Severus was nervous. Things had been much, much too quiet since the incident in September. There had been only one meeting since, one in which he'd been instructed to leave Draco at school. Little had happened at that meeting; it seemed more a regrouping session than anything else. The Dark Lord promised he had plans and Severus had no doubt it was true, but he wasn't sharing any of them with anyone.
Voldemort knew what he had done and he was taking strides to correct it. It was an altered course, a turning of the wheel of the ship of bigotry, but if anyone could steer it back it was him. That ship would always sail on but sometimes it was better captained than others.
He sighed, his finger tapping against the desk. It was close to the holidays and as such he would have expected the students to be out of their minds with the promise of a few weeks of freedom. They seemed subdued today for reasons unknown.
Subdued was not a word he usually applied to Gryffindor/Slytherin double potions. So far this year the two houses had stayed in their respective corners. He knew Draco was stirring the pot of doubt in Slytherin and as much as he hated to admit it, without provocation from their adversaries the Gryffindors were content to keep to themselves.
His eyes fell on Hermione Granger. Annoyed with her inability to ignore Potter and Weasley, he'd paired her with Neville Longbottom in the front of the room. The other two did not like her so much that they would willingly sit in the front of his classroom. Harry and Ronald skulked in the back, botching their potions together.
She had the patience of a saint. She was belaboring the same point to Neville for the third time. He knew it wouldn't process no matter how many times she tried to explain it to him. Longbottom simply had no knack for potions. With her monitoring, though, disasters had been kept at a minimum.
He didn't know what to make of her and had stopped trying. She was an ungrateful little snot, acrimonious at best. He realized that his fingers were drumming a nice little solo on the desk now. He hoped it would annoy her.
Oh, listen to him. The little nit had gotten so far under his skin! He hadn't slipped since the last time, when she'd given him a taste of his own sarcastic playacting. Was that it? He could dish it out but not take it? Maybe. Few people were brave enough to return his sentiments and few could do it as well as her. If there was one thing Hermione Granger was good at, it was studying. If her subject happened to be a person she was no less successful; she had studied him and memorized him and learned to regurgitate his fine examples.
What was it all about, though? His mind drifted for a moment, back to the Infirmary at the beginning of the school year, back to the girl who had touched him very little shyness and even less hesitation. What was wrong with her? And what was wrong with him that he couldn't get her small, warm hands out of his bloody head?
The students all looked up at him when he visibly snapped back to himself, seeming to twitch. The Slytherins merely looked perplexed; their head of house was not prone to daydreams. The Gryffindors looked wary. He gave them all a scowl and rummaged for something read. Yes. That would keep his mind in safe places.
Perennial Potions wasn't helping. Really, it was kind of alarming. He didn't care if she had some kind of warped crush on him. It wasn't the first time. It made him wonder, when young teenaged girls (or boys, there had been one boy) developed a strange infatuation for his 'mysteriousness' and utter cruelty. What kind of environment had they been raised in that they could find that attractive? Ah well, their frontal lobes were not fully developed and he desperately hoped it could be attributed to that.
But he had a hard time believing that Hermione Granger's frontal lobe wasn't fully developed. The girl was a genius and possessed a degree of logic that didn't exist at her age. Without her the other two would be flunked out, dead, or some combination thereof.
So why did she come on to him, however subtly? She had to know better. She did know better. She could get herself expelled, never mind getting him sacked. Nothing should terrify her more than that. No threat or insult he could toss out held more power than that. What could he do, then, if she was fully aware of a devastating consequence and chose to do it anyway?
To her credit she had backed off after the last encounter. She had not pressed him, attempted to contact him, anything. Perhaps she knew she had overstepped a boundary. Perhaps he had overstepped one, too. Boundaries were notoriously capricious this year, prone to jumping and wiggling about and sometimes not existing at all.
He sighed, turning the page of the magazine for show. He hadn't absorbed any of it. He'd read it already and probably knew everything it said anyway.
A tap on his desk cause him to look up from the magazine. He hoped that he wouldn't come face to face with her now, but there was a good chance since she and Malfoy usually alternated finishing first. Thankfully today it was Malfoy.
She was only three minutes behind him. She set the potion down on the desk and looked right at him. It was plain that she expected him to ignore her. Well, no, today he wouldn't give her the satisfaction. He met her eyes and held them.
She was equal to the task. Hermione Granger just couldn't say no to a challenge, could she? The stalemate lasted until Pansy Parkinson jostled her from behind, demanding,
"Get out of the way, Granger!"
Hermione gave the other girl a dirty look and ceded the battle.
"Miss Parkinson, in the spirit of the holidays I would ask that you refrain from gauche behavior in my classroom," he said dryly. Several students laughed, knowing that he didn't give a damn about the holiday spirit. Most of them were done now and a stream of students moved toward his desk.
She ought to have left by the time he looked up, but she hadn't. Her eyes met his for a brief instant, and then she turned in a flurry of dirty-blonde curls and was gone.
Intertwining dark light
And the face of fright
Sweet opium rays
Erase the days
And you hang sinister, bright
On the canvas of my night.
You pulse in me
I struggle and break free
I'm born and I die
I smile and I cry
For you are all I see
And I cease to be.
Selena put the scrap of parchment down with a lead stone of knowledge in her gut. She had written this nearly twenty years ago. She had been spending so much time teaching Cassius the Patronus charm that she hadn't much time to try for new predictions. Divination wasn't like that, anyway. That was something few people understood. Prophecies, predictions, fortunes – they came when they pleased. They didn't bow to human schedules or conveniences.
Somehow it always seemed to take a good knock on the head to spark the outbursts of sight. The Sorting Hat had begun it all, spearing into her brain. She had been so young that she thought the barrage of odd images she saw that night were only dreams. And then the miscalculation on the quidditch pitch where Newbright had barreled down upon her without realizing it – that had triggered a stream that seemed never to stop. She had brought an extra notebook to her classes to jot down whatever she saw. It had flowed and flowed and flowed and…
Her mind flared to life. No, no, not this, not now…
"Spaseeba," the cab driver said around his cigar as she handed over the coins.
She stepped out into the dark night. They didn't have the money for streetlamps out here and the moon was nowhere to be found. Clouds covered the stars. It was utterly black. Still, her feet knew the way.
As she walked, gravel crunching beneath her boots, a smell drifted on the light breeze. She lifted her head slightly, inhaling. Lilies. Her mother liked to grow them for Easter.
The small house loomed up suddenly, a dark shape against another shade of dark. She fumbled for her keys. When she finally felt out the right one, she lifted a hand to the doorknob. It was not where it should have been. Selena put her hand out in front of her. It met no resistance. The door was…
Her hand went to her wand. There was someone in the house who didn't belong. She didn't care if it was a wizard or a muggle or Hades himself; they were going to taste the business end of her wand. She prayed her mother had gone out.
She couldn't see a goddamn thing. If she lit her wand, though, she would only be a moving target. She edged forward. She knew the layout of her mother's tiny house well enough to navigate the dark rooms.
In the dark it was hard to realize she was falling because there was no up or down. Selena hit the ground awkwardly but managed to bite off the cry that wanted to escape. So much for the element of surprise. She lay still for a moment, listening for movement, for any hint of where the intruder was. She heard nothing.
Selena felt for what had tripped her. At first she couldn't figure out what it was. Then she felt a pattern, etchings…engraving. Flowers, curlicues…it was the leg of a decorative table that her mother kept in the hall. A leg, shattered messily at the end, and nothing else.
The house remained silent around her. She knew she couldn't keep groping around like this. If someone was here she would never be able to take them without light. Selena climbed to her feet and whispered,
"Lumos."
A halo of light spilled from the end of her wand. Now she was a target. So what…if the Death Eaters had come all the way out here to get her, what could she possibly do?
But no cloaked demons emerged from the shadows. The house was destroyed, ransacked…what few possessions her mother had were ripped, cracked and scattered all over the floor, or missing entirely. She stepped over unidentifiable rubble, her heart beginning to pound harder. Please, let her mother have gone out…
No. No such luck…
A sob ripped out of her when she saw her. Her mother was on her back, too still, a shocking pond of blood spread on the floor behind her head. A bludgeoned saint…
The next seconds, minutes, hours…were blank. She came back to herself later, lying next to her dead mother on the floor. Her wand had gone out.
Shakily she relit it. And then she froze. Coiled a foot from where she sat there was a snake, not tremendous but not small. It had bands of red and yellow and black all around it and it stared at her, still. Its tongue tested the air once.
In the moment it took her to think of a spell, it struck. She cried out as its fangs sank into her hand. Instinctively she pulled at it with her other hand. That was a mistake; it caused the creature's fangs to gouge a bloody track across her knuckles. But it dislodged and she flung it across the room, hearing its ropelike body hit the wall. Trembling, she swung the light around to see where it had landed.
It was already coming at her. This time she was ready.
"Evanesco!"
It incinerated from the inside out, barely having time to writhe in its cindered death.
She told herself it was a horrible coincidence. There were snakes out here. The door was open. It had come in from the outside. It wasn't the first time. But this was no grass snake, no harmless thing the width of her pinky. This, her fuzzed mind registered, could be poisonous.
There was a spell for removing venom. She knew there was. God, where was Severus? Severus would know it. A flare of anger hit her and two fat tears splashed on the wooden floor. Severus was not here. Severus was at Hogwarts. Severus, who had…
No.
Her mind slammed shut, preserving her. She struggled to her feet. The wrecked house swam crazily as she stumbled toward the kitchen. What the hell was that spell? Fuck, she was bleeding. The snake's fangs cut deep.
With clumsy hands she turned on the water. It stung as it cascaded over the slashes, rinsing away blood that welled up again seconds later. What the hell was the spell? What the hellwhatthehellwhatthehell…?
It flared into her head.
"Exsanguini venomi!"
The wound stung fiercely and she watched cloudy drops of liquid rise from it. Five opaque drops, like little pearls of death. With a trembling hand she cast them into the sink. They swirled down the drain and she collapsed.
She hadn't gotten all of it. Some of it had been cycled through her system but hopefully she had been quick enough that it was too little to kill her. Her head and hand throbbed malevolently. Her vision still swam.
The wand flickered out again. Fucking hell. Her mother…
The perfectly parallel stripes on her hand wouldn't stop bleeding. Lucius would be able to heal this. Oh, but Lucius wasn't here either. Lucius would never be here. Lucius was –
A loud pop sounded and in the darkness Selena screamed.
That was the night her mother had died and the night Cassius had come to her. The pop was the house elves, Goochy and Binky, apparating into the house with Cassius in tow. She had no time to fall apart. Not with a murdered mother and a nearly dead child in her care.
Falling apart had come later, when, in the daylight, she spotted a glisten among the snake's heap of ash. A diamond ring. An engagement ring. That was when she knew. Lucius had planted the snake. Lucius had killed her mother. Never mind that there was no evidence of magic in the house. Never mind that muggle burglars could have done the same. The snake and the murder couldn't be unrelated…could they?
She had told the people at the hospital that Cassius was her half-brother and they took her tears to be out of concern for him. But really, those never ending noiseless tears were for something else entirely.
The nail in the coffin was the letter. Composed messily with a bandaged hand, she had written to Severus. She was not on speaking terms with her father and so Sev would have to relay the news. She wondered if the man would even care…
Severus,
I know you are in no state for this. I wouldn't write if it wasn't important, so please don't throw this in a fire or a bin or rip it to pieces. Please read this.
Mum is dead. The muggles call it 'blunt force trauma'. It was made to look like a muggle robbery. I know it wasn't. There are other things…
Sev, I think Lucius was involved. Please…I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.
His response came the next day. It was short and blunt and impersonal.
Lucius wasn't involved. It was muggles.
Enclosed with it is a clipping of the Daily Prophet. Lucius was in St. Mungo's recovering from being stabbed by his father. Lucius was a victim. The house elves tried to tell her. They tried to tell her that Marius went mad and her gut knew that Lucius would never succumb to that madness…but the ring. The ring!
There was nothing else from Severus, just that scrawl and the clipping. Numb, she sold the ring to pay for her mother's funeral. Neither brother nor father showed up. Even now it made her want to flay him alive.
Selena breathed. The paper was crumpling beneath her fingers. Severus hadn't been in his right mind at the time. She knew it like she knew the lines on her palm. It wasn't his fault. If he had it to do over, he would. She had forgiven him a long time ago and there was no use dwelling on it now.
She jumped when a hand fell on her shoulder. She turned to Cass's wide blue eyes.
"Do you want--" he stopped short. "Hey, are you ok?"
She nodded, hastily barricading the foul memories in her mind.
"Do you want tea?"
She nodded again, opening and smoothing out the piece of parchment that had started the whole downward spiral.
"What's that?"
"One of my old predictions."
He sat down next to her, obviously in no hurry for the tea. "Figure it out yet?"
"Read it. I think you'll be able to solve it."
He took the parchment from her and read quickly. Once, twice, a third time. Cassius frowned and shook his head.
"It's about a werewolf," she offered.
Cassius nodded and read it again. "Remus Lupin?"
She nodded sadly. "Wherever he is, Cass…he's coming to terms with what he is."
"Isn't that good?"
Selena shrugged. That all depended on what terms he came to.
Remus lay on the cold ground and knew he should get up. He should get up and go inside and wash himself. But there was no one out here, no one at all, not a soul that cared if he froze to death. There was just him and the snowy conifers and the shadowed mountains.
His torso was stiff with dried blood. None of it was his; he only tore at himself when he was confined, as he had been at the Shrieking Shack. So he had killed last night, but not people – there were no people, he had made sure of that. Animals he could live with.
He sat up gingerly and looked around. There was the carcass. He frowned. It was huge; an elk, perhaps. Were they called elk here? It was nearly picked clean, all bare bones and empty skin. He could not have done that himself. As ravenous as he knew he became when the moon overtook him, he couldn't eat an entire elk. Perhaps he had help, or perhaps he'd been out so long that the vultures had the time to scavenge it.
He stood up, grimacing. It was a mark of his state of mind that it didn't at all bother him that he'd savaged the creature and swallowed its flesh raw. Meat was meat. Humans were the only carnivores that bothered to cook their meat, and when the moon sat like a fat white cue ball in the billiards table of the sky he wasn't human.
In three months he had accepted it. There was no one out here to brew Wolfsbane and he couldn't do it himself. He hadn't the ingredients, the skill, or the drive for it. He crouched down by the animal and gathered up what was left of its skin. It was a good thick hide and there was no use in wasting it. It had proven to be colder than expected in this hidden valley and what little clothing he'd brought with him was inadequate.
For all the stories and legends, Transylvania was not so bad. True, it was silent, isolated, dark, cold, and the brooding mountains held more than enough atmospheric menace to put off the bravest wizard. But so far he had not encountered a single vampire. Wisely, they kept to themselves. He'd seen a dragon resting on the mountaintop three peaks distant and reveled in it; it was the first time he'd seen one beyond a photograph or a heavily sedated specimen on a chain. A free dragon scratching its blue scales and shaking out its wings and tail, causing small landslides in the process, was something to behold.
There were other werewolves here, though. He was certain of it. He had heard them during his prior transformations and this time he was fairly certain he'd shared a kill with them.
His thoughts were interrupted and a second later, confirmed. Two people were coming toward him in a similar state, nude and disheveled and painted with dead grass and blood. His dinner pals and members of the midnight tribe. It was a man and a woman. The man was picking his teeth with a shard of bone. He could see both of their scars. The woman's was a raised, misshapen crescent; the wolf that had bitten her had literally taken a chunk of her side with it. The man was missing his left arm below the elbow.
She was taller than her companion and he found that odd because the man was not what he'd call short. Her hair was black, thick and curly, and he wondered how long it would take her to wrest the knots from it. His hair was dark blond, straight, falling in a messy curtain to his shoulders. He held off on observing their faces; sweat, blood, and dirt would obscure their true appearance.
They stopped a few feet away. Remus said nothing. He didn't feel exposed or uncomfortable. They were like him. They understood. The man stepped forward.
"Can you help us, mate?" he asked in a thick brogue. "We strayed far from our home last evenin'."
Remus nodded. When he turned, they followed. He didn't know what to say to them. He had never spent this much time in the company of his own kind, because for so long he had refused to fully accept his lycanthropy. He was still in those clichéd stages of grief; first the denial, though he had been so young that denial had been more his parents' game. Next was the anger; to this day he had plenty of that. He had bargained his little heart out two years ago when he accepted the job at Hogwarts. Now here he was, seated nicely in his depression, waiting…waiting for acceptance.
He led them to his shack in silence. Once inside he had to crack a small smile; it wasn't fair to call it a shack when it had running water. Thank God he had paid attention in Sprout's Herbology classes. He doubted anyone else in his year could remember how to construct their very own aqueduct.
"Thank you," the man says. "We just want to wash up."
"Of course," Remus found his voice. "Anything you need, just ask."
The woman moved toward the makeshift loo and Remus heard the water turn on. The man appraised him for a long minute. He busied himself with the elk hide, inspecting it.
"I'm Desmond," the Scot said suddenly. "You're new 'round here."
Remus nodded and held out a hand. "Remus. I arrived here at the end of September."
Desmond clasped his hand briefly. "We heard you these last few moons. Why didn't you seek us out?"
"I wasn't sure how I'd be received."
Desmond tilted his head to the side and a blade of brittle grass fell from his hair. He didn't notice it. "Are you just changed?"
Remus couldn't control a small, mirthless laugh. "No. No, I've been changed for twenty-nine years."
Desmond's nostrils flared and a slightly pained expression settled across his features. "You smell like Greyback."
"He was the one that bit me."
The Scot's face twisted. "Same here, eight years ago. I can smell that son of a bitch ten miles away." He frowned. "But twenty-nine years…where did you live?"
"England."
"Among regular folk?"
Remus nodded. Desmond looked impressed and horrified at the same time.
"Well bless your heart for doing it. I couldn't."
"Obviously if I'm here I couldn't either."
"People are cruel," the other man said needlessly. "And so is fate. But we need not dwell on it."
Remus nodded. He liked Desmond very much already. "And the lady?" he felt brave enough to ask. She still had not emerged from the bathroom.
"Ramona," he answered. "Bitten three years ago."
"I can introduce myself, thank you," Ramona said from the washroom, her first words in his presence. Her accent snapped sharply through the air, lending it a certain electricity.
"Yeah, sorry, love."
"No matter," she said, emerging. She was startlingly clean now, a whole different person without the muck. That seemed to be all she had to say; she marched past them and went back outside. Remus blinked, unsure what to make of her. Desmond gave no explanation, but with one look Remus could tell she was his. His mate.
"It's your home, Remus. I wouldn't think to go before you," Desmond spoke up, gesturing toward the loo. "Ramona has no such scruples but I try to make up for her."
Normally Remus would not have considered leaving someone he'd only just met alone in his house, however pathetic it was. This was different. He went and took a very fast bath in lukewarm water, scrubbing vigorously and managing to rid himself of most of the night's grisly evidence.
When he was done Desmond took his turn. Ramona was still outside standing in one spot and staring at something he couldn't see. The woman was stark naked in the cold. He offered her clothing, which she accepted with a curt nod. She dressed outside and resumed her odd vigil. Either she hated him or she was in her own world. Maybe it was a little bit of both. Upon his exit Desmond didn't seem bothered by the lack of clothing, but eventually took the pajamas Remus pressed on him.
"Exactly how far did you stray last night?" Remus asked, noticing that the sun was making its brief midday appearance above the peaks. In one night a werewolf could travel a significant distance, but Desmond was missing an arm. That made him the proverbial three-legged dog and undoubtedly slowed them down.
"Oh, about ten miles."
"Will you be able to make it back by nightfall?"
Desmond nodded. "Aye, we'll find some thestrals. They're agreeable enough." He paused. "Will you come with us? You don't have to be alone out here."
"No, no. You and Ramona have a life. It isn't my place to interrupt that."
"It isn't just me and her. There are a whole bunch of us, a nice little town, with a few roads and houses and everything."
Remus was floored. An entire town of werewolves? "How many?"
"About 250, I'd say. We're inside the border of the conservation lands so no one comes in who doesn't belong."
"How do that many werewolves coexist?" He couldn't imagine that town during the full moon. Wouldn't they fight and kill one another?
"We get on all right," Desmond shrugged. "We know our pack, Remus."
Yes. Even though Remus had never spent much time around other werewolves, he knew what it was to have a pack. He'd had one once, although the members of it had been a dog, a stag, and a rat. It was unconventional but effective. Even in his wolf form, scent told him that they were allies.
Desmond went outside to join Ramona and Remus followed. He smiled; two thestrals were picking at the remains of the elk.
"Guess you don't have to look far," Remus commented.
"Aye. Fortunate."
Ramona coaxed the creatures away with soft words. She appeared gentler than she had for the entire hour and a half of their strange visit; she stroked the beasts' spiny backs and leathery wings, almost cooing.
"Sometimes I think she likes animals more than people," Desmond said. "Pretty strange when you're both."
Remus couldn't think of a response. It was becoming easier to admit to himself that he was part animal, but he couldn't say it with the kind of blind acceptance the Scottish man did. And Remus was the one who had been a lycanthrope for nearly three decades! He'd been bitten so young and raised to believe it was a controllable illness. It was…mostly. Merlin, he was still so mixed up.
The two of them mounted the thestrals. Before urging them on, Desmond turned back to him. "You're welcome to join our pack if you want. You'll find us ten miles east, across the river. And thank you, Remus."
He could only raise a hand in acknowledgement as they rose into the air. The words hit him like a sucker-punch. Memories of his last pack rose unbidden in his mind. Oh, God, what he'd give to have that strange family again. Even after Sirius and James did what they did, he could not stay angry at either of them.
James was the brain of the group back then, the ego to Sirius's id. Remus was the superego. Together the three of them made a full person. Peter was along for the ride, a vestigial structure that was sometimes needed, sometimes not, but could be lived without. Peter was their appendix – a place where shit built up and cankered and one day exploded.
When it was their conscience doing terrible things, how could the two of them possibly know how to act? Sirius's instinct had been to make it like it never happened, to protect his friend. James had arrived at the same conclusion after weighing options and pros and cons. Stuck between impulse and morality, his logical friend found the course with the fewest consequences. To him…to James, Remus had the greater need, right and wrong be damned.
What he wouldn't give to have another pack. As misguided as his teenaged best friends had been, they had done it for him. They had done something grievously wrong to protect him, to save him…because they loved him. After three tormented months his anger rested solely on himself. Now if only his guilt was that easy to sort through…
He would belong with these people. That was something he had wanted his entire life. Still, Remus wasn't sure he was ready to relinquish his identity as a wizard and trade it for that of werewolf. A part of him still wanted both. So he waited, frozen in functional indecision, for his gut to tell him what to do.
The air was so cold that it hurt the inside of his nostrils. Draco sighed, walking up the long grounds of the Manor. It didn't usually get this way until January but here it was, the twentieth of December, too cold to even snow.
In the last two months little had changed. His father was still in St. Mungo's and still not responsive. He still couldn't figure out the man's last cryptic message. Close the eyes in the wall, it said. Draco wasn't stupid; he could figure out that it probably referred to a portrait somewhere in the house…but it was a big house and there were well over a hundred portraits scattered throughout. How was he supposed to know which one?
Trial and error was his only recourse. He hadn't had the time or the opportunity to explore during the fall but now two long, empty weeks awaited him. At least the Ministry had finally concluded their investigation of the house; now he could rifle through it without any fear of watchful eyes.
Watchful eyes…
Draco stopped in his tracks.
"Who is that?"
Lucius looked up from his shuffle of papers. Draco, eight years old and suffering from clinical stupidity, had followed his father into the gargantuan office at the top of the stairs. He wasn't allowed in here and had received a sound verbal warning for previous attempts to enter.
Lucius turned. The tremendous portrait behind him claimed most of the wall between the two large windows. The man in it had brown hair with a touch of grey at the temples and piercing blue eyes. His posture in the painting was arrogant as all the family portraits were.
"That," his father said after a moment, "is your grandfather." This seemed to be another one of his unpredictable displays of patience.
"Mum's father or yours?"
"Mine."
Draco moved closer, wanting to see the title carved into the gold nameplate. "Marius Mercutio Malfoy," he read. "1930 to 1978."
Lucius had gone back to his paper-sorting, seemingly comfortable with Draco's perusal.
"He was--" Draco squinted, trying to do the subtraction in his head, "forty-eight. How old are you, father?"
"Thirty."
"Is it normal to die at 48?" Draco contemplated his newly discovered grandfather with a faint expression of worry. Lucius gave a rare chuckle.
"There are many wizards who live to 148. So no, it is not normal to die at 48."
"Good," Draco declared. "I don't want you to die in eighteen years."
"Thank you." His father's tone had returned to the one adults used when they didn't give a knut what you were saying because they were thinking about other things. Nevertheless, he had a faint smile on his face. "And since we're doing maths, how old will you be in eighteen years?"
Draco frowned, not wanting to mess up in front of his father the one time he had his attention. "Twenty-six."
"Excellent. I shall have to tell everyone how smart you are."
Draco was nearly delirious with the praise. It was even rarer than his father's (mostly) undivided attention.
"What do you do when you're twenty-six?" he asked. "Do you still go to school?"
"No. By then you have a job."
"Like yours at the Ministry?"
"Possibly."
Draco fidgeted. His father really never came into this room; there was dust on top of the massive desk. Draco traced shapes in it. "What else?"
"Hopefully you get married and have a family."
"Get married?" Draco wrinkled his nose. "To a girl?"
"That is the general idea." His father crumpled a piece of parchment and banished it.
"Girls are gross."
"Mm hmm, they are, at least until you're thirteen."
He was about to ask his father what happened when you turned thirteen when he realized something. The portrait of his grandfather didn't move like all the other portraits did. It was completely still.
"How come grandfather Marius doesn't move?"
Lucius was silent. Draco had begun to fear that he'd said something wrong when his father finally spoke. "He does move. Watch his eyes." He crumpled up another piece of parchment and without warning, tossed it underhand across the room.
The piercing blue eyes followed the arc of the parchment until it hit the floor. They stayed on the ball of paper for a long moment and then returned to their original gaze. If his father hadn't told him to look for it, he would have missed it completely.
"He is always watching, Draco," Lucius said. "His eyes never rest." His father's tone of voice confused him; soft, as if he were telling a secret, and flat. It changed abruptly into something harsher. "Do not come in here again."
Draco had gone in there again. Eleven times, to be exact. It amused him to no end to watch his grandfather's eyes whiz about in pursuit of whatever he flung around the room. It was a tie between Exploding Snap and Fizzing Whizbees for the best reaction; in both cases Marius Mercutio Malfoy's eyes whirled crazily, trying to track all the different objects. Even now it brought a smile to his face.
It had to be that portrait. It was the only one in the entire house that didn't move or speak or seem alive, aside from those eyes, of course. Les yeux dans le mur – the eyes in the wall. There was more to that painting than his father had let on. More to the entire room; why else would his father have avoided it like the plague most of his life and now, in pseudo-death, entreated him to unearth its secrets?
He is always watching.
It made a chill dance up his spine.
Albus Dumbledore didn't much care for St. Mungo's. It was a great hospital and the place he wanted to go if he was injured, but like many others, the sickness within its walls discomfited him. For this reason he had held off on going to visit Lucius Malfoy. He was in the best hands he could be in. Now, though, an idea had coiled in his brain and he needed to act on it.
The ward was bedecked in Christmas decorations. Their loud, colorful display was in marked contrast to the residents. This was exactly why he avoided this place. Merlin help him if he ever wound up in this section, vacant-eyed and beyond salvage…
Lucius was a ghost of himself. Even in unconsciousness he looked supremely exhausted. He was thin in spite of the nutritional potions, but at least they had not cut his hair. That would have made him a stranger.
Albus sat in the chair by his bedside for a few minutes. He observed the activities of the ward. It was not busy today; the rush would begin on Christmas Eve when families came to visit their loved ones. A nurse moved here and there throughout the ward, but all in all he was alone.
He reached out for Lucius's chart. He wasn't supposed to do this. It might prove fruitless, anyway, because it was not Lucius's current situation he was interested in. It was that other visit to this ward roughly fourteen years ago. In so many years the records might have been compiled into some vault ten levels below and even the Minister of Magic would have trouble accessing that.
The parchment toward the back was old and faintly musty. It had been archived, he suspected, but brought back out because of the similarity to Malfoy's original malady. Jackpot.
The symptoms were almost identical. Several mediwizards and mediwitches had weighed in on possible causes.
Patient's condition may indicate excessive use of Unforgivable curses, particularly the Imperius. However, there is no known syndrome associated with overuse of Imperius as there is with Cruciatus; Malfoy's symptoms are almost entirely unique.
A Healer Johannes Bern had signed that statement. Dumbledore stroked his beard, wondering if Johannes Bern was still working at the hospital. He continued to peruse the records, glancing up from time to time. Lucius was brought in the second of August, 1982. He was kept for roughly three months; that put his recovery and release around Halloween.
Halloween, 1982. A massive victory had come on that day. Many Death Eaters that had escaped the first aggressive auror sweeps had been captured. A poorly planned strike at the Ministry was foiled and it seemed that they had at last stopped the defibrillating heart of the war.
There he went using medical metaphors. Damned hospitals. Albus turned the page. This was interesting; a visitation record. It was peppered with the obvious: Narcissa and a very young Draco, one barely legible scrawl of Severus Snape, and then, at the very bottom, something unexpected. Three times, from the twenty-fourth to the twenty-sixth of October, was the name of his sister-in-law.
Bellatrix LeStrange.
Bellatrix LeStrange.
Bellatrix LeStrange.
Why would Bellatrix visit him alone? Perhaps Narcissa had asked her sister to check on him, but why then? Three days in a row so close to Halloween…Albus would eat his hat if Bellatrix hadn't been instrumental in that failed plot to overtake the Ministry. They hadn't captured her until a few days later, on Bonfire Night. He suspected that Bellatrix would always be the last one standing when it came to the Dark Lord; oh, this was shady indeed.
He sighed and wished that Narcissa was alive. That would have made things easier. Whatever one had to say about her, it could not be that she hadn't loved her husband. Evidently his ever-present adversary Tom Riddle was reaching the point of irrational paranoia, for if he had bothered to interrogate Narcissa even a little, he would have discovered that she knew next to nothing about Karkaroff. The blame would have fallen squarely on Lucius and perhaps that would have been enough to push her into a change of allegiance.
It was too late now. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Lucius had been more a victim than he ever thought. He had definitely been under the Imperius curse the first time around. During his last year of school he was ripe for conquest; a shattering breakup, a mad father, and the sudden death of his entire family was more than enough to weaken him to the point that he couldn't fight. After all that maybe he hadn't wanted to fight.
Albus placed the chart back into its slot. It disgusted him more than many things Voldemort had done. The sheer opportunistic cruelty of it was enough to make his blood boil. Worse was the fact that only a few months ago Lucius himself had displayed that same ruthlessness in efficiently framing Selena. Was it possible that the same madness that had destabilized his father was now destabilizing him? Could Lucius really have come to enjoy the things that Voldemort once forced him to do?
He rubbed his temples. No one here could give him answers and he couldn't divine them out of thin air. The only people that could confirm or deny his suspicions were in Azkaban or Tom Riddle himself. Albus strongly suspected that any attempt to speak to Bellatrix LeStrange would be a colossal waste of time, and Tom was obviously out of the question.
Albus sat there in the chair, arms crossed, until a polite mediwizard informed him that he had to leave.
Draco hadn't looked at Marius Malfoy in six years. His childhood memories of the portrait were benign, even happy, but now it felt different. Now Marius seemed haughty, coldly sinister, and his sapphire eyes too aware. Suddenly Draco understood. His father's refusal to talk about his family, to come into this room, and that odd tone that had crept into his voice in that fragment of memory – it all came back to his grandfather.
Though he burned to know what secrets the portrait held, Draco had no idea how to close his eyes. They never closed. They didn't even blink. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Draco knew he was smart but he also knew that he was usually limited to one or two great epiphanies per day. He was not going to figure it out immediately.
There were other things he could do. He could find out what the hell had happened between Marius and his father, and how and why the others had died. There would be no record of it here. But there was a record in his uncle's head…and it was time that he heard it, no matter how painful it was.
Harry savored the early morning quiet of the Burrow. For once he had awakened before even Mrs. Weasley. In another half hour she would wake and the hustle and bustle of the holiday would begin. Christmas with the Weasleys was always a dizzy blur of food and faces, as famous for their indomitable cheer as for their swift squabbles that he got sucked into and let out of in the course of minutes. They were amazing in their magnanimity.
He loved them, he really did. They were the closest thing to a real family he would ever have. His aunt, uncle, and cousin, though truly blood relatives, were people that he never wanted to spend another minute with once he was old enough to leave them. He often had a hard time believing that Aunt Petunia was his mother's sister. True, living in the shadow of a magical sister must have smarted, but Harry had the feeling that she would have turned out the same even if Lily hadn't been a witch. Nothing needed to be said about Uncle Vernon or Dudley.
Harry pulled the blanket tighter around his body. He would be able to see Sirius later, which pulled him away from ugly thoughts about what would await him at Privet Drive when the school year was over. He hoped Sirius was coping well on his own. Owls had been scarce and one never could quite grasp tone or mood in a letter.
As for his own mood…well, it had been surprisingly good for nearly two months now. Any normal person wouldn't have thought twice about it, but Harry was not used to life without frequent emotional upheavals. It was sad how used to it he had become. In its absence he felt an empty sort of anxiety…the feeling that he should be worrying about something and the fact that he wasn't would come back to bite him in the ass in the future.
Yes, so far this school year had been very, very quiet. The first month had been business as usual, but then…all had settled. He was doing well in classes and he hadn't fought with either Ron or Hermione since September. And the person that always stepped in to make his life just a slight bit more miserable had been scarce, if not invisible since the attacks on his parents. Even Snape was more composed than usual.
None of that worried him as much as the illusion of peace did. Voldemort had come back with a bang and followed it with the equally spectacular murder of the Malfoys, and then – nothing. Such inactivity could only mean that he was plotting. And the last time he had so much time to plot, it had resulted in his resurrection, Cedric's death, and Harry's near death. In less than one hour last June, Voldemort had almost accomplished everything he needed to pave the way for genocide and world domination.
This peace, this waiting…it sometimes made Harry sick with apprehension. What was he doing to counter? What was anyone doing to counter? He was going to have a discussion with Dumbledore as soon as he got back. He couldn't be idle anymore.
He would enjoy this holiday, though. For a few more days he would let himself pretend that this was real peace. The door creaked slightly and Harry looked up. It was Mrs. Weasley, poking her head in to check on them. She winked and withdrew a second later. Harry smiled, all other thoughts dashed from his head. It was little moments like that one that always reminded him why he would bear all of it…and more.