It's a lame title, but deal. I'm unsure of a lot of ideas for stories I have, so I'm going to build up some ideas & post this for now. I have a ficlet I wrote a bit ago about the Maurders & I might post that soon just as well. Anyway.
Read & review!
A Father's Lie
A crumpled old paper in his hand and a suitcase in the other, the young man looked up above at the looming manor that was before him. He swallowed unsurely as he examined the cold, stone building that was so unlike his mother and from he imagined as his father. His mother had always told him that his father came from a different sort of people than from her family. Although he had taken all of his father's appearance and namesakes, his personality and aspects of life were completely with his mother as she had been the one to raise him. The cold air churned around him, tightening his throat and forcing him to pull his grey jacket closer to his slight, tall frame. It was now or never, like it always seemed to be.
His feet crunched down upon the thick snow that covered the pathway up to the looming mansion. He was seventeen, just turning into a man, but he felt like a small child wandering aimlessly and coming across a haunted, abandoned house. England had harsher seasons than his homeland of France did, his mother had warned him as she tried to talk him out of finding her family, and of course his father. Despite of the many stories and little things his mother had told him, it wasn't until he began tracking down his family that he realized he knew almost nothing, but growing up he had been so content to hear he looked just like his father or said something reminded his mother of one of her brothers, he was sufficiently content.
The path was long and worn; his feet just barely hit the cobbled stone underneath the thick layer of snow. It seemed the manor grew larger and higher with each step as he peered up at the towers and windows of the house his own father grew up in. How could a young child find comfort in stone walls and such a cold atmosphere? His mother owned a small flat in the city of Lille, France, and it was the only place he had yet to call home even despite his many years at Beauxbatons. The only sound in his ears was his mother's desperate words to save him from any wild imagined wonderful thoughts he had of his father.
"He might not believe you. He might not accept you. He might hurt you."
It had been a pleasant day when he'd gotten the address from an old man in an old shop of London, and his journey he'd set as a young boy was coming to close. Soon after meeting his father, he was sure to find his mother's family just as well. Just a few meters away from the door, he stopped. Did he want to do this? By knocking on that door, it could just be breaking his heart of all his fantasies of his father opening his arms and greeting him like he knew him all along. He wanted to be seven years old again, having a holiday in France with his mother and his friends, dreaming of having a perfect, complete family just like everyone else. A mother, a father, a son. He dreamed of the day he'd find the family his mother spoke fondly of, but had fled from. She needn't say any more of the subject for her son understood.
He took yet another step up to the door and raised his hand eagerly despite the maturity and realistic disappointment that might just happen. But this was his dream, even if it ended badly, all he wanted to do was to meet his father. He let out another deep breath and closed his eyes tightly and thought of his mother's glowing red hair and light brown eyes of which neither had he inherited. He had white blonde hair matched with pale skin and stony eyes, and as his mother described him, he was almost exactly the same as his father. His mother told him his features were more relaxed than his fathers, but either way, they were both incredibly handsome. He swallowed again, the crumpled paper in his fist as he took a final breath and opened his eyes as he knocked against the large, wooden door. It was a minute or two before the door creakily opened slower than anything he had experienced in his life. His anticipation was building higher than every before.
A tiny house elf appeared at his feet, looking up with wide eyes, and quickly bowed to its knees. He held himself back from cringing as he always regretted the inhuman actions toward other magical creatures. "How may I serve you, sir?"
"Ehm," he racked his brain for the English had heavily practiced for his trip. "I am, ah, looking for a Monsieur Draco Malfoy?"
The elf ushered him inside before scurrying off, leaving him alone in the large darkened hallway. He soaked in everything he could of the sight, the tall arched ceilings which was graced at the top with a large crystal chandelier. Behind that was an enormous staircase which the elf had hurried up in a record amount of time. The ivory tiled floors led to all closed, large, wooden doors similar to the front door, though much less grand. The walls, just as he expected, were stone and icy, and once more he though, how could a child grow up in such an atmosphere? Or were they immediately expected to be adults? His thoughts and silence were shattered by a voice sounding quite annoyed, and as the words hit his ears, he straightened his posture immediately to reach the extent of his six-foot frame.
"Remember to present yourself before you enter a room, for God's sake. It's not like you're a –" but the man's words were cut short as his eyes fell on the other young man near the front door. The man held a startling resemblance much to his own, with white blonde hair, incredibly fair skin and dark, dark stormy eyes. It was his father, he knew, it just had to be.
"You are Draco Malfoy?" he asked the man once he had reached the base of the staircase.
The man's eyes held no describable emotion, but he was much more than what his mother had described him as. This was the type of young child to grow up in this environment, was among his many rapid thoughts. He was solid and professional, despite his young age. Either way, the man narrowed his eyes towards him and nodded sharply.
"And, who are you?" he asked delicately in his clipped, perfect English, very different from the strangled English that came from the young French man's throat.
"Aries Jacques," he bowed his head eagerly and remembered the paper wrinkled in his hand. He smoothed it out and smiled up at the man. "My mother is Ginerva Weasley –"
"Oh God," the man spat as he turned his head and pressed his left hand to the center of his forehead. "I have a son? I have a son."
"Yes," Aries nodded once more with a hopeful smile. "I have been waiting for a long time to find you, and now that I am of age –"
His father raised his right hand to stop him. "Wait, wait, how old are you?"
"Seventeen, I graduated from Beauxbatons this May."
The older man let out a shaky breath and he would not face Aries as he began to mutter under his breath, either believing his son could not hear or simply not caring. "I was nineteen – I knew she couldn't have just left, why didn't she tell me?"
Aries waited patiently as his father bantered on under his breath, cursing quite a bit and talking just a bit too fast for him to catch on to what he was say. He stood still and folded the paper back into a small square in his hand as his father finally closed his mouth and looked up at Aries. His father's eyes were far beyond harsher than Aries had imagined, slick and stormy.
"And what do you expect me to do with you now?" his father said with a hint of disgust. "You are of age, you said it yourself. What do you want, money, a home, food?"
He stuttered for a second, unsure of why his father treated him like a being that meant nothing to him. If he had truly known Draco Malfoy, he would have realized he was treating kindly as a stranger rather than a bit of unwanted rubbish in his life. "I – I just wished to meet m-my father, that is all."
Draco narrowed his eyes as he clasped his hands behind his back and approached Aries at a quick and threatening pace. He stopped right before him, studying his features, his eyes till tapering in what seemed as disdain of his son. "You believe that I will come and accept you, do you? You believe that I will take you in as my own?"
"No," he muttered as he felt himself shrinking beneath his father's slightly taller body.
His father sneered. "Your mother is a mistake that I wished never to hear of her again – there is nothing good I can say of her, least of all you. Take my name if you wish, but I do not know you nor will I call you my son."
"We are blood," Aries retorted in a way that reminded Draco deeply of himself.
Draco's mouth twitched into a small grin. "You are lucky enough to have some of the purest blood running through your veins – but your mother's... I hardly consider it pure –"
Aries could not help himself but to laugh in the face of his father. It was small, but then grew louder and it silenced Draco. "You are a horrible liar. A wretched, nasty liar."
"It is a good thing she left before you were born," his father snarled lowly.
"You love her," he said softly. "You love me. But you're a horrible person for a denying it, and if I say so, just as my mother was for not believing you would raise me even at such a young age."
"Did your mother tell you about my family? Myself? Our opposing roles in the war?" Draco yelled, despite all his son was saying was true. "I was Death Eater. It may not have been my choice, but it was my father's and my mother's. And your mother was in the Order, but she loved me. She came to me, you disgusting filth."
"And you accepted her," Aries replied coldly.
"What do you not understand?" He shook his head sharply. "We were traitors."
"There is nothing traitorous about love," his son raised his head a bit at these words.
"You are your mother's son," Draco said carefully as he took a step backwards. "I presume you are also searching for the Weasley's?"
"Yes, my mother's family."
His father's face returned to a calm disposition. He turned his stare to a grim painting on the wall he remembered studying as a young child. This was no house to raise a child. "It is lucky your mother raised you. She comes from a family that is kind, unlike my own. I am not saying I am much different, but your mother turned my views around."
Aries nodded and quickly glanced at his watch. "I am sorry, but –"
"You were right," Draco cut in quickly. "But there is no weakness larger than admitting love. You have seen a small bit of this cold place, and I can say this is not home. It is a manor occupied by a wretched man and poorly treated house elf."
His son smiled softly as he watched his handsome father who did not return his gaze. "You are much better than what my mother said."
"I am afraid that words can not describe such a mangled soul and personality such as my own."
"You are my father, no?"
Draco Malfoy paused and nodded. "I'm glad she carried on that tradition, in all difficulty of saying this. She had some respect for my family."
Aries waited patiently and eagerly to hear what his father was to say that proudly made him a Malfoy.
"Many in my family are named after constellations," Draco nodded as he averted his eyes to Aries.
Aries smiled and looked down at the ground for a second before looking back up to his father. "Once I am home, I will write to you. Maybe – maybe you will come visit me and my mother once? You wouldn't understand how much it would mean to her to see you again."
"I don't believe you understand how much I would want to see her again either, despite an aging man's lies."
Father and son, it was an image as the cold Slytherin prince reached forward and embraced his son, believing in the back of his mind that it was his Gryffindor princess. When he opened his eyes and pulled away, he did not see the reflection of his seventeen year-old face. He saw the woman he would love forever, Ginny Weasley. As his son left with a final farewell, which he knew would not be final, Draco Malfoy closed his eyes but, as always for the past seventeen years, he did not see darkness. He had usually seen a small spark of light, far far away, but this time it was a raging fire that reminded him of everything she, and now him too, would mean to him.