Harriet raced out her bedroom door before the doorbell had finished chiming. She jumped down half the stairs, ricocheted off the landing, ripped open the front door while Uncle Vernon was still struggling awake from his armchair nap, and hadn't even got the door open all the way when Hermione threw her arms around her neck.
"Who's that, then?" Uncle Vernon barked from his arm-chair.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Dursley," said Daniel, with a smile that didn't go even halfway up his face.
"Oh, yerse," Uncle Vernon grunted.
"What a curious place to keep your school things," Daniel observed when Uncle Vernon begrudgingly unlocked the cupboard under the stairs. "You must be very worried something might happen to them."
Uncle Vernon looked a lot less welcoming today than last week. Perhaps he liked Jean better than Daniel, or maybe he'd just had time to think and decided that the parents of freaky children were hardly better than freaks themselves. "Well, get your trunk, girl," he said to Harriet, glaring into the cupboard as if her things had dirtied it.
"What about my wand?" she asked coldly. "Did Aunt Petunia tell you where she put it?"
His expression clearly said that if Harriet hadn't been born such a weirdo, her aunt wouldn't have needed to take her wand, and then he wouldn't be having to go and get it now. But he stomped upstairs and they heard him rooting around and muttering. Daniel was studying the pictures on the walls. They were all of Dudley, sometimes with his parents, sometimes alone.
Uncle Vernon stomped back down, her wand wrapped in a bath towel.
"There." He threw the towel at her, like he didn't want to touch it any longer. "That's all you need, I hope."
Harriet unwrapped her wand. It seemed to be all in one piece.
"Is that everything, Harriet?" Daniel asked, with a subtle pressure on the first word.
Except for Hedwig, it was. Five minutes later, Harriet walked out the front door without looking back. Uncle Vernon shut the door with a sharp snap behind her. They did not say goodbye.
"Mum and Dad said you're spending the whole summer," Hermione whispered as they clicked their seatbelts shut.
Harriet's joy was so fiercely powerful she couldn't speak.
One month later and elsewhere
The lights were too bright, the voices too loud, the room too warm. Some woman standing nearby was wearing too much fucking perfume, stinking like a vat of fermented flowers. The smell of cigarette smoke was making the back of his throat burn, wanting one of its own.
He found Narcissa with no trouble. Even halfway across the room she was fully visible, reigning over the roulette wheel. A besotted ass old enough to know better was lighting her cigarette, looking far too pleased with himself when Narcissa leaned in almost close enough for their noses to touch. Severus was too far away to see it, but he knew her sliver of a smile would be calculating and amused. Narcissa knew the effect she had on men.
So had Lily.
Narcissa was far too successful to need him right now, and when she did need him, she would send one of her admirers to find him—someone good-natured enough not to get condescending about it and consequently find himself turned into a newt. So Severus swiped a pack of cigarettes off the bar, where a young wizard flirting with a snubbing blonde witch had been careless enough to set them down, and slipped out of the refracted brightness.
Beyond the main room, the casino descended from glint and glitter into lush velvets in dark colors, gilded wallpapers and warm lamplight. Go even further, and one could find its rich supply of shadowed corners, dark and secluded balconies, and sound-proof bedrooms.
Severus went past several balconies that he knew would be occupied until he found himself one that wasn't. He stood on it alone, in the regrettably balmy night air, and lit up, watching the end of the cigarette burn like the lights of the city spread off in the darkness.
He hated coming to places like these. Only Narcissa held the cards of his obligation; only she could inspire him to suffer the tedium and tension of a night full of raucous drunks. He'd only ever felt stirrings of pity for a few people throughout his life, but Narcissa's stoic, brokenhearted calm in the face of Draco's growing away from her had resigned him in a way few things ever could. She had borne up well under Draco's enthusiasm to spend a month of the precious summer with distant relatives on the Continent, but when she had suggested casually to Severus that he accompany her to Milan, where she would be within Apparating distance of her son, he had understood her implicit longing and acquiesced.
This was Narcissa's territory. He hated to be around people—anyone—drinking. He stayed away from pubs and bars and clubs, eschewed dances and concerts, even avoided festive staff-room parties. It was a moment of acquaintance he dreaded, figuring out what sort of drunk a person was. Everyone around him thought of it as letting their hair down, lightening up, having some fun; for him, it was being wound tighter and tighter until he couldn't stand it anymore. He never drank anything stronger than water. He would take a glass of mead or wine or brandy when propelled to, but he never had so much as a mouthful. He'd hold the glass he'd been forced to take and methodically vanish the contents throughout the evening, the only one in control of his faculties, his heart hammering and his palms sweating as everyone around him degenerated into slurring, shouting, cackling, staggering, falling. Nobody ever noticed. Nobody gave him a second thought.
Instead of drinking, he'd taken up smoking. And Dark magic, of course. Death Eating.
He ground out the stub of his first cigarette and lit a second.
On the balcony below him, two people were having sex. He flicked ash over the balustrade, but it probably blew away in the tepid wind before it landed on them.
He really fucking hated places like these. And yet, here he was.
At least it wasn't Hogwarts. He'd needed to get the fuck out. He needed to spend time among adults, even if they were irresponsible addicts—needed to spend time with one other person, at least, who he knew was as incensed as himself about the Basilisk, the risk to one child in particular, even if it was a different child for each of them.
"How could he, Severus? Endanger my baby, the only child I will ever have. I could kill him, in cold blood I could. . ."
Narcissa sent a waitress to get him later. She wore her nut-brown hair styled in a coil and a dress that was at least one size too small, and smelled of perfume and cologne and smoke and sweat. Her eyes were glassy and mostly unfocused; she'd been taking something. He could smell it on her breath, a sharp scent like crushed flowers. The pure-bloods called them candied violets.
He pushed her away as soon as her hand grazed his arm and left her there. The sweat from her shoulder stuck to his palm, and he wiped it on a silken drape as he passed down the hall.
"You didn't have to come right away, you know," Narcissa said when he located her divan inside the quieter card-room. An older man whom women would surely have described as handsome and distinguished was sitting with her, and a much younger man, as pretty as he was vapid, was hovering jealously behind. "Otherwise I'd have sent a waiter to get you."
"So you did send her," Severus said. "As doped as she was, I wasn't sure it was really me she was looking for."
"Oh, dear," Narcissa murmured. "Well, now that you're here . . . Julian," to the older man, and, "Larkson," to the younger, "I'm afraid I must abandon you both for the night."
"Please stay," said Larkson, playing the part of the yearning half-wit.
"I'll get your cloak," Severus told her, more to escape the sexual melodrama than from any genuine chivalrous urge. He left Narcissa looking archly amused and went to the cloak room, bullying his way to the front of the queue. When he returned, Julian skillfully scuppered Larkson's chance at draping Narcissa in her cloak, and she bid them both a fond and sparkling good-bye, leaving the younger one sulking and the older one looking as ironically amused as herself.
"I promise you I didn't give the girl anything," said Narcissa as they left. "She looked . . . friendly. That's the only reason I sent her."
Severus grunted.
Narcissa threaded her arm through his. "Thank you for escorting me, my lamb. I know how you detest it, but I do promise to make it up to you. Shall we go to the club? I have a wide range of acquaintance there whom you can bully with impunity."
The offer of bullying was tempting, and he knew that Narcissa had only left the casino because she wanted a change of venue, so he agreed. Narcissa kissed his hand and they strolled onward; or at least Narcissa strolled and Severus approximated her pace. He wasn't sure he had ever been relaxed enough to stroll in his life.
Though it was nighttime, the wizarding quarter of Milan couldn't be described as fully dark. Patches of blackness, so deep and silent they spoke of concentrated secrecy, alternated with bursts of dazzling light and sound. Sometimes they passed people whom Narcissa regally acknowledged; others, without speaking to or even looking at. Jewels glittered in Narcissa's hair, at her throat and on her hands as they parted the folds of her cloak, where a blue diamond brooch shone even in the dark. But Narcissa didn't fear a mugging. She didn't travel with Severus because she needed protection; only an escort, for a daughter of the Blacks would never suffer the ignominy of venturing out alone.
"How is Lucius enjoying Brussels?" he asked with irony. His hand tightened in his pocket as he remembered the tingle of the spells he'd cast, there on the steps after the house-elf had tried to send Lucius packing.
"Not at all." Narcissa's fingers curled on his arm, nails scraping through her gloves and his sleeve. "I understand his mother is very upset with him, poor lamb, for endangering the succession."
Not nearly as upset as I was. "I don't think I ever saw his mother ever truly upset. Does her hair turn to snakes and her gaze to stone?"
Narcissa's smile glinted like her brooch. "Something like that, I believe, yes."
"What are you doing, Severus?"
"I'm showing you the price of ambition."
Dumbledore would also have been very upset with him, had he found out. Severus had almost told him what he'd done, just to get back at him, to make him feel as betrayed and disappointed as he'd felt at Christmas. But then Dumbledore might have revoked the spells, and Severus hadn't cast them only for his own satisfaction.
Lucius wouldn't remember what he'd done, and the spells were undetectable. If—when—if the Dark Lord returned, there would be one less Death Eater whom the girl would have to worry about hurting her to gain the Dark Lord's favor.
"And all to stop that shabby circus-freak Arnold Weasley's Muggle Protection bill," Narcissa was saying with cultured disgust. "Lucius should just poison the blood-traitor and leave my son out of it."
"I'm positive that he thought any object left to him by the Dark Lord would never harm a child as pure of blood as Draco," Severus said, adding to himself, The fucking fatwit.
"Lucius is a baboon's arse," Narcissa said coldly. The use of a common vulgarism like that would have shocked at least three quarters of her acquaintance to their eyeteeth, but he'd heard Narcissa say much worse. He'd taught her most of them. "He didn't even know what that wretched diary would do. Releasing a Basilisk, for Merlin's sake—how was Draco supposed to be safe from that?"
But that's Lucius all over, Severus thought. Do what seems to get him ahead first, get hit in the nose with the consequences later.
In this case, it had been the consequences of Severus's own . . . displeasure.
"He learned nothing, twelve years ago," Narcissa went on. "He thinks the Dark Lord is gone."
Severus could feel her looking at him, but he had glanced away. He watched the black windows of closed shop-fronts, smelled a thick burst of jasmine from a bush climbing over the wall of a late-night restaurant. Narcissa's hand tightened for a moment on his arm.
"Do you think he has gone, Severus?"
"I believe the events this year have proved he hasn't," he said, still without looking at her.
"But the Potter girl destroyed whatever was in that diary."
"She did." He had not told her about Quirrell. It would be too dangerous, and worrying her would serve no purpose. "But Dumbledore does not think he has gone. And however little you care for the man," he added when she made a soft, scornful noise, however little we both may, at times, "he's always been right about the Dark Lord in the past."
He had been right this year, too: it had been the Dark Lord's spirit, possessing a child, driving her to commit evil. He had been exactly right. And about Quirrell, too.
The only place Dumbledore's intellect had failed had been in Harriet Potter.
Harriet had never been to a Waterstones before. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't read fiction; they considered it to be too full of unnatural things that no decent person could ever support. Hermione's parents, the whole while they walked through the bright summer evening light, were arguing about the merits of libraries vs. bookstores. Jean thought they should save the money and patronize local libraries, but Daniel said that owning books was good for the soul. "It's like playing with someone else's pet versus having your own," he said.
"They always do this," Hermione whispered to Harriet as they walked in front of her parents. "Whether we go to the library or the bookstore."
But then they'd come to the store, and Harriet had been overwhelmed by all the books. The Hogwarts' library was enormous, but frankly creepy, with all those dark, thick grimoires and Madam Pince glaring over the top of her desk. But these books were cheerful, disorganized, chaotic - and there were so many.
After wandering for what felt like ages, reading curious titles like The Phantom Tollbooth and Left Hand of Darkness, she wound up on a very educational aisle.
"Hey, Hermione . . . come look . . . "
"What is it?"
"Just come look."
A teetering pile of books with Hermione's bushy hair appeared at the end of the aisle. At least, Harriet supposed Hermione was in there somewhere, but all she could see was books and hair.
"Are you buying all of those?" she asked in awe.
"No, of course not. Mum's said I can't buy more than fifteen books at a time," said Hermione's brisk voice from behind the moving library. "I've got at least twenty-three here. I need to sort through them to see which ones I want most."
"You're done looking, then?" Harriet asked innocently. "Been through the whole store?"
"Of course I haven't been through the whole store." Hermione crouched to set the books carefully on the floor. "This aisle, for instance—" She gave the brightly colored books (most of which were pink) around her a look of scornful superiority. "I know there's nothing on it for me. What are you doing here, anyway? These are romance novels, you know."
"Really?" Harriet made a show of looking at the cover of the book she was holding, where a woman with yellow hair streaming in the wind was about to fall out of her dress and into the arms of a bloke who'd lost his shirt. "Suddenly this cover makes loads more sense."
"Oh, ha." Hermione rolled her eyes. "That's not what you wanted to show me, I hope."
"You bet it is. Listen to this." Harriet turned the book over and read off the back in a low, feeling voice, "'Don't make me love you, she whispered, and the steely look in her eyes warned Tanner not to take her words lightly, even while her supple body responded to his burning kisses'—"
"Eurgh," Hermione said, doing a good impression of Snape whenever he looked at Neville. "What rubbish."
"It's called Passion's Bride," Harriet said, straight-faced. "They're both willing prisoners of their passion. She wants to give herself up to the exquisite pleasure of his embrace."
"Please tell me you aren't buying that," Hermione said, starting to sort through her books, all of which were very large and had serious-looking covers.
"Imprisoned by his passion, she became a captive of his love," Harriet read. "I am so buying this."
Hermione shook her head, an incredulous look on her face.
"Gilderoy Lockhart," Harriet said idly.
Hermione went pink. "Oh shut up," she muttered, opening a book and pulling it over her face.
Narcissa's club was decorated with more velvet and gilding and crystal. He was going to have a migraine before it was over.
"There are the Blenkinsops," Narcissa murmured, unfurling her fan, a reality-defying ephemeral construction of lace and gauze. "Let us navigate that way, hm? They deserve a bit of a verbal scything from you."
As Narcissa steered them through the overdressed throng, so skillfully it looked like he was the one steering her, she suddenly paused and sucked in a breath.
"Cornelius," she said. Really, she breathed it, and for a moment her hand tightened on Severus's arm. But her discomfort was so subtle that even the most hawk-eyed socialite wouldn't have noticed anything wrong; Severus only did because he knew her so well - and because he knew why Narcissa would pale and stumble at the sight of Cornelius von Ritter.
Everyone called him "the Baron," for technically he was, although his material wealth equaled that of a royal duke. He was the last of a proud Austrian line that once had owned half of Europe, and twice he had almost cost Narcissa everything.
"He hasn't seen you," Severus said, pretending complete unconcern for the benefit of the people around them.
"I'll have to acknowledge him," Narcissa said. They were both speaking so quietly that no one around them noticed a thing. "It would give rise to too many questions if I don't."
"He won't do anything to compromise you."
"Of course he won't, darling." Narcissa's voice sounded caught somewhere between wistful and pained. "You know very well that isn't why I'm—Carlotta, dearest Carlotta, how have you been faring?"
Carlotta, whoever she was, had chosen a gown of such obscene chartreuse that for the sake of his vision Severus had to look away. Naturally, he found himself looking toward the Baron von Ritter, who was partially hidden by a jabbering crowd of women wearing upright ostrich plumes on their heads. The Baron wasn't overly tall, so Severus wouldn't have noticed him if Narcissa hadn't first; the ostrich plumes almost obscured him completely.
But then one of the ostrich-headed women dropped her purse and bent to pick it up, giving Severus an unobstructed view of Narcissa's only devastating liaison (if you discounted Lucius and his Death Eater involvement), and Severus wished the woman had fucking stayed put.
"Shit," he said.
Narcissa must have heard, because with all the natural grace in the world she sent Carlotta on her way and turned to him. "What, darling?"
He thought about not telling her, but Narcissa had the tenacity of a steel clamp. If she dragged him with her to meet the Baron, she'd find out anyway.
"Von Ritter has a woman with him," he said, flat and wasting no time, wanting it over with. "She used to work for Melisande."
For a moment Narcissa looked openly astonished; then she glanced swiftly toward the Baron, who had his head bent down toward a woman with a coil of dark, loamy hair. The last time he'd seen her, her hair had been a striking dark red. She'd never looked anything like Lily, really, but the hair had been enough incentive to choose her for the evening above the others.
"When?" Narcissa asked, a question so oblique he wasn't immediately sure what she really wanted to know.
"Seven years ago now, at least. She never keeps anyone for very long." No; some appearance of freshness was paramount in a business that eroded it as quickly and unerringly as the moon shifted the tide.
"Well." Narcissa's expression was languid, but when she snapped open her fan, Severus head the whistle of a falling guillotine. "She's done well for herself in the interim. Let us go and say hello, lamb of mine."
Severus almost said, Do we have to? but he might as well argue with Dumbledore and expect to get anywhere. He was used to humiliation. At least, he experienced it enough.
Narcissa's method of "going and saying hello," however, was oblique. She circled around the room, often dropping into groups of acquaintances or relatives equally distant and abhorred, so that a person less familiar with her might have dared to hope the evening would end before she got near the Baron and—he was pretty sure she'd called herself "Florivet" when he'd last seen her. It wouldn't have been anywhere near her real name. But that pair was Narcissa's goal, and she had only ever been majorly thwarted twice in her life. Eventually they must come to the Baron and Formerly Florivet.
And they did. Or rather, the Baron came to them.
Severus felt a hand on his shoulder, which was startling in this place, where he was always treated like an overlarge cheesemite.
He turned and found the Baron smiling a warm smile of welcome and pleasure.
"Master Snape," he said, holding out his hand for a shake. "A very long time it has been."
Florivet adorned his arm and did it well. Severus could tell from her expression that she recognized him. Well, he'd probably been ugly and pathetic enough to stand out. She was dressed in the Italian fashion, with a high-cut waistline and a low-cut neckline, her now-dark hair arranged loosely in delicate curls. It frankly suited her more than the red had.
She smiled at him, a tiny but full and private smile, which told Severus that in whatever capacity she was there, it wasn't as the Baron's demure and proper companion.
"Mrs. Malfoy," said the Baron, releasing Severus's hand to take Narcissa's and bow over it with courtly grace. "I hear that at the casinos, you carry all before you."
"My Lord von Ritter." Narcissa afforded him a light curtsey. "It was well done, I'm sure you'll agree."
She might have been talking about the gambling but could have been talking about anything. In fact, she was probably taking about three things at once, and possibly more.
"Allow me to introduce to you my companion, Olivia Lacourt," he said, and Formerly Florivet curtseyed deeply to Narcissa, as meek as if she were a merchant's daughter being presented to Marie Antoinette.
The rest of the conversation passed mainly between Narcissa and the Baron. Everything verbal certainly did, while Severus pretended to be interested in the moldings in the ceiling and Florivet/Olivia played the part of the decorous and silent companion to the hilt. He wasn't sure what the etiquette was when one re-encountered a high-class prostitute one had patronized for one night seven years ago, but he'd always been shit at etiquette anyway.
When the Baron and Narcissa decided they had chatted long enough for a vague acquaintance that wasn't nearly embroiled in a hushed scandal fourteen years ago, they parted, freeing Severus from durance vile. Well, one of them, at any rate.
"Isn't she a sweet one," Narcissa said, though she might as well have said diseased hussy. She looked idly after the Baron, wafting her fan in a languid motion. "Was she very good, when you knew her?"
"She was adequate," Severus said, which was as much as he could remember. He never enjoyed those encounters very much. Only on a physical level, and that quickly eroded.
Narcissa looked almost amused. "You're an incurable romantic, my pigeon."
"She probably said even less of me," Severus said, truly unconcerned—about that, at least.
"You know," Narcissa tapped him with her fan again, "you're supposed to enjoy it, Severus. I'm sure I wouldn't tell anyone if you managed to have fun for a quarter of an hour seven years ago."
"I need a bloody smoke," he said instead of answering this.
"Merlin, so do I," Narcissa said, and they slipped away to one of the club's many balconies.
He lit her cigarette and then his, remembering when he was eleven and Narcissa sixteen and she had followed him behind the greenhouses, where he'd go hide when Lily wasn't with him, to smoke and generally hate the entire world and everyone in it (except Lily). Narcissa had bribed him with expensive chocolates, asking to learn how to smoke, studying Muggle swear words; her separate objectives of seeking to entrap Lucius Malfoy into marriage and indulging her crude, decadent side entwining.
Thirty-eight-year-old Narcissa expelled smoke toward the city skyline that glowed with the brightness of all those electric lights and souls. Unlike so many people Severus had known as a boy (too many) Narcissa had grown into the person she had always meant to be.
"I'm not fun," he said, after he'd smoked through half his cigarette. Though it hadn't taken very long; he'd been dragging on it like a prisoner standing five feet away from the firing squad.
Amusement etched across Narcissa's face, just visible in the dim overlay of light and shadow. "Now, how am I supposed to reply to that? If I repudiate, you'll only scorn me, but conceding would only be cruel."
"You enjoy being cruel."
"To others, of course." Narcissa did not laugh, because laughter was vulgar and common, but the mirth was there in her voice. "So do you, my lamb."
"Of course," he said, which was the absolute truth and which made her eyes brighten.
They smoked on the balcony for a time. Narcissa ordered a glass of ice cold gin for herself from an unobtrusive waiter, and they talked of nothing at all, really. Draco was enjoying his holiday with those distant Continental relatives who had young daughters whom Narcissa did not loathe too badly. She was already on the lookout for a suitable daughter-in-law. Lucius had written her a grovelling letter that she might deign to respond to within a week or ten days. She'd lost sixteen thousand galleons at the casino and won seventeen five hundred and sixty. Larkson had also written her a letter, full of very inappropriate sentiments and suggestions that would have been quite amusing if the rawness of her meeting with the Baron hadn't been too fresh for anything similar, however juvenile, to be anything but ironic.
Part of the reason Severus always accepted Narcissa's invitations to squire her around a load of tedious soirees and casinos was because it made his life at Hogwarts seem more remote. Ten months of every year of his life since he was eleven had been spent in that place; a place he called home more than any other, but which was full of duties and reminders, dessicated hopes and fossilized nightmares, oppressive solitude mixed with claustrophobically constant company. There, he was a teacher, standing in loco parentis to two hundred children, disciplinarian terror and pathetic old creep to eight hundred more. His life was taken up with something he didn't give a good goddamn about, but he'd painted himself into that corner twelve years ago.
So often he felt as if his life, the life he'd meant to lead, had washed away from him, borne off to sea on the tide of all his worst decisions; and the life he could have had, though close enough for him to distinguish, however distantly, was never near enough to touch. He sometimes felt as if he wasn't an adult yet because he had chosen a life that proscribed so many adult experiences: loves, marriage, children, even the irresponsible things adults did. He was surrounded by adolescents but he wasn't a pedophile, so even the humanity of lust and crushes was mostly foreign to him. He had sex periodically, but only with very high-class whores, and only outside of England, because any prostitute in Britain was likely to be one of his former students and students, current or former, were the exact opposite of sexual beings to him. But it was just a means of release.
He existed on the fringes of Narcissa's real society, but it was distinct enough from Hogwarts that he found relief in it. Even among the other Hogwarts' teachers he did not really feel like an adult, perhaps because they had known him as a student and he wasn't sure they would ever stop thinking of him that way. Certainly they didn't like him very much. Hardly anyone did. He couldn't seem to make them, even when he tried.
Narcissa laid her hand over his. Her palms were always cool and dry. "Now, don't hurl me off the balcony for saying so, my darling," she said, sounding not the least bit timid, "but I think you ought to seriously consider getting married."
Severus stared at her. Narcissa stared calmly back, her pupils so wide in the twilight they almost entirely consumed her pale irises.
"I thought you didn't get drunk," he said.
She didn't roll her eyes—it would be too plebeian—but the vibe was the exact same. "I don't, as you well know. Don't deflect, my peach."
"I'm not deflecting, I'm incredulous. There are a thousand absurdities in that statement, but I'll start with who, in God's name, am I supposed to marry?"
"I didn't have anyone in mind," Narcissa said, as unfazed as ever. "I merely think you ought to consider it as a . . . future possibility."
He settled for saying, "In Merlin's name, why?"
Narcissa considered him. "You're a unique man, Severus darling." (He snorted.) "It's true," she continued serenely. "Most people either need to be around people or they don't; anyone will do for the purpose. You, however . . . I believe you are one of those who chooses to be alone if you can't be with someone whose company you truly enjoy."
"I loathe people," he said, which wasn't really a reply, but he hated being psychoanalyzed. "They're a race of fatuous cretins."
"Yes." Narcissa patted his hand. "But you like certain persons. A miniscule few in all the world, yet you do."
Severus massaged the bridge of his nose. "Given that it's difficult enough for garrulous social parasites to find someone whom they wish to marry and who wishes to marry them, my chances of achieving the same would be so infinitesimal as to be nonexistent."
"Well." Narcissa shrugged, not as if she was dismissing it, but with an air of que sera, sera. "You never know. All you need is luck. It all comes down to that, with each of us."
"I've never been remotely lucky in my life. It's why I don't gamble."
She shook her head, earrings glimmering. "Oh, darling, most gamblers have the worst luck in the world. You don't gamble because you believe, deep in your heart, that you'll always lose."
Severus's gut twisted. She had said it almost playfully, but it was the absolute truth, and somewhere far beneath the light surface of her voice was a depth of certainty.
"M'sieur?" The meek voice of the waiter skillfully insinuated itself into the silence, barely an intrusion at all. He was holding a tray in both his hands, and on it was a single envelope.
The memory of a similar letter, coming to Severus at a similar time in a similar way a year ago, pinged bright in his mind. This letter was addressed not to Dumbledore, however, but to himself. His name, in Dumbledore's familiar, looping script, bleak on the parchment.
He tore it open and shook the message free. It contained only one line:
Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban.