Chapter Twenty-Six

'Before I turn the question back to you, Mr Potter,' I said, stifling the shock of his revelation as though he had just told me that he had had a cheese sandwich for his lunch, instead of having told me had killed Abraxas Malfoy, 'I think I would like to invite Lucius to share this conversation.'

Lucius wasn't long; in fact Henry Potter hardly had time to become uncomfortable by the time he marched through the door in a way that made me think had been informed by his elves that I had a visitor, who was not Tom Riddle. Never a one to move terribly quickly, that told me Lucius had probably been on his way anyway to where my living room from Spinner's End sat neatly between the small sitting room in the downstairs entrance hall, and the dining room, in a space that had never been there.

'Potter,' he remarked, quite taken aback, but I wasn't watching Lucius, I was watching the way Henry Potter started back for just a moment when Lucius had walked in with his tied back, so that it looked short. 'What on earth are you doing here ... drinking Severus's whisky, if I'm not mistaken ... unless he has laced it with something nasty?'

'Mr Potter has something interesting to say,' I replied. 'Or should I say, he has said something rather interesting.'

'I had come here to ask you some questions, Severus ... ones which, of course, you are at liberty to refuse to answer,' Potter said, rather coolly, 'not to defend my actions.'

'What actions,' Lucius asked. 'What's going on?'

'Henry has just mentioned that it was he who killed Abraxas,' Sirius replied. 'Haven't you, Henry?'

Potter glanced quickly to me and then to Lucius, and I fancied he was wondering whether he should draw his wand, and deciding he would be much safer trying to talk himself out of whatever he had just talked himself into.

'I forgive you, Potter ... Henry, if I may?' Lucius said magnanimously, smiling like a dangerous shark that had missed lunch, 'the fact that you seemed happy to allow Severus to hang in your stead notwithstanding. Now why don't you tell us just what this is all about?'

'He was never supposed to hang,' Potter snarled. 'That was Cygnus Black's little intervention ... one that Crouch forgot to mention to me. He was only supposed to go to Azkaban.'

'Only?' I asked. 'What age are you, Mr Potter?'

'Fifty-five, why?'

'I, Mr Potter, am almost twenty-five. The sentence for ... what did Crouch call it again? ... Ah yes, a premeditated act of murder ... is life imprisonment in Azkaban ... I'll allow you to do the arithmetic.'

'You were never going to stay long,' Potter replied. 'A few days at the most. We had our own alibi ready in the wings.'

'Really? But not in the court where I would have needed it, had not I had a perfectly good alibi of my own ... the one you did not care to believe, despite my assertions.' I was angry; in fact I was finding it hard to even think. 'And just what good would your fucking alibi have done me if I were dead?' I stood up and began to move from the room.

'Wait, Severus,' Lucius said, surprising me somewhat. 'I think I should like to know the truth of this, and just why Mr Potter has come here. Surely not just to tell you that he almost got you hanged by mistake. After all, it would be a brave, not to mention foolhardy man who came here to do that.'

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Henry Potter's tale was so unbelievable that it had to be believed. He had been at the Ministry on the night of Abraxas's death, when an owl was received from a whorehouse in Knockturn Alley to say that urgent help was required in dealing with "trouble with some powerful people". Their intrigue piqued, the two men working late that night, Henry Potter and an Auror called Anton Meadowmarch, decided to investigate, and went straight to Knockturn Alley. The Madame of the house told them that a young prostitute had escaped from Malfoy Manor and had come to her, babbling somewhat incoherently about abuse of her sister workers beyond anything acceptable, even in the dive she worked for. She maintained that Dark Magic was being used, in the form of Imperius Curses, to have the girls perform certain sexual acts, involving not only the men whom they entertained, but also house-elves, about which they were very superstitious, and some inanimate objects likely to cause lasting physical harm. The girl said that the men involved were drunk, and that a brawl between them had broken out, and she seemed genuinely fearful of the other girls' fate.

'I came here to the manor with Meadowmarch,' Potter went on. 'I had an axe to grind of longstanding with your father anyway,' he said, nodding to Lucius, seemingly not noticing that he stiffened. 'Apart from that, I confess we were hoping to find Tom Riddle.'

'And was Riddle here?' Lucius asked. He had stood up, and instead of watching Potter, was looking out of the window at the gathering gloom of the late autumn afternoon, and I had the feeling he was feigning having lost interest.

'No, not then, although he did come just before we left,' Potter replied. 'By which time your father was already dead.'

'I see. Please go on, Mr Potter,' Lucius replied, still looking out of the window, and I wondered if Potter had noticed that had dropped the more friendly "Henry" rather quickly.

'We found three whores and four men, none of whom were really in a fit state to be interviewed. We called for help, and the girls were taken to the Ministry, and thence to St Mungo's to be treated for various injuries of both a sexual and magical nature; thereafter their memories, and those of the Madame and the girl who had escaped, were Obliviated. The men, as I said, were all drunk, and seemed to be under the influence of some illegal plant or herb.' Henry Potter paused there, and sensing no deeper hostility than what he had already invited, he looked to Sirius, perhaps assuming him to be the only one amongst us not ready to hex him into the next week. 'I am laying myself open to more trouble than I think I can handle,' he said, but once again it was Lucius who answered him, as though it were by then his show, and I was only a side issue.

'You have my word, Mr Potter,' he said, turning from the window at last, 'that not only will there be no recriminations from this house stemming from what you have told us ... thus far ... but also that, if it were within my power, I would have you decorated with an Order of Merlin for killing Abraxas Malfoy.' He crossed the room and sat beside me, opposite Potter.

'Go on, Henry,' Sirius urged too. 'I think you have already realised you can trust us enough to tell us the rest.'

'Very well,' Potter said, heaving a sigh, as though reluctantly accepting that he had, for the time being, ceased to be the inquisitor. 'There had obviously been some kind of brawl; furniture was upended, and there was broken glass lying around. As I said, the men were insensible, none more so than Abraxas. The Aurors we had called to take the girls to St Mungo's had returned, and Meadowmarch had left the room with them, and Orion Black, and Igor Karkaroff, and I could hear them arguing. Both Darius Shield and Malfoy were unconscious in the room I was in. I bent over Abraxas, and he began to haul himself to some kind of consciousness, and, Merlin forgive me, I took the opportunity I had never thought would be open to me, and would never be likely to present itself to me again ... and I killed him.'

None of us spoke; it was almost as though there were too many questions to ask, but Potter seemed content to go on with his story.

'I called Meadowmarch through to confirm that Malfoy was dead; he and one of the other two Ministry men ... John Sanquar it was .... both examined him and pronounced him dead too. We rounded up the rest of the men and their wands, and took them to the Ministry. Of course, their wands were all examined, and none was found to have delivered a Killing Curse recently, although they had all performed both Cruciatus and Imperius. Naturally, my own wand was never tested. We went with the convenient story of a heart seizure ... it suited me, I confess, and the three other men seemed content to let that go. Something was happening in the background though, and Orion Black came to me the next day to say that he had changed his mind, and now wanted a thorough investigation into Abraxas's death, as he was not known to have a heart condition of any kind. I was left in the position of having to come back here with another Ministry Investigator, as you know, and it was he who identified the cause of death.' He turned to me, to where I had been sitting silently listening and evaluating what he said, and looked down for a moment. 'And that was when you came into the story, Severus,' he said, and I almost asked him to revert to his "Mr Snape" form of address.

'How?' Lucius said. 'And while we're at it, when did Tom Riddle appear on the scene?'

'Riddle? He arrived here just as we were leaving, looking for Severus, and left again almost immediately,' Potter said. 'But at the Ministry, Severus's name began to crop up from all of the men as having been present at the manor, and having left not long before we arrived, and as none of their wands had killed Abraxas ...'

'Mine was a convenient hook on which to hang your hats,' I snapped, 'and me too, come to think about it.'

'It was never supposed to happen the way it did,' Potter said quickly, as though he were trying to distance himself from what had happened afterwards. 'I had no way of knowing that anything other than a lengthy prison sentence would be handed out to you. It's years since anyone has been hanged ... Anyway, I had my own alibi set up for you. I knew your own assertion of a mystery woman was untrue, having been told by not only the other men, but the house-elves too, that you had spent the evening in Tom Riddle's ...'

'Just pass that bit,' Lucius interrupted him again. 'Let us go on to just why you killed Abraxas Malfoy, Mr Potter. I am interested to know why you did that, why you almost got my ... my friend hanged to kill a man you hardly knew.'

'He killed my best friend in cold blood,' Potter said, 'and I owed him for that.'

'Why not just drag him through the court for that, instead of dragging Severus through the court for your own crime?' Lucius asked, and I could see he was becoming angry too.

'It was many years ago ... I had no proof, nothing anyone would believe,' Potter replied. 'I was young at the time, and other things were happening in my life. That said, it has festered with me for a long time.'

'And just who was this best friend of yours whom you thought deserved the life of not only Abraxas, but Severus too?' Lucius asked, his voice rising dangerously in challenge.

'It was no one you knew; he died before you were born, but for whatever record you may care to keep, it was Valerius Malfoy ... Abraxas's brother.' Henry Potter looked around us, stopping at Lucius, quite unsure of what he had said to drop a silence over us that seemed almost tangible. 'You didn't know your father had a brother, Malfoy? An older brother? Of course, Abraxas would not have talked about him. In fact, when you came in earlier I was almost taken aback at just how like Valerius you are; I had not really noticed it so keenly before.'

"I think we should tell a story of our own," Black's voice said into my mind.

"Allow me," Lucius added in the same way. He stood up and looked once to me, until I nodded my own agreement. 'Come with me, Mr Potter ... Henry,' he said, oozing his Malfoy charm again. 'I have something I would like you to see.'

Potter was wary, as well he might have been. 'I'll just stay here,' he said quickly. 'In fact I really should be getting back home; my family will be wondering where I am.'

'Come, come, now, Henry,' Lucius replied. 'I'm sure a man who can spend all night at the Ministry, and then drop off at Malfoy Manor to commit murder on the way home, does not have to make excuses for his absences.'

'It's all right, Henry,' Sirius added. 'He's just being Lucius. He really does have something to show you. Something I think ... no ... I'll let you decide what to think.'

I suppose it was only Sirius's presence that coaxed Potter to where the Malfoy family crypt lay at the top of a hedge-lined path at the eastern side of the manor. Lucius lit the torches at the entrance; they then bent to the ones next to them, and so on to their neighbours along the walls, lending one another their light, until the interior of the grey granite mausoleum was flooded with flickering torchlight.

'Along here, Henry,' Lucius said, moving through the two stone statues that jealously guarded the final resting place of the Malfoys. He stopped in front of the memorial to Astoria Malfoy.

'Sweet Merlin,' Potter breathed, turning to Lucius. 'Sweet Merlin, man, I should have known.'

'I only just found out myself,' Lucius murmured.

'Lucretia?' Potter queried, looking at the inscription on the memorial stone that Lucius had changed only a couple of hours before. 'A sister? I didn't know you had a sister ... but how? Abraxas and Astoria were only just married; you were the first child, and she died in childbirth.'

'Come back up to the house, Henry. There is someone I should like you to meet,' Lucius said, taking his arm. 'But before we do that, I shall fill you in with a few details of just how deeply Abraxas Malfoy's treachery went.'

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