"Why do I get the distinct impression that I've been excommunicated?"

"What?" Narcissa asked airily, dipping her head to take a sip of wine and avoiding my gaze. We had been making cold and polite conversation, and, frustrated, I went for the direct approach.

"Narcissa." There was a chiding (or was it imploring?) tone to that word as I spoke it. "Whatever else has gone on, we have always been honest with each other. I have so much respect for you, couldn't you at least do me the honour of explaining yourself?"

"I'm sorry Tom," she was angry, I could tell. "I don't understand what you're asking me. Honestly, you think that we all read minds and understand what you're going on about with your stupid speeches and your—" She looked up, white but with flushed cheeks and refused to embark on that destruction of my character.

My expression was open, and I felt a distinct pang when I saw how she looked at me with such fury, like she'd rather be anywhere else than in that wine bar with me. "I don't want you to be angry with me. I see that I've done something to make you want to avoid me, want to break engagements, want to stop sending me invitations. Were you anyone else I'd let it go, but you've never lied to me before, and I'd hate to look back and see a blot on our perfect record together. So please, Narcissa, tell me how I've offended you."

"Don't look at me like that." She said, after an awkward pause.

"Like what?"

"Like you're a betrayed lover or something."

"You used to count me as a friend. I'm a bit odd, but I always preferred friends infinitely to lovers."

"Where do you get these tiresome epigrams. Do you store them up?"

I sighed and sat back. We might have been in a staring competition. I grew tired of it and uncrossed my legs, preparing to leave.

"Forget it 'Cissa. I'm truly sorry, and it was a pleasure knowing you. Epigrams aside, if it means anything, I'm going to miss your company."

'Fuck! Bell, book and candle: well done, Tom,' I thought as I stalked out in high heels which looked elegant but always made me feel like a child playing dress-up. I was shaking with rage and mortification and this lasted until I got home, where I looked at the sofa and the piles of neglected books in waiting for my perusal, and for some reason burst into floods of hysterical tears. I went to my bedroom and felt despair, the worst of all sins, as I thought with a fresh understanding about how much unhappiness a life could hold.

"You're very dull this afternoon," said Lucius watching me from a chair as I stood on a stool, a couturière beneath me, furiously pinning the hem of my new dress robe.

"I'm sorry." For a moment I thought I might cry and my throat burned with the effort of suppressing it. He was looking at me with curiosity and eventually I managed: "I'll be more entertaining the next time we meet, I promise. It's a minor emotional crisis that I'm sure you're not interested in in the least." He frowned at me, and the couturière tutted at her handiwork and went to fetch more pins. "So . . . so let's not discuss it. Let's keep to safe subjects like how ridiculous Cornelius Fudge is, and how Hogwarts is going to the dogs."

"Sometimes, Tom, I think you believe I'm frivolous and ignorant." Lucius gave an imperious toss of his head and directed a level, demanding gaze at me.

"Lucius," I gave him a pleading look, my hands clenching in the rich fabric. "Don't ask me to confide in you. If you have any respect for me, don't. I know you love to manipulate people, and that you're devastatingly good at it, but really, I'm not in the mood to allow you to know my secrets and then have you use them against me at another time."

Lucius sighed comically, though I could tell he was a little frustrated. "You wound me."

I smiled. "I know you: you can't help yourself, Lucius." I smoothed the fabric down again and twirled a little, watching the train of the robe swirl around the legs of my reflection in the many mirrors. "And you know, it's really a very dangerous business being a mistress. If she doesn't watch herself, the mistress might, after a while, get used to her lover. She might start confiding in him and daring to nag him, imagining she has some rights to him. She becomes a wife, no less despised than one in the end, and unfortunately, in the lamentable and precarious position of having nothing legally binding in her possession."

Lucius laughed richly, and with a kind of pleasant surprise. "Tom, never let it be said that you are an ingénue."

"Cynicism is a sort of innocence." I mused, as the dressmaker returned and got down on her knees. I was glad we were back on more general ground. One more pin, apparently did the trick.

"Voila!" enthused the punctilious couturière.

"Alright, very good. It'll be finished by next week, yes?" Lucius spoke aside to her, and I turned to look at my full-length reflection straight-on. My hair was, like the dress, piled up precariously in pins. I ought to have looked much older, or more sophisticated, but to my own eyes I was unchanged. I was like one of those little cut out and keep cardboard dolls I used to love as a child; the ones that had an array of little two-dimensional outfits which stayed on when the tabs were folded around their static bodies. Tom in shabby robes left over from Hogwarts that she wears to lectures; Tom in her hotel uniform; Tom in haute couture: expression just as blank and unaware whatever overlay her. Not like Lucius; his attire was part of his persona: all urbane, all understated, all exquisite.

The couturière went back to the shop front to leave me to change. I stepped down from the footstool and Lucius came over, stroking my bare shoulders.

"What do you think of it?"

"It's beautiful. A lovely gesture, Lucius. I just don't know where on earth I'll wear it. Maybe around the house . . ."

"Funny you should say that. I do have an event in mind . . ."

"Oh, do you indeed?" I smirked. I knew he would have; he knew I was trying to draw him out and he was refusing to co-operate.

"Top secret. You might have to go undercover to find out."

"Oh Lucius, such puns are below you. Besides, you know you only have to ask . . ."

Lucius' hands moved down to my waist and he kissed me, pulling me up and against him. A stray pin at the waistline of the dress dug into the soft flesh of my hip and I yelped in pain.

"I want to fuck you right here," he muttered, driving his loins against me as if he wanted to back me into a corner.

"Won't the seamstress mind?"

"I pay her enough that she ought not to."

I raised an eyebrow and led him to the changing area and pulled the curtain across. I'm not wild about sex in public (or semi-public) places, but Lucius seems to have engaged me in a tacit competition to see who can be the most daring. Consequently I pretend to be blasé when he makes these outrageous suggestions. I raised my skirt and he hoisted me up, slamming my back against the mirror, which was soundly affixed to the wall with screws. I hooked a foot beneath his robe and yanked it up awkwardly with one hand as he kissed me desperately. My legs wrapped around his naked waist and my thighs struggled to cleave securely to him, as he straight away thrust into me. I made a whimpering sound and tightened my grip around his shoulders, aware of how precarious our position was in more ways than one. Lucius grunted, carried away by his lust, and I don't believe we were at it for more than a minute and a half. "Slut," he hissed, looking at me with a voyeur's objectivism as he neared climax.

"Yes," I agreed half-heartedly, and he came, biting down on my exposed shoulder.

"Hello my beauty," I said, chucking the barn owl under the chin. He tried his best to look affronted. "If you're here it means Narcissa is speaking to me again," I explained. "You're like the dove with the olive branch." I untied the missive from his leg and shook him out some treats, then retired to my sofa with my legs tucked under me.

Malfoy Estate

3rd May

Late, very late

I almost cried reading the last line above, because it was a joke of ours. 'What time is it, Narcissa?' I would ask when we were out having 'lunch'. 'Late, very late,' she would always reply, and we'd laugh, order more wine and consider staying on for dinner.

Tom,

I hardly know what to write. I hardly know if I should write at all. It's the middle of the night, I don't know where Lucius is. I hope he's with you because if not I can't bear to think about it. I just woke up from the most terrible dream about You Know Who. Lucius frightens me, he sends strange letters to Draco and won't tell me what's in them.

Tom, I'm so very sorry about how I behaved the other day. I was angry with you, because Lucius said—here a section was heavily scored out so I couldn't read it, even when I held it up to the light—No, I can't begin to write it. He manipulates me, I know he does. He poisons me against you, but I can't help loving him—I know you think I'm weak for that. When he paints such vivid pictures in my mind about you two together, I think that I must hate you. I even thought wicked things, I considered hurting you. He's mine you see, my Lucius. He's married to me! Why can't you just go away and leave my family alone? You're not one of us, you're just some poor (this bit was scored out, but she had not gone to so much trouble, and it was legible).

If you were anyone else Tom, I wouldn't tell you all this, but I know you'll forgive me. You can't hold anything against anyone, can you? Not even Lucius, and you understand his faults better than I do. Sometimes I wonder what we did to deserve you. I envy you— I hope you know that—because you're so good and so strong.

I don't know why I'm writing this. I can't see you again, Tom—I fear what I might do to you if you continue to be my friend. Perhaps I'm writing out of selfishness, because it makes me feel life is just a little more bearable if I know that you're in your little flat, and thinking of me. Think of me often. I can't write any more, I'm crying like an idiot.

Yours sincerely,

Cissa

P.S. I don't know when this will reach you, some time in the morning, no doubt. I hope it doesn't look mad. I'm frightened.

"Oh Cissa." I murmured, my hand clasped over my mouth. I rifled through the sideboard and found a self-inking quill and an old shopping list I could write on the reverse of.

Untidy Flat

Golders Green

London

4th May (early)

My very dear Narcissa,

I'm worried about you. Please, if you're frightened come and stay with me—Lucius doesn't know where I live, as he never bothered to ask. I don't believe for a moment that you would hurt me and you know me too well to think I could be angry with you.

I know that you think you can't escape, but it's not too late. He doesn't love you and I am more than convinced he doesn't love me. You're right about You Know Who. Lucius is worried and there's only one man in the world he's afraid of. Get out while you still can.

I will think of you hourly, but you'll find that my thoughts alone are poor comfort!

Love,

Tom

The owl had gone when I looked up to the window again, and so I rushed down to the post office in my slippers. When I returned from university in the evening, my housemate Sam wandered in and threw the letter, still tied in the distinctively knotted ribbon I had bound it with, on to my bed.

"Bloody big owl came by earlier. Who owns that, your fancy-man?"

"His wife." I answered, just for the shock value. I wrote another letter, and another. They were all returned unopened and without reply.

"I like that dress robe you're barely wearing," said Lucius, with (I fancied) less of a smirk than such a comment would generally warrant. He was sitting on the edge of the bed; I was taking out my earrings and looking out the hotel window.

"Thank-you. You bought it for me, remember?"

"No," he looked up, as if this genuinely annoyed him.

"You said you liked me in green."

"I can't decide," he looked at me critically, "if I want to buy you an emerald necklace, or whether I rather prefer my view of your pretty throat to be unobscured."

"Don't say 'pretty throat', Lucius—it's macabre."

"In what way?"

"It seems to belong in the mouth of a kiddie murderer. 'I'm going to wring your pretty throat!'"

Lucius laughed. I turned away and leaned down to unfasten my shoes. "Tom, how long have we known each other?"

"Nine, ten months. Does it seem longer?"

"In a way. I was just thinking that I ought to know you better than I do. You seem secretive."

"I'm not secretive. If you ask me questions I will answer them."

"You don't talk about yourself, about your family. I don't even know your surname."

"I suppose you mean, are they pureblood? Yes, they are. My surname is horrible and full of consonants, because my grandparents on my father's side came from Eastern Europe. They were disinherited aristocrats, a count and countess, believe it or not – though apparently titles were two a knut there. The only black sheep of the family is my mud-blood aunt—she is linked through marriage alone and childless—though she did poison my mind from a young age by exposing me to muggle poetry, art, and Biblical mythology. Are you satisfied as regards my pedigree?"

Lucius' reflection smiled at me. "Yes. I was considering marrying you off to my son, you know. He's rather insipid and needs the guidance of some brilliant woman."

"Draco? That pale, stern little boy in the photographs." I was looking at Lucius in the dressing table mirror as I sat and took down my hair.

"He's fifteen now."

"Well, there's no time to lose then. Quick, buy me a white robe!"

Lucius laughed. "This is what I'm talking about—you surprise me endlessly. You never react the way I expect you to."

"That's what Narcissa always says—" I said, without thinking. We never spoke of her together.

"Oh, you still keep in contact with her do you?" he asked, in a malicious, offhand sort of way.

"Not any more." I swivelled on the dressing table stool and shook my head at him. I bent down again and began to roll off my stockings.

"Really?"

"I don't lie, Lucius. I don't have any reason to. Narcissa and I had a disagreement, and we don't speak to each other anymore."

"Good. It really wasn't appropriate for you two to be friends."

Now wearing only my dress robe, I went and sat down next to him.

"Did you ever consider it might not be appropriate for you, a married man, to fuck a twenty year old student? You're really in no position to make moral judgements."

For a moment I thought he might strike me, or curse me, so before he could react I leaned over and kissed him. I ran my fingers through the hair at his temple and tugged it lightly.

This was the time for some expedient erotic flattery:

"I'm glad though, that you do choose to fuck me," I whispered, stroking his thigh. "It's a privilege I'm very fond of."

Lucius looked strange for a moment, not confident and lustful, as I was used to, but weary and uncertain. He looked down at his lap where my hand still rested. He sighed and this seemed to express resolution: he took from within an inside pocket a small silver phial and unstoppered it.

"An aphrodisiac draught?" I asked, recognising the mingled, unpleasant scent of civet and essence of rose. Lucius looked at me evenly and nodded. "Do you take it often?"

"It did not used to be the case," he apparently thought better of it, for he resealed the bottle and placed it back within his robes, "but nowadays I do so more and more. Perhaps it seems more imperative these days to make very encounter count."

"Because He Who We Do Not Name is rising again."

"What makes you say so?"

"Your Dark Mark is much more clear."

Lucius looked at me, apparently unable to chose between shock and anger. We had never spoken of his mark or what it signified. I believe now that his wearing of the dressing gown our first day together, and the cover of darkness he used the for the first few consequent assignations, were an effort to conceal it. Perhaps after that he became more trusting, or more careless, or he thought that because it was then so faint I would not notice it, or that I was too young and too ignorant to know what it signified.

"Never mention that again!" His eyes flashed, like I imagine the terrible Kubla Khan's do.

"Alright." I agreed, simply. I took his hand and kissed the backs of his fingers. Apparently he didn't expect that answer either.

Without the influence of the aphrodisiac, sex with Lucius was different; it had a slightly surreal quality and lasted for an undetermined expanse of time. There in the dark, where the barest silvery outlines alone constituted the real world of objects, it could have been hours, years that we laboured. Close to me, I saw Lucius' eyes hover and though he always watched me as we coupled, this seemed more personal, where before it always seemed that he watched me with a certain objectivism, as if the looking worked only one way, like I was something being replayed through omnoculars, something that couldn't look back. The pace was varied: there were periods of languid, slow writhing, as we lay draped, sideways on in a tangle of flesh and bedclothes; then a frantic crescendo of thrusting where I heard and felt his panting breath against the side of my face as he strove to reach an orgasm which tantalised but eluded him, and so he sank back into a resigned and moody rhythm, shivering as sweat slid down his back.

"Come on," I pushed him and he obligingly rolled onto his back. The curtains rippled and for a moment until they settled more light fell upon him. He passed his forearm over his brow, which beaded with perspiration. He smelled delicious to me: fresh sweat and sex, his lips reddened and parted, wisps of long hair teased in whorls upon the pillow. As I straddled him I felt like some feline animal, or Cro-Magnon woman: demanding and full of shameless curiosity. But then I saw his eyes re-focus so that he was no longer looking at me: he was looking at something I signified, some universal slut or she-devil. So, as I fucked him I spouted some fragmented obscenities in keeping with the decorum of such a character, and he closed his eyes, finally able to come.

He was deep in thought as he lay back afterwards, but his tiredness was overwhelming him. I could see he was at pains to keep re-opening his eyes.

"Go to sleep for a bit if you want," I said. "I'll wake you in an hour."

He shot me a slightly distrustful glance, but his desires overcoming his apprehension, he pushed himself further down the bed, wrapped the covers around his body, and laid back his head with a grateful sigh of comfort. I let him sleep for as long as I dared to, fascinated by it, for I realised I'd never before seen him do it and I liked him so unguarded. I looked at his inner arm as it lay unfolded on top of the covers and felt a prickling thrill at the idea that the Dark Lord had touched him there, had made that mark with a curse from his very own wand. He Who We Do Not Name is legend, and to a witch of my age, thinking of him as a real person who walked the earth is bizarre. Then I turned my attention to his features in repose; I leaned down with my face close to Lucius' and swept a path across his temple, up over his forehead and down his nose with the side of my thumb.

"Lucius," I murmured. I could hear he was waking because he inhaled deeply, shifted and his eyelids fluttered. He blinked a few times, disorientated.

"Are you alright?" I was leaning on one elbow, close and a little bit above him.

"Mmm," he yawned behind his hand. "I have to get up."

He dressed quickly, I at a more leisurely pace. When he was fully arrayed he turned and regarded me seriously as I laced up a boot. "I can't see you anymore," he said. For a moment I thought he meant he'd gone blind, but the real meaning hit me in a stinging backlash of understanding.

"Why not?" I was too shocked to say anything else.

"It's not safe—"

"For whom? You, or me?"

"Both of us. It's going to get ugly again in our world, and a clandestine connection like ours renders us vulnerable, it would be suicide for one or other of us. Maybe in a year's time . . . No!" his face twisted into a bitter sneer. "Tom, I know you don't appreciate false promises, so I won't make any."

"He's pulled you back, hasn't he, even though you don't want to be part of all that again? A twitch upon the thread . . ."

"Yes," he smiled, bizarrely, "the other Tom."

"What?"

"Don't say any more about it."

We walked out together in silence, it felt impossible to say anything. What was appropriate? 'I love you, and goodnight.' No, he would have despised me. My thoughts were like a boiling sea, chaotically heaving and swirling, scalding me by turns. We paused where we knew we would diverge and I looked up at him, his unreadable expression. For once I found his sang froid irritating rather than impressive. He stood close to me and I realised, belatedly, he was rather tall.

"Goodbye, Thomasina."

I didn't say anything, because I knew the tightness in my voice would betray me. He pulled me close and sighed heavily. I encountered the brocade of his robe beneath his outer cloak, felt his crushing embrace, and took comfort in a fiction by comparing myself to the sweetheart of a soldier duty-bound to depart, uncertain to return. If I had a role I would understand the decorum required . . . But what woman has ever known that the side the beloved soldier fought for was the wrong one, and how was she to deal with the knowledge that he fought not out of duty, but cowardice?

He let me go and I pressed for a final, fleeting kiss before he walked away. I stood numb with pain and indecision for a moment until I was startled by the creaking of the hotel door behind me. A porter emerged, his braid-trimmed hat askew in a way I would have found delightfully amusing at any other time, but just then had only the power to make me consider with scorn how blighted and imperfect human existence really is.

"Your companion," he chose his word with egregious tact, "dropped this in the foyer." He held out a glove, and for a moment I stared at it, alarmed. Not accepting it seemed churlish, and yet I was damned if I was going to chase after Lucius and give it back.

"Thank-you," I said eventually, aware he was looking at me with curiosity, and took it.

"What are you doing?" Sam demanded, watching me as I knelt upon my bedroom floor, tearing apart a silken dress robe with my bare hands and fed it to the voracious fire I had charmed in the grate. "Why are you crying?"

"I didn't say you could come in—leave me alone!"

"Why are you so horrible to me? I was just showing concern."

"Fuck off!" I roared through a throat raw from sobbing.

"Jee-sus." Sam bumbled off and went to sulk, in his clueless, boyish way.

In the end I burned or otherwise destroyed everything Lucius and Narcissa had given me, partly because it pained me to see the clothes, the letters, the delicate bottles of perfume, the flowers in makeshift vases, filling my room with their treacherous scent and reminding me of that garden . . . but mostly I did it because I no longer wanted to owe them anything, because I wanted to prove that the money and glamour had meant nothing to me. 'I wasn't a prostitute after all, Lucius,' I was trying to say, all the while acutely aware of the grim pointlessness of my gesture. I kept only that damned glove, aware with irony that some just like it (predecessors undoubtedly, for Lucius bought new gloves fortnightly, unable to bear ones which were in any way grubby or stretched) had been responsible for all of this, causing pain and discord in my life. It had lost all literal meaning in my mind, it was only a symbol, a Desdemona's handkerchief. Besides, it had never been given to me: it was not mine to burn.

"You haven't heard?" Sam said, the eager little mudblood who knew nothing of the Dark Lord except through history books. "Death Eaters in the ministry! It's insane! They say that Lord Vold—He Who Shall Not Be Named has risen again. Did you know anybody who died in the war first time round?"

"No, my family were all bleeding heart liberals who sat back and did nothing." I muttered, snatching the previous day's Daily Prophet from him. That'll teach me to live in the library and take no notice of the outside world. For ten minutes, I sat numb, reading and re-reading the front pages, snapping at Sam to fuck off, before he viciously lobbed at my head the parchment that he had just untied from the leg of an owl on the windowsill, this being, apparently what he had been trying to communicate.

Malfoy Estate

Past Midnight

Dear Tom,

I don't know if you've heard: the ministry have arrested him. It's all the fault of that nosy little halfblood wretch, Potter. I'm surrounded by idiot family members here and I can't tell them anything. Please come.

"Drink it, 'Cissa."

"No, I don't want to. What if—"

"Nothing's going to happen and you need to rest. You're wearing a trench in the floorboards. I promise I'll wake you if there's news."

"Oh alright." Narcissa tossed back the draught in the cup with an arrogant gesture that made me think of her, in a flash of inspiration, as Queen Gertrude. She then lay down upon the bed and almost immediately began to blink. I sat down by her side and watched her as the flashes of blue eyes grew more infrequent, and the covering lids gained mastery.

"Narcissa," murmured, confident she was almost asleep. "I hope you realise this is all your doing. I wanted to leave—I was going to let you all be, but you pulled me back again."

I stroked the taut expanse of her forehead and she sighed softly in her drugged sleep.

Closing her bedroom door with a strained care, I tried to walk past the adjacent bedroom, which I knew to be Lucius', but could not. I opened the door and felt grief buffet me, just as it does when entering the room of someone who has recently died. The fact that he was absent, paradoxically, seemed to underline his presence there. It was solely a fancy of mine, for all evidence that anyone lived in there was hidden behind wardrobe panelling, all evidence that the bed was often slept in erased by the straightening fingers of the house elves.

The bed was of course the master bed, its majestic headboard carved with the family crest: site of the conception, nightly repose, and deaths of generations of Malfoys. That was a rather macabre thought, and I shivered, seeing a processional dumb show of stern-faced imaginary ancestors of Lucius. Losing my nerve, I carefully took the glove from my pocket and laid it on the near-side pillow, where it showed yellowish next to the startlingly white linen; then I fled, and could breathe again only with the door closed safely behind me. I continued down the corridor and descended the stairs to find somewhere to sit down and collect my thoughts.

I first laid eyes upon Draco as if he was a painting. He sat perfectly still, perched uncomfortably on the edge of a sofa, and as I was walking past that room I glimpsed him in a stripe where the door was ajar. I knocked, pointlessly, for he had looked up at my approaching footsteps.

"You must be Draco," I said. He was surrounded by a score of framed photographs of himself at various ages, for this was his mother's sitting room, and they stared with a kind of eerie reproach at him.

"Who are you?" he asked, with his father's angry disdain.

"I'm Thomasina. I'm a friend of your parents."

He looked dubiously at me. "Aren't you a bit young to be their 'friend'."

"I haven't known them so very long," I explained, with patient evasiveness. "Your mother asked me to come and stay with her for a while. She's having a lie down in her room, so why don't we go downstairs and have tea?"

"What, to the kitchen?" He wrinkled his nose, like Narcissa does when she witnesses someone behaving in a gauche manner.

"It's nice and warm down there." Apparently I had enough clout to command his compliance in this small matter, and our arrival below stairs sent house elves cringing and scattering, falling over themselves to bring us cakes and toasted bread products. I thanked them and sent them all out, earning Draco's contempt for my terse courtesy to them. I chatted to him about Hogwarts, shared secrets I had discovered while there about various teachers, and in doing so managed to tease from him the odd laugh.

I spent months trying to decipher Narcissa and Lucius, but Draco I understood in a matter of minutes. He concealed nothing: what he did not say was apparent in his very open facial expressions. He hated this Potter, I gathered, and was wildly jealous of him; his mother's doting love he was all too assured of, so he spoke of her in the offhand, ungrateful manner typical of teenagers; and he was in awe of his father. Draco spoke of Lucius reverentially, like pagans would speak of a remote sky god, from whom they longed for rather than expected kindness, and lived in constant fear of sudden retribution for unknown infractions.

"You know Draco," I poured out second helpings of tea, "your father jokes that he's going to marry you off to me."

Draco didn't seem to know what to say to this, he flushed.

"You must be very angry with him at the moment," I ventured, "but that's alright, I understand. I've known for a while that he was a Death Eater, was it a shock to you?"

"None of your business." He seemed to think this was a trap, like I might be a representative of the Ministry of Magic secretly pumping him for information.

"You're right, it isn't. I'm sorry Draco, I just prattle on . . . it's insensitive of me. I just, well I suppose I'm shocked that things have gone so far before anyone in the magical world would admit to themselves that He has risen again. Bloody Daily Prophet."

Draco gave a half-smile, more of a curl of the lip and pushed some crumbs on his plate around.

"I know this sounds lame, Draco, but if you want to talk about anything ever . . . Oh, that is maudlin! Well, it's not always easy to talk to one's family about things, I know and I can assure you, I'm not a ministry spy or a journalist. Send your big barn owl to find me if you want to write—he knows where I live."

"What, Clamydes? Is he still alive?"

"So it would appear."

"Are you one too?" Draco asked, after a pause.

"What?" I thought for a moment he was asking me if I were an owl.

"A Death Eater?"

I laughed. "What makes you say that?"

"Oh, all my parents' friends are. I thought you might be a new recruit."

I plucked the chocolate button off the top of a bun thoughtfully. "No, I'm not a Death Eater, nor willing to be recruited as one."

"Oh."

"I wonder sometimes, what Lucius thinks of all this. I can imagine that back in the day, when he was young and rash, he did want power—the kind of glorious power that the Dark Lord was offering for the taking. But I don't think that he brought about the Dark Lord's resurrection, in fact I'm sure he didn't. From what he's said to me, I think he was alarmed and shocked by it too. He got off lucky in the last round of persecutions, and I don't think he wanted to risk all this again—least of all you, his family."

"You don't really know him." Draco said, his face growing whiter because I had dared to voice such speculation. Malfoys stick together, I've realised, no matter how lacking, how acrimonious, their relationships to one another are. Draco, Lucius and Narcissa are a love triangle I could never hope to break.

"No, I don't." I agreed, and my simple assent seemed to surprise Draco.

I lay awake and uneasy in a guest bed that night. The house was positively ingrained with dark magic, creaked uneasily with it. I had left my door ajar so that I could hear Narcissa if she happened to awake, and even without a candle lit the full moon outside worked slid between the gaps of all the curtains in the house and filled it with a sombre, grey light. By this, I saw Draco as he stood in my doorway.

I sat up and clasped the bedclothes to my chest.

"Did father really say that you and I could marry?" Draco asked, sounding very childlike, and venturing one step into the room. He wore pyjama bottoms but no top, and I was intrigued by how slight and slender he was compared to Lucius.

"I think he was joking. I'm not prestigious enough to be a catch for you."

"He wouldn't object though, if I said I liked you."

"I honestly don't know."

"What do you think?"

"I really wouldn't worry about it for another five years or so, Draco."

"No I mean, do you like me?" he lingered now, at the foot of my bed, an arm snaked around the bedpost.

"I hardly know you."

"Do you think I'm good-looking?"

"Is this something you're concerned about a lot, Draco?"

"Sometimes." He sniffed, imperiously.

"You're very handsome." This was true: thought at times I couldn't help seeing the double image of his parents overlaid in him, Draco had his own merits in the favourable combination of features. He smiled at this, calculatingly.

Oh Tom! You wouldn't . . . would you? I tried to listen to my conscience, wherever and whatever that might be, realising that both refusal and acceptance might come at a price.

A few days later I sat exhausted on my sofa, thinking of Narcissa's drawn face as she hugged me.

"Send for me as soon as you like," I said, earnestly, in persona of concerned family friend. "If you want me to go to the Ministry with you, or to the trial . . ."

"If it comes to trial," Narcissa said darkly. I nodded.

"If You Know Who doesn't recruit the Dementors, you mean."

Narcissa stroked a lock of my hair back from my face. "Oh, how did you and I get caught up in all this madness?"

"It's Draco I worry for," I said. "How he might figure in all this." I instantly regretted saying it, for I saw how it upset Narcissa. "Try not to worry," I added, "it really doesn't help."

"Easier said than done. Damn him!" she cursed, though I know she didn't mean it.

"I'm at a moment's notice." I kissed her and lifted my suitcase. On my way out I saw Draco loitering in the hall, and he gave me a look of rather unsubtle derision. I smiled blandly at him and he did not know quite how to react. He has in some ways a very confident exterior, but I suspect it is an act he has as yet failed to master, for he has a habit of allowing his eyes and complexion to betray his anger or frustration. As an inscrutable aristocrat he is a neophyte compared to Lucius, and I consequently felt much safer playing with him, as one might play with a lion cub. In him the tactics of the adults he mimics are imperfect and thus ridiculous. His claws have no power to scratch, his roar is but a mewl. The stupid boy is an amateur at blackmail and doesn't realise that I don't care what lies he tells his father about me, and that I know he won't dare to mention me to his mother. I followed the infuriating smile up with an airy wave, allowing myself a brief, uncharitable thought of him being dragged to the next Death Eater sabbat.

I came back to myself after this reminiscence, taking a drink of tea and squinting at the letter I was writing to my parents and thinking about all the work that I'd missed and how I needed a new job. Workaday self, sulking slightly from her long banishment, was reluctant to come to my aid.

Sam entered the room.

"Hello," he said, warily.

"Hello."

"Where've you been? I was a bit worried."

"At a friend's. I'll leave you a note next time if you like."

"Ok. House seems empty without you."

He looked at me with that tell-tale longing, the look I saw once before when, unguardedly drunk, he gazed across the floor of a party at me; the look I hide from Lucius and can never expect Narcissa to return. His innocent, unexpectant love cut me very deeply all of a sudden. 'Oh Sam,' I wanted to say, 'you have no idea.' Once there would have been a chance for you and I, but it's gone now. I'm someone else entirely, but you just haven't realised it yet.

- Finis