A/N: This is Beater 2 of the Chudley Cannons checking in for Round 2 of Season 5 of the QLFC.

Prompts: Setting is Spinner's End. 8. (dialogue) "If you leave now, you get nothing," 9. (word) past, and 12. (word) shadow

Word Count before A/N: 1,803 words

I am not JK. This is her creation.

Thanks to my lovely teammates for betaing!

Narcissa Malfoy felt the familiar pull above her navel as she twisted her way through space. Apparition. She hated it on good days. And on bad days, well, she loathed it.

She found her footing at the bank of a river, bottles and bags and other rubbish scattered at her feet. Beside her, Draco was removing his hand from her shoulder, using it to brush away any wrinkles in his black coat. He didn't say a word, didn't look at her, didn't care to try. Of course she didn't blame him for how he felt. She herself was still reeling from the last few weeks' events.

The Battle. The demise of the Dark Lord. Lucius's arrest.

Narcissa sighed. It was the middle of May, but the air was chilly and smelled like exhaust. "Come along," she said. "It's this way."

She lifted her skirt and began her ascent up the small hill of the riverbank. Fallen brambles of dead bushes grabbed at her shoes, but she managed to make it to the peak without any real struggle. Draco, on the other hand, had slipped and fallen.

"Now you're going to dirty everything with mud," she started to brush the bits of twig from the front of his shirt, but he grabbed her hands and pushed them away.

"Whatever will I do," he spat. He turned abruptly from her and the winding river below. Narcissa watched as her son, her once glowing baby boy, faded into the tic-tac-toe streets—perfect grid lines stacked with rows of dilapidated brick homes, grey and drab against the mid-morning sky.

She followed behind, her heels clacking against the cobblestone. Narcissa hoped that none of the locals saw them today, and luckily the shutters on most of the windows were still drawn. The quicker they got in, the faster they could return to their own crumbling lives.

In front of her, Draco paused. He looked down one alley, then another.

"I don't remember the way," he said to her, his eyes never meeting her own. What she wouldn't give to look into his eyes again, to see the happiness and joy he once held.

"Follow me," she said. She knew the way like the back of her hand. She knew every little shadow of this town. The path to Spinner's End was forever engraved in Narcissa's mind, ever since that day she and her sister hurried toward her son's salvation.

Her sister. It was a strange feeling, knowing that Bellatrix was dead but not feeling at all upset about it. She wanted to say she loved the woman, but even those words fell flat most days. Bellatrix had been a volatile and terrifying force the past few months. So much so that Narcissa wasn't even shocked in the slightest when she heard what had happened to her. It was one thing to believe in blood purity. It was another to lose all sense of self in the process.

But, alas, that had been Bella's downfall. Narcissa had bigger problems to work through than her sister's death.

Namely, her son's acquittal.

"There," her voice penetrated the silence that had fallen between them. "That's the one."

Narcissa dug in her pocket, the key hidden somewhere inside. When her hand touched the cold metal, she shuddered. Slowly, she opened the front door of Severus Snape's old home. Half expecting something to jump out at her, Narcissa fingered her wand inside her robe pocket. When nothing hit her but the stench of must and decay, she knew the coast was clear.

Severus, may he rest in peace, was never one to care much for his childhood home. Bellatrix had been floored when she learned that the old Potions professor actually had a home. Up until then, Bellatrix thought he lived in the school, snivelling up to Dumbledore like the coward he was.

Of course, Narcissa reflected as she stepped over the threshold and into the home, Bellatrix had never really liked Severus anyways. She was always dreaming up the worst in the man, saying love blinded him to what was most true in the world. Power, probably.

"Lumos," she heard Draco mutter from behind her. Draco, Narcissa thought, was what was most true in her world.

"Here." She used her own wand to light the candle-filled lamp dangling from the ceiling. Soon the tiny sitting room was aglow, the dim light flickering across the rows of black- and brown-bound books on the shelves. There were so many of them, aligned in perfect little rows, like chickens lined up for slaughter. They could never go through them all, which meant that the mysteries within would always remain as such to her and Draco. And that would have to be okay.

Narcissa's head swivelled to the left, her eyes landing on the very spot where she had made the unbreakable vow with Severus. The one that saved her only child's life. She sighed.

"Where do we start?" Draco asked from the other side of the room. He ran a finger along the books, his eyes scanning the titles. "Most of these are books on potions. There are a few here I don't recognize."

"Muggle, most likely," she said. "I've already promised the books to the Hogwarts library. It's the least we can do—"

Her voice trailed off. She didn't want to talk about all the burned books that littered the floor of the school's library. She hadn't done it, but her own bad decisions had led to that night's events, and Narcissa would do anything to clear her son's name. Even giving up Severus's vast collection.

"There are more, in the bedroom, but we don't need books. We need to make sure everything is in order," she told her son. With that, she exited through the only other door in the room, stepping deeper into the dark house.

"This is ridiculous!" Draco threw down a pile of pages. "We've been at it for hours, and nothing."

"What did you expect to find?" Narcissa asked. She was sitting on the floor, something she'd usually find unrefined, surrounded by stacks of parchment. Each page held new recipes for potions, new ideas for spells, new techniques for wand work. "We're here to look for evidence, Draco. Maybe finding nothing isn't such a bad thing."

"I don't care if bloody Snape gets exonerated, Mother."

"Yes, well," she sighed, dropping the paper in her hand. They had already searched the kitchen—a small room with a small ice box and one burner over the stove—and were diligently working their way through the bedroom's drawers of notes. No clothing at all lined the closet or lived inside the solitary oak dresser. Just notes.

Draco, for what it was worth, had kept his head level longer than Narcissa had expected. Three hours had already been dedicated to searching for evidence to back up what Harry Potter had said. Three hours wasted. Narcissa knew it. But Kingsley Shacklebolt, the acting Minister of Magic, had said that if she and Draco did this grunt work, their own trials would be less severe when the time came.

After Lucius had been arrested, Narcissa would have sold her soul to keep her own son free. Paperwork really didn't seem much of a punishment to her.

"I can't do this," Draco rose to his feet, his own stacks of parchment fluttering about like oily pigeons begging for scraps of food at his feet. "It's mind-numbing."

Narcissa continued to scan the pages in her hands, "If you leave now, you get nothing."

"I don't want anything here," Draco spat. "What does that even mean? I get nothing?"

Slowly, so as not to disturb her work, Narcissa stood. She placed the parchment in her hands at the top of the already-read pages. Her eyes met Draco's for a moment, and though it was brief, she was happy to see he didn't look upset at her. Just upset in general.

"You want to be a Healer, don't you?" she asked him. Then she motioned to all the pages strewn about the square room. "There are mountains of potions and spells here that no one else has access to. Shacklebolt and I struck a deal. If we don't find anything incriminating, you will have first pick when the potions are auctioned off."

"But not the books?"

"No." She smiled. "I felt that a collection as vast and as rare as the Prince legacy could only go to one place."

"I agree," he said. Narcissa had to look at him again, her own ears unwilling to believe that her son hadn't pushed harder. She had known, from the moment Draco had started scanning the titles of the leather-bound books in the sitting room, that he had wanted to read every single one of them. Now, she watched as her son sank back to the creaking wooden floor, his pale fingers picking up the scatterings of pages. He said, "He really was a genius, in a way."

Together, they continued through the house, each room they entered more depressing than the last. The bathroom had a rat living in the shower drain, the window in the drawing room was covered with ivy growing up along the foundation wall outside, and the only other bedroom in the place, the one that looked like it was for a young child, was bare. The only piece of furniture in it was a shaky table with a glass vase on top. A water ring stained the inside rim of the bottle, and the remnants of a flower lay on the floor beneath.

"How odd." Narcissa scowled at the sight of it. She closed the bedroom door promptly, intending to never open it again. "That's everything."

She held out her arm for Draco, and soon they were standing outside their own home again, the sun resting high.

"Thank you," Draco said, his hand still wrapped around her arm. "Thank you for thinking of me, of my future."

"I'm your mother," she smiled. "I only ever think of your future."

He squeezed her arm tighter. Narcissa looked at her son, once a bouncing baby boy, now a man. His eyes met hers, boring into her. "I mean it. Everything feels hopeless right now, with Father in Azkaban and our trials looming ahead of us. But you, you keep fighting for me. Making deals with the Minister so that I can be a Healer. Thank you, Mother."

Narcissa wiped away tears from her eyes. Her sister was dead, her husband in prison, and yet she hadn't shed a single tear for them. But now? It made her laugh. "Oh, Draco, I would do anything for you."

"Like lie to the Dark Lord?" he teased, making Narcissa laugh even harder.

"Naturally," she said, smiling, and pulled her son into a tight hug.