Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

"Lost Bastion" (6/?)
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

Draco Malfoy came upon Sirius Black pacing along the halls of Hogwarts. He nodded a bit to himself as he spotted the older wizard.

"Figures," Draco said. He was unaware he'd spoken aloud until Black spun to face him, wand in hand and pointed straight at the Slytherin boy.

"Sorry," Draco said, feeling stupid. Of course the man was going to be jumpy. Thirteen years in Azkaban, almost two decades fighting the forces of the Dark L- Voldemort... He shook his head.

Black nodded sharply and put his wand away. "What figures?"

"That you'd be here. Pettigrew had been staying at my house. He's not there anymore. I guess you had something to do with that."

"What- oh, of course. Draco Malfoy, right?"

Draco found himself suddenly the sole focus of Black's eyes, and flinched. "Yes, sir."

Black nodded again. "So. You think I had something to do with what happened tonight?"

"Let's see- a couple Gryffindors show up and make off with my father's houseguest. Which Gryffindors would be most interested in him, I wonder?"

Black laughed. "So what the hell are you doing here?"

Draco simply looked at him for a moment.

"Well?"

"For those of you playing along at home, vacation's almost over."

"Doesn't answer my question," Black said.

Draco sighed. "Yes, it does. There's class on Monday."

"You think they're still holding classes, then?"

"McGonagall wouldn't cancel school for anything." Draco paused. "And even if they aren't having classes, so what? What else am I supposed to do?"

"Stay home?"

"Right," Draco said. "Stick around for my father's funeral, and listen to the Death Eaters plot revenge against Snape? Which they'd have done anyway, for what he did to them before."

"Yes, well, isn't that where your friends Crabbe and Goyle will be?"

"Crabbe and Goyle can go hang. And they aren't my friends!" Draco was surprised at how vehement that statement was.

"The Death Eaters, then. Surely you have a place there."

"Maybe, but I don't want it." Draco glared at him. "I don't know why I'm explaining myself to you anyway. I don't know why you care."

"Let's see," Black said. "One- you're Lucius Malfoy's son. I was at school with your father, and you've done nothing to indicate that you are anything other than a chip off the old block."

"You don't even know me!" Draco protested.

"I know the name. I know the family. Isn't that enough?"

"Used to be all I wanted," Draco muttered. He stared at his shoes for a minute before looking back up at the older wizard.

"Two," Black went on, "you know about Snape."

Draco shrugged. "After tonight, everybody knows about Snape." In the pause that followed this statement, Black would have had to be blind not to see the worry that sprang suddenly into the boy's grey eyes. "Snape- He's alright, isn't he?"

"Leaving aside for a moment the fact that he's basically a bastard- yes, he's fine. Got back here alright, and all of that."

Draco breathed a sigh of relief. "Good."

"And third," Black finished, "you're here."

"Right," said Draco. "I'm here. Alone. Cold, wet, and tired. I flew a good bit of the way here. On my broomstick. In this storm. I almost drowned crossing the bloody lake, I knocked, didn't come barging in- Granger let me in, by the way- and I didn't bring Voldemort's army with me. Did I?"

"No, but-"

"Look," Draco snapped. "My father's dead. My mother's going to run to the Death Eaters. I came here. Knowing how warm my reception wouldn't be, knowing how you'd react to seeing me. Knowing almost everyone here hates me- I came back to Hogwarts." A pause, then, sullenly, "Dumbledore would've been glad to see me."

"He also would have known within five minutes if you were to be trusted or not. I'm not that good." Black sighed. "Alright, fine. As far as I'm concerned, you can stay, but if there's trouble you'll have to go through McGonagall. She's in charge now, and-" He shrugged. "You know what you'll have to do, though, don't you?"

"The Veritaserum?" Draco nodded. "I know. If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. It's alright. McGonagall's tough, but she's always been fair. Even to the Slytherins." He paused. "May I see Professor Snape now, please?"

"You really want to?"

"Yes," Draco said, "of course I do."

Black raised his eyebrows. "Oh really?"

Draco sighed. "Yeah. Really." He paused. "Listen- Father's dead; Snape killed him. I do understand that. I also understand that in the morning I may really hate him for it. Right now I'm just too damned tired. I'm a Slytherin; he's head of my house. Who are you having those of us who come back report to, if not their head of house?"

Black nodded. "True. Well. I presume you can find your own way from here?"

"Better than some bloody Gryffindor," Draco said, not entirely maliciously.

Black sighed. "Go." Draco started off. "And, Malfoy?"

"Yeah?"

"I hope- Merlin's ghost, I can't believe I'm saying this- I hope you can forgive him, Malfoy. Try."

"I- I will," Draco said, suddenly hesitating greatly. "Ah- Good night, Mr. Black."

"Good night, Malfoy."

---

Despite what he had told Minerva McGonagall, Snape had known he wasn't going to be sleeping that night.

Instead he sat alone in the Slytherin common room, and paced when he was no longer able to sit. The few Slytherins who had returned early from their vacations had been given the boot- Snape had sent the students to bed, though he doubted they'd done more than relocate and lower their gatherings' volume. Of course, he didn't really care whether they slept or not; perhaps it would speak better of them if they were unable to do so. Hard as it might be, they would be better people if they faced what they could have become and flinched, rather than turning away, refusing to see, and sleeping the sleep of the willfully ignorant.

Snape sat again in one of the brass studded green leather armchairs scattered about. How wrong the Slytherin common room seemed without Draco Malfoy and his gang slouching around the place, plotting and brooding... Snape sighed. He had never expected Crabbe or Goyle to return. They really weren't the type; Many of the Slytherins who had come back, Snape suspected, had done it more in defiance and rebellion against their parents than out of any real desire to oppose the forces of Voldemort. But at least they were here, and so they would have a chance, however it had come about. They might take that chance, or they might throw it away- but they had it.

And he had wanted- was just realizing how very much he had wanted- for Draco Malfoy to have that same chance. To think now that he might never- that he had let it slip through his fingers, perhaps never knowing that it existed at all...

After all he had been through that night, and all the nights before it, Snape found this almost too much to bear.

He propped his chin in his hand, stared moodily at the fire growing lower in the grate across the room, too weary even to lift his wand and refresh the flames. What did it matter, really, if it grew darker and colder in this room? It had held enough of both already that surely the patterns were familiar by now.

---

Pansy Parkinson paced up and down the stairs leading down towards her old dormitory, where now resided the second year girls of Slytherin.

Her charges.

After graduating Hogwarts, Pansy had found herself at loose ends. The only thing she knew, really knew, was that she did not want to fight for Voldemort. Not after serving him had destroyed so much of her family, shattered the lives of so many she knew. And among the Death Eaters, what would she have been?

Other girls of her year were settling down, finding places for themselves in the world. But did the world have a place for Pansy Parkinson? She was beginning to doubt it.

She had gone out with Draco Malfoy off and on, but in the end Pansy found that she cared about him a little too much. And so she did what she had always done when she found she'd let someone in, close, too close- she ran.

If she had loved him, it didn't matter- It wasn't worth it. Not after she had, at long last, defied her father, refusing to join Voldemort. Her father might have killed her then, but Pansy did as she had always done. She ran.

To the one place she knew she would be safe, to the one place she knew she could not be touched.

Hogwarts.

Hogwarts, and Albus Dumbledore...who made a place for anyone who wanted one, who gave second chances and help to those in need.

Albus Dumbledore, who wasn't going to be there for her- or anyone else- ever again. Who had died at the hands of those Pansy had dared to defy, but not dared enough to fight.

---

She came, rather like Draco Malfoy, though she did not know it- in the middle of the night, out of a storm. Christmas holiday, seventh year, and she returned halfway through.

She shivered in the entrance hall, water pudding at her feet, and gasped out through lips gone mostly blue, that she needed to see Dumbledore.

"My father," she whispered to the headmaster as she stepped into his office. But Dumbledore stopped her then, showed her to a chair, and magicked into being a thick fuzzy blanket and a steaming cup of tea. Only when she had accepted these things did he allow her to continue. Something more than herbs was in the tea; it seemed to stick to her bones in a warm sort of way, and whether it was that or the roaring fire in the grate, she felt the chill leaving her. "My father... told me I was to join the Death Eaters, as his heir. I refused!" With those words the defiance and the anger, sapped away by the cold, returned to her. "I said I wouldn't, I'd make my own choices... I want to show them, show them, show everyone..."

"Show them what, Pansy?" Dumbledore had asked, his tone very kind.

"Slytherins," she said. "What we are, what we really are. How we're not simple like they think- we're not simple evil, we're not simple anything. Like the Gryffindors aren't just brave, or the Ravenclaws aren't just sharp-"

"Come with me," Dumbledore said. He took her down the spiral staircase, to the staff room. "Wait outside a moment, please."

He went into the room, and she heard him speaking to someone. "-rather you come here, she is very cold- yes, it's raining, rather hard I believe- Thank you, Severus."

The door opened soon after, and she was beckoned forward by the headmaster. But Pansy hardly saw him. What she saw was the man standing behind him, the head of her house.

"Professor Snape," Pansy said. The way he was looking at her- it was the expression only the Slytherins ever saw, the one he only allowed to show when he thought none of them were watching, and it was one of both deep concern and fierce protection.

Severus Snape hated children. Everyone knew that- but what they did not know was that no Slytherin in that era had ever truly been a child. And these- these were different, the Slytherins in Snape's charge. They were his. Only Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore knew that he loved them, those children- but he did. And no harm was going to come to them that would be unanswered by their protector, their mentor, their sword and shield. He protected them, in his way, but more, he taught them to protect themselves, taught them self-respect, pride. Pride in their house, pride in each other. Pride in themselves.

And that, ultimately, was what gave Pansy Parkinson the strength to defy her father. Because she was valued, cared for...loved in a way only a Slytherin could view the concept. By Severus Snape.

"Pansy." Snape approached the girl, dropped to his knees- for while she was tall and growing taller, he still towered over her- and, after a quick glance at the door, which was closed, he enveloped her in his arms.

Pansy was shocked. It was the first time Snape had ever touched her, ever touched any of them. Once he had come close to striking a boy, but she had never seen him even approach anything like this.

And Pansy, who had never known such a paternal touch, burst into tears. She sobbed for quite a long time, onto Snape's black-clad shoulder. He patted her back as if he had never done it before, but did not try to comfort her in any other way. No words could have helped; he knew it.

Finally Pansy sniffed and wiped at her nose with her hand; Snape produced a handkerchief, and she blew her nose.

"Professor-" Pansy began, not knowing what she was going to say- wanting to thank him, but not knowing how.

"Listen before you speak. You have chosen to walk the difficult road, when you could have taken the easy. You are safe here- but your struggle is not over."

Pansy had nodded, and thanked him then- thanks he had refused, ignored, and she knew he could do no less.

She had nodded, thinking she understood. But she hadn't. Not then.

Well, Pansy thought. I understand now.

The rest of that year had been hard- hard because the others had known, her Slytherin girls, the ones who followed her because she was the coldest and the meanest, because her wit was quicker and her tongue sharper, hard because she had been cut off from her family. Hard because she had realized at Easter that she still had nowhere else to go. She had found sanctuary, but she could not leave it.

Pansy spent that summer in Hogsmeade, working in The Three Broomsticks. On the last day before the new school term was due to start, Professor Snape had swept into the pub, a sheaf of parchment in his hands. He dropped the stack onto the table where she was sitting, twirling a strand of hair 'round her finger- there were no customers, and she'd cleaned everything in the room twice already.

"What's this?"

Snape picked up the first page. "A list of the first year students. The next is a map of the Slytherin dormitories and common room-"

"I don't need a map," she cut in.

"Study it," Snape went on, "and mind you locate the secret passageways before the first years. Beneath the map is a letter I want you to take to Dumbledore as soon as your shift ends." He turned over several sheets of parchment. "The rest of it is self-explanatory."

Pansy looked up at him in confusion. "What-?"

Snape sighed. "You read the news, and you know what they are not printing. I am not going to have time to go chasing after a bunch of eleven year olds this term."

"You don't have to," Pansy said. "What do you think Filch is for?"

Snape smirked at her. "Amusing, Miss Parkinson. But no. I want you to start taking the girls of Slytherin in hand, beginning with the first years. Any progress you can make with the older ones, or your old friends, would be all the more good."

"Take- the girls- in hand?" Pansy asked. It was, in a strange sort of way, starting to come together, but...

"Yes. I will deal with the boys."

"Right," said Pansy. "But what are we really doing?"

"I am trying to save them, Pansy. And you are going to help me. Unless, of course, you don't want the job. You have, perhaps, somewhere pressing to be?"

Pansy gaped at him. "Job?"

"Read the letter," he said, and swept out again.

Shrugging, Pansy turned her eyes to the letter and began to read it. When she had finished her expression of bewilderment had vanished, replaced by something like pride...and happiness.

"Pansy?" asked Madame Rosmerta when she returned from her lunch break some time later. "What's all that?"

"Professor Snape just offered me a job up at the school," Pansy said proudly.

"Take it," Madame Rosmerta told her. "It's what you've wanted all summer, to go back there."

Pansy had gone, taken Snape's letter to Dumbledore. Watched as the headmaster read it, and nodded.

"It's brilliant," Dumbledore said. "If you wish, Miss Parkinson-"

"Yes, Professor Dumbledore, I do."

Later she had learned that being an only child hadn't prepared her very well for being in charge of so many younger children. But later, too, she had learned that Slytherin children were indeed different, and that she could speak to these in a language they could understand- the language of silver and green, of pain and silence and traveling the same roads. And later she had learned that many of them had already heard about her from parents or older siblings, and were not warmly inclined towards her.

Later she had learned that with some it would be a struggle, to befriend them, to save them.

Had learned that some of them were beyond her reach. Some among them had been her friends once, the girls of her own year. Between them there were battles of wands and of words, but one by one those she had been unable to touch left, some loudly, some quietly. Pansy had known to where it was they traveled.

When Millicent Bulstrode went to Voldemort, Pansy had gone to Professor Snape. Believing she had failed, believing she was unworthy of the trust he had placed in her- and more deeply wounded than she ever wanted to admit, by the loss of her best friend.

Snape had told her, as he had on the occasion of every other loss, not to dwell upon things she couldn't change, but rather to focus on the good she had done, the bonds she had forged with the children and the older girls who had made the choice to stay. Then he had offered her a drink, and after she had accepted, told her a few things she had never before heard about Lucius Malfoy, saying behind those words, between the lines, that he understood.

Perhaps it had been the drink, which was rather strong, or perhaps it was simply the hour for truth. Perhaps it was the ghost of the lost and lonely little girl hidden deep beneath Pansy's armor, finding her voice at last as the young woman said, "I wish that you had been my father."

She had gone then to see to the charges still remaining to her, and so had not heard the voice of the kindred spirit as he said, "I, too."

But in a way she had heard it, knew it without knowing it.

Slytherin had always been her true family, anyway.

---

Pansy rubbed her arms as she walked along the corridor, feeling the cold of the stone coming up through the soles of her shoes. But most of the chill she felt was not physical, and no amount of movement was going to dive it away.

Now she knew that Hogwarts was not quite the haven she had thought it, and that not even Dumbledore was invulnerable.

Dumbledore. Merlin, but she wanted to weep. Wanted to, and couldn't- if one of the girls came by, Pansy didn't want them to see her crying. She'd tried to instill in them the idea that emotion wasn't weakness, that it was alright to be things besides angry and unkind, but as others were still trying to instill this belief into Pansy, her lessons hadn't taken very well. If she had believed it herself, maybe... But she didn't yet.

Alastor Moody had clunked his way down to the dungeons to tell her about Dumbledore, as Snape was nowhere to be found. She worried and fretted over the head of her house until she heard the sound of a key turning in the common room door, then the unmistakable sound of his voice commanding the students to bed, or at least to take their folly out of his sight.

She'd come out from the girls' wing and spoken to him briefly, but sensing he was preoccupied, Pansy didn't linger.

Eventually she took herself off to bed, and had just about fallen asleep when she was jerked awake by the sound of someone telling off the portal and screaming last term's passwords at the top of their lungs.

---

"Bloody hell, let me in!" Draco Malfoy shook his fist at the damp brick wall. "Green! Silver! Pureblood! God damnit! I am not a Death Eater!"

The panel swung open.

Draco shook his head, bemused. "The password is 'I am not a Death Eater'?"

A dry chuckle answered him. Only then did Draco notice the dark-robed figure of Snape standing in the doorway. As the young man was about to speak again, Snape grabbed hold of his arm and dragged him through the door.

"In," he said, and shoved the portal closed again.

"What the devil?" asked Draco, jerking himself free.

"It may be a moot point, what with your shouting to wake the dead, but I don't want the whole school to know you're here."

"Alright. I'm sorry. If I'd had the password, though-"

"You must have guessed we would have changed it," Snape said. "Twice, actually- the second time tonight."

"The first being the day we all left," Draco sighed. "Right. Granger let me in, and I ran into Sirius Black on my way here; I think they're the only ones who know I'm back."

Snape nodded.

"This place is lousy with Gryffindors, Professor."

"You were expecting Hufflepuffs, perhaps?"

Draco shrugged. "I don't- I don't know, really. Didn't think about it much."

"That I can well believe."

"What do you want from me, Professor?" His tone was hardly respectful, and Draco remembered a moment too late that one did not speak to Snape in that manner, no matter one's circumstances. Done was done, though, and he was tired of walking on eggshells, tired of having to bow and scrape, knuckle his forehead and respect the elaborate hierarchy that sometimes defined all things Slytherin. Hadn't he stepped outside of that hierarchy, in coming here tonight? Hadn't he?

Suddenly he very much hoped so.

---

"The question, Mister Malfoy," Snape said slowly, crossing his arms, "is what you want of me. Why are you here?"

He wanted to take back the words as they crossed his lips, wanted to belabor the fact that he could not trust this boy. Wanted to, but knew what the reality of the situation was, and no matter that he loathed it. Oh, he was glad the boy had returned, but his presence here tonight was only the beginning. Only the first step.

And Draco Malfoy knew it as well as he did.

"Right now," Draco said, "I don't know. I don't know why I'm here, and I don't know what I want- from you, from anyone. I don't. And I know- I know that answer isn't going to cut it in the morning; it's not going to cut it with you, or with McGonagall, or with the Aurors. And it shouldn't- I'm not saying that it should. What I'm saying is that it's past midnight, I'm exhausted and soaking wet, and you, if you don't mind my saying so, look like hell."

"You know what you face if you remain?" Snape asked, and knew the answer before the young man nodded.

"Yes."

"You came," Snape told him, "for the truth."

Draco shrugged. "I don't know what it is."

"You will." Snape turned away, and then as a thought struck him, looked back. "Your room is as you left it. If you remain tomorrow, you may keep the job I gave you."

The young man smiled. "Going to pay me this time, Professor?"

"If you have honest need of money? Yes."

Draco nodded. "I'll remember that promise. And I think I'll sleep here tonight." He patted a green leather couch.

Snape shrugged. "If you insist. The password, by the way, is veritas."

He laughed. "Yes, it would be. Good night, Professor."

"Good night."

Snape closed the common room door behind him, quietly.

He spent the rest of the night pacing the Slytherin quarters and the dungeons just beyond, pausing only for moments to look in upon his charges. Snape heard voices echoing down the corridor and raced towards the sound, only to find that it was the ones had told off earlier in the night, sleepless as he was.

Snape nodded to himself. Every student he had tossed out of the common room was there, and he paused for a moment to listen to them.

Eavesdropping on students might not have been the sort of tactic Minerva or Dumbledore would have approved of, but Slytherin was a very different house from Gryffindor. And it was not their childish secrets he was interested in, least of all tonight.

"-just can't believe it," said a boy's voice. "I know he was older than dirt, but I thought Dumbledore would live forever."

"But who could have killed Dumbledore?" This, a first-year, who should have been too young to ask the question, or to hear the answer. Should have been. Wasn't.

"Who do you think?" snapped one of the fifth-years. "It bloody well wasn't Merlin!"

The first year sniffed, then blew his nose. "You mean You-Know-Who?"

The older boy sighed. "Yes."

"Give him a break, Jeremy- he's just a kid."

"Like that matters anymore," said Jeremy.

Snape nodded again, and turned away.

He walked quietly to the other end of the hall, nearer his own room. Slammed the door open, and let the sound of his shoes on the stone echo out ahead of him.

"Go to bed!" the commanding voice of Professor Severus Snape rang out towards the boys' dormitories.

But as he closed the door to his own room, Snape smiled.