Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, and all these other people are characters belonging to J.K. Rowling. I claim no rights to them, their surroundings, or their situations. Much to my sorrow.

--- 23 Draco: Hello? Is There Anybody In There?

Things were happening around him, and Draco was aware on some level, but it was all curiously muted. He felt as though he were wrapped in a shroud of thick cotton wool, insulated from everything. One face blurred into another. Words buzzed by him, leaving no impression.

Was this what it was like to be dead?

Strange how one's mind could start to misfire at times like this; all he'd been able to think of, right after the fact, was keeping his promise to Hagrid. So he'd apologised to Hermione, standing there in the wreckage of his ancestral home, with the bodies--

No, he wasn't going to think about that right now.

She had looked at him as though he were insane. Which might very well be the case. He had no clear idea why he'd told Weasley to bring the Nimbus along either, but it had seemed very important that it not be left behind. Now it was lying on the floor underneath this cot where they had put him, and it might lie there for the next twenty years, for all he knew what to do with it.

More faces, more voices: trying to be kind, to reassure, to soften the blow, he supposed.

Sod them all. Nothing could ever fix this.

He wanted to go to sleep, and preferably stay that way, but dread of the nightmares that surely would come kept his eyes open. He wanted to die. No he didn't...whatever was waiting for him on the other side of that trip, it was likely just as bad. He wanted...

...he wanted Harry to come back from wherever he'd gone, that was what, and explain to him how one could live like this, with a great gaping hole in his life where the people who'd loved him used to be.

He did get one of his wishes, at least. Pomfrey came and took that horrible fucking mark off his wrist. Getting rid of it hurt almost as much as having it put on, in spite of the potion she'd cajoled him into drinking, but even that pain couldn't penetrate the mantle of shock; he'd watched with detached disinterest as layer after layer of disfigured skin was peeled away, right down to the underlying muscle, and had not needed to be told that there would be a scar. Even magical healing had its limits.

After a while the Healer had gone away, leaving him to his comfortingly stark view of the white tile floor and the effort of not thinking. Much more difficult than it sounded, that. He needed sleep, but each time he let his lids close, his mind tried to fill in the blackness with images of betrayal and terror.

After a while, as exhaustion and inertia wore at his resolve, they came anyway.

Lucius Malfoy had always had a temper. Draco had seen him angry before, many times. Angry enough to do violent hurtful things, on occasion, but...never like that. He hadn't been disappointed when Draco refused to go along with him, or hurt, or even just ordinary garden-variety angry. He had been enraged--and even more so, when Narcissa had tried to step in and defuse the situation.

He'd forced her to be the one to conduct the ceremony. She hadn't wanted to do it, had argued and pleaded with him; but Lucius had said terrible things, had threatened to turn her over to Voldemort as a traitor if she disobeyed him.

People said that the most terrible thing about Azkaban Prison had been the Dementors, until they defected to Voldemort's side; Draco thought it must be a pretty horrible place in its own right, to have so thoroughly broken down his father's carefully cultivated self-control.

Narcissa, though--Draco had known his mother fairly well. Professor Snape, Harry and the others might not have seen it. But he, reeling from the aftereffects of the Cruciatus, had watched her face as she bound him in layer after layer of dark enchantment, then begun the first phase of the rite that would either seal him irrevocably to Voldemort or else destroy his mind, perhaps kill him outright.

The entire time, she had been frantically looking for a way out--for him, at least, if not for herself.

Ron Weasley had provided that escape. (He'd been brilliant, Draco grudgingly conceded, absolutely brilliant. He couldn't ever have seen that kind of binding before, it was used only for the Morsmordresignum; but he'd dismantled it faster than Draco would have thought possible, at least without committing a fatal error.) But Lucius--

No. He did not want to think about that.

He wouldn't. Would not. Seeing it once had been bad enough.

What it had driven him to do was worse.

The scream was already there, inside him, and now it was eating its way toward the surface...his mother's eyes stared at him sightlessly, his father's flying open in surprise, and then staying that way, as the Avada struck him--

Only when Molly Weasley reached out and touched him did he register the fact that she was there--had been there, talking to him for a while. The unexpected gesture snapped the world back into focus, delaying his impending meltdown, for the moment.

Though not entirely ungrateful, he deliberately gave no outward sign. He did not want to talk to anyone, and he had no idea what he'd say to the woman anyway. The last time they'd met, his father had insulted her family and then got into a bout of fisticuffs with her husband.

He half-listened to her predictable platitudes; the sorts of things that were considered polite to say when someone had suffered a loss, but which in the end really meant bugger all, because no amount of sympathy could bring back the dead. She obviously hadn't been told the truth about what had happened. If she had any inkling what he had done, nothing could have persuaded her to come near him, he was certain.

She talked about the Burrow--now what kind of name was that for a house? Descriptive, no doubt, but surely even a bunch of backward hicks like the Weasleys could come up with something more dignified?

Only long moments after the fact did it really sink in that she had just extended him an open invitation to her home. Draco didn't know what to make of that. He certainly couldn't have seen his own mother doing the same, if the circumstances had been reversed.

He was not accustomed to feeling ashamed, and found that he didn't much like it.

The woman carried on with her monologue. "You must have come to some sort of understanding with Harry--"

Harry. A vivid memory emerged suddenly, out of the chaotic mass that crowded his mind: he was lying on his back, shaking violently, his wand arm pinned down as Professor Snape pried Crabbe's wand out of his hand; and Harry was lying on top of him. Holding him down, but not hurting him. And not condemning him either. "I'm not telling anyone. The man just killed his mother, right in front of him, for god's sake! You think I don't understand?"

Of course Harry understood--at least as much as anyone could. He'd lost his own mother in almost exactly the same way.

That realization merged with the lingering impressions of the other boy's warmth, the genuine compassion in his voice, and the somehow reassuring weight and solidity of him, to set a small spark burning in the cold hollow place where Draco's world had so abruptly caved in and self-destructed.

"Harry asked me to come and speak with you. He's like another son to me, and just between you and me and the curtain, there isn't much I wouldn't do for him..."

Harry knew. Harry had sent his own surrogate mother to look in on him. He already shared her with seven others, a thing that Draco, as an only child, found inconceivable. But here she was, after all these years of bitter antagonism, offering to open her home to him--knowing, as she surely must, that Ron and Ginny and the twins would throw a monumental fit about it--all because Harry had asked.

What was this power that Harry Potter possessed, to make things happen with simple words, or sometimes just by existing?

He'd lost track of what Mrs. Weasley was saying, and was a bit startled when she leaned forward to pat his hand, then stood up. Although he knew he must be very poor company right now, he didn't want her to leave yet--at least not before he'd thought of something to say, to acknowledge her act of kindness.

Molly Weasley. What did he know about Molly Weasley? She was poor, she was loud, she had a whole herd of children, she--

"Mrs. Weasley?" His mouth was so dry, the words came out as a croak. "I thought--that I heard once--you're a very good cook." He hoped he was thinking of the right person.

Apparently so; the question brought the loveliest smile to her face, and Draco found himself bitterly envying Ronald Weasley and his gaggle of hapless siblings. "Are you hungry, dear?"

He wasn't, not really; he wasn't sure that he'd ever be able to choke down a mouthful of food again. But he nodded anyway, and watched as she hurried away to the kitchen.

He'd need to eat, to sleep, to pull himself together. Slytherin House was now the only family he had left, and though Professor Snape was back on the scene, Draco had a suspicion that the old boy would need all the help he could get when the matter came to a head.

But how much help could he really be? Hadn't he just become the very thing that Black and his supporters accused him of being?

What if they're right? The lump of curdled distress in his gut, already weighing him down like lead, grew even heavier. Did House Slytherin do this to my family? Or was there just something rotten in the blood to begin with?

It was really too bad that his first introduction to Molly Weasley's cooking came in the midst of such ghastly thoughts. When she returned a few minutes later, the contents of the heavily laden tray she brought with her would have fed several people. "Here we are; I wasn't sure what you'd like best, dear, so I brought a little bit of everything..."

Roast beef, steak and kidney pie, bangers and mash, baked beans, mixed vegetables, Branston Pickle and cheese...in a normal state of mind, Draco would have torn into the meal, hodgepodge of leftovers though it was. Sadly, although everything tasted wonderful (and he took care to say so,) he had to force down a few bites from each dish. The good food couldn't wipe out the bitter taste the day's events had left in his mouth.

"That's all right, love," Mrs. Weasley said kindly, after watching him struggle to swallow for a few minutes. "Even a little bit will do you some good. Why don't you try to sleep...I'll just leave the tray here, in case you want it later."

He nodded again, feeling that sleep was fast becoming a necessity, nightmares or no.

"Condiocibus," Mrs. Weasley murmured over the tray, setting it aside. The contents would stay good for days, if need be.

Although he knew the room wasn't cold, Draco was shivering, and couldn't seem to stop. Mrs. Weasley must have noticed; when he'd settled back into the cot, she tucked the blankets securely around him, then cast another charm, wrapping him up in delicious warmth from head to foot. It soothed his tattered nerves, and he felt his muscles begin to gradually unclench.

It was a strange feeling, but nice, if vaguely embarrassing--being fussed over this way. Even when he'd been little, if anyone had tucked him in at night, it was nearly always Birble or one of the other House Elves. His own parents were usually entertaining company or out at someone else's dinner party in the evenings.

He tried to imagine what it was like for the Weasley children to be cared for like that for years and years...to be able to take it for granted.

Maybe I had it wrong, he thought dully. Maybe they aren't so poor after all.

His eyes drifted shut without any conscious directive on his part; his last waking impression was of the sound of Mrs. Weasley humming something quietly under her breath, and a soft rhythmic clicking he could not identify.

---

He bolted upright drenched in sweat, wakened from a terrible, but unremembered dream in a state of abject terror, and completely out of his reckoning; where was he, why couldn't he feel his legs, and what in Salazar's name was that horrible noise?!

Memory kicked in at the same time that he realised that his legs were pinned under the big boarhound, Fang, and an unfamiliar voice said apologetically, "Oh ruddy hell! I'm sorry, Cous, I didn't mean to wake you up."

'Cous'? Draco frowned narrowly at the individual who'd spoken: a singularly peculiar woman, young, with short, bright fuschia hair in countless tiny ringlets. They bounced wildly around her head as she tried to disentangle herself from the pile of medical equipment she had apparently just knocked over.

"Oh, Tonks!" Madame Pomfrey hurried over and hauled the girl to her feet, then knelt to try and salvage the scattered instruments, some of which appeared to have been bent or broken by their tumble.

"I'm so sorry, Madame Pomfrey--"

"Yes, yes, I know, dear. Just sit down, why don't you, since Mr. Malfoy is now awake, and have your little chat. But don't--touch--anything." She underscored this order with a steely glare worthy of old Moody (or his normal eye.)

"Yes ma'am." Meekly seating herself in the chair that Mrs. Weasley had used earlier, the girl turned and smiled at Draco, a warm but rather chagrined sort of smile that looked as though it spent a good deal of time on her face. "Wotcher, Draco."

He tilted his head quizzically as he considered her, leaning over to scratch Fang behind the ears. He knew the name 'Tonks'--they were relatives on his mother's side--but he had some trouble attaching a given name to it. "Nim--Nimadonna?" he queried uncertainly after a moment.

She winced humourously. Her face was incredibly expressive, and her eyes the most startling shade of purple he'd ever seen. "Tonks. Just...Tonks. Easier all around." She pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged on the chair, which was in no way built to accommodate someone sitting that way. "I am sorry to wake you. I only just stopped by to look in, see how you were doing."

He raised his eyebrows slightly. The one time he remembered talking to this very peculiar cousin--who was only a few years older than he was--he'd been about four years old, and she had patted him on the head and called him 'precious.' He'd been indignant for days, if memory served. "Why?"

She shrugged, her smile faltering a bit. "Dunno. I heard about--well, you know, everything that just happened..."

"I'm sure everyone around here has," he said sourly, not pleased to be reminded. He would do all right, he thought once again, if only he could avoid thinking about it too much.

Easier said than done. He felt as though he were floating on a deep, treacherous ocean in a pathetically small raft, in dire peril of being swamped by the first good wave that came along.

"Nah, not everyone. The Order mostly, and some of the teachers. Anyway my mum is your mum's sister, you know; she'll be asking about you when the word gets around to her."

"Ah. Keeping the family grapevine up to date. I understand." He smiled maliciously. "Well, you can tell dear Aunt Andromeda that I am as well as can be expected, under the c-circumstances." He had to pause for a moment to steady himself. "Which is to say, of course, about a millimetre shy of complete hysteria at any given moment, but why dwell on trivia."

Not bad; he'd made the statement sound almost matter-of-fact. His father would have been proud.

Father. Damn it...he dug his fingers roughly into the soft flesh of Fang's neck, prompting a whine of protest from the big dog, and swallowed thickly against a hot upwelling of grief laced with guilt. Though he had a good excuse if ever there was one, some instincts were too deeply ingrained to deny; he would not give way and disgrace himself in front of another scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Tonks very kindly chose not to notice his distress, but quickly changed the subject, reaching for a pair of tins that lay beside the loaded tray of food Mrs. Weasley had left for him. "Oh, did you see? Hagrid dropped some stuff off for you."

"W-what is it?" He forced the words out around the stoppage in his throat.

"Let's see..." She pried the top off of one tin. "Treacle fudge, here. Wouldn't recommend eating it, unless you've got a loose tooth you need pulled. But hold onto it, it'd make wonderful grout." Grinning mischievously, she opened the other tin. "And Hagrid's homemade biscuits, listed in the Auror's Basic Training Manual as the number-one choice for improvised missile weapons in case of a broken wand--"

Draco leaned over and snatched the tins away from her, cutting her off sharply. "Don't make fun of Hagrid!" Hell's bell's--did I just say that??

Tonks stared at him, her eyes wide. Their bright purple hue faded as he watched to a much more ordinary shade of blue. "Here, now," she said softly, raising her hand in a mollifying gesture. "I didn't mean--"

"I don't care what you meant. Hagrid's my friend," he said hotly, his own vehemence taking him by surprise. "He doesn't deserve to have his gifts ridiculed." He carefully set the tins aside.

It wasn't that he doubted Tonks's assessment of Hagrid's cooking. She surely knew the half-giant better than he did. It was just that he didn't often receive presents that weren't prompted by either politics or family obligation.

"Okay, you're right. I'm sorry. Simmer down, Cous, I like Hagrid too. I wasn't bad-mouthing him." Tonks sat back, eyeing him curiously. "You this touchy all the time, or only when you've got the shite kicked out of you?"

"Look, I'm sure I don't mean to be rude," he said, scowling, "but you are a very strange person, Tonks. And I'm really not in the mood for company right now." He made to pull his legs out from underneath Fang, with a stunning lack of success. The enormous beast had him effectively trapped. "Come on, you bloody great ox, lemme up." The dog gazed at him soulfully, but did not move.

Tonks chuckled and gave a low whistle, patting her leg. Fang heaved a great sigh and slowly rose, stretched (the cot creaking alarmingly under his shifting weight,) and jumped to the floor, padding over for a thorough ear-scratching.

"There's a good old lad," Tonks crooned to the big dog, who shut his eyes, his enormous tongue lolling rapturously at the affectionate attention. "That's right, he's a good boy, isn't he? Yes he is."

"Oh for pity's sake. He's a dog, not an infant. Let the poor bloke have some dignity." Draco swung his legs over the edge of the cot, and hissed as numbness gave way to the intensely uncomfortable pins-and-needles of returning circulation.

Tonks lifted her chin haughtily as she got up, a gesture that should come naturally to any child of the Black family, but which looked suspiciously like a parody when she did it. "Well. I think we can tell when we're not wanted, Fang. C'mon, let's go visit the old bat; I bet he's more congenial company."

"Old bat?" Any recent Hogwarts graduate could mean only one person by that. "Professor Snape is back?"

"And here I thought you liked him," Tonks said reprovingly. "He's right over there." She nodded past Draco to another cot, half-concealed in a shadowy corner of the infirmary space. "He's out cold though. Professor Dumbledore potioned him, I guess."

"Is he all right?" Draco got up--a little unsteadily, as his feet were still half-numb and half-tingling--and walked carefully to the Potions Master's side.

"Dunno. Some sort of nasty business he ran into on the way back here, I reckon. Remus wouldn't tell me much." Tonks followed him, the dog trailing behind her.

Snape was sprawled out on the cot, both arms wrapped tightly around a pillow, clearly dead to the world. Relieved to have his mentor back safe and sound, Draco nevertheless couldn't help but be concerned at the older man's haggard appearance

He'd been too distracted with his own predicament to really take note of it back at the Manor, or maybe it was a more recent development; Snape had never looked excessively healthy to begin with, of course, but now his face was marked with the unmistakable signs of illness and exhaustion. There was a slight ragged edge to his breathing, as though he was suffering from chest congestion.

In spite of all that, however, he wore an oddly contented expression, something Draco had never seen before, and had frankly never expected to. It worked a profound transformation, almost literally rearranging his face, and Draco found himself a trifle unsettled by the effect.

Severus Snape was an unhappy man--that fact had always seemed as timeless and immutable as the laws of magic. Clearly, something highly unusual had happened after he, Harry, and Ron had departed the Manor House.

"Here now, you two. Don't you dare disturb him." Madame Pomfrey came hurrying over, speaking in an imperious undertone. "He needs his rest. And you, Mister Malfoy, should not be up walking around either. Back to bed with you."

Draco took a few steps away from the oblivious Potions Master, unwilling to risk waking him, but then stopped and dug in his heels. "What's the matter with him? Will he be all right?"

The Healer sighed and opened her mouth, but hesitated, her gaze flickering toward Tonks. Draco shot the bizarre young woman a meaningful look.

"What?" she said innocently, then blinked. "Oh. Right. Say, was that Molly's steak-and-kidney pie I saw on that tray? D'you mind if I--"

"Help yourself." Anything to get her out of his hair. There was too much there for one person to eat anyway.

"Ta, Cous. C'mon, Fang." Girl and dog loped off to attack the victuals, leaving the Healer free to speak sans an audience.

Madame Pomfrey sighed. "Well, to answer your first question, Mister Malfoy, there are a number of things wrong with him--chief among them his own pig-headed stubbornness, an ailment for which I have regrettably found no cure to date." She looked Draco speculatively up and down. "He won't thank me for speaking to you about it, but maybe you can get through to him where I've failed."

"Go on," Draco said levelly, trying to ignore the ominously large swell that had just appeared off the starboard side of his little raft.

"Come and sit down, please. You know you're just as bad as he is," Pomfrey grumbled, moving over to a pair of chairs near her makeshift desk.

He went along with her, secretly a bit relieved to be off his feet. The Mediwitch seated herself opposite him, and continued, "Professor Snape has subjected himself to a great deal of abuse over the years, as I'm sure you can guess." Draco nodded. He was only hazily familiar with the harsher aspects of life in Voldemort's Inner Circle, but the small taste of it he had personally got just a few hours ago clarified the matter quite a bit.

"Wizards are remarkably resilient creatures, Mister Malfoy. We bounce back from accidents and illnesses that would maim or kill a Muggle without even thinking twice about it. But there are limits to what even one of us can withstand." Madame Pomfrey glanced back at the Professor rather sadly. "The Cruciatus, for example, leaves no lasting mark the first time it is used, apart from a very unpleasant memory. Even several exposures in short order won't permanently harm most wizards. But too many--"

"The Longbottoms," Draco interrupted. He knew the story well; most of the children of the Death Eaters did. As far as he knew, they still occupied the long-term care ward at St. Mungo's, and they probably always would. For the first time, he felt a pang of sympathy for Neville, whose parents lived, but were lost all the same...

"Yes, cases like the Longbottoms happen when someone is Crucio'd at length, without respite." Pomfrey's voice was flat and chillingly clinical. "But the curse can also have a much more subtle, cumulative effect over time. When the victim is not given sufficient time to recover between one attack and the next, permanent nerve damage invariably results."

"Nerve damage?" he echoed, aghast. "You mean like, to the brain?"

"The brain is by no means unaffected. But it's the peripheral nerves that suffer the most from the seizures, as well as the musculature. Professor Snape has suffered the Cruciatus more times than any other wizard I know. He is still reasonably young; the full effects won't hit him until he's quite a bit older, but even now, all his denials to the contrary, I know he's begun to feel it."

Draco rubbed at his slightly stubbled jaw. "That's not all that's the matter right now, though, is it."

"No." Madame Pomfrey sighed. "The Cruciatus isn't the only thing he's suffered over the years, merely the worst. And Severus has compounded his problems many times by failing to seek help when he needs it.

"But the major problem right now is with his lungs. I checked him into St. Mungo's for a reason. I understand why he left the hospital, and why he went straight back out after you. But he should have undergone further intensive treatment...as it is, he may have done irreparable damage to his respiratory system."

She shook her head. "Above and beyond that, he is prone to neglect basic necessities, such as eating, when there are larger issues to deal with, and it's caught up with him--just as it always does."

He very much did not like the sound of all this. The fact that his own parents had been party to this slow irreversible injury to the man he respected so much, that they had undoubtedly known all about it, only added to his own sense of turmoil; but at that moment there was really only one matter that concerned him. "So. I repeat: long-term effects aside, is he going to be all right?"

Madame Pomfrey stood and smoothed her robes down. "In all honesty, youngster, I just don't know," she said quietly. "If he is given time to recuperate, then yes, probably he will. I've seen him come back from worse. But with things being the way they are, I very much doubt that is going to happen."

"Is there anything I can do?" Draco asked. It was perhaps the first time in his life he had ever asked that question without any sort of ulterior motive.

It earned him a gentle smile. "You can help him sort out this ridiculous to-do over your House, if he'll let you; anything that takes some of the strain off his shoulders, anything that gives him a chance to rest a little, will do him some good." She paused. "Perhaps if you put your head together with Miss Granger, the two of you might come up with something more."

"Granger?" He blinked, momentarily nonplused. "What's she got to do with it?"

But even as the question left his lips, pieces were falling into place. Granger accompanying the Professor to the hospital, staying behind when the rest of them left the Manor, Weasley getting his knickers in a bunch, that uncharacteristic peaceful look on Snape's face as he slept--

He knew it wasn't appropriate, but he just couldn't help it. Despite his best effort, the trademark Malfoy smirk worked its way slowly across his face. "Why that randy old son-of-a-serpent. I didn't think he had it in him..."

"Hush, Mister Malfoy," said the Healer severely, but her own lips twitched irrepressibly. "Draw what conclusions you will, but you did not hear a word from me, and if I discover any untoward rumors making the rounds I shall be most displeased with you."

He shook his head firmly. "Not about something like that. Thank you for sharing all this with me, Madame. I appreciate your confidence."

"My pleasure. Now back to bed with you, young sir. Professor Snape isn't the only one in need of downtime."

"Yes ma'am." He obediently returned to his cot, the Healer looking after him with deep suspicion. Perhaps he shouldn't have capitulated so easily...

"Hey--I don't mind sharing, Cousin, but what're you trying to do, starve me?" Rescuing the tray before Tonks and Fang could demolish it entirely, he sat down and tucked into Molly Weasley's excellent cooking with a will.

"Sorry, it's just all so good," she mumbled guiltily around a mouthful of roast beef. Fang thumped his tail hopefully on the floor, and Draco relented and set the remains of the baked beans down for him.

"You're gonna regret that later," Tonks predicted cheerfully.

He snickered. "You mean Hagrid will."

The awareness of all that was wrong in his life remained, lurking just underneath the surface, ready to drag him down if he allowed it. But other matters were at hand; surely it would be no fitting tribute either to those he had lost, or those who still remained, if he just curled up here and let himself sink.

"Listen, Tonks, I wonder if you could do me a favor."

"What's that?" she said, catching the conspiratorial tone of the question and leaning in toward him with an eager gleam in her eye.

"Could you arrange a small distraction for Madame Pomfrey?"

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