Sweet Obscurity
Sweet Obscurity
Disclaimer: Sadly I can not claim these characters as my own, since they belong rightfully to one Miss J.K. Rowling. Also this story contains slash, you know two members of the male persuasion doing particularly nasty things to one another, so if you can't handle that, get out.

Chapter 1-Drama Queen

It was amazing how painful silence could be to someone's ears, how strung with tenacity, how expressive in its stillness.

How dangerous.

"I'll ask you once again, what is this?"

Draco felt paralyzed. It was as if gravity had suddenly intensified and the act of raising his head became too much. It was much easier just to latch his eyes to the floor in a wretched attempt to hide the naked fear dancing deliriously behind his gaze.

"Answer me boy. My patience is wearing thin." Pure venom spat between clenched teeth.

Draco bit back the urge to shudder in response to the acrid words and cautiously, wearily, he raised his head. He swallowed thickly, feeling a lump stick in his throat. "It's mine." Quiet conviction stitched between words of depicted calm.

The man before Draco took a menacing step forward. "Of course it's yours. I'm not stupid. I want to know what it was doing in your room." He hovered uncomfortably close forcing Draco to drop back a step, unconsciously edging nearer to the study room door.

Draco swore inside his head; it was just like his father to do routine checks of every room in the Malfoy manor, especially his. Nothing, absolutely *nothing* remained hidden from the sagacious eyes of Lucius Malfoy. Especially under his own roof.

Lucius Malfoy was a man of disturbing tendencies. In Draco's mind he was exquisitely deranged: he saw the madness raging behind the cool calculated gaze, lunacy simmering in the irises of tepid, leaden gray. His delusion however, only lent itself to his brilliance. His shrewd cunning was something to be marveled at by even the cleverest of intellects. To the world he was a silent sensible man; to Draco he was purely insane.

Draco fought to keep a shiver of fear from distorting his words. Draco generally thought of himself as a dauntless person, with one exception: when under the scrutiny of Lucius Malfoy. Without even looking up Draco knew the book his father spoke of. It was Draco's book, a collection of works by the highly debated and (in Draco's mind) highly ingenious, Oscar Wilde. "I -I was reading it."

"How *dare* you bring this kind of trash into my house? Not only is this written by a muggle but a diseased one at that."

Draco's vision quivered suddenly with rage. He didn't dare ask the question that burnt like an infection along the back of this throat. His struggle, however, to remain silent must have been fairly visible because his father bent closer still, bitter amusement slightly straining the corners of his mouth.

"You know perfectly well what I mean. He was a bleeding faggot, a disgrace to the higher classes of Victorian England. Thank heavens he was a muggle and people left it at that. No one would dare consider that sort of stain crossing over to *our* side. But that is of no consequence, the point is, to find you in possession of such rubbish is intolerable. A disgrace upon the Malfoy name." Draco fought not to roll his eyes (his most timeworn expression of eloquence); he'd been given the talk of Malfoy honor so many times, that with each increasing occasion, it became harder and harder to choke back the urge to vomit all over the floor.

"I've tried my best boy, to keep you as you should be, a true Malfoy straight through to the blood, but it's times like this when I wonder..." He trailed off acidly, eyeing Draco with contempt. "I will have no more of this. If I ever find anything of this nature again, I assure you Draco, the consequences for those actions will not be so easily forgotten. I'm letting you off this time, but mark my words, it is the very last of any mercy you will get from me."

The words hung ominously for a moment and the air was thick with tangible restraint, as iron eyes drilled inexorably into the impressionable silver irises of the boy before him.

He straightened up swiftly and Draco released a quavering breath.

His father turned sharply and took several brisk strides in the direction of the fireplace on the opposite wall of the room. The cool embers that lay in the narrow grate were still and lifeless.

Draco watched his breath slide in ivory coils past his lips, suddenly aching for a sliver of warmth to dispel the frigidity of the icy atmosphere.

His father twitched his wand toward the grate and a little riot of fire erupted there in a dazzle of gold and smoking sapphire.

"It's fire you want then?" He breathed, a cold humorless smile contorting his thin lips.

Draco struggled not to fall back a step, the momentary joy from the burst of warmth forgotten as his father's words struck a disturbing chord inside his chest. It was disturbing to say the *least*, the way his father seemed always to know what was running through his head. He dismissed it falteringly, in spite of things, telling himself firmly that his father must have seen him shiver.

He stepped close to Draco once more, his fingers wound scornfully along the book's spine, eyes glittering eerily in the firelight. Without warning, his hand shot out, fingers clamping like iron to Draco's wrist. He gave it a vicious twist, eliciting a sharp gasp from deep in Draco's chest. He bent his head low to Draco's ear as Draco crumpled forward in agony. "You will take this and burn it. Do you understand me? I want you to walk over there and chuck it in the fire." He ground his fingers tighter into Draco's flesh, giving the delicate bones another savage wrench.

A cry caught in Draco's throat, as he ground his teeth in desperation, an agonizing last effort to swallow all symptoms of weakness. He screwed up his eyes in anguish, blond hair quivering wretchedly on his forehead as he began to shake, struggling to shut out the words his father was hissing in his ear.

"I want you to watch the ink run, the pages turn black and fall to ash. All his words eaten away by flame, his memory swallowed up in a cloud of sweltering soot, and instead of paper being scorched to oblivion, I want you to picture the flames melting the faggot's face. All of his kind should be erased from this world, hunted down and extinguished. People like them are nothing but a stain, a festering blemish upon the face of humanity."

"No!" It wasn't so much a plea, as a gasp clinging brokenly to the ragged current of air that dragged up Draco's throat.

And immediately, Lucius let go.

Draco sagged, falling heavily to one knee, head bent, breathing hard. The fingers of his left hand were gnarled into a tight fist as he fought to calm the swell of anger that had erupted in his chest.

Lucius's manner was alarmingly calm; not a tremor of emotion disturbed the placidity of his features. The burst of anger he had only just expressed was clearly all in falsity. This unsettling and rapid transmission from storm to calm, however, was not unfamiliar to Draco. Lucius, seemingly, had no emotions. His only forms of expression, were all done with a purpose in mind. No act he ever carried out was without purpose. "Well, well, well, what an interesting reaction. I must say I suspected something, but nothing quite so... passionate." The word was unmistakably mocking. His lips curled around it with genuine derision.

Draco forced himself to raise his head, stubbornly shaking several chunks of hair back from his eyes where they had begun to stick with sweat.

"I can see this situation brings more cause for alarm than I was willing to admit." He furrowed his brow momentarily, looking vaguely concerned. Then with a slight sigh, he turned and tossed the book into the flickering flames.

Draco tensed, but caught himself in time, struggling to ignore the spasm of despair that exploded in his chest. Lucius narrowed his eyes for no longer than a heartbeat, then crossed briskly to his desk and picked up a quill to scrawl something in a distinctly businesslike manner across a paper in the center of his things.

There was a brief spell of silence and Draco watched with a knot of sorrow tightening in his throat as hungry flames ate a black hole through the center of his book. He felt the familiar ache in the glands of his neck, as the unbearable urge to surrender to tears plagued him.

Lucius straightened up.

"I have given you a test Draco. You have failed. I don't know yet how deep this problem runs, but it has all ready begun to agitate me. I despise being agitated Draco." His words were crisp, sharp with conviction, painfully to the point. "Your punishment will be this evening at eight o'clock. I advise you once again to be on time. Try not to disappoint me Draco. You are dismissed."

Draco swallowed with a painful contraction of sore muscles in his throat, strained, to say the least. He rose to his feet and as quickly as he could manage without looking frantic, he crossed to the enormous glossed doors at the other end of the room, and let himself out.

~

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