Chapter 17: The Willing Muse
Narcissa's entrance into Spinner's End was completely unlike anything she could have possibly imagined. She emerged from the fireplace, which was remarkably clean and devoid of soot, into the middle of a grand domestic argument complete with dogged, spousal bickering.
"These socks have been darned!" Snape bellowed in wrathful incredulity, shoving his fingers into the toe of the offending hosiery, fully expecting one of his digits to emerge through a hole in the fabric, and reeling with anger upon discovering his fingers denied by whole cloth.
"Well, of course they have! And by a right rudimentary darning spell, too! One wonders how you ever got along without one," Poppy Pomfrey replied in kind, her voice raised to match his.
"I did not ask you to darn socks nor launder linens! You overstep your bounds, Madam!"
"I could not possibly have overstepped any bounds in this house. 'Twould have been impossible to find them, let alone overstep them, covered as they were in filth and decrepitude!"
Narcissa blinked. Her eyes darted between the two combatants: Snape stalking his bedroom in unmitigated loathing, and Poppy Pomfrey, angry but somewhat bemused with her arms folded across the stalwart bodice of her sensible grey bombazine dress.
"You have a guest," Madam Pomfrey said, upon noticing Narcissa standing quietly in front of the hearth.
"I can see that!" Snape roared. His eyes flicked to Narcissa briefly before returning to Madam Pomfrey. "What have you done to the wards, woman? Why has she arrived in my bedroom? All floo travelers should arrive by the Great Room hearth."
Madam Pomfrey gave a derisive snort. "Great Room my arse, Severus. Is that what you call that sad excuse for an Everything Chamber? I fully intend to burn every single stitch of furniture in it when you're otherwise occupied."
"Out!" he cried, using his last ounce of restraint to keep from stamping his foot. It was an undisputed fact that foot stamping was but a hair's breadth from full-on tantrum.
Madam Pomfrey inclined her head in a haughty, shallow bow and exited the room.
Narcissa stood a moment in stunned silence, watching as Snape paced to a standstill. He turned his eyes to her again, let them rove her face unfettered for a moment, before he remembered himself and looked away.
"What do you want?" he growled.
Narcissa opened her mouth to reply and then closed it again, all thoughts of an opening gambit dispelled by the scene she had just witnessed. There had been something personal about it, something private, something human. It struck her that Snape was a man alone, a bachelor, who had, perhaps, neglected the running of his house. It was true that men did such things when left to their own devices; bachelorhood being a rather obtuse state of existence which apparently bred a Spartan imperviousness to creature comforts. It was a terrible life of rough, ragged linens, frayed cuffs and various other sartorial indignities. That Narcissa had just glimpsed evidence of Severus Snape, bachelor, was at once disarming, intimate and embarrassing.
Snape acknowledged the embarrassment, albeit involuntarily, through the high color in his cheeks. "That woman will not leave," he groused, despite the fact that Madam Pomfrey had been gone some minutes.
A tiny smile played across Narcissa's lips; she found brief respite in this moment of levity. Snape's scowl darkened.
"It seems I am plagued by unwanted female guests. Wherever do they come from, I wonder?" he asked, the question plainly rhetorical in nature.
"The hearth?" Narcissa offered. They were the first words she'd managed since her arrival and were apparently self-conscious enough to trip, unsteadily, along her tongue.
Snape narrowed his eyes.
It was Narcissa's turn to look away. She busied herself unclasping her cloak and draping it over her arm while she looked for a place to stow it. Her eyes came to rest on a chest at the foot of the bed and she crossed to lay the garment on top of it, carefully smoothing its folds. Once that was accomplished, she returned to where she'd been standing in front of the hearth, her hands clasped together in front of her.
Almost in spite of herself, her eyes were drawn back to him. Narcissa couldn't help but study him, albeit surreptitiously, out of the corner of her eye. It was the first time she'd seen him since she'd felt the vow failing. She knew that he must have been in some kind of mortal danger and she'd done everything in her power to prevent it. Whatever had occurred had left him pale and hollow-eyed, but overall sound, if somewhat the worse for wear. She breathed a tiny sigh of relief; he was whole in body at least, functional—though functioning remained to be seen.
Snape felt her scrutiny, however covert it may have been, and it chafed his nerves.
"Why have you come, Narcissa? Is it for my undying gratitude? Or perhaps I should say my dying gratitude—that which I felt while dying—until death was cruelly snatched from me by your command. Do you wish to take that as well, my dying gratitude, the joy that has eluded me which I found in death?"
"Severus—"
"—what then? What do you want? Why keep me alive? To protect your son? And if I could have protected him best with my death? What then? There is nothing left, Narcissa. I have nothing. What can you possibly take from me alive that you cannot take when I am dead?"
Her heart leapt into her throat. She had no answer for him, at least none that would do. How could she explain that she did not want to take? He would not believe her, not when taking was so much in fashion these days. The Dark Lord took. He took lives. He'd taken her son, her home. Lucius took. He'd taken her innocence, her trust. And once these things were taken, what became of them? They were never returned and one was left to live with the loss.
How could she tell him this? How could she tell him that what she had for him was to be given, not taken? How could she tell him when telling him would seem like nothing more than a ploy on her part to advance the Dark Lord's plan? Yet if she did not tell him, she played herself false; closed the door of possibility between them; invited the Dark Lord's wrath.
There was no suitable course of action; the situation held her fast. No matter what her choice Narcissa found herself bound by circumstance. It exerted a subtle pressure that walled her in at every turn, and it was then that she began to imagine, in her sudden panic, that the dress she wore plied a pressure of its own, constricting at the high neck and cuffs, at the waist and across the bodice.
She gasped and her fingers flew to the row of tiny buttons fastened at the back of her neck. Fear blocked all thoughts of the appropriate charm, one that would unhook the fastenings with oily ease. The dress could kill her with its rows of tight, neat buttons, pearly and petrous, hard like teeth. Her fingers stumbled against them.
"No," Snape said, watching her hands shift to the back of her neck, watching the collar of the dress as it loosened at her throat. "No," he said again, this time panic colored his thoughts. She mustn't do this. The garment was a barrier that must remain in place. He could not fathom her otherwise, exposed in her wretched loveliness. "No."
Snape moved only with the thought of stopping her hands. He reached around to grab them, squeezing them to stillness. He hadn't thought of the awkwardness of it: how she would be close and facing him; how her elbows would jut forth as her bent arms framed the space on either side of her head in their triangular hollows; how his hands would be tucked behind her nape.
"Do not remove this dress." It was meant as a command, but somehow once voiced it sounded distinctly like an entreaty.
"Perhaps if I told you who the dress belonged to you might help me remove it." A hysterical little chuckle escaped Narcissa's lips. "But that's what he wants."
Snape found himself unable to move. His fingers remained clenched around hers. "Is it cursed, the dress?"
"Yes, only not in the way you think—not magically," she said slowly. "I have only just come to understand. I am the curse." She expected Snape to agree but he merely looked exhausted in response. "It is the only way for him to use a woman such as me." The Dark Lord would wield her like a scourge, like a plague on men.
Snape stepped away quickly, jerking his hands from hers. "You speak of the Dark Lord? You are here at his bidding?"
"He thinks that you are a traitor, that you protect Lily's son."
Snape's lips twisted into a sneer. "I am to confess to you?"
"I believe I am to tempt you," she said wryly. She sobered however, as Voldemort's words came back to her. She paraphrased them, passed them through her own lips. "I must try," she said. "He will know if I do not try."
"Ah, and I shall bow down at your knees, lay my secrets at your feet, prove myself false?"
She nodded, but she never expected what came next.
Snape knelt. He could do it no longer. He was tired of carefully looking away from her when she had been made to look at. He was too weary to keep the barriers in place. If she was a curse then so be it. If she was a trap designed to snare him in treachery, he could no longer care. He had met Death, wrung its hand and still he walked the path of the living; a path which placed Narcissa Malfoy squarely before him.
He took her hand in his and, with unsteady fingers, unfastened the buttons of the lace cuff that circled the delicate bones of her wrist.
"Very well," he said. "I confess."
OOO
Hermione had tumbled over the edge before she could even get her bearings. Fortunately the fall was less than a meter in length, and though the abrupt landing brought her into contact with a hard stone surface, no permanent damage had been done. If anything it was the shock of the fall and the disorientation resulting from her recent reemergence into consciousness that had done the most harm. She sat bathed in the silence of a pitch black chamber, her arms weak and shaking, wholly reliant on the palms of her hands for support where they met the cold stone floor.
After a moment her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. She was sitting beside a massive bed, a tangle of sheets spilling from the edge of the high mattress. She could only assume that she'd been sleeping in that bed and that perhaps she'd dragged the sheets with her when she'd fallen.
It stood to reason. She was wearing next to nothing, a thin, sleeveless shift that left her exposed to the draught of the chamber and shivering with cold. Instinct told her to return to the bed. It was bound to provide more warmth than the shift and was certainly a softer surface than the hard stone floor.
Hermione rose up on her knees, her head cropping up over the edge of the mattress. She froze and sank down again, sitting back on her heels. There was someone in the bed.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn't matter. She knew without looking who it had to be. She'd tried so hard to prevent it.
She didn't want to open her eyes. It was foolish, she knew, but the longer they remained squeezed shut, the longer she could actively deny what she knew. How long could she draw out this moment? How long could she kneel here in self-imposed denial before she opened her eyes and let them confirm a truth, the stark reality of which would crush her?
Not long as it turned out. There was no denying the inevitable. Hermione opened her eyes and rose up on her knees once more. Draco lay on his back sleeping, his right forearm thrown across his eyes, as if he'd been trying to blot out light or perhaps some other bright, foreign reality which had threatened to wake him with its brilliance. He was partially wrapped in what remained of the sheets, but it wasn't enough to conceal his bare arms and chest or the lean calves which crept into her line of sight.
So Imogene had won. Hermione collected the linens hanging from her side of the bed, wrapped herself in them and climbed back up onto the mattress. The immediate warmth kept her from shivering but did little to dispel the sense of cold which had settled into her thoughts, making them dull and sluggish in the hopes of numbing the pain.
How could she have possibly thought to win against a dead girl? Imogene was not bound by the same laws and limits which held Hermione. Not even death had stopped her, so why was it that Hermione had imagined she could keep Draco from Imogene, could keep him to herself? And had she really thought, hoped maybe, that he would not want Imogene, that he would choose Hermione even after she had pushed him away?
She had thought all those things and only now realized how foolish she'd been to think them. Hermione was angry with him, but angrier with herself. She was smart, so bloody smart, but she'd failed to see that this was a battle she could not win.
And there he was beside her, her loss. Hermione looked at him. Then she touched him, her intent being to push him away. She no longer wanted to see him, but when her fingers caught in the skin of his stomach, in the flat ridge of muscle there, they lost their force, their intention. They settled against him and touched him with a solemn heaviness, nails dragging across his skin in a slow dirge of desire, tracing the shape of her loss in eloquent mourning.
Something brought Draco round. It was the quality of the touch, perhaps, which woke him. It was somehow different from the feel of Imogene's fingers, which he'd peeled from his skin and crushed close to her sides in utter stillness. It was elegiac, this touch, familiar, and it kindled heat in its wake. He pulled his forearm from his eyes.
"Hermione?" he asked. His eyes told him nothing that he could rely upon, but her touch made him certain. Her hands stilled at the sound of her name and she nodded.
Draco let out a breath that he hadn't known he'd been holding. It made sense that she would surface eventually, but he hadn't expected his reaction to her. He pulled her roughly on top of him, clumsy in his desperation, and leaned up to kiss her.
It didn't matter, he thought. She couldn't love him and it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Time was so short. She would leave him again. He would take this. He would take this moment.
Hermione returned his kiss, feeling his desperation, his urgency bleed into her. Something caught hold of her, the notion that she could steal this time, that it would be hers and hers alone. She knew better, knew that Imogene had uncanny access to all that she had, but that didn't stop her. She was captured by this notion, driven by this potential theft.
Hermione took him in her hands, closed her fingers around the length of him, circling him in an intimate grip. Draco sighed and wondered at her fingers, agile as any seamstress's, stitching threads of pleasure along the seams of his flesh; his body made for her hands of sturdy male cloth; rare, masculine in texture, beautiful. Like fabric he rippled and folded against her as she touched him. His shoulders hitched, shuddered as he arced toward her, his body bowed and bent taut by desire.
And he touched her, she realized, with a peculiar knowledge, not just of the body, of the human mechanism, but a knowledge of what lay inside the housing of flesh. He touched her in the only way that she could be touched, with a body so unreliable, so not wholly her own. He pulled her to the surface of herself, somehow, through the tips of his fingers on her skin.
When had he done it? When had he begun to whisper almost without sound? The words were hoarse and hard to make out—even for he whose lips formed them—but somehow he spoke them, perhaps elementally, through his body; making the inanimate animate, whispering creation, breathing life.
It wasn't a spell, wasn't an incantation, though it had the rhythms and cadences of such, but an invocation. He called to her with his breath, his life, his body and she, the willing muse, answered.
Draco saw the moment she slipped from his grasp.
"No. Don't. Stay," he whispered.
Her eyes lost focus and it was a moment before they sharpened again, a new girl surfacing despite his touch, despite his whispered words. He drew back, pushed himself away from her, his body hard, raging in protest.
Imogene's eyes raked over him, taking in the scene.
"Well, don't stop on my account," she said, touching a hand to the flush she'd inherited that ran across her cheeks.
But he did stop. He had to, even though it bloody well felt like starving. One moment more of this, one instant more of this girl who was and wasn't here, and he'd go barking mad.
OOO
It seemed like too much to touch her again. Severus Snape had been in the habit of denying himself and so was given to interpret what others might find to be a slight indulgence as gross excess. He still couldn't quite believe that Narcissa would allow him to touch her, had invited it even. And then there was the curious notion that she had touched him, and had purportedly wanted to touch him. After all, he was not made that way, not handsome. He was a mean creature, shabby of heart and intention. Why she should entertain him with her generosity, her beauty, was beyond him.
It was perhaps why he'd retired to the basement room where he often brewed potions and had at one time nursed Hermione Granger. Had it been rude, he wondered, to leave Narcissa sleeping alone in bed? Was it ungentlemanly? He was not good at this. He'd had little practice. He had never woken with a woman in his arms, and perhaps never should. It was impossible to reconcile himself—shoddy, ignoble as he was—with the whole man, the man who woke with a woman in his arms. It was not meant for him somehow.
There was a soft footfall at the threshold behind him. Snape turned to see Narcissa framed in the doorway, wrapped in an old cloak of his that was in much better repair than when he'd seen it last—Pomfrey's work no doubt.
He nodded in her direction then cleared his throat. The fact of the matter was that he was quite simply embarrassed. The sight of her and that tumbled hair clinging to her shoulders—the fact that his fingers had been in it; that its curled ends had touched his face, his chest as she rose up over him—was not easy to endure. To his horrified chagrin it stirred him even now.
Narcissa broke the silence. "Tea?" she asked.
"Yes, of course," he said, summoning the tea service. A kettle arrived along with two stone mugs, a pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar, all seemingly of their own accord. The kettle puffed gently as it brought water to a boil and whistled happily when the water was ready. Snape reached to pour, but the kettle lit out away from him, eager to pour for Narcissa itself. It did so and returned to its tray, not bothering to pour for Snape. The pitcher of cream and the sugar bowl rose to hover in front of Narcissa, awaiting her command.
"Your tea service is absolutely delightful, Severus," she said.
"Isn't it, just?" he replied through clenched teeth. "I have never seen it quite so obsequious." He reached out to pour for himself, but the kettle dodged him again, this time whistling twice in an accusatory manner. "It appears I forget my manners. Are you hungry?"
"I'm afraid so," Narcissa said softly. Before she had even finished speaking, the kettle dashed from the room. It returned several minutes later with a tray of dainty cucumber sandwiches, blueberry scones and clotted cream.
Snape looked sullenly at the offerings. He could not recall the last time the kettle had gone out of its way on his account.
"It seems the tea service is rather… pleased to have a guest," he muttered.
"Pleased? Not plagued, I hope," she said, reminding him of his earlier words.
"Decidedly not plagued. I only wonder where it is that these comestibles have come from."
"Do you?" she asked archly. "I would think you should know."
"Pomfrey," he hissed, as if her name were a curse. Angrily, he shoveled a cucumber sandwich into his mouth.
"She's quite the efficient housekeeper, Severus. You really ought to marry her."
Snape choked, the aforementioned sandwich in his mouth making a hasty exit into his remarkably clean cloth napkin. "WHAT?"
"I am teasing, Severus. I had only thought that now it might be okay for me to… tease you a little."
"I do not like to be teased," he said gruffly.
"Clearly, it does not agree with you."
"I am…sorry, Narcissa."
"No, I am," she said, setting down her mug. "I don't know why I thought that this could simply be tea—not between an adulteress and a traitor. I should have known better." It had been nice though, that brief moment of pretend.
Narcissa clasped her fingers together in her lap. She was at a loss as to how to proceed and it showed in her perfect posture—back straight, shoulders down, chin up—the only thing she could control when everything else was in question.
"I do not wish to serve him," she said quietly, "but it appears that I have done just that. The Dark Lord will take my memories and use them to betray those closest to me."
It was true. He would, Snape thought. Voldemort would press the boundaries of her mind until he breached them, flay her thoughts and lay them bare, forcibly extract them to expose the details of this night. The Dark Lord would live them again, those details; insinuate his presence into those close moments when one should turn away, avert one's eyes out of modesty, privacy, respect for the space between two people, the diminishing distance between their bodies, the moment when that distance dissolves, ceases to exist, and they are held apart by nothing. Three is indeed a crowd, even in a Pensieve; especially in the process of Leglimency—the reliving, reviving—the second life of memory.
Is that how Voldemort cheated death? How he ate it? By living others' lives anew through memory? By consuming those memories as his own, devouring them?
Snape could not let that happen. He would not forfeit his memories, nor let her forfeit hers. They were too dear to him. They were the stuff of his second life: this tense, tenuous time since his initial death. They were his all and only—his memories of this night. They were, he realized as he turned his eyes to her, what he lived for.
OOO
The stone lay heavily in Harry's pocket. It was the only one of the hallows that he couldn't easily destroy, and that was just as well, for he sensed, if not fully understood, that it served a purpose other than his own. Something about the weight of it, its heft when he held it in his fingers, convinced him that its fate lay elsewhere. He'd been meant to carry it perhaps, to contemplate its igneous rind between the tips of his fingers, but it wasn't for him to expose the fleshy, pulpy magic which lay within.
It was this certainty which drove him to find her. Harry stopped in the corridor to consult the Marauder's Map. Hermione had been absent from the map these past two days, but late this afternoon Draco Malfoy's name had appeared on the surface of the worn parchment and, as Harry had suspected, Hermione's name along with it.
The last time Harry had seen Hermione on the map there'd been two of her. Now there was only one, but that one was dubious in nature. The letters of Hermione's name were faint and faded nearly to illegibility. They seemed mixed up somehow, with the I at the start of her name followed by the M, then the O. Several of the other letters had almost disappeared completely, yet the general shape of her name remained intact, its ghostly outline visible on the yellowed surface of the paper.
Harry started walking again as he followed Draco and Hermione on the map. They'd come to a stop in the seventh floor hallway. He quickened his pace, hoping to reach them in the next few moments, when suddenly they vanished.
Harry stopped. They couldn't have Apparated, not from inside the school. Hermione had told him as much from her repeated readings of Hogwarts: A History. He rounded a corner and found himself in the now empty corridor from which they had just vanished. There was no sign of them.
It was the kind of puzzle Hermione would have relished and no doubt solved in a matter of moments, but as she was at the center of this mystery, Harry was unable to seek her guidance. Instead he stood in the middle of the corridor amid a growing sense of frustration. His eyes scanned the hall looking for anything out of the ordinary. It was a typical Hogwarts corridor, full of chatty, unobservant portraits and rusty suits of armor, yet there was something familiar about it.
Suddenly it occurred to him: the Room of Requirement. This was the hall. This was the place. He had only to think of what he needed, what he required, and the room would appear. He stood utterly still, staring at the wall. I need to find Hermione,he thought. I need to know. I need answers. I need not to be the Chosen One. I need. I need. His thoughts came in a rush. It was vague at best, not nearly as specific as the room required, but it was all he could think. He could only hope that the room had spent years listening to the shadowy yearnings of adolescents and that it would somehow, in its accumulated wisdom, understand.
Sure enough a door materialized in front of him. Harry stepped through into a space of boundless clutter; things lost, things forgotten. How he would find anything in this place, let alone Hermione, was a mystery. It seemed designed especially to inhibit a search, if not thwart one altogether. He stood still inside the threshold, thinking that the room had a particularly perverse sense of humor.
In the stillness however, he heard footsteps. Harry worked his way toward the sound as quietly as he could, skirting piles of neglected objects, odds-and-ends and bric-a-brac, the varied detritus cast off by generation after generation of Hogwarts students. He rounded one particularly daunting aisle of debris and found himself face to face with Draco Malfoy, who stood beside a large, open cabinet.
Harry fell back immediately and jerked his wand from his pocket. Draco eyed him disdainfully for a moment, before he said in a rather bored drawl, "What do you want, Potter? I'm busy fulfilling my destiny or some such. And speaking of destinies, shouldn't you be about yours?"
Harry looked from Draco, to the tall, oblong box beside him, and back to Draco again. "Where's Hermione?" he asked.
"That is the question, isn't it?" Draco sighed. "I seem to recall I asked you that once. You weren't helpful in the least."
"I don't have time for this, Malfoy."
"Neither do I. I don't have the time, Potter. I've only just re-opened this passage and there are Death Eaters anxious to use it. So perhaps that's where she is, in the passage, or perhaps not. Who can say where the lady really goes once you've disappeared her? It's the mystery that makes the trick so delicious."
Harry's grip tightened on his wand. He opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again promptly as Hermione appeared in the open cabinet. Harry reacted purely on instinct. He jumped forward, pushed Draco aside and slammed the cabinet shut, throwing his weight against it, until he realized that there was a charm that would accomplish the feat of sealing it closed.
"Have you gone barmy, Potter?" Draco roared.
A frantic pounding came from inside the box. Harry backed away from it but kept his wand trained on its closure. "Who is she?" Harry asked.
"Don't be daft," Draco said.
"Tell me, Malfoy, which one is she? I need Hermione."
Draco couldn't answer him. He didn't rightly know. He stared hard at the sealed cabinet. It was Imogene who'd stepped into it, but there was no knowing who she was from one moment to the next. And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? It was a second rate magician's trick gone awry. Put the girl in the box and she disappears, but she always returns the same girl. Saw her in half and she's always whole again, never two halves for all eternity.
The pounding continued, and her voice, hoarse, called out to them.
Draco took a step forward and faltered. His feet stuttered to a stop, a crippling setback along the well-worn path of his fate. Who was he hoping would emerge from the cabinet? Imogene, who'd been bred as he had, raised to bear the mark, or Hermione, for whom he'd been willing to shirk his fate, stray from his path? He thought he'd given Hermione up—or perhaps it was she who'd given up on him, unable to love him as she was—but then she had slipped through Imogene and touched him and called everything into question.I need Hermione, Potter had said, and it struck Draco how dearly he wanted those words for his own.
The box had fallen silent. Draco wasn't sure when it had happened—he'd been lost in his own thoughts. It was the sound of her voice, at last, which drew him to the present.
"Ask me something," she said.
Harry and Draco exchanged a glance, finding instant solidarity in their confusion.
"Ask me something that only I know—me—Hermione."
Harry thought a moment, searching his memories for details. Hermione was good at details. She kept them close, lived them in a way that most people didn't.
"My O.W.L.s," Harry said. "What did I get on my O.W.L.s?"
Draco couldn't resist. "Easy enough to guess your grades, Potter: a smattering of Dreadfuls amidst a slew of Trolls." He didn't see what the point of such a question was. After all, who remembered someone else's grades?
Harry chose to ignore Draco. The room grew quiet. The two boys strained their ears against the silence until finally they heard her shift inside the cabinet. She drew a breath and began to recite the results of Harry James Potter's achievements on his Ordinary Wizarding Levels, from the O in Defense Against the Dark Arts to the D in History of Magic. "And you easily could have had a passing grade in History of Magic if you'd just once opened Talcott's Annotated History of the Goblin Wars—"
"—That's Hermione," Harry said. He moved to unlock the cabinet with a flick of his wand, but Draco stepped forward, blocking his path.
"Wait a minute, Potter. She may have proven herself to you, but I've got a question of my own." Draco turned to the box, addressing the girl inside. "Answer it truthfully and I'll know you by your answer. Lie to me and I'll know you better still." He walked up to the cabinet and leaned against it, placing his palms flat against the door. "Do you love me?" he asked.
Harry blinked in surprise. It wasn't at all the question he'd expected from Draco Malfoy.
Hermione's breath caught. She felt Draco's weight against the cabinet. She heard his voice as it leaked through the wooden seam of the box, muffled, removed, yet startlingly close. It was already too small a space with the door closed, barely room for her to turn with her arms akimbo, and his voice encroached on the remaining space. His words grew large, filling every spare centimeter, each scant idle inch. There was no room to avoid them. They would flush out her answer whether she wanted it or not. He'd left her no room, no margin or gutter, eliminated the periphery necessary for evasion, for escape.
Hermione smoothed the wetness from her cheeks. She sighed and said simply, "Yes."
Draco drew his wand and unlocked the cabinet.
Harry looked away. He couldn't explain it, but he knew that this moment wasn't his to see. It was shocking, then, to find Hermione in his arms. Her hands traced the frames of his glasses and touched his face gently.
"Harry, thank Merlin you're alright!" she said relieved. "She didn't harm you, did she?"
Draco stared at the two of them in stony silence. His face hardened into an implacable mask and there was no disguising the bitter hurt and anger in his eyes.
"What, no warm welcome for me, love?" he asked.
OOO
It was perhaps the waiting that was the worst part. Narcissa stood in the drawing room at the manor, awaiting the Dark Lord's presence. He wouldn't keep her waiting long, she knew. He was eager to sift her memories of Snape, but every minute that passed was a torturous exercise in tedium.
She caught a glimpse of her face reflected in the windows on the eastern wall of the room. The dying light outside gave substance to her reflection: pale hair pulled tight into a bun at her nape; and her face, angles and shadows; a feminine chiaroscuro created by liner, smudging and paint, revealing dark-rimmed eyes framed by long, sooty lashes; a contrast to the usual soft, pale, blonde fringe. It was a harsh beauty, sharpened to a purpose.
So armed, Narcissa waited. It was only a matter of time before he arrived and then they would see. They would see if the Dark Lord was deceived by the memories Snape had altered. They would see if he consumed them without suspicion—those thoughts which had been tailored to his dark, clamorous appetite.
It was to her credit that she did not turn when she heard the door open behind her. Instead she waited an instant longer—waited when waiting had become nearly unbearable—until she felt the change in the room, felt the air shift with the urgent, crackling energy of a presence that, while familiar, was decidedly not the presence of the Dark Lord.
"Bella," Narcissa said, astonished.
Bellatrix Lestrange darted into the room. She closed the door behind her furtively, Narcissa would have said judging from her movements, and yet the door sprang from the woman's grasp and collided with the jamb with such a resounding crack that there could be nothing furtive about it. It was like Bella to attempt the thing, and then somehow in the doing, produce its opposite. Despite her best intentions she slammed doors.
"Greetings and salutations, Cissy," Bellatrix said, tilting her head slightly as though listening to Narcissa's reply before she'd had the chance to speak it.
"What are you doing here, Bella?"
"What am I doing here? I should think it would be obvious, Cissy. He has sent me." Narcissa studied her sister, the gleaming eyes, the unruly dark locks which strayed over her shoulders. There was something about her, her dark dress slightly askew, a cuff torn, flapping carelessly from her wrist. It was as though Bellatrix were coming undone, as though every time Narcissa saw her, some part of her was out of place. It was troubling that Bella didn't seem to notice it; that she neglected herself; let things slip and lapse and stray.
"Who has sent you?" Narcissa asked.
"Why the Dark Lord, of course. He wants me to see to your memories." Bellatrix danced toward her sister, fingers outstretched. "Come now, I'm going to filch your thoughts, suck them right out through my fingertips."
"Don't be silly, Bella. The Dark Lord wouldn't have sent you. You're not a Leglimens."
"You're not a Legilmens," Bellatrix parroted, her voice a high, shrill imitation of her sister's, thin and mean. "Silly, Bella, thinking she's a Leglimens. But you should know, Cissy. You should know that there are other ways of getting information."
Bellatrix produced her wand from the folds of her dress, twirled it lazily around her fingers.
Sadness formed a lump in Narcissa's throat. Bella hadn't always been this way. She hadn't always neglected herself, her humanity, for the pleasure of cruelty. She hadn't always spoken in threats.
"Don't you want to share, Cissy? Don't you want to share your memories?"
Narcissa turned away from her.
"Frightened, is it? That's what happens when you send a girl to do a woman's job," Bella hissed. "And why he should have chosen you I cannot fathom. Ever since we were little they have always chosen you. I cannot see it. So pale and fragile, fine-boned they said. Narcissa Black, how like a doll. How like a delicate porcelain doll. And they couldn't see what I see: so vapid and mealy, effete."
"Stop it, Bella."
"Stop it, Bella. They favored you. They all did. And Lucius, what did Lucius see in you? I was never sure. Did he want to fuck you or merely keep you on display, in a curio somewhere; a curiosity to behold?" Bellatrix's eyes glittered with unhealthy light. They gleamed, rabid and feverish, a zealot's eyes. "What is it those filthy Muggles say, a penny for your thoughts? A penny, a pound, it's all the same. I'll have them all the same—your thoughts—for a pound, for pain."
Narcissa felt it coming even before the movement of Bella's wrist confirmed her worst suspicions. She dove behind the settee. The curse flew high and just wide of her, burning a hole in the mantle of the hearth. Wood splintered and crashed to floor.
Narcissa threw up her arms to protect her head and crouched low behind the settee. She listened for movement, for her opponent's breathing, for any sign of an attack to come. It hadn't truly registered that her opponent was her sister; she couldn't let it, she needed to keep that thought at bay.
With her wand trembling in her fingers, Narcissa peered around the settee and cast a Stunner. It missed and Bellatrix returned a quick volley of curses, some of them Unforgiveables, others Narcissa couldn't even recognize. She crouched lower, peered under the settee, aiming for her sister's feet.
"Expelliarmus," Narcissa said.
Bellatrix danced aside. "Really, Cissy? Footsie, is it?" She twirled her wand wildly and hurled another curse. It missed Narcissa by mere inches. Enraged, Bellatrix leaped over the settee, landing squarely on her younger sister. They rolled on the ancient carpet, Bellatrix kicking and clawing, Narcissa suddenly truly livid, suddenly possessed enough to jab her wand into her sister's ribs point-blank and hiss for all she was worth, "Crucio."
Bella's eyes widened in shock and her body grew rigid as pain rippled through her. She said in astonished wonder, "Look at you, Cissy. You finally found something worth fighting for." And then she howled, writhing on the floor.
Startled, Narcissa withdrew her wand, but Bellatrix continued to shriek, the sound piercing her ears.
"Bella?" Narcissa gasped, her voice fraught with concern. "Bella?" Narcissa shook her sister gently, but Bella's body remained rigid in her grasp.
At last, the wailing dissolved into hysterical giggles.
"He calls," Bellatrix said, and thrust out her left arm. Narcissa saw the inky black mark twist and contort itself on the pale surface of her sister's skin. "He calls," Bellatrix said again, as she kicked free of Narcissa's grasp and scrabbled to her feet. "I won't be late," she whispered to herself. "The devoted are never late."
Bellatrix touched her wand to the mark and disappeared.
Narcissa stared at the empty space where moments ago her sister had been. She closed her eyes, squeezed them shut against the ghostly image which hung in the air before her: a Cheshire image of her sister's dark, crooked grin.
OOO
Hermione stepped out of Harry's arms. She turned to Draco, whose words were as unkind as his face. She said nothing to him. She had said all there was to say with the wall of the cabinet between them.
In the silence Harry looked from Hermione to Draco. Dumbledore said that he had put them together—Miss Granger and Mr. Malfoy—but he hadn't mentioned what held them together. Now, seeing them, Harry had an inkling of what that might be: their ability to wound each other.
For while Hermione looked small, isolated even in her vulnerability, and Draco's face was thunderous, neither one could turn away from the other. They were drawn to each other. Draco listed toward her, almost imperceptibly, as much as he wanted to keep himself apart.
Harry didn't want to think on it. He found himself not quite jealous, but possessive. Hermione was his, a part of him, and Draco had clearly hurt her. It was enough to propel him forward into the other boy's path. He would've cursed him, at the very least put his hands on him, if Hermione hadn't put herself between them, staying Harry with a hand on his chest.
"Not now," she said. "We don't have time."
Harry fell back. He could see Draco behind her, arrogant as ever, still as stone.
"What is it, Harry?" Hermione asked. "You were looking for me."
Harry took a breath and then plunged a hand into his pocket. He drew out the stone, holding it out to her on the flat of his palm.
"I came to give you this," he said, "the Resurrection Stone." And then the words tumbled out, all of them, everything Dumbledore had said about prophesies and hallows, death and sacrifice.
Hermione shook her head. "I can't take this."
"You have to," Harry said urgently. "Snape said there was no other way."
"He told you to give me the stone?"
"No, I… I just did it."
"What exactly did Snape say, Harry? About me and… her."
Harry dragged his fingers through his hair, agitated.
"Kill the vessel," he said, not remembering precisely, but knowing that the word vessel had been used. It was such an odd choice, that word. It put him in mind of a ship, not a person, not a body, a human with a soul. But then it was Snape who'd been talking and given that he supposed it made sense. Snape himself was, after all, dark, obtuse, full of bits of odd phrase and malice.
"Kill the vessel," Hermione echoed, lost in thought.
Harry nodded, hoping that he'd got it right and that there wasn't another reason why he'd offered those words. The phrase sounded eerily similar to the one that haunted his dreams: Kill the spare.
After a moment, Hermione spoke. "I won't take it, Harry. There's another way. I've just got to find it."
"You've got to take it. You don't have a choice," Harry argued. "I'm sick of people dying for me!"
"But you don't get to choose," Hermione said. "Whoever told you that you get to choose?"
"I'm afraid she's right, Potter," Draco said. "That's the thing about being the Chosen One; others do the choosing for you."
What happened next happened so quickly that Hermione was barely able to register it all. Draco drew his wand and hexed Harry, leaving him doubled over and gasping for air. He grabbed Harry by the front of his shirt and angled him toward the cabinet with his wand thrust painfully beneath Harry's chin. Hermione drew her own wand but quickly stilled when several cloaked, hooded figures poured forth from the open cabinet.
"So it works," the first figure said. He pushed back his hood. It took Hermione a moment to place him: Nott. "It took you long enough, Draco, but that's neither here nor there now, is it? Lead the way." Nott stepped forward, but Draco shook his head.
"I'm afraid there's been a change of plans." He nodded to Harry, who sagged in his grip. "Now that I've got Potter, I'm taking him directly to the Dark Lord at the manor."
"But the school?" Nott asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Pointless, really. Only valuable as a stronghold for Dumbledore and his sympathizers."
"Dumbledore's dead then?"
"No, but he will be," Draco answered. "He'll come for Potter, no doubt. He's as good as dead."
Another hood fell back, revealing Dolohov. "I don't like it," he said.
"What's not to like?" Draco asked. Despite the interrogative form, it wasn't a question. It was a warning.
Dolohov eyed Draco suspiciously. "I'll take the boy then."
Hermione moved to stop the Death Eater, though he hadn't stepped forward to make good on his assertion.
"What's this?" Bellatrix Lestrange said, as she pushed back her hood. "The mudblood's had a makeover?"
"Mudblood?" Draco asked, his eyes drifting lazily to Hermione. "Ah, it's not quite what you think, Aunt Bella—or perhaps I should say, who you think."
"A mudblood's a mudblood, Darling Nephew," Bellatrix replied with an airy laugh.
"Except that this one's a pureblood."
"What?" Bellatrix said. "Whatever do you mean?" She crossed to Hermione and pinched the girl's arm. Hermione jumped, but managed to keep from crying out.
"Really, Bellatrix, do you wish to draw her blood and question it?" Nott said, annoyed.
"This is Imogene LeCoeur," Draco explained. "She's taken over Granger."
"You mean Polyjuice, with a touch of the Imperius, perhaps?" Bellatrix's eyes grew wide in delight.
"Yes, yes, the old Barty Crouch, can we get on with it?" Dolohov said. He stepped forward and snatched Harry from Draco's grasp.
"Alright then, it's back to Knockturn Alley and then to the manor. Tell the others they needn't come through," Nott said to Dolohov. The latter nodded and disappeared into the cabinet with Harry. Nott and Bellatrix followed.
Hermione stood stunned, staring at Draco. He pushed her in front of him and she stumbled toward the cabinet.
"You played your role perfectly, Granger. I knew Potter would come looking for you, and clearly it's Potter I want. It's Potter that seals my future." His lips twisted then into something between a grin and a grimace; not kind enough to be a smirk, not cruel enough to be a sneer. "Come along, then, if you want. Maybe Imogene saves you. As for myself, I can't say that I will."
Hermione stared into the hard lines of Draco's face. Heavily, she stepped into the cabinet, into the unknown, a destination as unfamiliar as the boy who now stood behind her.