Chapter Twelve: From This Path, Shall Be No Turning

Chapter Twelve: From This Path, Shall Be No Turning

He was barefoot. Like a house-elf, he thought... or a child.

He was supposed to be searching.

~~ // ~~

There was a humbling contentment in surfacing to wakefulness in the same bed for sixty-four days straight, although, if Horace was pressed on the matter, he'd hardly tarnish his dignity with an admission that he'd been keeping count. To lay one's head on a familiar pillow and not need magic to make it suitable -- such a small but welcome comfort. Indeed, his accommodations were most satisfactory, except for this infernal poking of some wayward bedspring into his shoulder... Quite bothersome... Strange that he hadn't noticed it before... Perhaps a cushioning charm...

The diffusion of sleep that filmed his eyes suffered nothing from the light that ghosted through the mullions above his bed. Lowering his lids once more with a grunt of irritation, Horace shifted his weight, seeking a few more minutes of repose against what promised to be a cheerless gray morning. The arms of Nyx were warm and welcoming around...

Damn and hex... This cursed bedspring was becoming maddeningly persistent, and its poking was growing... rhythmic... and vocal...

"Up, now. Old Cauldron Keeper must be awake. There is no more sleeping. There is getting out of bed."

Hardly the dulcet voice of slumber's lovely patroness... More like...

A house-elf -- and a very demanding one at that...

With a phlegmy snort, Horace squinted himself awake to meet the unrepentant gaze of Pinkham, Minerva's senior attending elf. The creature stood with a bony finger poised to launch another barrage of pokes and was clearly not about to be denied a prompt response.

"Headmistress is requiring you. No delay -- hurry quick," the elf croaked, fairly convulsing with agitation as he yanked the blankets from off the bed. Stepping back to allow Horace to sit up properly, Pinkham brandished the heavy dressing gown that was clutched in his free hand.

"Cover sleeping clothes with this," he demanded. "Mistress says bring you with no stopping."

Wincing at the intrusion of cold air on his spindly shins, Horace reached for his wand, muttering to himself. Cheeky thing, this elf, waking him so rudely... Hardly the proper fashion to begin the day, but a bit more light and a warming charm would...

The dressing gown was thrust into his lap, and the stomp of Pinkham's bare feet on the flagged floor barely missed assaulting his own.

"Young Slytherin is through the Veil. Mistress calls your promise."

Through the... Someone was dead? A student? One of his... One of theirs... His promise... On the heart of his wand... he'd sworn...

Snatching the brocaded robe from the elf, Horace threw it around his shoulders and stumbled for the door of his chamber, forfeiting only the time required to Summon his slippers. Gaining steadier footing, he swept through the young men's quarters, wand at the ready, his heart lurching, his eyes darting... here... there... counting, searching for an empty bed but finding none. Everywhere were soundly sleeping youths, their arms and legs flung akimbo in the total abandon of their slumbers. Nothing seemed amiss... No one masked and robed for Death, standing in triumph over a broken body...

One of their young witches, then? Attacked... taken... under Pomona's very nose... Dear blessed gods... again... Again? But the wards... surely between Minerva and the Castle...

Even as Horace turned towards the double doors of the girls' dormitory, a strong gnarled hand seized his tasseled belt, urging him to focus on a different direction.

"Not these," Pinkham rasped, reading his face. "These are safe, not hurt, not stolen. Old Master comes this way, should follow me. No more puzzling what is wrong. Mistress says to have you run," he insisted, and then, as if recalling the way of things between elf and wizardly folk, added a hasty "if not too much difficulty for not-so-young feet."

His pride a bit ruffled at such an affront to both his age and fortitude, but randomly thankful that the War had, in fact, cost him a few stone, Horace plunged after the elf. Heedless of distractions, they tore past drowsing staircases and brooding alcoves, down arching corridors lined with shrouded portraits, ducking low to pass beneath hovering scaffolds, skirting herds of sawhorses and tidy hillocks of debris, until they reached the small south-facing wing Horace knew Poppy Pomfrey had recently taken as her own.

Her old hospital domain had been one of the earliest casualties of Riddle's assault that dreadful battle night. Despite her shields and the Castle's wards, the instruments and aids of Poppy's arts were consumed in Fiendfyre, her skills for comfort drowned in the wash of healing potions that bled from hundreds of smashed vials. A clear declaration of what she and her wounded could expect at the hands of Lord Voldemort victorious.

Brave Poppy... In the hours that followed, how fiercely she'd fought the pain and death that were allied against her. She'd used all her strength, expended every resource to save their own. If she'd chosen to forsake her Hygeian Oath and had turned away from the suffering of Riddle's fallen, Horace could have forgiven her, believing she'd make her peace later, when there was time. But even those, separated from the rest under the guard of steel-eyed Aurors, were given what remained to her.

"They're barely grown, some of them," she'd snapped when one of the Aurors wondered aloud why she'd waste her time on Azkaban fodder, "the same age as our own young ones. There's some here that were ours before that bastard murdered their hearts and marked them..."

At daybreak, dizzied between sorrow and relief, Horace had taken for himself the task of finding Severus's potions reserves. That they existed was never in question. He'd squandered nothing to the hope of breaching the wards of the Shrouded Tower or finding what was wanted in the Headmaster's office. Severus would not cache what was most precious in just one place. There would always be an alternative to any anticipated course of action.

Laboring his way to the top of the Astronomy Tower, scanning the melee of elation and devastation far below, Horace had dropped to his knees in the humility of his exhaustion. If anything useful was hidden, the proper questions needed to be asked and answered, but his heart and mind were battling their own naked truths. He'd been able to offer no contrivance against them. Blatant honesty had seemed his best recourse -- but so dreadfully Hufflepuff that he'd almost laughed. Still, since he was addressing the newly dead -- and aloud, no less -- and hoping for directions not confounded within the usual Slytherin ingenuity... Hoping not to see a pale, bloodied wraith smirking down at him, he'd spoken the few words that occurred to him...

"Severus, where is there help for Poppy, here? She has so little..."

Precisely where Dumbledore had waited, with such exacting deliberation, for the mercy of his spy's vow, the stones had begun to tremble, parting with only a sigh of mortar shivering into dust. An ironwood chest had risen readily under Horace's beckoning wand to rest in front of him. No auras of light, no quivers of magic -- just the chest, shadowed and silent in its waiting, like its maker.

Horace could still recall the grace of Poppy's scrubbed-raw hands when he'd brought her the portions trove. She'd received it so gently, and his heart had seized with pride and grief when she'd raised the lid with a whispered, "Necesse vel Somnium, Severus?"

Meticulously arrayed within were flasks, vials, and ampoules -- dozens upon dozens of them -- each labeled in a terse black script, outlining their unflinching purpose -- with that beautiful, terrible voice almost tangible in the words. Here -- these will be useful for healing those fortunate -- or damned -- enough to remain alive. And these -- they may offer some small dignity for the dying. Poppy had scarcely breathed when she'd touched them, so afraid, she was, that they might vanish.

"I'd pester him for whatever I needed, and he'd scowl at me so. Necessity or some foolishness, he'd want to know..." Poppy's face was an unwritten page as she turned the lid, over and over, in her hands. "I'd laugh... say something about the necessity of foolishness, and there'd be this smallest bit of a smile... Not so you'd notice... unless you knew him..."

In the blatantly hopeful light of that sundered morning, she'd asked Horace if perhaps he'd fetch her some strong tea, a good cuppa not conjured by a wand but made by the elves, brewed by their hands... living hands... Anxious for her well-being, he had stepped closer, touching her arm in fragile comfort, in some faint hope of his own reassurance. She was fine, she'd said, quite all right, only wanted a moment... please... just a moment to herself... to take stock... make an inventory of what had been left them...

Glancing back as he'd left on his meager errand, Horace had suspected he'd seen a tremor run through her body -- that she'd been close to tears -- but later, he'd chosen to believe he was mistaken. Madam Poppy Pomfrey had rarely been inclined to trembling or losing herself to weeping...

Racing, now, to keep some measure of pace with Pinkham, Horace realized it was his own hands that were palsied by dread.

~~ // ~~

If he'd had any boots, he would have had a proper place to stow his wand, but there was evidently no need for that. On either side of Life, it seemed that privilege -- no longer his given right, not any more -- would still be kept from him. He had hoped, though... a little...

Draco's lids closed, and the gray fell into black.

~~ // ~~

In that first moment, bracing to a wheezing halt behind Pinkham, Horace dared one final hope that Minerva's summons might have been excessive in its urgency.

The doors of the infirmary were wide-flung. Twin rows of white-draped beds stood in smartly ranked attendance, the windows behind each charmed so that the light touching a patient should always be gently filtered, and any visiting breezes, soothing. The muted glow of wand light tented only one bed, the one most distant, the last in its row. The form within seemed long and slight, but too far from Horace for the face to be clear. The profile, though, appeared to be young... familiar...

Peering through the thin light slipping in from outside, he could just make out Poppy, already dressed in her matron's robes, the soft wool and pristine linen of her calling. All her aspects were as they should be, even her cap, with its sweep of starched white wings that extolled her authority over illness and injury as she bent over her patient.

Her alder wand was sweeping through the air in whorls and arcs of great complexity, and he could hear her strong, steady incantations flowing beneath another witch's voice -- educated, elegant -- clearly accustomed to being heard. The wand light caught the flash of hair as pale as tangled flax, and Horace felt his throat tighten.

"For pity's sake, Pomfrey, another vial... another... These are Severus', you're quite sure? Why is there no effect? His potions never failed, never..."

Horace could not see the woman whose voice collapsed into whispered sobs of desperate demand.

"Wake him... You must. You know how... you do... you've cared for him, before... you have... He likes you... He does..."

The witch's voice began to rise, pitching towards hysteria.

"Headmistress, I have already said I will give anything... I swear it... My life... a vow... what must I promise you?"

Horace could almost feel the weight of Minerva McGonagall's counterpoint.

"Hardly my wish, Narcissa, but if you cannot calm yourself and be of use, I will surely quiet you for your own sake," she snapped. "Come now, witch, tell me, is this the vial that was used, the only one? Horace will need to know..."

Horace could never have sworn what dragged him forward, whether it was Pinkham's tugging hand, his own unsteady gait, or that most unexpected name. His only focus was Minerva's grim face when the sound of his approach attracted her attention.

As she hurried towards him, her heels drumming double time across the flagstones, Horace felt as if the ground beneath him were crouching in wait.

"What's happened?" he demanded, clutching at her shoulder. "Your elf says one from my House... Through the Veil, he said... Merlin help us, Minerva, why is Lady Malfoy here and in such a state? Her boy's not even here. Neither of them has been seen since Lucius..."

Before his Headmistress could begin to shape an answer, Horace released his grip on her robes and staggered towards the bed, scenting the air, his grizzled head raised like a hound's.

Every well-wrought potion, exactingly rendered, bears the underlying trace of its maker's hands, a signature of the senses for those with a finer skill for recognition. Horace could offer thanks to some beneficence that neither age nor indulgence had robbed him of that gift.

The clean breath of lavender and sweet flag hung in the air, but were overshadowed by deeper, richer pungencies -- juniper root and tansy leaf, phoenix ash and thestral dung. A Suscitatio of the most powerful measure -- calling and summoning -- demanding an awakening, tolerating no refusal...

Only against the strongest Draught of Living Death would Poppy need such a powerful potion...

Horace clenched his fists against the lingering notes of Severus that reached his nostrils. Sharp as a blade, they were, brilliant, balanced, perfect... wrenching...

And of no avail...

The beast beneath Horace's feet no longer crouched in wait. It writhed and bucked beneath him as he sank into the chair beside the bed, his vision swimming between the bloodless face of Narcissa Malfoy -- willing herself not to scream -- and the empty visage of her son, his rigid fingers locked around a slender silver cylinder.

The dread that had run with Horace through the halls of Hogwarts settled itself into his hands as he firmly pried the vial from Draco's grasp. Moving to the window several paces from the bed, he fought the tremors of his fingers as he gripped his wand and cast his Protegio.

Offering a silent appeal to whatever deity might care to hear him, Horace carefully removed the stopper. A strangling scent rose to hover in rank miasma -- heavy with the stink of thorn apple and henbane. A profound potion, perfectly crafted, correct in all its essences -- but its maker's signature far too young for the terrible gravity of its purpose. Far too young, indeed. No fame or glory brewed or bottled, here -- but death? Ah, now that had been most impeccably stoppered, curse that infernal speech the boy had, no doubt, swallowed like dark honey.

Shaking his head in dismay, Horace lowered his shield and turned back to the waiting witches, ringed around the bed. Narcissa, her pale hair a spreading hood around her shoulders, stood slowly swaying, never taking her eyes from Poppy's swiftly darting hands. The cobra and the mongoose -- and Minerva, the lioness between them. Poor cobra, he thought, she must allow the lioness and the mongoose to prevail or nothing can be done.

"It is not the Living Death that holds this boy, Poppy," he hissed. "All your store of Suscitatio, even though it was brewed by Severus' own hand, will not wake him."

Horace knew he dared not be too gentle with Narcissa. Her sanity would shatter in an instant if he gave her that permission. If they lost her to her grief, there could well be no turning back from that pit, and she would be powerless to help her son.

Willing his pity for her to withdraw, he forced her attention to him, his voice carrying none of its usual satisfied affection.

"Lady Malfoy, it would appear young Draco has achieved a terrible Making."

The cylinder glinted in his creviced palm, as though it sought to take the wand light for its own.

"This is Viator Cuspis, the Traveler's Blade. Even with Severus as his master, I would not have thought he had gained the ability, and certainly not the inclination. Severus would not have encouraged such a thing, though Riddle might..."

At the edge of his anger, Horace saw that Minerva was tight-fisted, that she'd turned nearly as pale as Narcissa. Merlin, she looked as though she were the one close to screaming. He'd noticed that, from the day he'd sat in her office -- how even the slightest mention of Severus seemed to wall her into some far place...

"Madam, your boy's gone to walk Between, remaining with neither the living nor the dead."

He could no longer hold back his pity as he watched Narcissa, swaying, clutching at the empty air...

"Gods help you both, what has this poor, arrogant child begun?"