Be Careful
49: What Life You Live
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco ran into the entrance hall and stopped in his tracks.
Looks like someone isn't quite as dead as she was supposed to be.
A black-haired witch, her deep-set eyes burning with an insane gleam, cackled softly to herself where she knelt near the foot of the marble staircase. James Potter, Sirius Black, and Alice Lovegood stood around her, wands in their hands, fury in their faces. Clearly, they were only waiting for an excuse.
Not going to be asking for a trip to your Gringotts vault, I don't think.
Just in case we were still wondering why the wards went down.
Behind him, Draco half-heard the quiet exclamations of thankfulness as Abby and little Charlie ran to their parents’ arms.
"—reminded me what came after ‘nunc et,’" Abby was saying to her mother, "and we said a decade together and then touched hands to share—"
"—when she was about Abby's age, only she was dead," Dragon enthused to his father, "and I got to say ‘Open up’ all by myself—"
Isabelle Black leaned forward slightly, as though enthralled by what she could see. Draco turned his head to follow her line of sight.
At the other end of the hall, near the door to the kitchen corridor, lay the body of Severus Snape. Cecilia Black knelt beside him, weeping silently, as though her grief were too great to be expressed aloud. Andrea Tonks and Lily Potter stood behind her, as though they hoped to comfort her but feared to intrude on such pain.
Draco was about to start towards his mum when she lifted her head and rose to her feet, staring at her eldest sister. "Why?" she said, her quiet voice cutting clearly through the silence that filled the hall. "Why, Isabelle? What harm had he, or the children, ever done to you?"
"He—no harm in the world." Isabelle rocked back and forth on her knees in time with her words. "I misjudged him. Thought he would be weak. Easily overwhelmed. Then perhaps my foolish little sister could seek out someone more worthy of herself."
"No man is more worthy than he," Cecilia hissed. "If you knew him as I do—if you saw what he has done, what he has sacrificed—but no, you could never understand such things. Not though you lived a thousand years."
"The children, now." It was as if Isabelle had not heard her sister speak. "Two of them half-breeds, from both sides. How Slytherin would weep if he saw what this line of his descent has come to—a werewolf for an Heir and a Scumblood for his wife…"
Not quite as catchy as Mudblood, noted a detached portion of Draco's mind, but it works.
"But the third one. The strange one, the boy from another world." Isabelle's rocking slowed and stopped, and her voice was level as she eyed Cecilia and Andrea. "You've held him. Healed him. Taken him as your own. Do you know the things he's done? The things he's capable of doing?"
"I know one thing he was not capable of doing," Cecilia said calmly.
"Then know another." Isabelle rose to her feet. The Aurors half-raised their wands, but she remained where she was, pointing at Snape's body. "He put his trust in your boy. ‘Don't miss,’ he said. And your precious child shivered and whimpered and never raised his wand until it was over and too late. Your darling Severus gave himself up for nothing, and he'll have eternity to know what a fool he was. If he can know anything at all."
Draco bared his teeth, as his Animagus form might when confronted with its natural enemy. Shut your lying mouth before I come over there and do it for you…
"And then? When they began to close in on him, and he felt the fear taking him?" Isabelle cackled again, her laughter rising in wild glee. "He threw the children to them, pushed them out in front of him to be Kissed! He hoped to find an escape while my friends’ attention was elsewhere! But with so many of them, and only two tiny souls to go around…" She shook her head, clicking her tongue sadly. "And to think you had such hopes for him. To think you believed he could be your prophecy child. Perhaps he was. But not all prophecies come true."
"This one," said Lily from behind Cecilia, "still may." The eyes so like her daughter's flickered across Draco, and she flashed him a smile before looking back at Isabelle. "If Draco and the other children with him were Kissed, where are their bodies?"
"I Vanished them." Isabelle tossed her hair back over her shoulder with a practiced flick of her head. "I would have done the same for dear Severus if I'd had the time. An act of mercy—his body will die soon in any case…"
"Actually, with a touch of magic to help it along, his body could easily live a year or more," Andrea interrupted her elder sister. "He kept himself in good condition for having such a sedentary job, and the brain damage one often sees with Kiss victims is missing here. Likely because he went to it willingly."
"And I have walked the grounds, Isabelle," said Cecilia quietly. "I have tasted what was left behind. One person, and only one, was Kissed tonight, and his heart held no despair, for he knew his soul would fly free. As for my Draco…" A faint smile came to her face. "Once, perhaps, he would have consigned innocent children to hell on earth in a bid to save himself. But no one who would do such a thing would be able to destroy a dementor."
"There lies the flaw in your argument!" Isabelle's finger stabbed the air in her youngest sister's direction. "How do you know Severus was not simply deluding himself, hoping for the impossible? How do you know you are not doing the same? How do you know—know, Cecilia, not believe—that your child, your Draco, is truly capable of conjuring a Warrior Patronus?"
Before he knew what he was doing, Draco had his wand in his hand again. "Expecto patronum emeritum!" he shouted, and the owl burst forth—Bella shrieked as it swooped down on her and flew through her as it had the dementor—
She collapsed to the ground, gasping, as the Warrior Patronus circled above her, then came to rest on its caster's upheld left wrist.
"Got any more lies you'd like to tell about me?" Draco asked, advancing to where she could see him easily. The same detached back corner of his mind which had earlier critiqued the mad witch's choice of words now noted that he must cut quite a dashing figure, wand in his hand, owl on his arm.
Wonder how I'd look with the real thing?
Small feet slapped the floor behind him, and Abby was by his side, her eyes half-shut as she looked down at Bella. Dragon Charlie poked his head around his sister and stuck out his tongue at the Dark witch. She hissed at him. He responded in kind.
"That will be quite enough of that," said Moony from behind them, lifting Dragon off his feet. The little boy squeaked in surprise. "Be thankful your mother can't understand you, or she'd have you chewing a bar of soap."
"Oh, I can usually get a fair idea through your ears, love." Danger scowled at her youngest son. "And I agree with your father. That sort of language, Parseltongue or not, is absolutely unacceptable for someone your age…"
Draco tuned this out. Bella was staring at him. Up close, her resemblance to his mad aunt was even more pronounced.
Maybe she didn't spend twelve-odd years in Azkaban, but considering she refers to dementors as "my friends", I'd say she got about the same amount of exposure.
"Something for you?" he inquired, putting his owl-holding arm around Abby.
"I watched you," Bella said, pushing herself into a half-sitting position. "I watched you and learned about you, everything that my friends could tell me, and everything I could scry for myself once they had brought me something of yours from the Manor. I saw your entire life, up to the night you failed in your great mission—the night you should have died for your failure—"
"And you can't understand why I'm different now?" Draco finished.
"I understand perfectly why you are different." Bella cast a venomous glance down the hall towards her sisters. "What I cannot understand is how."
"Neither can I," Draco said frankly. "I can remember being that person, and I can feel what it's like to be me, but I'll be—" He glanced down at Abby and made a quick substitution. "—cursed if I know how the changeover happened."
Abby looked up in time to meet his eyes, a tiny smile present on her face. "I know how," she murmured.
"Of course you do." Draco tossed his Patronus into the air, where she circled the hall twice and dissipated. "You know everything. Are you going to tell me?"
"It's from something she said." Abby pointed to Bella, who was now being hoisted to her feet by Alice—apparently whatever the Aurors had been waiting for had arrived. "She said there was a night you should have died. I don't know when that was or why, and I don't want to. But I think she's more right than she knows. I think you did die that night."
Draco slid two fingers of his right hand along the inside of his left wrist. "Feels like a pulse to me."
"That isn't what I mean and you know it." Abby scowled. "I mean the person you used to be, the one she was talking about—the one who would have let the dementors have me and Dragon to try to get away himself—that person died that night. And that meant you could be born. This new you." She spread her arms. "And you found a new world to live in."
"I'm not who I thought I was," Draco murmured, remembering. "And I don't know who I am."
And Mum gave me somebody to be. Somebody worthwhile. Abby's helped me build on that base—so have Moony and Danger, Ray and Neenie, Harry and Ginny and Ron and everyone—
I'm not completely different. I still have plenty of the old me left. But the worst parts, I hope, are gone.
Which means there's room for new things.
His eyes sought the point where his Patronus had disappeared.
"An interesting form for it," remarked his mum's voice from beside him, startling him into a jump. "And a most interesting burst of emotion associated with its conjuration. Have you perhaps come to some decision you want to share with me?"
"A decision, yes, but I don't know if I want to share it. It is, or some old-fashioned part of me feels like it should be, a private matter." Draco knew around the middle of the first sentence that the quelling tone he'd been trying for hadn't worked, but he finished what he was saying with it anyway. Might as well get a laugh out of it.
Mum chuckled. "It will be private between us," she said. "And I will not bring it up unless you do."
Probably as good as I'm going to get. "All right. I…" Draco glanced around the hall. No one was within earshot. "I think I'm in love, Mum. With Luna. My world's Luna. And from the way she's been acting, it's just possible…"
"That she sees through your mask to the new person underneath it?" Mum finished for him. "And thinks he might be worth at least befriending?"
"I can only hope." Draco drew his mind back to the present time and place. "So what happens now? Besides needing to find a new professor for the Advanced Potions classes?"
"I believe we shall wait and see." Mum slid her arms around him and held him tightly. "And I shall tell you again that you have never yet disappointed me more than mildly, and that tonight I am more proud of you than I have words to say—" She broke off, looking down. "And just what do you have there?"
"Oh, that." Draco patted the left pocket of his robes. "Well, it struck me that I had a couple little Parselmouths with me at my Hogwarts. Seemed like an opportunity I shouldn't waste. So I hid Dragon under my cloak and sneaked into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom—"
Mum raised an eyebrow. "Moaning Myrtle?"
"One of our ghosts. Long story. Anyway, Dragon opened the Chamber for me, and I conjured myself a rope to get down and back up…" Draco shook his head ruefully. "The tunnel was almost totally blocked by a rockfall. If I'd had someone else with me, we probably could have cleared it, but I was alone, so I had to Summon what I was after through a gap and hope for the best." He reached into his pocket and produced what looked like a bundle of rags. "Only got one, and a little one at that, but it's better than nothing."
"One what, exactly?" Mum asked with a hint of strained patience in her voice.
"Sorry. Thought I'd said. It's a basilisk fang."