Part First: The Hart Assurgent: Chapter 6

Chapter 6:

"So what did you think of my mother-in-law?" Lucius asked. He had tucked Emily's hand under his arm and was leading her down one of the corridors toward where, presumably, the sun room was; yet he seemed in no special hurry to get there.

"She seems very pleasant." May the Goddess forgive me for that lie.

"Very pleasant. Really. Well, I'm glad you liked her, because I think she's a half-dotty old idiot."

She stared at him for a long, shocked moment – then fell against his shoulder laughing.

"Now that you mention it, there is a certain half-dotty-idiot aspect to her general air of pleasantry, I suppose... "

He squeezed her hand where it rested on his arm. "Dear, dear Druella. She's the sort who, after you've spent weeks doing up a suite to her standard, will still keep the entire house up in a great hue and cry over a too-cold hot water bottle. And she refuses to walk anywhere by herself or simply get a wheelchair – everyone has to walk her from place to place and take tiny, tiny steps just like she does. Whenever it's me that's doing it, I have to fight off the urge to throw her over my shoulder like an armful of washing so we can get to wherever she wants to go a bit faster."

He hadn't changed a bit – still as maliciously clever as ever. He always made her laugh, even if she felt half horrified at herself while she was doing it.

"Oh yes, the foibles of querulous relatives. My Aunt Charlotte – remember her? – would complain constantly that no one remembered her birthday, so for her sixtieth one, you remember my father threw that grand cotillion in her honour. Then of course you remember she spent the whole party wailing about how all the to-do made her feel so small and insignificant."

"It sounds as though Charlotte and Druella are reading the same books on how one becomes dreadfully popular with one's relatives. In Druella's case, she can't simply tell you what she does want, but can only list endless conditions that she can't possibly be expected to put up with. She drives the house-elves to drink. And after she's put us through all that, she's still entirely convinced that she's being used by everyone else like a perfect martyr." Lucius turned to her confidentially, his accustomed drawl turning wickedly satiric. "Don't let the old troglodyte fool you – she's a great deal sharper than she lets on. She simply likes to make a great show of impending senility so she can get away with things like making Narcissa wait on her hand and foot, and making unpleasant comments to pretty young women she doesn't know."

"Good to know – I'll keep that in mind." They were both still laughing when Narcissa glided up through a doorway on their left, and took her husband's arm.

"Darling, do share the joke."

"Hello, my love." Lucius put a comfortable arm around his wife's shoulders and gave her a quick kiss.

"Narcissa – how are the preparations coming?" Emily had let her hand slip out from under Lucius's arm and taken a demure step away from the couple.

"Splendidly, Mrs. Tumnus." Narcissa's eyes raked over Emily's face, her hand coming up to adjust and toy with the many strands of antique gold pearls that circled the majestic ivory column of her throat.

"Oh, good. Your kind husband was commiserating with me over the latest gossip from my Wizarding family."

"Apparently Emily's Aunt Charlotte is up to her old tricks, poor old dear. And did your Great-Aunt Mehitable's orchids sweep the awards at the show again this year?"

"Of course. That's inevitable now, like rain in autumn."

When they were younger, this had been a trick they developed – whispering the most caustic comments to each other about the people around them, and then segueing into the dullest topics imaginable if anyone else approached. It was amazing how quickly she and Lucius seemed to fall back into their old prankish, insular habits, alternately flirting shamelessly and satirising everyone around them mercilessly, as if he had only left the Third Kingdom a week ago.

"Darling, Goliath tells me that the Goyles, the Crabbes, and Felina Rosier have just arrived. Shall we show them to the sunroom, or let everyone wait in the main hall till everyone has arrived?"

"Let's let everyone assemble in the main hall – that great blaze there is so pleasant on a dull day like this. I was going to show Emily the sunroom, as she's never been to the house before. We'll meet everyone in the hall in a moment, love."

"Of course, dear. Do make certain the elves have set out the biscuits Draco likes for his tea."

"Certainly, love." Narcissa smiled and swept down the hall in a cloud of wafting blue velvet.

Emily turned to Lucius again with a conspiratorial smirk. "Throwing your mother-in-law over your shoulder like an armful of washing. The only problem is, I don't believe you've ever carried so much as a sock of your own washing for any significant distance."

He smirked back. "Given the choice of carrying either Druella or the washing, I'll take the washing – it smells better and passes gas less often. Now come see the sunroom. There's no sun today, but if there was, this is where we'd come to observe it."

What the Malfoys called the sunroom was a very large porch, with walls and a partial ceiling made of glass panes. The black marble floor was dotted with round, white-draped tables, on which impeccably polished silver tea services and antique china plates were laid out in anticipation of the guests soon to arrive. In warmer months, it would have been bright and sunny; but today, most of the light came from a giant hearth and several silver candelabra.

"You're right. This sunroom is most distinctly sunless." She moved close to one of the windows, gazing out on the unbroken white of wintry landscape outside. Lucius had come up close beside her. She glanced sidelong at him, and her gaze lingered admiringly; even the harshness of that light could not mar his beauty. With his ivory skin, platinum hair and grey eyes, and the pewter-coloured velvet of his robes, he made colour seem irrelevant.

"I'll have to have you back in summertime so you can see it in its full glory." He laid his hand over hers, turning to her confidingly. "And I should thoroughly enjoy having someone interesting around to talk to for a change."

She had always loved when he talked to her like this – as if she was the only other intelligent person in the world, the only one capable of understanding him. As if he was delighted to have her as his partner in mischief. "I wouldn't miss it," she replied.

One of the towel-clad house-elves wavered hesitantly toward Lucius. "Master... Master sir, Mistress is wanting you in the hall, please?"

Her host glanced toward the creature with a flicker of irritation in his eyes. "Yes, Tully, tell your Mistress we are on our way."

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The group had grown substantially by the time they returned to the hall.

Lucius took Emily's elbow and made introductions – Mr. and Mrs. Galen Goyle, a tall, heavyset man with pepper and salt hair, and his short, heavyset wife; Mr. and Mrs. Nestor Crabbe, who looked like the figures of Mr. and Mrs. Goyle drawn by a different artist; and then Mrs. Felina Rosier (who wore extremely Victorian robes of mourning crape, with skirts that swept the floor, buttoned sleeves, and buttons well up her throat). A recent widow, then. She had Emily's sympathies.

Mr. Theodore Nott was rather older than the rest of the group – his smile, when he greeted Emily, was so tight that she wondered if the poor man suffered from some arthritis of the jaw; Mr. and Mrs. Walden Macnair, one of those couples in which the husband was still dark-haired, virile, and fit, and the wife was fully grey and shaped like a pudding; and the portly, middle-aged, very blonde and very tweedy Miss Elvia Wilkes.

Shortly afterward she met Mr. and Mrs. Emmitt Parkinson, the husband tall, autocratic and aquiline, with an extremely pretty young brunette wife; both Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Flint, Sr. – the father and son had identical teeth and crew cuts as well as identical names – and Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Bulstrode (he was one of the tallest men she had ever met, but his wife was a good physical match for him, being no pixie.)

Emily found it easiest to make the acquaintance of the Crabbes, the Goyles, the Parkinsons, the Flints, and the Bulstrodes, as they all had children in her classes, and they, like most parents, readily warmed on the subject of their children. The young, lively Mrs. Beatrice Parkinson had already heard accounts of Emily's class from her daughter Pansy's letters home, and had apparently done some sport fencing with her father and brothers as a young girl – she and Emily had gotten into a very pleasant chat in front of the fireplace until a look from her husband made her excuse herself and move back to his side.

The group moved from the fireplace in the front hall to the tea tables after visiting for some time. Professor Snape, Emily noticed, had taken on the duty of walking Druella Black to the sunroom; she leaned heavily on his arm, and his ear was inclined toward what she was saying. Ladies were seated at two tables closest to the window, gentlemen at two others. Mrs. Crabbe and Mrs. Goyle took seats on either side of Emily, and Professor Snape and Narcissa gently handed Druella into a seat just beyond Mrs. Goyle. As he made to withdraw, Mrs. Black stopped him with a clawlike hand on his wrist. He paused for a moment as she said something in his ear, which she punctuated by darting a resentful glance at Lucius across the room. Snape murmured something that sounded sympathetic, and patted her hand before withdrawing to his own seat between Draco and Macnair.

Well, Emily reflected to herself, perhaps by the time she had a dowager's hump, he might find a little sympathy within himself for her too.

House-elves circulated, serving steaming tea, and Emily noted with relief that someone had kindly provided a choice of mint-tarragon herb tea in addition to the usual Earl Grey with milk and sugar.

Conversation proceeded apace. The ladies discussed their children, children's schooling, what the husbands said about their work, anniversary and birthday gifts from the husbands, things shopped for, rooms decorated and redecorated, what they were going to have their house-elves put out in their gardens in the spring, and people they knew who were pregnant. Mrs. Crabbe volunteered something about a horse her husband was thinking of buying, and Miss Wilkes talked about knitting sweaters for her Corgis. Emily tried not to yawn out loud.

"What lovely robes, Professor," Mrs. Rosier said, as the house-elves put trays of delicate sandwiches, scones, cream and preserves on the table. "Is that what the Fae are wearing this winter?"

From most other people, it would have been a compliment on one's clothes, and an invitation to talk about the current fashion of a foreign visitor's native land. It could have made her feel warmly towards the speaker, and led to an interesting chat.

But from Felina Rosier... it drew attention to the fact that she was not in fact wearing trailing witches' robes at all, but an Arcadian frock and coat; it underlined the fact that she was of a foreign nationality, and implied that that foreign nationality was madly impractical when it came to dressing properly for the weather. And a people so impractical as to wear such clothing in winter of course had to be possessed of an overwhelmingly lascivious temperament to do such a ridiculous thing.

Such was the power of Felina Rosier.

Emily had thought, when she dressed that morning, that the outfit she had chosen had been quite appropriate: a very simple black velvet dress with a skirt that swirled to just below her knees, with a matching frock coat of Edwardian cut, with sleeves that fastened with long rows of tiny silver buttons. She had then added her favourite necklace, a piece she wore habitually – a double strand of black Arcadian pearls that sat just below her collarbones. She loved the necklace because it had been a gift from Gwydion, and also because of the way the pearls reflected dark iridescent colours in the slightest light: blue, purple, green, gold, silver. In the mirror back at Hogwarts, she had thought the outfit looked simple and classic, and thought the hem and long sleeves quite modest and becoming, and the single piece of jewellery very tasteful. The mirror had agreed too, declaring "You're a picture, dearie, just a picture," when she had given her hair a final smoothing before leaving her rooms.

But at Narcissa Malfoy's tea table, after a single comment from Felina Rosier, she was all of a sudden terribly aware that that her clothes were entirely wrong, and that the glances of some of the men had been in covert appreciation, and that the looks from most of the women had been of tightly veiled disapproval. Black velvet may have appropriate had she chosen proper long witches' robes of that material as it was woven in the Second World, but the Faery spidersilk velvet was entirely too lustrous, too supple, and poured too fluidly over her body to be proper here. The pearls were too scintillant, too ostentatious, too much – they threw the dull gold of Mrs. Malfoy's many antique strings of pearls quite into the shade. She could feel eyes on the expanse of black-stockinged calf and white throat and collarbone revealed by her dress. And to go up and change now, or to use a Glamour to make herself look more human, would be to admit that her first choice had been inappropriate.

Emily paused. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Rosier. Indeed, dark velvet is very much the rage at Court this year. All of the weavers are being deluged with new orders for it."

"Oh yes, of course. And how fares your father, Buckminster Swain, in his position at Court?" Mrs. Rosier asked, with a demure sip from her teacup.

There was another of those marked lulls in the conversation. Emily was growing to dread them with a passion.

"Swain. I know the Swains. You're a Swain?" asked old Mrs. Black, peering malevolently at her. Emily could feel heat climbing her face to the pointed frills of her ears.

"Yes, madam. Buckminster Swain, the historian and anthropologist, is my father."

"I see. You are of the Lake District Swains, then?" Mrs. Crabbe asked.

"My father was born in the Lake District, yes, but I myself am of the Third Kingdom Swains," she replied pleasantly.

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Crabbe said, with a brittle smile. "Buckminster's second wife is your mother, then." Something about her inflection made it sound as though being the child of a second wife was very disreputable indeed.

"Yes, she is the former Lady Greenbarrow. She serves in the Fianna."

Mrs. Crabbe stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"The Fianna being the Faery military," Emily volunteered gently.

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Crabbe said, nodding vaguely. "Your father is in the military there?"

"No, actually my father is a scholar and historian to the King. My mother is in the military."

"Oh." Mrs. Crabbe obviously considered female military service even less reputable than the children of second families. "Do you think that a suitable occupation for a woman?"

"Certainly," she replied with a laugh. "So much so that I've taken it as my own occupation as well, madam."

Several heads turned in her direction at that. Most of the ladies, including Mrs. Goyle, Mrs. Bulstrode, and Narcissa Malfoy, wore expressions of delicate disturbance.

"I thought you were a teacher now," Narcissa said, with an air of one much deceived, but too genteel and forgiving to call the offender out for the transgression.

Emily addressed her hostess in her most neutral, pleasant voice. "Indeed yes, I am currently teaching at Hogwarts. But you see, I was sent here in the capacity of a representative of my liege, not as an independent employee. I'm not so much working here as I am stationed here, really."

"The Lake District Swains are a pure-blooded family," old Mrs. Black rasped, apropos of nothing, glaring at Emily.

"Indeed they are a fine old bloodline," Narcissa agreed. There was much genteel susurration of agreement at that statement.

"One that gets purer all the time," Emily agreed, demurely raising her teacup to her lips. There was some murmur of agreement at her comment – at first. Then Mrs. Crabbe and Mrs. Black darted malicious looks in her direction, and Narcissa looked down at her plate even more sourly and sulkily than usual.

Emily looked innocently off into the middle distance – where, unexpectedly, she caught Severus Snape's eye. For one brief, tremendously gratifying second, she thought she saw the corner of his mouth twist and his jaw tighten to suppress what might have been a laugh at her rejoinder to the ladies at her table – but then Macnair addressed a comment to him, and his attention was lost.

"It's a shame that the old traditions, and old virtues, are so often neglected these days. I remember a time when everyone was content with the comforts of home and the old ways, and the old loyalties, were so well respected," Mrs. Crabbe said, in a tone that was not exactly scolding, and not exactly sanctimonious.

Yes, that made the boundaries clear. She was a Faerie and therefore an outsider, sitting amongst a group of women whose families had known the pure-blooded branch of the Swains for centuries. Her father's foreign marriage had been chewed over in the gossip mill probably for decades, no doubt since before she was born. They were probably more familiar with her family tree than she was.

In short, they knew all about her, and she didn't know much about any of them – a situation to set any Faerie's teeth on edge. She was starting to feel like a butterfly on a pin.

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After the meal was over, the house-elves passed around flutes of champagne, and the guests began to get up from their tables and mingle amongst each other, to Emily's relief. All of Lucius's male guests seemed to be waiting for a word with him, Draco was loudly bending Professor Snape's ear with complaints about Harry Potter getting into the Triwizard Tournament, and Beatrice Parkinson was having a long, involved discussion with Narcissa. When Menzentius Black began hanging over the back of her chair, plying her with his usual brand of charm again, Emily got up and excused herself, saying she had to find the powder room.

She wandered back in the direction of the great front hall, stopping to examine the oil paintings hung on what seemed every available wall. Here were Malfoy ancestors going back centuries, back before the name had been Anglicized and the previous owners of Malfeasant had been named de Malfoi. Emily was left with the impression of a tremendous lot of blonde hair and elaborately embroidered lace.

Two female voices drew closer, paused in the balcony sitting room overlooking the grand hall.

"So what did you think of Lucius's Faery friend?" Mrs. Macnair was saying to Mrs. Bulstrode.

"Oh, yes – Buckminster's little sylvan afterthought. She's nothing much. I was expecting her to be rather prettier – they say all the Fae are such raging beauties, after all."

"It's just rather a pity she favours the mother so much. No wizard in her at all, is there?"

"Not that I can tell. Same sort of disconcertingly feral look as the mother had. Those ears and those eyes really are uncanny, poor thing."

"Speaking of feral creatures – did you see how Menzentius looked at her? They had best get that one married off, and soon, from the way he acts when any remotely likely-looking female comes in sight."

Mrs. Bulstrode laughed. "At the rate that fellow drinks, it'd be a wonder if he could be of any use to a bride!"

They were coming toward her down the corridor – and she had no desire to confront either one of them or deal with the embarrassment they would feel if they knew she had overheard them. So she silently spoke a word, Obscuring herself – when they passed her in the hallway, both remained completely oblivious to her presence.

It had been somewhat understandable when these women had reacted with some hostility to the presence of an unfamiliar woman in their circle – the fact that she was one of the youngest women present and now unmarried could have accounted for that. Now, however, when they began to pass judgment on her mother – she was so angry that she leaned against one of the stone walls and pressed her burning forehead against its cool stone to calm herself. Elaine Greenbarrow Swain was First Knight of the Third Kingdom, one whose name was covered in glory, the niece of a king; a woman considered a beauty amongst a people for whom beauty was the norm, who wielded wild magics through pure force of originality and will. And these women dared speak ill of her all because she didn't live in some crumbling anachronism of an old manse in some dull Second World suburb, counting the silver after every dinner and producing children whose chins got weaker every year?

In their eyes, her parents' relationship was not about a distinguished, infinitely gentle man who adored his heroic wife, and who had taken over most of their daughter's upbringing so that she could serve her King. To them, her mother was only that conspicuously beautiful foreigner who had made off with a highly eligible widower of their set, taking both him and his fortune out of their orbit. Then he settled much of that fortune on the youngest daughter, child of his middle age, and to add insult to injury, that youngest daughter had now turned up in their midst – looking almost as conspicuous and "disconcertingly feral" as the mother did.

She took several deep breaths, fists clenching and unclenching.

There was another pair of witches moving up the stairs from the great hall, Mrs. Rosier and Narcissa – oh hell, she had no desire to talk to either of them at that moment. She moved silently along the corridor, away from the rank scent of the desperation and resentment of those other witches, towards some half-sensed breath of fresher air. As she progressed down the stone corridor, down a stairway and then another, she scented green, living things. She turned towards that scent and inhaled deeply. Somewhere nearby there was steamy heat, flowers, trees, fresh earth, water. Her steps turned in that direction.

Her path led to double French doors of green stained glass, which slid open at the touch of her hand. Inside – dim green light illuminated a space full of plants, green and fragrant. She had wandered into the Malfoy greenhouse. She let her Obscurantis effect fade away, feeling more comfortable.

Green house was right. The walls and ceiling in this place were made almost entirely of green panes of glass. She wandered along the aisles, admiring the work of the artisans who had created this vast room. The glass-paned walls were as elaborate as some Muggle churches, depicting vast stained-glass murals of vineyards, lakes, and creatures that dwell in water – grindylows, merpeople; giant, jewel-scaled fish, sea serpents large enough to swallow ships. She was breathless with the beauty here. Certainly it was extravagant, but to dwell amongst such loveliness, what consideration was money.

Sometime later, she turned from the windows to the potted flowers and plants, and was equally affected. Dozens of varieties of iris, crocus, and amaryllis, blue and purple and silver, stood tall and elegant in forcing vases. Ruffled and bearded iris, and also the sort that stood tall and austere, like the blades of swords. Later on, dozens of varieties of fruit trees: lemon, lime, orange, raspberry, pear, grapefruit... all either in blossom or fruiting, fragrant enough to raise goosebumps on her arms. She could hardly imagine living amongst such riches. It was almost too much to bear.

"Emily?"

She spun around. Embarrassed; interrupted in her communion with the plants and flowers, scents and textures.

Lucius Malfoy was standing in the arched glass doorway. "I knew you'd find the greenhouse," he said pleasantly.

"Oh, Lucius. This is... this is... so beautiful. Astonishing," she said, gripping her upper arms painfully hard.

"You haven't changed a bit, dear hart. Show you something green and blooming, and you go to pieces." He moved down the aisle and leaned companionably against the table opposite her, against a bank of potted foxglove and belladonna.

"You're right, as always."

He sighed. "You didn't enjoy the tea at all, did you?"

"I don't think anyone really enjoyed my company at the tea."

"Don't blame yourself – it looked to me as though Druella was her usual charming self, and the lugubrious Widow Rosier had her claws into you immediately. She did the same thing to poor little Beatrice Parkinson when she married Emmitt, you know."

"Well, I did say something rather snarky myself. I'm terribly sorry, Lucius... I truly don't mean to disrespect your, or your wife's, hospitality... "

"I know you don't." He said that as though that was the most obvious thing in the world. "Oh, my dear, don't mind all those old cats. They're all still angry that your father's money – I'm sorry, your father – didn't marry one of their set after Gwenhwyfar died, as they thought only right and proper."

"As if Father would ever marry someone for economic reasons. If he had ever cared about money, why would he go move somewhere where they don't even mint money? I think one of the happiest days of his life was when he transferred title of everything he owned in this world to all of us."

"As my father would have said, that's just old Buck Swain for you." He smiled ruefully at her. "I'm sorry about all those old biddies – most of them are just duty invites anyway. I shall tell Draco and Menzentius not to allow any of them to corner you this weekend."

"Oh, don't worry, you don't have to. I'll be all right." She was doing her best to discourage that plan – while she liked Draco well enough, sending Menzentius Black to rescue her from the likes of Felina Rosier would be like sending a great, sharp-toothed wolf to save her from a bad-tempered housecat. She turned back to examining the hothouse blooms, and Lucius bent over them with her. Peripherally, she could feel his eyes on her face.

"Emily... can I ask you something?"

She turned toward him, brows tightening a bit in concern. "Of course you can – what is it?"

One of his slender white hands was stroking the velvety petals of a lavender crocus. "Tell me... why was there never any repeat of Beltane night?"

Oh. Perhaps she shouldn't have been so quick to invite him to ask his question. She averted her eyes, blushing madly.

"Well... there were a lot of reasons." She gazed into the heart of a deep blue iris, as if for moral support. "I was only seventeen, you know. And you were always on about how you had to have an heir to carry on the Malfoy name, and I don't want to have children. I have a knight for a mother – I won't make some poor child live with the constant wondering whether Mummy is going to come home alive or dead from the latest action against the Orcs. Those seem to me pretty major obstacles to any kind of serious relationship, don't you think?"

"I can see how that would be why one would shy away from getting engaged, certainly. But I always thought there was something else. One night you were tearing my shirt off in a haymow, and a few days later everything was over, without so much as a nice speech ending in, 'Do let's be friends.'"

She laughed, desperately trying to hide her embarrassment. "You are on a dogged search for the truth tonight, aren't you? It wasn't you, darling. It was me. I have been labelled a feckless git more than once." She turned to the foxglove on the opposite table, with an elaborate show of gaiety.

His low, deliberate drawl came again, close by her ear. "Having seen you with Dorien, my dear... forgive me, but I have a difficult time believing that. Please dispense with all the verbal Obscurantis and just tell me what got in the way, Emily."

She sighed. "It was... because when I got to know you better, I began to find your political views rather... morally repulsive, Lucius," she said truthfully. He had pursued her with a straightforward question, and she had given him a straightforward answer. Therefore any pain its truth caused him superseded any ingratitude for hospitality. "I find your dislike of non-magic people disagreeable. I myself have a Muggle grandmother, and I went to Muggle university. Hell, I bloody taught at Muggle university, for some years. I haven't burnt any bridges there – I may still go back."

"I see." He stood beside her, deeply absorbed in peering into the heart of a sepia-coloured rose.

"And well... I thought that if you were so convinced of the inferiority of Muggles... then what would stop you from looking down on anyone who wasn't a pure-blooded witch? I could foresee a time when you rejected me because I was a part-human – and that cooled things for me."

"I see," he said again, surveying the rose from all angles. "And yes, the Muggle family is not the most attractive thing about you, no. But the connection is distant enough, and your other... attractions are such... that I could try to put that out of mind, if you could... refrain from mentioning it?" Same mocking drawl he always used, that silky voice that both irritated and aroused her.

"Lucius... we've been friends for a very long time. To be honest, I'd thought you had half forgotten about that Beltane night. I don't mean to offend you. But when you ask someone, why did you end your involvement with me, you might hear something you don't want to hear. I'm sorry."

But he only smiled in response. "Do forgive me for this, but if I agonised over everyone who found me morally lacking, I'd have to resign my post at the Ministry. But tell me... you've never found me physically repulsive, have you?"

She didn't know how to lie to him about that. "Far from it."

"Good, because coming from you, that would upset me." He moved to the door, then paused.

"But let me say this – when we hand out judgments on each other's morality... " He gave her a long, tragic look over his elegant shoulder – "... let us remember who amongst us has had their morality called into question more recently. And let us remember how I supported you in your decision to act as you did. When those who thought you acted more out of a desire for revenge than for justice criticised you, I believed you to be entirely justified, and I said so. At whatever cost to my own reputation there was."

It was true. She turned away and hung her head, feeling ungrateful, hideously cruel to someone who cared for her.

"Lucius – " She called apologetically.

He was gone.

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It was seven o'clock by the great antique ormolu clock in the spacious ballroom of Malfeasant.

For some hours, the manor's mob of house-elves had been busy. There were cases of wine and champagne, some to be chilled, some to be decanted, some to be properly aerated before serving, and wine meant glasses of many types to polish and set out properly. Their Master had given them an unusual menu for the dinner, and locating all of the ingredients had kept them busy. The great dining table had to be set, which meant that the vast expanses of antique tablecloths and napkins had to be washed, starched, and pressed. They had polished the silver to a mirrorlike sheen, as was the dark hardwood of the expansive dance floor. When the musicians had arrived, the elves had shown them to their seats and helped them set up their instruments – they probably would have re-strung all the violins themselves if necessary. Now they stood ready with little trays of wineglasses and hors d'oeuvres, dressed in brightly coloured harlequin-stitched guest towels.

At seven precisely, our host and hostess, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, attired in costume as Charles II and his Queen, Catherine of Braganza, made their appearance. Although Charles himself and the Portuguese Catherine were both known to have been dark, the monarchs presiding over this small Court were both stunningly fair. Madame Malfoy was fabulously beautiful in her low-necked, corseted, ruffle-sleeved Restoration ball gown of chameleonic silver silk, with emeralds shimmering at her magnificent white throat – a worthy match for her ineffably elegant husband, who looked so majestic and dashing in the wardrobe of that rakish era that even the monarch who made it famous could not have looked so distinguished.

Our hostess's brother, who already smelled of claret, was next to appear, dressed in an English knight's plate mail and clanking sword, but like Byron's King Sardanapalus, was apparently too vain to allow a helm to impair the full glory of his flowing hair. On his arm was our hostess's mother, who wore a beautifully detailed, queenly black silk and lace mourning gown and slender crown on her elaborately dressed white head, in the guise of Queen Victoria after her loss of Prince Albert. Seeing as how Mrs. Black was not often seen in gowns more modern or less elaborate than the one she wore that evening, it looked for all the world as though she had simply added a crown to her usual ensemble and called it a costume. Her son escorted her to a large overstuffed velvet armchair and, having deposited her there with painstaking slowness, made his way back for another glass of claret.

A cry of "Father, when can I get a Firebolt?" heralded the arrival of our host and hostess's teenage son, whose moonlight-fair juvenile beauty, so like that of his father, was attired for that evening in the authentic robes of the British National Quidditch Team, with his Nimbus 2001 over his shoulder. But the boy's father turned away from his heir with disinterest, sipping from the glass of claret in his hand, his grey eyes watching the grand curving staircase for the arrival of his guests. The boy turned his plaints to his mother instead, and she duly petted him and fussed over him.

One unfashionably early guest made his appearance first – a tall, thin, dark man. The black hair and eyes and strong profile that figured in the nightmares of many a callow first-year student at Hogwarts looked unrecognisably distinguished that evening; from his smoothly shaven cheek and the tidy, nicely barbered state of his long raven hair, it appeared that perhaps this was the year the Malfoys had enough valets to go around to even absentee distant cousins. He wore the garb of a Danish Renaissance prince in hues of the most sombre black, and was unaccompanied by anyone other than the grinning human skull he carried.

Lucius went to meet his cousin. "Ah, good evening, Severus. What have you got there? The head of a pesky Gryffindor who misbehaved in your class?"

"Would that it was."

By that time, more guests were arriving, masked and in costume; Walden Macnair and his wife appeared as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, the only wizard and witch to ever sit on a throne in the British Isles – rather an unoriginal choice, but a patriotic one. The Crabbes appeared in decadent Italianate costume as Rodrigo and Lucretia Borgia. Malcolm Bulstrode appeared in the costume of a French Musketeer, escorting Mrs. Bulstrode in an elegant French court gown, blonde wig, cloak, and dagger, and sporting the likeness of a fleur-de-lis brand on one shoulder – D'Artagnan accompanied by the treacherous beauty Milady de Winter. Elvia Wilkes, in the costume of a European peasant woman, with heatless scarlet flames shooting up from around her skirts, was in character as Wendelin the Weird.

Felina Rosier appeared next, in an elaborately Victorian mourning gown of black lace and embroidered silk, with a tiara on her head. She smiled magnanimously at the assembled company with a suitably tragic air – until she caught sight of Druella Black and scowled. Druella, catching sight of Felina, scowled back just as vociferously. Clearly, that evening's duelling Victorias were not amused. They proceeded to stare daggers at each other for most of the evening.

Most of the guests had assembled in the grand ballroom by quarter past the hour, with one notable absence – but that lady made her appearance by half past seven. Professor Emily Swain arrived, with a swish of silk on the marble steps. A trifle late – but then, it wasn't as though the culture in which she had been raised put much store by strict punctuality, or as though reliable clocks had yet been invented in her homeland.

Her costume turned some heads as she made her way across the ballroom floor and prettily greeted the Malfoys and their guests. The bare-armed black silk gown and matching sleeveless over-robe, traced with an impossibly intricate spider web pattern in crystalline blue beadwork, seemed light enough to float away on the slightest breeze. For good measure, she had added an elaborate spider web pattern, drawn in what looked like some kind of dark blue body paint, upon the flesh of her right shoulder and arm. At any Faery Court, she would have simply been a very well-dressed woman; but this was the Second World, the Wizarding part of the Second World, and the Malfoy family manor at that. In this crowd, the effect was rich, strange, and otherworldly.

She accepted a glass of champagne from a tray carried by a passing house-elf, and turned to Mrs. Parkinson to inquire about her costume. While Emmitt Parkinson had appeared as a stolid, and somewhat unoriginal, Merlin, the lively young Beatrice Parkinson had appeared in the gown of a nineteenth-century Italian woman, with her black hair flowing down her back and her arms full of flowers that gave off a stuporous perfume. After a few moments of laughing chatter and guessing, Emily named her as Beatrice Rappaccini, the beautiful and poisonous heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's story Rappaccini's Daughter. Beatrice was explaining that she had always found her name a bit dull until she came across that story and had fallen in love with it, gesturing animatedly with her wineglass. Lucius, she said, had helped her select fresh flowers and herbs from the greenhouse for their intoxicating effect – she had poppies, foxglove, oleander, bittersweet nightshade, fragrant hemlock, henbane, and belladonna in her bouquet.

During the cocktail hour before dinner, Severus Snape had withdrawn from the merry company a little ways, onto the long gallery that overlooked the dance floor below, and like his famously melancholy alter ego, seemed more content to brood and observe than join in the others' frolic. To Emily, it seemed an ideal time to try to speak to him privately. She excused herself from Mrs. Parkinson and made her way up the steps to the gallery.

"Hello, Professor," she said. Her palms were so damp that she hoped she wouldn't lose her grip on the flute of champagne in her hand.

"Good evening, Professor," he said, with absent courtesy, his eyes never leaving the group below.

"At first I wondered what you were doing in your regular clothes with that skull. But you're Prince Hamlet. I love it."

"Thank you." He sounded as though he would thank her more to leave him alone.

"Honestly, Professor, you do look absolutely marvellous tonight. It suits you perfectly. I couldn't imagine a better costume for you."

He looked sidelong at her, almost shyly – and his mouth twisted in a guarded smile. Again, she was struck by his eyes – they were a true black, reflecting a fathomless brown-red in strong light. His hair was the same colour, not a cool blue-black, but a warm red-black, lightening toward dark auburn in the occasional tendril around his face.

"You look... rather nice yourself," he said, slightly less gruffly than usual. "However if you're now coming to the part where you declaim, "To be or not to be," in a dramatic fashion, and then reveal yourself to be utterly ignorant of the rest of the play, then don't bother. About ten people have already done that in the last half hour."

She grinned at him. "Oh, let me see if I remember.

'To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd.' "

"All right, all right, I am duly impressed," Snape broke in, but this time, he smiled in genuine amusement. "You have diligently studied your Shakespeare."

"At Cambridge – I actually got asked to choreograph the fight scenes for a production of Hamlet. I must have heard the actor playing him rehearse that speech a hundred times."

"Really. And whose identity have you assumed this evening?" It was a relief to discover that he wasn't a total stranger to the concept of small talk.

"Coincidentally – that of another of Shakespeare's characters. Can you guess who?"

"Let me see." He turned to face her completely, then gave her a quick look up and down. "Not Ariel, or Titania?"

"Ariel's cold, but Titania's getting warmer. They're in the same plays."

"Not – Cobweb, from Midsummer Night's Dream?"

"The very same – well done, sir. Though I prefer her in Theseus and Hippolyta, as she's got more to say in that one."

"Theseus and Hippolyta?" He looked perplexed. "I don't think... I've heard of that one."

"Cobweb is one of the funny ingénues in it – she and Peaseblossom, Moth, and Mustardseed decide that the Amazons shouldn't neglect love so much in favour of war, and play all these pranks on them with love potions. Theseus and Hippolyta get engaged in the end, as it's a comedy. Then you know in the beginning of Midsummer they're planning their wedding and all."

"Are you, er, quite sure that's one of Shakespeare's plays?" Snape asked, looking suspicious.

"Absolutely. King Auberon commissioned it from him personally."

Professor Snape's eyes widened. "You mean to tell me that... Shakespeare himself went to Arcadia, and wrote a play while he was there?"

"Oh yes. Back in the Second Age – I mean, the sixteenth century. And it was three plays, actually – he wrote everything very fast. Theseus and Hippolyta, Fortinbras, and Fleance."

"And they're all completely unknown to scholars here?"

"Well, not to all scholars here," she replied with a downcast smile.

Something in his voice and the way his scent changed said that his interest was very much piqued by that admission, but before she could continue, Lucius had swept up toward them with an expansive smile.

"Emily, dear. I've been telling Draco a bit about his fencing mistress – and now he's simply dying to get a chance to talk to you about your battlefield exploits. Do indulge the boy and spend a bit of time with him, would you?"

"Of course," she said, honouring the request of her host, her host whom she may have recently rather offended – though she turned away from Professor Snape with reluctance. "Where has he gotten to?"

"Down talking to his uncle and grandmother by the dance floor."

Well, didn't that sound like more fun than should be allowed – and just when she had finally been making some headway in having a civil conversation with Severus Snape. Damn.

She nodded politely to Snape as she made her exit – hoping that he would catch the regret in her expression as she moved away from him. Lucius turned to his cousin with a very jovial air. "Severus, old man. I was hoping to catch you sometime tonight – to talk about that mutual friend of ours. Are you busy?"

Lucius's drawling voice floated back to her as he moved off with Snape – Sorry to interrupt, but surely the two of you see enough of each other every day at work...

Yes, no doubt he had seen enough of her for one night, and was simply ecstatic to have an excuse to get away.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

It was some time before Snape reappeared in the ballroom after his talk with Lucius Malfoy. Anyone who knew him would have thought that he looked as cool and emotionless as always, though perhaps in a worse mood than usual. A person who knew him extraordinarily well might have noticed the slight tremor in his hands, the more than usual rigidity in his shoulders, the intense disquiet in his black eyes. But the only person who would have noticed those clues to Professor Snape's mental state was at that moment feeding his Phoenix in his office back at Hogwarts, and thus was not available to offer his support. There may have been someone present who would have offered him her sympathies had he indicated his upset to her, but Professor Snape was not the sort of man to presume on such. As it were, Snape only leaned against the gallery rail overlooking the ballroom, took several deep breaths, and willed his hands to stop shaking – but Snape's will was a formidable thing, and he had composed himself in the space of a few heartbeats.

A few paces further down the gallery rail, Walden Macnair and Menzentius Black had removed themselves alone and were discussing the finer points of the attributes of some of the female guests. Both decided that Felina Rosier was still looking all right, although she was trying altogether too hard to flirt when she still hadn't doffed her mourning for a husband dead these fifteen years. A moment later, when pretty Beatrice Parkinson had crossed the dance floor, Menzentius expressed a fervent wish to be a flower hugged to that bosom.

The talk had turned scabrous when Emily Swain came into view, talking with Draco Malfoy.

"Well, well, well – would you look at that. She didn't get that frock in Diagon Alley, and that's for certain," Macnair muttered to Menzentius.

"I'll bet she didn't get that frock in this world. Lucius says our little professor was born in Arcadia." Somehow Menzentius's tone made the fact of Arcadian birth sound only slightly less lascivious than being born into a family of brothel prostitutes.

"They say it's all fun and games there. Do you know how they celebrate Easter?" Macnair gave an unpleasant sort of laugh.

"That's what I've heard, too. You know what they say about those Faery women... I've heard it said that they sweat perfume and taste like honey. And the best part is that they can't give you any diseases – and they hardly ever get pregnant," Menzentius said. "Yes, I think I'm going to have to get myself some Faery tail, preferably this evening. Get it, Faery tail?"

"Yes, dreadfully witty, that," Professor Snape interrupted. He had been so quiet that they had not noticed he was there, until Menzentius turned to find himself impaled on the same withering black stare that had reduced many Hogwarts students to a state of nearly wetting themselves.

"Much as I hate to interrupt this lecherous tête-à-tête, I find myself curious as to what foundation any of your remarks have, if any. I assume that you have, of course, been to Professor Swain's homeland, celebrated Easter with the natives, smelled and tasted one or more of the local women, and have enough experience to knowledgeably make the claims that you are holding forth here?"

The youth's lip curled. "Lucius has been there. He lived there for a year as one of the Tithesmen, just before he and Narcissa were married. He says that during their spring religious holidays, they celebrate by running riot in the fields. Lucius tells me that they – "

"My boy, do hold your foolish tongue for a moment," Snape interrupted again, his eyes flashing dangerously. "No matter what Lucius says, the lady is a Hogwarts teacher, and I won't have her spoken of in such a manner in my presence, sir. Either speak of her civilly, as becomes a gentleman, or do not speak of her at all. Do you understand me?"

Menzentius smiled balefully at Snape. "As you wish, sir." He nodded to Macnair, eyes still fixed maliciously on Snape's glowering face. "I think I'll go see if Professor Snape's lady would like an escort to dinner. Good evening, sir."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The burly goblin who served as house major domo announced that dinner was served, and the Malfoys and their guests made their way past him and into the great dining hall. Emily found Menzentius Black at her elbow, bowing suavely. "Shall I escort you in to dinner, Professor?"

She had been chatting with Beatrice Parkinson again, not speaking to any of the men, and rather hoping that Professor Snape would want to do the honours. But instead, he had gone over to Druella Black and was now helping her out of her armchair. Yes, evidently she would indeed need a dowager's hump before he noticed her again, even in these surroundings and in this dress.

So when Menzentius appeared at her side, she smiled at him perhaps more brilliantly and graciously than necessary and took his arm with a more mammalian air than was warranted. "Thank you, sir."

The elves seated the guests for dinner. Lucius took his place at the head of the great table, and Narcissa took hers at its foot. Emily was seated at Lucius's left hand, between him and Macnair – who seemed to hold some non-specific Ministry job that had to do with wildlife management – on her immediate left. Draco sat across from her at his father's right hand, next to Mrs. Rosier.

She wasn't sure where Professor Snape was seated, but resolutely refrained from looking for him.

The house-elves, attired in starched black pillowcases for their duties at table, busied themselves with serving the salad course. The obviously antique china was set atop silver filigree chargers. Emily was pleasantly surprised by the menu. The salad consisted of colourful mixed field greens and sprigs of fresh herb, dressed very lightly in a fresh pomegranate vinaigrette and coarse Dijon mustard. The first course was accompanied by a dry fume blanc, a pale green wine redolent of grasses and herbs.

The second course consisted of thin slices of roast breast of pheasant in a light sauce of honey, orange, and cognac, with herbed potatoes and pencil-thin spears of asparagus brushed with tarragon-scented olive oil. Along with the white-flour bread that she found so cloyingly sweet and tasteless, there were piping hot rolls of rich dark brown bread, accompanied by tiny pots of clover honey and butter that tasted fresh churned. The house-elves offered a choice of a full-bodied sauvignon blanc or a very fine Faery dandelion wine. One of the house-elves made a little curtsy beside her seat, offering a bottle of the Faery vintage for her inspection.

"Third Kingdom white dandelion." She turned to Lucius. "You have splendid taste, sir."

"I have friends who teach me well." The characteristic drawl was almost a purr.

After Emily had cleaned her plate nearly to the bone-white raised pattern, she turned to find her host regarding her with an indulgent smile. "Oh, you didn't enjoy your dinner at all, did you?"

"Lucius, that was wonderful. The best meal I've had since leaving home. You and Narcissa have outdone yourselves."

"I do hope the vegetables were crisp enough to suit you."

She laughed merrily. "They were delicious, thank you."

The elves served a third course, artfully arranged plates of exquisite soft cheeses, and fruit that couldn't possibly have been in season – tiny, iridescent lavender grapes, raspberries, and melting slices of pear. The wines were a mildly sweet sauvignon blanc, and another Fae vintage – a pale, dry honey mead. She was about to kidnap the Malfoys' chefs and sommeliers and take them home in her trunk.

"Pardon me, Professor, I noticed your frock when you came in this evening. Do all your things come from Arcadia?" Mrs. Rosier asked, pleasantly enough.

"They have for this year. I only had a few days to prepare to come to Hogwarts, so I went to my mother's favourite weaver and asked her to make me some witch's dress robes from a sketch I made. This was what she came up with."

Mrs. Rosier smiled gently. "I do hope you're not chilly, in this British weather."

Was that another dig, or an expression of genuine concern? She couldn't tell with these witches. She decided to assume the latter. "You're quite right – most of our weavers just don't fathom the idea of dressing for cold weather. But she went through so much trouble secreting them for me in a hurry that I just couldn't ask her to do them up again. Goodmistress Peskha is a great friend of my mother's."

"What do you mean – secreting them for you? Your mother wears dresses like that, too?" Draco asked. From the sound of his voice, he seemed to think that the elder Lady Swain must be a rather racy number if she dressed like her daughter.

"In the infrequent occasions when she doffs her chain shirt for a few minutes, yes," Emily replied.

Lucius turned to his son with a patient smile. "Of course she does, Draco. You see, the Arcadian climate is so mild that little spidersilk frocks are all the better class of women wear most of the time."

"Spidersilk? Do you mean silk that's really made from spider's thread?" Draco asked curiously. He turned to his father. "Do the Faeries get their clothes made by bugs?"

"Draco, don't display your ignorance. All silk is made by bugs, even in this world," the elder Malfoy explained, very smoothly and patiently, ignoring the scowl on his son's face at his criticism. "But in the Faerielands, it's all made by spider pookas, great talking spiders as large as men. They weave silk clothes, and they'll give them to you in exchange for food, or services, whatever the spider needs."

Draco turned even paler than he already was. "Ruddy great spiders as big as a man?"

"It's not considered polite to show disgust at their appearance – the females especially take offence. But there's nothing to fear from them. They're very clean and well-mannered, actually. Good merchants." He nodded deferentially to Emily while he praised her countryfolk – she smiled back.

"They're good fighters too, actually, Draco. Mistress Peskha's husband was a member of my mother's original unit. You should see a spider pooka in action sometime – they're incredible. They can lift far more than their own weight, and, they can also fight with any of their limbs with no loss of dexterity, and have eight eyes to watch the enemy with – it's nearly impossible to surprise one of them. I'm awfully glad they're on our side."

"Cool." Draco's expression had changed from disgust to excitement. "I'd rather like to see that."

The house-elves were now serving dessert and after-dinner drinks, liqueurs, coffee, teas. Lucius accepted a cup of mint tea in the most beautiful cup, she noticed, made of metal wrought in a decorative pattern around a glass cylinder.

"Perhaps you'll meet some of them, if anyone sees fit to ask you to become a Tithesman like your old father and grandfather," Lucius said indulgently. "It'll only happen if this peace holds up, however. They don't practice the old custom in times of war. It's considered too dangerous for the visitors."

Emily paused for a moment to ask a hovering house-elf for mint tea before turning to Draco herself. "But I'm pretty certain it'll be a fair number of years before the Orcs decide to try to take us again – we gave them a good beating the last time they tried us. And the Tithe committee does seem to like asking family members of previous pages. In some families, it's a tradition from generation to – "

She stopped in the middle of her sentence – because as she accepted the cup of tea from the serving elf, she had felt her flesh suddenly sizzle and burn.

Everyone looked up in surprise and alarm as Emily let out a sharp scream and flung the cup back onto the table, spilling the tea onto the tablecloth. She grasped her wrist and flexed her hand, white-faced and grimacing.

"I'm sorry," she said, "that must be made of iron... "

Lucius was instantly beside her, reaching for her wrist and delicately opening her injured hand.

"Lucius... really, it's nothing... "

Lucius glanced down at her hand, on which patches of angry blue blisters were rising on her palm, first and second fingers, and thumb.

"That doesn't look like nothing," he said.

"Looks like a bad burn," came Severus Snape's quiet voice, from close to her ear, startling her – she hadn't heard him so much as get up. "Happened from simply touching a cup, you say?"

Whispers broke out all around the table. Emily couldn't tell if they were concerned, or scandalised, or neither.

"It's to be expected," she replied, through gritted teeth. "I react horribly to iron... can't touch it... shouldn't even get near it... "

Lucius turned a look of terrible cold fury at the little retinue of house-elves waiting on the table – and all conversation in the room fell dead silent.

"Who put the wrought-iron cups out tonight?" he asked, in a quiet, but inexorable, voice.

The acrid smell of abject terror suddenly rose in waves all around her. One or two tiny, fearful squeaks were audible. "Not me, Master!" "Master, I was only setting down the plates!"

"Lucius, please. If they've never had a Faery guest before, they probably didn't know any better," Emily said quickly.

"You're right, dear, they haven't had a Faery guest before," Lucius answered. "Which is why I specifically told them to put all the ironware in the house securely away." The look in his grey eyes was frightening.

Emily put her good hand gently on his arm. "I'm certain it was just an honest mistake."

Lucius's furious gaze moved to her – and his expression softened a bit. Then he looked past her to Snape. "Severus, old man. Do you by any chance have some of that healing potion of yours with you?"

"Always." Snape addressed the cringing house-elves. "Please bring me the large black physician's satchel in my room – it should be on my dressing table – "

"Yes, sir, Professor, sir – "

"Right away, sir – " Two elves vanished in puffs of grey smoke.

Lucius addressed the rest of them. "Clear those cups away this instant, and put out the china cups instead."

"Yes, Master, sorry, Master... "

"Right away, Master... "

"We're so sorry, Miss Professor, ma'am... "

"We're all sorriest, Miss Professor!"

"Professor Swain does not want me to reprimand you, and I'll defer to her wishes. But you're all very lucky that she is in a forgiving mood this evening," Lucius said imperiously.

The elves went to work with lightning speed, whisking the wrought-iron cups away and replacing them with delicate china ones. The spilled tea vanished. Three elves were nearly instantaneously at Emily's elbow with bandages and a tiny basin of cool water with some kind of disinfectant salts – and the two who had gone for Snape's healing potion rematerialized almost instantly with his large black physician's bag. Snape took it from them, brusquely waving away their offers of help. He took from it a stoppered bottle of clear, robin's-egg-blue liquid and an eyedropper.

For such a habitually tense and contentious person, Professor Snape had an oddly reassuring bedside manner. Something about the air of unassailable confidence and competence he assumed when he was administering the potion was tremendously calming to her. Perhaps it was because he was in his element as a Potions master. Perhaps it was due to some other reason known only to him. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for it.

He dispensed several drops of the blue fluid into Emily's goblet of water. "Drink that."

She wrinkled her nose at the odd, astringent-floral smell of it, but gamely took a deep swallow. "You'll want to drink all of it. Now... " He sank to one knee beside her, then lifted her hand from the water and dried it with her linen napkin.

"This may sting a bit." He dispensed some drops of the blue potion directly onto the burned skin.

She flinched. "It doesn't hurt – it just itches like mad."

"That's the tissues regenerating and tightening."

Within moments, much of the angry, scalded blue skin had cooled to a tough-looking grey. "Thank you, Professor, that's much better."

His brow tensed as he examined her hand. "That's strange – a simple burn like this should only take a moment to heal completely."

"It's an iron burn," she said. "Even with the strongest healing potion, it will take some time to heal completely."

His brow creased deeply, but he gave only a terse nod, then neatly wrapped a bandage from the middle of her fingers to her wrist. After he had finished, his gaze fell on the white linen napkin he had used to dry her wound – something about it caught his attention. He opened the cloth and stared down at the stain, like dark blue ink, on its surface. He raised it to his eye level and examined it minutely.

He turned back to Emily looking as if he would like to ask her a question, but she was staring straight ahead with such a look of tight-jawed tension that he remained silent.

"Thank you very much for your help, Professor Snape," she said, her voice sounding as stiff and dismissive as his usual tone toward her.

He nodded to her and his host, and moved back toward the other end of the table, to his seat at Druella Black's right hand.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

After dinner, Emily's burned hand was still throbbing painfully. Beatrice Parkinson, Narcissa, and Menzentius had made rather more of a fuss over her after dinner than she would have liked, asking her if she was in pain, bringing her glasses of wine, offering her a dose of belladonna or valerian. She could tell from the looks on their faces that they were perplexed at her reaction to a metal they thought of as totally inert and harmless.

But, painful as it was, at least the injury gave her an excuse to approach Severus Snape. After what he had done for her, a personal thank-you was really necessary – even if he had been entirely too fascinated by her bloody linens to suit her. He was hovering on the candlelit gallery balcony alone again, nursing another brandy, his other hand resting on the cranium of that skull. She sidled up behind him on the long gallery, with something like terror in her chest.

"Professor Snape, sir?"

"Yes, Professor?" He had barely turned to look at her. "How's the hand?"

"It'll be all right. I was rather hoping to get to speak to you... about something, sir," she said.

Finally, he turned toward her, regarding her very coolly. "I admit to being a bit in the dark as to what you would want to speak to me about, madam."

All right, at least his tone was now just very reserved – not openly hostile. Perhaps she could work with that.

"Well... um... "

All right – now exactly how did one initiate this conversation?

Thought Emily: Yes, I would really like to talk to you because on the first day I met you, I took you to tea and then shagged you very memorably in a call box, sir, and now, since we happen to have coincidentally discovered the next day that we work at the same school, I would like to discuss that event with you – and perhaps we could arrange to continue that very memorable activity in less public and more comfortable environs at a mutually convenient time. Is tonight good for you? I'm in the Green Room.

Said Emily: "It's been quite a year, hasn't it?

"Very much so," he said, tossing off a healthy draught from his glass.

"Remarkable about the Tournament, really," she said.

"Quite," he replied. He had gotten bored with this conversation, apparently, and had turned back toward the dancers on the floor.

This was getting excruciating. Something had to be said.

"I, um, was rather surprised to be introduced to you like that, on my first morning at Hogwarts... after the previous evening," she said.

All right. Now she'd done it. Mentioned... a certain night in September. He turned back to her with a wary, incisive gleam in his eyes.

"As was I," he said quietly. "Pray continue."

"All right – I'm... not really sure how matters have progressed like this... from the first time I met you to us barely being able to be in the same room together."

"I wasn't aware that we were unable to be in the same room together, madam. I take every meal and faculty meeting in the same room that you do, do I not?"

"Well... this still seems a marked drop in cordiality from the first time I met you to... today."

"I would say that a great deal has happened since then, Professor," he replied.

"Not... that much, really, I should think."

"At least six weeks have gone by since then," he said, with another healthy swallow of brandy.

Six weeks in which he had alternately barely acknowledged her existence or ranted at her about students' use of her sort of magic. And now it felt like he was chiding her for something?

"Well... judging from those six weeks, sir, I can only conclude that perhaps you were less than thrilled that I had come to work at Hogwarts, sir. I was wondering if there was anything I could do or say that would make this less upsetting for you."

His mouth quirked sardonically – and far from the exhalations of desire she had previously felt from him, she could only detect an acrid tang of anger and irritation. "I have no problem with you holding a position at Hogwarts – you seem qualified enough to teach your subject."

"Then, sir – what is – why – ?"

"Madam," he interrupted, "can you really think of nothing you might have done that might have upset me in any way?"

"Well... I've heard of men looking down on women who are too... forthcoming on the first date, but somehow it seemed rather as though those rules didn't much apply... somehow."

"Yes, we seemed to have dispensed with many of the usual rules of behaviour that evening. So much so that you decided to employ your pet art of Obscurantis to play a Weasley-twins type of prank on me before you had ever exchanged two words with me."

"I thought I... I did try to say I was very sorry for that," she said. "Obviously you weren't impressed by that apology, but I did mean it when I... "

"Yes, I remember. It was a very moving, if glib and indirect, apology, Professor. And you were only a little aware of how fetching you looked when you delivered it, as well."

That rankled – especially when she had honestly been sincere. Suddenly she felt as though she had been raked over the coals long enough – and good intentions died under a rush of hot temper. "Oh honestly! When someone comes to you with an apology, can't it simply be a matter of just saying, 'Oh, all right, don't do it again,' and then letting it go, like other people? Why must you be so damned difficult all the time? I've since concluded that I must have hallucinated the impression that you liked me the first time we met."

The sinister eyebrow was back, and the red-black eyes were gleaming with suppressed rage. "There did indeed seem to be some hallucinating going on that evening – after all, you did take me for a Muggle – "

"I hadn't been in this world for eight years! How was I to know there hadn't been some huge fashion for wearing cloaks since then? And besides – you took me for a Muggle! "

"You were wearing Muggle clothes," Snape said matter-of-factly.

"Oh," she said. "Now that I think of it, yes I was, wasn't I. No, wait – I had one of my old witch's cloaks from school with me. I remember – it got terribly rained on."

"You weren't wearing it at the time." Nothing provoked a show of emotion from the man. He was cool as a dozen bushels of cucumbers.

"I wasn't?"

"I remember quite distinctly what you were wearing," he said. "Thoroughly and completely Muggle."

"All right, I concede your point, I looked like a Muggle. But you – you wanted me to take you for a Muggle, Mister Professor 'I Teach Chemistry,' didn't you?"

"I do teach chemistry – after a fashion," he said, sighing elaborately, as if frustrated on her insistence on being so thick. "However, if in the future I ever become involved with, oh, perhaps a Muggle university professor, I don't believe that my Wizarding background is the sort of revelation I would make to her on the first date. Though seeing as how that lady told me, over jasmine tea, that she teaches folklore and mythology at Cambridge, I thought perhaps revealing it to her at a later date might be possible. I also don't recall you telling me that your father is a wizard. Nor do I recall you mentioning that you were born somewhere other than Earth – Miss 'My Family Hails From The Lake District'?"

"Well – they do. They're a fine old bloody pure-blooded family, as I'm sure you heard today," she said, with an impatient nod in the direction of Druella Black, who was again glowering at Felina Rosier from the armchair below. "And come on – when you tell someone, even a wizard – 'Hello, I was born in a different plane of existence,' they tend to look at you all funny. Wizards are all right with being apart from the Muggle world, but being entirely removed from the Earth in general is just weird for even some of your kind. Don't try to deny it – I've had a tremendous amount of experience on that topic, as recently as today." And much of today's unpleasant experience came from the elderly great-aunt to whom he was so very sympathetic, and his apparently long-time friends, she thought, but did not say out loud.

"All perfectly valid points, of course. You make me wonder, however, what you're working so hard to justify to yourself, Professor," Snape said in the most delicately insinuating tones imaginable. The lady doth protest too much. She was struck

momentarily speechless.

When he spoke again, his voice was so soft that she had to lean close to him to hear it.

"If you can't fathom why I seem disinclined to simply say, 'Oh, it's all right,' where you're concerned... do try to understand one thing, if you are capable of it.

"If I had done to you what you did to me, morality would have called me a rake, a cad, and much worse. Yet when you, a woman, played the amoral rake in your treatment of a man – you seem to think that that sort of thing is just perfectly acceptable behaviour. It doesn't appear to me as though you've wasted one moment's worry as to how it made me feel to be so used for your own gratification – "

– he drew the word out thrillingly, stroking the fingertips of one hand down over the back of her hand, and then jerking it away a moment later –

"then discarded afterward like some greasy chip shop wrapping. I am unimpressed by your expectation that I should simply indulge you in your callousness and get back to the more serious business of amusing you in ballrooms as though nothing had happened. Which leads me to believe that perhaps you are used to spending time with men who are satisfied with such treatment. But, I assure you, madam, I am not of that type. And perhaps your regard for yourself is so inflated that you believe some brief hours of your company are reward enough for any indignity you choose to inflict on someone else, but I was not flattered by being so seduced and then so unceremoniously abandoned."

She had been expecting him to make some accusation that she would find as insulting as it was unjustified – the ballroom-intrigue equivalent of implying that she had somehow given her students the idea of Dungbombing his cauldrons. But instead, after he finished speaking his mind, she found herself coming to a most unforeseen conclusion.

He was right.

Leaving the way she did had indeed been insulting – exquisitely so. She felt smaller and more petty and ridiculous with every word he said. It was true that most men would have been satisfied merely by the carnal rewards offered by a quick anonymous encounter. But Severus Snape wasn't most men. Now he was defending his bruised self-worth with an intensity, she realized, that probably came from numerous other bruises in the past. His dark head and shoulders were thrown back with great dignity, and he spoke with controlled righteous indignation.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she stammered.

"You could have tried to," he snarled back.

Oh, the hurt on his face. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than a long flight of stairs that she could kick herself down.

She wanted very badly to put her arms around him and say... what? Something that would make his accusing attitude toward her soften – something that would make him forget, some apology that he would be satisfied with... just something. Anything.

But was there any kind of apology he would accept? He had already told her what he thought of her attempts at mollifying him – and this was not the kind of man to whom one whined, 'Oh but I didn't mean it like that,' like some disrespectful schoolgirl. It was entirely possible that she had established herself forever as low and heartless in his eyes, but at that moment, she had no idea how to go about changing his mind, and was terrified of offending him even more in the attempt.

"But don't let me keep you," he muttered. "I'm sure one of your various Malfoys will soon be missing you. Good evening, Professor." He turned on his heel and stalked away. If he had looked behind him, he would have seen her watching his retreat with smouldering disappointment.

But he didn't look behind him.

"Emily? Are you all right?" Lucius's voice, from behind her. In a moment, he had moved up to her side and had put a supportive hand on her shoulder. "I thought that looked a bit heated. Severus being the epitome of graciousness and tact, as always?"

She turned gratefully toward him – the warmth of his hand on her bare shoulder felt furtively pleasant. "I just... it's nothing. Just a stupid workplace personality conflict is all."

"Said Emily, drooping rather tremendously. He really has offended you, hasn't he. I think I really should have that talk with him if he's huffing about insulting women so. It's really just unbecoming to a gentleman."

I'm afraid it was I who much offended him, actually.

"No, he didn't insult me, he just brought up an... earlier point of contention at an inopportune time, is all. I just didn't feel up to a round of his, you know – debating tactics." All of which was true enough, but she knew that Lucius would assume that the point of contention was some academic trifle, rather than a disagreement about their mutual sexual history.

Lucius put a companionable arm around her shoulders. "Well, love, let that serve as your latest introduction to the famous Snape family charm, then. I hate to speak ill of my own cousin, but he's already such a grumpy old man, it's hard to believe he's not even thirty-five.

"But as I recall, you haven't danced with me yet this evening." He took her unbandaged hand. "Come on."