A/N: Love to reviewers and to Countess Black

The idea of fighting on even while doomed is an oblique reference to Tolkien.

'A Lady shows only her most cheerful face in public. Be she in the drawing room or in her chambers, she strives to make no mention of her personal misfortunes, but rather counts her blessings. And she certainly never discommodes her husband with her own petty little worries and frustrations, when she could be ministering to his. Remember, Ladies, the most fair ornament to our sex is discretion.'

Virgilia Malfoy, Letters to Wives

Hermione set her quill down. She'd brought the refutation to work on as she brewed, and now it was done. She looked it over, shook hair from her eyes, and flicked at a cauldron of bruise tincture before calling Leesy.

Leesy, looking slightly deranged, popped in, straightening her toga. 'Bad, nasty cat. Wicked cat."

"What did he do this time, Leesy?"

"Giving Leesy shifty looks. Yes, plotting something. Cat is plotting against Leesy."

Hermione snorted. 'Leesy, he's a cat. Of course he's not plotting against you."

Leesy glowered and said nothing, looking a little Crookshank like herself. 'Would you take this upstairs, please, and put it on my dressing table?"

Leesy took the sheath of papers but didn't move. 'Leesy is speaking to Madam?"

"Yes, of course? Is something wrong?"

"Madam is stopping now? Is not healthy."

"Stopping what?"

"Refusal. No more refusal?"

"Refusal to what?"

Leesy gestured at the papers. 'Refusal. Is being bad for Madam."

Hermione blinked. There was an obvious question on her tongue but she wouldn't ask it, not now. 'Did something prompt this?" If they had told Leesy to ask, she'd have to say.

Leesy shook her head. 'Is being bad! Bad for Madam's health. Bad for making baby. Babies is not settling in uneasy womb."

Hermione stood to ladle some of the tincture into phials. 'Leesy, I...I'm touched, but haven't you noticed how much happier I am when I've something to do. Sitting around all day was making me miserable."

Leesy burst into tears. Hermione was moderately used to house elf emotions at this point, but that didn't stop her from spelling the heat down and turning to the elf, whose greatest pleasure in life was simply being around she and Draco.

"Leesy?"

"Is our fault! Couldn't make Madam happy! Had to write refusal to be happy!"

Hermione sighed internally. Couldn't five minutes go by without some sort of issue that required her to deal with someone else's problems?

"It isn't your fault, Leesy."

"Is! Isn't being good elf! Bad Leesy! Terrible Leesy!" Leesy, still sobbing, tried to punch herself in the head. Hermione grabbed her arm. 'Please don't!"

Hearing the distress in Hermione's voice, paradoxically, stopped the elf. She sniffled hugely, dried her eyes on the hem of her towel, and stared worried at Hermione with her enormous eyes.

'It's...very complicated, Leesy. But it's getting better, don't you think?"

Leesy nodded slowly. 'Better. But still not happy."

"No. But more than I was. Remember how sad I was in August?"

Leesy nodded again. 'Is hard, being away from parents."

"Yes, it is. And it's hard because Draco..."

"Master is being veela."

Hermione's eyes widened. 'You knew?"

"Elves is always knowing. Is...' Leesy sought for words to describe the memories that swam in her mind, memories as old as history and as deep as the sea-not her own memories, but those of her ancestors, who'd been fierce, wild creatures, only half tamed, used to defend Wizarding castles.

If she'd had the words, she could have described a good many things. The smell of the wood, wet and heady with decay, that came from the Conqueror's ships as he sailed past castles on distant, windy cliffs; the terrible stench of the plague, which had struck muggle and wizard alike and gifted them with reeking kisses; the clash of metal on stone, as a hundred thousand defenders breeched a hundred walls; the rain of fiendfyre and hot sand and pitch her grandfathers and great grandfathers had poured on the men below, their dying shrieks slicing the air; werwolves; feasts; hunts; veela.

But she couldn't. She only looked helplessly at Hermione and say, in all innocence 'Leesy is not supposed to be knowing? We is sorry, Madam."

"No, no, it's fine. I just didn't realise...oh." She sat down, legs suddenly weak and straining, and looked at the quill, tip mushy from use.

"Everything is different, Leesy."

"Different?'

Hermione forced herself to speak casually. 'Yes. It's...I...' She inhaled, willing herself not to cry. She felt stupid; she'd cried over this earlier. She'd drained the wound. Shouldn't it be healing now?

We do not, as a rule, lose things all at once. Rather, we lose them in stages, as bit by bit we realise part of ourselves has been stripped away and we must learn to live with the absence of it. Think on the loss of a limb-one does not lose merely flesh but pieces of a life we'd thought owed to us, a thing that supposed to be with us as long as we live.

So was her re-discovery of grief. Time had dulled the pain, but it was by no means gone entirely. Months or years later, a memory we'd thought dead can spring to new and shocking life, still sharp, still vital, and make us bleed.

Hermione swallowed convulsively. 'I'd like some water. Please."

As soon as the elf had gone she rested her head on her hands and blessed, a little, their solitude in Castle Black. Her life was quiet here, and there were no memories.

Had Lucius known? Had he sent them to a place with no scars? She still felt uneasy with the man, but perhaps his intuition had been correct in this case. She could adjust to things in parts, safe from some prompt which would open her again to this feeling, which was too real to be real.

Leesy handed her a goblet and drained it at a single sip. 'Thank you, Leesy. Let's not talk about this anymore right now, all right?"

Leesy agreed, and after she'd begged Hermione's pardon, they set to finishing the day's last batches with a silent efficiency.

There was a knock at the door. 'Enter."

Narcissa poked her head in, nose wrinkling slightly. 'Darling, what an awful little room. Have you really been down here for most of a week?"

"Yes, Mother. We'll have remedies for the whole winter, though, when I'm done."

"That's wonderful, love. How are you?'

"All right, Mother. You?"

"Tired, darling. Tired. Father Malfoy and I...it's been a long few years."

Hermione made sure her face didn't change. Narcissa sat on the work bench and began to page through the sheath of paper there.

'Have you finished?"

"Today, in fact."

Narcissa set the papers down again and pulled something from her pocket. 'I was going through some photographs. Thought you might like to see."

"That would be wonderful."

She produced a few snapshots of Draco as a toddler. He'd been a chubby, cheerful little boy with a whole shock of white blond hair. 'He was the happiest baby I ever saw. Always laughing."

Hermione studied the pictures. All the Malfoys looked happy in them, smiling, prompting baby Draco to wave to the camera, to smile for Father, to play with a little enchanted carriage.

"Draco had just learnt to walk in this one. I look a nervous mess." Narcissa smiled at her past self's folly and handed the next picture over. 'That's Father Malfoy and I on our wedding day."

Hermione saw how radiant Narcissa looked, how proud Lucius was, standing beside a man who had to his father. Beside Narcissa, two small, dark haired women were half smiling. Hermione bent closer.

"My mother, Druella Rosier Black. And Bellatrix." Narcissa's voice had got rough round the edges, as though she'd swallowed something very, very bitter.

"Doesn't Trixie look beautiful in her new robes? Pink always was-always was her colour."

Hermione half wanted to stop her mother in law, but she couldn't. She wasn't the only one who needed to purge something foul, it would seem.

"And you-my dear, sometimes when I look at you, you remind me so much of her, that I wish you and she might have met under happy circumstances. She would have liked you very much."

Narcissa pulled her shawl tighter. 'I mean that in the best way, you understand. You remind me of the things about my sister that made her worth loving, not the wreck she became."

Hermione considered as there was nothing in Bellatrix which had been worth loving, but she was too kind to say so. Instead, she listened.

'And Draco. It was-being with them- with Him-it was a poison. I hated...I hated Him. The Dark Lord. Hated Him."

"I'm so sorry."

Narcissa's was a grief which could not be named. It was disenfranchised, hidden, kept apart because the object of it was vile. But the horror of Bellatrix's final months had not wholly diminished the love her sister had borne her, nor made her loss easier to bear, for all it was salted with genuine relief that she could never hurt anyone again.

'Mother?"

"Yes, darling?"

"Do you feel as though...you can't...?"

"Yes. It isn't to be discussed. Some losses are not explicable, are they?"

Hermione looked down. 'Because sometimes it isn't just the loss, it's the potential of it."

"Quite. I'd imagine, child, it's worse for you. Bellatrix was a monster, I understand that. But your young man was not. People say we deserve what we get, and perhaps we do, but you and that boy...it was nothing either of you did. It was fate."

Hermione nodded. It was comforting, to hear it summed up thus. Fate. Wrong time, wrong place. 'Yes."

"I love my son more than anyone, and I'm thankful every day that he's so happy, but I wish it hadn't been at your expense."

Hermione was deeply startled by the admission. 'Mother?'

"I'd imagine that anyone listening to this would call us ingrates at best, wouldn't they? We survived. But it doesn't always feel like a mercy, does it?"

Hermione thought of what the future looked like to her. A long progression of chores and obligations, society dinners, balls, musical evenings. She cringed internally. Children. Sending them to school at eleven, the endless days with the silent house and the discreetly moving elves. Books. The occasional day trip.

"No. But it could be worse."

"This is what I admire about you, Hermione. You're always cheerful."

Hermione had never considered it in that light. She meant to keep going, was all. The idea of surrender, of putting up her hands and letting it all go, was foreign to her. To Hermione, the mere fact that a battle was doomed was no reason not to fight it.

"What else is there? Someone has to do it."

Narcissa laughed softly. 'My thoughts exactly! Someone must do the things no one else wishes to."

"I...sometimes I resent it. Do you feel that way?"

"Of course I do. But that is a woman's lot, darling. To clean up the messes and look cheerful about it."

"Sometimes I...I hate them a little."

"Whom?"

"Everyone. I get tired of being the bigger person."

"That's normal. But you do it well."

Hermione looked at her shoes. 'Thank you."

"That's an important thing, darling. To have that skill."

Hermione looked at her, eyes bright. 'Is it? It's only ever made me miserable."

Narcissa sighed and pulled her closer. 'Head down, that's the girl. Shhhh." She stroked the child's fringe from her eyes.

'Has it? Do you like how it makes you feel?"

"Sometimes. But sometimes I want them to go away and let me alone for a while."

"Very natural. But it speaks well of you that people bring their problems to you, hmm?"

"I-I suppose it does."

"Of course it does. And for what it's worth, I think Draco values that as well. Beyond the...imperative, I mean."

Hermione nodded. 'It's hard to know."

"Yes. But he'd changed so much in the last year. You brought me my son back." She gave the girl a final, gentle squeeze and then released her.

"You know, that first night, I thought, I thought we'd have to sedate you. Didn't hear a peep."

"Draco was holding me too tightly." Hermione remembered how it had been for her:

Damp. Fresh from the bath, she lets Tibby dry her hair and help her into the nightgown again. Draco is waiting as she steps from the bathroom. He's wearing a nightshirt, like Hermione has seen on Masterpiece Theatre.

"Isn't that so much better, darling? Come to bed now, and we'll cuddle a bit."

Hermione has no urge ever to cuddle again, but she knows he'll just drag her if she doesn't go. And it might get the elf in trouble.

Draco lets her crawl in beside him, tense all over. He lies down, making sure she'd need to get over him before she could get out. Beaming, he presses her to his chest. She can feel his heart beating in his chest, regular as a little engine. In a moment of black, sucking hate, she wishes it stopped.

But it doesn't, and she's glad, because even now, Hermione can't wish harm on someone. She forced herself to be as still as possible, not to give him the satisfaction of fighting or letting him know how scared all this makes her.

Draco coos softly. 'You're awfully tired, dearest. Right to sleep, and your mood will be so much better tomorrow." His hand, rough from years of broom riding, gently insinuate themselves between her shoulder blades and rub. He's humming something. It sounds like a children's song. A lullaby.

Hermione closes her eyes and forces herself to relax enough to sleep. It seems a cruel joke to her, now, that she survived so much, only to end up buried all the same.

Narcissa wondered if she'd said the wrong thing. The child looked hazy for a moment and then seemed to bring herself back. 'It wasn't so bad. He didn't hurt me."

"No. Draco wouldn't."

In the master suite, Narcissa waits for the inevitable. Beside her, Lucius is also awake. Hands on chest, he breathes evenly, eyes open.

'Darling?'

'Hmm?'

"Do you expect he'll be able to deal with her?"

"Hermione? She's five feet three, I should think so."

"I meant emotionally."

Lucius rolled to put his arms round her, and she snuggled into his warmth. No one on earth could make her feel as safe and loved as Lucius. She nestled against him and breathed his scent, cologne and rosemary oil and soap.

'We've done our best to give him a good example, Cissy. And I told him off today for scaring the girl."

"He didn't try to...?"

"Just a kiss. She bit him."

"Bit him?"

"Slightly." Narcissa giggles despite herself, and Lucius joins her. She feels a tiny flower of liking unfold in her heart for the girl; biting a veela took spirit. If the last year has taught Narcissa anything, it's that sometimes a little boldness is all a person has.

'He doesn't get this from me. Your son..."

'Why is he always my son when he does something like this?"

"You need to ask?"

"Hmph. As though your family never..."

"Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, you know my family never."

"Lying is a wrong act, Cissy, my love."

"You'd best stop, then."

They play and banter a little more, but both of them have an ear out for what they're sure will come, sooner or later. It never does.

The potions were done. Narcissa put the pictures back in her pocket and helped Hermione fill the phials, chatting the whole time about silly matters and bits of gossip.

"May I read it?"

"The refutation?"

"Yes."

"I...yes. Draco said he'd like to as well. May I make a copy?" Hermione was adept at copying spells, as everything else.

"Of course, my dear. It's yours, after all."

Holding her copy, Narcissa followed the girl up the stairs. She would read it. And if Hermione wanted it published, Narcissa suspected she would give her support. A girl bold enough to bite a veela, and kind enough to listen to her grieve for her monstrous sister...perhaps a girl like that deserved the chance to rip society apart.