A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 23 – Summons

Draco crossed his legs at the ankles and rested them on the tabletop. He leaned back in his chair, balancing on its two back legs and contemplated the matrimonial state. He was, at the moment, quite angry about his lack of prospects. Apparently having a father incarcerated in Azkaban for being a Death Eater put something of a damper on his eligibility.

It was insulting the lengths to which his offered brides were going to in order to avoid ending up married to him. Percy Weasley, for Merlin’s sake! Who in their right mind would take a penniless bureaucrat over the scion of the Malfoy lineage? Wasn’t Draco heir to a vast fortune? Didn’t he have impeccable antecedents? What were these Mudbloods and half-bloods thinking? Not that he actually wanted to marry the awkward, ill-mannered Auror, but there were principals involved.

He cast his eye over the Slytherin Common Room, which was looking sadly depleted of late. Since Slytherin was the House with the most purebloods, they were the ones suffering the highest level of attrition to wedlock. Every day, another Slytherin was married off to some impure creature and sent off to private rooms for breeding purposes.

Draco knew that few of those unions would prove fruitful; Lord Voldemort would arrange ‘accidents’ for the impure before any more dilution could mar the Wizarding race. Still, it irked him that no girl was flinging herself on Draco, desperate to join her name with his. What was wrong with these girls anyway?

He caught sight of himself in a mirror and studied his reflection. Doubt shadowed his features and he looked around the Common Room again. Blaise Zabini was sitting by the fireplace, visiting the Common Room. He was probably desperate to escape his Mudblood wife.

“Zabini!” he called across the room. The other boy looked up from his conversation with Millicent Bulstrode, another whose bids were being met with little success.

“What, Malfoy?” Blaise got up and sauntered across the room. He was a slight fellow, with the usual well-bred features of a pureblood, but with his eyes tending more to green than blue. His hair, unlike Draco’s, was jet black; his father’s Italian heritage looking rather out of place over the pale English features.

“You’re a poofter, so you tell me:” Draco began. “Am I repulsive?” Zabini looked surprised by the question and Draco nodded. “I didn’t think so. So why are they refusing my bids?” Draco hated it when he whined, but his frustration was very real.

“Um, perhaps they fear what it might mean to marry a convicted Death Eater’s son?” Zabini served a large slice of sarcasm with that sentence and Draco frowned. It was a good point, one he’d been thinking himself for some time. “Then there’s the fact that you have never hidden how you feel about Mudbloods.” Blaise shrugged and Draco had to concede the point.

“True, but the money alone ought to tempt them,” Draco pointed out.

“Money is no good if you aren’t alive to spend it.” Blaise’s voice had dropped a little and there was something in his eyes that made Draco blink. Was that regret? It was gone an instant later and Draco shrugged it off. The Zabinis were pure to the core and loyal followers of the Dark Lord. There was nothing to worry about there.

Besides, he had to think of a way to get back at the girls who had rejected him while finding at least one who would marry him. He had never been the last one chosen before and the unpleasant feeling of being left behind was stealing over him as one by one the other Slytherins paired off.

It was embarrassing and Draco hated being embarrassed.

Severus stepped into the bathroom and paused. There was something different about the room – something that he couldn’t quite place. He glanced around and finally his sharp eyes picked out the telltale signs of invasion. Dainty hand towels decorated the baroque rods, and bottles of oils and unguents were artfully clustered on the counters and in the shower stall. Suspicions mounting, he peered into the stall and a thunderous frown settled on his brow.

“Madam! What have you done with my shampoo?” he bellowed. A soft sigh from behind him made him spin around to face the miscreant as she stood in the doorway.

“I was kind of hoping you might try something new,” she ventured with a tentative smile. She was knotting a lock of hair with her fingers and her nervousness irritated him. Obviously she knew that what she had done was both rude and intrusive, so why had she done it?

“I am perfectly content with my hair just the way it is.” Each word was bitten out angrily as he tried to control his temper with little success.

“It’s greasy and I hate the way it feels.” Her face shifted from nervous to mulish and he ground his teeth. Gryffindors were worse than Hufflepuffs sometimes.

“It is greasy for effect, much as I dress in black for effect,” he ground out with exaggerated patience. “You see, I am an ex-Death Eater, suspected by many to still be a Death Eater. I am neither a simpering lothario like Lockhart nor a mewling do-gooder like Lupin and I am trying to keep myself alive while also keeping Albus supplied with information.” She was edging away from him, but her mouth was still in that straight line.

“So you can’t wash your hair with something decent?” Her dubious tone made his temple throb and he rubbed at it with irritation.

“No, Madam, I cannot.” He put out his hand with an aggrieved air and she sighed as she pulled his shampoo bottle out of the cupboard. She gave him a long-suffering look, turned on her heels and went out. That she should feel pained for putting him out sent him into the shower with a feeling of intense annoyance.

Women, you couldn’t live with them and you couldn’t kill them and dump the bodies in a Muggle landfill, he thought with irritation.

Hermione was still fuming when the bathroom door banged open with great force and Severus charged out, half dressed and frowning like he had just caught a couple snogging in the Astronomy Tower.

“Severus?” she gasped in surprise, but he merely stormed past her and headed for the library. She jumped up from her chair and followed after him, suddenly alarmed. Had the shampoo really been such a big deal?

He slammed open the library door and sped across the room to the fireplace. Still grimacing, he yanked hard on a carved figure and the fire went out. The whole front of the fireplace swung open and a dark cavernous passage was revealed to her wide-eyed gaze.

“I’m being summoned. Tell Albus,” Severus grunted and she realized that his expression wasn’t one of anger but of pain.

“I will,” she whispered, suddenly chilled. Severus extended long thin fingers to grasp a black hooded cloak and a silver mask from the wall and Hermione watched, frozen, as he was turned from familiar to strange by the simple act of donning those garments. Fear set her heart to thumping as that masked face turned to her.

“Now, Madam. There is no time to stand about gawking!” he snapped at her and she fled the room. His voice, distorted by pain and the mask, had scared her as little had before in her life.

She was running for the door in terror when the Baron, silvery and cold, materialized in front of her.

“Gently, child,” he soothed and she pulled up short as much in surprise from his kindness as in realization of what she was doing. “You cannot run through the corridors in your nightrail,” the Baron scolded gently and she could feel her heart slowing as her intellect reasserted itself.

“Yes, of course. How silly of me,” she replied, feeling a trifle embarrassed now.

“The mask has a charm on it you know.” the Baron commented idly and examined his nails with great interest. Hermione cocked her head and studied the Slytherin House ghost with equal intensity.

“What sort of charm?” she asked finally when it became obvious he wasn’t going to continue.

“What sort do you think?” He gave her a haughty raised eyebrow and it became suddenly obvious to her.

“A fear spell of some sort! The Mask is enchanted!” She snapped her fingers and grinned at the ghost.

“You are as clever as a Ravenclaw.” The Baron gave her a look of such sorrow that it stunned her and then he vanished into thin air, leaving behind a residual chill that made her shiver.

Helena sat quietly at breakfast beside her husband and contemplated the future. Her wedding feast had been an utter disaster, which was supposed to bode well for the married couple’s future. Traditionally, the worse the wedding and banquet went the better the marriage, in which case she should have a paradisiacal future awaiting her.

Her father had been vanquished by a combination of mishap and the protective instincts of her new family and friends. She ought to be gleeful, but Neville’s grandmother, as imposing in her way as Taliesin, had made it quite clear that Helena wasn’t up to the usual Longbottom standards. Between her snobbery and Taliesin’s rudeness, she was seeing a long road ahead of her filled with family gatherings of excruciating unpleasantness.

“So I was thinking that we could move to Iceland after graduation,” she muttered under her breath.

A gentle kiss on her temple brought her attention back to her sweet-faced husband once more. He was smiling in a particularly soppy manner than really ought to have disgusted her. Instead, she found herself feeling pretty soppy right back at him and her lips stretched into what she imagined to be a pretty fatuous smile in response.

“We will move into Longbottom Hall, Helena, and Grandmother will live in the Dower House.” It was amazing how her gentle Neville could sound quite determined at times. There was a glint of iron in his eyes that convinced her he was quite serious.

“As you say,” she agreed and snagged an apple as the bowl was passed down the table. He grinned at her and she grinned back. It was nice to feel so much in accord with another human being.

How had she ever gotten along without him in her life?

Tonks stomped back across the training field with a frown. She had managed to beat her best time across the obstacle course and usually that made her happy. However, she was still feeling off-kilter from her argument with Percy this morning.

She wasn’t sure it could even be called an argument, really. Percy had brought up Christmas and Tonks had suggested her parents’ house. Percy had frowned and Tonks had found herself feeling very uneasy. Soon after it had somehow been agreed that Christmas would be spent at the Burrow and her parents were of course invited. The thing is, Tonks didn’t remember agreeing to any of it. Somehow it had just all been arranged.

By the end of a half hour, her parents had agreed and everyone was happy, except for one Nymphadora Tonks, who was left feeling vaguely unsettled. Despite how many times she had gone over it in her mind, Tonks couldn’t figure out how he had managed it.

She ran through the obstacle course once more, diving and rolling, throwing off hexes and dodging curses with a speed and agility that would have stunned anyone who knew her. For some reason, when it was combat, all of her clumsiness just fell away and she was a graceful, precise machine that just seemed to know what to do.

Drop her in a party of debutantes and she would trip over everything and everyone, but throw a hex at her and she was in her element. It had baffled her teachers and it still baffled Tonks. Why couldn’t she be more like Penelope?

She stopped cold in horror at the very thought. Why on earth would she want to be more like Penelope, she asked herself. The thought that came back to her was both disheartening and shocking.

Because Percy loved Penelope as he did not love his wife. But Tonks couldn’t imagine why she even cared. Didn’t she hold Percy in utter contempt? Didn’t she?

Sarit Yidoni leaned back in her chair and contemplated her latest creation with a contented smile. The etiquette of the pureblood world was inflexible and demanding. To those who upheld it, there were many rewards, but the very inflexibility of those rules could also be made to serve… other purposes.

The tiny figurine was made of solid metal with jeweled eyes that sparkled and gleamed in the flickering candlelight. It was a wrought silver snake, curled around a tiny golden lion; the emerald eyes of the snake looking deeply into the ruby eyes of the lion. Sarit concentrated and found that she could indeed see out through the eyes of the snake for brief moments.

It was a perfect wedding gift. It would be seen as a reconciliation gift to the unhappy couple from an old woman who was trying to make up for her past ill manners. Sarit snorted at the thought. She had played harder roles in her life, but the necessity of smiling at her impure granddaughter-in-law was nauseating. Still, for that promised great-grandchild, that unborn Seer that was yet to come, she would play the role and then depart from England, lulling them into a false sense of security.

Her smile was unpleasant indeed and in her preoccupation with her labors she never noticed her youngest grandchild watching her with interest from the shadows. After all, none of her children or grandchildren had been born Seers, so of what use were they to her? She hardly noticed them at all anymore.

The grandchild, his mind whirling with thoughts and questions, crept away from his observation post and went to report to the rest of the family. They all had much to discuss.

“Yes, I am sorry about that, Lucius; it is most unfortunate,” Fudge was simpering and smiling at him as though they were intimate friends and it made Lucius want to laugh aloud. The idiot was so easy to manipulate.

“Poor Draco has been trying so hard to live down my mistakes. I regret all that I have put him through.” Lucius forced out a heartfelt sigh and cast a benign eye over both Fudge and the frog-faced Umbridge woman who shadowed him everywhere. They were both looking at him with matching expressions of insipid concern and he wished he were an artist so that he could immortalize them. He could entitle it “Duex Dolts.” It would be a best seller in all the rubbish shops in Diagon Alley, no doubt.

“It is a terrible shame, Lucius.” Fudge’s resemblance to a Muggle painting of a large-eyed puppy was quite marked, Lucius noted.

“My terrible errors in judgment have doomed my poor innocent boy to a life of loneliness.” How he managed to keep a straight face through that sentence he would never know, but the tears that were welling in Umbridge’s eyes pleased Lucius no end.

“He was such a support to me while I worked at Hogwarts,” Umbridge sniffled and pulled out a limp pink rag, liberally dosed with lavender water and painfully over-decorated with lace and silk flowers. She applied this monstrosity to her nose and blew noisily. Lucius controlled his expression with an effort. He had a momentary spurt of annoyance that he was forced to deal with such barbarians, but his practical nature quickly reasserted itself.

“Yes, he spoke quite glowingly of you, Dolores. I can call you Dolores, can’t I?” he purred at the creature, using every ounce of his legendary charm on her. She melted visibly beneath the high-powered smile he flashed her and nodded, flustered and blushing. Merlin only knew how very easy it was to manipulate such eager puppets. There really wasn’t any challenge to it at all.

“But really, Lucius, what can we do about it? We can’t force some young woman to marry against her will.” Fudge was just smart enough to be useful and not smart enough to think his way past Lucius’ traps. With an avuncular smile and a gentle pat on the arm, Lucius had Fudge’s number and was well on his way to achieving his ultimate aim.

“Of course not, my dear fellow; no one would ever dream of suggesting something like that.” It was difficult to keep his gloating out of his voice, but he managed it, even though he knew he had won. “It’s merely that these girls, they don’t know my Draco – his kindness, his nobility, his wisdom. If they had an opportunity to learn more of him, they would flock to his side. I have no doubt of that. They are rightfully appalled at my dreadful past and are sadly judging the poor child by my actions.”

“It is true that Draco is a lovely boy. No doubt there must be some girl smart enough to see past some youthful peccadilloes,” Umbridge commented soulfully. Lucius thought back to some of the things he had done as a Death Eater and nearly choked at the description of them as “youthful peccadilloes”. Still, it served his purposes well.

“Indeed, I knew that you would understand Dolores,” he beamed at her and watched her melt from his attention. She was grotesque, but very useful.

“Well, there might be a way to find a young woman to marry him,” Fudge began uncertainly. Come on Fudge, Lucius thought impatiently, figure it out already.

“Really?” Lucius prompted innocently, when the plump minister faltered.

“Yes, there is an ancient spell that might be of use.” Lucius smiled gratefully at Fudge, as though the whole meeting hadn’t been orchestrated from the beginning to achieve his own ends.

“You are the answer to my prayers, my dear sir.” Which was probably the most honest thing that Lucius had said throughout the whole conversation.