AN: A bit dark at first by keep reading to the end, my darling readers. Thank you for still being here! DDD
It was a familiar sound, but that made it no less startling when Snape heard it. The sound was not one he should have been able to hear inside Hogwarts - the crack of a frantic apparation. He spun around in his study to face the intruder, his wand was drawn, teeth bared, expecting the worst. What stood before him, however, was a tiny house elf he recognized from Malfoy Manor.
"What is it?" he asked with icy caution. For months, nothing had called to him from Malfoy Manor but the burning of his Dark Mark - nothing, that is, except for one personal visit from Narcissa Malfoy, earlier in the school year.
Narcissa - his blood ran cold.
The house elf was weeping out a message about the mistress being hurt, dying fast. She reached for Snape's hand, pleading with him to come at once, forgetting to ask his permission as she apparated him away.
When Snape came to himself, he was inside the manor, upstairs in Madam Malfoy's bedchamber. The air smelled different. There was the usual scent of narcissus flowers, stone dust, and something more - blood.
Bellatrix leaned over the bed, moaning and wailing. "Cissie, no. You stupid girl. How could you? And for that." Her voice was rising ever higher. "Don't you see? He wasn't wrong - he had to do it. Cissie - for stars' sake, Cissie, stop bleeding."
Severus bolted across the floor, to the bedside. Sunk into the once white sheets, everything now soaked scarlet in blood, was Narcissa Malfoy, quiet and still, her body moving only as her sister jostled it, working to stop the flow of blood from a wound slashed into Narcissa's chest. She had torn open the bodice of Narcissa's robes, and was now pressing against her chest, just below her collar bones, staunching the flow with a lace-trimmed pillow.
"What was it?" Snape asked Bellatrix, shouldering past her to see the wound. "What did he use? Is it what I think it is?"
"Yes. Sectumsempra," she said. "I know it, of course, but not its countercurse."
No, Bellatrix Lestrange never saw any use in learning countercurses. She fell back to let Snape work, pushing her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing her younger sister's blood across her forehead, her clothing already darkened with it.
Snape had begun the song-like incantation, the wandwork over the torn, white flesh beneath the red patina of fresh blood. He took a breath. "How long ago?" he said before beginning the incantation again. The edges of the wound were knitting back together beneath his wand, but if Narcissa had bled for too long, lost too much blood, the mere repair of her tissue wouldn't save her.
"Not ten minutes ago. He let me take her away as soon as he opened her," she said, stifling something like a gag, or a sob, at the memory. "He had to do it, Severus. We had the Mudblood's mother here all morning - would have had the father too, if it weren't for bloody Yaxley and that Carrow. Yes, she was all locked up until Cissie let her go. I told him she did it only because she was mad but - she still had to be punished. It was only fair."
When Snape finished the next cycle he pressed his fingers to Narcissa's neck, feeling for a pulse. He pressed hard enough to wonder if he was merely feeling his own pulse in his fingertips. "Yes, the Granger woman made her way to Hogwarts this afternoon, her husband soon after, brought by Minerva McGonagall."
Bellatrix swore, cursing Yaxley and Carrow again.
Severus turned to look her over. "Enough about them. You were made your sister's keeper and yet you failed to stop her from letting the Granger woman go. Is all of that blood on your skirts your sister's, Bella, or is some of it your own?"
She nodded toward the bed. "All hers. Cruciatus for me. I've learned my lesson."
Snape grasped her wrist. "Oh, your lesson is not over yet. To keep your sister alive, we'll need an act of loving grace from you, a donation of your precious, pure Black family blood," he sneered into her face.
She struggled against his grip. "Use a blood engorging potion, you idiot."
"Impossible. Your elf dragged me away without any supplies. And there isn't time to retrieve them. If you were any kind of a faithful servant, Bellatrix, you would know that if she dies, the Dark Lord forfeits the strongest hold he has over his student operative inside Hogwarts. Little Draco can't be controlled without her. He is a teenaged boy ruled by lust for a filthy mudblood schoolgirl. Without the pull of his mother to balance his allegiances, he will desert the Dark Lord and all of his plans, even if it means severing his left arm completely."
Bellatrix snarled at the mention of her nephew's pristine Black family body mutilated.
"The Dark Lord knows this, of course," Snape went on. "Which means, if he didn't trust us to be able to shove Narcissa back from the brink of death, he never would have done this to her. Will you abuse his trust, Bella? Yet again? "
"Never," Bella hissed back at him. "And she is my baby sister, Severus. You needn't harangue me with all the reasons she musn't die."
He tugged her toward the bed by her wrist. "Then roll up your sleeve."
When it was over, and Narcissa Malfoy was sleeping, clean and dry, with a palpable pulse in her throat, Severus fell into the chair at her vanity. Bellatrix lay beside her in the bed, tracing fine blue veins through the thin white skin over her sister's temples as she slept.
"You are too terrified to leave this room," Snape taunted her. "You fear he is still angry enough to slaughter you on sight."
She sat up, fingering the mark on her inner elbow, where Snape had drawn out her blood. "I fear nothing of my Lord. He is just and fair, and no one serves him better, more eagerly than I do." She slid off the bed, the soles of her feet smacking against the hard floor, limping away on Cruciatus ravaged legs, her dress stiff with dried blood, off to hide from her master in her own bedchamber.
Snape's shoulders slumped as the door crashed closed behind her. He listened to her steps scuffling away before he stood and walked to the bed. Kneeling beside it, he took Narcissa by the chin, gently swivelling her face toward him. Her eyelids fluttered but did not open. He frowned, bending to watch her in profile, her nose high and pointed, her skin more pallid than he'd ever seen it, her brow smooth, curving into her angel-fair hair.
A sneer curved at one half of his mouth. Leave it to Lucius to marry a person who looked so much like himself. They were an unsettling couple, like a pair of dangerous siblings. Such was Lucius's love for himself.
Even after the transfusion of her sister's blood, Narcissa's face felt alarmingly cold under Snape's fingertips. He leaned forward to sense its temperature with the side of his face leaned against hers. After a moment, he turned to use more delicate instruments, his lips, closed and dry, left pressed to her cheek long enough to warm her skin.
Her voice sounded in her throat, a murmur. "Lucius…"
His spine whipped upright. "Madam Malfoy," he said, his voice clear, calling to her.
She moaned, her eyes cracking open, as if the dim room was brightly lit. "Severus? Why - " Her voice was torn away with a cough. Severus slid an arm beneath her, propping her up as she coughed rusty, bloody phlegm into his handkerchief.
"Don't speak. Don't move," he said, easing her onto her back again. He waited until she was quiet before he went on. "You helped Mrs. Granger escape."
She gave a weak smile, defying him as she said, "It's Dr. Granger, actually."
"What have you," he droned. "She was meant as leverage against Hermione Granger, a way to force her surrender to the Dark Lord. What have you done? Clearly, you are no longer loyal to him, and it nearly cost your life. If I'd been a moment later..."
She smiled at the ceiling as his voice trailed off. "But you did arrive in time, Severus. I knew you'd - " It was Narcissa herself who couldn't continue now. She cleared her throat. "The truth is, if the girl was captured, Draco would have destroyed himself to save her. What else could I do but interfere, for his sake?"
Snape lunged forward, his lips against her ear as he spoke. "I have made the unbreakable vow to protect him. Believe in that, Cissa. There was never a need to endanger yourself."
She pulled her ear away from him, tipping her head back into the pillows to look at his face. She raised a hand to his cheek, the long, straight jaw against her palm. "Severus, I do believe in you. You've protected us so selflessly, with such genius, and Draco as if he were your own son."
He sat back again, slowly, taking her hand from his face and laying it hand gently against the sheets. "Lucius," he said, "he is well enough in Azkaban, is he?"
"Well enough. Dearly loved, terribly missed, lost." She sighed at the ceiling above her. "I know, Severus, that the Dark Lord has promised me and Malfoy Manor to you, when everything is over. Lucius is not meant to survive to return to us. This we know."
Snape looked up at the ceiling as well. "I never asked for any of it."
"No, of course you didn't. You have your own motives for being his perfect servant - deep, old ones well beyond wealth and power, beyond Draco and me. And now I'll come to you with a nasty scar." She squeezed his hand as she breathed a laugh.
"Dittany - have you got any?"
"Yes, in the bathroom."
He summoned the vial into his hand, rose from his knees to sit on the edge of the bed, bent over her, dropping the potion onto the red gash visible through her ripped clothing. This was the Dark Lord's violent perversion of matchmaking. Even this close to her, Snape knew he and Narcissa Malfoy would never be together. But at this moment, it pleased him to care for her, to hear her thanks, to look at her and wonder at how beautiful another mangled, flawed person could be.
As he stoppered the vial, Snape let out a long breath. "Come back to the school with me," he said. "The headmaster seems to be collecting endangered parents. You ought to be among them."
She shook her head against her pillows. "Draco is safer if I stay here. If they don't have me under this roof, they'll use the Mark to call him back more insistently, more frequently. Until eventually," she gestured to the wound on her chest. "Eventually his evasions will fail him and he'll die here. And not like Abraxas Malfoy, as an old man surrounded by loved ones, but as a deserted, disgraced dead end to this line."
Snape joined their hands, raised them, leaning his forehead against their knuckles. He wanted to give her hope, to tell her the matrimonial charm would be cast this weekend, and they might have a chance to get the demon out of her house. But it would be better if her mind was empty, nothing more in it for the Dark Lord to discover.
Narcissa pulled their hands toward her face, pressing a kiss to the back of Snape's bloodstained hand. "Go back, Severus," she said. "Go back alone, and save our boy."
In the Great Hall, supper was almost over by the time Hermione came skidding inside.
Ron was still at the Gryffindor table, Pansy sitting beside him, leaning over his lap, deftly buttering a slice of bread after he mentioned, idly, that he might not have eaten quite enough.
He was laughing at her. "Why are you like this?"
Pansy's head snapped round to look at him. "Like what?"
He brushed the end of his nose against hers. "Doting. Fussy, even. Cutting meat for me, spreading marmalade, blowing soup, and the rest of it. Like you're hell bent on waiting on me, but only while I'm eating."
She scraped the edge of the butter knife clean along the bread's crust, scoffing at him even as she continued to fawn, raising the bread to his mouth. "Welcome to pureblood dinner etiquette, darling. I've been trained since I was a tiny girl to see that the men in my care have all their needs met at dinner time. Don't take it too personally. It's second nature to me."
He bit into the bread without taking the slice from her fingers, relishing it with a low growl, his hands grabbing her at the waist, pulling her close.
"Your nutritional needs only," she hurried to say, squirming in his arms, pushing and laughing as she spoke. "It's supposed to be courteous and dignified. Don't make it lascivious."
Ron had swallowed his bread and was moving his mouth to Pansy's neck, repeating the word 'lascivious' against her skin when Hermione collapsed into the seat beside him. He was happy to ignore her, but Pansy was knocking her fist on his chest, clearing her throat.
Ron sighed. "Hi, Hermione."
"Hello," she said, opening her book-bag to load it with food she was wrapping in napkins.
Ron raised his eyebrows. "Running away from home?"
"No, Malfoy's sleeping through dinner on McGonagall's orders. He's still not altogether well, so I'm making sure he doesn't go hungry whilst trying to catch up on sleep."
Pansy smirked. "Look at that. Pureblood dinner etiquette without the pureblood. Well done, Granger."
Hermione glanced at Ron. "What's she on about?"
He sat back. "Ask her yourself. The two of you have to be friends now."
Both of them groaned. "Smooth, Weasley," Pansy said, rolling her eyes. "Right then, shall I come by your dorm to braid your hair later, Granger?"
Ron was scoffing now. "Yeah, good luck with that."
"Shut up, Ronald," the girls said in unison.
He did, but looked quite pleased with himself.
"Where is Harry?" Hermione said, standing up, her bag packed with bread and meat and fruit.
"Off with Dumbledore. Getting serious about your charm," he said.
She nodded. "Makes sense. There isn't much time. We have to do it Sunday. That's what the star charts say."
Pansy's face paled. "Th-this Sunday?" she stammered. "You'll be Madam Malfoy by Sunday?"
It was too loud and Hermione sat down again to speak quietly to them. "You'll be there with us won't you? Both of you? Without witnesses who wish us well, the charm loses power. That's what your Hufflepuff Friar told us, Pansy."
"He isn't my Hufflepuff - "
"And we can't spare any power," Hermione went on. "There's too much at stake. Maybe a whole war. So say you'll come. Please."
Ron sighed again. "This is not how you make friends, Hermione - threatening them with war breaking out if they don't come to your party."
He meant to tease her but she looked hurt. "Sorry," he said. "It just makes me tense, the thought of you married by this weekend."
She nodded. "I know that. It is sudden, and I'm sorry. But I need you anyway."
Pansy leaned past Ron, taking Hermione's hand, and shaking it. "Congratulations, Hermione. I would be honored to witness your ceremony."
Hermione smiled primly, replying, "Thank you, Pansy."
Pansy linked her arm through Ron's, nudging him hard with her shoulder. "Right," he began. "I'll be there too. I can't say I'm happy for you, but I do believe if there's anything good to be had in this, you'll find it, even with him."
Hermione couldn't quite smile at that, but she did manage to say, "Thank you, Ronald. I suppose that will do. Now help me get the same out of Harry."
"But I don't understand," Harry was saying from where he sat coiled and tense in what was meant to be a comfortable chair in Professor Dumbledore's office. "Draco will inscribe a charm on Hermione's arm, almost identical to his own, complete with the cat scratch."
"Yes, and they will each speak an incantation Miss Granger is adapting from what's left of the old texts. Then the matrimonial charm will be in place," Dumbledore finished.
"Which makes them married?" Harry asked again, always hoping for a different answer but never hearing anything but...
"Yes."
"Well, sir," Harry paused. "Sir, I hate to sound selfish, but what exactly am I supposed to do in all of this?"
Dumbledore smoothed his sleeves with his fingers. "I do wish I could tell you, Harry. You are correct that exactness is what is needed to put the charm in place and to activate it, which I believe you've already seen them do."
Harry squirmed, remembering Hermione kissing Malfoy's arm in the hospital wing.
"Once it is activated," Dumbledore went on, "your struggle against Tom Riddle will begin. The both of you, as one, will be torn from the Malfoys' charm as it transforms from a pledge into a marriage. You will be reeling together in a space between, a fragment of Tom's soul once again wounded and dependent on yours more desperately than it will have been since he first attacked you as an infant."
Harry sat back in his seat as if blasted by an awful, half-held memory.
"In that moment, Harry, he will be weak."
Harry caught his breath. "Yes, but what do I do?" He was nearly shouting now. "Just tell me, Professor. I want to do it properly, but I don't know what it is."
Dumbledore's voice was rising too. "You will do what he will never do, Harry. You will love."
"But what does that mean?" Harry railed. "Hearty hugs all around? Friendship bracelets? Please sir, I don't understand."
The tension was broken. Dumbledore was chuckling, stroking his beard with his blackened fingers. "Perfect, Harry, my lovely boy. No one has ever explained to you how to love. During your most formative years, no one showed you either. Yet you do it with faithful, earnest beauty all the same. When the time comes, you will find, once again, that you will not need it explained to you."
Harry was still frustrated, doubled over in his chair, removing his glasses to rub at his eyes and forehead.
Dumbledore went on. "I can't tell you how to act in that moment, Harry. But I can counsel you on how to prepare for it."
Harry slid his glasses back onto his nose, sitting up, attentive.
"Your relationship with one of your best friends, Miss Granger, has deteriorated somewhat over the course of this school year." It was not a question.
Harry nodded. "Thanks to Malfoy, yes."
"Indeed," Dumbledore said. "If you wish to be prepared for this Sunday's ceremony, work at repairing and strengthening the ties between yourself and Miss Granger. Your fears are right, Harry. This will mean beginning a friendship with Mr. Malfoy. But, if I may speak as someone engaged in keeping peace among the students at this school, it is high time that you did."
He was rising to his feet behind his desk. "This is an assignment which could be one of great sweetness for you, Harry. I send you down into the school on a mission to love and be loved. That is where our best hopes lie. Now go. You will find Miss Weasley waiting at the bottom of the stairs."
Draco was still asleep when Hermione returned to the dusty, dilapidated married students' quarters on the seventh floor. There was no point in worrying about sullying the mattress with crumbs, so she sat beside him, setting out the food noisily enough to wake him.
He sat up rubbing the almost completely healed gash on his chest. He had rested long enough to be hungry, and for once, she didn't need to cajole him to eat. She ruffled his sleep-rumpled hair before tucking in herself.
"So what are you going to wear to the ceremony, since you won't wear the dress I like best?" he asked, grinning archly. "You said it should be something with short sleeves to make the inscription. What do you reckon, then. Maybe that pink number you got at Christmas for McLaggan?"
"Stop, it Draco," she scolded, laughing at him. "I would wear the dress you picked for the Yule Ball if it were suitable, but it isn't. Don't sulk, Draco. It's not like you've offered to let me choose what you'll wear to the ceremony."
He huffed. "No one cares what I wear."
"Well, I do," she said.
He smirked. "What would you choose for me? I have a vast array of dress robes so you can't simply say that. Be specific."
She frowned. "Since my parents may be there, wizard dress robes might be a bit - much. Mum and Dad would be more comfortable if you wore some of those clothes of yours that are almost exactly like Muggle suits - "
"I have no such clothing."
"You do. All you Slytherins do, even if you don't know it. You look like a lot of stylish Muggles."
Draco shuddered. "Well, I'm not asking what your parents would like me to wear. I'm asking about you. If you could have me dressed in anything, what would it be?"
Hermione didn't giggle often, but she did now.
Draco raised his eyebrows. "What?"
She shook her head. "Never mind."
He set down the bread he was eating, shifting closer to her on the bed. "Out with it. What would you have me wear?"
"No, it's ridiculous."
"Hermione - "
"Fine. I'd have you dressed in - in your quidditch uniform."
Draco gave a triumphant yell, grabbing her around her waist, lifting her into his lap. "I knew it. You and quidditch players. It's just like everyone always says."
"Oh, shut up, Draco," she said, still laughing at herself. "It's not the stupid game. It's - I don't know - the white trousers? Or the leather? I can't say." She kept trying to explain anyway, even as he lowered his face toward hers. "You just - when you're dressed like that, it's - "
There was a loud knock at the door and they sprang apart, as if they weren't about to be married in four days.
"It must be Mum," Hermione said, rising to open the door.
"See, I told you the map is never wrong." It was Ron's voice. "Looks deserted, but here they are."
He stood in the corridor outside the suite, re-folding the map, dropping it to reveal himself, Pansy, Ginny, and Harry. Ron bobbed his head sideways to see around Hermione's bushy hair. "Come on out of there, Malfoy. Dumbledore's told us we'd all better fall in love with you before Sunday."
Draco stood up, coming to join Hermione in the doorway. "Any ideas how?" he asked, eyeing Potter without much hope.
Ron shrugged. "Pansy said something about braiding each other's hair, didn't you love?"
Draco smirked, looking down at Hermione as he said, "You know, lads, for the first time this year, I've suddenly got a hankering to play some quidditch." Hermione elbowed him in the side but he went on. "Not the usual arrangements either - mixed Gryffindor and Slytherin teams, scramble up our usual positions too. How's that?"
Harry shrugged. "Sure. I'm off the team now. What do I care?"
"That's the spirit, Potter," Draco said. "Meet you on the pitch in twenty minutes."