Draco sullenly followed the man who had brought him to this awful place of brambles and dirt roads. The man who had very probably saved his mother’s life and Draco’s own, which at present still earned him very little gratitude. A manor house at the top of a distant rise spilled a small amount of firelight from a few of its many windows, and Draco hoped that was their goal – though if it was, he could certainly do with more dirt road and fewer brambles in getting there. He caught his sleeve, and arm, for the dozenth time and swore roundly.

The man ahead of him, who annoyingly seemed to be able to flow past all obstacles with no difficulty, spoke without turning or slowing. “What would your mother say of such language, Draco Malfoy?�

“If she were here getting clawed to death by these thorns, she’d be using it herself. Why couldn’t we just Apparate to where we’re going?�

“There are wards and traps on the place, I believe. We will find out about your mother’s language soon enough.�

“And what right do you have to take me anywhere?� Draco had failed in his task, and found weakness and confusion where he had thought to find certainty. He had believed he would do anything for his mother. Apparently the infuriating presence before him truly could, and Draco could not.

“Do not question me, Draco.�

Draco stopped and stamped his foot, getting himself nothing but a muddy leg. The older wizard’s black cloak was indistinct in the darkness. Draco hurried after him again, focusing his anger on that shadow. “You’re not my Head of House anymore.�

“Indeed.�

“You’re not my professor anymore.�

“No.�

“So why do you still think you can order me around?�

Draco nearly collided with the older man, who had halted suddenly and swung to face him. “Because the terms of my Vow to your mother were to see you safe and unharmed until your task was done. It is done.� There was a crack, and Draco saw stars in the shaded darkness. “And that should have been done ages ago.�

Draco rubbed his stinging cheek, the pain only beginning to make itself known. Snape had slapped him. Snape had actually had the bloody nerve to slap him. “That Mudblood Granger already did,� he admitted sullenly. It had been no less a shock, nor less of an impertinence. To be treated so shabbily by an inferior even once in a lifetime was once too many, and now it had happened twice.

Eyes glinted in the pale face before him. “As I am now free to say so: good for Granger.�

“And you expect you can turn your back on me now?�

Pale hands gestured dismissively in the darkness. “If you have somewhere else to be, and some means to get there, by all means go.�

Draco glared. “I could go home.�

“If you wish to be dead or imprisoned, I am not stopping you.� The older wizard waited. The moon broke free of a cloud to reveal an expression of minor impatience. “Tsk. I suppose you should have taken a little of your energy away from orchestrating your little fiasco this evening and put it toward learning to Apparate. As it is, I suppose you are stuck with me, and may as well follow nicely. Agreed?�

The choices were few enough. “Agreed. Just don’t forget your place, Snape.�

“Clearly,� Snape said, turning smoothly and all but vanishing into the darkness again, “neither Miss Granger nor I slapped you hard enough.�

Draco fingered his wand, thinking black thoughts. Unfortunately, their relative status at the moment boiled down to one thing: Snape knew where they were going, where they could go, and Draco did not. He followed with bad grace.

Some sort of building loomed out of the vegetation. Draco stared at the hovel, its roof and walls atilt, the door slightly ajar with a drift of leaves at the threshold. “We’re not stopping here!� His voice broke, embarrassing him.

“You are, while I fetch your mother. She is not safe now.�

“Here?� It was all too easy to picture horrors lurking in every shadow of this ghastly place.

“Here. The home of the last Pureblood descendents of Salazar Slytherin. Perhaps that will give you something to think on in my absence.� The older wizard disappeared in a swirl of black. Apparently the presumed wards and traps would not keep Snape from Disapparating.

The home of the last… That had to be a lie. Had to be. This collapsing shack could never have housed Pureblood wizards of the proudest blood of all. And if it had, what would that prove?

A leaf crackled, then several, and Draco spun to face the threat wand-first before realized he was menacing a light evening breeze. Bother. He had a choice; he could stay out here, exposed, jumping at every sound, or he could go into that filthy-looking pit of a house and be hidden -- along with whatever else might be in there. It couldn’t be anything worse than a few spiders, he told himself, maybe a feral cat or two, certainly not the dozen Inferi his helpful imagination kept dreaming up and insisting were there.

He pushed lightly on the door, and found it stuck. That was natural, he told himself. Wood warped. The door was certainly not stuck on a body (imagination made it Dumbledore’s, of course) or held in place by a particularly mischievous enemy. He pushed harder, and staggered several steps into the mouldy darkness when it gave suddenly. The house did not fall in on him.

“Lumos!� he said, more softly than he’d planned, and the darkness filled with sickly yellowish wandlight and quivering angular shadows. Green eyeshine proved to be an anxious cat, which stared at him an instant before flowing out in a furry blur. “Kitty?� Draco said hopefully, because even cat company was better than no company, but the animal was gone.

There were a few sticks of furniture about, nothing Draco trusted with even his relatively light weight, a stove and a few rickety shelves of books. He wondered if any were still in readable condition. The titles offered nothing terribly interesting, unless he wanted to count the cookery books near the stove, since he had never bothered to look at such a thing before.

He tried one now. It fell apart in a clumpy cascade of mildew-blackened sheets. “Reparo!� he said. The book rebound itself, but the pages were no more readable for the effort. Oh, well, it had only been a book of cooking spells – which only meant that this house had held a wizard or witch at some point past. The thought that any non-Muggle could sink to this level was depressing. Even Granger would give the Wizarding world a bad name by living here. Even that slinking weasel Snape.

Even Draco Malfoy. He thought he had sunk to being a mere assassin to save his mother, and it turned out he was too weak even for that.

That thought would get him nowhere. He pushed it away and browsed the other shelves, looking for anything shielded from ceiling leaks, pausing at a gigantic tome reading “Holy Bible� in gold letters. It seemed out of place as neither a spellbook nor a mouldering wreck. He took it from the shelf, curious, placed it carefully on the elderly table, and turned over the heavy cover with as much care as if Madam Pince were watching with her beadily vulturish expression. One learned respect for books at Hogwarts even if one learned nothing else. Goyle had learned respect for books.

A family tree had been written on the inside of the cover; barely legible at the top were the names “Salazar Slytherin� and “Merope Flint.� Draco touched a finger to the dim ink to follow the line down, then jumped back as a brilliantly coloured construct flowed up from the page. A thousand years of the descendents of Salazar Slytherin were now diagrammed before him in green and silver and red. A thousand years of wizards’ births and marriages and deaths hung before him in a tangled rope of relations, distant cousins’ threads coming together for marriages, one long silver line hanging in the middle. Draco stepped closer to study the top.

The founder had produced six children, all but one shown as marrying and producing offspring – and one married to someone indicated only with an M in red. Their descendents’ names were also all in red, with the surname of Finegan. Draco followed that red line, found a few names he associated mainly with Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, and lost interest. Then, with a moment’s amusement, he followed the line down past many more M’s to Seamus Finnegan’s name glowing at the bottom of the tree. Wouldn’t Seamus hate to know he was a remote descendent of Salazar Slytherin? A tainted one, but a descendent all the same? But now Draco knew the key – red was for tainted bloodlines, silver for pure, green names were deceased Purebloods. He followed silver lines and kept coming to red, often with disturbingly familiar names. He told himself there were many other Flints, other Blacks, other Bullstrodes. In a thousand years, there could be many other Crabbes. He did not follow those to the gleaming living wizards at the bottom of this complicated lace.

Through the center, from the first Slytherin child, ran a long silver thread, and now Draco chose to follow this one. There had to be one left, one who had opened the Chamber of Secrets, one whose name he dearly wished to know. The Heir of Slytherin. At its end – Merope and Morfin Gaunt. Both green. Both Purebloods. Both dead. Beside Merope’s name an M, a damning M, and beneath the link one glowing red name: Tom Marvolo Riddle.

The Heir of Slytherin? Impossible. No Mudblood could be the Heir. But there were no glowing silver names at the bottom of this skein of relations. All of them were red. How had this happened? How could this have happened?

Peering through the mist of red names that leapt into focus if he fixed on a particular one, he spotted more he recognized, and there was no denying it. There was only one Marcus Flint, only one Millicent Bullstrode, one Harry Potter – that made him smile even in his shock, knowing Potter would like the connection no more than Finnegan would. Only one Narcissa Black Malfoy… What was that?

His mother’s name, linked to his that of his father, hovered above his own, passing to his name that damning red line. Her name had a second, paler link, to an explanation – generations of bloody damn liars! Severus Snape, in red, below a line of Princes and suchlike that held no interest, and a great bloody M right there, the Half-Blood bastard, and linked with Draco’s mother -- and below the link, one small name. Hadrian. No surname. Dead. Staring hard produced a date, the year before Draco’s birth, the year after his parents had married.

Draco had almost had an older half-brother, and had him no longer. There was a story here. He tried to imagine asking his mother for it, then his father, then Snape.

This was a story he was unlikely to learn.

The great wretched unfairness of it all was that he had always wished for a brother. To hell with inheritance, he had been lonely in the sprawling Malfoy mansion. Hadrian – the older boy leaped into his mind as if from a memory, a boy as beautiful as his mother and imposing as Snape, a black prince of a brother. How different Draco’s boyhood might have been.

For that matter, this hovel would seem a good deal safer with that brother along, a brother to keep him company and watch his back. Snape had claimed to be going to fetch Draco’s mother, who would suffice. Draco peered around at the shadows and listened to mysterious creaks and rustles. Snape would suffice. Harry bloody Potter would have been better than nobody.

What had killed Hadrian? Draco tried to picture his father raising another man’s child and knew an answer, a grim and barely thinkable answer, immediately.

Well, if Pansy came to him pregnant with another man’s child, what would he, Draco, do? If it were the child of – he cast about for a suitably low name – Ron Weasley, for instance? Was his own jealousy, his own possessiveness, enough to make him kill a child?

He knew it was not, and knew this was no weakness. His father? He was quite certain his father would, and had. For the sake of this now-imaginary brother, Draco hoped the end had been easy.

He slammed the book shut, and the silver-to-red cascade vanished. There was no such thing as a Pureblood descendent of Salazar Slytherin, not anymore. It almost seemed there was no such thing as a Pureblood, for if Draco Malfoy was not one, who was? His own father, of French pedigree, had come into the tree on a red thread. His mother had come down from one as well. Tainted on both sides.

And – shocking, irreverent thought – what of the first Slytherin himself? The tree had been drawn as if he and his bride had sprung out of the earth; what of his ancestors?

There was a sound outside, and another, closer. Footsteps. Draco waited, wand ready. “Your son is within,� he heard Snape say.

Draco’s mother rushed in and embraced him with a shriek of joy before he could even put away his wand, nearly stabbing herself on it, babbling words of affection that he pretended to be too old to enjoy. He did return the hug, though – the contact was nice in this creepy old shack.

She broke free of him to rush back to Snape, who waited by the door with his face in shadow, to embrace him as well. Draco felt a surge of fury that she would lower herself to such a level – that apparently she had lowered herself more even than that – and another when the Half-Blood cur pushed her away as if she were worthless.

“I have told you before, Narcissa. Do not touch me.� The words were frost on the muggy June air.

"Severus, thank you, thank you -- how can I possibly repay you?"

“You cannot.� Snape stepped back, out of the building. “Let me introduce you to this place. In the valley, you will find the village of Little Hangleton. In the manor house at the top of the hill, you will find Death Eaters and perhaps the Dark Lord himself.� He paused at Narcissa’s soft sound of alarm, then continued. “This is quite possibly the last place anyone, friend or foe, would think to look for you – midway between some very disappointed former colleagues and a town of Muggles. I know that soon you will wish that at least one of you had valued your education more than you did. For instance, Narcissa, you can Apparate only yourself, and your son seems not to have mastered the skill at all – so if you wish to leave, you will have to do so on foot or by the plebeian Knight Bus. Enjoy your little holiday.�

Narcissa gasped, her eyes wide in the faint light from Draco’s wand.

“Wait!� Draco called. “You can’t mean to just leave us here.�

“I can, and do.�

Bastard, bandying words at a time like this. Draco pushed past his mother to confront the older wizard. “Wait,� he said again in a lower voice. “I know about Hadrian.� This was a gamble. Snape might not know about this himself, but assuming Snape did not know something was never a safe wager.

Black eyes narrowed. “Thanks to a Memory Charm, your mother does not. And you cannot manipulate or blackmail me with that information.�

“I hadn’t thought so.�

“What, then?� Snape’s voice was crisp, that of a person with better things to do.

“I… I wanted to know more.�

Snape was quiet for a long moment. “He died at the age of one month, maybe two. There is little else to know.�

There was any amount more to know, but Draco could not ask it. How his mother and Snape had come to be together at all, how the relationship – whatever sort it was – had ended, how Snape knew of Hadrian and what exactly Draco’s father had done. Whether – no, the family tree of Salazar Slytherin showed Lucius Malfoy as Draco’s father, and that was good enough for Draco. Whether he liked what it showed or not, the beastly thing seemed to be painfully reliable.

“That’s still something,� Draco said instead. “Thank you.�

Snape inclined his head slightly. “You had better see to your mother before she faints or draws enough breath for shrieking fits. And, Draco – though it is saying very little – you are turning out better than your father did.�

Draco had learned tonight how little that truly meant. Frankly, he wasn’t sure how much better – there had been blood and bodies in the corridors of Hogwarts as they had fled, and that had been his fault and his alone – but any praise at all from Snape was a rare thing. “Thank you, sir,� he said, but too late. His teacher had disappeared again.