'No,' he said, and briefly, the flood waters receded and Harry saw Ron's head jerk up as the redheaded boy stared at him. A faint light of surprise flickered in Lucius' eyes. 'No,' Harry said again. If he could have seen himself, he would have been startled by the look in his own eyes — a cold look, Draco's bitter humor. And his tone was Draco's, too, when he spoke again, as dry as winter air: 'As much as I despise you,' he said, 'that is as much as is my regard for your son, who is no longer anything like you. I have had my parents taken from me and it has been a wound inside me that has never healed. I would not cause that same pain to anyone that I love. So live,' he said, and flung the sword at Lucius' feet, where it clattered, and Lucius, looking startled, took an involuntary step back.
'Live, and know that you do it by my sufferance — and with my pity.'
Lucius' face changed — and for a moment Harry seemed to see through the polished villain he hated to the ragged and rotting shell underneath. A twisted snarl warped Lucius' mouth, he looked as if he were about to speak -
And the flood waters rose again in Harry's mind, black and choking, and this time he knew what the sound was: it was Draco, calling out for him so loudly that the cry had become one uninterrupted and nearly unintelligible howl of despair. It was not Draco's voice calling him, but something more primal than that.
Lucius was speaking, but he had vanished, ceased to matter. Blindly, Harry flung himself towards the door, fumbling for the knob — he heard Ron call his name, loudly and urgently; he turned and saw Ron behind him, holding his sword in one hand, and Draco's in the other.
'Take this,' Ron said, his voice like a whisper against the screaming in Harry's head. He was holding the sword of Gryffindor out to Harry. 'I can't hold two swords, and I don't want him getting hold of the other one.'
Blindly, Harry grabbed the sword out of Ron's hand, leaving the other boy with Draco's blade. Something nagged at the back of Harry's mind, something strange about Ron's expression, something Harry wanted to ask him. But the panic in his head was too great; it crashed and roared around him like floodwaters. He had to get to Draco. Without another word to Ron, he spun on his heel and began to run.
Hermione did not know how long they sat there, the minutes ticking by, as she held Draco in the circle of her arms as if doing so could keep him tethered to the world of the living. Time seemed to stretch out; she could have believed that he breathed once an hour. She stroked his hair lightly with her fingers, drawing it away from his face, as if he were a child. 'I can't reach Harry,' he said, finally, opening his eyes. His gaze wandered unseeing across her face. 'I don't think I'm strong enough.'
'It's all right,' she said. His hair felt fine as silk tassels threading through her fingers. 'He won't hurt your father. He loves you too much for that.'
'He'll do what he has to do,' Draco said, his tone distant. 'I gave him my permission — I can't ask him to forgive my father, not after what he's done.'
'He'll make your father tell him what the missing ingredient in your antidote is — then we can cure you. That's what's important,' Hermione said, with a wild stubbornness.
Draco laughed, bringing silver-red bubbles to his lips. He wiped the blood away with the back of his hand. 'My Hermione,' he said, 'not everything can be solved with an infusion of new information.'
'Shush,' she said, 'You need to sleep — and when you wake up, we'll have a cure for you I could charm you — .'
'— And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, and better than thy stroke,' he said. 'I'm quoting again — Ginny would be annoyed.' He smiled faintly. 'I kissed her earlier today, you know, because I thought I ought to kiss her before I died. Maybe that was thoughtless. Do you think she'll be angry?'
'No,' Hermione said, 'no, I don't think she will be.' She wound a curl of his hair around her finger, soft as trammeled silk, fine as flax, and he moved restlessly under her caress. His skin burned almost too hot to touch. 'Close your eyes,' she said.
'If I do, I won't open them again,' he said, 'and I would like to wait for Harry, if I can.' His tone was matter of fact. 'You're a terrible liar, you know.'
She stilled her caresses. 'I am?'
'Yes,' he said. 'You just offered to charm me asleep with a broken wand.'
She reached to cover her gasp, but was too late. 'I had forgotten it was broken — '
'No, you hadn't.' He closed his eyes, then opened them again. 'I'm blind, aren't I? I ought to have known — even in the darkest night, you can see your own hand in front of your face.'
'With the antidote, it could be reversed — possibly — ' Hermione whispered.
'It doesn't matter,' he said, and blind as he was, he caught her anxious, fluttering hand easily, and drew it towards him, and pressed a kiss to her palm. He folded her hand closed, trapping the kiss in the cage of her fingers. 'I can see you anyway,' he said, 'in your white dress, standing on the steps, with your hair full of snow. I wonder if there are such beautiful things where I am going?'
Something hot splashed onto the hand he held; Hermione realized distantly that she was crying. 'There should be only beautiful things,' she said.
He laughed quietly. 'I asked Harry once if he believed in Heaven,' he said.
'I must have known, even then. I think I knew since the arrow went into me. I didn't want to believe it was true, and then it was easier to believe than not to believe, and then Harry left and I hoped it was true. And now I am only tired, so tired — it hasn't been a wasted life, this life of mine, has it, Hermione? I've been in love and had my heart broken and broken other hearts, and I've been found and lost, and saved the world — that's not nothing, is it?'
'You won some Quidditch games, too, if I recall,' Hermione said, pressing the palm of her hand to her face, as if to transfer the kiss to her cheek.
'But never the Cup,' Draco said.
'No,' Hermione said gently. 'Never the Cup.'
'That belonged to Harry,' Draco said. 'Though I've forgiven him for it.'
'And he you. I hope you believe that now.'
'I believe it,' Draco said. 'But it doesn't make me less afraid.'
'Of dying?'
'I always thought I would die before he did,' Draco said. His tone was soft, reflective. 'It was what I wanted, and I was glad for it. But I also thought I knew where I would be going when I died. To the place where the restless shades are, those who walk the riverbank wailing and crying out for justice. But I will have justice. Harry will have given me that. And I will have rest, because he will have given me that also. So where will I wait for him? What if there are no shores to stand on, where I am going now? I would wait for a hundred years, if that were what was required, but what if he cannot find me?'
'He can always find you,' Hermione said. 'You can always find each other.'
'Now, yes, but then? Or are you positing telepathy in the afterlife?' Draco said, a shaky undercurrent to the lightness of his tone. 'Forever is a very long time to be alone, Hermione.'
Lightly, she touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. The heat scorched her skin. 'We're all alone,' she said.
Magic, Ron thought as he watched Lucius stare at the door that had shut behind Harry, could do many things: it could transform a cat into a teapot, a blade of grass into a sword. But there were other forces at work in the world, stranger than magic and more powerful. The forces that held a family together, that broke and mended hearts, and that had transformed Lucius, in a matter of hours, into an old man. He looked stooped as he turned to Ron, the gray in his pale hair markedly apparent, lines grooved deep around his mouth and eyes. 'And now they leave me with you,' he said. 'They might as well set a monkey to guard me.' He squinted at Ron. 'I have always wondered,' he said, 'if perhaps your ancestors intermarried with Muggles? There is something not quite right about the lot of you. Your muddy gazes and unfortunate hair — that whole business with your mother spawning two or three of you at a time — '
Ron looked placidly at the sword in his hand. The blade was clean, the ornate words carved into the side
