Chapter 13: The Coward's Choice
She stood alone in the closet, a small antechamber really, that held her gowns and the antique reflecting glass. Narcissa studied her reflection, her hair pulled loose where his fingers had driven through it. She still wore the dress. She felt curiously hollow, nothing inside, all magnificent surface.
In the quiet Lucius approached. He stopped at the threshold as he always did. The small space was her domain, filled with woman's things; rarely did he enter. His eyes met hers in the glass.
"Come, Narcissa, let me undo you," he said. She heard the expectation in his voice, the low note of desire. She didn't move.
He did enter then, the sound of his footsteps absorbed by the ancient carpet beneath her bare feet. He touched her back, the shoulder left bare by the complex construction of the gown, his fingers grazing her skin. His eyes sought the fastenings of the silken edifice, searching the delicate folds of the fabric for its vulnerabilities, its seams. He was at once stunned and oddly touched by the complexity of the garment, so feminine and yet seemingly impregnable. At last he saw them, the tiny row of buttons in their noose-like loops, which ran along the left side of the gown from the curve of her breast to her waist.
Lucius liked to undress her. A tremor curled through his fingers in anticipation. He was heady with wine and pride. He had given a strong, fine son to the Dark Lord that night, a sacrifice seventeen years in the making. The climax of a grand endeavor had come and it left him with a vague sense of loss which drove him to her in need.
In his privileged life there was always someone to do for him those things which were of little consequence. The privilege of wealth, the ease of magic lent him the luxury of avoiding the mundane, the dreary; the dull physicality of lifting, carrying, lacing and unlacing. Yet this—the unfastening of the buttons on her dress—this was worth the doing. It was worth the doing with his own hands for the pleasure it would bring. For Lucius, it was a rare thing that was worth the doing with his own hands.
Narcissa stood bathed in stillness. She felt him behind her, felt his hands as he brushed her hair aside exposing her nape. She felt his breath on her skin. The thought of him touching her tonight was unbearable, and so she did it.
She tilted her head and murmured a soft incantation. The buttons which marched down the side of the dress fell free of their loops. The garment sighed as it loosened and parted. It was a small thing, but it was one thing he would not do with his own hands. She would not let him.
Lucius froze. His fingers stopped on her skin. She was rigid beneath his hands. His eyes narrowed. He grasped her arm and spun her about to face him. His touch was not gentle.
"It is a curious game you play," he said roughly. "You stand apart from me at the ceremony refusing to offer the boy, you deny me your presence at the reception, and you deprive me of my pleasure in you. If I were you I would not persist in this game of deprivation. It is a dangerous game."
Narcissa closed her eyes. She could not look on her husband. Suddenly, he released her.
"Nonetheless, tonight is a rare occasion and I am feeling generous. Therefore, I will grant you a boon. You have tonight, Narcissa Black, but when I wake tomorrow it will be to my wife."
She felt him retreat, withdraw from the room. When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
Narcissa slipped free of the gown. It slithered down her legs to pool at her feet, folds lapping her calves. She sank to her knees on top of the dress and, closing her eyes once again, cursed its gaudy, frothy beauty.
OOO
"I am a coward," Snape said. He couldn't say how long he'd been standing there, fingers tightened on the bookshelves. She had left hours ago, returned to the manor—he was sure of it—but it wasn't until now that the words forced themselves from his throat into the empty silence of the room. There was no one to hear them.
Narcissa should not have come here. It was not a place for beautiful creatures. Spinner's End was purposefully removed from the orbit of their ilk. It lay apart in the midst of Muggle decay for a reason. It was both a sanctuary and a tomb where he lay undisturbed with his memories of a dead girl. Narcissa needn't have touched him and threatened those memories.
Slowly, Snape released his hold on the shelves. He drew a hand across his face, scrubbing it roughly. Still the truth rang loudly in his ears. I am a coward.
Indeed, it was his own courage that had failed, not Hermione Granger's as he had once said to Dumbledore. It was the truth all along. He had first created the altered Polyjuice with its addictive qualities for himself many years ago. He'd brewed it because he had been and still was a coward.
The coward's way was to deceive. It had seemed easy enough. Use the Polyjuice to become his enemy, kill his enemy, and through deception take his enemy's wife. In those terms it was a simple strategy, abstract, removed, as if designed for a game of Wizard's Chess. It had not been so easy in the doing, however, to become James, to kill James, to take Lily in his stead.
The thought of it had terrified him and yet he'd been driven to accomplish it. It would have meant spending his entire life as James Potter, losing Severus Snape permanently. For Lily's love, it had seemed a small sacrifice. Only, he'd doubted himself. Could he truly become another over and over until the end of his days? Could he keep such a secret eternally?
Perhaps. Perhaps if he were driven to it, driven by physical need. Perhaps if he altered the Polyjuice so that his body craved the substance, craved the transformation, indeed, relied upon it for survival. He would have no choice then but to stay the course.
It was a risky proposition. No one had ever used the Polyjuice for a lifetime. Its long term effects were unknown. His studies, however, led him to believe that eventually the potion would alter his body permanently.
It was a kind of madness that drove him to it that night. It must have been. Knowing that James had been called away, he took the potion and went to her in Godric's Hollow. Lily was shocked to see her husband, expecting that he would be gone for several days, and yet here he was returned to her.
Snape looked at her through James' faulty eyes, the frames of Potter's glasses an unfamiliar weight on the bridge of his nose. Then she had simply been Lily, young, newly married and unfinished as every beautiful young woman should be. She wasn't yet a mother, not yet a victim of that powerful divided love split between her husband and her child. It was this Lily that he clung to in his memories, not the present day martyr she had become.
Death had finished Lily Potter. She'd been stopped short, her life ended at the moment of sacrifice so that she was remembered for all eternity as a model of mother love and a brave heroine who'd given her life for her son. It was a fine way to be remembered, but to those who'd loved her, the memory was cold comfort. It was stingy, speaking only to her sacrifice, not the vibrancy and warmth of the living woman.
She was warm in his arms that night, thinking that he was James. What he couldn't have seen, even with the aid of a Pensieve, is what she knew. She knew that he was troubled, more so than usual. Everyone was anxious, these were trying times, but this soft, sad trouble ran deep. It was a different side of James, whose emotions were often brash and on the surface.
He was gentle that night and new. He looked at her as if he'd learned her from a book, and when he touched her it was with a sense of wonder that the solid reality of her flesh could exceed all that he had ever learned. There was a sadness in him, and as she slept wrapped in his arms, it permeated her and her heart ached.
He knew that his courage had failed him. He could not do this to her. She clearly loved. She loved so strongly that he couldn't betray that love with deception. It would never be his love, he wouldn't have earned it, and he realized that what he hadn't earned of her, he didn't want. It was enough, that night had been enough, and the memory of it would last him his entire life as Severus Snape.
The next morning he was gone when she woke, and when she woke it was from a troubling dream. The details vanished the instant she opened her eyes, so it was with no small amount of shock that she was startled to hear herself whisper "Severus" on a soft exhalation.
She would never speak of it to James.
It had taken him weeks to free himself from the potion's addictive thrall. It hadn't been easy; his days and nights spent in a haze of fever dreams, aches and chills. It was a fitting punishment for failure.
Yet it had been his choice. He had not given Hermione Granger such a choice. He'd simply continued the experiment that he'd begun on himself all those years ago. He could let the altered Polyjuice consume her. Already she was tainted. He could condemn her to live her life as another, a choice that he, who had never even particularly liked being Severus Snape, had ultimately rejected.
It was for him to decide. It was for him to make the coward's choice.
OOO
The second uninvited guest that evening arrived by Floo. Not a moment's peace to be had in Spinner's End it seemed. It reminded him vaguely of a story by that third-rate Muggle author Dickens—by all accounts a squib—where a beleaguered solicitor in search of nothing but a decent night's sleep was visited by three ghosts or some such. The second visitor to Spinner's End was no ghost, however. Snape rose to his feet as Albus Dumbledore stepped from the flames of the fireplace, beating his robes free of soot and smothering an errant ember which had become embedded in his silvery beard.
"Good evening, Severus. You really ought to think about sweeping up the hearth every now and then. Finding coals in one's beard is not entirely pleasant."
"My apologies, Albus. I'm afraid the Floo here doesn't get much use. However, I should be remiss if I didn't point out that were your beard cut according to international wizarding grooming standards you wouldn't have such worries. If I'm correct it exceeds length regulations by at least ten centimeters."
Dumbledore glanced down at his beard and patted it protectively. "So it does, Severus, so it does. I am old and as such I know the value of such regulations. I find that actions, not beards, make the man. If the Ministry were as concerned with a wizard's intentions as it is with his facial hair, the world would be a very different place. Take our adversary the Lord Voldemort for instance: utterly hairless and entirely evil."
The corner of Snape's mouth lifted of its own accord. For anyone else the reaction would have counted as the ghost of a smile. For the former Potions Master, however, it was merely a learned response, the quirk of a gesture which had long ago lost meaning.
It was just as well. Despite the elder wizard's elegant chatter, Snape knew that this was hardly a social visit. It was only a matter of time before the second uninvited guest got down to brass tacks.
"Where is she?" Dumbledore asked.
"Below stairs," Snape replied. "You may look in on her if you wish."
"What is it I should expect to see?"
"She is resting at the moment. I gave her a sleeping draught to allay some of the symptoms."
"Symptoms?"
"Withdrawal symptoms. In her waking hours she is feverish. She speaks incoherently. It is the thrall of the potion."
Dumbledore said nothing. He crossed the room to the staircase, pausing only for the steps to gather themselves and unfurl beneath his feet, creating a path for his descent.
It was a quarter of an hour before he returned; his eyes hard, glittering.
"She is weak, Severus," Dumbledore said quietly. "You have broken her."
"I have done nothing that was not asked of me."
Silence ensued. Carefully, Dumbledore spoke. "That is not what I asked."
"Isn't it?" Snape replied. "It was your plan to create another Imogene when the first was lost to us. That is who Miss Granger will become permanently. It is as my studies lead me to believe. I have only to continue her dosage and let the process run its course."
Dumbledore paled. "Then I have failed to make my intention clear. It was never to create another Imogene as you say. Indeed, the qualities of Miss Granger are what make all the difference. Imogene is merely the mask which allowed Miss Granger entrance into young Mr. Malfoy's life." Here Dumbledore paused. "I'll remind you that masks are made to be removed. They are not permanent fixtures. For us to truly succeed, the mask must be removed."
Snape's eyes narrowed in quiet fury. "But there is the prophecy."
"Yes, there is the prophecy, but you know as well as I do that prophecies are complex. This one in particular is not so easily thwarted. It would be foolish to trick the prophecy by simply supplying an Imogene; more foolish still to trick the heart."
"No, Albus, enough. Enough of your equivocations and machinations. It is all ludicrous. It is absurd." Snape laughed then, a harsh, hoarse barking sound completely devoid of humor. "I have done what you asked always. All that you ask, even those things which remain unspoken, especially those things which you haven't the stomach to do yourself." Another harsh sound escaped him, strangled laughter or an exhausted howl; it was difficult to discern which. "I do your dirty work, Albus. We do it… the boy and I." The boy, with his mother's startling green eyes and Snape's own unruly black hair. "It seems that we have something in common, Potter and I. We are your tools, sir. We are your mules."
Dumbledore appeared to weaken under the weight of Snape's words. His shoulders bowed in strain. After what seemed like an eternity, he made his reply.
"It is true, I have used you thus."
Then the elder wizard did something unexpected. He gathered himself, his voluminous robes, and asked of his body that which age made it difficult to grant. He knelt, lowering himself to the floor. It was not a smooth motion. He did not command his bones with the same fluid ease with which he commanded magic. He labored to his knees and felt the floor rise up sharply against weathered bone.
Dumbledore bowed his head. "I am… flawed," he said. "But do not emulate my mistakes, Severus. Do not embrace my flaws. Do not use Miss Granger thus."
Snape closed his eyes, the reality of the scene before him overwhelming. The Headmaster was pleading with him. It was done with quiet dignity, and the dignity, though proud in nature, did not disguise the humility of the request.
When Snape opened his eyes Dumbledore had risen to his feet. There was nothing more to be said. The elder wizard tossed a handful of powder into the hearth and disappeared into the flames.
OOO
"I dunno how you do it, Harry." Ron scowled across the Great Hall at the Slytherin table. "If I were you, I'd hex him into next week."
Harry grunted, shoveling a forkful of treacle tart into his mouth.
"I mean, really! He put you in the Hospital Wing. Let's pound him." Ron fixed his narrowed gaze on Draco Malfoy who sat silently between Crabbe and Goyle. "We could make it look like an unfortunate Quidditch accident or something. Or maybe let a Blast-Ended Skrewt wander into his path. Feed him to the Whomping Willow or—"
"—Ron! Believe me, I've thought about it more than once, but something's not right. Something's been done to Malfoy. Look at him. Something's going on."
Malfoy was certainly present at the Slytherin table, but he seemed to be the only one who didn't know it. His eyes were vague and unfocused. He lacked a sense of being. In an odd way it seemed that he had wound down; Draco Malfoy at full stop.
"Hermione would know," Ron muttered, dejected. He threw his fork down. It clattered onto his empty plate. "I can't believe she's visiting her parents in hiding."
Harry stabbed the treacle tart again and plied his mouth with another forkful, ruminating as he masticated. "Neither can I," he said, his eyes hard.
"What do you mean?" Ron asked.
"It's not like her just to disappear without saying anything to us. Why the secrecy? I mean, she didn't mention it at all. It was like she didn't even know about it."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, "and it's Hermione we're talking about. She knows about everything."
"Exactly. There's no way she wouldn't have told us. Something's going on, Ron." Harry put down his fork. After a moment he said, "Malfoy was looking for her."
"What?"
"When we fought in the hall. He was looking for her."
"I'll kill him!" Ron said. He jumped to his feet, nearly stumbling over the bench in the process. Several students turned to stare.
"Sit down, Ron." Harry tugged the redhead back into his seat, hoping to quell his hothead temper. "Malfoy was missing for a couple of days, too, and he's not the same since he's been back. He's been up to something all year. Maybe Hermione knew what it was. Maybe she's connected."
Ron balled his hands into fists. "Connected to Malfoy? You mean, like in eternal loathing or something?"
"I don't know what I mean, Ron," Harry said quietly. "I just have this feeling."
It was not a feeling he could ignore.
OOO
He hadn't wanted to handle the girl but he had, and she would require more handling before it was done. Snape sat on the edge of the cot with Hermione. He'd caught her around the middle as she lurched forward, torso folded over his arm. She retched over the side of the cot into a waiting ewer. Her fingers were fisted in his shirt, balled tightly around the fabric, insistent in their demand for support as her stomach fought another spasm, forcing its contents upward into her throat.
He knew to expect the nausea and vomiting but she did not. He had been able to prepare, stripping the linens to prevent their being soiled and placing the ewer close at hand. He had considered cutting off her hair while she slept. It was foolish to keep so much of it. It was weighty, unwieldy and doomed to be fouled by vomit, but he hadn't moved quickly enough before her eyes sprang open and caught sight of the shears. Now he clutched her hair in one hand, holding it clear of her face. She heaved once, then again, before she drew herself up and slumped against him, exhausted.
Snape stiffened at the contact. Awkwardly, he tried to disengage from her, releasing her hair and angling his body away from her, but she tightened her grip on his shirt, confronting him with her weak and wretched body, keeping him fixed to her.
"You did this," Hermione said, her voice raspy as it crept gingerly through her damaged throat. Even though the sound was barely above a whisper, Snape could detect the accusation in her tone. She was clearheaded for what seemed like the first time in days. The sound of her voice chastened him more than he would've liked to admit. "What… what have you… done to me?"
Though her nearness was nearly intolerable, Snape thought that he might prefer it to seeing the bitter accusation which he knew had taken up residence in her eyes.
"The potion, you require it," he answered bluntly. "Without it you fall ill."
Hermione eased her hold on his shirt, only to tighten her fingers again, this time her nails digging into the skin beneath.
"This illness… it's because you… won't give me the Polyjuice." It didn't make sense. Vaguely she knew that she craved the potion, but she didn't know why. Hermione was having trouble even formulating ideas. Words weren't coming to her as quickly as they usually did. Thought felt sluggish, torpid. Anger was present, and outrage too, but her exhaustion made it impossible to fuel them.
"Essentially, yes." Snape did not elaborate.
"Then why… why do you… make me suffer?"
"It is a choice. I have altered the Polyjuice. If I continue your dosage the illness will abate, but eventually you would become her. You would become Imogene permanently."
Hermione gathered her strength and slowly pushed herself free of him. Her head reeled and she leaned back on her palms, her arms shaking with the strain of supporting her weight. She needed to look at him, as if it might help her to understand.
"You murdered one girl, and to replace her you would sacrifice another," she said slowly.
Snape met her eyes.
"I would. Dumbledore would, though he would never admit it."
"Then why haven't you?" she asked bitterly, her words cutting, cruel.
Snape didn't answer.
"Or have you already?" Hermione said slowly. "The golem… is that it? It wants to destroy me so that Imogene can take my place." It had never occurred to her that, in trying to eliminate her, the golem might be doing as it had been bid.
"The potion works on its own to enact the transformation. It does not require the golem's assistance," Snape said wearily. "As for the golem, I will remind you that it has no sentience. It is not a creature of agency. It cannot do as you suggest."
"But is has," Hermione argued. "It's tried to kill me. That isn't part of your plan?"
"I am not a murderer, Miss Granger."
"Aren't you?"
"Stop!" Snape commanded. "Stop this. Stop your lies."
"Which is the lie? That the golem wants me dead or that you do?"
Snape rose from the cot and stalked across the room. A tense silence settled between them.
"There is a way." Hermione spoke at last. "There is a way to know if I am lying… about the golem."
"I do not need Veritaserum to know the falsity of your words."
"That isn't what I'm suggesting." She looked up at him, met his gaze. "The truth is here." Hermione raised an unsteady hand to her forehead. "I'll let you," she said, "willingly."
Snape stared at her, startled that she would willingly allow him entrance into her mind in service of the truth. He didn't need her permission for such a thing and yet she had granted it, even suggested it. How very Gryffindor of her. How very noble and courageous.
He drew his wand and advanced on her.
OOO
Her mind was cluttered, dark, confused. The landscape had changed since the last time he'd entered only months ago. Memories lay fragmented, splintered in his path. They were oddly incomplete, scattered, altered. This was not the work of the potion or lack thereof.
The potion was a delicate and refined thing designed to transform her outward appearance. It should not, could not warp her memories. There was something else at work, another force, another presence.
Snape paused in the hall of her memories. An eerie quiet seemed to have settled in her mind, the calm before the storm, he thought, for lack of a better analogy. It lasted for the briefest of moments. Then it began. The doors which had been open to him slammed shut one by one along the hall. It made no sense. She had agreed not to fight him. She had willingly granted him access.
The hall twisted, lurched beneath him, throwing him off balance. As he struggled to regain his footing so to speak, he was thrown against a wall where he smashed through the door of a memory.
"Come along now, Imma," the man says. She is small. He extends a hand to her and she reaches to take it. Her short, chubby fingers settle neatly in his large palm. They walk through a shaded wood, dotted with peculiar stones which rise from the ground. He is a tall man and her child's legs struggle to keep up. The ground is leafy and uneven beneath her feet. They move between the stones, careful of them. It is important that they are careful.
At last, the man stops. He is dark to her, not in mood or coloring, but dark in that he lacks a certain light. It even clouds his features—this absence of light. They are indistinct in her child's mind. He sits and draws her down to sit beside him in the shadow of a pale stone. The stone takes shape, rising sharply into focus from time-eroded memory. Its edges are smooth, crafted. It is hewn in remembrance; white marble. There is writing on the stone. She can hardly read it, can barely make it out, but now she knows. It is a grave marker, and the words are names.
And the name is LeCoeur.
Snape watched them both from within the memory. Somehow he'd taken up residence in it, almost as if he were viewing in a Pensieve.But this was not a Pensieve. It shouldn't have been possible. It shouldn't have been possible that the man turned to look at Snape, knowing that he was there.
It was then that Snape saw it. The man was himself. It was he who had showed the girl her own grave.
Snape's mind seized. A barrier had been crossed, broken. This was not a memory, but a cleverly crafted fiction, a fiction with a purpose. Pain seared through his own thoughts and then a voice struck him.
It is mine, the voice said. It is mine now. It has used I and I will use it. It is mine now. It is mine. It is I.
OOO
Snape was on his knees beside the cot, gasping for air. Sweat ran down his face to dampen his collar. His eyes were squeezed shut, the pain in his mind intense. His hands shook. He fought to slow his breath, regain control of his lungs.
After a moment he opened his eyes, and that's when he saw her, the girl who for all intents and purposes was Hermione Granger. She lay in a troubled sleep, seemingly unchanged save the color of her hair—still ridiculous, unwieldy, superfluous in its expanse—which was now an inky black.
It was the early stages of a transformation which should not have occurred without the Polyjuice and yet it had.
Snape sank down to the floor. As impossible as it was to grasp, he had come to the limit. He could no longer do this alone. There was only one other who knew this girl who was and wasn't Hermione.
Snape would need his help.
OOO
The boy seemed tired. His pale head dipped forward. He sat hunched over in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees. In the quiet of Snape's office at Hogwarts silence hung between them. It glinted off of the many jars and vials which stocked the shelves, resounding in a kind of hushed white nose that fell upon Draco's ears.
"You haven't told me why you want me to come with you to Spinner's End," he said at last.
"I'm afraid I cannot go into detail here," Snape answered.
"Something to do with my task perhaps?"
"As I said, I cannot elaborate at this time."
Draco shrugged listlessly. "I suppose it doesn't matter, does it? As my professor, as my… mentor, you may will me to do whatever you wish." A bitter laugh escaped his lips.
Snape rose from the chair behind his desk. He crossed to Draco where he sat, grabbed his arm and tugged up the boy's sleeve. "We meet as equals," he said, indicating the mark.
"Of course," Draco hissed, dragging his arm from Snape's grasp. "I am what my father made me. I am the Dark Lord's creature."
The former Potions Master fell back a step. He pulled up his own sleeve revealing the mark on the underside of his left forearm. "This is not fate in the way that you might think, Draco. This is… opportunity."
Snape let his sleeve drop and folded his arms across his chest. "It is a choice. And it is yours."
OOO
Draco had not been to Spinner's End in some time, not since he was a young boy on a visit with his mother long ago. It was small and shabby as he remembered. He followed Snape down the enchanted staircase to a second room. It was dark, warm, the air close from the heat of a fire banked in the hearth. The room smelled of herbs and medicinal things. It was a sickroom, he realized.
There was a cot in the corner. On it laid a sleeping girl, covered by bed linens, twisted in them, facing away from him. All that was visible was a spill of inky black hair. Draco's breath caught. He knew this girl. He turned to Snape who hung back by the entrance to the room. Snape merely inclined his head, his expression unreadable.
Draco stood rooted to the spot. Imogene. He hadn't seen her since he'd received the mark. Upon his return to Hogwarts, he'd been told that she was once again visiting her parents. It had stung to think that she had left again when she said that she wouldn't. Yet, he hadn't been sure that he wanted to face her—not as he was now, marked and owned.
He took a step toward her and stopped. Would she know him with the mark? Would she know how it had changed him, how it had made him someone else? Draco pushed those thoughts aside and willed his feet to move, one foot in front of the other until he reached her.
He sat down on the edge of the cot and pulled the twisted linens away. There was something wrong. Her features were different. Her hair not as he remembered. Draco turned the girl's face toward him. His hands shook. His ears grew hot.
This girl. Her features took shape in his mind, assembled themselves in a familiar pattern, one that led to recognition. This girl, who was and wasn't Imogene; this girl who was, but couldn't be, Hermione Granger.
Draco sprang up from the cot, stumbling back into the center of the room. He turned his eyes to Snape, questioningly, accusingly. Snape said nothing, but the answer was plain in his face. Hands shaking, Draco pushed past him, headed toward the stairs.
Snape watched in silence as the boy fled.
OOO
Severus Snape was exhausted. He'd looked high and low for the boy, all of his possible haunts, everywhere except the manor. He knew that Draco wouldn't return to his home. The boy wasn't anxious to see Lucius again since the ceremony, he knew that much. It was just as well. Snape had no desire to set foot in the manor either, though it had less to do with Lucius than with Narcissa. She had made things difficult for him. She had unearthed that which should have remained buried.
He unclasped his cloak and dropped it in the middle of the floor. It was uncharacteristic of him. He didn't care much about garments, but he knew better than to leave them lying in the floor. He couldn't abide such thoughtlessness, but tonight he would make an exception. Tonight he was bone-weary and the cloak could lie where it had fallen. He would start again tomorrow, continue his search.
There was only one thing left to do before he closed his eyes tonight. Snape paused at the stairs, let them shift to accommodate him. He would check on the girl once more before he retired. He descended the stairs, but stopped at the threshold of the room.
There on the cot lay the object of his search. Hours spent looking for the boy and Snape hadn't thought to return to the start. Draco lay curled around the girl, his eyes closed, his breathing even.
The boy had come back of his own accord. He had come back to the beginning.
OOO
When she opened her eyes he lay across from her, close enough to touch. There was no tension in his face, the space between his thin blond brows smooth, unwrinkled as he slept. How he had come to be there she could only guess, but he was there. She touched the side of his jaw, followed the line of it to his chin; stroked his chin, then his lips with the backs of her fingers.
Draco woke. His eyes drew her into focus. He stared.
Suddenly it occurred to her: she had no idea who he was staring at, no idea which girl she was. She was afraid to speak, not knowing whose voice would emerge from her throat, Hermione's or Imogene's.
Draco blinked, a decision made. He pushed himself back from her, pushed himself up to sitting. It was a reaction to Hermione, she guessed. Slowly, she pulled a strand of her hair in front of her eyes. It was certainly the texture and curl of Hermione's hair but it was the color of Imogene's.
Who am I? She wanted to ask him, frustrated, but she realized that he couldn't tell her. He didn't have the answer. She did.
She moved her fingers to her own face, searching, fighting the uneasy feeling that she was something in between, in between the two girls, in between Hermione and Imogene; a strange amalgam, neither one nor the other. A sense of panic seized her.
Draco sensed it. It struck his own fears. He shifted, tossing the sheets aside. He was angry, he remembered, angry at her whoever she was, angry at the brutal evidence of her deception.
She saw it then, now that the sheets had been cast aside. She saw the mark on his arm. He followed her gaze, saw where it had fallen. It quieted him. He drew his arm up to his chest, concealing the Dark Lord's seal. She didn't know him, not this boy who had been marked, altered.
Neither of them knew where to start, how to begin. They were strangers. There was a newness between them. They were new to each other.