Chapter Twenty-Five

Black wasn't my only visitor that night. I had just come out of a long hot bath and was towelling my hair dry, when there was a soft knock on my door. I pulled it open, half expecting an elf with a mug of cocoa or something of that sort. Who I didn't expect was Lucretia Malfoy, certainly not dressed in a diaphanous nightgown of pale green silk that clung to her body in all the right places.

'Don't you think I am in enough trouble with your brother?' I asked, standing back to allow her to pass me, not failing to notice the scent of violets again, the way it invaded my senses. 'At the risk of sounding rude, Lucretia ... what can I do for you?'

'Well, you could close the door first, Severus,' she said, sitting down on the little bedside chair.

'Lucretia,' I said, still holding the door ajar, 'don't you think we should talk in the morning? I was just about to go to bed.'

'I assumed so,' she replied, making no effort to stand. 'That's why I am here. Now, Severus, close the door, your mouth too, and come here.'

'Lucretia,' I tried again, 'it is customary in most societies for a couple to wait until they are married to spend time alone with one another in bedrooms ... it's the way things are done,' I finished lamely, pretending to myself that I hadn't noticed my pulse rate increase.

'Are you a virgin, Severus?' she asked.

That word again, it seemed to be haunting me. 'No ... no, I'm not.'

'How many times have you been married?' she asked.

'Never,' I replied. I could see where it was going, and I hadn't a clue how to stop it.

'So, it is just me that you do not care to ... to spend time alone in your bedroom with?'

I closed the door, but stayed quite resolutely standing bedside it. 'That's not true,' I said. 'But ...' She was laughing at me; I knew that. 'I don't think tonight is the right night for this,' I said.

'I see,' she replied, not at all put off. 'If it is Lucius you are frightened of, he is drunk and asleep ... and Sirius is with him. So even if he wakens sober, he is unlikely to come calling on you.'

'Black?' I asked dumbly. 'Of course, I'm not frightened of Lucius ... Black?' I repeated.

'Yes ... oh, I didn't think that was a secret,' she said. 'Lucius is almost as fond of the boys as he is of the girls. Have I offended you?' she asked when I failed to answer.

'No,' I said, giving up, and going to sit on the edge of the bed, making sure the towel I had wrapped around my waist didn't fall apart.

'Severus, if we are to be married, don't you think we should check that we are at least compatible?' she asked. 'I mean, it's allowing a rather large margin of error to wait until our wedding night to find out things aren't what they should be ... and I, for one, do not intend to spend the rest of my life shackled to a man who, for want of a better description, is a lousy fuck.'

That time at least I knew my mouth was hanging open. 'Do you think we could start again?' I asked, wondering if Black had been giving her lessons in picturesque speech. 'Only I'm beginning to feel a little foolish.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I'm being unfair. Perhaps you're right, perhaps tonight is not the night.' She began to stand, her gown slipping to caress her body in a way I wanted to. It was quite deliberate, quite contrived, but no less appealing for that. She dropped her gaze and began to move across to the door, and I could tell she was secure in the knowledge that I was undone and would not let her leave.

All I really had to do was to get her into bed without seeming to back down; it was going to be tricky, but I was sure I would manage somehow.

*****

I had taken her for a tiny frail little thing, something to be treated as though made of fragile glass held together by cobwebs, a notion she disabused me of quite quickly. All of my other preconceptions about her had been wiped away earlier, as I had come to realise that what I had assumed at first for an almost backward reticence, when we had first discovered her, had been nothing but a woman unsure of whether the men who had come to her had come to free her, or just have her swap one life of servitude for another of a different sort.

Even in the few days I had been held at the Ministry, the change in her had been astounding. Lucretia Malfoy had emerged, and I couldn't help drawing a parallel between her and Sandro Botticelli's Venus emerging from a seashell. That thought made me smile, something I only ever did either grudgingly or unwittingly.

'Are you laughing at me, Severus?' she asked, crossing the room to put one of her hands on my bare shoulder and the other on the towel at my waist, and I noticed her touch was like a feather.

'No ... I rather thought you were laughing at me,' I said, dropping my head to plant a kiss on her hair, the hair that glowed like spun silver and gold, and smelled of violets.

She was small and slim, yet endowed in all the ways that mattered to make any man's blood run hot; she was strong and nimble, and her hands and mouth so dextrous that her every touch surprised and pleasured in equal part, and made short work of leaving me desperate with desire to please her too.

'I think I am content to toast our engagement,' she whispered much later, twisting her fingers in my sweat dampened hair, as I collapsed on top of her a second time, my breath heaving and my heart hammering. 'What say you, Severus?'

I wasn't really in a fit state to speak at all, but I suppose I made some sound of agreement because a few moments later I felt her shift below me, and just remembered I was still pinning her down. 'Sorry,' I groaned. 'Have you suffocated?' I slid over onto my side to lie facing her, watching the way the light from the waxing moon caught the silver and gold lights in her hair, and I knew then I could care for Lucretia Malfoy, and maybe one day, if Merlin were kind enough to us both, I could love her dearly. But for then, I was content too, and felt myself drifting off to sleep.

The popping of the champagne cork almost made me dive out of bed in search of my wand, shocking as it was in the soft dreamy silence of post-coital repose, until I heard her laugh. And then she was straddling me where I had sat up to rest my head against the bedstead, and she was pouring Lucius's best Krug into my mouth in little dribbles, and I did my best not to laugh at her delight, as she bent her head to my chest to lick away what she had spilled.

*****

I had a moment of panic when I woke, that she was perhaps still by my side, and about to be discovered by whoever was knocking on my door. It was late; I could tell that much as my sleep-fogged brain reminded me that Lucretia had left me at first light to go to her own rooms, and I had fallen back to sleep.

'Who is it?' I called, dragging myself upright in the devastation of my bed.

Lucius took that as an invitation.

'Why did you not come down for breakfast?' he asked, sitting down on the chair beside the bed, where his sister had sat only a few hours before.

'I should have thought that obvious,' I replied. 'I was asleep.' He seemed unsure of how to go on, and I suppose I realised I was being a bit unfair. 'I handled things very badly last night,' I said, trying not to choke on my words. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be stupid, I was drunk,' Lucius muttered, waving his hand in dismissal, and I could see that was not why he had called. 'I ... I thought you'd left the house,' he added, 'or were avoiding me.'

'I was asleep,' I repeated. 'What's wrong, Lucius? You might as well spit it out, or it's going to be a very uncomfortable day for us both.' He looked away from me, and a rather unwelcome thought occurred to me. 'Have you come to tell me you have changed your mind about my marrying your sister?' I asked.

'Merlin, no ... I suspect she would skin me alive if I did that,' Lucius said with some feeling. He put his fingers to his forehead as though he was trying to rub away a headache, and I knew he was struggling with his emotions. 'You were feet away from them, Severus ... we both were ...' He trailed off as I understood what was haunting him, and cursed myself that I had not thought of it before.

I needed to talk him through this, and I knew I had let him down by not following him out of the kitchen the day before when Ethel had disclosed Astoria's fate. I should have done it then, instead of leaving him on his own to get drunk and dose himself with Merlin alone knew what self-recriminations.

'Let me get dressed. I'll see you in the library in ten minutes, Lucius,' I said, hauling myself out of bed. 'Make sure Black doesn't trail along. I want to speak to you alone.'

He gave me a long troubled look and then nodded, heaving himself off the chair. Then he looked around the carnage of my room, as though seeing if for the first time: the wreckage of my bed; my clothes lying scattered where I had taken them off before my bath; the towel I had had wrapped around my waist, the one that Lucretia had flung over her shoulder to land and drape itself over a candelabra; the two crystal champagne flutes, and the almost empty bottle of Krug.

'You're rather untidy, Severus. I do hope you don't expect my elves to lift and lay after you,' he remarked, seemingly quite himself again, stooping to pick up a small pale green silk handkerchief. He held it out to me, letting his eyebrow rise in something that wasn't quite accusation. 'Yours?' he asked, looking down at the embroidered letter L.

'It's in my room,' I replied.

'You won't forget she is my sister, Severus, will you?'

'No, but I shan't hold it against her either.'

*****

The fire in the library had already been lit, and Lucius was sitting in the leather armchair Tom Riddle seemed to favour. He had just laid his empty brandy glass down on the mahogany side table, and was in the act of lifting the decanter once more. Before I sat down, I crossed the room, took the decanter from his hand, and took it and the glass to the chiffonier on the wall beside the door.

'Do you mind?' he said, spluttering his indignation. 'I believe you are the guest in this house, and I am the host. As such, I'm in charge of the brandy. You may have one if you wish.'

'I don't drink at ten o'clock in the morning, Lucius,' I said. 'And I'm not talking to you if you're drunk either.'

'Don't tell lies, Severus, you drink at any hour of the day or night,' he muttered. 'Although I have noticed you've become almost abstemious by your own standards these last few days.'

I ignored his jibe, and the truth in it. He needed to talk, and I needed to listen, but not about meaningless drinking habits. 'You can't blame yourself for this, Lucius,' I said, diving in at the deep side of the river. 'You were a baby.'

'I can't get it out of my mind,' he said, looking down, and I realised he was really struggling. 'We were there,' he said, looking back up at me in some sort of appeal. 'That day when Abraxas and ... and his wife were away in Romania. When we were in the cellars, you were only a few feet away from them. If I hadn't called you back ...' He trailed off hopelessly. 'In a way I killed her, you know ... I killed my own mother.' I let him talk on, let him vent everything that haunted him. 'If I hadn't let Rabastan talk me into going down to the stupid cellar, she might still be alive,' he said. 'I signed her death warrant.'

'You could look at it that way ... but only if you want to torture yourself,' I said. 'But you'd also have to look at the fact that if we had not gone down, I would not have seen the sarcophagi ... and if I had not seen them, Lucius, I would not have mentioned them the night we came here, the night after Abraxas died ... and Lucretia would still be imprisoned, probably for the rest of her life. As to whether your mother ... whether Astoria would still have been alive, is a moot point ... but it is likely that Lucretia would just have pined away, and died in captivity.'

I suspected he had tried all that out on himself already, and I thought he was only half listening.

'In a way you saved her life,' I said, ignoring his snort of derision. 'Oh, I know, it took a long time ... but she is alive, and well, and blossoming at a rate I find hard to believe of the frightened little mouse we found a couple of weeks ago.'

'Don't you think I've tried to tell myself that?' he snarled, his emotions flooding dangerously to the surface.

'Lucius, I don't know what to say to you to help you to try to handle this,' I said uselessly. 'I don't know how I would cope with the hideous facts that were thrown at you yesterday ... but you've got to look at the one positive aspect ... the very fact that Lucretia is alive.'

'I know,' he whispered.

'What would help you?' I asked. 'Do you want me to send Ethel to you? Or Narcissa?'

He shook his head as though I had offered him a sticking plaster for a Cruciatus Curse. 'No, I'm going to stay here for a while.'

'No, actually you're not, not on your own,' I said, looking deliberately to the decanter of amber cognac. 'I'm not leaving you to sit here drinking on your own.' I thought for a moment, turning the white stone absently in my pocket as I tried to find something he might want to do, something meaningful, and latched onto an idea at last. I felt rather proud that I had thought it out myself, and smiled inwardly at the almost crestfallen little throb of approval the stone gave. 'I want you to help me do something anyway,' I said, 'something I think should be done, although it is not my place to make the decision.'

'What?'

'I think it would be fitting to move the sarcophagi to the crypt ... perhaps to lie beside Astoria,' I said, letting my eyebrow rise as I sensed his interest. 'Would that not be some kind of tribute to your parents ... to let them lie together in some sort of peace?'

'Yes ... yes, I think I would like that,' he said. 'Why didn't I think of that?'

'There's something else too,' I said, now that he had shed a small part of his morbid self-reproach. 'You are making Lucretia nervous by treating her as though she were made of eggshells.'

'When you know better?' he asked, his own eyebrow rising in some vague challenge.

*****

The three of us went down to the catacombs; we hadn't told Lucretia or Narcissa what we were going to do, although I knew better than to suspect that we kept it secret from Ethel. We reached the end of the corridor where the bookcases hid the stone coffins from view, and I thought it odd that it seemed more eerily dark because it was daylight in the rest of that part of the world, and wondered if I had felt that way twelve years before, when I had gone there first. I had to push away my own stab of guilt that I had been so near to Lucretia and her mother, and had sensed something, but had not had the presence of mind to investigate. I tried to push it away again, telling myself I had only been just under fourteen at the time, and hardly a match for all of the other older boys there.

'Severus?' Lucius's voice sounded unsure in the slightly echoing darkness. 'You go and check everything's all right first. Black and I shall wait here.'

'All right?' I asked, turning so that the glow of my torch bounced off the stone walls, casting deeper seeming shadows. 'Of course it's all right. Stop being such a coward, Lucius.' I moved forward again, pretending my heart rate hadn't increased, and my mouth didn't feel dry, and trying to fool myself that I had only accidentally clutched my hand around the white stone in my pocket. Something passed in front of me, and it was all I could do not to let out a yelp of fright, even though I realised it was only a ghost. I hadn't sensed one on any of the other occasions I had been down there, and wondered why it had chosen that day to appear.

'Grandfather?' Lucius said warily from much closer behind me than I had thought he was. 'Grandfather, is that you?'

'Lucius,' the ghost of Atticus Malfoy murmured as he moved right through me to where his grandson stood stock still in the shock I felt. 'Have you come to claim your rightful sire at last, boy?'

I heard Black let out a gasp, and then felt him slip into my mind. "We're surrounded, Severus," he said urgently. There's about a dozen of them."

'Killed us all,' Atticus said, cocking his head to look behind Lucius to where the ghost of a woman, who could only have been Astoria Malfoy, and a man who was so like Lucius, except for his short hair, that if Lucius had not been standing there, I could truly have believed he had died. 'Speak up, boy,' Atticus said, 'so that I may hear what is in your heart ... so that I might see for myself that you are the son of your father, and nothing of the other ones has left its mark on you.'

'I only came to lay him to rest beside my mother, Grandfather,' Lucius replied, and the panic seemed to have fled him, leaving him calm and somehow sure of himself. 'May I speak with them? The only parents I ever knew until now were Abraxas and that woman he took as his second wife ... I never even knew I had real parents.'

'A fitting gesture, Lucius,' Atticus replied. 'You may not speak to them though, but know that they pride themselves on you and your sister ... and that I am gratified to see the House of Malfoy fall to its rightful heir.'

'These men are my friends, Grandfather,' Lucius said, waving his torch in my general direction and then Black's, so that the shadows flickered with the shades of Malfoys past in some kind of ghostly waltz. 'May we move my father's remains to lie with my mother's?' he asked.

'On one condition, Lucius,' Atticus replied, 'and that is that you lay your guilt to rest with them, boy. It does not belong to you, and will not serve you well,' he said, and with that he disappeared, and the rest of the ghosts of Malfoy Manor disappeared too, even the insubstantial shades that had been hovering about Black.

It was no difficult job to levitate the sarcophagi to the crypt, and I didn't fail to notice that I manoeuvred one, and Black the other, whilst Lucius seemed content to issue orders. We laid one on each side of Astoria's memorial, and Lucius changed the inscription from "Astoria, beloved first wife of Abraxas Malfoy" to read "In perpetual memory of Astoria and Valerius Malfoy, together forever, from their loving children Lucretia and Lucius", and I was only sorry that Abraxas was not alive to see it.

*****

There was still no call from Riddle that day, nor the day after, and I resolved to make up something as an excuse to call him. Much as I loathed the thought of any contact between us, I recognised that any distance was even more dangerous. I had spent a little time thinking over the meaning of Atticus's words, when he had said that Abraxas had killed them all, but could take no meaning from it, other than Abraxas having dispatched his own father in the wake of his brother, to save him waiting for his inheritance. I didn't suppose it mattered much then anyway.

It was only when the "Evening Prophet" arrived late the next day that I understood that Riddle's absence was because he had been busy with other things.

"SWEEPING CHANGES AT THE MINISTRY

Mr Potter was not available for comment when our reporter called at his home, but issued a statement through his son, James, to the effect that recent goings on at the Ministry led Henry Potter to the conclusion that his position at the Ministry was no longer tenable, hinting that he had left of his own accord, a point refuted by the Ministry. Henry Potter will be succeeded in his post by Barty Crouch Junior, who, although he is young and inexperienced, we are sure will be able to call on his father's vast reserves of experience in these troubling times."

I laid the paper down, feeling somehow responsible for Potter's demise, and frowned at Black, who had been reading it over my shoulder. Truth be known, I had already begun to consider leaking the story of Lucretia's existence, and I had been swithering between casting Henry Potter or Arthur Weasley in the role of the man to do the actual leaking.

'Barty Crouch,' Sirius muttered darkly. 'That's a cat amongst the pigeons, if there ever was.'

'You haven't spoken to James Potter, have you?' I asked. 'Since we saw him in Hogsmeade?'

Sirius shook his head. 'I haven't have the chance ... I wasn't really looking for it though. Why?'

'I was just wondering how close he was to his father,' I mused, the thought of using Henry Potter refusing to leave me.

'Not particularly,' Sirius grunted. 'James always thought old Henry lived below his station in life ... all that Gryffindor honour, and spending more time courting the unwashed masses than flashing his cash around to entertain the rich and powerful. I liked him actually; he gave me a home when I needed one.' He gave me long look. 'Why the interest in Henry Potter of all people, Severus? Last I recall, he was trying to put a rope around your neck. In fact, it was only a few days ago.'

'Yes,' I agreed, but somehow I didn't think Henry Potter was the one making the noose. 'That was rather a pity.'

'What are you up to?' Black asked, pouring himself another shot of my whisky and sticking a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

I was just about to reply when the door to my living room swung open after a soft knock, and one of Lucius's elves came in; it was holding a silver tray on which it had placed a small white visiting card. I couldn't read it from where I was sitting, but I had a rather ominous feeling that, despite the fact I had not felt his presence, Tom Riddle had arrived.

'A gentleman to see you, sir.' The elf bowed, holding the tray out to me, but I looked past it instead of looking at the card, to a hooded and cowled man.

'Come in, Mr Potter,' I said. 'We were just talking about you.'

'You amongst many, Mr Snape,' he replied, sitting down opposite me, and beside Sirius.

I lifted the bottle of malt, absently noticing there wasn't much left, and reminding myself to make sure I had more than the one full bottle in my desk drawer. I poured a couple of fingers and passed Henry Potter the glass. 'How can I help you, Mr Potter?' I asked.

He tossed off about half of the whisky and laid the glass down, and I had an idea he suddenly had reservations about being there, like a man who had worked out what he wanted to say and do, but had forgotten to work out how to get there.

'What's wrong, Henry?' Sirius asked. 'Are the family all right?'

'Yes, yes, of course ... thank you for asking,' he replied. 'I ... I am unsure if my coming here is wise,' he said, 'based, as it is, purely on gut feeling.' He looked from me to Sirius and then back to me. 'May I ask you something, Mr Snape?' he said.

'I had rather thought that you had asked me quite enough over the past while,' I replied, and then did my best with a smile, probably making him think I had eaten something too acidic for lunch. 'But ask away ... as long as any reply I make does not involve my being arrested again.'

'No ... of course not,' he replied, and then I rather fancied he had taken stock of us both and had not found us wanting. 'There are two things, two major things I would like to know, before I come properly down to my reason for calling here today.'

'I am going to ask you something first,' I said. 'How did you know I was here? I have, after all, a home of my own ... or was that gut feeling too?'

'Nothing as mysterious, Mr Snape. You weren't in Spinner's End, and when I looked through the windows the house was completely empty ... it didn't even have any internal walls. That led me to believe that you had not just packed for a brief holiday. Now, may I ask my questions? I would prefer not to be here for too long.'

I didn't think he meant that as an insult of any sort, more that he was cautious for some reason. I raised my eyebrow in invitation.

'Why did you take the Dark Mark, Mr Snape?'

'What is the other question?' I asked coldly.

'What is the truth of the night Abraxas Malfoy died?'

I stood up, intending to send him packing. 'I did not kill Abraxas Malfoy, Mr Potter, which is actually something I have come to deeply regret,' I said, my tone hardening. I was disappointed in him; for just a few moments I had almost thought he was a man I could trust, we could trust, despite his being James Potter's father. 'That is all you need to know.'

He wasn't about to be dismissed though. 'Of course you didn't, Severus,' he said, using my given name in a way that made me stop in my tracks on the way to opening the door. 'How could you have killed him, when I did it for you?'

*****