The Malfoy Residence, Evening, July 31st

[ex_multitud]

Narcissa stepped into the foyer, setting the bags she'd collected at several Paris shops on the floor for the house elves to deal with. She could hardly remember what she'd purchased; that hadn't been the point, after all. The means, rather than the end, had been her focus after her conversation with Draco. For a time she could pretend it was an

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[still_soul]

Lucius sat in his study and sulked. Not that he would call it that, of course, but anyone else who knew him well would. He was sulking, slumped in his favourite chair and holding his favourite whisky and waiting for his favourite person to come home and yell at him. It had already been his son's turn and his friend's turn, now it was his wife's.

It was enough to make a man paranoid, he thought sullenly. It's their fault. They're the ones driving me mad.

Damn it, after a day like today, a man deserved his chair and his whisky and a night of peace. He deserved cosseting, he deserved indulgences, he deserved to not be yelled at for doing what he thought best.

He didn't expect to get any of it. Especially not after Narcissa saw the burnt sitting room wall.

[ex_multitud]

Narcissa stalked through the halls looking for Lucius, trying the drawing room first, and then the library. She stepped into the sitting room and stopped dead.

She had thought she smelled something off.

Circe, what had happened while she was away? A charred black smear ran up one wall--obviously from a hex gone astray--and she stared at it a moment before lifting her chin and turning on her heel.

She found Lucius in the study. Standing in the doorway, she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

"Have a pleasant afternoon?" she asked, her voice arch.

[still_soul]

Lucius took one look at Narcissa and slouched deeper in his chair. There would apparently be no cosseting from her. Bitch. (He was very, very careful to keep that thought to himself and off his face; he was no fool.)

"Your son," he began with great dignity, "has a big mouth."

[ex_multitud]

She raised an eyebrow, tilting her head and looking at him without moving from her spot in the doorway.

"Had you sworn him to secrecy, then? Had you confided in him that you'd been dumping your potions down the sink but told him 'we musn't breathe a word of this to your mother because she'll worry',?" She made an exasperated sound. "You idiot."

[still_soul]

He snarled into his drink and ignored her questions completely. They were entirely irrelevant.

"I wasn't dumping them down the sink." He swirled his drink then took a sip, his eyes shifting away. "And that's not the point. The point is that he was blabbing family concerns to Severus. Who knows what else he's telling him?"

[ex_multitud]

She narrowed her eyes. "Was Severus here today, then? I suppose that would explain the sitting room wall. Does he still have both his eyebrows?"

Sighing, she unfolded her arms and walked to a chair near Lucius's. "He doesn't know anything. He can't tell what he doesn't know."

[still_soul]

Lucius brightened. He hadn't thought his diversion would work.

Taking a sip of his drink, he composed his expression into sober lines. "Not about us, but he has his own secrets now. His meetings with Potter, his disgust with our Lord, his unconcern for which side wins... Severus claimed that he saw--" don't bring up the potions, you fool! "--things in Draco's mind during the Legilimency lessons. Only to be expected, really. But if Severus has seen things about me, chances are good that he's seen some of Draco's other activities."

As he spoke, Lucius's expression darkened, the reality of his words hitting him. "The question is why Severus hasn't done anything about it. If he's the Dark Lord's right hand man, why is he tacitly allowing Draco's disloyalty and outright betrayal?"

Why, indeed?

[ex_multitud]

She made a low, strangled sound and rested her forehead in her palm. "Lucius..." She thought about Draco's face at lunch earlier, about his desperate desire to be a man, to be respected in his own right. How easy it would be for someone to twist that, to use it against him.

Heat prickled at the back of her eyes but she forced it down ruthlessly. "We've always trusted Severus. You saw him today. You know him. What do you think?"

[still_soul]

Lucius's chest lurched sideways, as if a portkey was pulling on him. He exhaled slowly and tried to order his thoughts, tried to divorce himself from emotion. It was harder than it should have been.

"Severus has changed," Lucius acknowledged, struggling with that sense of loss which had plagued his interactions with Snape of late. "He was always ruthless but he has become... focused. He has plans, and plans within plans." He closed his eyes for a moment. "I don't know what they are. I no longer know what his goals are."

Giving his head a shake, he looked at his dear wife. His wife. "He still cares about me and he cares about Draco. But... we can't trust him. He would betray us if he deemed it necessary, and I no longer know where that line is."

[ex_multitud]

She nodded, slowly, lifting her head and turning to look at him. "We've put our son into his care. I have put my son into his care." She swallowed, aware that her voice was threatening to break. "If we cannot trust him, then we must decide what to do about Draco."

Guilt and anger and bone-deep fear ached inside her, twisting her stomach painfully. "I don't know if we can get him back, Lucius."

[still_soul]

Lucius sighed, meeting her gaze evenly. "We can't. Our influence over him is marginal at this point. Anything we do would be seen as treating him as a child and will send him further from us."

His mouth twisted with the unpleasant taste of his words. "Not only that, but he's infatuated with Severus. He idolizes him. Severus is the only one who understands him, the only one who treats him like an adult, ad nauseam. Anyone else we might be able to warn him against but Severus?" He shook his head. "He might choose Severus over us."

[ex_multitud]

The tears that had threatened before now made her vision swim, but she willed them not to fall. She hated to cry, particularly in front of Lucius. He had never loved weakness.

"Tell me what happened today with Severus. I need to know." Her expression shifted, becoming harder. "I need to know about the potions."

[still_soul]

Damn it! Lucius had thought he was home free. Irritable and worried, he set his jaw and returned her look. "What about them?"

[ex_multitud]

"Lucius!" Her voice was sharp. "This isn't a game. It never was, but especially not now. You don't trust Severus, and I can only assume that's why you stopped taking the bloody potions. You put yourself at risk over that. You put your mind at risk."

She stopped, pressing her lips together, wondering whether she ought to continue. "You put me at risk, and you've spent weeks pushing me away for fear of hurting me, and it was all your goddamned fault!"

She drew in a slow, hitching breath, and found that her hands were clutching the arms of the chair so hard her knuckles were white. "So tell me what happened."

[still_soul]

She had a point. A small point. A small, shrill point. Bitch.

His lips compressed and he considered digging in his heels to make his own, very important point. But that way lay madness, hexes and a cold bed. It was the cold bed that decided him.

"I don't remember all of it," he finally said. "He started hounding me as soon as he arrived about his potions. We fought and then--" He shifted, hating this, hating his illness, hating Azkaban and hating himself. "Then I don't know. The next thing I remember is lying on the couch with my head on his lap. He was," Lucius's mouth twisted, "affectionate, by anyone's standards. I could tell that he was worried."

[ex_multitud]

She stared at him, a chill seeping through her and leaving her numb. The man across from her had proclaimed that he did not trust Severus Snape. He had made love to her only once in the past several weeks, and then only because she had given him no other reasonable choice. He had touched her less, kissed her less, held her less than at any other time in their marriage.

And he had lain with his head in Snape's lap. He had called him affectionate.

"I don't understand." Her lips and tongue felt frozen and stiff. "What were the two of you doing this afternoon? What were you thinking?"