Written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry Assignment 3, Mythology Task 4: Write about someone with a floral name.
Draco has been summoned. A House-Elf had appeared and told him he was needed in Master Lucius's rooms, and Draco had nodded and spent a good ten minutes brushing his hair, and another five picking a shirt, and then he'd stopped in the kitchens for good measure.
But there's only so long you can delay, and now he stands outside his parents' rooms, takes two deep breaths, pushes the door open, and walks in.
It's one of their smaller sitting rooms, with uncomfortable couches and an unlit fireplace. There is an almost untouched a tray of tea and a newspaper on the low coffee table. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are there, Lucius pacing back and forth along the hardwood floor while Narcissa takes small sips of her drink.
When Draco walks in, neither of them turns to look at him. Narcissa catches her husband's eye, and Lucius crosses the room to settle next to her. The message for Draco to sit across from them is clear, as is the power play showing that they are united, and he is alone. That he holds none of the aces except those which they have given him.
"Mother, Father," Draco says, and nods to them, but doesn't sit. There's not much they can do anymore, to him or to anyone else, despite their continued delusions of power.
"Please, Draco, sit," Narcissa says, and smiles thinly as he does.
"Draco," Lucius starts, "you are no doubt aware of the current… political situation that we are faced with, and that it is not entirely favorable."
Draco snorts, even though he shouldn't. Not entirely favorable is one way of describing that the entirety of the Wizarding World now despises his family, its allies, and their values and ways of life. After they lost the war, those pathetic bootlickers who had been perfectly content under the old order suddenly developed moral compasses and a terrific urge to rid the government of blood purism and prejudice. Disgusting, the lot of them.
Narcissa raises an eyebrow at the sound, and she sends another sidelong glance at Lucius as though to say, What are we going to do with him?
Nothing, if it's up to Draco, but it's clearly not, so he sits in silence and waits.
"I will be in Azkaban by no later than the fifteenth of July," Lucius says, picking a newspaper off the table in front of him and opening to a column with names and dates. "My trial is scheduled last, no doubt so that the Wizengamot will have had time to get properly indignant over the other… crimes committed by our allies."
Draco nods again. He knows all this, and not verbally acknowledging his father gives him a rather pitiful sense of satisfaction.
"There's no way they won't find me guilty," Lucius continues, "not with the Boy Who Lived in all of his glorious righteousness testifying against me. I'll spend the rest of my life in Azkaban if I'm lucky; if not, it'll be the Dementor's Kiss."
"You won't be exempt from a trial, Draco," Narcissa says. "You may have been a child—you may still be a child—but all that matters to them is the Mark on your arm. Your hearing doesn't seem as though it will be in the near future, but they'll get around to the less prominent Death Eaters eventually."
"I know, Mother."
"Then of course you've considered our options and realized that our best course of action is to alter your memories?" Narcissa's annoyance at his impudence is evident only through a slight sharpening of her voice; she knows perfectly well that Draco hasn't been doing much considering. After all, Draco's been buying his Firewhiskey through the collective Malfoy family vaults.
"Pardon?"
Lucius gives a little sigh. "Your mother and I don't want you to go to Azkaban, Draco, and with Potter so likely to speak against you at your trial, how good do you think your chances are?"
Azkaban?
Draco's spent the last two months purposefully not thinking about anything at all, but with Lucius's words, reality slams into Draco like an elephant on a broomstick. He's going to go to Azkaban. He may not have killed anyone or tortured Muggleborns, but the brand on his skin will forever remind anyone he meets of the decisions he's made, of his family heritage, of the fact that the Dark Lord himself lived in his house for a year. Lucius isn't wrong; Draco's chances of getting acquitted are close to nil, which is why he's been assuming that they would run away before that became a problem.
Draco wishes Toory, his House-Elf, was here so he could ask him to retrieve that bottle Draco's been saving for a special occasion. His parents being convinced that he's going to jail is probably good enough to warrant a 1951 Ogden's Best.
"And how would changing my memories help me? I've got a Dark Mark, haven't I? And Potter and his little gang have seen me doing—doing what I did."
"Try to think, Draco," Narcissa says. "We won't just wipe your memories; we'll do so in a way that clears you of any blame and places you in a perfect position to receive the sympathy of the Wizengamot."
"Yeah? How's that?"
His mother crinkles her nose slightly in disapproval at his lack of dignity, but when is she not disapproving?
"We'll replace your memories of Lucius with new ones. We're going to make you out to be a classic case of domestic abuse and tell them that you were forced into it. By the time Voldemort rose, you were so far broken that you didn't have it in you to resist what you were told, but you are of course innocent in all respects."
"You—you're going to tell the entire world that Father hit me?"
Draco turns to stare at his father; there's no way that Lucius agreed to this. But Lucius nods, fixing Draco with a rocky stare.
"It's the only way," Lucius says. "The Malfoys have controlled Britain for centuries, and if it takes my getting convicted to keep it that way, we'll do what it takes."
"By pretending that you're a child abuser?"
"Yes, by pretending that I'm a child abuser!" Lucius clenches the armrest, then takes a breath as Narcissa settles her hand over his. "We're out of options. If you had been on good terms with one of those Dumbledore's Army idiots, we could have had a chance, but at least this clears you and Narcissa of responsibility. You and your wife will be free to rebuild the Malfoy name without much of the animosity you would have otherwise faced."
"But—Mother, you cannot possibly—"
"We will do what we must do." Narcissa sets her mouth in a thin line, and Draco knows that the decision has been made, that he never really had a choice to begin with, but he'll be damned if he allows anyone to change the entire course of his life without putting up a fight—or, in this case, without complaining.
"You want to change all the memories of my childhood, just so I'll be able to testify under Veritaserum for a couple hours during the trial? How is that—"
"Draco, you don't understand," Narcissa says. "You're not getting these memories back."
Draco imagines a crack of lightning and a rumble of thunder accompanying her words, but the day is quite sunny, and all that happens is that he chokes a little and stares at his parents.
"What?"
"They'll be watching you closely to begin with; even the Ministry isn't so entirely incompetent as to allow 'dangerous' people to go without supervision. Who knows how long they'll keep their guard up? And afterward it'll look strange to have your personality and memories suddenly change."
"Don't you think that'll happen anyway? People did know me before the war."
Draco isn't sure why he's fighting so hard for this; it's not as though the memories he has of his father, which consist mainly of a steady stream of lectures saying that he's not good enough, are particularly pleasant. But Draco knows that Lucius loves him, has known that Lucius loves him for as long as he could remember, even if his father chooses not to express it. This—this altering of such an integral part of his life—well, Draco isn't sure if it's really that much better than Azkaban.
"The war changes people," Lucius says, checking his heavy gold watch. "I'd rather this not take all day… Narcissa, if you would do the honors?"
Narcissa nods. Her wand appears in her hand seemingly out of nowhere—a handy intimidation trick that Draco learned immediately after he got his first wand—and she stands and gestures for Draco to approach her.
Even as he stands and moves toward her, Draco knows that he could argue, fight, run, do something, but he's also well aware that he will do none of these things. Draco's always been a coward, and this instance is no different. He wonders what it'll feel like to think that he's been hit his whole life, and decides that it doesn't matter, really. He'll still have his Firewhiskey, at any rate.
He kneels, and as his mother touches the tip of her wand to Draco's forehead he thinks that her eyes are shinier than usual, but when she speaks her voice is steady.
"Obliviate."
Draco blinks awake.
"All done," his mother says, and he looks down at his right arm; indeed, the bruise marks are gone, replaced with skin so smooth that he could never have guessed that just hours ago Lucius had split that same skin with a word, that it had bled so much that Draco thought that surely today would be the end.
Lucius is drumming his fingers on his leg. "Finished?" he asks, and Narcissa nods. "Took you long enough. Narcissa, we've got to get going, the Greengrasses are expecting us any minute now. Draco—" he raises his hand slightly.
Draco cringes automatically, then rights himself, swallowing, as Lucius moves Narcissa's teacup back onto the tray.
"I'll be here, Father," he says. Oddly enough, there's something strange in Lucius's eyes, an indescribable emotion that Draco struggles to pinpoint, but it's gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced with impatience.
"Good."
The dismissal is clear, and Draco makes a swift exit. There's a bottle of 1951 Ogden's Best Firewhiskey with his name on it, after all, and Draco wants nothing more than to forget.
He stops as soon as he steps through the doorway—no Malfoy would ever do otherwise—and pauses to listen.
"Narcissa…" Lucius says, the sound quiet through the oak door, but as clear as ever.
"It's for the best," Narcissa replies, voice soft. "You know Azkaban would have been worse."
"Yes." Draco has to strain to hear him. "Yes, it would have been."
There are the two pops of Disapparation, and Draco stands still for a moment, wondering about the meaning of what he's overheard.
What did his parents do? And what did they do that is better than Azkaban?
Not that it matters, really. His parents do a lot of things, Draco thinks as he starts the trek back to his rooms, and it probably had nothing to do with him anyway.