Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES

There is a secret place
You'll find a bloodstained fence
It's there the future speaks
And she spoke to me

--"Another Night Alone" SR-71

Lowered Expectations

Harry and Sirius both prowled the room like caged animals, point and counterpoint, until Snape made some cutting remark about dogs on chains. After that Harry flung himself down in his chair and did his best to focus on grading Malfoy's Arithmancy exams, and Sirius went outside, ostensibly to check his mobile for messages. Snape himself was busily flipping through dozens of essays, scrawling happily on them in red pen. Narcissa, in the corner, seemed to be concentrating utterly on the research results she was charting, her sleek blond head bent and her hands steady. They were Malfoy's family, together for the first time, and they could not even bring themselves to look at one another. It explained a lot about Malfoy, really, about why he was the way he was. In the end what was distance but another form of self-defence?

This had not been one of Harry's better ideas, dragging all of these people who hated each other into a single place. Had he thought they would somehow come together because they loved Draco and wanted him to be safe? Had he thought they could comfort one another, ease the sting of waiting? Somehow he had. It was quarter to four; Draco had been gone since six. He had all of England to search--what were the chances he could find Ista and subdue her in ten hours? (Harry pointedly did not think about how he would have subdued her.)

Sirius came back in. "Ista Flint is dead," he said flatly. "She was killed early this morning--almost certainly before seven--by an unidentified wizard using the Avada Kedavra curse." Behind Harry Snape took a deep breath but did not say anything.

"It wasn't Malfoy, then?" Harry asked hopefully. "Because if it were, we'd have heard."

"Harry." Sirius paused and then went on, his voice gentle. "Whoever it was got into the house without Apparating or Flooing or knocking on the door. After--someone raised the Morsmorde, but no one was willing to go into the house to check it out. We've just gotten our team cleared. Chances are good it was Draco. There were traces of Ista's blood on the floor; she had a quite deep cut on her right hand. There's no reason to think Draco's hurt or anything; doubtless he's just making his own way back." This last was directed to Narcissa, who did not react in any way. She was like Malfoy in that, in her stillness, or he was like her.

Harry moved to sit beside her. Surely, of all of them, this must be hardest on her. It was Narcissa, after all, who had carried Draco underneath her heart for nine months, who had watched him grow from a baby to a man; it was Narcissa who knew best what they stood to lose. Narcissa had become almost a mother to him, in the years since she had married Sirius, but though he had come to love her, he did not claim to understand her. That she could be waiting, so quietly and patiently; that she had spent ten years and more waiting for Draco to come home. That she might not mind if he did not come. Mothers were supposed to love their children when no one else dared to.

Thinking of this now, he asked, "What was Draco like as a child?"

Narcissa stared at him, her enormous brown eyes expressionless. She had not wanted to be here, Sirius had said. He said she'd been angry, that she'd only agreed to come for appearances' sake. Harry, though he knew she'd made no effort at all to see Draco since he'd come back to England, that she hadn't spoken to him that day in the garden, hadn't spoken of him in years--Harry preferred to believe it was grief that drove her. Otherwise, what did it say about her, that she could love Jamie, Sirius, Harry, when she could not love her firstborn son? He had wanted, desperately and a little irrationally, for Narcissa to be perfect, virtuous and pure; he had wanted her to be his own mother, or at least everything Lily had been rumored to be. He had almost even believed it; until Narcissa opened her mouth he had thought he had believed it.

"He was ordinary," Narcissa answered at last. "He was a lovely, bright, happy little boy. What do you want to hear, Harry? That his father created him in his own image? That we didn't love him enough? That I didn't love him, at all? He was ordinary, Harry, he played Quidditch, he wanted to be a singer in a Muggle band when he was nine. He wasn't a murderer. I don't think...I don't know, I don't know him at all, I never have."

And with that Snape was on his feet, sending the table, the neat stacks of essays, flying. Harry had never seen him angry, not like this; there was none of the cold distance of the classroom here. For a moment he saw what it was Draco fancied, saw, too the resemblance to Lucius Malfoy. For a moment the light, the passion that blazed on Snape's face made him human. "How would you know?" he demanded. Sirius had come to his feet, was moving forward; Snape ignored him. All his attention was on Narcissa, and if a look could have killed her, his surely would have done. "How would you know anything of him at all? A murderer? What makes him a murderer and Harry, or your precious husband, soldiers? It is the winners who write the history books, indeed! Call him what you will, Narcissa, call all of it what you will. But for Merlin's sake, don't judge him, you cold-hearted bitch. You and my father did your best to tear him to pieces from the very beginning--."

Sirius said, very quietly, "That's enough, Snape."

Snape turned and looked at him. "She's beautiful, Black, but beauty doesn't keep you warm at night, you know. Beauty doesn't sit up at night with sick children, or teach them their letters, or remember birthdays." His wand appeared in his hand; he muttered some small spell and his beloved papers sprang into a pile. He gathered them and was gone in a swirl of black cloak and forbidding dignity.

Sirius dropped to crouch beside Narcissa's chair and pressed his forehead against her arm. Narcissa smiled a little, sadly, and ran her fingers through his hair. In repose she was even lovelier: pale and proud as a queen. She whispered, so softly that Harry almost didn't hear her, "I didn't love him, but I love you." He wished he had not heard her, that he could go on believing that Malfoy had grown up wealthy and spoiled and idolized.

When she was dead at his feet Draco's first instinct (and his second, and his third) was to run and never look back. In bird form he flew out into the gray dawn, heading steadily north toward nothing. He flew for hours, until the joy of flight began to overcome the numbing grief he felt. Late in the afternoon he found himself above a heavily forested area and he swooped lower, among the trees. Spotting a rabbit, he dived: the original Wronski Feint. He killed it and ate, and perched in a tree to rest.

When he woke it was fully dark and the euphoria of sun and wings and wind had worn away. He fluttered slowly to the ground and transformed, which was a mistake. He could taste the rabbit's blood in his mouth, and perhaps Ista's blood as well, and he was abruptly, shatteringly sick. He crawled until he found a tree to lean against, and curled into a ball and tried to keep from shivering. It took him a very long time to catch his breath; the detached portion of his mind attributed this to cold, and shock, but mostly he was consumed with the thought of his warm dry bed, and the comforting lump of Potter's body.

It was not until he could stand again that he realized he'd dropped his wand. By then it had begun to snow and the world had narrowed to black and white. He fumbled increasingly desperately and in the end gave up. He had learned early on to work an Animagus spell without a wand, but doing so took more energy than he could summon. He was afraid of winding up half changed, a man with hawk's wings and a beak, unable to utter a charm even if he found a wand. In the end he spent what remained of the night huddled under a bush, starting at every sound.

The sun rose, and he found his wand less than a yard from his hand. He was suddenly so hot he burned; he changed and flew like a bullet south toward Hogwarts. The journey was a nightmare blur of fever and ice, half-formed recriminations and second thoughts. Why had he not kept Ista talking? Why hadn't he simply gone back to Malfoy House and waited for Potter to come? By twilight he was so tired he could barely see. He was nearly home; he could afford to rest. A small brown animal moved at the edge of his vision and he plummeted downward but his talons closed on empty air. Fever or exhaustion or hunger, something was making him hallucinate.

He let go his Animagus form and stretched; what use a hawk's wings without a hawk's judgment? He started at a movement in the shadows, and turned his head slowly, half-afraid that whatever it was would be gone. But no, still it was there. A man, here where no one had dared go since Hagrid died.

Perhaps one wizard in ten knew how it was that Salazar Slytherin had been martyred; perhaps one in twenty knew why. Draco had had the story repeated to him over and over as a child, a strange, almost biblical litany. Saint Salazar, now defrocked by magical and Muggle churches alike; Salazar had died for the sins of the wizarding world. Salazar: crucified by William Rufus the king, and left to die in the very heart of the Forbidden Forest--the most magical, and dangerous, place in all the British Isles. Salazar Slytherin, whom Lucius Malfoy and Tom Riddle had raised almost to godhood.

Slytherin stared at him, his eyes like flames in his pale face, and Draco put his hand on his sword hilt and was surprised to find a sword there. "Malfoy," Slytherin said, and his voice grated, rusty with disuse or pain. A thousand years of crucifixion would do that to anyone. The small wound on his side trickled blood and his arms sagged--they had bound and not nailed him to the cross--but his face was as fierce as a nightmare, fierce as in the picture book of saints Draco had had as a child. Around his neck a snake was coiled, seemingly oblivious to the snow.

"Malfoy," and this time the weight of the word staggered Draco. But he did not, would not kneel; he had always approached life on his own terms whatever the consequences and no hallucination would make him fall.

"What?" he gritted his teeth and demanded, "What is it you want from me?"

"The dark is rising, Malfoy, and only you can turn it back."

"Why should you think I could stop it? Why should I even try to stop it?"

"Little Malfoy dragon," Slytherin's words burned through Draco until he almost screamed. "Bad faith, no faith, misplaced faith, but the Malfoys are always true to themselves. Save my people, Draco Malfoy."

Without another thought Draco transformed and flew, panic like ice in his veins. Ten minutes hard flight brought him within sight of Hogwarts; five minutes more and he was at the window of the Owlery, stumbling into human form. His body felt strange to him, unfamiliar and unwelcome, and he almost cried out when something in the shadows moved. It resolved itself into Severus Snape, gray against the blackness. Draco blinked at him uncertainly, not sure if he were real. They had played out this scene so many times before. But Snape caught his wrist and steadied him, gripping tight enough to bruise, hard enough that Draco knew he had not imagined or remembered it. There was something on Snape's hands; Draco pulled back, so hard that he nearly lost his balance, and stared.

"What's so wrong?" Snape demanded.

"The blood...why is there blood on your hands?"

Snape glanced down in surprise, and slowly turned his hands palm up. They were an unearthly white shade in the darkness, pale and slender, faintly stained with potions. There was no blood anywhere. "Oh," Draco said faintly, "I thought--."

"Come on," Snape's voice was cool but there was an edge of concern to his words. "We'd best get you to the hospital wing."

"Wait!" Draco knew there was something he had meant to ask, and after a moment a question came to him. "Where is Potter?"

"Downstairs, waiting patiently as any Gryffindor," Snape answered. "Malfoy--."

"Wait," Draco said again. "Is Dumbledore planning to tell the Muggle government about us?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"'Five years, at the outside. More likely it will be two.' You didn't need to ask what war I was talking about. You knew what I meant. You know what this means!"

"It means the end of everything," Snape responded, very softly. "I am doing what I can to stop it. How did you know? You were fishing before, but not this time. Who told you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I said it," Draco answered, and Snape blinked at him. "It wasn't Potter, Severus--it wasn't anyone you know." Catching Snape's eye, he couldn't help laughing, which set off a coughing fit that nearly killed him. (Hysteria, his mind catalogued.)

Snape looked like he was considering arguing, but instead he propped Draco up with one arm and began the trek to the hospital wing. Draco, no longer sure how much of what he was seeing was real, was glad of the help. They staggered down seemingly endless hallways, down crumbling staircases Draco could not remember having seen before, and all the while Draco tried not to think of what war would be like. There were fifteen Muggles in Britain for every wizard, fifteen men and women raised to fear what they did not understand and hate what they feared. It would, in fact, be the end of everything. "It will be very bad when it comes," he said at last, almost but not quite to himself, and Snape stopped and heaved him up against the wall.

"Malfoy," he began, and his voice and his eyes were very serious, without even a trace of a sneer. "Malfoy, what's wrong with you? For Merlin's sake, I've seen you bathe in the blood of innocents, practically. What is it about the death of this little girl that is bothering you so?"

Draco, his defenses in ruins, said (for the first time in years) exactly what he was thinking, "She reminded me of Lucius." And thought--so that's what is bothering me. In his mind's eye he could see it: Ista on the marble floor, Lucius in the snow: their heads at such an unnatural angle, their eyes blank, their fingers slowly curling inward, the smell... Lucius on the marble floor, Ista in the snow, or had it been the other way around? Ten years on the run, ten years as human trash, and he had never taken the time to mourn his father. A part of him knew that that was not all this was about, that there was more wrong with him than his sorrow, however real, for the dead. The rational part of his mind thought Cruciform, and depression, and was speedily silenced.

Snape was trembling against him, that old connection between them throbbing as if it had never been away. Shared blood, in more ways than one. "It will be very, very bad. Draco, you have to be careful--this is why Dumbledore wanted you dead, I'm sure of it. There's something you're going to do, once the truth is out, something he will kill to prevent." Slowly, he straightened against Draco, as if by sheer will, hardening himself once more. "Mr. Malfoy, I want you to know that--whatever happens--I am proud to have fought beside you. You did--you did what had to be done, as befits a true son of our line."

"Oh," Draco managed, and then everything spun.

When he woke he was in the infirmary, in a narrow, hard bed, with Harry Potter a warm presence at his back. There were worse things to come back to, and worse people. He sat up too fast, and set off another coughing fit, and Potter rubbed his back with surprising gentleness until he got his breathing under control. For a moment, everything was right, as if a large part of their lives had never been. Difficult to imagine, because they would not have been themselves. Truly, it was probably not much easier to be anyone else these days.

"Potter," he gasped when he had gotten his breath back, "I'm glad that you're here."

"Hey, me too." Potter, despite his professed desire for closeness, was as awkward with tenderness as Draco; now he flushed a mildly endearing pink: part embarrassment and part pleasure, one hoped. "Look, Malfoy, everyone else's been let out early for Christmas, what do you say we take off too?"

Draco looked around. Bare white walls, uncurtained windows, and not a single flower to be seen; it just went to show that Gryffindors had no social graces whatsoever. "Yes," he answered, "take me home," and he was thinking not of the cool silence of Malfoy House, waiting patiently and wearily for its master, but of Potter's small and filthy flat.

"Lucky thing we're wizards," Potter was saying briskly as he helped Draco wrap himself in a sheet, "I can't find your clothes and it would be much too cold to go outside like this. But we can just Floo--oh. Malfoy, I meant to tell you, your mother is here."

He looked so stricken Draco had to choke back a laugh. "It doesn't matter, Potter; in fact I'm thrilled not to have to contend with her. Merlin knows what she thinks of this latest escapade--you may have begun to notice she's not exactly thrilled with me at the best of times."

"Yeah," Potter admitted, looking away. Draco wondered, briefly and without much interest, what had happened between Potter and Narcissa to put that extra edge of disenchantment in Potter's tone. Really, it was a welcome change no matter what the reason. Then he and Potter were in the living room of the Hogsmeade apartment, coming out of the fireplace in such a rush they fell over the coffee table and landed on the couch.

It was only then that Draco realized his wand was still firmly clenched in his left hand, his signet ring still on the middle finger of his right. "They let me keep it?" he asked, surprised. "Why would they let me keep it?"

Potter smiled at him, a little sadly. "You're free, Malfoy, didn't you notice? You've done what they wanted."

Draco stared. "They--wanted me to be an assassin? That was what it took to earn the country's trust? Killing a child?" Potter went a little white around the mouth, and Draco took it back. "Never mind."

"I love you, Malfoy, you know that?" Said casually enough, though Potter could not quite meet his eyes.

"Yeah," Draco answered, keeping his voice light. "I know that." Which got him a smile, and a kiss, and a very pleasant half hour or so. They went to bed, that night, with the sun, but the next morning when Potter got up to go to work Draco stayed burrowed in the warmth of the bed. He did not get up until noon; it felt dreadfully déclassé. Malfoys did not sleep late, not when there were worlds to conquer, but at the same time he was so very tired.

The next day, and the next, he was still tired: remnants of Cruciatus, he supposed, or an effect of the cough that made his breathing burn. On Christmas Granger and Ron came for dinner (rather, with dinner) and he made an effort to be cheerful and pleasant, he could tell that Potter was pleased, but it bothered him that it was an effort. He felt--drained, almost. Just when he'd hoped the party was over Ron, mildly plastered, insisted on telling fortunes.

Draco thought, but did not say, that any gift for Divination Ron might once have had must long ago have been pickled. He knew that this was an old tradition, and he did his best to help, assisting Potter in the search for the Tarot cards they'd used over the summer to play Exploding Snap. In the end the cards were summoned from under the couch cushion and Draco humored Ron by cutting and shuffling the slightly sticky deck. Ron dealt him seven cards, laying them out in a cross on the coffee table. When the first card was turned over Granger gasped and with the second Potter whitened; by the time Ron had finished his hands were shaking. "Death," he said softly, "but not for you; you will sacrifice that which you love most to save the world." From the face of every one of the cards in the deck the patient haunted eyes of the Hanged Man stared back at them.

Draco swept up the cards and threw them into the fire. "Well. That was awkward. What say we pretend this never happened?" The others were very quick to voice their agreement; children's game or no he could see they were frightened. As if they were children, he packed them off home to bed, making vague reassuring noises all the while. When he and Potter were alone they carefully did not look at one another, and the next day it might have been a dream, but for the ashes in the fireplace, the scorched face of the Hanged Man staring sadly at nothing from a torn remnant of pasteboard.

The week between Christmas and New Year's Draco and Potter housesat for Black and Narcissa; Draco slept twelve hours a night and spent the afternoons going through his mother's things, partly out of curiosity and partly in search of--what? Some scrap of her old life, some sign that she remembered her first husband, her first child. He knew it was stupid to care, but he couldn't seem to help himself. Under the lining paper of Black's desk he found a letter from Remus Lupin--why Black would be hiding that, there was no telling--and Muggle pornography; Narcissa had a full stash of birth control potions in a concealed cabinet in her workroom. Not very interesting secrets.

Finally, on the third day, he hit the mother lode: an ordinary cardboard box the size of a case of beer, spellotaped at the corners and buried twelve feet under the flagstone patio. It was a good thing, probably, that Potter was at work; Draco would have a hard time explaining why he'd felt the need to spend the afternoon ripping up the stones and digging a hole in the frozen ground. He dragged the box into the house, grimacing at the trail of dirt it left on the carpet. But it was not his house, not his carpet, although it had begun to look rather like Potter's flat already. He moved a Coke can full of cigarette butts, an almost empty ashtray, and a picture of Jamie in silver frame, and heaved the box onto the buffet in the dining room.

The cardboard was rotten on the outside, but it had clearly been spelled; the contents were perfectly dry. He removed an envelope full of pictures, a worn baby blanket embroidered with his initials, a platinum christening mug that had been a gift from Voldemort, file folders full of health records, birth certificates, old school papers and tests, a wedding album, the (probably priceless) Malfoy engagement and wedding rings wrapped in a Ziploc bag full of plastic Easter grass. He wondered what Potter would do if he were presented with the diamond and decided the potential amusement would not be worth the effort of explaining where he had gotten it. In the end he kept out the rings to put in the Malfoy House safe, and the photographs and put the rest back in the hole. With a little luck Narcissa would never notice anything had gone--there would certainly not be a Malfoy marriage in his generation. Potter came home just as he was Reparo-ing the last of the flagstones and Draco was forced to pretend he'd been looking at the scenery, such as it was.

He thought, that week, that whatever it was that was bothering him could be blamed on the pictures, on evidence that his mother might not love him but she had not forgotten him. Yet even at Hogwarts, even waiting for the term to start, he felt--restless, uneasy, exhausted. Not himself, and not at home in his own skin. For a man who never cried, he was perilously close to tears. He wanted to fly into the sun, he wanted to crawl into bed and never come out. He had bitten the inside of his bottom lip, sometime after Ista died and before coming back to Hogwarts, and now he could not stop biting it; his mouth was sore and raw and it hurt him to eat, to drink coffee, to kiss Potter. Sometimes he started to cough and could not stop. But these were small things next to the weight of the darkness pressing on his mind.

The night before the students were to arrive Potter stayed over and in the morning he and Draco went to the Great Hall for breakfast. They were sitting at high table (Potter eating as if he'd never see food again, which given that he had to eat his own cooking was not completely untrue) when a small tawny owl dropped a white envelope on Draco's plate. He slit it open carefully to reveal a single sheet of black-bordered paper, heavy linen that smelled faintly of lilacs. It was engraved with Gabrielle Delacour's name and address, and beneath it in delicate black pen had been written, Murderer.

Sickened, he threw it down and stood. He was not angry, exactly, because after all it was true; he was not even sorry, because what choice had he had? Potter was standing, too, but Draco forced a smile and said, "Excuse me for a moment, everyone," and he subsided. In the bathroom, he leaned against a wall and gasped for breath. Murderer. And he was, too, a hundred times over; he could not even remember the first person he'd killed. It was not as if the word was new to him, not as if he had not been called worse names. He couldn't imagine why this was bothering him so.

The door opened, closed; he thought, Potter, and did not look up. He stayed where he was, and he said, very softly, that there was something wrong with him, and that he was sorry. Only, of course, he was a Malfoy, and rarely said what he meant, and somehow the words came out, "I wish I were dead." There was, of course, nothing he could have said that would have hurt Potter more, but when he looked up it was not Potter in the doorway.

It was Dumbledore, blue eyes twinkling rather less than usual, who said, "Don't be so melodramatic, Mr. Malfoy."