Vita Labyrinthae Similis In Quo Umbrae Vagamus

CHAPTER 8

Other sins only speak; murder cries out.

--Webster--

When Nadezhda drifted back into the world, she was rather surprised to find herself still in Snape's dungeon, with the charred remains of the sigil still staining the flagstones greasy black. Snape himself was nowhere to be seen. Hermione Granger lay with her head pillowed on her outstretched arm, her wand fallen and forgotten; Nadezhda could see angry blisters rising on the palm of her right hand, and a moment later realized her own hand was stinging fiercely. It looked rather as if she'd grabbed a red-hot metal bar. The twisted line of the scar down her arm was aching dully. Her wand, too, was blackened and stank of smoke, as if the power running through it and through her had set it on fire. She blinked.

Draco.

She dragged herself to her feet, stumbled over to his couch. With her good hand she fumbled for the pulse in his throat, found it, sat down hard with relieved shock, and only then noticed that his fever had gone. He was terribly pale, but breathing evenly and deeply; the agonized catch at the end of each breath was gone. A small red burn on his forehead, where Snape had set the mark, was the only evidence of the spell.

They had done it.

He was alive.

She checked her watch; it was ten in the morning, long past time for the curse to have killed him. Presumably Lucius Malfoy was dead. She was surprised that the thought gave her little pleasure. She thought perhaps all the capacity for pleasure had been burned out of her with the strange fire that they had shared, last night.

She bent over Hermione Granger, who was still very unconscious. She was too young for it, thought Nadezhda remorsefully. But she did it. We did it. I wonder how many successful Vita Reflectus charms have ever been performed using the assistance of a sixteen-year-old girl?

She tapped Hermione with her wand, trying not to wince as it bit into her blistered palm. "Ennervate," she said wearily. A moment later, Hermione came awake, blinking. There was a moment where she was clearly trying to remember who she was and where she had ended up, and then she grabbed a handful of Nadezhda's robes with her good hand.

"Did it work?" she hissed.

"See for yourself," said Nadezhda. Hermione let her go and staggered over to Draco, performed the same cursory examination Nadezhda had done. Then she fell on her knees, her eyes closed.

"Thank you, Merlin," she murmured. "Thank you God, thank you Nimue, thank you Selene, thank you Ishtar and Mithras and Artemis. Thank you for his life."

Nadezhda was touched, somewhere in whatever part of her soul hadn't shriveled up to a formless black lump. "How are you feeling, Hermione?"

The girl winced. "Like someone's been using me for Bludger practice."

"How descriptive. Come on, I'll take you to the hospital wing. We can figure out some kind of story on the way."

"But..." Hermione began, looking at Draco.

"He's going to be all right, I think. He's lost a fair bit of blood, and I think he might have some internal injuries, but he's going to live. I need to have a talk with Severus and then we'll see about moving Draco to the infirmary too. I wish I knew where Severus was."

"Professor Snape, you mean?"

Nadezhda shook herself. "Yes. Professor Snape."

"Are you..." Hermione broke off. "Sorry, it's none of my business." She got up from beside Draco, ran her fingers through her hair (which, Nadezhda noted absently, still had faint blond streaks in it) and stuffed her scorched wand into her sleeve.

"No," said Nadezhda mildly, escorting her to the door. "It's none of your business, but yes, we are."

"I'm so happy for you," said Hermione, looking up at her with enormous guileless eyes. Nadezhda raised an eyebrow. "No, really, I am. You've looked so wonderful the past few days. Glowing. I mean...it must be great."

Nadezhda grinned suddenly. "It is. But don't expect him to come over all nice and lenient in your Potions classes. Not for a while."

"I won't," said Hermione. Together they left the dungeon, and Nadezhda used several secret passageways known only to her, Filch, and the Marauders; they reached the hospital wing in record time. They paused before going in. "Um...what are we going to tell Madame Pomfrey?"

"Er....I was giving you some advanced lessons in DaDA and you got overtired?"

"She might actually buy that," said Hermione, looking at her with some admiration.

Nadezhda could tell the nurse didn't buy it, but she could also see that she was willing to keep quiet until Nadezhda told her the truth. She gave Poppy a little nod, as if to say I'll explain everything later.

Poppy's answering nod said You'd better.

On her way back to the dungeons, Nadezhda was halted by a house-elf, who jumped out from behind a statue near the hidden entrance to Dumbledore's office. "Professor Serenskaya!" he trilled. Guh, she thought. My head hurts badly enough already without that noise.

"Yes?"

"Headmaster Dumbledore is wanting you, Professor," said the house-elf. "Please to go to Headmaster Dumbledore at once."

You didn't refuse a Dumbledore summons, even from a house-elf. Nadezhda sighed. "Very well. What's the password?"

The elf skipped excitedly along the corridor back to the hidden entrance, and sang out "Sugar Quill!" Immediately an entrance formed in the wall, and the house-elf preceded her inside. Wearily she stepped onto the spiral escalator, and found herself carried up to Dumbledore's office door. It opened without a sound before she had a chance to knock.

"Ah, Ringo and Nastasya," said the Headmaster. "Excellent. Thank you, Ringo, you may go. Nastasya, please have a seat."

The house-elf skipped off, satisfied, and Nadezhda collapsed into the chair he indicated. She wasn't particularly surprised to see Severus in the other chair, looking at her with a mixture of concern and affection. "What's going on?" she asked.

"I should be the one asking you two that," said Dumbledore mildly. "But you have done a very brave, if very stupid, thing; and you have saved an innocent's life. Not that I ever, ever, ever want you to include a sixth-year student in a spell as complicated and dangerous as the Vita Reflectus again."

"I suppose there's no point asking you how you know?" asked Snape mildly. He was fidgeting again, his fingers twisting in knots. Nadezhda could see the burn of the wand on his palm, too.

"I tend to know things that go on in my school," said Dumbledore. "I called you in here because you've not quite finished with what you were doing."

"What?"

"You set the Vita Reflectus on Draco Malfoy. You haven't yet gone to see whether it's had any effect on Lucius."

"I," said Severus, and stopped. "Do we have to?"

He sounded just like a child, she thought absently. "I'm afraid so," said Dumbledore. "I have arranged transport for you, since I doubt either of you is up to Apparition this morning. I will also have Draco moved to a private room in the hospital wing, as secretly as I can. From what I can make out, he is in no immediate danger, but his internal injuries need attention. I will instruct Madame Pomfrey to act with the utmost discretion. None of this needs to get out."

"No," agreed Snape. "Thank you, Headmaster."

"No need. Severus and Nastasya, you have once again proven yourselves worthy of high praise. I can honestly think of no better hands than yours for Draco to have fallen into."

Nadezhda swallowed hard. Coming from the Headmaster, this was high praise indeed. She saw that Severus was looking firmly at the floor.

"Now, off you go. There will be a carriage waiting at the gates."

Together they made their way down the long marble staircase, both limping rather, feeling like they'd suddenly aged about thirty years. "He took it well," she said, as they reached the entrance hall. Snape laughed a little; a half-laugh, that he would not cough.

"He's used to bizarre and dangerous feats like that," he said cryptically. "Here's our ride. My, look at all the gold, how tasteful."

They were faced with a large black horsedrawn carriage, thickly encrusted with gold foliage and swirls. The Hogwarts crest was painted in glowing colour on each door, and the coachman looked remarkably like one of Dumbledore's ubiquitous house-elves. Dobby, she thought this one was called. Two great Thestrals were harnessed to the carriage, and this at least did surprise Nastasya: the black pegasi were among the rarest examples of the species, and often thought of as dangerous. These two didn't seem to mind being used to pull a carriage. Severus's tight features warmed in a smile as he saw the Thestrals, and he took a moment to stroke their glossy noses. Nadezhda watched, her head tipped on one side, and realized she'd only seen that look on his face one other time; when he had woken up beside her. It was a look of simple and powerful pleasure.

"Come and say hello," he said, fishing in the myriad pockets of his robes for something and holding out a tangle of candied angelica on the flat palm of his hand. The Thestral to whom he had first introduced himself vacuumed the delicacy up immediately, and proceeded to sniff at Snape's robes and hair in the hopes of more. Nadezhda laughed a little. "They're not going to hurt you," he said.

"I know. I'm just rather surprised to see them being used to pull carriages. I've never actually seen a Thestral in the flesh."

"No? Here, give this one some coffee sugar," he said, handing her a bunch of brown crystals. She raised her eyebrows at him—do you always carry around handfuls of sweets in your pockets in case you might have to make friends with an unfamiliar winged horse?—but held out her hand to the Thestral, who regarded her with one limpid black eye before deigning to lip the sugar crystals from her palm. The great teeth were indeed pointed, she saw, but the lips that were still working on her hand were softer than velvet. Her other hand crept up to touch the silky tumble of the Thestral's mane.

"They're beautiful," she said. "No, I haven't got any more, sorry...."

"We should go," he sighed. "I don't know why Dumbledore let us use the state carriage. It's a museum piece."

"Oh well," she said, letting him lead her away from the huge black pegasi and into the carriage itself. "Since when did you know so much about pegasi?"

"Picked it up here and there," he said, holding onto the doorhandle as the coach-elf flicked the whip and the carriage jolted into movement. "Actually, that was another of the things I had to do for Lucius; he had a whole stable of the creatures, and every summer while we were in school I was taken home with him and used as a sort of houseboy. I can darn socks, iron, get bloodstains out of almost anything, dust," he paused, ticking items off on his fingers, "make rather good crepes suzette and stellar Russian tea, and groom a Thestral without losing any limbs. I suppose I have Lucius to thank for that."

She sighed, but the expression on his face was merely weary, not bone-shakingly bitter. His long fingers entwined themselves in hers, making sure that he was holding her non-burned hand. "Hell," she said, "you can darn socks. That's a great deal more useful than what I learned as a child."

"What, you mean Kallikrates Serensky's only child never learned to mend her stockings?" Severus regarded her lazily, under half-lowered lashes. She snorted.

"Dad was never much concerned with what I looked like or what I wore," she said. "He'd drill me relentlessly on how to fight off Boggarts or where the most dangerous will-o-the-wisps were to be found, and if I was less than perfect in following his teachings, he'd scream; but no, he never taught me how to darn socks. He didn't care. I remember having to demand a new set of robes from him when my old ones were so much too small that I couldn't squeeze my arms through the sleeves anymore without ripping something, and he just sort of looked at me in surprise and said something like "Good lord, not new robes again?" even though the ones I had were more than five years old. Dad just didn't really live in the day-to-day world."

Severus smiled, pulled her to him, and she let her head rest against his shoulder and was content not to think about what they were flying towards, or what they would have to do there.

The carriage ride took the better part of two hours. Nadezhda had fallen asleep, and the first thing she was aware of when they landed was Snape's heartbeat thudding against her ear, and his amused voice telling her to shove over so he could open the door. She blinked owlishly at the brilliant midday sunlight.

Sliding out of the Hogwarts carriage, she found that they'd landed directly in front of an absolutely enormous mansion. It looked about the same size and shape as the Winter Palace, and was done up with layer after layer of white columns and pilasters and stone swags of dead birds and fruit looping around windowsills. What Dad would call "Imperial Baroque Kitsch," she thought. The Malfoy crest was carved into every flat surface that didn't already have a statue stuck on it, and the sweeping steps that led up to the porte-cochere entry were guarded by rampant stone dragons. Nice.

Snape was giving instructions to the coach-elf. A minute later he joined her, looking up in awed silence at the monstrosity of the Malfoy family pile. "Good, isn't it," he said sourly, and led her up the steps to the massive ebony doors. "You'd need the dreadful music and the hordes of drunken party-goers to get the full effect, but it's still pretty impressive."

"Where's the fleet of Bentleys?" she asked absently, following.

"Oh, they've got a mansion of their own round the back. We should be expected," he added to the maid who opened the door. "Albus Dumbledore sent us....what's the matter?"

The maid, who couldn't have been more than fifteen or so, was staring at them with wide, horrified eyes. Nadezhda noticed that she had been crying recently, and her hands were shaking as she gestured to them to enter. "Begging your pardon, sir," she stammered, "but there's been an accident..."

"Yes, we know," said Snape briskly. "Where is he?"

"He, sir?" the maid repeated, her voice quivering. Nadezhda shot a look at Snape.

"What's going on?" she asked calmly. "Where are Mr and Mrs Malfoy?"

The girl lost what little control she had left and began to sob hysterically. Snape let out an exasperated oath and pushed past her into the foyer. "Deal with her," he told Nadezhda as he disappeared into the gloom of the house. Nadezhda snorted. Real diplomatic.

She pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to the girl, who gave her a teary smile and blew her nose copiously before dissolving into further floods of tears. Christ, this is why men think women are idiots. Cos we do stuff like this in moments of crisis.

She took the girl's arm and guided her firmly to the great sweeping marble staircase that dominated the entrance hall, making her sit down on the bottom step, and joined her. "What's your name?" she asked, as gently as she could.

"Rosa," sniffed the maid. Nadezhda manufactured an encouraging smile.

"Well, Rosa, can you tell me what's the matter?"

More sniffles, but after a few moments Rosa seemed to get herself more or less together. "I don't know what happened," she began. "All I know is that when I was supposed to bring Mistress her coffee this morning the door was locked. The door's never locked. So I knocked a few times, and when there was no answer I went and got Alfie—he's the footman---to help." She blew her nose again. Nadezhda wondered what the hell Narcissa Malfoy had to do with Lucius's use of the curse on Draco. "Alfie broke down the door and—oh, miss, it was terrible—she was all white, and she had no clothes on at all... and she was just lying there and staring..." Rosa went off into hysterics again. Nadezhda was suddenly cold under her autumn robes. Narcissa's dead? How? Would Lucius have killed her too?

"What did you do then?" she asked, keeping her voice calm and level. It seemed to help somewhat; at least, Rosa calmed down to the point at which she could be understood.

"Alfie and I ran to get the Master. He'd been in his study last night, and we thought he might still be there. That door was open." Rosa's face was so pale Nadezhda could see the blood pulsing softly in her forehead and cheeks, and felt rather ill. "He was sort of slumped forward over his desk, and there was blood everywhere, and oh, miss, the smell, it was awful....Alfie left, ran down to the village to get the constable, which shows how upset he was—the house is unplottable, the village doesn't even know it's here—and I just—I---please, miss, what's going to happen to us?"

Nadezhda closed her eyes firmly, reopened them. Dumbledore doesn't know about this yet. I've got to go and see what happened. Was it Lucius's fault Narcissa is dead, or was there something else going on last night? If I can find his wand I can use Priori Incantatem on it....

"I'm not sure, Rosa," she told the maid. "But you're not going to be blamed for anything. We're affiliated with the Ministry" (well, sort of, that is) "and we'll take care of everything. Just sit there and rest a moment while I go and have a look." Not giving the girl a chance to protest, Nadezhda hurried past her up the grand staircase. Narcissa's room must be around here somewhere.

The third door she came to had been knocked off its hinges, and she suddenly realized why Rosa had been so very shocked to see what lay beyond it. Narcissa Malfoy lay crumpled on her vast canopied bed, her head lolling upside-down off the edge of the mattress, regarding the doorway with wide glazed purplish eyes. Her pale hair had come loose from its complicated prison, and lay like a skein of white silk over the edge of the bed and on the floor. She was completely naked, and her entire body was as colorless as her face; it was as if something had drained every drop of blood from her, leaving her a woman made entirely out of ice.

Nadezhda pulled out her wand as she strode across the acres of carpet to the bed. According to her spells, there was no lingering residue of Dark magic in the room, nor any traps or wards set around the body. She bent over Narcissa, touched the colorless skin; cold. She had been dead for some time.

Her touch had disturbed a lock of platinum hair, which slowly uncoiled itself from the base of Narcissa's throat. What it revealed made Nadezhda swallow very hard and back up a few steps.

Narcissa's flesh had been torn open just over the position of the carotid bodies, at the base of the great arteries that run up to the brain, and the skin had pulled back in death so that the ripped margins of the bloodvessels were clearly visible. The wound was white. Utterly white; there was no blood in her anywhere to stain her skin red, let alone to try and clot a gash like this. Peering closer, Nadezhda could make out marks that looked a great deal like teeth on the edges of the wound.

Teeth.

...I think of his father with a mouthful of blood.....

Nadezhda spun on her heel and pelted back out of the room, down the staircase, towards where she'd seen Snape disappearing down a corridor.

Rosa had been right, the smell in Lucius's study was appalling. Vomit, and blood, and something else; something older, rotten, like a dead rat in the wall that has begun to deliquesce. Lucius lay across his desk, his lovely face frozen in a rictus of agony. There was blood everywhere; pooled on the desk, spattered on the floor, even splashed here and there on the walls. Snape, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, was bending over Lucius. He looked up as she came in.

"Narcissa," she gasped. "She's dead. Drained of blood."

Snape nodded, looking deadly sick. "There's too much blood here for it to have all been his," he muttered through the handkerchief. "I've done a few tests. We've got type A here, Lucius's own, and type O-, Narcissa's. He must have drunk her blood before we set the Vita Reflectus charm into effect."

"He killed his wife? Why?"

"I don't know," said Snape shortly. "Perhaps she pleaded with him not to do this to Draco. See if you can find his wand."

I never thought the ice-queen would have enough of a heart to plead for her son's life, thought Nadezhda. No. That's uncharitable. I suppose she might have loved him, in her way. Even Lucius might have loved him; he was enough like a mirror of Lucius to please him, but that very similarity must have galled the hell out of Lucius when he began to show signs of individuality. It must have driven him mad to see himself acting against his own desires.

What a sodding dysfunctional family, she thought, and then: Ex-family.

Draco is an orphan now.

The thought made her nervous. What the hell were they going to do?

And then her hand closed on a long slim object, slimed with blood, half-hidden under the fall of Lucius's robes, by the desk. "Got it."

Severus nodded tersely. He took the wand between finger and thumb, mouth twisted in a moue of distaste, and set it tip to tip with his own wand. He said sharply "Prior Incantato."

And the room seemed suddenly dimmer around them as thick grey smoke boiled from the tip of the dead man's wand. The shape of Narcissa Malfoy began to manifest itself, solidifying into a shadow of herself, eventually coming to rest standing on the air a few feet from them. Snape's face was unreadable as he stared at her. Nadezhda just stared.

"He killed me," muttered the shade, a sound like the sighing of wind made into words, with the faintest edge of Narcissa's aristocratic drawl. "I never believed this of him. The bastard." She turned to face them, and Nadezhda felt a cold shock as she noticed that the shade had no eyes; two dark holes in the smoke that formed her face were all that seemed to be there. "Did he do it? Did he kill Draco?"

"No," said Severus, and Nadezhda was surprised at how hoarse his voice was. He cleared his throat, coughing a little in the foul air of the room, and tried again. "No, he didn't. He would have, but the spell was reflected back upon him, and he died by his own curse."

"Good," sighed the shade. "Take care of him. Take care of my son. Promise me. Take care of Draco."

Severus bowed his head. "Promise me," insisted Narcissa's shade. "Promise me."

"I promise," said Severus, the words rasping in his throat. "Narcissa— please, go back into the wand. We need to prove he's done this, and then you can rest."

Nadezhda watched as the shadow began to fade again. Just before it was gone, she heard the echo, like a breeze in the chimney: Take care of Draco. Promise me.

They had hurried out of the charnel-house study—Nadezhda didn't forget, either, that it was this room that had seen Lucius's pleasure with the Muggle whore, all those years ago—and sent Rosa by floo powder to the Ministry with the wand, and instructions on whom to give it to and how. Now, back in the flying carriage, they sat in silence, both feeling extremely sick and both trying to figure out what the hell to do next.

Hermione woke, as the sun was turning from gold into copper and staining the white linen of the hospital wing's beds a deep vermilion. Ron and Harry were sitting by the bed, looking worried. The table beside her was mounded high with cards and presents and boxes of Honeydukes sweets.

"Hello," said Harry, awkwardly, as he saw she was awake. She gave him what she hoped was a smile.

"Hi." She felt lousy, but it wasn't all physical. Her entire body hurt, yes, as if she'd been rolled briskly around the grounds in a barrel; but it was the taut and burning worry for Draco that was really making her feel bad. "Smile, won't you? You look like you're at a funeral."

Ron grimaced. "Don't, Herm. You scared the bejesus out of us. Disappearing like that....we thought you'd got kidnapped, or attacked by a Dark monster, or something...."

"No," she said as easily as she could, "just got a bit overenthusiastic in my lessons with Professor Serenskaya. I know I should have told you guys about that," she added, "but I didn't know if you'd understand...."

"Herm, don't you remember all those late night sessions I had with Lupin when the Dementors were roaming the place?" Harry demanded. "You should've told us about it, we could have come too. I know I could use some extra DaDA." He looked wry. Ron, beside him, looked mutinous.

"Yeah, and you left me out of it, too," he said. "I never get to do anything interesting."

She sighed. Forgive me, Professor. "Well, if Professor Serenskaya agrees, when we start up again I'll see if you guys can't join us. We'll have each other to practice curses on."

Ron brightened. "Excellent! I've got a new version of Furnunculus I want to work on."

"Oh, give it a rest," said Harry disgustedly. "Try out your horrible hexes on the Slytherins, not us. That reminds me, Herm. Malfoy's disappeared. D'you reckon it's something to do with....?" he trailed off, glancing at Ron. Hermione thought quickly.

"I dunno," she said, vaguely. "Maybe he's gone home or something. Who cares about Malfoy, anyway?" I feel dirty.

"Yeah!" Ron cheered. "Hey, Herm, wanna game of exploding snap before Pomfrey comes back and kicks us out?"

Hermione pushed away the throbbing headache and manufactured a smile. "Sure," she said. Where is Draco, anyway? Professor Serenskaya said she'd have him moved here if Snape agreed.

She beat the living hell out of Ron three times in a row before Madame Pomfrey appeared at the foot of the bed and told her visitors to leave. "Miss Granger's had quite enough excitement. You two can come back tomorrow, for a few minutes."

"When'll she be able to come back to school?" demanded Ron, imperiously.

"In a few days," said the nurse, giving him a look. "Come on. Out."

They left. Harry gave her a lingering glance over his shoulder, and she knew he wanted to ask her where she had really been, and if it had anything to do with the strangely altered Draco Malfoy, and Hermione didn't honestly know what she would have said had he asked her straight out. She liked Harry, of course; she had liked him for a while. She liked Ron in a different way, one which had been causing her strange feelings in her stomach for quite a while now. But the brief time she'd spent in Draco's company....the astonishing feeling of his burning hand stroking her hair....seemed to eclipse all those other feelings, to outshine them and outdo them as the light of the moon burns the light of the stars to nothing. She wasn't quite sure she wanted to think about that just yet.

Honestly. She unwrapped a Chocolate Frog and bit its head off, meditatively. Until a week or so ago Malfoy had been his usual unpleasant self, taking every opportunity to refer to her as mudblood scum, and the nicest thing she could have said about him was that, for an insufferable stuck-up pillock, he had good hair. Then he'd begun easing off on the racial-purity jokes, and then he'd stopped going out of his way to taunt them at every turn, and then he'd stopped taunting them at all and started looking extremely worried about something. It was just about then that the Mystery Flu had hit Hogwarts, and she'd lost track of the amazing changing personality of Draco Malfoy; she hadn't thought about it at all until yesterday afternoon when she and Harry had come across him weeping in the forest. And....she swallowed hard, thinking about how he'd been when they'd found him in the bathroom....last night, he hadn't seemed malicious at all; it had been jolly hard to reconcile the Draco she'd held in the grips of abject misery with the Malfoy who had cursed her teeth into rodent fangs and inspired dozens of libellous Witch Weekly articles about her. It was as if he'd lost the strength to be that Malfoy, and was too weak to pretend he was anything but Draco. Just Draco.

And someone had tried to kill him. Nearly managed it, too.

She couldn't imagine the household he must have grown up in. Her own parents were completely inoffensive Muggle dentists. The most dangerous thing she'd ever had to do as a child was to cross the street holding their hand, for Merlin's sake; Draco had grown up in the midst of opulence and intrigue and....she couldn't avoid it....evil. She had thought he, too, was evil; had assumed it, as one assumes the young of a viper will grow to become as poisonous as their parents. But the curse that had nearly killed Draco had been powerful Dark magic, and she couldn't imagine a Dark wizard using power of that magnitude against someone who was loyal to their cause. Why...?

It made her head hurt. So did the dawning realization that she did, in fact, feel something for the pale boy; a realization that went against five and a half years of experience and garnered knowledge, and which made her feel slightly traitorous at the same time as thoroughly excited. She shoved away the whole business, glad she had such a tidy and biddable mind, and ate another Chocolate Frog before letting herself slither back away into sleep.

It was snowing by the time Nadezhda and Severus got back to Hogwarts. They dismounted from the great carriage, which promptly took off again and disappeared, and hurried up the steps to the castle. Snape drew a deep breath, trying to calm down, and coughed wrackingly as the cold air assaulted his healing lungs. Nadezhda took his hand and drew him inside, into the warmth and safety of the castle, and they shared a long look before trudging up towards Dumbledore's office and the explanations that awaited them.

Dumbledore looked up as they came in. "I've had several owls from the Ministry," he said calmly as they dropped into the chairs before his desk. "Lucius Malfoy's wand has been thoroughly tested—they got Ollivander to identify it as definitely his—and he has been posthumously charged with the death of Narcissa Malfoy as well as the illegal use of the simulacrum mortus curse and innumerable other infractions."

"What's going to happen?" Nadezhda asked, wearily pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes. Dumbledore had got up, and was making tea.

"Any number of things," he said mildly. "The Malfoy house has been taken into Ministry possession, as has the fortune, and inquiries are being made into Lucius's other illicit activities. There's some evidence of involvement with a Muggle drug ring, and something to do with offshore accounts and money-laundering. There's no immediate next of kin; Narcissa had a younger sister, who married someone in New Zealand, and Lucius had a few cousins scattered around Europe, but no immediate next of kin is on the books for Draco. Which means as of now he's a ward of the Ministry. We here at Hogwarts are empowered to act in loco parentis. When he turns eighteen he's no longer legally a minor, but until then he's under the legal guardianship of myself and the Minister." He handed them cups of scalding tea. "Drink up, Severus, you look chilled to the bone. I've put something in there that should help."

Nadezhda sipped at her own cup. She couldn't help the smile that tugged at a corner of her mouth; Dumbledore was at least as good at Potions as either of them, and she recognized some of the heartening ingredients in the tea. Brandy was among them.

Snape coughed a little, swallowed the contents of the cup. A little color was coming back to him. "Albus," he said. "What are you going to tell the boy?"

Dumbledore looked suddenly very old. "I don't know," he said simply. "He's still unconscious, which is a blessing. He's been through a great deal. When he wakes up, we'll have to decide what we want to tell him, and what options we've got. The decision is ultimately his."

Severus set down the empty cup. "It makes me angry," he said, looking at his clasped hands. "It makes me fiercely angry that Lucius is not paying for what he has done. To me; to the countless other people he has hurt, and especially not to his own son."

"Severus," she began, reaching for his hand, but he ignored her.

"No," said Dumbledore softly. "He is not paying for it. But Draco will, Severus, unless we can find a way to help him through this. Don't get caught up in vindictive anger; it won't help. We are going to need all your concentration and all of your skills if Draco is to come through this without cataclymic scars, Severus. Think of it that way."

Snape looked up, his black eyes unreadable. "I'll try," he said, "but I'm going to have to punch several walls before I get to sleep tonight."

"Curse them," suggested Nadezhda, "instead. Less damage to the metacarpals. Headmaster, is Hermione Granger all right?"

Dumbledore blinked. "I believe so," he said. "She is merely exhausted. Madame Pomfrey was very cross with me for allowing a student to become so overtired by her studies." He twinkled at her.

"Good. And Draco?"

"Still out, but I am told his internal injuries are responding well to treatment. They will live, Nastasya. Our task is to make that bearable."

Snape rubbed at his temples. "I'm not sure even you can do that," he muttered. "There are some things you don't recover from."

"Don't give up," snapped the Headmaster. "Don't give up, Severus. I know you better than that."

Snape sighed. "It's so tempting, though. I think I'll go to bed. I'm not feeling wonderful." He got up, shrugged into his cloak. "Good night, Headmaster."

"Take care," said Dumbledore, and patted Nadezhda's hand. "Go with him, dear. He needs you....he needs not to be alone, tonight. I didn't want to send him to the Manor today, but I had no choice. What he saw there has brought back a few old ghosts."

"I know," said Nadezhda. It would be a long time before she forgot the image of Narcissa Malfoy's white body spread-eagled on her sumptuous bed, or the slumped form of Lucius swimming in blood with that horrible frozen scream on his face. She tried to return Dumbledore's smile, but knew hers was a miserable failure, and left, hurrying to catch up with Severus. Neither of them spoke as they returned to the dungeon quarters, passing through the office that still bore the scorched remains of the spell-sigil that had saved Draco Malfoy's life and ended that of his father, and came again to Snape's bedchamber; neither of them spoke as they faced each other in that dimness, as they drew off their robes, or as they slowly came together in the familiar moves of that slow and fiery dance. Long after Severus had drifted away into sleep, Nadezhda lay staring sightlessly into the blackness of the nighted dungeon, feeling the tears well silently from her eyes and trace their path over and over again down into the tangle of their mingled hair, like the slow but unstoppable seeping of a wellspring.