Her Missing Son
A/N: My muse, Maggie, is simple girl. All she likes are plot bunnies and reviews. So be kind to Maggie and feed her review cookies please.
Thank you SpicyKittens for the wonderful beta work. I'm hopeless without a spot to help me out!
No copyright infringement intended. All characters are the property of JKR, Scholastic, and any number of other companies with more money than I've ever dreamed of seeing. I didn't make any money off of this, so please don't sue.
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Narcissa stared longingly at the tattered image. It no longer moved as it had when it was first taken. The edges were burnt and brittle. The color long faded to hues of brown. It was the only remaining picture she had of her first born son. The only photograph she had been able to salvage of her first born son; the one she had tried to save from a life of servitude.
Despite the discoloration of the photograph you could tell the child pictured in it had strikingly pale skin and hair: his eyes had sparkled with youthful exuberance, now dimmed by the aging photograph's diminished color. Barely more than six, he had been chasing his just toddling brother across the grass of the informal gardens. It was the day after the Dark Lord had fallen.
She smiled sadly at the smiling face of her lost son. He had been so young. His attention focused on her every word and teaching. Paying no mind to the pureblood dogma his father had spewed in his ear from the time of his birth. He was a good son full of love and joy, peace and understanding, compassion and hope. Past the visual picture of blond hair and perceptive light blue eyes, he was nothing like the heir Lucius had wanted.
For years Lucius had tried to mold the boy into the perfect Malfoy heir, with words of pureblood supremacy and hate, while she had done the very opposite trying against all hope to save her son the fate of being marked. Constantly she had whispered words of love and devotion into her eldest son's willing ear. It had worked. For every cruel missive Lucius fed the boy her words of kindness, love, and equality held the boy in rapture. He had wanted the dreams of love and happiness his mother had told him, while his father had been bowing and scraping to the Dark Lord.
The night of the Dark Lord's fall to baby Potter Narcissa had cried with joy. Her husband was free. There was no reason for him to continue his indoctrination of their sons. Her sweet Draco, just older than the Potter child, and her beautiful loving Cedrus could have a life free of dark lords and pain, or at least she had hoped. But it had never been. Lucius had continued on in his destructive ways with their sons. She had continued on praying words of kindness and hope in their ears, praying to any god listening with every fiber of her being, that her words were stronger and would take root deeper within their young hearts and minds.
The summer before Cedrus was set to attend Hogwarts, Lucius gave up his battle to turn his eldest son and heir into the perfect pureblood supremacist Malfoy. Her words had indeed taken hold and even her husband could no longer deny it. Cedrus was a child filled with a natural joy and hope so eternal that she sometimes wondered if she would have ever had to say a thing against his father to get him to stay the right path or was he simply destined to turn from his father? Her eyes grew moist as the painful memory assaulted her.
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The loud crack of the heavy wooden serpent head cane across bare flesh resounded through the large dungeon room. Cedrus held in his screams; screams only made his father hit him harder. "Boy you will learn, or so help me you will be a Malfoy no longer." Cedrus held his tongue wishing he could scream out that he hated his father and that the Dark Lord was dead never to return.
"Say it boy. Say we are better than worthless mudbloods!" Lucius screamed as he raised the cane once more to strike his son.
"No, Father," Cedrus said quietly, tears streaking down his pale face.
"You will say it," Lucius said as the cane once again stuck the naked, bruised, skin of Cedrus' back.
"I won't say what I don't believe," the boy said with a choked whisper as the pain racked his small body.
In the corner Draco sat quiet as a mouse as his father had demanded he do. He watched his brother take every hit with silent tears streaming from his eyes. He couldn't understand why Cedrus didn't just say it. Why make their father so mad? What was so important that he wouldn't just say it?
Hit after painful hit Cedrus denied the foul words that Lucius demanded of him until Draco had broken his word to his father and run crying from the room. He found his mother and flung himself into her waiting arms. Moments later Lucius had emerged from the dungeons with a beaten Cedrus being dragged behind him. He threw the boy at Draco and Narcissa's feet in her parlor. "Heal him. Now. Then say your goodbyes. He is our son no longer."
Narcissa gently levitated her sweet son to his room, lowering him atop the covers of his bed to lie on his stomach. Quickly setting to work on healing the damage her husband had once again laid on their eldest child. "What have you done my sweet boy?" she asked as she healed the battered skin of her son's back. Her wand moved swift and undeterred from the awful task before her, unwilling for even an extra second to pass with her son in pain.
"I don't believe it Mum. I couldn't say I did," he said, his words muffled by the pillow beneath his face.
Narcissa nodded as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She knew the time would come, first for Cedrus and then for her tiny Dragon. Lucius would demand loyalty and she had prayed mutiny into their tiny ears from the very second they were conceived, knowing herself trapped, but them not to be.
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He had only been ten that summer. Lucius had kept his word and removed the boy from their family. The Ministry had been told he had passed away in an accident; he had drowned while swimming during a family outing. The family healer, having been coerced of course, confirmed the entire lie; stating that he had confirmed the child's death himself and presided over the very small, private, family burial at the mausoleum on the Malfoy estate.
Rather, he had been abandoned at a muggle orphanage; God knows where, with little more than the clothes on his back and no memory of his former life. She had wanted nothing more than to race out behind him, track their combined magical signature that ran deep in their son's blood in the darkest ways that she had learned at her parent's knees, bring their boy home, and then make Lucius pay for taking her son from her, but she knew worse would come to all of them if she did. She was little more than a pretty slave in that cold, stone, mansion and she was even more powerless than her sons, for at least they carried Malfoy blood. At least they had some chance. Even abandoned to the muggles, Cedrus would have a chance. He was a strong boy and would one day be a strong wizard, stronger than Lucius would ever understand. But she knew. A mother always knew the potential of which her children were capable.
She hadn't seen her son in going on fifteen years. If he had survived, he would be a grown man somewhere. The spitting image of his father and brother, he walked in the world alone, unaware of his heritage, and the dark past from which he had been thrust away from.
It broke her heart to think that, perhaps, he hadn't survived. Perhaps Lucius had lied and killed their son. She wouldn't have put it past him, and now the time was past for asking. Lucius had died, still a vapid servant to a posturing fool, and taken that answer with him beyond the Veil. But in her heart she knew the answer somehow. Her son was alive, out there somewhere in that great wide world, and happy.
She fingered the worn photograph. She could find him now.
The Dark Lord was dead once more, as was Lucius, and her sweet Draco had made his decision to follow his mother's quiet preaching in a way that had surprised even her. Her son had spouted off Lucius' lies for years, forcing her to think he believed every word Lucius had drilled into him. He had been marked as soon as the Dark Lord had asked if he would like to join him. Never once did she question her son's loyalties to his father, or the Dark Lord.
Oh, how wrong she had been! Thank the gods above she had been wrong about the youngest of her sons. He had heard every word she had ever whispered in his ear, and taken them to heart. Unable to stand up the way his brother had done, lest he lose his life or his mother, he chose a quieter way to defy his father. Quietly, he turned traitor to the dark cause in his own way. Loyal Death Eater, one of the upmost high, turned loyal spy for the Order when he was offered redemption by the very man he was sent to kill when he was little more than a child in her eyes. Her sweet, sweet, son had, in the back of his mind, watched and waited for the prime time to make his move and let his true self be known to those who could, and would, understand that a person of true character assumes other names, other titles, and sometimes other guises to make it through a situation until time was such that it is in their favor.
She couldn't be more proud of her sons if she tried. Both had picked the higher road, instead of the dark path that Lucius had tried so hard to lead them down.
Now, all that was left was for her to find her eldest son. Her boys deserved to be reunited under the flag of family and equality; they deserved to finally be brothers once more. Her word as a woman, and a mother, she would move earth and sea to find her missing son, even if that meant finding a grave to grieve upon.
"Mum." Draco's soft voice called as he entered the room, rousing her from her musings. "What are you looking at?"
Narcissa looked up, tears shining on her lashes, smiled weakly, and passed the partially burned photo to him. "Cedrus."
Draco took the picture in hand and stared at it. He hadn't seen a picture of his brother since the night his father had taken him away, and every physical reminder of his brother had been whipped clean from their home. Earlier, that very same night, he had watched his father beat his brother to a point near death. The very night he had decided he would never make his father so angry as to have that happen to him, but he wouldn't be like his father either. It was one of only two crystal clear memories he still had of his brother. That night and one of a happy day spent playing in the gardens while their father had been working at the Ministry, just days before they were separated.
He honestly hadn't thought about him in years. He hated admitting it to himself, but it was true. It was easier to lock the memories of his long-lost brother away, than remember he had an older brother that loved him and doted on him, like only his mother had. It was easier to do what he must and play the part of the devoted dark son, than to remember the brother that refused the same to the point of exile.
"I nearly had forgotten," he said barely above a whisper.
"I never did," Narcissa replied looking away as tears began afresh, streaming down her cheeks. "I intend to find him Draco. With, or without, your help, I will find him," she declared, stronger in voice than she had realized she was capable.
Draco nodded. "You have my help Mother, he's my bother and he's been gone far too long."
Narcissa smiled brightly, fresh, joyful tears streaming down her rosy cheeks.