Hermione liked what Draco had done with his cellar. Even after years spent under the diligent tutelage of Professor McGonagall, Harry and Ron still approached the discipline of Transfiguration with apprehension, both in class and out.
It was one of the more scientific of the classes offered at Hogwarts, and as such, was one that Hermione far exceeded her peers in. Where Charms was all quantified force of will and wand movements, Transfiguration's mechanics were more esoteric, although, paradoxically more grounded in logic. There were principles and understandings, more subtle mental gymnastics to power the spells, rather than raw intention.
Perhaps it was the misplaced affections of a little girl who had watched an animated Fairy Godmother conjure a ball gown and entourage one to many time, but Hermione had firmly put the Deputy Headmistresses on a pedestal in her heart from the moment she had transfigured her parents' good china into a mischief of white rats over tea, all those years ago.
Well, McGonagall and periwinkle ball gowns. Her mother had purchased her dress in pink for her Yule Ball date, but Hermione had transfigured the pigments of each sheet of satin, painstakingly, into Cinderella-blue.
The tulle shoulders alone had taken her the better part of a weekend to work out.
She'd been fifteen then, and so over the moon with Ron. It couldn't really be helped, the Weasley's had brought her physically into their home, and metaphorically into the wizarding world. Everything happy and accepting in her world, she owed to Harry and Ron. But the gentle musings of her adolescent heart had settled on Ron instead of Harry.
Ron, who was tall enough to make her feel dainty. Who was the most overlooked out of all his brothers. So she let him ruin her night with Victor, a handsome, older professional athlete who treated her like a veritable princess. Who fought for her life (well, her honor at least,) during the second task for the Triwizard Cup.
Victor, who she had whispered to that "she'd always be fond of, but that she was in love with someone else," while dancing at a wedding, just last summer. So he let her go.
The Bulgarian gentlemen had smiled, nodded respectfully in Ron's direction without really taking his eyes off of her, then said "The heart vants, I suppose," in the small vestiges of the accent that she wished, wished made her flutter the same way Ron's full-bellied laugh did. Then Ron let her go, too, when he became suspicious of Harry and Hermione's friendship.
Draco did not let her go. Not in the ruins of his home, not on the dirt floor of his cell, not buffeted by the gale outside, in the storm. He fought and fought and fought. Like she was a prize worthy of winning. It should have made her feel objectified.
It didn't.
In hindsight, she was surprised by how much she told him, but he was well and truly trapped by their vow, and she was lulled into a false sense of security by it.
Hermione realized, with a start, that Harry and Ron were already seated on orange stools, and had left one for her. Draco was languishing on his cot, for all the world like Herod at court, and smiling at her, expectantly. It felt like this was happening more and more often, this gentle drifting to simpler times.
She tried not to draw any attention to her lack of wherewithal, or indeed, even breathe too loudly, as she squeezed past Harry into the circle. She failed horribly when, as she felt the distinct pressure of a stool top slap the back of her thighs at Lavender-Brown-skirt length, she squeaked out a sound too embarrassing to typify.
Harry paid her no mind, and Ron barely registered the noise, but Draco's smile widened and narrowed into a smirk. The poncy git had seated her like she was meeting him for dinner. He trailed his index finger away from the wand that was now lying next to him, seemingly abandoned on the cot. His mouth hadn't moved at all.
'Elegant, for a nonverbal...'
Not Harold then, far too competent. And refined. Her mother would probably adore him. The thought soured her disposition, compound with her earlier realization that her parents would be ecstatic to find out she was being courted by a magical doctor.
Oh, Merlin. Oh, God! She had, tacitly, no; she had notionally agreed to be courted by Draco Malfoy. What did that even entail?
Harry was talking, she heard him talking somewhere at the edge of her peripherals and her sanity. Her anxiety had reduced his voice to a drone worthy of Professor Binns' least engaging lecture. This was the problem she had identified a week ago, she needed to be stressed, not anxious.
Stress would keep her on task, keep her focused. Stress was the lead ball in her gut and the grit in her wand hand. Stress was an old friend. Anxiety was… a distraction and useless, besides. Hermione bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood and focused on her best friend in the entire world.
"We could fly in, I suppose." Harry's voice was more confident than it had been in a long while. Hermione realized she had been mentally absent for even longer than she feared.
"There's no way Snape's just letting anybody fly into Hogwarts. The castle was nearly impossible to get into before Dumbledore was offed!" Ron's voice was still dismissive, and he evidently didn't fully grasp that prioritizing Hogwarts would make their expedition to Gringotts easier on the balance. Surprisingly, Draco seemed to agree with him.
"Not that I've never considered how easy it would be to take an evening fly by one of your towers while the girls were getting ready to turn in, but I'm sure Snape's thought of warding the perimeter against flight," came the blonde's perverted admission. He didn't seem the least bit remorseful either.
Not Herod, but far too lascivious to be Fitzwillliam Darcy. The man even seemed braggadocious of his adolescent musings, and- was that a sympathetic nod from Ronald?!
"This is not a Quidditch locker room, thank you very much!" She tried to infuse the admonishment with two years worth of a prefect's scorn and the Head Girl's badge she'd been robbed of. She continued,"There are other ways onto campus, ways that even Snape doesn't know about. What about the Honeydukes passage?"
The hope came crashing down with a shake of Draco's head.
"One of the first things Severus did when he assumed the role of Headmaster was to bend the portraits to his will. They work for him now, and willingly divulged every route to and from the castle in the first days of the year; I remember him bragging about it."
Hermione didn't need to turn and look to know that Harry's next question was accompanied by an accusative narrowing of the eyes.
"How is Hogwarts these days?"
Draco sighed before responding, exhaling something akin to trepidation before, "The stuff of nightmares. I returned a student in name only, but I've spent more nights in my bed at the manor than in the Head's dorm. My mark's been on fire since the ministry fell, but rarely for violence. After the Order went to ground, the Snatchers were quickly established to perform more… kinetic operations. The Death Eaters got what they thought they deserved, an unrestricted gateway to reshaping the bureaucracy of the Ministry into a machine for their purposes. An efficient one, at that."
Hermione rolled her eyes "Yes, well, at least under Mussolini the trains ran on time." Draco snorted, Harry blanched, and Ron gave her that confused look he always adopted (and that she always hated,) when she mentioned something muggle. Then he looked at the Draco and turned red.
"Come off it, if I don't know the bloke, neither do you!"
"Context, Weasley. It's about the context. Hermione, is that another aphorism?"
She shook her head dismissively.
"Not really, actually, it's a more recent sentiment, I'd classify it as a sardonic refrain, if anything."
Harry and Ron looked between the two of them like they had switched to French. Which they could have, she realized; if the fluency he had displayed the week prior was anything to go by.
Her mother had grown up speaking French and reading Greek, and had insisted Hermione be able to do both. That in conjunction with the rudimentary Latin she had received in primary school had made her self-style as a budding polyglot.
A hit at her parents' dinner parties, but rarely in the schoolyard. In her most private moments, Hermione wondered if she'd still be as close to Harry and Ron if they didn't constantly rely on her near eidetic memory for their survival in their formative years.
"You mentioned you're constantly being summoned? What, does You-know-who host daily check-ins?" Draco paled at the dismissive tone before answering. It was color the wizard could scarcely afford to lose.
"Yes, actually. Or near-daily, at any rate. When he's not abroad, he's wont to hold court in the grand dining room of Malfoy Manor at least three times a week. The rite is what the revels are modeled after, but they're exclusive to the Knights of Walpurgis, what most people call the Inner Circle."
The grim silence that followed his explanation went unbroken until…
"The Knights of Walpurgis? As in Walpurgis Night? From Faust?" she questioned.
"Perhaps? I know of Faust, but my family has never been one to dabble in German curses... " Draco shrugged his shoulders, but Hermione couldn't be stopped.
"Johann Georg Faust, the historical German dark wizard, whose exploits were so famous and depraved that he even made his way into muggle folklore, then later into their art. The muggle playwright called Goethe wrote a fictional play about how Faust descends completely into moral degradation, culminating when he attends a revel where a coven of witches is communing with the Devil in an orgy. Paradoxically, the higher he goes up Brocken mountain, the deeper he goes into hell, and it all happens on April 30th, Walpurgis Night; It's a play on words!" She finished the thought in a rush as the words poured from her, frothing in the white water rapids of her indignation and almost out of breath.
The brainy witch nailed her gaze to her lap and let a curtain of hair enclose her from view, unwilling to let her friends see how deeply she was affected by the development. The bastard had based his pageantry and methodology on muggle literature. The hypocrisy was thick enough to turn her stomach.
"Ah, so that's his fascination with that date. He's planning something that night, you know; some type of revel where he will make an appearance to all those who work for him, Death Eaters and Snatchers, alike." Harry looked at Draco as the blond man spoke, and then through him like he was made of vapor.
"He's done that before. He always seems to draw power on that night. He hosted revels then before the third task, and again before the Department of Mysteries…" He still wasn't really looking at Draco, and was instead caught in the past, where he wasn't sure which nightmares had been a vision from Riddle, and which had been a figment of his tortured, adolescent psyche. She realized that Harry drifted just like her, away from the here and now… but not to happier times.
"And the Astronomy Tower, yea." That drew Harry back to reality and made him focus on Draco again.
"I don't remember dreaming then-" He stopped on the dot, as if he remembered who he was talking to, then lashed out "- but you would know better, I suppose. Slip any more cursed necklaces to your classmates that night?" Hermione hoped against hope that Draco knew better than to rise against the jibe.
The Black family eyes flashed silver and narrowed atop a sneer. The man knew he was being baited, he just didn't care. "No, too busy planning the successful assassination of some barmy old poofter, he was ancient though, bit of a mercy killing."
The resulting breakdown in adult behavior shamed Hermione to recall.
Harry had sent a wordless hex at Draco with such speed that only the knowledge that he had provoked it saved her vassal from facial scarring. As it was, Draco merely tilted his head to the side, like Harrison Ford in that one reshoot her Father absolutely despised, before sending a stunner into Harry's gut that knocked him off of the stool. Ronald's shrill "Expelliarmus!," snapped the silversnake and hawthorn wand out of his hands.
"Immobulus!" Hermione didn't realize she had aimed the freezing charm at Ron until she finished the backwards, jagged twitch of the wand movements. It might have suspended the redhead, but Draco looked similarly paralyzed, straining against unseen bonds that pressed him against his spot on the wall.
He didn't look upset, though. On the contrary, the aristocrat looked excited, exhilarated even; to be sparring with a long-time rival instead of circumstances beyond his control. Like Tybalt on the streets of Verona. The thought sent an embarrassing thrill through her. Inhale. Exhale.
"Okay, in a second, I'm going to release the charm. Ronald, you are going to pocket your wand and sit down. Then, Draco, you're going to pick yours up and place it back in the walking stick. After you're both seated and have taken the time to remember that we are all that's standing between He-who-must-not-be-named and his very viable bid for total control of Wizarding Europe, I will rennervate Harry, and we will confront him as a unified front about personal attacks in the middle of planning sessions, thank you very much." She didn't wait for them to acquiesce.
'Finite.' The general counterspell washed across Ron before, "Bloody hell! I thought he wasn't supposed to be able to hurt us, 'Mione!"
She was wondering the same thing, and mentally considered the wording of the vow for loopholes he could have exploited as Ron returned to his seat and stowed his wand.
She turned and looked at Draco, who was finally free to comply with her staggered request. He gave her a small, wicked smirk as he retrieved his wand and returned it to his walking stick, which he left good-naturedly on the other side of the room. He had clearly figured it out, and was waiting for her to do the same.
She racked her brain before muttering, "Never… do ought of what is loathful to her… when I to her submitted and chose her will…" She looked at Ron's form, perched like the spiders he so despised, on top of the stool, ready to jerk out and attack at the slightest provocation; before she rambled out the best explanation that came to mind.
"So, in that moment, I suppose I was more frustrated with Harry, enough that I evidently thought him being stunned was a good idea. It wasn't loathful to me, or against my will for him to do so," she finished, answering Ron's question.
The redhead didn't seem pacified by the explanation.
"So our only hold on him is entirely based on your bleeding temperament? What happens if you want to set parakeets on me again?"
It was a fair point, but she hadn't been thinking about the emotional ramifications of the bond when she had set to drafting it. The wording she had used was based on a text from a university reader she had paged through in her spare time, specifically an encompassing oath of fealty from the tenth century. If it was good enough for a medieval knight's immortal soul, it was good enough for her purposes; so she quelled the part of her that agreed with Ron by projecting the urge to remind him that it had been canaries, not parakeets, and brought Harry back to consciousness.
When she did, she regretted it immediately. He was almost manic. When he had finally regained a modicum of equilibrium, he leapt to his feet, nearly smashing Hermione in the process, and began to pace from wall to wall with an almost frantic gate. Ron looked positively terrified of his best friend's unraveling, and Draco looked on the two of them with only barely concealed amusement.
Finally, Harry stopped short and yelled at the top of his voice, "DOBBY!"
The ensuing crack was loud enough to wake the dead.
When Harry was finally done interrogating the similarly manic elf about something he thought he saw in a fragment of Sirius's mirror, he turned and looked at the three of them.
Somewhere from between squawks of "HARRY POTTER! Blue eyes? Aberforth!? The Hog's Head. Neville, really?," a plan had evidently begun to form behind Harry's wide, green eyes. Finally, without releasing the free-elf, he unleashed a deranged look back on them.
"Let's go."
"Tonight!," Ron inquired with hoarse disbelief. Hermione was too gobsmacked to even argue. Malfoy alone was composed enough to respond.
"Are you that eager for death, Potter? I'll admit, it's not a curse I'm too handy with, but there's no need to outsource to the competition what I'm sure we can cook up, homebrew."
He began to shake his head like a man possessed.
"No, we need to get moving. This can't go on much longer. There isn't another Malfoy waiting around every corner. We're just sitting here, waiting to get attacked again because I forgot that Tom doesn't like it when I call him by his special name! I don't… I don't want to have to dream about him again. I'm tired of watching him hurt people, Hermione. I'm tired of not being able to stop him."
She felt as despondent as he looked. Ron intervened.
"... It's about an hour 'till midnight. We could take a quick kip then hit them in the middle of the night. Dobby, could you send a message to coordinate with Neville now, tell him to use the D.A. coin; just to see if it's even an option." She rounded on Ron with fire in her eye, but noticed the pleading look stamped across his face. He was buying time to get Harry to sleep.
She nodded once then retrieved her coin with an accio pointed into the mouth of the beaded bag. In the time it took her to send a duplicate message using the protean charm, Ron had already hooked an arm around Harry's shoulder and steered him up towards the doorway. Dobby had dispparated away, as swell. She didn't doubt they'd get a rapid response, she knew Neville, Luna, and Ginny checked their coins religiously and kept them on their person at all times. That's what you did when you were a soldier, you waited for orders.
And they had all become soldiers together, two whole years ago.
"If they answer back yes-" She stopped as the Galleon grew uncomfortably hot in her palm, then peered down.
"3:00 a.m."
Harry looked back at her, now almost out of view by his ascent.
"3:00 a.m. it is then. Tell him we'll see him there."He didn't look back again. 'See him where?' She sent the question through the galleon, but didn't wait for a response. The day had made her weary, and Hermione had committed to following the two to bed. She really did.
"Hermione, stay."
She tried to present only her most haggard look to the man she had found herself alone with again.
"I don't have it in me for another soulful conversation, Draco. Not twice in one day. I'd like at least a half a night's sleep before we move out."
He snorted. Git.
"So stay and sleep." He gestured to the cot.
The entire atmosphere of the room changed, charging with the heat of his request; the sheer audacity of the wizard sent roiling heat through her chest cavity. She clamped down on it and him, Tybalt, indeed.
"Draco Lucius Malfoy, I don't know what you think I agreed to today, but-" He swiped his wand as she took a breath, and the cot enlargened to the width of a queen size bed.
"Chaste as lambs, on my honor as a Slytherin."
It was her turn to snort.
"I should think your founder's honor would necessitate a doublecross."
"I'd never compromise your virtue."
She laughed at his response. But he continued on, seriously.
"Do you ever get night terrors?"
"Why, are you going to offer to chase them away?"she shot back with an accusative slant to the deprecation.
"No, I was going to ask you if you'd be willing to chase away mine. I don't sleep well anymore, but it used to help to be around other people, in the dorm."
She could only blink. The juxtaposition from tender-in-private to flaming-asshole in front of Ron and Harry was frying her nerves.
"Draco, I hardly think that being in bed with me would be conducive to a good night's rest." She deeply resented the warmth that shot down into her stomach as the words passed over her tongue. He seemed to enjoy them as well.
"I'll be sure to keep my behavior as respectful as magically possible."
Hermione was too tired to fight the bemused smirk the turn of phrase elicited. The duality of the man was undoing. Oh, his intentions were plain enough in the upturned corners of his cheeky grin and appraising eyes, but his voice? Like butter wouldn't melt.
"Yes, well your behavior hardly merits any awards this evening." He feigned a wounded countenance that would be home on any actor in the Globe Theatre.
"Moi!? I was merely fulfilling my obligation to serve you and defend your honor, as I am attempting to do now." He said, with a look of manicured affront; hand clasped over heart.
She rolled her eyes.
"Ah yes, my sacred honor; how, pray tell, was it so virulently threatened, my good knight?"
The hand slapped down onto his bedspread, punctuating the majestic wroth of the man.
"Potty and his pet Weasel were so ill mannered, that they exchanged withering glances as my lady was attempting to educate them. A charitable, however fruitless, instinct to be sure." The sidebar made her giggle, but the wizard continued, still in character. "My lady was clearly overwrought by the events of the day, as any woman of proper breeding might find herself to be, and they had the gall to act as if they were humoring a favorite child, rather than a treasured compatriot who was attempting to enrich their desolate cultural landscape." This went on as if he was the one reproaching a misbehaving child, drawing laughter from her again. It was a well that Harry and Ron used to be able to pull from, when times were dark and grim humor prevailed. Harry was right, this war couldn't go on for much longer. Forget logistical constraints, what were they to do if they had to carry around another Horcrux without destroying it? They'd never last.
"Harry and Ron do appreciate me, you know. They know they'd never last five minutes without me, and have reminded me of that in the past at regular five minute intervals. I am very well validated here." She added that last part as an affirmation to herself, more than anything else.
"Yes well, forgive me for thinking you deserve to be appreciated for more than your ability to keep them alive and on track. You're not a deus ex machina, Hermione. You're more than Dumbledore's plot device in Harry Potter's monomyth."
Merlin, you shouldn't be allowed to just say some things to a bibliophile! He imploringly patted the space beside him again, but she clung harder to the last standing stone of resistance to the notion.
"It would complicate things if Harry and Ron found out. This… all of this, needs to wait until after the war." The sentiment tasted like a lie as she spoke it. She had already jumped into bed with a man she had trusted because they were at war, and she'd been burned for it.
"You'll leave five minutes before I do, and we can stay fully clothed if that would make you more comfortable?" The blonde spoke as if he was completely aware of how hot and bothered he made her in the twill vest and loosened tie. Sin, he was the embodiment of temptation. It was the way he looked at her, she realized; in the confidence of his high regard. It was that type of confidence.
The type where, it wasn't just that she was appreciated, no; it was in how much he wanted her to know she was appreciated. That's what his smile held, the promise of how appreciated he could make her feel; how good he was sure it would be.
It was everything the Anglican pastors of her childhood promised the devil would offer her, coming from an actual wizard. The muggle attire he had donned scarcely impeded the vestiges of his Regency mannerisms, and Hermione couldn't be sure that if she refused again, he wouldn't suggest bundling! Actually, that was an idea.
"If you touch me, I'll put you in a full body bind." 'Wait, what? Hermione-fucking-Granger, you little tart-' Draco was completely unaffected by the threat, and the only inclination she had that he was even slightly as nervous as she was, was that when she mounted the cot and sidled up to his position, she couldn't see his chest move.
She was seated with her back against the wall and leaned into his side, arm against his chest and head on his shoulder like she'd done with Harry a hundred times.
Inhale. Exhale. And what an inhale it was! The man had yet to be disabused of the wearing of strong scents while on the lam, as she had been by Scabior, and his cologne assaulted her olfactory senses like a hammer.
First, there was a sharp, peppery quality to the musk, but it finished off somewhere on the back of her tongue with a zest. She inhaled it again, trying for every ounce of subterfuge she could be afforded as a Gryffindor. 'Yes, professor, I tried to fight that troll all on my own. No, professor, I'm not currently nosing my childhood bully's clavicle like a bottle of fine wine.' No, not wine, Tea! It was a bergamot mint! The scent had all the appeal of spearmint, but with a sundried spice that made her thirsty for it again. Hermione inhaled again, this time far more greedily, as her head began to cloud, her eyes having been long closed. She heard him laugh as his left arm, which had divided them, snaked around her shoulder and eliminated any space between them with a single pull.
She'd have to remember to smack him for that.
"You know, Hermione, there was really only one witch I was hoping to get a glimpse of when I flew by Gryffindor Tower."
She pretended not to hear him because she didn't want to have to smack his pretty face twice.
Hours Later
"A third real prophecy, Severus! You really must see about a raise for her now."
Albus Dumbledore had been the headmaster of Hogwarts for almost thirty-two academic years, and it showed. Normally when a wizard or a witch had a portrait commissioned, they spent the time sitting for it talking, both to the painter and to the painting. The mannerisms and idiosyncrasies that formed the facsimile of consciousness were immortalized in the process, then crystalized as the spell was finally cast. It was an incredibly limiting perspective on human consciousness, and all it took was one unfortunate assistant with an unrecognizable surname, and one was left with an irate woman screaming about "mudbloods defiling the halls of her ancestors," in perpetuity.
The portraits at Hogwarts were different, particularly the headmasters'. Headmaster portraits were always done during the first summer of pertinent witch or wizard's tenure, as the incumbent sorcerer undertook the wardings and enchanted burdens of their office. It was very rare that a headmaster retire before the eve of their death, although they might begin grooming their deputy to assume the position at any moment. The portrait was placed inside the wingback chair of the headmaster's desk, finished… yet, not.
It was there that the headmaster's likeness would sit and learn. Watch as the duties of his office weathered and changed its charge. The potential depths of the magic were unplumbed, but Albus's portrait proved that a condition of near sentiency could be reached if the owner poured enough of themselves back into it.
It was, Severus thought, the closest thing one could achieve to immortality on this plane… Save, perhaps, for the construction of a Horcrux-which was an oxymoronic notion.
One would have to be truly stupid to consider ripping their soul in half to prolong an imitation of life… and the magnitude of sorcery that the construction necessitated precluded anyone who was not of prodigious intellect. Herpo the Foul had experimented with their design as more of a magical exercise than anything else.
Conversely, the magic of the Headmaster's portrait was truly a wonder to behold. When the soul entwined in the magic of Hogwarts finally departed this realm, the enchantment rebounded through the frame, awakening a likeness as proportionately utile to the length of the headmaster's turn. The first thing a deputy should expect to see when entering the office was the warm face of their predecessor, clapping in concert with the long line of their shared legacy, and welcoming them to take a seat.
It was a tradition that had probably gone unbroken until it had been stolen from Minerva. Albus had gone on sleeping until Severus had mounted the griffon guarded staircase, and he, himself had only received a dewy salutation when he sneered at his bonder.
He spied the man from underneath a fall of his black hair, which was less greasy than it had been in years, owing to not being stuck behind a cauldron's fumes for most of the day, every day. The portrait certainly seemed to retain most of his late predecessor's more insufferable qualities.
"I might wonder if you'd be willing to guest lecture occasionally when all this business is concluded… just the occasional N.E.W.T. section, but I'm sure Minerva will sorely miss your insight into Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts when you're gone."
That was just insipid.
"I'm sure the only thing Minerva will miss when I'm gone is a deserving target for those daggers she favors, or perhaps the fireballs." His wit was sharp, and it drew blood as it pierced the portrait's emotional facade.
"Severus, you know the Deputy has always thought most highly of you. I would go as far as to say that she thinks of you as one of her favorite colleagues, certainly one of the former students she's most proud of."
This earned a violent sneer in response.
"I do believe killing you and stealing her position might have put a damper on her affections. I'm certain that my recent taste in hiring has, at the very least, breached the professional barrier and damaged our personal relationship."
Albus's portrait only sighed, which was the first inkling of a less than perfect imitation; the living Headmaster would have betrayed his grandfatherly disposition with a haughty, if guilty chuckle at that remark.
"Alecto and Amycus are a truly regrettable necessity. You have protected them from the worst, I have every faith in you." Yes, this Albus had only the memories of the twilight of his life. After the joys of the classroom, and research, and love… this Albus was made from what came after all of that.
Death, war, duty. And precious little reprieve as headmaster before watching Tom Marvelo Riddle embark on an evil crusade of terror that taxed him as Supreme Mugwamp and Chief Warlock.
Severus rolled the engraved hilt of his ebony wand between his fingers in sympathy for the man's plight. It was a highly meditative practice, and he understood now why the late Dumbledore had been so fond of it. It was grounding, to say the least.
"Tell me, Severus, the Dark Lord believes that the Malfoys have all passed from this world."
This earned the dead man a look of extreme exasperation.
"Yes, one of them, Narcissa, I expect, made it look very convincing." I'm sure they're sequestered abroad, in one of a dozen chateau."
"That is reassuring, of course, if Draco had passed on then-"
"-I'd be dead too, yes."Albus nodded along, sagaciously. He spared the family's machinations a look normally reserved for an opponent who had surprised him in wizard's chess.
"That unbreakable bond was an inspired maneuver, no doubt Bellatrix was very impressed with herself for thinking of it. Are we quite sure she's been taken off the board as well?"
What a distasteful euphemism.
"I didn't see a body, if that's what you're asking. Nagini has taken her place by his side the last several times I've seen him"
Albus seemed disquieted by the variable.
"And you don't expect Draco to return to Hogwarts in the foreseeable future?"
Snape shook his head in response, "If he hasn't come to me now for help, he never will."
Albus's disappointment was palpable.
"What a pity, I had such high hopes for him, once upon a time." Snape looked away, as disappointed by the shortcomings of his godson as Albus was. But what could you expect, really? He was still a child, and despite Dumbledore's proclivity for a troupe of child soldiers, this was a man's game; being played by masters with a combined century of experience on him. Something in him, some morsel of a paternal instinct, stirred a sentiment shy of condemnation.
"There never was much hope for him."
"Oh, only a fool's hope, Severus. But I've always thought of the two of them as a 7-10 split, as we say in ten-pin bowling. A perfect set up for a beautiful spare, but fiendishly difficult to bring to conclusion."
'What the devil was he talking about?'
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean." It was Albus's turn to wear a look of exasperation.
"The prophecy, Severus, the prophecy! Weren't you paying any attention to it?"
He hadn't, actually. It entailed something about "a starcrossed dragon, a queen of both Greece and Italy," and a whole load of other tosh that Severus couldn't be bothered about in the current academic year. The third years that had been traumatized by Sybill's questionable descent into prescience had yielded vivid accounts when put to his legilimency, but he'd recited the words to Dumbledore mostly to get the man off of Potter for a single blasted moment.
The man looked as if he was ready to unload a lecture on something that should have been immediately obvious to his successor when a ward barrier punctured like a soap bubble against his omnipresent occlumentic barriers. It wasn't one of the institutional ones, bound to the questionably new looking devices that sat around the office, but rather a private one Severus had erected. Most of the young D.A. members had been keyed to enter and exit by this point so that Severus could be sure that he'd be aware of any new breaches to the castle wards, rather than have them go off again and again, as Longbottom led his little sorties. There were four new wizards on campus. Powerful ones... not students, to be sure.
He didn't spare Albus another glance and launched himself to the doorway with a billow of black robes.
"Severus! Remember what I've told you about the snake!"
It caught his ear as he made the stairway, but he didn't slow. There were still miles to go before he'd sleep.
AN: That more or less concludes the 1st arc, I think. How are we feeling about Dramione progression? Do we like the opening of the subplots?