Title: Winter-Dark (18/?)

Author: Sonya

Rating: R - yet more nastiness, disturbing themes and death. There will be somewhat happier stuff next chapter, promise - nobody's going to be dancing a jig, but we'll move away from the "life's a bitch and then you die" theme.

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I don't own. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all associated characters, settings, etc., belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, etc. Harry Potter and all associated characters, setting, props, etc., belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Inc., etc. No copyright infringement is intended, so please don't sue - all you'll get is a really bratty bird and some really spoiled rats.

Spoilers: Up to 'Wrecked' in the Buffyverse, up to "Goblet of Fire" in the Potterverse.

Pairings: Willow/Snape, Hermione/Viktor Krum, Draco/Ginny, Fred/Angelina. Other 'ships to be decided.

Summary: Yet more fall-out.

Author's Note: Just a reminder that this story takes place following "Goblet of Fire" - as in, "Order of the Phoenix" never happened. There will be overlaps, but there will also be differences, and there are no intentional spoilers. So, if you've read the book, you'll see some things familiar and some things not. If you haven't read the book and don't want to be spoiled - use your own judgment. If I don't tell you what's my idea and what's from the book, then you're not really being spoiled, right?

***

The floor of the Lestrange's great hall was cold, hard, and altogether uncomfortable, but Severus felt ill-inclined to move; for one thing, his head was pounding as though it'd fall off. For another, there was a supple, warm body curled around his. That was going a long way towards making all the various other indignities of passing out drunk on the floor completely insignificant. Sometime during the night someone had tossed a robe over the two of them like a blanket; it looked like his robe, so he supposed he'd probably done that, but he didn't quite remember.

"Are you awake?" Cissy asked in a teasing, half-giggling little voice. Her face was flushed; she was obviously still high, though he wasn't sure on what. Her hand was tracing nonsensical patterns on his chest; it paused, then trailed down his abdomen. He sucked in a rather desperate breath; his pulse was thudding horrifically loud in his temples and he was terrified he might throw up. He didn't want to do that; he didn't want to do anything to make her stop.

"I guess you are," she whispered in his ear, then laughed. He was rather beyond speech.

A door banged open somewhere down the hall, echoing against stone and tile and high domed ceiling and the inside of his skull. Cissa's hand drew away and she sat up, the robe/blanket falling down around her waist, her breasts pale and bare in the early morning light.

"It's rude not to knock!" she scolded indignantly; her face then broke into a rather delighted, simpering sort of grin when she saw who had walked in. "Oh, hello, Lucius," she purred. Severus tried to bundle the robe around his hips, feeling very ill; Narcissa stood, unconcerned in garters and one white stocking and nothing else. She sauntered up to Lucius Malfoy, kissing him on the cheek. Anton Lestrange was with him, looking rather disgusted by the whole scene. Lucius didn't return Cissa's kiss, just gave her a faintly indulgent, faintly predatory sort of glance and then proceeded to ignore her.

Anton walked up to Severus and kicked him in the hip, sneering. "Playtime's up - *he* wants you, though Merlin knows why," Lestrange spit out.

"Don't injure him," Lucius admonished distractedly, watching Cissa as she whirled indignantly on Lestrange.

"No kicking," she snapped out, slapping at his arm. "The Dark Lord doesn't mind, s'not a dickless git like you, you wouldn't know how -"

"Cissy -" Severus began warningly, reaching out towards her, but Anton, who appeared neither hung over nor sleep-deprived, was much quicker. He grabbed her ineffectually swatting hand in an iron grip, squeezing until she cried out; then he shoved her backwards. She stumbled on the edge of the robe Severus was still clutching around his waist, landing hard on her ass, her pale, fine hair falling in her face.

"Get dressed," Lestrange ordered, giving Severus another kick, harder this time, just to make his point, before turning and sweeping out of the hall.

"The Dark Lord wants to know if you can do with a potion what Anton did with a charm last night," Lucius explained smoothly, calm and unruffled. "A potion would be so much easier to apply to a group." Narcissa was quietly crying. Lucius blew her a kiss, and followed Lestrange from the room.

"Bastards," Cissa sniffled when they were gone. "My head hurts."

"There's a hangover remedy in my bags, green bottle with blue cork," Severus suggested awkwardly, pulling on his robe.

"Won't you want it?" she asked, sniffing and turning her face up to him. She was beautiful even with swollen tearful eyes and the pallor of beginning withdrawl clinging to her perfect skin. He did want it, but she was sitting there sprawled out on the floor with her legs still half-spread, exactly as she'd fallen, looking like a broken doll.

"I have more," he lied.

"Oh," she said, accepting it without question. She wiped her hand - already starting to bruise - across her eyes. "You're going to go make the potion for them?"

"Of course," he snapped back, inexplicably half-annoyed that she hadn't caught his lie.

"Do you want to?" she asked in a small voice. He paused, doing up the buttons at the front of his robe.

"It's important," he hedged irritably. "You've heard the Dark Lord too, it's only a matter of time before the muggles figure out that we exist, with the all the new mechanical things they're inventing that are almost like magic, and they'll react like they always have, they'll attack - and the Ministry is incompetent, there's been no weapons research done there in years. The experimentation is unpleasant, but it's necessary if we're to -"

"I don't like it," Cissa interrupted, sounding child-like and scared. "That muggle was screaming so much. Anton was laughing." He looked at her, wondering just how much she'd drank - or cranked up, or shot up, or all of the above - last night. She just blinked huge, tearful, pale blue eyes up at him, as if expecting him to make it better.

"Then why do you come?" he demanded impatiently. He was dressed now, he knew he shouldn't be lingering here. The Dark Lord would get impatient.

"I dunno," she shrugged petulantly. "People like me, they're nice to me. It's fun sometimes." He thought of Anton Lestrange crushing her hand, and said nothing.

"Let's run away!" she blurted out suddenly, face brightening, reaching her wounded hand out to clutch weakly at his robes. "Just us. We'll go away somewhere that there's no - no muggles, and no people screaming and - we could, couldn't we? Could we?"

"I have to go," he mumbled, leaning down to remove her hand gently from his robe. She yanked it back, clutching it to her naked chest.

"Fine," she snapped. "Go. I don't care." Not knowing what else to say, he did.

A hand touched his arm. Severus blinked, the Lestranges' hall and Narcissa's face fading from memory. He was staring out an arrow-slit window somewhere along the third-floor corridor. It was cold, a thick haze of snow falling outside. His elbows ached where they'd been resting on the stone for some unfelt time.

"Dumbledore's back," Willow informed him in a hushed tone, watching him closely as if expecting he might shatter at any moment. "Hermione's staying with the Weasley's for now, at least until Christmas. There's - there's more word from the Ministry."

"More dead?" he asked bluntly.

"Yes," she answered as flatly, and he felt a surge of entirely disproportionate gratitude for her candor.

"Students?" he asked.

"Some," she said. "He didn't tell me names, he said he wanted to tell you himself." Yes, he would, wouldn't he? He made sure he was the one to tell me about Narcissa. I don't know how he even knew.

Of course, I don't know how he knew to find me down in Willow's rooms, being told in her babbling way that she's interested but still vaguely in love with her girlfriend, either.

He glanced down at the redhead. Her eyes were a subdued sort of blue-green, the color of sky before a storm, or of the ocean in winter. Cissa's had been the color of frost, just barely possessed of color at all. Cissa was tall, classically beautiful in a frail sort of way, while Willow was tiny, vibrant, no one feature outstanding until they were put together, until she moved, laughed, breathed.

They're nothing alike, really. Willow cranked up once. Got lost in her power more than once, but in a terrified, altruistic sort of way. Nothing like Cissa. Cissa didn't have any power to get lost in, did she?

But she did more in one night than I did in fifteen years. And died for it.

Dead. Cissa is dead.

Back then I was expecting it all the time. She'd just go too far one night, crank up too much, and we'd find her in the morning. I expected it. I'd stopped expecting it now. I'd almost stopped thinking of her at all.

Maybe she'd be alive if I'd kept thinking of her. If I'd been paying attention, if I'd found a way to see her, even if she never came to the revels anymore -

"I'm sorry about . . about the woman Dumbledore came to tell you about," Willow offered hesitantly. "Draco's mother?"

Draco's mother. Of course she'd be Draco's mother to Willow. How else would she know her?

I suppose there are worse things she might be remembered by. Worse things she probably will be remembered by.

And they haven't found Draco yet; don't know if he's dead or alive yet, don't know if he's with Voldemort. Would he have stood by and watched his mother die? Would he?

Would I? And didn't I, really? I did nothing to stop it. Nothing to save her.

"Were you close?" Willow asked.

"No," Severus snapped.

"Oh," Willow retreated a little, hugging her arms around herself. "I'm sorry."

She's nothing like her. Nothing at all. Cissa wasn't a fighter. And Willow's not - just because her last lover was a woman doesn't mean she's as indiscriminate as Cissa was. She loved this Tara. Perhaps still loves her. There's no reason to compare the two.

No reason to be petrified she'll end up dead on the floor somewhere, half-naked, bleeding, just waiting there and growing cold for some stupid Ministry git to find her, take pictures for the Aurors, draw the last spells out of her wand, examine her lifeless flesh for curses because now she's *evidence*, she's a body, a thing, not the body you made love to, not the girl who was so desperately alive you just knew she had to burn out sooner or later, no one could be that much and that weak at once, no one could survive the life she half-lived.

No reason to think that of Willow. No reason at all.

I never thought she'd die like this. She's a hero. Her picture will be all over the Daily Prophet tomorrow.

Not the photos from the scene. Please, not that. She would have hated that. She wasn't modest but she was vain. The world shouldn't get to see her dead and cold.

"I knew her in school," Severus said, not sure why he was talking, where the words were coming from. He hadn't been thinking that. "She came to dark revels. She was . . we weren't . . we fucked, I guess. That's what we did. We fucked. She fucked everyone." He hadn't meant to say that, not with her lying in a morgue somewhere, waiting to be put in the ground. That wasn't what he wanted Willow to know about her.

Willow didn't say anything, but she crept closer to him, leaning against the edge of the window. She had to look up to watch his face; she's so very tiny, so fragile, but not. She's a fighter, a survivor. Not like Cissa. It made him feel guilty, and he wasn't sure why.

"She was "close" with everyone, I guess," he spat out bitterly. "She wasn't close with anyone." He paused, surprised to find that his breathing had grown rather ragged. "I should have taken her away. She hated it, but she wouldn't leave. They treated her like shit, every last one of them, even me, but she didn't leave. It's what finally got me to fucking wake up, to see . . she married Lucius. I finally saw what an utter idiot she was, what an idiot I was, letting them use me. Saw they didn't give a damn about anything, not about the betterment of the wizarding world, they weren't any better than the muggles they called animals, soulless, they were all soulless filth and I should have made her - I should have made her get away -" he stopped, because there suddenly wasn't enough air.

She's dead. Cissa's dead and a martyr and a hero and I'm alive, and I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be here, drinking wine and perhaps getting close to someone and living, I shouldn't be living when she died, she died and did more than I ever did, more than I did in fifteen years, Cissa who was a joke, Cissa who they laughed at 'cause she'd do anything, screw anything, she even did that greasy git Severus, do you believe that, do you believe her -

- she's dead.

"She did, though," Willow offered tentatively. She was biting her lip, looking uncertain. "Leave. Not the way anybody would have wanted to leave, but she did. She must have - she must have changed, I guess, from how you remember her. I mean, she managed to take a few of them with her. Maybe even Lucius. It's - well, it's not much, I guess, compared to still being alive, but it's - there's someone coming up the path," she finished abruptly. Severus blinked at the non-sequitor, his over-wrought brain slow to catch up with her rapid shift in focus. She was frowning and wriggling her way in front of the window, pressing closely up against him in the process.

There's someone coming up the path?

He was able to see easily over her head; at first all he could see was snow and darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out trees, the lake, the faint indentation in the blanket of white that marked the cobblestone path to Hogsmeade. There was a thin, dark shape shuffling up it, silhouetted against the frosty paleness.

"The Ministry are flooing in and out," Willow observed aloud. "Hogsmeade's on lockdown, everyone's being told to stay inside. The students should be in bed. Why is there someone coming up the path?" Her voice took on an alarmed edge as she went on.

Severus was barely listening; there was something familiar about that figure, about its hunched-shouldered, faintly belligerent walk, apparent even from this distance.

"Draco," he breathed out, almost disbelieving. How . . how could he possibly . . then he was running for the front gate.

***

"She could have taken my old room," Charlie said, sitting on the edge of an armchair and watching as Ginny made up the couch for herself. "It's nostalgic and all staying there, but I could always bunk with Ron."

"Harry's staying in Ron's room," Ginny pointed out, tucking a sheet corner in under a cushion.

"Percy, then," Charlie suggested. Ginny just gave him a look. "Desperate circumstances," Charlie shrugged.

"It's not funny," she snapped.

"Merlin, of course it's not funny, Gin!" Charlie protested, scowling. "I wasn't trying to be funny! I'm just saying -"

"Your room's all full of Quidditch stuff and boy things," Ginny said. "She'll feel more comfortable in mine."

"I don't think she really cares at the moment," Charlie retorted. "Gin, are you okay?"

"Why ever shouldn't I be?" she said scathingly, grabbing her quilt from the heap of bedding on the floor and flinging it out across the couch. Why ever should I be bothered that Hermione's parents are dead and Dad's hurt and Mum's going out of her mind and I think she's going to pace a hole in the floorboards if he doesn't get home soon and Merlin knows what's happened to Draco and it's all - it's my fault.

It's not. I know it's not. It's his fault. Tom. Voldemort.

But I can feel what he'd feel about this, how funny he'd think it all is, and there ought to be something for that, some balance, I ought to be able to do something to hurt him if I'm going to have this echo of him here inside me -

I wish I were back at school so I could at least talk to Myrtle about it. That's pathetic.

If all I can do for Hermione is give her my bedroom that doesn't smell like old Quidditch gloves, then .. well, then she can have it. She can bloody well move in and stay. I'll move into the attic with the ghoul where I belong.

"You seem a little more not-okay than you ought to be," Charlie stood and folded his arms determinedly. "Gin -" his face softened a little, "you know Dad's gonna be fine, right? It's just a little hex."

She almost laughed. He thinks I'm upset because Dad was hurt. And I should be. That shouldn't be the smallest thing I'm worried about.

"You should go tell Mum that, before she falls through the ceiling on us from pacing in front of the window upstairs," Ginny answered, tucking the quilt into the back of the couch, studiously looking anywhere but at her second-eldest brother.

"What's got into you?" Charlie scowled at her.

For half a second she hated him.

What's got into me? What's got INTO me? Don't they even remember? Did it maybe just slip his mind? Does it ever occur to any of them that they never even asked, not really, never wanted to know what I remembered, never wanted to know what it felt like, it was just too awful, I guess, so awful that I've had to deal with it all my self for the last three years and now, now he wants to know what's got into me?

And here I am, thinking how awful they all are - at least they're alive to be awful. Oh, God, Hermione, I don't think I'd survive it if . . both of them at once . . I don't think I could survive it.

Dad just got hit with a little hex . . but it didn't have to be a little hex. It could have been worse. It could have been . . she sounded like she was choking. She would have fallen on the stairs if Dumbledore hadn't caught her, and that could have been me. That could have been us, so, so easily.

All because of one person. Tom. He used to lay awake at night planning how he'd kill his father, how he'd torture him. His father who he never even met.

I hate him. His father. Would it have been so hard for him to just deal with it? So his mother was a witch, so what? Is that worth this? Is that worth Hermione upstairs not able to breath, and Mum pacing the floor and Dad's hexed leg and Draco, who doesn't do well with screaming . . oh God I want to scream . . I just want to scream and scream and scream and never stop.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry isn't even right. There isn't a word for this.

"Nothing," Ginny shook her head. "It's nothing." She kicked off her slippers and crawled onto the couch, pulling the quilt up over her head. "Just go to bed, Charlie," she mumbled. "I'm fine."

***

Draco had never seen Dumbledore's office before; now that he had the opportunity, he found he didn't really care. Snape and Rosenberg had rush him up here as if it were imperative that he be secreted away as quickly as possible, then Rosenberg had left, returning moments later with Madam Pomphrey, a heavy down-filled comforter, and an obscenely huge mug of hot chocolate. Draco was neither hungry nor cold; Madam Pomphrey had pronounced him to be in shock and ordered him to drink the now luke-warm chocolate, then left. Rosenberg had gone to fetch Dumbledore. Snape stayed, hovering like a dark, malignant cloud behind him; Draco couldn't figure out what he was doing at Hogwarts, and not at Malfoy Manor.

But something's gone wrong. More wrong than me getting knocked out by a house elf.

And no one will tell me anything. 'Dumbledore will explain', and a pitying look. Or, 'You're just going to have to wait for Dumbledore - now drink that chocolate!'

Dumbledore arrived a moment later in a swirl of soot-dusted robes, as if he'd been using the floo a great deal. He exchanged an unreadable look with Snape, then sat behind his desk, facing Draco.

"There has been a Ministry raid at Malfoy Manor," Dumbledore said without preamble, tone wary, testing. Draco felt his pulse jump into his throat, resisting an almost unbearable urge to look back at Snape. Did he know? Is that why he's here, not there?

Did Father know? Is that why the house elf . . no, no, if Father knew, he would have brought me home but there would have been nothing for the Ministry to find when they got there. Would have had dinner set out and the place drowning in Solstice candles, respectable enough for the front cover of Witch Weekly.

"That happens now and then," Draco said with a careful shrug. "Politics. Father's very involved with the Ministry, you know, and -" And what? Think, damn it! Think!

House elves just don't get bright ideas like that on their own. Something's happened, something more -

"And one cannot help but to make enemies," Dumbledore supplied.

"That's right," Draco agreed, and hoped it hadn't been too hasty.

"Mr. Malfoy, it is difficult . . perhaps it would put you at ease to know this is difficult for me as well," Dumbledore said. "It has been difficult, these many years you have been at school, and a good many years before that, that your father served on the Board of Governors."

Difficult. Draco just blinked at him. He's breaking the rules. You don't talk about it, you don't talk about that -

"I want you to know that I am the one giving you this news because it is my duty to do so, not out of spite. There is no magic that will allow me to take this moment and remove it from the time and the conflict in which it exists, and let someone whom you have not been raised to see as an enemy relate tonight's events to you, but I hope you'll believe me when I tell you that I dearly wish I could," Dumbledore finished, and Draco felt the cold of the long walk from Hogsmeade finally making itself known, deep down in the pit of his stomach.

"Just tell me," he demanded. "Just - whatever it is, just say it already." You don't talk to the Headmaster like that, either.

"Draco -" he never calls anybody by their first names not students he calls the professors Minerva and Severus and Willow but never the students "-I am very sorry, but your mother has been killed."

Draco blinked. Swallowed. Inhaled, exhaled, once, twice . . I know what those words mean, I know I do, but . . but he tried to think of something, anything, and came up blank. It felt like someone had pulled a cork somewhere down at the very bottom of his being and all thought, all feeling, all comprehension had just drained away.

"Your father is currently missing, but there is the strong possibility that he is dead as well."

"How - " Draco rasped out, swallowed, moistening his tongue so that the words wouldn't catch, but they were just words, he wasn't even sure he was the one speaking them. "How did they - the raid, was it Aurors -"

"At about four o'clock this afternoon, Arthur Weasley found a package on his desk at the Ministry," Dumbledore went on stoicly. Weasley? Draco thought. Weasel-girl . . weasel-girl has freckles on her lips and she told me not to go home. I didn't. I didn't go home. That doesn't make sense . . I don't know what I ought to be thinking but that doesn't make sense, this is all just . . I can't think . . "The package contained a large number of muggle photographs, showing various illegal devices and objects. It also contained an invitation to a dark revel to be held at Malfoy Manor, and a hand-written note announcing that the wards at Malfoy Manor would be de-activated at sunset this past evening."

Malfoy Manor, he keeps saying it like it's in a story in the Daily Prophet, like just some place you've maybe heard of, not like I live there . . do I live there? Will I live there now that . . no. No, this doesn't make sense . . house-elf on the stupid bloody train and Weasley and muggle pictures, it doesn't make any sense . .

"Naturally, a raid was assembled."

Naturally. That's what you do when a house elf knocks you out on the train and you almost kill Potter and Weasel-girl tells you not to go home and there were invitations? I didn't know there were invitations. Naturally. You assemble a raid.

I'm cold. It's very cold in here.

"The Aurors and other assembled Department of Magical Law Enforcement personnel stormed Malfoy Manor at slightly after sunset last night. The wards were, in fact, down - however, they were met with armed resistance, from an estimated three dozen or so individuals clothed in traditional Death Eater apparel."

Traditional Death Eater apparel. That's kinda funny, isn't it? Is that funny?

The wards are never down. Never.

"The Aurors managed to erect a temporary shield around the premises, preventing those inside from fleeing via apparition or portkey. It is believed, based on the evidence that has been gathered to this point, and the testimony of several captured Death Eaters questioned under influence of veritaserum, that the assembled individuals chose to fight rather than flee on foot because Voldemort himself was inside, and in a portion of the manor from which escape by physical means would be unlikely."

Dungeons, probably. No way in or out but the one stair down, and it's got all those wards on it . . when he says all the wards, does he mean those too? Those have been there for bloody centuries, some of them. The spells that made them are lost, for some of them. Father's going to be -

- nothing. Father's going to be nothing because he might be -

No. No, that doesn't make sense.

But Voldemort would have been there. That's right. That part's right. He was going to be there to mark me, me and Crabbe and Goyle and Millicent Bulstrode, but not Pansy.

I missed my initiation. I missed my bloody goddamned initiation because a stupid bloody fucking house-elf knocked me out on the bloody fucking train from school, and that's ridiculous. That's just sodding ridiculous. House elves don't *do* that. They just don't -

- they just don't come up with bright ideas like that on their own.

Voldemort would have been there. In the dungeons. No way out. There's no way out of there.

"The resulting skirmish lasted some two hours in the main, and another few hours before the Aurors had rounded up the last snipers. There were casualties on both sides."

Casualties. That's a bloody stupid word for it, isn't it? Casualties. Casual. Dying, or getting maimed, having your face hexed off, that's what that means, nothing casual about it, bloody stupid word . .

Was that . . was that how they . . Mother and Father . . Mum was never casual a day in her life. She'd come down to breakfast in jewellry and beauty charms.

A day in her life. That's . . that's a weird thought . . no, don't think about that, it doesn't make sense . .

"Your mother was found upstairs in her bedroom."

Found. No. No, no, no, it doesn't make any sense, no sense . . why would anybody send a bunch of muggle pictures to the Ministry, that's stupid, and house elves just don't do things like that on their own . .

"Also found in the room were the necessary elements to perform a very powerful ritual spell, for invocation, or revocation, of protection for a place or person. From what the investigating Aurors could gather, the ritual was performed in this case to remove the protections from a place - to remove the wards from Malfoy Manor. Other writings found among her personal affects matched the handwriting on the note sent to Arthur Weasley at the Ministry."

And that did make sense. It made sudden, horrible, awful sense - because he remembered where he'd seen that house-elf before. In the kitchen. In my own bloody goddamned fucking kitchen. And house-elves just don't get bright ideas like that on their own.

"She wanted to stop the initiation," Draco said numbly.

"Initiation?" Snape queried sharply, and Draco jumped; he'd forgotten anyone but he and Dumbledore were here.

"You're a Death Eater," he said tonelessly to Snape. "Why are you here?" If his words had made an impression on the professor, it didn't show; Snape stood still as a statue, impassive.

Should I have said that? I shouldn't have. Shouldn't in front of Dumbledore . . but doesn't matter now, does it?

Does anything? My mother's dead. My mother died to stop the initiation.

"Professor Snape has been my spy for some time," Dumbledore said quietly at Draco's back; Draco turned back around, blinking disbelievingly at the Headmaster. "We believe he was discovered sometime early this fall; he has not been to a dark revel since the incident in Hogsmeade."

"My mother's dead," Draco blurted out. It was echoing in his head, followed closely by an even more horrible idea. "Did - did my father - "

"The captured Death Eaters tell us that Lucius Malfoy was last seen by them leaving the dungeons; he was supposed to fetch his wife and return. Narcissa Malfoy was to be used in a blood ritual that would give Voldemort the enhanced power to break through the Ministry's shield, and apparate himself and perhaps a few of his followers away from the manor. They had attempted the ritual with the muggle captives being held for the evening's entertainment, but it failed, and they deduced that the sacrifice of a witch or wizard would be necessary."

"They - they sacrificed her -" Draco tried to imagine it and found his brain rebelled, providing him with just blank white noise, just static.

"No," Dumbledore corrected quickly, "No, she was spared that. Narcissa was found upstairs in her room, undamaged except for a laceration on her left arm and some bruises indicative of a brief struggle. When her wand was examined, it showed that she had performed the killing curse - on herself, and on Lucius Malfoy."

"So they couldn't sacrifice her," Draco said. To stop them. She died to stop them, to stop me - to stop them from making me one of them. "She killed herself so they wouldn't get away. And Father - you said -"

"His body was not found, and the after-image of him produced from Narcissa's wand was very faint," Dumbledore explained. "She was greatly weakened from the ritual she'd just performed; it's unlikely the curse would have been powerful enough to kill either of them, if she hadn't already been physically depleted. The ritual required the donation of a great deal of blood."

"So they caught them?" Draco asked. "Voldemort. They finally caught Voldemort."

Said the name. Just said it, like it's nothing. It nothing now, nothing means anything . .

Dumbledore paused here, and for the first time seemed to flinch away from the telling of it.

"They did," Draco insisted. "That's why she died, why she killed herself. So they couldn't do the ritual, so they couldn't escape. That's the whole bloody reason she's dead, so they must have caught them!"

"Voldemort found someone else to sacrifice," Dumbledore said quietly.

"Who?" Draco asked.

"Pansy Parkinson," Dumbledore told him.

"So there was - there was no point -" Draco heard his voice going thin. He was cold, suddenly horribly cold, as if every bit of frost he hadn't felt all the way from Hogsmeade was suddenly coalescing on his skin, and under his skin, my blood is going to freeze and I'm going to turn to stone, I can't feel anything, anything . . there was no point, no point at all . .

Pansy's dead. Mother's dead. My mother and the only girl I ever slept with are dead.

And Father's . . they don't know. The image of him was faint. Faint, like a ghost. She could be a ghost. He was going to sacrifice her. He was going to fetch her. Fetch her, like a book you'd forgotten, or gloves, yes, just like gloves, must go in and get my gloves because it's colder out here than I thought, just like that, like NOTHING, like she was nothing and it was for nothing and she's dead -

"A number of Death Eaters were captured, and three were killed," Dumbledore answered in a cautious, sympathetic tone. "We know a great deal more now about Voldemort's future plans than we did a day ago. And I believe - I believe, perhaps, most important to your mother -"

"I wasn't initiated," Draco finished for him. "She knew. She knew I didn't want it." He paused. "She wasn't that type of mum. She wasn't the type that always knew when something was wrong or when you were in trouble or . . she never knew anything. She used to come down to breakfast stoned out of her mind."

I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said that about my mother, because she's dead. My mother is dead.

"She died for me," Draco said flatly. "I lived." A sudden thought occurred to him. "Just like Potter."

"Whatever else she might have done in her life, your mother loved you very, very much," Dumbledore tried to assure him.

"Oh goody, maybe I can repel curses now!" Draco snapped. "Just like sodding Potter. Can I be the *Other* Boy Who Lived? Maybe the Boy Who Lived Too." The cold was fading; he could feel heat creeping up from some deep, dark place inside him. "Can I be in Gryffindor now? Maybe we can put my mother in Gryffindor too, posthumously. Can they do that? Maybe she could come back here as a fucking ghost and haunt fucking Gryffindor!"

"Draco -" Dumbledore tried to interrupt.

"Shut up!" Draco screamed. The nothingness in his head was buzzing like a swarm of wasps, hot and furious. "Just shut the bloody fucking hell up, you don't get to talk! None of you do! You're useless, you're a bunch of useless, pathetic wastes, with your spies and your Boy Who Lived and what the fuck do you know about it?"

"Mr. Malfoy -" Snape tried to interrupt, tried to put a hand on Draco's shoulder. Draco slapped it away, backing away from his Head of House until he hit Dumbledore's desk, still screaming.

"What did you do about it? Nothing!" he shrieked at Snape, and had the satisfaction of seeing the older man go sickly pale and flinch away. "My *mother* had to do something for you to just catch a few sodding Death Eaters! For you to know when your own fucking students were getting the fucking Dark Mark! My mother died and you couldn't even get it right then! You couldn't catch him, couldn't make it worth something -"

Dumbledore murmured something softly, from behind him, and Draco felt something like cool water hitting the center of his back; he struggled against it, but the sedating charm carried him down, and the last thing he saw before consciousness fled was Snape's face, pale and empty as if he'd been carved from stone.

***

Willow stood nervously outside Snape's door; she'd knocked three times already, and he hadn't answered. Her other arm was getting very tired.

Is this a good idea? I mean, haven't you sprung enough on him tonight? And then there's the whole rest of his life blowing up in his face -

- which is what makes this a good idea. Grow a spine, Rosenberg.

She raised her hand to knock again; the door opened, revealing Severus in a long grey night-shirt. His face was haggard and worn, blotchy around the eyes as if he'd been crying earlier. He didn't look like someone who'd just been woken up; in fact, he looked like someone who hadn't slept in days. Or maybe weeks. Or years.

"Hi," she said tentative, and gestured to the tray in her other hand. "Um, tea."

He stared at her uncomprehendingly.

I think I'm almost getting used to the Severus Snape Stare. Though I hadn't seen this variation on it. I think I like the struck-dumb-that-someone's-being-nice-to-me version much better than the shell-shocked-'cause-my-life-just-went-to-hell-in-a-jet-powered-handbasket version.

This was a good idea. It was. Just look at him.

"It's late," he said after a moment.

"I know," she answered. "But you weren't asleep." He didn't respond. "Look, I know today's been - well, there hasn't been a word invented yet for today, I think. But whatever it was, it's been a whole heaping lot of it, and I know some tiny little miniscule portion of that lot was me and my whole 'guess what, I'm gay' thing, and the kissing, and I really don't have enough of an ego to think that compares to there rest of today, but still, I know you probably don't want to deal with it at the moment, so - no dealing," she suggested. "I'm not trying to - I mean, this doesn't mean anything. Or, it does mean something, but it just means I do care about you and I would care about you even if you hadn't kissed me and no offense, but you look like crap, and you shouldn't be alone. So, um, yeah - tea."

And more staring. This one is also new. I'm just not sure if it's the this-woman-is-crazy-and-I'm-about-to-call-Filch-to-remove-her-from-my-doorway kinda staring, or the some-company-would-be-nice-but-saying-so-is-outside-of-my-social-vocabulary kinda staring.

"Thank you," he said finally, sounding immeasurably tired and grateful, and moved aside, gesturing for her to enter.

***

In room 212 of Stevenson Hall - the freshman dorm, but the only place with an open bed mid-semester - Tara Maclay woke up to the sound of screaming.

A moment later, the lights clicked on; she blinked in confusion, throwing her hands up in front of her face. The harsh shrieking stopped, and that was when she realized that her throat was raw and that she'd kicked the sheets off the bed, and that the person producing the unearthly sound had been her.

"Okay, what the hell?!" demanded Claudia, Tara's new roommate. Claudia was eighteen, evidently had difficulty cohabitating with others if her three previous room changes could be considered evidence, and looked very, very annoyed.

Tara tried to calm her breathing, tugging the sheets back up over her bare legs and squinting.

"Hello?" Claudia blinked the lights on and off repeatedly, which didn't help Tara's disorientation. "Anybody home? What the fuck was that?"

"S-sorry," Tara managed.

"Uh, yeah," Claudia snarked. "Whatever." She grabbed her coat off the hook by the door, throwing it on over her pajamas. "Well, if it's not gonna make you have another fit, I think I'll go find some sane people to hang out with. Now that I'm *awake*, and all." She stormed out without waiting for Tara's response, slamming the door behind her.

"I said s-sorry," Tara muttered at the still-shivering doorframe. She blinked, rubbed her eyes again, stood a little shakily and shuffled over to the fridge. She spilled the first glass of water she tried to pour herself, and grabbed a towel off the drying rack to sop up the moisture before it seeped through the carpet; a moment later she realized the towel was Claudia's. She felt both vaguely bad and vindictively pleased about that.

She's just eighteen, but . . well, but I really, really don't like her.

And I have bigger things to worry about than towels. She tried again, and this time managed to keep hold of the water glass; the cool liquid felt wonderful on her abused throat. Like what I was screaming about. Screaming and not knowing why, it's very upsetting, and not usually a sign of good things . .

Something feels . . something still feels a little off. Something must have felt very, *way* off for me to scream like that, I haven't done that since . . I think since the first night after I moved here . . I felt the Hellmouth . .

And now it feels like . . feels like . . she sipped her water, sitting down on the end of the bed and trying to gather the amorphous feeling of foreboding into something more coherent.

. . like, something wicked this way comes.

***

TBC . . .