A/N: I usually prefer to let my stories stand alone, but this is my first concerted effort at a multi-chapter fic, so I feel it deserves some explanation, or at least a precaution. I am going to try to keep this on schedule; there will be a "projected update" note at the end of each chapter. My goal is to update once every week to two weeks, but keep an eye on the notes at the end of the latest chapter, as they are subject to change.

Also: my short HP fics serve as standalones. Reoccurring characters will not necessarily keep their same characterization.

Please enjoy.

Disclaimer: not mine


The Distribution of Will

Chapter 1

Draco Malfoy had, during the course of his brief and unglamorous life, accumulated several hundred thousand galleons in gold and bonds, made several hundred enemies who would love nothing more than to spit on his newly dug grave, met a few dozen people who can call to mind the form of his patronus, and three sons.

The rest is irrelevant; this is about the three of them.

Scorpius Malfoy is the scion of the family. He is his father's spitting image and has inherited much of his aristocratic demeanor though little of his propensity to flaunt it. He needs narrow, silver framed glasses when he reads, but he wears them regularly, if only to stem the steady flow of exclamations of just how much he is his father's son. He is twenty-five years old when his father dies and though he would have been content without his family's fortune, he receives it and guards it warily.

Arcturus Malfoy is very much his mother's son, though he too seems to have struck gold and grey in the game of genetic roulettes. He is twenty-three and does not expect much of his father's estate, as it has always been perfectly clarion that he had been his father's least favorite son. He receives a few thousand pieces of gold – which he promptly spills to girls and drinking – and a tersely worded note never to expect any handouts from his brother the heir, as it has been written into his own conditions that any violation of these terms would mean the forfeit of the sums to an undisclosed tertiary party. Arcturus shrugs, lets soft hands pet his face as he presses his lips to that of a bottle and patiently waits for his mother to die.

Rasalas is the third son, barely out of green and silver, and is summering with his grandmother when word comes by the claws of Scorpius' great eagle-owl. He buries his face into his grandmother's lap and feels small and ashamed as he muffles his sobs in her skirts. She sits stony faced above him, eyes dry and careful and weary as the fingers she threads carefully through his black, black hair.

To Rasalas his father leaves the deeds to one of his smaller estates and an envelope, addressed to him in his secretary's thick, even hand. His father's solicitor looks up at him gravely, offers him his condolences and wishes him well. Rasalas nods numbly and slips the papers into the folds of his cloak, where their weight bumps gently against his side with every step he takes, where his father's weight bears heavy and relentless upon his shoulder.

The funeral is held beneath the bright noon sun of early August. Rasalas sits stiffly behind his mother and eldest brother, holds his grandmother's cool, smooth fingers in his hand. It is halfway through the service before he realizes he cannot distinguish which of them is taking and which is providing comfort. His father's various business associates – old, balding men, young upstarts – parade across the podium. They say brief, ingenuous things about the keenness of his father's business sense, the shrewdness of his mind, his dignity in office, how much they'll regret his unexpected passing, their sympathy towards his beautiful widow.

A tall, thin man loiters awkwardly to the side of this procession, lingering and jostling as if unsure whether to stay or leave. Rasalas catches him staring intently into the crowd, pale gaze weary and still compared to his gawky, swaying body. Their eyes meet for half a moment before the man looks away, pulling his hat lower over his dark hair. Rasalas looks back, some time later, but he is no longer there.

After the coffin has been lowered into the ground, after the fistfuls of earth are thrown, the crowd begins steadily to disperse, his brother Arcturus leading the way, young witches – daughters of the well-wishers, undoubtedly – hanging off each arm. Rasalas's grandmother is the last to leave him. Her face is impassive, eyes worn and smooth like pebbles in a stream. She seems no more affected by the death of her only son than she would by the passing of a sudden rainstorm in spring, but Rasalas can see the weight and measure of her grief as she touches the fingertips of one hand to his face and brushes the gravestone fleetingly with the other.

It is just him now, standing at the foot of the plot of newly turned earth, white funeral flowers moving silently in the late afternoon breeze. He feels as if he should have something to say, but nothing comes to mind.

"I'm sorry for your loss," a man's voice says from behind him. Rasalas turns and sees the dark man from before, shifting his weight from foot to foot beneath the shade of a nearby tree. Rasalas can see him a little more clearly, now that he doesn't blend in with the throng of black and grey from earlier. His robes are a little too big for his frame, his collar a little crooked and of a material and design clearly mass-produced. He wears wire-framed glasses atop a thin, slightly crooked nose and his eyes are very, very green. Rasalas walks over, stands by the man.

"I don't believe I know you, sir," he says, his voice impeccably polite. The man takes a darting glance at his face. "My name is Rasalas Malfoy, and I encourage you to head down the hill, in the way of the carriages. They will take you back to the Manor, where refreshment will be served –"

"I'm not here for your sandwiches," the man snaps before hastily apologizing, "I'm sorry – Rasalas, isn't it? Rasalas." He pauses as if to ruminate this realization. "It's just that I came here to talk to you." Rasalas blinks.

"As I've said, sir, I don't believe I know your name," he says carefully.

The man shakes his head, mutters, "No, I don't suppose you would." He reaches up, and removes his hat. "I don't think we've met. I'm Harry Potter. I went to school with your father." He holds out a hand, and the breeze picks up enough to play through his disheveled black hair, and Rasalas catches a glimpse of that infamous jagged scar, livid beneath his fringe.

"Mr. Potter! Sir!" he exclaims, quickly reaching back to shake the man's hand. "I'm sorry, truly; I can't believe I didn't recognize you, I mean, my brother –"

"—was once best mates with my son, Albus," Potter says, smiling ruefully. "I don't think they've spoken for a number of years now."

"But, sir, my father," Rasalas continues. "We never knew, I mean, we'd all heard about how you'd saved him, back during the War, but he'd never mentioned you outside of that. I can't believe you were friends and he never even said anything!"

Potter looks away, smile flattening into a look of practiced chagrin. "I can't say we were particularly close," he says, "but your father and I did understand one another, for a while." He looks past Rasalas' shoulder and Rasalas turns, following his gaze. The carriages have driven off, by this point, a long line of black, horseless cars disappearing into the horizon.

"Anyway," Potter says. "We'd made our peace, your father and I. We'd not spoken for years when one day he owls me out of the blue, asking to meet. It was his mother, he explained. She'd come to understand that a certain lot had come into my possession some years ago, and she wanted to know what I planned on doing with it. Naturally, I said I wasn't doing anything. It was never really mine, anyway; my godfather –"

He looks pained, here, old memories of a distant past rushing to the forefront. Rasalas remembers that his father had occasions like this, briefly and infrequently, but sometimes when Scorpius or Arcturus or he came back for holiday, wrapped snuggly in their black uniform robes and house colors, he'd get that look, an uncharacteristic strain to the corners of his eyes, like he was trying not to remember.

"It wasn't mine," Potter concludes. "So your father, he asks if I'd be willing to part with it, to give it back because his wife, your mother, was pregnant again and they were hoping…" He trails off again here. Rasalas looks up at him expectantly.

The Man Who Prevailed, he wonders to himself. They'd read all about him in their textbooks at Hogwarts, spent entire terms analyzing the feats of this singular individual who had saved the wizarding world again and again over a period of a little less than ten years. All while he was even younger than Rasalas is now!

Rasalas looks at him, the man standing in front of him, and a little of that glamour is stripped from the glory that is "Harry Potter." This man is ordinary; painfully so. His shoulders are much too narrow to have comfortably carried the hope of the entire world; his hands are overlarge, fingers too skinny. He is not even particularly heroic looking, thin lips and a perpetually frazzled look to his upkeep.

"This is supposed to be yours, anyway," Potter says finally, reaching into his rumpled cloak and pulling out a threadbare box of red velvet. Rasalas takes it into his hands, runs the pads of his fingers over the cloth. "He wanted me to give this to you; told me to keep it until after he died because he didn't want his sons to know," Potter recites, steady eyes gone darting and uncomfortable. "He didn't want them to think that he loved any one of them less than the others." Rasalas peers up at Harry Potter again, but he doesn't seem to notice, his expression lax and far away.

"Thank you," Rasalas says, slipping the box into the inner pocket of his own cloak. "And thank you for coming all this way for this. Are you sure you wouldn't like to come down to the Manor? You could at least have a drink before you leave."

Potter shakes his head. "No, no. This isn't really my sort of crowd, you know? And I don't suppose a lot of them will be too happy to see me. Besides, it was only ever your father who –" He shakes his head. "Thank you, Ra-lasas, but I really should be going now." He takes his weight off the trunk of the tree and is almost down the hill when he turns back and calls, "If you want my advice, you should burn it. The place… it's not the same as it used to be. There are things…. You can either keep it or burn it, but if you keep it, know that it isn't like it used to be. Not at all."


She had seen him at the funeral; it was hard not to. He stood out in the sea of sober colors and insincere men: The Boy Who Lived, no, The Man Who Won. Everything, in the end, however briefly before he'd cast it away for that family he'd always wanted, that normalcy and anonymity he still convinces himself into thinking he finally has. Foolish child, Narcissa thinks, like her son had been. Making grand gestures to uncomprehending, disinterested audiences and expecting applause. They could afford to be so selfish, she thinks, climbing into the carriage at the head of the procession, tucking her skirts around her legs. They were young and the world had just been laid at their feet, conquered and trampled and shattered but wholly new and reborn. They'd had all the time in the world and the world would be more than happy to look the other way to give it to them. Except.

Narcissa sighs, covers her old hands with the soft skin of leather gloves. She had been young once too, but she hadn't nearly their opportunity. Her husband had turned out to be a fine man, self-serving and slippery, but gentle with her, doting with her son. Still, they had been happy, even without an ounce of selfishness on either of their parts. Well, that was it, wasn't it? The one thing she regrets about her youth – she'd never got to be selfish, to feel like the only thing in the world that mattered. Her son though, had been loyal and dutiful to his mother, possibly even spoilt her in ways she had not been accustomed to as the wife of the scion of an ancient family. He'd given her choice, and bid her choose the most important thing in the world so that he may give it to her.

And she could only think of one thing.

Perhaps she just isn't meant for selfishness, she muses. Perhaps that is one nature that had not been bred into her. The carriage jumps, wheels crushing unevenly over the gravel trail below. Narcissa sighs again, straightening her spine with a succession of quiet pops. She is old now and what is done has been done. She feels her heart growing weaker with each pulsing beat, feels her age upon her every time she falls asleep before her books or forgets where she put her stitching. One day she is going to fall asleep, she knows, closing her eyes and remembering the texture of her son's hair, back when he was a boy. One of these days she will fall asleep and she will forget to wake. Then perhaps her heart will finally find the freedom she'd denied it while she was awake.


Next update: 10.4.08