CHAPTER FIVE
His life had held many shocks but few true surprises, for a man of Severus Snape's temperament was rarely surprised by the bad things in life.
This, however, could safely qualify as a surprising moment in the long and varied life of Hogwarts' Potions Master.
"No magic?" he repeated, at a loss for a mordant retort.
"In light of recent events, I think it's best if my nephew were quarantined from the magic world at large. He has been harmed enough by all this madness, I hardly think learning how to do the things that got his father killed will be a valuable experience." She'd rehearsed the speech in her head, and it hadn't sounded nearly as ridiculous then. But now, with the cool black eyes staring at her, Lilith knew she'd be feeling foolish no matter what she was saying.
"Tell me, Ms. Benedict," Severus said, regaining his composure easily. "Do you practice magic?"
The color dropped from her already pale cheeks, and though Severus couldn't see where she suddenly went, where the faraway eyes focused, he could see she was suddenly somewhere else entirely.
Frail hands, bony, claw-like and weak, grasping desperately for Lilith's own fair hands, hands roughened by work.
"Help me, Libby," her mother said, her eyes imploring as she uttered her daughter's childhood nickname. "Please…"
Wide, wet eyes met wide, wet eyes and Lilith cursed her heritage, cursed the father she'd never had. Poverty had driven them to such a state, and Lilith abided day by day, her magic useless against her mother's illnesses, her face a constant reminder of the man who was gone.
Magic had not made a whit of a difference in the life of Olive Benedict, and that had haunted Lilith for the ten years since her mother's death. The only magic the woman had needed was the perfectly ordinary kind—the kind even Muggles had, stemming from the heart and given freely.
"No," she responded to Severus, her voice hollow. "I don't." The dreamy, faraway look in her chocolate eyes sharpened, bringing her back into the room, back to him.
He felt his lip curl in a sneer, in a look of disdain meant as surely for himself as for her. After all, who between the two of them had cowered behind bottles and tins, crushed plants and powdered bones? He'd done his greatest work, not with a wand, but with a cauldron, and all because he'd been too scared to do otherwise, too aware of his own Slyterin tendencies and weaknesses.
He was trying to think of a response, appropriate or no, when the door to his office burst open and a long-limbed, platinum-blond young man strode in, his nearly beautiful features marred by an annoyed countenance. He'd not once before utilized the open invitation he'd been granted to his Head of House's office.
"What I'm learning in Defense could fit in a thimble," he spat, keeping his eyes on his textbook in a menacing glare. "Shacklebolt, maybe not so bad, but that Tonks bint—" Draco looked up then, ready to be rebuked for the name-calling, and felt all the moisture in his throat dwindle to nothing, his anger dissipate into a phantom. His heart felt as though it were beating in his throat, and the only movement he was capable of was reflex.
He cowered, both hands thrown in front of his face as though to ward off a blow from—
No doubt his father, Severus thought, moved to action by his pity—and by his sympathy. He stood and placed himself between the aunt and the nephew.
"No, you don't have to do that," Lilith said, raising wide eyes to Severus's narrowed ones. "Please," she pleaded, her hands thrown out in supplication.
"Fucking bastard!" Draco shouted from behind his hands, unwinding like a spring to leap at the figure behind Severus. "Let me—just let me—"
One hand shoved at Severus while the other reached for his wand, and all Draco could see was those tendrils of hair, thick and bright like his own, and bile rose up in his throat, bringing hot, stinging tears into his eyes. He struggled like that until two strong hands pressed down on his shoulders, and a usually sarcastic voice spoke in dulcet tones.
"It's not him, Draco. It isn't him." And then the strong hands shifted Draco to the side so he could see her—this woman who was clearly not his father, but who could have been, but for a few small changes.
It was Lilith's turn to cower, her doe eyes rapidly leaking tears as she pressed a slim, chapped hand to her mouth to stifle the small sobs that wanted to escape from it.
How could she have anticipated that? Anticipated that he would come into the office when she wasn't prepared to see him, anticipated that he could be so damaged?
Before this moment, he had been abstract to her, a duty, an obligation, but now she could not deny the pull of family, the emotion attached to seeing this beautiful boy so warped by time and circumstance.
He took one hesitant step toward the woman, her appearance so shocking to him he kept his eyes squint as though looking into the sun, his fingers still riding the air above his wand in a posture of readiness that made Severus proud.
"Draco," Lilith said, reaching one hand out to him, and he recoiled as though stricken.
"What are you?" he ground out, his chin tipping into the air once again, master to servant, pride restored.
It looked as though they were sided against her, she thought, the two of them standing in almost identical poses, light and dark heads tilted back, dark and light eyes assessing.
She saw Severus Snape's lips thin in a smirk and she could practically hear his mental rejoinder: Excellent question… what are you, Miss Benedict?
He was definitely going to be no help.
"It's complicated," she said, standing and tipping her own chin back. She'd come here for a purpose, hadn't she? "But to trim a lengthy matter down, I'm your aunt and I've come to take you away from Hogwarts."
"You look like him," Draco said, a grimace twisting his features as he thought of his father. "Which means you're no family of mine. Even if you were, you'd have to kill me before you took me out of here." With that, Draco cast his eyes to his mentor, pain flashing briefly before the silver indignation he'd treated Lilith to. Why had his professor been sitting in the office with this woman, knowing full well who she was, and never said anything to his student?
"I have class," he said, turning on his heel and leaving the office without so much as a backward glance, his heart still tripping along at a nastily rapid rate.
Silence fell, perfectly suiting the gloom of Severus's office, and several minutes passed before Lilith finally broke it, her tone defensive.
"He looks like him, too," she said, hating the immaturity in her statement but unable to stop it.
When Severus finally answered her, Lilith wondered why it had never occurred to her.
"Yes, he does look like Lucius. Why do you think he loathes himself so much?" The man who looked like his own father, a monster of a different variety, stared out the door where his pupil had gone.
~~~
She'd been sitting in the library, minding her own good business, for once actually doing her Potions assignment, and the next thing she knew—
—Ginny was sitting in Dumbledore's old classroom, the press of her wand against her side conspicuously gone, her Potions homework sitting neatly before her.
"Oh, bugger," she said, but her voice was more weary than cross. She might have known she couldn't skip out on a class assigned by the headmaster himself.
"I'd say the same, only now it would seem banal." Draco sat in the room's dormer window, one knee bent and the other dangling down along the wall, his eyes turned slightly out the window.
He had come voluntarily, choosing an hour with a Weasley over another minute in the room with that… thing, that woman that looked so much like his father and the professor who had apparently been keeping Draco in the dark, as it were.
He'd brought his wand with him, conjuring patterns and shapes on the wide expanse of glass before him, and when it was precisely 11:12, his wand had vanished and he'd been left holding his hand aloft like a fool.
That was when the Haughty Pauper, as he'd come to think of Ginny, had popped into the room looking bewildered and not a little brassed off.
"For Merlin's sake," she sassed, getting up from her desk. "What's the meaning of all this, then?"
"It's a class," he said mildly, the fight momentarily gone from him. The Weasley was fighting enough for both of them, he noted, and watching her struggle with the prospect of another hour alone with him was definitely taking some of the edge off.
"A class, is it? What do you think we're learning, Malfoy?" Ginny shouted, uncomfortable with his acquiescence. He'd been much easier to deal with when he was calling names and strutting about the place like a peacock on a potion. Now, with his eyes cast out the window and his long-limbed figure silhouetted against the light pouring in, he just looked a bit sad, a bit melancholy.
"Perhaps it's a branch of Care of Magical Creatures," he said, finally turning to fully look at her, a nearly white eyebrow arched insouciantly. "It seems I've reached the lesson on caring for penniless weasels." But the sting was absent from his words, and he turned away from her once again.
Annoyed at his non-engagement in the argument, Ginny stamped her foot impatiently. She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, opened it again, and blew her hair out of her eyes.
What good was an enemy without enmity?
"You've a big family, Weasley, how does one deal with all those meddling, upsetting people?" he asked, using a finely-shaped fingertip to draw the outline of a dragon in the haze that had formed from his proximity to the cool window. He added a few scales here and there, and then a wickedly pointed tongue, then shot his eyes over to her.
The daft biddy was gaping at him like the town fool. It was like trying to converse with Crabbe or Goyle, honestly—
But Crabbe and Goyle were dead, or presumed so, weren't they?
"Too good to answer me, Duchess?" That particular idea perked him up a bit—the Weasleys as royalty. Too funny, that.
"I don't know what you mean," Ginny said, pacing the room so as not to have to look at him. "My family isn't precisely meddling, you know. Upsetting at times, perhaps, but…" She trailed off.
"And I'm sure the Weasley family forest is well-documented, thousands of offspring that there are," he conjectured, more to himself than her. "So no chance of random little Weaslettes popping up here or there." Hopeful, he turned his eyes to her. "No chance?"
Biting her lip, she shook her head. Draco Malfoy, though never known to be the sanest among the Hogwarts set, had clearly lost his marbles, conversing about family with a Weasley. Fleetingly, Ginny wondered if he could manage to kill her without his wand.
"Well, you never know," he said, turning back to etch in flames with a surprising amount of skill. "You think you know everything, then—" With a shrug, he wiped the window clean with the sleeve of his robe. He could feel her eyes on him and so he kept his out the window. "Get back to the lessons, Weasley, I'd hate to be responsible for the further failure of the most prolific family in the wizarding world."
He heard her sit and, after a few moments' hesitation, her quill begin to scratch over the parchment. Waiting until she was busy, he slid sinuously out of his comfortable seat and chose a desk at random, turning it to face her.
"I can't do my lessons if you're ogling me," she said, keeping her eyes down as a flush stained her cheeks.
"Sure you can, Weasel. You can sleep in a house of a family of nine, can't you?" He pulled out his own parchment and pen, and in his own way, Draco began to do his lessons.