Chapter 74: The Pureblood Sisters
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
When he woke it was half six, but the fetters of sleep, once cast off, vanished irrecoverably, and he sat on the edge of his bed, watching the grounds. The frosty trees were like points of green agate, and the fields were smooth and silver with veins of blue heather; the sun, a heatless red dot; and the ice, dark as iron, on the face of the lake. It was March in Scotland.
Looking out at it he was eleven and fifteen at once, and twelve and fourteen and thirteen, too, rising to greet any one of a thousand mornings, on any one of a thousand days. He was fifteen, and a prefect, at a school under the command of the Ministry’s Special Inquisitor; and all that notwithstanding, somewhere in the same tower was a girl who had made him a promise.
Holding that information, in the midst of everything else, felt like cradling a candle in the middle of a storm. But then, there it was, like a bowl of something simmering and precarious balanced somewhere around his sternum, every moment risking a spill. By candlelight, he knotted a red tie in a Windsor and pinned the prefect’s badge to his lapel. He slipped his ring onto the fifth finger of his left hand, and watched the light dapple on the black garnet, the double-headed snake, the ornate M. It occurred to him for the first time that it might be odd for him to wear it; it meant nothing to anyone in Gryffindor, besides being a bit of nice jewelry that Malfoy liked to wear; and the only people at Hogwarts whom it communicated anything to were people he otherwise had no intention of communicating with.
And what did it say, really, that anyone didn’t already know? It asserted that he was Lucius Malfoy’s son. At some point, it had asserted that he was proud of that fact. What did it say now? That it was possible, perhaps, to be himself and also be Malfoy. That the rot of ages did not descend inexorably from one generation to another. That he could be himself, whole, and free of it. That he was not, in fact, a contradiction in terms
Ron, shuffling past him to the bathroom, grunted and gave him a short nod of greeting. Draco nodded back in silence. The simmering vessel inside him gave a jolt.
In the common room, Hermione was curled up reading in a nook by the window. The diamond grate of Tudor windows sieved the light coming in, and her face was a quilt of shadows.
It was so early that the room was empty. He leaned against the stairwell, watching her. She wet her finger to turn a page, then smiled at something she’d read. The self-contained little expression of someone doing something she loved. The wrinkle of her nose when something confused her. The snort of derision when she read something insufficiently researched.
The floorboards creaked to announce him when he joined her. She drew her knees up to make room for him in the nook and closed the book, folding it against her chest.
“Hello,” she said, like it was a question.
“Hello.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Worst of my life,” he said, and she laughed, relieved. She shifted her knees off the sill to move closer, and her leg brushed his knee.
“I was hearing birds when I fell asleep.”
“Terrible waste. Could have stayed in the Room, if we were both awake anyway.”
Her blush flared; she glanced around the common room. He nudged her knee. “Easy. No one’s here.”
“They could hear on the stairs.”
“Who? Lavender? She’d get us a cake.”
She blushed harder and elbowed him. He smiled indolently and leaned back against the window. “Harry,” she whispered pointedly. “And—”
“Ronald. Yes, I remember. But I told you, he already suspects. Both of them do.”
“There’s a difference between suspecting, and… seeing it. You agreed we weren’t going to tell anyone for a bit.”
“I agreed to be discreet. If someone asks me, I don’t intend to lie.”
She rolled her eyes amusedly. “Yeah, but no one’s going to ask you.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because they’re afraid of getting murdered. Do you know how you come across? How many personal questions are you asked on a weekly basis? Monthly, even?”
“Thousands.”
“Mine exempted.”
He considered. “I think Longbottom asked me my favorite color, once.”
She snickered. He caught her chin in his hand and drew her in to kiss, and she went soft against him for a moment that was altogether too short. Her hand found his tie, pulling him in absently. But she broke off with a frustrated hitch of breath.
“Common room.”
He sighed irately and sat back. “Ronald and Potter aren’t blind. We live in each other’s pockets. How long have you ever kept a secret from them?”
“Long enough,” she said stubbornly. “I will tell them. I just want… privacy. For a bit. Before everyone makes a thing of it. And you know they’ll make a thing of it. The whole house. And then the school, too. You being who you are. And Harry being Harry, and us being close to him, and… I keep thinking about that Skeeter article from fourth year. Sometimes girls still bring it up to me, you know.” Her fingers picked at a cuticle. “And. Not that it matters, really, but. I’ve never done this before.”
He reached out and brushed her hair away from her face, making her look at him. It seemed like such a ridiculous, unthinkable thing that he should be able to do that. That she should let him do that, and look at him with such acceptance, even satisfaction, when he did.
“It’s not possible for you to fail at this,” he said. “It’s you and me. We’re the only ones that matter.”
She swallowed. Her eyes were dark and uncertain.
“It’s you and me,” she repeated. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
Then she smiled, and even hesitant, it erased the common room and castle beyond in its corona. Being alone with her was like having a country to themselves.
He would have kissed her again, but the stairs creaked, and Hermione sat upright to put distance between them.
Neville came down, balancing awkwardly under the weight of heavy bags and a large cauldron. “Oh! Hullo,” he said. “Either of you got the t-time? Curfew’s lifted, hasn’t it?”
“It will in five minutes,” said Hermione, checking her watch. “Why? Where are you going?”
“The greenhouses. Sprout lets me brew p-p-potions in the back, if I’m careful not to make a m-mess.”
“The Potions homework this week is an essay, Nev.”
“I know,” he said hesitantly, glancing at Draco. “But M-Malfoy’s f-forcing me to sit the O.W.L.”
“…What?”
Draco examined his cuffs. “If you’d rather give up on being an Herbologist, it’s nothing to me,” he drawled. “It isn’t my future.”
“Okay, b-b-but, you said I actually wasn’t allowed to d-do that, though—”
“Are you helping him?” she said suspiciously.
“No.”
“Yes,” said Neville, traitorously.
“Please. I’m taking an hour a week to yell at him, is what I’m doing.”
“I think that’s helping,” said Hermione. She was staring at him so radiantly you’d think he had the cure to all illnesses in the palm of his hand. It made the simmering cup in his chest thrash and spill. Discretion would do precious little for either of them if she kept looking at him like that, Neville be damned.
He flushed and folded his arms. “Well,” he said tartly, “you would.”
With O.W.L.s perched on the horizon in May, the collective nose dipped to the grindstone, and pushed. The moments not consumed by classes, meals, or a piffling quantum of sleep found them ensconced in by a fortress of textbooks. Hermione had checked out half the library and put the other half on reserve. Harry and Ron glued their faces to their workbooks as if proximity would make the information move faster. Long after others went to bed, Hermione would find a table and crack her books again.
Cassius Warrington continued to rove around the castle grounds, often seen in Theo’s wake, if not Umbridge’s. At night, Theo’s name floated alone with Myrtle’s on the second-floor bathroom, but when they returned to follow him, they found the door warded and cloaked in Muffling Charms.
“What do you think happened to Myrtle?” Hermione said absently. The low burble of the Great Hall shielded their conversation from prying ears: the four of them were working through a dinner of shepherd’s pie and a hearty gravy, with roast chips stacked high in silver bowls.
Harry tore his attention away from the high table, where Umbridge was explaining something to a frowning McGonagall. “Moaning Myrtle?” he said. “You mean the ghost?”
“No, my great aunt. She’s ill of late. Yes, Harry, the ghost!”
“Jeez. Okay,” he muttered. “Didn’t realize you were on a first name basis.”
“This is the Theodore Nott thing, right?” said Ron evenly, assembling a forkful of pie. “You think he’s after some kind of information?”
“Yes. And I think he thinks Myrtle has it. But what does she know? She died in 1943. She’s been here ever since.”
“Maybe she witnessed something.” He popped the fork in his mouth.
“What, in the bathroom?”
“Yeah, in the bathroom,” he retorted. “We used it in third year. Great place to work without being noticed. Fifty-odd years, we’re probably not the first ones to think of it.”
“But she said she didn’t remember.”
“Maybe she’d forgotten,” said Draco. Ron jerked his chin at him and nodded.
Hermione hummed to acknowledge it, but her fingers drilled on the table. “I suppose… I don’t know. I really think it’s something to do with her death.”
“Why would he care?” Harry muttered. “He’s not the type to get choked up, is he, if she fell and broke her neck—”
“That’s the thing! I don’t think she did break her neck,” she broke in passionately, leaning forward. “If she died in a normal accident, why wouldn’t the book say so? And why doesn’t she look injured? The Bloody Baron and Nearly Headless Nick both look as they did when they died, blood and all, but Myrtle seems perfectly fine. What kind of ‘accident’ doesn’t leave a mark? What kind of death doesn’t leave a mark?”
Ron grimaced. He looked at Draco, who pursed his lips and laid down his fork.
“What?” she demanded. “Don’t do that, don’t just stare at each other like you’re afraid to—”
“The Killing Curse,” said Harry.
Ron winced. Harry glanced at him, then at Draco, and added in a flat tone: “Famously.”
“That’s… not an accident,” said Hermione, after a moment.
“No. But you don’t think it’s an accident, anyway.” He shrugged and reached for his pumpkin juice.
“I … think… it’s an open question. Your… theory… would suggest someone killed her.”
“Yeah, it would,” he agreed.
“And then covered it up.”
“Yep.”
“Be serious, mate,” said Ron. “Students can’t do Unforgivables.”
“Pansy Parkinson used blood magic to perform a permanently incapacitating petrification curse at twelve,” said Draco.
“One: not an Unforgivable. Two: a teacher taught her to do that, yeah? She didn’t come up with it on her own.”
“I didn’t say a student did it,” said Harry.
Draco traded a glance with Ron and Hermione.
“Are you suggesting a teacher killed a student?” Hermione said delicately.
Harry shrugged again. “Almost happened to me in first year.”
Hermione began to reply, but they were interrupted by a trumpet of throat-clearing. Draco turned around. Alfie Chrissenpoffer had presented himself, his spine straighter than a sword.
“Good evening! Malfoy! Sir!”
“He’s only a prefect, Alfie, you don’t have to call him ‘sir,’” said Hermione.
“In fact, please don’t,” said Ron.
“Belay that. ‘Sir’ is fine,” said Draco. “We reserve ‘lord’ for formal occasions. What’s the matter?”
“I’ve a letter! From Professor Dumbledore! Sir!”
Satisfied at having fulfilled his duty, the child departed with a bow.
The letter was written in an elegant hand.
The headmaster’s office is home to some jonquils that would be beautified by the addition of jasmine.
There will be no need for haberleas today.
There will be no talk of carnations.
“I’m going to the headmaster’s office,” he said. He passed the note to Hermione. “Occlumency lesson. Potter, no need to come.”
Harry, relieved, made no effort to question it; but Hermione said, “How can you tell?”
“Carnations are insults. ‘Haberlea’ means Potter. You can infer the rest.”
“She has a name for me?” said Harry.
“She’s comprehensive.”
“Do I have one?” said Hermione.
“You do.”
“What is it?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Draco!”
“See you in the common room, Granger. Gentlemen.”
Her indignant noise turned several heads, which he enjoyed more than he should have, walking out.
The headmaster’s office was dark when he arrived. Lightning flickered from the domed skylight overhead, sending occasional bolts searing through the gloom.
His mother sat in a chair by the fireplace, her profile traced in firelight. Her thumb spun the ring on her right fourth finger in endless rounds about its berth.
“Draco,” she said.
They hadn’t spoken since December. Not one word, neither pardon nor reprimand, had disturbed their silence.
“Mother.” He shut the door. She watched him shuck his robe and fold it over the coatrack, then roll up his sleeves.
Before that, she’d begged him for a promise. Then she’d begged him for a lie.
She rose and stood against the fire, veiled with red glow.
“Why isn’t Potter here? He could use the instruction.”
“I wanted the privacy to speak plainly,” she said. “This will be the last lesson for some time.”
“What? Why?”
“Because your headmaster is sending me somewhere that will take me considerable time to return from.”
“Are you leaving the country?”
“No. I would prefer that considerably.”
“Where, then?”
“Witherfell.”
The name stung him with fear.
“You can’t.”
“‘Shouldn’t’ is what you mean. Precision in everything, my dear.”
“The place is cursed.”
“Curses require casters. They don’t come from Merlin, Draco. You’re old enough to know that.”
“It’s haunted.”
“You think the Manor isn’t it?”
“Why haven’t you been back, then?” he snapped. “To Witherfell. If it’s safe.”
Narcissa lifted her chin coldly. “Because I cannot bear it,” she said. “Although lately, people have found all sorts of ways to test what I can and cannot bear.”
With an indifferent lift of her shoulder, she slid the knife between his ribs. It left him fairly breathless.
“And I didn’t say it was safe,” she remarked, turning away.
“So you admit it’s dangerous.” He swallowed around an edge of anger. “What you’re doing.”
She drew her wand and lifted it, examining the silver crossguard, the angled pommel. “What?” she said softly. “You think the only one allowed to endanger my life is you?”
Point, set, match, a knockout in a single blow, and he came off the piste with his head spinning. He’d be surprised if there wasn’t blood splattered on the floor behind his chest; that was how it felt.
“I never wanted,” he said, in a small voice that came from a body not his own, “for it to be like this. I would have done anything — anything I could have done—”
“Except disobey them.”
He curled his lip. “I’m not following their orders. This is about right and wrong.”
“Two things you understand exhaustively, of course, at fifteen.”
“Fine. Fine! Fine. If you think I’m wrong, explain it,” he snapped. “Make your case. Tell me why blood matters. Explain why perfectly magical children aren’t the same as any other magical child. Point to the facts. Can you? Or do you admit you don’t honestly believe it, because it’s ridiculous, only you never questioned what your parents told you, so you resent that I did—”
“You never took my advice,” she said bitterly. “You never thought I could counsel you in politics. Nor in war. I was too frivolous, I suppose, or too mad. Would you have obeyed your father? I sometimes wonder.”
“I’m sick of you fantasizing about the son Lucius Malfoy raised.”
She broke off. His voice rattled the frames on the wall.
“You didn’t get him,” he spat. The intensity of his anger numbed him, made him almost calm. “You got me. And I apologize for whatever pain it’s caused you, but for better or worse, you have only ever had me. The father of your child is dead. You’ve had seven years to come to terms with it. And I find it ghoulish,” he said, raising his voice, “that you still try to resurrect him every time you want me to heel—”
“Because you respected his memory more than me,” she cried furiously. “You wrote me off. You thought I was mad! You ask me to explain myself now? Now, when your mind’s made up? When did you ever seek my counsel except after it was too late?”
“I told you everything. What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play the fool,” she snapped. “It was years before you admitted the extent of your friendship with Potter. Or the muggle-born.”
“If you don’t use her name, we’re finished talking.”
It should have been against the law to see one’s mother so vulnerable to pain. It should have been a death sentence to cause it on purpose.
“Granger,” she said tightly. “Your friendship with the inexorable Miss Granger.”
“I’ve always done the best I can to please you.” He was carefully deadpan. “I’ve tried to honor the name of Malfoy. If you disagree, that’s your right. But it isn’t your name. And until someone pries this ring from my corpse—”
“Draco!”
“—then it remains my name. Mine to waste, mine to save, mine to kill,” he said savagely. “My father gave me that right when I was eight years old, and if he regrets it now, he can come and fucking take it back.”
Narcissa made a noise of anguish and swept away, leaning on the mantelpiece. Black lace fanned and shrank like a raven’s tail.
Time passed. Thunder marked its passage on the roof overhead.
“He loved you,” she said. “Before you were ever born, he loved you. He wanted you so badly.”
She must have expected this to move him, but it didn’t. Nothing in him recoiled, for there was no pride to injure — only the aching cavity of love, a relationship that had never been. A man he could count the number of times he had touched.
“Prepare yourself,” she rasped. He had only a moment to grasp what she meant before she raised her wand. “Legilimens.”
They dropped through the waters of his memory like a pair of wrestling birds in free-fall.
The courtyard under the clock tower, smelling of blood and wet stone. Two boys wrestling by the lake on a cloudy day. St. Mungo’s Hospital, bitter bleach, linoleum, jazzy horns on a scratchy radio. The gnarled door of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. His mind’s eye glided in hungrily, narrowing to the handle, which turned on their approach. Voices murmured behind it: Mad-Eye. Arthur. Hermione.
Panic flared. He tore them away, and flung them into the past.
A horse patronus, Ginny’s, galloping past in a blur of silver. Seamus Finnigan, wrenching his hand up with a victory roar. Cheering, applause. Closing the door to Umbridge’s office. Hermione’s hand cradled in his own, her blood running through his fingers—
Deeper, faster, he tore them down.
Lavender Brown, catching his salute like a kiss. Katie Bell flipping him a pass behind her back. Percy Weasley slumped on the Atrium floor. Peacocks and lemonade. Salt, sweetness. Brown curls ribboning on the breeze, a linen shirt, thin and translucent—
He shoved his hands desperately into the earth, and threw up darkness.
Viktor Krum’s last grin. Bone-white masks in a hedge maze. Cigarette smoke stinging his lungs outside the Shrieking Shack. Four children bellowing at each other in a dark common room. A golden dress beside a red mountain of a man in a fur ruff, her hand in his, drawing her further and further away from Draco, while some part of him was drawn helplessly, miserably, into looking.
Because a waltz was playing, she was dancing with Viktor Krum in an enchanted ballroom, the loveliest thing in a castle of enchanted objects, glowing with light from without and within: of Hermione Granger and the man she might have loved, if she’d had the chance. And Viktor Krum was holding her carefully, clumsily, with the awestruck tenderness of someone who knew what he had in his hands; for he had already loved her, had died loving her, naturally, as anyone who ever loved her would.
On her face was the smile for which he would live forever in envy of a dead boy. He nauseated himself.
He drove deep into the pits of himself for something worse. It came eagerly to him.
Dementors converging on a moonlit lake. Hermione sprawled unconscious on the beach, her hair dark as spilled blood on white stone. No: not stone. Hospital bedsheets. Features frozen in an endless gasp of fear. Brave, bold, terrible little thirteen-year-old Hermione Granger, shouting at him, and the worst word he’d ever said sliding out between his teeth. The feeling of oil where a soul should be. A yearning to wrestle back through the past and catch himself by the throat, close his fist.
He was the first person who’d ever called her mudblood. On the train to Hogwarts. Before Sorting, before Gryffindor, before Draco-and-Hermione or anything that mattered. She hadn’t known what the word meant before he taught it to her.
To close one’s fist and hold, and hold, and hold. To choke out the breath that did the harm, to annihilate the past, to black it out, unmake, unhurt, unbreak. To soar into the cloudless sky, and forget the ground beneath him. To remember oneself only as their protector, and not the thing they had to tame to survive.
His mother’s mind writhed in distress. He felt triumphant. She didn’t like it. Well, he didn’t like it, either. Let her see what he thought of the boy she raised.
The quidditch pitch, mud-slicked and raining, the day he broke his arm. The Whomping Willow. The girls’ bathroom.
An owl patronus, its face a heart-shaped thing with dark, curious eyes.
Hello. I’m Hermione Granger. Is anyone sitting here?
Said breathlessly, like she’d run her whole life just to make that train, and she got there as soon as she could.
His mother strained against his grasp. He pinned her viciously to the floor.
If you’d rather not be disturbed that’s fine. I just want somewhere to sit and read my book.
There was a strident pulse of displeasure from his mother. Her mind blazed in the hopeless protest of watching an irrevocable, fatalistic mistake.
And it wounded him. And it made him furious.
He hauled them back into the gauzy darkness between memories. His mind went clear and flat as a piece of obsidian. He could feel her scrabbling for a hold, throwing sensations at him — she tried Hermione’s face, her voice, a shared memory at King’s Cross — but none of them caught. He drifted above them. He let them slide over and through him without interest. They were in his mind. It was his kingdom.
The pressure diminished. He could feel ripples of her thoughts, like vibrations of sound without the sound itself: her agitation, her frustration, her cunning.
They stilled, and a single spike of intention flared in the distance. She threw herself against him, her mind rushing up against his like a clash of tides.
Her destination: a funeral. Midsummer in Wiltshire. Mourners crowding a fresh tombstone. An eight-year-old boy making a promise to his mother.
Fury burned the bottom of his stomach. He shattered the memory, pitching them into freefall, and summoned the face of Andromeda Black.
Her mind became a detonating object. It became a caged animal. It became wild.
He trapped her there, locking them both in with clamps like teeth, driving points into his skull: Andromeda’s elfin chin, her thick black braid, a face feathered with the same beginnings of age that lurked in Narcissa’s features. And next to her, a twenty-something daughter, styled in the image of Bellatrix Lestrange.
His mother’s sisters gazed out at him from an endless hallway of black tile, a dyad of unrecognition and horror.
Pain ripped through his thoughts like an ax cleaving the plate of his skull.
Thoughts dissolved. So did feeling. There was nothing but void and pain.
Something dropped beneath his feet. He was sailing again, but through a different space, this one was smoother, emptier, more cavernous. Nothing guided him; his mother didn’t seem to be pushing anywhere at all.
They landed with a jolt that shook his skull.
Sunlight seared his eyes and made him blink black spots from vision, clearing gradually into the scene: a garden party. A flock of wizards in white dresses and white suits drifted like swans over a vast and luscious green, which started at the foot of a black reflection pool and shot into the blue distance, narrowing under the encroachment of hedges and elm trees and marble statues, vaulting furrows of white rosebushes, looping fountains that perfumed the air with silver spray, and finally shattering into ivy against the face of a vast stone hall, twice the Manor’s size at least, with turrets crowned in rust-blue copper, and fanged spires slitting a cloudless sky. The white crests of the party’s tents dotted the lawn like the sails of great slow-moving barges from which wizards swum out, on occasion, to fish a cocktail from a floating tray, or board another vessel with a spray of laughter, and disappear.
“Where is she?”
Draco tried to turn, but his head wouldn’t move.
“How should I know?” said a small, waspish voice. “Cissy and I have been here all afternoon.”
His head turned without his will, and he found himself perched on a sedan chair in the shade of a tent. Wind stirred the tent and the linen chairs and the tablecloth hangings, so the only still objects seemed to be himself, and the girl next to him, and the pair of women whose shadow loomed over himself and the girl.
The girl sat haughtily upright, as if her spine refused to bend, and her striking black brows drove an intractable ridge into her face — a dour impression not helped by her wide mouth, which she screwed into a ferocious pout. A single black plait knifed open the white back of her party dress, but dozens of curls had frayed out around her face; a silk wand-purse dangling from her wrist, above the cuff of a white lace glove, marked her as at least eleven.
“Because she’s your sister,” said the first woman, a narrow-faced witch with pale hair piled high on her head.
“I’m aware of that. You told me to stay here.”
“Then you shouldn’t have let her leave.”
“Fine! Next time she wants to use the loo, I’ll tell her to sit there and soil herself like a gentlewoman.”
“Bella!”
“Don’t be crude,” said the other woman coldly. Her face had once hung from the stairwell of Grimmauld Place. “And don’t backtalk to your mother. It doesn’t matter where she went. Go fetch the girl and show her to the Greengrasses’ tent; they’ve brought their younger boy to introduce him.”
“But—”
“Bellatrix.”
“But she doesn’t want to meet a stupid boy!”
“And I care almost as little for her opinion as I do for yours. Go.”
Neither Druella nor Walburga waited for the girl’s answer. They retreated with a springing, elegant step across the field, white skirts flickering behind them.
“Fine,” muttered the girl who would become Bellatrix Lestrange. “Yes, milady. Terribly sorry, milady.”
She hauled herself up and stomped over to his — Narcissa’s — chair. “Come on,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Up with you, fatty. Enough sitting.”
“Am I coming?” said a high, soft voice. Narcissa allowed herself to be lifted, and her body pulled free from Draco’s in a dizzying moment of detachment: now he seemed to be floating weightlessly, like a tethered ghost, behind the tiny girl that was his mother. She was a petite and dreamy-looking child with long cornsilk hair tied in a blue bow.
“You don’t have to. You can always run back to Mummy and Aunt Wally.”
“Oh, no. I want to stay with you.”
Bellatrix grinned. “Good,” she said, “because I do know where Andy is. I lied.”
She twined their fingers together and tugged. They set off running over the lawns, rousing a flock of silver pixies that rose chittering from the bullrushes; they dodged a jewel-colored lyrebird with a razored beak, and waved at the koi-red scales of nixies darting alongside them in the wading pools. They dodged between Attic columns of tiered white cakes, ducked through a hedge full of gnomes that spluttered and squawked at Bellatrix when she kicked one out of her way; they sped giddily across a fresh-mown lawn whose dark and light squares alternated when a foot touched them, and tore through a game of bowls on a plain of white sand, the balls of which sprouted legs and scrambled around frantically whenever they were struck. Bellatrix snatched one up and pitched it far from the court, prompting the strangled cry of a tall wizard with antlers growing from his top hat; then, laughing, she dragged Narcissa away.
They ran past the music tent where four elven violinists trilled Vivaldi, and ignored the wizards in silk and jewels whose greetings spilled from every tent they passed; ignored the fond choruses — “Hello, Bella!” and “Attagirl, Bella!” and “Where are you off to, Bella?” — of familiar faces; they threw jubilant waves at a pair of dark-haired boys in white suits, a toddler and a boy no older than four, squabbling over a toy broomstick.
They escaped the pavilions at last and came along a rugged stone wall that circuited the lawn, and scrambled over it in a place where the stones had crumbled away; then plunged into a glade of oaks and sycamores, perfumed by the dark scent of wet earth.
The sights and sounds of the party faded behind them. A song drifted from the trees ahead. It was a girl’s voice.
Bellatrix slowed and cocked her head to the wind, gauging the direction of the melody. Her eyes narrowed. Then she hurtled into the trees, hauling Narcissa along by the hand.
My heart is pierced by Cupid
I disdain all glittering gold
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold.
“Andy?” Narcissa cried. “Andy, where did you go?”
“Do shut up. I can’t hear.”
His hair it hangs in ringlets, his eyes as black as coal
My happiness attend him wherever he may go!
“This way,” said Bellatrix.
They stepped into the clearing of a giant sycamore tree. There was a wooden bench beneath it, gnarled with age, and a set of muddy footprints traced from its seat, to its back, to the pale sycamore trunk, and disappeared into its branches. The singing was quite clear now.
From Tower Hill to Blackwall, I’ll wander, weep and moan
All for my jolly sailor, until he sails home!
Bellatrix led them to the base of the tree and craned her neck.
“Hello, Princess,” she called.
“Hullo, Boss!”
Andromeda peered down from her nest among the branches. Her muddied slippers swung free beneath her, and her white skirt bloomed gauzily over her chemise. Her curls were wild as black wool, half-pinned by a white ribbon, half abandoned to a frizzy helmet at her shoulders, and dirt caked her fingernails. She bared her teeth in a grin.
“Am I in trouble? Have they noticed I’m gone? Am I for a spanking?”
“Worse. Mummy’s sent for you,” Bellatrix called back. “They want to pawn you off on the Greengrass boy.”
“Ooh. Is he handsome?”
“Gross. He’s a boy.”
“He can still be handsome.”
“He looks like a frog shagged a ghost,” said Bellatrix, “and both were new money. If he speaks to you I’ll make him wish he was dead. Come down anyway, I want to play It.”
“I shan’t,” said Andromeda bravely. “It’s boring. Plus you always win ’cause you’re bigger. Can we play a story instead?”
“Fine. But we have to do the Warlock’s Hairy Heart, and I get to be the warlock, otherwise I won’t play.”
“You always get to be the warlock!”
“I don’t like Warlock,” whined Narcissa. “I’m always the servant, and I never get any lines—”
“Because you forget them!”
“You do forget them, Cissy.”
“—and it’s a sad story anyway! I hate sad stories. I want to do Three Brothers.”
Andromeda rolled her eyes. “Nobody cares. Bella, we can do Warlock, but you can’t hit me in the death scenes.”
“It’s called realism, numpty.”
“It’s called ‘I’ll tell Daddy.’ Numpty.”
They glowered through a silent contest of wills.
“I still want to play Three Brothers,” said Narcissa, with sad fatalism.
“Deal,” Bellatrix told Andromeda. “Let’s use the Mausoleum. They won’t find us there.”
“Deal!” Andromeda hopped up on the branch and began walking its length, arms extended for balance. “Although I’m sad to leave this tree. I do love it. I think me and this tree have a common spirit, like forest nymphs… In my next life I should like to be a nymph. In fact, we should all be nymphs, and we can be like those old trees that grow together in the deep heart of the forest.”
“Please. You’d go running inside as soon as it rained,” said Bellatrix. “And then we’d be stuck out here without you, a pair of dumb ugly trees. Silly idea.” She sniffed. “We ought to be dragons, instead.”
“I think you’d both make marvelous dragons,” ventured Narcissa.
“Yeah? You wouldn’t.” Bellatrix pinched Narcissa’s nose, and she squealed. “You’d pick fights with all the big ones, and I’d have to come kill them for you. I’d be the most tired, banged-up dragon you’d ever seen.”
“Would not!”
“Would so.”
“I wouldn’t let them bang you up. I’d fight them off.”
“Oh, yeah? What if they did this?”
Narcissa screamed in delight and dodged Bellatrix’s attempt to tickle her.
“What kind of tree do you think you’d be?” Andromeda called dreamily, ignoring their scuffle. “I’ll be a silver birch. Cissy, you’re prettiest, so you’d be a big lovely willow; and Bella, you’re oldest, so you’re an elder, of course!”
She hopped to another branch, which creaked under her weight. Bark splintered.
“Careful, Andy,” cried Narcissa.
“Don’t be a baby, baby!” She bounced up and down. “See? The tree loves me. She wouldn’t—”
But Narcissa had been right: the branch groaned and snapped. Andromeda shrieked and tumbled down through the air.
Bellatrix thrust out her hand.
Andromeda never made it to the ground. Like the fingers of a great hand, the branches swooped to catch her, and enclosed her in a cradle of wood. The whole great bulk of the tree drooped gracefully until its uppermost branches swept the ground, and ladled the girl gently onto the earth.
When it was done, the tree rolled over beside her and flopped down lifelessly in the dirt. Its trunk was splintered open.
Bellatrix dropped her hand with a gasp. Sweat beaded her temples. Narcissa whimpered in relief.
Then Bellatrix stormed over to Andromeda and hoisted her up by the front of her dress.
“Ow! Bella!”
“Are you hurt?”
“No!”
“Cuts? Sprains?”
“No!”
“You’re entirely well?”
“Yes!”
Bellatrix slapped her. Andromeda wailed and clutched her cheek.
“You shouldn’t be,” she shouted. “You should’ve snapped your neck from a fall like that, and if I hadn’t been here you would’ve. I wish you had broken something, and I wish it hurt for the rest of your life, so you’d remember not to be such a dumb little cow. Are you really this stupid? Is this all you do while I’m at Hogwarts? Scheme up mad ways to get yourself killed?”
Andromeda looked up at her. Her lip wobbled. Her eyes were large as dinner plates.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and burst into tears.
Bellatrix released her. “Oh, don’t do that,” she said gruffly. “You’re alright, you — you’re just a silly little thing, you get scared easily.”
“Bella, I’m sorry,” wailed Andromeda. “I’m so sorry, Bella, please don’t be mean. Forgive me — you’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
“No. I’ll loathe you for ever and ever — oh, f— that was a joke, Andy, don’t — stop crying. You’re hideous when you cry, it does nothing for your complexion.”
“I know!” bellowed Andromeda, unconsoled.
“Merlin’s sake. Manipulative chit, we ought to run you for Minister. Come here.”
Bellatrix opened her arms, and Andromeda buried herself in them. She rubbed her face desperately into Bellatrix’s neck, like a kitten. Narcissa hurried forward and threw her arms around Andromeda’s shoulders.
“You’re fine,” said Bellatrix softly. She leaned down and kissed the red imprint of her own hand on Andromeda’s cheek. Andromeda popped up her face, wet-eyed and shiny, and beamed at her. “See? Little fool. I’m right here.”
“I’m here, too,” piped up Narcissa, nosing into them, and Bellatrix looped an arm around her shoulders with a huff.
“Yes. And Cissy’s here, too.”
“Do magic, Bella. Can you do magic?”
“Yes, please, do magic for us!”
“Do the spell that makes birds,” said Andromeda excitedly. “Can you make the birds again? So we can chase them?”
“I’m not supposed to do magic outside of school,” said Bellatrix warningly, but she was drawing her wand. “If I get expelled because of you, you’ll be really sorry.”
“You won’t be expelled,” said Andromeda. “They wouldn’t ever expel the great and terrible Bellatrix Black!”
Her voice sounded distant. A white vignette began gnawing away at the corners of the scene.
Bellatrix smirked. “Dippet might try,” she said. “He doesn’t like me very much. He thinks little girls should know their places.”
“I hate him,” cried Narcissa.
“You never met him, pet.”
“I hate him anyway!”
“Forget him,” laughed Andromeda. “Who cares what he says? It’s only us here, and we won’t tell. Do magic, go on.”
“Do magic! Oh, please!”
Fog was closing in through the trees, but none of them seemed to notice it. Bellatrix lifted her wand, dark eyes glittering, and opened her mouth.
Her spell vanished into the aether. The fog closed. Dirt disintegrated beneath his feet, and Draco plunged through a cascade of it, end over end, a diver torn from his broom.
Dark wood soared up to catch him.
He never got there. The spell lashed him in the heart and threw him back. He was soaring, then, the room a whirling streak of silver, and he slammed into something sharp and unforgiving with a firework of pain.
When his head ceased spinning enough for him to open his eyes, he found himself sprawled over the upended desk of Albus Dumbledore, while a maelstrom of loose parchment fluttered over his head. Everything that had been on the desk now lay in a sad, glittering ruin around him: a cracked Sneakoscope, a snapped quill, books with crumpled pages face-down in puddles of ink, and an ornate gold hourglass, one bulb of which had shattered, and trailed a white waterfall of sand into the cracks between floorboards.
Narcissa huddled against the opposite wall, her head hung, wand outstretched. With a shell-shocked twinge of betrayal, Draco’s eyes fell on the hand that had jinxed him.
He tried gingerly to push himself upright. A fang of pain sank deep into his hand. He snatched it up and cradled it, watching blood well from a crooked line across his palm: a shard from the inkwell had sliced it open. He sucked breath through his teeth.
The sound made Narcissa’s head jerk up. She blinked the fog from her eyes.
“Draco?” she croaked. “Are you alright?”
“Fine.” He pressed the heel of his other hand to the cut to try and staunch the bleeding while he searched, not without urgency, for his wand. “Small cut. That’s all.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not much. Have you seen my w—”
She flew across the room in three strides and fell to her knees. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I — I didn’t mean it — Mummy didn’t mean it — she’s sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry…”
She sounded on the verge of tears. He stared at her, hardly knowing who she was.
“Mother. Mother? Mum. It’s fine.”
“You’re hurt, I hurt you—”
“You didn’t. It doesn’t hurt,” he lied.
She seized his face. He felt her press a bruising kiss to the crown of his skull.
“I love you,” she whispered. “Mummy loves you. Mummy’s sorry.”
“I’m fine. I’m alright, Mum.”
She shook her head. The rush of warmth stirred his hair when she sighed.
“I saw Bellatrix in your memory,” he said.
Her breath caught. He was glad he could not see his mother’s face.
“She didn’t seem like a madwoman,” he said.
“She isn’t mad.”
“Most people say she is.”
“Most people don’t know her.”
“They know she tortured the Longbottoms into insanity. And killed countless people.”
“Draco.”
“Including my father.”
“Bellatrix—” She flinched, breathed deeply, and pushed on. “For her many faults, she wasn’t foolish, nor careless. She may have been passionate—”
He barked a laugh.
“—yes, passionate, and relentless; stubborn, wrathful — possessive, territorial, more than occasionally cruel — but she was never uncontrolled.”
“You think she was rational?”
“She was more than rational. She was deliberate. Perceptive. Frighteningly intelligent; surprisingly thoughtful. And she was most certainly prudent. She was the favorite knight of the Dark Lord, and she didn’t earn his trust by making mistakes.”
“She made one with Lucius.”
Narcissa tipped her head, equivocating.
“What did she gain by killing him? The aurors only caught her because she came back to England. And another thing — if she knew the Dark Lord could be resurrected, why didn’t she resurrect him? ‘Favorite knight,’ and she never thought to bring him back?”
“Resurrection is difficult.”
“Not too difficult for Peter Pettigrew.”
She rubbed her eyes. “Pettigrew was chosen because his flesh was expendable. He was slave meat, and remains so. As to why she never attempted — I’m sure she tried to. But the ritual requires the bone of one’s father, and I assure you, the Dark Lord never disclosed his sire to any of us.”
“Bloody oversight, that.”
“It wasn’t an oversight; he intended to never die, and we had no reason to doubt him. It was treason to speak of his death, or prepare for it. It’s why the war went so badly after he died.”
“Did it go badly? I thought it lasted years.”
She nodded. “Mm. But it was decided the night the Potters died. Barty was captured immediately; he was at the Potter house, and he stayed there, like a fool. I think he believed the Dark Lord would rise again from the very floor… he’s dead now,” she added, with startling blitheness. “Killed in Azkaban. Travers turned cloak… Dolohov and Mulciber were hounded down, like chattel, by the barbarian Moody… he threatened to send Mulciber’s wife to him in six-ounce increments. Barty’s father captured Rabastan at the Battle of Stirling, and baited Rodolphus into a rescue attempt. Nearly got himself killed. Did kill his regiment, which was a third of the remaining soldiers, and nineteen Death Eaters. After that, the Lestranges fled to Albania, and your father went back to Wiltshire.”
“Why did they leave him behind?” he said, indignant despite himself.
His mother looked at him. Her mouth was a tight seam of pity.
“You’d just turned two,” she said softly. “We had cake at the Manor, just the two of us. Bella and Roddy sent you a toy broomstick for a gift. Your father gave you a set of coloring chalks. I enclosed your drawings with my letters, so that he could see them.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Bella was jealous. She kept demanding to know if you were using the broomstick. I told her you were enough of a menace with your feet on the ground.” A distant smile curved her mouth. “She liked that.”
Her tone chilled him. “You sound fond of her.”
“I am fond of her,” she said calmly. She rose to her feet, and offered her hands; he took them, and let her draw him up. “I love her.”
“You’re joking. You cannot possibly still—”
“Why not?”
“She killed my father!”
To this, Narcissa offered the staggering reply of a shrug, as if to say: And so it is.
“And yet love endures,” she said. “It endured the murder of the man I married. It survived the collapse of my house, and my life, and the end of the name she and I once shared. But mark this well: I loved Bellatrix Black against reason, against duty, and against judgment. As I ever loved anything. Including my only son.”
She extended her hand. He took it. Her fingers sealed over his like a vise, painfully tight. She smiled cryptically and kissed his hand. Then she drew him into her arms and held him tightly, her heart beating like a rabbit’s against his ribs.
The rain trilled along in a steady alto, joined by the occasional roll of thunder.
Some time later, once Narcissa had left, he went to the Hospital Wing for his hand. Curfew had fallen, and the torches guttered high along the stone walls.
His head swam with afterimages of his mother’s memory. Of Walburga Black, young and well and sneering. Of Bellatrix Lestrange, hardly older than Victoria Frobisher, snapping a tree in half with her outstretched hand.
As he approached the Hospital Wing, the echoes of shouting bounced around the corner. Alerted, he drew his wand, and stepped into the hallway in time to see a trio of students rush through the doors. He followed, and their voices resolved as he stepped into the glaring light of Pomfrey’s chamber.
Blinking the spots from his eyes, he saw Cassius Warrington striding up the aisle with a barefoot Astoria Greengrass in his arms. Pansy hurried along at his side, half-running to keep up with him. Pomfrey was running out of her office to meet them, and their shouting collided in the center of the room.
“—down on the bed, Warrington, be careful—”
“—some kind of fainting spell,” Cassius announced. He ladled Astoria onto the bedspread. “Perfectly normal, especially around exams; stress and low blood sugar—”
“No, you idiot, I told you!” Pansy cried. “She needs a transfusion, Pomfrey, listen—”
Pomfrey did not need telling, however. She whirled away from Astoria’s bed. “Expecto Patronum!” she cried.
Her Patronus leapt from her wand and coalesced into a hooded snake.
“Find Orpheus and Dido Greengrass,,” she commanded, rolling up her sleeves. “Ask for permission for a blood transfusion between their daughters. Mr. Warrington — Ms. Parkinson — some space.”
Cassius obeyed with nervous haste; Pansy did not so much as loosen her grip. Pomfrey fed out the cord from Astoria’s wrist; a tap of her wand split it into three, and she slotted one into the base of a silver cloche-shaped instrument on the table. When the cord touched it, the cloche began to chime: ding… ding… ding…
At close range, Draco noticed the blood on Pansy’s wrists. A dirty smear ran from palm to forearm on either side, like she’d made a sloppy cut, and healed it sloppily, too.
He met her gaze. She wrenched her sleeve down.
“Did you try to heal her?”
Her face crumpled, and she turned her head sharply to hide it. She didn’t answer him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
“Stop.”
“Runes are powerful tools for simple functions. Healing, warding. They can’t address a complex medical problem.”
“Draco,” she said unsteadily, “are you actually so stupid — so piss-poor empty in the head — you think I need you to explain how runes work?”
The doors flew open. Theo stood between them, gripping Daphne by the hand like he’d pulled her from the depths of hell. Pansy gasped, actually gasped, and wilted against the wall.
“Here,” he barked. He surged down the aisle, and Daphne hurried after him. “I got her.”
“Is she alright?” Daphne cried, overtaking him. “Did I come in time?”
She leapt up on her sister’s bed and swept back her sleeve, reaching for a needle from Pomfrey’s tray. It had the practiced fluidity of a motion done a hundred times before. But Pomfrey didn’t give it to her.
“Hurry up! What is it? I told you, I’ve had sugar — is it fluids? Teddy, fetch me some water—”
“Your parents changed their policy,” Pomfrey said. “Standing permission for transfusions has been revoked. In the meantime, I’m placing your sister on a heartclock—”
“They can’t revoke it! I’m her only match! She needs my blood!”
“—to stabilize her, and giving her a fluid drip—”
“That won’t work!” Daphne screeched, and she lunged. Theo caught her, hauling her back from what appeared to be a hail-mary grab for the needle.
The heartclock was starting to slow down: the distance between chimes was growing. Each swell of Astoria’s chest failed to meet its previous height.
Theo’s move cost him dearly: Daphne was stronger than him, and with a snarl, she threw an elbow that almost put him on the floor. “It won’t work!” she shouted. “There’s only one thing that worked, and the only supply of it is right here, and I ought to know, because it’s my disease!”
“It isn’t my decision. Your parents fear for Astoria’s health—”
“She’s dying!” Daphne screamed. “I’ll show you fear for my sister’s health — give me the needle—”
She lunged again, and this time, it took Pansy and Theo both leaping on her to stop her from tackling Pomfrey to the floor. Draco stepped in front of Pomfrey, his wand drawn, his heart racing. He had never seen Daphne this way. He didn’t know what she might do.
“Merlin’s blood, just let her,” Cassius exclaimed. “You can’t possibly intend to let them throw away one daughter out of — out of spite for the other.”
“It isn’t spite, Mr. Warrington — Miss Greengrass, please stop struggling—”
“Listen, you can hear her dying, please don’t —” Daphne’s wail broke into sobs. “Don’t make me listen, don’t make me listen to her die—”
“Pomfrey,” Theo said furiously, “I’ll handle her parents, just do something—”
“Daphne Greengrass is not legally cleared to give blood.”
The bell gave a weak, faint chime. Then another.
Pomfrey’s chest heaved. “I’m sorry, child,” she said. “At your last reading, markers went up considerably.”
Another chime. Daphne went still and expressionless.
“Markers of what?” said Theo. “Markers of what, Pomfrey?”
Daphne sank to lean on the bed. She blinked like she was trying to wake up.
“Answer me,” Theo snapped. “Markers of what?”
“Alpha-L immunoglobulin,” Daphne said, with a musical mnemonic lilt.
“Okay?” Pansy threw up her hands. “Hell does that mean, Daph?”
“It’s a marker for lycanthropy.”
The bell kept chiming its sad, slow song.
“Mother of Merlin,” Cassius said quietly. He was looking at Pomfrey. “And you kept her in a school.”
Theo leapt at him.
Cassius barked and seized his wand, but Draco’s was already out. A book-perfect Stupefy struck Theo in the back, and he dropped like stone.
Pansy’s reflexes alone rescued Theo’s nose from a nasty impact with the floor. She caught and lowered him carefully, while Cassius skittered back, staring at him in astonishment.
“Thank you, Malfoy,” Pansy said quietly.
Draco jerked his head in acknowledgement. There was no love lost between himself and Theodore Nott, but he had no desire to see the winner of a duel between him and Cassius Warrington.
“What happens,” he said to Pomfrey, “if you give her the blood anyway?”
“It’s inconclusive. Bloodborne lycanthropic pathogenesis hasn’t been studied, because it doesn’t often happen; the usual vector is a saliva. Lycanthropes are barred from giving blood in most circumstances.”
“Suppose you only did a small transfusion. Would that avoid the risk?”
“No.”
Pansy whimpered.
“There’s always a risk,” Pomfrey said. “I could tell you the odds of infection were low, as the concentration of pathogens in the bloodstream is minor compared to the concentrations in werewolf saliva. I could tell you I would anticipate optimal outcomes in a reasonable timeframe. I could tell you that in a choice between death and a treatable, if challenging, medical condition, not one medical professional on the planet would hesitate. But I could not tell you with confidence that she would not be infected, because I am not confident that would be the case.”
The doors slammed again. Orpheus Greengrass, Dido Greengrass, and Albus Dumbledore flew up the aisle in a confusion of shouting. When Dido saw Astoria, she gave a strangled scream and flew to her side, nearly shoving Cassius to the floor.
“Prepare her for transfusion,” Orpheus shouted at Pomfrey. He hurled a briefcase on the table. “We’ve brought blood for her.”
“What blood?” said Pomfrey. “Whose?”
“Donor organisms.”
“Daddy,” said Daphne, “did you know about me? Did they send you my results?”
Dido smoothed the hair back from Astoria’s face, murmuring.
“What ‘organisms’?” said Pomfrey.
“House-elves.” Orpheus threw open the briefcase. Inside lay three bags of blood on a bed of steaming ice. “Our researchers have confidence the blood will match.”
“Daddy?” said Daphne. “Mummy, did you know, either?”
“I entreat you,” said Dumbledore, speaking for the first time since coming into the room,“to consider what you are doing to your daughter.”
Orpheus drew himself up with righteous anger. “Spare me your sanctimony,” he said. “One of my daughters was poisoned under your care. I will do what it takes to save the other.”
He gestured furiously at Pomfrey. With an aggrieved sound, Pomfrey snatched up one of the house-elf bags and fed it into the intravenous cord. Its length flushed from gold to red.
The bell chimed again, and then once more, stronger. It picked up a faint but steady rhythm. Pansy keened and keeled over, burying her face in her hands.
Daphne slipped off the bed and staggered a bit, catching herself. She looked at her mother, but Dido was furiously darting kisses over Astoria’s face. Orpheus knelt and took Astoria’s limp hand, pressing it tightly to his lips.
Daphne stood apart from them with a distant expression, like a sailor standing in the shallows of an island he didn’t know.
Dumbledore ambled over to her and offered his arm. She stared at it, not understanding.
“Would you care to join me in my office?” he said, in a low, soft voice. “You need not stay here, if you do not wish.”
She shook her head.
“Of course. You prefer to be with your sister. May I extend an invitation, then, to come when you feel comfortable leaving her? It would please me very much.”
“I don’t… Professor, I…”
Cassius said, “You’ve broken the law.”
Dumbledore turned. Cassius lifted an unsteady finger.
“You harbored an unregistered lycanthrope. In a school full of children. For months. You… I lack the words for what you are. I lack the words for your audacity, your sheer degeneracy — I lack the words.”
“Apparently not,” said Dumbledore mildly. “You seem full of them.”
“Do you hear me? She’s a dangerous creature! I can’t believe people like the Greengrasses could be so irresponsible. It’s a tragedy to lose a daughter, I admit, but that’s no excuse for exposing other children to a predator. Something has to be done about it.”
Dumbledore’s expression changed. It slipped from its usual glaze of intelligent, disaffected concern into a piercing stare of great intensity, blue eyes flashing like small collapsing stars, the ancient lines folded deep and bitter with loathing.
The expression on Dumbledore’s face had seen far worse things than Cassius Warrington, but it liked none less.
“Perhaps you have forgotten that this is a school,” he said. His voice was gentle and firm. He could have been addressing a first year. “Given recent events, I understand the mistake. But if you attempt to have my student apprehended, I will be forced to stop you. And I will regret it. But not nearly as much as you will.”
Cassius stepped back, and bumped into the wall.
“Is that a threat?”
“Is that a question?” said Dumbledore pleasantly. “Deputy Special Inquisitor, you can escort the Greengrasses out. I have other items to attend. Miss Greengrass, do remember my invitation, please. And might someone remove Mr. Nott from the floor? He does not seem very comfortable.”
“I’ve got him,” croaked Pansy.
“Thank you, Miss Parkinson.” He glanced at Draco. “Good evening, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco gave a wary nod.
Dumbledore’s smile became sad. His sadness unnerved Draco more than his threats; he didn’t know what sorrow the sight of himself could possibly offer that a dying girl wouldn’t.
The headmaster offered no explanation. He swept out of the Hospital Wing while the heartclock chimed faster and faster.
-Coming to you LIVE from the BOTTOMLESS BLACK PIT, it is your author, crawling briefly out to throw a chapter at the world and then crawling back in. When will she emerge next? Only the BOTTOMLESS BLACK PIT can say! For further information, please consult BOTTOMLESS BLACK PIT.
-If you have left a comment on the last chapter — and there were so many wonderful ones that I have fattened my Beloved Comment Folder by twofold, let me tell you — I hope you have a great week. And that life gives you the opportunity to pitch your enemy into a BOTTOMLESS BLACK PIT very soon. Metaphorically speaking. Or literally speaking! Chase your bliss.
-The next chapter title is still being hammered out, else I would give it here. You are my reason for writing. Thank you!!
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