Chapter I: Tea, Secret Places, and Locked Doors

In English society while there is tea there is hope.

– Arthur Wing Pinero, Sweet Lavender (1888), Act II –

Malfoy Manor, Late June, 1999

Draco sat on the couch – the precious French silk, XVIII century maybe, just the tiniest bit marked by the signs of time, the colours a shade paler than they should be – like a broken doll or a shattered man. He was both, and felt as such. Yet, he was the perfect host: tea and biscuits had been brought, formalities exchanged; but while he was half-listening to Longbottom's blathering, his eyes were lost and his cup was forgotten on the low table, already cold.

Outside, the wind blew sweet and warm – as it was June, a sunny day, the smell of summer clinging in the air, lazy and familiar, the smell that once meant home, and sleep, and peace, and the slowing pace of days before the beginning of a new term.

Another year had passed. There would not be another term.

Hogwarts and the anomalous 8th year had provided distractions, sometimes; but every corner, there, was haunted by too many ghosts, too many memories – every minute a reminder of things that weren't anymore.

He had taken his NEWTS, as many as he could, more than it would have been considered sensible, more than the classes he had attended, more than Granger, even. More than Dumbledore. But not even all the studying, all the books, all the potions, had filled the endless silence of the hours or given a shadow of meaning to the emptiness of time. Nothing had filled the hollow void crushing his chest. Not even the straight line of O – two feet long, never attempted in the century, never obtained in the last four, his mother had said – that had raised the astonished murmuring of Academia and would open him any door, create doors even, had made him feel proud, feel anything. Every last spark of ambition – the consuming ambition that burned him on the inside, once – was now distant and faded like someone else's memory in a broken Pensive, cinder, and dust.

A year had passed, indeed; now the hours had the stony weight of emptiness, and peace carried the silence of the dead buried behind, and forward just the nothingness of ashes, shadows of things forever lost.

Shadows kept invading his dreams, shadows and ghosts and voices of the past; every night, he kept dreaming of him, his voice, his living hands... The memory of his presence was a bliss and a curse; waking up was, everyday, an agony.

The wind, outside, kept blowing, sweet and warm; but sweetness was, for Draco, the sickening smell of blood and burned flesh, a smell so intense that the incense cannot hide it, that remains in your lungs – and you can't breathe, and you just can't forget. He was so cold that warmth was unconceivable.

The wind kept blowing, sweet and warm, and full of whispers of things left unsaid and unconfessed secrets. The Order of Merlin, appointed in his chest, was pointless and meant nothing – just nothing meant anything anymore. There's only so much pain a soul can suffer.

"... and I'm so sorry that..."

"Thank you for accompanying me back, Longbottom." Draco said, brusquely, because he had to and it seemed right, a thing to say – the only one he could force himself to.

"Malfoy, I..." he hesitated, clumsy with words like he had once been with everything, not so long ago, and yet it seemed like eternity, " I am worried for you."

"There's no reason to be." And there wasn't a reason, because Draco felt hard and scarred like stone – a soulless, a heartless stone that grows tinier and tinier, until all that's left is sand. He felt no pain, not anymore. Only the shiny medal on his robe – first class, no less – hurt like an open wound that cannot heal.

"Draco... "

"Look, Longbottom, I know you're here for a reason: we always meet for a damn good reason. As for your concern for my sanity, which by the way has no reason to be, I won't bore you by saying that I appreciate it, because that would be a blatant lie and I'm not in the mood for any more tactful nonsense. Yet, it is not a good enough reason, isn't it? So, please let's skip the formalities: tell me what you have to say and let me be. I'm tired."

Longbottom sat speechless for a while – not unusual, per se. But he didn't look lost or clumsy, or anything like the old Longbottom did, the one that Draco remembered from before, before everything went mad and got broken. Actually, he was serious and tense: not nervous, just... tense, waiting, like a tamer about to face the beast; ready to strike, like a bowstring with a nocked arrow. The look on his face – still roundish, a childish face – was solemn even for a grown man, and yet he was so young... too young, like Draco himself. They both had seen too much and done too much; they had had their plate full and each his part – some, they shared, too. And now he had a medal to remind him, as if the hours and days, the endless months of passed whispers, rebellious secrets, and shared fear – always that damned fear that felt like agony – were not enough. If asked – but nowadays the question would be churlish – Draco could not explain the nature and the object of that fear, or what it was about. Fear for his life? Maybe, at first, before understanding had come and hope had gone. And what is left to fear for when you can't force yourself to reasonably hold onto faintest glimpse of hope? Not for you, not for your parents, not for anything you loved. He knew, he had known for a long time, that a different ending was not to contemplate; but he was meant to be lying downstairs, he wished he were, instead of...

To hell the war, to hell the winners and the future and every ever after. And yet, here he was. It was so wrong, it felt so wrong. Maybe, he had feared this too: this outcome he could not accept and could not explain, that he hadn't foreseen; and the naked, ruthless factuality of it that he could not force himself to face.

That fear was something else entirely, something primeval, and deep, tangled in your stomach, in your guts. It doesn't matter that you don't expect to make it out of it all alive, it doesn't matter that you don't even care: it drives you, that fear; it moves the animal, the trembling beast, that is in you – that, maybe, is at your very core. This kind of fear, that fear had been. Somebody – some idealistic fool – would find the idea repulsing; he didn't even care.

"Deal with the facts, Draco." Severus had said, years ago – it felt like centuries, forgotten ages. "Deal with the facts, and make the best of them". But what was left to gain?

It was not a matter of survivor's guilt and all that Hufflepuffish rubbish: his little apocalyptic scenario had been disrupted – and he had not planned to survive and see. And now he had to cope (still coping, always coping, over and over again) with what was left and what was lost, trying to put things back together, somehow, because it was expected of him. He did not know how, he did not want to.

It was not survivor's guilt: it was the responsibility of surviving and carrying on that plagued him.

"Draco…"

"I don't see the point, Longbottom. There is no point anymore."

Longbottom put down his cup, carefully. He kept an air of calm determination and respectful sympathy – which Draco found utterly unnerving.

"We need your help", he said, simply.

"Find someone else. I am done."

"Nobody else would do." We are never done, Longbottom did not say, but it hung in the air like a length of rope.

Simple, bare and yet solemn. Said with a matter of fact tone that admitted no condition and no reply. Damn Longbottom and his newfound dignity. Damn his quiet stubbornness. Damn honour, pride, and duty; damn what he expected and what was expected of him. Damn the subtle whisper, the secret pull of war, when you do not know anything else, not anymore. Wars come and go, begin and finish, with some desolation, dust, and reconstruction, but the silent invitation, the secret lust, for again and more, lies always there. There will always be some trivial matter, some utter foolishness, to be settled or put to rest with righteous fury, deployed armies, sometimes – in one is wise – with a knife or two stabbed in the back. Always with a bloodbath. Draco had learned his lesson, had studied it well, and – no matter how much, how desperately he tried – he could not forget: you can't escape the war. Longbottom knew that too. It was between them like a shared secret, a common affliction.

Draco eyed the folded paper that Longbottom had just placed beside his cup, while rising. Draco rose too.

"Please, I do not wish to impose. I shall see myself out", he said with his childish serious face and a serene little smile. He extended a hand.

Everything was settled and they both knew it. Longbottom was still too kind, always too kind, always putting others' possible distress before himself and propriety (not that Draco cared about politeness or propriety anymore). Once, Draco had found this attitude of his – passing through life as unobtrusively and noiselessly as possible, slipping on water like mist in a fog-like quiet – irritating and dull. Then, he was young and foolish. Now, maybe he was wiser, or – maybe, just maybe – it was simply comforting, like the placid certitude of a long acquired habit and the predictability of a long-time acquaintance. Somewhere, along the line, they had become friends; and Draco, blinking at the firm hand extended to him, had realised it only now. He grasped it hesitantly, but his grip was steady – or he hoped so.

"Neville."

"I shall pick you up tonight. Nine o'clock. Please, don't be fashionably late".

Draco rolled his eyes, muttered something about boredom, but nodded anyway.

Longbottom was already on the door when he turned, whit a satisfied and friendly smile. "Welcome back." And he was gone.

Draco sat back and with a wave of his hand warmed up his tea, while picking the note.

"The time has come", it said, in a neat and elegant handwriting, below an address that had burned itself in his mind before, a moment later, the note turned into ashes.

The time has come, indeed. He did not forget his tea. Like all the blood that has been spilled and gone to waste, it was bitter and cold.

You can't escape the war.

"Narcissa, darling, the Greengrasses have left the country. What a pity", said Lucius, folding The Prophet. The social column over tea with his wife was still a little daily pleasure of his, even if these days it looked more like the necrology page than anything else, and it had for some times.

"Indeed?", she answered, sitting at the harpsichord, absently flicking random keys.

"Well, their youngest would have been a good match for Draco. I mean, not the Daffodil one – Draco's classmate..."

"Daphne", corrected Narcissa.

"Yes, Daphne… Anyway, she was a bit too much like a transvestite bloodthirsty vampire, if you ask me, and unless Draco is into that sort of thing…"

"Lucius, my dearly cherished husband, I know that after the whole Dark Lord flop you had to be inconspicuous and convince the rest of the goody-doing, honest-working wizarding world that you are well-intentioned if not the sharpest blade in the drawer, but sometimes your impressive acting skills are quite a problem. Believe me, Draco was most definitely never interested in the Greengrass daughter… or that sort of thing."

For a couple of seconds – physiological time, just physiological time, he told himself – Lucius gazed at her with some perplexity, not quite understanding whether he had just been insulted or complimented, and the full implications of his wife affirmations. He would have had a couple of questions – out of curiosity – about her sources, but she seemed in one of her moods and so he let it pass, with the unbecoming result that he didn't know what he was expected to say now. Narcissa – Merlin bless her sense of theatrics – started to play a gloomy and meditative piece from Bach's Musikalisches Opfer to fill in the conversational impasse. To an estranged observed she would appear deep in serious and complex reflections, but, knowing her like he knew and loved and trusted her (in a Slytherin fashion, which is: with some reserve and a solid escape plan just in case), he saw clearly that she was quite pleased with her choice. It was the moment to press the matter.

"Oh Cissy, darling, I do love Great-Great-Uncle, trice-removed, Johann Sebastian! Even if I do not understand why he was so obstinate in spending his life among those uncivilised Muggles! But Merlin knows that our boy needs some distraction! This whole business has been unbearable for us all, and Draco was most affected."

"Don't be silly, my dear!", she answered, pressing a fraction too hard on the keys.

"Silly?" Lucius was sincerely perplexed.

"Obviously."

"Obviously?"

"Yes, obviously"

"Not quite so."

She glared.

"What I mean is… please, explain."

She sighed, but kept on playing, and started explaining in a soothing tone appropriate for addressing a demented Squib child who got hit too hard in the head by some random Bludger when they were still in the cradle.

"Clearly, we all have been through a terrible ordeal, and our Draco more than everyone. But obviously trying to fix him up with some girl of dubious reputation or even a most eligible spinster is not the answer."

"I thought that marriage was the answer to every eminently significant trauma, unsolvable problem, and possibly barely escaped social scandal…", he poured himself another cup of tea, to fortify his spirit. "Wait! 'Girl of dubious reputation'?"

She stopped, turned towards him and grinned that grin of hers that made her look like she was sixteen again and here he was falling all over in love, again and again, like a schoolboy – even if they had fought and survived two wizarding wars in the meantime; almost lost their lives, their family, and their freedom; and his own hairline was undeniably receding. But the grin meant: "Gossip time!" and his answering lifted eyebrow was clearly "oh, please, proceed and make it saucy!". She smiled, abandoned the harpsichord, and sat next to him, taking her own cup. He fixed it with a drop of milk and two sugar, the way she liked it.

"Quite so, quite so… The Greengrasses left the country because their two girl had an embarrassing accident, resulting in one of their cousins' death, and they wished to keep the entire business quite hush-hush!"

This was saucy.

"I do not understand: the common socially accepted reaction to a close relative unexpected passing wouldn't be to throw a sumptuous and vaguely decadent funeral party, and mourn sometime while redecorating accordingly the family estate?", he asked, indicating the black roses pot on the tea table. He refused to acknowledge the black ribbons that, against his protests, still were on some portrait frames, not to talk about the black veils that some overdramatic house-elf kept putting on the mirrors - with the sole distressing result of making him feel old and occasionally disfigured.

"Not when said death involves bondaged Acromantulas, an underdressed Dementor, improper use old Lady Perpetua Greengrass' tombstone, and a corpse in a pink negligee."

"Did they bury Old Perpetua in a pink negligee?", Lucius didn't know if he felt amused, appealed or simply disgusted. "I am not sure I want to know the details you certainly have access to, my dear."

Narcissa smirked. "I always do. But trust me, you don't want to know. Yet, if it can be of any interest, I heard that the the two girls got a little bit too intimate with the Dementor, so to speak. What the Acromantula was doing there, that's food for thought." She was interrupted by the loud sound of a suicidal peacock crashing repeatedly against the window. "With young people being the way they are nowadays, I should probably start a business in designing fashionable prosthetics for ladies. Well, at least she didn't try to mate with a wild werewolf, as that Hufflepuff girl a couple of years ago... oh, dear, I can't recollect her name... I need a holiday! I still don't get what is with the young generation! That one, she didn't even have the excuse of the war!"

"She was in Hufflepuff, darling, it would be enough to make me suicidal!"

The crazed peacock hit again, hard, against the glass.

She put down her cup, then touched his arm – and her smile was sweeter. "Walk in the garden? We might visit the hidden patio behind the west rose garden and watch the sunset, if we are not molested by your psycho-peacocks. I have to work tonight and might be home late."

"I like my peacocks!" He rose, and extended his hand to her. "Work? Don't you fix your own schedule?", he asked as they made their way to the French door.

"I do fix everybody's schedule, Luci. And now, be a darling and lead the way".

With a wave of his wand he opened the door for her, smiling fondly. Then, at the threshold, he stopped, deep in thought and quite worried. "I don't want Draco to fornicate with wild werewolves."

Narcissa patted reassuringly his arm and pushed gently her husband into the mild sunlight of the late afternoon. "I am quite sure it won't come to that."

At one past nine, much to his own discomfort, mild irritation, and against every social principle he strictly believed in and tried to live by, Draco was ready and waiting at the main gate of the Manor. The night held still a faint glow of light, slowly fading after sunset, a watery shade of gold and bronze shadowing the line of the horizon against the black outline of the woods. The evening was warm and peaceful; the stillness was broken only by the distant cry of a noctule, somewhere.

Draco had been waiting for almost five seconds and he was growing relentless, when Longbottom appeared in front of him with a loud pop, a broad grin and a discomposed swoosh of ample, black robes.

"You are late."

The grin, if possible, grew even wider: "I trusted you would be at least a minute late yourself."

Draco snorted. The fact that he was, was absolutely irrelevant. "Shall we go?"

Longbottom extended his big, puffy hand: "Side Along, Malfoy". And, with another pop that clanged between Draco's ears, they were gone.

"Is there a reason why you couldn't tell me to Apparate to the back of the Ministry?", he asked, petulantly, trying to straighten his robes. "And by the way, who is the retarded mongrel who let you have your licence?!"

"I didn't want to spoil the mystery", said Neville, still slyly, which earned him another snort. "Now, please, get in touch with your inner Slytherin aplomb and let's go. The robe is fine, for Merlin's sake!"

"It is not, you unrefined Gryffindork!", and to make a point he gave another tug to the folds of silk falling on his sides, but followed all the same.

Longbottom tapped his wand on a cracked brick in the wall, apparently nothing happened. After what Draco guessed to be a very definite amount of time (Longbottom was looking at his clock, in childish concentration, as fearing he would miss the second), he tapped again several times, in a rhythmic succession, and the crack in the wall grew larger.

"Please, identify yourself", a deep, disembodied voice, quite inhuman and metallic, said.

"Employee 003/7."

"Insufficient information. Please, give your complete identifying credentials"

"Employee 003/7. Code name: Honeysuckle."

And Draco could not resist raising an eyebrow, even if Longbottom was very busy glaring at the crack, try to perfect that kind of look that could kill inanimate object and made dark lords obsolete. "Honeysuckle?"

"Shut up, Malfoy". It was the wall that answered and Longbottom seemed almost smug and ready to gladly sign an armistice with no conditions. "State your destination and the purpose of your visit, please"

"DOOM, Director's office. We were summoned."

"Password, please."

"Roasted peacock à l'orange."

"That sounds disgusting", Draco commented.

"You may proceed. Lady Grey is waiting for you", the wall answered, and the crack was replaced by a narrow passageway. "Mind the step", it called after them while Neville was already tripping and Draco was attempting not to get caught in Longbottom's too long and fumbling robe.

"DOOM, seriously?", he asked, when they were both stable on their feet and slowly descending a barely illuminated staircase.

"Department of Obscure Mysteries... and a flamboyant sense of dramatics".

In the darkness, Draco could not see the bottom; Longbottom kept going silently and slowly, trying not to break his own neck, so it was left to him to attempt conversation: "New department?"

"I guess so: if it was there before, nobody knew about it, so it is not of import, is it?"

"And how comes I am summoned by the boss of the Unspeakable Unspeakables?"

Longbottom turned his head, flashing him a bright, amused smile, then he tripped and continued his descent tumbling down.

Several floors, two elevators, a handful of passwords and a series of check points with a dubious sense of humour later, Neville was still massaging his lower back when they reached an ample hall, luminous with a cold, diffused light, decorated with crystal flower pots and metal tea tables. There was even a silver tray, gently floating in front of them, with tea, and biscuits.

"Welcome to DOOM", the same voice than before greeted them, "The project Make DOOM your DOOM offers refreshments to all employees and visitors. Take a moment to feel at home, then proceed with your business. Don't forget to sign the waiver for any bodily, mental and magical harm resulting by the undeclared testing of highly experimental potions that might or might not be in your food and drinks."

Neville grabbed a cup from the tray, simply moving it to the nearest table. Somewhere between the fourth checkpoint and the mirror in the second elevator – that apparently could not refrain from criticizing his haircut choice – Draco had started to think he was the one who had fallen and seriously hit his head, then grabbed a piece of cake and kept following Longbottom, chewing almost happily. At least, this whole, weird escapade was a distraction and even if it turned out to be his own delirium or the result of an impairing concussion, he was almost intrigued – and that cinnamon cake was to kill for. Good point, subconscious.

They reached an inconspicuous wooden door at the other end of the hall; a little silver tag, on the right, finely written in a delicate handwriting, read: "The boss is IN". Longbottom knocked, the door opened smoothly.

The office was ample and Spartan, almost bare, but with a solemn elegance that spoke of posh minimalism rather than a lack of will for decorating: just sharp, pearly vaults and pearly, nervous columns; three tall, high-arched magical windows behind a crystal desk, a turned chair and a vase full of white roses, full in bloom.

Neville marched up, his peace long and secure. "Was it really necessary to put on the whole welcome service? You have only three employees, counting yourself and the secretary upstairs."

The chair didn't turn dramatically, but the answer came anyway: "The doomy hall of DOOM, in the night, without a proper welcome? We have guests, Honeysuckle."

"I don't like this double codenames business", he grunted.

Yet, if Malfoy was surprised, he didn't let it show, and Neville was quite admired.

"Couldn't we do this at home?", Draco asked, calmly and plainly. Ok, he was at least a little surprised, Neville concluded.

Narcissa now faced them, smiling and looking smug too. Definitely a little surprised.

"This is an official call," she explained, and two elegant chairs appeared at a wave of her wand. "Besides, you never go out and the house-elves had to clean your rooms, sooner or later."

They sat.

"Please, explain to me how in hell you managed to became Head of the secret service of secret services in less than an year, after ending a war a few step too close to the losing side," Draco asked, and then added, almost as an afterthought: "That at leas explains all the dramatics... Burning notes, mum?"

"Manners, darling!", she scolded him. "Well, I am good at knowing everything about anyone, I can be quite ruthless – or so I am told – and I am to be trusted only if I am already in a position were I can't reasonably desire anything more. Clearly, I was the best candidate for the job. Of course, we can still expand and take over the main branch, then the Ministry and ideally the whole of this miserable island, before starting to plan the annexation of the Continent – but it's not my fault if nobody upstairs noticed that little, insignificant, detail... Do you require any further explanations, darling?"

"Yes: did you really cook dad's peacocks?"

"Never mention my choice of password in front of your father... well, never mention my password. Unless you are using it to get in here, of course."

She was stalling, so he went to the point: "What am I doing here?"

"Receiving a job offer."

Draco didn't answer, but was already on his feet and going for the door. Then Narcissa kept talking: "Should you refuse, given the sensitive nature of this Department and the matters we deal with, you will be Obliviated before leaving, obviously. Yet, if I were you, I would listen and consider carefully before deciding."

"I did not apply to Unspeakable training. I am not qualified."

"You are more than qualified and you have experience. Because of the services you rendered during the last war and your academic achievements, upon accepting the position, you would undergo six months of intensive training, and we already have an assignment for you."

Although not interested, Draco was almost resigned to see this through. If he had to ask and listen, before forgetting, and going home, so be it. "Why me?"

"Because you were the last person who could enter the Headmaster's Office."

Draco's blood froze over. His feelings were too many, too strong, too messy. He sat again and stared for a long time at the vague, shifting space between the the floating roses and their thorns.

She had known his answer even before asking – knowing her, she had known before she got herself the job, a chair, and a whole super-secret-spy Department just for that question and hearing his answer, beside her fondness of inconspicuous power.

"When do I start?"

She looked pleased like a cat who got the cream and the canary, while torturing some mice in a particularly gruesome way.

A large sheet of parchment, all in small print, appeared in front of him. Despite knowing better, he didn't bother reading it through, but went straight to the bottom: Please sign here with three drops of blood. Helpfully, Narcissa – the epitome of motherly love – handed him a small dagger, equally likely to be a letter opener or an instrument of discrete assassination – probably both.

"Honeysuckle, give him the files. Welcome to DOOM, Probationary Agent Earl Grey."