AN: Getting close to the end but not quite yet. Enjoy, and never forget DDD promises you HEA.
One thousand years after Hogwarts castle was established, the Room of Hidden Things was badly in need of a purge. That was not what headmaster Albus Dumbledore intended to do, but it was a consequence of the "tidying" he and the Order of the Phoenix undertook to clear a space around Draco Malfoy's vanishing cabinet, creating an uncluttered, open area, like a battle arena.
While Dumbledore hated to order it, whatever objects they touched which were clearly broken or ruined or rubbish to begin with - the empty liquor bottles, chipped dishes, centuries' old cheat notes, accidentally mummified animal hides - were vanished away. The rest was piled into a single mass without the maze-like paths that once snaked through the room, providing places to run and hide. There would be no chasing here, no surprises but what the Death Eaters might bring with them.
By noon on Monday, the clearing of the room was finished, and the vanishing cabinet stood uncovered, bolted shut by the headmaster's seal, in its own space against the outer wall.
Professor Dumbledore and Nymphadora Tonks stood on a section of the floor that hadn't been touched by human footprints for hundreds of years. Dumbledore stared at the door of the cabinet while Tonks stared at him.
"You are wondering, Dora, what we are to do next, when we do not know when or with whom they will strike," he said.
"Shall I get Remus, and camp out here with him and my Aurors, waiting, and hoping it's Pettigrew?" she volunteered.
He hummed. "I have misgivings about Pettigrew. Tom Riddle is a vain man. Sending Pettigrew on this errand may be the wisest course he could take but it would do nothing to satisfy Tom's sense of flare and beauty." He paced toward the door of the cabinet, Tonks following. "And even if our guess about Peter being their messenger of death is accurate, we place too great a burden on Remus if we expect him to negotiate a peaceful resolution through appeals to old feelings alone. It is an unkind and unsafe risk."
Tonks nodded, relieved. She spoke eagerly. "You're suggesting we plan for something more along the lines of conventional combat? A big fight?"
He said nothing, considering, pacing.
"Frankly, sir, it's doing my head in," Tonks admitted. "Sitting up here waiting for them to come at us, when the Malfoys' charm is ready, when Harry is ready - "
Dumbledore chuckled. "Harry benefits from the rest and comfort he is taking this morning,"
"To be sure, sir," she agreed. "But I can't help but feel like this moment of power is slipping away from us, and we ought to - "
Dumbledore stopped pacing, turning to face her, his expression that of a teacher pleased with his student for talking herself 'round to the right answer.
Tonks continued, "I feel like we need to draw the Death Eaters out - bring them here in a moment of our choosing, with all the players we need assembled and organized - everyone we could possibly need. It seems smarter than waiting and scrambling to face a counter-attack."
He nodded. "Draw them out. Yes. This open space feels desolate, doesn't it, Dora? You know what would brighten it up? A picnic. Yes, we'll take a moment to gather the Order and meet here for a bit of a lunch meeting. A picnic - that ought to sort everything out."
On Mondays, Defense Against the Dark Arts classes ran during every period of the day except for the one right before lunch. That was when Professor Snape locked his classroom and crept, stealthy as a shadow, to the hospital wing where Narcissa Malfoy had spent the night. Sleep had come too slowly for her, her back aching with its injuries from the blast of the Dark Lord's curse, her heart mourning the family she had with Lucius, the one she had to let slip away.
Snape had stayed with her until she fell asleep, and as he made his way back to her now, he replayed last night's conversations in his mind.
After Draco had stormed out, it had taken her hours to stop crying completely, and she had done it without Snape being able to hold her for comfort. In the school where he worked, where his character needed to be above reproach, he would hardly touch her, the still-married mother of a student.
The distance between them helped him find the resolve to sit at her bedside, late in the night, and to say, "You are free of your captors now, Cissa. In this castle, you are under the protection of Albus Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix."
"Yes, Severus. Thanks to you," she said, sighing into her pillows, managing after all her tears to smile up at him from where she lay.
His head drooped for a moment before he drew in a great breath, forcing his shoulders to square. "A great many things have passed between you and I, as we fought toward your safety. Declarations were made, intentions spoken - "
Her eyes widened, lips parting, her smile gone.
He saw it but went on. "I wish you to understand that I will not hold you to anything you might have said under such extraordinary duress."
Her voice was small, barely a breath. "Severus - "
"Now that you are safe and free, Narcissa, you have no more need of my protection. And should you wish to plan a future for yourself independent of me," he paused, swallowing hard, "I would suffer, but I would come to understand."
She moved as if to sit up but the pain in her back gripped her and she sank into the mattress.
His eyes were clenched closed, and he pressed ahead saying, "Or, if you choose to wait for better days, biding your time to make a return to your husband of nearly twenty years with whom you share a heartbroken child, I would understand that as well. Lucius is deceived and angry now, but I do not doubt that if he survives this ordeal, he will forgive you. Divorce is an ugly, Muggle-derived institution, after all."
She was angry enough to interrupt him with a scoff. "You think I'm a fool," she said. "You mistake me for a woman who can only move by advancing from one man to another."
"Narcissa, no," he said, eyes open again. "If I truly believed that, I would happily, eagerly make myself the next man in your life. If only I could keep you with me merely by stepping forward. If only things were that simple. But they are not."
She pounded one fist against the bed. "All you asked of me was love, Severus," she said. "You did not ask for any lengthy justifications of why. You want them now?"
He scrubbed his face with his hands. Perhaps he did, though he hated himself for it. Instead of asking, he said, "I remember you, Cissa, in school, always reading, the beautiful girl in the library, yawning through her fancy older boyfriend's rants on quidditch and his unsophisticated political theories based on bloodlines. You were brilliant. You are brilliant. And as the days pass and your strength and the clarity of your mind returns, you may choose to go back to where that girl left off, returning to the House of Black to use your family's hitherto misguided power to challenge those who once oppressed you - "
"Severus, you're not letting me - "
"There is family to support you, Cissa. There is Draco, fully grown now, and with a powerful young wife. There has always been Andromeda and her husband and daughter. The Prewett family survives in Molly Weasley and her children. It would be an odd alliance, but viable. And all of this says nothing of Sirius Black's godson, the storied Harry Potter himself." He sneered through the last one. "Should you remain separate from Lucius, there is no need for you to ever be alone in this conflict - in this world."
"Severus, stop," she said with a desperate air of finality. She had dropped her hand over his where it lay on her bedsheet. "Can't you see that I adore you? You are selfless and brave and - and I remember the angry boy sitting in the library behind a fortress of books on potions and the dark arts. We were there together. I never yawned at you. I never laughed at you unless you wanted me to. I won't say that I loved you then, but I did imagine what it would be like to find you watching me with the softness in your eyes you reserved only for Lily Evans - the softness with which you are looking at me tonight."
He choked, his hand twitching beneath hers.
"Severus, don't turn away. Look at me. I can't bear for you to stop."
Her hand tightened over his, a single pulse before withdrawing, her arm folding over her stomach. "However, I do understand that I come to you as a heavy burden. I am a mother, and now both my child and I are traitors to the Dark Lord. I have a fortune, but no home. I have a disgraced, jilted husband who may not demand revenge but who may connive for it. And then there is this," she tugged at her collar, where the traces of sectumsempra still showed red and ragged. "The pretty young girl in the library is now cursed and scarred."
He took her hand away from her collar. "Cissa, don't - "
She pulled her hands free of his. "You have already been noble, Severus. But if you can't come any further toward me and have a mind to let me go," she paused to take in a breath so deep he heard her voice in it, like a sob, "I will - I will beg you to stay all the same."
He sprung forward to sit on the edge of her bed. It was late enough that the hospital wing was empty, though he might have risked coming this close to her at this moment even in a crowd. He bent over Narcissa where she lay unable to rise. He was not touching her at any point, his hands on either side of her head, his face hovering over hers. "You are no burden."
"I am," she said, taking his face in her hands. "But Madam Malfoy has not learned to be selfless, as you have. Stay, Severus. Please."
He leaned into her right palm, his mouth closed but pressed to her skin, nodding.
"Let's not talk like this again," she said, smoothing his hair as it fell to hide his face from her. "Come to me tomorrow without any tragedy. Come and tell me about your day, about your classes, like you used to when we were here as students. Bring me vapid gossip, what the students are saying about my son's marriage. Bring me parchment so I can write to our solicitor in London about my separation and begin to move forward. Bring me flowers for this room - anything but more of this tortured struggle to believe I can love you."
This was the spirit in which he meant to approach her this morning, not brooding and heroic, but as someone she could have in her life from day to day. Students flung themselves out of the way as he moved from the classrooms to the hospital wing, a small writing desk under his arm, stocked with parchment, ink and quills, and hidden out of sight inside his robes, he carried a stalk of deep purple flowers, aconite kept in bloom all year long in the greenhouses.
Narcissa beamed at him as he conjured a silver vase for the flowers and set them beside her. "Wolfsbane," she said, using one of the flower's folksier names. "For the past nineteen years I have ordered fresh flowers for my table every day, and I must say this is the first time anyone has ever sent me Wolfsbane. How perfectly Snape of you."
He raised an eyebrow. "Do you like it, or not?"
She laughed. "From anyone else, I might think they were trying to kill me. But from you, Severus, it is a lovely show of your deep concern for me. I'm sure anyone happening by would understand if I thanked you for it with a small, chaste kiss on the cheek."
He raised both eyebrows, but his voice kept its monotone. "I am sure they would not."
Her mouth was curving into that somewhat wicked smile of hers. "Suit yourself, Severus, but do come here and help me. It wouldn't do for my letter to my solicitor to be written in your hand. And so you must sit me up to write it myself."
He startled. "You are able to sit up this morning?"
"If you help me, yes," she said, both her arms extended toward him. A pink colour was rising in his face as he hesitated. She waved her hands, beckoning. "As my erstwhile healer, Severus, please help me up."
He bent over her, letting her hold him around the neck, propping her up, shifting her toward the head of the bed. "See, I'm sitting," she smiled.
"So you are." He was nodding, indulging in a small smile himself. "A truly marvelous sight, Narcissa. Narcissa? You may let go of me now."
"In a moment, Severus, let me steady myself," she said, pulling at his neck again, turning her face toward it. "You smell like - like peat moss."
"From the greenhouses," he muttered, her chest rising against him as she inhaled.
"It's better than roses," she said, "complex and lush - "
"For stars' sake, Cissa," he whispered into her ear, his cheek hot against hers, "unhand me and write to your solicitor."
"Cissa!" someone was calling from the door.
Snape stood up, sliding out of Narcissa's grip as she greeted Ann Granger. He withdrew, excusing himself.
"You needn't rush off on my account," Ann called after him as he backed out of the room.
"Not at all, Dr. Granger. I've a meeting with Professor Dumbledore and must be leaving." He bowed and was gone.
"I don't want to have lunch with anyone else," Draco said, draped over his wife's shoulders like a cape as they walked out of Arithmancy class to meet their parents in the hospital wing. "I'd rather go upstairs…"
"Other appetites are important too. You can't give up eating just because you found something you like better," Hermione laughed over her shoulder, against his face. "And it might be for the best that we stay out of the Great Hall and give everyone a chance to talk about us without having to sit there in the thick of it ourselves while they do it."
"Upstairs…" he droned into her ear.
Draco was focused solely on her, but Hermione was glancing around them, getting a sense of the people rushing past in the corridor, nodding primly at anyone who dared or chanced to make eye contact. If they had any guesses about what Draco was whispering to her, they were probably right. Her primness battled her smirk. "We will go upstairs soon. After lunch and two more classes."
He let out a huge sigh. "It's already been four hours."
"I snogged you during the break."
He was nearly devouring her ear. "That just makes it worse."
"Alright, since it's still our honeymoon, we can skip Charms," she laughed, ducking away from him. "But not Herbology."
"Yes," he said, standing obediently still as she turned to face him, smoothing his hair and clothes, checking the progress of the bruise all but healed on his neck.
"How's my hair?" she asked him in return.
He fluffed it hopelessly. "You look darling."
She looked up at him, plaintively. "Help me, Malfoy. You know your mother is terrifying, don't you? And it's got nothing to do with Death Eaters." She pawed through her bag for a mirror. "We are about to find her looking flawless and stately as a queen in spite of being in a hospital bed the day after getting cursed by You-know-who."
Draco smirked. "That's my mother. Though hanging out with Snape is bound to take some of the shine off her."
It was another remark meant to be flippant but landing with a dark sadness to it - his specialty. She sighed and held his face between her hands. "Will you be alright if he's there when we go in?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I am glad we don't have DADA until tomorrow. I will say that."
She rose onto her toes to kiss him. "It's alright for you to be sad for your mother. Don't hide that from her. Anger, however, is different. We must be kind to her."
He nodded against her face. "I'll try."
"Yes, try your best. She's your mother."
He sighed again. "Right - parents, family, unconditional love, all of that. It's harder than it sounds. Think of it this way: imagine if it was my father lying in there instead of her. My father the Death Eater who gave his comrades permission to kill you and your best friends. Imagine that and then remember that I've always loved him just as much as I love her. I still do. But imagine me showing kindness toward him. It's not easy."
She held him tightly around his neck. "I never said not to protect yourself, Draco. If they're hurting you, protect yourself. Draw a boundary as wide as the whole country if you need to. But don't be unkind."
Hand in hand they came into the hospital wing. Behind a curtain, the Grangers and Narcissa Malfoy were already seated together at Narcissa's bed, talking.
Draco heard his mother's voice saying, "It was always a good library but it became truly astounding when merged with what I brought with me from my own house. Yes, I had a dowery of books on top of a dowery of galleons. Might have been the more valuable portion as well."
Ann was laughing. "A dowry? Cissa, did you just use the word 'dowry' here on the brink of the twenty-first century?"
"First things first, is it Mother?" Draco said, shouldering through the curtain and into the conversation, sauntering toward her cot with his hands in his pockets, Hermione's hand tucked into the crook of his arm. "Already launching into negotiations with father on divvying up the Malfoy library?" He glanced at the writing desk in her lap. "Oh, and dividing it up in writing, through the solicitors in London. Most civil of you."
Narcissa folded her hands on the writing desk, smiling up at her son with a stirring bittersweetness. "Not at all, Draco."
"Good," he clipped. "Because you'd better leave it alone. It's neither the Malfoy library nor the Black library any longer. It's the Granger's library. It's the belated bride price I'm offering for their daughter. The whole collection, undivided."
Ann and Tim Granger chuckled to each other.
"Goodness gracious, Draco, where would we keep it in a London house?" Ann said.
"Bride price, indeed," said Tim.
Narcissa's smile hadn't quavered. "Draco, I was just telling your family I had no intention of disturbing the library. In my instructions to my solicitors, I directed them to transfer the ownership of it out of my marital property and into yours and Hermione's. You will preserve and safeguard it." She shifted her gaze to Hermione. "Of that I can be sure."
"Yes, don't offer it as bride price to us," Ann said. "Accept it as a wedding gift from your parents."
Draco paused, his shoulders sagging. "Father hasn't agreed to any of this. Though he may not have to. For all we know, they may have killed him by now - "
"They have not," Narcissa said, her voice firm but not loud. "I would know. Trust your father in this, Draco. His best instincts are those of self preservation. He will survive."
"I'll see that he does." Draco swore it like an oath.
There was a moment of silence which Hermione broke with a gentle clearing of her throat. "We'll have to be back in class soon…"
"Of course," Narcissa said. She waved toward the trolley at her bedside laden with sandwiches and tea cakes. "Eat, everyone - especially you, Draco. I'd reckon you haven't taken anything all day."
"Oh, he ate most of an apple," Hermione rushed to say.
Narcissa laughed. "I should have known. Come, Draco, you're not feeling hungry but that doesn't mean you aren't." She smiled at Hermione. "It's a weakness of his, forgetting to eat when he's upset. But of course, you already know."
The rest of lunch was light conversation piloted by the Grangers, long time dentists each highly skilled in managing lopsided chatting in uncomfortable, even acutely painful situations. Draco managed to speak to them, interacting with his mother only indirectly, through his wife and in-laws, as if they were interpreters.
He would only eat when Hermione waited until he was distracted and slipped bits of sandwiches and cakes into his mouth.
"Thank you, darling, no more," he said after swallowing each bite.
She kept feeding him anyway, already knowing how she would make it up to him. They would be skipping Herbology after all.
Ron and Harry left Charms class early when Pigwidgeon came blustering in with an urgent message from the headmaster calling them to the Room of Hidden Things.
They arrived to find the room starkly different than Harry had ever seen it, all neat and wrong, as if prepared for something awful to happen. Members of the Order of the Phoenix who weren't teaching classes at the moment were gathered there: Tonks and Remus, Kingsley Shacklebolt, the Weasley twins complete with both of their parents. A pair of Aurors stood guarding the cabinet. The picnic meeting with Dumbledore was over and the Order was ready to discuss their plan.
Hermione was there as well, waiting with Malfoy who had a tousled, rosy look about him that still made Harry want to hit him somehow.
Dumbledore turned slowly at the sound of the door closing behind the boys. His face took on a grave solemnity Harry recognized from other times Dumbledore had come to him to ask, as he said, for too much. This time, it truly would be to request a price Harry did not want to pay.
The headmaster was advancing toward them, one hand raised. "The time has come," he said, "when we have need of you." He was close enough now to reach out his long, blackened fingers and take Harry by the arm.
He didn't. Instead, as Molly Weasley held her head in her hands, his touch landed on Ron. "We entreat you to help us, young Mr. Weasley."