said, and then a voice sounded behind him, a slim black-clad form taking shape as Draco stepped through the smoke.
'Harry,' he said. He stood, blinking a little, eyes narrowed against the smoke. He didn't seem to see his father there, or Hermione, or Ron, or anyone but Harry. 'You're all over blood — '
'Not mine,' Harry said quickly. 'Voldemort's. Well. Mostly.'
There was a long pause. 'So,' Draco said, finally, 'It looks like I've missed the excitement again, as usual,' and there was relief in his voice, but his gaze stayed on Harry, taking him in slowly, lingering on each abrasion, cut, and bruise. 'Your arm,' he said. 'I felt it break. But you're all right?'
'Hermione healed me,' Harry said.
Draco lifted his hand, as if to touch Harry, his shoulders, his face and hands, to reassure himself' Draco,' Lucius said again, in the same hoarse, new voice.
Draco dropped his hand, turning, his face a mask of surprise, and saw his father kneeling, hands clasped, and Ron standing behind him with the dagger. Draco didn't move, his hand still upraised, but Ron saw the edge of one pale eyelid twitch as Draco stared at his father.
'My boy,' Lucius said, and staggered to his feet. 'Please — '
'Shut up,' Harry said, cutting him off, and turned to Draco. 'He survived the blast,' he said. 'Peter didn't.'
'Oh,' Hermione said, sounding surprised, as if she'd heard this piece of information for the first time. She looked at Draco. 'Tom…?' she asked.
'I knocked him out,' Draco said. 'He's shackled up against the wall.
Ginny's watching him.' He pointed.
Hermione looked briefly uneasy. 'Just Ginny watching him? No one else?
Are you sure that's a…'
'Good idea?' Draco finished, raising an eyebrow. 'Oh, I don't know. I have faith in her.'
'Hm,' Hermione said. 'Still. Tom is — tricky. I'll go help her out.'
She vanished into the smoke.
'Wll, I'm certainly feeling the trust here,' Draco remarked, but his voice was sharp and unamused. He glanced at his father and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. 'You're looking a bit peaked, Father,' he said.
'Voldemort's total and ultimate defeat got you down?'
Lucius gazed at his son with haunted desperation. 'Thank God, Draco,' he said roughly. 'Thank God you're all right — '
Draco's eyelid twitched again, but his voice was cool. 'Really,' he said, 'you must be desperate indeed if you're trying these sort of tricks.'
'There is no trick,' Lucius said. 'When the Dark Lord died, all his spells were broken. Everything he took from his servants was returned to them.
Everything,' he added, a mute appeal in his eyes.
Draco sucked in a short, sharp gasp of breath, his eyes widening impossibly until they seemed to fill his whole face, and even Ron felt a stab of pity for the horror in their depths.
'Malfoy,' Harry said, taking a step forward, but Draco held out a hand to stop him, gaze still locked with his father's.
'That may well be so, Father,' Draco said, a little of the color returning to his cheeks. 'But that doesn't make you any less the sort of man who'd lie and cheat his way out of a desperate situation.'
'You mean that they plan to kill me,' Lucius said, looking from Ron to Harry, and back to his son.
'Probably,' Draco said. 'We can die together — a surprisingly poetic denouement for our particular family tragedy. The tragedy being that we happen to be part of the same family.'
Lucius' breath hissed out of him. 'Die together? But you — ' A sudden horror flashed in his eyes, a groan breaking from his throat. 'The poison.
Of course. Oh God, what have I done? What have I done?'
He buried his face in his hands. Draco looked at him, a slight curl at the corner of his pale mouth. 'Don't,' he said, and his voice cut like a whip's edge. 'Remember what it says in the Code of Conduct — 'Regret, like hot pink, is unsuitable to a Malfoy.''
'Draco.' Lucius dropped his hands from his face, stumbling forward, his hands outstretched towards his son. 'My son — my own blood — '
Draco didn't flinch away from him, too astonished, it seemed, to move. It was Harry who moved in a flash of black and silver, flinging himself between Draco and his father with a sharp bark of rage and the soft grating noise of his sword pulled from its scabbard. The tip of it rose like a bright silver dragonfly to hover just at Lucius' heart. 'Your blood,'
Harry said to Lucius, his voice tight with a savage mockery. 'Before you flooded his veins with poison, you mean? How dare you talk to him like that? How dare you even look at him?'
Lucius shook his head, a little wildly. Ron could see where the thick fair hair, streaked with gray, was escaping from its neat black-tied tail at the back of his neck. It was more gray than he had remembered. 'I do not need to look at Draco to see him,' he said. 'I see him every time I look in the mirror — he is blood of my blood, bone of my bones, flesh of my own flesh. He is my son and you have no right to keep me from him!'
'I have every right!' Harry thundered. 'You're not his father — a father loves and cares for his children. My father died to protect his son — you murdered yours!'
'I'm not dead yet,' Draco said, softly, and Harry, still shaking with rage, shut his mouth into a hard line.
Lucius turned his gaze on his son. 'Draco,' he said. 'I know I have wronged you, but you must understand — it was Voldemort's spell, his curse on me — when you were a baby I loved you as much as any child has ever been loved — before that love was taken from me.'
'Taken from me,' Draco said, 'you mean. You gave away what was not yours to give.'
'It was what he asked for,' Lucius said, 'and I was afraid.'
Draco looked down at his feet, and then back up at his father, glancing through his lashes like a child. 'I love you, Father,' he said, and Lucius lurched forward, almost on to the point of Harry's sword. Draco stepped back, neatly, shaking his head. 'But love isn't enough,' he said. 'It never is.' He looked at Harry. 'I need to talk to you,' he said.
Harry's mouth was working. 'I can't let him go,' he said. 'I'll leave him alive if you want me to, but I can't let him go.'
'I didn't ask you to,' Draco said. He was, Ron thought, remarkably calm, although Ron would never forget that first look of agonized horror in his eyes. 'There's a small room, there, at the end of the Chamber,' he said, and pointed towards the far end of the Chamber, where a small blue door hid in a recessed shadow. 'With a door that bolts. I suggest Ron take my father there and stand guard outside with a dagger. Or maybe two.'
'No,' Harry said, and added, before Draco could say anything, 'not with a dagger. With my sword.' He lowered the blade, and handed it silently to Ron. Lucius made no attempt to run, only stood staring at Draco with the eyes of a starving man gazing at a banquet of food he can never have.
Ron raised the sword, and placed the tip of it between Lucius' shoulder blades.
'Move,' he said, and Lucius did.
The two boys stood together in the swirling smoke, wrapped in a silence as intent as the silence on a battlefield after the combat has spent itself.
Icy air sifted down from the smashed ceiling. Harry shivered, his eyes on Draco as the blond boy watched his father receding into the smoke, marched at swordspoint by Ron. A stranger would have thought his face blank of any expression, but Harry saw the tightness around Draco's mouth, the faint butterfly tremble of his eyelids, and knew that pain twisted his insides like a handful of knives.
'I'm sorry,' he said.
Lucius had disappeared. Draco turned to look at Harry. His eyes were the same bitter gray-black as the smoke. 'What for?'
'I don't know. Maybe I should have warned you. Told you about your dad
