Family Album: The Photographs

O! my Daddy, my Daddy!

The Railway Children, E. Nesbit

It was Snape who told him, of course. Of course. Had he been in one of the other houses, Draco had no doubt that it would have been the Headmaster who told him about his father, but Dumbledore didn't like to dirty his hands with Slytherins and so the duty fell to Snape. It was probably better. Draco didn't think he could have taken it from Dumbledore, have sat and listened to the Headmaster's pretend concern. He knew that Dumbledore wouldn't have been able to resist judging his father in the end. He twisted his tired face in a sneer, hoping it might make him feel a bit better. It didn't. Yes, even now Dumbledore would probably have found some excuse to take house points. He bet the old man had given them to Potter. It was the sort of thing he would do, hex Slytherin when it was down and give the reward to Potter. Under the increasingly rumpled sheets of his hospital wing bed, Draco clenched his fists and then forced himself to relax. Stop it. Don't think about him. It wouldn't help, nothing would help. Professor Snape had said so. Harry Potter was laughing his head off in Dumbledore's office, and Daddy...Daddy was in Azkaban.

Draco couldn't help it. He sat up, kicked off his blankets, and threw himself, fists flying, face down into the mattress. It was that or cry, and he couldn't bear to cry. He knew that once he had started again he wouldn't be able to stop.

***

At first, Snape was glad of the party that kept his charges nicely contained as he attempted to stop Potter and his little gang bringing disaster down upon them all, and roamed the Forbidden Forest in search of them. Later, when disaster had indeed fallen - although the day that Severus Snape felt personal grief for the death of Sirius Black would be the day he parted the Red Sea - the fact that the Slytherin common room was full of mildly inebriated and extremely over-excited students presented him with a problem. Namely, how he was to get the ones he needed to speak to out of there. His own repeated appearance would destroy any hope of discretion, besides which he needed to stay here where he could be contacted. He groaned and ran his hand through his lank hair. He wasn't any good at this, but he was damned if he'd let Albus do it. No. He'd just have to sort things out in his own way. In the corridor outside his office, where they had no right to be at this time of night, he heard the patter of student feet. Ah...he opened the door.

'Miss Tiernan. A word, if you please.'

As Head of Slytherin House, Professor Snape was very good to his students in the matter of post-exams parties. The three youngest years were given firm instructions that they were to be out of the common room by half-past ten or rue the consequences, consequences that the tone of voice implied were likely to involve carbonised dragon dung and a scrubbing brush. He had collared Draco and Pansy the day before the last exam, told them that he knew very well what they were planning, and that here were a couple of exeats for whichever seventh years were buying the booze. They should make sure to order the food from the house elves in advance, which was only courtesy, and he would be obliged if nothing actually poisonous were served. He himself would supply his customary punch, and very good punch it was, the students all noticing rather too late that good as it was and potently alcoholic as it was, nonetheless after a certain point it didn't seem to have any further effect, and nor did anything else. They were certainly mildly pissed, but that was all. The sneaky bastard! But they were grateful. They knew from past experience that as long as things didn't get too riotous and no furniture was broken that a quick and sober Reparo! could not remedy their Head of House would allow them to get on with things with nothing more than one or two peeks round the door and an unspoken promise to forget anything he saw that was merely embarrassing and not actually illegal.

Deep into his fifteenth drink, his tenth of the punch, Theodore Nott found that the stuff was finally beginning to have a bit more effect. A fuzzy warmth spread through him as he left Daphne and Mills to their philosophical discussion on the iniquities of school uniform and made his way over to the doorway where little third year Deirdre Tiernan stood with a look of fierce concentration on her face.

'You're not supposed to be here,' he said vaguely. His voice seemed to come from oddly far away.

'Professor Snape sent me,' she said. Theodore noted absently that she seemed to be pointing her wand at him. 'He wants you to go to his office.' Go to his office the words echoed in his head. He must be drunker than he'd thought. He nodded absently and pushed the door open. Deirdre hesitated for a moment behind him, and then followed him out. Halfway down the corridor, Theodore looked back. The girl was leaning against the wall, her wand still held in front of her. She waved it in his direction. Go to Snape's office, he thought vaguely. Yes.

Sitting behind his heavy mahogany desk, Snape pushed the pile of student reports aside. The ends justified the means, and Filius had been very clear; the girl had an exceptional ability in Charms.

In the common room, the party continued in a roar of the Weird Sisters' Greatest Hits, pomegranate juice and Maracaibo bitters. Daphne, who had entertained vague thoughts on the subject herself, wondered whether Theodore had disappeared because he had got off with someone, but she couldn't see anyone missing other than Vincent. Theo might be quiet but it wasn't that sort of quiet. Deirdre was hovering over by the door again, and Daphne ought to go and tell her to shove off, but by the time she got across the room the kid had vanished, so that was all right then. Probably someone else had told her. There was a tug at her elbow and someone shouting in her ear,

'Hey, Daphne, have you seen Sappho?' Well, that explained where Theodore had got to. Daphne shrugged and helped herself to another glass of punch. In the storeroom down the corridor, Deirdre Tiernan sat on a low stool getting her breath back. Vincent Crabbe had been quite difficult; it seemed that he didn't drink. Three down, one to go. She was glad Professor Snape had told her to leave Draco until last.

***

Draco couldn't remember much of what had happened in Snape's office. The Professor hadn't put a memory charm on him, it wasn't a blank like that, like the startled, suddenly supine expression he had seen on Deirdre's face as the Professor had softly muttered 'Obliviate!' It was just that there didn't seem to be much to remember, that he had hardly been able to take it all in. Of course he hadn't. How could he? It would be like remembering the order in which his bones had broken as the house came crashing down upon him. There was before and afterwards, and in the middle merely the pain. Not like the other time. Draco thought that he could remember almost every word of their conversation when Professor Snape had told him about Bellatrix. Did you know each other, sir, he had asked at the end, and Snape had answered yes. Now Draco could hardly remember what Snape had told him a mere couple of hours ago, but he knew what it meant, he knew exactly what it meant. It meant that he hated her. When he was only a baby, his father and mother had been accused, but no one had even mentioned Bellatrix's name. Then she had thrown it all away for the sake of Him and ended up in Azkaban where the blood clotted in her throat and in her lungs and silver threads laced through her long dark hair. And now she was free and Dad was...Dad was not.

Draco remembered falling, hurting his wrist as he went down. He remembered lying on the dungeon floor, his face wet against the cold stone, and sobbing Daddy, Daddy, Daddy as the Professor gripped his shoulder and said nothing. The watch hanging inside his robes had pressed awkwardly against his ribs. After the Professor had left the hospital wing, Madam Pomphrey had put it on the bedside cabinet. Draco could see it now, the gold hands bright against the black face. He reached a hand to smash it and pulled back. It wasn't her fault; it was Potter's fault, it was Dumbledore's fault. It was! He would hate them.

***

On the February evening after the Death Eaters had escaped from Azkaban, Draco Malfoy had cut the front page out of the Daily Prophet and carefully spread it flat inside the back cover of his photograph album. His conversation with his mother at lunchtime had not been very informative. Of course she had had to be circumspect, but he wished she had said something more, said anything to show him she was glad. It was hardly different in the Easter holidays. He had raced up the drive like a child, thrown off his shoes and pounded into the drawing room as if he had expected to see her there, to see her sitting with his mother by the hearth, to see her turn at him and smile and say...say something to show she didn't mind his growing up. She hadn't been there. His mother had stood and opened her arms and Draco had embraced her and said,

'But doesn't she want to see me?' Narcissa stepped back, looking carefully at him - he was almost as tall as she now - and smiled gently.

'You know she isn't here, Draco, she can't be here,' and he had known not to say nothing else. Only later, playing Blazes in the games room with his father, he had stopped to ask,

'Mother is happy about it, isn't she?'

Narcissa, standing silent in the doorway, had answered softly, 'Yes.'

With his parents refusing to talk about them, Draco searched for his aunt and uncle himself. They must have come here. Not straightaway, perhaps, but they must have come. He looked in the linen cupboard, and found the sheets not quite stacked straight, but he couldn't have said if it were any different to the last time he had seen them. He looked in the peacock room, but the bed under the lace-covered counterpane was always freshly made and told him nothing. He poked behind the gardener's shed and there were no rags of black robes. He bathed and dressed and shoved his nightgown under the pillows and his hand touched something hard.

It was metal, wrapped in a handkerchief he recognised as one of his mother's. But it wasn't one of his mother's; the initial embroidered in white in the corner read not N, but B. She had been here, she had been in his room and she had left him this. There was no card, only the round watch on its golden chain, the black enamel face emblazoned with stars. It belonged to the Blacks. He had seen it in a portrait at his grandmother's house, and now it was here, it was his. Bellatrix had given it to him. Of course, he thought dimly, he was the only male left in the first line and his aunt wouldn't have children now. Sometimes he had wondered if his parents had wanted another baby - now that he was older, he wouldn't have minded a brother - but it was one of those questions one couldn't ask. He thought perhaps they had; he remembered overhearing his father talking to Andromeda one time when his mother was ill, years ago now. Draco folded the handkerchief neatly and fastened the watch chain on the inside of his robes. It would be his secret.

He sent the handkerchief back by owl in an envelope with a small piece of parchment merely saying Thank you. He wasn't stupid. And he didn't tell his parents.

***

Eventually, he had stopped crying. His wrist hurt, and his side where he had fallen and it was cold on the dungeon floor. He struggled to his feet and tried to straighten his robes a bit. Professor Snape had withdrawn to a chair on the other side of the room to stare intently at the back of his hands. Draco found a hanky and blew his nose. The professor looked up.

'Sorry, sir,' Draco said. Snape stood and took down the pot of Floo powder from the mantelpiece. He threw it into the fire.

'Hospital wing, I think,' he said.

They waited in Madam Pomphrey's office while the nurse prepared yet another bed.

'It's all a mistake,' Draco said. 'Isn't it, sir?

'Of course it's a mistake,' the Potions Master answered. Later, Draco realised that neither of them had said what.

Draco couldn't imagine his father in Azkaban. He had known Bellatrix was there before he really understood what it was, it had been mysterious and strange and frightening before it was horrific. Now it was different. He had seen the Dementors. The first time, on the train at the beginning of his third year, he had run screaming down the corridor almost not because of what he heard but because of what he suddenly knew. Years and years of half-knowing and theory and dream crashed suddenly upon him and he understood. No more delusions of the princess in her tower, of Bella with her splendid hair flying as she faced down the Dementors with power and scorn. Now it was only his mother's sister, a little girl he had seen in photographs, Bella crying in the corner, shrinking desperately away from the black-clad crackling wraiths that drank her fear and didn't even laugh as she pleaded and screamed. It was his grey-faced father putting down his untouched glass of whisky, then years before, the Ministry representative talking, his mother's scream, Oh God, oh God! and Draco saw her stumble and fall, striking hard against the heavy furniture to lie unmoving and then blood everywhere. At home for Christmas, Draco had asked Narcissa to teach him the Patronus charm. He had been quite good when he practised, but he had never had to use it for real. He had tried several happy memories before he found the right one, sitting between his parents with a photograph album on his lap, looking at three little girls in a bluebell wood. That is Andromeda, his mother said, and that is Bellatrix.

Draco couldn't imagine Lucius in Azkaban. He wondered whether perhaps it was the potion Madam Pomphrey had given him. He tried, but he couldn't do it. It was too hard to understand what had happened. The whole world had fallen, it wasn't even real, and Draco did not blame Bellatrix. She had not understood, she was brilliant and loyal, a proper Black, but it would destroy her. The Dark Lord had saved her, He had to: she loved Him. And now it seemed that his father did not. Draco knew that. His father had not failed, he never failed. If Lucius had taken this Prophecy, then he had not wanted it. So he had been there for nothing, and Potter had been there for nothing, and it was Potter's fault, Potter, the only one they said had power to defeat the Dark Lord, and who had not done it. Draco didn't understand. His wrist ached, his eyes burned, and he wanted to cry again and he knew there was only one thing to do, there was only one person now who could understand, who would know what to do, who was doing it now, Draco was sure of it. It was time to put away childish things, time for an end of not questioning. It would be the holidays in a week and he would go home, and when he was home Draco Malfoy was going to talk to his mother. He thought that she would talk to her sisters.