In the Black Midwinter — Lionheart

Chapter 69: In the Black Midwinter

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

“No, we haven’t seen Hermione,” said Harry, lifting his head in surprise. “Why?”

“She’s not with you?” said Ron sharply. Ginny lowered her hand of Exploding Snap. “Didn’t you get on the train together? We thought you followed us.”

“We did,” said Draco, who would have lacked patience for Ron’s tone even in much better moods. “She’s on the train. I merely lost sight of her.”

“How’d you manage that? It’s one bloody aisle with carriages on, and they’ve windows in ’em—”

“Not ones you seem to have made use of, seeing as she’d have passed this compartment, and you didn’t notice — nor did you exhaust yourself looking for us, I’d add—”

“Oi! We did two rounds of the train! Worried sick, weren’t we, but we couldn’t find you, and we couldn’t get in the prefects’, so excuse us for having a sit—”

“Pardon me if I won’t, seeing as I just polished off a deadsprint from the castle onto a moving train—”

“You wot?”

“Pipe down,” said Ginny, to evil-eyed compliance from both interlocutors. “She’s a witch. Reckon if she wants a moment to herself, she can manage one.”

The truth of this was accepted in silence by three ill-comforted wizards; then, by way of an olive branch, Ron cleared his throat. “Onto a moving train, you said?”

“Long story.”

“We’ve got until London,” suggested Ginny, drawing her legs off the bench to clear space.

Draco casted a glance down the hall. The train rattled, raising a small thunder in the luggage racks. The ghostly print of small hands lingered on his skin.

“She’ll probably turn up in a minute,” said Harry, somewhat pointedly.

The weight of growing awkwardness tipped the scales. Draco closed the door behind him.

But she did not turn up in a minute, nor an hour, nor by the end of the ride, whereon the four of them disembarked to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters to a close-knit crowd that made finding anyone particular, not least a small witch of considerable talent, next to impossible. Mad-Eye and Arthur had come to collect those going to Number Twelve, and Eventually the Weasleys and Harry turned on him with mutual grimaces of sympathy and concern.

“Suppose we stop by the Grangers’ on the way home,” Ron said, “just to see if she made it — or pop over to a telly-phone and call.”

“Call whom? The answering machine?” said Draco coolly. The fact that Ron supposed himself to be on ‘stopping-by’ terms with the Grangers rankled him. “They’ll have driven here to get her.”

“Bully. Let’s find them, why don’t we, then?”

“Because we’ll miss our portkeys,” growled Mad-Eye, who wore a lavish black wig for a disguise. “An’ I’m not walking you lot through the streets of London so long as I fancy my freedom. I’d do better to make Runcorn my Secret-Keeper.”

“Fine,” interrupted Harry, who despite being under the Invisibility Cloak communicated a scowl quite well. “You can take Ginny and the twins, and Ron and I will use the Cloak—”

“Nice try, Potter.”

“How about Draco?” said Arthur helpfully. “You could stay, couldn’t you, lad? You’ll be here anyway, to make your connection to Wiltshire. Why don’t you go find the Grangers?”

“He doesn’t know what they look like,” Ron said, apparently without thinking, and then stopped. Ginny turned sharply to stare at Ron, flickering a glance at Draco.

Belatedly, Ron froze and glanced at Draco, too. There was a pause with teeth.

Draco slipped his hands in his pockets and held Ron’s gaze as neutrally as he felt capable, which was not very.

“No,” he said, “but I know what she does.”

Ron’s cheek twitched. He averted his eyes.

“I’ve only met them twice,” said Harry, apparently in response to nothing in particular. “For the record.”

“We can all recount our fond acquaintance with the Grangers later,” snapped Mad-Eye. “She’s a clever lass. She’ll turn up. Malfoy, good day. Weasleys, with your father. Potter, with me.”

His hand shot out and grabbed a handful of thin air — the air gave a high yelp — and he cut off through the crowd at top speed. The Weasleys followed him with varying reluctance, Ron lingering until Ginny stuck her head back through the platform wall and hauled him out by the sleeve.

Draco, whose train would not come for another hour, waited on the platform until the train was all but empty; but since no muggles remained on the platform by that time, the Grangers, if they had ever been there, seemed to have left; and so he boarded his connection, however unwillingly, with a dull weight in the pit of his stomach.

The entrance to Malfoy Manor was empty. Calls to his mother received no answer. The windows gazed back at him like a long line of gray eyes, fogged with frost.

He dropped his luggage in the foyer, went straight through to the gallery, and snapped the lock on his father’s broomstick collection.

The most expensive was a vintage Firebolt Imperator, which Lucius had anecdotally procured by calling in a favor with the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. It was worth three hundred thousand galleons by itself, and five with the factory seal on.

Draco stripped off the seal and hauled open a window.

Why would you kiss someone and then run away?

Possibility the first: she had undergone a spontaneous realization of having made a colossal mistake. She had, in remorse for this act, fled the scene of the act, hurled herself from the train, and died.

Possibility the second, adopting the same premise: having fled, she had discreetly exited the train in the usual way, and was now tucked away somewhere in muggle London, drafting an eloquent resignation from their friendship, Gryffindor House, and Hogwarts itself, never to be seen again.

Possibility the third: She was mad, and there was no point trying to understand her at all, because she was a cruel and lovely sprite sent from the aether as a personal envoy of misery and torment. This last seemed to be the strongest theoretical explanation.

When the Imperator accelerated, the jetstream felt like razing off a layer of skin.

Narcissa didn’t return for the first few days of the vacation. This was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it relieved him of the need to come up with an excuse for his foul mood. On the other hand, the reasons she could have for being absent did nothing to improve said mood, either.

He ordered Briselda to keep the Floo grates open and set the table for two at meals. He practiced with the dueling wands in the gallery, dismembering mannequins with an efficiency that bordered cruelty. He flew for hours through snowstorms that doused the grounds in white ice. He tried not to think about Hermione. That would have been easier if he couldn’t remember the feeling of her mouth like it was the only thing that had ever happened to him.

Why would you kiss someone and then run away? If you thought you’d made a mistake. If you didn’t want to have kissed them in the first place. If you’d detonated five years of friendship because you were careless, because you’d acted without thinking, and wanted to take it back as soon as you did. Because you knew the boy you’d kissed would want too much, because he bled things dry; because your heart was worthy of people like Viktor Krum, who could give themselves freely and selflessly, and who stepped willingly onto the sacrificial pyre, because the metal of their souls was cut from the same spiritual ore, and it was a finer alloy than his own.

Because the boy had known this, and kissed you anyway. For he had always drunk in all the attention as you could give him and still demanded more, because he was selfish, and not the kind of person you would want to be attached to, if you were a brilliant girl with a heart like an open door. Because he never met someone Because he loved like a sinkhole, which was to say, badly.

You ran away if everything was over, but you couldn’t say that, so you left them standing on the back of a train with the wind and the cold and the ghost of a kiss still warm on their lips.

After the first three starts of a letter to Hermione failed to yield anything tolerable, he began a different letter entirely.

_Dear Dr. & Dr. Granger, _

I apologize for the necessary impropriety of addressing you in print without a personal introduction to precede it. Please trust that under no circumstance but urgency would I consider it appropriate to take this liberty with persons of such esteem and of such close relation to someone I consider a dear friend.

I therefore take the liberty of introducing myself as Draco Lucius Malfoy, Lord Apparent of House Malfoy, Master Apparent of Malfoy Manor, and an inveterate companion of your daughter, Ms. Hermione Granger.

While one regrets deeply to demand favors on the heels of introductions, one would nevertheless appreciate confirmation that said daughter has safe passage to her dwelling, and resides with you in a reasonable state of health. While one does not consider oneself fretful, her departure from the castle occurred under such circumstances as to make such inquiries appropriate for those with an interest in her wellbeing.

One also would like to inquire as to the state of her arm, and attaches with this missive a small poultice of dittany, in the event that the answer is not favorable.

I wish you good tidings, and hope that you will be unhesitating in your solicitations of assistance from me, should it ever lie within my power to render it.

Yours sincerely,

Draco L. Malfoy

He attached both letter and package to Ulysses’s leg, and released him into a silver sky, feeling a foreboding commingled with irritation.

Ulysses came back by the end of the next day, carrying a letter that was written on fresh white paper instead of parchment.

Draco,

I don’t know what unearthly idiocy compelled you to write to my parents (!) instead of me, but thank you ever so much (!!) for doing so because now in addition to explaining why an owl flew into their window at half six I got a nice full day of trying to convince them my friend isn’t a real member of the British peerage, even though you go around calling yourself ‘lord’(!!!) and generally otherwise write like someone picked you up out of Middlemarch. And thanks also for leading them both to freak out and COMPLETELY overreact to an injury that I previously had made the executive personal (!!!!) decision not to tell them about, because (1) it is my business and (2) explaining the relative frequency and normalcy of injury in the Wizarding World to a pair of dentists was not a source of anticipation for my winter holiday!(!!!!!) Really, I can’t possibly thank you enough!

I have been instructed to inform you that I am safe, and to apologize for any distress. They also thank you profusely for the poultice, which they have insisted that I make use of, and so you may add the waste of a perfectly good bottle of dittany as another offspring of your letter.

If you felt like checking up, you might have at least tried writing me first, instead of doing what you did, which made my parents think I’d been ignoring your letters (which didn’t exist). If you don’t want me to to write to me that’s fine, and I certainly won’t demand that you should, but if you’re not going to write to me then you shouldn’t expect to hear anything about how I am. For your information I would have been perfectly happy to answer a letter from you under different circumstances and in fact would have welcomed one. At any rate we’ve been corresponding for years so I don’t have any idea why you’ve decided to stop now.

Sincerely,

Hermione Granger

Granger,

Three points.

Matters relating to your health are indeed primarily ‘your business,’ but it does not follow that they are not mine. That wound did need dittany, and while I rarely risk saying so, our Potions marks testify that I am, in fact, a better judge of that than you. Because neither I nor Potter nor Weasley(s) had any idea what became of you on the train, you will pardon me for writing directly to persons I could reasonably expect to answer, out of urgency. Any show of life from you would have been more than sufficient to forestall my inquiry. I would also have welcomed any letter from you, as I am sure you could have inferred. I did not ‘stop corresponding’ with you, nor will I, until fortune sees fit to remove my hands at the wrists.

In sum, you have behaved erratically, uncharacteristically, and illogically, and we were all much concerned about it. That I may have had special reasons for concern, concerning the circumstances of our departure, should be perfectly clear.

I have attached another volume of dittany. I request that you return the empty vial with your reply as proof of use.

Yours sincerely,

Draco

P.S. I am a member of the British peerage, just not the one they’re familiar with. And knowing your opinion of ‘Middlemarch,’ I should think the comparison a compliment.

Draco,

Eight points.

Whether or not my health is your business, my decision to share information about it with my parents is mine exclusively. My parents, as you may or may not be aware, are muggles, and are not very keen on their daughter continuing to attend a school where muggle-borns are looked on unfavorably, so keeping the details of my life at Hogwarts to a minimum will be essential if either of us want me to come back next term. You are beating me in Potions by exactly two points, both of which were scored as extra credit on an exam in which it was not clear extra credit would be available, which makes them suspect in my view since I could have written the same thing you did and earned the same points if I wasn’t trying to follow the rules. And even if we took your mark to be reflective of any technical superiority (which would be suspect in the first) it does not follow whatsoever that you are better at medical diagnostics, which is a distinct skill that has nothing to do with potioneering, and if anything has much more to do with anatomy than it does any sort of magic. Don’t be ridiculous. Also, you saw the injury for a minute at most, in a dark wood during heavy snow. Also, it is my arm. For your information, I spent the train ride with Cedric and Angelina, who were asking to be put in touch with Mad-Eye over the vacation. They wanted information about joining the Order. I was not behaving ‘erratically,’ ‘uncharacteristically,’ or ‘illogically,’ I was simply preoccupied. I am sorry that I worried you. I did not mean to do that. Nothing about you or your feelings is ‘perfectly clear.’ What do you mean by the ‘circumstances of our departure’? If you’re talking about the kiss, you might as well say so.

Anyway. Here’s the bottle you asked for. I did use it, though for the record, I think I would’ve done alright with aloe vera. You really are the fussiest person I know.

Write back soon, and preferably at a more appropriate time of day. My house is not large, and when Ulysses starts shrieking at my window, everyone can hear it.

Sincerely,

HJG

P.S. Re: kiss. I have a lot of thoughts about it, obviously, but the first thing to get out of the way is that I realize what a hypocrite you must think I am going on and on about being friends and then kissing you. You’re right, I am a hypocrite, and I’m sorry. I don’t have a good explanation except that I was caught up in things and wasn’t thinking properly. I suppose I just wanted to kiss you, so I did. I am happy to talk about it further at length when we see each other next.

P.P.S. Everything I said in the bathroom is still true and I do care for you very much, but my feelings about the subject haven’t changed and I am sorry if I gave the impression they had.

P.P.P.S. I don’t know what your Christmas plans are, but my parents are going skiing with my cousins in Switzerland, and I am staying with Harry and the Weasleys for the last week of the vac. Obviously you are welcome but I understand you may have plans with your mother. I would obviously like to see you if it suits you, but don’t feel under any obligation.

Granger,

I don’t know how many points this is going to be, so make yourself comfortable.

You are on record as having threatened to take me to a muggle hospital with or without my mother’s consent, if the necessity revealed itself, so you will permit my skepticism on your commitment to this principle. You have a charming way of framing your loss to me in Potions as if it somehow reflects a virtue of yours. It was a noble effort, but the fact remains: two points is two points. Apologies are accepted. You might also extend some to Ronald and Potter, whose concern was not less poignant for being less informed. I am not ‘fussy,’ and if I was, then one could still forgive the cauldron for taking offense when the pot calls it black. I had not received any such invitation to intrude on the Weasleys’ Christmas plans, but if you would like me to come, I will. Re: re. You say your feelings on the subject have not changed, but it seems from my vantage that they have at least changed enough to permit very different behavior than was previously established. You will forgive me for mistaking them, then, since I do not believe you ever expressed fully what it was you felt, or wanted, from me — a fact that I resent, since giving you what you want of me has become an increasing obsession. Any clarity would be an act of mercy. Relatedly, I believe my feelings are a great deal clearer than you permit, especially to you.

Nevertheless, you may have it in writing: My feelings on the subject also have not changed. They are what you must have surmised on our prefects patrol. If you wanted them to, you ought not to have kissed me. It was a terrible thing to do to a man you expect to be friends with, and I strictly recommend you not to do it to anyone else.

I think of you to the point of distraction, likely to ruin, and clearly to the point of bad behavior. I have thought of you in this way for longer than you can imagine, and if you object to me expressing it now, I apologize, but your hesitation in the matter makes me think you perhaps do not understand who you are talking to.

There are the facts of it; do with them what you will. If you are committed to sharing a platonic friendship, I will attempt one, though I would note that we have both thus far been unsuccessful in maintaining it.

I remain—

Yours sincerely,

Draco,

Sorry for the delay in replying. It took me a while to sort out how I ought to begin and I still don’t really know how. So. If this is disorderly, you might imagine why.

I’m not as good with words as you are, so if this doesn’t make sense, then I promise you’re not the only one who’s frustrated with me about it.

I wish what I wanted was simple. I feel like everything’s crept up on me without giving me any time to think, and I wake up feeling like I’m drowning under all the problems I have to solve to make it through the day. I hardly know what to say to you half the time because I can’t look at you without my brain getting tied up in all the things I want, most of which don’t fit together. I’ve been doing my best, which hasn’t been very good so far, as you pointed out, but I really have been trying. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was a bad idea, and I think about it a lot. I think about you, too. I think about things like your hair, and how your face bunches up when you’re cross, and your handwriting. You have very nice handwriting.

In my heart of hearts I think we both know I don’t want to be your friend. That’s the truth. It has been for a while, and I’ve never really known what to do about it.

But I still don’t. It’s all so messy. And I’m so scared of everything now. How do you manage it? The fear? Sometimes I worry I’ve forgotten what it felt like not to be afraid.

I’ll have more to say about everything when we see each other next. I don’t know if I’ll have a good answer for you by then, but I’m going to try to put my thoughts together.

I hate writing letters like this, really. I wish I could talk to you in person. It’s easier to think when I’m talking to you.

Hopefully I’ll see you at Christmas. Miss you terribly.

Yours,

HJG

P.S. You were right about the dittany. However, all other points re: potions remain unchanged.

Draco leaned back in his chair. He missed her, suddenly, like realizing a great hunger all at once; he wanted to be in the same room with her, listening to her fidget with the pages of a book she was reading, watching her bite her cheek in thought. He missed the way she smelled and the way she wrinkled her nose at him when she was exasperated with him, which was often, and the way that rooms felt when she was in them— safe and whole.

His finger drifted over the line in the letter where she’d written: I don’t want to be your friend, and then down to the line that was simply: Yours.

It tightened the same part of his chest that envy lived in, but in a warm, rich way — a strange sort of sting that soothed.

Later that day, a letter came from the Weasleys’ owl, a grossly overworked creature whose genealogy somewhere concerned a pigeon. It contained a scrawl of numbers and letters indistinct from someone beating their fist indiscriminately on a typewriter. At the bottom was the missive’s only legible line:

P.S. Key is 1991 bathroom dweller visually identical to d. malfoy.

He threw down the envelope and stormed off to fetch a quill.

It was a simple transposition cipher. The product was a short letter from Ron, peppered with what were either misspellings or errors in encryption.

Draco,

Good job with the code. Moody’s making us encrypt everything in/out of No. 12, so use code to write back. Don’t go nuts _. Hermione’s last took 2 hrs & had to ask Bill for help. Bloody mad she is. _

Anyway. Know you’ve probably got big holiday plans to eat caviar and throw rocks at peasants and all, but Mum wants me to invite you for Xmas. Told her you’d want to spend it w/ your mum but Sirius butted in and said to invite you anyway, which was freaky because Mum and Sirius agree on piss all. So there, you’re invited.

Come whenever. Plenty of room. I’m bored of kicking Harry’s arse at chess and yours is due a good walloping.

Hope you’re enjoying your castle.

Cheers,

Ron

He considered it.

He thought with uncomfortable reluctance, about Molly Weasley, who was already cooking to feed a house of twenty at least, and insisted nevertheless on an invitation for a boy she knew perfectly well wouldn’t go hungry. Molly who had six sons, seven counting Harry, which she obviously did. Molly who had made him a sweater, and baked him a cake when he made Prefect, and put him up in Ron’s bedroom for weeks while his own mother was off God knows where, doing God knows what.

Which wasn’t Narcissa’s fault. She was a soldier, no less than Alastor Moody. And she had a different part than Molly did to play.

The thought made him itch with a vague and childish guilt, but it didn’t stop him from writing back to accept.

He woke at half three in panic for no reason at all.

It was like hearing the whine of an alarm fastened to the underside of his skull. The hairs on his nape stood rigid, and the house resettled riotously on its foundations, and the queer, impalpable certainty that he was not alone. Someone else was in the house. He was certain of it. He had no idea where the certainty came from, but it was unimpeachable.

He lay in bed for a minute, trying to rationalize the feeling; meanwhile, the feeling itched on like insects climbing up his arms.

Finally, he rose, and took his wand with him when he left his bedroom.

Stepping outside, the sconces whiffed to life, licking the dark wood paneling with warm light. A door creaked at the end of the hall, inviting him towards the main stairwell. He followed it.

The main entrance remained locked and bolted, as were the doors to the veranda, and the viewing balconies. None of the secret passages appeared to have been used recently. Not a mote was out of place in the dining-room, the gallery, or anywhere else that a burglar might find interesting; snow coursed silently and dimly in the dark frames of the windows.

When he reached the library wing, he noticed the door to the study was cracked, and light fanned from the crevice in a yellow triangle on the hardwood. Footsteps echoed from within.

He lifted his wand, but then thought better of it. He reached for the door, and it moved without being touched, gliding silently and dreamily out of his way.

“What the devil is wrong with you?”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Narcissa said tiredly. “What happened to ‘good evening, Mother?’ Do the young people not greet each other nowadays?”

She wore traveling leathers, black from toe to fingertip, and the dark under-half of her hair spilled from its knot over her mantle. Snow christened her shoulders and the alpine roots of her hair.

“It’s not evening, it’s morning. And you tripped the wards at four o’clock to sneak around in the study. I woke up thinking we’d been robbed.”

“I’m delighted that you’re learning to read the wards, it’s a prodigious advancement. Have you been practicing your household magic?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Am I not allowed to indulge in my son’s success?”

“Don’t stall, either.”

“You’re no fun anymore, darling.”

“You could’ve come to wake me.”

She arrested him with a cryptic stare, and did not answer. Then she took off her mantle and draped it over the back of a chair.

“Would you like some tea?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m having some.”

In the kitchen, lamplight lapped in uneven tides over the Edwardian cabinetry. The wide wooden slab of the table was polished and bare. Narcissa lit the stove with a flick of her wand and Summoned a kettle from the copper rack in the ceiling. She took down a pair of teacups from the cabinet and settled them down, along with a box of loose-leaf darjeeling, first flush.

By the time the kettle came to boil, the room had warmed from the steam. He sat at the table and she settled the teapot in front of him, so that he could pour. She took hers with one lemon wedge, no cream, no sugar. He couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t known that.

He finished and dried the spoon with two taps. “Did you have to travel long?”

“Not as far as you did. That train ride from Scotland is beastly. Did you sleep?”

“This is insulting to both of us.”

“How’s that?” Her face revealed nothing.

“‘Do you know how many caves there are in Cornwall, Severus’?” he repeated.

“Must we?” she said. “It’s so late, my darling.”

“If you won’t tell me the truth, then we’ve nothing to say to each other.”

Her mouth twisted archly at some secret joke. “Adolescence is such a strange time,” she said. “All the zealous fire of a child’s yearning thrust clumsily at an adult’s desires.”

“Tell me what you are doing,” he said, “for Albus Dumbledore.”

Her fingers were long and thin, terminating in shiny white points. One tapped the shell of her teacup.

“There was a locket that once belonged to your Cousin Regulus,” she said, in a lower, clearer register. “After his disappearance, it went missing.”

The Dark Lord has split his soul among several vessels. A necklace, for Regulus.

He lowered his saucer to the table.

“Either he took it with him, or something… someone… took it from him. But Albus believes it was hidden. He says that before his death, Regulus was trying to find a certain cave in Cornwall.”

“…A cave?”

“Yes.”

“Is he serious?”

“That was my reaction. His theory, if you must know, is that Regulus never did wear the horcrux he was given, only a fake copy; he hid the real thing somewhere near Witherfell. And before he vanished, for some reason, he was trying to recover the original. Albus thinks — hopes, rather — that he might have succeeded.” She sipped her tea. “But of course he hasn’t any idea where Regulus might have stuck the dashed thing, so I’ve been appointed as a spelunker. It isn’t very exciting, but it also isn’t too dangerous, and I’ve learned my lesson about whinging to Severus, for my God, if you think you’ve ever seen a withering look—”

“What happened to him? Regulus?”

“He disappeared,” she said evenly. “If that answer disappoints you, be assured that you are in good company.”

“But—”

“There is no ‘story.’” Her nails drilled a quadrille on the side of her teacup. “It was not the kind of action to which explanations can be applied. It was not a tale with a beginning, middle, and end. It was a vanishing act.”

“Might he have run away?”

“No.”

Draco straightened with renewed interest. “I understand it would be out of character,” he said, “but if no one ever found a body—”

“No,” she said flatly. “I would believe it of anyone before Regulus. He was an odd little thing, and I confess I never understood him, but if he had one trait, it was duty. It wasn’t in his nature to seek pleasure. Nor to experience it, really; he was his mother’s son, and a droll boy to begin with, but all the joy went out of him, after… childhood.”

“How do you know he didn’t change?”

“Because he didn’t change,” said Narcissa, with a tired note of amusement. “None of us did. Blacks don’t, generally. We have strong natures; it is not our way to be reformed. Toujours pur, pour ainsi dire.”

“What about your sister?”

The rain slapped the windowpane. Reflected candlelight danced in Narcissa’s sunless eyes.

“Bellatrix,” she said, after a moment, “remains, I assure you, the same she ever was. Nothing has ever tamed her, and in my own judgment, she will go to her grave as the same girl she was at eleven.”

He cut short a reply that would have corrected her.

“Perhaps it wasn’t true of Regulus. You admitted he was unhappy.”

“He would be the last one to act on his unhappiness, if he felt it,” she interrupted. “Fealty was his virtue. To the family, to the name, and to the Dark Lord, in that order. Why not? He was heir to the greatest house that ever was, Master of Witherfell, the richest wizard in Britain, worshiped by his peers… and one bright morning in September, he walked out the door of Grimmauld Place, and he never came back.”

Her gaze slipped from his face into the middle distance.

“Your great aunt was undone by it,” she remarked. “He was her only son, by then, her only child… And after all that had been visited on her family, a decade of disgrace… not even a body to bury… It swallowed her. She died, too, soon thereafter.”

A faint, absentminded ‘by then’ was the only acknowledgement of Sirius’s existence.

“Was Bellatrix the heir thereafter?”

She nodded. He twirled his teaspoon restlessly.

“What was she like?” he said. “Bellatrix. Before.”

He didn’t know if he meant before she killed Father or before she was the heir or something else altogether — a nebulous before, invoked by Narcissa’s remark about the girl Bellatrix had been, a reference to a child he could not imagine coexisting with the woman he recognized now.

“Ask me a different question,” she said roughly, “please.”

Her tone sent him scrambling for a change of subject.

“There was a spell you used in Professor Dumbledore’s office, last year.”

Her haunting expression faded, and she cocked her head curiously.

“Do you remember? You performed it on Sibelius Nott. It made a bunch of lightning. An Electrocution Curse, or something like that.”

“You mean Electrosempra.”

“Yes. Did you invent it? Because Flitwick doesn’t know it.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s a quite cruel spell, and it’s not the kind of thing they’d teach you at Hogwarts.”

“It’s dark?”

“Not everything cruel is dark magic,” she said, cryptically enough. “And not all dark magic is cruel.”

He cocked his head in interest. Narcissa sighed, rubbing her temple.

“I will say this once,” she said. “I don’t much like the idea of you using it, and I doubt you will find it often useful. Heaven knows I try not to.”

“Fine, good, whatever. How do you do it?”

“Electrosempra is the incantation. It’s a conjuring spell. It draws the energy out of the air, it uses friction — don’t ask me details, I don’t remember. When it strikes a target, it moves like lightning. It travels downward.”

“Through conduits until it reaches ground.”

“Whatever they teach these days,” she said, waving lazily, and he recalled with discomfort that those were muggle words. “Naturally, you have to direct it where you want, which is the difficult part. Raw power doesn’t want to go where you tell it. The key is to be deliberate. You have to maintain perfect clarity of purpose. You must know what the spell is for.”

“Cruelty,” he supplied.

“Cruelty isn’t an end, it’s a means. Only a brute takes cruelty as an end unto itself. And you are not a brute, Draco.”

He scowled at her instructive tone. “I know that.”

“You think you do.” She drank the remainder of her tea with an elegant movement. In her dark robes, sitting straight with her legs crossed at the ankle, she could have been a portrait by Sargent.

He suddenly recognized her as she had been when he was young, as others must see her still: cold, beautiful, wealthy, above everyone’s notice. It was an impression so strong it felt like a glimpse of another life.

“We ought to go to bed,” she said. “Would you like some Dreamless Sleep?”

“I’d rather stay awake.”

“Suit yourself. You know where it is, if you change your mind.”

Her heels made a stately carillon on the floor. He remembered something and called after her.

“I’ve been invited to Christmas dinner with the Weasleys.”

The carillon stopped.

“That was… optimistic of them.”

“I said I would.”

A beat.

“I see.”

“I didn’t know when you were coming back.”

“It’s perfectly alright.”

“I would have stayed if I’d known you’d be here.”

“You mistake me for someone who is trying to stop you,” she said. “Enjoy yourself. Do you know how to get there? I’d Apparate you, but I’ve no idea where their flat is.”

“I’ll take the Floo.”

“Oh, they do have a Floo grate. Good for them.”

“Mother.”

“That was a joke. Will your friend be there?”

“Several of them.”

“I believe you know what I mean.”

He stood up, annoyed.

“You know her name.”

“So she will,” said Narcissa. She sounded both satisfied and yet unhappy, somehow.

“Perhaps. Is that a problem?”

“Certainly not, so long as she stays there.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Another little joke, darling. Laugh. It’s funny.”

She moved toward the door. It slammed in front of her. Its echo shuddered into a taut silence.

“I’m going to assume that was the draft,” she said.

“I don’t understand why you’re being like this.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’ve made my position clear on several occasions, despite which you’ve somehow failed to grasp it. Your beliefs are your business—”

“They’re not beliefs. They’re rules. It’s unlike you to forget the difference.”

“Whose rules? We’re the only ones here.”

The manor creaked on its foundations.

Narcissa straightened. Her silence was worse than a scream.

It occurred to him that he had never, not once, heard his mother make a sound of pain. At his father’s funeral, she had stood with head high and delivered a eulogy like a medical record.

Here lies my husband, Lucius Abraxas. He is survived by myself, Narcissa Alocasia, and our son, Draco Lucius. He was thirty-four years old.

“You have to accept her,” he found himself saying. “You must understand that this is not an argument that you can win.”

“I must? Oh, well, if I must,” she said mockingly. For a moment he hated her, with a searing stripe of hatred that left his hands tingling; then it was gone, replaced by a dull, burning resentment, and shame.

“She is — something upon which I will not compromise. What I feel for her is immutable.”

“Draco, there are fathomlessly few things in this world that are immutable. Your feelings at fifteen years old are not one of them.”

He realized abruptly: it didn’t matter. He had nothing left to hide.

You’re butchering your own happiness over the opinions of a corpse.

She deserved to have someone tell her.

“I am your only son.”

“Draco.”

He spoke over her. He had to. He knew how it went.

“I am your only heir,” he repeated, louder. “I am the last family you have.”

She whirled around, wild. “Have I wronged you?” she said wondrously. “Have I been cruel? Have I possibly earned this?”

“It’s the truth. The House of Black doesn’t exist anymore. The House of Malfoy barely does. You don’t have anyone left to obey or impress. What you have is me, and that’s all. So how can it possibly matter—”

“‘What can it matter?’ You say that to me, now, in this house?”

“—what your ancestors would think of me? They’re not here. I’m here. I’m alive.”

“As am I,” she cried, and he quailed at her tone, high and cold, shattering on the ceiling like broken crystal. “As am I! Black was my name first, it is my name still, and it is not yours! It will never be yours! Not to honor nor to desecrate — it is mine, and you have no right to invoke it against me.”

“Mother—”

“And I am alive,” she snarled. “I survived. I lived. I lived for them, I lived despite them, and now I live without them. But I did not die. And my name is Narcissa Black.”

Her chest rolled with the force of a great, ragged breath. Her echoes filled the hall with whispering applause.

“So do not,” she rasped, “tell me my house is dead.”

Watching her tremble, he reached for his courage, and found his scorn instead.

“I’m still your son,” he said.

“Always.”

“You said you would stand by me.”

“I did. I do.”

“But you won’t. Not on this. Because I’m not a Black, am I? You don’t respect me,” he said, raising his voice over her cry of complaint, “enough to bother with what I think — because that’s not as important to you as what they would have thought—”

“How many times must I tell you?None of this is about what I believe! The fact that you think it is, somehow, is — it is a luxury that has been bought for you in blood!”

“You’re wrong.”

“No one has ever cared what I believe,” she said incredulously. “It has never mattered. If I bent to you now, what do you think would happen? If I broke faith with my house, do you think anything would change? Do you think the filth and grit of the world would cast off at the slightest gesture of my hand? That muggles and their progeny would rise to the ranks of our equals once I lifted my heel? I am not the author of your suffering, Draco, nor anyone else’s.”

“I’m not demanding you to fix the world. You know perfectly well what I want from you, and it isn’t that.”

“I do not! I do not know, in fact. I live for you. I endure for you. I risk my life for you. What more do you ask of me?”

He was disgusted by her helplessness, and his.

“To be brave,” he said. “To be braver than this.”

She spun around, turning her back on him in a jerky movement.

“No,” she said feebly. “I cannot. I cannot bear it. I tried my best, but it will kill me, that promise — and you promised me—”

“Stop! Don’t mumble at the corner, don’t pretend you can’t hear me, I’m right here! Turn around and look at me!”

She did not turn around. What she did was say, calmly:

“Do you love her?”

The candles guttered. Wax melted in thick folds on the sconces. He recoiled in fury.

“What do you— what does that have to do with any of this?”

She lifted her chin, though it was trembling.

“Because I could bear the rest. I could bear all — I could bear anything, for you. But you made me a promise.”

“What? What promise?”

“You promised you would protect your father’s name. Our name. You swore to me—”

“That promise? A promise you took from an eight-year-old at his father’s funeral?”

“Yes! And I would have let you have her,” she cried, turning to him. He recoiled at the wildness of her stare: it was not the familiar wildness of an oncoming episode, but an intense, searing, terrifying lucidity. “Take her, keep her, have her as you liked, I never stopped you! You think you’re the first boy who ever tried to bend the rules? Do you think I was never young, do you think we were never — do you know how I have watched trespass upon trespass, and found it in myself to tolerate it? Do you know what riches of forgiveness I have offered you from the shadows, thanklessly, endlessly, while you — you, with your sneering, and your recklessness, and your ideology — you find the gall to call me heartless?”

“I never said—”

“Do you even know what my mother would have — I have held my tongue while you humiliated yourself!”

“Don’t you dare speak of her.” He was numb with fury. “You lack the right. You — you lack the fucking honor.”

“I have allowed you anything!” It was shrill, with a note of the child’s complaint. “I would forgive anything, and I would have forgiven it all, but — but you brought her here—”

“As was my choice to make.”

“It was an embarrassment, Draco!”

“To you,” he said coldly. “Not to me. And this is my house, not yours.”

She sagged to one side, and caught herself on the desk, as if he had ripped away one of the struts holding her up.

“To your father’s house, then,” she croaked. “To a place you inherited on the sole condition that you would maintain it as your forebears willed it. You brought her into it. And still, I could forgive that, if you tell me now — promise me — that you understand the limits of your position. That you will never — go somewhere I cannot follow.”

She wore it badly, begging. It was the only thing even she couldn’t make graceful.

“I really am sorry, you know,” he repeated, as confusion stirred her face. “You likely don’t believe it, but I am.”

She drew herself up to a height. He was still taller. That fact caused unexpected sadness.

“Let me be clear: I am asking you this for my sake. I am asking you, outright, as your mother and the woman who raised you, alone, in this very large house, for fifteen years: go no farther. Do not leave me here.”

“You don’t have to stay.”

“You would take yourself away from me, and it would — you will unmake me. If you do that. So promise me you will not go,” she breathed. “Or lie. Lie! If you have to. Lie to me. It won’t kill me. But the other will.”

He was silent. The room, like him, was silent. They became two silent people, in a silent house, in a silent, snow-covered world.

“Lie to me,” she said. “Please.”

He turned his head away. Her shoulders wilted.

“Get out,” she said.”

“Mother—”

“Go.”

The doors parted. He hadn’t touched them, and neither had she.

Finally, he did what she asked of him.

Everything was sepia and silent in the dawn: dusty curtains, snow-packed windows, parquet floors filmed in the bleak light of a midwinter morning. When he reached his rooms, the doors slammed behind him with a snap like a great pair of jaws.

His breath rasped loud in the preternatural stillness of his chambers. Ulysses bleated unhappily by the king-sized bed, with its foam of tangled sheets.

Draco stood in the window, his reflection gray against the dark snowfall. He thought of his dorm at Hogwarts, miles away, and of the leagues of silent, frozen ground between one barren home and another.

Hello, everyone. I don’t know how to begin. I suppose I’ll start by saying that I’m sorry this isn’t a Friday, but I wanted to put it out as soon as I had finished editing rather than making you wait, since I’d done so much of that already.

And thank you so, so much for that waiting. I’ve said it before, and I’m sorry to say I’ll likely say it again, but your comments are the reason this fic continues to exist. The amount of grace and kindness you show me makes me strive to deserve it. Even when I wasn’t active, I would come read and re-read comments that you left on this fic as a source of comfort on rough days, and it would bring me back to life a little bit. You’ve brought me through, and I don’t take a single bit of it for granted. You’re the heart of this story. It owes everything to you.

Anyway. Enough of the soppy stuff. The next chapter will be called “The Ghosts of Grimmauld Place,” and it will go up… possibly soon? I will try to set up an update schedule as soon as I’m reasonably settled and no longer on the move. As soon as I’m able to make promises to you, I will. I care for you terribly much. I hope that a stranger on the street today smiles at you. I wish I could.

—GT