The Quality of Mercy

Well, Harry was a bit of a twit in the last chapter, wasn't he? I suppose every story has to have its antagonist, and Harry is it in this one, unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose, depending on how you see it). There are some answers in this chapter -- I hope you find them interesting! Thank you to everyone for your wonderful reviews!

Seventeen: The Fatal Flaw

"Of course we can talk," Hermione replied at once, although her mind fairly reeled at the thought that Pansy Parkinson had come to seek her out. Coupled with the astonishment was an underlying sense of unease, however. As much as she wanted to hear what Pansy had to say, Hermione couldn't help wondering what this unexpected delay might mean to Severus. Her mind at once began to manufacture a variety of worst-case scenarios where Harry burst in on Severus in Yorkshire or Severus sent her a Howler telling her what an utter prat she had been to confide in Harry in the first place. Resolutely she stomped out those thoughts the way one might tread on a spark to keep a blaze from spreading. Pansy was here, requesting a meeting, and Hermione knew she would be a fool if she did or said anything which might prevent that from occurring.

She put on an encouraging smile and added, "Do you want to step inside the Leaky Cauldron? It would be much warmer."

Pansy cast a wary glance in the direction of the pub. "It's so public - "

"Never mind about that," Hermione replied. "A combination of a Disillusionment Charm and a Muffliato spell should keep anyone from seeing you or from overhearing our conversation."

"A what spell?" Pansy asked, her tone suspicious. "I've never heard of that one."

"It'll cover up our conversation. Anyone in the vicinity won't hear anything but the background hum of the people talking around them."

This explanation seemed to mollify Pansy; she nodded, then slipped her hood up over her head once more. Hermione took this as a sign that she should proceed with casting the Disillusionment Charm, so she pulled out her wand and murmured the words of the spell. At once Pansy seemed to disappear, although if Hermione squinted hard enough in the right direction she could still make out the shimmering outlines of the other woman, almost as if her form had been transformed into moving water. Still, within the dimly lit confines of the Leaky Cauldron's public room, Pansy would be effectively invisible.

The pub was fairly crowded, but Hermione spied an empty table off in a dark corner. Perfect. She headed in that direction, hoping Pansy would have the sense to follow. After all, Hermione couldn't turn around to see if she were accompanied; she had to pretend she was here alone.

She settled down into the chair, leaving the booth against the wall for Pansy. A chair being pulled out from the table apparently on its own would no doubt attract unwanted attention. Hermione fancied she heard a faint creak from the seemingly empty booth opposite her, and guessed that Pansy had just seated herself.

"Muffliato!" Hermione whispered, and then said, in a more normal voice, "It's all right to talk now. No one will hear us."

"That's a neat one," Pansy said, her voice still pitched somewhat low, as if she didn't quite trust the unknown spell. "But I suppose you always were counted as clever."

This last statement was made in a half-grudging tone, as if Pansy wasn't quite sure she believed in Hermione's cleverness. Hermione felt a stir of irritation, but now was certainly not the time to be renewing schoolgirl feuds. "I suppose," she replied, in an offhand manner, as if to show Pansy such things were of no real import. "I'm glad you came to see me, Pansy. What did you want to talk to me about?"

A long pause, followed by something that sounded like a half-muffled sob. "You said you would help us."

"I can try," Hermione said. "But I have to know what's really going on with Draco and his father. This secrecy is helping no one."

"I tried to tell Narcissa that. I tried to tell her it was doing no good to cover things up. But she kept telling me that it couldn't get out, that the family would be disgraced, and I should keep my mouth shut, as I was a Malfoy now and I had just as much to lose as the rest of them."

Disgraced? Hermione thought. How could being ill possibly be a disgrace? Unless, she added with a mental grin, Lucius and Draco have somehow acquired what Muggles politely refer to as a "social disease." She kept these speculations to herself, however, and said gently, "Perhaps you should start at the beginning."

Another faint creak, as perhaps the unseen Pansy shifted her weight on the wooden seat. "It started with Lucius. He never really got over his loss of status after the War ended. Most of the Malfoy fortune is still intact, I suppose, but no one can deny that the Malfoy name was...tarnished."

That was probably an understatement, but Hermione supposed it had taken Pansy a supreme effort of will to admit even that much. She nodded, then jumped a little as Tom, the Leaky Cauldron's owner, came over to take her order. It felt a bit odd to order something for herself when she knew she couldn't get anything for Pansy, but Hermione also realized she'd have to give the pub some custom in order to keep her seat. She requested a butterbeer, then waited until Tom was safely away before asking, "So...would you say Lucius was depressed?"

"Not depressed. Angry. He hated that Professor Snape kept his real loyalties hidden all those years, that he had spied on the Dark -- He Who Must Not Be named and had fooled him and everyone else. And then Lucius became obsessed with Legilimency and Occlumency. It seemed he thought that learning those skills would give him something of an edge, or that at least he could regain some of his power in the wizarding world if he could tap into the thoughts of those around him."

"And did that help?" asked Hermione, although she had a suspicion she already knew the answer.

The sound of sigh emanated from the empty booth. "No. He forced Draco to practice with him, since of course you can't work either type of magic without someone's mind to read, or having someone attempt to read your own thoughts. Lucius found books somewhere, with exercises -- Draco never let me see inside them, but they looked old. Merlin knows where Lucius dug them up. Anyway, after a few weeks of that, the first...incident occurred."

Tom arrived with her butterbeer. Hermione thanked him and set it down on the table without drinking any of it. "What sort of incident?"

A long pause. Then Pansy murmured, "It was dreadful. Draco and I were in the downstairs sitting room, and suddenly there was this -- I don't know how to put it exactly, but I suppose you could call it a presence. Yes, an enormous presence in the room that rushed toward both of us. We were taken off-guard, and I was knocked to the floor before Draco was able to cast a Shield charm. Then Draco cast the charm, and you could feel the presence pushing against it, until it seemed to give up and rushed out of the room. Then Narcissa found us, and it seemed she'd had a go-'round with it as well -- her face was puffed, and one eye was already starting to turn black."

Well, that sounded quite similar to what Mr. Morris had described in regards to his own attack. "So what was it?"

Another silence, this time so long Hermione wondered if Pansy intended to reply at all. Then she said, in flat tones, "It was Lucius."

That didn't seem to make any sense. "How could it have been Lucius if this presence were invisible and so much larger than he is in real life?"

"It wasn't Lucius in his body. It was his mind -- " Pansy made an exasperated noise. "No, that's not right, either. It was as if all the anger, all the resentment that had been building up in him had burst forth to act as an independent entity."

"And how do you know this?"

"Narcissa told us...eventually. Of course, at first she tried to deny anything untoward had happened, and said that the marks on her face had occurred when she was taking down a box in her wardrobe. Silly, of course -- as if Narcissa couldn't have cast a Levitation Charm to keep the box from falling on her! But it took two more incidents to occur before she'd admit what had gone wrong with Lucius."

The whole thing sounded dreadful, and Hermione felt an unexpected stir of pity for Lucius Malfoy, something she'd never thought she would experience in her lifetime. "And what does Lucius have to say on the subject?"

"Nothing," Pansy said, and although Hermione couldn't see the other woman, she had the distinct impression that Pansy shuddered. "Whatever's gone wrong with him, it's destroyed his mind. Narcissa won't even let me see him now, but I did catch a glimpse a week or so ago, when Withy wasn't fast enough about shutting the door. He looks like a waxwork -- propped up against the pillows in his bed, staring straight ahead, but his eyes might as well be made of glass for all the life that's left in them." She made a choking sound, as if she were trying to force back a sob.

"And what of Draco?" asked Hermione, her voice gentler than she had ever thought it would be when addressing Pansy Parkinson.

"He's the only one who can control Lucius. But not always -- and the strain is getting to him, too. Sometimes he just can't block the entity, and it goes out and doesn't seem to stop until it's hurt someone. The problem is that I think it's starting to happen to Draco now." After making this statement, Pansy stopped, and this time she really did begin to sob, in a horrible ragged manner made all the more terrible because it was plain she had done everything in her power to keep from doing so.

Feeling awkward and embarrassed, Hermione could only sit and wait for Pansy to recover herself. After a minute or so the sobs began to subside, and Hermione said, "How do you know? Has there been a second entity?"

Pansy replied immediately, "No. But he has trouble sometimes remembering simple things, and he's become so weak he can't get out of bed, either. And yesterday he wouldn't even eat anything."

"I'm so very sorry, Pansy," Hermione said, and she meant it, too. No matter what she thought of Lucius and Draco Malfoy, she certainly wouldn't have wished such a fate upon them.

"That's all very well," Pansy retorted. "We don't need pity. We need help."

The brusque words did not upset Hermione. How could she take offense at Pansy's tone, when it was obvious the other woman was exhausted and distraught? "You said Narcissa told you the entity had come from Lucius. How could she be so certain?"

"She didn't want to tell me that. I kept pressing her, and she said she'd heard of instances of similar things happening in other families, but that had been so long ago she'd thought they must have been old wives' tales. Ob -- obviously not!" And Pansy disintegrated into a fresh bout of weeping.

If the breakdown Lucius -- and perhaps Draco -- was experiencing had occurred before, Hermione wondered that she had never heard or read anything of it. She'd thought she'd come across just about every malady wizard-kind could suffer at one point or another in her far-ranging research, but apparently not. Perhaps Severus does know something, she thought, a sudden excitement gripping her. He all but hinted that he had a theory. If I go to him with this information, it could be the data he needed to support his hypothesis. Assuming he's still speaking to me, of course.

"I want to help, Pansy," Hermione said. She hoped the soothing tone of her voice would get through to Pansy even if the immediate meaning of her words might not. "In fact, I know someone who could prove to be invaluable in finding some sort of treatment for Lucius and Draco. I need to go speak with him. Do I have your permission to relate to him what you've told me now? In strictest confidence, of course -- I know he wouldn't share your secrets with anyone else."

A muffled sniffling came from the seemingly empty booth. "Yes, if you must. What could it hurt? I've tried everything else."

It wasn't the most enthusiastic of responses, but Hermione knew she couldn't expect much more. "Then I think it's best if I speak with him at once. And you should probably get back to Malfoy Manor. You wouldn't want Narcissa to become suspicious if you're away too long."

Pansy sniffed once more, then said, "True. I had better get back. I told Narcissa I was returning to the Apothecary's to see about the phoenix tears, but of course I knew they wouldn't have any in yet."

"Well, perhaps we can think of something which doesn't require the tears," Hermione replied. She fished in her robes for the pouch that contained her money, and dropped several Sickles down on the table next to the untouched mug of butterbeer. A slight squeak from the booth seemed to signal that Pansy had stood, so Hermione pulled her traveling cloak back on and made her way outside. Then she murmured, "Finite incantatem!"

Immediately Pansy shivered back into existence, her face now blotched and swollen from crying. As if realizing the effects of her breakdown were now visible, she pulled her hood back up over her head. "I won't be able to come to town for a few days. Can you meet me at Twilfit and Tatting's on Thursday at three? I have a new set of robes to pick up then."

Hermione wondered at Pansy spending her energy on something as frivolous as clothing when she was faced with such a monumental crisis in her personal life, but perhaps it was the only thing she could think of to keep herself occupied. At any rate, it wasn't Hermione's place to comment, and at least the errand would give Pansy an excuse to return to Diagon Alley. "Of course," Hermione replied. "That will give me some time to follow up on my research."

In response, Pansy nodded. Then she moved away from Hermione and, after taking a furtive look around to make sure they were still unobserved, Disapparated with a sharp cr-aack! Hermione was left to stand there by alone, her thoughts a jumble. A few faint flakes began to drift down from the heavy sky, and she shook herself. She had to get moving and hope she would be able to outpace the storm on her broomstick. If she could manage to hang on for the two hundred-plus miles to Yorkshire, that was.

At the moment, she didn't know which would be worse -- falling off her broom, or facing Severus' fury once he realized she had confided in Harry.

***

Rosedell looked quiet and serene under a rising moon, the pathway to the front entrance still magically free of snow. Hermione unlocked the door and let herself in, then stopped dead at the sight of Severus, who rose from the sofa, laying aside a book as he did so.

"Sev -- Severus!" she exclaimed. "I didn't think -- that is, I didn't expect -- "

"Considering the cryptic message you sent me, I deemed it wisest to wait for you here." The line between his brows deepened. "However, I did not think I would be waiting for you quite this long."

"It was Pansy Malfoy. Severus, she actually came to see me. She told me what's wrong with Lucius and Draco." And perhaps if we get embroiled in that discussion, she thought, we can leave the whole Harry fiasco aside for the moment. Although she had never been one to avoid an unpleasant duty, still she did not look forward to that particular conversation.

"Indeed," said Severus, but he did not look overly impressed. "And as illuminating as I'm sure the discussion must have been, I am more interested in hearing why particularly you thought I should be on my guard...especially since I am always on my guard, as the wards surrounding my home would attest."

Of course he wouldn't let it go that easily. For a moment Hermione did not reply. Instead, she went to the hall closet and took off her traveling cloak, hanging it up on the sturdy wooden hanger she reserved for that purpose. After she was done with that particular task, she turned to Severus, who still regarded her with a frown creasing his forehead, the thin line of his mouth telling her he was not overly thrilled with her cryptic message or the possible reasons for it.

"Well," Hermione said, and she found that her mouth was dry, her throat tense and aching. "I know it was a foolish thing to do, but I was talking to Harry, and erm...I told him about us."

Silence then, as Severus continued to watch her with that cold black gaze which made her feel as if she were back in school and about to get called on the carpet for some transgression. At any moment she expected to hear him say, "Fifty points from Gryffindor for gross stupidity!"

But he did not. After a heavy pause, he inquired, "And why would you do that?"

A very good question, one for which she did not have a definitive answer. But at least he had not upbraided her or informed her of his opinion of such a foolish maneuver. Yet.

"He kept pressing me, Severus, asking question after question. And somehow he'd been tracking my Apparitions -- I don't know how, since it's a spell I've never heard of, but perhaps it's something you learn in Auror training, or -- "

"Nothing that complicated," Severus broke in. His voice sounded suspiciously silky, which Hermione had come to learn was not necessarily a good thing. "Have you ever been in the Minister of Magic's office?"

Wondering why that should matter, Hermione nodded.

"Then perhaps you might have noticed whilst you were there a map on the wall behind the Minister's desk, a map which shows the whereabouts of various Ministry officials? No doubt the esteemed Mr. Potter merely requested the opportunity to inspect it. Of course Kingsley Shacklebolt would have no reason to deny such a simple request, especially coming from the boy who defeated the Dark Lord." Severus smiled, a thin humorless grimace that was a mere baring of teeth. "Quite resourceful of Potter, I must say. I suppose we must be thankful that the map is not large enough to show a great deal of detail. I'll conjecture that he only gave you a general locale and not a specific address for your destination?"

"Yes, he only knew I had gone to Yorkshire," Hermione replied. Her stomach felt knotted and tight, and she still wondered when the explosion would come.

"Quite meddlesome of him," said Severus. "The boy should really learn to attend to his own affairs and keep his nose out of business which doesn't concern him. But I suppose you told him as much."

"Well, mostly. And that I was an adult and could manage my own affairs without his interference."

"No doubt he took that very well."

The sly note in Severus' voice told her of course he wasn't serious, and Hermione felt a faint glimmer of hope. Perhaps the dreaded outburst wouldn't come after all. "Erm...not really."

"Of course." Severus turned from her and moved toward the hearth; for the first time Hermione realized a fire burned there, dispelling the chill that would have normally greeted her upon her arrival at home after a long day. "In the future, perhaps it would be wise for you to consult me before you unburden yourself to your friends."

"I know," she said quietly. She crossed the living room so she could stand next to him in front of the fireplace. "But you didn't really think we could keep this a secret forever?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. There is no point in wasting time on conjecture, seeing as you have relieved me of the burden of worrying as to whether or not we would be found out. The question we must ask now is, what will Master Potter do with this new information?"

"I made him promise he wouldn't tell anyone."

A sardonic twist of Severus' mouth told her how much he thought of Harry's trustworthiness. "I see. Well, then, I must consider the matter closed."

On impulse, Hermione reached out and laid her hand on his arm. The wool of his worn frock coat felt rough beneath her fingertips, the arm beneath it hard and unyielding as the stones which made up the hearth. "Severus, I know you don't think much of Harry -- and I'm certainly angry with him now as well -- but I do know this about him. He's not one to break his word. If he promised me he wouldn't tell anyone else, he won't. At the very worst he might say something to Ginny, but I don't think he would even do that."

"How touching that you have survived this long and have still managed to retain your charming sense of naïveté." At least he did not attempt to remove her hand from his arm, but neither did he show any signs of reciprocating the caress. Eyes glittering, he continued, "At any rate, done is done. If Potter keeps his mouth shut, all the better, but if not, we will face that contingency when it arises. I have always known the possibility existed that one day the fact of my survival might be discovered, and that possibility only increased as my association with you wore on." Finally he turned toward her, and although he still wore the same grim expression, at least he reached out to take her cold hands in his. "I cannot fully understand the friendship you share with Harry Potter, but I also cannot deny that it exists. You spoke to him because of that friendship, but do not be too surprised if you see your friendship end because of your association with me."

Although Severus' hands were warm against hers, somehow Hermione's fingers felt like icicles. Surely that couldn't be true. As angry as Harry might be with her right now, eventually he would have to relent and come to some measure of acceptance of her relationship with Severus. No matter what he might say, Harry didn't completely hate Severus Snape. Hadn't Harry defended Severus, revealed to the Ministry the depth of the sacrifices the Potions master had made while in Dumbledore's service? Were those the actions of a man who found nothing good or redeeming about Severus Snape?

Of course not, Hermione reflected. But that was before Harry realized his best friend was snogging the man in question. It's one thing to acquire a certain grudging respect for someone when he's safely dead and not around to make your life complicated, but it's another matter entirely when you're faced with the realization that that same dead man is very much alive and getting personal with the girl you think of as a sister.

When she thought of it that way, she felt a stir of half-hearted sympathy for Harry's situation. Still, he could have attempted to be a bit more mature about the whole thing. Throwing fits over something usually wasn't the best way to endear yourself to people, but Harry always had lacked something of a volume control for his emotions.

"I hope it won't come to that," she said, after an uncomfortable pause. "But I can't allow the threat of the friendship ending to prevent me from being with you. It would be like emotional blackmail."

Severus did not smile, but something about his expression seemed to warm, and a little of the hardness about his mouth eased. "I am somewhat relieved to hear that."

Perhaps she should just leave well enough alone, but a lingering guilt over her confession to Harry compelled Hermione to say, "I'm really rather astonished at you, Severus. I was expecting a fearful dressing-down."

To her surprise, he shrugged. "And what would that do? Would it correct the error in judgment you made by telling him in the first place?"

Somewhat shamed by his forbearance, Hermione admitted, "Of course not."

"Then it would be a useless expenditure of energy." His hands tightened on hers for the briefest moment, and then he let go. "Let us rather turn our attention to the erstwhile Miss Parkinson. You say she sought you out?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, Severus. It was the most extraordinary thing -- " And she launched into a description of her encounter with Pansy, making sure as she did so that she repeated as much of Pansy's story verbatim as she possibly could. She thought she got most of it right; her memory for that sort of thing had always been very good.

As she spoke, Hermione watched Severus closely. His expression altered very little, but she thought she spied a flicker in his eyes when she described the entity that had attacked Pansy and Draco, and there was no mistaking the way his mouth tightened as she related Narcissa's explanation for Lucius' breakdown.

When Hermione finished, Severus was silent for a moment. Then he gave a heavy nod. "It is as I thought. What afflicts Lucius -- and Draco, to a lesser extent -- is something known as Scarbury's Syndrome."

"I've never heard of that," Hermione said at once. "Surely it must be very rare."

He turned a thin smile on her. "Not as rare as you might think. Rather, almost all mentions of it have been carefully erased."

"Why on earth would someone do that?"

Without replying, he turned from the fire and made his way over to the sofa. Although he remained standing, he said, "Perhaps you should sit down."

Mystified, Hermione did as he instructed. Clasping her hands across her knee, she looked up at him and waited.

The pose he adopted next made her stifle a grin, as it was an almost exact replica of the lecturing stance she remembered all too well from her Hogwarts days. However, Hermione schooled her features to an appropriately sober expression and then said, "Do go on."

"Scarbury's Syndrome was first identified in the late eighteenth century by one Silas Scarbury, a Healer at St. Mungo's, although it was not until approximately one century later that it was identified as an inherited disorder, one which afflicts only males in the older and more inbred Pureblood families." Severus paused, his black eyes glittering. "So you see why all mention of it has been suppressed. Pureblood wizarding families do not like to admit to any weakness."

"But surely it would have come out somehow," Hermione protested. "After all, there are plenty of Pureblood male wizards around, and I haven't seen any of them exhibiting the sort of symptoms Lucius appears to be showing."

Without missing a beat, Severus inquired, "Have you ever wondered why, if they were so crucial to the War, the disciplines of Occlumency and Legilimency were never covered in your studies at Hogwarts?"

To be honest, Hermione had wondered the same thing on more than one occasion. It seemed an odd gap in the school's curriculum. She nodded.

"It is because such use of the mind's magical abilities causes a particular kind of strain, one that, in a wizard who carries the gene for Scarbury's Syndrome, inevitably causes madness and death. And since the Healers have never been able to develop a test to determine who carries the disorder and who does not, it was thought best to abandon the study of Occlumency and Legilimency altogether."

Madness and death. Hermione shivered, thinking of all the terrible genetic diseases that afflicted the Muggle population, such as hemophilia and Huntington's disease and Tay-Sachs. Who would have ever thought the wizarding world suffered similar horrors? "That's...terrible," she murmured.

Severus gave the barest nod. "Indeed. Half-bloods are apparently immune, so there was no danger in my utilizing Occlumency against the Dark Lord, nor in teaching Potter to use it...not that he ever had the proper discipline to make a go of it. With Legilimency and Occlumency removed from study at Hogwarts, instances of Scarbury's Syndrome virtually disappeared, and the Pureblood families did everything in their power to ensure it would never be mentioned."

"I've never seen anything about this in Hogwarts: A History," Hermione said, her tone dubious. "Surely there would at least be a line or two about Occlumency and Legilimency being taught in earlier centuries."

"In a book that was written in 1919, if I recall," Severus replied. "A good quarter-century after the Pureblood Protection Acts were made law by the Ministry. As I said, no mention of the disease was allowed, and Occlumency and Legilimency were allowed to fall into disuse. Oh, one could learn about the practice, if one dug deeply enough, but most students are content to simply pass their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s without researching forbidden subjects. The Dark Lord, of course, delved in places he shouldn't, and Albus Dumbledore passed on information regarding those disciplines to me when it became clear I would have to master their use in order to be an effective spy. Potter did not realize what a rare gift he was given, to study what so few others have had the opportunity to learn."

An opportunity he squandered, since he couldn't get past his hatred of the Potions master. Hermione had often felt frustrated with Harry for his failure in Occlumency; surely she would have done much better in the same situation. "So I would have no trouble learning it," she said.

"Most likely not." Severus frowned. "Although I do not see the use at this point. There are very few practitioners of Legilimency left; very likely the only person you would need to shield your thoughts from would be me."

"And we can't have that," she said, allowing a quick smile. She stood and went to him, and after a brief hesitation his arms went around her, drawing her close.

Despite his reassuring nearness, and the joyous feeling of those heavy robes encircling her, warming her, Hermione still felt an underlying sense of unease, of doubt. "So what can we do to help the Malfoys?"

"Do?" Severus repeated. At once he released her, and stared down into her face as another scowl creased his forehead. "Did I not just inform you that generations of Healers at St. Mungo's have been unable to find a cure for this malady? It is passed down from generation to generation; it is in the Malfoys' blood. We can no more heal it than we can permanently change the color of their eyes."

His words had a chilling finality to them, but Hermione refused to let the matter go that easily. "Severus, I promised Pansy I would help her. Surely there's something we can do."

A grim smile touched his mouth. "If you want to help, then assist Pansy in securing the most comfortable room in the long-term residents' ward at St. Mungo's for her husband and father-in-law. I fear there is little more that you can do."

Hermione stared up at Severus, desperately wishing he had just made a horrible joke, and realizing he had just told her what he thought was the simple truth.

And if Severus Snape, Potions master and quite possibly the greatest wizard in England now that Voldemort was dead, thought the situation was hopeless, what on earth could anyone else do?