Once again, dinner was the solemn, two-person affair, mother and son silently eating, the sound of their cutlery louder even than their own breath. His father was in Azkaban, where he would be spending the next three to eight years, depending on well Lucius played along with their little game, pretending to go along with all of the new changes of the world that people like Saint Potter or Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt were attempting to construct.
"Your uncle may be coming over at the end of the week. he's being rather obscure about the ordeal so I can't say for sure, but if he does, it will be your duty to entertain your cousins, particularly the younger boys. I strongly suspect your uncle is seeking for ways to acquire the family manor from its rightful heir and I wouldn't put it past him to make attempts to tie you to his youngest, your cousin Lucille. But we've seen the effects of tying cousin to cousin before, in my own family—you will politely reject all proposals, of course, though as your only uncle, we must at least humour the man and pretend to consider his request."
Draco had never much cared for his uncle Haffrey, the younger and only brother of his father, nor did he care for Lucille, the youngest of the three daughters. His uncle always made thinly veiled jokes about Draco's own father being unequipped to properly run the Malfoy family and it was obvious to all that he thought one of his three sons ought to be the heir over Draco, seeing them as more fit for the role.
Mother absolutely detested her brother-in-law, but it was far too big an insult to expel him from the family home for her to ever dare to try such a thing. That was an act that could only be enacted by the head of the house, who was currently in Azkaban, or his heir, and Draco needed all of the allies he could get right then, which meant upsetting his uncle would be a dangerous thing to do.
"I don't suppose Aunt Aquila could be talked into also visiting, perhaps to relieve some of the tension that will undoubtedly come with having Uncle over?"
Aunt Aquila—Father's older sister and the wife of the last remaining member of the Black family, Perseus, who had, bizarrely, made no claim to the family fortune following his cousin's imprisonment and later death. In contrast to Uncle Haffrey, Aunt Aquila was respectful of the family order but even better than that was the fact that she was fun. She had been the one to teach Draco to fly when he was only four, leading to her broom getting stuck in the tree and Draco to break his arm. The whole situation had been swiftly dealt with, his arm repaired, tears dried, and Aunt Aquila bribing him into silence with chocolate frogs and the promise of more flying lessons in the future if he simply didn't tell Father what had happened.
He hadn't seen his aunt, nor any other member of her side of the family, since before the war began, when they left for Germany in order to stay out of the war.
Mother stared at him, at first bemused by his request before her features softened in understanding. "I don't see why not. We could make it a family dinner, the first in such a long time. I shall write to them both after supper, how does that sound to you?"
"Draco, my boy, how are you?" Uncle Haffrey practically crowed, clapping him on the back. He was an odd reminder of Father, with the same long, blond hair and icy grey eyes but the rest of him was all Bulstrode, from Draco's grandmother, while Father was pure Malfoy through and through, the same as his father before him.
Through gritted teeth, Draco replied, "I'm very well, thank you, Uncle. How are you?" He went to shake his cousins' hands but paused when he noticed that the oldest of the three boys—the younger Haffrey—was missing. "Serbius, Brutus," he said, "it's nice to see you but where is your older brother? I had things that I wished to discuss with him."
An awkward silence filled the parlour as Draco looked between his relatives and realised that he had made a grave mistake, even if he had no idea what it actually was he'd done.
"Haffrey was not quite so fortunate as you to have someone to rescue him from his own foolish mistakes. Though not yet seventeen, he chose to fight that night in order to...protect his younger siblings. We lost our son that night on the battlefield." His uncle's voice was steely and Draco noticed that thirteen year old Serbius, the new heir, was trembling visibly.
Mother covered her mouth with one hand before demanding of Uncle Haffrey, "Why didn't you tell us about this? Why didn't you write to Lucius? We're family, we could have helped with the grieving process and eased the pain, as family should."
"No." Uncle Haffrey scowled, a dark anger flashing in his eyes for a brief second. "We have earned the right to bury out children without interference from anyone else. Besides that, it was a personal, intimate funeral, with only our immediate members in attendance. I do not think you would have felt welcome, having ended the war on a different side from us."
He might as well have slapped Mother in the face, not so subtly telling her that, amongst the Purebloods, they had failed the community just as much as they had seemingly failed the Light side by nature of being Purebloods. To Uncle Haffrey, they were no longer quite family, having different end goals following the war. Draco and his mother fit in nowhere and with no one.
"Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I have been on my feet all morning with Barrett so I'd like to retire to the sitting room if you don't mind. Or perhaps the stuffy old people would prefer to stand around and exchange more jabs like we don't all understand what's being said, those of us old enough to do so, anyway."
Ophelia Gamp—formerly Black—ducked the swat directed at her head by her smirking mother and pointed to the infant in her arms as proof that she was tired. She winked at Draco, who subtly shook his head back at his cousin.
"That sounds lovely, Ophelia, quite a lovely idea indeed—in fact, I have already told the house elves to assemble something for us in the largest sitting room, so if you wouldn't mind just following after me, I will do my best to show you the way. Of course, I must say it often feels that this house is too large, with far too many rooms for me to properly keep track of these days." She gave Uncle Haffrey a smirk of her own, knowing he was most likely burning up inside with the thought that these rooms should be his instead.
The whole family followed after Mother, with Draco trailing at the end to make sure that Uncle Haffrey and Aunt Drisella didn't pinch anything in their desire to won that much more of the Malfoy name, as though they didn't attempt to strip the manor of valuables every time they visited only to protest their innocence when caught.
Ophelia and Aunt Aquila also fell back, young Barrett still in his mother's arms; they walked on either side of him like bodyguards. Draco, without turning his head, took in the sight of his oldest cousin, whom he hadn't seen since she graduated at the end of his third year when she had wed the heir of the Gamp clan, a man she was betrothed to since infancy.
She didn't look like much of a Malfoy or even the daughter of a Malfoy, not with her dark brown hair and high cheekbones that so obviously screamed of the Black family. But Aunt Aquila, too, looked much more like Grandmother with her strawberry blonde hair. And that odd physical difference had carried onto Ophelia's children—nearly five year old Cassandra and two year old Edmund, who took mostly after their father's family.
Father always used to say, after one too many drinks, that it was truly only he and his cousin Altaire who chose to carry on proper Malfoy bloodlines, which Draco never understood, considering Uncle Haffrey's spawn were just as pale and cold as his own family.
"Your mother has ended your betrothal to that Parkinson girl," Aunt Aquila suddenly said. It was not a question; as usual, his aunt had acquired knowledge by means of her entangled web of gossip, sitting through boring old Pureblood women prattle for hours just to catch a smidgen of relevant information. "And now my brother has invited himself to dinner, along with his daughter, not yet betrothed and of marrying age. What do you suppose he wants?"
"I suspect it's a tad more than to discuss the current political situation. Merlin knows that Uncle has been after what belongs to Father and me since he was old enough to understand what being the spare truly meant."
"And what about what it means to be the daughter, especially when I was the eldest child, but cast aside purely on the grounds of my gender? Perhaps I should have had another daughter in order to win back my father's fortunes." His aunt chuckled. "Though money and titles—I am lucky that my husband also does not care for such things. Life is easier this way, allowing Lucius to be the heir and the rest of us to simply live our lives how we want to."
The family settled in the largest and most richly decorated sitting room, Draco dropping into a seat by his mother's side, with his younger cousin Lucille placed uncomfortably close by his other elbow. She smiled up at him, batting her eyes in a way she clearly thought was charming and becoming but that Draco only found served as a reminder of how closely related they were. Lucille could have been his younger sister, given their eerily similar appearance.
Uncle Haffrey cleared his throat and looked at Mother. "Now, Narcissa, I know you are a very busy woman, as I myself am always finding myself pulled in a thousand directions, so let me cut to the chase. Your son," he nodded at Draco, who gritted his teeth in response and faked a smile, "is of eligible age to marry yet he has broken off his betrothal contract to the Parkinson girl. I presume that, considering all the work Lucius has put into keeping his line as the running one, you'd want to find a girl for Draco soon enough before people begin to think there's something wrong with him. And, as no one that I know of has heard anything about a new bride waiting in the wings, I suspect that one has not yet been selected."
Mother narrowed her eyes at her brother-in-law as the rest of the room drew in a deep breath, wondering if Haffrey was truly about to ask what they all suspected he was here to ask. Was he honestly going to suggest that they become like the Blacks, pairing cousin and cousin just so that he could get back into his father's house?
"What you say is true—Lucius did not have the time to consider a new bride before the Ministry locked him up and they have not yet allowed us to write to him so that I might begin the process of selecting someone in his name. But what does this have to do with you being here in my sitting room this afternoon?"
"I merely worry that, if you don't move quickly, there will be no one for your son and the main line of the Malfoy family will die out or else be swallowed up by some inferior house. I came here today with a suggestion that, since your son is of age and Lucius will be in Azkaban for the foreseeable future, you would allow Draco to create his own betrothal contract with myself acting as his beneficiary to make sure the deal goes according to plan?"
"And this is because you wish to put your own line as the one that carries on the name of Malfoy?" Mother waved her hand at Lucille, whose cheeks burnt pink at being called out. "You've paired off the elder girls but left Lucille unclaimed all this time in the hopes that such an opportunity as this would open up for you to grab power?"
His uncle chuckled and shook his head. "I've already signed the contract for Lucille to marry that Abbott boy, don't worry about that, I wouldn't risk the legitimacy of the heir by pairing cousin with cousin." He smirked at the blonde woman. "Actually, I've come with an entirely different request for a bride, dear Narcissa. I instead wanted to recommend my wife's niece, Astoria Greengrass, as the perfect woman for your son."