CHAPTER ELEVEN - The Nature of Love
Men, Narcissa ruminated, thought women knew nothing. They thought a simple statement or two would satisfy a woman's curiosity. In this particular matter, her son was no different.
So, by the time he came to see her again, she had already theorized her way through several explanations for his decidedly alarming and completely uncharacteristic behavior.
It was simple, really; only two things could make a man-especially a Malfoy-act so dotty.
Fear was one.
A woman was the other.
She had decided it was the former based on the things he'd said, the urgency with which he'd grasped her hands, the climate of the world around them. He was afraid, the dear boy, and was it any wonder? He had never seen, experienced war before.
But when he appeared for tea with her looking relaxed and sated and positively lambent, she was forced to reevaluate.
Perhaps it was a woman. Because if only fear and females could garner that wide-eyed, stumbling, foolish panic, a woman alone could bring about that lax, limpid state of satisfaction.
Thus, it was no wonder she was a little misty-eyed when she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. Her little boy, her baby. In love. Or, at the very least, on his way to being so. Any woman capable of giving him that lightened step and squared shoulders would certainly be more than capable of snagging him for good.
"Mother?" Draco narrowed his eyes at his mother, wondering what she was looking so faraway about. It wasn't all that unlike the fond look Ginny had given him just the evening before as they'd stood in the alley that ran along her block of flats, trying to say goodbye without actually saying it.
"No matter what," she'd said, and at his puzzled look, she had stood on her toes and kissed him on the tip of his nose. "I love you no matter what."
It should have made him smirk, but instead it had made him ache, both the sweet, cavernous ache he'd missed and the bitter, sharp ache that made him want to question what she claimed.
"Who is she?" His mother's voice laid an intrusive but gently path straight through his memory, and he started despite himself. These days, it was so much harder to hold onto the image, the expressionlessness that had carried him through school. Lack of sleep, lack of warmth, the constant edge of expecting to look over his shoulder and see his father or her father or some nameless do-gooder with wand at the ready-all these things made it harder to maintain pretense, along with the steady, unflagging, consuming need for her.
"Who is who?" He made himself sit down, crossing his long legs at the ankles and selecting a biscuit from the tray. Give her very little, he thought, but there were so many emotions, so many things he felt and thought. Want, the sheer want to tell her everything. And relief. There were worse questions she could ask.
"I refuse to let this become a game of semantics," Narcissa said airily, trying to suppress a decidedly unladylike snort. If her son thought he could talk his way out of a straight answer, he had some real soul-searching to do. She'd made tougher and older wizards gab like first-year Hufflepuffs, not the least of those wizards being Lucius himself.
Narcissa did so love a challenge.
"I recognize a man well-loved," she said, though it took every last ounce of her breeding and self-control not to blush as she said it. Her son, for Salazar's sake, her baby. When he was thirty, he would still be too young to be well-loved.
Draco regretted picking up the biscuit as it lodged in his throat, strangling him. His brain had voiced an indignant exclamation, but all he could issue was a dry, crumb-filled wheeze.
Narcissa folded her hands in her lap and regarded him flatly, a tiny, enigmatic smile on her lips.
She wanted to pinch his cheeks.
"What you recognize," he finally said after swallowing most of a cup of scalding tea, "Is a man overworked." What, was he wearing a bloody sign? One that perhaps read 'I had a fantastic shag last night'?
Well-loved, he thought. Yes, in more ways than one.
"You didn't work yesterday," Narcissa stated, buttering a scone. "If you won't tell me who it is, then I'll simply be forced to guess." It felt lovely, to be able to tease her son as though they'd a normal family.
He talks to you more than he talks to me. Has he said anything? Lucius's demanding voice, almost a childish pout.
She sniffed at the recollection. She had things to worry about other than a man-made game of chess wherein her husband willingly took whatever part he was told. This was more important.
Poise. He was always unguarded with his mother, and he felt perhaps he had erred in that. Proper poise took only a moment. He could spare a moment.
If his mother thought she read him with little more than a glance, she had some real soul-searching to do. He'd managed to dupe the discerning eyes of tougher witches and wizards, not the least of those wizards being his own father.
"Feel free to share your theories," he said, graciously bowing his head and extending a hand in a go-ahead gesture. "At the very least, I'll have some entertainment with my tea."
He was so like his father, she thought, both loving and hating it.
"I believe I will feel free, being as this is my house," Narcissa told him, but the coolness in her voice was manufactured. "I know it isn't that dreadful Parkinson girl," she dismissed Pansy right off the bat. That made Draco slightly uncomfortable; he'd rather hoped his mother would assume he was dallying about with Pansy and have done with it. "She's far too predictable… far too safe… for you to be acting as you are."
"So I'm not seeing Pansy," Draco said, trying to keep his voice smug as he crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn't about to eat or drink anything else; she'd simply choke him again somehow. "Wonderful to know. She was always a bit clingy for my tastes."
"I suppose it could be the Bulstrode's youngest. Who knew impending adulthood would do her looks so much good?" She watched Draco's face carefully, but he betrayed no reaction. He was good, this one.
"I could be dating Millicent," he repeated in the tone of voice that suggested a student taking notes. "Do continue."
"Also too safe," Narcissa said. "So shall we skip over your classmates entirely? If you were dating any of them, you'd not bother to hide it from your father and you'd certainly not bother to hide it from me."
"Perhaps I'm dating a Muggle," he said, widening his eyes. "How positively shocking that would be." And he did expect her to be shocked, but she merely shrugged.
"You wouldn't be the first of your line to do so." When it was his turn to be surprised, she raised an eyebrow. "Oh, don't be so naïve, Draco. That which is forbidden is most often too appealing to deny." That got her a reaction, and her heart gave a little start in her chest.
Perhaps he was more like her than she'd thought. Once upon a time, she'd been Narcissa Black, and though Lucius Malfoy had been a pureblood, he hadn't been nearly good enough by her family's standards.
Together, they'd made him good enough. Together, they'd made their name overshadow all others, including her family name.
Suddenly, she'd lost the will to question him, to torture the answer out of him using his anxiety. What if he truly was only tense, anxious because of the war, because of his tenuous balance between that which was Ministry and that which was Malfoy?
"You'll tell me when you're ready," she stated, trying to sound certain, trying to sound casual.
"You will love me no matter what happens in my life, won't you? No matter what I do, no matter whom I fall in with."
The fear she'd let herself forget leaped back into her throat and she reached across the table to pat his hand. "There are no secrets a mother cannot keep," she managed.
She hoped, for his sake, that was the truth.
~~~
He looked so… official. So competent.
Looking at him, Ginny wondered if she were merely playing at helping, playing at being part of the Order.
For the first time since… well, since ever… Ron looked as in control with something as he did while playing chess. He had taken over a blank wall of the first floor, moving his wand over it, and Ginny watched as a detailed map of Diagon and Knockturn Alleys spread itself over the wall. With one jab, a green dot appeared on the map that said Nott. With another jab, Mulcibre.
"Spelled that one wrong, love," Luna said absently, her brow furrowed.
He glanced over his shoulder, ready to retort, and then he softened and changed it, muttering his thanks. Mulciber.
A calendar appeared beside the map, the dates the men were found highlighting themselves in green.
If there was a pattern, Ron would find it. That was what he excelled at, patterns and move anticipation and seeing things as they would be seven more steps down the line. Now, however, he could see no real pattern. Comparisons, of course… Two men, two Death Eaters, both in various levels of power within their own dishonorable ranks. Both men had been found in Morgana's Mortar, a dim, avoid-at-all-costs pub in the darkest stretch of Knockturn Alley. Their wands had been taken and two tankards, both empty, had been left on each table.
"Here's what we can surmise," Ron sad, tapping his wand against the map and making a bright white light flare each time he did it. "If it happens again, it'll likely be another one of You-Know-Who's lackeys."
"Hard to feel bad about that, really," Harry snorted. Hermione rolled her eyes at him but twined her fingers with his. It didn't matter if she didn't agree with him; solidarity wasn't optional at this point.
Albus sat in one corner of the room, popping peppermint candies into his mouth and nodding soberly.
Ginny felt her stomach roll over. Was it someone in this room? There was hatred in more than one pair of eyes, feelings that said they would provoke, they would attack without being attacked. More than one of these gathered witches and wizards would approve of such a vigilante show of violence.
"The raids have happened directly after each killing. We ah…" Ron fumbled for the first time. "Found out about the last attack before it actually happened." His eyes went to Ginny's, wide and apologetic.
"And?" Charlie leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his barrel of a chest. "All that did was get us all out for them to look at. We didn't get half as many as we'd liked, and we can't do anything unless we kill them."
Ginny gripped a corner of the wall, trying hard not to sway. Could she really listen to this? People were watching her now, watching her because she'd told them all the attack was coming.
"You never told us how you knew, Miss Weasley." Dumbledore's voice was insistent but quiet, and she felt her head loop around itself like Errol when he was quite tired and dizzy. He knew how she'd known. They all knew-they'd all been told upon her acceptance to the Order. It had been humiliating, exposing, for them to discuss her heart's blood when considering the sacrifice she was willing to make for them.
"Is that even a matter to consider?" Severus's voice, that auditory derision, made more than one Order member wince. "Had Miss Weasley not informed you, I would have. There's hardly any need to duplicate efforts, and we've no need for another double agent." Granted, he'd had his reservations about Weasley and Draco in the past, but Severus Snape was not a man given to flights of fancy. What was simply was and he would not question it.
He had no hopes for the two of them, and no hopes for Draco's redemption. He'd heard far too much from Lucius to have such ridiculous hopes. Had it not been for the Ministry, Draco Malfoy would have already been official, seal of ownership and all. Severus's hand crept to his forearm and he stared unwaveringly at Ginny.
For a moment, she'd had the bizarre urge to hug him, just hug him for stopping the line of questioning they'd started. But then he'd looked at her and touched his arm and she'd simply felt sick.
She closed her eyes and kept her hand at the corner of the wall, imagining that hand resting on Draco's arm as it went feverish and insistent and nearly vocal in its pain-
A steadying hand pressed against her back and she leaned into it, grateful but bitter because she knew it wasn't who she wanted it to be.
He could not be here, home of his ancestors or no.
She opened her eyes slowly, feeling vertigo roil through her, and turned to look at the person who had braced her. Remus Lupin had one fine-boned hand pressed to her back, the strength of it surprising, considering how weary he often looked. He waited until the conversation began bouncing around the room once more, and he ducked his head, his moss-green eyes kind.
"Those whom we love the most are often capable of surprising us in wonderful ways," he said quietly. "Even great heroes have been mistaken as murderers."
She wanted to thank him, felt her throat grow thick, and closed her mouth as tears started in her eyes.
She wanted to believe him, but all she could see in her mind was a young man in the thick of things, dressed in the dark robes of his cohorts. A young man whose upbringing afforded him no choices, whose secrets seemed to grow weightier by the day.
Great heroes.
She closed her eyes once more as Lupin continued on his way through the room, and she decided she did not want a great hero. She wanted the man who held her tight and stared at her fiercely and communicated everything he meant without saying anything at all.
Heroics be damned.