Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).
ooo
When Draco wakes, the moon is high and its silvery, colorless light throws deep-black shadows: they hide the figures in the Persian carpet on the floor, the roses in their vase, the deep high ceiling of his room… and his first thought is for Hypatia, who might not be safe.
"Three Squibs, one stillborn, and one who lived four hours and had seven fingers on each hand."
Being a Squib isn't fatal in itself. What happened to his three older siblings? (He doesn't even know if they're brothers or sisters.)
The night before, assisted into the arms of sleep by three glasses of firewhiskey, he hadn't woken until just before dawn. Now it seems he never will sleep again, for it lacks half an hour of midnight, and he's wide awake.
Three Squibs, and his mother will not say what happened to them.
It's women's business, men's business, something the grownups don't discuss in front of the children.
He wanted to scream that he is a grownup now, he's foster-father to his baby sister; didn't she say so herself…?
He doesn't want to wake Hypatia, so instead he whispers it, in a low hoarse voice that hurts his throat. He feels the tears coming on, because he suspects the answer.
No, it wasn't his mother who bound him to his duties as foster-father. It was his mother who hid from him the letters from Pansy, for reasons of political necessity, so she said, for the sake of the Line and the House and indeed his own future outside of Azkaban.
As if it would have made a difference, actually… it was Potter's testimony that had saved him, and Kingsley Shacklebolt's determination that the sins of the father would not be visited on the son. Pansy might be vilified for what she said about handing over Potter to Voldemort, but she was not a defendant in the war crimes trial.
What makes him most ashamed about the whole business with Pansy is that he barely remembers it. Only the flash of warmth, her hands on his face, her dry lips on his—a little rough because it was winter, or early spring (which are much the same at Hogwarts, particularly that year), and they were chapped—and her thighs grasping him about the hips… that he remembers, tender skin against skin, warmth and softness under the scratchy veil of her layers of black lace… for it was furtive, his robes pushed up and hers draped over them by way of cover…
He remembers much better the fear, and the sense of temporary respite. In the dark of the night, he weeps because all the while that he's been trying to do right by family, by his mother's child, he unknowingly abandoned his own, condemned it to death. (No, he knows that's not the literal truth, but that's how it feels.)
He realizes that he doesn't even know if it were a boy or a girl. Pansy didn't tell him.
The child who never would have lived more than a few days… has no sex, in death. Just like his Squib siblings, and the stillborn, and the short-lived, malformed one: only "it," the way that an unsuccessful attempt is "it." Without sex, without name. Except that even in death, Pansy's child ought to have borne his name, the name of the line from which it was fathered.
And he'd never properly paid attention to Pansy either, for she'd always been there, from the time he was four years old. He's not sure if he can say that he loved her, just as he doesn't give that name to his feeling for his mother or his father, because they have been there since the founding of the world.
It's only with Hypatia that he has come to use that word: because she is something new in the world, and she is his, blood of his blood and bone of his bone, the same stuff as he. They have the same mother and the same father, though he has proudly stepped in to be the foster-father. When Andromeda spoke that title, she had his assent before he even spoke it.
That cold, and fear, still grips his heart as he thinks about the conversation with his mother.
There is no warmth, no respite: anything at all might happen to his little sister if she doesn't measure up. What truly matters is enforced by binding vows, and his mother will not or cannot speak of the agreement. It's women's business, or men's business; it's something not spoken in front of the children, and to her he's a child. He remembers the things he learned in that courtroom, that come back to him now that he is not paralyzed with fear for his own fate: that she blackmailed Severus Snape into the Unbreakable Vow, to protect him on his mission of assassination; that she lied to the Dark Lord; that she gave him her wand so that he would be armed, and then did not hesitate to charge unarmed into the maelstrom of the Battle of Hogwarts in search of him.
He is his mother's treasure, but she never will tell him the truth. All of that was hidden from him.
However, there are other sources of information, who might speak frankly to him.
ooo
It's midnight, and he's standing in Diagon Alley, at the doorway that leads to the little flat over Flourish & Blott's, or rather, the little side-room that's the premises of Andromdeda Tonks, bookseller and purveyor of Muggle novelties.
He rings the bell, and waits.
After a few minutes, she comes down the staircase with a book in one hand, her fingers still holding the place.
(He glimpsed the title: Middlemarch, by George Eliot. Muggle, of course: only Muggles have time and leisure to write such fat books. All made up, so he understands, conjured out of empty air. His aunt insists that Muggles do magic quite regularly, between the covers of books.)
She's weary but patient with him, and she has the strangest air of having expected his visit. When she sees that he's carrying Hypatia, she smiles indulgently and strokes the baby's curled fist with one long forefinger. The smile is melancholy, or perhaps it's the look in her eyes.
He's surprisingly frank with her: he's come to see her in her capacity as family rebel, and because he is so seized with fear that he cannot sleep. Anything at all might happen to his little sister. He needs to know the whys and wherefores, and whence to expect the danger.
ooo
By lamplight, in her tiny kitchen, Andromeda's resemblance to Bellatrix shows in the dramatic bone structure and the heavy-lidded, deep-set eyes, but is negated by the dress and the manner. She's wearing a dressing-gown of Muggle cut, over what he understands are Muggle men's pyjamas, and her hair, dark only by contrast with her pale skin, is looped in a heavy plait over one shoulder.
He asks the question plainly, "What happens to Squibs?" He's heard Granger remarking to Longbottom that wizards don't do statistics, but he does have some notion of the gambler's logic; the things that his mother has told him do not bode well for Hypatia.
At first Andromeda hedges, and says she never came to that part, never was initiated into the blood vows of a Pureblood marriage contract. By traditional standards, she is not in fact a daughter of the House of Black.
He contradicts her, fearlessly: she must be such, because she acknowledges him as her nephew, and she bound him to his duty as a foster-father.
No, she corrects, she offered it as an option, and it was not binding. He was the one who chose.
Her sister acknowledges her, he adds.
No, it's rather the other way around. But Cissy has no one left, and you don't abandon your little sister to her fate no matter how many bad decisions have led her there.
He says that he agrees on that, and he can say the same of his own little sister. He can't guard her from danger if he can't sleep, and he needs to know whence the danger will come. No one has told him anything.
There's a silence, and he has the inescapable feeling that she's been testing him, and that he's passed the test.
She tells him that she did receive some warning in advance. From cousin Callidora, as it happens, the one who writes the gardening and household magic books, the one who used to have the gardening column in the Daily Prophet.
The one who suspected, before she did herself, that she was in love with Ted Tonks.
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Her voice is reminiscent as she sets the scene for him: summer, the long warm summer of her sixteenth year; Cissy was fourteen, and Lucius had begun paying court, after his fashion, watching in admiration as Cissy and Bella circled each other in the disused ballroom, hour on hour, at their dueling practice; afterward, with stiff formality, Lucius invited Cissy to promenade the formal gardens with him. The Lestrange brothers were courting Bella, though she had not chosen. Andromeda watched the whole thing in fascination. She's been a watcher all her life.
Something about the way she says it makes it a title: she's been a Watcher all her life.
Cousin Callidora was visiting, because her woman friend had a cottage nearby. Of course, Andromeda adds parenthetically, the woman friend was Callidora's real marriage; Harfang Longbottom was her cover, as she was his. And then there were the greenhouses, which they both loved.
(It's a measure of Andromeda's alienation from Pureblood ways, that she speaks plainly about cousin Callidora. Draco knows it, as everyone knows it, but he winces at the bad form of putting it into words.)
Callidora drank tea with Druella, and watched the girls at their dueling, and smiled at Andromeda as she watched. After tea, as Druella went to chaperone Cissy and Lucius in the gardens, she'd spoken, rather offhandedly.
"You'll be well shut of it," she said. Years later Andromeda realized that it…was the whole Pureblood way of life, though Callidora didn't spell that out in so many words. "It won't be easy, but at least you'll be able to keep your children… however they might turn out."
Andromeda was more than surprised, because she hadn't been listening, really, but lost in reverie—oddly enough, day-dreaming about the funny Muggle-born boy with whom she'd been flirting (and rather more) those last months at Hogwarts. Callidora had laughed, in that canny, grown-up way that was more than annoying.
"He's not one of ours, is he?"
She had to ask Callidora, how it was she came to that conclusion: that it was a question of a boy, and a Muggle-born boy at that.
"Because you and your little sister are wearing the very same expression. And I would know if you'd taken a Pureblood beau, now wouldn't I?"
She didn't deny it, of course, because she was more interested in what else Callidora had said. "What did you mean, that I would be able to keep my children?"
"Not that it's likely a Muggle-born would father Squibs on you, but even if he did… you'd be under no obligation." Callidora looked up, at the distant gardens where Cissy and Lucius were visible, intermittently, as flashes of blond hair between dark hedges. "Now your sister, she'll have it easier than you, but only on the surface of things."
Callidora was no Seer, but one didn't need prophetic powers; for a daughter of the House of Black and a son of the House of Malfoy, the path was already laid out. That summer, the joint petition of Druella Black and Abraxas Malfoy was working its way through the Wizengamot. By the time that Cissy boarded the Hogwarts Express to begin her fourth year, she and Lucius would be formally betrothed.
Draco frowns; there's so much left out of this tale, for all the revelations.
Andromeda pours him another measure of firewhiskey and pulls down a large, dusty book from the shelf. It's an album of photographs; she turns the stiff pages until she's found what she seeks, and wordlessly places the album in front of him.
There is his mother, splendid in her sunlit beauty, oddly enough wearing a head-scarf pulled forward to shade her face like a cowl; there's a plump, contented blond toddler on her lap, who must be him…
… and a skinny little girl with blue hair who monopolizes him, in the next picture; and then in the next, he's tottering after her on his chubby little legs as she shoulders her broom. In the next picture, he's sitting astride the broom in front of her, as she puts his hands on the shaft in the correct position.
He looks up from the pictures to Andromeda's expectant face. "She only met you once, but she wanted to take you home," she says with a smile. He frowns. "Nymphadora. Cissy was so envious, and the First War had just finished, and I couldn't resist rubbing it in a bit, because I had a daughter who was magical from the moment she was born, and Cissy… well, she'd put in an appearance to show you off."
Draco feels the coldness in his stomach, again, in spite of the warming liquor. "She told me there were five before me."
Andromeda nods. "Every one died at the age of three, except for the ones who didn't make it that far." She looks at him. "In a traditional house, they wouldn't have told you until your wedding night. But that's why you came to see me, isn't it? Age three. You won't have to worry about it until she's three, and then only if she hasn't shown any sign of magic."
"And if that happens…?" He still can't say it aloud: if she's a Squib…
"Before her third birthday, we'll be sure you and Hypatia are elsewhere." She says, "Cissy asked me if I'd help her honor the contract, and I told her my name wasn't Malfoy, or Black either."
Draco nods.
"You're the foster-father. There's no obligation on you. Your mother, on the other hand…"
It makes him sick, to realize that for the first time in his life he's afraid of his mother.
"…she'll do her duty, even if it breaks her heart."
ooo
He sits a while in silence, considering that. Once, he would have hearkened to that word, "duty," but he's taken on too many duties so-called that have left him with nightmares and the taste of ashes.
Then, as if to change the subject, he asks what she knows of her late husband's brother's daughter.
She frowns. "My husband only had one brother." He nods, as if to say, yes, I know he's not a wizard. "He runs a pub in London. His daughter…" and now she's looking at him, "…his daughter will take over the place, like as not, when he retires." Her frown gives way to an expression more definitely quizzical, and then something in his face incites her, and she begins to laugh. "Oh, dear. Oh, my. When Cissy kicks over the traces she does it with a vengeance. Surely not…"
He's annoyed now, because she's treating it as a joke at his expense. "So who is she? And how old is she?"
"Just about your age… eighteen? Nineteen? She's a Muggle, of course, but she does know our ways. Nymphadora corrupted her, fairly thoroughly… as if her father hadn't already." She smirks. "Eddie and Ted paid for the pub, you know, with his World Cup winnings…" She adds, unnecessarily, "Quidditch, mind you. Not football."
He says, "My mother wants an introduction." His humiliation is complete, but perhaps his rebel aunt can help him forestall the last of it.
He can't look at her as he adds, "For the sake of the family."
His mother wants to marry him off to his cousin-by-marriage, whom he's never met, who's a Muggle, and he's not the Heir of the House of Malfoy but its breeding stock, and he's woefully flawed. Pansy won't have him on that account. Either of them, on their own, might be able to try their luck elsewhere, as that Healer so crudely put it, but together, they're deadly.
And then there's the present matter… Draco feels the breathing weight of Hypatia asleep against his chest, and wishes he himself could return to childhood.
"About the Squibs," he says, "do you really know, or is it only rumor?"
Andromeda looks at him, eyes dark in their sockets, and there's a chill in the room as Bellatrix Lestrange is momentarily resurrected in her cold, erect posture and look of fire and steel.
When finally she speaks, it's slowly, in a low voice, as if there still were someone who might overhear.
They had compared notes as adults, she and her cousin Sirius, and what they'd put together from things overheard in the men's and the women's quarters led her to believe that it was true: that certain great Pureblood Houses did in fact cull their Squibs in the most literal sense possible, that no child survived beyond the age of three who did not demonstrate unmistakable magical ability.
What's more, Sirius had seen the great ledgers in his father's library, on the sly as always; if he hadn't had help, a borrowed aid he wouldn't specify, he'd have been seen reading them.
His face had been white as a sheet, and his eyes wide, when he'd told her what was written into her sisters' marriage contracts.
The House of Black cut off their Squibs, but the Lestranges and the Malfoys culled theirs.
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It's past two in the morning, and he can't settle into sleep. Everything in his room stares back at him, malevolently, the roses and the Persian rug accusing: are you a traitor to the House of Malfoy? He thinks of his dead and disowned cousins, Nymphadora who wanted to adopt him and Sirius who read the family ledgers on the sly, and envies them their freedom. They didn't care that they were traitors, or (in Nymphadora's case) both nonexistent and a bastard.
Hypatia is sleeping soundly, but he takes her up, and walks as if he were trying to soothe her into sleep, when it's himself he's trying to lullaby with the reassuring thought that all will be well.
He's the only one of the first six who survives. What are Hypatia's chances?
Now he wants to take up Granger's suggestion that he take her to a Muggle Healer for examination; if she's a perfectly healthy baby, even if a Squib, then she could pass for a Muggle, couldn't she? And what would be the harm of that?
His mother.
His mother won't permit it. She's done for all the others, so why not this one?
Because if she lets it go in this case, if she lets a Squib live, then she'll remember that the others didn't survive… and in any case, she's likely compelled.
ooo
It's past three in the morning, closer to four, when he materializes in the quiet street outside the Granger house. Light shines from the kitchen windows. It's probably Hermione, having breakfast, because she wakes every morning at this time.
The morning air is cool, August mellowing into September, and he remembers the bustling crowds at King's Cross on the first of September; all those Muggles you have to dodge to get to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. All those Muggles. He has a cousin-by-marriage who's a Muggle, the daughter of a publican, and that's the best marriage prospect he has at present.
He's about to ring the bell when he hears the voices through the open window: a man and a woman, conversing in low tones and laughing. At first he thinks it must be the Granger parents, for the woman's voice is in the right register to be Madam Granger… except that the man's accent is wrong, no, it's all warm round vowels and swallowed consonants, what would be lilting and musical if it weren't just wrong—certainly not William Granger's carefully correct, BBC news-reader's version of the Queen's English.
It's not Madam Granger, but her daughter.
And the man is Neville bloody Longbottom.
And what they're saying to each other he doesn't want to hear.
He can't help looking in the window, though, and indeed it is Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom, and they're both sunburnt—well, Neville's always sunburnt, in a patch across the nose when he's forgotten his gardener's hat. His scars show livid on his cheekbones through his darkened skin…
… and Hermione is bronzed, a dark beauty, copper showing in her hair and gold in her complexion and for the first time he wonders whence hail her ancestors, the Mediterranean or the Levant or perhaps even the West Indies. Her hair flies around her face like a mane, and she's made no attempt to bind it or slick it down; her sleeveless blouse is slipping down her shoulder, and her legs are bare. She's as wild as a Muggle, but she's a witch, oh god, a real witch, his own kind, but he can't have her, it's a social impossibility, and besides she's not interested in him, but in Neville Longbottom of all people.
It wouldn't taste quite so bitter if she were with Harry, for he's more than inured to being humiliated by Harry.
Neville and Hermione are laughing, because apparently they walked in on her parents… well, in other than a parental aspect, and they're both uneasy, and it's better to pretend that it's amusing than to admit… well, it's better to have Apparated home, which apparently they did, having left the elder Grangers to their amours in the holiday spot somewhere on the Mediterranean. (Draco hadn't even known that they'd gone on holiday.)
They're sitting on the couch, under the civilized lamplight, both in shorts and sandals and bare legs… he stares, which isn't right, because bare legs are definitely not a proper Pureblood manner of dress, and there are two pairs of them—hers, sturdy and muscular and his, the same on a rather larger scale… and Neville has drawn her down on his lap and she's laughing and kissing him, her unfastened sandal dangling from one toe, his hand on her knee.
You'll be able to keep your children, however they might turn out.
He hates them, and envies them, with a ferocity he hasn't felt since Hogwarts, when Potter turned down his overtures of friendship, when Slytherin was cheated out of the House Cup… so much emotion he spent, as a child, on such childish things, not knowing that he was rehearsing the adult hatreds of an exiled prince.
He can't go home, for the Manor itself accuses him, and he can't go back to Diagon Alley; his aunt has spoken her piece and retired for the night. He wraps his cloak about him and casts a warming charm for Hypatia's sake, and shivers less from the early-morning chill than from the thought that he came here for reassurance, and it isn't going to be offered. Hermione Granger is not her mother, who is kind to him because she doesn't know him. If he rang the doorbell just now, Hermione would be polite, and irritated, and wish the whole time that he would go away.
Hypatia sleeps against his chest, her chubby fist shoved in her mouth. It's a long time until she's three, and he trusts Andromeda, but for the moment, the danger seems immediate and the night both long and cold. He hasn't any idea what to do now, except to sit still and try not to weep like an abandoned child. He hasn't any right to that role, not with Hypatia trusting him to keep her safe.
He hasn't succeeded in keeping calm enough, for she starts, and wakes. For a brief moment, she stares at him with her bright grey eyes before she starts to cry, a thin wail that isn't hunger but fear.
Then there's Longbottom's voice asking what that is outside, and then the door opens, and Granger says in a voice that is trying to be polite and failing, "Malfoy. It's four o'clock in the morning. Why are you skulking about again?"
"People don't skulk with babies," Longbottom says, quite reasonably, which makes Draco hate him even more than he hates Granger. "I think something's the matter." And then with the warm, capable manner that he recognizes as utterly professional, Longbottom and Granger between the two of them have him on his feet, and into the front room.
Hypatia is still crying, but somewhat less urgently, which is a relief to Draco because if Longbottom succeeded in getting her to calm down when he can't, he would find it in himself to kill the duffer on the spot.
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