Vita Labyrinthae Similis In Quo Umbrae Vagamus

CHAPTER 10

'Can you hear me...O can you hear me...Can you...?'

--Mervyn Peake—

"You have to tell them something."

"I know," said Dumbledore, looking every hour as old as he really was. "I will."

"Albus, I'm afraid. He's different. It's like something's turned off inside him. Something's broken."

"Give him time," said the Headmaster. Poppy sighed.

"There's nothing physically wrong with him except the exhaustion. He'll be in the hospital wing for weeks, Albus, I can't accelerate the body's regeneration of blood. But he's turned away from the world somehow. He won't speak unless spoken to, and even then he says only what needs to be said; it's like he's given up on being alive, somehow. I'm worried."

"We all are," said the Headmaster. "Just....keep him comfortable. That's all I can ask of you. All any of us can ask of you."

But I want to do more. I want to make it better, and I know I cannot. Aloud she said merely "Yes, Headmaster."

"Professor Snape will be returning to his classes today," said Dumbledore with the air of one actively changing the subject. "And the first of the trial matches for the Quidditch Cup is scheduled for this afternoon."

"Life goes on," Poppy said, knowing what he wanted her to say.

"Indeed." He bowed to her, giving her a little of his famous twinkling smile, and left the infirmary. She sighed, sagging a bit now that she was out of his gaze, and regarded her notes on Draco Malfoy. She had told Dumbledore the truth; there was no injury remaining, but he was deeply debilitated by the effects of his father's last curse, and the emotional wounds showed no signs of healing. In fact he showed no sign of emotion whatsoever. Those great silver eyes had become utterly impersonal, utterly reflective; they were the color of brushed steel, of winter, and even she had no clue what went on behind them. Before, he had at least behaved like a human child; now, he had the same cold distance about him as the snow-elves he so resembled, and she could not make out what he was thinking. If anything. He merely lay there like an alabaster statue in the narrow bed, and drank the potions she gave him, and answered her questions in terse monosyllables. She was deathly afraid that the human part of Draco had died with the news of his parents' deaths.

She closed the book, shut her eyes for a long moment, and turned her attention to the myriad tiny afflictions that as always took up her attention. Accidents in Potions classes; bruises from stray Bludgers; sniffles and colds borne on the winds of winter. The enigma lying quietly in bed in the private room by her office was beyond her control, but not---she desperately hoped—beyond her help.

"You've got to eat, love," said Nadezhda firmly, pouring Severus a cup of scalding tea. He looked at her wryly from beneath a waterfall of tangled black hair, and raised himself on his elbows in bed to accept the cup from her hands.

"Keeping my strength up for the battle ahead?" he inquired.

"Something like that. Look, it's only two classes today, the fourth-year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws and the sixth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins. That's it. I've kept them up to date on your syllabus, and they seem to be doing fairly well with it."

Severus buttered a slice of toast, meditatively. "Potter," he said.

"Yes, Potter. And Weasley and Granger, if she's out of the hospital wing, which I doubt." At the mention of Granger's name, a look of pain crossed his features, and Nadezhda swore.

"Look, love, what is it?"

"I'll tell you," he said quietly, "but not now. Where are my robes?"

She rose from his bedside, gathered up his trademark black robes from the chair he'd thrown them over the night before. "Here. And your cloak."

He sighed, finished the toast, and slithered out of bed. "I cannot express in words," he remarked, "how much I do not wish to do this."

"I know," she said quietly. He gave her a self-deprecating smile, took the robes from her and pulled them on.

"There," he said, running long fingers through his hair. "Do I look menacing enough?"

"No," she said, and reached up to undo the finger-combing he'd just achieved, reducing his hair to a snarl of black elf-locks. "Now sneer."

He did. She grinned. "Perfect." The sneer collapsed. He found his wide black leather belt, hooked his multiple spell-component pouches onto it, and cinched it around his waist, before stuffing his wand down his sleeve and pulling his cloak around his shoulders.

"If we hurry," he said, "we can catch Albus's morning speech to the students. He said he'd make some sort of announcement about the Malfoys this morning."

She bowed her head in acquiescence, and followed him out of the dungeon, noting that he was as good at stalking through the corridors like Darth Vader as he'd ever been.

The Great Hall was already full by the time they arrived, slipping round the House tables to take their places with the rest of the faculty. Nadezhda received several curious stares due, no doubt, to the fracas of the previous night; Snape was simply stared at by student and teacher alike. It's the first time he's appeared in public...in daylight, that is.... for quite a long time, she realized. Dumbledore gave her a little smile before tapping his goblet for attention and getting to his feet.

"My friends," he began. "I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news. A tragedy occurred two nights ago which has robbed one of our students of his family."

How's he going to explain this without going into detail about Lucius's activities?

"I received an owl from the Ministry," continued Dumbledore, "informing me that a magical accident had occurred at the home of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. It is with great sadness that I must inform you all of the deaths of the Malfoys. The Ministry is investigating the incident and will do its best to bring the perpetrators to justice. Meanwhile, I ask for your understanding and your compassion for our student Draco Malfoy, who has just experienced a terrible loss. I know you share my feelings when I say that Draco has our full and unutterable sympathy, and that you will treat him with the respect and tact which he deserves in this difficult time. Draco himself was badly injured in the accident, and it is unlikely that he will be able to attend classes for some time. However, when he does return to our midst, I trust that you will join me in supporting him through his time of need." He stopped, and the Great Hall was dead silent for a long moment before he sat down again and applied himself calmly to the bacon.

Nadezhda looked at Snape, who was regarding his golden plate fixedly, and out into the hall, over the student tables. She noticed Weasley whispering something gleeful in Harry's ear, and Harry looking extremely pained before plastering a happy expression on his face and whispering back to Ron. Hermione Granger wasn't there; presumably she, too, was still in the hospital wing. Nicely done, she had to admit, looking at Dumbledore. Enough of the truth to be believable; not enough to be really shocking.

She sighed, swallowed her coffee. "What a sodding week," she said to no one in particular.

"You're telling me," said Lupin at her left, who looked shaky. "When Snape came hurtling into the staff lounge last night gasping about how you'd disappeared and were being killed in nasty ways by Dark monsters, I just about had a fit. Thank Merlin he was over-reacting."

"That was my fault," said Nadezhda, shamefacedly. "I'd no idea he would come after me like that. I had just gone out to fly, to clear my head a bit, and when I came back the grounds were swarming with search parties and everybody thought I was dead."

"That was his fault," said Lupin mildly. "He was panicking."

"I know," said Nadezhda, "and I feel horribly guilty."

"Don't. His own stupid fault."

"Remus," she said quietly. He grinned.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But you've got to admit it was rather touching, the way he went to pieces when he thought you were gone."

"Touching? Maybe." Nadezhda poured herself more coffee. "This is not a good time, is it, Remus? For any of us."

"What really happened to Draco?" he asked smoothly, without changing his expression. She swallowed hard.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the last I saw of you for a day and a half was directly after Draco disappeared from the Halloween Ball, and you've been spending a great deal of time in the hospital wing, and I can smell worry on you. I don't think it's all for Romeo Snape."

"Damn you," she said tiredly. "You're right. Something did happen. It's not my place to tell, though, Lupin; that's up to Draco and Dumbledore. Suffice it to say that it was really rather horrible, and had to do with his wretch of a father, who is now dead."

"And Hermione Granger? What does she have to do with this?"

Nadezhda stared at him. "Nothing," she lied. Lupin regarded her with disarming yellow eyes, and abruptly nodded.

"Very well," he said. "Nastasya...if it gets to be too much, do come to me, won't you? I'm a very good listener."

"I'll remember that," she said simply, and meant it.

"No Malfoy for the foreseeable future!" crowed Ron, doing a little dance of joy in the Potions hallway, and dropping his bag. Harry sighed, leaning wearily back against the corridor wall.

"On the other hand," he pointed out, "we've got Snape back again. Don't get too happy."

"Crud, you're right. Maybe he'll be too sorrowful about the death of his old pal Lucius Malfoy to be unpleasant."

"Keep hoping," said Harry, as the rest of the class gathered around them. Everyone seemed normal. Dean and Seamus had their heads together and were clearly plotting something to do during class; Neville was shaking with fear at the thought of Potions without Hermione's help, Lavender and Parvati were giggling about something in Lavender's copy of Witch Weekly. The Slytherins, however, seemed subdued, and Harry thought he saw something like a gleam of tears in the eye of Pansy Parkinson, although it could have been her glittery eyeliner. Crabbe and Goyle had reappeared from wherever they'd been for the past week and a half, and were standing around like rather lost monoliths without Draco to direct them. Blaise Zabini looked rather as if he'd like to take over Draco's position between them, but didn't have the guts. He kept shooting the rest of the Slytherins unhappy glances. There was a sense of something vitally important missing, without Draco.

Draco, thought Harry suddenly. That night in the bathroom....he wasn't just sick. There was something more going on there. My scar felt weird all that night.

But Snape was there, sweeping down the passage like an overgrown bat, and he had no time to muse about the fate of the Malfoys. He and Ron hurriedly took up their positions at the rear of the classroom, as far from Snape as possible, and watched the rest of the class drift in.

"We will start," said Snape, "by reviewing the assignment I set you on nightshade and Fibrillia Potions. Pass your essays up to the front."

Dead silence filled the classroom. Snape leaned on the desk and raised an eyebrow at them. "Well?" he demanded. Zabini raised his hand.

"Uh, sir, when Professor Serenskaya was subbing for you, she didn't say anything about the Fibrillia essay, and, um...."

"You assumed you didn't have to do it," finished Snape icily, regarding them with cold black eyes. Harry felt a sudden splash of relief: Snape hadn't changed a bit. The world was continuing to turn on its normal axis. It was oddly comforting to see that some things were still as they had been. Snape sighed, rubbing at his temples. "Where did you get to with Professor Serenskaya?"

"We'd finished up with crushed glass, corundum and diamond in medieval to Renaissance poisons," Neville squeaked nervously. "Professor Serenskaya had us research the Muggle Borgia family for extra credit."

Snape gave him a look. "I expect you needed it, Longbottom. Very well, I will not take points off for your failure to complete the essay, but I expect to see it in my office by the beginning of next class. Four rolls of parchment. Fibrillia potions are among the most important remedies for certain kinds of heart disease."

He pulled out his wand and gestured at the blackboard behind his desk, and a list of ingredients appeared in yellow chalk on the board. "This is the recipe for the Puissance Potion, a French invention of the early nineteenth century. Copy it down. The French wizard Monpeur came up with this recipe in an effort to increase strength, stamina and courage during the Napoleonic wars. Pair yourselves off. Each set of partners will attempt to brew a Puissance Potion, and we will test them at the end of class. I will warn you that an incorrectly brewed Puissance will result in extreme and uncontrollable terror, so make sure you do it right. Longbottom, I suggest you work with Potter; he is our resident hero, and I am sure he will be able to protect you from the agonies of fear I fully expect you to experience by the end of class." Snape waved a dismissive hand at them, and directed his attention to a pile of third-year essays he was grading.

Harry sighed. The requisite jab at his "hero" status was classic Snape, and served rather to reassure him that all was back to normal, but he wasn't looking forward to working with Neville. He'd grown rather attached to his eyebrows. Nevertheless, one did not disobey a direct order from Snape, and so he got up and moved his belongings to Neville's table with a rueful glance at Ron. Neville looked up at him as he sat down, clearly terrified.

"Harry," he squeaked. "There's no way I'm going to be able to do this!"

"Sure you will," said Harry, trying to convince himself. "Look, why don't you set out the ingredients and I'll add them. That way it'll be my fault if anything explodes."

Neville gave him a grateful glance and began to measure out beetle eyes into a teaspoon.

Surprisingly enough, the only cauldron that exploded belonged to a Slytherin. Neville and Harry's attempt at the Puissance Potion was certainly not entirely correct, but they both drank a spoonful of it at Snape's command, and neither of them collapsed in helpless terror. Harry rather thought this disappointed Snape, who merely raised an eyebrow in their direction, nodded, and made a note in his grading book. Ron, who had worked with Dean, ended up strutting around the dungeon and challenging everybody to magical duels and explaining how very brave he was, which made everybody laugh until Snape took the effect off with a well-placed jab of his wand. Lavender and Parvati had managed to produce a potion that gave them a mild boost in self-confidence, and some of the Slytherins had gotten the colour of the final product to be the correct shining gold, but nobody had achieved the full effect, and yet nobody had failed utterly. Snape seemed to be surprised at this.

"Not bad," he said grudgingly as they all returned to their seats. "Professor Serenskaya has clearly managed to din some obedience into your fat little heads. Do not, for your own good, backslide. Dismissed. And make sure that essay is in my office before next class." He got up. "Potter, stay behind. I want a word with you."

Neville gave Harry a horrified, sympathetic look. Ron punched him lightly in the arm. "See you at lunch, if you're still alive," he said with some bombast. Perhaps Snape hadn't completely reversed the effect of the potion. Harry sighed, packing up his ingredients and books, and dragged himself up to Snape's desk as the rest of the class filed out.

"Yes, Professor?" he asked wearily. Snape looked around, making sure the rest of the students had gone, and reached into the bottom drawer of his desk.

"I believe this belongs to you," he said, handing over a familiar bundle of silvery fabric. Harry stared. My Invisibility Cloak? But how did Snape get hold of it, and why in the name of Merlin is he giving it back? He's been trying to confiscate this ever since my first year!

"Th....thank you, Professor," he managed, folding the Cloak away into his bag before Snape could change his mind. "But how...?"

"That is none of your concern, Potter," said Snape. Harry noticed how thin he looked, suddenly, how very weary and preoccupied. "Run along. You'll miss lunch."

"Thank you," said Harry again, and was surprised to realize that he meant it. At the door of the classroom, he looked back to see Snape staring helplessly into space, his head in his hands, looking more human than Harry had ever seen him. Maybe everything isn't quite back to normal.

I wish I understood what was going on.

Up in the Great Hall, he slid into a seat by Ron, who was looking slightly less full of himself as he poked at a plateful of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. "What's the matter?" said Harry. "Not hungry?"

Ron turned a pale face to him. "I think that potion disagreed with me. I've got mad indigestion." He paused. "What did Snape want?"

"Oh, he just told me my grade was abysmal and I should work six times as hard if I want to pass the NEWTs next year," said Harry breezily, helping himself to stew. "D'you reckon they'd just let me stay here until I do pass the tests?"

Ron snickered. "'And please welcome Harry Potter, Hogwarts's first-ever tenth-year student,'" he announced. Harry grinned. Everything did feel almost normal, except for the absences of Hermione....which he didn't want to think about too hard, since every time she took up residence in his mind, he felt suddenly hot and cold all over....and Draco.

Dumbledore said it was an accident that killed his parents and hurt him. When did he have a chance to leave Hogwarts and go home to be with his parents, so that they could all be in an accident together? He was in no condition to go anywhere that night we found him in the bathroom, and he's been missing since then. I'm willing to bet he didn't set foot off the grounds, and it's something else that did away with his family and is keeping him in the hospital wing.

Abruptly he decided to blow off Herbology and go to the hospital wing to question his friend.

"Madame Pomfrey?" asked Hermione quietly, as the nurse checked her pulse, making notes on a clipboard. Poppy looked up.

"Mmmm?"

"Is Draco Malfoy still in the hospital wing?"

A guarded look crossed the nurse's face. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm..." Hermione trailed off, tiredly. "I'm worried about him." She looked down at the angry line of blisters her wand had left on her palm in the process of the spell that had saved his life. Madame Pomfrey's fingers tightened briefly on her wrist, before releasing her.

"Yes," she said, quietly. "He is."

"And....is he going to be all right?"

"Of course," said the nurse with forced cheer. "What a silly question. He'll be just fine."

Hermione looked at her steadily, and Madame Pomfrey dropped her gaze first. "Can I see him?"

"The Headmaster's suggested he shouldn't have visitors for the moment," said Madame Pomfrey. "He's still quite weak." She noticed that a spasm of something like pain crossed Hermione's features, almost too quickly to register. "Ah," she added, changing the subject thankfully, "you seem to have a visitor."

Harry gave them a little wave. "Um," he called, "can I come in?" He was standing in the doorway of the hospital wing, his arms full of books. Madame Pomfrey straightened up.

"Of course, dear," she said, "but you can only have ten minutes. Miss Granger needs her rest."

Harry nodded, hurried up the aisle between the rows of beds, and took a seat by Hermione's bed. "Here," he said, "the set texts for History of Magic, Charms and Transfiguration. I figured you'd want a little light reading to keep you occupied."

Hermione grinned. "Thanks," she said, meaning it. "Just chuck them on the table by the chocolates, would you?"

Harry had to nudge aside a veritable cliff of presents and sweets to set down the books. Hermione's friends were of the sort who clearly believed chocolate was the secret to swift recovery. He himself had been responsible for the giant box of Chocolate Frogs, which he was rather pleased to notice was now half-empty. "Look," he said, leaning closer. "What do you know about Malfoy?"

Hermione abruptly stopped smiling. "Nothing," she said quickly. Harry stared at her, green eyes wide, and she looked away. "Please, Harry, don't ask me that. I can't tell you."

He sat back, surprised and slightly hurt. Her voice had held....sorrow, and weariness, and not a little irritation. "Come on, Herm," he cajoled. "Please. I'm...kind of concerned. He didn't look too good when we found him in the bathroom."

"He's all right," she said, "according to Madame Pomfrey."

"Dumbledore fed the school a line about how he and his family were in some kind of accident which killed his parents and hurt him badly," said Harry, looking fixedly out of the window. "I don't believe it, but I can hardly go up to Dumbledore and say 'Come on, sir, pull the other one,' can I?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Draco's parents are dead?"

There it was again: Draco, not Malfoy. Harry tried to keep his mind clear. "Yeah, some sort of magical accident. He didn't go into detail. I think because he was making it up."

Hermione sighed, lying back against the pillows. Harry suddenly noticed how worn she looked, how very tired, as if she'd had to do something that had taken more strength than she could fairly give. We're all acting like grownups in some sort of stupid thriller, he thought suddenly. All this secret-keeping and sighing and not telling each other anything. Hermione gave him a little smile. "Harry," she said, "I will tell you everything when I can. Please believe me. I don't know much more now than you do."

Harry scowled down at his clasped hands. "What about Snape?" he asked. "He told me to stay after class, but instead of yelling at me and giving me a detention for no good reason, he just gave me my Invisibility Cloak. I have no idea how he got a hold of it in the first place, or why he gave it back to me once he'd got his hands on it, since he's wanted to get it from me since I received it the first time."

Hermione looked faintly shifty. Harry suddenly made a connection, and whistled.

"You took it from my trunk, didn't you," he said, softly, working it out as he spoke, "and you went down to Snape's dungeon later that night after we'd left Malfoy with Professor Serenskaya. What happened there, Hermione? What the hell went on?"

She looked at him with enormous cinnamon-colored eyes. "All right," she said, quietly. "I'll tell you what I can. But you've got to promise me not to tell anybody else, not even Ron. I'm only telling you because you've figured out enough to deduce the rest, and I'd rather you hear it from me." She paused, staring out of the window at the grey afternoon. "Yes, I took the Invisibility Cloak. You can yell at me for that, if you like, I had no right to go through your stuff or take it without asking you, but I...had a feeling something was horribly wrong, and I wanted to help. I was pretty sure there wasn't anything I could do, but I wanted to try, all the same." Her voice held a note of pleading. "I snuck down to Snape's dungeon, because Malfoy had asked for Professor Snape, and Professor Serenskaya said something about taking him to Snape for help. Snape was furious at first....you see, he thought I was you, in the Cloak, and he was working himself up into one of those rages....but Professor Serenskaya was there, and she told him to let me in. They showed me Draco. Someone'd put a curse on him."

"I thought so. I thought it had to be Dark magic. My scar was tingling the whole time we were in the bathroom," said Harry. "Go on." His voice was hard and urgent.

"It was a killing curse. Not Avada Kedavra, that'd have been instantaneous, but something else; something called the simulacrum mortus, which is a lot more painful and drawn-out. Snape and Serenskaya told me there wasn't any hope. I think Professor Serenskaya understood how I felt; Snape just seemed to have shut down. He was sitting there and staring at Draco as if he was watching the world end." She swallowed hard.

"I looked up the curse in one of his books....yes, even in times of crisis, trust me to be the sodding bookworm....and found a passage in German about the first recorded use of it. Professor Snape translated it, and at the end it said that there was a spell that could stop the curse, or rather reflect the effects back on the person casting it. He and Professor Serenskaya could perform the spell, but they needed a third person, and they asked me if I would help them." She had no intention of telling him about the virgin clause. "Of course I did. We cast the spell, and it saved Draco's life, but the curse that was cast on him was fatal, and the effects of it travelled back to the original magician. Whoever it was that tried to kill Draco. We killed him instead." She opened her right hand, showed him the weal her wand had left across her palm. "It burned you?"

"It felt like my entire body was being burned away. Like I'd fallen into the sun, or something. When I woke up the next morning, Draco was alive, but very weak, and he had internal injuries from the curse that needed to be seen to. Professor Serenskaya took me up here and I don't remember much else for a while. I'm sorry I lied to you about the extra DaDA lessons, Harry, but I didn't know how much it was safe to tell anyone." She paused, looked up at him intently. "Is Dumbledore sure his parents are dead?"

"He seemed pretty convinced. Why would he lie about something like that?"

Hermione looked very white. "I wonder," she said. "I wonder what killed them."

"I bet you it wasn't a magical accident," said Harry acerbically.

"It could have been," said Hermione, now sounding decidedly sick. "God. What have we done?"

"Herm?" Harry demanded. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she assured him hastily. "Nothing at all."

But her eyes were suddenly very, very haunted indeed.

"How did it go?"

Snape collapsed into a chair, passing a hand over his face. "I'd forgotten how sodding long those classes were," he said wearily. "You did well with them, though, my love. Some of them can even follow rudimentary instructions now."

"Oh, good," said Nadezhda. "I'm so glad you've got such confidence in your students' abilities."

"I was impressed," said Snape dryly. "Longbottom didn't even melt his cauldron, would you credit it? Of course, I had him working with Potter, so it might have been contact luck, or something."

"Longbottom's not all that bad," she said. "You just scare him senseless." She stood behind his chair, beginning to knead the stiff muscles of his shoulders with long deep strokes. Severus sighed.

"Really," he said. "He does ask for it. I mean, the boy's so spineless."

"Doesn't mean you get to terrify him at every opportunity," she said, but mildly. "What about the rest of them? I'd had some good results with the Hufflepuffs, actually."

"The fourth-years? Yes, they weren't as abysmal as normal. You must have pointed out the difference between a 1/10 and a 1/100 solution of henbane to them....ooooh, that feels good....." He trailed off as her fingers unknotted a particularly tense muscle. She leaned on the knot briefly with most of her weight, and felt it loosen and disintegrate beneath the pressure. "You know," said Severus dreamily, "it's a rare thing to find a female who understands the necessity of firm pressure in the deltoid and trapezius regions. You've got the acupressure points down perfectly." She snorted.

"Thank you," she said, "I think."

"Mmmm. I am monstrously and unworthily lucky," he informed her lazily. "Don't stop doing that."

She didn't stop. "Did you give Potter back his cloak?"

"I did. He looked at me as if I'd grown another head."

"He was probably wondering why on earth you were giving it back to him, if you'd got your hands on it."

"Well, honestly," he said, slumping forward gently as the tension drained out of his neck and shoulders, "life would get rather boring without Potter traipsing around the place in his Cloak after hours, wouldn't it? Besides, he'd find a way to steal it back, once he figured out I'd got it."

Nadezhda smiled fiercely at the back of his head. The Snape she'd known a month before would have happily died before saying something like that. He seemed to realize the incongruity of his statement, however, and sighed. "I'm going soft," he said. "You're a bad influence on me."

"No I'm not," she said with perfect equanimity. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her around the chair to face him, his black eyes very bright.

"Yes," he told her firmly, "you are. A terrible influence. Absolutely reprehensible." He drew her to him, curling his hands in the loose fall of her hair, and kissed her thoroughly. When at last he let her go, she blinked owlishly at him.

"What was that for?"

"That," he said, and kissed her again, "was for being such a dreadful influence on me. Who knows; perhaps eventually you'll make me into a nice person, if you try hard enough."

She made a face. "I don't like nice people."

"Oh, good," he said, relieved. "Saves us the trouble." And he picked her up as easily as he would pick up a griffin feather, and carried her bodily into the other room.

Some time later, she lay against his chest, tracing absentminded circles on his pale skin with the tip of her forefinger. "Severus," she said.

"Mmmmm?"

"Will you tell me what's been bothering you?"

"Oh, Christ," he said, tiredly. "You don't give up, do you?"

"No," she said. "I don't."

"Fine. Have you got any of those horrible cigarettes with you?"

She raised her head, looked at him in surprise. "What?" he demanded. "Isn't it customary to smoke, after...?"

She couldn't suppress the laughter. After a moment, he joined her, the tight lines that had suddenly appeared on his face fading away again. She slid out of bed, rummaged in the pocket of her robes, and produced her crumpled packet of Gauloises. He took one, lit it by glaring fiercely at the tip, and regarded the ceiling through wreathing coils of smoke. Nadezhda lay back against him, and his free arm curled around her shoulders. She lit her own cigarette, and waited.

"After we got back from the Mansion," he said after a while, quietly, "I couldn't stop remembering the image of Lucius, sprawled across his expensive desk, in that room I'd not been able to go into all those years ago. I kept thinking about what it would mean for Draco, to have lost both his parents so suddenly and in such a remarkably horrible way."

He blew a smoke ring with the skill of long practice. Nadezhda found herself wondering how long he'd been a smoker, and what other little secrets he had been hiding.

"I wasn't sorry for Lucius's death. Perhaps I have a unique perspective on it; but I honestly cannot scrape up any regret that he is gone from this world, no matter how hard I try. Narcissa....well, I never liked Narcissa much, but she didn't deserve that death. Not at that monster's hands. And she died because she wanted to stop Lucius from destroying his own son."

Nadezhda let smoke trickle from her nostrils, thinking about the cold dance that must have been Malfoy family life.

"I began to wonder about Draco. What would happen to him now? There was no way his father's activities would remain a secret after his death. He would be revealed to the world as the son of a vicious and insane criminal. The pride of the family would be destroyed. And he has nobody, now. No family to fall back on. No one to stand with him against the world."

"He has his friends," said Nadezhda, but knew it was a lie before she'd finished speaking the words.

"No," said Severus sadly, "he doesn't. Not real friends, anyway. He never needed them before." He sighed. "Nadezhda....did we do the right thing? Did we do well, when we refused to let him die?"

She raised herself on an elbow, stared at him. "Christ. Is that what you've been thinking about? Whether he'd be better off dead?"

"Well, think about it," he said miserably. "What does he have now? He is the only son of a man whose crimes hardly bear thinking about. He has nobody on his side; he is utterly alone and unloved in the world, and everything he's ever believed in is gone forever. He has nothing left to hold on to, Nadezhda. He's been left behind."

"Severus," she said in a low and deadly voice, "don't you dare start thinking we have the right to decide who lives and who dies in cold blood. There's nothing we can do about it now: we saved his life at the cost of his father's, in a crisis, without having much of a choice, and I challenge you to tell me that was the wrong thing to do. We could not have stood by and watched Lucius torture him to death, when he had done nothing. That would have made us as bad as Lucius himself. Draco is alive; his father's death is indeed our fault, but not his mother's. And don't blame yourself for not stopping Lucius sooner, before he killed Narcissa. She was dead before any of us knew about the curse."

She stopped, drew fiercely on the cigarette. He looked at her with wide shocked eyes.

"But he's so miserable," he said, helplessly.

"Of course he is," she said. "You and I know misery well, Severus. It's our duty to make it bearable for him. A great deal of this is our fault, I will agree, and we have to do our best to help him to deal with the consequences of our actions. But don't you tell me you could sleep at night if you'd walked away from him and let Lucius kill him in cold blood. Don't you tell me that."

"All right," he said, softly, defeated. "But, Nadezhda....how can we help him? What help is there, for something like this?"

"I don't know," she told him simply. "I wish I did."