visible over the trees, green valleys surround them, the sky is impossibly blue, and he can’t help thinking about Scorpius and the fact that he saw the same landscape a few weeks before.
Draco wonders what Scorpius thought of it all, wonders if his son thought about his father, and how unlikely it was that Draco would ever see these sights himself. He wonders if at any point of his expedition Scorpius stopped and decided that it wasn’t worth it, that his company was too peculiar and the trekking too difficult for him. He wonders if at any point Scorpius wanted to come home. To his parents, the Manor, his job at St Mungo’s.
When they stop in front of a tall pile of Prayer Stones, Draco shakes his head to send those thoughts away.
“We should write something, too. Some prayer or something…” says Potter, her voice, for the first time since they’ve left London, quivering a little. “Shouldn’t we?”
“I’m afraid that’s not how it works, Ginny dear,” chuckles Lovegood. “But we can walk around them, from left to right. Yes, following the direction in which the earth revolves.”
Draco stops to look at them as they walk around the imposing pile of stones. They do it three times; Potter insists and Lovegood indulges her, even when he tells her that once is enough for all of them.
“You should do it, too,” she says frantically, looking at Draco. “Don’t you want to find your son?” She seems on the verge of tears.
Draco can’t explain why, though, since she hasn’t talked almost all day, only with Lovegood, and only one-word-replies to his excited rants. Probably it’s that. Probably she’s been thinking about her daughter all day. Probably realisation is hitting her already. Draco doesn’t know if he should feel relieved that she’s finally losing her grip on her denial or worried that she might start crying and go on for the whole week.
He knows he should keep the peace.
He’s never been good at that, though.
“They’re dead,” he replies darkly, fumbling with the uncomfortable straps of the backpack. “What difference does it make?”
“They’re not dead!” she insists, jaw clenched. “They’re lost somewhere.”
“Lost somewhere for a week without food and their wands,” he replies, looking at the mountains ahead of them; suddenly they don’t look quite as beautiful as before, suddenly they look very intimidating. “If the Yeti didn’t kill them, they froze to death.”
“Take that back.” Her voice is dangerously low, and when he looks at her, she has her wand pointed at him. “Take what you said back.”
He just stares back at her, resolute. He’s not going to take the truth back; after all, the sooner she comes to terms with it, the better. Yes, he’s ready to hear her cry until they’re back in England rather than listen to that nonsense.
“Ginny dear, let’s keep moving; I cannot wait to get to Phakding,” says Lovegood, grabbing her arm and tugging gently. “There’s a tiny Monastery that I have to visit.”
“I’m not going to visit anything,” protests Draco through gritted teeth.
“Nobody is asking you to come with us in this journey,” snaps Potter, her eyes narrowed as she looks at him.
“Good,” he replies.
When she turns away from him and walks ahead with Lovegood, Draco can hear her uncertain voice. “They’re not dead, they’re not dead…”
“Of course they aren’t.” Lovegood’s tone is cheerful. “You wait and see, Ginny dear. You wait and see.”
Phakding is small, somehow even smaller than Lukla. Draco is dropped off at their lodge like a suitcase, while Potter and Lovegood do the short walk to the Thaktul Monastery. Lovegood is particularly excited about it, and Draco doesn’t pay him any mind. He’s just happy they’re both going and leaving him in peace. He asks for a Butterbeer, but in this land it’s not an ordinary drink, apparently. He is given more lemon tea and he sits in his room, sipping from his cup and looking at the mountains from the window.
Potter and Lovegood don’t make an appearance until dinner time. Potter is silent and she looks tired; Lovegood is so excited that he has to show Draco all the things he has found at the Monastery.
Draco stares at Lovegood’s stones and powders and phials without listening to him.
When they turn in – all in the same room this time – it’s only eight.
“It’s going to be a hard day, today,” states Potter dryly. “The road is going to be steep and we have more than 2,600 feet to climb to get to Namche Bazaar.”
Draco looks up from his breakfast. It’s no fake porridge this time; apparently it’s the typical Nepalese breakfast. Soup, fruit salad, fried bread, and milk tea. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s tired and hungry, but everything seems to taste delicious this morning. “I assume that’s to be our next stop,” he says calmly.
She nods back at him without looking up from her map. “Yes,” she replies. “We should arrive later this afternoon. And no, we cannot continue to the next stop before evening.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” grumbles Draco.
“We should stop for a day,” says Lovegood. His hands, greasy from the fried bread, are leaving fingertips all over his old copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. “To acclimatise,” he goes on cheerfully, “and there are many little shops that sell traditional ingredients for potions and concoctions, and a museum nearby that we can visit. And I bet my hat that we can see an Occamy today.”
“A what?” grunts Draco.
Lovegood looks at him and beams, properly beams, at the prospect of telling him everything about Occamies. “It’s a two-legged winged creature with a serpentine body that may reach a length of fifteen feet,” he explains. “It’s slightly aggressive, but only when it has eggs to defend—eggs which are made of pure silver. It’s usually found in India, but I bet some specimens can be found here, too; apparently the Occamy loves high mountains, and this is the perfect habitat for it.”
Draco darkens slightly. He certainly hadn’t asked for the lesson on the creature and he hasn’t enjoyed it either.
“What does it eat?” asks Potter. “Is it dangerous?”
Lovegood shrugs a shoulder dismissively. “Rats, small mammals, the occasional monkey…”
“Lovely,” mutters Draco. “We’re not stopping for a day,” he says coldly to Lovegood. “We’re not on a holiday.”
“I’m sorry, Xenophilius, but Malfoy is right,” says Potter. Draco looks at her. It feels strange to hear her agree with him. “We’ll stop on the way back,” she suggests, a small, unsure smile stretching her lips. “I’m sure… I’m sure Luna and the boys would love to stop, too.”
Lovegood’s grin is joyous. “That’s a marvellous idea, Ginny dear,” he says. “My Luna will love to stop there again, and Lorcan, too, you know, he loves to look for new species, much more than his brother.”
Draco feels the urge to tell them that corpses can’t look for new species, but doesn’t want to start another day with a quarrel. He keeps silent and keeps staring at them over his breakfast.
“Sweet,” Ginny replies softly, with a tired smile.
Lovegood’s grin becomes even wider. “And your Lily Pad, too,” he says. “Luna always writes pages and pages about her and how much she likes exploring and trying to pet the most dangerous animals. She’s a brave one, just like her mummy.”
Potter smiles again, but doesn’t reply; she sips her tea and for a moment her eyes seem to fog with something undecipherable.
“Scorpius, too,” says Lovegood suddenly. “Luna says that he loves the outdoors. She says that he was a bit concerned about his ability to keep up with them at the beginning, but he’s become quite the adventurer.”
Draco presses his lips together until they’re almost hurting him. Scorpius has never written to him, not once since he’d left for this expedition. Not to tell him and Astoria that they had reached Nepal safely or to inform his father of any of his discoveries.
“Scorpius was… very good,” says Draco darkly, “with everything he did.”
“He is,” Potter corrects him anxiously, “he is.”
Draco shakes his head, but he doesn’t reply.
Potter’s prediction turns true: the trek that day is hard. The air feels even colder and more rarefied than the day before, and the climb is steep most of the time. The layers of clothes are coarse against his skin, and his feet start to hurt him two hours out from Phakding. Draco hooks his thumbs under the straps of his backpack and tries not to think about anything but putting one foot in front of the other.
He’s constantly the one at the rear of their little expedition, but he’s happy about that. It means his companions don’t have to see his disconcerted expression or the pained face he pulls every time he twists his ankle or stumbles over some rock.
Potter walks steadily ahead of him. She’s the one who decides when to stop, when to eat the lunch that they packed that morning, and when to refill their water bottles. She’s never following her own desires, though: she’s always asking Lovegood how he feels, if he’s tired, if he wants to stop, if he’s thirsty or hungry.
They stop to rest for five minutes before passing a suspended bridge, and Lovegood wanders off in the forest because he claims he saw something silvery, shining amongst the bushes.
“You need to rest, Xenophilius,” Potter calls after him, but he’s already gone. Sometimes, he looks like a child, and he’s definitely as stubborn as one.
Potter sits on a square rock and takes out her water bottle, gulping down water and catching her breath.
“How are you?” Her tone is unexpectedly even. Draco looks at her and he's surprised to see that she's staring at him. Her freckled nose is a bit burnt by the unforgiving sun of the Himalayas.
“Good,” he replies stiffly, wiping the sweat off his brow. “You?”
She nods back, but doesn’t speak, and Draco finds himself yearning for some more conversation after having kept quiet for almost the whole day.
“Tired?” he asks.
“Yeah,” she replies.
He nods. “We’re almost there, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” she replies again. “We should reach the Beyul Khumbu Park after that bridge. Then it’s only a couple of hours to Namche.” She looks at the place they’d last seen Lovegood. “I hope there are no monasteries to see,” she sighs softly.
Draco glances at the forest, too, before turning back to look at her. “I’ll go with him,” he says before he can stop himself. “You’re tired, you should rest.”
She shakes her head and smiles wearily. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine,” he says more harshly than he has intended. “You’re our navigator, I don’t want you to be too tired to look at the route properly and maybe get us lost.”
She stares at him, probably trying to understand if that’s an excuse to mask his act of gentleness. “He wants to do some shopping in the village,” she says. “It’s probably going to take him hours.”
“I’ll give him one and a half,” he announces, “then I’ll leave him in the village.”
She doesn’t believe him, and her smile is grateful this time. “Thank you.”
He nods curtly, then Lovegood finally comes back, and they resume their trek without any further exchange until they reach the Beyul Khumbu Park. There’s a sign there that states that it’s a sacred place to the Sherpa people. And visitors are encouraged to refrain from taking life, refrain from anger, refrain from jealousy, refrain from offending others, and refrain from taking excessive intoxicants.
Potter taps the first two points on the list and elbows Draco discreetly in his ribs. “Remember these when you go with Xenophilius,” she whispers before winking and walking ahead of him again.
Namche Bazaar is far bigger than Draco had expected. It has many lodges, cafés, bars, and more shops crammed one next to the other than Draco thinks there should be in a village up the mountains.
If he cared about these things, he would also notice that the prices are three times as much as those in Kathmandu, but he doesn’t care about these things. Especially not there, since all he’s going to buy is food and secure himself a bed in a triple room along with Potter and Lovegood.
The streets are small and crowded with trekkers acclimatising themselves to the altitude and Sherpas who have lived there all their lives. Draco follows Lovegood around as he goes from shop to shop. Luckily, he is tall and dressed in bright yellow and blue colours, and his long white hair makes him terribly spottable, otherwise Draco would have already lost him.
Lovegood is surprisingly fast and still full of energies. Draco has no idea how that can be, but he suspects that the old fool has not followed the last point on the list and has taken excessive intoxicants. There is no other explanation for the fact that Draco feels like collapsing on a bed and never getting up again while a man easily old enough to be his father seems ready to climb Mount Everest that very day.
“We need to find kamal,” Lovegood says excitedly, checking a small list he has been keeping in his pocket all this time, “and suryamukhi, and sayapatri. Yes, it’s imperative that we find sayapatri.”
Draco darkens slightly as he drags his weary limbs around the village. “The writings are all in Nepali,” he points out. “How are we supposed to find these—what are they?”
But Lovegood isn’t listening to him. “Here, here!” he exclaims and disappears inside the umpteenth shop. Draco follows him inside, reluctantly, but he is sure that Potter would have a heart attack if Draco were to go back to the lodge without Lovegood.
Inside, the place is warm and stinks of herbs and dead animals. It looks like a herbalist’s shop. Draco stares at the apothecary jars as Lovegood speaks to an amused shopkeeper, who'd probably smelled the money on the daft trekker while he was still a mile away.
Draco wonders if Scorpius has stopped there with the others, wonders if his son has bought anything from that shop or any other shop in town. He wonders if Scorpius has bought something for Draco or for his mother. Draco’s mind goes back to the evening before his son’s departure. The mess in Scorpius’ room, the stupid clothes that Draco scoffed about. He goes back to the last words he said to his son, and convinces himself that Scorpius didn’t buy him anything at all.
Then, he can’t help thinking about Potter. He’s sure that she had been excited about that suicidal expedition and probably kissed her daughter goodbye and good luck. He wonders who feels worse. She who had blessed the trip, or he who hadn’t even said goodbye to his son.
“Ah, absolutely marvellous,” chirps Lovegood as he reaches Draco with many small bags hanging on his wrist. “I was even given a free bag! Look at it! Isn’t it precious?”
Draco doesn’t even look at it. “It’s getting late, Potter will start to worry,” he says.
Lovegood puts the bag away. “Ginny dear will be at the post office for a good while,” he says calmly. “Most transactions take a considerable amount of time there, as they are nearly always short of owls. And I need to find some aduwa before we go back. This is the last village with a Wizarding district before Gorakshep, and there’ll only be a Wizarding guesthouse there.” He smiles brightly. “How exciting, isn’t it, Draco? To have to mix ourselves with Muggles in this part of the world!”
Draco doesn’t reply, but after Lovegood has found this aduwa, which looks like common ginger to Draco, they go back to the lodge.
He pretends he doesn’t see Potter’s red eyes when he walks into the room, and she pretends she’s not been crying.