Chapter Thirty-Nine

Ethel took Narcissa and her baby and Lucretia into her picture with her, and I left her to it, sitting in the dark, waiting. Black didn't come back to the manor until almost dawn, and I knew where he had been; I could smell Azkaban from him. I didn't ask him anything, and he didn't volunteer any information. All we seemed able to do was to wait, as Lucius's life ticked away. I hadn't imagined how slowly the seconds could pass, and yet how quickly the hours could snatch themselves away as we sat in some kind of silent vigil.

At shortly after nine o'clock Riddle arrived at the manor, and guard of six Death Eaters or not, I felt murder rising in my blood, and had to clench my hand around the stone in my pocket so as not to sign the rest of our death warrants.

'I have come to spare your hurt, my Severus,' he said, and for a moment I truly believed him, before he dashed all hope. 'I would prefer if you stayed here this morning and did not witness this. I understand how upset you are,' he said. 'In fact, he quite fooled me too.'

'I'm going,' I replied. I didn't say anything else; I had nothing left to say to his madness.

He hadn't finished though. 'I shall be moving in here tomorrow, Severus,' he said. 'Not tonight, as I had originally intended. I shall let you get to terms with Lucius's absence. I do understand, you see,' he said, as though the next day I would no longer notice Lucius wasn't there.

I let the cold knot of sick fury settle on my chest, and determined then to content myself to let him be hoist by his own petard, and for that I had to remain calm. He might have won that battle, and whilst the cost was more than I could bear, I resolved then that he had just lost the war. All I needed was time... and courage.

*****

We had all had to surrender our wands anywhere within range of where the ancient gallows stood against a backdrop of lowering grey clouds. It was placed on a rise so as to make it visible to the masses, and they had turned out in ugly force. I drew my cloak tightly against me, shivering against everything but the external cold; I couldn't even feel that. The last drum roll had sounded, and Lucius Malfoy was led to the gallows, his clothes and his hair streaked and splattered by the mud and refuse that had been hurled at him on the last walk from the Ministry Apparition point. His eyes scanned the crowd, seeking mine, flitting to Narcissa, and back to me.

"Don't do anything, Severus," he said, his thought slipping into my mind. "I have come to terms with it; I shall deal with it in my own way."

I was almost surprised at how lucid he was, how calm. "I took it all from you... I should have freed you...' I stumbled out the inadequacies.

"No, Severus, you know that for the madness it would have been," he replied, as Walden Macnair slipped the white Italian hemp noose roughly around his neck. "You gave me everything I have now," he went on, as though what Macnair was doing was happening in another world to another man. "My wife, my son, my sister... my pride... I would have had none of them had you not been at my side." And with that he drew his thoughts away from mine, and I felt him close his mind to me, and knew I would never hear from him again, not directly, not in this life.

I watched Macnair milk every second of fame from his grisly task, and then watched Lucius instead. No matter how despised he had become, he had walked a tightrope for us, and had never faltered in his path. The world was losing a hero it would never know it had, and I grieved for that; he didn't deserve to die at the Dark Lord's behest. I wanted to turn away, not to listen to the crowd baying to Macnair to hurry up and let them watch the bastard dance, but Lucius was worthy of more than that act of cowardice.

As the drummer boys picked up their beat again Riddle stood, resplendent in his robes, from where he had sat a good distance from the gallows, at the edge of the cordoned area that separated the riffraff from his elite of Orion and Cygnus and a few of the other older Death Eaters, and I noticed only absently that the old American Morton Schultz was not amongst them.

'Get on with it, Macnair. Let us hang this traitor and be done,' Riddle said as he turned to the crowd. 'Let this be an example to anyone who seeks to thwart the ends of our struggle for purity,' he said, his words whipping the crowd to even more eager expectation.

Riddle began to cross to the scaffold, as though perhaps he were about to ask the man he had condemned for his own crimes if he had any final words, or maybe he intended to bestow some hellish blessing. He was about half way to Lucius when I felt something nudge against my leg. I looked down, puzzled, and felt my heart turn over at the pitiful looking black mutt that had appeared at my side. I looked to where Lucius's brave little wife nodded once to it, laying her hand on its head in some sort of futile gesture of comfort, and the cur slunk away into the crowd in front of us as I pulled Narcissa to me.

Macnair stepped back, tugging the rope once to settle the knot firmly below Lucius's left ear. He spat on the ground at Malfoy's feet, and I swore that he too would die. The crowd was becoming restless; yells of "get a move on", and "let him dance", and whatever other abuse they cried, until a hooded man stepped forward as Riddle gave Macnair a nod, and the Death Eater went to kick away the tall stool on which Lucius stood, and I heard a snatch of conversation slip into my mind.

"Sleep easily, Animagus... my friend, in the knowledge that I understand what you are about to do as the mercy it truly is..." Lucius's last thought trailed off.

'AVADA KEDAVARA.' The words ripped through the air from the hooded man, along with a bolt of green light. It hit Malfoy square on the chest, as I felt Narcissa slump at my side in what I knew was partly relief, and the crowd bellowed their outrage at having been denied the spectacle they had longed for: Lucius Malfoy dangling on the end of a rope, as his life was choked out of him, and his bodily fluids ran down his legs.

Riddle spun in fury. 'Guards,' he screamed. 'That man.' He pointed to where the crowd had parted in surprise. 'The hooded man... It was Sirius Black... arrest him and bring him to me,' he shrieked, his careful façade of sanity cracking as the crowds backed away in fear.

But I knew they were wasting their time; there was no hooded and armed wizard for them to find, just a sorry black dog trotting away to hide somewhere safe until I could call for him.

*****

I went back there, once I had taken Narcissa and Lucretia back to Ethel's care, later that evening just as dusk was falling, just to say my own goodbye to him, a farewell to the Lucius Malfoy I had known and grown to love as a brother. There was an almost eerie silence surrounding the dell, broken only by the soughing of the wind in the trees that lined the clearing, and the creak of the scaffold rope where it swung backwards and forward. I don't know how long I stood there, my throat constricted, and my breath heavy in my chest. I shouldn't have gone alone; I realised that. I should have taken Black with me to help, and it was only when I walked towards Lucius's body that I became aware of the fact that five other men were approaching from the far-side Apparition point.

'You shouldn't be here, Severus,' James Potter said quietly, and for once there was nothing about him that set my teeth on edge. 'You don't know who's watching.'

'There is no one else here,' I said. I looked to where Sirius and the others had begun to climb the small rise to where Lucius hung, hardly surprised that the other men were Arthur Weasley, Henry Potter and Remus Lupin.

James just nodded. 'We only came to take him for some kind of decent burial.' He turned away, and began to make his way towards where Black and Lupin were already climbing the scaffold.

Sirius used no magic for his task, sawing at the hemp rope with a knife he drew from his boot, as Lupin tried to give him a bit of slack to work on, and I understood they wanted to leave no magical trace. I watched as Henry and James Potter caught Lucius's body as the rope eventually gave way. I let them do it their way; perhaps in that way Black could deal with his own part in Lucius's death. Whatever mercy his Killing Curse had been, it would still weigh as heavily on him as my part in his demise lay on me.

Sirius and Lupin had clambered back down, and James and Sirius stood Lucius up, and then Apparated away in tandem with Malfoy's body between them; it was the last time I ever saw Lucius. Lupin and Henry disappeared next, but Arthur had hung back, and he began to walk slowly down from the rise to where I stood.

'Some heroes are not recognised in their lifetime, Severus,' he said wisely as he reached me.

'And some are never recognised at all,' I said flatly.

'He will be,' Arthur replied. 'I swear that to you. When this is over, everyone will know the part all of you have played.'

I almost laughed. I suppose I had already come to terms with the fact that Lucius was just the first, and that it was likely that none of us would survive, whether we were successful or not. 'And just who will tell the world, Arthur?' I asked. 'Who will be left to tell the world what happened? Who will be here to care anyway?'

'Me,' he said simply, and I looked at him properly, perhaps for the first time: a balding red-haired man, ordinary, one of those I had always regarded as somewhat beneath me, the precious ones of our world, one of those whom we had sworn ourselves to protect. 'Me, Severus,' he said, laying his freckled hand on my arm. 'I shall bear witness.'

*****