As Though Nothing Could Fall

Chapter 80: As Though Nothing Could Fall

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TW for violence and gore. Reader discretion advised.

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(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

If you were fast, you could get to Grimmauld Place from King’s Cross in ten minutes.

The square was unnaturally empty. Dementors twisted in the air, and a shimmering in the air suggested a ward of some kind, which squirmed uncomfortably over his skin when he passed through. He’d cast a Disillusionment on himself, and though it wouldn’t hold against scrutiny, it would hide him from anyone not looking for him. The first thing he saw was Tonks, who stood in front of a glowing hex of golden runes, her hands lifted, her face glowing perspirant in concentration. Bill and Fleur stood together in front of Hermione, which jolted him in relief. But Harry was nowhere.

He moved flat-footed around the edge of the square, slipping low behind the row of cars. Bill caught him in his periphery, and grimaced in exasperation. Hermione gasped, and leapt at him: her hug was bruising, and her fingernails bit deep into his shoulders. He caught her and gripped her tightly, but briefly, and let her go to free his wand-arm.

“Malfoy,” Fleur hissed. “What are you doing here? Get out!”

“What are you doing out here? The warded building’s right behind you. And where’s Potter?”

“Here,” whispered Harry, gripping his wrist invisibly. Draco seized his arm, and smacked him.

“That’s the start of what I owe you,” he snapped, while Harry hissed. “Why aren’t you inside?”

“Tonks worries it’s trapped,” Hermione said lowly, crouching beside them. The wind dragged her ragged, sweat-limned curls over her temples. With a flick of her wrist, she threw an absent Episkey in Harry’s direction, but her gaze was intently on Draco. “Fleur’s put a muggle-repellent charm on the square, and a Concealment Charm, in the meantime, and Bill’s putting up wards. Did you cast a Disillusionment before coming in?”

“Of course I did. Who do you take me for?”

“Thank God. Anyway,I wanted them to take Harry in side-along Apparition—”

“Won’t work. You need—”

“—incredible skill to do long-distance side-along, I know that—”

“And there’s a hard upper bound on distance traveled—”

“—inversely proportional to the quantity of matter, and I know, I was trying to think of something, and we’ve only been here five—” She stopped and inhaled. “Draco,” she said, “where’s your mother?”

“She’s behind me,” he said, shoving all attendant thoughts pointedly to the side. “She had other plans for this evening. I disagreed.”

“Oh,” said Hermione. She wet her lips. “Are you — are you two alright?”

The pain of keeping them aside was quite keen. “No,” he said shortly. “Probably not. Let’s not talk about it.”

“But—”

“How are your parents?”

She recoiled fractionally. “All right,” she said. “Fair enough.”

Tonks finished the incantation with a jerk of her wand. The gold hex of runes shattered into the air, and she lowered her hands with an even exhale.

“Should do it,” she said. “Now get in, kiddies. One of those runes was an alarm sigil, and if it’s keyed right, they’ll know I broke it. Let’s—”

Lightning slit across the sky. It stole the visible world, and when it gave it back, it gave it back unevenly, with a dark stain on it. On the roofs across the square, there stood a ridge of figures, billows of smoke still dissipating from their hems, as if they had come fresh from a walk through an inferno.

There were five. The first was Sibelius Nott, an elderly man, the folds of his face an edifice of years’ bitterness; his hair was far closer to white now than it had been when Draco saw him last. Like the others, he still wore the tattered grey smock of Azkaban.

The other three men were strangers. One had wild curls, stained black by filth, his face masked by the same; the second was dark-haired and bearded, with blood splashed in lurid brown over the front of his smock; the third had no hair at all on his head, but his eyes seemed to protrude from his face, a blue so bright they seemed manic. All had wands.

The last of their number was a pale, diamond-shaped face, cut by searingly dark eyes, and a cowl of wind-battered hair. Her lips peeled in a harsh, broad snarl, an expression that was ugly on purpose, as if to disown the cold beauty of her face.

The lull between the flash and thunder yielded to the hoary bellow of the sky, like a child crying belatedly at a cut. Tonks dropped back to flank Bill and Fleur. With a single lash she cast a patronus, and started talking to it quickly in a low flat tone, without removing her eyes from the peopled skyline.

“All hands. All hands, to Grimmauld Place. Emergency call, five hostiles. Calling Fool, Hierophant, Empress. Five hostiles. Lightning is here. I repeat. Lightning is here.”

“Inside,” Hermione said unevenly, and groped behind her for Harry. “Get inside Grimmauld Place.”

She shoved him to his feet and fumbled him towards the door. Draco was staring.

Her face was familiar. Broader than her sisters’, furred with thick brows and a wide mouth, it had far more of Cygnus than Druella. He had seen its childhood counterpart, once, in a dream of a memory. Years’ growth and years’ suffering, and the grime of Azkaban, could not remedy the resemblance such that it was not striking.

Bellatrix stepped up to the ledge of the building, put her arms out, and laughed. It was a hypnotic, crystalline sound, and it was lovely, like a lady’s; it was a sound so refined it seemed wrong to come from her throat. Her fingers waved slightly, as if relishing the very feeling of the air. Static glinted frantically in the air around her, magic coalescing in shivering waves around her body.

“So Potter does come when he’s called,” she said, and it echoed queerly around the empty square. “My God. How genteel.”

She leaned forward, off the ledge, and dropped.

Her body became a rippling fold of black smoke. It dipped and split across the square in a reforming bloom, snaked through the road, and rippled under Tonks’s guard, the auror’s curse slitting harmlessly through the fabric. Bellatrix leapt from the smoke and landed on the stoop of Number Twelve with an elegant drop. Her wand whipped behind her back to deflect the splatter of curses from Bill and Fleur. A Shield Charm so thick it was opaque sent their curses soaring back at them, and they dropped for cover. Her head didn’t turn.

She pointed her wand down. A shockwave boomed from the ground at her feet. All the cars on the street rocked. It threw Harry and Hermione on their backs, and the cloak slipped from Harry’s shoulders.

He leapt back to his feet, and with cruel ease Bellatrix flicked away his jinx; she did something complex with her wrist, and he shot forward, skidding his heels against the stoop, until she caught him with her offhand by the hair.

“I have your poppet,” she called, only she wasn’t looking behind her, at her companions, nor at her enemies; she was gazing up at the dark windows of Number Twelve. With a slow, almost playful flourish of fingerwork, she rolled her wand through her fingers and directed it lazily at Harry’s temple. “Another one, that is. What shall I do with it?”

The door was sealed and silent.

Tonks leapt into a duelist’s stance, her wand high. “Lestrange!” she barked. “Formal challenge! I challenge you in the name of my mother, Andromeda Black!”

Foul idea. The witch standing before them would cut Tonks to ribbons. But it was a gamble to isolate Bellatrix — to hope that her traditionalism would blind her — to hope that Andromeda’s name had purchase, even if only as a distraction or an irritant.

There was no such luck. Bellatrix paused, her lip curling; but she did not rise to it. “Dolohov,” she spat.

The dark-haired wizard vanished into smoke. A moment later, Dolohov burst into existence over Tonks’s head. She dove beneath him to avoid the Bombarda he lashed out of the air, which struck one of the cars. The engine exploded and set the alarms off up the street in a concert of lagging, eerie, echoing screams.

“The mongrel thinks it has a right to duel,” Bellatrix said casually over the pandemonium, waving her hand. “Enlighten it. If it survives you, I might try playing with it myself.”

Tonks threw a spell back at Dolohov. He parried, and they took up dueling furiously, driving Tonks back up the street. Bill tackled Mulciber, who snapped into existence in the street before them, with a spell that threw him into the square, and Fleur lunged for him with a searing barb of a spell that shattered and scorched the pavement black.

Bellatrix turned back to the door. Hermione shrank away in the corner of the stoop and pressed herself against the brick, chest heaving. Draco knelt beside her. His heart pounded.

She hadn’t seen him. Bellatrix hadn’t thought he would be here, so she hadn’t seen him. The Disillusionment had concealed it.

He cast the charm again, over himself and Hermione, and felt the cool ripple pass over them. Hermione’s figure blurred. Her hand brushed his shoulder in fleeting gratitude. Then she knelt and reached forward, moving slowly to avoid notice, until her fingers met a puddle of silk on the stoop.

“Prison has its uses,” said Bellatrix to the door, reflectively. Harry snarled as she jerked his head back, exposing the column of his throat. “It’s a handsome chance to think on one’s errors. Mine was being too submissive to orders. I told the Lord he was a fool to send me to the Longbottoms — it was the first thing I said to him, when he dropped the walls of Azkaban to stones, and pulled me from the rubble; the first thing I said, after I had thanked him for my salvation — he was a fool to send me there, and not to the Potters. I said, ‘Lord, what did Alice Longbottom know of blood magic? A blunt instrument, what curses could she have wrought? You might have killed all three with a snap of your fingers, and I would have left both Potters gibbering beside the dead infant.’”

Harry roared and thrashed against her. She tapped a Petrificus into his throat, and he froze.

Hermione snatched the Cloak back and whipped it around her shoulders.

“I would have died for him, too,” said Bellatrix, casually, “if the bitch had still managed the runes. I doubt she would have. I’m faster than my good Lord, even he admits. He said: ‘Indeed, Devotion, I was a fool; I should not have trusted my own right hand with what I could not trust in you. But I have suffered for it; I was dead ere I was with you.’ And then I said, ‘I suffered twice that, Lord, for you merely died; I had to live without you.’ And so we forgave each other.” She smiled sweetly. “But what of your dead Lord, cousin? When will James Potter raise you from the ruins?”

Fire ripped up the street in a gust from Mulciber’s wand. Tonks caught it and siphoned it, and Fleur leapt in front of her to deflect Dolohov’s spell, which ripped up the posts of the wrought-iron fence and sent them diving in a birdlike flock. Her Shield thundered under the effort, and Bill ducked beneath it, carving a gouge in the ground under Mulciber. The three of them moved in a dreadful synchrony, and the street warped under the haze of magic, the sirens blaring.

Bellatrix lifted Harry by the hair and examined him, admiring the scar like a piece of fine porcelain. “Do you know I worked out how she did it, in Azkaban? Cousin, I award her: it’s a horrible piece of magic. I never would have dreamed it of a mudblood. Did you teach it to her? Martyrdom was a hallmark of your style.”

A stirring in the air told him Hermione had stood. Draco’s heart kicked. A second later, he understood what she was doing. He shifted up and forward onto the balls of his feet.

“I hope you did,” said Bellatrix, and a smile crept up her face: it was the smile of his mother getting what she wanted. “I hope you taught her everything she knew of the Dark Arts. I like to imagine you had a hand in my Lord’s death, even at a distance; for one, it’ll please me all more to kill you; and for two, it adds a charming symmetry to events, since my Lord cut down your heart’s companion like a dog.”

The door flew open. Draco’s heart dropped. Tonks whirled and gave a roar of dismay, but Mulciber’s bruising curse threw her off her feet before she could stop it.

Sirius emerged from the shadows of Grimmauld Place. His combat leathers sat loose on his shrunken frame, straps tightened into bruising cuffs to compensate, but his great height still imposed itself in an eerie way as he ducked through the door, and the blue robes of the Order of the Phoenix swept the ground behind him. His hair fell loose to his waist, black as a raven’s wing, threaded with ice-grey streaks of age, and when he grinned there was a dark glitter of something hungry and listless behind his face. There was something almost like gratitude in it.

“There’ll be a charming symmetry to your offal,” he said, “when I slit you cunt to snout, good kinswoman.”

Bellatrix’s smile thickened into a grin. Commingled with the loathing there was an equal gratitude: she almost seemed genuinely pleased to see him.

She lunged, and dissolved into smoke. Sirius slashed his wand, and the stones at her feet leapt up to entomb her ankles, but the smoke foamed through them harmlessly. It concealed in the air, darted over Sirius’s shoulder, and plunged into Grimmauld Place. Sirius snarled and ran after her, and a shivering explosion from inside bespoke the continuation of their duel.

Harry dropped down the stairs, petrified. Hermione dove for him, and they rolled together down the stairs, a blur of dark hair whirling together with the silken cloak.

Bill was crouched behind Fleur’s shield, lobbing shots at Mulciber; Tonks and Dolohov were sparring around in a growing sinkhole in the middle of the street, which Dolohov appeared to be commanding, as it chased Tonks wherever she moved over the asphalt. Sibelius and the other Death Eater had vanished — could have been anywhere, or fetching reinforcements. Draco lunged down the stairs and scrabbled to a halt at the bottom, where Hermione lay tangled together with Harry.

He dragged her up and she rocked upright, breathing hard, a bruise forming around her right eye. “Fine,” she rasped. “I’m fine. We have to get Harry out of here.”

“Bloody good time we’ll have with that. We can’t Apparate, and the city’s swarming with dementors.”

“Right, then. So. We’ll try something else,” she said. Her voice hardly trembled at all. Her hands were shaking, and there was blood smeared up her wrist — Bellatrix’s blood, where she’d cut her. She extended it to him. He caught it and let her pull him to his feet. There was no time to comfort each other. The street wavered and burned and warped under the hideous contortions of magical battle. Dolohov’s sinkhole widened, and there were flames in the trees. There was no time for anything at all.

Harry broke free of the petrification with a gasp. He grasped Hermione’s shoulder and heaved for breath. “What did she mean, about my mother?” he demanded. He stood up, swaying. “Do you know?”

“No idea,” Draco snapped. “Probably it was a lie to bait out Sirius, which, predictably, worked. Put the Cloak on— better yet, give it to Granger, I’ll Disillusion us—oh, Merlin , you shithead—”

Harry had twisted out of Hermione’s grasp and had raced up the steps, towards Sirius. The Cloak whipped around his shoulders, and he vanished.

“God damn it,” Hermione hissed. “I’m going to kill him. No! I’m going to let you kill him, first, to get the method right, and then I’m going to kill him, only slower, and differently — come on.”

It was bravado; she was palpably working herself up. Draco touched Hermione’s hand. She took his quickly, and tightly, and held on as if it were the only object gravity were still operating on.

She drew her wand, cast Disillusionment, and led them into the old townhouse.

Inside, the parlor had been shredded. With curtains drawn, it was so dark they had to find their way from the glittering embers scattered over the stairwell. Something had ripped up the stairwell like spines on a dorsal ridge and left gaping holes in its wake. The wallpaper peeled and wilted from panels of scarred wood and, in some places, scuffed stone; some of it smoked. The hallway to the kitchen was a bombed-out, smoky black, and the floor piled with rubble like a desert tundra. Under the hole of Walburga’s portrait there was a stain of something red and visceral. When they passed the burnt brass shell of the hallway mirror, glass crunched under Draco’s boot. Directly ahead, in the drawing-room, the shadows writhed together in a violent ballet of shade and light.

In the heart of the room stood a more violent dance still: Bellatrix Lestrange and Sirius Black, wayward daughter and prodigal son, dueling in a tiny supernova of light and holy fire.

Wherever Sirius wasn’t, Bellatrix was. She cut a white rift in the air above her, and he shot a blue charm on the backhand, which exploded together under the chandelier in a fountain of splintered wood and glass. The shrapnel hit a Shield Charm balanced on his wand-tip, which swallowed three bolts of green light and then vanished as she shot something sinewy and red. Sirius swayed back in an elegant dodge and she slashed her wand into the opening — blood sprayed, it had nicked him — but Sirius had used the move to flick a curse sidelong under her guard, and though she counterspelled it, the recoil rocked her back, so she moved, too, shifting the curse, curling it around her waist like a physical liquid, flipping it back at him with a new thread of black spikes. Sirius spun his wand in a wide circle over their heads; the air shimmered as something blue and scaly came into being, forked tongue hissing — and now his guard was down, so she ducked under his arm and slashed her wand again, and two Death Eaters who had been readying their wands fell in a blaze of green light — and the thing over their heads was sprouting wings, roaring — and Bellatrix was everywhere, all at once, shooting spells and deflecting curses, and Sirius at last with a gleeful howl released the ice dragon, and as its wings spread open it drove deep gouges into the wood of the rafters, like claw-marks. The house gave a whining groan, and the ceiling sagged.

“Where is it?”

That was Bellatrix, impatient and shrill. Draco stepped quickly behind the doorframe, hauling Hermione around and out of sight.

Bellatrix grunted and met the dragon with a sweeping fan of fire that forced Sirius to dive behind the sofa. It killed the creature, but it also snapped up and caught the tapestries on the wall. They kindled and burst into flame, casting the room in a hellish red.

“Where did you put it?” she shouted. “Where is it? Where is it? I know you have it!”

“Whatever it is, it’s at the bottom of a flea market in Knockturn Alley,” said Sirius savagely, “if Mundungus Fletcher is the man I hope he is — pawned for sickles to a mudblood beggar, or trickled down to a muggle charity shop—”

“Enough! I know you stole it! Where did you put it?”

“If I gave a fuck what you meant, I still wouldn’t tell you,” he spat, and jabbed his wand at the floorboards. They erupted underneath her in a trapjaw, snapping closed with deadly force around the space she was: Bellatrix slipped out of the way, executing what Draco identified as a truly beautiful sidestep, and the jaws closed on empty air. “Missing one of your trinkets? Fretting for your childhood thumbscrews?”

For some reason, this found purchase under her skin. Bellatrix scoffed in anger, and flung an armchair at him. It shattered in an explosion of upholstery and mahogany against the mantelpiece, and Sirius hardly had to duck. “The ring!” she cried. “The ring that bears the crest of Black! Where is it?”

Sirius gaped at her, and gave a harsh laugh. “Ask your lady sister,” he said. “Or your lord husband, maggots take him. Bella, baby, why the fuck did you think I had your ring?”

“The vault’s been emptied,” said Bellatrix thinly. “A blood-sealed vault. Did you really think you could lie to me? Tell me where you put it.”

“This is hilarious stuff,” gritted Sirius, throwing a Killing Curse. Carelessly, she kicked an ottoman at him, blocking it. “So your gaudy junk went missing. It’s not even the real ring! It’s your new-money knuckleduster replacement crap. The real one’s somewhere out there in Reg’s grave. I bet his ghost nurses it like a binky.”

“Tell me where it is.”

“No idea! Ask your lady sister, the vault master, you fucking moron—”

“Cissa wouldn’t take it! It was mine, she well knew!”

“Oh, well, if you told her to,” Sirius drawled, dancing back from her curse. “I’m sure she did it, then. Quite your whelp, wasn’t she? Small matter of killing her husband, water under the trollbridge, between chums — hah! I don’t suppose it occurred to you! Did it? That she wouldn’t forgive you?”

Bellatrix threw herself at him. In midair she became smoke again, like her body belonged only temporarily to the physical plane, dissolving and reforming — Draco’s heart jerked — far too close, on the inside of his guard, too close for him to party — and with a shout that was more contempt than anger, she tore her wand diagonally across his chest.

Blood sprayed high and thick and dark over both of them. Threads of it draped their faces and soaked through the leather of Sirius’s breastplate, pouring fast onto slick floorboards. A gouge opened in Sirius’s chest so deep it flashed white bone.

Sirius dropped to his knees. One hand fumbled at his chest, and came away soaked. In the light of the burning tapestries the color hardly changed, but thick trails of it ran down his wrist when he lifted it, slowly, before his eyes. He listed and caught himself on his wand-hand; his aged, handsome face was slack with dazed surprise.

Bellatrix stood over him, her arm still extended in the finishing pose of her stroke. She could have finished him easily, then, with a Killing Curse or any other crowning blow, but she didn’t.

Harry ripped off the Cloak and tore out of the shadows, dodging Draco’s desperate grab at his arm.

“SIRIUS!” he screamed. It was an awful sound; an orphan’s sound, Draco thought, with the part of his brain that wasn’t dumb with dread. “SIRIUS!”

He threw himself over Sirius’s body. His breath came in audible wet gasps. Sirius rocked back, blinking. His hand drifted lightly over Harry’s shoulder. He sagged down and caught himself on one elbow.

“Run,” he croaked. “Go, kid. Run… I can… get you time, buy you…”

It was not clear he knew what he was saying. His eyes were unfocused. Harry fumbled to heal him, but Episkey spluttered uselessly against the depth and breadth of the wound.

“James, you can still make it,” said Sirius.

His arm went out from under him. His head knocked hard on the floor.

“SIRIUS!”

Hermione gave a muffled scream. Draco dragged her further in the shadows, ice-numb. Harry was there. Hermione was here. They were too far apart. Bellatrix could take all of them at once, it wouldn’t matter, she would kill them.

She would kill him. She’d killed his father, and she’d kill him. She’d kill both of them and she’d make him watch and then she’d make him die.

Bellatrix lowered her arm, flexing her wand-hand absently, and cast a glance around the room. She seemed disinterested in Harry, for the time being, likely more preoccupied with whatever it was she wanted — the ring. The ring for which Sirius Black had died.

Hermione was tearing through her pockets for something, whispering frantically to herself. Draco gripped his wand and tipped his head against the wall, trying to steady his heartbeat.

He risked another look into the drawing-room. Bellatrix had thrown back the Turkish rug — now so bloodstained as to obscure the print — and, swiping her fingers through the pool of Sirius’s blood, she had begun drawing a rune on the darkened floorboards. The reflected flames of the tapestries flickered over her dark brows, drawn intently in concentration. She worked steadily, adding each dot and mark with care; the lines of her pentagram were unblemished and crisply angled, no worse than Sinestra’s.

Harry was crying into Sirius’s chest. His hands were dark and shining with his godfather’s blood.

Hermione drew something from her pockets with a trembling exhale. It glinted silver in her hands. Phoenix tears.

“I need an opening,” she whispered, and her voice had never shaken more, but her hands were steady. “If we can get her away from Sirius—”

“How.”

“Distract her. I’ll get her attention—”

“No.”

“Then hide me,” she begged, “so I can heal him. Draco, he’s going to die, and Harry will never come back.”

It was true. Her face was furious, streaked with fire, gold where it wasn’t red or shade. He was angry at her for suggesting that either of them risk their lives for Sirius Black, only it was an imperfect anger, because he’d been thinking of the same thing.

“You do a better Disillusion.”

“Two charms,” she said. “Disillusionment and Muffliato. Then I’ll heal him, and we’ll all head for the Floo. Harry first, then you—”

“No.”

“Fine! We both go at once. But Harry first, with Sirius, then us. If we’re fast, we can do it.”

If they were fast, and lucky, and perfect, possibly. He didn’t say that, though. He nodded shortly. Hermione took a deep breath, wrapped her hands around the tiny vial of phoenix tears, and ducked into the room.

Bellatrix’s back was turned, working at a rune. Draco placed his foot on the seams of the boards and moved lightly, the shimmer of Hermione’s charm so strong he could hardly focus on his own boots. The nerves in his body were chattering with a blind and uniform panic. There was so much blood he had to take care not to trip.

Outside, the sounds of wizards dueling came in muffled thunder. The sirens carried on an endless lament. Bellatrix’s hand slowed, and then finished the loop with a short stroke of her third finger.

Draco gestured with his head. Hermione slipped around the corner, darted along the wall, and dropped to her knees beside Sirius, shoving Harry off without preamble. Harry gave a gasp, and she clapped a hand over his mouth, her eyes wide and searing.

“I wouldn’t,” said Bellatrix.

She hadn’t turned her head. His blood was ice. It did not move. Nothing moved, not even his heart. Hermione had frozen with her hand on Harry’s mouth.

“It’s a waste,” she added. She wiped her hand on her prisoner’s skirt and stood. “You’re young wizards. Brave ones, if you saw that and didn’t run.”

Bellatrix turned. Draco felt it like a physical touch, a slap of cold water.

Her expression tightened, quizzical, and he saw the dark darts of her pupils flicker up to his hair.

“You love the boy,” observed Bellatrix. Drained of contempt, her voice was an odd thing: low and hollow, hard-edged, and it might even have been compassionate. It was hard to reconcile with the reality, so recently demonstrated, of her enormous capacity for cruelty. “You would have run if you didn’t. Well, it’s no crime. If it is, it’s not one my Lord won’t forgive. Here is his mercy, and mine: Neither of you have to die here.”

Harry pried himself free of Hermione. “Hermione,” he gasped, and Draco was seized with an awful, choking premonition too late to stop the name from slipping out, in a desperate unthinking slur: “Draco, go, run, listen to her!”

He kept pleading, but Draco’s hearing kindly winked him out. At the word Draco, Bellatrix’s head cocked to one side, and her expression sharpened into fascination.

“Draco,” she said softly. “Yes, I thought so. Your face resurrects him.”

He found his voice, inconceivably, somewhere at the bottom of a cask of fury he’d kept on ice for a long, long eight years.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said coldly. “He died some time since.”

Her expression was difficult to read. It was intrigued, faintly vulpine, equally devoid of guilt or blame. Bellatrix began to cross the room, picking gracefully around the broken furniture. There was something in the way she moved that was like an animal, a large one, moving with deceptive lightness. “You’re my heir,” she said. “I held you in my arms when you were a baby. I thought of you often, in Azkaban.”

Of all the things he had thought she might say, this was so far beyond predictable that he struggled to pin the reality of it in place.

“You thought of me.”

“Of course I did. You, and the Dark Lord. They were the two thoughts that kept me alive,” she said, with bizarre simplicity. “Those, and your mother. How is she? Has she married again?”

“No.”

“Good. More children would only be a danger. Their sire would breed them against you, and you’d war for the succession once she died.” Her face twitched in a way that might have been a smile, or an effort at one, in a hideous way. “Under other circumstances, it could be quite fun.”

“I don’t understand.” His head pulsed with the ache of trying to reconcile her with what he knew. She had killed his father. She had tortured the Longbottoms to insanity. She had made Neville an orphan. She had probably made many orphans.

But she was a person, then, in front of him, with oily skin and prison greys, and greasy ringlets in her hair; and she had told them to run, so she wouldn’t hurt them; and she had told what he was fairly sure was a joke. It was impossible. It couldn’t fit, it would break, it would break anyone who tried to understand it.

“What don’t you understand? Tell me. I will make it plain.”

“You killed my father. You speak as if— you speak as if you didn’t.”

Her face cleared. “Oh,” she said. “She didn’t tell you. Of course she didn’t; how cruel that lovely girl is. Draco, your father betrayed us. He sold himself to the Ministry for a short leash—”

“I know that.”

“Then I mistake your question. I saved a thousand of our Lord’s servants from your father’s treason. I saved the Lord himself, in ways you are yet too young to understand. I speak to you as family.”

“I speak to you as the son of a man you killed,” he said, furious. It pitched him beyond fear. “You took my father and buried him. I don’t care what he did.”

Bellatrix blinked.

“You’re older than I thought you would be,” she said, after a moment. “The years pass differently inside. I hoped to return before you were a man. I don’t know why I thought you would ever understand, growing up with your mother.”

It was worse for the way she delivered it: without apology, which he would not have accepted, and without sympathy, which he dreaded to think he might have.

Hermione had been working while they spoke. Unstoppering the vial, she poured its contents in a thin stream over Sirius’s wound. Pale steam guttered from the body, and tendrils of muscle reached for each other, replenishing the flesh that had been lost. A corded rope of scar tissue rose over the wound, cinching the cleaved folds of skin together. Hermione followed the path of the healing with her wand, bolts of sweat shining on her face, muttering spells. Harry cradled Sirius’s head in his lap, watching her with an expression that would have over-honored Merlin himself. But Sirius did not stir.

Draco realized that Bellatrix was still looking at him. If she knew what Hermione was doing, she didn’t care. Possibly she hadn’t meant to kill Sirius, or hadn’t cared to, or perhaps she merely knew she could again, once Hermione’s efforts were finished.

“What do you want with Potter?” he said roughly.

“Do you care for him?” she wondered. “Is that why you’re here?”

“I don’t want him to die,” he said, which was true, if incomplete. He shifted away from the others, subtly. If could keep her attention until Hermione had finished—

“The Lord doesn’t want him dead. Potter has many uses to him yet. If he were meant to die here—” Suddenly, Bellatrix looked over his shoulder. “Rookwood, it’s not here.”

One of the Death Eaters stood in the door, his robes tattered and smoking, his brown curls hanging low over his eyes. He put out one of the flaming tapestries with a flick of his wand and braced himself against the wall.

“Then we should away,” he said raggedly. “Before the others come. The auror child bested Dolohov.”

“Good God, he’s out of practice,” Bellatrix said in dismay, stepping around Draco. Her hand brushed his shoulder, a fleeting and absent gesture, as she moved around him; everything in him froze still. “Where’s Nott?”

“Commanding the dementors. He’s neutralized the red one and the blonde.”

“He’s done well, then.”

“He is a whinging dog.”

“Those are often competent,” said Bellatrix, “and I have uses for them. Augustus, meet my nephew: Draco Malfoy, this is Lord Rookwood, Death Eater.”

Rookwood focused on him intently. “Lord Malfoy,” he said, in glacial tones of respect, and extended his arm. “Good tidings.”

“I’m not Lord Malfoy,” he said, revulsed. It was the only thing he could think to say. The light was thick and red and nauseating. It made Rookwood’s face seem unearthly, swollen with malice, a demon-face.

“He’s sixteen,” said Bellatrix brusquely, and stepped between them to cross to the door. Rookwood withdrew his arm, his eyes glinting. “My lady sister is his regent. I’ll escort him back to her when we’re finished.”

“Be swift in it. We have a long journey ahead.”

Hermione drew back from Sirius, who still did not move. Harry shook his shoulder weakly, to no resolution. Draco’s stomach sank. If Sirius had died already, the healing wouldn’t matter. They were a powerful palliative, but they couldn’t bring someone back from the dead. Hermione watched Rookwood and Bellatrix move around the room with wide eyes.

The door to the house flew open with a scream of hinges. The figure that emerged into the firelight was sallow and thin, and wore high-collared black robes.

Severus Snape stepped over the threshold, tossed ashes from his hems, and glanced down at the fallen body of his old school foe. Surprise registered in the briefest flare of his eyes. Draco could not help it: he was relieved to see him. He almost called out to him, but he clenched his jaw to stop it.

Then Snape stepped over the corpse, forcing Hermione to dive out of the way to avoid being trod on. Harry gave a wordless snarl at him, clutching Sirius’s head to his chest.

Bellatrix watched him with a calculating expression. Snape glanced at Draco, and though his eyes narrowed, he said nothing to him.

“Hail the Lady Lestrange,” he said. He swept into a bow so deep it seemed faintly mocking.

Bellatrix twitched in irritation. “Hail, Severus,” she said. “The eternally turning worm.”

“I hardly think I deserve that,” said Snape, straightening. “I have served our Lord faithfully these many years.”

“Faithfully! I should strike you down for saying the word.”

“If you thought he would forgive you that, you would have,” said Snape smoothly. He folded his hands behind his back. “So at least one of you is mistaken in me. Does the Lady doubt her Lord?”

Her lip curled, and she scoffed, turning her back on him. “It’s not here,” she muttered instead of answering, kicking a bit of rubble that had once been an armchair. “Black hid it from me.”

“I see,” agreed Snape, blank-faced. “And did killing him further your interrogation?”

“It furthered my pleasure,” she said pointedly. “Which is the disposition I find myself in, at present, Severus.”

“Could I request that you adopt a more productive disposition, at your convenience? Far be it for me to deny you sweets, but you were dispatched for a purpose, and you are not the only one whose displeasure has a body count.”

“We’ve laid hands on Potter,” Rookwood said. “He wants the boy. He’ll be pleased with us for that.”

“Leave him to me,” said Snape immediately. “I’ll see him to our Lord, and deal with the spares. You stay, and complete your purpose.”

“It isn’t here,” snapped Bellatrix.

“Have you searched thoroughly? I see you have attempted a heartsblood pentagram. You intended to scry the ring, I assume?”

“It wouldn’t have worked. You can’t scry that kind of artifact.”

“Certainly not with an unfinished pentagram,” he said.

“Maybe I shall use your heartsblood to finish it.”

“It could only improve your chances.”

Rookwood stepped over to Harry and tore him free of Sirius as casually as one lifting a dog. Hermione gave a cry, and Draco looked sharply at her. She was crouched by the hearth with her wand gripped close to her chest.

“Enough chinwag,” said Rookwood. “I’m taking him back.”

“No,” said Snape.

“Severus,” snapped Bellatrix. “Let him take the boy. You cannot possibly begrudge him this one pearl—”

“Potter is sly and cunning,” said Snape, “and I, knowing him better than either of you, am best suited to handle him.”

“You piece of shit,” Harry said raggedly. “Try it, Death Eater, see how you handle me.”

“Silencio.”

Snape’s wand moved so quickly Draco didn’t see it. The spell whiffed out Harry’s voice, though his mouth kept moving in savage shapes.

“You’re hardly one to fear a child’s cunning,” said Bellatrix.

“Potter has twice evaded our Lord. Your arrogance will make it thrice.”

Draco’s heart pounded. Snape had not holstered his wand after Silencing Harry.

“Rookwood,” said Bellatrix suddenly. “Take Potter. Go.”

Rookwood dragged Harry forward by the collar. Snape stepped into his path. She inhaled, and inclined her head with a knowing condescension.

“Severus,” she said, “in the name of our Lord, his right hand, and first knight, commands you to step aside.”

“The right hand may command all it likes,” said Severus softly, “but I take my orders from the mouth. Ones that even you are not privy to. Give Potter to me, and I will deliver him.”

“I have always loathed you,” Bellatrix said softly. “I have always mistrusted you. I never understood why the others didn’t! Whatever amusements Mulciber found in you… What in Merlin’s earth compelled Lucius to take a half-blood runt under his wing. He was never one for pity.”

“Much in this world can be laid at the feet of half-blood runts,” replied Snape. “Give me the boy, and I will relieve you of the burden of my presence.”

Bellatrix tilted her head almost indulgently. She drew back the sleeve of her left arm, revealing a swirling tattoo that swallowed the plane of skin from wrist to elbow: a skull and a snake, twined around each other in a black ouroboros. Her fingers skimmed low over the ink.

The curse flashed. A jerk of her wand deflected it, and it sizzled out at her feet. She stepped back and grinned at him.

Snape lowered his wand, his shoulders sinking.

“What a gift,” she breathed. “What a way to celebrate my liberation! Oh, I’ve wanted to do this for years. You didn’t even make me wait.”

“Bellatrix,” said Snape, and he stepped sideways, slowly, while she matched his steps in reverse. Draco realized what he was doing: turning the axis of the duel, opening a route to the hallway for Draco. “You were in prison this morning. You have fought one bout already. I have not. Consider carefully whether you can best me.”

Her smile vanished, and a snarl replaced it. “Best you!” she said. “There’s old audacity, with its blind eyes! Does a storm weigh its chance against the vane? Did I hesitate for Amory Bones? For Wulfred MacKinnon? For Galatea Merrythought? The last man to best me brought an army. And on your best day, you were nothing more than a bumbling alchemist, fretting at your notes and theories, studying the shadows of greater wizards on the wall.”

Snape struck on the word shadows. His first curse was a beauty, a swarm of white blades arcing out of the air, converging on her like a razored school of eels. Bellatrix raised her wand with a conductor’s poise, and she gave a delighted little laugh, as if she found nothing in the world so splendid as this effort to kill her.

Her wand glided gracefully down. The blades melted and swirled into liquid light on her wandtip. She rolled her shoulders with a dancer’s grace and whipped it back in a swarm of tentacles that swarmed across the floor, leaving bubbling ruts of acid in their wake. Snape conjured a lattice of spongiform black beneath them that drank them up and gnawed at the floorboards. They dueled in a dreamy and grotesque style, less of the sparring stroke-and-parry of the classical duel, and more like a ritual showcase of horrible ways to die.

But Bellatrix was stronger. It was evident in three movements, and obvious in four: Spells that took Severus seconds to compose were shredded at her glance, and her movements were offensively lax, parsimonious, graceful, to the point it seemed effortless. There was an element of dance in them, of pleasure. She laughed when he slipped something deadly past her guard, as if it couldn’t matter, and it didn’t. She twisted his every spell into something more monstrous and lassoed it back at him. A noose of thorns sprouted at her touch into a bloom of poisonous flowers, which he siphoned from the air with a gust. A conjured snake she split open in midair, blood fountaining, and transfigured each shred of skin into a razor-toothed worm, which scurried towards Snape with terrible shrieking before they died in a blight of heat at his wand.

Reality bent and twisted at the flutter of her fingers; her offhand seeming to conduct the air around her wand as it jumped and darted. Magic hung thick in the air, static flints jumping from her fingers and hair. The air around them distorted in a fish-eye shape, which he recognized a second later as their wards.

The first six movements passed in a matter of seconds. A sideboard exploded under a redirected Bombarda, and Draco threw a Shield Charm to shield himself from shrapnel, the force of which drove him back on his heels. He slammed into something hard and tall and found himself staring down Rookwood.

Rookwood darted forward with his wand close to his body, arm bunched for a thrust — he was too fucking fast, unnaturally fast — tossed away Draco’s probing strike, and knocked him on his back with an unusually blunt punch to the chest. It had enormous strength behind it, and threw him into the wall with a starry blot of pain when his head hit the wood. The killing blow didn’t come: Rookwood hauled Harry into the hallway, backlit by the burning tapestries and the exotic fireworks of the duel, and passed Draco by. Rookwood was too dangerous to think the mercy was incidental.

Small hands grabbed his collar. Hermione had screamed something; his head swam and he heard his name.

“Draco!”

She was panicking. Her eyes were glassy, tear-tracks of fear slitting open the grime on her cheeks, and she was wild in how she touched him, ungentle. Her bloodied hands flew to his neck, cheek, temple, leaving warm smears of something on his cheeks. He clasped her arm, blinking spots out of his eyes.

“Fine! I’m fine! He’s got Potter!”

“I KNOW! Catch— get to — more—”

He couldn’t hear her over the duel. Hermione seized his hand and tugged, and he ran with her around the corner, into the shattered hallway. Rookwood was almost through the door with Harry when Hermione pointed her wand and shouted: “ULCERATIO!”

Rookwood whirled and caught the curse on his forearm. Sores ripped up the skin, angry and red, ballooning the skin from wrist to arm. The man barked and barely clasped his wand, which was clutched in a growing mass of sores. It was not without pride that Draco noticed the blood that wept between sores, the yellow swell of infection peeling the skin. She had learned it beautifully. It was almost better than his.

Hermione panted, twitching her wand back into first position, and threw another curse at his ankles, which missed. Draco saw the twitch of Rookwood’s swollen wand-hand and threw his arm up to counterspell the curse that lashed back at her. Rookwood dropped Harry, who landed on his knees and gasped for breath, clutching his throat. His wand slid from his pocket and rolled, skittering out of reach.

“That was a poor idea, child,” said Rookwood. His pain showed in the whistle of breath through clenched teeth.

“Fuck you,” Hermione said, and she was so angry she was shaking. There were years of anger in the adrenaline gleam of her eyes. Too angry for a clever reproof, nothing witty in the risk of death. She cursed him again.

A net swirled from her wand. It was thin as gossamer, but it had weight, and snared Rookwood’s ankles. It caught him, and he severed it with a lash, then threw Bombarda. It detonated at their ankles. Draco swept the blast up and out of the way, shattering another chandelier, raining glass and wax against Hermione’s shield. Draco lobbed a curse low as she threw one high, and he understood as if he’d already seen it what she was going to do, where her body would move next; he moved to cover it, and found the hole in her guard, threaded a counterspell through it to block Rookwood’s curse, and when he lashed a charm overhand Hermione ducked to throw a Stupefy at his knees, forcing Rookwood to backstep.

Harry’s wand sat just to his right. As Rookwood lunged, Draco sidestepped off his line, and Hermione intercepted the curse that Rookwood shot into the opening. Draco kicked Harry’s wand back at him.

Harry snapped it out of the air, rolled on his back, and shot a spell that hit the guard at the same time as Hermione’s Everte and Draco’s Vermicarnis.

Rookwood blocked two with a neat zigzag movement: two, but not three. Draco’s spell hit him square in the sternum, and he staggered back, clutching his chest. The fabric of his shift started to ripple.

A hole peeled open in Rookwood’s chest, and a thin pink worm nosed out. Another one opened in his stomach, followed by a second worm, which wriggled out and then burrowed back into the skin.

Across the skin of his chest, dark holes sprouted and spawned a wriggling, fleshy mass of worms, which squirmed and chewed their way back into his body. Rookwood roared, and his hands spasmed, torn between the obvious desire to beat them off and not to touch them; he thrashed in pain. Blood beaded and wept from the holes as the worms feasted on his skin.

Harry barked an expletive and scrambled back from him, leaping to his feet. Hermione stepped back, uncertain, but in her horror there was a glint of hard, angry satisfaction. Rookwood staggered out of the house, into the smoky dusk, and Apparated with a crack, leaving a wriggling trail of worms in his wake. He was gone.

“Is it going to kill him?” said Harry hoarsely.

“I don’t know,” said Draco, feeling numb and cold, because he didn’t. “I’ve never used that spell before.”

“Holy shit, Draco.”

“I didn’t see you saving either of us,” Hermione snapped, and Harry flinched.

“I didn’t mean — I’m not saying it’s—”

“Good, I hoped you weren’t. I’m sure you weren’t going to say anything about his methods, Harry, when Draco fought a Death Eater for you, if it weren’t for his exceptional skill with a wand, you might be halfway to the North Sea—”

“Hermione, I wasn’t!”

She had stepped in front of Draco, her hackles high, as if he required guarding. It was deeply touching; also, vaguely discomfiting, since she was shouting at Harry as if she might curse him next. “And you know, I’m glad he did cast it,” she shouted. “I’m glad I watched that happen to him. I’m bloody glad Draco was here, so Rookwood didn’t kill me. I’m glad Draco made him suffer. I’m glad it wasn’t peaceful or civilized, I’m glad that I got to watch someone do something half as bad to him as what he would’ve done to me. I’m not sorry. I’m not fucking sorry. I’m not going to roll over and die. Draco is the only one of us who can fight worth a damn, don’t you dare tell him not to, don’t you dare, you’re not allowed to—”

“Hermione, I didn’t say that! You’re panicking, listen to yourself—”

“I’m fucking terrified!” she snarled. “There are Death Eaters and dementors here and Sirius is dead, and my parents are out there, and I’m about to die—”

“Hermione, please!”

“—and you leave Draco alone, he’s the only reason I’m fucking close to safe, you’re certainly not—”

“Granger,” Draco said roughly, pulling her back from a stricken Harry. She snarled at him, but she stilled when he touched her, snapping her jaw closed around another invective, and breathed hard through her nose. “That’s enough. I appreciate it. It’s not the time.”

“I can’t,” she said, breathing quickly, “I can’t breathe, I’m going to—”

“You’re not going to die. I won’t let you.”

“We’re all going to die, there’re Death Eaters — I’m not a duelist, I can’t fight, Harry can’t fight, the only one of us with any experience is you—”

“I’m good enough,” said Draco intently, threading his hands in her hair. There was blood on them, now, Sirius’s. He pushed it aside. Couldn’t think about it. He could do that; doubtlessly Hermione understood the situation better than any of them, that was why she was terrified, but he could close down those thoughts, he could force himself to be steady and even and cool. “I can be good enough for the three of us. I can. I’ll get us out of here.”

“You can’t.”

“I can. Trust me. Tell me you trust me.”

Hermione gripped his wrists, and closed her eyes. With a shudder, as if some violent spirit were going out of her, she stopped shaking. She said: “I trust you.”

“There you are. Come on. I’ll get us out of here.”

He began turning to Harry, but a shadow darkened the doorway. His wand snapped up of its own accord.

The shadow sharpened as it stepped into the dull red light of Grimmauld Place. It was Narcissa.

A great swell carried him up and seemingly off his feet, a dizzy, free-falling delirium of relief. It was his mother.

“Mother,” he said, reaching for her. “Mum.”

She flew at him and caught him in a fierce embrace. Her arms crushed him to her chest. Her ring grazed over his skull, heavy and cold. Her breath shuddered out of her.

“Draco,” she whispered. “Draco, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I was awful. Mummy was selfish. I’m sorry.”

“Forgive you — yes, it’s fine, I don’t — we have to go. We have to go now.”

Narcissa laid a bruising kiss on his temple and withdrew. “The Order is coming,” she said briskly. “They’ve been delayed. The Floo network is policed, and many of the public grates are shut. Take Granger and Potter to the Manor. Stay there until you get word from Albus Dumbledore — from Albus Dumbledore, and no one else. Let no one through the wards. Not even those who wear familiar faces.”

“What about the others?” rasped Harry. “They were fighting outside— Tonks, and Bill, and Fleur—”

“Nymphadora Tonks incurred heavy injuries in her duel with Dolohov. She was lucky to survive, at that cost. Leave her: she will only slow you,” Narcissa said curtly. “The Weasley and the Frenchwoman I found swarmed by dementors; it took all I had to save them. You may tell Molly Prewett, that self-declared wardenness of other women’s sons, that my debts are paid.”

“Tell her yourself,” said Draco, his heart skittering. “Where are you going?”

Narcissa ignored him and clutched his arm. She gripped Hermione on the shoulder, so high her thumb almost dug into her throat. “Never leave him,” she hissed, and the firelight kindled her dark eyes with manic intensity. “Never. Kill anyone who tries to hurt him. I trust you to do it; you are a fierce creature, and you will fight like a demon. I see it in you. I bless it. It will take all the fire in your soul to survive what comes. They will rip your happiness from your arms and bleed it to death while you watch, if you let them. They will tear your heart’s treasure limb from limb and gnaw on his bones — if you let them. Girlchild, you must do anything but let them. Break every law. Defile all altars. Become any monster, before you let them.”

She jerked Hermione forward, and — Draco started — pressed her mouth to Hermione’s ear. Hermione’s eyes flared, and she made to shove Narcissa away, but she stopped as Narcissa whispered something to her. Her expression shuttered.

When she was finished, Hermione flinched away, and Narcissa released her, with a savage satisfaction in the twist of her mouth.

She kissed Draco on the forehead, and said: “From any distance, my darling.”

Then she pushed him away. He stumbled back. Narcissa turned and moved into the entrance of the parlor, and the wave of fresh light washed her face red.

“What are you doing,” he said sharply, reaching for her. Hermione held him back. “What are you doing?”

“We have to go,” Hermione whispered unhappily. “I’m so sorry. Draco, we have to go.”

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not — what is she doing? Let go of me. Granger, let go of me.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, we have to get out—”

He pried free and ran into the parlor, ignoring Hermione’s cry.

Inside, the tapestries had guttered out, and the light was so dull it was almost night. From small smoking bundles on the floor the only light of the room dappled the walls, red and dreamy, like a vignette from Baudelaire. His gut twisted at the scene.

Snape lay at Bellatrix’s feet, bleeding profusely from a stump where his left arm had been. His face was a warped mask of bruising and scars, his nose collapsed and crooked sickeningly to one side, and when Draco saw him it pierced his chest with a cold certainty that he was dead. The tiniest lift of Snape’s chest proved it for a lie: but relief was not long, for Bellatrix paced the room nearby. The wrist of his severed arm, which bore the Dark Mark, she broke with a stamp of her boot.

“…emperor strung by his own phylacteries,” she spat. “Nothing less to expect from a half-blood worm… You ought to beg me to kill you; when I turn you over to the Dark Lord, you’ll long for the death I’d have given you. How many of our failures were brooked by your treason? How deep is the knife you laid in the spine of God? Why, Severus, you must weep for honor: he may even kill you himself.”

She did not notice that two people slipped into the room, the first smoothly, with a step that did not hesitate at the horrorshow that awaited her; the other stumbling after her, and caught in disgust at the door.

Narcissa presented herself in the low kindling light, her spine straight, her shoulders thrown out and back to accentuate the proud shape of her carriage in her jade-green robes. Pieces of cornsilk hair fluttered around her face in a coy frame. She was splendid, beautiful as a bride, with and despite the deep lines in her face. After a moment, she smiled.

Bellatrix stared at her. The tremor in her face seemed torn hatefully from her, an unwilling concession to fear or fury or whatever it was. Then she lunged.

Draco’s arm seized for a curse, but Bellatrix didn’t attack Narcissa. She cleared Snape’s body in a single leap and threw herself at Narcissa, and Narcissa stepped forward, with a broken sound, and buried her face in her sister’s shoulder. Draco’s hand twitched, and he lowered his wand, paralyzed.

The two women huddled together as if they were trying to enter each other’s skin. Bellatrix gripped the back of Narcissa’s head, her yellowed nails digging into her skull, and pressed her face into the crook of Narcissa’s neck, nosing at it with terrible sounds; Narcissa laughed wetly at something. She clenched Bellatrix’s shoulders and shook her, a bit, to dislodge her. Bellatrix went freely, and when her face lifted again it was wet and shining.

“Cissa,” she said. “You came for me. You heard I was— you came.”

“Yes,” murmured Narcissa, and the lie jarred him in its ease, “yes, of course. Of course I came.”

“You didn’t visit me. Years and years, I waited for you, and you never came.”

“How could I? How could I bear it, to see you brought so low?”

“Weakling,” said Bellatrix, and the spite was heady with affection. “You craven wretch, you’re not fit for use nor ornament. You abandoned me to that place because you couldn’t stomach it?”

“It’s what I am,” said Narcissa simply. “How could I help it? I’m sorry, Bella. I would have come if I could bear it.”

“I know,” she admitted. Her matted curls veiled half of her face, and the half that wasn’t shone. “I know you couldn’t come, poppet. I know. You’re only a fairy-girl. A cruel, shriveling, soft little fairy-girl, with hollow bones and knives for teeth.”

Narcissa said, “That’s a bit much.”

And Bellatrix said, “That hair is a bit much. Did your house-elf swap tar for soap?”

And they laughed together, a harmony of two notes, high and low. Bellatrix clasped her again to her chest, like a child pinning a squirming pet.

“Go now, with Mulciber,” she whispered giddily. “He’ll take you, and your boy — Draco — I met Draco! Cissa, he’s a fine thing, isn’t he? So proud, so angry — lost his way, of course, but you did the best you could, and I’m here now, there’s so much I can do with him.”

A whisper of fabric brushed Draco’s wrist. He jerked around. Hermione stood behind him, her finger pressed to her lips, the Cloak half-draped around her shoulders. She tugged on his arm insistently, and he knelt to let her draw the Cloak around them both, and pressing close to his side, so it would conceal them. Her arm lifted above them to hold the Cloak over their heads, and he could feel her heartbeat jumping against his arm. She exhaled, steadily, and a bead of sweat moved down her cheek. Unsteady, and unable to speak for fear of giving them away, he tapped her twice on the back of her wand-hand, and she gave an unsteady twitch of the mouth: You’re welcome.

Narcissa took Bellatrix’s wrist and drew it away from her shoulder. “Bella,” she said, in a honeyed trifle of a tone. “Run away and live in a Death Eater camp? Bunk with Mulciber and Dolohov, and ride out to hunt werewolves on thestralback, burning effigies to keep warm? Recall that you and I read very different kinds of novels.”

“Don’t be a priss. You’ll have your silks and sweets. But—” She refocused, abruptly, on Narcissa’s hand. The sentence died on her tongue.

“What?”

“You idiot,” said Bellatrix, with awestruck woe. “You perfect stupid thing. You wore it?”

Snape had begun to stir. His right hand groped feebly along the baseboard for something. His wand rested a hairsbreadth from his bloodied fingers.

“Wore what? What are you talking about?” She followed Bellatrix’s gaze to her hand, which bore a black diamond ring inset in a thick band of goblin silver. “This? It’s your signet. It came with your effects.”

“It’s not yours!”

“It’s the Black sigil. What on earth are you talking about? Do you want it back?”

“It isn’t the Black ring,” said Bellatrix, on the edge of a hysterical laugh. “Cissa, that’s mine. That is —it’s not even mine, it’s his.”

“His? Whose? Roddy’s?”

There was a beat. Smoke guttered from the embers of the tapestries. Narcissa whisked her hand out of Bellatrix’s grasp, now very pale.

“No,” she said. “What do you mean? No.”

“Why did you wear it?” said Bellatrix incredulously. “Did you long so badly to be the heir, that you…? Surely you knew it wasn’t Orion’s.”

“I thought it was yours,” Narcissa exclaimed. “I thought it was given to you by Father, or Regulus, as a gift.”

“And you still wore it?”

“I thought it was yours.”

Snape’s hand closed around the wand. He dragged it along the floor, moving with a languor that could have been weakness or subterfuge, and pointed it weakly at his severed stump.

“You and your softness,” said Bellatrix, her dark eyes shining. Her fingers grazed Narcissa’s cheek. “My little tower princess. You don’t even know how you’ve saved us. He’ll love you as I do, after this.”

Narcissa flinched. “I don’t want that.”

“I know you don’t. Don’t worry, he knows you’re mine. Here, poppet. Give it to me.”

Snape had staunched the bleeding on his wound; the scorched reek of cauterized flesh joined the stench of smoke. He gripped the sideboard and gnashing his teeth, he dragged his body upright. The effort drained him, and he had to stop to gather breath.

“What happens if I do?” said Narcissa, her voice small.

“Everything goes back to the way it was. Only better. You come with me, and they never part us. No more fathers and teachers.”

“And Draco?”

Draco twitched. Hermione clenched his arm.

“Draco? He’ll come with us.”

Narcissa closed her eyes. The breath she drew seemed to break something in her throat on the way out. When she opened her eyes again, it dislodged a tear, which she removed with a calm and surgical daub of her knuckle.

She said, “Severus, I can give you seven minutes.”

“I could do it in four,” rasped Snape, “but I appreciate your vote of confidence.”

The look she flashed at him was not amused, but freighted in its place with a shocked, angry species of gratitude. She might have laughed at that, Draco thought. It was the kind of joke his mother would have liked. Someone who knew her would have known. Snape peered back at her through swollen eyes, with textbook impassiveness, and dipped his chin.

She pried the ring from her finger and passed it to her off-hand, where it vanished into her fist. Bellatrix moved to take it. Narcissa held her ground, and twisted her offhand behind her back. It had the effect of shifting her shoulders onto a duelist’s line.

“What are you doing?” said Bellatrix coldly. “Stop conspiring. Give it over.”

Snape braced himself upright against the sideboard, jerking the sallow hair from his eyes. His wand etched a complex pattern through the air, more script than gesture. As he muttered, a rosy gleam suffused through the air over his wand, as if someone in the next world over had turned a light on.

“I forgive you,” said Narcissa.

Bellatrix smiled quizzically. “For what?” she said.

“For Lucius.”

Bellatrix’s eyes sealed over with something flat and cold.

“For him?” she repeated. “You forgive… me… for him?”

“For killing my husband,” Narcissa said calmly. “Yes.”

“He betrayed you. He broke his oath,” she snapped. “He made fugitives and prisoners of us, our families—”

“You left him to rot in Azkaban.”

“And so he should have rotted in Azkaban,” snapped Bellatrix. “Did you think I would have left him there forever? I would have freed him. I would have fought to free him, for you, dull fool that he was. And if it were your life at stake, I would have felled the prison to do it, wandless I could have done it, with bloody hands — and what? He loved you so little he could not sit in silence for the same purpose?”

“He did it for me. And for Draco. He wanted to watch his son grow up.”

“And that was enough for you? You didn’t care, then, that he betrayed us — that he betrayed me—”

“I did care.”

“Not enough! If you forgave him that, it was because you never cared for me!”

Narcissa winced. “I do not grant that,” she said. “I say that I loved him. I would have died for him. I suppose you couldn’t countenance that, really,” she said, kindly enough. “You would never permit me to die unless it was for you.”

“Don’t say that like it makes you proud,” Bellatrix hissed, and her venom failed to disguise injury. “You insipid fool. Of course you’d die for him. You’d have died for anyone that gave the order, you were too fucking simple to do anything else. That’s why he married you.”

Narcissa shrugged.

“I loved you first,” she said simply. “I loved you the day I married Lucius, and I loved you the day I buried him. Strike me down, and you will cut down a creature that loves you.” She added, “Then again, you always did enjoy doing that.”

“Silencio!”

The curse flew high and wide of Narcissa, who did not move. It splashed harmlessly on the wall.

“I’m sorry we made you marry him,” she said, in even tones of sorrow. “It was a mistake. We should have rallied around you. We should have protected you. We were all you had, and we left you to die. I’m sorry.”

“You had nothing to do with my marriage. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Narcissa tilted her head. “No, I didn’t,” she said. “I should have. They should have had to pry me from you with an awl—”

“Be silent, Narcissa!”

“—should have cut my hands off at the wrists before they released you. If they had tried to marry me to a man I despised, you would have killed him before he touched me,” said Narcissa, lifting her voice. “You would have burned Witherfell before you let him take me from it. I should have done the same for you. I should have fought; I could have won. Not a day goes by where I do not wonder what would have happened if I had not betrayed you.”

“As if you had any power—”

“I could. With Andy and you together, we could. You were our courage. That’s why she left, I always knew it,” she said. “She loved you more than any man, but you were gone, and I was not enough.”

The curse slit the air between them with black lightning. Narcissa turned her chin and it sizzled past, inches from her cheek. Bellatrix did not even speak, but kept her wand aloft in warning.

Narcissa lifted her own wand and shifted stances, her offhand rising to hover about the hip, her wand outstretched in the overhand grip. The old grip. The old way.

They dueled.

Her wand snapped up in a perfect parry. Perfect glide into a perfect riposte into a perfect counterstrike. And for every perfect deflection, Bellatrix hurled another perfect attack, a flawless curse, a ruthless thrust, coming down the piste like thundercloud unfurling, raw magic rippling the air around her in a dizzy storm of humid sparks. She feinted right and yet Narcissa stepped left, gracefully quick, without even a deferential glance at the feint, to parry the spell. A conjured whip of thorns was withered to ash in a single blast. Ice spikes ripped up from the floor and she dodged them a three-step so smooth it was almost a waltz. Jinxes shattered on her guard in a pepper of fire that her wand caught unerringly, as if magnetized.

Her cool dark eyes held unerringly on the point of Bellatrix’s wand. Her body moved as if it knew what would happen three seconds ahead, as if she had done all this before, and had been doing it, without relief, for a hundred years.

“Prometheo,” said Snape.

Fire poured from the air like a river of liquid sunlight. It coalesced into the shape of a beast, but it was unlike any beast Draco had ever seen in flesh or book: a bulbous arthropod with a sectioned carapace and an underbelly studded with long claws that propelled it through the air like fins, a forked tail that frothed and spit with tufts of flame. On its shoulders perched a skull and not a head, with four hollows instead of eyes where black coals guttered, with great serrated mandibles that dripped smoke. It snapped and swam through the room, leading a trail of fire that snapped up the walls in thick tongues.

Narcissa and Bellatrix were still dueling. There was no opening for anyone to intervene. The way they were moving, any curse stood equal chances of hitting Narcissa.

Hermione was hauling on his arm. The roar of Snape’s conjuration drowned her voice, but he read the plea to run on her lips.

“My mother,” he said numbly. “My mother—”

“Draco, please!” Hermione was pulling him. Her panicked eyes swam to him through the smoke. The fire left them the color of tarnished galleons. Her hands found his face and tried to pull him to look at her. Her hot trembling fingers were still sticky with blood.“You have to leave!”

The walls were burning. Smoke billowed from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The roaring and spellfire congealed to a thunderous ringing in his ears. The house gave a groan.

A splintering CRACK was the only warning. A portion of the rafters collapsed. Hermione dove out of the way. They shattered around his head. The log that descended on him broke his Shield under a momentous blow, and he was knocked to the side. Hermione screamed his name and vanished behind a falling piece of the ceiling, guttering in flames.

Draco tore himself upright. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see her. He shouted for her and didn’t hear his own voice. His Aguamenti spluttered against the fire and merely added steam to the darkening veil of smoke. He shouted for her again the burn in his throat seemed to spread, down his chest into his lungs, into his bones, until his body was on fire, everything was on fire with panic.

And then there she was: caught under a piece of the wall that had collapse, her Shield glittering ferociously under the enormous bulk of the wood, and her teeth bared and face knit in effort and the relief was a single split second of cool.

He threw a Levitation Charm like a snare and it shoved the wall to one side. The wood leaned away from her and collapsed in an explosion of kindling and embers. Hermione’s Shield vanished as she gasped for air. He seized her by the arm and dragged her up, and she clutched his forearms, coughing hard.

Hermione shoved herself upright, breathing raggedly, and pointed her wand. “Ventus!”

A gust of wind barrelled down the corridor of flame, splitting it open around the gleaming deer. It laced a narrow path through the burning wreckage to the door.

Snape’s fire demon made another round of the room, letting out a screech that shook the foundations of the house. Spells flickered back and forth from the flames, but he couldn’t see the casters. He shouted for his mother, but there was no answer. The silver deer stamped the ground in agitation, nosing at the path to the exit.

With his heart in his throat, he gave a snarl of wordless, hopeless frustration, and shoved Hermione in front of him. They staggered out of the burning parlor, through the collapsing entrance hall. The portraits had melted ghoulishly under the onslaught of flame, and the brass of the mirror had warped, dripping on the floor in a glowing molten pool. Turkish rugs lay in black spiderwebs of ashen thread. Embers rained from above as burning parts of the ceiling dropped like comets. All the ghostly splendor of Grimmauld Place howled in a cascade of fire and ash.

He grabbed Hermione’s hand and ran to the door, her fingers sweat-slick and tight in his. They were so close; he could see the soft clear twilight of the night beyond, the clear purple, and he could almost taste the waft of fresh air from beyond the burning doorframe. Hermione cast another Ventus and it knocked the flames away in a billowing curtain around the door, and her foot had crossed the threshold when something snared the back of his shirt and wrenched him back, tearing his hand free of hers.

The flames snapped closed around her as she whirled around. They closed on her face in a rictus of horror. She screamed, “DRACO!”

A hand fisted his collar. The nails scraped the back of his neck.

He twisted and lashed out blindly behind him with all of his strength. Something connected — something cracked — there was a female cry of pain.

Draco landed with a hard dazzle of pain on his back and threw his hand up, with a wordless cry, to block a curse he could not stop, but it never came. Instead, Bellatrix swore and clutched her mouth, where blood beaded from the lip he’d split with his elbow. Embers guttered in her hair, and a cast of smoke and cinders paled her hair to a ghostly shade. She grimaced and spat blood beside him. Then she thrust out her hand, her palm streaked with an indistinguishable smear of ash and magical residue, her fingernails blacked with it.

“Take my hand.”

“Where’s my mother?”

“They seek to destroy the ring — he has seduced your mother to his treasons—”

“Let go of me—”

“She has condemned us all—”

“LET GO!”

Bellatrix screamed in anguish, threading her hands through her hair. “I cannot,” she cried, “it is too much, I cannot bear it, I will not, I can survive no more—”

The house fell above them, and she tore herself away with a cry that vanished into the scream of shattering wood.

The ceiling came down at once, a shower of black beams with an unfurling bloom of red behind it. Draco’s Shield came too late.

A beam dropped on his head, and the world went out.

For a moment — it could have been minutes, it could have been hours — he floated in the world outside the world, blank and numb.

---

“DRACO! GET UP!”

He was flung off his stomach and dropped on his back. The house was still burning. He was caged between beams. His head seared; up and down rotated each other at a frenetic quickstep. He had no idea how long it had been, but Bellatrix was gone.

When the three sets of vision blurred together, Sirius Black stood over him, his bare chest corded with scars, wearing a shirt of his own blood, frail and wild and viciously alive.

“There you are,” he shouted. He seized Draco by the collar and rattled him hard, loosing a raucous cough from Draco’s chest. Sirius’s face swam in and out of smoke and dizziness. “Get up! GET UP! Gotta get out of here!”

“I can’t—” He could hardly breathe in the smoke. It hurt to talk. “Can’t walk—”

“Then I’ve got you,” Sirius said grimly, hauling him upright by his shoulders. “Hold on to me — HOLD ON! Up! UP! Attaboy, Draco — steady! Steady! Oh, you’ll live, I tell you!” He gave an unnerving, hysterical cackle as Draco staggered upright, and they lurched together for the doors.

Sirius blasted Bombarda at the beams in their wake, shattering what remained of the walls, and charged through the wreckage with a warrior cry. The night swelled before them, still and cool. “That’s fucking RIGHT!” he roared. “You and me! Come on! We’re not dying here!”

He slung Draco’s arm around his back, and clutching him tightly, Sirius hurtled onto the stoop.

Fresh air filled his chest in a buoyant rush. Sirius staggered down the stoop and laid him carefully on the pavement. His lungs shuddered, seizing around the smoke.

“Alright,” muttered Sirius, shifting his wand-grip. “Think I remember this one. Dispefumum.”

The smoke slithered out of his throat in an eerie, sucking rush, and he snapped his head back as it poured from his mouth in a rippling snake. He gasped and dropped back down as his lungs drew full of clear, gorgeous air, and his blood sang with oxygen. His vision cleared. Sirius sat back on his haunches, grinning in exhausted satisfaction.

Seven days of bombing could not have done worse to the street. The magical battle had left it charred and distorted, the asphalt melted like butter and swirled in bizarre shapes, trees uprooted, cars smouldering. The dementors were gone. Draco tried to speak and found his voice a withered shell of itself.

“Where’s — Hermione? Where’s Potter?” He tried to sit up, and Sirius pushed him back down, gently.

“Rest a second,. You broke anything?”

“No — where are they? Get off me.”

“Order took ‘em,” said Sirius, and jerked his head at the empty street. “Your bird fought like a hellion, by the way. Didn’t want to leave you, went a bit mad for it. Think she splinched Kingsley trying to stop him from Apparating her.”

“The Order came?”

“Yeah,” said Sirius, scratching his temple with his wand. “When I came to, I dropped the Apparation wards. Let them pop right in, instead of coming longways from the Floo at Arabella’s.” He paused. “Was I dead?”

“You were close,” he rasped.

“Huh,” said Sirius. Then: “Am I dead?”

“No. Hermione saved you. She had — phoenix tears.”

Sirius set his jaw. He sat back, elbows braced on his knees.

“Not sure I would’ve advised that,” he said, at length. “Those are pretty rare.”

“You weren’t available to consult,” Draco snarled, clambering upright. “Next time, don’t lose. Where did my mother go?”

Sirius blinked at him. “Your mum?”

“Yes. My mother.” His heart started running again, a slow, hard beat at the bottom of his ribs. “Did the Order take her?”

“I didn’t see her. You mean Narcissa was here?”

“You didn’t see her leave? She didn’t — Bellatrix didn’t take her, either?”

“Last I saw Bellatrix, half my guts were pouring out of me,” said Sirius. “What was Cissa—?”

“Thank you, Sirius.”

A shadow carved through the lamplight. It was Dumbledore. He wore robes of midnight blue that trailed, and his hair was bound back with a piece of silver twine. He carried his wand: a long and knobbled thing, with a simple leather hilt.

“My mother,” said Draco unsteadily.

“Step back, please, Draco.”

“My mother was inside. With Snape. Her ring—”

“Draco, I must insist you step back.”

Dumbledore lifted his wand and flattened his offhand delicately against the air. He closed his eyes, and drew his wand slowly back.

A current of air rippled around the house. It raced up the walls in tight spirals of wine so strong they rattled the shutters of houses down the street.

The flames guttered as the air above them was ripped away. With the oxygen whisked up and away from the source of the fire, the glow faded from the windows. The remaining layers of coal-dark bricks, once so fine, slumped and skittered finally to the ground under twists of shriveled ivy. Smoke unfurled in a black sheet, billowing from the dead-eyed house.

Dumbledore, with a slight effort, bent his arm and conducted the air in a vast current that rippled off across the street, blowing the trees nearly flat to the ground. Cars skittered away from him. His robes thrashed, and his hair snapped in a long white tail.

Then he lowered his wand, and the street went still.

Draco shoved past him and raced up the stairs.

The parlor was a blackened ruin. Thin grey strains of twilight filtered through a hole in the roof that reached up through the successive floors, revealing a biopsy of carnage in the burnt house. Embers floated amongst drifts of smoke. A pair of figures huddled in the corner of the room, crouched against the mantel, shrouded in a cast of thick ash. The shining remains of a runic circle lay on the floor around them, burned-out from use.

Bellatrix held Narcissa’s head in her lap. The younger sister lay on her side, her body a slender stripe of fallen marble amidst the wreck. Snape was gone.

Bellatrix was crying. It was a surreal act; her face did not move, and the clamp of her mouth did not unseal, but her shoulders shook, and tears ran from wide, raw, red eyes.

Wood snapped under his feet when he knelt beside them. Bellatrix lifted her head.

“Draco,” she said.

“Is she,” said Draco. His head was a clean white slate across which a single thought raced in nauseating circles. “Is she? Mum.”

Bellatrix moved Narcissa’s head, tipping it towards Draco. Her hand spilled open, and the ring tumbled out of her fist.

The fire had melted the outer cast of goblin-silver, warping it open to reveal the ring beneath it. The original setting was a thin band of gold, and under the outer diamond sat a pyramid of black stone, which had split open at the base from the setting. It was weeping an oily black substance.

“Mother.” He shoved her shoulder, roughly. “Mother? She’s not conscious. Did you Ennervate her?”

“Draco.”

“What did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do this,” said Bellatrix roughly. “The fiendfyre — she took it on herself to extinguish it.”

“Where was Snape?”

“I don’t know. I would have killed him, if he were in sight. He poisoned her—”

“You’re lying.” His voice was calm. He did not know why it was so calm. “You dueled her. You killed her.”

“Not for her life. I would not.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

She thrust out her arm. “Bind me to the truth,” she rasped. “I will make the vow Unbreakable. I did not kill her.”

“But you survived,” he said. It was not calm, he found, so much as emptiness: something in his mind that was failing to spark, flint scraping fruitlessly against steel. “You did. And she—”

Bellatrix shook her head. She bent over Narcissa, pressing their foreheads together.

“Get off of her,” he said. The flint caught. “Get the fuck off of her. Get off—”

“Draco.”

“Don’t touch her. It’s your fault, you killed her—”

“I did not!”

“She wouldn’t have been here if not for you!”

“I never touched her,” Bellatrix rasped. “I never struck to kill—”

“If you hadn’t come, if you hadn’t told her what that fucking ring was, if you’d stayed the fuck away from us, if you’d died—”

If he’d never said no, if he’d never turned back, if he’d done as she asked. If Sirius Black had never been born. If the wind had changed, if the Hat had lied.

“Draco Malfoy, I own my share of your vengeance,” Bellatrix said. Her dark eyes radiated under a gnarled fringe of curls. “I owe you a father. I own it. But this—”

“Bellatrix.”

Dumbledore’s voice brooked a flutter of warm wind, stirring the cinders. Bellatrix jerked her head up, and scrambled back, still clutching Narcissa.

“Professor,” she spat. “Come to see all that you have made?”

“Let her go.”

“Do you really find nothing in yourself to blame for this?” It had all a teacher’s condescension without a teacher’s kindness. “No guilt, still? I suppose by now the remorse would have killed you. Perhaps it finally may.”

“Remorse is not a killing thing,” she said. “The weight is never quite enough to snap the neck.”

Dumbledore sighed. “We both know tonight is not the night you die,” he said. “Leave Narcissa, and take your leave. Your master calls.”

“I will bury her in the soil of Witherfell. She belongs there.”

“You lost a sister. There is a boy here who lost his mother. Leave her.”

“She is mine! She was mine, she was not yours!”

Dumbledore lifted his voice. “She belongs to the boy she chose,” he said. “Just once, can you try to see her for what she was, and honor it?”

Bellatrix stared at him, wide-eyed. “Strike me,” she said suddenly. “Strike me, old man. I know you want to do it.”

“Bellatrix, you tire me,” Dumbledore said contemptuously. “If you seek to suffer, ask your Lord. He will give it to you. But leave my sight. You are despicable, and you are not even opaque.”

She wailed, and pressed her head to Narcissa’s. Dumbledore’s wand twitched.

Crack. She disappeared.

With her gone, Narcissa slumped to the floor. Draco caught her and lowered her, trying to cushion the back of her head.

Her eyes were closed. That was good. She could be sleeping, with her eyes closed. An angry burn trailed down from her neck under her hemline, but when he pulled the flap of her robe closed he could only see the crown of it. That was also good. And her hair was spilling out of its knot, gathering dust, which she would hate, so he gathered it out of the way and tried to pool it on her shoulder. She had smudged her makeup and he rubbed it off her cheek with his sleeve, but that was dirty too, so he left it alone. And her hat was gone. Where was her hat? She would want it.

He reached for his magic, but it failed. The current that ran through him had been stoppered; he could not focus, he could not think. There was nothing in his head, and so the magic eddied fruitlessly around him, clenching his muscles in its longing to manifest.

“If you will permit me,” said Dumbledore, and sat down beside him. Watching the old man lower himself was a bizarre experience: the mundane resettling of robes, the way Dumbledore hitched his trousers back on his knees. He wasn’t supposed to do that. He was supposed to be above that. It made Draco furious.

“It’s a horcrux,” he said roughly. He picked up the ring and pitched it into Dumbledore’s lap. Dumbledore peered at it without touching it. “The ring. The fiendfyre was meant to destroy it.”

“It did.”

“Snape broke his cover to save Potter. My aunt cut off his Mark.”

“I can imagine.”

“Why was he alone?” he bit out. “Why didn’t the rest of the Order come with him?”

“Severus had heard of the Azkaban break before Nymphadora’s warning,” Dumbledore said calmly. “He had earlier notice, and a shorter distance to travel. He came from Little Hangleton.”

“I don’t know where that is.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

That was probably true.

“A child is not his mother’s keeper,” said Dumbledore, as if he knew the first thing or last thing about her, as if he knew everything and grieved it.

“My mother,” he said, as Narcissa continued not to move. There was something heavy bearing down on him. It was not yet painful, but it soon would be, and the dread of it was almost worse than the pressure it exerted now; soon he would wake up, though, and she would be alive again. He would wake up and he would be eleven. He would wake up and he would be eight, and both of his parents would be having breakfast in the drawing-room, murmuring to each other about unknowable grown-up things. He stopped. Started again. “My mother was.”

But there was no more. That was the end of the sentence. It was the end of everything: my mother was. The seconds that raced past carried him further and further away from her, into a black and monstrous is; but Narcissa Malfoy slipped inexorably into the past, still and quiet, like a figure on a receding train station.

---

Next chapter, 10/19/25: “The Princess’s Tale.”

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