Chapter Twenty-Four

I felt as though I would settle rather more quickly and comfortably into Malfoy Manor than I had expected. When Ethel had said that she had wanted to move the whole house, she hadn't only meant its contents; somehow she had actually brought Spinner's End with us. Not the street, or the physical building as such, but she brought everything from behind the peeling front door, right down to the little terrace outside my kitchen, the one that she had created as a replica of the manor's own. I pushed the thought from my mind that she had done that little enhancement on Spinner's End to prompt me in my wooing of the woman I had thrown away.

I cannot even attempt to explain, nor to fathom out how it all seemed to fit in, as though it had been part of Malfoy Manor's original plans when it had been created as the seat of the Malfoys some four centuries previously, but it did, and left me feeling more secure for doing so. Ethel had made modifications, the way she was always changing things, and I found I had a workshop with my mother's old stove in it, just off my kitchen, which was in turn just off the manor's main kitchen, so that that area alone should have taken up a sizable part of the back of the manor's ground floor, which, of course, it didn't. She was inexhaustible, and I noticed that Lucretia and Minerva, and Narcissa to a lesser degree, seemed to be struggling to keep up with her. I felt such a welling of affection for Ethel that it quite took me aback.

'Enough, Ethel,' I said, taking her small bony hand and sitting her down in her own little chair, the one at my own kitchen table. 'We're safe for now ... thanks to you.'

It had only been four hours or so since I had dispatched Riddle's owl from Lucius's kitchen garden, and it was by then a good couple of hours past the two o'clock he had said he was going to call at Spinner's End. I doubted it would be much longer before he came a-calling to the manor, and I knew he would be very displeased to do so. But I needed time with Ethel, on her own, without Narcissa and Lucretia hovering in the background, or Minerva sitting under the table eavesdropping in her Animagus form, or any other distractions I somehow felt Ethel welcomed. I had an uneasy feeling I knew why that was. I thought Ethel was trying to keep me at bay, keep me from asking questions I needed to ask, and hearing answers I didn't want to hear.

'You've been avoiding me,' I said, leaning across and taking her hand in mine. 'What's troubling you?'

She looked across to me in some kind of appeal; it was something I didn't recognise in her, something almost alien that frightened me. 'So many secrets, dear,' she said, looking to where the sound of elves busily preparing dinner issued from the main manor kitchen.

'In this house?' I asked. 'Shall we go back to Spinner's End?'

'No, Severus dear, that won't be necessary; everything we want of Spinner's End is here.'

'What kind of secrets, Ethel?' I asked. 'Is it something we need to defend ourselves against?'

'No, I do not believe there to be anything inherently evil about this house,' she said. 'It is, however, uneasy ... as though it has hosted many evil people and many unspeakable deeds. It has a bloody past,' she said, nodding slowly.

'The Malfoys?' I asked, stating the obvious, as it was the very Malfoys who had had the house built during the sixteenth century, on the site of an ancient pagan burial ground. I almost gasped as I understood the implication of that, not only that it was one of those little gems of knowledge that Ethel saw fit to implant into my mind to save herself the bother of explaining it, but also that the very act of building on what would have been regarded as sacred ground would render the house, in the eyes of many, to be cursed.

'Some of them,' she agreed. 'But more often those who sought to associate themselves with what they saw as the Malfoys' worth.'

'Ethel, what has this to do with us?' I asked, remembering only then that I still hadn't asked her about Lucretia's secrets.

'I'm not sure, Severus. But ancient magic protects this house and those in it ... some of it very Dark Magic indeed.'

I thought of the sarcophagi in the cellar, the ones that held the remains of Astoria Malfoy, Lucius and Lucretia's mother, and wondered why I had not puzzled more over how her awareness had been preserved for the twenty-nine years since she had died giving life to not only her son, but the daughter who had been hidden from view for so long. I felt a pang of what I could almost regard as guilt that we had all but abandoned Astoria's remains, when they had watched over her child for so long.

'Not for as long as you think, Severus,' Ethel said, snatching my thoughts from where they had barely coalesced. 'Astoria Malfoy did not die until Lucius was seventeen.'

I sat back stunned. 'It was Astoria's funeral that Lucius was taken away from Hogwarts to attend?' I asked. 'When he thought it was Lucretia's? But that doesn't make sense. If Astoria had been alive when I had visited the catacombs as a schoolboy, her remains could not have been what I sensed at that time in the stone coffins.'

'I have spoken to Astoria, Severus,' Ethel said. 'Her tale is grim indeed. But you are right, it is not, and never was, Astoria's remains that inhabit the sarcophagi.'

'What is it then?' I asked, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck begin rise.

'It is the remains of Astoria Malfoy's lover,' she said. 'Lucius and Lucretia's father.'

'Impossible,' I gasped. 'Why would Abraxas allow his wife's lover to inhabit Malfoy Manor ... in any capacity?'

'It was the only part of Abraxas's act of revenge that went awry ... had he but known it,' Ethel replied. 'The remains had been charmed to make sure they did not permit anyone with intent against the House of Malfoy to pass. He had not bargained on you acting on Lucius and Lucretia's behalf. In his vanity he quite forgot he was not the only Malfoy.'

'Are you telling me on one hand that Abraxas was not Lucius's father, but on the other that Lucius is a Malfoy?' I asked, as confused as I was stunned. 'How?'

'Oh, yes, he is, dear. He just wasn't Abraxas's son ... the man Astoria had a love affair with was Abraxas's brother Valerius.'

She looked across to the door to where Lucius was then standing, and I suspected he had been there for some time, and that Ethel had known that.

He crossed the room and sat beside me. 'I think you had better tell us it all, Ethel,' he said.

'And I think we should wait for Sirius too, Lucius dear,' she replied. 'Are you comfortable with that?'

*****

'I could not understand at first why I was unable to find out from Lucretia how she came to be imprisoned. I should have been able to read her memories even of infancy, when she so willingly allowed me access to her mind,' Ethel said. 'Parts of her memory had been very skilfully Obliviated, and as you know the memory is not just subdued, but is actually removed. But something puzzled me about such an eloquent young woman of such undoubted and unaffected poise ... and that was just who had taught her her social graces: who had taught her to dress, and to play the piano, and how to conduct herself? Not the elves of Malfoy Manor surely; the elfin peoples do not have our skill with language, they use an altogether different means of communicating with their own, one that is unable to be understood by humans. I knew a woman of high station had in some way brought up Lucretia, and it was only when we came here today that I fully understood just who that was, and how it had happened.'

'But Lucretia told us that she had never met another woman before,' I argued, harking back to Lucretia's excited pleasure at the thought of meeting Ethel.

'It was every memory of her mother that was Obliviated from her, Severus dear,' Ethel replied. 'It was one of the odd things I felt about her when we first met.'

Ethel told us how her first stop, once she had set the other three woman to working on her charms, was to the cellars to where the sarcophagi were, and thence to the Malfoy crypt, to where the memorial to Astoria Malfoy was, the one I had assumed was empty of her remains. She was a bit vague about how she actually communicated with Astoria, but none of us saw fit to ask her to explain; we had too much else to listen to.

Abraxas Malfoy had been the second son of his generation of Malfoys, his elder brother Valerius being his father's favourite, and Abraxas being his mother's, and as such Abraxas stood to inherit only a relatively modest living from the Estate. Valerius had not married by the time Astoria came to Malfoy Manor, having said he had no inclination to settle down and produce an heir to the Malfoy name much before he was thirty, concentrating instead on travelling the world. Ever encouraged by his mother, Abraxas resented him, always having considered himself to be more worthy of inheriting the vast Malfoy Estates than his playboy brother.

His doting mother had secured a match for Abraxas, a seventeen-year-old French aristocrat whose family had fallen on difficult times, and Astoria was brought to Wiltshire under the domineering thumb of Abraxas's mother, and the cold brutality of the man she was to spend her life with.

By the time Valerius returned from his latest visit to the mysteries of the Orient, Abraxas was already married. Valerius recognised the beautiful young woman, who was his sister-in-law, as being bullied and frightened, and he befriended her, eventually becoming her lover. What neither Valerius nor Astoria knew was that Abraxas, in common with the second sons of the precarious Malfoy line, whilst by no means impotent, was sterile, and that it would only be possible for his wife to conceive if he used potions produced by Dark Magic to boost his fertility. Abraxas had not seen fit to tell his wife of this, knowing that within a year or so the potions he took would have sufficiently empowered him to father a child.

Astoria, however, became pregnant after only six months of marriage, and as her lover was the dashing, but very Malfoy, Valerius, she had no worries that even if the child she carried were not her husband's, of passing him off as Abraxas's; she did not know yet that two babies slept below her heart. On hearing the news of his wife's pregnancy, Abraxas took to having her movements shadowed by the Malfoy elves, and, of course, the elves, having no contrary orders from the elder Malfoy brother, followed his instructions and reported her clandestine meetings with Valerius.

Abraxas did not wait until the babies were born. He took his wife, ostensibly to show her something in the cellars, and bricked her up, alive and pregnant, and without food and water, whilst he went in search of the brother who had once again travelled abroad. Abraxas told his parents he had taken Astoria with him. Fortunately, if fortune could in any way be called her fate, he was only away for a week, and Astoria had survived: weakened and terrified, but alive. When Abraxas came home he confided in his mother, and they both went to the cellar to see if Astoria had died.

His mother nursed Astoria back to health, convincing Abraxas that he would do well to have an heir in place, to preserve the lineage. Astoria thought that she had found an ally in the woman she had hitherto come to fear. She was wrong through. One day, not long after Abraxas's return, mother and son went to Astoria and told her that someone purporting to be her dear friend wanted to keep her company. They had three elves with them, each elf bearing a burden bigger than itself. One bundle was Valerius's legs, another was his arms and head, and the third was his torso. Astoria was once again bricked up, this time with some bread and water, her dead lover and his unborn children for company.

'Fuck sake,' Black muttered, the first one of us to interrupt Ethel.

I was watching Lucius though. We had all been silent, but he was more than silent; he was pale, and looked almost as though he had withdrawn into himself in some sort of defence against his shock.

'Is there much more of this, Ethel?' I asked, but she had reached her hand across the table to lay it on Malfoy's.

'Can I ask something?' Lucius said quietly to her, drawing his hand away, and I thought his voice sounded dead and flat, like something broken. I understood then, too, the contempt that Abraxas had always shown for the boy he had passed off as his son, the one who was to succeed him as master of Malfoy Manor, and I regretted I had not been the one to deal out his death.

'Of course you can, Lucius dear,' Ethel replied. 'Try not to burden yourself too much though, dear ... try to remember it is all past, and Lucretia is safe and free.'

'Was I ... were we born in that cellar? In that prison?'

'Yes, dear,' she replied. 'Astoria never left those rooms again in her lifetime. She thinks she died of a malady ... and is not sure what that was.'

'You think otherwise?' Black asked.

'I know otherwise,' Ethel replied.

'And was she used?' Lucius asked, and I wished there were something to move him away from his line of questioning. 'Was she forced to entertain other men ... in the way Lucretia seems to have done?'

'Yes, I'm afraid she was. Her daughter's safety was her priority, her only focus,' Ethel said. 'She taught her the way any mother would teach a high born daughter. You see, Lucius, Astoria always believed that one day Lucretia would be free ... that one day Abraxas would die, and her daughter could join the world she belonged to ... and even beyond this world her heart is now rejoicing.'

'And me?' Lucius asked, even more quietly, as I heard Black draw in a stifled sigh. 'Did she ask about me?'

Ethel said nothing for a moment, and I wondered just how much worse this could get. Then I actually felt her pass some kind of mental balm onto Lucius's mind; I could almost see it travel the short distance between them. 'Lucius ... dear,' she said, 'Astoria was told that you had died. It was only after Astoria had died herself that Lucretia was told that you were alive, and living as Abraxas's son.'

Lucius dropped his head to the palm of one hand, and let his fingers splay through his mass of white-blond hair.

'I think we've had enough for one day,' Black said, failing to hide the emotion in his own voice.

Malfoy had straightened up though, his face taut. 'I want names, Ethel,' he said, his voice hard, brittle. 'I want the names of every ... I shall not call them men ... I want every name of every savage that violated my mother and my sister.'

Ethel sighed. 'Yes, dear,' she whispered. 'And you will have them ... on one condition.'

'What condition?'

'That you swear to me on the lives of Lucretia and Narcissa that you do nothing that will endanger your life or your freedom as part of your revenge.'

'I can't do that,' Malfoy replied.

'In that case you do no justice to your sister or the woman you intend to make your widow, Lucius,' Ethel replied firmly.

I hadn't noticed that Black had stood up until he sat back down and shoved three glasses of my Glenfiddich around the table. 'That's enough for today, Lucius,' he said. 'We'll work the rest of this out in colder blood than we have just now.'

Malfoy looked ready to object, and then seemed to change his mind, lifting his glass instead, and tossing the heavy measure of malt over his throat in one go. He stood up and left the room, and we could hear his heels clipping on the stone floor of the main kitchen, and out into the back hallway.

*****

Riddle didn't call that day, and I began to wonder if he were expecting me to contact him. I didn't care much one way or another, finding myself content to enjoy my freedom and begin to take stock of what was happening around me, and perhaps more importantly, what I needed to do. I had to find a direction of my own, instead of waiting to be pushed in one by Tom Riddle. I was at my desk, surrounded by my own belongings and flicking absently through "Die Letztendliche Wahrheit?" when I became aware of being watched. I raised my head, expecting to see either Ethel or the equally ubiquitous Black, and found the steady but slightly disconcerting gaze of Lucretia Malfoy instead.

I only realised I had not said anything when she raised her eyebrow and gave me a quite breathtaking smile. 'May I come in, Severus?' she asked. 'Or shall I just speak from the doorway?'

I stumbled belatedly to my feet, rather like a schoolboy caught out with his manners lacking. 'Of course you may come in,' I said, pulling a chair aside for her, without noticing that I expected her to sit at my desk too, instead of one of the settees Ethel had brought to Malfoy Manor for me.

'I hope can be friends, Severus,' she said. 'I know you have been rather railroaded into coming here ... and pushed into whatever may happen next.' She looked away from me for a moment, but I could see it was to save my discomfort, and not hers. 'I know you love another, Severus, and that you have lost her for now ... but I swear to you that if you find Andromeda becomes ... available,' she said, shaking her head as though the word were not the one she was searching for, 'I would not expect you to stay with me.' She looked up again, and I was struck by her sincerity. 'But for all that, I hope we can be friends.'

'I thought we already were,' I replied.

'That's good,' she said, and nodded, and it was only when she seemed to relax that I understood how tense she had been. 'May I talk to you about Lucius now?' she asked. 'I'm very concerned about him.'

'Of course,' I said. 'Do you want to sit by the fire and have some tea? I'm sure it must be teatime ... it always seems to be.'

We moved across to the fire, and when she began talking I remembered that she was not a child, not an eighteen-year-old girl, but a woman of almost thirty, who had endured and survived what I could barely imagine.

'I know Lucius is terribly upset,' she said. 'Oh, I know why that is ... Ethel has already told me everything she told you all. You have other concerns surrounding me too, not the least being how to introduce me to the world at large, as you indicated yourself.'

'You have a suggestion?' I asked.

'I have a suggestion.'

'And does that suggestion involve telling the truth?'

'Yes, Severus,' she agreed. 'That suggestion involves telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.'

I thought about that for a moment, no longer feeling as self-conscious as I had under her scrutiny. 'What did Lucius say to that?' I asked at last.

'I have not discussed it with anyone,' she admitted. 'I rather thought it was my place to put it to you first.' She gave me a somewhat roguish smile which was filled with challenge, and laced with a warning that, whist she might consider herself to be my equal, she did not consider me to be her superior. Maybe it was that alone that made me realise that I would get on very well with Lucretia Malfoy, perhaps even very well indeed, and that prospect cheered me enormously.

'If we could convince him ...' I trailed off for a moment as something else occurred to me. 'In fact, the truth is actually a far stronger standpoint for Lucius, is it not? The fact that he was the son of Valerius Malfoy, the elder Malfoy son, actually means that Abraxas never had any claim to Malfoy Estates .... Lucius not only is, but was from the day he was born, the true lord of Malfoy Manor.'

She was nodding vigorously, her soft blond curls rippling on her shoulders. 'Exactly!' she exclaimed. 'I confess it is very refreshing to talk things over with one who so readily understands. I had not fully understood how engaging conversation could be.' She looked away, blinking quickly. 'I... I feel like a bird that has been freed from a cage ... I ... I'm sorry,' she said, stumbling to her feet, her pale green silk dress catching on the small side table and upsetting her teacup. 'I promised myself I would not burden you thus.'

I found I was on my feet too, reaching for her, feeling my arms close around her in a gesture solely of comfort. 'You cannot burden me,' I said as softly as I could, into her hair; it smelled of violets and something else I couldn't identify. 'Now sit with me for a while so that we can work out how best to go about this ...' I trailed off; that was not what she wanted to hear. 'Just sit with me for a while.'

*****

I could see Lucius had been drinking when we sat at dinner that night. Minerva had gone back to Hogwarts, and it was just the six of us; I was glad of that much, and found I was beginning to accept Narcissa Black as a permanent part of our circle too.

I should have handled it better; I know that, but I had not accounted for too many things, most of them Lucius's vulnerabilities.

'We think we have worked out a way to address one of our problems,' I said, glancing once to Lucretia.

'How?' Black asked, looking up from the lamb he had been attacking with the vigour of one on the edge of starvation.

'With the unadorned truth,' I said. 'We bring Lucretia into society with the truth.'

I watched Lucius pale, and mistook it for something other than the fury it was.

'In the long run the truth is always preferable,' I went on. 'So much harder to disprove, if it comes down to that.'

'Preferable to whom?' Malfoy asked, and it was only then that I realised he was angry.

'To all of us, Lucius,' I said.

'I see,' he retorted coldly. 'I'm sure if you examine that, Severus, you'll find it is just preferable to you.'

'I resent that, Lucius,' I said. 'I am not the only one who finds this suggestion to be the right one ... Lucretia herself agrees with me.'

'You resent that?' Lucius replied. 'Let me tell you what I resent. I resent the fact that you see fit to use my sister's past as your own political platform. I resent the fact that you have even seen fit to discuss any such thing without me present. In fact, Severus ... I rather fancy I resent you even being here.'

I said nothing. He was drunk, and I had made a bad mess of handling a very delicate subject. Instead, I took the coward's option, excused myself from the table, and went to my room. It was about two hours later when Black knocked on my door and poked his head round, without waiting for an invitation.

'You didn't do that very well, did you?' he said, leaning back against the door he had closed; at least he hadn't sat on my bed.

'I don't suppose I did,' I admitted sourly. 'I still believe it's the right thing to do.'

'It is,' Black agreed. 'Anyway, Lucretia gave him a good dressing down, and told him she had gone to you with the idea.'

'I was not looking to be rescued by yet another woman,' I retorted.

'Oh, get over yourself, Severus; you're worse than he is,' Black muttered, patting his pockets down for his cigarettes. I was just about to tell him not to even consider lighting up in my bedroom, when he passed the pack across to me, and I took one instead. 'He seemed to quieten down a bit when Lucretia told him how you had worked out that he had always been the rightful heir to Malfoy Estates ... above Abraxas. In fact,' Black said, warming to his subject, 'I think he now sees this as some way of getting his revenge on Lucretia's visitors.'

'How?' I asked, not sure I liked this bit of the turn of events.

'It was Narcissa's idea, actually,' Black replied, squinting against the smoke from the cigarette he had left in his mouth as he spoke. 'She suggested that Lucius makes formal representation to the Ministry of Magic for help in tracking down whoever they were ... not that we don't already know, of course ... but it could make things a little embarrassing for the parties concerned.'

I didn't like that at all. 'I think that's inviting trouble we don't need, Black,' I said.

'Well, I shall leave you to talk Lucius out of it then,' he said grinning like the maniac he truly was. 'He's drunk right now ... maybe he'll have forgotten in the morning.'

'Was Ethel party to this insanity?' I asked, disappointed that she had not managed to nip it in the bud, so to speak.

'Yes, she thought it would work, with a little modification on Lucius's more radical ideas ... like public castrations, and so forth.' He became serious. 'Look, Severus, he had a bad day; his return to Malfoy Manor was not what he had hoped for. Give him a day or two. I'm sure you can sort it all out,' he added with a confidence I didn't feel.

'Maybe I should go and talk to him just now,' I said.

'He's asleep,' Black said, heaving himself off the door as though it had been his only means of support. 'Which is just what I'm about to do as well. I suggest you do too. By the way,' he added, digging into his pocket again and flinging a banana across the room to land beside me, 'I brought you dessert.'

I picked the fruit up and gave him a hard look. 'What am I supposed to do with that?' I snapped.

He grinned again. 'I bet you wish you hadn't asked me that.'

I watched him leave, laughing like the schoolboy I had begun to suspect he still was, wondering just what on earth I had unleashed.

*****