White Bird on a Silver Thread

Prologue

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

- Matthew 55.7

Draco Malfoy was late to the end-of-the-year feast. The red and gold decorations of the Great Hall hardly surprised him, though it was galling: Gryffindor had taken the House Cup yet again. The only satisfaction he clung to was that he had finally beat Potter in Quidditch that year, though whether that was due to his new Hawkeswing 2000 or his own skill, he was hard put to tell.

As he sauntered to the Slytherin table, his hands in his pockets, one thousand pairs of eyes fixed themselves upon him, some with admiration, some with loathing. Crabbe and Goyle scooted over to make room for him. As he sat down, Blaise Zabini's musical laughter the only distinct sound amid the murmur in the hall, he noted two prominent people missing from the Gryffindor table - Potter and Granger. Probably snogging in some corner closet, he thought contemptuously. Blaise linked her arm with his and leaned her head on his shoulder, her hair like gold against the green of his robes.

He would miss Hogwarts over the summer. Though he would rather die any kind of painful death you could devise than admit it, he had a deep, unshakable loyalty for the ancient castle; the same loyalty that had prompted his Death Eater father to send him there rather than to Durmstrang. And Malfoy Manor always tasted of fear - it lacked warmth.

The coming year would be very different from the past, he mused. Crabbe and Goyle had finally been kicked out of the school for a combination of bad behavior and abysmal marks. It would also be his final year at Hogwarts. He had never really thought of his life after graduating, but he always had a vague, general idea that he would end up joining the Death Eaters, as his father had done, especially now that Voldemort had risen again.

Of course, Super-Potter had to play hero, as always, and defeat Voldemort (if only temporarily) yet again this year. Did he never know when to back down? Hadn't Granger nearly been killed in their fifth year? He had barged right on ahead this year in his habitual evil fighting, regardless of others' - or his own - safety.

Well, if his father wanted Draco to join the Dark Lord, then he would do it. After all, it wasn't as though he had much of a choice. And he had never disobeyed his father before. He was certainly not going to start now.

Still, Draco couldn't see any benefit in becoming a Death Eater. It wasn't much of a bargain. He would have to get his nice skin damaged, and for what? He would still live in fear of Voldemort, and there was no guarantee that the Dark Lord would even succeed this time. Who knew? Maybe Potter would defeat him again.

"Aren't you hungry, Draco?" asked Blaise.

"No," said Draco, without brevity, but with no intention of saying anything more.

Blaise pursed her lips. She was not used to being ignored - and certainly not by her own boyfriend! After all, Draco Malfoy was only male. Male creatures are all the same, she thought scornfully, panting after a beautiful body. She was about to do something provocative and entirely inappropriate when the doors to the Great Hall opened and Snape came swooping into the Great Hall like a great big bat, heading straight for the teacher's table.

He said something in a low, intense tone to Dumbledore, waving a bit of parchment in the air. The Headmaster, looking grave and maybe even a little regretful, answered in a gentle tone, and Snape nodded. The Potions Master, to Draco's surprise, hurried to the Sluytherin table and tapped him on the shoulder.

"A word with you please, Mr. Malfoy."

Draco, startled, threw a hasty apology at Blaise before following Snape out the Great Hall, wondering curiously what had happened.

***************

Hermione had accidentally worn her bedroom slippers down to the Feast and she had hurried back to Gryffindor Tower to change into proper footwear before anyone noticed. After persuading the Fat Lady to let her in (the password had been changed and Hermione didn't know the new one), she had found her pumps and hastened back down the stairs. She was turning a corridor to get to the Entrance Hall when she had heard a familiar voice in a disused classroom, and curious, had gone to investigate.

Always light of foot, neither Cho nor Harry had heard her approaching. She stood for one shocked moment in the doorway, as Harry, in a low, choked voice he had never used for her before, said something to a blushing Cho. They were holding hands.

She turned swiftly and silently away, but instead of going to the Great Hall, she fled outside, praying desperately that she wouldn't run into anyone, and that the tears wouldn't come until she was far from prying eyes.

***************

"Your grandmother sent an urgent message," said Snape, once he and Draco were alone in the Entrance Hall, the noise from within the Great Hall dulled to a buzzing hum.

"What's wrong?" demanded Draco, apprehensively.

"Perhaps," said Snape, in the gentlest tone Draco had ever heard him use, "I had better leave you to read your grandmother's message alone."

Draco took the bit of thick Malfoy parchment with a sense of foreboding as Snape, with a last glance at him, opened the oak doors to the Great Hall and strode briskly inside. Draco hardly noticed. Why had his grandmother written? She wouldn't write - unless - unless -

The thought was too horrible to contemplate. Draco hastily unfolded the note and scanned the short, clipped lines. For a minute he froze. Then the note fell from lifeless fingers and Draco Malfoy bolted out of the Entrance Hall into the velvety night. There was only one thought on his mind. He must get outside, or he would suffocate.

********************

Hermione slipped on a bit of parchment in the Entrance Hall. She caught herself on the wall, and bent to pick up the slip of thick, cream colored paper, wondering if she herself had dropped it in her haste. Hermione always had bits and scraps of parchment in her pockets.

It was addressed to Draco Malfoy. She did not mean to read it, but it was so short that the words imprinted themselves upon her numbed mind at first glance. Your father is dead. Your mother is very ill. Malfoy Manor is swarming with Aurors. You and your mother will be spending the summer with me at Hedgerow - Grandmother Malfoy.

It did not matter. It did not matter. Nothing mattered except that Harry didn't love her. Kingdoms might fall - the whole Malfoy clan might perish from the earth - it was nothing to her. Without thinking, she thrust the note into her pocket and continued running.

*****************

Draco walked the length of the lake seven times before finally sitting down on a boulder at the lake's edge, his mind paralyzed with shock and pain. It was not possible. His father could not be dead. It was all a lie. No, no, no, his brain chanted over and over, in tune with the chirping of the crickets.

But presently reality seeped in. He tried to block it, but his logic wouldn't allow him to. His grandmother had no cause to lie. Lucius was her own son; she would not joke about such a serious thing.

It was a still, clear night; the moon and the starlight were reflected in the lake, and the white flowers that grew in the shadows gleamed like polished jade. But Draco was in no mood to enjoy scenery, even had he been the kind person who would enjoy scenery in the first place.

How could his father be dead? It was impossible. Lucius was Voldemort's own right hand man - how, how, how could he have died? Malfoy Manor is swarming with Aurors, his grandmother had written. Did the Ministry do it?

It doesn't matter, he thought, his throat full of bile. He's dead - dead - dead. He must not think of it. He's dead - dead - dead. How crisp the wind was! What strange patterns it traced on the smooth, satiny surface of the lake! He's dead - dead - dead. The crickets were singing mournfully in their own hidden, shadowy corners.

No, he thought. No.

******************

Hermione ran out of the castle, away from the dark, imprisoning stones, and down a small path that led to the lake. The night was clear and beautiful, like a diamond she had once seen in a London museum. Owls hooted softly. An old, old moon rose over the far off mountains. The stars fell from the skies and into the lake, like shattered dreams. But she saw none of it. Because her tears blinded her, she did not see Draco Malfoy sitting on a rock at the lake's edge, and she crashed into him.

They both went tumbling into the lake. Fortunately the water was hardly a foot deep, because neither could swim. Hermione managed to cling to the rock as she fell and thereby only get her shoes and stockings wet, but Draco landed on his stomach and was soaked to the skin from head to foot.

It speaks volumes for his state of mind to note that he hardly looked at the apologetic Hermione, but instead picked himself up resignedly and threw himself down in the soft grass under a low-boughed oak tree.

He should have been screaming at her. He should have been swearing and cursing, as was his wont. He should have hexed her by now.

But he didn't. He hardly looked at her.

"I'm sorry," said Hermione awkwardly at last, seating herself in the grass as well to wring out her shoes and socks. "I didn't see you."

"It doesn't matter," said Draco dully. He was very wet. His hair stuck to his face and his robes stuck to his skin. It was cold. But he didn't care. He didn't care.

Hermione stared at him, startled, and her wide brown eyes reflected her surprise. She had never seen him so miserable before, and as much as she hated him, she couldn't help but pity his grief. His father just died, she realized very suddenly, remembering the note she had thrust in her pocket. Her unrequited love for Harry seemed very silly in comparison to his anguish. She slowly crawled towards him, and kneeling beside him, tapped him lightly with her wand. "Dryge," she whispered, and he blinked, his clothes no longer wet. Then he lifted his eyes to meet hers, and they were the gray of fallen stars, and they seemed to hold in their depths as much knowledge and suffering as the stars must have seen.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"How much do you know?" he asked, in the same spiritless tone.

She took out the parchment and handed it silently to him. He took it lifelessly.

"He's dead," he said, flatly. He shredded his grandmother's note with his fingers, and they fell like a shower of snow into the grass. "He's dead, and I know he's dead, but I can't believe it. Why did he die? He was my father. Why did my father die?"

He put his head in his hands, his fingers rigid. "He was evil," he continued, emotionlessly, and that indifference was what made Hermione's eyes begin to burn, because it hid a world of bitterness and anguish. "He was evil, but he was my father. Why?"

"I don't know," said Hermione, shaking her head and hugging her knees to her. "I don't know."

"He was a good father. He tried to be a good father. Whatever he did, whatever he had done, he - "

He stopped very suddenly, gazing at her as though seeing her for the first time, as though he had just realized whom he was talking to. He shut his mouth with a snap, and his face smoothed over like a mask - beautiful and flawless and passionless in the silver moonlight. Hermione realized for the first time what a finely chiseled face he had. He was handsome in a clean, refined way: straight nose, high cheekbones, finely molded forehead. He might have been a marble statue of some Roman god in a Paris museum. But his eyes . . .

"Tell me," said Hermione. "Tell me."

He took a deep breath, searching for words, not knowing why he trusted her, and not certain he did trust her, but too tortured to care. "Why?" he shouted finally, and his voice echoed over the lake and was lost.

His chest heaved, and he let out a single sob, choked and anguished. Before she knew that she had done it, Hermione took his head in her hands and pulled him toward her, cradling him as though he were a hurt child, which, she later realized, he was. Her hand came in contact with something cool and hard and polished around his throat - a jade pendant - as she drew him to her.

"Hush," she whispered. "You'll be all right."

He did not cry, but his breath came rapidly. He leaned his head against her, not remembering the last time he had been held with so much motherly tenderness. His own mother never held him. She kissed him with cold lips, very lightly, on the forehead, but she never showed any warmth or affection. And his father didn't know what affection was.

He was cold, so cold, and Hermione was warm and soft and her voice was like water on smooth stone. He felt her fingers moving gently through his hair, and all the while she rocked him as if she were comforting a child. He could hear the sound of footsteps, heavy and measured.

Someone is coming, he thought, and lifted his head a little, and the footsteps stopped. It's Hermione's heart, he told himself, surprised. What I'm hearing is the beat of her heart. He lay his head back down.

They sat there thus for a very long time, even after he had quieted. Perhaps Hermione fell asleep. Looking back, months later, she could remember very little except for a blur of velvety nighttime shadows and colors. It was much later that her senses came back into focus and she became aware of her surroundings again - the singing of the crickets, the starlight on the rippling water, the whisper of the wind in the grass, and the weight of Draco Malfoy's head in her arms, his pale hair like cool silk against her skin. The moon was beginning to set when Draco spoke at last.

"I loved him, you know?" he said, softly. "Whatever he had done, he was my father."

Hermione smiled gently. "I know."

****************

That summer was a hard one for Draco. His gentle, tranquil grandmother had been waiting for him at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. When she had seen him, she had simply held out a hand to him and smiled very tenderly. They had gone to Hedgerow, her family's country estate in Scotland, and the first few weeks passed in a daze of pain and a blur of color. Draco went through the routine of his life mechanically. He could not think, and he did not try to.

Everything had changed. His world was shattering around him. Narcissa Malfoy, who had fallen ill, joined them within the first fortnight. But it was much later, bit by bit, little by little, that Draco learned of how his father had died, and why he and his mother could not return home.

Voldemort himself had killed Lucius Malfoy in a fit of rage when the latest plan to murder Harry Potter had yet again failed. After the Aurors had carried away anything connected to the Dark Arts from Malfoy Manor, the Death Eaters had descended upon the old ancestral halls like vultures and took everything of value before burning the house to the ground. Within a few weeks, Draco Malfoy had lost everything - his father, his home, his wealth. He realized for the first time that nothing in his world was everlasting.

The move to Hedgerow became permanent. Draco's grandmother, who had been Isabelle Hedge before her marriage to Christopher Malfoy, had her own family's estate and fortune, and welcomed the widow and her son with open arms.

After the initial shock had worn off, Draco began to live again. A healthy grief heals in due time, no matter its intensity, and there came a time when Draco started to take notice of what went on around him again. And he was glad, in a way, to be living at Hedgerow. Hedgerow was beautiful in a way Malfoy Manor could never be, beautiful and warm and alive. Flowers bloomed in a thousand colors, the grass grew thick and soft and pliant, and the house was half-smothered in brilliant fuchsia and climbing roses. They twined around the Greek pillars, crawled over the roof, and curled about the doors and windows and balconies. The house itself was a handsome one, white and stately and airy, with a Neo-Greco air that manifested itself in grand pillars and light balconies, wide courtyards, ivy-covered arches, and exquisite fountains, caryatids, and statues. It was a thing of grace and beauty, brilliant and faultless, with smooth lawns and terraces sloping to the gardens and the gardens to the sea. Beyond the manicured landscape there was a valley full of waterfalls, gurgling brooks, and new paths to discover everyday.

Draco took to riding in the mornings. Before coming to Hedgerow, he had never even touched a horse, but Isabelle Malfoy gave her grandson a handsome red mare, and Draco discovered that he actually liked the creature. He took long walks, relishing the open spaces and fresh air. He had been delicate as a child, but he grew stronger in the sunlight and beauty of the countryside. His face had more color and his eyes became more like the eyes of a boy.

One day he found a white lark with a broken wing. He took it home, and had the stable master help him nurse it back to health. The lark was a particularly tuneful one, and he delighted in its song, but a week later, he noticed that the little bird sang less and less. His grandmother told him to release the creature. If, she said, the lark truly loved him, it would stay of its own free will. Opening that cage door was the hardest thing Draco had ever done. The bird had soared to the skies while he watched its joy with an ache in his heart. But his grandmother had been right. The lark returned every day to eat the crumbs he scattered and sing for him. Draco smiled for the first time that summer.

In the afternoons he wrote long letters to Hermione, telling her what he had done, and what he had discovered. She wrote cheerful, witty epistles in return. She had a gift of expression, and her letters were clever, wise, fanciful. She commented and criticized, encouraged and advised freely. There was a humor in her letters that he liked; it leavened them with its sanity and reacted on him most wholesomely, counteracting many of the morbid tendencies and influences of his life.

They were an intellectual stimulant in Hermione's letters as well. In every letter there was something new for him to learn and assimilate, until his old narrow mental attitude had so broadened and deepened, sweeping out into circles of thought he had never known or imagined, that he hardly knew himself.

Draco spent the evenings either exploring the house or in the library. One day after dinner he hied himself to the Hedge library to look through the thousands of books and paintings his grandmother kept. He had gone through several boxes of old books when he came across a watercolor painted on a long length of white parchment.

He was instantly drawn to the painting. It was the picture of a woman, a slender, beautiful woman sitting on the back of an enormous white bird. The bird reminded him of the lark, somehow, but it was the woman that dominated the painting. She wore all white, and she had black, black eyes like jewels, and long pale hair of a color not unlike his own. Her face was very dreamy and almost otherworldly. There was passion in this picture, and beauty, and power, and many secrets.

The scrawled signature in the bottom right hand corner proved the artists to be his own grandfather. Draco wondered who this woman was - not only who she was, but who she was to his grandfather. It was certainly not his grandmother, who did not have such passionate and secretive eyes. But it was common knowledge that Christopher Malfoy had a lover. Was this his mistress? Draco privately thought that he'd rather have this strange woman with her bewitching eyes than his gentle, dispassionate grandmother, even in her heyday, when she had been young and very beautiful.

The picture had not been enchanted, so it did not move, but even in its very immobility it was captivating. The bird soared through the air, the long pale hair caught in the wind, and sometimes - sometimes he thought she was trying to tell him a secret.