Aftermath

A/N:

My continued thanks to RedSkyAtNight, whose patience, humor, and skill are apparently boundless.

She was lying face down, and her back felt as though it were on fire. There was a loud, high-pitched humming in her ears, and she could see nothing. Her hands and feet were cold, but she could not move them to warm them.

For a long while she lay like this, barely conscious of her surroundings, or of the passage of time, only of the burning pain in the center of her back.

Very gradually she became aware of the bed on which she was lying, and of the hushed comings and goings of the people who came to attend her. Every so often someone would pull back the sheet that covered her and dress her back with a wonderfully cooling ointment.

Mostly, she slept.

The ringing in her ears had subsided, and she could hear voices: whispered conversations that would cease immediately anytime she made the tiniest move. She could move her hands a bit now, although mostly they lay still, or twitched of their own accord.

Someone entered the room, and a woman's voice said, "Have you been here all night again, then?"

"Mmh." A man's voice, barely audible.

Hands lifting back the sheet, and the man's voice again: "She's dreadfully thin."

"Not surprising...she's gone nearly three weeks without food."

"That's going to leave a terrible scar, isn't it?"

A soft snort from the woman. "I'd say a scar is the least of her worries at the moment."

The cool sensation of the ointment on her back, and she slept again.

When she finally came fully awake, it had been twenty-six days since the duel. She was lying on her back now, the pain there reduced to a dull ache, and when she opened her eyes she could see that she was in a severe white room. Wherever this was, it was not the Hogwarts hospital wing.

Her mouth was as dry as paper. She brought one hand in front of her face and hardly recognized the brown monkey's paw before her; the effort of moving it was exhausting, and she let it drop again.

She was alone in the room, but not for long. A Mediwitch came in, and, seeing that she was awake, fluttered about her, checking her pulse and plumping her pillow, talking to her in that strange way that nurses have, referring to Rawa as "we" in a voice half an octave above normal.

And then there was food, a thin soup that she sucked down as greedily as any meal she had ever eaten in her life, straining forward like a baby bird each time the spoon was lifted to her mouth. She finished every drop and would have gladly taken as much again, but the Mediwitch said, "No, dearie, we don't want to be eating too much at once now, or we'll be sick all over these nice clean sheets."

The soup felt wonderful in her stomach: warm and surprisingly substantial. She was struggling to sit up, supporting herself on stick-thin arms, when there was a soft knock at the door and Dumbledore came in.

When he came and sat next to the bed, she saw that his eyes were glittering with unshed tears. "My dear girl," he said, "I am so relieved to see you back among us."

She smiled shakily. When she spoke, it took several attempts before she could manage anything but a hoarse croak.

"Who is teaching my classes?"

"Severus, Sirius, and Minerva are taking it in turns. And I myself have taught a few lessons."

She looked down at her wasted body, felt the ache between her shoulder blades. "What happened?"

"You fought a duel with Lucius Malfoy. Do you remember?"

Suddenly she did remember. Everything, right up until the moment she had pitched forward onto the hard gleaming surface of the table. "Lucius did this? But how? I had his wand." It was possession of his wand that had made her feel secure enough to begin dropping the Shield.

"Not Lucius, Narcissa."

"Oh." And then a wave of horror and guilt washed over her. "Oh, god. Draco."

"Yes." His face was serious. "He's had rather a hard time of it, I fear."

She felt abruptly sick, and closed her eyes for a moment. "What will happen to her?"

"She's being held in Azkaban until her trial. I believe they've been . . . waiting to see how you got on, before deciding what to charge her with."

Waiting, she understood, to see whether the charge would be attempted murder or just plain murder.

"I will not prosecute," she said.

Dumbledore looked at her in surprise. "She tried to kill you."

"I know. Believe me." She gave a bitter little laugh. "Do not misunderstand. It is not some selfless gesture, turning the other cheek or whatever you call it. I would love to see her locked up with the Dementors for the rest of her life." In fact, she was filled all at once with a vengeful rage, and would in that moment happily have watched Narcissa pulled apart by dragons.

"What then?"

"Draco. If there is a trial, he will have to testify against her, as my second. Can you imagine how terrible that will be for him, for a son to give testimony that may put his own mother away? I should never have involved him to begin with."

Dumbledore looked at her gravely. "You will forgive an old man for speaking out of turn," he said, "but I don't believe that is your decision to make."

"Do not be ridiculous. I am the one lying in this hospital bed, no?"

He took off his half-moon spectacles and began polishing them on the hem of his sleeve. "Rawa, I have found over the years that it is almost always a mistake, even with the best of intentions, to shield people from the natural results of their behavior."

"Draco has done nothing to deserve this."

"No. But his mother has, and it is not for you to decide that she should escape retribution for her actions."

"I am the one who brought Draco into it. If I choose to spare him further pain, that is surely my affair."

"Yes, you are the one who brought him into it...and that is a decision for which you must suffer the consequences. But remember that your duty to Draco is not to spare him pain: it is to teach him."

She looked at him mutely, dumb with grief and guilt.

Finally she said, "He is just a boy."

"He is. And you are right: you should not have involved him. But what's done is done, and he is involved...and his mother is, as the historians say, the proximate cause of his current painful situation. It is hardly a secret that the penalty for use of the Killing Curse is imprisonment in Azkaban, and she had to have known that Draco, as your second, would be forced to testify against her. Yet she did what she did."

Rawa was obdurate. "He has suffered enough, I think."

Dumbledore was silent for a few minutes. Then he said, "There is a kind of hubris...do you know that term?"

She nodded.

"...A kind of hubris in thinking that in our wisdom we can pull the strings of fate and arrange for the outcome that we think best. The clockwork of the universe is unimaginably complex, and things almost never turn out the way we plan. If we begin our clumsy interventions, then we must accept responsibility for the outcomes, whatever they are."

"You will have to be more concrete with me," she said irritably. "I am too tired for riddles. What do you mean?"

"That if you shield Narcissa from prison, and she goes on to harm or kill someone else, her liberty to have done so will be on your head. That if Draco sees his mother commit this horrific act and then escape punishment, he will inevitably learn from that...and it is not a lesson you would likely wish him to learn."

She closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow.

After a while he said, "In any event, it may not be up to you. There has already been a visit from the Ecuadorian Minister for Magic, accusing us of an act of international aggression and demanding redress. In all probability the Ministry will prosecute, whether you choose to testify or not."

"Please go away," she said crossly. "I need to rest."

He smiled, and squeezed her hand briefly before leaving.

When he was gone, she found herself unable to sleep, and looked about the room restlessly for something to read. On the floor in the corner by a chair she spotted something small and dark, and lacking anything else to do, decided to get out of bed and walk across the room to see what it was...an arduous task that took her nearly fifteen minutes. She picked it up, and sank down exhausted in the chair to look at it.

It was a black, fabric-covered button.

She knew that as soon as he saw that it was missing, he would simply Summon it, unless she effected some sort of concealment. "Churapuy," she said to it, and then, clutching it in her hand, began making her way back to the bed.