Disclaimer – I don't own Harry Potter. Laurell K. Hamilton owns the ardeur. Don't sue me.

CHAPTER 3 - THE AFTERMATH

Professor Dumbledore hadn't heard from the Hogwarts Express after it left King's Cross station - so his sudden inexplicable sense of unease was strong enough to drive him to trying something he always left as the last possible resort. The scrying bowl was plain earthenware - some used silver, others even gold, but his mentor had always preferred functionality to decoration - and that taste had stuck with him, in this aspect of his life at least. Albus had never been one to restrain himself to good taste and elegance.

The water swirled, blurred, and then coalesced, somehow deepening, into a face Albus knew well - his new DADA teacher, who was never ruffled or discomposed, but in this image was stripped down to what he suspected was his bare personality - the fierce, intent look of grim determination, and in the eyes...some called it madness, others obsession, but the Malfoy had a gift, when they were pushed to the outermost limits of their beings, of being able to strip everything unnecessary away and focus entirely, completely on one objective.

It was in their eyes - the absolute, implacable determination that tipped over into madness, determination that would see them do anything, destroy anything, and promise anything, to see their one desire fulfilled. And he saw that look in Luc's eyes now.

The feeling of unease had escalated into full-blown alarm and almost panic, and he almost ran down the stairs to McGonagall's room, rousing her, and down to Snape's dungeon, where he was pacing back and forth, knowing that something was wrong but not what. The knowledge that the Hogwarts Express was under attack made Snape pale, his eyes lost their emotionless calm and filled with fear for the children, and a growing anger that Voldemort would even dare this much, go this far.

Riding broomsticks, when he hadn't even been up on one in fifty years, Dumbledore managed to keep his balance and, his right and left hand supporters on either side, made astonishing time to the train tracks, following the plume of smoke from the Hogwarts Express' engine.

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They caught up with it half way to Hogsmeade, stranded and unmoving, and, wands out, boarded cautiously, on the lookout for any Death Eaters. The carnage stopped them in their tracks - the dead, navy-blue robed bodies, some obviously felled by the Killing Curse, others by what looked to be a knife, and still others by something even stronger, and the sight of the students made them pale and feel sick to their stomachs.

They were all alive - not one body on the floor was a student - but they had been...frozen, by some kind of shield, or a spell that shut down any signs of life that the Killing Curse could attack. The result was eerily like that of a massacre, even though they knew better. Everything was silent, only the wind, moving across the green fields, made any sound at all - until, with a startled hiss, Snape stood up and looked to his left, towards the front of the train. Robes flying behind him, he all but ran through the carriages, following whatever he had heard to its source.

He found it in the second carriage from the front, where the carnage seemed to be the strongest and bloodiest. Obviously the Death Eaters - for that was what they undoubtedly were, despite their navy blue robes, had been trying to force their way inside the door to the next carriage, and someone had come at them from behind. But that didn't say why it was so still, or why everything and everyone on the train was lying as if dead.

But the feel, the residue of the magic that still all but crackled on the walls of the carriage did. Snape remembered this spell, developed years ago when they had all been at Hogwarts together - he, and the two Malfoy brothers, and the two Lestranges and Andahni and Courtney and Avery. They'd been fooling around, experimenting with setting spells that would target certain types of people, people with certain characteristics. If the caster also had that characteristic, then with the spell they had eventually come up with, they could cause a physical reaction in those with that characteristic, but unfortunately it also affected the caster themselves.

There hadn't seemed to be much point in causing everybody with the blood of Snape's great-aunt Agatha chronic itching, because Snape too came down with it. Nevertheless, they had filed the spell away for future reference. It seemed that Luc had cast a maximum strength Cruciatus on everyone on the train who wore the Dark Mark - including himself - and had kept it up until every single one of them had been neutralised and killed.

But where was the man himself? And where were the students?

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The door to the first courage swung open, causing Snape to spin around, wand in hand, and Harry Potter to react in exactly the same manner, albeit with less grace, skill or speed. They stared at each other for a long, long moment, over their raised wands, and then Snape, with a sardonic gleam in his eyes, lowered his and murmured, "Do that in school, Potter, and I'll see that you lose more points than you've ever dreamed of."

Harry scowled - right now, he couldn't care less about points, school or even Snape. "So, you finally came, Professor."

Snape ignored the barbed comment and looked past Harry, through the open door into the carriage. "Where is Mr. Malfoy?"

Harry swallowed. "He won't wake up, sir. After we...got rid of the rest of the Death Eaters, he just collapsed on the floor, and we can't wake him up." He sounded worried, more like the fifteen-year-old boy he was and not the Boy who Lived.

Snape pushed past him into the carriage, a little disconcerted to find himself the focus of nearly thirty pairs of eyes, most of them gathered around a still, black-robed form crumpled on the floor. Crossing to kneel down beside it, he reached out a hand and pulled Luc's face towards him, feeling the waxy, cool texture of the skin and noting the extremely pale complexion. He felt dead - but there was life underneath that skin, flowing blood and a faint, erratic heartbeat and the sense of not quite tension in his aura. He was still alive. But he was fading slowly - blood loss, an extreme expenditure of magical strength and reserves, exposure to maximum strength Cruciatus cast with all of his own strength - it all added up to sheer exhaustion, and a total physical collapse now that he was no longer making impossible demands of his body.

Among the students were two older faces - Welsh faces, all to be found beyond the Veil, both of them watching him handle their bastard lord with all the fierce, unblinking vigilance of a hunting hawk. Just in case. "You'd better hope he doesn't die, Professor Snape," the Auror/companion said blandly, but with a pointed look in his eyes.

Snape met his eyes, kept his face impassive and his eyes faintly questioning. It wouldn't do to show any kind of fear or challenge - for all that Snape was a High Clan Lord and this man was a Malfoy servant, the Nine were not to be lightly meddled with. After a short, intense staring match, the companion took pity on him and smiled slightly, with surprising good humour. "He cast the shielding spell over all the other students," he explained. "Only he can undo it."

"Shouldn't it dissolve automatically when he dies?" That was Miss Granger, insatiably curious know-it-all, whose hunger for knowledge occasionally overcame the bounds of tact and good manners.

Marc de Sauvigny, a Gryffindor also, but raised within the High Clan by his cousin Luc, almost hid the slight flicker of his eyelids as he winced.

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A very young girl, one he didn't recognize (which indicated she was a first year) began to cry, stating emphatically that she wanted to go home; she didn't like it here anymore. Harry and Ron, looking uncomfortable, awkwardly tried to comfort her, only to make her cry even harder. Draco, in a rare display of humanity, watching everyone and daring anyone to react, reached out and gently laid his hand on her shoulder, releasing a small, soothing amount of the ardeur, enfolding her in the warmth of compassion, love and belonging.

The Malfoy ardeur was classed as sex magic, but it was much more than that - it could also spread affection and warmth, or an expression of love, physical, platonic, or otherwise. Snape knew that Luc bound his chosen family to him with the ardeur - with all the love and affection expressed with every touch, every small little dose of the addictive warmth in his magic, and was bound in turn by the very act of binding. Nothing in the world of magic was ever one sided, the world ran on the principle of balance - what was sown, must be reaped, what was taken must be given back. Not now, perhaps not even tomorrow - but certainly one day, it would all come back tenfold upon them.

Snape had never before thought that Draco understood this basic principle - but then, if he had been partially raised by Luc Malfoy, perhaps he hadn't done him enough credit. There was no one as fundamentally aware of the basic laws of magic than a bastard with no standing who has had to use everything he could to succeed, or even to survive. Perhaps he owed Draco an apology.

Looking politely away from Draco's unprecedented and uncharacteristic behaviour, Snape focused on Miss Granger's rather tactless, but nonetheless valid inquiry. "He has tied the shield to his aura, Miss Granger, and normally it would be true that it would melt away when his aura does. However, some of the students he is shielding are grievously, perhaps even fatally injured - that shield, and through it his heartbeat, is the only thing keeping them alive."

She looked puzzled. "His heartbeat? What do you mean, Professor?"

Snape focused the full force of his black eyes on hers, and had the satisfaction of seeing her flinch and swallow. "He is breathing for them, his heart is beating to keep theirs beating - his life and survival is bound to theirs. If he dies, Miss Granger..." He trailed off, his meaning more than obvious.

"But that's - that's forbidden by the Ministry. It's Dark Magic."

He sneered, eyes snapping with contempt. "You will find, Miss Granger, that there is dark magic, and there is Dark Magic - and there is a whole world of difference between them. The Ministry, in its need for absolute control and dictatorship, sought to curtail the powers of the High Clan - and in doing so, declared all magics that offended its middle class, prudish and xenophobic sensibilities forbidden Dark Magic."

Draco, looking up from the now smiling first year, said, "It's not Dark Magic, it's an ancient healing practice. It's easier to control and monitor patients when they're connected to you."

She looked mollified, but then intent. Snape waited patiently for her to take the trail of logic to its inevitable conclusion. "So," she began thinking out loud, "We have to wake him up, without jolting him too much, and without accelerating his heartbeat - so we can't use Enervate..." Enervate woke people up by stimulating the heartbeat and virtually shocking them awake. She looked at him as though he held the answer to everything. "How do we wake him up, sir?"

Snape's eyes held bitter, cynical amusement. "I don't know, Miss Granger."

She opened her mouth, met his eyes, and thought better of it. "Nor do I, sir...but we have to, don't we?"

He sighed. And then a calm, confident voice from behind came, a voice that held the wisdom of the ages, at least to the students. "Yes, my dear students," said Professor Dumbledore, every inch the ancient, omniscient wizard. "We must. But not here...let us take him outside, where we can be more comfortable. And where we are not constantly reminded of death."

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He and McGonagall led the way outside, into the green fields. The students looked around, perhaps surprised that it was only about eleven thirty in the morning - the train had left the station at nine, and it must have seemed that the ordeal they'd gone through had lasted forever. It had, perhaps, taken all of half and hour.

But that, Snape had found, was always the way with life-threatening situations - they slowed time down and they assumed an importance quite over and above that of real life. He had had more than enough experience to know what he was talking about, and to know that they all, Hogwarts, the Ministry and the parents of all the children, owed the fact that any students were alive at all solely to Luc.

Without him, this morning would have been a massacre unprecedented in the wizarding world.

There were times, he supposed, when one could be grateful for Death Eater training.

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