For the Sins of the Father| PG-13
Scorpius' childhood is far from idyllic. Trapped by his father who is by turns charismatic and terrorising, and subdued by his mother who is still desperately in love and living in painful denial, when he is kidnapped for ransom by a tortured woman on a mission to hunt down the men who killed her father, he finds himself doubting everything he holds to be true, and struggling to be free once and for all from under the doomed Malfoy fate.
"Both your sins and the sins of your fathers," says the Lord . "I will measure into your laps the full payment for their former deeds".
Isaiah 65:7
They move around a lot when he's young, French countryside, Argentinean hills, he's been there all. He doesn't see much of any the places they go to, they always live high up, on a hill, secluded from the town and surrounded by charms that his father painstakingly puts up each time they arrive somewhere new. He doesn't go to school, his mother teaches him in the living room, first words, then numbers then history, until he can draw a skull with a tongue like a tangled snake.
His mother talks about home a lot, not the house they live in, but that little island where she grew up, green hills she says, green hills and the bluest seas, woods that feel like home. You'll see she says, everything will be better when we get home.
That becomes a mantra when things get bad. It'll all be better when we get home she says curling up next to him, a bandage around her head.
'You hurt your head again' he notes 'you should be more careful'
He doesn't understand why his mother cries when she smiles 'I should be more careful, I'm so clumsy these days, '
When he's six, they move to England, on the West Coast. Home, says his mother, gripping his hand tight as they stand in front of the house that looks as if it's in ruins from the outside. Home, it seems to him is nothing special, just a house, he doesn't see how anything will be better just because of this.
But he sees the sea for the first time from that house. That, at least, is everything his mother promised.
He runs down with her from the cliff and stands on the edge of the vast expanse and thinks how easy it would be to walk in and never walk out. It's the grey on that first day, like quicksilver, mercury that his mother keeps in glass bubble on a necklace, bottomless and impenetrable.
It doesn't seem like that when he walks right into it, it isn't heavy anymore. Bare feet snag on swirling seaweed and graze of shards of shell. Foam rushes in to claim his ankles, the ground drops away in front of his feet and he follows it until he is submerged. It isn't metallic that close, it's clear and beautiful and from the corner of his eyes he swears he sees a silver fish dart away. He remembers that first time as the happiest day of his life, when he looks at his mother, she is changed. She looked young for the first time that day, alive, free, the woman his father must've seen when he first met her. She's a version of herself he'll yearn for the rest of his life, the person he will search for but catch only glimpses of in late summer afternoons when the sun is so low that when he squints he can almost see the past.
The moment passes, they go back to the house, back home. She's a different person then, meeker, faded from the seafront, a shadow of the woman he's seen. For all the years he lives in that house, in all years she lives in the house, she'll never go back to the sea.
The air is electric the day that the world changes. There's a storm on the horizon, not that they see it, their own small family is too consumed by the lightning and thunder they produce in the house to be concerned with the surges outside.
He wants to go outside, that's how it starts.
'No,' says his mother 'it's too rough, you'll get swept away by the tide,'
He can smell the ozone in the air, briny gusts of wind blown through the kitchen window, flirting with the lace curtains Peggy the house elf put up.
His mother pulls out a box with the parts to a model airplane. Kisses his forehead and curls a hand around the nape of his neck, leaves.
He sits cross legged on his bed, assembling the parts, Styrofoam wings glued to the body, inserting the aluminium V with the wheels attached to in into the end into the capsule in the belly of the airplane. The world outside is misty with soft rain that clings to the cold glass like teardrops. The house pulses with the tide that crashes on the shores below. He leans against the thin walls and feels the life-force through his back, each pulse synchronised with his own heartbeat. There's a motor on the airplane that winds up with a rubber band, he tries to place in it the nose, twisting it and twisting it again so it's wound up in a figure of it but it snaps against his hand and leaves a red mark that stings.
Taking the plane and a spare rubber band he tries to find his mother, taking each the stairs two at a time and sliding his hands over the well worn banister. The wood is velvet and warm under his hands and the woolly carpet under his bare feet scratchy.
His mother isn't in the living room or the kitchen but there are voices from his father's study. He grips the rails of the winding staircase down to his father's study tightly as he descends. The tips of his fingers are electric and with anticipation. Rarely does he get to see his father these days. In his mind his father has become as dream, impossibly bright and brilliant.
His father's study is almost as big as half the ground floor. He's been there only once, a large wood panelled room with a magnificent fireplace and a big green leather chair behind a mahogany desk. He thinks of knocking, but as he raises his hands to the door the voices grown louder and he drops his arms, hand unfurling.
At first he doesn't mean to listen, just sits, back against the wall in front of the door waiting for the voices to subside. But he gets caught in the story of the voices, different tones and pitches and when the voices get quieter he crawls forward and presses his ears to the door. Names fly in different voices, names like Weasley and Potter, Rabastan is on the run. Mark hunters. From the Ministry? He doesn't understand much, he doesn't who any of these people, any of those places but he listens. When there's silence, he presses closer, eager to be a part of this, to have the knowledge even if he can't use it. He doesn't expect for the door to open, to fall into his father's feet.
He sees true anger for the first time when his father drags him up by the scruff of his neck. Eyes so cold he thinks he might've been burned.
He scurries upstairs when his father turns his back and goes into the study again, airplane forgotten. He'll find it again, years later, dusty, stuffed into a crack into the wall behind the swirled staircase, wings broken, motor snapped. He'll wonder then if that's how he is, how his mother is, wings broken, motor snapped, stuffed into the cracks in the walls of this house, this place called home.
Those disembodied voices leave the house well after the sun is fallen. The air outside is heavy with anticipation of the coming storm and inside, inside the air is quiet.
He remembers the light being especially yellow, brooding when his father comes into the sitting room, wand drawn.
'Stand up,' his father says and he does, stands up quivering with fear.
He remembers watching that wand and thinking put it away, put it away even though he couldn't have known. He couldn't have known what he'd do.
'He's just a child' his mother begs 'he didn't mean to, he's just a child' she clings to him, trying to lower his wand arm.
His father is seething, his arms are iron, he draws her closer, face inches from hers, pure rage in his eyes. He pushes up his sleeve, up past his elbow, blue ink on white skin. 'I was just a child, no one is too young to learn the consequences'
There are silent tears running down his mother's face, she turns to him and stares for a second, all these tears. He wants to ask why, why are you crying. What will he do? There is no answer, except the sound of her footfalls running as fast as she can from the room. He'll hear that door slam for the rest of his life.
His father's hands are cold on his skin as he pushes up his sleeve. The tip of the wand, white hot.
Scorpius trembles, trying to pull away. His father places a firm hand on the nape of his neck, like his mother does when he's crying.
'Don't wince, learn to be a man,' words of advice, he'll carry with him. He stands to attention, heels together. Yes sir. Things his father taught.
The pain is blinding, deep and slow, abrasive against the solid length of his bone. One, then two, three. He doesn't wince even as his toes curl against the stiff leather of his boots.
His father bandages him up silently, wrapping the white gauze tighter and tighter until his arm is numb. When he's done, he ruffles his son's hair.
'I'll expect better from you next time,'
He lies in bed listening to the rain against the window pain later that night. He holds up his hand to the cool glass, lets the stinging be soothed. His mother comes and sits at his feet, tucks the duvet closer around him, runs a hand through his hair.
'He's a good man, you know,' a sigh 'he does the best he can'
He snuffles, curl deeper into his bed, further from her.
'You shouldn't test him so much, he's told you not to listen at the door before, you're old enough to know that now, this moving, it's been hard on him. His friends, his family they aren't close anymore, he's hurting. But we're home again now, you'll see, things will get better,'
They do get better, the men with the steel tipped army boots and the black velvet cloaks come around less often. His father steps out of his study once in a while, sometimes he even plays catch with him, throwing the battered old Quaffle high, smiling when Scorpius catches it on the other side of the garden.
It was a sunny day, he'll remember.
Listless, he wanders around the house, his mother's out, her broomstick missing from the shed. He hears hushed voices in his father's study. He sits on the bottom step of the winding staircase and listens in between the beats of the bounces of his old India rubber ball. He doesn't have to strain, the voice that speaks most often is loud. Carrow he hears, Carrow, Yaxley, Lestrange, it's his voice, the man with the wolfish grin and body like a mountain, raspy, gravelly, he shivers. Then his father's voice, even, all of them? he asks, the silent assent, scraping of chairs, he stands up quickly, feet together in attention.
The door opens; his father is the first one out, the scarred man in out next, head bending to fit through the doorway.
'Scorpius,' he says, extending a hand and tracing the curve of the jaw with a single yellow nail 'how good to see you' a flash of pink tongue darts out of his mouth, it takes all of Scorpius' will to not flinch.
'That's enough Greyback,' the wolf man pulls away from him at the touch of his father's hand. Scorpius avoids his father's eyes. 'You should go,' his father's voice is quieter than usual, more commanding. Greyback nods, walks down the hallway with his father, pauses at the doorway.
Scorpius watches the two of them, Greyback like a mountain bending towards his father who must be a third of his companion size but still carries an authority that crackles at the edges.
'Think about it,' says Greyback, bending close, whiskers almost grazing his father's ear. That's all he hears, captivated by the sunshine pouring through the stained glass window above the curve of the staircase. His father doesn't reply, simply opens the door.
He waits for punishment silently; he knows the penalty for eavesdropping. Rolls up his sleeves, braces himself when his father walks by. No punishment comes; no wand digs into his forearm to split open old scars, his father walks right into his study. Slams the door.
The front door is still ajar; a sliver of sunshine forcing it's way into the dark hallway. It calls to him, light dancing making his skin itch for the feel of sun on his arms, his shoulder. There's no sound from the study, except that of rustling paper, his father's quill scratching and scratching.
Only a minute, he tells himself, only a minute, just out in the garden. That's okay, it's alright. He opens the door, feels the sun on the bridge of his nose, warming. He can almost feel himself tan, except he never does, not even when they lived almost on the Equator, he just burned, red, blistering, but loved it, danced out on the sun baked ground and wouldn't come inside even his mother called him her little lobster and pulled at his wrist from the shade of the patio awning.
He looks back at the house, glass panes from his window wink at him. The house is on a hill, bigger than it looks from the outside, a stony footpath runs from the back door of the garden, joining like a tributary to the cliff path that winds down to the beach below, there's a sheer drop opposite the front door, tufts of yellowing grass cling to the sandy cliff. The cliff face is almost eaten away, only the charms that surround the house keep it from crashing into the sea. There used to be stone steps, now eroded by the sand that falls even in a light breeze. He doesn't look for long, vertigo swirling his stomach and making his head spin, he's glad of the white painted picket fence even if knows he won't fall
He forces his eyes to look at the horizon instead, most days it's grey out here, grey sea seeping into grey sky, the horizon indistinguishable except for the hump of dark mass he knows to be the island with the lighthouse. It isn't grey today. The cobalt sea makes a clean cut across the sky, drawn as if by the pencils his mother sharpens to a fine point and then drags across a page against a ruler when she teaches geometry. The island looks green almost, a real place, rather than a smudge in the landscape, he watches the waves break against the rocks on the curve of the bay and imagines the force on his skin, cool water, foamy surf, he shakes himself impatiently from the fantasy.
He isn't allowed to the beach alone, his mother never agrees to accompany him, sometimes when the weather is clear she sits in a deck chair by the fence in the garden and watches him play on the beach. She isn't here now, but the crash of the waves is stronger here, a thrum through his body, a call that reverberates through him. Past the garden fence, the charms don't work. His father forbids him and his mother agrees 'too dangerous' she says, ruffling his hair, kissing him, what would I do if something happened to you? What would I do? He ignores the wetness that dampens his hair, the protest of his rubs as her arms tighten around him.
The charm is electric on his arms as he runs past it, buzzing with anticipation.
He remembers the strangest things about that day, little pieces seared into his brain, onto the back of his eyelids, images that play when he closes his eyes. He slips down the cliff path, the edge of his shorts catch a nettle and as he runs past it snags on the cheap denim and tears a hole. Years later he'll think about those shorts and feel a pang of regret, they were brand new.
It doesn't bother him then though, he runs into the sea, submerges himself, swims like a fish. He counts elephants under the water, coming up , propelling himself out of the sea with one hand on the wooden posts that anchor the coast. He plays the game in the bathtub sometimes, squeezing his eyes shut and counting and counting, but it isn't the same, the absence of cool porcelain knocking on the back of his head, the absence of safety sends a thrill down his spine.
He doesn't see his mother return, a long speck in the horizon growing into a woman on a broomstick over the house, nor does he hear her calls, see her switching on every light, looking everywhere. In fact he can't tell time has even passed until he surfaces, and sees the pads of his fingers are puckered and wrinkled.
He barely feels the sting.