CHAPTER THREE – A WEEK LATER, AT MALFOY MANOR

'You're looking much better,' Severus said, while taking off his cloak and handing it to a waiting House Elf.

'All due to good food in sufficient quantity, baths and regular exercise. And of course your astonishing strengthening potion. Not being beaten up once a week might also have helped,' Lucius said. He was aiming for lightness but didn't quite succeed. It was all still too recent, his return to a life as he had known it for over forty years still too dreamlike and fragile. He was afraid of going to sleep, for fear of waking up in his cell. Not that he intended to tell Severus that, but he rather thought Severus might have guessed, to judge by the look he gave him. 'Thanks for keeping all those newspapers,' he continued, eager to steer the conversation away from himself.

'I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea,' Severus said. They were walking towards the library – pre-dinner drinks in the library had been a ritual ever since his first visit at the Manor. 'In the end, I decided to keep the ones containing the most important news, because I thought you'd rather enjoy catching up, in spite of being reminded of how much you'd missed.'

Lucius opened the door and gestured at the other wizard to precede him. 'After you. Well, I didn't believe the world had been standing still since I went to prison, so I was rather glad to read up on events. Weasley kicked the bucket,' he added.

'Yes, it happened the day you were released.'

'Indeed. His wife had come to see me at Azkaban – the former Miss Granger, wasn't that her maiden name? The one Bella tortured… She's made quite a career for herself, or so it seems.'

'She'll be the next head of the Law Enforcement department, or so they say. You probably ought to feel honoured or something.'

Decanter in hand, Lucius smirked at him. 'To tell you the truth, I felt rather pissed-off. Little Miss prim-and-proper informing me about the terms of my parole, impressing on me the need to report back to her every ten days… Not on Saturdays and Sundays of course,' he said, mimicking Hermione's stern tones so accurately that Severus laughed out loud, 'So, if the tenth day falls on a Saturday, you'll come to see me on the twelfth day, and accordingly on the eleventh day, if the tenth day happens to be a Sunday.'

'She hasn't changed much since Hogwarts,' Severus said, taking his glass from Lucius with a nod of appreciation. 'Not in that respect, that is. She always had a rather, let us say casuistic, mind.'

'That's a very nice way of putting it. I did ask her, of course, whether I had to visit on the eighth day after a twelfth day, or on the tenth day after a twelfth day, and what to do at Christmas.'

'I suppose she didn't quite catch the underlying sarcasm.'

'Gryffindors seldom do.' Lucius took a deep gulp of whisky and sat down. 'Anyway, I'm glad her husband rode off to meet his maker before I was out, or she would probably have blamed it on me.'

'You were luckier than you know. They've examined the broomstick – somebody had tampered with it.'

Lucius stared into the fireplace, where a huge fire had been lit by the House Elves. 'Really? Who'd want to kill that moron?'

'It wasn't his broomstick. It was Potter's, he'd just borrowed it.'

Lucius gave a low whistle. 'Which explains,' he said pensively, 'why this bit of information didn't make it into the papers. How come you know, Severus? I didn't expect you to have such good contacts at the Ministry.'

'Granger told me, Mrs Weasley I should say.'

'The grieving widow herself? Why?'

'We'd worked together on a couple of her cases – she needed an expertise on potions and naturally turned to me.'

'Naturally.' The glint in Lucius's eyes was unmistakeable.

'Well yes, of course. I'd been her Potions teacher, so I probably was the logical person to turn to.'

'And that was reason enough for her to tell you somebody had manipulated Potter's broomstick.'

'That, and the fact that we've become… Friends would be a bit much, I guess, but close acquaintances over the years. A few days ago, she asked me to brew her a special calming potion – something that would enable her to work without making her dizzy or tired.'

'Potter's broomstick,' Lucius murmured. 'I thought that the Saviour of the Wizarding World was universally loved.'

'Nonsense, Lucius. Nobody is universally loved. Potter is an Auror, and quite a good one, much as I hate to say it. Naturally he has enemies. It could've been anyone – except for you, that is. You have a watertight alibi.'

'And you are friends with the Granger girl,' Lucius stated.

'She's hardly a girl anymore, Lucius.'

'But still quite young. And attractive, I might add, if one is partial to that particular brand of uptight propriety.' Lucius put down his empty glass and stretched, voluptuously, like a cat. 'Life, my dear friend, begins to look more interesting by the second.'

'I'd hoped you would, well, find life interesting, if maybe not for that particular reason.'

Lucius put his empty glass back on the table and got up. 'Let's have dinner, I'm famished. What do you mean you hoped – you didn't think I was going to kill myself, did you?'

'No.' Severus glanced sideways at his friend, trying to guess what went on behind that seemingly serene exterior. 'But there are worse things than dying, as you well know. I wouldn't have wanted you to…' He shrugged. 'It's good to see you like this.'

'Severus, I must say I find all this altruism a trifle disquieting.'

They'd reached the dining room and sat down at a magnificently set table. Dinners en famille had never been conducted in quite such a sumptuous way, not that Severus could remember anyway. But then, Lucius had to catch up on a lot, which probably accounted for the display of luxury. 'Don't worry,' Severus said, while examining a particularly fine Sèvres salt-and-pepper set. He still wasn't used to seeing the tremor in Lucius's hands, which became obvious when he unfolded his napkin. It would pass, he supposed, and in the meantime it wouldn't do to notice it. 'I'm not going to start mollycoddling you or asking whether you want to talk about it. But you don't have too many friends right now, and I owe you.'

'You have changed a lot,' Lucius observed. He was trying to make it sound casual, but his envy was palpable. 'There is a… a lightness about you, which I've never seen, not even when you were a boy.'

'I never had it,' Severus replied gravely. He still wasn't looking at Lucius and pointedly dedicated his attention to his starter. Maybe Lucius was going to open up a bit, if he set an example. 'You see,' he said, raising his glass in a silent toast, 'up till Voldemort's end, I always had to struggle, and I always had to pretend. It was only afterwards, when everything was over, and I'd been acquitted, that I realized how much strength had gone into that constant struggling and playacting. I'm not saying it was easy the first years after the war, but suddenly the struggle was for myself, just for myself – I don't quite know how to express it. Before, I had to invest all my strength into keeping up a status quo, to run like mad, merely to stay where I was.'

'Like the Red Queen,' Lucius said pensively, catching Severus's eye.

'Very much like the Red Queen, yes. And then… There was movement, all of a sudden, and, well, maybe not success, but results. And I was free to be just myself, to let it all out – if I felt like screaming and raging and banging my head against the wall, I could do it. Not publicly of course, but at least in the privacy of my own house. At Hogwarts, and with the Dark Mark, I never had that freedom. And after the first couple of years, I was able to look beyond myself, get a life, even make friends.'

'Which brings us back to the recently widowed Mrs Weasley,' Lucius said with a smirk.

Severus glared at him. 'Why on earth are you so interested in her?'

'She's my parole officer, why do you think I'm interested in her?'

'Be careful, Lucius. One single misstep and you'll be back in Azkaban.'

Lucius flung his hair back over his shoulder. 'Yes, I know. There's absolutely no need to remind me of it.' A shadow passed over his face, but he shook it off. 'Let's talk of something more interesting than Azkaban. Tell me about your potions research.'