Thoughts kept throbbing in her head, pushing against her skull, and once more she felt herself reminded of that day in the Hospital Wing, so long ago, she might have lived an entire life since. Lying on the table, her hands were held by Ron’s and though she liked them so much, she wished for a different pair to do it instead. The longer she lived, the more she began to understand, what it had been like for him, loving someone dearly, always having this spark, somewhere, in the back of a mind that nearly exploded and imploded mutually every time thoughts were brushing along.
But it was different. While she had hope that he might come back, a chance he might do so, he had nothing but emptiness to hold on to. Perhaps the same hope, that he would be seeing Lily and all his friends again some day, but that he then would be gone as well. There was nothing that could possibly make him afraid of dying, because then he would be with her. Still he was here. I have a job to do. Yes, he apparently had. And though she couldn’t fully understand why it had to be such a brutal one, she at least accepted that she wouldn’t entirely understand before she had children herself.
“Have you sent the letter already?”, she asked softly, straight up into Narcissa’s blue eyes, ignoring that to her right, in his grandmother’s arms, Teddy had changed his hair colour again.
“No.”, the woman answered emotionless.
“No?”, Hermione straightened slightly.
“It would only give them unnecessary troubles. Draco has a lesson to learn and he has to do that alone. Even if they might find something that actually worked the way he believes, he should first retrieve the ring. If he so badly wishes to pull his family’s secrets up from the deepest grounds, I won’t stop him. It is his right to learn this lesson. The dead are meant to rest and their secrets are meant to rest with them. I merely let him devote to this project of his because I fear he might – ”
She swallowed heavily and looked out of a kitchen window behind Andromeda. In whole, it took her more than half a minute until she found the strength to add the obvious, though with a bigger knot in her throat.
“End up like his father. I do not – want to – bind another – off – you see, what Lucius destroyed in the end, was himself. It wasn’t his life as a Death Eater, or his time in Azkaban – it was his own pride, his wish to be something, to fondle the name that had lost its prestige with his father. He wanted to bring back old days he had no imagination of and if I don’t want Draco to make the same mistake, he will have to open this grave and see. If he thinks there aren’t enough corpses already to haunt him at nights, I will not stop him from inviting another to his dreams.”
“That’s cruel.”, she looked back at Hermione, her expression still empty.
“No. Lucius has built a cage for Draco, and it had been on me to polish it, to hold its bars together when they were about to be washed away. You see, as much as he had a propensity to this useless prestige, to wealth, as much he had it for another luxury he formerly only cherished on occasions, but it became more frequent. While he was cheerful when he drank, he was also easily offended and lost all inhibition. He didn’t differ. The more he had drunk, the less he differed. And if he had enough, he was in a completely alternate world. No one could follow him there. In this world he was king. He was the emperor, and he had no friends there, no family. Only he counted. I wasn’t his wife, and Draco – wasn’t his son. I don’t know what exactly we were then for him, other than slaves, but of course, while I had a certain control, Draco couldn’t see it. He had been too young, and then he had been used to the fact that this was Daddy as well. He didn’t differ either. And I couldn’t make him differ. Lucius never had any memory of those nights, or even days. I did my best to make it as pleasant for Draco as possible, and if it meant that he had to believe it to be alright. He idolised his father, adored him, loved him deeply. I couldn’t blast away his illusion. He was only a child – I – I just couldn’t – ”
“What did he do.”, Hermione moaned whispering.
“Yet, even if he had remembered, I don’t believe he would have understood – the extent – after all – he too had loved his father. And thinking back, seeing how habits had passed on, I – I, yes, maybe I had grown to live with it. Decided that this was, what fathers did.”
“What fathers did?”, Hermione kept demanding.
“The dead can’t defend themselves.”, Narcissa countered cold. “You are not his daughter. It is not on you to dig him out and question a side of him he couldn’t control. It is hard enough for me that I had been so naïve as to not see that contact with others might wake Draco up; just like myself; that he might begin to question his father – and he did, eventually. He saw and heard and understood that some things might not be as alright as he had always believed them to be. He confronted Lucius and Lucius didn’t know what he was talking about. I never told him what he was like when drunk. Let alone that he would have believed me, or understood. He loved Draco too much. He would have rather kicked me out, even though he loved me nearly as much. His lesson was that Draco had grown up and begun to unveil a person Lucius didn’t know it rested in him. He had no knowledge of the real monster that had been passed on in his bloodline, the reason why his own father’s existence had soiled this family so terribly. The reason nobody ever spoke about.”
“And – ”, Hermione unnecessarily wanted to push her.
“But of course they did. They already did, back then in our common room. They spoke about it when Lucius wasn’t there and I mostly left with my hands on my ears so I needed not hear the horror stories about my boyfriend’s father. He might have even been worse than Lucius, but his wife did her best to keep me away from him. Why, I only understood when I had married Lucius and I finally got to realise why she had had to lock Abraxas in so many times.”
“And you didn’t leave the manor?”, Ginevra asked, at Ron’s left.
“Why. Why should we have done that. If Lucius had left, he would have been shunned, outcast, hunted. You know well the habits in our families. There is a reason why Pure-Blood defenders stay among themselves. Because they are so much alike, in principles – and ability to cruelty just to keep their ideology alive. If Lucius had left, Abraxas would have denied him.”
“You know what our aunt did to Sirius.”, Andromeda threw in. “You know what she did to me. If you run away, if you decide to no longer be part of the family; and if it is solely to build your own life; you are no longer wanted. You are – scum that has no rights, you are as much an enemy as any who disagrees with the `high, noble laws that are the only way to save wizardkind´.”
“They would have hunted us down, beat every breath out of us until there would have been less left than empty shells. You are familiar with the knacks our sister had. She was not a rare sight. The only difference was that she was acting in the open, rather than behind thick, ancient walls. I loved Lucius, so we stayed – made our jokes about Abraxas, and respected him for the proud man he was when walking his halls sober.”
“How could you have born that – ”, aspirated Hermione, not missing that Narcissa’s quiet voice was becoming more forceful the longer she talked, but nevertheless didn’t show a raise of volume.
“Lucius never spoke of what his mother hid under her high buttoned robes, and I am not sure whether he ever really knew. We never talked about it. It was present, but it was taboo. When they were locked in, we never heard anything. You know well the spells to keep secrets hidden from any ear. Nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. No evidence, nothing there to question.”
“That doesn’t sound like an even slightly bearable life,”, Ron straightened with his eyebrows narrowed and wrapped Hermione’s hand more firmly.
“She slept in, peacefully, locked in with her drunken husband. Of course he was devastated, but he did not lose a word. She was carried out, covered from everyone’s eyes, buried behind the manor. Abraxas didn’t speak. People; outsiders; still say he died from Dragon Pox, that year later – from the ulcer that has infested our families long ago.”
“Blimey – ”, the whisper came so quiet only Hermione noticed it, giving him a short, angry side-glance.
“We said, he died from a broken heart. What really killed him, is out of question. He is dead. He did not speak, and cannot speak about it anymore. Dragon Pox took him away. His wife slept in. Lucius had been crushed by the causes of a war. And it does not do you any good to shake your head, girl. Sanctimonia Vincet Semper. Toujours Pur. Satisfy yourself with the fact that Lucius and I had married out of love, as much as my sister and Ted had, rather than what the rest of us would have and had done it for.”
“So that’s it? You will always be a Black? Always be a Malfoy?”
“These families have seen so many wars,”, Hannah said something for the first time, “But they will always be what their ancestors meant them to be.”
“That’s medieval.”, Hermione grunted. “We are a year away from a new millennium.”
“I thought, one like you would not be able to understand it.”
“One like me?”, the young woman snarled.
“Well, of course. For you it seems easy to just stand up to the world and – ”
“If it interests you, your son’s just doing exactly that.”, huffed Hermione. “He’s standing up to the madness the lot of you have been defending brutally for so many centuries – ”
“And it is on me to keep him from burning like this foolish Icarus, who believed that Muggles could fly a better flight than any, even better than a bird. I do encourage his ideas, but I am his mother and it is my obligation to take care of him.”
“But that doesn’t mean you have to keep up that mania your families have been practising for so long!”
“You still don’t understand, girl.”
“She’s got a name,”, Ron hissed.
“This war may be over, but there are still people out there who do not support people like you, regardless of that person who seems to have made it their duty to slay them all. There will always be witches and wizards who hate Muggles and knowing Muggles that are disgusted by us, as much as there will always be white people who hate black people and the other way round. Racism has ever been there since people of different tribes had met coincidentally in wide lands. Minds can be changed, but only minds that have suffered from inequity. A heart that hasn’t bled, will not know what those that had, do feel like. You ask why I let my son step down onto his father’s corpse and retrieve a ring? Because he has to see that while some things may be immortal, others aren’t.”
“But – ”
“He has gotten to discover his father’s flaws, very painfully, and he will have to learn it even more that we are all just human and that it is in human nature to have flaws and learn to convert those to something positive. He has to learn that we all one day will go back to nature, that nothing is forever and that no matter how much he curses Lucius now, he is dead and it doesn’t help anyone that he curses him or is unable to cry for him. But it will help him to understand that his father, no matter how strong he seemed to be, was as weak as any, that he was human, not some sort of god and that he himself isn’t either. You want to know why I let him invite one more corpse to his dreams? Because I don’t want him to make exactly the mistake that has ever been present in our families. You are said to be intelligent. But why, I ask you, do you then argue with me, confessing that you haven’t even listened?”
“They are too young to understand that.”, Molly sighed, walking past them with a basket of laundry.
“We’ve seen a war too, Mum.”, snorted her daughter.
“Yes. Twice. And I might not be able to understand why they are like this, because I’ve grown up with tolerating parents. And of course I can accept that some things are simply what they are.”, Hermione gnarled. “But I’ve also seen that there are other ways. No, I can’t understand why Pure-Blood supporters seem to be so arrogant and genuine that they mostly can’t be converted but have to be killed. As she said, there is always a way to make someone understand. It’s that twist in her opinion I don’t get.”
“There is no twist in my opinion; if you had listened – ”
“It’s cruel that people have to suffer in order to understand what suffering means, but I guess that’s also in human nature, isn’t it? It’s this cruel life in which fathers have to deny their sons so they don’t die from care, isn’t it? That life in which you have to abandon loved ones so they aren’t too bond to others. That life in which you have to kick your children out so they can grow up, other than holding them close, explaining it thoroughly.”, she was on her feet and turned to leave.
“So you want to do it the Umbridge-way then?”, Ginevra suggested angrily. “Teaching them the theory of hurt and believe they’ll know then and won’t hurt anyone? Some people might possess enough ethics to not do things that might hurt others. Some people might have enough imagination. But I agree with Narcissa. Not everyone has this imagination and the ones who haven’t, seem to be bound to having to learn their lesson as brutally as possible. If you want it done thoroughly but not hurt too much, you’ll have to bring them to the truth slowly.”
“And what do you suddenly know about that?”
“Well, I’ve seen what sudden truth can do to a caring heart. I’ve seen him collapse in the Entrance Hall.”
“What?”
“Yes.”, Ginevra had stood up as well. “I’ve seen what the message has done to him and it’s been just his friend. You, have only lost a friend, if I may remind you.”
“Stop it, okay?”
“Oh no, I won’t stop it.”, snarled the ginger. “You’ve had months to get it, but you didn’t. Dwelling in self-pity doesn’t bring him back. You don’t understand? Well, lucky you. You never lost a father. He didn’t want him to lose another, because he himself knew what it was like to lose a mother, and later – ”
“I know what you’re driving at, but – ”
“If you know that much, then I don’t need to make you understand, or do I?”, Ginevra huffed. “He knew what it was like and wanted to keep Harry away from another experience like that. He failed. So he threw himself onto that duty even more. But it doesn’t matter how hard I’ll try to explain, you won’t know until you lost someone.”
“I’ve lost my sister!”, Hermione was close to tears, but so was Ginevra, her expression as cold as Narcissa’s.
“What?”, Ron gasped. “Could anyone tell me what’s – ”
“She wasn’t even born yet! You know nothing, Hermione! Nothing! Don’t try to judge people if you never felt what they felt! Harry plasters his walls with photos of dead Death Eaters? Well, I don’t mind! I wouldn’t mind either if I wasn’t going to marry him! Because he has all the right to do that! He has the right to decorate his room with corpses! Because the souls that had been in those bodies, killed his family as well, among so many others! He’s got all the right on this satisfaction! That’s why he doesn’t want to stop these Avengers, not only because they’re better than any Auror the Ministry had under their command in centuries! It helps him sleep better! Yes, he used to have nightmares, but they are over. They’re over now that he got to see that there is something like justice, even if it’s brutal, but sometimes brutality has to be fought with brutality. Because some people won’t get it otherwise. They’re actually rather kind.”
“Rather kind?”, shrieked Hermione, not believing what she had to listen to.
“If they were arseholes, they’d let their victims survive much longer than it would take to figure their mistakes. It’s much worse if you got tortured to a breaking point and have to live with that memory. No matter if innocent or not. And bless you, I don’t even mind having sex beneath those photos, because that, in my opinion, shows just as much how successful their ideology was. And yeah, let the dead rest and all, but blimey, they don’t get it anymore anyway.”
“And what is your opinion about that?”, Hermione addressed someone else, mostly to distract herself as she looked at Ginevra, clearly understanding what her friend referred to and she felt the pain, the fear for her own life, the memory of the night Bellatrix Lestrange had tortured her, and much more.
“I think,”, everyone of the others startled with their faces zooming at Luna whom they had not seen sitting down on the dresser, “Everyone has to find their own way. You can’t change a stubborn mind. They’ll have to decide for themselves which of the things you try to tell them, is worthy enough for them to be taken into account. You might not see it, but that goes for you as well. Your opinions aren’t easily shattered either. Why then wondering that others are the same?”
“And besides, we’re Gryffindors. We stand by our red.”
“What?”
From the sitting room, the noise of Hermione’s parents coming back from their trip to London via Floo interrupted simply everything they had going on. Molly continued devoting to the laundry, Hermione stomped for her mother and father, Narcissa disappeared upstairs with her sister and the baby, Ginevra asked Luna with a single look whether she wanted to help her preparing lunch, Luna approved with a smile and hopped off the dresser. Left behind at the table, was only a very confused Ron. Hannah had gone to her room too then.
~~#~~
Crawling cold meant to conquer them, and with every minute more passing, neither Harry’s cloak, nor their propinquity seemed to be standing the spears, arrows and blades of winter’s knights any longer.
“You still want to give it a try?”, Harry whispered, but got no response. “Draco?”
At least he still breathed, Harry thought, and tried to get his hand up to his own eyes without pulling the cloak off him. Once he had managed to rub his eyes behind his glasses, he became even more tired. It had stopped snowing, but the silver clouds were still as thick. His look travelled around, eventually reaching Draco’s head, which somehow rested against his right collarbone without sliding down. Probably because his forehead had been halted by the side of Harry’s chin. Draco’s lips stood ajar and a strand of his long hair was dangerously sought inside every time he breathed in. Hannah had once mentioned that since he used her shampoo, his hair had gotten more volume and she had been right, but now his bundles which had been sticky from digging, had been glued to his head by melted snow.
When Harry brushed the strand with some others behind his right ear, Draco shortly seemed to wake up, but he only took a deeper breath through his nose, which resulted in a single snore and a quiet moan before he slightly readjusted the position of his head without noticing. That cost Harry a little chuckle and a smile.
“Draco?”, no reaction.
Harry sighed and brushed his head another time, back in thoughts, though regretting it immediately, blinking and frowning heavily straight ahead. Draco had given a tiny whimper and the arm that had laid on Harry’s right thigh, slid off. It wasn’t too bad, Harry thought. Such things could happen. But curiosity killed the cat, knowingly. Though, was he a cat? Believing himself mad, he gave it a try and ran his fingers through Draco’s hair another time. Eyes wide open, his ears perceived a second moan that sounded even delighted and it still wouldn’t have bothered him much – if it hadn’t been for Draco pulling back his arm, which made his palm come to halt – his breathing indicated that he was really still asleep. Or he was feigning it incredibly well. Harry pulled back his own hand to prevent worse, but the touch actually induced what he had feared: Draco’s fingers seemed to be believing that they had gotten hold of a blanket or similar.
“Draco,”, Harry moaned slowly and waited some seconds but it didn’t work. “Draco!”
With a gasp, he finally startled up, his right hand almost instantly at his face and he murmured into it while he robbed his eyes. The fingers of his left hand however clutched slightly and Harry bit into his lower lip to hold back any sound. Fortunately Draco seemed to have noticed it as he faltered in his move.
“Don’t tell me – ”, he aspirated, staring over his hand.
“No need to worry. It’s just a cushion I conjured and placed there in case your hand might slip off right into that area.”, Harry grunted and Draco gasped again, quickly removing his hand.
“Sorry – ”, he moaned. “I’m so sorry – ”
“I said, don’t worry. I’m glad just glad you didn’t squeeze. That might have hurt.”, murmured Harry, but Draco already snorted into his right hand, bright red. “Really funny, yes.”
“It’s – a quite – tightly stuffed cushion – ”
“I’m warning you,”
“But I might have been – ”, his left hand very slowly glided back into that specific direction, “Mistaken – ”
“Draco!”, now Harry slid away to the left.
“Are you sure you don’t – ”
“Will you shut up?”
“Like it? Argh!”, Harry had given him a smack on the back of his head, but he didn’t straighten as Harry had expected him to do. “Don’t – ”, he moaned quietly, his voice suddenly trembling. “I – I promise – I’ll do what you say – I’ll do everything – ”
“Er – ”
Some moments passed. Draco only sat curled up, the cloak having slid to his waist, and blubbered out mutters Harry didn’t really understand, but those he did, began to worry him. So he carefully held him by the shoulder, trying to make him straighten.
“Please don’t – I promise I won’t disappoint you – let – let go of me – then I’ll do anything – please!”
“Draco?”, he had to push him up forcefully, but Draco kept his head lowered, sobbing more than before, with his eyes tightly shut when Harry took his chin and lifted it.
“I p-promise – p-please – ”
“Draco!”, Harry yelled and his eyes shot open with terror, staring at him as if he was not sure what he saw there. “What the – what’s wrong with you?”, it took him several seconds to focus his eyes on Harry’s, then they sighted the grave and the soil next to it, his mind apparently returning to where he actually was. “Dr-Draco?”, but Draco only cried louder and sank against Harry’s shoulder. “Sorry – ”, Harry had been confused so many times in his life, but the current situation was too much, even for him and he could barely hold Draco. “I – I’m sorry – what’s – ”, he tried to wrap him into the cloak again, but it wasn’t any better. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell – but you just really scared me, you know? If there’s anything you’d like to – ”, Draco shook his head. “Or if I can do something – ”
“C-close.”
“Close?”, Harry lightly pressed him away.
“C-close – i-i-it – p-p– ”
“Close it? What shall close?”, his eyes shut, Draco gave a barely noticeable nod and Harry shortly turned his head in the direction, understanding. “The grave? You want me to – close the grave?”, Draco nodded again, faster and trembling. “Okay.”, Harry pulled his wand from his sleeve and gave the heap some waves, whereupon the soil slid into the pit and filled it evenly. “It’s closed, you see?”, Draco wiped off some of his tears, though didn’t look. “What was that?”, the answer Harry got was only a shaking head. “Fine. I won’t force you to tell me now, but I’m curious, you know? I’d really like to understand why you can kick me in the face, but beg for your life if I give you a little clap on the head – that’s – just a bit – er – strange – ”
“Forget it.”, Draco panted, failing at drying his face.
“I won’t tell anyone. You know I won’t.”
“I said – forget it – what – what’re you doing – ”, Harry had taken some snow and melted it with the warmth of his left hand, which he then held up to Draco’s mouth. “Oh – thanks – ”, he drank it and Harry gave him some more.
“You could have – ”, he said after a third serving, “Conjured some water – into my mouth – ”
“I don’t want to drown you.”
“Well, that’s great to know.”, Draco mumbled after the last, shivering slightly when Harry’s now cold hand was placed on his cheek. “What.”, he whispered grim at Harry’s still concerned expression. “If you want to kiss me, you should do it now.”, huffing, Harry moved his hand to Draco’s shoulder.
“You want me to kiss you?”, Harry frowned.
“No.”, Draco smirked and rolled his eyes away.
“Good.”
Both breathed like they had ran for a long while and Harry did his best to hold the seams of his cloak together at Draco’s back, studying his shattered face, the bloodshot bluish grey eyes that avoided his look, the now messed, long, fair strands that fell past his shoulders already. Like minutes ago, Harry brushed some of them behind his right ear. That brought him Draco’s attention and he gazed at him through an apparent veil of salty water. There were only inches between them, but Harry leant closer, carefully pressing Draco’s head to the side and examined a long, thin, very straight scar that ran from the hairline above his ear diagonally down to the edge of his lower jaw, stopping where the corner of his mouth started. Its colour didn’t differ much from the rest of Draco’s skin, but it was clear enough Harry could feel it with his fingertips.
“How did you get that one?”, Harry asked, making Draco curl his lips in search for an explanation.
“Screwed up healing spell.”
“I didn’t ask how it became a scar.”
“Christmas present from last year.”, Draco grumbled and looked over to the entrance of the maze.
“Bellatrix?”
“No.”
“Voldemort?”
“No.”
“Draco?”
“No. I’m not that clumsy.”
“That’s not funny,”
“I didn’t laugh.”
“Your Dad?”
“Could you let go of me so I can finally hammer that ring into the stone?”
“Fine, you don’t need to tell me. I know I’m right.”, Harry sighed. “And pushing me off that brutally doesn’t undo anything either.”, he added when Draco had jumped up and stomped off.
“You’re done?”, Draco snapped, having come to halt in front of the dark gravestone, though not daring to stand on the patch.
“Not nearly.”, Harry meant and stood up as well.
“Fine. Then get your arse here and cast a shield, just in case that thing explodes, or something.”, he took off the ring.
“And how are you going to `hammer´ it into the stone then?”, Harry arrived at his side and conjured a shield he hoped to be strong enough to repel heaps of heavy rubble.
“Swish and flick, you Troll.”, Draco sighed boredly.
“Oh great. The I-have-an-O-in-my-NEWT-bouncer is back.”
“Not my problem that you decided to drop out.”
“Do I have to remind that I did take my NEWTs even before you did and that it was you who said – what was it? `I don’t see it as that important´?”
“Okay, okay! You won.”, Draco grunted. “But I also said `these days´, if I can remember right. They’re over.”
“Thanks to me.”, Harry replied coolly, and Draco took a very deep, frustrated breath, but didn’t counter this time.
Four eyes followed a very old silver ring floating towards the gravestone where it met smoothly with the engraved coat of arms, fitting in as if the signet had been cast into it. There was some humming sound and a faint blue glow around the ring as well as above the entire meadow, and as if a cupola of ice was melting from glass, the shield sank to the ground, revealing a high old building that almost mirrored the main manor. Though its windows were dusty, some of them even broken and plants trailed up the walls and through the holes in the windows. It appeared dead. Like a beaten dragon, its remains forgotten and now discovered by two nosy teenagers.
In the centre of the roof was a big dome that could have been an observatory. Some parts of the roofs had caved in, the rest was covered in thick snow and it was hard to tell how long it would withstand. Bushes of long grass were growing around, too massive to be fully hidden under the white blanket. Even though it had been shielded from people for what appeared to be centuries, the building had been completely and utterly at nature’s mercy.
“You still want a pond?”, Harry chuckled at Draco’s stare.
“You must always butt in, right?”
“If I can,”
~~#~~