Chapter Forty

I didn't go back to the manor that night. It would be so easy to site any amount of noble reasons for that; it was Lucius's home, and I didn't feel like staying there when he would never again have that luxury; it was only fair to give Narcissa the time to be alone and come to whatever terms she could with her loss; it would be a kindness to allow Lucretia some time with Ethel and Narcissa, and for the women to grieve the way women did, in that healthy outpouring that men find almost impossible to allow themselves to succumb to. There was only one truth though, one reason for staying away, and I couldn't hide from it: its name was cowardice. I was frightened to look those in the eye from whom I had, perhaps not taken so much, but allowed so much to be taken. Narcissa and her baby, Lucretia... even Black. I didn't fool myself that his action had been anything less than that of love, and I found myself believing as I had once before, despite his denials, that it was for Lucius that Black had held a candle close to his heart.

I Apparated to the warehouse at the top of Cottontrader Row. Nothing had changed there; the dusty old warehouse with the broken windows was still the same, the cracked pavement slabs were still cracked, the off-license where I bought my whisky was still open, even the barking mongrel dogs almost seemed to welcome me back to where I belonged, a dingy little street on the way to nowhere.

There was no Death Eater guarding my own street that night, of course, I thought wryly, as the house at the bottom of Spinner's End swam into only my view. I let the old iron gate swing shut and clipped the few steps up the weedy slabbed pathway to the shabby front door. I don't suppose I was surprised that, despite Henry Potter having told me that the house was totally empty, it was actually still the same, but I did wonder if what Ethel had taken to Malfoy Manor was a replica, or an illusion, or if the whole lot had moved itself back to Spinner's End when I opened the front door. They were surface thoughts though, just anything to hide from the real issues.

I closed the front door behind me, and stood against it. Everything was still the same, but Lucius was still dead.

I don't know how long it took me realise that I wasn't alone, or what it was that invaded my consciousness first, whether the voice came before the smell of cigarette smoke, or vice versa, but a bit like the chicken and the egg, it didn't really matter.

'I thought you'd come here,' he said.

Black was sitting on one of my settees, my favourite one, of course. I didn't say anything, just cracked open the Glenfiddich and poured a couple of stiff ones, handing one to him, and downing the other in a painful gulp that did little to warm me inside or out.

'I just can't go back there tonight,' he said, when it became apparent even to him that I wasn't going to speak. 'I can't face Narcissa... or Lucretia.'

He had more guts than I had, I'll give him that; at least he had the courage of that admission.

I don't know what we talked about that night, or perhaps I do, and do not care to recall the painful memories we both dredged up, not only of Lucius, but of the sorry world we were a part of. The next thing I really recall is waking stiff and sore and guilty as the dawn crept through the windows, dusting Black's dog form where he slept on the floor, and rousing him eventually too.

It was a wordless agreement that we both squared our shoulders and faced those whom we had left bereft to deal with their own emotions the night before.

*****

I cannot explain my feelings, or speak for Black's, as we walked from the Apparition point behind the greenhouses, Lucius's greenhouses, but we did it, and pushed open the kitchen door to where the three women waited for us: Narcissa, pale and drawn, but brave, with her blond-headed babe at her breast; Ethel worried and upset and fussing around us in a way that made the guilt rise fresh and hot, as I had not thought about her hurt, or her fondness for Lucius, and had left her alone to cope with the younger women; and Lucretia, the brother she had only just found, so cruelly plundered from her life.

They converged on us, on Black and me, the way only women can, the way they touch and weep and mourn, like some kind of laying of hands on tortured souls. And we were tortured, but there was something else too; I knew that we had found something else in Lucius's death, and that was the final resolve to finish what we had begun, at whatever the cost was to be. Whatever the price tag was, I would not permit the down payment of Lucius Malfoy's life to be squandered.

I left them after a while, and opened the door on my study and went to sit at my desk. All the books and scrolls seemed to watch me, as though they too were on to greater effort, giving me the push I so desperately needed to start the thinking process again. I didn't wonder then how the parts of Spinner's End that Ethel had brought to the manor could be there, and yet also where Black and I had just left them up north; it seemed too mundane a thing to be concerned about, one of those things that just was.

"Die Letztendliche Wahrheit?" sat open on my desk, something that didn't surprise me.

To go through pain, Severus, you must keep going, for only then will it pass behind you, to be plucked later and found that what your heart wept for was not only grief, but the stealing of what you valued most.

Remember too, as you cannot heal your heartache, he can steal neither your memories nor yourself.

I laid it down again as the text blurred to leave just what I had come to regard as the meaningless ancient scripts that hid the private messages the book held for me. I knew, and I understood. It was telling me to get a move on.

*****

It was late in the day when the Potters arrived, Henry and James. They had Arthur and Lupin with them, and I could tell that they too were waiting for some sort of direction from me, and I worried again that I had nowhere to point. As it happened, I was wrong, and it was only when Black came into the room with yet more men and women, ones who were, I supposed, members of his mysterious Order of the Phoenix, that I understood that I was not expected to lead the way, but to follow on instead.

'Cygnus Black has just been made Minister of Magic,' Arthur said as an opener, as though he wanted that bit out of the way as quickly as possible. He sat down on one of my settees, leaving the rest of them to make whatever job they saw fit of making themselves comfortable, just as I noticed with a rush of painful affection for Ethel that I had suddenly acquired not only more seats, but more space too.

'We know this house is in mourning, Severus,' Henry Potter said, 'and we... Arthur and I, and James and Lupin... well, we want you to know that we also feel your loss.' He turned to where the other men and women stood around awkwardly, the men and women he had not mentioned. 'They all know the sacrifices Lucius made... the dangers he embraced in working with Arthur to allow so many to be moved to safety.' He stopped for a moment and nodded to Kingsley Shacklebolt, a young black wizard, only a year or two older than I was, as though singling him out.

'Kingsley's own grandmother even now lives in Ethel's picture. He has seen that for himself.' Henry paused again, and I wondered if he was waiting for me to speak, but that seemed not to be the case. 'We have to take the fight to them, Severus,' he said at last. 'And we have to know that you can deal with Riddle if we do.'

At last I understood what they were asking, that I took Riddle, and they would take the rest.

'I think so,' I replied, not at all sure that I was speaking the truth.

*****

It was quite late in the evening when I found myself alone at last. I had tried to take in as much as I could of the plans the Order of the Phoenix had been making, and kept finding myself surprised at the depth of their scheming, how it all dovetailed neatly with the evacuations the ladies had been doing, and James Potter and Sirius's fake death squads, and the way Lucius and Arthur had all but undermined the Ministry on their own. All that was over now, of course; Cygnus Black was Minister of Magic, and not only was Lucius unable ever to return to the Ministry, or anywhere else, I thought bitterly, but neither could Arthur Weasley return. I knew, too, that Sirius's position was more dangerous then than it had ever been, his closeness to Malfoy Manor and its inhabitants, and the way he had distanced himself from his own family saw to that, even without the spectacular way in which he had thwarted Riddle by sparing Lucius's final humiliation by delivering his own death curse. And then I wondered why I should be surprised that honourable men and women had not been sitting back waiting for their loved ones to be harvested by Tom Riddle's Death Eaters.

I was deep in my troubled thoughts when I realised Ethel was sitting in her little chair watching me.

'We're all going to die, aren't we?' I asked.

'I don't know, dear. That much is hidden from me.'

'Is it worth going on? Will the results justify the casualties?'

'Will you honour those already fallen, and those still to fall, if you do not?' she asked. 'Will you honour Lucius?'

That stung me, probably the way she had intended it to. I thought for a moment, wondering if I should even ask the next question, and yet that wasn't quite true; I knew I was hoping she would pluck it from my mind, in that way of hers.

'I have not spoken to him yet, Severus dear, but I shall tell you what I told Sirius just a short time ago.' She waited until I had raised my head again. 'Lucius knew of his eventual fate.' She paused for a moment, and I read in her, perhaps not the self-doubts I felt myself, but that she too was struggling with what she saw as some kind of personal shortcoming. 'I underestimated him, Severus,' she said. 'Not latterly, but when I met him first... I took him for a weak and selfish man, one who would succumb to whatever pressure was greatest upon him. That will always weigh heavily on me.'

I had grasped her bony little hand in mine. 'He loved you,' I said. I couldn't think of anything else to say.

'I know, dear, as I loved him, and all of you,' she said, rallying in a way that made me wonder if her admission had been her voicing her own doubts, or what she had read as mine. 'Now let us honour him.' She looked to where the door to my living room was closed, and I'm sure she had dropped some kind shield over it, because it was only when she turned back to me that I felt Tom Riddle's presence.

'He is moving in here?' I asked.

'I suspect it is his intention, dear,' she said. The old lined face broke into the smile that charmed me in a way no other smile ever had or ever will. 'That said, Severus dear, we, on the other hand, are moving out.'

'Out? Out where?' I asked.

'We cannot afford to have him living here,' she said, 'not when Salazar is so close. If I have to leave the catacombs to defend any one of you, it would leave just Godric and the shades to keep Salazar from breaking through.'

'Has Godric not got the power to do that?' I asked.

'Of course, dear,' she chided. 'It is, however, a risk he does not see fit to take. There are other things in this manor besides the spirit of Salazar Slytherin.'

'What other things?' I asked, not at sure I wanted to know.

'This house...' she said, trailing off in in some kind of unease that I had never detected before in her. 'As you know, it was originally built on a pagan burial site, dear. Many would believe that that alone renders the house cursed for all eternity.'

'What's buried here, Ethel?' Black asked, not surprising me at all by appearing in doorway.

'The reason Salazar is so strong here is that not only is his spirit here, Sirius dear,' she said, 'but his earthly remains too lie below our feet.'

'Where do we go now?' I asked, as though I hadn't the mental capacity to work it out, as Black drew his hand across his face in what looked like superstitious dread.

'Spinner's End, of course,' she replied. 'Now, dear, you must tell him that we are leaving here.'

'And Black? He cannot be seen to be at Spinner's End.'

'Oh, don't worry about Sirius, Severus dear,' she replied, smiling over to where Black still stood rooted to the spot. 'He won't be seen.'

*****