AN: Full disclosure, this fic started right before my father got terribly sick. I wrote the last half of the story sitting at his bedside, late, late at night. Writing this was my self-care. Thank you for participating in that. I didn't shift in the storyline to include heroic dads on purpose. It arose naturally out of the way of the story, the way of my grief and my gratitude for my own dad. He was definitely more of a Dr. Granger than a Lucius Malfoy, and what we went through together as I wrote this guaranteed that all dads get their redemption.
Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix who had witnessed the second insubstantiation of Tom Riddle were meeting in the headmaster's office, planning the search for horcruxes which would have to come next. Instead of pacing behind his desk, in front of his phoenix, Dumbledore led the discussion from where he lay on a sofa, one arm folded against his middle, blackened fingers barely visible at the end of his sleeve.
He would take Harry with him to retrieve one last horcrux, a locket that belonged to Salazar Slytherin, and then he would go quietly. Harry would do the rest.
Floors below them, in the hospital wing, Narcissa, Draco, and Hermione Malfoy, and Severus Snape stood at Lucius's bedside. He had been hit with a killing spell diminished by being cast wordlessly and wandlessly and by a wizard already badly injured. But the wizard was still the Dark Lord, and his imperfect spell carried enough force to eliminate all signs of life in Lucius the instant it overtook him and knocked him to the floor.
He lay glassy-eyed and deathly still until Severus Snape administered a Rennervate spell on the floor of the Room of Hidden Things. At the touch of Snape's spell, Lucius had blinked his eyes, returning Snape's dark, searching, all but frantic look. He spoke, barely audible but as forcefully as he could. He told Snape what he'd just said to Draco.
"Get her out."
In the next moment, the light of Draco and Hermione's matrimonial spell had washed over everything. Snape pulled Lucius's face into his robes, shielding his eyes. Narcissa held his limp hands and ducked her face into Snape's shoulder. They huddled together until the light abated. As soon as she could see again, Narcissa was tugging them both to standing, begging Lucius to live and Snape to help.
When it was all over, and Draco and Hermione saw that his parents were gone, they left the Order to gather the splinters of the cabinet and went after them. Lucius lay in his hospital cot, his breath rasping in and out of him in something deeper than sleep. Doctors from St. Mungo's Hospital had been sent for. They were on their way to examine him and see whether he ought to be brought to the hospital for treatment, or if he should be left with his family to finish what might be his final hours.
Hermione steeled her courage and took Professor Snape aside. "Do you think, sir, that we could Rennervate him again? I know it can be dangerous, but if he's not going to recover, it would let Draco speak with him afinal time. It's been so long, and so much is changed."
Snape nodded but continued to frown, whispering a reply. "It is risky. Lucius's present condition could not be more fragile. Another spell could be one too many. The doctors from St. Mungo's will be able to tell us better."
She wasn't sure he was right. Lucius was cursed with darker magic than most healers ever encounter. No one knew the Dark Lord's curses better than Snape. But she would not press the issue - not yet.
From several paces away, Snape and Hermione watched the Malfoy family trio - adoring them, aching for them and with them. Lucius was resting in bed, the rasp of his breathing the only sound in the room. Narcissa was perched on the mattress at his side, smoothing his hair from his brow as Draco knelt on the other side, holding his hand. Even from a very short distance, they appeared to be a model family, perfectly matched to each other, predestined, not to be tampered with.
In truth, of course, it was an illusion, a mess. Lucius had betrayed both his wife and son, exchanging their peace and safety for his own life, even if it was a miserable life in prison. After he let the Dark Lord into Narcissa's home, into the flesh of Draco's arm, Lucius's family had still loved him, still hoped in him. They suffered for months before moving themselves away from the ugly things he had made most precious to himself - more precious than them.
What did it mean now that, in what might have been his last act, Lucius had taken an enormous step back in his family's direction, vindicating the hope they once had in him?
Hours before, as he had waited with Pettigrew in the manor, the Dark Lord had recognized the signs of Lucius's return through the vanishing cabinet. This was it: the signal he had called for to let him know Hogwarts had been made ready for his arrival. The witch might be dead already, the headmaster as well, and in mere moments, he would step into Hogwarts as its conqueror.
He chuckled, stepping closer, caressing the wood with his good hand as the cabinet's magic rolled with the return of his docile, idiot servant. Only it wasn't the bowed head of the obsequious Lucius Malfoy he had always known who reappeared in the cabinet. It was a ferocious face, vengeful with bared teeth, wild white hair flying as Lucius lurched out the door, caught the Dark Lord in a tight grip, pinning his arms, chafing his injuries, crushing him against his chest, and tugging backward, falling into the cabinet with all Lucius's weight and strength.
Wormtail not only watched them go, but kicked the door closed as they went, fearing retaliation from the Order defending the school. He ran from the room, screaming through Malfoy Manor, calling out to the others that the Dark Lord was lost.
In the darkness of the cabinet, Lucius and his master fought, mashed against each other between the wooden walls, in the confined space, the Dark Lord's wand was trapped in the folds of his robes. Lucius tried to cast a silencing spell, but the space was too small and chaotic to be sure if it worked.
In this state of fury, struggle, and confusion, the pair of them burst through the cabinet on the other side, in the room on the seventh floor of Hogwarts. As Draco promised, the headmaster, the Order, Harry Potter, and Lucius's family were waiting there to save him, if they could.
Whether they could save him or not hardly mattered to him. Lucius did not deliver the Dark Lord for himself. But whether they could save him or not mattered an awful lot to Lucius's family.
In the hospital wing now, Narcissa tucked his hair behind his ear. "You did right, Lucius. At long last, you did right."
As she spoke, his rasping breath rose to a clatter, the pressure in his grip on Draco's hand grew tighter.
Draco leaned into his face. "I'm here, Father. I promised, and I'm here." He looked up at his mother, tears in his eyes. "Mother, do something. I promised he could live on with us. He has to get well. Please." He was frantic with grief, almost mad. Hermione left Snape's side to take her husband in her arms where he sat.
Narcissa showed Draco her empty hands. "I have nothing else to offer, Draco. Not even my wand."
He stood up, still holding Lucius's hand. "I'll fetch it for you," he said, but then looked down, puzzled, as if he didn't know how to bring his mother her wand without letting go of his father's hand.
Hermione stroked his arms, calming his agitation, getting him to sit down on the bed. "I'll get it, darling. You stay."
"But then you'll be gone - " His voice was getting louder, his breath shallower.
"Only for a moment, Draco - "
"Nevermind," Snape interrupted. "Calm yourself, Draco. There is one remedy I have not yet attempted. It requires the compression of his chest cavity and is, therefore, dangerous physically as well as magically. I can guarantee neither Lucius's safety nor his survival."
Draco was on his feet again. "We've nothing to lose. Do it anyway, please sir."
Snape hesitated, still not drawing his wand. "Magic as dark as this requires dark magic in return. I can try but be warned I have never seen anything so filthy as this carried out here, in this school."
"No, you don't care about dark magic in the school," Draco said, shouting now. "You're holding back because if Father dies, my mother can't go back to him."
"Draco, no," Narcissa said. "He's holding back for the opposite reason: because if your father succumbs to the Dark Lord's spell in spite of Severus's efforts, Severus will forever be misunderstood and blamed for botching the counter-spell on purpose. He is blamed if he withholds, blamed if he tries and fails."
"Then he'd better try and succeed!" Draco shouted, glaring at Snape across the hospital wing before collapsing to sit on the bed again.
It was too much for Hermione. "I've got a wand," she said. "If no one's going to help right now, 'll cast a Rennervate. Narcissa, stand clear, if you please."
"This impatience is counterproductive," Snape was saying, Draco cringing at the sound of his voice. "St. Mungo's is coming. It is better that we wait."
Narcissa was rising, stepping toward Snape. "Severus, Draco is right. Try and succeed - "
"How can I - ?"
"And what's more," she went on, "no one can help us like you can, Severus. No one at St. Mungo's. No one at all. I tell you, we need you. And I tell you this as well. I choose you. Whether Lucius lives or dies. If he lives, he can make a virtuous new life for himself, but without me as his wife."
Draco choked. "Mother?"
She forced herself to ignore him, focusing her words, her look on Snape. "My son is grown now, with a wife of his own. I am free to choose you, Severus. Fear nothing. Work your magic on this man."
She was close enough to Snape to take a letter from her pocket and press it against his chest.
"This is from our solicitor," she said as he read it. "If Lucius is well enough and willing to sign it, we will no longer be husband and wife. If he gets well and refuses to sign it, I will meet him later at the Wizengamot and compel him to sign it there. It is dated yesterday. Please try to save him. I am yours."
Snape broke the line of sight between himself and Narcissa. His hands and shoulders were shaking as he returned the parchment to her. He still hadn't drawn his wand.
Hermione squeezed Draco's shoulders where she held him down. "Trust him, Draco. Ask him to try the counter-curse."
Draco swallowed. "Yes. Professor, please."
Snape shook himself, coming to life, preparing for the counterspell by leading Narcissa toward the door. "It is a wicked bit of magic - nasty," he told her. "I need a tear from your eye, but I can take it now and use it later. You needn't stay to see it all unfold."
She shook her head. "Wicked magic? It's a bit late to worry about exposing me to that. This is what we've made ourselves of, Severus," she said. "We brought this into our own lives and we can't look away from it now."
He shuddered all the same. "Very well. Let us begin."
On the table next to Lucius's head, Snape conjured a cauldron. He muttered an incantation over it and the iron sides lost their matt black appearance, shining now with the same sickly green as the flash of a killing spell. He sighed and bowed his head, "Miss Granger, if you would forgive me?" he said, his hand extended. "I require a drop of your blood."
Her face blanched white but she nodded and let Snape take her hand. He held it over the cauldron, closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. When he opened them, he was chanting. "The right hand split, for the Mudblood's pain." With his wand, he lanced the tip of her thumb, squeezed a drop into the cauldron, and released her.
Looking more sorry, he extended a hand to Draco. "Now you," he said. "The left one."
Draco offered his arm, and with a small silver knife, Snape shaved a flake of burnt, black skin from the Dark Mark branded into Draco's flesh and added it to the cauldron.
He chanted, "Traces of our Lord, power made plain."
Releasing Draco, he came toward Narcissa. Instead of taking her hand, Snape gently dabbed the tip of his wand into the corner of her eye.
"Tears of the loved one, earnestly shed."
Her tear magnified itself on the tip of Snape's wand, and he dropped it into the cauldron as well.
He leaned over the mixture again, chanting low, nearly singing - every time he cast a spell, Draco knew, Snape sang. He lifted the cauldron from the table and set it on Lucius's chest, delicately, balancing it, letting go by degrees so he could stop if Lucius couldn't bear the pressure.
At last, he let go, standing tall, but was sighing once again. He leaned low over the cauldron. "Spit of the enemy, the soul not fled."
His saliva sizzled within the murky haze drifting over the rim of the cauldron. He didn't move to stir it, something Hermione always struggled with in potions. Not stirring, standing back and waiting, was the most difficult step of all. The fog drifted slowly out of the cauldron, so slowly Hermione wondered if she was only imagining she saw it move. Yet in due time, Lucius's entire body was covered in the mist. It was no longer green, like a killing curse, but orange, like a rising sun.
All at once, Lucius sat up. The cauldron clattered against the floor, black and iron again. Draco rushed to support him, holding him by each arm as he coughed against the lingering weight of the cauldron and the curse. Catching his breath, Lucius's hand found Draco, his palm forming into a curve around the back of Draco's head. He pushed their foreheads together, panting.
Draco held his breath, eyes wide and staring into his father's face.
Slowly, Lucius began to laugh, quiet and breathy. "Draco, my boy. Did you get him?" he said.
Draco laughed back at him. "Yes, Dad, we did. Me and Hermione and Potter and the Order. We got him, at least for a few more years. He's dust and we're safe now."
Lucius patted Draco's head. "Excellent boy." With that, he fell back against the pillows, still laughing faintly.
Narcissa bent over him again, wiping his sweating brow with a damp cloth. His eyes cracked open, and he laboured to raise a hand to stop her. "Cissa," he said, "You left me in the manor."
She dipped her cloth in the basin, wringing it out as she said, "Yes. You know why."
He raised his hand to stop her from wiping his forehead again. "I have something for you, in the inner pocket of my cloak."
She searched his clothes and drew out a thick swath of parchment. It was a copy of the letter from her solicitor, and Lucius had already signed it.
"You see, Severus," Lucius said, barely above a whisper. "I am not your enemy. And a man who cares for my family, as you have done, is not mine."
Snape folded his arms, replying nothing.
Lucius touched Narcissa's face with one weakened hand. "I can change myself into a better father for Draco and for his Hermione and for generations of Malfoys to come. But there are consequences for what I have done. And losing you, the darling wife of my youth, is one of them. Forgive me."
She took his hand from her face and kissed it. "I do."
"You do what?" Draco said. "What just happened? It wasn't -"
"It was, darling," Narcissa said. "Do better with your own wife. But don't trouble your father with it now. Look at him."
Lucius was fading again, happy, no longer doomed, but exhausted. It was time to leave him to rest. His eyes had closed again before Snape finished gathering up his cauldron from underneath the neighbouring empty cot.
Outside the door of the hospital wing, Narcissa would not let Snape take leave of her. "My injuries have healed," she was saying, "And as soon as my owl reaches London, I'll be divorced. Which means, I am not sleeping in the hospital wing anymore, especially not now that Lucius is there. I am sleeping in the dungeons, with you."
He covered her mouth with his hand, hushing her. "By the stars, woman, mind how you say things. I am a teacher at this school."
She laughed into his hand. "Yes, Professor. And you have the best-guarded, most private sleeping quarters in the castle, I'm sure. So take me to them."
She linked her arms around his waist, leaning into him. He pried her hands apart, placing them by her sides.
She faked a pout. "Don't tell me you've changed your mind about me already."
"Of course not, Cissa."
"Cissa darling," she corrected him.
He spoke low into her ear. "Narcissa, you will kindly reserve displays of affection for when we are alone."
"And when will that be?" she asked. "Where will that be?"
Snape sighed - a different sigh than she'd heard him use yet today. Her arms had wound themselves around his torso, inside his robes again. It was making his pulse rise and his cheeks flush and there was nothing for it but to tell her, "Come with me now. But first - "
He coiled another Disillusionment spell around her. She followed him across the Entrance Hall, seeming to the students they passed like a breeze moving behind him.
"Who was the last woman to be in here?" she said as the door to his study closed behind them.
He sniffed. "Are we counting your daughter-in-law as a woman?"
She scoffed. "No, someone not a student."
In the sanctuary of his dungeon office, for the first time since he carried her up the hill to Hogwarts, Snape closed his arms around Narcissa. He wasn't stiffly resisting her for the sake of propriety, but opening himself to her, bending and tilting to receive her curves and contours. Teasing him with affection he both desperately wanted and could not accept had been exciting for Narcissa. Having him reach for her, eagerly taking her in was a new kind of exciting. Her heart lurched with an unexpected thud.
She was speechless as he said, "The last woman here would have been you, coming to meet me early in the morning to discuss Draco's task."
She wrinkled her nose, which he had never seen her do and which almost made him gasp at how charming he found it. She was saying, "That is not a good memory. I was mad then."
Snape clucked his tongue. "I rather think you're madder now."
He tightened his hold on her, pulling her up toward his face. Her expression smoothed, her eyes wide, pupils dilated. He slid a long, thin hand along her hot neck and into her cool silky blond hair, tipping her face upward. Snape kissed her tenderly, with love and without hating himself for it. She relaxed into him, supple and warm, open, leading him deeper. He didn't taste or feel like Lucius, and she chased after what he was, curious and famished for it.
He pulled away, breath ragged. "There's a sofa. I can sleep on out here in the study tonight. You can have the bedroom in the private suite." At his words, the rear door opened, revealing the rooms where he lived.
She peered through it but held onto him. "You are a gentleman, Severus."
He closed his eyes, bowing his face into the top of her head. "I am careful. The last time I - loved someone, I handled it badly. I couldn't have failed worse at it. No matter how slowly, how carefully I must proceed, I will not fail with you, Cissa."
She grinned into his face. "I have heard many romantic speeches in my time, Severus, and none of them has ever had the word 'proceed' in it before today." She rose onto her toes, bringing his hawkish nose to touch her small, straight one.
He spoke. "Are you making fun of me, Madam?"
She laughed. "No, Professor. I am making everything of you."
"I'm going to stay with him awhile," Draco told Hermione. "Even if he's asleep, I just want to look at him, hear him breathing. Make sure he's alright."
"Shall I leave you alone then?" Hermione asked.
"No, never," Draco answered, pulling her into his lap. "Stay with us too."
She tipped her cheek against his head as Draco watched his father sleep. She laughed softly. "It's almost uncanny, the way the pair of you look so much alike. If I didn't know better I'd wonder if you were his homunculus."
Draco faked a retch. "No, I'm a fully human being. How can you say - "
"I didn't," she laughed. "I said I know better. You heard me."
Draco leaned his face into the softness of her chest. "Looking at him does make me wonder what our - you know - the next generation would look like."
She sat back. "Do not make me pregnant out of vain curiosity, Draco Malfoy."
He re-settled his face against her, cuddling her harder the more she tried to be stern. "Come, darling, don't you want a little son who looks just like us?"
She scoffed. "Do you mean 'us' as in you and your only very recently reformed father? Or 'us' as in you and me? Don't forget that I will be contributing genetic material to our children too, Draco. And unlike your parents, you and I do not look like siblings."
Draco placed a hand on his heart. "By all means, I insist you contribute genetic material. I won't have it any other way."
"And so," she went on, "there is a distinct possibility our son might not look like an elegant country lord but like a tufty-haired London dentist."
Draco paused for only slightly too long before he said, "That would be fine."
She punched his arm. "Well, it will still be years before we meet any of our children," she said, folding her arms. "Hogwarts may have disused married students' quarters, but it has no nurseries."
Draco raised one eyebrow. "Doesn't it? I'll check in "Hogwarts a History" once we're back home. I'm sure I remember something about nurseries."
She was smiling coyly. "I suppose you could do research when we get home, or…" She whispered the rest in his ear. "But I will be the one casting the contraception charm."
"Right," Draco said. "Home it is."
AN: Please keep watching your notifications for the epilogue to Draco Takes a Mark appearing in a few days. Thanks again for your support.