Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES

Some will fall in love with life
and drink it from a fountain
that is pouring like an avalanche
coming down the mountain

--"Pepper" The Butthole Surfers

Lords of the Morning

"Oh, but you of all people should want me dead," Draco said, and Dumbledore smiled a little, showing a few too many teeth. He looked like an elderly, bookish satyr, and there was something green in his beard that might have been grass but probably wasn't. Draco looked away.

"I do want you dead," Dumbledore answered, finally. "But you of all people should know that we do not always get what we want."

"Don't we?" Draco kept his voice expressionless, but he was thinking of Grindelwald--how she had died for having something Dumbledore wanted. Dumbledore was no different than Voldemort; both of them believed in absolutes and both of them were wrong as much as they were right. Both of them had killed for their causes. Between them they had torn his life apart.

Dumbledore moved closer, put out his hand to touch Draco's chin. Draco fought back the urge to flinch; he was used to being admired, though he did not like it. Dumbledore's hands were hard and surprisingly strong, a penance before the sin; Draco hated to be touched. He stared at the old man, and Dumbledore stared back, and there were footsteps in the hall. His wand was in his sleeve; stealthily he dropped it and concentrated on not looking down. He raised a hand and Dumbledore startled, grabbed for and caught his wrist. He took a step back, and then another, until the wall was hard at his back and his arm twisted painfully in Dumbledore's grip. Then Draco shut his eyes and let his face go blank: a simple, useful little spell, that let those who saw him see whomever they wanted to see.

"Don't," he said, while with his mind he urged Dumbledore on. A useful trick for a whore to know. The footsteps were closer now, just outside the door. Dumbledore's mouth was brutal on his, and he whispered between them, "Do it, Headmaster, make it rape. Let them see what it is you are." He felt as much as saw Dumbledore's eyes widen, and he wrenched away, letting himself fight to be free. "Stop it!" and the hysteria in his voice was honest enough. The door flew open and crashed against the plaster of the wall, and in the doorway were Harry Potter, Poppy Pomfrey, and Severus Snape.

Though he did not allow himself to feel satisfaction, Draco knew how this must look: himself, disarmed and backed into a corner with Dumbledore holding him at bay and slavering over him. Snape might have his suspicions but he was their father's son and would keep his mouth shut; Pomfrey looked horrified--and well she might, useless old bat. And Potter, Potter's reaction was everything Draco could have hoped for. The rage in those green eyes was a fearsome thing; Draco had faced it himself of old and knew it well. He had never before seen it turned on someone else.

"What," Harry Potter demanded, "is going on here?"

Dumbledore's head bent under the weight of the words. He looked, suddenly, an old man, beaten and broken. Draco was gladder even then he had expected to be. He could see that this was the end, that Potter would never look at Dumbledore the same way. He had not won very often, not where Dumbledore was concerned. He made himself sag against Potter's arm, and was warmed by the other man's concern. Snape, he noticed, was eying him carefully; no doubt he wondered why Draco hadn't simply changed shape and torn out Dumbledore's eyes. Draco willed him to silence, and he looked away.

"I didn't mean," and Dumbledore's voice trailed away. "I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy, I don't know what came over me." He backed out of the room, and Draco watched him go, his head on Potter's shoulder.

When he thought they had begun to accept what had happened he said flatly, "I'm going to be sick," and let Potter help him to a toilet. They stayed that way for a long time, Draco on his knees, struggling to bring up the little he had eaten, helped by the memory of Dumbledore's mouth on his, Potter behind him choking back sobs, Snape and Pomfrey frozen in the doorway. When at last he stood, Snape began, a little reluctantly, "Professor Malfoy, I will see to it that this matter is handled discreetly. Should you wish to press charges..."

Draco smiled his best martyr's smile. His mouth felt stiff and sore and he hoped that the effort was convincing. "I hardly think that would be wise," he answered. It was true, too; though they would not dare use the Veritas charm on a man Dumbledore's age, there was no telling what an in-depth investigation might turn up. It was enough to have ruined whatever was between Potter and Dumbledore; even if Potter were not an essential ally in the coming war, it had clearly been the thing the old man valued most.

Snape bowed, and his dark eyes danced. Draco sent him a warning glare; they would never be able to explain away laughter. He put his hand on Potter's and said, "Please, I'd like to go and lie down."

Potter caught his hand up and pressed a kiss as gentle as a prayer into Draco's palm. He could not bear for Draco to be hurt, unless of course he hurt him himself. And yet, Draco knew he meant well, that even the small cruelties he had almost outgrown had been more carelessness than anything else. There was no pettiness to Harry Potter; he would have been appalled to realize that Draco's evisceration of Dumbledore had been purposeful . That, of course, was the difference between Gryffindor and Slytherin to begin with: that Gryffindor hid behind the illusion that an end justified an action--that an end was necessary to justify an action. They were all of them staring at him, and Draco was grateful they seemed to expect such weakness. It saved him the trouble of trying to act brave but broken.

Far easier, as it happened, to slope off to bed with Potter, to stand trembling in the shower while Potter's mouth reduced him to speechlessness. Far easier to lie beside him in the narrow bed. The only trouble with Potter was that he was far too easy to grow attached to; there was something intoxicating about the gentleness with which he set out to comfort not-really-wounded Draco. What would it have been like to have him to come home to, all those years ago with Voldemort? Thinking of that, he wondered how Potter could believe he had survived rape to be shattered by a kiss.

The truth was that Potter was more talented than bright; the thought made Draco a little angry. It was not as if he had not known this, and yet what did it say about him that this was his mate? Only it did not matter, because it was not as if Potter were going to bear Malfoy heirs. The mother of Draco's child was the brightest witch of his generation. That would have pleased his father--Lucius had realized that new blood was as important as pure blood.

As if Potter had sensed Draco's thoughts, he rolled onto his side and asked in a small voice, "What would your father have said about what happened today?"

There was no reason to lie. Draco told him the truth. "He would have said that I've been acting like a faggot, that I got what I deserved."

Potter made a hurt, gulping sound and Draco relented. "Look, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I know, but my father wasn't--what he had with Riddle wasn't really about sex. It was about power. The idea that two people can be together, not because they want something but because they want to--that was absolutely foreign to him." Without meaning to he touched his tongue to the raw place on the inside of his lip. Potter nodded gravely, as if he understood. That made one of them. Draco closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted, and fell asleep without meaning to.

When he woke it was late morning and Potter was gone. The room was filled with streaming sunlight, and from far away he could hear voices. He had slept the clock around without meaning to. But that was January, as it turned out: weak sunshine and too much sleep and students who were suddenly respectful and distant. Even the teachers made an effort now; it was a shame that somehow Draco could not bring himself to care.

In mid-January he found a copy of Owl Magazine (Politics! Personalities! Power! News for the Liberal Wizard) with his own face blazoned on the cover. Draco Malfoy, the most dangerous man in England, if you were a child or an old man. He threw it in the fire and watched himself burn. Then he cancelled his classes for the afternoon and slunk back to bed. The only warm place in the castle, he justified it to himself--the house elves still hated him, and the chimney in his room smoked unbearably--ironic that Hogwarts' non-human occupants were so much better at holding grudges.

In February Vincent Crabbe came to see him, but he was not the Vincent Crabbe Draco remembered. A big man, though he had not run to fat the way his father had done by thirty; he had grown handsome, with a hard square face. Blind, wearing dark glasses even in day, glasses that no doubt covered the scars around his eyes--burn marks and skin grafts and failed surgeries. He put out his hand and Draco took it, feeling the other man tremble despite his deceptive air of calm. What must it be like to be Vin these days and was it worse than being Draco Malfoy? He had half expected Vin to kill him upon entry but instead Vin let go the deathgrip on his wand and took out a stack of files.

"I just need you to look these over. Let me know what you think, Professor," he said evenly, handing Draco papers on which raised dots transformed themselves into letters.

Draco flipped through the pile, one eye on Crabbe; after all it was not as if the other man could see him staring. A part of him wondered coldly if it would not be better to be dead than blind. But perhaps Vin had forgotten what it was like to be able to see the sun; perhaps he no longer knew what it was he was missing. They were letters. All of them were letters from the tenants who lived on the Malfoy estate.

"Dear Draco," they began, or "Lord Malfoy--", or even "My lord earl:." The earliest were dated from the week he had returned to England; the most recent was only two days old. They were heartbreaking, some of them, and some of them almost made him laugh. "Please, we need money for a doctor." "Please, the roof has been leaking." "I demand that you see to it that the bars are open on Sundays." "We need justice, we need food, we need a new quidditch pitch." And: "The old earl would have done it," "Lucius understood..." "Your father was always there for us." Draco stared at Vincent, wondering whether Vin could feel eyes on him, and shuffled through the letters again. There were thirty-nine of them, organized chronologically, and most of the concerns they addressed should have been dealt with by the Ministry.

"Do what they ask," he said eventually, flatly. Vin started as if he were just recalling Draco's presence in the room. No doubt he was thinking of the past, of a country ruled by a madman--two madmen--of a time when he and Draco would have killed for one another.

"Everything they ask, m'lord?" Vin asked, his voice dry. Was he laughing? Did it matter?

"Everything," Draco answered, hoping he'd not just acceded to anything wild. Vin made as if to leave, and turned back. Between them stood the dead: Greg and Tarquin and Kelso and Blaise and the others. Sometimes he thought that everyone he knew was dead. And could a blind man even see ghosts?

"Malfoy," Vin began, and this time there was no trace in his voice of the man he had once been. He had not grown up to be his father, any more than Draco had. He was no longer Draco's friend; that had been a long time ago and the past was another country altogether. Vin stopped in the center of the room and undid his tie and unbuttoned his collar, and his fingers were very deft. What need, after all, had a blind man for a mirror? "Malfoy, which side are you on?"

Draco fought to keep from laughing. "What difference does it make," he demanded. Vin came closer still, and Draco did laugh, not so much because it was funny but because he didn't know what else to do. There was a small tattoo of a phoenix in the hollow of Vin's throat, a tattoo Draco recognized; the Order of the Phoenix marked its members so. If Vin was here as their representative than he was moving in different circles indeed; and far more exalted ones at that.

The Order of the Phoenix were the most dangerous wizards in England with Voldemort's Death Eaters gone; they had, in all probability, been the most dangerous wizards long before that. They were purebreds--they required six generations of wizard's blood on each side for admission, and Vin must have just squeaked in--and they opposed contact between the wizarding and Muggle worlds. They were dangerous because they remained in the shadows, and many wizards did not believe they existed. They were dangerous because they were committed to this one end, to the exclusion of all others, and had been for more than eight hundred years. They were dangerous because they would do anything, anything at all, in the service of the order.

Orion Malfoy, Draco's grandmother, had been Grand Dragon of the order once; that was how Draco knew of it at all. Her son, Lucius, had been its most spectacular failure, the only man in its history to break faith with the Phoenix and live. They had not opposed Voldemort, because he was not a threat to their cause, but they had not supported him openly either; he was, after all, only a half-bred. No one who bore the Dark Mark was welcome in the order (they did not, after all, suffer fools) and Draco guessed Vin was risking rather a lot to have revealed even this much to a known Death Eater.

"I'm on the same side as you," he said, and he knew it was the truth, "and I think that I can bring Harry Potter with me."

Vin nodded. "We will need leaders, Malfoy, when the time comes. We will need men tested in battle, men who are willing to sacrifice."

"I understand." And he did, of course; Vin's visit had been sanctioned because they wanted the Malfoy name, a famous face, the skills he had acquired in the last war. They wanted him because they knew what he was; most of all they did not want to stand against him. He swallowed to keep from being sick and did not watch Vin go; this was not the childhood friend he had remembered or wanted to remember, but a man sharpening a sword against future need. He did not hate Draco, or love him, any more than a man hated any tool.

All his life Draco's perceptions of himself had been shaped by those who loved and hated him: by his father, Vincent, Greg, Pansy, Snape, by his mother, Harry, Dumbledore. For the ten years after the war this had kept him sane, and now it seemed that everything was changing. It made him wonder who he was, now that what he remembered was gone. Somehow he was in his rooms, in the bath, standing in front of the mirror. The face that looked back at him was too thin, too pale, with lines of strain that would one day be permanent ringing the mouth. It was not a face he recognized; it was the face of a desperate man.

"Show me your arm," the mirror demanded. "I won't have any Death Eaters, and you're losing your looks at any rate." He meant only to quiet the thing; he rolled back his sleeve to pacify it. Suddenly he was pounding the mirror into fragments, and the pain in his hand, when it came, was immediate and excruciating. He fell, and caught himself on his injured hand, and bit his lip to keep from screaming. The shard of silvered glass through the heel of his palm hurt more than he had imagined anything could hurt; there was warm bright blood everywhere. For the first time since had killed Ista Flint his head was perfectly clear. He knew exactly what was happening: that the blood running like a fountain meant a severed artery in his wrist, that it would not take him long to bleed to death, that if he were to survive he should summon help immediately.

Draco clawed his way to his knees, caught his breath, and let it out again suddenly. Why, precisely, scream? Why not die, quickly, from what was indisputably an accident? Let Potter remember him as a man who had died foolishly, after having attacked a piece of furniture. There was no shame in stupid fits of temper, not for a Gryffindor. No shame, no guilt, and an easy escape; really everyone went home a winner.

The outer door, the one that opened into the corridor, imploded into the bedroom and Draco struggled to turn his head. He must have been lying on his back, because a black clad figure loomed over him. He had never seen Snape so angry, or had never seen the anger directed at himself; the Potions Master looked rather like a vulture in a rage. Draco closed his eyes and let the words wash over him, and he bit his lip to keep from crying out when Snape touched his injured hand.

Very shortly after that the pain was gone, and Snape's magic poured into him like sunlight. Draco, still light-headed, struggled to sit up, Snape pushed him back down, and then he must have passed out. He woke up in the hospital wing of Hogwarts, as usual, in the private room reserved for professors, with its yellowing walls and cracked ceiling. Potter was curled up beside him, taking up well over half of the narrow bed and sleeping so deeply that he did not even turn over when Draco slid out.

He moved to stand in front of the narrow, uncurtained window, and was not even surprised when the other man joined him. "Little Malfoy," Salazar Slytherin said, and his voice was gentle, almost kind, "Let me see your hand."

Draco knew which hand he meant. He held it out, palm upward. The wound had been healed, but there was a scar as wide around as a Galleon, fresh and pink and shiny against the older scars. Slytherin traced the lines of Draco's palm with a slender, jeweled forefinger and smiled. "Your love line--here--you will have one great love, all your life. Your life line, here; long life, Little Malfoy, and well lived. Here, come with me."

Without a word Draco followed him; what else did one do, but follow, when a saint commanded one? Slytherin led him out into the infirmary's waiting room and gestured to the chairs. Draco sat down across from him and watched as Slytherin drew a packet of cards from his pocket. Not this again, he thought, remembering Ron Weasley's attempt at fortunetelling, but the cards behaved exactly as they were supposed to.

"Death," Slytherin read, "Crossed by the Hierophant. A world in the balance. Those who will determine it: the Knight of Swords--see how fair he is, that is you, Little Malfoy, and the King of Cups--he is the old man you hate, the Page of Pentacles your brother--he has something to tell you, in time, and the Magician, reversed--a group that you must make what you will of. Now, what they all strive toward is the Tower, a dangerous card at the best of times. And what must be done? A sacrifice, that is the Hanged Man. Or the Ten of Swords, the end of the world. And what determines this? Justice. And the Six of Wands crosses Justice, so that either victory or destruction will be total. One world or the other, there are no compromises."

"Why?" Draco asked, as Slytherin began to gather the cards into a pile.

The other man shuffled the cards and cut the deck. "Tell me, my silver dragon, can you name the six Great Houses?"

Draco closed his eyes and repeated the names. "Slytherin. Malfoy, Plantanaget, du Parc, Devereux, and de Michel." Five Norman names, the five who had come to England with William the Bastard. And one Pictish name, the Druidic family that had dominated England for a thousand years before.

"And Slytherin was first of them all," Slytherin recited as if from a child's rhyme. "But Slytherin is dead, and Plantanaget, and the others are lost or leaderless. Only the Malfoys still follow the old ways. Only you, Draco. You and your heirs are sworn to defend the land forever. You are the only one who both sees the danger in what the old man means to do, and is wise enough to stop it."

He stood, and Draco scrambled to his feet as well. "Kneel before me, Dracovel Malfoy, Earl of Malfoy.

"Malfoys kneel before no man," Draco answered, a little wearily. "I did not kneel before Dumbledore or Voldemort and I will not kneel before you." It had been Voldemort, all those years ago, who had called him the little Malfoy first.

"Then I will kneel to you," Slytherin said, and before Draco could stop him he was on his knees. He took Draco's left hand, palm upward so that the new scar showed, and pressed his lips to the spot where Draco's vein had been pierced. "I swear to you, Draco Malfoy, that I and all those who hold true to me shall follow you and your heirs in war and peace wherever you may lead us, for a thousand thousand generations."

One did not spurn such words, and Draco knew it. "I accept your vow, Salazar Slytherin, on behalf of House Malfoy, and in return I grant you such protections as I have to give, such power as I have to save, and such governance as I have to endow." He drew his sword--he had not belted it on, of course, any more than he had dressed, but it hung at his side regardless. Holding it awkwardly right-handed, he raised the hilt to his lips and the kissed the relic forged into the cross shape. "Why?" he asked again. From the hollow of Slytherin's throat a phoenix tattoo stared up at him; Slytherin, after all, had founded the Order.

"Why? Because I can." Slytherin turned to him, smiling, and Draco thought, Merlin, he looks like Lucius. And when Slytherin stood, he and Draco were the same height exactly, because what kind of man's hallucination outstripped him?

"Which card are you?" he asked, and Slytherin threw the deck in the air. All the cards but one vanished as they fell, and Draco bent to pick it up. It was the Fool that smiled blankly up at him, the Fool who in prophecy was always the Querent, and when Draco looked up Slytherin was gone and he was lying in his own bed in his own room and Potter was asleep in a chair at his side.

"Harry," he tried to say, but his throat was so dry it set him coughing. Which successfully woke Potter, at least. And Potter, proving his worth as a nurse, helped Draco sit up and gave him drink of water and eventually a quick, hard kiss on the side of the mouth. Then he stepped back and looked down at Draco, his green eyes less than friendly.

"Dray--Malfoy--Christ, what were you thinking? How could you be so careless? How could you do that to me, to us? Don't you know--." His voice broke. "Don't you now how much I love you? There is nothing you cannot say to me, nothing I would not prefer to this." He lifted Draco's wrist, pressing his lips to the place Slytherin had kissed in the dream, and after a moment he drew back, his face puzzled.

Draco followed his gaze. There was no trace of the new scar on the inside of his wrist, on the back of his hand. It was gone as if it had never been. But Snape still had the scars on his throat, from all those years ago. "S'okay," he lied to Potter, not feeling up to explaining that Salazar Slytherin had turned up and healed it personally. And it was okay, it was more than okay. It was as if some weight he had barely been aware of had been lifted with the scar. For the first time in months, he could breathe.

"Cruciform," Snape said later, less grimly than was his usual wont. "It causes periodic depression, Malfoy, certainly they told you that." He turned his dark stare on Potter. "They can give you pamphlets about it, you know. What to look for." He seemed to be implying that Potter should have made it his business to find out, should have been able to prevent this ever happening. "They have Potions to treat this; with a little foresight it could all have been prevented. (This made Potter blush, and was probably unfair; Draco had the feeling that Slytherin was most to blame of all.)

After all that, life went on, even if one had not been sure one wanted to go on with life; Draco found his classes eager, almost grateful for his return, and his fellow teachers hanging on his every word. And in the end of February, one of the Hufflepuffs, a tiny second year girl he did not teach and could not remember having seen before, came to him in tears. Her story was nothing spectacular; she was no Ista--simply a lonely child, who wanted an adult to listen to her. Why she had chosen Draco Malfoy to be that adult, was another matter entirely. Yet she kept coming back, and Draco found that he rather liked the role of confidant. He would never get to play the father with his own children, and sometimes he was almost sorry. A small part of him, too, wondered if there was not some use he could make of girls like this one.

On the first of March his heir was born: nine months and two weeks and no doubt the first time the Mudblood had ever been late with anything. Draco and Ron and Potter spent the night in hospital, solely because Potter thought that Hermione would appreciate their support. Draco knew of bridges in more need of support than Hermione, but went along with it since he would need to be there anyway. Ron and Hermione had had some sort of rapprochement, and could now be in the same building without fireworks. Draco rather thought that might change when the Mudblood realised how pissed Ron was; neither he nor Potter could stop giggling when the three of them were escorted in to meet the new child.

Draco had to admit that for a Malfoy, the baby was awfully red and squirmy; he took it from its equally red mother a bit gingerly. When it did not immediately burst into tears, he managed to get hold of himself and recall what he had meant to do. It was critical that none of the others catch on in time to stop him, but as two of them were drunk and the third wore nothing but a paper hospital gown with no back he felt relatively safe. During the night he had worked out the logistics; now he managed to slide the knife down from his sleeve and close his fingers around it. A few drops of blood were all that was necessary, and he let the knife slide back into his sleeve as he raised his cut fingers to the baby's forehead.

Gently he drew a cross on the baby's delicate skin. "By right of blood I claim this child as my heir," he said, and the others looked up, "and as is my right as her father I name her. Rain Lucia Pegasus Malfoy, heir in her turn to all the Malfoy estates and titles, and to all that is due the Malfoy name." He juggled the baby, nearly dropped her, and slid the Malfoy signet from his middle finger on to hers. It fit her as perfectly as it had him.

In a superhuman effort Hermione was out of the bed and snatching the baby back while the others stood staring blankly (no doubt Ron was just working out that when he married Hermione his first child would bear the Malfoy name). "How dare you, Draco Malfoy!" she screamed. "How dare you name by baby Rain!" The baby began to cry. Draco turned and ran, Potter (Seeker's reflexes coming into play) on his heels.