054. She dropped the knife

Word Count: 1,059


Remus wandered down into the Slytherin territory, looking more and more uncomfortable as he walked closer to the entrance to the Slytherin house.

Just as he walked around a corner, he narrowly avoided colliding with Severus, who looked more relaxed than Remus had seen him in months.

The Slytherin looked over at him almost curiously. "Remus, what are you doing down here?" he asked.

"I was hoping to find your room-mate, actually," Remus replied. "And I believe that congratulations are in order, on your part."

Severus smiled a bit and started to lead Remus back toward the Slytherin house and his dorm room. "The Council was particularly impressed when they realized that I had been able to get the cooperation and input from a werewolf, so I owe you a debt of gratitude," he said.

Remus shook his head. "You owe me nothing," he said. "How is Lucius coping?"

"Not well. I trust you know about the current situation between James and Lucius?" the Slytherin asked.

"After seven years, James knows better than to try to keep secrets from me," he said.

"He's not going to be happy to see you," Severus said. "He's doing his best to drink himself to death with some of his favorite brands of vodkas," he said, pursing his lips into a frown.

Remus remained silent as he followed Severus into the Slytherin's dorm room.

Lucius was sitting on his bed, finishing off a bottle of Grey Goose and looking at a ring on a chain around his neck. He looked up at the two intruders standing just inside the dorm room, staring at them silently.

"He's not going to die, is he?" Remus asked.

Severus shrugged. "I don't think so," he said. "At any rate, I've been monitoring his intake and administering the necessary potions to stop him from poisoning himself. Why did you want to see him?" he asked, looking over at the werewolf.

Remus was silent for a long moment, watching as Lucius stood and stumbled into the bathroom, likely to vomit. Once the door was shut behind the drunk Malfoy, he met Severus' gaze. "I wanted to see if he was taking this any better than James," he said.

"And is he?"

"Sirius and I have been watching James, and he's doing his best to ignore what happened. He's tried to kill himself in his sleep, though. Twice," Remus replied.

Severus frowned, but said nothing else as he led Remus out of the Slytherin house and the two of them made their way up to the library.

...

After spending a good twenty minutes vomiting, Lucius had the sense of mind to get back into his bed before he passed out. It wouldn't take him long to sleep off the effects of the alcohol - he had been drinking vodka since he was fourteen, though never before in the quantities he'd had in the past few days, and his body had adapted to the onslaught of that drink.

...

Four hours later, Lucius woke up with a massive hangover. He reached for the Hangover potion that Severus had left on his nightstand and downed it without moving more than absolutely necessary.

Once his headache dulled enough that he wasn't in too much pain, he sat up and looked at the fireplace in the room. He wasn't going to last much longer like this, he knew, and he needed help. Almost before he realized what he was doing, he had penned a quick note for Severus and had walked over to the fireplace and floo-ed back to Malfoy Manor, unwilling to think too much about his last interaction with James.

His mother was in the kitchen, cutting up some fruit likely for her lunch.

"Hello darling," she said without turning around. "I thought you had a meeting to go to before you came home for the day."

"Mother, it's me," Lucius said quietly, taking his mother by surprise. "Father's still at work."

Turning around abruptly, she dropped the knife and walked over to her son, immediately enveloping him in a hug. "What are you doing out of school at this hour?" she asked, stepping back from her son and looking at him. When she noticed the bloodshot eyes and the faint signs that he had been drinking heavily and crying, she pulled him back into her embrace. "What happened, Lucius?" she asked.

Lucius was silent for a long moment. "James is gone."

"Gone?" Eva asked, her eyes narrowing. "What do you mean, James is gone? The two of you are mates, for Morgana's sake!"

"He said that he wanted nothing more to do with me, and he hasn't been out of his room in the Gryffindor Tower since then," he said, finding a sense of security with his mother that he had missed.

Eva paused for a moment. "Did something happen between the two of you?"

"Not that I can recall, mother," Lucius said. "Though the Headmaster had been requesting to speak with James a number of times before James told me to stay away from him."

"Let's go into the sitting room and talk about this. You aren't going back to Hogwarts for at least the rest of the day. I'll arrange things with the Headmaster."

Lucius offered his mother a small, sheepish grin as he walked with her to the sitting room. "I left a note for Severus to tell Professor Slughorn that you requested me to return home for the next three days to deal with a family emergency. Slughorn won't ask too many questions and Severus will keep things vague on purpose."

Eva pushed her son onto the couch and sat down next to him. "Tell me everything," she said. And with those words, Lucius remembered why his mother was such a calming influence.