Authors Notes : This is not a sensual vignette. This is not a tale of romance. This is not a happy story, period; in fact it's rather sick, and if you have the slightest distaste for slash, pedophilia, or incest - PLEASE. Leave now. I understand the sheer perversion of the events to follow. I wrote them anyway; because fiction isn't always pretty, or pleasant, or meant to warm one's heart. You have been warned. Use your discretion.
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The Scent of Cedar
[ colloquial title : Behind the Armoire Door ]
Someone was talking to him. Someone with a high pitched, nervous voice was talking very fast, and very close by. The words had fangs; they slipped through the outer layers of Draco's restless slumber, biting into his subconscious like a snakebite so that he awoke in a cold sweat.
"Master Draco? Your father wishes to see you in his chambers…"
He didn't want to open his eyes. If he just pretended that this was part of his dreams… Draco rolled over, pulling the blankets over his head and curling up in a tight little ball beneath them. "Go away, Tzench," he muttered to the house elf, who was peering in through the gap in the bed curtains with wide, watery eyes. There was a cold, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he closed his eyes against it. He didn't want to see his father, now - or ever again, for that matter.
School vacations were Hell, for Draco. He spent the whole two weeks leading up to them telling anyone who would listen how wonderful his holiday was sure to be, and how very pleasant it would be to see his parents again, and how Christmas at his family estate was a celebration unlike any other in magical Britain. He described it all the way that he wanted it to be; with a mother and father who welcomed him home singing him praises and showering him in gifts, when in truth, Draco's life at Malfoy Manor was not a life at all, but a waking nightmare.
He could not remember a time when his father had loved his mother. Perhaps he never had. Narcissa had been a brood mare for the Malfoy family line, and now that she had produced the desired number of children Lucius had put her out to pasture; leaving a wing of the mansion entirely under her delegation and never venturing across it's threshold. Lucius did not find it necessary to beat her, as long as she was not underfoot, and Draco had not seen her in nearly a year.
But his father was omnipresent in the household, and for Draco, there was no escape within these walls. His sisters were grown and gone, and there was only him, now - the soul receptacle of his father's 'affections'. Summers were never-ending, beneath this roof; a steady, violent flow of Lucius's temper, and Draco was nearly always the object of it. What he had done to earn this dubious position, he would never know; it had simply always been so, ever since he could remember. Lucius hadn't given a damn about Jezebel or Isadora; daughters had been nothing but a disappointment to him. He'd beaten them right along with the rest of the household, of course, but he never crept into their chambers at night as he had Draco's…
At first it had been the Big Bad Secret; no one could ever know what happened behind the drawn curtains of that four poster, and the few times that Draco had thought about telling someone, he'd gotten sick to his stomach before he could even put the words to order in his head. But now? Now it was an all out war, father-against-son, and Draco wasn't winning. Now all of Malfoy Manor rang with his own screams after dark, and there was no one here to hear it.
"Master Draco must come quickly, sir, Master Lucius demands it…" The house elf was shaking him by the shoulder, now, a note of panic in his voice. "Please, sir, do not make him wait!"
Draco rolled over and shoved the elf away from him so violently that Tzench flew off of the bed and landed on the stone floor of the bedchamber with a resounding 'thud' and a high-pitched squeak. Pushing the bed curtains back, he peered beyond them. Nothing but blackness met his eyes - Merlin only knew what time it was, or how long he'd been asleep - it didn't feel like very long at all since he'd lain down, stressed and exhausted from the trip back from Hogwarts to this prison that he had to call home. He had prayed in vain to no particular god that his father would leave him in peace, at least for this first night.
But now it was half-past-who-knew-when, and the house elf was cowering against the wall, gazing at him with terrified yet expectant eyes. He had to go. If he didn't go, Lucius would come after him, and it would hurt twice as badly when he did. His hands already trembling a bit, Draco drew his robe on over his pajamas and pulled it tight around himself, shivering anyway. Deathly cold in the mansion tonight - the air of the cavernous bedchamber hung thin and still, like the air inside a mausoleum.
"Go tell him that I'm coming, then," he said, trying to keep his voice even.
The house elf bowed so deeply that his thin, pointed nose touched the floor, and scurried from the room. Draco followed the echoing pitter-patter of his little feet out the door, and down the long, high vaulted upper corridor of Malfoy Manor. Twisted gargoyles wrought from dark, heavy stone leered down at him from the walls, the flicker of intermittent torchlight casting ugly and foreboding shadows across the crevices of their faces. The marble floor was freezing beneath his bare feet, but Draco barely felt it; moving with slow, automated steps, he made his way past the grim-faced, fading portraits of his ancestors - a few of whom chuckled mirthlessly at him under their breath as he went by. Someday, he thought to himself… someday when his father was dead and gone, and this cursed place was his, he would burn every single one of those paintings. He would wrench them from the walls with his own two hands and throw every one of those sneering, smirking faces into the flames. He would save Lucius's portrait for last, and spit on it before he burned it to a cinder…
With a startled rush of panic, he realized that he had reached the doorway to his father's private chambers. The heavy mahogany doors had been left ajar; there was a warm orange glow creeping through the opening, and the smell of burning cedar. Something lurched very deep inside Draco's stomach as the scent hit his nostrils; his father always burned cedar, and the sweet perfume was a strong and sickening reminder of what he was about to face beyond those doors. The smell of cedar and warm silk sheets, the smell sweat, the smell of tears, the coppery, metallic scent of blood…
"Come inside, Draco," said a silken, icy voice from beyond the doors, "you've kept me waiting far too long already."
A frozen surge of fear shot down Draco's spine - quite suddenly his feet seemed glued to the floor. There was no chance to run, now; he should have done it when he had the chance - turned right instead of left out of his room and run until he was out the front doors, past the front gates, away from Wiltshire forever. Now he didn't have a hippogriffs chance in hell of escaping the horrors that he knew were to come. Dragging one leaden foot forward, then another, he forced himself over the threshold by sheer willpower alone, padding silently into the room…
Lucius's chambers were spacious, lavish, and riddled with shadows. The ring of light cast from the huge granite serpent's head that was hearth seemed small, and though the cedar fire burned vivaciously its glow did not even reach the adjoining walls. Draco could only catch the faintest glimpse of the mammoth canopy bed against the far wall; the gleam of a high polished ebony post, and no more. That bed was the maw of Hell, for Draco; beyond those shadows and green velvet bed hangings hid the most horrible memories of his life…
His father was waiting for him; sitting in a high backed velvet chair of the same hue as the bed curtains with a glass of wine in one hand, and his eyes on Draco.
The steel colored gaze ran over him smoothly in the fire light; up, down, then up again, and Draco nearly shivered again. Lucius raised one fine, pale eyebrow, and said very quietly, "You're late."
"I'm sorry, sir."; the whisper left Draco's lips automatically. He could feel the heat of the fire against his back, but he was still freezing, freezing. It was as though he had never left the Manor at all; never gone back to Hogwarts, never left for a second… he had been in this very room just yesterday, or so it seemed, and no time had passed between then and now…
"You have not been home yet twenty-four hours, and already I see the signs of Dumbledore's softness in you again. Does he let you show up to class when you please, then? Do you simply *choose* whether or not to come when a superior calls you?" Lucius had folded his hands very properly before him. Now he was regarding Draco with raised brows, and a look of mock earnest that did nothing to conceal the razorblades in his eyes.
"No, sir," Draco said quietly, the familiar numbness creeping down his spine and into his chest. It would be worse if he didn't answer…
"This will not do, Draco. This will not do at all. Your grades this semester have been less than tolerable. Your conduct reports are reprehensible. And now you keep your own time table under my roof." Lucius stood up, the shadows from the fireplace dancing ominously over those pointed, chiseled features, and peered down at Draco from this new height. "You are a Malfoy. You will act as a Malfoy. It is time that you learned what is expected of you."
Draco kept his eyes on the marble floor beneath his feet, but he was swallowed now by the shadow of his father, as Lucius stepped 'round behind him. It was bad enough when his he wasn't angry, bad enough when he was simply bored…
"Disrobe," said Lucius.
Nightmare.
Time seemed to ebb away like the recession of a wave, leaving Draco suspended behind it. The chamber seemed to close in around him, surreal yet somehow sharpened, and the crackling of the fire seemed very far away. He had not told his hands to move, but they had anyway - removing his robe with deft and trembling fingers, unbuttoning the shirt of his pajamas as though they were not his own fingers at all, but something distant and remote and under Lucius's control. There was no Hogwarts, now; no cool and quiet Slytherin dormitory, no high-set old four poster bed with nothing but safe, warm silence behind it's curtains. There was only the cold air against his back, now, down his hips and thighs as his pajama pants slid to the floor, and the horrible, creeping sensation of Lucius's eyes caressing his naked body. Shivering, Draco hunched his shoulders and ducked his head, drawing one knee up to cover himself.
Five long, icy fingers caught his jaw in an iron grip. One moment Lucius had been behind him, the next he was wrenching Draco's head up so that their faces were but inches apart. "Stand up straight." Lucius whispered through gritted teeth. "Cowardice is unbecoming. I will not allow it." And with that he released the boy, stepping back a few paces yet holding him firmly with his eyes.
Draco swallowed hard and kept his head up, squaring his shoulders and setting both feet beneath them. The hard, cruel eyes on him were nearly as bad as the hard, cruel touches that he knew would follow soon enough. It made him squirm in his own skin. At least they eyes couldn't get inside him…
"You've been eating?"
Looking anywhere but at his father, Draco nodded. "Yes, sir."
Lucius dragged his eyes over the slender, delicate frame of his son, and sneered a bit. "You could have fooled me." Draco set his jaw and swallowed again, trying not to think about anything at all. He'd always been too small for Lucius's taste, and too pretty. Always, always too pretty.
His father paced in a long, slow circle around him, his words a silky yet frozen. Drawl. "Do you know how long I waited for you, tonight? Seventeen minutes, Draco. My time is not yours to waste." The languid footsteps paused somewhere behind him.
And then Draco heard a sound that set his teeth on edge; the rusty hinges of Lucius's armoire door.
Everything that hurt lived behind the armoire door. Everything that left bruises and welts, everything that made him bleed; everything that held him down or stretched him open or had sharp edges…
"An eye for an eye, as the old saying goes," said Lucius. "I believe that seventeen lashes ought to be sufficient. You will count them off; do not lose track, or we will start over from the beginning. Understood?" - some wretched instinct nodded Draco's head for him - "Very good. You know what to do."
There were exactly eleven and a half paces from Lucius's chair to the end of the canopy bed. Draco had counted them long ago. He knew each and every one of them by heart, now, and his feet followed the path to which they'd been trained. This bed haunted him in nightmares from which he woke up screaming in silence. The ebony footboard was smooth and cool beneath Draco's clammy hands, as he leaned over and braced himself against it, spreading his legs as he knew he was expected to do. It hurt more, that way, and his father knew it, lay the most sensitive parts of his body open to the sting of the blows. The hiss of leather against stone met his ears, drawing closer with Lucius's footsteps, and fading into silence so close to Draco that he cringed despite himself.
"Eighteen lashes, then, if you are not going to heed my warnings against cowardice." Lucius's voice colder than ever.
"Count."
The first stripe of the whip landed lit Draco's back on fire; he was bleeding already, and the next seventeen blows were going to take the rest of his life to land. Gritting his teeth, Draco forced the word "one" from between his lips, and braced himself for the next lash.
It landed lower, this time, and the next blow lower still - and each time, Draco choked out the appropriate number, praying that his voice would not crack of break or tremble. Five, six, seven… he heard his voice somewhere outside of his own head, and it sounded small and unfamiliar to his ears. The blood was weaving warm, stick trails down his legs, now, and every new blow landed upon an open wound... Ten, eleven, twelve. Lucius seemed determined to leave every inch of Draco's flesh below his waist and above his knees raw and bleeding; the heat was rising in his skin, his body's desperate attempts to begin healing before the onslaught had even ceased. thirteenth lash clipped sharply against the inside of his thigh, and Draco nearly gasped out the number. Fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, and his knees were threatening to give out beneath him… seventeen fell so hard that Draco reeled against the baseboard, and eighteen made his vision flash white.
He leaned heavily against the bed when it was finally over, breathing hard and swallowing wave after wave of nausea that rolled through his stomach and boiled up into his throat. He hadn't cried out, he'd choked back all his tears, but if he threw up now he'd get whipped again twice over.
This was only the beginning, and Draco knew it.
"Do you understand the value of punctuality now, Draco, or must my point yet clearer still?"
The dangerous slither of the leather whip over the floor behind him, again; Draco flinched and whispered, "I understand, sir."
"I sincerely hope that you do." The hiss of Lucius's 's' was entirely serpentine. "Bed. Now. On your back."
There was nothing warm or comforting about the smooth silk sheets of Lucius's bed. Draco closed his eyes very tightly as he slid onto it, cringing sharply as he lowered his weight onto the wide open lash marks and turning his face to the side, hiding it against the pillows as best he could. Once again, he could feel the cold grey eyes tracing the lines of his body, taking note of the shivering in his bones and the rose colored flush of humiliation beneath his delicate cheekbones. Draco tried very hard not to flinch as Lucius's weight sunk onto the bed next to him - he kept his face turned away, his eyes shut tight, and tried not to think about what else was going to happen to him. He barely heard his father's muttered jinx, but the effects were sickeningly familiar; for now he could not move his arms or legs, as though he'd been chained spread eagle to the bed with invisible bonds.
"You seem to have forgotten quite a bit in your absence, Little Dragon," said Lucius, who seemed to be taking a divine sort of pleasure in watching Draco tremble against the sheets. "Look at you. Scared to death. Are you afraid, perhaps, that I've found out about something you've neglected to tell me?"
If Draco's stomach hadn't been so busy turning, it would have shriveled up and vanished. There was no way that his father could know, no possible way…
"No, sir," he whispered tightly.
"And you're sure of this?" Almost lazily, Lucius flicked his wand at the boy; and quite suddenly there was something slithering over Draco's skin - something smooth and cold and scaly...
A small, dark green serpent was coiling it's way around his calf, sliding smoothly up his leg. There was a soft yet decidedly dangerous hissing coming from it; it's silver eyes flashed as it slithered over Draco's hip, weaving back and forth across the silk-soft plane of his abdomen.
Lucius couldn't know, couldn't know, no, never; not about that, not about *him*. Lucius couldn't possibly know how he touched Draco, kissed him… how he drew Draco into his private chambers at night and drown him in tenderness until dawn. His stomach tense and quivering beneath the curling of the snake, he bit his lip for a moment, then whispered, "Yes, sir. I'm sure."
"You are a horrible little liar, Draco."
A sharp, stabbing pain shot through his body from his navel out; the serpent had plunged it's fangs into him, locking it's jaws split-second around a tender strip of flesh before releasing it's hold and continuing it's slow, slithering path up - his chest, and back down. Draco cried out sharply, his fingers knotting around the bed sheets beneath him. The wound stung as though it were laced with salt, and he had to fight to keep his breathing even, fight to keep the tears from making it to his eyes. His entire body was covered in a fine sheen of cold sweat, now, and the snake's path over his skin was colder still; only the blood was warm, trickling slowly but surely over his stomach and down his side.
"Do you think that I cannot tell when you are lying to me? Do you think that I cannot tell, just by looking at you, what a little whore you've been? Someone's had their hands on you, Little Dragon. They've left their scent on you." Abruptly, Lucius grabbed him by a handful of silken platinum hair, yanking Draco's face round to meet his own. "Who is it."
"No one!" Draco whimpered, now thoroughly panicked, and the snake sank it's fangs like needles into the inside of his thigh. With another gasp and a buck of his hips, he tried to pull away from it. Lucius twisted the lock of hair in his grip, drawing his face down closer and hissing through gritted teeth.
"You have one last chance, Little Dragon. Either you tell me who's bitch you've become, or I will personally quell your desires for any human being for a very long time. Now who… is it."
Draco choked on another sob, tried in vain to turn his face away. The snake was between his legs, now, curling in a sickening pattern around the most tender places. He was still bleeding, still shaking, and now Lucius's face was only an inch from his. It seemed that if he opened his eyes, his father would be able to see right into them, glean the treasured secret from his mind. No matter what happened, what was done to him, Draco couldn't give that secret up. In a life structured by fear, riddled with pain and laced with neglect, those tender midnight moments were all that he had to live for; the moments when he was warm, and safe, and touched with a tenderness that he'd never known from any other living soul.
"No--" but he hadn't even gotten the second word out before Lucius struck him hard across the mouth, and in the same moment the snake bit down between his legs. And this time Draco could not contain the scream of pain that rose in his throat and burst desperately from his lips. His back arched up and away from the bed, his jaw locked, and now he was struggling blindly against his invisible bonds as the wicked, conjured serpent sank it's teeth in again, and again…
He never heard the counter jinx that finally brought the agonizing assault to an end. There was nothing but pain, now; pain and nausea and a desperate, paralyzing fear. It didn't matter now how angry he made his father by struggling - anything, anything to get away, to make it stop…
He was alone on the bed, and the armoire door was creaking.
The implement that Lucius came back with was, by far, the cruelest looking object that Draco had seen to date. A fairly long, fairly thin contraption made of dark, well-work steel and riddled with little round holes from top to bottom, and a rusting gear attacked to the thickest end of it. He knew exactly what it was; blinded by pain, he'd felt the horror of it before, but he'd never laid eyes on it until now. Wide eyed and shuddering, now, he whipped his head in a hopeless, soundless negating from side to side against the pillows, his lungs seeming to shrink inside his chest so that he could not draw a proper breath.
Lucius did not bother to speak to him, anymore - he simply jerked Draco up from the mattress by his neck, spun him around, and slammed him back down so that his face cracked against the headboard of the bed in the process. The thick, coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth, and Draco pressed his face against the hot silk sheets, the scent of sweat burning cedar heavy in his nostrils.
The invisible bonds held his hands down firmly on either side of his face, kept his knees wide apart as Lucius dragged Draco's hips up off the bed, fingernails digging deep into the skin. There would be no preparation, he knew - only cold hard steel inside of him, and those vile little teeth…
Even so, it hurt worse than he remembered. The wicked instrument slid into him smoothly, but then the rusty gear ground into action, and the entire thing began to stretch, widen… Draco could feel his body tearing, feel the hard steel edges digging into him.
And then the true torture; for through the holes came the wicked little spikes, snapping out as though sprung by a switchblade trigger and digging into him from the inside. They were not sharp enough to pierce the skin, right away - but Lucius gave the entire device a horrid twist, then another. Soon enough they would wear through the tender lining of his body, and the blood would come before the numbness did; Draco knew every moment of the nightmare by heart. There was nothing to be done now but scream; scream until his voice broke, until he coughed blood, until he finally collapsed, limp and shuddering and unable to fight anymore as his father tore him apart from the inside out.
Draco had no idea how long it took, or how much blood he had lost; he only knew that when it was over, the charm that Lucius used to staunch the bleeding had no effect on the pain that throbbed through his guts and outward to the tips of his fingers and toes. He only knew that everything hurt and that there was nowhere to hide from it, no way to escape it. Draco curled up on his side when the bonds released him, burying his face in his arms as best he could. Sometimes if he was hurt this badly, when it was over, Lucius would allow him to cry himself to sleep right where he was, instead of forcing him back onto his feet and sending him away. He never touched Draco after, never comforted him if he let him stay, never even lay down beside him; but at least he didn't make him move, didn't make it hurt more…
"Get up. Get out."
Dragged to his feet by his hair before he could even flinch, Draco found himself thrown down hard on the cold marble floor a few feet from his discarded clothing. Trembling too hard to do more than drag his robe around him, he gathered up his pajamas in his arms and curled up against the foot of Lucius's chair for a moment to catch his breath.
But Lucius kicked him hard in the back, sent him sprawling, and reaching down to grab another handful of the boy's spun silk hair, dragged him harshly by it the remaining distance to the door. Draco's sore, slender body slammed against the opposite wall of the hallway, with such force did Lucius eject him from the chamber. Stumbling for balance and clinging to the molding, he fought hard to keep his footing as the huge mahogany doors slammed shut behind him. If he collapsed here in the hall, Lucius was sure to find him before he came 'round again, and then it would happen all over again…
It took nearly all of his remaining strength to get himself back to his own room. Tzench was nowhere to be found; Draco drew himself a glass of water from a jug beneath the window, tried to drink, then stumbled blindly into bed.
Only now did he allow himself to cry.
Curling up around a pillow and burying his face against it, Draco sobbed with all the breath that he could draw. He cried because it hurt, cried because he was scared, cried because there was no one to hold him, now, and sooth the pain even a little with gentle words and gentle hands. He cried because gentleness was all that he wanted, and the only person who had ever given it to him couldn't help him now. He cried because he wanted to go back to Hogwarts; back where someone stroked his hair, and called him beautiful, and stayed late with him in the Potions classroom when everyone else had left to give him a soft kiss after each class…
Draco whispered "Severus" very softly into his pillow, and cried himself to sleep.
-to be continued-
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* * *
The Scent of Cedar
[ colloquial title : Behind the Armoire Door ]
Someone was talking to him. Someone with a high pitched, nervous voice was talking very fast, and very close by. The words had fangs; they slipped through the outer layers of Draco's restless slumber, biting into his subconscious like a snakebite so that he awoke in a cold sweat.
"Master Draco? Your father wishes to see you in his chambers…"
He didn't want to open his eyes. If he just pretended that this was part of his dreams… Draco rolled over, pulling the blankets over his head and curling up in a tight little ball beneath them. "Go away, Tzench," he muttered to the house elf, who was peering in through the gap in the bed curtains with wide, watery eyes. There was a cold, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he closed his eyes against it. He didn't want to see his father, now - or ever again, for that matter.
School vacations were Hell, for Draco. He spent the whole two weeks leading up to them telling anyone who would listen how wonderful his holiday was sure to be, and how very pleasant it would be to see his parents again, and how Christmas at his family estate was a celebration unlike any other in magical Britain. He described it all the way that he wanted it to be; with a mother and father who welcomed him home singing him praises and showering him in gifts, when in truth, Draco's life at Malfoy Manor was not a life at all, but a waking nightmare.
He could not remember a time when his father had loved his mother. Perhaps he never had. Narcissa had been a brood mare for the Malfoy family line, and now that she had produced the desired number of children Lucius had put her out to pasture; leaving a wing of the mansion entirely under her delegation and never venturing across it's threshold. Lucius did not find it necessary to beat her, as long as she was not underfoot, and Draco had not seen her in nearly a year.
But his father was omnipresent in the household, and for Draco, there was no escape within these walls. His sisters were grown and gone, and there was only him, now - the soul receptacle of his father's 'affections'. Summers were never-ending, beneath this roof; a steady, violent flow of Lucius's temper, and Draco was nearly always the object of it. What he had done to earn this dubious position, he would never know; it had simply always been so, ever since he could remember. Lucius hadn't given a damn about Jezebel or Isadora; daughters had been nothing but a disappointment to him. He'd beaten them right along with the rest of the household, of course, but he never crept into their chambers at night as he had Draco's…
At first it had been the Big Bad Secret; no one could ever know what happened behind the drawn curtains of that four poster, and the few times that Draco had thought about telling someone, he'd gotten sick to his stomach before he could even put the words to order in his head. But now? Now it was an all out war, father-against-son, and Draco wasn't winning. Now all of Malfoy Manor rang with his own screams after dark, and there was no one here to hear it.
"Master Draco must come quickly, sir, Master Lucius demands it…" The house elf was shaking him by the shoulder, now, a note of panic in his voice. "Please, sir, do not make him wait!"
Draco rolled over and shoved the elf away from him so violently that Tzench flew off of the bed and landed on the stone floor of the bedchamber with a resounding 'thud' and a high-pitched squeak. Pushing the bed curtains back, he peered beyond them. Nothing but blackness met his eyes - Merlin only knew what time it was, or how long he'd been asleep - it didn't feel like very long at all since he'd lain down, stressed and exhausted from the trip back from Hogwarts to this prison that he had to call home. He had prayed in vain to no particular god that his father would leave him in peace, at least for this first night.
But now it was half-past-who-knew-when, and the house elf was cowering against the wall, gazing at him with terrified yet expectant eyes. He had to go. If he didn't go, Lucius would come after him, and it would hurt twice as badly when he did. His hands already trembling a bit, Draco drew his robe on over his pajamas and pulled it tight around himself, shivering anyway. Deathly cold in the mansion tonight - the air of the cavernous bedchamber hung thin and still, like the air inside a mausoleum.
"Go tell him that I'm coming, then," he said, trying to keep his voice even.
The house elf bowed so deeply that his thin, pointed nose touched the floor, and scurried from the room. Draco followed the echoing pitter-patter of his little feet out the door, and down the long, high vaulted upper corridor of Malfoy Manor. Twisted gargoyles wrought from dark, heavy stone leered down at him from the walls, the flicker of intermittent torchlight casting ugly and foreboding shadows across the crevices of their faces. The marble floor was freezing beneath his bare feet, but Draco barely felt it; moving with slow, automated steps, he made his way past the grim-faced, fading portraits of his ancestors - a few of whom chuckled mirthlessly at him under their breath as he went by. Someday, he thought to himself… someday when his father was dead and gone, and this cursed place was his, he would burn every single one of those paintings. He would wrench them from the walls with his own two hands and throw every one of those sneering, smirking faces into the flames. He would save Lucius's portrait for last, and spit on it before he burned it to a cinder…
With a startled rush of panic, he realized that he had reached the doorway to his father's private chambers. The heavy mahogany doors had been left ajar; there was a warm orange glow creeping through the opening, and the smell of burning cedar. Something lurched very deep inside Draco's stomach as the scent hit his nostrils; his father always burned cedar, and the sweet perfume was a strong and sickening reminder of what he was about to face beyond those doors. The smell of cedar and warm silk sheets, the smell sweat, the smell of tears, the coppery, metallic scent of blood…
"Come inside, Draco," said a silken, icy voice from beyond the doors, "you've kept me waiting far too long already."
A frozen surge of fear shot down Draco's spine - quite suddenly his feet seemed glued to the floor. There was no chance to run, now; he should have done it when he had the chance - turned right instead of left out of his room and run until he was out the front doors, past the front gates, away from Wiltshire forever. Now he didn't have a hippogriffs chance in hell of escaping the horrors that he knew were to come. Dragging one leaden foot forward, then another, he forced himself over the threshold by sheer willpower alone, padding silently into the room…
Lucius's chambers were spacious, lavish, and riddled with shadows. The ring of light cast from the huge granite serpent's head that was hearth seemed small, and though the cedar fire burned vivaciously its glow did not even reach the adjoining walls. Draco could only catch the faintest glimpse of the mammoth canopy bed against the far wall; the gleam of a high polished ebony post, and no more. That bed was the maw of Hell, for Draco; beyond those shadows and green velvet bed hangings hid the most horrible memories of his life…
His father was waiting for him; sitting in a high backed velvet chair of the same hue as the bed curtains with a glass of wine in one hand, and his eyes on Draco.
The steel colored gaze ran over him smoothly in the fire light; up, down, then up again, and Draco nearly shivered again. Lucius raised one fine, pale eyebrow, and said very quietly, "You're late."
"I'm sorry, sir."; the whisper left Draco's lips automatically. He could feel the heat of the fire against his back, but he was still freezing, freezing. It was as though he had never left the Manor at all; never gone back to Hogwarts, never left for a second… he had been in this very room just yesterday, or so it seemed, and no time had passed between then and now…
"You have not been home yet twenty-four hours, and already I see the signs of Dumbledore's softness in you again. Does he let you show up to class when you please, then? Do you simply *choose* whether or not to come when a superior calls you?" Lucius had folded his hands very properly before him. Now he was regarding Draco with raised brows, and a look of mock earnest that did nothing to conceal the razorblades in his eyes.
"No, sir," Draco said quietly, the familiar numbness creeping down his spine and into his chest. It would be worse if he didn't answer…
"This will not do, Draco. This will not do at all. Your grades this semester have been less than tolerable. Your conduct reports are reprehensible. And now you keep your own time table under my roof." Lucius stood up, the shadows from the fireplace dancing ominously over those pointed, chiseled features, and peered down at Draco from this new height. "You are a Malfoy. You will act as a Malfoy. It is time that you learned what is expected of you."
Draco kept his eyes on the marble floor beneath his feet, but he was swallowed now by the shadow of his father, as Lucius stepped 'round behind him. It was bad enough when his he wasn't angry, bad enough when he was simply bored…
"Disrobe," said Lucius.
Nightmare.
Time seemed to ebb away like the recession of a wave, leaving Draco suspended behind it. The chamber seemed to close in around him, surreal yet somehow sharpened, and the crackling of the fire seemed very far away. He had not told his hands to move, but they had anyway - removing his robe with deft and trembling fingers, unbuttoning the shirt of his pajamas as though they were not his own fingers at all, but something distant and remote and under Lucius's control. There was no Hogwarts, now; no cool and quiet Slytherin dormitory, no high-set old four poster bed with nothing but safe, warm silence behind it's curtains. There was only the cold air against his back, now, down his hips and thighs as his pajama pants slid to the floor, and the horrible, creeping sensation of Lucius's eyes caressing his naked body. Shivering, Draco hunched his shoulders and ducked his head, drawing one knee up to cover himself.
Five long, icy fingers caught his jaw in an iron grip. One moment Lucius had been behind him, the next he was wrenching Draco's head up so that their faces were but inches apart. "Stand up straight." Lucius whispered through gritted teeth. "Cowardice is unbecoming. I will not allow it." And with that he released the boy, stepping back a few paces yet holding him firmly with his eyes.
Draco swallowed hard and kept his head up, squaring his shoulders and setting both feet beneath them. The hard, cruel eyes on him were nearly as bad as the hard, cruel touches that he knew would follow soon enough. It made him squirm in his own skin. At least they eyes couldn't get inside him…
"You've been eating?"
Looking anywhere but at his father, Draco nodded. "Yes, sir."
Lucius dragged his eyes over the slender, delicate frame of his son, and sneered a bit. "You could have fooled me." Draco set his jaw and swallowed again, trying not to think about anything at all. He'd always been too small for Lucius's taste, and too pretty. Always, always too pretty.
His father paced in a long, slow circle around him, his words a silky yet frozen. Drawl. "Do you know how long I waited for you, tonight? Seventeen minutes, Draco. My time is not yours to waste." The languid footsteps paused somewhere behind him.
And then Draco heard a sound that set his teeth on edge; the rusty hinges of Lucius's armoire door.
Everything that hurt lived behind the armoire door. Everything that left bruises and welts, everything that made him bleed; everything that held him down or stretched him open or had sharp edges…
"An eye for an eye, as the old saying goes," said Lucius. "I believe that seventeen lashes ought to be sufficient. You will count them off; do not lose track, or we will start over from the beginning. Understood?" - some wretched instinct nodded Draco's head for him - "Very good. You know what to do."
There were exactly eleven and a half paces from Lucius's chair to the end of the canopy bed. Draco had counted them long ago. He knew each and every one of them by heart, now, and his feet followed the path to which they'd been trained. This bed haunted him in nightmares from which he woke up screaming in silence. The ebony footboard was smooth and cool beneath Draco's clammy hands, as he leaned over and braced himself against it, spreading his legs as he knew he was expected to do. It hurt more, that way, and his father knew it, lay the most sensitive parts of his body open to the sting of the blows. The hiss of leather against stone met his ears, drawing closer with Lucius's footsteps, and fading into silence so close to Draco that he cringed despite himself.
"Eighteen lashes, then, if you are not going to heed my warnings against cowardice." Lucius's voice colder than ever.
"Count."
The first stripe of the whip landed lit Draco's back on fire; he was bleeding already, and the next seventeen blows were going to take the rest of his life to land. Gritting his teeth, Draco forced the word "one" from between his lips, and braced himself for the next lash.
It landed lower, this time, and the next blow lower still - and each time, Draco choked out the appropriate number, praying that his voice would not crack of break or tremble. Five, six, seven… he heard his voice somewhere outside of his own head, and it sounded small and unfamiliar to his ears. The blood was weaving warm, stick trails down his legs, now, and every new blow landed upon an open wound... Ten, eleven, twelve. Lucius seemed determined to leave every inch of Draco's flesh below his waist and above his knees raw and bleeding; the heat was rising in his skin, his body's desperate attempts to begin healing before the onslaught had even ceased. thirteenth lash clipped sharply against the inside of his thigh, and Draco nearly gasped out the number. Fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, and his knees were threatening to give out beneath him… seventeen fell so hard that Draco reeled against the baseboard, and eighteen made his vision flash white.
He leaned heavily against the bed when it was finally over, breathing hard and swallowing wave after wave of nausea that rolled through his stomach and boiled up into his throat. He hadn't cried out, he'd choked back all his tears, but if he threw up now he'd get whipped again twice over.
This was only the beginning, and Draco knew it.
"Do you understand the value of punctuality now, Draco, or must my point yet clearer still?"
The dangerous slither of the leather whip over the floor behind him, again; Draco flinched and whispered, "I understand, sir."
"I sincerely hope that you do." The hiss of Lucius's 's' was entirely serpentine. "Bed. Now. On your back."
There was nothing warm or comforting about the smooth silk sheets of Lucius's bed. Draco closed his eyes very tightly as he slid onto it, cringing sharply as he lowered his weight onto the wide open lash marks and turning his face to the side, hiding it against the pillows as best he could. Once again, he could feel the cold grey eyes tracing the lines of his body, taking note of the shivering in his bones and the rose colored flush of humiliation beneath his delicate cheekbones. Draco tried very hard not to flinch as Lucius's weight sunk onto the bed next to him - he kept his face turned away, his eyes shut tight, and tried not to think about what else was going to happen to him. He barely heard his father's muttered jinx, but the effects were sickeningly familiar; for now he could not move his arms or legs, as though he'd been chained spread eagle to the bed with invisible bonds.
"You seem to have forgotten quite a bit in your absence, Little Dragon," said Lucius, who seemed to be taking a divine sort of pleasure in watching Draco tremble against the sheets. "Look at you. Scared to death. Are you afraid, perhaps, that I've found out about something you've neglected to tell me?"
If Draco's stomach hadn't been so busy turning, it would have shriveled up and vanished. There was no way that his father could know, no possible way…
"No, sir," he whispered tightly.
"And you're sure of this?" Almost lazily, Lucius flicked his wand at the boy; and quite suddenly there was something slithering over Draco's skin - something smooth and cold and scaly...
A small, dark green serpent was coiling it's way around his calf, sliding smoothly up his leg. There was a soft yet decidedly dangerous hissing coming from it; it's silver eyes flashed as it slithered over Draco's hip, weaving back and forth across the silk-soft plane of his abdomen.
Lucius couldn't know, couldn't know, no, never; not about that, not about *him*. Lucius couldn't possibly know how he touched Draco, kissed him… how he drew Draco into his private chambers at night and drown him in tenderness until dawn. His stomach tense and quivering beneath the curling of the snake, he bit his lip for a moment, then whispered, "Yes, sir. I'm sure."
"You are a horrible little liar, Draco."
A sharp, stabbing pain shot through his body from his navel out; the serpent had plunged it's fangs into him, locking it's jaws split-second around a tender strip of flesh before releasing it's hold and continuing it's slow, slithering path up - his chest, and back down. Draco cried out sharply, his fingers knotting around the bed sheets beneath him. The wound stung as though it were laced with salt, and he had to fight to keep his breathing even, fight to keep the tears from making it to his eyes. His entire body was covered in a fine sheen of cold sweat, now, and the snake's path over his skin was colder still; only the blood was warm, trickling slowly but surely over his stomach and down his side.
"Do you think that I cannot tell when you are lying to me? Do you think that I cannot tell, just by looking at you, what a little whore you've been? Someone's had their hands on you, Little Dragon. They've left their scent on you." Abruptly, Lucius grabbed him by a handful of silken platinum hair, yanking Draco's face round to meet his own. "Who is it."
"No one!" Draco whimpered, now thoroughly panicked, and the snake sank it's fangs like needles into the inside of his thigh. With another gasp and a buck of his hips, he tried to pull away from it. Lucius twisted the lock of hair in his grip, drawing his face down closer and hissing through gritted teeth.
"You have one last chance, Little Dragon. Either you tell me who's bitch you've become, or I will personally quell your desires for any human being for a very long time. Now who… is it."
Draco choked on another sob, tried in vain to turn his face away. The snake was between his legs, now, curling in a sickening pattern around the most tender places. He was still bleeding, still shaking, and now Lucius's face was only an inch from his. It seemed that if he opened his eyes, his father would be able to see right into them, glean the treasured secret from his mind. No matter what happened, what was done to him, Draco couldn't give that secret up. In a life structured by fear, riddled with pain and laced with neglect, those tender midnight moments were all that he had to live for; the moments when he was warm, and safe, and touched with a tenderness that he'd never known from any other living soul.
"No--" but he hadn't even gotten the second word out before Lucius struck him hard across the mouth, and in the same moment the snake bit down between his legs. And this time Draco could not contain the scream of pain that rose in his throat and burst desperately from his lips. His back arched up and away from the bed, his jaw locked, and now he was struggling blindly against his invisible bonds as the wicked, conjured serpent sank it's teeth in again, and again…
He never heard the counter jinx that finally brought the agonizing assault to an end. There was nothing but pain, now; pain and nausea and a desperate, paralyzing fear. It didn't matter now how angry he made his father by struggling - anything, anything to get away, to make it stop…
He was alone on the bed, and the armoire door was creaking.
The implement that Lucius came back with was, by far, the cruelest looking object that Draco had seen to date. A fairly long, fairly thin contraption made of dark, well-work steel and riddled with little round holes from top to bottom, and a rusting gear attacked to the thickest end of it. He knew exactly what it was; blinded by pain, he'd felt the horror of it before, but he'd never laid eyes on it until now. Wide eyed and shuddering, now, he whipped his head in a hopeless, soundless negating from side to side against the pillows, his lungs seeming to shrink inside his chest so that he could not draw a proper breath.
Lucius did not bother to speak to him, anymore - he simply jerked Draco up from the mattress by his neck, spun him around, and slammed him back down so that his face cracked against the headboard of the bed in the process. The thick, coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth, and Draco pressed his face against the hot silk sheets, the scent of sweat burning cedar heavy in his nostrils.
The invisible bonds held his hands down firmly on either side of his face, kept his knees wide apart as Lucius dragged Draco's hips up off the bed, fingernails digging deep into the skin. There would be no preparation, he knew - only cold hard steel inside of him, and those vile little teeth…
Even so, it hurt worse than he remembered. The wicked instrument slid into him smoothly, but then the rusty gear ground into action, and the entire thing began to stretch, widen… Draco could feel his body tearing, feel the hard steel edges digging into him.
And then the true torture; for through the holes came the wicked little spikes, snapping out as though sprung by a switchblade trigger and digging into him from the inside. They were not sharp enough to pierce the skin, right away - but Lucius gave the entire device a horrid twist, then another. Soon enough they would wear through the tender lining of his body, and the blood would come before the numbness did; Draco knew every moment of the nightmare by heart. There was nothing to be done now but scream; scream until his voice broke, until he coughed blood, until he finally collapsed, limp and shuddering and unable to fight anymore as his father tore him apart from the inside out.
Draco had no idea how long it took, or how much blood he had lost; he only knew that when it was over, the charm that Lucius used to staunch the bleeding had no effect on the pain that throbbed through his guts and outward to the tips of his fingers and toes. He only knew that everything hurt and that there was nowhere to hide from it, no way to escape it. Draco curled up on his side when the bonds released him, burying his face in his arms as best he could. Sometimes if he was hurt this badly, when it was over, Lucius would allow him to cry himself to sleep right where he was, instead of forcing him back onto his feet and sending him away. He never touched Draco after, never comforted him if he let him stay, never even lay down beside him; but at least he didn't make him move, didn't make it hurt more…
"Get up. Get out."
Dragged to his feet by his hair before he could even flinch, Draco found himself thrown down hard on the cold marble floor a few feet from his discarded clothing. Trembling too hard to do more than drag his robe around him, he gathered up his pajamas in his arms and curled up against the foot of Lucius's chair for a moment to catch his breath.
But Lucius kicked him hard in the back, sent him sprawling, and reaching down to grab another handful of the boy's spun silk hair, dragged him harshly by it the remaining distance to the door. Draco's sore, slender body slammed against the opposite wall of the hallway, with such force did Lucius eject him from the chamber. Stumbling for balance and clinging to the molding, he fought hard to keep his footing as the huge mahogany doors slammed shut behind him. If he collapsed here in the hall, Lucius was sure to find him before he came 'round again, and then it would happen all over again…
It took nearly all of his remaining strength to get himself back to his own room. Tzench was nowhere to be found; Draco drew himself a glass of water from a jug beneath the window, tried to drink, then stumbled blindly into bed.
Only now did he allow himself to cry.
Curling up around a pillow and burying his face against it, Draco sobbed with all the breath that he could draw. He cried because it hurt, cried because he was scared, cried because there was no one to hold him, now, and sooth the pain even a little with gentle words and gentle hands. He cried because gentleness was all that he wanted, and the only person who had ever given it to him couldn't help him now. He cried because he wanted to go back to Hogwarts; back where someone stroked his hair, and called him beautiful, and stayed late with him in the Potions classroom when everyone else had left to give him a soft kiss after each class…
Draco whispered "Severus" very softly into his pillow, and cried himself to sleep.
-to be continued-
* * *
