"You may need to use the spell again. Harry, look at me." He waited until the boy did. "You must comprehend the extent of your own powers. You can't go forth in ignorance, not when you have magic such as this at your command. Surely you can see this."
Harry nodded glumly, feeling sick deep inside. "All right, I'll just-- oh, yech. I'm still not sure he's dead, you know, but if he is, this is going to be gross."
"Wait," said Draco suddenly, his voice excited. "I should have thought of this sooner! There's a portrait of Lucius upstairs. It's never spoken or moved or anything, not that I've ever seen. And it shouldn't, right? Unless . . ."
"An excellent notion," said Dumbledore, beaming a smile at Draco. The old wizard flicked his wand toward the doorway to the room, and a few moments later, a large gold-coloured frame came sailing towards him. It was moving so fast that Harry couldn't properly see the painting until the headmaster deftly caught it and set it on the floor, leaning it up against one wall.
Lucius Malfoy glared out from the canvas, rapping his cane right and left and up and down in a clear effort to escape the frame. "Where is that worthless spawn of mine?" he roared, throwing his head back. His stance reminded Harry an enraged jungle cat. "Serpensortia, is it? I'll show you a Serpensortia to curl your toes!"
As soon as he caught sight of Draco, he yanked his snake-headed wand from his cane and pointed it directly at the boy.
Draco leapt back in panic, but when nothing happened, he stood up straight and shouted. "Ha! Your wand was destroyed before you died, which means you're one-hundred percent without magic!" He paused, smirking. "Oh, did I mention you were dead? Yeah, dead. And good riddance!"
"I'll make you wish you were dead, I will, you worthless good-for-nothing ingrate excuse for a son!"
Draco leaned laconically against the edge of a divan and smiled like a cat lapping cream. Or perhaps, like a young man who suddenly didn't have a care in the world. "You know, Father, I think you must have been keeping the wrong sort of company. You certainly do seem less a wizard."
"Why, you--" Panting with fury, Lucius grabbed the edges of his portrait with both hands and did his best to leverage himself out of it.
Draco walked right up to the portrait, leaning over to meet Lucius' painted glare at eye level as he spoke very softly. "I bet you wish you hadn't gone to such extreme measures to teach me to conjure snakes. Eh? What, nothing to say?"
"I'll get you for this, Draco Snape!" screamed Lucius. "Just see if I don't! You'll never get so much as a knut from my holdings! And don't think your mother will ever help you. I knew she might want to someday, so it's all been settled elsewhere! Irrevocably! My fortune and hers both. Everything!"
"Well then it's a good show I'm not like you, thinking that money and power matter more than family," retorted Draco. Standing, he turned his back on Lucius.
"Family!" bellowed the portrait as Draco walked away. "You betrayed your family, your real . . ."
"Lucius." Severus interrupted the exchange in a voice that was calm, yet deadly. "You are nothing now. Nothing but a painted shadow of your former self. You will never again harm my sons. Or anyone else."
"You can have him!" ranted Lucius. "I'm well rid of him! I should have replaced him long ago with one more worthy, one who wouldn't let a filthy Mudblood best him time and again, one who would respect his family lines and heritage--"
Draco spun on a heel and levelled his wand at the portrait, but before he could cast Incendio or something equally destructive, Albus stepped in front of him and flipped the portrait so it would face the wall. Quickly, he cast wards around the portrait, both silencing it and preventing it from hearing as well.
Scowling, Draco lowered his wand, his entire posture deflating a little. Harry suspected that heavy emotions were the only thing keeping his brother on his feet.
"Best to keep our options open," Albus said, his tone conciliatory. "The late Lucius Malfoy knows things that may prove of use."
"Of course," said Draco, lifting his chin. "I'm not sure how you'll get him to talk, though."
Another pop announced Remus' return to the room. "Gentlemen, I'm afraid we have a problem," he announced without preamble. "I did not find a house-elf in or anywhere near the snake pit, though I searched the vicinity quite thoroughly."
"What?" Losing him composure completely, Draco actually squawked. "Dribby! Fibby, Gibby! Oh, whatever the blazes your name is, you come to me this instant!"
The wizards all waited expectantly but no house-elf appeared.
"That's weird," Harry said after a few moments. "He certainly seemed to obligated to obey you before. Do you think the snakes did him in? Maybe house-elves disappear when they die. Well, when it's not of natural causes," he added, thinking of the elf heads that used to decorate Number 12 Grimmauld Place.
"They most certainly do not," said Severus, his voice taut and grim. "Furthermore, it would take more than snake venom to kill one. It takes Dark Arts, as I do believe I once mentioned."
Dumbledore nodded agreement, even as he added, "The magical laws governing the relationships between house-elves and wizards are complex -- even nebulous at times. Perhaps, your bloodline and your name were not enough to supersede your disinheritance after all, Draco."
The blond boy flushed slightly. "You knew I'd kept Malfoy as part of my name?"
Albus smiled, very gently. "Oh, of course, my boy. You surely didn't think my teas with Severus concerned only Harry, did you?"
Draco obviously had, since he shrugged defensively. Or maybe he was defensive because of what he was about to say. "Um, this is probably going to sound fairly daft but . . . um, I might have freed him, I'm thinking."
Harry gaped. "You freed an elf? You?"
"Well, yes." Draco shifted his weight and looked around the room as if he didn't know whom to look at. Or whom to avoid. "See, back when Gibbery was putting me into Lucius' clothes, I handed him the shirt I'd just taken off and tried to free him." Draco crossed his arms. "I thought maybe the wretched little bugger wouldn't hurt us if he wasn't under Lucius' control. But he protested that I couldn't free him since I wasn't his master. But now I'm thinking that when Lucius died and I became the eldest Malfoy in the dwelling, maybe it took, right? After the fact."
"Nebulous indeed," murmured the headmaster.
Severus gently tugged on Harry's arm, urging him out of the chair. "Come along," he said. "Whether the elf was freed then and lying about it, or became free at Lucius' death, it's clear that he's gone and is most likely reporting on all that has happened. We are no longer safe in this location."
"Oh no," Harry groaned softly as he lumbered to his feet. "My magic! He'll tell what I did to Lucius! After all we've done to keep it secret." He shook his head ruefully.
In the meantime, Albus shrank the warded painting and slipped it into a pocket of his robe. "As you may have surmised, Remus, we have confirmed that Lucius Malfoy is, in fact, deceased. Draco recalled that Lucius kept a wizarding portrait upstairs and it is now quite active with the late Malfoy's essence."
"Has he any others?" Remus asked.
Draco both shook his head and shrugged in answer to the question. "Not that I know of, anyway."
"We'll thoroughly ward the painting to make him stay in this frame, all the same--"
"Harry, are you all right?" asked Severus.
"Me? Oh yeah, fine," said Harry. "It's not like I'm going to be Apparating myself out of here anyway, eh? I'm just tired. I don't even think I need to see Madam Pomfrey, to be honest--"
Severus pursed his lips and gave Harry a look that said they'd discuss the matter later. Both matters, actually. Because he hadn't been asking about Harry's physical condition, and Harry knew it.