Part First: The Hart Assurgent: Chapter 7

Chapter 7:

It would have been easy, after that conversation with Professor Snape, for Emily to allow herself to become a second melancholy person in black palely loitering alone on a gallery, drinking a ridiculous amount of brandy and not to speaking to anyone, but Lucius didn't seem about to let that happen. Instead he escorted her out to the dance floor and insisted on spinning her around in a lively Viennese waltz.

"Really, my dear, if that miserable crustacean of a Snape doesn't leave you alone, I'm going to have a dreadful revenge on him. I'll arrange to have him locked up in a small closet with Felina Rosier."

"You introduced me to Felina Rosier. I wouldn't wish that even on Professor Snape."

"I'm just dying to see which of them would kill and eat the other first."

"As opposed to who would kill and eat the other second? That is vile and disgusting, sir," she said, between giggles.

"Yes, it is," he drawled back. "But you're laughing... aren't you?"

The third waltz began, and Emily's host showed no signs of wanting to leave the floor with her. "You know, Mr. Malfoy, I've been told that here in the ballrooms of the Second World, it used to be that if a gentleman danced three waltzes with a lady, it was tantamount to a proposal of marriage," she teased.

"Yes, I've heard that too. Splendid then. I shall get you a ring in the morning."

"Wouldn't Narcissa rather object?"

"I'll lend you to her sometimes," he said generously.

"Oh, so Church of England okayed polygamy while I was away? All right then – but I want my own wing of the house."

"Then I shall call on the contractors right after I finish at the jeweller's."

Her sides were starting to hurt from laughing. "I am not having this conversation with you – you're terrible!" But her tone rather said that he was terrible in a way that was dreadfully clever and appealing.

The grey eyes smirked down at her; then he sighed and shook his head. "Spoilsport."

Lucius called to his brother-in-law, who was standing close by the dance floor with Mr. Goyle. "Menzentius – the Professor is an energetic dancer. Come cut in before I collapse with a fit of the vapours."

He turned back to her. "You don't mind, do you? You know how the old cats do love to meow."

"I'll just count one-two-three, and think of England."

Then Menzentius very obligingly cut in, and Lucius merged back into the crowd, after placing a very quick and very chaste kiss on the back of her hand.

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"Ah, Severus, old man." Malfoy approached Snape in the ballroom, pressing a fresh snifter of warmed brandy into his hand.

Narcissa had finally prevailed upon Snape to come down from the gallery and sit beside her in the ballroom, but then Draco had loudly complained of wanting to dance, and Narcissa had taken the floor with her son. The other guests were swirling by, to a stately foxtrot. Emily had not yet been relinquished by Menzentius.

Lucius Malfoy took Narcissa's vacated seat next to Snape. "I wanted to thank you for bringing that healing potion with you. Emily would have been in a terrible state without it."

"How is she?" Snape said, in the manner of a physician inquiring perfunctorily after a patient.

"I don't think she'll be giving any hands-on demonstrations in her classes for awhile, but she'll be fine in a week or two."

"Lucius – how is it that ordinary iron burned her like that? I don't think a hot poker could have done more damage."

"The same is true of all the Fae. Iron doesn't occur naturally in their world, you see. For some reason, their flesh reacts violently to any contact with it."

"Did you know that her blood, once shed, looks quite blue? Does the iron cause some kind of cyanosis, or – "

Lucius shrugged. "Faery blood is naturally blue – I don't pretend to know why. If you please, Severus – don't draw so much attention to that which makes her different from us. That always makes her uncomfortable, and from what she's told me in confidence, I think she's feeling rather under scrutiny this weekend."

Snape looked slightly abashed. "Of course."

A flash of a murderous scowl showed momentarily behind the gracious façade of his host's face. "I can't believe the carelessness of those damned elves – putting iron on the table when there was a Faerie present. That would be about like someone inviting you or me to supper, and serving us off of radioactive plutonium. Be assured, someone will be well and truly punished for this."

"I thought she didn't want you to punish the elves," Snape said.

"Of course she didn't – the Fianna are such a stoic lot that she'd probably say it was nothing if they gave her an iron bedstead by mistake. If it had been anyone other than Buckminster Swain's daughter who was handed an iron-framed teacup at my table, I should never be able to show my face in Arcadia again. Thank heaven for the generosity of old friends." He pressed a hand to his temple in relief.

"I hadn't realized the two of you knew each other so well," Snape said distantly. Both of them briefly turned toward the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, now in conversation with Menzentius and the Parkinsons across the room. Narcissa Malfoy's brother seemed to be making quite a fuss of trying to look after her.

"Oh yes, I've know Emily quite awhile. Her father was one of my father's great school cronies."

"I didn't realize he went to Hogwarts. He was in Slytherin?"

"No, Ravenclaw – but a very good pure-blood family," Lucius said, so the Swains were redeemed despite their lack of Slytherin-ness. "I met Emily the year before Narcissa and I were married, though it's been at least five years since I saw her last. You know, I really think it must have been at her wedding, back in the Third Kingdom."

Snape froze. "She's married?"

"Widowed, now, poor dear. Fairly recently," Malfoy said, heaving a heavy sigh – and taking a covert sideways glance at his companion. "It's so awful things ended the way they did for her poor husband."

Snape took a deep swallow of brandy before replying. "Seems a bit young for a widow."

"He didn't exactly live a normal lifetime. Especially not for a Faerie."

"What on Earth happened?" Snape asked with some consternation.

"It didn't happen on Earth, actually, but in the Kingdoms. It was quite the scandal about three years back. You hadn't heard?" Lucius's tone implied that any half-decent friend or colleague would have kept up with such important events in Professor Swain's life.

"No," Snape said, a touch defensively. "To be perfectly honest, until September of this year, Faeries were only a few pages in my old History of Magic text to me. I hadn't imagined I'd ever be teaching alongside one of them."

"I see. Since you're curious, I suppose I must needs tell you the story," his cousin said with that sly smile Snape knew so very well – the one that said he was about to be regaled with a rich dish of gossip and scandal. He knew from long experience that Lucius did simply love to talk, especially when the topic was someone else's darkest secrets.

"The Swains, you see, are a very old, very pure-blood family. Older than the Malfoys, believe it or not – nearly as old as the venerable Princes, actually," Malfoy said with a slightly malicious laugh.

"Bully for them," Snape retorted.

"They're one of those families that are so old, and so rich, that they've gotten quite bored with politics and spend all their time at things like writing books in dead languages and breeding tiger striped orchids."

"Professor Swain breeds tiger striped orchids?"

"No, her Great-Aunt Mehitable does that. Emily's father's passion, on the other hand, was anything to do with Faeries. Originally, he was an historian, but then he was selected for the Tithe after he left Hogwarts and became obsessed with them: their magic, their culture. He's a real anthropologist, though – not like that absurd Arthur Weasley and his obsession with Muggles."

"I'm curious. So you object to an interest in Muggles, but not in the Fae? Why?" Snape asked.

"Well, we can't all be pure-blood wizards of course," Malfoy observed, with only a slight sneer. "But the Faeries are all right – at least they use magic. What's really delightful about them is that everyone uses magic quite openly in their world – there's no need to hide oneself and one's culture from an encroaching infestation of Muggles and their torch-carrying church leaders. The only ones who don't use magic there are the Orcs, and they are a despised enemy tribe who are kept properly in their place when they attempt to take over the Faeries' rightful territory – "

"Lucius... not again with the torch-bearing Muggles, please?" Snape said, with an air of pained infinite patience. "How long ago was that?"

"Sorry. I'd forgotten I was talking to an academic, for whom patriotic feeling is... simply intellectual," Malfoy said with a thin smile, taking a deep swallow of his own brandy. "At any rate – even if the Arcadian level of civilization is of course some centuries behind the Wizarding world – their food and wine are wonderful, the scenery is magnificent, and the climate is superb. Narcissa and I have often considered the possibility of building a vacation home there. And of course they're an extremely handsome people." He nodded very graciously to Professor Swain across the ballroom. She smiled prettily back at him.

"My father's old schoolmate Buckminster certainly thought highly of them. After his first wife died, he went to live in the Third Kingdom and married again in his middle age to one of King Gwydion's knights. Lady Elaine was quite the beauty in her youth, I'll give her that. There's still a pure-blood branch who live in a grand old manor out in the Lake District, half-brothers and sisters.

"Emily's mother's line would have been infinitely respectable – her mother was a Greenbarrow, no less – but then her grandfather married some sort of – " his lip curled " – Muggle. But the Fae have always been known for taking... peculiar sorts of lovers now and then. There's some story about how, back in the Renaissance, a Faery Queen fell in love with a Muggle weaver due to some messing around with love potions, and made a perfect fool of herself over him. No accounting for taste in these temporary romantic liaisons of theirs. Ah well, it's never long before the lady wakes up saying, "'Methinks I loved an ass.'"

He gave a knowing sort of laugh. Professor Snape gripped his brandy glass much harder than was necessary, staring fixedly at some point far across the room. Malfoy took another sideways glance at his cousin and smiled covertly before continuing.

"Buckminster's first family were at Hogwarts – all Ravenclaws – but then he fell prey to a notion of an overseas education for his youngest-born and sent her to Beauxbatons. Afterward the mother unaccountably sent her to some Muggle university... Oxbridge, I think... but who can remember these absurd Muggle names. Then the Muggles offered her a teaching job. A few years later though, war broke out at home and she went back to serve in the Fianna. Shortly after the peace was declared, we heard that she was getting married, to one of King Armus's knights. King Armus, you know, rules the Sixth Kingdom."

Snape rolled his eyes. Same old penchant for name-dropping as always.

"So we went off to Arcadia for the wedding. Sir Dorien Tumnus turned out to be this tall dark fellow. He was thought quite good-looking at Court, though personally, I thought him a bit dull. One of those people who's always got his nose in a book. No title other than knight of the realm, either. Not who I would have expected her to marry in such a headlong fashion. But – they seemed happy enough together." Malfoy shrugged. "Her parents liked him."

"How did he die?" Snape asked quietly.

Malfoy lowered his voice confidingly. "Well, unfortunately for him, a few people were rather disappointed when Miss Swain got married – no virgin bride, that one – but there was one fellow who took it very hard. Apparently he stalked Dorien down during a hunt, and killed him. Arrow in the back. Said it was an accident. But when Emily confronted him directly, though, he confessed – but tried to defend it by telling her he loved her." Malfoy had a grand laugh at that. "What men will say to justify themselves before women. It's simply pathetic.

"But that's an actual legal defence to them – falls under an ancient Faery legal doctrine, the Right of Passion. There's a primitive sort of legal system there, you see. If this fellow could convince the King that he had killed Dorien because he was out of his head with love for her, he could soften what was coming to him.

"Emily wasn't content to allow the King to dispense justice on Robinett, however. She publicly threw down a gauntlet, and challenged him to a formal trial by combat – under the same Right of Passion that he had invoked. That sort of thing is legal there, and since he was the admitted murderer of her husband, she had the right to his blood or even his life, if she could part him from it. It was either face the angry widow in single combat, or face the King's justice. He opted for the duel.

"And he died."

Snape's face was composed, but his eyes were wide. "She killed him?"

"Oh yes," Malfoy drawled, with gleeful satisfaction. "Rather bloodily, I'm afraid. They say it was very elegantly played out – I dearly wish I could have been there to see it. Apparently, she completely severed one of his femoral arteries in her second forward lunge."

"The fellow can't have... done much moving around after that, then," Snape said faintly, leaning forward and putting a hand on the inside of his own thigh in an unconscious protective gesture.

"From what I've heard, that didn't stop the poor bastard from trying," Malfoy said, noticing his cousin's discomfort with a silvery laugh. "Left alone, he would have bled to death soon enough. But she moved in for the kill in her third action and severed his spinal cord and jugular vein – which is a classic Fianna killing blow, by the way. Robinett was long dead by the time he hit the ground. The whole thing took less than a minute.

"Are you all right, there, cousin? You're looking a bit green," Malfoy's pleasant voice said.

"I'm fine," Snape said, grimacing. "Quite a story, that. It sounds more like a dissection than a combat."

"Oh, yes, the Fianna are extremely precise with those rapiers of theirs. They believe that it's more... merciful to kill an opponent as fast and painlessly as possible. They school their squires in attacking vulnerable points of an opponent's body, so that they can dispatch them in the most efficient manner possible. They believe you should kill an enemy with two strokes maximum – anything more is just sloppy work. It's all sublimely practical. Their approach is rather cerebral and utilitarian to my mind, not much scope for aesthetics or personal style, but they do keep those Orcs at bay.

"I've never seen her actually kill anyone, more's the pity – but since she joined the Fianna she's become known as being very good at it. She didn't join up for proper combat duty until about eight years ago, when the Third Kingdom declared open war against an especially unpleasant invading Orc tribe. But when I was there, she was only seventeen and already considered one of the best swords at Court. Well, except for her mother, but that goes without saying where the great Lady Elaine is concerned."

Snape was staring off into the middle distance. "What happened after she killed him?"

"You mean, did her government exact some punishment on her for it? Not at all. She challenged him under the Right of Passion, and heaven knows she had cause. Thus, her actions were seen as wholly justified – at least by the Fae. Her wizard friends are less willing to get behind her on it, but even they agree that her actions were better justified than his were, as far as invoking the same defence."

Malfoy turned confidingly to Snape. "You see, as far as the Faeries were all concerned – that was the end of it. He murdered her husband, and she avenged him. Justice was served. Case closed. Now it's back to our dandelion wine and dancing by moonlight. That's how the Fair Folk are, Severus. They play by the old rules. They bloody invented the old rules."

Snape's eyes drifted across the room – Professor Swain was waltzing with Emmitt Parkinson, and she seemed a graceful dancer indeed. Her sparkling black gown wafted around her ankles with every step. Even Parkinson, that old tyrant, seemed to be enjoying himself more than usual.

"She doesn't seem the sort to just... slash someone open like that," Snape said, grimacing.

"No, at first glance, I agree with you, it's hard to believe. But don't let the pretty robes fool you – the woman is a Knight Protector of her realm, Severus. She's killed Orcs by the cartload on the battlefields – there have been land wars going on between the Orcs and the Fae for thousands of years. Though I daresay she never would have killed Jayson Robinett, if those particular circumstances hadn't arisen.

"Do you know what the Fianna call her? 'Our Lady of the Blade.'" Malfoy's eyes raked over the slender, fair-haired figure on the dance floor with a long, slow look of admiration. "Picturesque, isn't it?"

"Terribly," Snape replied.

Malfoy turned back to Snape with a breath of tenor laughter. "Ah, Severus. You're not alone in being a bit dismayed to hear it – there are others who have taken the position that what she did was barbaric, and that she should have let the king handle it. But I've always admired her actions in the matter, even though it's not the most popular stance to take in certain pure-blood circles. I can't describe what I would do to anyone who took someone I loved from me.

"I think she showed remarkable restraint, personally – if someone had killed Draco or Narcissa, and I was given the opportunity to mete out justice on the killer, it wouldn't be over in less than a minute, believe me. I think there's a tremendous kind of poetic justice in allowing a murdered man's wife to deliver the coup de grace herself, rather than having the authorities step in and take over." His tone chided his companion slightly for being so gauche.

Snape looked morosely down at his empty brandy glass. "I may have said something rather unfortunate earlier, then," he muttered.

"Really? What was that?" Malfoy prompted, interested.

"Oh, not much – when we received our invitations, she made some comment about whatever was she going to wear, and I told her to try wearing a black frock, because she wears them every day, you know. I thought it was some sort of colour preference."

"You mean like your preference for wearing black every day?"

"There is a long established tradition of professors appearing before their classes in scholarly black, you know, even if Hogwarts allows its teachers a bit more leeway in their appearance," Snape said with a flash of slightly guilty irritation. "In her case – now it seems more like... mourning."

"Mourning. How very quaint and Victorian," Malfoy said, with an amused glance at Felina Rosier and Druella Black, still staring at each other in annoyance across the ballroom. "More brandy?"

Snape's eyes followed his colleague as she waltzed with Marcus Flint, Sr. She seemed to be getting prevailed upon to dance with nearly everyone.

He held out his glass.

"Please."

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By midnight, the musicians had gone, and Druella Black and most of the wives had gone off to bed (and Menzentius Black, now very unsteady on his feet, had been helped upstairs by four house-elves and Goliath, the goblin major-domo.)

Narcissa proposed a few games of whist in the main hall before the fire, and everyone else had agreed that this was a capital idea. Lucius had a word with one of the house-elves, and by the time everyone had moved to the hall, there were several four-person tables with comfortable chairs set up in front of the cavernous fire.

Emily took a place at the far right-hand table, and soon Mrs. Rosier, and Mr. Macnair had joined her. A moment later, after she confessed that she had never played before, Lucius took the seat on her right in order to coach her along. Draco had taken a seat at the table just beyond his father.

Outside, snow had begun falling again, and a freezing wind was whistling around the vast panes of the windows. Without the exercise of dancing to keep warm, and in the seat closest to the windows, Emily soon began to shiver. Faery silk, while beautiful, was not the warmest fabric in this world. She stoically took another swallow from her wineglass, refusing to ask any of the servants for her cloak and thereby acknowledge that Felina Rosier had been right about the impracticality of her gown. A second later, however, Lucius called two house-elves to him and whispered to them – and a moment later they draped Emily's fur-lined cloak around her shoulders.

"Thank you," she said, ostensibly to the elves, but more in the direction of her host. He smiled covertly at her, swirling the brandy in his glass.

"Tully, Skerry – do build up the fire," he called to two more elves. "It's gotten chilly in here. I'm simply freezing."

The elves immediately rushed to throw more wood on the fire, and to puff up its brightness with a bellows. Mr. Macnair was shuffling the cards, readying them for the first hand of whist. Felina Rosier wrinkled her nose – it would have been, of course, beyond rude to comment disparagingly on a guest's lack of preparation for the chill of the weather when one's host had already noted how cold it was in the hall. Lucius glanced at Mrs. Rosier and smirked, then leaned close to Emily and drew a fold of her cloak more securely across her bare shoulder.

"Still chilly, love?"

Emily smiled. "Much better now, thank you. And you?"

"Much better too, thanks," he said, returning her smile, and picking up his cards.

But even a clear demonstration of their host's favour was not enough to distract Mrs. Rosier from her favourite game of subjecting other women to a verbal Death of a Thousand Cuts. "I do admire your boldness, Lady Swain, in wrapping yourself in head-to-toe sable, what with the economy being what it is."

Emily looked uncomprehendingly at her. "I'm sorry? Bold how?"

"Well, last I heard, dear, fur was quite expensive," Mrs. Rosier explained patiently. Evidently the logic of taking another woman to task for wearing an extravagant fur whilst she herself was wearing a diamond tiara was totally lost on good Mistress Rosier.

"Oh, well, I only really had to pay the tailor – I already had the fur."

"I daresay you didn't pay for it, dearie," Mrs. Rosier replied with a thin smile. "So we've got ourselves an admirer, do we? I think you might, you're young and pretty still." Her tone said that any woman who did not doff her youth and beauty when she herself was in mourning was guilty of a tremendous faux pas of etiquette.

"My late husband gave it to me, actually. It's not sable, but weir panther," Emily said, taking a deep breath and controlling her temper with an effort.

"I see. Your husband must have been very fond of you indeed, then." Only Felina Rosier could make a deceased husband's great affection for his wife sound somehow suspect.

"Well, he was fond of me, of course, but there was rather more to it than that. Where I come from, it's customary to give any trophies that result from a hunt to the hunter who takes the killing blow on the quarry," Emily explained. "Unless of course you're a guest on someone else's land, the way we will be tomorrow, and then the landowner is entitled to parcel out the kill as he or she sees fit." She nodded in the direction of their host.

Mrs. Rosier smiled at her disbelievingly. "You're not actually trying to tell me that you killed that beast yourself, are you?"

"They were a mated pair that went renegade. It really was a necessity." Emily shrugged, feeling extremely self-conscious. "And I had a very great knight indeed assisting me." She turned back to her cards.

"They went renegade? You mean they went man-eater?" Draco Malfoy sounded as though that was the most thrilling thing he had ever heard.

Emily glanced nervously around the room. It felt as though everyone was staring at her.

"Child-eater, actually," she said in a quiet voice. "A six-year-old girl. The mother was quite devastated."

There was a tinkling noise – Narcissa's glass had slipped from her stunned fingers and fallen to the rug before the fire, where it didn't break, but scattered whiskey droplets and ice. Instantly three house-elves were after the spill with tiny dishtowels.

Macnair raised his glass to her. "Well! Good show then! That's how dangerous beasts who harm children should be treated, to my mind."

Lucius smiled approvingly at him. "Well said, Walden. Hear hear."

He leaned forward and clinked his brandy glass against Emily's. "You might be surprised to hear, Felina, that hunting down the occasional renegade panther is the least of Commander Swain's accomplishments. She's been decorated twice for valour on the battlefield in her homeland. While some of us were sitting comfortably in our gardens, Emily was keeping her world safe from marauding monsters."

There was another little lull in the conversation. Emily stared at her hand of whist.

"Lucius, please... everyone's looking at me now," she muttered aside to him.

"Let them look," he whispered, covering her hand with his again. Then he turned to Felina Rosier, not withdrawing his hand from Emily's, and with one glacial, eloquent look and an infinitesimal raise of an eyebrow warned her off of criticising his friend any further, if she valued his goodwill. Mrs. Rosier subsided, with a little droop of her shoulders. Then a moment later, Lucius smiled jovially at that rather deflated lady, as if to thank her for being such a good sport, picked up his own cards, and began whimsically wondering aloud what he should play next. Mrs. Rosier was only too happy to helpfully offer him her advice.

Emily, watching his handsome profile, suddenly thought that perhaps she had underestimated Lucius Malfoy. Fifteen years of marriage seemed to have wrought a real change in him – she couldn't recall him ever having been so gallant, so kind, and so considerate.

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New appreciation for his kindness and consideration or no, however, there was something about which Emily Swain needed to talk to Lucius Malfoy. She cornered him by the staircase after everyone else was departing up the stairs toward their rooms, to bed.

"You told him, didn't you?"

"Told who what, darling?" He was the picture of innocence, bending over her concernedly.

"Told Professor Snape about... you know... three years ago. I heard you – I was dancing quite close with Mrs. Parkinson's husband, and you said something about 'she avenged him, justice was served, case closed.' And then he was looking frightfully uncomfortable afterward."

"Oh, my dear... I forget sometimes the kind of ears you've got on you. Yes, I did tell him," he confessed, looking terribly contrite.

"Lucius! How could you? You know how I feel about – I reserve the right to tell people or not tell people as I – I actually would have preferred that no one here knew about – it's not my favourite part of my life, you know – " She was vibrating like an agitated hummingbird, breaking off in mid-gesture with each broken sentence.

"Yes, yes, I do know," he said, looking miserable. He put both hands on her shoulders and put a brotherly kiss on the side of her forehead. "I'm sorry, love, I should have asked you if you minded... but he was just being such a right sodding bastard to you, riding roughshod over you the way he does over everyone, that I couldn't stand it. I just thought that if I told him about the kind of tragedy you had endured, that perhaps he wouldn't be so willing to twit you and work you over the way he does, even if your coming here did do him out of the stupid Defence Against the Dark Arts position for another year... I thought that... probably wrongly... that I might be able to find a spark of human decency somewhere in the man, and perhaps make your life easier somehow. If he could only see how noble you were capable of being, then maybe he would – "

"Oh, Lucius. There was nothing noble about it. My husband is dead. And a man who used to be my friend is dead, and the Tumnuses and the Robinetts have lost their kinsmen, and both Gwydion and Armus have one less knight... there was nothing good or noble that came of that situation. Nothing at all."

"Emily, listen to me," Lucius said vehemently, framing her face in his hands. "You were right. You did the right thing."

"I know," she said bitterly. "But try sleeping in the arms of the fact that you were right sometime."

"There is no doubt in my mind that someone else will eventually want to do the honours there," he murmured. "Now go get some sleep. We'll need you tomorrow, you great panther-slayer, you."

She finally smiled. "Oh, all right. But don't tell anyone else, all right?"

"Not a word, love, I promise." He put a fervent kiss on the back of her hand.

"Well, good night, then. And... " She opened the hand he had brought to his lips and lightly caressed his cheek in a conciliatory gesture. "I'm sorry. For everything I said today. I was far too judgmental about... "

"Say no more. It's forgotten," he said, with offhanded graciousness.

"Thanks," she said. "Well... good night, then."

"Good night, darling."