Chapter Thirty-Seven of 'I Give You a Wondrous Mirror'- Explanations
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Chapter Thirty-Seven-Explanations
“I suppose,” said Andromeda, with a tone in her voice that Harry couldn’t understand, “you are wondering why I chose to do this. And because you are still special to me-though if I were truly committed to my principles, you should not be-I will tell you.”
Harry didn’t answer. He didn’t think he could. He hadn’t stopped shuddering since Andromeda uncovered her face. It wasn’t cold that made him do so, and it wasn’t sorrow or fear or anger. It was a numbness beyond all of those emotions, which made him feel as though his heart had been launched into deep space.
“You remember the last war, I assume?” Andromeda laid her mask carefully on the floor and aimed her wand at the doorways in front of and behind her, casting spells to make sure that no one could intrude. Harry thought, distantly, that she should have done that in the first place, but he could hardly open his mouth and tell her so. “Of course you do. I am certain that your memories are at least as clear and painful as my own.
“I did almost nothing. I remained behind, out of danger, and survived when my husband died. Then I stayed with my grandson instead of entering the battle alongside my son-in-law and-my daughter.”
The last words were whispered. Harry stared into that calm, nearly motionless face, and thought he was at last beginning to understand.
“And that was a good thing, and that was a necessary thing, because if I hadn’t stayed with Teddy, who would have?” Andromeda shook her head. “But the more I told myself that, the more I confronted myself with the fact that Nymphadora died fighting my sister and I survived, the more I realized it had not been the good or necessary thing for me. I should have been there when she fell. I should have done anything I could to prevent her from falling. I should have taken vengeance on her murderer, and not left her to Molly Weasley’s tender justice.
“And I knew that I would never have that. Not with Bellatrix dead, not with Nymphadora dead.
“But facts don’t curb a desire, do you realize that?” She turned to Harry, her head cocked like a great bird’s. “I’m sure that you didn’t cease to miss your parents, once you knew they were dead, just because you also knew they weren’t coming back.”
Harry finally found his tongue. His mind was on the dimple that Andromeda’s wand had made in Al’s neck, on the fact that Draco was suffering alone in a dark cell by now, on the fates of his children and Narcissa and Teddy. “Never dare to compare me to you,” he whispered. “I have not done what you did. I have fought all my life against the kinds of things you did. I-“
Andromeda flicked her wand. Harry felt the impression of a hand slapping his cheek, strong enough to nearly knock him from his feet. He staggered, caught himself, and came back up, spitting blood; his teeth had cut into his lips and the sides of his mouth.
The interruption was good for him. It reminded him of the words he’d spoken to Draco in the box at the Salazar Snakes’ hideout: that he never would have survived captivity around Bellatrix and Voldemort, because he would say the wrong thing at the wrong time and force someone to kill him.
He couldn’t afford that, not now. He had to remember that other people’s fates rode on his, and indulging his tongue was a luxury. He scowled at the floor when the spell finished, and kept his breathing soft and quiet. Andromeda nevertheless watched him for long moments before she spoke again.
“But we are similar, Harry. I grew to see that during the years that you helped raise my grandson. Nymphadora and Lupin made a good choice in you. I believe that you would do anything to keep Teddy safe. And I would do anything to ease my grief, to purge myself of this festering wound so I can go on afterwards and be a good grandmother, the way I always should have been.”
Even if Harry had granted himself permission to respond to that, he didn’t think he’d have the words. He stared at the floor some more.
“There was only one way to give myself the bloodshed and the vengeance I needed to ease my grief,” Andromeda murmured. “A war. A war where I could fight anyone and anything. I didn’t care, at that point, about fighting only pure-blood supremacists like my bitch of a sister. After all, the Muggleborn groups hated me just as much, because I was pure-blood and refused to stop existing just to oblige them. I’ve made myself familiar with their hateful rhetoric. It counts for nothing that I married Ted, or that I tolerated Nymphadora’s marriage to a werewolf even if I didn’t like it. They honor only those who were actually, actively fighting against the taking of wands from Muggleborns during the war. Your name is important to them; mine is not.
“With loyalties to neither side, with the people I loved most in the world dead, why shouldn’t I set them on each other in a war? I don’t care which side wins. I only care that there will be enough killing, finally, to satiate my hunger for vengeance. It will continue and continue and continue, and at the end, if I survive, I will be smaller than I have been, but also quiet. That is the only thing that will burn this-this rage out.”
“You planned this for ten years?” Harry asked. It was the kind of question Hermione might have asked, and if he survived this or was able to escape, he needed to be able to bring her that kind of information. Hermione commanded the largest group of people in the Ministry right now who would fight against this war. She knew the most about it. Like it or not, she was their general against Andromeda, and if there was any chance that she could know about this, Harry had to play spy.
“Yes.” Andromeda gave him a sympathetic smile. “You don’t really need to blame yourself for not being able to outfight or outwit me. It was inevitable. When you defeated one plan, I could call on another. Already I’ve destabilized the relationships between pure-bloods and Muggleborns again. So the attack on Hogwarts will not start the war, but another conflagration will, not many days from now. There will be ample evidence to make the biased on either side believe that their opposite numbers began the attack. And, of course, it’s the biased I’m trying to convince, not people like your friend Hermione who hold back and watch without judging.”
“Do you want me dead or not?” Harry held his voice steady, though it tried to tremble when he asked the next question. “What about my children?”
“I couldn’t face up to the necessity of your death at first,” Andromeda admitted. “That was why I sent the owl during your trip to Diagon Alley asking the Salazar’s Snakes to capture you, not kill you-“
Harry flinched as he remembered Andromeda’s hasty assurance, when he had asked her to stay with his children, that she could; she only needed to send an owl to a friend who had been expecting her.
“And why I set off the attack in your house that morning I visited with Teddy, at the same time the Manor and Diagon Alley were attacked.” Andromeda gave a little shrug. “I thought that, if you saw the danger to your children first and foremost, you would give up the pursuit of the enemy. There are some things a young hero can face which are too dangerous to a father.”
“It only enraged me.”
“I know that now. I should have known that then.” Andromeda rapped her wand thoughtfully against her palm. “And then when I saw you wounded by my dragon, I fled rather than continue the attack; I needed time to deal with the fact of your death. But you survived. After that, I reconciled myself to the fact that I would have to destroy you.”
“Now?” Harry raised his head, his heart beating very fast, and held her gaze evenly. If he died now, he died now. It was a possibility he had been facing since the start of the war.
“Of course not!” Andromeda exclaimed. “I am not such a monster that I won’t let you have some time with your children, and even your lover if you wish, to say goodbye.” An expression of resigned distaste crossed her face. “I could have wished that you chose any other lover but my nephew. You sadly reinforced the worst in each other. If he hadn’t got you involved-or, I suppose, if my sister hadn’t got you involved-my initial plan would have resulted in his imprisonment, and you and your friend would not have been in the possession of enough information quickly enough to act.”
There was nothing Harry could say to that that wouldn’t make Andromeda respond violently, so he preferred to move on to another subject. “You did not say whether you would spare my children.”
“Yes,” said Andromeda calmly. “They’ll weather out the war here. I never intended to kill my sister. Even Marian’s Blood Hydra, which I taught her how to make, would only have killed Draco and vanished. She’ll have the children to care for, and I think that will sustain her.”
“Where is Teddy?”
“Safe.” Andromeda eyed him askance. “I have given ten years of my life to my grandson. He is the only connection I still have to Nymphadora. I burned my house mainly to give you something else to worry about, and then to cover up the traces of the Inferi, which I’d had buried there for years. Do you think me such a monster I would harm Teddy?”
Harry couldn’t help the flash of his eyes that followed, even though he held his tongue.
“I see,” Andromeda said quietly. “Well.” She lifted her wand. “Your death must, of necessity, be public. I don’t want any awkward rumors that the Savior is still alive and languishing somewhere in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor. But there is no reason that I can’t hurt you a bit first. That might also quiet any inconvenient ideas that are forming in my sister’s mind.”
*
They’d chosen a storage closet for him, a room without light unless one carried a wand in, so small that Draco could barely sit upright with his legs crossed beneath him. One of the Salazar’s Snakes flashed his Lumos-lit wand about to show him the closeness of the walls, and laughed at him when Draco flinched in spite of his resolve not to show any fear to his enemies.
“Enjoy it,” said one of his captors, which made the others laugh again, and then they shut the door and left him in the darkness. Draco had to sit with his knees and elbows held as closely as possible to his chest so he didn’t touch the walls.
It was bigger than the box he’d been kept in at the old manor house, but there, the major difference had been that Harry was with him. Here, he was alone, and if he spoke, he would only hear his voice echo back from the stone. If he cried out, no one would answer. If he reached out for a touch of warm human flesh, there would be nothing but coolness a few inches away-
He calmed his panicking brain, jerked it to a stop like a restive broom, and then deliberately closed his eyes and reached back into his memory.
Harry had said that he didn’t love Draco at the time, but that he liked him. And he didn’t believe Draco was evil; he had only been following orders. And he had been weak, but not a weakling.
A weakling would crumble apart in a situation like this, break into a mumbling, weeping heap, and give his captors everything they wanted. The Salazar’s Snakes had tried to break him like that during his first imprisonment. Without Harry there, he would have become a helpless victim for them and done whatever they commanded.
Was he still like that? Had he changed enough to survive an ordeal like this, even knowing people waited elsewhere in the Manor who were depending on him to escape it?
He shivered. The walls were pressing against his shoulders, he was certain. They had moved in while his eyes were shut, and now hovered like predatory birds, ready to slam shut any moment and crush him to a smear of blood and flesh-
No! He ripped the thought from his head, crushed it, exiled it, pictured the walls of his own mind smashing it to pieces. If he lost himself in morbid imaginings, then he deserved everything that followed. It was one thing to let his enemies get to him; it was quite another to do their work for them.
Harry had believed he could become strong. He had a son upstairs to whom he was everything in the world, a strong father and his primary caretaker, since Marian hadn’t been allowed to touch him for months. Draco pictured Scorpius struggling and crying in Marian’s arms, not trusting this strange woman who proclaimed herself his mother. And since Marian had sent those letters about the Masked Lady to Granger, proving, too late, that she regretted joining her, would she perhaps snatch Scorpius and try to run again? Perhaps she would, and the Masked Lady would let her go because she didn’t care, and then Draco would never find them again.
He couldn’t bear that. He had to find some way to get out of here, for the sake of Harry and his children and Scorpius and his mother.
His mother. Had the Masked Lady hurt her? Had Narcissa tried to fight when Marian let the Salazar’s Snakes through the wards? She would have, Draco knew, if she perceived the children as being in danger. And of course they would be in danger with Marian’s companions about.
He pictured Narcissa broken and bleeding, and didn’t let the instinctive panic take over. He didn’t need panic at the moment. What he needed was rage.
And it was there, burning bright, if he pictured his son gone to the Hebrides in the arms of his traitorous mother, or his own mother assaulted but still standing up to her enemies with dignity-at least until they took her wand away-or Harry’s children huddling together and trying not to cry, or Harry being tortured.
Now he needed to ensure that the rage continued burning as a flame against the darkness.
Draco opened his eyes.
He made himself see and accept the darkness that hemmed him in, no matter how much his skin crawled. He waited long moments, then reached out and touched the walls, locating them in the exact same space they had been. The flash of them in the light of the Lumos charm was still clear in his mind. He could use the memory to reassure himself that no, they hadn’t moved.
And now he had to face the memories of Bellatrix, who had hurt him in ways he still flinched from thinking about.
For a moment, a maelstrom of fear tried to pull him back into itself, as had happened in the box with Harry. But although he didn’t have warm arms around him this time, or a warm voice murmuring into his ear, he had the knowledge that such things existed and waited for him just on the other side of this darkness. He took several deep breaths, pulling air in when he would have hyperventilated, demanding that he think of comfort when he would have thought of pain, and tightening his grip around his knees when he would have started lashing out, shaking and crying.
He could ride this. He would emerge victorious.
Sorrow had tried to break him during the last ten years. Had he let it? No. He might not have done very much until Harry’s sudden arrival woke him from his stupor, but he had put up with the state of things. He had endured an apathy that was worse than this fear, because it dragged on and on with no sign that it would ever end.
Had he let Marian’s betrayal get to him? No. He had blamed himself for trusting her in the first place, but he couldn’t have predicted that, and he was not to blame for her actions. He had done as he had to, and-
Draco jerked his head up, blinking. His chest hurt with the deep breaths he was forcing himself to take. His thoughts had suddenly oriented on the night that Esther Goldstein had died, the night Marian had tried to convince Harry that he was guilty because he had been missing from his room for an hour.
And he had been missing for an hour. But Marian had never known why, and Draco hadn’t told Harry, either, because it was a family secret.
One he could use now.
Hope joined the rage, and lit a flame that reduced the darkness to shadows. Draco knew the worst moments of panic had passed, and he wouldn’t drop back into them again.
Of course, it would be best if he could convince his captors that he was broken, so that they would be less wary when they opened the door.
Draco closed his eyes and set himself to creating a convincing simulation of despair. He had to pause several times along the way, though, to keep his lips from wrinkling into a smile.
*
Harry had curled around his stomach. It didn’t help, of course, but it was an instinctive reaction, and he couldn’t convince himself to uncurl.
The spell Andromeda had cast made him feel as though he were being punched in the solar plexus multiple times. Each few punches, the strength of the magic increased, and so did Harry’s lightheadedness and desire to vomit-and his pain. As the spell spread outwards through his body, his muscles tingled and went numb, and now he wasn’t sure he could have stood up to flee even if Andromeda had opened the door on the far side of the room and invited him through.
He tipped his head to the side and let a small stream of bile flow out of his mouth. Then the spell attacked him again, and he moaned and rolled over. He didn’t think he’d got his hair in the bile, but other than that, he had no idea on which patch of the floor he lay, or where Andromeda was.
“Be grateful I’m doing this to you,” Andromeda whispered as she paced around him. “You’ve frustrated me, and I need to take this out somehow. I could have tortured my nephew, or your children. Wouldn’t you rather be suffering, instead of them? Your hero complex says so.”
Harry was almost grateful for the magic, then. It prevented him from saying all the stupid things that he surely would have said otherwise.
She lifted the spell at last, and let him uncurl and lie there, panting. Harry stared in silence at the ceiling of the entrance hall for minutes and minutes before he even tried to get his feet under him.
When he did, he came up to a shaky kneel, and whispered, “I would ask that you leave my children out of this. They were born since the war. They don’t have a part in any pure-blood or Muggleborn supremacist group. They can’t have done anything to cause you grief.”
“I would leave them out if not for their connection to you.” Andromeda sounded weary, as though she had explained this twenty times already. Harry glanced up to see her leaning against the far wall, her wand dangling loose in her hand. “I have told you that. I intend for them to survive the war, and my sister can raise them-or however many she wants. I may be willing to take in one or two. I think she might want your little girl but not your boys, for example.”
Harry shut his eyes. “Give them to their mother.”
“Ginny?” Andromeda sounded amused. “I thought you had left her. You would trust her with your children?”
“She’s still their mother.” Harry wiped his mouth slowly clean, tried to stagger to his feet, and ended up falling down. He shivered, and let the racking spasms travel to the ends of his legs before he tried to speak again. “She still loves them. I would rather see them with someone who loves them than someone who might or might not want to raise them. I would rather see them with anyone than with you.”
Andromeda didn’t take offense. “I can understand that,” she said. “But I plan to be different after the war, I assure you. I will be much calmer, and feel that my daughter truly rests in peace now. I can at last fulfill the role of mother and grandmother that everyone told me I should be so delighted to play, regardless of what children I was playing it to.”
Harry sighed and closed his eyes. He thought she was mad, or as good as. She might still have the capacity to talk and act sane, but that only made her dangerous, not free from insanity.
He jerked his head up abruptly, and then whipped around to face the entrance of the Manor. Andromeda followed his motion, her gaze wary.
Harry pushed himself off the floor using both his feet and the flats of his palms. He still couldn’t run fast, but he was stronger than he had let himself look, and he had got rid of the worst of his weakness. He doubted that he would have a better chance than this, no matter how long he waited.
Once before, ten years ago, he had stolen a wand in this Manor and had it perform well for him. He only hoped that he could do it again.
Andromeda fired a hex at him, but her surprise had slowed her down, and Harry leaped over the spell. The next moment, he crashed into her and bore her backwards, his hands tangling in her sleeves as he struggled for the wand.
*
Draco could hear the laughter when the Salazar’s Snakes opened the door.
“Crumbled just like you said he would, Michael!” someone called.
“You owe me five Galleons, then, Jensen.”
Jensen spat and muttered about his bad luck, whilst at the same time tugging at Draco’s arm, which was clamped around his head as he curled up in a fetal position. “Come on, Malfoy. There’s someone here who wants to see you.”
Draco waited until he’d been turned in the right direction. Then he launched up with a kick that caught Jensen in the groin and crumpled him. His hand opened, his wand went flying-
And Draco snatched it with a Seeker’s instinct. Then he rolled to his feet and Body-Bound Michael. Back he went like a falling tower, bearing down at least two of the other wizards waiting behind him.
Draco leaped over them and ran madly towards the tunnels that twisted past the closet. He didn’t know exactly how far away the familiar part of the Manor was, but once he entered the territory, he would recognize it.
He was going into the Malfoy family crypts, which no one but him knew about, which only he had walked in the ten years since Lucius was imprisoned-
And which were said to contain help for a Malfoy in dire need.
Chapter 38.