"Mum!"
Ronnelle's voice might as well have come from a hundred miles away. It sounded to Hermione as if it were echoing, faintly, across a vast, empty, lonely space - a wasteland.
And yet – here was her fair-haired daughter right beside her, pale and stricken-looking, taking her by the arm in an attempt to steady her.
"Matt, help me!" Ronnelle ordered. And then, to Hermione, "Mum. Mum? Come on, come and sit down."
And Seth was there too, then – the exact opposite of his older sister; he always had been, physically, at least – flushed and furious, his dark, serious eyes ablaze with anger. "He doesn't mean it, mum, he wouldn't do that – I won't let him!"
Her children, supporting and defending her again; roles hopelessly reversed – this wasn't how it was supposed to be. It was all wrong, everything was wrong…
Hermione, for God's sake get a grip on yourself. The danger is still real, and immediate. And there's no one left to protect them now but you. So pull yourself together right this bloody minute.
Right. All right. Deep breaths. This was a disaster. But if there were any silver lining to be found, anywhere in this mess, it was that one way or another, Luke was leaving the house today. There was that much to be thankful for, at least. That was what she had wanted, after all, and she had achieved it. But the cost, sweet Merlin, the cost –
No. Stop it. That way madness lay. And besides, there was still much to do. The Luke situation was not resolved, far from it. All she'd done was buy herself some time. Luke was still a danger to her family, she knew, she knew – and she was still taking the children and getting the hell out of here, for the time being, at any rate. She needed to regroup, think this through. And she needed the support of her friends. She couldn't handle this on her own, not anymore – as if she'd been doing a good job of it up to now.
God.
She hadn't wanted to drag him into this, she'd resisted as long as she could. But she was in over her head. She needed her best friend.
She needed Harry.
00000
It was some twenty minutes later that Hermione bundled her children into the fireplace to floo to the Potters' house. Matt had gone ahead at Hermione's insistence, to prepare Ginny for the displaced family's imminent arrival, though he'd been deeply shaken by the events in the Malfoy household that morning and had resisted leaving Ronnelle, even for so short a time, right up to the end. It was only both Hermione's and Ronnelle's repeated assurances that she would be the very first to rejoin him that had convinced him ultimately, reluctantly, to go.
Accordingly, Ronnelle stepped into the flames first, vanishing in a flash of green, with Seth close behind her, clutching his rucksack and tossing his mother an uncertain glance over his shoulder as he disappeared. Hermione tried to look strong and reassuring for his sake, but failed at the last moment as something snagged her attention from the very corner of her peripheral vision, wrenching her gaze away from her son.
Draco stood in the doorway of the room, still in the sleep-rumpled clothes he'd been wearing during their nightmare blowout in the kitchen. Had it been half an hour ago or a miserable, interminable lifetime ago? Hermione could barely tell.
His silver-white hair was in even worse disarray than his clothing, looking as though it had been raked through repeatedly; a sure sign of intense agitation in her husband.
Oh, God, her husband... but for how much longer? Merlin, he wouldn't... really... would he?
Would he?
Could she really have destroyed things with Draco so completely through just a few ill-thought-out words? Was there no going back from here?
His posture was loose; almost casual - but she could tell at a glance that his posture was a lie. She'd been his wife for nearly two decades, after all. His fists, at his sides, were clenched so hard that she imagined his nails digging little white crescents into his palms. And his eyes... they were that intense gunmetal color, shades darker than normal, that could only indicate one of two things; lust... or desperation.
Their eye contact sizzled - it burned. There was so much that still needed desperately to be said. God, what was she doing? She couldn't just floo away from her husband, her life mate, her soul mate. This was ludicrous, it was... inconceivable.
Her lips parted almost of their own accord, and she drew in a breath to say… what, she hardly knew. But then she stopped cold. Literally cold, as though she'd just been doused, head to foot, with icy water.
She'd just seen Luke.
He sauntered down the hallway to linger just behind his brother, Draco unaware of his presence as all of his attention continued to be focused on Hermione. And in Luke's cold, menacing eyes and calculatedly bland expression, just the hint of a smirk twisting his lips, she saw the reason she had to go.
I know what you are, you soulless bastard. And you will not hurt my children.
Draco wasn't her highest priority anymore. It was that simple. And it killed her – killed her – that he'd been taken in by Luke and that she was leaving him in what she strongly suspected to be real and immediate danger. But her primary responsibility lay in the safety of her children – Ronnelle and Seth and the baby, as yet unsuspected by anyone but Ginny, which she carried within her.
She would resume her attempts to get through to Draco – she would, she had to, but not until she knew that her children were out of peril. That came first. So she released the breath she'd been holding with a sick, miserable little exhalation, swallowed hard, turned away, and followed her offspring into the still-green flames.
00000
The room was a vacuum.
He could hardly breathe.
His family was gone and he felt their absence in every fiber of his body. The silence they left in their wake was almost a solid thing. It pressed in on him so heavily that he sagged back against the doorframe, barely able to keep himself upright. And if this was what it was like one moment after they'd left, what would it be like for him tomorrow? And the next day? And the next?
Merlin, it hardly bore thinking about.
How could she have done this to him? For no other reason than that she hadn't liked sharing her home with his brother? What was one more family member in a house this size, really? A house, moreover, that could be magically enlarged even further at any time? It wasn't as though they were short on space. How could she be so selfish? How?
He took a deep, shaky breath. He needed to get a grip on himself. And he needed to see Severus. His whole life might have fallen into shambles in the space of half an hour, but that much at least hadn't changed. He needed his mentor now more than ever.
Right. Have a shower. Get some decent clothes on. And then track Snape down. If he could think of each step independently, take one thing at a time, and never look too far ahead, then perhaps he could prevent himself from becoming completely overwhelmed.
He turned to head for his bedroom – and a hand came down on his shoulder.
He started, and then realized.
Christ. Luke. The person at the center of it all. Absurdly enough, in the drama of his family's departure, Draco had actually, completely forgotten his brother's very immediate presence in the house.
"Draco?" Luke's gray eyes were searching, intent. "What's going on? Is something wrong?"
Shit. What could he say? My fucking traitor of a wife just left me over you, and took my children with her. The three of them have been my world since I left school half a lifetime ago and now I don't… I can't… I'm fucking… lost.
But of course he couldn't very well say that, now could he?
Fuck no.
"Luke, I'll… listen, we need to get out of here. Just for a short while, until I can… until things… look, I'll explain on the way. Just, um… grab your broomstick and meet me outside in twenty minutes, all right? I'm taking you to meet an old friend. I think you'll like him. Okay?"
Luke's expression now was guarded; skeptical. "There's something you're not – "
"You're damn right there's something I'm not!" Draco cut in, his fragile control slipping. But he reined himself in, nearly panting from the effort of not flying completely off the handle. It wasn't Luke he was angry with after all, he reminded himself.
It wasn't Luke who had betrayed him.
"Luke, please don't press me," he gritted out through clenched teeth. "I said I'll tell you on the way and I will. But I need… to fucking… get myself together first. All right?"
"Alright," Luke said at last, somewhat reluctantly. "Twenty, outside. See you then."
As Draco pushed past him, wearing the sick expression of a man who'd just been kicked repeatedly in the gut, Luke's eyes drifted aimlessly across the now-empty kitchen – and then narrowed, arrested by the sight of a piece of parchment lying forgotten on the floor. It was heavy, pale gray, and bore a crest he knew quite well.
Durmstrang.
In two quick strides he crossed the floor and snatched it up.
Dear Mrs. Malfoy, he read.
00000
Hermione stumbled emerging from the Potters' kitchen fireplace – it had been so long since she'd last been pregnant, with Seth nearly thirteen years ago, that she'd forgotten how flooing tended to affect her while expecting. Right around the time she'd first begun to show with Ronnelle, she had found that the intense spinning sensation associated with floo travel caused her to arrive at her destination unsteady on her feet, disoriented, even mildly ill.
Needless to say, she hadn't used this particular mode of transport again during either of her previous pregnancies.
And now she remembered why.
She very likely would have fallen, in fact, had not a pair of strong arms reached out instantly to steady her, and she found herself a heartbeat later looking up into Harry's worried, dark green eyes.
He didn't say a word – he didn't need to. The anxiety in his expression – and in Ginny's, right beside him – was all it took to get her to spill her guts – literally.
"I'm-pregnant-and-Draco-wants-a-divorce," she gasped out, then shoved an aghast Harry aside, rushed to the bathroom, and threw up.
00000
Luke was thinking fast, the Durmstrang parchment crumpled in his fist.
He'd never believed the mudblood to be unintelligent… but neither had he expected her to be shrewd enough to go delving into his past this way.
This was a real wrench in his plans; it wasn't supposed to have happened like this. Upon receiving this letter from Durmstrang, the mudblood had not only connected the dots, so to speak, but she'd actually pulled herself together enough to make a run for it, and take her half-breed brats with her. It hardly seemed possible, as frankly deranged as she'd been acting lately. He'd thought he had broken her sanity, and done a good job of it, too. Yes she'd suspected him, for quite a while now, he knew. He knew, and he had enjoyed toying with her, watching her unravel. But she was supposed to have destabilized to the point where she should have lost the ability to rationally think through the danger to her family and take decisive action to prevent it.
He'd assumed she'd be more deferential to her husband, as well.
Apparently he'd underestimated her.
Well, no matter. He could still salvage this. He just needed to remove Draco temporarily from the equation, and then find out where the rest of the family had gone. He couldn't simply eliminate Draco, not just yet. Draco had to die last, with the full knowledge that the three people who meant more to him than anything else in the world had been tortured and murdered because they were the three people who meant more to him than anything else in the world.
Draco had to die screaming.
That was The Plan. The plan that Luke had been raised to consider a nearly sacred calling, practically since he'd been a babe at his mother's breast. And that final moment, when the uppity little mudblood had been put in her place, when she was lying at his feet and her filthy spawn along with her, when he'd removed their stain permanently from his family's name and honor – that moment before he delivered the final death blow to his blood traitor of a brother and took his rightful place as sole heir to the Malfoy line –
That moment would be so sweet.
And any extra effort required in getting there would only make it all the sweeter in the end.
00000
Hermione sat hunched at the Potters' kitchen table, her elbows resting on the scrubbed wood surface, holding a mug of steaming tea with both hands. Ginny, who had brewed the tea purposely weak in an effort to help settle her friend's stomach, was sitting close beside her. The two women's shoulders and arms were touching, as if Ginny were now attempting to transfer some modicum of comfort to Hermione through their simple skin-to-skin contact.
The children, all of them save baby Lily, had been banished outdoors, where Chris and Seth were half-heartedly practicing their Seeker skills, whilst Matt and Ronnelle were around the side of the house, snogging unabashedly in the arbor, for all the world like a couple who'd been separated for months.
Harry, for his part, was pacing the room like a caged animal.
"No," he burst out abruptly, for what had to be the fifth time. "It can't be like that, Hermione, it can't. You must have misunderstood."
"Harry!" Her voice was a hoarse mixture of misery and exasperation. "I wish to God I was mistaken, but I'm not! I know my husband, all right? It was as clear as day."
"But that's not possible! Sweet Merlin, Hermione, the man is stupid in love with you. I know that – everyone knows that! He wouldn't do that. He swore it." His voice dropped to a barely audible pitch. "He swore it to Ron and me."
Hermione looked, if anything, more stricken than ever. "Ron?" she repeated, in a small, almost sick voice. "You and Ron? When?"
"When we… just before we went…" Harry trailed off, seeming to think better of proceeding with his explanation, as Ginny glared daggers at him. Hermione was in a fragile enough state without having old, old wounds reopened for her. She didn't need to know, just now, about the conversation the three boys had had just before embarking for Malfoy Manor to retrieve her from Lucius' cruel custody – a mission that had cost Ron his life.
"It was a long time ago," he finished lamely, "but damnit, Hermione, I hold him to it, and more than that, I know he holds himself to it as well – it was not a promise made lightly." He stopped pacing abruptly, only to run both hands through his hair, such a Draco-like gesture that it earned a double-take from Hermione at the table.
"This is wrong," he said flatly. "It's just wrong, and I'm going to find out what in the hell's going on." And without another word he spun, strode to the fireplace, tossed some floo powder into the flames, and vanished.
His whole demeanor was different when he reappeared some fifteen minutes later. Gone was his former frenetic agitation, replaced by an aura of grim calm. His green eyes were hard, reflecting a deep, simmering anger.
"He's gone," he said flatly, as Ginny wrapped her arm tightly around Hermione, pulling her even closer, squeezing her shoulders in a futile attempt at comfort. "There's no one there; the house is completely empty. The son of a bitch is really gone."
00000
"Ugh!" Draco whirled and smacked his palm against the wall in frustration. "Damn it, I need to speak to Severus! What the hell could be holding him up? He knows I wouldn't ask unless it were important!" Turning abruptly, he sagged back against the wall, pushing his silvery hair, windswept from the hectic broomstick flight to Snape's house, out of his eyes.
Luke, for his part, turned from where he'd been examining some interesting artifact on Snape's mantel. Draco had brought them to this house following a hurried floo exchange with his mentor, whom he'd caught in the midst of some crucial endeavor in the Hogwarts potions lab. Apparently the urgency of Draco's request to meet had been somewhat lost on the professor, who'd been rather distracted throughout their brief conversation by the many extremely volatile potions ingredients simmering to a boil nearby. He had directed Draco to meet him at the little cottage, some dozen miles outside of Hogsmeade, that he'd purchased about ten years ago with dreams of a retirement that had not, as yet, come to pass.
Still, it was a pleasant and, even more importantly as far as Snape was concerned, a secluded little place that had proved perfect for quiet holidays and, on occasion, private meetings such as this.
But where was he, damn it? Where? Where?
Draco couldn't even floo him from here; true to his character, Snape had never connected his country home to the network, preferring not to be disturbed while at his retreat. Apparition wards surrounded the property as well; the only way to get a message through to Snape while he was on holiday was by owl post… which was exactly how Snape liked it. Draco was mentally weighing the pros and cons of apparating to the edge of Hogwarts grounds and actively going in search of the older man, versus staying put and trusting that Snape was already on his way, when Luke spoke, jerking him out of his troubled reverie.
" – parents?"
Draco shook his head slightly, brow furrowing. What was that Luke had just said? Something completely off-topic; nothing to do with Snape, or Hermione, or anything else relevant at all.
"Wait." He shoved his hair back from his forehead again; a curt, distracted gesture, buying himself valuable seconds as he made a concerted effort at focusing his scattered attention on his brother. "Wait… what?"
Standing by the cold fireplace, Luke looked distinctly uncomfortable, yet determined. "Draco. I've been meaning to bring this up for a long time, but it just – it never seemed right. But since we have some time to kill and it looks like you could use a distraction, I was hoping… that you could tell me something about our parents."
"Our parents?" Draco echoed, struggling to wrap his mind, which had been dazed and sluggish ever since watching his family disappear in a flash of green flame, around the unexpected turn the conversation had just taken. "Why?"
Luke's expression took on a defiant cast. "Look, I wanted to ask you before. It's only natural, you know. If you had never known them, wouldn't you be curious?"
"If I'd never known them…" Draco sighed, hearing again Hermione's accusing voice ripping through his mind – nothing good has ever come out of that family! "I guess you're right. I'm sorry. Frankly, it never even occurred to me that you'd want to talk about them. It's because I did know them that I prefer to… well, not to dwell on them when I can help it. But yeah – you've got a right to know if you're curious. What do you want me to tell you?"
"I don't know." Luke suddenly appeared very young; strikingly vulnerable. "Just… what were they like?"
"Like." Draco's voice was flat. A teenaged kid – and that's what Luke was, really, for all that Hermione was determined to paint him as some kind of demon – an orphaned kid, no less, wanting to hear, from someone who had known firsthand, what his parents had been like. It was the most natural thing in the world.
And now it fell to him, Draco, to reveal to the boy that his parents had been nothing short of… monsters.
It was a shit situation all around. Still, Draco had never been one for sugar-coating the facts, and he wasn't about to start now.
He owed Luke more than that.
He crossed to the battered brown leather sofa that held pride of place in the center of Snape's living room and collapsed onto it, bracing his booted feet on the edge of the coffee table and dropping his elbows onto his knees, arms dangling loosely between his legs. "I hardly know where to begin."
"What about our mother?" Luke asked. "I know her name, but that's about it. What kind of a person was she?"
"Our mother," Draco echoed. It had been a long, long time since he'd thought about Narcissa Malfoy, much less in terms of their one-time relationship as mother and son. Evil to the core, evil to the soul! Hermione was screaming behind his temples. Nothing good has ever come out of that family! How could he sum Narcissa up for Luke, who was waiting expectantly to learn about the mother he'd never known? The truth was stark; ugly. How did he break it gently to his brother that their mother had been a monster?
"She was…" Draco trailed off for a moment, struggling to find the right words. "She was beautiful. One of the most stunning women I've ever seen. But Luke, she was… Merlin, so cold. Under that beautiful exterior, there was… nothing, really. Frost. Cruelty. And that's all. I'm sorry – this can't be easy for you to hear."
Draco was still sitting folded over on the couch, his eyes fixed on the dark, rough-hewn wood of Snape's floor, unable to bring himself to look in Luke's direction as he disclosed these bitter, unwelcome truths. Consequently, he misread the utter white-hot fury in his brother's voice, taking it for a simple surplus of emotion as Luke gritted out, voice shaking, "and our father?"
"Lucius." Draco's voice was flat with hatred. "I honestly don't think there's one thing I could tell you about him, Luke, that you would really want to hear."
"Oh, you're wrong." Luke's voice was soft now; deceptively so. "There's one thing you can tell me about him that I very much want to know. That I've wanted to know for years, actually. You can tell me the story of how you murdered him, your own father, in cold blood."
Draco's breath caught – a sick, sinking feeling sweeping over him. Luke shouldn't know about that. There was no – bloody – way in hell that Luke should know about that.
What the FUCK was going on here?
He raised his head, very slowly, slate-colored eyes seeking his brother from beneath the fringe of white-blond hair that fell forward over his brow.
Luke was still lounging against the mantel, his wand now trained steadily, unerringly on Draco's heart; a cold, ugly, hate-filled sneer twisting his mouth. "We have a lot to talk about, in fact," he continued evenly as Draco stared at him, stunned beyond words, "before mother arrives."
