proceeded to concoct a surprisingly satisfying supper of spaghetti and black coffee for both of them. The coffee was bitter and strong and the spaghetti tasted of tarragon: Sirius felt very guilty about not being able to ingest much of either.
'Still thinking about what you were thinking about before?' Lupin asked, tearing a piece of bread off the loaf on the table.
Sirius, who had made multiple bread pills out of his half of the loaf, nodded. 'Afraid so. I keep seeing Dracos face when I was shouting at them both outside the Inn. Harry was too drunk to be upset, I guess, but God knows how he felt the next day. And who was I kidding? Like I?ve never stolen a broomstick in my life.'
Lupin chortled. 'That may be true, but that won?t affect how you feel when you see them in danger, or what you think is danger. You?re their father… after all.'
'I wonder if I am,' Sirius said reflectively. 'Sometimes I feel like I?m more a friend to both of them than a father. A friend that cares a great deal for them, but still a friend. I?m terrified of somehow seeming to try to take James? place with Harry, and as for Draco, he hates his father so much…'
'Hates him?' Lupin shook his head. 'He doesn?t hate him.'
Sirius looked at his friend in surprise. 'Of course he does.'
'No.' The candlelight turned Lupins eyes to low-burning lampshine gold; wolf eyes. 'You don?t see it.'
'See what?'
Lupin sighed. 'You didn?t have parents, Sirius, not really. Not that you grew up with. And you didn?t know Draco when he was younger. My father says this…my father does that. Every other word out of his mouth was about Lucius. Hes defined himself by his father. Lucius used to be what he wanted to be; now hes what Draco is afraid he already is. But that doesn?t mean he isn?t still his father.'
'Hes grateful to Lucius, you mean? Because without him he wouldn?t exist?'
'No. Thats not it.' Lupins voice was emphatic. 'I remember when we covered the section in Advanced DADA on vampires. How they sire other vampires, how they pass along their traits, how they form into tight-knit clans. I talked about that vampire clan I routed out of those old mines in Romania and how the head vampire ran at me in the sunlight — sacrificed himself so the nestlings could get away. Everyone else was riveted by the story, but when I looked at Draco….I could see what he was thinking. Even demons love their children. How can my father hate me so much?'
Sirius looked fixedly at his plate. He had never, to his recollection, seen the faces of his own parents. But he remembered — he remembered James? parents, who told him he was wonderful and brilliant and talented and loved, and so he had been. And Peters parents, who had told him he was a coward, and so he had been. And Lupins parents, who had told him he was a monster whose sole responsibility in life was to make sure he never infected others with his own monstrosity, and the years and years of work it had taken to convince Remus, even in the smallest way, that this was untrue.
'All parents have a hold over their children,' Lupin said quietly. 'And in the end, all children believe they are what their parents tell them they are.'
Sirius glanced up at his friend. 'I spent all those years in Azkaban for murder, but I?ve never killed anyone. But if I get my hands on Lucius Malfoy, I will kill him. If I have to go back to Azkaban, I?ll kill him.'
'No you won?t,' Lupin said matter-of-factly. 'Because I?ll do it for you.'
Draco had been right: the passage did open out into the rose garden. By the time they reached the end of it, Ginny was nearly fainting: it was so rank and close inside the narrow passageway underneath the moat that her dormant claustrophobia had awakened. She had to lean against the dripping stone walls while Draco fiddled with the heavy catch on the trapdoor above; finally it popped open and clean night air flooded in.
She exhaled a breath of relief. Draco looked at her. 'Eager to get outside?'
he remarked.
Ginny said nothing. It was Harry who spoke, 'Let me go first,' he said.
He went, clambering up the rough wall and through the open trapdoor, as agile as a lizard. His booted feet dangled at Ginnys eye level as he pulled himself up; she could see the cracked laces and the heavy, muddy soles.
Then they were gone, replaced by Harrys hand as he reached down to her.
'Come on,' he said. 'I?ll pull you up.'
Ginny glanced at the hand — he had hands like Dracos, slender and articulately made, and with the same white scar along one palm — and took hold of it; she let Harry haul her up, wincing herself at the pain this must be causing his cut hands. In a moment, she was sprawled beside him on the snow and he was helping Draco up. Draco landed on his knees and hands beside her, then spun around to slam the trap door shut behind them.
'Lets go,' he said, matter-of-factly, and got to his feet. 'We have to get off the grounds.'
Harry looked at him and then said something that Ginny found peculiar, 'Can you run if we have to?'
Draco didn?t say anything back; his face shut, and he nodded silently.
Ginny looked from one of them to the other — Harrys white face, Dracos set one — and decided not to ask. She wondered what Lucius had done to them, up on that tower: they seemed physically unharmed, aside from the shallow cuts on Harrys hands. But there were ways and ways of hurting a person.
'Come on,' Draco said, and gestured for them to follow him.
They had emerged at a point about a hundred meters from the house proper: it loomed behind them like the bulwark of an enormous ship. All the windows of the lower floors were darkened, Ginny saw as they made their way away from it: tawny torchlight flared from the upper stories like a line of flame along the ridge of a distant mountain.
The moon had gone behind the clouds, and the only illumination was starlight. It lend a ghostly dimness to the frozen beauty of the gardens.
They stretched away in every direction: long white rows of trees like orderly bones laid out for the moon to bleach. Slender threads of ice wove between the branches. Iced-over snow was piled everywhere like heaps of sugar pressed under glass: Ginnys feet crunched loudly as she walked, making her wince.
'It doesn?t feel that cold,' she whispered, gathering her cloak to her and glancing around, 'but theres so much ice…'
'My fathers playing around,' Draco said shortly. Then he stopped dead -
Harry stopped beside him, and then Ginny stopped as well.
They were standing in front of a mausoleum built of black marble; it was taller than any mausoleum Ginny had ever seen and the marble of it was so black that it looked less like a man-made structure than a hole ripped through the center of the night. On the door was the crest she would always remember: the sword crossed with a wand under the name MALFOY. Beside that were smaller letters: Arte perire sua.
'My fathers grave,' Draco said, with a sharp, unamused laugh. 'This was what he asked for in his will…this bloody huge ugly thing. Although the Latin inscription was my mums idea.'
'What does it mean?' Ginny asked, looking at him worriedly — the distance had come back into his expression again.
'?To perish by ones own creation,?' Draco said flatly. 'Which, I suppose, she thought he had. No such luck, though.'
With no idea what to say to this, Ginny glanced over at Harry. He was standing, booted feet apart, looking at Draco — and she saw a look flash across his face that she could not have described. Iit seemed a sort of terrible, fearful concern, an almost-pain that hurt her even to look at.
Finally, he reached out a hand and touched Draco on the shoulder.
'We?d better go,' he said.
If Draco said anything back, it was silent. A moment later they were moving again, skirting the mausoleum widely. They cut along the side of a low hill, and came around it to see the walls that surrounded the Manor.
High, unbreachable stone, with a pattern of intertwined 'M's along the top. Farther down, there was a gap in the wall where the enormous wrought iron gate stood, frosted all over with ice. Ginny saw Draco straighten his
