Drunk Again
Author : Finn-Turner
Rated : R for violence and abuse
Summary : Lucius makes a mistake he cannot change. Not slash.
Disclaimer : I am not J.K. Rowling and I am not making any profits from this. Also, I do not condone excessive drinking or abuse in anyway – just to make that clear.
He was drunk again.
Draco heard the first crack of flesh-against-flesh, as he made his way up the spindly staircase to his bedchambers. He heard the thin spine slap against the wall like a wet towel and the faint sobbing of a broken, spidery woman. He heard the murmured speaking of his father. He could feel the heat of the room, his father's anger. He could see his father's fist tightening, his other hand groping blindly for the cane that he loved so dearly; his eyes would be locked on his victim, unwavering. His mother would be begging for him to stop – "not tonight," came the murmur, "not with him home…"
Draco wished to do something for his mother; except that, he knew if he interrupted the meeting between his mother and father, it would be his head cracked open with the hard, black paint of the cane – instead of his mother's. It would be his body on the floor, twitching, and it would be his shrieks and cries echoed through the house. The boy acknowledged the selfishness of these thoughts, but disregarded them – his mother would do the same, he was sure.
He had seen the bottle in the kitchen; set out that morning and yet, there was only about a quarter of an inch left. The welcomed rays of sun illuminated the bottle. The house elves were working feverishly to scrub the windows, to welcome the sun and warmth into the monster of a home, and yet, their efforts were futile. The house never seemed to have enough light and it was so desperately cold. The fact that the sun even touched the bottle had been a shock to young Draco. Of course, it had meant something much more terrible than what many would have thought. To many, the lack of contents signified company or a night with a father passed out in a bedroom; to Draco, however, it meant that his father would be beating his mother senseless that night.
In fact, the boy remembered as he stood outside the door to the study, Bella had been there the night before. Aunt Bella – one of the most terrifying women Draco had every known – had influenced his father adversely. His mother's sister had pegged the empty specter of a woman for death. Yet, Draco knew his father did not have it in him. After Azkaban, his father was empty, yes, without a heart, but … to kill his own wife was a preposterous though. Bella had been sent from the house immediately for it. Narcissa's own sister…
However.
Perhaps…
He was drunk again.
Draco sighed and rested his silver eyes on the mahogany banister. Looking down, his saw the disrupted parlor, where the fight had obviously started. Cushions were slightly astray, there were cool embers from the hearth splayed around on the ground, and the house elves were dashing around madly, trying to clean the room quickly. They were also subjected to occasional drunken punishments, but they had the ability to hide. Draco, on the other hand, did not.
Having heard enough of his mother's desperate sobbing, he continued up the next flight of stairs, to the third floor of the Malfoy Manor – which could have easily been confused with a castle if one was not careful. Once at the landing where his door was situated, he looked into the darkness of his bedchambers. His father had promised him that once he turned 17 and graduated Hogwarts, he would be given a new bedroom – one with windows. For the meantime, however, Draco was confined to a twelve-by-six-foot windowless room, with a twin bed crammed into it, along with a hardwood desk. He stood in the doorframe and from there, used a random wand that was kept in the house to light the lanterns on the wall.
The boy of 16 heard a piercing scream from downstairs, one of extreme pain. Draco knew the breaking of bones had begun and this was when his father was angriest. The cane had been used on Draco before – he knew the feeling of the wood and metal mixture slamming into his shins; he knew the desperate pain of the bone breaking and he could never keep the screams inside him.
He was weak, like his mother. But she was a woman, Father would yell, she is a woman, she is weak by nature. Think, Draco, think. Think. Think.
The door was closed with a dying click and Draco sat in his dark bedroom, with only the light from one lantern showing him the death of his life. He was the Silver Prince of Slytherin – feared because of his father and respected because the evil and pain he could harbor within himself. He knew that he should help his mother – but his father was drunk. Slytherins cared for no one but themselves; tonight was not the night for Gryfindor bravery. He saw his perfection and cunning in darkness, not light like those brave souls that swelled in that house of maroon and gold – the house that Draco envied so greatly, with malice in his silver eyes.
His toes dug painfully into the marble floors, as he heard the screeching begin downstairs. It was to the point he hated – where his father would grip the ghost's hair and he would hold her there, perched atop the stairs, as she wept and begged for him to … no, no, don't, please. Draco felt the familiar crunch beneath him; he let out a pained whimper and stared at his toes. It was crumpled. Had he really pressed on his foot that hard? Quickly and badly healing his feet, he stood to test his work.
It was then that he heard it.
Mother was weak, a woman.
He was drunk again.
Draco froze as he heard it, the screeches, as they grew dimmer in the shadows of the house that was void of all light and happiness. His mother's screams crashed and bounced against the stairs as she did, as her appendages and digits slammed and smacked into the hard marble of the stairs. Suddenly, with one large thud, it ended and all that could be heard was the rushed feet of the house elves and the murmured ramblings of a drunken father.
The vodka was swirling in Lucius Malfoy's head. His wife was laying at the foot of the stairs, weeping.
He was drunk again.
Draco opened his bedchamber door once again and looked down. His father's silhouette … hunched over, one hand holding a vodka bottle and the other hand steadying him by gripping the doorframe, he stared down as his wife as she cried out in pain. His father did not see him, did not sense him.
He was drunk again.
It was nights like these that made Draco hate Christmas, but they were over just as they had begun. Unexpectedly, without warning. In moments, Narcissa's broken bones and bleeding orifices were healed and she was sitting upright, with a stunned look on her face. She just sat in the armchair and stared in front of her, as Lucius sat in his own winged armchair by the fireplace and looked into the fire, as it crackled, hissed, and burned, sending much needed light and warmth onto the mildewy rug. The ghost of a woman's face was blank, just staring, no emotion, no love. It was the mother that Draco had known his entire life – a woman that sat empty, no words and no feeling in her eyes. She was a trophy wife – a pale, slender trophy wife with good hair and pretty eyes, but a nose that could spear a rhino. His father let her know this fact.
Draco stared into his mother's eyes at dinner and searched for a sign that she loved him. They sat, across from one another, with a terror of a father at the head of the table. There was little conversation, as there were almost no safe topics. Sure, sometimes the weather if it was to Lucius' favor and maybe pure blood relations and superiority, but only if Lucius was having a good day. It was delicate process, a balance that had to be upheld.
He was drunk again.
Draco was excused at ten minutes past eleven. He stepped slowly up the stairs and heard it start, the low rumbling of his father's voice.
She was weak. A woman. Just weak. Just another piece of meat. Just more flesh to hit, another soul stolen and destroyed. Aunt Bella loved the pain that Lucius caused, she wanted to feel it herself, hold it inside herself, she could do better than her sister in handling the beatings. She would love the way he hit her.
Draco sat in his dark bedroom, his thoughts calling out to the shadows that were cast out before him. There was nothingness from below him, no noise until half past midnight when the first crash came.
Draco knew it was not a normal one when it began – as it had already happened once. Perhaps, Draco thought, perhaps Bella's words sunk into Father's mind and perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.
Draco did not want it to happen. He did not want the pale ghost to leave him.
He was drunk again.
The hallway was dark when Draco stood inside of it, looking down into the depths of the darkness. He had heard his father's faint voice, the faint calling for a specter that was no longer full of life. Of course, it was true that she had had no life since the day she married Lucius.
Draco saw the lifeless body, his father hunched over it weeping, and remembered the words that many had told him, "nothing can stop death." There was nothing his father could do, it was sad to say, about what he had done to his own wife. As his son watched him, Lucius cried over the body and wished with all his fiber that he was not the man he was.
He was drunk again.
She was a woman, a weak woman, but someone had destroyed her.
It was moments like these, these tender moments that Lucius sometimes showed, that made the thought of going back to Hogwarts a sour smell in Draco's nose. The boy's father rarely showed that side of him – the side that cried and wanted only the best for his family, the side that he buried deep inside of him.
Draco did not want to be seen. He made his way back upstairs, very silently, and hoped in the morning that it would all be a terrible dream.
She is just a woman.
The glass bottle sat on the table beside the armchair. It was empty, on its side and the light from the fire was cast inside of it. It glowed orange and spread out over the dark wood of the table.
"Remember when I told you about when your mother and I met?" He whispered to his son. His fist gripped his cane to the side of the chair. The young boy stood motionless beside him. "We were so in love."
He was drunk again.
There were screeches in the night sometimes.
"Yes, I remember, Father," Draco whispered in a monotone voice. Lucius sighed happily – his son was a well-trained machine, almost emotionless just like his mother had been.
His mother.
His mother.
She was just a woman. Just another woman. Just another woman for Lucius' use, to be cast off when she was of no more use. Just a piece of meat. Just another touch, another hit with a cane, another slap of flesh against a wall, another scream piercing through the darkest of nights.
The boy hated it. Hated them. Hated him. Hated life.
The boy was a shadow, with his mother gone. Lucius had lost the plaything that had kept him sane for so many years. He always thought he would make it without Narcissa, that his life would just continue. It was when she was truly gone – truly gone, never coming back, could not be healed – that he realized just how much he had grown to love that woman that he had been forced to marry at the tender age of 18.
Of course, he needed someone to take his pains out on. The boy – his own son – seemed to be the perfect choice. Sure, he could have smacked around any random house elf, but that just would not do. House elves were used to such punishments. As much as Lucius tried, Draco still had a bit of raw emotion inside of him – emotion that screamed out when he was hit, cried when he was sad, and smiled broadly when he was happy. Narcissa had lost most of that, in her 17 years of marriage to the coldly domineering man.
He was drunk again.
It was another one of those moments. When Lucius' anger turned to tears at the thought of the woman, when Draco answered so mechanically, without thinking about his answers. Lucius had had the family he had always wanted: the beautiful, perfect wife (despite her crumpled nose that was a mistake of an early beating) , the obedient and mechanical adolescent son that did everything in his power to please his father. Lucius had had it all, but had thrown it away in one solid motion. Lucius had ruined his own life, his son's life… and…
Narcissa.
She was just a woman.
He was drunk again.
"We were so in love."
The empty bottle rolled onto the floor, as the cane was swiftly taken up. The sixteen-year-old boy – much too old for tears, but much too young to deserve that type of treatment – was hunched on the ground, a shivering heap as his father hit him repeatedly. The sound of the cane hitting the young boy's flesh, breaking the weak bone – so weak from the weeks that Lucius had kept him locked up, to keep him silent, starved him – brought back too many memories for the shadow of a father. Lucius stumbled back, staring at the broken soul before him, the boy that was too weak to move crumpled on the floor, sobbing hysterically and blood seeping out of random cuts on his body. Lucius let the cane fall to the ground, nick the bottle slightly, and stay motionless.
She was just a woman.
He was just a boy. Weak and incapable of love, he was just a pale ghost of a soul, a pale ghost of a human. Broken and dying, he was cast aside.
He was just a weak child.
She was just a woman.
He was just a boy.
The man was just a father.
He was drunk again.