**AUTHOR'S NOTE: Reformatting your hard drive sucks. I know you probably all know this fact, but I want to reiterate it. This week I had to start a new job full-time and at the same time, reformat my hard drive. So, I apologize for the wait. Happy reading!**
What did one say in these situations? What were the words to give to a relative you'd never known, the only blood relative you had left? What were the words to give to an orphan of unfit parents, a young man stuck between childhood and adulthood and judged by all his peers?
"I'm sorry" seemed awfully weak, and even if it had been a good choice, Lilith wasn't certain she could have pried her cold lips apart to say it.
He was a beautiful boy, even more so close up than from afar, and the unfairness of that one fact made Lilith ache. Anyone with so much beauty should have had a charmed life instead of a cursed one.
Though the same could have been said for her, she never would have applied the same logic to herself.
She really didn't look like Father, Draco thought, his silver eyes wide as he stared at her. It was more than just the eye color and the hair length. There were other things, other evidences, that made all the difference in the world between the siblings. The look in her eyes that said she knew love, not only for others but for herself, as well. She loved and had been loved, and likely, Draco thought with a shallow inward sneer, thought she loved him.
Well, that was a handful and a half of Dungbombs, as far as he was concerned.
"Excuse me," Remus interjected, easing his slim body between the two relatives purposefully, breaking the staid gaze the two shared. "I was just on my way out."
Half-breed, Draco thought reflexively, and winced. That particular gem was a thought of his father's ilk, the kind that had been drilled into the child Draco with an insistence so mad and fierce it was captivating. But the reflex was weak and easily beaten, and he stepped back to let the ex-Professor through, though he said nothing.
"Pardon," Lilith muttered, casting her eyes to the side and slipping into Severus's office. She kept her eyes away from his, afraid for a moment the emotion of the situation would betray her. She'd heard things in her days at Hogwarts, things about the mind-reading Potions master with a bent for favoritism. The last thing she wanted was for him to read her mind and, horror of all horrors, hear what she thought of him, or how often.
Must you behave like a juvenile? she asked herself, and though it didn't immediately occur to her, that snide inner voice sounded a great deal like Severus Snape.
As Draco followed her into the dungeon office, Severus kept his long, thin fingers curled into tight, pale fists on his desk. He hadn't the slightest how to help them, hadn't ever really had the slightest idea how to help Draco, no matter how much he'd wanted to. The son of his peer, the son of his enemy, the son of a man who had drawn Severus into the darkest depths of Severus's own soul—Draco had always been just beyond Severus's reach.
Severus had thought more than once that saving Draco might be his own salvation.
Now he just cared too much not to save the boy.
How ironic, he thought, crabbily gesturing each of them into chairs. He hadn't yet thought how to start, but it didn't matter—Draco had received the Malfoy knack for taking a situation and making it his own.
"I don't know you," he said definitely, his eyes narrowed into metallic slits. "So, all things considered, I'd say you get to start with the explaining."
Lilith leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, arching a pale eyebrow at her nephew, mirroring his facial expression magnificently. "My name is Lilith Benedict. My mother was a witch named Olive Benedict who never stayed put in one place for very long. My father was a wizard named Balthasar Malfoy. I'd wager you've heard the name before?" she asked, completing the illusion by carrying over his mocking tone.
His face flushed red and he leaned forward as though shoved into movement by her goading. "Continue," he said through clenched teeth, and Severus could tell the adult façade was going to fade very soon, indeed.
"I met my father once, and met your father at the same time, and neither one seemed very inclined to admit I even existed." Hearing the cold tones of her own voice, Lilith sighed and rubbed a thin hand over tired eyes. She hadn't meant to do it like this, hadn't meant to let him put her on the defensive. This wasn't the way to start things.
Of course, ideally, the way to start things wouldn't have been bare weeks after the boy had been orphaned.
"You're the only family I've left," she said softly, trying a different approach. This Lilith was honest, was true. Her eyes were nakedly pleading, and her emotions were obvious.
Don't do that, Severus thought, leaning forward warningly. A wounded animal would strike out at the hand which tried to help it, and a wounded young man would do no differently.
Severus had stricken out at plenty of helpers in his life, and he wasn't keen to see Draco do the same.
"Do you expect me to return that sentiment?" Draco asked, rolling his eyes and throwing a glance at Severus before returning his attention to Lilith. This had been a bad idea—a bad idea, indeed. She was looking at him—
Like his mother used to, tender and loving, caring, wanting to keep him shielded from the ugliness later to come.
He stood, towering over her as she sat, and looked down at her, tamping down the constrictive feeling around his heart. "In case you've not noticed, Miss Benedict, family doesn't mean a great deal to Malfoys, so you may as well try something different."
"Draco," Severus said sharply, his onyx eyes flashing. "Bear in mind you are the one who requested this… reunion."
When his pupil turned those cold slate eyes on him, Severus had to fight the urge to look away. What he saw there, for the briefest flicker, was contempt.
"Ohhhh," Draco said, smirking mightily and feeling the sting of betrayal pierce through him. This man was supposed to defend him. No matter what the woman sitting before them both said, Severus was the closest thing Draco had to family, and now that family was turning his back. "I believe the professor must have a bit of a yen for Auntie, eh?" His sneer cracked, his lips trembled a bit, but he kept his eyes forthrightly on Severus's as his aunt gasped behind him. "You know, Snape," he spat the name nastily, "Goyle and Crabbe always said you were more my father's servant than Voldemort's. Perhaps we see why now."
Severus's face paled more than usual and he stood with two hands pressed to his desk. Now it was he who towered over Draco, and when he spoke, his voice held the tone usually reserved for a hopelessly slow Hufflepuff. "I'll not rise to your bait, Draco. You think I've not endured things far worse than the ill-aimed taunts of a child, you're sadly mistaken."
"Stop this!" Lilith had stayed silent more of necessity than choice; her voice had backed up in her throat, her breath had backed up in her lungs when the two had faced down, coldness to coldness in their anger.
She'd rather have died than cause more pain in the life of this beautiful boy, and the truth showed itself with a face as ugly as any troll.
She should not have come to Hogwarts.
"You're right, Professor," Draco said, feeling the panic start to rise up in him. "I was sadly mistaken." He turned and ran out of the office, abandoning the last of his composure.
If there'd been a Muggle shrink on hand, they'd have started screaming 'fear of intimacy.'
As it was, an orphan of the last war had no wish for family, as family had been the bane of his existence.
"That went poorly," Severus said dryly, and when he looked at the woman in front of him, her tears were mirrored in his heart.
How could it ever be fair, he wondered, to come close to losing someone, to see a child in danger, to see them removed from the immediate danger, and to lose them anyway?
When would he ever stop losing what he had found?