The Affairs of Wizards

10. Sisters Three

I drifted into consciousness the next morning with a feeling of lazy contentment that quickly vanished when I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the canopy of an unfamiliar four poster bed. The previous night's events came rushing back in equal parts of pleasure and embarrassment, and I groaned out loud. Effing, effing hell. With my usual impeccable timing I'd come straight out of a disastrous relationship with one wizard and ended up in bed with another. Who just happened to be my boss. This was not good. Not good at all.

I sat up. There was no sign of Malfoy, so at least I had a little time to pull myself together before I had to face him. It was then that I noticed that my favourite jeans and a t-shirt, obviously taken from the stuff that Blaise had sent back to me the previous day, had been neatly laid out on a chair ready and waiting, and that someone had left a tray with a still-hot pot of coffee and a cup on a side table. Malfoy's loony house-elf was nothing if not efficient.

I helped myself to the coffee and Malfoy's shower in that order, wondering how the hell I was going to play this. Oh, I've had my share of one-night stands - who hasn't? This was different. It mattered to me what Malfoy thought of me, and in the aftermath of the previous night's events it was slowly dawning on me just how much. I really did not want to lose his good opinion just because I'd slept with him on the rebound. Even if the sex had been bloody great. I told myself sternly I would not think about the sex right now but images kept on intruding. Oh, effing, effing, effing hell.

Finally, I could prevaricate no longer. I opened the bedroom door, and peered into the corridor. From across the way, Malfoy's voice called, "In here." I followed the sound through the open door of his sitting room and into the dining room. Malfoy was standing with his back to me, arms crossed, staring out of the window.

"Good morning." He turned to face me, and I could tell at once he was every bit as embarrassed as I was. My heart sank.

"Good morning." There was an awkward silence, then we both started to speak at once.

"Look, I don't -" We stopped, each waiting for the other. Eventually, I motioned to him to carry on.

"I was going to say that I don't make a habit of this, despite anything you may have heard."

"Ditto." I decided it was best to cut my losses. "I should go." I turned to leave.

"Vanessa!" Malfoy was at my side in a couple of quick strides, and grabbed me by the arms, turning me to face him. "I did not mean -"

I was suddenly tired of all this. "Of course you didn't, and of course we can still be friends and all that stuff. Satisfied?"

"Will you just listen to me for a minute, woman? I am not trying to get rid of you, I am trying to apologise. Whatever else I may be, I hope I am a gentleman, and I did not mean to take advantage of your grief last night."

I gaped. Malfoy was trying to apologise? For taking "advantage" of me? I felt a rush of warmth towards him. This was a side of him I'd not seen before. It was sweet and really rather old-fashioned but then he came from a world that was at least thirty years behind my own in its approach to the relationship between men and women. I hastened to reassure him.

"You've nothing to apologise for. In case you hadn't noticed you didn't exactly have to tie me to the bed."

A spark of mischief lit the grey eyes, and his mouth quirked. "I would have been quite happy to do so if you'd asked me."

Then we were laughing together like a couple of naughty schoolchildren and all awkwardness between us fled. I felt a rush of relief. Perhaps this could work out after all. Malfoy was the first to sober up, and I sensed he was trying to find the words to say something very important to him. I waited.

"Vanessa, I -" He stopped, then began again. "I - that is to say - oh, for Merlin's sake - I know it's all rather soon, after Zabini and everything but do I have a chance?"

It took me a while to process what he was saying, but when it finally hit me I just couldn't stop a great big stupid grin appearing on my face. "Yes."

"Good," he said simply, pulling me to him and kissing me gently. "Now come and have some breakfast. Damned elf always makes enough to feed the entire Wizengamot. I hope you like kippers."

***

We were just finishing breakfast when the letter arrived. Goyle had outdone themselves this time - the thing was virtually covered with "checked and cleared" stamps, and came accompanied by a note from Seamus Finnigan.

Malfoy

It's another one of those letters.

We've checked it over very carefully, and I'll let you have a full report shortly. Do you want me to notify Ron Weasley?

S. Finnigan

Malfoy opened the letter, and together we stared at the contents. It said, simply,

When shall we three meet again?

"Macbeth once again," Malfoy said. In reply to my unspoken question, he added, "I read it after the murder. I couldn't see any connection."

"You should let Ron know right away. One thing we can be sure of is that the arrival of one of these is usually followed by something very nasty happening." I rose. "I'd better make myself scarce before the Aurors arrive."

Malfoy rose with me, put his hands on my shoulders, and stood looking down at me. "When all this is over, Vanessa -"

"Yes, when all this is over," I echoed him with a smile. He kissed me again in reply, let me go and strode over to the mirror above the fireplace.

"Finnigan?"

I retrieved my car and drove back to Swindon from the Manor deep in thought. Whoever was doing this kept giving us clues as to their identity and motivation but somehow we were missing the point. Maybe it was time to take a look at the sub-text.

***

I'd not been home five minutes before the Floo flared into life, and I heard my own voice saying, "This is Vanessa Granger. I'm not able to take your call right now but if you'd -"

"Receive," I barked at the thing. I'd been hiding from the world for long enough. Tracey's head appeared in the fire, and her expression cleared when she saw me.

"I've been trying to get you all last night and half the morning. Nev's worried about you. I told him you were not the type to let something like that knock you back for long but you know what he's like. How are you?"

"I'm fine Trace," I assured her, with perfect truth. Ever since Malfoy's confession I'd been struggling with a feeling of joy that seemed positively indecent in the circumstances but which simply would not be suppressed. Then a horrible thought struck me. "Where is Neville? You need to warn him -" I stopped, realising what I was going to have to own up to but decided that keeping Neville safe was a damn sight more important than any embarrassment I might suffer as a consequence. I ploughed on. "You need to warn him that Malfoy got another one of those letters this morning. He should watch his back."

"He's quite safe. He's been here all morning," Tracey said automatically. Then it hit her. "How -" I could almost see her mentally adding up two and two and arriving at six and a half. "Oooh, so that's it, is it? I am so going to enjoy winding him up about this. He owes me big time for all those "dirty Mudblood" cracks when we were at school."

"Just keep it to yourself for the moment, please?"

"Don't worry," Tracey's smile was warm and genuine. "Only joking. I'll let Nev know about the letter. Take care." She vanished.

I made myself a cup of coffee, grabbed my battered Penguin copy of Macbeth, and sat down to read. An hour later I was no better enlightened. I knew the play backwards - I'd played Lady M. in a rather avant garde open air production in Reading Abbey Ruins while still at school, and stage managed a fairly dire one at the Edinburgh Fringe during my "I'm desperate and I'll doing anything for work" phase. It didn't help. Try as I might I couldn't see any obvious connection between this play and events at Magus.

Maybe I was going about this all wrong. I fetched a sheet of paper and wrote down the contents of the letters, in sequence.

Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine.

There had been nine of these "incidents", if you included the murder.

Blood will have blood.

Well, there had certainly been a lot of that about. A picture of the scene of Treadwell's murder flashed through my mind, and I shuddered.

Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?

Well, that one was pretty bleedin' obvious, if you'll pardon the pun.

And finally,

When shall we three meet again?

Which meant - what? I sighed in frustration, and decided to take a different tack, one which had served me well when trying to work out an approach to a particularly difficult speech. Go back to the basic meaning of a word and study it. I fetched my dictionary.

blood noun 1 a fluid tissue that circulates in the arteries veins, and capillaries of the body as a result of muscular contractions of the heart. 2 relationship through belonging to the same family or race, etc; descent • of royal blood. 3 near family • He's my own flesh and blood. 4 bloodshed or murder; violence...

Relationship through belonging to the same family or race. Near family. Blood will have blood ... What if blood meant bloodline rather than the stuff that runs through the veins? What if all this had something to do with the Malfoys - or the Blacks?

Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa stared at me from out of the portrait in Malfoy's living room.

When shall we three meet again?

And then I knew.

I tossed a handful of Floo powder into the fire, and called Hermione.

***

Three quarters of an hour later I was back in the car and driving to the Manor like a bat out of hell. For twenty frustrating minutes of that time I'd been trying to get hold of Malfoy, only to be met with, "This is Draco Malfoy. I can't take your call at the moment but if you'd like to leave a message -" I swore violently, and considered my options, which were fairly limited as I couldn't Apparate and all the Floo connections were sealed. It was the Muggle way or not at all.

Hermione had confirmed my guess, and the whole thing then fell into place. What frightened me was the implications behind that last note. The next lines of that scene from Macbeth kept running through my mind.

When the hurly burly's done,

When the battle's lost and won.

That will be ere set of sun.

Whatever was going to happen was going to happen today, before the sun set. I had to get to Malfoy to tell him what I knew before that.

I reached the Manor and an astonished Goyle Security wizard let me through the gate. I abandoned the car next to Malfoy's Merc barely stopping to take the keys out of the ignition before I tore into the house and up the stairs to his apartments. I reached the door, and hammered on it in desperation.

"Malfoy! Let me in. It's Vanessa."

The door swung open, and there was Winky with an astonished Malfoy standing behind her. "Vanessa? What in Merlin's name -"

"I know," I gabbled. "I know what it is the saboteur's looking for. What you and Neville have been hiding all this time."

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Your mother."

***

The next moment Malfoy's wand was pointing straight at my heart.

"Who are you, and what have you done with Vanessa Granger?"

"Malfoy you idiot, I am Vanessa Granger. How can I prove it to you?" I have to say I didn't blame him for being suspicious. I'd left here just a couple of hours ago none the wiser than he was about what was going on. Then suddenly I turn up out of the blue claiming to have guessed the secret he'd obviously been hiding so carefully for the past ten years.

He considered. "There is one way."

"Do it," I told him. "We don't have time for this." The wand I was facing swung to point between my eyes, and I forced myself to stand quite still.

"Legilmens."

It was an extraordinary sensation, like fingers going through my mind, turning over memories, looking for confirmation that I was who I said I was. To pay him back for not believing me I let some particularly graphic memories of the previous night play back, and grinned as the presence in my head registered the mental equivalent of embarrassment.

"Believe me now?"

"Finite Incantatem." Malfoy slipped his wand back into his sleeve, and finally met my gaze, looking rather sheepish. "Legilmency lessons with Snape were never quite like that. I'm sorry."

"Doesn't matter. We need to talk."

He led me in to the sitting room, and gestured to me to sit while he went across to the mirror. "Neville Longbottom."

The mirror clouded over, and Neville's face appeared almost instantly. "Draco! I've been waiting for you to call for the last two hours. Tracey says there's been another letter."

"That's right," Malfoy confirmed. "But there has also been another, more important development. Vanessa's here. She knows, Longbottom."

I watched Neville as the implications of Malfoy's words sank in, and knew that my guess had been right. "I'm coming over. Open your Floo, will you?" Seconds later the fire flared up and Neville stepped out of it. He sat down and studied me with mingled amusement and respect. "Tracey and Draco both keep telling me you'd have made a good Slytherin. I have to say I agree with them. How did you guess?"

I tried to order my thoughts. "Well, it was pretty obvious that you and Malfoy have been hiding something, and not very well I'm afraid. I think Ron Weasley knows that, too, but he hasn't guessed what yet." I turned to Malfoy. "What made me realise was that picture of your mother and her sisters you showed me last night." Neville shot Malfoy a sharp glance, which the latter met with a deliberately bland stare. The response was the nearest thing I've ever seen to a smirk on Neville Longbottom's face. "I'd been going over the contents of those notes, and I realised that blood actually meant bloodline, and your bloodline contains three sisters who are also witches. Nobody knows what really happened to Narcissa. What if she was still alive? Then where was she? What if she never left the Manor? Which explained why you were so determined to return here as soon as you possibly could. So I called Hermione and asked if you could hide a person by magic the same way this place is hidden, and she told me about the Fidelius Charm. She said it was what Harry Potter's parents used when they tried to hide from Voldemort."

"Not very successfully, as it turned out," Malfoy commented. "That's because the success of Fidelius depends on the loyalty of one person - the Secret Keeper. Longbottom here is Mother's Secret Keeper. He pointed out, with rather Slytherin cunning, if I may say so, that no-one would expect the son of Bellatrix Lestrange's most high-profile victims to be protecting her younger sister. So far he's been right."

"Well somebody else apart from me has figured it out. Somebody else who has been trying to use both of you to get to Narcissa. You need to tell Ron Weasley what's going on, before that someone kills one or both of you. That last letter made it pretty clear that our saboteur intends to bring things to a head today."

Malfoy and Neville exchanged a glance, then Malfoy spoke. "There is only one person who can make that decision, Vanessa. I'll go and see her now. I think you should come with me. There are - reasons - that she might take some persuading that it is necessary for her to reveal herself. Longbottom?"

"Makes sense," Neville replied. "In the meantime - Plan B?"

Malfoy nodded. "How soon can you be ready?"

"Give me half an hour to pack and talk to Tracey," Neville responded briskly. He went to Malfoy's desk, scribbled something on a piece of parchment and handed it to Malfoy. "Here, you'll need this. See you later." He threw a handful of Floo powder into the fire, recited an address, and departed.

Malfoy turned to me. "Let's go and pay a visit to my mother."

***

Malfoy led me down the corridor to the locked door where Winky had tried to attack me on the night of the launch party, and handed me the piece of paper that Neville had given him. I unfolded it and read it with Malfoy looking over my shoulder. On it were the words,

Narcissa Malfoy lives on the second floor of the East Wing of Malfoy Manor

As I read, the door in front of me melted in to thin air to reveal a flight of stairs. As we got to the top, Malfoy turned to me, his face serious.

"This will be difficult for her, Vanessa. I'm sure I can trust you to face the situation with your usual aplomb."

"I'll do my best." We stopped outside a pair of closed double doors, and Winky appeared with a soft pop.

"Tell your Mistress we need to talk to her, Winky," Malfoy commanded. The creature shook its head.

"No, no Master Draco. Winky knows that Mistress does not like seeing people. You should not be bringing strangers to see Mistress."

"This is urgent," Malfoy insisted. "Go and tell her that Miss Vanessa Granger and I need to see her on a matter of great importance." Winky, surprisingly, vanished without further argument, after giving me a penetrating look. Crazy she might be but she wasn't stupid. A couple of minutes later the double doors swung open of their own accord, and a rich contralto voice I'd heard only once before called out to us.

"Please come in, both of you." I followed Malfoy into the dimly lit room. The veiled figure seated in the chair by the fire nodded politely to me. "Excuse me for not getting up, Miss Granger. I find it a little difficult." The figure lifted its hands and raised the veil from its face. "Ah, that's better. Now I can see you properly."

It was not the first time since I'd entered the Wizarding World that I was glad I'd trained as an actress. It took me all that training to hide my horrified reaction. Narcissa Malfoy's face was a picture of the ruin of great beauty under the onslaught of great age. A woman who, by my reckoning couldn't be much more than fifty looked as if she was a hundred and fifty. Penetrating blue eyes studied me from within a mass of wrinkles.

"No, Miss Granger," Narcissa Malfoy said, softly, "you are not mistaken. The Dark Lord was very clever and extremely cruel. He took from my husband the blood of which he was so proud, drop by drop. Me he deprived of something that had always been a great source of pride to me - my beauty. Do sit down." I sat in the chair she indicated, facing the fireplace, and found myself looking at the same portrait of Narcissa I'd seen in the Great Hall at Samhain. The portrait inclined its head to me and returned to studying its living counterpart with cool compassion. Malfoy flung himself into a chair next to me. "She said you were clever," Narcissa continued, nodding at the portrait, "and my son never tires of singing your praises. I assume the fact that you are here at all means you have guessed our secret." She turned to Malfoy. "Draco darling, please don't slouch." Malfoy sat up abruptly, and I smiled at this evidence of my inner conviction that no man alive is ever more than seven years old to his mother. "You had better tell me what is going on."

Between us Malfoy and I told her how I'd figured out what the saboteur was after, and I reiterated my conviction that things would come to a head tonight. Narcissa sighed.

"I believe you, Miss Granger. Now it only remains to decide what is to be done. Draco," she turned to Malfoy, "I believe it is high time we released Mr Longbottom from his obligation to us. My family has caused him quite enough pain for one lifetime, and I have no wish to be the cause of any more. That, however, will take time. The counter-charm is very elaborate, and I do not believe we can afford to wait. Fetch Mr Weasley, for me, will you?"

***

Ron Weasley showed very little surprise when informed that Malfoy's mother, presumed dead for the last ten years, had actually been hiding out in the Manor all this time. I wondered how much he had actually known, or at least suspected. After all, he had been present that night, and must have wondered what had happened to Narcissa between the time she and Lucius had fought Voldemort and his arrival with Dumbledore at the Manor.

As Narcissa and Ron talked, the final bits of her story fell into place. After Voldemort had cursed her she had fled, taking refuge in her own apartments on the second floor of the Manor's East Wing. From there she had contacted Dumbledore and begged for his help. She had not known at the time that Harry Potter, with his usual flair for derring-do, was in the middle of staging a rescue mission accompanied by Neville Longbottom. After the storming of the Manor she had remained there, cared for by Winky and protected by the Manor's Unplottability. The Fidelius Charm had come later, when Malfoy and Neville had decided to start Magus and needed some way of protecting Narcissa from prying eyes.

Ron, musing over my conclusions regarding the meaning behind the notes, homed in on the one thing I'd not considered.

"Then this is a family matter. Blood will have blood, Neville's note said."

"Apart from myself and Draco, there are only four members of my family left," Narcissa commented. "Andromeda I would trust with my life. I am pretty sure she knew I was here but she has kept that knowledge to herself. Her daughter, Nymphadora, is above suspicion - "

Nymphadora? No wonder Malfoy's cousin kept that one quiet.

"- which leaves my lunatic sister and her daughter. I take it you suspect the latter."

"It has the feel of her," Ron admitted. There was a definite gleam in his eyes at the thought of catching up with his quarry after so long. "Neville tells me there was an unidentified Death Eater present at Lucius's death, ready to cut your son's throat. Could that have been Ariadne?"

Narcissa shrugged. "I really do not know. I had no contact with the girl after Bella was sent to Azkaban. She was packed off to live with Rudolphus's relatives in Bulgaria. For all I know it could have been her. Getting her to murder her cousin as some sort of initiation test would be the sort of thing that would appeal to Bella."

"And as to motive - Is it possible Bellatrix could have told her daughter you'd been spying for the Order?"

Narcissa raised an eyebrow. "Dumbledore told you?"

Ron shook his head. "He left a deposition. I was given access to his papers when I got the Lestrange case. Don't worry, your secret's safe. Publication is embargoed for the next fifty years."

Narcissa smiled. "I am not ashamed of it, if that's what you mean, Mr Weasley. I did what I had to do. Without Severus and myself the Order would have had limited success. It was a pity that Bella stumbled on evidence of my activities when she did and bought everything to a head. Draco's death was to have been my punishment, and, well - you know what happened after that."

Wheels within wheels. So Narcissa had been spying for Dumbledore's Order. This explained why she had been able to contact him so easily.

Ron was back to Ariadne Lestrange. "But if it is her, how the hell does she intend to get to you in the Manor with her accomplice dead? And why, assuming it was her who committed Treadwell's murder in the first place, did she kill him before his usefulness to her was over? That isn't like her."

At that moment, Malfoy, who had been downstairs to see if Neville had returned, appeared looking worried.

"He's not back, yet, Weasley. This isn't like Longbottom. If he says half an hour he means half an hour."

Ron nodded grimly. "We'd better check it out. Where was he going?"

"Davis's place and then back to his flat to pack. If I know Davis she'll have insisted on going with him to keep watch."

"Let's hope so. Carstairs!!"

***

Ron told me later that Tracey and Neville had obviously put up quite a fight. The living room of his flat was a shambles, and the walls were covered in hex marks.

Amidst the debris they found Tracey, unconscious, her wand broken beneath her.

There was no sign of Neville.

***

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