"This is boring," Lyra complained. She pulled a pin out of a nearby cushion and jabbed it in Draco's direction. He avoided being stabbed, but it was a near miss. He glowered. She smirked at him and pulled her arm back to try again.
"Stop that!" Her mother grabbed the pin out of her hand and kept a firm hold on her wrist. "Be nice to your brother."
"Why? He's not nice to me," Lyra pointed out.
"That's because you torture him."
"Let go of my arm!"
"If you keep whining, Lyra, I shall allow your father to send you to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts."
"You can't do that. You've already sent in my acceptance letter." Lyra mustered up her best eleven-year-old's glare and turned it on her mother; she was not impressed.
"I can, and I will. Do you wish to test me?"
That threat finally quieted her, although she did pout and continue to try to tug her arm free. Eventually she proved effective, as she did get her mother to let go, but she wasn't sure if it was her continued pulling on her mother's wrist or her increased volume, which was drawing the attention of other patrons. Lyra instantly bolted for the opposite wall of the small shop, still pouting and cradling her wrist even though it didn't really hurt.
"I know it's tedious waiting," Madam Malkin said, while she adjusted the hem of Draco's black school robe; she had finished Lyra's just a few minutes before, though Draco had been much more patient about it. "Maybe there's something else you'd like to try on?"
It was a good plan, and on any other day the prospect of shopping might have distracted Lyra. "I don't want any more clothes," she drawled. "I want to go and pick out a wand."
Her mother sighed and pursed her lips. "As soon as we're done with your brother."
"I'll be as quick as I can," the seamstress promised. But 'quick as I can' was not nearly quick enough for Lyra.
"I could just walk up the street and start on my own," she suggested, but her mother was quick to cut her off.
"And find you sneaking off to Borgin and Burkes again, or buying candies to eat in your room instead of dinner? Absolutely not."
"It's right up the street."
"I said no, Lyra."
She threw herself down in her chair again, arms crossed over her chest and legs swinging wildly in front of her. "Boring," she muttered under her breath every few minutes.
Madam Malkin hesitated a moment, as if afraid to interject again, but then she suggested, "If you wanted to take her up the street to Ollivander's, Mrs. Malfoy, I could finish up with Draco here and then have my assistant Cas walk him up to meet you."
Draco looked like he was going to protest, so Lyra jumped up from her seat and started marching towards the door before he could. "Perfect," she said firmly. "Let's go then."
Her mother sighed, defeated, and turned toward Draco. "Will you be alright on your own for a few minutes?"
"Yes," he answered, although Lyra detected a distinct note of jealousy in his voice. He didn't like the idea of her getting her wand first. She stuck her tongue out at her brother while her mother's back was still turned.
Looking distinctly unhappy about it, her mother took her hand again and led Lyra out of the shop. On their way to Ollivander's, they passed by a boy with dark hair and glasses walking alone in the other direction. He stared wide-eyed around the street. Probably Muggle-born, Lyra thought, and a fellow Hogwarts first year.
Her mother moved them to the other side of the street before she could stick her leg out to trip him.
The wand that chose Lyra was elm, a little over twelve and one-half inches, with a phoenix feather core. Draco's wand was hawthorn, ten inches exactly, with unicorn hair. Both went into boxes in a locked cabinet in their parents' bedroom, where they would remain until they day they both went away to school. Not that Lyra needed hers. She was still having periodic bursts of accidental magic, and she was already learning how to channel them to happen when she wanted.
She was sitting in the garden, pretending to read, while Draco whizzed overhead on a practice broom; he fancied himself a Quidditch player, though he'd never competed with anyone or played with a full team. Lyra kept her head down but her eyes up, watching him like a hawk over the edge of her book. Their mother wasn't paying attention, she was too busy coaxing new rose buds to climb one of the delicate trellises.
"Mordeo turgum," Lyra murmured, and grinned to herself as Draco jerked in the air, the broom tilted downward, and he landed rather ungracefully on the gravel path and skidded several feet before coming to a halt. That, of course, got their mother's attention. She rushed to Draco's side, examining him for injury, but aside from a scrape on his left elbow he appeared to be unhurt. Pity, Lyra thought, but it would be better once she had her wand.
"You did that on purpose," Draco accused, once their mother had gone inside to get an ointment for his cut. Lyra finally looked up from her book.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said cooly, swinging her legs back and forth on the bench. "I didn't do anything. I was just reading."
"Reading out loud," Draco said. "That's a spell book, I know it is."
Lyra held up the cover to prove him wrong. It was not, in fact, a spell book, but the folded page hidden inside was torn from one. Draco scowled at her for a moment, and then suddenly bent down and picked up a large stone from the side of the path, which he hurled in Lyra's direction. He missed by several feet, he probably had only aimed to frighten her, not hit her, but Lyra reacted without thinking, grabbing the nearest object and throwing it back at Draco. Only after it had connected with a solid and satisfying thump did Lyra even recognize it as one of her mother's gardening trowels.
Draco's knees gave out and he slumped to the ground. For a moment, Lyra could only blink and stare at him. When she realized that he wasn't faking, she got up from the bench and crossed the path to see what she'd done. His eyes were closed, and a bit of blood was pooling under his hair. The trowel lay beside him where it had fallen.
She picked up the small shovel and quickly buried it under several inches of the newly turned soil that her mother had been working in. Then she ran up the path back toward the house.
"Draco fell again," she told her mother at the door. "He got back on the broom but he must have been dizzy after he fell the first time. He didn't answer me when I asked if he was okay."
The first thing that Lyra did upon her brother's waking up in St. Mungo's (fortuitously timed so that both of their parents were in the hall talking to the healers) was to agree to do his homework for the first three weeks of school if he wouldn't tell their parents what had happened. They stuck to the story that he had fallen off his broom, Draco smirked that evening at dinner when he promised their father that he would get excellent marks at school, and Lyra privately reveled in the knowledge that while she had promised to do Draco's homework, she had not promised to do it correctly. Everything returned to normal for the Malfoy family, and remained that way until the afternoon of August the twenty seventh, when a trembling house elf came into the drawing room where they were having tea. Lyra eyed the creature suspiciously; it wasn't carrying any mail for them, and it hovered anxiously at her mother's elbow until it was acknowledged.
"Pardon me, Missus," the elf squeaked nervously, "but we is finding something in the garden we think you is missing."
Her mother and father shared a curious look. Lyra kicked Draco under the table.
That evening, her father called Lyra into his study. Her mother was there too, and of course she had the trowel. It was covered with dirt; Lyra was surprised that her father was letting it sit on the lacquered wood desk.
"Do you know what this is, Lyra?" he asked sternly.
"It looks like a shovel." She shrugged and glanced up at her mother. "I don't know, I'm not allowed to touch your things."
Her mother pursed her lips into a thin, fine line but did not say anything.
"Lyra, we already know that your brother did not fall off his broom, at least not hard enough to hurt himself like that," her father continued. "The healers told us that his injuries were caused by something sharp." He fixed Lyra with a particularly cold stare. "Does this look sharp enough to you? I think it does."
Lyra shrugged again.
"How about how it came to be buried underneath the tulips?" he pressed. "Perhaps you have an answer for that?"
She shook her head.
"I do not appreciate being lied to, Lyra," he continued, and his voice took on the edge that he only used when they were really in trouble. "Not by anyone, but especially not my own children. I do not know why Draco has agreed to lie for you as well, but I will find out, and I will get the truth of what happened out of one of you, if I must resort to veritiserum to do it."
"Fine!" Lyra folded her arms and stared sulkily at the floor. "I threw the shovel at him. But only after he threw a rock at me." When she put it like that, it didn't sound quite so bad.
There was a long, tense silence in the room. Lyra could feel her parent's eyes on her but continued to stare at the floor. "Are you going to punish me?" she asked after a while.
Her father sighed and sat back in his chair. "We'll discuss that tomorrow. Go and tell Draco to come here and then go straight up to your room."
She nodded and, for once, went to do as she was told.
September the first dawned bright and warm. The trunk with Lyra's school things had disappeared from her room, brought downstairs and, presumably, loaded into the limousine that would take the four of them to London.
Lyra had not spoken to her brother in three days. She was too angry with him for tattling to the house elves (and angry with herself that she had not thought to forbid him to do this as part of their deal) and she did not want to risk any additional confrontation. She hadn't spoken to her parents either, except for the usual pleasantries over meals. There had never been any discussion of a punishment for the shovel incident, and she assumed this meant that there was none forthcoming, but that didn't mean that they couldn't change their mind if she wasn't on her best behavior.
She arrived in the drawing room to find her mother, father and brother already there, along with a house elf, who was busy stoking flames in the large fireplace. The floo powder was out on the mantle.
"I thought we were taking a car into London," Lyra said, glaring at the house elf, as if this was somehow its fault. She was wearing her favorite sweater, she didn't fancy the idea of getting it all sooty before they got on the train.
"Change of plans," her mother said briskly, adjusting the collar of Draco's shirt. She glanced at the clock in the hall. "Lucius, you ought to get going, the two of you will be late."
Her father nodded and beckoned her across the room. Lyra took a step back up the stairs. "What do you mean 'We'll be late'?" she asked. "You'll be late, too."
Draco began to laugh in an infuriating manner. "You mean they didn't tell you?" he mocked. "You're not getting on the train with me. You're going to Durmstrang."
"No I'm not."
"You are."
She looked at each of her parents in turn. "You can't do that!"
"Watch me!" her mother snapped in reply, and Lyra froze. She had never heard that tone from her mother before. She had yelled at Lyra, sure, but there was a cold edge to her words now that, had Lyra been less selfish, she might have recognized as pain. "Lyra, I don't like the idea of sending you away any more than you like the idea of going, but if we can't trust you to get along with your brother, you aren't leaving us any choice."
"This isn't fair!" Lyra pointed an accusatory finger at Draco. "You never punish him!"
"That's because I don't throw shovels at people," he retorted.
"No, you just throw rocks instead!"
"After you hexed me!"
"Stop it, both of you!" Her mother turned Draco away and pointed him toward the door. "Lucius, you have to leave, or Lyra will miss her carriage."
She looked to her father in one last plea for help, but he maintained an air of stoic superiority, and she realized that he agreed with her mother. Lyra felt her face turn pink with rage. She wanted to scream and stamp her feet and possibly throw something else at Draco — she didn't see how she could get into any more trouble — but she fought down those urges and instead adopted a determined, tight-lipped expression. Fine, she thought, if they wanted to send her away, she'd be proud of it. She'd make sure they regretted their decision, one way or another.
Head held high, she walked purposefully across the room to join her father, who shooed the house elf away and threw a pinch of floo powder onto the fire. The flames turned green and rose to chest height on Lyra, and she took her father's hand as they stepped into them.
She spared just one last look over her shoulder, long enough to catch Draco's eye with an expression that promised payback for his part in this, whatever it was, and then her mother's.
"I hate you," Lyra said, quietly but firmly, as her father spoke the name of their destination and the green flames swallowed them both.