"Though doubtless neither of you will be overjoyed to hear as such, we grow near." Severus spoke from the head of the group, not turning to look at his cohorts. Dumbledore had kept up idle chatter for the majority of the journey, and though Severus was loathe to admit it, it had served its purpose and taken their minds off matters more grave.
But he knew they were getting close, and that the two others should be warned. He thought it odd he hadn't been summoned for a gathering of the Death Eaters, but he knew the reason why. There would be no meetings as long as they were hunting Dea, as long as they were trying to kill her. She was a variable they did not understand, and so she had to be snuffed out.
Severus wondered how long it would take them to come to the same conclusion about him, for he had seen glimmers in their minds, glimmers of mistrust similar to ones he saw in the minds of the Order members.
Once a misfit, he thought bitterly to himself.
He had spent most of the trip worrying, not about himself or the men he was with; he knew they were capable, though it frightened him to think of Potter as such. They were capable, and they had volunteered for the job, had agreed to it knowing full well what they were going into.
He was worried about Dea, and about the security of the Black house. It would only hold so long under a group of determined black magicians, and even Malfoy alone would more likely than not be able to find her.
She was, after all, blood kin to the man. And blood found blood, more often than not.
"We need to hurry," he said definitely, increasing his pace.
"Oh yeah, sooner the better," Harry said, but he felt his pulse quicken, and not all of it was fear. Adrenaline was starting to kick in, making the whole thing seem a little more exciting than it actually was.
"The sooner the better," Dumbledore agreed, and behind his glasses, his kind eyes hardened.
~~~
He had found something.
He had found it in a corner of his mansion, scenting it out like the animal that he was, sensing the addition where before there had been none. It had a magical scent to it, like ozone and light and static. It was the smell of magic going bad, of a spell losing its grip.
Lucius Malfoy twirled the single orange feather between his thumb and forefinger and sneered at the bright, impertinent color of it. Orange, in a Malfoy mansion? Ridiculous. But the small amount of light it was radiating, the smell, was enough to excite him.
He had part of her, a part that had undoubtedly come floating to the stone floor when he'd struck her. He felt a tightening in his loins at the thought of her pain and palmed the feather like a stage magician with a handkerchief.
With his other hand, he snapped thrice and held his arm aloft. A hawk perched on his arm, eyes glinting with nothing short of malice, only slighter saner than its owner. Making the feather shuttle over his long, cold fingers, he passed it in front of the hawk's eyes.
"Do us a favor, Ferreus. Find your fellow feathered friend." He brought his eyes down to the glittering yellow eyes of the bird and let his long nose rub its beak. "Find her, find her, find her." He threw out his arm suddenly, sending the bird into flight and out the window.
"How I do love a hunt," he said in a sing-songing voice.
Draco had seen nearly enough—after all, it wasn't uncommon to find his father talking to objects, or treating his damned dark animals like favored children. "Father, Mother wishes to see you. She told me to—"
"Your mother tells you nothing. I tell you everything." Lucius whirled on his son, eyes already rolling in derision. "I tell you everything," he repeated, and his eyes narrowed. "And you should tell me everything."
"Yes, Father," Draco replied mechanically.
"And in the spirit of such, tell me, have you seen anyone around the school? A woman, with a white streak in her hair? A woman who looked as though she should be dead? A tiny, feathered fiend come to muck things up?"
Draco bit back a sigh. The old man really was going batty. Soon, Draco thought, he wouldn't even be properly able to pursue his pet hobby—being a Death Eater. The more time wore on, the more Draco was convinced he didn't care about the bloody battle between good and evil—he'd find power his own way.
But for the moment, he had to appease the beast.
"No, Father." And as the hawk shrieked from a distance, Draco winced.
~~~
This time, this night, she came to him. He had spent the day trying to pretend as though nothing had happened, and though she didn't necessarily agree with it, Dea was too smart to pretend she didn't know at least some of Remus's mindset.
Men, no matter what their motivation, how old they were, how intelligent, did not like to share. And though she felt the two halves of her were split cleanly in two—before her parents' death and after it, with a nice spot of nothingness in between—she could hardly say there were not residual feelings from that other life. But Severus was gone to her, and had been even before her return.
So she went to Remus's bedroom, her knock firm but quiet in deference to the adolescents sleeping down the hall, and when he bade her enter, she did so and shut the door behind her.
He was sitting by his bed, reading a book, the small glasses on once again. When she came in, however, he closed the book and set it aside, making sure to keep his hands busy, his eyes away from hers. Want, it seemed, had not diminished with the previous evening, but had grown.
That, he thought, was quite a predicament.
"We couldn't have been together, you know." She stated it quietly, watching his eyes grow wide as they flew to hers, hurt flashing perceptibly in the gentle green. "Severus and I," she elaborated.
When he said nothing, only looked away from her again, she huffed out a breath and sat on the side of his bed, propping her feet on the chair he sat in. "Listen to me," she insisted, shoving hard enough with her feet to make his chair move. "Damn it, Remus, I'm not going to beat around the bush in an effort not to offend your precious sensibilities. Listen to me!"
"I've no other choice," he fired back, raising his eyes to hers. How could he be cowardly over such a thing as this? Cowardly when bravery was clearly the order of the day?
"We couldn't have been together. There are too many things—too many things painful for him and too many painful for me—that would prevent that. And I stopped wanting that, Remus, long ago." She reached out and brushed a hand over his cheek.
He let his eyes drop to her hand, resting lightly on his cheek, then looked her in the eye again. "You don't have to tell me that, Amadea. I didn't ask for a confession."
"It's your business now," she replied. "I just wanted you to know."
"Then I suppose I should say thank you," he replied quietly. He believed her—at least most of him did; it was difficult to kill jealousy in one fell swoop—but it didn't change other things.
The fact that he was, in fact, in love with her. That was unaltered, only shored up by the last day's events. And the fact that he was most certain she felt not the same for him.
That, too, was unaltered.
But when she leaned down to replace fingers with lips, kissing him lightly on the cheek, laying her cheek to his, he could ignore those facts.
And as they moved from bedside to bed, neither of them heard the hawk in the distance.