Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES

There's a grief that can't be spoken There's a pain goes on and on Empty chairs at empty tables Now my friends are dead and gone. Here they talked of revolution Here it was they lit the flame Here they sang about tomorrow And tomorrow never came From the table in the corner They could see a world reborn And they rose with voices ringing I can hear them now The very words that they had sung Became their last communion On the lonely barricade at dawn Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me That I live and you are gone There's a grief that can't be spoken There's a pain goes on and on Phantom faces at the window Phantom shadows on the floor Empty chairs at empty tables Where my friends will meet no more Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me What your sacrifice was for. Empty chairs at empty tables, Where my friends will sing no more

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/les-miserables/84401.htm

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND THINK OF ENGLAND

(Characters property of JK Rowling & co. although I would be happy to take Draco off their hands. Story by Ishafel, copyrighted 10/31/02. Postwar fic.)

He supposed that the mediwizards came, then, but he was hazy on what was happening. Someone cut away his sweater and shirt; icy hands touched his broken back and ruined shoulder. He bit his lip through, trying not to cry out, and someone gently patted his head. Not comforting, exactly, but he knew it had been well-meant. Rather as one reassured a dog in pain. "He´s in shock," from above him, and then, "internal bleeding. We´re going to lose him unless..." He did not remember passing out. It had been years since he had been truly unconscious, since the time he´d woken to find himself on the floor of Voldemort´s campaign room, surrounded by shreds of the Dark Lord small enough to fit in a shoebox. A dangerous luxury, fainting there at the Ministry surrounded by so many of his remaining enemies, but his life did not mean to him what it once had.

Sirius stood between the beds, looking down at the boy-man, now-responsible for so many deaths. Hard to say for sure, but he thought Draco Malfoy was regaining consciousness. It had been a long battle, but in the end they had saved him. A shame that they had fought only to (more than likely) spare him for the Kiss. Harry, sprawled on the other bed in Sirius´ guest room, was exhausted, so deeply asleep that even the light of Sirius´ wand had not woken him. He looked much younger when he slept, his arm shading his face, his hair tangled, still dressed in ragged jeans. Malfoy, on the other hand-had he ever been that young? No innocence there; even on the edge of sleep there was a guarded quality to him. It might have been pain, that made him lie so unnaturally stiff and still, but Sirius rather thought it was not. Self preservation, the result of ten years spent hunted and alone, and twenty before that in his father´s not so gentle care.

The silver eyes were opening, Sirius noted, the pupils so dilated that he wondered for a moment if they had somehow missed a concussion. But no, they shrank like a cat´s when he turned the light of his wand toward them. Cold eyes, but almost ordinary in the half-light: wide and tired and aware and confused and human. Malfoy had tried to change several times through the night, flickering from falcon form to human with the ease of long practice, as if he no longer even needed to think to make the change. He had been eerily silent in human form, but the falcon had screamed when they touched it, as if its mind had no room for the desperate control the man exerted. Eventually the line had blurred, until they were no longer sure if it was the man or the bird they treated.

"What is this place?" Malfoy asked carefully. His voice was rusty as if from overuse, but sane.

"It´s my apartment." And when Malfoy blinked up at him, "I´m Sirius Black, Harry´s godfather. We didn´t know what else to do with you; it would have started a riot if we´d taken you to St. Mungo´s."

"Right," Malfoy agreed. "I have to admit, I thought I´d wake up in Azkaban, if I woke up at all. Why didn´t I?"

Sirius looked away. Evil he might be, but even Malfoy did not truly deserve Azkaban. "They still need information from you. Because you´re an Animagus, they can´t risk locking you up, it´s the Kiss or nothing. And after you´ve had the Kiss..."

"There won´t be enough left in my mind to interest even a Gryffindor. I take it you´re that Sirius Black, then."

Sirius choked back a laugh. "Yes, rather." He held out his hand and after a moment Malfoy took it. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Better than I have in a long time, in truth," Malfoy answered. "Did someone...?"

"They fixed your shoulder, yes. No sense having you in unnecessary pain, hmm? I think you´ll find you can fly now."

Malfoy looked up at him, expressionlessly. "Can, or will? Come on, Black, you know what´s waiting for me. Three, four days of interrogation at most, and then the Kiss. I´ll be lucky to ever see the sun again."

"Did you expect anything else, Malfoy? Honestly? Did you think the amnesty went so far as that? They executed his supporters before. This is meant to be merciful, and there are some who protest that it is too kind. Ron Weasley is one of them; he´s fought long and hard to have all those who once bore the Dark Mark put to death. You were free and clear. Why in hell did you ever come back?"

"My mother-"

"Don´t. That rumor was a lie and you know it. Harry´s good at what he does but not good enough to fool you. You came back for reasons of your own and you knew what it was you risked."

Malfoy looked past him, past the lump of Harry asleep in the next bed, out the window at the night. "You were in love with her once, weren´t you? A long time ago?"

Sirius didn´t have to ask whom it was he meant. It had not been so very long ago to him. "Yeah, I was."

Malfoy made an effort to sit up and couldn´t quite manage it. Sirius moved to help him without a second thought, propping him carefully against the pillows and sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. "Thank you," Malfoy said with a sigh. "I hate this." He coughed a little and Sirius bent solicitously closer. Malfoy´s mouth on his took him utterly by surprise. He tasted of blood and chocolate and desperation, just as Narcissa had so many years ago. Sirius closed his eyes without a second thought; he was unimaginably lost and for a long time unsure of who it was in the bed with him. But in the end he ran out of breath. He opened his eyes and saw he´d been making love to the wrong Malfoy. The hand on his shoulder was stronger than he´d expected, there would be no getting free without a fight, and Draco (impossible to think of him as Malfoy under the circumstances) had positioned his other hand much lower. Sirius froze.

"You want my mother," Malfoy´s voice was breathless, but hard as tempered steel. "I can be like her. Enough so you´ll never know the difference. Close your eyes again, Sirius. I can be anyone you´ve ever dreamt of making love to. Narcissa? The mudblood Minister? Your boy Harry? His mother, the saint? I can be anyone you want, Sirius, any way you want it. Go ahead, make it rape. I´ll fight you, if that´s what you want. Or if you want, I can do it to you. Is that what you want, Siri? Would you like to call me James Potter? Lucius? Snape? Lupin-the-Werewolf? Tell me what you want, and I´ll make all your fantasies come true. "

No trace of the weakness or weariness he´d shown earlier. And Sirius, Merlin help him, was tempted. Not because he wanted that, but because he wanted-it was a spell. It had to be. Dark magic indeed. Sirius jerked back, eyes wild, gasping for breath. "What did you do?"

"Did you like it?" Draco sounded as if he were purring. "Let me make you happy, Sirius. You're hard. I can tell, I can always tell."

"And what? You think I'll let you go, if you make me happy? What would your father have said if he knew you were playing the oh-so-willing whore for me, child? What kind of behavior is this for a Malfoy?"

Draco, dryly, "I think you're forgetting that I killed my father myself. What makes you think I'd care?"

"You've done this before, played the whore. You're good at it. A Slytherin does what it takes?"

And Draco answered him. "Do you know, I think my father would have approved. He would have said, 'Close your eyes, son, and think of England.' He sold his soul, you know, to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Did you really think he would balk at selling my body? I am good at playing the whore because I've had plenty of practice. I can be anyone, anything, that you want, and all you have to do is give me five minutes start afterward."

"No," Sirius told him. "I will not do it. I don't want you, no matter how good an actor you are." Draco wasn't looking at him anymore, he was looking at Harry. And Harry, Merlin help them, was looking back, green eyes wide and horrified, disgust all too plainly stamped on his expressive face. Harry, who had lived by his principles his whole life, because he had never needed to do anything else. Harry did not understand desperation because he had never felt it.

"Never mind, Black," Malfoy said without looking at him. "I can see that this was a mistake. Forget I said anything."

And Sirius dropped a pitying hand onto the man's shoulder, because he did understand, and almost even admired, that kind of focus. Malfoy did what had to be done, and he had won them the war and now he was fighting for his life with the same desperate fervor.

"What time is it?" Harry asked at last.

Sirius squinted--his eyes were not what they had once been--and checked his Muggle watch. "Half past four, the car'll be here in three hours. We might as well get up. Harry, want to help me get breakfast? Malfoy, there are towels in the bathroom, if you want to shower, and soap, shampoo, that kind of thing. Robes on the chair should fit you, and your suitcase is there in the corner."

"Right," Malfoy said, more cheerfully than was probably wise. Sirius turned and went out, Harry behind him, silent as a shadow. They went out in the hall and Sirius pushed the door shut and stopped abruptly, holding up his hand to forestall Harry's questions. They stood for an endless moment in the darkness, listening to the silence from the bedroom. A whispered word that might have been a spell or a curse, and the window gave a terrific crack and began to howl. Sirius choked back a laugh, and next minute the door was flung open and Malfoy stood blinking into the darkness, cradling his burnt fingers against his chest. "I give up, Black, Potter. I promise to behave if you turn it off. You can't blame a man for trying, right?"

Sirius turned and Malfoy snorted. "Trusting sort you are, hmm? Why didn't you just tell me the window was spell-locked? From the outside?"

Sirius grinned, and even Harry looked amused. "Would you have listened?"

Malfoy grinned back. "No. But you didn't know that."

Harry answered. "Oh, but he does. He would have done the same himself, you know. I give you my word, Malfoy, that I will do what I can to see you get free. I don't like Hermione's false amnesty any better than I like you. But there are certain answers we must have from you. I will have this done legally."

Malfoy whispered, "Then you know?" But seeing Harry's eyebrows furrow, he shook his head. "Never mind. A passing fancy. I'm going to try the shower."

When they were all seated at the small round table in Sirius' kitchen, Malfoy, looking very much his old self in Harry's second best robes (black, and no doubt generally reserved for funerals) said brightly, " I'm a former DeathEater on the run, of course, and Potter, here, is an Auror, and what's her name is the Minister of Magic. What does the Weasel do? Does he have many children yet? Have you been to any Hogwarts reunions, Potter?"

Harry sighed. Hard to remember that strangling suspects without trial might very well get his Auror's license revoked. "Ron Weasley--" and then stopped, looking over at Sirius. Because the truth was that Ron, for all his strategic brilliance and extravagant dreams, was a failure and a drunk. He had not been sober the war had ended, as if he could find peace only in the bottom of a bottle. Hermione and Harry had all but given up on saving him; Hermione could not even bear to be near him. She had always, Harry thought as he absently spread jam on his toast, been allergic to the smell of failure. "Ron does all right," he said shortly. "He isn't married yet. Ginny is, though. Remember his sister? She married an Irishman, Seamus Finnegan, from our year. She plays Chaser for the Irish national Quidditch team, though she's just taken a year off to have a baby. Her brothers have trouble deciding whom to root for when we play Ireland, though they're secretly very proud of her, of course. Seamus works as a consultant for Gringott's. Pansy Parkinson was married to Malcolm Bladdock for a while, though I heard she's chucked it and is living with Cho Chang."

Malfoy raised an elegant eyebrow. "I thought Cho Chang--."

Sirius watched with interest as Harry turned a brilliant scarlet. He had always wondered who it was that had ended the relationship between Harry and the Chang girl. He started to ask, "Is that why--"

Harry interrupted him hastily. "That was over a long time ago."

"I was going to say," Malfoy smirked, "that I thought Cho Chang fought for our side in the war. Why so touchy, Potter?"

"You mean she fought for Voldemort," Harry asked, startled.

"Right," Malfoy confirmed. "I expect that's where she met Pansy."

Harry filed that away for future reference. The truth was, not all DeathEaters had been given the Dark Mark. It was just possible that Cho might have been...she had been gone for a lot of the war. Pansy, on the other hand, had an impeccable alibi. She had been one of those Malfoy had betrayed, had spent the duration of the war in a cell. Looking up, he discovered that Malfoy had eaten all the toast, including the piece off Harry's own plate, and was beginning on the sausages.

"That's what happens when you take your eye off a DeathEater," Sirius said, and Malfoy laughed out loud and then tried to cover it with a cough.

"Who else is left," he asked, finally, softly as if it hurt him to show even that much humanity. "You, me, the Weasel, the Mudblood, the Hufflepuff lieutenant, Cho Chang, Pansy, and Seamus. Is that everyone?"

"From our year?" Harry fought to keep his voice even. "Crabbe. That's it. Nine of us, and there were how many? Forty, more or less, when we started. And that's true of every Hogwarts class from our years there. Hard to say what will become of the wizarding world, when three-fourths of our generation is dead."

"We all do what we must," Sirius said quietly. "We will survive this, too."

Malfoy pushed his plate away. "Yes," he echoed drearily. "We do what we must, no matter what the cost. That's why your lot don't execute DeathEaters, isn't it, Potter? Give them the Kiss to keep them docile, then use them in your government breeding program? How much will I be worth at stud, I wonder? Don´t worry, Potter. It's not your fault. I might do the same were I in your place."

Harry managed a smile. "You'll be worth a bloody fortune, Malfoy, and you know it. You're young, handsome, and powerful. Even Sirius was panting after you." He had surprised them both with that one, he saw. Sirius was definitely blushing, and though it was hard to tell it looked as Malfoy might be as well. "Point for Potter," he added, miming catching the Snitch. Things were finally looking up for someone even if it wasn't Malfoy.

Granger--the Mudblood Minister--looked devastated when she saw him, as if her belief in evil had just been renewed. Draco noted that she had grown up to be a very pretty woman, rather surprising given how awkward she had been at nineteen. There was something about her that made him think of women in pornographic magazines: schoolmistresses, librarians and nurses, prim witches with their hair in buns who wound up being fantastic in bed. He'd been disappointed when he'd arrived at Hogwarts and found that Dumbledore's faculty and staff were anything but stereotypical.

His father would have been horrified, a Mudblood and a woman running the Ministry. Draco rather suspected that she ran it well, too, or at least ran it firmly. She was no Cornelius Fudge, to play the marionette to Dumbledore´s puppetmaster. Most of the decisions of the last ten years, from the "amnesty" that wasn´t, to the improvement in magical-muggle relations, and the standardization of magical education laws, were clearly her work. "Ms. Granger," he said now, neutrally, aware that there was no point in antagonizing the woman who held his very soul in her hands.

"Mr. Malfoy," Hermione returned, looking him over. Hard to believe that anyone so monstrous could have so little presence, she thought. As a child, Draco had dominated every setting in which he was found, shining like the star on top of a Christmas tree, but now he was the sort of man one could pass on the street without a second glance. Handsome, but not startlingly so, rather like an over-bred thoroughbred horse that had become resigned to pulling a cart. It was enough to make her wonder which was the truth--had his charisma been no more than a spell, or had something been done to him to keep him from standing out? "Well," she continued, looking over the room, "it seems that everyone is here. I think we can begin."

Switching into lecture mode, she looked her audience over. Draco, in the center, cuffed to the chair, his silver eyes cool. Harry, behind him, green eyes guarded, and Sirius, looking troubled, to his left. And, seated at the table, the men and woman who would judge him. Men and women of honor, who could be trusted to act impartially (as much anyone could who had fought for their side could, on such an issue.) Albus Dumbledore, chair of the War Crimes Reconciliation Council; Roan Atkins, an international specialist in wizard´s rights; James Sturbridge, Muggle Representative; and Remus Lupin, Chief Auror. So few, to wield such power, to change a man´s life, or end it. For a moment, looking over them, Hermione was troubled. But she was responsible for the safety of England, of all the wizarding world, and she did what must be done. "We´ll be using the Commoneo Charm, Mr. Malfoy. I trust Mr. Potter has familiarized you with your rights?"