The Affairs of Wizards

7. At the Going Down of the Sun

Advance sales were looking good. What we had to do now was persuade the general public to go and buy the stuff once we had it on the shelves. That meant getting some good press coverage in the run-up to the launch. Fortunately for us, the appetite of the Muggle press for all things magical hadn't abated in the slightest and it helped that Neville and Malfoy were quite well known in the Muggle world, too. We managed to get some really good coverage in the Sunday broadsheets, and even the Sun ran a piece, predictably titled, "Wizard cold cure can really spice up your sex life."

Everyone wanted to interview Neville and Malfoy but the burden of the interviews fell on Neville. Malfoy stubbornly refused to answer the one question every interviewer wanted to ask - why switch sides? If they persisted, he lost his temper. After a rather unpleasant incident with one notoriously pushy interviewer from the Sunday Times I judged it best to keep him away from the Press. Still, Neville was a really popular choice with most - his combination of boy-next-door ordinariness and heartbreaking life story had all the female interviewers wanting to mother him, so we did fairly well out of it.

The launch party was now set for the 4^th November to take advantage of the onset of really cold weather, but far enough away from Christmas to avoid the news of our product being overtaken by the usual blitz of seasonal advertising. I'd wanted to hold it on 31^st October, Halloween, to capitalise on the connections with witchcraft and wizardry but Malfoy had vetoed that idea. Apparently, he had a private function going on at the Manor that evening and he wasn't prepared to move it, even for this. I'd learned from experience that Malfoy in one of his truly stubborn moods was impossible to shift so I'd given way, wondering privately what was so important that it overrode his obsessive concern for the success of the business. I was soon to find out.

***

The Manor owl arrived one Sunday morning as Blaise and I were relaxing after a late breakfast.

The previous evening we'd entertained Ron and Hermione to dinner. The occasion had gone a lot better than I'd feared it would, given the Gryffindor/Slytherin divide. There had been only one sticky moment when Ron and Blaise had got into an argument about Rubeus Hagrid, who'd been Care of Magical Creatures Professor when they were at school. I could see both sides. Blaise had gone into gory detail about Hagrid's obsession with dangerous creatures, particularly something called a Blast Ended Skrewt which sounded horrendous. On the other hand, I agreed with Ron that Malfoy's misadventure with the hippogriff was entirely his own damn fault. Hermione and I intervened, and both parties concerned rather sheepishly agreed to disagree for the sake of keeping the peace.

We were lounging on Blaise's sofa, swapping sections of the Observer and the Sunday Prophet, and reading the more ludicrous bits out loud to each other. The owl signalled its arrival by hooting loudly outside the living room window. Blaise looked up.

"Merlin! If this is Draco obsessing about the fine print in Clause 23 of the Weasley agreement at 10.15 am on a Sunday I am going to hex his bloody balls off next time I see him."

"Fine by me," I assured him. "Just make sure you leave something for me to have a go at."

Blaise recovered the letter, and his face changed as he read it. He looked as if someone had just dropped a very large rock on him.

"We-e-e-ll," he said, slowly, "I can truly say I never expected this." He handed me the letter. On expensive paper with elaborate gilded edges were the words:

Draco Malfoy, Esq ,O.M. (1^st), M.Ptns

Requests the pleasure of the company of

Mr Blaise Zabini and Miss Vanessa Granger

at the feast of Samhain

on 31^st October

at Malfoy Manor, nr Avebury, Wiltshire

7.30 p.m. for 8.00 p.m. R.S.V.P

"Do you want to go?" Blaise was looking at me with a very odd expression on his face.

"Do you want me to? You don't seem that keen." I fought back tears. Was he ashamed of me?

Blaise looked stricken. "It's not that, Cara, not that at all. Come here." He pulled me towards him, put his arms round me and kissed the top of my head. "Will you let me explain?" I looked up at his worried face, and something inside me relaxed.

"OK." He pulled me back down on the sofa with him, and sat with his arm still round me.

"It's a lot more complex than it seems, Vanessa. This isn't just a party invitation. This - occasion - is a very old wizarding tradition. Only the most dyed-in-the-wool pureblood families still celebrate Samhain. Modernisers like the Weasleys gave it up years ago. If you go, you will be the first Muggle to attend a Samhain feast since long before the Statute of Secrecy was passed. It seems to me that Draco's using this occasion to make a political point. Do you really want to get involved?"

My inner researcher popped out of the cupboard where I normally keep her and pointed out that more information was needed before a decision could possibly be made. "Suppose you tell me what it's all about, then I'll decide."

The explanation that followed made it clear to me why this gathering and why now. Samhain, according to ancient wizarding belief, is a time when the veil between the worlds thins, and the dead return to visit the living. It was customary, therefore, to hold a feast in their honour. The old pureblood families who kept up the tradition used this as a time to honour those who had died in the War. I now understood why Blaise and Malfoy had been so comfortable with the idea of holding a birthday party for someone who was no longer around to enjoy it. It was also obvious that I had to go - to refuse would not only be cowardly, it would be an insult to Malfoy.

"I think I should go." Blaise nodded, but I still sensed a hint of reluctance. To hell with it. If he didn't really want me to go it was up to him to explain why. I was damned if I was going to prise it out of him.

At this point the inner researcher went back to sleep and the inner actress poked her head out and made some very trenchant points. "Now that's decided, I hate to sound all girly and stuff, but - what does one wear to a Samhain feast?"

"You should wear robes," Blaise said, immediately. Then, aware that he was walking a tightrope here, "Not that you don't look good normally, but Muggle clothes at a Samhain feast would be like -" He stopped, obviously at a loss for an apt simile.

"- a red rag to a bull," I finished for him. "I'm aware of that. No, what I meant was, what sort of robes?"

Blaise looked nonplussed. "I don't know. Just - robes." Wizard he might be, but he was like every other man I'd ever been out with when it came to female attire. You could turn up in a bin bag and he'd still say you looked good. The finer nuances would be lost on him but I knew Pansy Parkinson would cast a very sharp eye over whatever I chose to wear. Catching my expression, he added, "Not very useful, I take it?"

"No. Do you know anyone, preferably female, who can give me some advice?"

Blaise's expression cleared. "No problem. Let's sort it out now, before I answer Malfoy's invitation." I took note of the fact that Draco had suddenly become Malfoy and my conviction that Blaise was none too pleased about all of this deepened. He went to the fireplace, knelt, and tossed a handful of Floo powder in the fire. "Tracey Davis!" The fire flared up. I went into the kitchen, ostensibly to make a cup of coffee but really to avoid bursting out laughing. Fire-calling always struck me as a particularly ridiculous method of communication. Give me the phone any day.

"She'll be happy to help," Blaise said, coming into the kitchen a few minutes later and accepting the mug I held out to him. When we'd first started spending a lot of time together he'd charmed his kitchen appliances to respond to my voice, otherwise I wouldn't even have been able to boil a kettle at his place. As it was, I managed fine by telling the equipment what I wanted it to do. It was like dealing with a voice-activated computer, except that computers don't argue with you and give you unwanted cookery tips. "Tracey'll owl you to fix up a date for a shopping trip to Diagon Alley. Now," with an air of one who is determined to change the subject, "how about lunch at that nice little Muggle pub in Richmond? And until then -"

As I leaned forward into his kiss I forgot about my doubts and fears. I could get used to this, very used to it indeed.

***

Neville's girlfriend, Tracey Davis, was a petite, elegant brunette. She was also, I was surprised to find out, a Muggle-born and an unashamed Essex girl. I'd got the impression that Slytherin house was all rich snobby purebloods.

With more honesty than tact, I mentioned this over pre-shopping ice cream tea at Florean Fortescue's and Tracey hooted with laugher. "Bloody hell, no! There weren't nearly enough pureblood sprogs entering Hogwarts each year to keep the house going, so a fair number of us undesirables got sorted into Slytherin. Made for an uncomfortable atmosphere. Malfoy's little clique and the rest of us - the Purebloods versus the Mudbloods."

"Then, how -" I stopped, realising I was leading up to a major foot in mouth episode.

Tracey grinned. "What you mean is how did a lowly pleb like me end up hobnobbing with Mr Draco-My-Family's-Been-Pure-for-Seventeen-Generations Malfoy?"

Her humour was infectious. I grinned back. "Something like that, yes."

"Well, to cut a long story short, when the Ministry finally admitted that Potter'd been telling the truth all along and You-Know-Who was back, a group of us decided we'd had enough of everyone else thinking Slytherin was synonymous with Dark Wizard. We started recruiting others. By then even some of the purebloods were getting a bit jittery - not all of them saw themselves as Death Eaters in training. But it all really snowballed when Theo Nott and Malfoy's dad were killed. After that they were falling over themselves to join us."

"What actually happened to Lucius Malfoy? The press reports are rather vague."

Tracey made a face. "Are you really sure you want to know? It isn't very pleasant." When I nodded, she went on, "He doesn't like us talking about it but since you and Zabini are an item you're bound to find out anyway. You-Know-Who wanted to ensure what happened to him when he tried to kill Potter would never happen again. He'd unearthed some very old, very dark, spell but it needed blood, lots of it. Magical blood. He never completely trusted Lucius, particularly after the Department of Mysteries fiasco, so he decided to test Lucius's loyalty by using Draco's blood. Lucius and Narcissa tried to stop him but no wizard living except Potter could actually defeat the Dark Lord. Lucius did manage to save Draco, though. You-Know-Who used him instead, keeping Draco in reserve in case he needed more blood. Potter and Neville rescued Draco, and the day after they bought him back to Hogwarts he walked up to me in the Great Hall with the rest of them trailing behind him and said, "Davis, you were right. We want to help you fight the bastard." We've been friends of a sort ever since."

Another piece of the Malfoy/Neville puzzle fell into place. "I didn't realise Neville helped save Malfoy's life. All the papers said it was Harry Potter."

"Story of his life, poor love. He does most of the work, and Potter takes the credit. The-Boy-Who-Nearly-Was-the-Boy-Who-Lived, that's our Neville. Nev doesn't give a toss about it. Says he'd far rather be him than Harry any day of the week."

"I can see his point."

"Suppose I can, really. He didn't have to fulfil that sodding prophecy, and he ends up with Malfoy owing him a Wizard's Debt because he saved his life anyway. Mind you, Malfoy owes Nev a lot more than just his life. Nev damn near put him back together again after what happened, and I'll say this for Malfoy, he appreciates that. If you ask me, all this stuff with Magus started because Malfoy saw it as a way of repaying the debt he owed Neville. Then he found he actually liked being a Potions tycoon. Ready? It's time we got on with it."

An hour later I looked into the mirror and saw a stranger. Tracey had breezed through the racks at Madam Malkin's like a five-foot-three-inch whirlwind, scooping up robes as she went and keeping up a running commentary. "What you need is something classic, understated, and slightly old-fashioned. That's what all the women wear to this sort of shindig. And it's got to be black of course, mark of respect for the dead and all that. Lets see - that one, that one, not that one, oh bloody hell definitely not that one, and how about this one - "

The robe I was now wearing was made of a heavy black silky material with a slight sheen to it and a dull gold trim. It had a stiff high collar and jet buttons down the front. I could have walked out of Madam Malkin's and straight on stage to play Mariana in Measure for Measure. It was perfect. The mirror obviously thought so, too.

"Madam looks simply divine but if I might venture a word of advice, the hair needs a little attention."

Tracey put her head to one side and studied me. "It's right. I should put it up, if I were you. You'll be indistinguishable from any of the other smart pureblood females there."

"The definite lack of wand might be a slight giveaway," I deadpanned.

Tracey roared with laughter. "Bollocks!. Magic isn't everything. Go in there and knock 'em dead Vanessa. Nev and I will be cheering you on from the stalls."

I might be facing the Pureblood Dinner Party from Hell but at least I'd gained myself an ally. That made me feel a lot better.

***

When Blaise and I Apparated in the whole ground floor of the Manor was ablaze with light. Blaise had told me the feast proper would be held in the Great Hall, and the pre-feast gathering in one of the reception rooms on the ground floor of the East Wing, next to the ballroom. Neville and Tracey were waiting for us, and the four of us made our entrance together.

"Mr Neville Longbottom and Miss Tracey Davis!" the house-elf butler squeaked. "Mr Blaise Zabini and Miss Vanessa Granger." There was a subdued hum of conversation, and heads turned. I'd completely forgotten that I shared a surname with Hermione, who, let's face it, wasn't exactly low profile in the Wizarding World. Any hope I had of remaining inconspicuous immediately vanished.

We made our way over to greet our host, who was listening politely to an elderly wizard with a three-foot long beard who seemed to be bending his ear about the shocking habit the younger generation had developed of wearing Muggle clothing. Malfoy gave me a sly smile as we walked up. He was wearing a full-length black velvet robe and a broad leather belt with a silver buckle in the shape of a dragon. I realised that when I'd seen him dressed in Muggle gear there'd been an air of unreality about him - a sense of playing dressing up. Tonight he looked exactly what he was - wizard to the core.

"Good to see you, Zabini. Miss Granger, that's a lovely robe. Delighted you could make it." Malfoy seemed to know exactly how much trouble I'd gone to in order to look right, and I got the impression that he thoroughly approved.

We chatted briefly to Malfoy, and then Blaise and I made the rounds of his acquaintances among the assembled guests. The reaction to my presence was mixed. Some of the people we spoke to were welcoming, others masked hostility under a veneer of cool politeness. At one point, while we were talking to Blaise's boss, Gringotts' Director of Corporate Finance (and the only non-goblin on the Board), I distinctly heard a sneering female voice murmur behind me, "It seems Malfoy's finally lost whatever remaining marbles he had. Doing business with them is one thing but inviting them into your drawing room is quite another." I stiffened, and Blaise squeezed my hand sympathetically.

"Pay no attention, Cara," he whispered, as we moved on. Since I'd decided to accept Malfoy's invitation he had been more than supportive. He'd let me grill him for hours about what to expect and how I should behave. I was beginning to think I'd read far too much into his initial reaction. We were talking to Gregory Goyle and his wife, Millicent, when a gong sounded.

"Masters and Mistresses," the house-elf butler announced. "Dinner is being served."

"Zabini," Malfoy's voice came from behind us, "sorry to but in. I need to deprive you of the company of our guest of honour for a few minutes." I turned, to find Malfoy offering me his arm, ready to take me in to dinner. If my reaction was surprise, Blaise's was complete shock. For a moment he was speechless.

"Yes, of course, of course," he finally managed. I found myself taking Malfoy's arm and leading the dinner guests through into the Great Hall. As we swept past Pansy Parkinson the look on her face was enough to keep me in happy thoughts for a week. Guest of honour, indeed! When Malfoy chose to make a political point, he certainly did it in style.

I found myself seated on Malfoy's right, with Blaise beside me, Millicent and Gregory Goyle facing us, and Neville and Tracey just beyond them. It fell to Malfoy, myself and Blaise to keep up the conversation, as Goyle was a man of few words and his wife a woman of even fewer. While Malfoy and Blaise discussed the Minister's speech to the Wizengamot on the measures to be taken to halt the decline in standards of magical teaching and the Goyles paid concentrated attention to their food, I was free to sneak a quick look at my surroundings.

Like its master, the Manor's Great Hall was dressed for the occasion. An enormous fire blazed in the cavernous fireplace, its light competing with the dozens of candles that lit the room. The colours of the heraldic banners hanging from the hammer-beam ceiling were reflected off the acres of expensive silver and glassware on the long table. My eye was drawn to the empty chair at the further end of the table opposite Malfoy; the place reserved for the mistress of the house. On the wall above the chair was a portrait I'd never seen there before. It had obviously been bought from somewhere else in the Manor and put there especially for this occasion. It was easy to guess who it was from looks alone. Seated in a chair, facing the viewer, was a tall aristocratic woman with a heart-shaped face dominated by cool blue eyes and framed by ice blonde hair. Her hair was twisted into an elaborate chignon, and like the dinner guests she was dressed in black. I just had to be looking at Narcissa Malfoy. She spotted me studying her, and favoured me with a distant nod before returning her attention to the conversation at the other end of the table.

When you are fighting your way through seven courses, four hours and a lot of cutlery, time passes fairly quickly but even so I was surprised when the magically amplified chimes of the clock on the front of the Manor's stable block boomed out midnight. The fire died, the candles dimmed, and the assembled guests fell silent. The white cloth on the table vanished, taking with it the remaining crockery, cutlery and silverware.

This was the bit I'd been dreading. I knew roughly what was going to happen but it was impossible to predict whether or not I'd be called upon to play a part in it. Blaise had shrugged helplessly. "Just do your best, Cara. You'll be fine, I'm sure." I know he meant well but it wasn't exactly reassuring.

Four squat black candlesticks appeared on the table at the four cardinal points, and a heavy gold goblet, more like a chalice than a cup, materialised by Malfoy's right hand. He drew his wand and lit the candle while speaking the opening words of the Samhain Ceremony.

"By the powers of the North, by rock and stone, welcome."

Another voice responded from half-way down the table, as Roger Davies, a former Ravenclaw I'd been introduced to earlier, took up the invocation. "By the powers of the East, by wind and sky, welcome."

To my astonishment, Narcissa Malfoy's portrait drew a wand, and the third candle flared into life. "By the powers of the South, by fire and sun, welcome."

From my left the voice of Seamus Finnigan, an Irish ex-Gryffindor and a friend of Neville's, completed the incantation. "By the powers of the West, by water and wave, welcome."

Malfoy picked up the gold cup and toasted the silent company. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - Absent Friends." He took a sip and passed the cup to Goyle, who stared reflectively into its depths for a moment.

"Vincent Crabbe. Septimus Goyle." He took a sip, and passed it on to his wife.

"Archimedes Bulstrode. Honoria Bulstrode," Millicent added gruffly, passing the cup to Neville.

Neville stared into the cup for a long time, before adding, "Albus Dumbledore. Luna Lovegood." He drank, and passed the cup to Tracey.

Tracey's normally chirpy façade was gone, and she had tears in her eyes. "Theodore Nott. Ginevra Weasley."

So it went on, a litany of names, some which I recognised some I did not. A roll call of the dead that encompassed everyone from known Death Eaters to someone's Muggle parents who had simply been caught in the crossfire. As the cup passed round the table I was wrestling with a dilemma. What should I do when it reached me? Simply pass it on and say nothing? After all, this was not my war. But - Dumbledore had fought this war for us, too, and our casualties would have been a whole lot worse if the Order of the Phoenix had not held off Voldemort long enough to give him time to persuade the Ministry to get us involved. As the sole representative of an entire people, I knew I should say something, but what? Inspiration came in the shape of a memory.

My Great-Grandad Granger had been in the Normandy landings, and when the veterans made the trip back to the beaches for the sixtieth anniversary, the entire family went with him. I could see clearly in my mind's eye a picture of him listening to the strains of the Last Post, tears streaming down his face, standing next to an elderly German who had probably been trying to machine-gun him and his comrades as they stormed the beaches.

"Luciana Zabini." Blaise drank, and passed the cup to me.

I held it for a moment as the others had done, took a deep breath, and spoke. "At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them." There was a barely audible sigh of approval round the table, and I knew I had done the right thing. I drank and passed the cup back to Malfoy.

"Severus Snape. Lucius Malfoy." He drank, and then repeated, "Absent Friends."

"Absent Friends," we all repeated after him. The candles flared up, died, and for a heartbeat we were in darkness. Then the candles round the room came to life, and the fire flared up once more. A hum of conversation started. Rising, Malfoy turned to me and offered me his arm once more. Together, we led the guests back to the drawing room where the house-elves were serving coffee and liqueurs.

"An interesting choice of words," Malfoy commented, handing me the brandy I'd requested. "Very apt. Yours, or someone else's?"

"Someone else's," I confessed. "It's often quoted at Remembrance ceremonies for the dead in our two World Wars. I only know a few lines:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

I don't even know who wrote it."

"No matter," Malfoy said carelessly. "I'll Google it when I have the time."

"Google?" This was Goyle, who had come up while we were talking.

"Fascinating Muggle invention, Goyle. You should try it." Malfoy went off on an enthusiastic explanation of the internet which completely went over the head of the bewildered Goyle. Blaise came over to claim me just as Malfoy's attention was diverted by another guest wishing to make his farewells. Goyle gave me a cheerful grin and rolled his eyes behind Malfoy's back. Blaise was right, there was indeed more to Goyle than met the eye.

Sometime later Blaise and I were curled up on the sofa in front of his fire with a late-night brandy, dissecting the occasion. I was dog tired and extremely glad that the following day was a Saturday. Blaise had been full of praise for my conduct, and my ego was definitely expanding in the warmth of his regard. When he finally ran down, he was silent for a moment but I had a definite feeling he was working up to something.

"You know," he said finally with elaborate casualness, "it seems rather silly all this to-ing and fro-ing. You spend more time here than you do at your own place. Why not move in for good? Or we could get a place together in a Muggle district - somewhere you could have electricity and so on if you wanted."

This was what I'd been secretly hoping for for a long time but had told myself would never happen. Muggle/wizard, different worlds, all that sort of thing. I was ecstatic. Tonight's ordeal had been worthwhile if it had convinced him that mixing the worlds could work for us.

"Yes," I said. "Yes - please."

***

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