Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Petunia reckoned that the weather had turned again for the worse as she stared out the window. A few days after February had begun, the snow that had blanketed the ground had slowly begun a process of condensing, thickening, and deflating, until only a thick sheet of slushy ice remained. That, too, had begun to melt in the past couple of days, revealing the wet, muddy earth of the school grounds. Worse still, the clouds that were already a quite common fare in London had taken this opportunity to further thicken, and a damp, misty fog had descended onto the city. Of course, this naturally meant that winter was coming to a close, that the weather was becoming warmer, which would also mean that she would no longer suffer from the perpetually broken heating in the school dormitories. And yet, this moment of the year, this confused, awkward halfway between the cold nascence of winter and the blossoming warmth of spring, had always brought Petunia a curious sense of melancholy. This year, the feeling was only exacerbated by how strangely she had been feeling recently, by that curious trip to Cokeworth a couple of weeks ago that she couldn’t remember, by that odd boy from the art museum.

Perhaps there’s a wonderful metaphor there. Perhaps it’s simply just so awfully Freudian of her, to have her external perception of the world colored by her own internal trauma and development. Perhaps, she is trying too hard to ascribe artificial meaning to the natural processes of the world, the vice of a social theorist. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, always too many perhaps's. Petunia was abruptly startled out of her thoughts by the chatter of voices approaching her. Melissa was elbowing her way through the crowd of students, offering apologies in a tone that was far too bright to possibly be sincere.

“Hey, Posy!” the other girl grinned when they were within speaking distance, deftly grabbing Petunia’s wrist, pulling her off the window sill, and looping an arm over her shoulders as she struggled to regain her balance. “Counselor wants you for lunch.”

“Alright,” Petunia replied, delicately brushing off the other girl's hand, idly contemplating whether Melissa had intended for her wording to have a double meaning or not as they walked towards the cafeteria.

“Oh- hey, hey! Spare me a couple pence, would you?” Melissa asked, grabbing her arm with a sharp smile, though her fingers were tentative, trembling almost. Certainly not strong enough to hold her if Petunia suddenly decided to simply march off and leave. It was odd, this little performance of theirs. Melissa was one of those girls of “good breeding,” or so the matronesses would say. Old money, apparently, though you’d never know it from how she comported herself, from how she dressed and spoke. Melissa’s shoes were never quite polished, her glasses always fogged with fingerprints, and she had the oddest habit of perpetually never carrying enough pence for the cafeteria lunch. And yet, Petunia knew that the other girl always had enough money to buy a new bookbag every time she found a hole in it, enough to pay for a pot of coffee and a dish of those delightful little custard buns every time they went out, enough to give Petunia a little extra for her tutoring every December when things got a bit tight (though never too much after she realized how much it hurt Petunia’s pride to be the subject of charity).

“Hmm,” Petunia raised her chin slightly, sniffing and side-eyeing Melissa as though she weren’t the girl from Cokeworth who wouldn’t be able to spare a couple of pence if she weren’t tutoring every exam season. Oh, they were a funny pair, weren’t they? A rich girl pretending to be poor, and a poor girl pretending to be rich. “Why?”

“C’mon,” Melissa pushed, a slight pout on her face, gesturing loosely at the cafeteria board which boasted a special of fish stew for fifteen pence a bowl with the hand not nudging Petunia’s arm. “I’m only one short.”

Petunia fished around in her pockets a bit until she found a coin small enough to be an exact single pence piece. She flicked the coin with her thumbnail, as though flipping it, and Melissa deftly caught it between her fingers before Petunia could catch it in her palm again. Petunia suppressed a smirk as Melissa examined and scowled at it.

“Tch. You’re a fucking cheapskate, Posy.” Melissa clicked her tongue in mock annoyance, leaning slightly on Petunia, suppressed amusement coloring her tone. Petunia didn’t bother to choke down a haughty scoff. Quite a funny pair, indeed.

“Aw, beggars can’t be choosers, Meli,” Rose suddenly appeared behind them in the hallway, slipping a hand around Melissa’s shoulders, and pulling her off of Petunia with a grin. Rose glanced at Petunia, almost as though she were assessing her with narrowed amber eyes and the ghost of a slight frown. Petunia blinked as she felt a very slight headache, as though something or other was brushing on the inside of the temple. The feeling was gone as suddenly as it had begun, and Melissa was playfully shoving away from Rose who was grinning in that curiously charming way of hers, sharp with seemingly too many teeth.

“So,” Petunia cut in as the three of them dipped into the queue. She didn’t bother collecting a tray, knowing there probably wasn’t enough time to finish a meal before she had to meet with the counselor, and the drab food of Felicity’s lunch hall would only become more unbearable if she left it to cool. “Does the counselor want me for lunch because she, too, cannot afford the cafeteria food and has decided to resort to cannibalism?”

“Well, you are a rather delicious thing,” Rose said with an over-exaggerated leer, picking up a tray, shuffling past the stew, which frankly bore an alarming reminiscence to that of twice-used dishwater, and immediately pouncing on the dessert offerings of the day.

“Oh, fuck off, Rose,” Petunia didn’t conceal her eye roll a second time, lightly elbowing the other girl. “Think of what that Kathy of yours would say.”

“Oh, we’re not official,” Rose stepped closer, balancing her tray, now piled high with three servings of peach cobbler in one hand as she wound her other arm around Petunia’s waist. “Or exclusive.”

“Hah!” Petunia slapped Rose’s hand off of her waist with a scoff, stepping away slightly in case the other girl managed to topple her tray of sticky, artificially orange-colored confections onto her shirt. “Well, we’ve already been there and done that, in case you don’t remember, Rose. I was under the impression that you’d never be caught in the same affair twice.”

Rose’s laugh was loud and slightly discordant, somewhere between the cawing of a flock of crows and the singing of a wind chime. Shrugging her shoulders, she slid away fluidly to pick up a can of cherry soda and tossed a lemon-flavored one at Petunia, who caught it with a raised eyebrow.

“Right, if you two are quite done,” Melissa cut in, her tray filled with a generous serving of the stew, though she secretly slipped a serving of the dessert onto her tray as well, after a brief glance at Petunia. “Ms. Councilor didn’t exactly detail her intentions to me, though I doubt she can’t afford this stuff. Do you know how much she gets paid?”

“Well, then I ought to go, if the risk to my safety is thus thoroughly mitigated,” Petunia said with a mock sigh of relief, sliding a couple of coins at the elderly lunch lady for the soda. The woman snatched the change and only begrudgingly returned a two-pence piece to Petunia after receiving a significant expectant look from the girl. “Oh! Rose, you’ve still got that hair tie I lent you?”

“Nah,” Rose said looking suddenly down at the ground, clicking a heel against the tiles. “Sorry ‘Tunia, I’ve gone and lost it.”

“Of course, you have,” Petunia sighed, out of pretense more than annoyance. “Melissa, remind me to never give Rose anything ever again without significant collateral.”

“Hey!” Melissa called as Petunia turned away towards the West wing. “Coffee at Clarity’s at three, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Petunia waved her hand dismissively over her shoulder. Coffee, in her absolutely unbiased opinion, was a bit of a preposterous invention. Tea, she thought as she took a couple of sharp turns down the hallway to the staff and professors’ offices, tea was a much better choice, something of which she’d have to take the opportunity later to remind Melissa. Clarity’s did make a lovely cup of Lady Grey, after all.

***

“Good afternoon, Ms. Evans,” the counselor smiled, though the pinched bone structure of her face made the expression unfortunately reminiscent of a woman grimacing upon tasting something sour. Her graying hair was pinned back in a tight bun that revealed a pox-scarred forehead and a receding hairline. She wore a sort of a brooch, a fat fish, or a bee, perhaps, constructed out of crystals, hanging off of her dark blue blazer.

“Good afternoon-” Petunia greeted back, glancing discreetly at the nameplate on the woman’s desk. “-Madame Friggelia. How has your day been?”

“Excellent, thank-you for asking,” the woman spoke slowly. She had that strange, slow, slightly grating kind of voice that demanded attention and authority, while also tempting the listener to drum their fingers under the table, waiting for the woman to just finish the damn sentence already.

“Melissa had told me you’d asked to meet me,” Petunia attempted to politely cut in before the counselor descended into some banal, yet still, inappropriately personal anecdote about her drive to school this morning, or what she ate for dinner last night, or, god-forbid, her pair of french bulldogs.

“Yes, well,” Madame Friggela readjusted slightly in her chair, a shiny, overstuffed leather monstrosity. “I’d like to speak with you on the subject of your application for the Beverson fellowship.”

“Ah-” Petunia couldn’t resist the impulse to rub the back of her neck with her fingers, eyes drifting down to the flat surface of the desk. Really, she had known from the beginning that the application had been a bad idea. She hadn’t even really planned on getting in, only applying for the experience, at the behest of one of her professors last semester. “Well, I did warn my professors not to expect-”

“You’ve been accepted,” the counselor said gravely, as if she were delivering a prison sentence.

“Pardon?” Petunia’s head darted up. Hearing those words was the dream of nearly every student at Felicity’s, but somehow it- it didn’t feel like good news. It felt like she was being informed that she had been expelled, that this life she had built for herself was collapsing, that she was forgetting something important. There was something - something aching and shivering and hurt inside of her that screamed like it had been burned - and the oddest, most uncomfortable thing was that Petunia didn’t even know why.

“Ms. Evans, this news hardly comes as a surprise to me, or frankly any of your teachers.”

“But- but, I can’t-”

“However,” the counselor raised an index finger as she cut her off, the skin pale and translucent, betraying indigo veins circling her bones. “I know that for God knows what reason, this is unexpected to you. I realize that you did not plan to graduate from Felicity’s until next year, and that your parents have paid full tuition for the next year.”

“Still,” the woman met Petunia’s widened eyes with her pinched, assessing gaze. “I implore you to please at least consider accepting this offer.”

“W-well, I- Er-” Petunia stuttered, averting her gaze again, letting it fall on her lap as fumbled for a proper response. “I’m sorry, I really need to- I’d have to think about it.”

“Please do,” the counselor sighed. “Consider it at least. It’s - really, it’s a great opportunity for you and your future career. I know - a lot of women still decide to settle down, and that’s a perfectly respectable thing to do, of course, but - it’s rare enough for a woman to get a good university education, I think it would be a waste to simply let an opportunity like this pass by.”

“I promise to consider it thoroughly, Madame Friggelia.”

“Here, this is yours, and it details all of the specific ramifications and conditions of your acceptance - And Ms. Evans?” the counselor handed her an envelope with a sniff, looking down at her through a pair of round silver-rimmed glasses. “If - Well, I suppose sometimes the family has some words about a daughter going off to live in the city alone, but - I’d be willing to speak with them, if they had such concerns. Times are changing, after all, and old-fashioned attitudes like that should not be allowed to stifle - young talent.”

“Thank you very much for your offer, Madame Friggelia,” Petunia managed to say, wondering with a disembodied panic why those words and the possibility of the counselor meeting "the family" brought such a strange half-anxious, half-satisfied feeling. She - she couldn't remember a single thing about her family, in truth, though she reckoned she must have had one, for she had no memories of an orphanage, either. Of course, the bell which announced five minutes until the next class chose that particular moment to ring.

“Well, off you run, now,” the counselor waved Petunia out of the office and it was only by a combination of luck and pure muscle memory that she managed to sprint off to her next class in time.

***

Petunia arrived three minutes late to Cafe Clarity in a bit of a daze. She all but collapsed at the table to which Rose had waved her over. Melissa shifted towards her slightly, hand twitching an inch or two over her shoulder in concern, before immediately darting into action and placing a faded porcelain plate of custard buns in front of Petunia. She hesitated a moment more before quickly pushing a cup of coffee in front of the other girl and beginning to pour a slightly unreasonable amount of cream and sugar into it. That was another of Melissa’s odd habits, Petunia thought, that tendency towards over-syncopated movements, halting before jerking into abrupt motion after a too-long hesitation.

“Hey, Posy,” Rose hummed from her chair, her voice soft and musical. “You must be starved.”

In response, Petunia simply snatched a pastry off the plate, tossed her envelope down on the table, and leaned back as Rose and Melissa scrutinized it. The two girls tilted their heads curiously at the thing, not unlike a pair of idle tomcats watching the particularly interesting corpse of a mouse. The letter had fallen face down, next to a glass vase that contained some kind of tropical plant, which Petunia had already begun to suspect was made of plastic. Rose threw a glance at her, to which she resolutely raised her eyebrows. Taking it as a consent, the other girl began to paw open the envelope curiously, under the avid gaze of Melissa. Petunia leaned her head over the back of her chair, staring resolutely at the dim amber light of the cafe and the faded linoleum sunflowers plastered onto its ceiling panels. The hard wooden back of the chair dug into her neck, pushing into a nook between her spinal disks, and Petunia found herself closing her eyes for just a small moment.

“Posy?” somebody laid a barely-there hand on her shoulder, and Petunia slowly blinked, only to be met with Melissa’s hazel eyes, fogged by her glasses, and speckled with shimmers of concern, along with her typical little bits of emerald. “Petunia?”

“Hmm?”

“Come on, you’ve got to get up now,” Rose deftly stepped over on Petunia's other side and pulled her up by wrist, as though she were a rag doll. Petunia’s neck ached still worse as she attempted to blink the blurriness out of the world while regaining her feet.

“Why so?” she muttered under her breath, attempting futilely to relieve some of the sharp needling pain in her neck and the base of her skull.

“We’ve drafted up a response to your letter, a polite little acceptance on your end,” Rose handed her a page of a notebook with some scribbled indigo writing on it, and Petunia absently picked stray frayed bits of paper from the perforated edge still shaking off her daze. “We really need to go type it up neat on nice paper, though, so the three of us are going to the library to borrow a typewriter.”

“Oh,” Petunia’s feet hesitated and her face fell, confused when she finally parsed what the other girl had said.

“Yeah, so hurry it up,” Melissa pressed her hands into her shoulder blades from behind her, prompting Petunia to walk again. “If we run, we might even be able to finish before the post office closes.”

“I-” Petunia started, her face curiously flushed and ashamed. She felt she ought to say something right then. Rose’s brunette hair flashed with a copper halo by some trick of the cafe’s amber light, Melissa’s hazel eyes glinted green for a moment as her glasses reflecting the plastic greenery on the table, and something visceral between Petunia’s ribs screamed that no, there was a very important reason why she couldn’t do that, why she had to put a stop to this right this instant, why she ought to snatch the letter out of her friends’ hands with a scowl and a flush. But Petunia simply could not remember.

“Alright,” she said lightly, as if it were any other thing.

Chapter Text

When Lucius Malfoy left that morning, the weather had been a careful neutral, a perfect paradigm of indecisiveness - or so it could be said. The day was neither warm nor truly cold - at least, not by the standards of Great Britain in mid-February. No, instead, it was as if the air outside had hit on that exact temperature at which one could conceivably forgo a jacket outside without suffering significant bodily harm, on the condition of enduring a perpetual state of gooseflesh and shivers. The air was heavy with humidity, inundated from the vapors of the melting snow. A heavy sort of mist had invaded Diagon Alley, and had been threatening to solidify into rain for the entire morning.

“Oh, for this sort of weather, one always must have something warm,” the man, a certain Charles Baudebely said, while flicking obnoxiously at his gold-rimmed spectacles. He was the Junior Undersecretary to the current Minister, though there was clearly nothing junior about him, judging from his wrinkled, pinkened cheeks and the quickly receding scraps of white hair betraying his age. “Care for more tea, Lucius, my boy?”

Mr. Baudebely was one of those older gentlemen who perpetually seemed as if they were perhaps suppressing a yawn, or perhaps on the brink of a heart attack. He dressed himself in tweed and other obnoxiously “academic” accessories. His mustache, if the frazzled bundle of white hair under his nose could be classified as such, quivered alarmingly when he spoke enthusiastically or - Merlin have mercy - laughed. Lucius figured it was rather easy to see why the man was friends with Professor Slughorn.

“Oh no, it’s quite alright,” Lucius smiled blandly, blinking his eyes slowly to prevent himself from rolling them. Frankly, he wanted nothing more than to leave, as soon as could possibly be still considered polite. He would certainly not care for more tea. Mr. Baudebely fidgeted, as though not sure exactly what to do with himself. Lucius privately found it all rather pathetic, though perhaps that said very little, as Lucius found nearly everything rather pathetic.

“Ah, no, no, I must insist,” Mr. Baudebely abruptly laid a wrinkled, soft hand on his wrist, and it was only due to seventeen years’ worth of pureblood decorum training that Lucius resisted the instinct to snatch his arm away and chop the man’s hand off with a snarled diffindio. With great pain, Lucius restrained himself. It wouldn’t do, he reasoned, to act with impropriety towards the Junior Undersecretary of the most powerful man in magical Great Britain. Not after Lucius had thinly resisted the impulse to send the man beyond that bloody Veil of his for upwards of three and a half hours. Not after he had come this far. Besides, an old man’s oily touch was hardly worse than Lady Governess’s stinging hexes, which he was proud to have endured without a flinch for years.

“I would hardly want to take up more of your time-” Lucius shifted his shoulders slightly, leaning forwards and covering the offending hand with his own. His voice was over-modulated, feigning righteous outrage, to a point at which it could only barely be perceived as sincere.

“But really, my boy, it’s of course no trouble at all-” Mr. Baudebely withdrew his arm, a small victory for Lucius, to reach towards that horrible, stained, half-empty teapot.

“-when you clearly have such important work-” Lucius retaliated by plucking his teacup off the table, holding it in his hands at the precise angle that would be the most inconvenient to pour to.

“-today is actually quite a slow day, and truly, there is nothing more important to me than-” Mr. Baudebely encroached further into his space, in hopes of strategically readjusting their positions.

“-But, sir, I could really never-” Lucius deftly shifted away, placing the cup down, on the far end of the table again-

- And on, and on, it went. Back and forth, the two of them grappling for the upper hand through feigned politenesses - Lucius with the singular goal of escaping that dreadful, stifling office and Mr. Baudebely with the goal of, for some unfathomable reason, retaining him there. Finally, just as the two of them reached an impasse, a chime rang, indicating the Ministry lunchtime. Lucius quickly jumped to his feet, deeply thankful for the world’s small mercies, and escaped the Junior Undersecretary’s office with some idle prattle about how it would be simply the most outrageous thing for Lucius to intrude upon Mr. Baudebely’s lunchtime.

***

Lucius rushed through the Ministry’s intertwining hallways. After a few too-sharp turns down ominous corridors, he supposed it rather unlikely for Mr. Baudebely to have followed him and slowed his footsteps to a more reasonable pace. The hallway he had ended up in was cast in shadows, lit only by the bleary light fighting its way through a line of narrow, condensation-covered windows. Lucius made perhaps two steps or so, before abruptly realizing that the oddest sound was emanating from the passage - a sort of series of miserable, half-muffled breaths, weakly adjacent to sobbing. Sniffing slightly like Lady Nott before she has her tea, Lucius quieted his footsteps, perusing the hallway for the source of the noise. A dark, somewhat familiar figure was leaning against on of the windows and Lucius walked closer, straining to see who -

“Severus?” Lucius called softly, mildly shocked as he watched from halfway down the corridor as the other boy jumped and hastily began to wipe his face with his shirt sleeves as he turned, likely mortified that an acquaintance would see him in such a state. Something must be horribly wrong, Severus was hardly the sort of boy to be easily distressed, and Lucius found himself rushing over. “Are you alright?”

“Lucius,” Severus breathed upon seeing him, and Lucius immediately found himself fighting a wave of concern and alarm. Severus spoke his name with a quiet brimming anxiety that spilled into the air like a physical thing. As though the three syllables were at the same time a gasp, an imploration, and a whispered half bitten-off curse. “I- I’m fine.”

“Well, thank Merlin for that,” Lucius stepped closer into the light of the window, clearing his throat slightly as he recognized the building alarm coloring his voice. “Hardly proper to be found sobbing one’s heart out in a dark hallway of the ministry, is it? You do know just about anyone could just walk by and see you, yes?”

“Ha,” Severus let out a poor approximation of a scoff, an uncomfortable halfway between a laugh and a cry. “Evidently.”

“Hm,” Lucius hummed, cocking his head slightly. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I could ask the same to you,” Severus narrowed his eyes, his shoulder twitching back slightly as his demeanor shifted very slightly towards defense. His voice was pitched up a bit, very slightly manic and desperate under his usual sarcastic drawl.

“Sure,” Lucius conceded, or perhaps continued to push, with a half-shrug and a carefully neutral face. “And I could present to you at least forty seven distinct, perfectly constructed excuses, if you reckon it would be worth the time and trouble of listening to me ramble.”

“Time and trouble, the currency of life,” Severus scoffed, a forced wry smile onto his face. Lucius took another step forward, Severus took yet another back, in a trite little dance. His fingers brushed the windowsill, and “All would be lies, surely,”

“Do you imagine yourself in a position to demand the truth?” Lucius raised an eyebrow.

“You would expect it from me-” Severus let out a half-stifled laugh, high and panic-inducing, something between a glissando on an exceptionally poorly tuned piano and a colossal shattering of glass. The sound was suppressed nearly as quick as it had come, and as Severus continued to speak, Lucius almost wondered if he had imagined it. “And something ought to be said for the sake of reciprocity.”

“Perhaps,” Lucius hummed again, leaning on the wall beside Severus and cursorily glancing at his hands. “But, if we’re being frank, forty seven lies for a single truth is hardly a bad deal at all.”

“Lies are lies,” Severus bit out between his teeth. “They are meaningless.”

“There is nothing more transparent towards its creator than a lie, Severus, I thought you knew that,” Lucius sighed, a ghost of a smirk on his lips before dissolving like sugar in the rain. He took a step forward, eyes narrowing ever so slightly when Severus, despite himself, took a half-step back in response, and flinched as his back hit the window. “But you haven’t come here to debate philosophy with me, have you?”

Abruptly, before the final words had finished leaving his lips, Severus turned quickly away from the window and drew his wand out of his wrist holster. Lucius, thoroughly taken aback, only barely managed a quick side step to avoid the oncoming cutting hex. A lock of his hair which had not been so lucky fell to the floor by his feet and a drop of something warm dripped down his cheek. More by instinct than deliberation, Lucius harshly grabbed Severus’s wrist before he could cast again, shoving the other boy to the wall and forcing him to drop the wand that had been loosely clasped in his fingers with a hiss.

“Lucius, ah-” Severus yelped, his free hand scrambling at Lucius’s tight grip on his wrist, and it took all of Lucius’s dwindling self-control to avoid dropping the other boy’s arm like a scalding hot cauldron.

“No. What-” Lucius coughed, steeling his voice. For Severus to react in such a way - something must have been very, very wrong. Lucius would fix it, of course he would, but he first needed Severus to give him more information, to tell him what sort of trouble the other boy had gotten himself into again. “What - are you doing here, Severus?”

“Potions apprenticeship interview,” Severus gritted out through his teeth, wincing and crying out a bit as Lucius’s fingers involuntarily tightened for a moment, though he immediately gentled them upon observing the reaction. Lucius could hardly understand why that was such an issue, until the other boy hoarsely whispered- “For Beauxbatons.”

“In France?” Lucius abruptly released Severus and carefully stepped back from him, watching the other boy fall to the floor in a heap. Severus immediately scrambled for his wand on the dark floorboards, his shoulders sagging in relief when he found the wood intact and uncracked.

“Please, Lucius,” Severus spoke quietly, still unable to meet Lucius’s eyes. Still on the floor, despite the fact that Lucius’s wand was on his ankle, and in the time it would take him to retrieve it, Severus could easily jump up and paint his skin crimson with that one of those beautiful, vicious curses of his. Despite the fact that Lucius, for all of his scoffs and harshness, would never resent the other boy for doing so. His voice was hoarse from tears or screaming, and it rasped pleadingly around the syllables of Lucius’s name. “Please - It doesn’t matter, really, it doesn’t - they-they’ve sent me away, anyhow, because I'm not a pureblood, and I-”

“And here I thought you were planning on staying in England,” Lucius said, his voice unbearably light.

“I wasn’t - I’m sorry,” Severus stumbled over his words, and it was true, Lucius knew he was. Lucius had gotten his single truth at the cost of his trouble and time. Severus had made a promise to Lucius after he found him panicking in a room of hidden things after Abraxas Malfoy (Lucius refused, in the privacy of his own mind, to refer to that man as father) had sent that letter saying a dark lord was interested in his service and that mother had, oh just by coincidence, taken a nasty fall down the stairs, and he would have to - Severus’s stumbling voice cut through Lucius thoughts with the same efficiency as Madame Malkins cutting thread. “I-I’m sorry, Lucius, but God help me, I’m afraid. Please, don’t -”

-and Lucius couldn’t bear to hear what the other boy thought he’d do with the information that Severus, just like nearly all the rest of them, wanted out. That Severus was so close to making it out, out of this mess that Lucius himself had dragged him into. That Severus was afraid and would leave -

“Fucking hell,” Lucius heard himself muttering and suppressed a laugh, despite himself. Oh, that was preposterous, what would people say, if they heard him speaking in such a way? (What would Abraxas Malfoy say?) Then again, the words of Abraxas Malfoy had come to mean so very little to him after what he had done to - Well.

“That’s enough,” Lucius spoke softly, interrupting his quickly derailing train of thought in favor of contemplating the boy still collapsed on the floor, slumped against the wall. “For the love of Lady Hecate, get up, Severus.”

“Severus?” Lucius turned back after only a couple steps when he realized the other boy wasn’t moving to rise and follow him. He could hear a mix of guilt and alarm coloring his voice when he spoke again, kneeling down in front of the other boy. “Is something wrong? A-are you hurt?”

“Fuck-” Lucius bit off a curse upon seeing the evident sprain and bruising coloring Severus’s wrist. Quickly he drew his wand, studiously ignoring the other boy’s flinch, and quickly muttered the incantation of some healing spell or other - something to fix this. “Trying tah- to fix the things you've gone and broken, that’s all you damn Malfoys are ever good for," his mother slurred as Lucius picked up the shards of the glass she’d thrown, his hands red from his blood, or no, no, that would be disgustingly improper and horrible and pathetic, no, no, no, perhaps it was simply that Merlot she was drinking, yes, of course it was, it must have been.

“Which office?” Lucius asked quietly. Severus glanced up at him, confusion evident in his eyes. Lucius offered no explanation beyond a repetition of the question. “Which office were you getting interviewed in, Severus?”

"Meeting room 29876 V," Severus mumbled quietly, still gingerly cradling at his wrist. Lucius stilled for a moment, drawing up an internal map of the Ministry’s passages and determining the quickest route to the room. As though he were a dawdling child, Lucius clasped Severus’s upper arm gently to guide the other boy up, his soft touch a mocking parody of his earlier viciousness. Severus allowed himself dazedly to be pulled down the corridor by Lucius’s swift steps, echoing in decisive clicks against the floor.

“Sit,” Lucius snapped eventually when they reached the relevant office, depositing Severus on a lone chair in the hallway. He watched Severus curl his fingers into the seam of the cushion for a second before the dazed sort of anxiety clouding his eyes abruptly became too much for Lucius to bear to look at. No matter, no matter at all. He would fix this, Lucius thought, as he made his way to the door. He would fix this and Lucius at least, perhaps, would make it out of this mess. He would fix this thing that he’s gone and broken because when all is said and done, perhaps that’s all a Malfoy is really good for.

***

"Severus," Lucius called softly, laying a tentative hand on Severus’s shoulder. Severus jerked to attention quickly, looking around as though attempting to place himself in his surroundings. Lucius gave the boy a steadying arm when he darted up. "Come on, we're leaving."

"Wh-" the other boy cleared his throat, wincing slightly at the hoarse tone in his voice. "What did you do?"

"What have you broken now, idiot boy?"  a screech, a crash, a cry stifled in his throat. Merlot under his sleeves and on Lady Governess's switch, on Abraxas Malfoy's lordship ring and on his mother's cheek, on Lucius's face where that horrible glass had shattered and on the sky blue carpet the house elves had to replace because the red would never come out of it - oh Merlin, does he hate the rusty smell and copper taste of Merlot.

"Hm? Well, absolutely nothing," Lucius said in that typical airy, flowing tone he affected when mocking someone. He waved a hand at a fidgety, worthless, pathetic man hovering behind him in the office’s doorway. "Here, the charming professor, that scatterbrained old man had forgotten to give you an acceptance letter. Isn’t that right?"

“R-right,” the man agreed, stuttering slightly as he directed an anxious glance towards Lucius.

“They’d be pleased to have you, of course,” Lucius continued to speak, glancing perfunctorily at his nails before meeting Severus’s eyes again. “And they have - graciously offered you a scholarship for your exceptional potential and promise. For how much was it, again?”

“3,000,” the man began, and Lucius raised an eyebrow pointedly. Quickly, the stupid pathetic, pathetic man corrected himself with a flinch. “Er- 3,500 a month.”

“Precisely,” Lucius plastered a saccharine smile onto his face, “It’s not much, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it? Say thank you to the old man, Severus."

"Er - thank you," Severus spoke confusedly, clearly unsure what to make of any of it as he took the acceptance letter into his hands. Lucius wrapped a hand around his arm again and began guiding Severus out of the stifling Ministry building without another word, leaving the pathetic, pathetic, pathetic Beauxbatons Secretary of Admissions who foolishly reckoned himself worth something more, shuffling in the hallway.

By the time Lucius and Severus had left the building, the rain had taken to coming down in harsh sheets, the street deserted except for the occasional pair of mumbling men and women huddled under one awning or another. Lucius tossed his umbrella back at Severus without a backwards glance, with the same deft mannerism with which one might toss away a crumpled piece of paper. For a brief second, he allowed himself to be drenched in the rain before swirling away in a crack easily mistakable for thunder. With that, Severus was left alone, staring at the puddle where his friend had once stood. Lucius felt his wet boots hit the oppressive carpet of the entry to Malfoy Manor and he forced up his occlumency shields, for Abraxas Malfoy was surely waiting for him at the end of the hall. Yes, perhaps Severus at least would escape this.