Not his Death Eater boots. They made a harsher sound against the marble.

She stood in the middle of the corridor leading to the western wing, like a broomstick accident waiting to happen.

He turned the corner, twenty paces away, eyes fixed on a stack of parchment in his hand. He looked thinner, if possible. Bones protruding from his face and chest like knives.

His eyes glanced up at her when he was halfway down the corridor.

His body jolted, dropping half his paperwork. She could see the violet bruises of exhaustion under his eyes from halfway across the room. Sucking in a rattling breath, she watched as his gaze dropped to the marble, his knees shaky as he bent to pick up the papers he'd fumbled. He stood and pressed back against the wall, eyes cast down.

And she was reminded of the first years that would jump out of the Slytherin King's path whenever he swept down the Hogwarts corridors. But to look at him now...

He waited, allowing her to pass with as little disturbance of the air she breathed as possible. She propelled her feet forward, feeling like she was passing through another cloud of grief, just aching to find the clean air and light again.

She thought of her bookcase, a slow-growing apology, a rebuilding of sorts. She thought of pale fingers on her wrist, breaking the capillaries and bruising the bones, unable to let go.

Stopping in front of him, she waited. His eyes didn't flicker upward. He stared off, across the floor, glazed eyes and held breath.

"Thank you for my books," she whispered.

She watched his throat swallow. Her chest was tight with the desire for normalcy, for where they had been before. Her hand lifted, fingers stretched to touch—

His grey eyes flickered to meet hers. Hollow. Her hand dropped. She continued moving through the corridor, pushing aside her thundering heart and her aching chest — her desire to comfort and bring color back to his skin.

When she reached the end of the hallway, she looked back and found a thin figure still leaning against the wall, bleeding into the background of his own manor.

~*~

Lucius Malfoy still had not returned. It had been two weeks since he'd left with Voldemort, and still the questions swirled in her mind. He'd offered "assistance" — whatever that meant. She remembered the feeling of two presences in her mind in the drawing room, one smoother and dull. She was fairly certain that Lucius had seen what Voldemort did in her mind, but she hadn't the faintest idea what he'd chosen to do what that information.

She sat in the Conservatory, staring out at the July day with a book in her lap. It was the closest she'd gotten to the outdoors. At first, after running into Draco, she'd been hesitant to leave her routine of library to conservatory to library to bed. But as the days passed, she grew anxious to see him. If she was going to help the Order, she needed to be on good terms with him. She needed his access, his information. Knowingly or unknowingly.