96. Fault
Later, Draco couldn't say whether he had only yelled at Mrs Smith to wake up or whether he had screamed for help as well. He only remembered the surge of panic upon realising she had no pulse.
He was nudged aside almost instantly.
"Let me handle that. I used to work as a lifeguard in my youth," a man said – the same one who, only minutes ago, had frowned at him for laughing.
Draco moved out of the way; he knew he couldn't help. The white-haired man he presumed to be a professor knelt down beside Mrs Smith. A much younger man was already unbuttoning her jacket. A girl talked urgently on her mobile phone. Two other girls said they would await the paramedics at the entrance and hurried off.
Draco stared at the men. There had been a chapter about first aid and life-saving methods in a book on health care he had read a year ago. He had studied the illustrations and perused the instructions for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and cardiac massage, and the whole thing had struck him as rather crude. Now, seeing it carried out, he was shocked. Cardiac massage was downright brutal! He hoped nonetheless with all his heart that it was going to work. The last thing he needed was the image of another dead body lying on the floor.
Unable to stand the sight any longer, he turned away. He hauled the trolley upright and busied himself with collecting the strewn books and stacking them back on.
Maybe a skilled healer could fix the problem with a swish of the wand. Why were people who were able to wield a wand outnumbered ten thousand to one by people who had to live without magic? Because the mothers of the latter had failed to walk into a Repello Muggletum while pregnant?
Perhaps the exposure to magic should be organised for every woman who was expecting. Guided tours to the unplottable house on the hill were a possibility. No, that would be too laborious. Sitting on a bench in the pedestrian precinct and casting a Cheering Charm on every pregnant woman who happened to walk by would be a much more efficient approach. Too bad he had no wand.
Then again, his theory about the origin of Muggleborns was just that – a theory. Experience had taught him that jumping to conclusions was never a wise thing to do, and jumping into action certainly was worse. But he could indulge in a fantasy, couldn't he? He could dream about moving from city to city and dishing out Cheering Charms – the women wouldn't suffer; they'd just feel extraordinarily happy for one afternoon. Every year of industrious work would result in more than three thousand – an average of ten Cheering Charms per day should be feasible – Muggleborn witches and wizards. He'd like to see McGoggleall deal with that! Muggleborns by the thousand overrunning Hogwarts – wasn't that scenario even more impressive than that of a mere dozen little white-blond Malfoy children? The grounds filled with tents to accommodate the mass of students, the Great Hall crammed with people fighting over food – and the punch line was that neither McGonagall nor the Minister and his underlings would have the faintest clue as to what was going on.
The arrival of the paramedics brought him back to reality. With them came somebody Draco had met before: Doctor Polkinghorne. The physician examined Mrs Smith, and the men clad in green and yellow overalls carried out his orders. Swiftly but with great care, they attached all sorts of equipment to the still unconscious woman and stuck needles into her arm. A long thin, translucent tube was used to administer a liquid that was in all probability this world's equivalent to a potion.
It didn't take long before Mrs Smith was carried off on a stretcher. Doctor Polkinghorne talked for a moment to the men who had rendered first aid to her, then he and the younger of the two hurried after the paramedics.
The few onlookers who had watched from a respectful distance left as well. The man in the grey suit dusted off his trousers. Without Doctor Polkinghorne's succinct orders and the clatter of medical equipment the soft murmur of the air conditioning seemed all at once a loud and prominent noise.
Draco decided to quit studying for the day and to go jogging instead. He needed a break. There was the newly established theory to mull over and, of course, he had to get the picture of Mrs Smith receiving cardiac massage off his mind.
He collected the last few books from the floor. When he looked up, he saw that the man in the grey suit was about to go. He also saw Mrs Highbury running towards them.
"Professor Ballantyne!" she exclaimed. "What happened? I hear Annie had an accident?"
"I'm afraid she suffered a coronary," the man answered gravely. "The doctor said so."
"Oh my goodness..." Mrs Highbury breathed. She clapped her hands to her face in dismay and confusion. "How... how is she?"
"Luckily, one of the medical students happened to be around when she collapsed. And the emergency doctor said there was hope. Right now, she is being taken to Royal District Hospital. I think it is your duty to inform her family," Professor Ballantyne said, nodding at her and at Mrs Shaw, who had trailed in after Mrs Highbury. "If you will please excuse me, ladies. I have a class to teach."
"Yes, of course," Mrs Highbury said, distractedly. "Oh my goodness, Annie... a heart attack!"
Mrs Shaw looked horrified.
"What was she even doing here?" Mrs Highbury suddenly burst out. "It's her day off today!"
"I... I phoned her," Mrs Shaw squeaked. She was close to tears.
"You did what? Why? What were you thinking?"
Mrs Shaw positively shivered. Tears threatened to spill.
"What else should I have done?" she all but sobbed. "Both Cora and Amrita called in sick. Then Maureen called and said she'd had an accident with the car and she couldn't come in. That's why I phoned Annie, and she said yes. How should I have known something so terrible would happen?"
"Calm d-" Mrs Highbury started to say, but Mrs Shaw didn't listen.
"The books don't climb onto the shelves by themselves!" she cried, turning to the trolley with the haphazardly piled up books. "All trolleys are chock-full. And now look at that mess here! Now – to top it all off! – I'll have to sort through them again!"
Mrs Highbury pried her away from the trolley and gave her a half-hearted hug.
"Calm down, Helen! Just calm down," she said, not very calm herself. "I'll try to get a couple of part-timers for today and t-"
"No, you can't!" Mrs Shaw cried hysterically. "All our part-timers have exams! Everybody's got exams! What do I tell them? Sorry, I don't know where the book you're looking for is? Come back next week when your exams are over and-"
"Calm down, Helen! Just calm down," Mrs Highbury repeated, now close to panic as well. "I might have done the same thing."
"But you didn't! It was me!"
"Stop that!" Draco cut in, rather more loudly than intended.
Both women turned to gape at him.
...
97. On Blame and Guilt
He felt his face go hot.
Mrs Highbury kept staring at him, looking distraught. Mrs Shaw was sobbing openly now.
The display of anguish got to him. Mrs Shaw had to stop crying, or he'd be in rapidly growing danger to join her. He had to say something – something that brought back at least the semblance of normality.
However, the only words that came to his mind were the ones Mrs Smith herself had said when she had attempted to console him on the first anniversary of Crabbe's death. Sometimes we're blaming ourselves for what cannot possibly be our fault, for all the things out there on which we have no influence.
But this was only partly right. People did have influence on the course of events. They could decide – they could do something, or they could leave it be. What they didn't know was the outcome of that decision.
He might have had a chance to save Crabbe if he had put him and Goyle under the Imperius Curse upon entering the Room of Requirement. The few seconds while they'd had their backs to him would have been enough. He could have made them walk away, and Crabbe might have survived. He might have survived. But he could have died in a different scenario as well. They could have been attacked on their way to a hidey-hole. They could have been crushed by a collapsing ceiling. There were a thousand ways how one, or two, or all three of them could have died that night.
Mrs Highbury still stared at him. Mrs Shaw sniffed loudly.
He cleared his throat.
"You cannot undo what has been done," he said, his voice embarrassingly thick with emotion. "And you cannot know what might have been if you had taken another course of action. Mrs Smith might have been fine, but it is also possible that she would have had the heart attack anyway."
Mrs Highbury gave Draco a look full of both gratitude and astonishment. Then she pulled the other woman in to a hug and said, "He's right you know."
"You think?" Mrs Shaw asked in a small voice.
"I do. And Mr Malfoy does too."
"But Annie," Mrs Shaw said. "It's all my fault."
"You don't know that," Mrs Highbury sighed. "If she hadn't been here... she could have collapsed in her own kitchen, preparing lunch, and nobody would have found her for hours. Mr Smith is working for a parcel service; he often comes home late."
Draco fought the urge to run. He wanted to be away from Mrs Shaw's woes and Mrs Highbury's helplessness. He wanted to be jogging. Jogging had become, over the years, a handy remedy for internal uproar, and right now he needed it very much.
He grabbed the book trolley with both hands to keep himself from fleeing the scene like the bloody coward he was. In former times he would have done exactly that. He would have said something scathing that showed people how inappropriate their behaviour was, and then he would have stalked out of the room, leaving them to their misery.
He had done that, and often.
He had grown up in an environment where craving emotional comfort was considered a sign of weakness. Offering words of consolation was seen as silly conduct unless they were purely a formality. Help wasn't given away; it had to be negotiated.
Anything heartfelt and genuine had been banned, anything save hatred and spite. Or had hatred and spite been an act as well? Most of the time, he had hated the people who had made his life difficult. Sometimes he had delivered the lines that were expected of him, feeling nothing. That hadn't happened often, but happened it had.
Mrs Shaw was still crying. Mrs Highbury gave Draco a pleading look.
Draco shook his head.
"I don't know any better than you do how to handle the situation," he said quietly.
"Perhaps we should focus on practical matters," Mrs Highbury replied.
Draco nodded. Focussing on practical matters came right next to jogging.
"I take it you are short of personnel," he said tentatively.
"That's a bold understatement," Mrs Highbury said, patting Mrs Shaw lightly on the back. "Half of the service staff seems to be down with flu, our part-timers have to sit exams this week, and now things just got worse. We are on the brink of having to close temporarily."
"Would it... will it help if I put the books back where they belong?" Draco asked, indicating the trolley with an inclination of his head. He still held fast onto it as if it were an anchor that enabled him to stay in place. Perhaps it was.
"Oh yes, I would be most grateful. Please do it, Mr Malfoy, if you can spare the time."
"Consider it done," Draco said with a curt nod.
"Unfortunately, this trolley here isn't the only one. If it doesn't interfere with your lessons, would you be so kind as to help with the others as well?" She gave him another beseeching look.
"I don't have any lessons today."
"All right, then," Mrs Highbury said, allowing herself a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Mr Malfoy. Payment will be as-"
"I know you mean well, Emma," Mrs Shaw suddenly choked out. "But it's no use! He doesn't know how. I'll have to instruct him first, and that will take me just as long as-"
"Don't worry, Helen," Mrs Highbury interrupted the outburst. "Mr Malfoy has done this before. He'll manage."
"Oh."
"Yes. And here is what you'll do now," Mrs Highbury continued. She put her arm gently around the other woman's shoulders and led her away. "You'll smarten yourself up a bit and then you'll go back to the check-out. I'm afraid there's already a queue, and people are getting impatient."
Draco watched them retreat. He leaned onto the trolley and tried to calm down.
...
He couldn't run now that he had promised to help. Besides, jogging wasn't a remedy, but a sedative. It cured nothing; it just dulled the pain.
So, he gritted his teeth and worked. After about two hours he had only five items left. They were maps, and he hadn't seen maps anywhere in the library so far. He decided to admit to his lack of knowledge and give them back to Mrs Highbury or Mrs Shaw.
He had to bring back the trolley as well. The question was how. He had never endeavoured to use the lift, but the trolley – although empty now – was too unwieldy to be carried down the stairs.
He saw two options. He could embarrass himself by confessing that he didn't know how to operate a lift, or he could at least have a look at the thing and try to figure out how it worked.
The sliding doors of the little cubicle stood open when Draco got there. He pushed the trolley inside and looked around for a command input unit. So far, he hadn't come across a piece of Muggle technology that responded to verbal demands. You had to push buttons, preferably in correct order.
Sure enough, there was a panel bearing buttons set into the wall. The button marked with a red "2" was lit. Maybe the numbers on the buttons were floor numbers and the light indicated the current position. Draco took a deep breath and touched the button marked "1".
The doors closed with a whizzing noise. The lift glided downwards, and when its doors opened again, Draco was exactly where he wanted to be.
Why couldn't things always be this easy?
Carefully, he manoeuvred the trolley out of the cubicle.
Mrs Shaw, despite the formidable queue at the checkout counter, hurried over to him the very instant she spotted him.
"Oh, it's so nice of you to help, Mr Malfoy! I can't tell you how grateful I am. Emma, too. She can't run the place alone. I... oh well, there's that, too." She reached for the maps, distracted from what she had intended to say. "I'm afraid Annie had the key for the map room about her when she was taken to hospital. I'll tell Emma. She's got a master key. Anyway, Mr Malfoy, will you please clear this trolley here next?"
She pointed to one that was piled high with an extra amount of books. Several more books were stacked on the floor next to it.
Draco nodded.
"Thanks. That's so nice of you," she said again. "The books belong all here on the first floor. You can tell by the labels. Look, it's all engineering stuff. Now please excuse me. Patrons are waiting."
...
Draco cleared two more trolleys until the staff for the late shift arrived.
He had dinner somewhat belatedly. Afterwards, he went jogging. He wasn't going to deny himself his daily dose of painkiller.
...
98. Portraits
When Draco came to the library the next morning, Mrs Shaw was still alone at the checkout, and Mrs Highbury looked as harassed as the previous day. So, he cleared trolleys again.
He helped shelving books the following days as well because the situation remained more or less the same for almost a week. Those who had been ill with minor diseases returned one by one, but a certain shortage of staff persisted. Maureen Kentridge had been more seriously injured in the traffic accident than initially believed and would be absent for a long time. Mrs Smith wouldn't be back soon, either. Mrs Highbury and Mrs Shaw, after they had visited her in hospital, said that she would have to undergo surgery and that it would take months before she'd be able to work again. Mrs Levine was on maternity leave, two part-time workers whose task it had been to shelve books had quit their jobs for reasons unknown to Draco, and Jeffrey's position was also still vacant.
Draco didn't mind helping out. Shelving books was a task he could master. If he was unsure where to place a particular book and asked for instructions, any staff member would answer his questions without reproach or ridicule. They were friendly even when they were busy. Mrs Shaw, in particular, didn't let him swap an empty trolley for a filled one without relaying a snippet of information to him or giving a quick explanation of some standard library procedure. She also showed him around. He got to see the map room and the rooms for storing audiotapes and videotapes. According to Mrs Shaw, tapes were going out of fashion and had to be replaced by discs.
...
To Draco's immense dismay, something else was going out of fashion as well – the twenty-pound notes with the physicist and inventor Michael Faraday on the backside. Placards proclaiming the impending withdrawal were up in the shops in the pedestrian precinct, and not a few shop assistants insisted on bills being paid with the newer type of banknotes that featured one Sir Edward Elgar on the reverse.
He didn't like the prospect of having to go from post office to post office again, changing money. He'd hardly find offices that he hadn't already used either here in the city or along the Coast Path. He'd have to venture into other, unexplored regions or go to offices for a second time. Both options weren't without risk.
For the time being, the stacks of outdated money could stay hidden under the thick layer of old plastic bags at the bottom of his wardrobe. He had enough Sir-Edward-banknotes to cover his expenses for about three months, perhaps four if he was very careful with his spending. But eventually, the need would arise to convert more than a thousand banknotes that he had already converted one or two years ago. Aside from that, there were also still a great many original banknotes showing the playwright Shakespeare.
If Grandfather had indeed been a seer and had known beforehand what would befall the family thirteen years after his death, why hadn't he foreseen that British banknotes were regularly replaced with new editions?
While Draco pushed book-laden trolleys along the aisles, he tried to recall his grandfather's gaunt face. Two things stood out in his memory. One was the completely bald head that the old man had often covered with a flat cap made of tweed even though wearing such headgear was deemed an unusual choice by traditionalists. His other main memory was that of the thick, almost rectangular eyeglasses. Thanks to them, Grandfather's brown eyes had always seemed overlarge to him.
Yes, his grandfather's eyes had been brown. He was sure of that. His paternal grandmother he knew only from photographs and, of course, from the life-size painting in his father's study. In all these pictures, her eyes were a watery blue.
He paused, a stack of engineering textbooks in his hands, and mused about the likeliness of a brown-eyed father and a blue-eyed mother having a grey-eyed child. The probability was twenty-five percent provided that, one, the trait was recessive, two, both parents were carriers and, three, only one gene was involved. The many different existing eye colours called for an involvement of more than just one gene. This lowered the probability, but it was still possible.
He himself having grey eyes meant that his mother had to carry the trait as well. Did he have any grey-eyed ancestors other than his father, or had the trait been passed down through many generations without manifesting itself?
He shook his head at how little he actually knew about his family and continued shelving.
The manor had been brimming with portraits, most of them centuries old. The pale ancient people in them had watched him whenever he had walked down a hall. They had watched in silence, brows knitted together in a frown or with looks of barely concealed disapproval on their faces. Save for the one of his father's mother, who'd had the habit of reminding him of the expectations he was to live up to, none of the portraits had ever talked to him.
Truth be told, Draco had always found them creepy. He had never checked the gallery of ancestral portraits for completeness. But he was fairly sure he had never come across a portrait of any of his great-grandparents, and he was certain that there hadn't been a single picture – neither photograph nor painting – of Abraxas Malfoy anywhere at the manor. Wasn't that a bit odd?
Whenever he had asked questions about his grandfather, he had got curt or evasive answers. His mother had called her father-in-law a crazy old fool. She had talked about 'antics' and a habit of sneaking away. Abraxas is ancestry you could do very well without.
Why? What had the man done to deserve that much contempt?
...
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Author's note:
Dear readers, thank you for the many friendly and encouraging reviews you've submitted since I started this story three years ago. :)
James suspects in his review that my posting schedule may be dictated by real life. Well, he's right. Writing fan fiction is a hobby, and I'll only be able to write if and when I have time to spare. I won't abandon "Exile", but it may take me another year or even more to finish the story. I know having to wait for updates is annoying, but I can only ask you to be patient.