**Author's note: I'm sorry this is going so slowly—I'm writing several things at the moment, and also working two jobs. Did I mention I've had computer problems? Life is good, let me just tell you. This piece is a little lighter than the last two, which is intentional. Hope you're enjoying it. Any and all feedback welcome. Happy reading!**
Draco turned with such speed that Ginny let out a little squeak, and simultaneously their hands dropped down, to draw forth wands.
"Damn it!" they chorused as one, countenances falling with the realization that they could not hex one another.
Ginny was the first to move, throwing herself behind her desk with a sigh of exasperation. Her first instinct had been to charge him; after all, a girl with six older brothers was completely able to take care of herself.
But that meant touching Malfoy, and she'd just as soon pass.
She buried herself in the homework she'd brought with her, trying to keep her inquisitiveness at bay. The albino had said something about a class, and she hadn't the slightest notion of what he was talking about.
Biting her lip, she glanced up at him, then hurriedly averted her gaze.
"What are you looking at, Weasel?" Draco sneered, crossing his arms over his chest. There had to be some way out of the room.
"I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out," she snarked back, rolling her eyes.
In the hallway, listening to the epithets wing their way across the room between the two enemies, Dumbledore hummed happily. Severus sat across the hallway, his arms crossed over his chest, a look of pure incredulity written over his face.
"You are a perverse individual," he ruled. "However, you are the headmaster. I have class to conduct. Do not let that reprobate harm my Seeker."
"Professor Snape." The voice that sounded behind them was cool, quiet, and declarative.
He turned to face his greeter and, for a moment, felt the world fall away, temporal constraints fall away, and he was flung into the past with a platinum-haired ally turned enemy.
But it wasn't Lucius. It wasn't even a man, but a woman walking down the hall toward him, her white-blonde hair coiffed in large curls around her thin face, her eyes not gray, but brown instead. Her wardrobe wasn't a silk or fur robe, but instead a well-worn cotton dress, its long skirt smattered with patches and mending.
No matter the sartorial differences, however, the cheekbones were high and slashing in her face, her full mouth set in a regal moue of displeasure. She had to be a Malfoy, Severus thought, his stomach twisting.
So where the hell had she come from?
Dumbledore was looking at her with something akin to fascination, his attention momentarily diverted from the quarreling pair in his classroom.
"Hello there," he said pleasantly, though her appearance gave him quite a start. It was alarming how much she looked like him—the recently departed Death Eater who had made more than one life a living hell. The cold beauty had worn well on this woman's face, muted to a classic sort of quietness.
She spared him a quick glance that could have been taken for dismissive, but Dumbledore could see the nerves dancing behind the quick flit of eyes.
She opened her mouth to say something when a barrage of creative swearing poured out of the room in front of them. Her curiosity peaked, the woman stood on tiptoe to look in the window, and then the look of displeasure hardened into something more certain.
"Take him out of there," she said stiffly, whirling to face the two men. "I don't know what the meaning of this is, but they shouldn't be allowed to spit such words at one another."
"Madam, I'm forced to inquire as to your identity," Severus said, not caring at all for her tone. Though he certainly wasn't in charge at Hogwarts and likely never would be, he'd come far from the cowering Slytherin boy he'd once been. The last thing he needed or wanted was some polished face telling him what he could and couldn't do.
She pinned him with a glare that held more than a little worry for the boy inside the room, and the care in that glance made Severus's resolve falter.
He'd thought himself the only person left who gave half a damn about the boy.
"My name is Lilith Benedict, and I ask that you let my nephew out of that room immediately."
Long accustomed to hiding his feelings, Severus kept his countenance blank, carefully hiding the nasty shock her words had given him. Nephew? Pureblood families were well-known in the magic world, so well-known that a long-lost relative was hardly an option.
But witches and wizards kept secrets well, and a secret as large as an unclaimed Malfoy would certainly be a secret worth keeping.
"Well, you're not an aunt of Sirius's," Dumbledore said, cocking his head slightly as he heard Draco call Ginny 'fool's spawn' and comment on his awe at her father's ability to have children at all. "So that makes you a…"
"Bastard sister of Lucius Malfoy," she said, her voice still quiet. "Unclaimed and unwilling to be so, until now. That boy in there has no family excepting me. I'm not so proud I would let my own hubris stand in the way of that."
"And you believe you have a right to be here, tossing orders around?" Severus sneered and looked down his nose at her, trying to puzzle out the strange mix of confidence and timidity she was displaying.
She wasn't too timid to stand up to him, though, lifting her chin and staring him straight in the eye. "I'm his family. Someone must make decisions."
"Then why not the people who know and actually care about him?" Severus retorted triumphantly.
Aha, Dumbledore thought. Severus had never admitted to caring for the boy, but he knew Draco was the closest thing to a son Severus had. They had a rapport unlike any other Dumbledore had seen, unspoken and unacknowledged but strong nonetheless.
Lilith didn't have an answer for the tall man with the angry face, the Potions master who seemed to temporarily be watching over her nephew. She didn't have a reasonable answer, but she had a response at hand.
"Better someone who does not know him than a Death Eater who orphaned him."
She felt a small twinge of regret as the guilt, the weighty responsibility, slid over the cruelly handsome face. It wasn't like her to say such things, but orphans reached out to orphans, didn't they?
No matter what the cost, no matter who they had to reach over. And, Lilith thought, she had plenty of reaching to do.
If she had anything to do with it, Draco Malfoy would be out of England as soon as she could manage it, and away from the memories that surely plagued him.
"Better, indeed, Miss Benedict," Severus said, feeling the pit of his stomach plummet at her words. What was more stinging than the truth, at any rate? "I believe I'll leave this to you, Albus." He began to walk away, but his next words were not lost on the rueful relation of Draco's. "A Death Eater has no place in a discussion of family."