Nine hundred years of Malfoys have lived on the land where Malfoy Manor now stands — theirs is one of the oldest pure-blood families in the country — but by the time Lucius and Narcissa died, the Dark Lord had been the one sleeping in the master bedroom, the one giving orders while holding court in the main hall. The house and the grounds had been overrun by his lieutenants, by his lackeys, and by the army that was to restore wizarding society to its rightful place in the world.
There's not much of an army left now, and He Who Must Not Be Named is long gone, but centuries of Malfoys still look down from their portraits to see Bellatrix Lestrange play lady of the manor, surrounded by her horde of flunkies — inbred rabble who in times gone by would have been drawn and quartered, and their heads impaled on pikes for the amusement of their betters.
They look down from their portraits and see the Malfoy heir, the last of his line, hold his tongue and bow his head to that harpy of a woman (And how the Blacks have fallen!). The shame is not to be borne.
Draco has little patience and no time for the shame of his forefathers. The one thing Lucius taught him, the one lesson that stuck, is that pride is as dangerous as the death curse, and twice as deadly. Draco has lived this long, has stayed alive this long, because he has long ago learnt to play the hand he's dealt, and bid his time until the chance presents itself for him to rig the game.
If that means he must take Bellatrix's orders, bow to her every whim, smile as she pats his cheek, then he will — gladly, enthusiastically, with all the zeal of a true believer. The prodigal son has returned and he's happy and eager to serve the cause.
He's done worse for less profit.
"Where is he?" Bellatrix's shrill voice bounces off the stone walls, filling the room. Some of the Death Eaters present shift uncomfortably in place. Theo Nott flinches noticeably, his face ashen. He always was a whimpering coward, even as a boy at Hogwarts. He'd have been better suited to life as a shopkeeper or a clerk, or something else equally mundane, but much like Draco he had fallen into the family business.
"It's only been an hour," Yaxley says with more courage than sense, a point immediately made by Bellatrix, who shoots a fireball in his direction, which he barely manages to dodge.
"It's only been an hour," she mimics in a pantomime voice. "The next person who fancies himself a cuckoo clock, will get their entrails ripped out through their throat."
Just then a soft pop heralds the arrival of a tall wizard in dark robes, who immediately falls to one knee, masked face bowed reverently.
"My lady," he says, his voice deep and familiar. "I apologise for the delay. I bring news."
"Out with it. You've kept us waiting long enough."
"We've been betrayed." The statement immediately sets the room ablaze with frantic murmurs. Bellatrix has gone preternaturally still. "Someone has talked. PHOENIX knows about our plans. They're moving the Dark Lord's remains. They mean to destroy them."
"Who?" Bellatrix's voice is low and soft and terrifying. "WHO?" she growls and the whole room starts.
"I— I couldn't find out." Bellatrix brings down her wand and the man screams, his mask splitting open, a thin red line crossing the side of his face where the curse hit him. Terry Boot. One of the names on Draco's list.
Boot bows down further, his forehead almost against the floor, his whole body shaking as he mumbles a litany of apologies and excuses, and vows to do better, to be better, to serve the cause better, but Bellatrix is no longer paying attention to him. No. Her eyes are on Draco, wide and accusing. When she darts across the room towards him, the Death Eaters closer to him shift away with more haste than dignity.
"Now, now, nephew, you wouldn't know anything about this?" Her voice is sickly-sweet, her expression soft as she tilts her head to look up at him, but her nails dig into his arm like claws and her wand presses painfully against his sternum.
Without breaking eye contact, without betraying the slightest change in expression, Draco reaches for his wand with slow, careful movements and, turning it between his fingers, holds it towards Bellatrix, end first.
"If you have cause to doubt me, aunt, to doubt my loyalty, my life is yours to take."
The room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Even Boot has stopped his whining. Bellatrix's expression is closed off and unreadable, and it could have gone either way, it really could, but just then Hermione whimpers, and Bellatrix lets go of him, swirling around with a dazzling smile.
"I know," she says with the giddiness of a girl. "Why don't we ask my little sparrow?" She stops near the long dining room table and looks up at Hermione's hovering form, a grotesque centrepiece brought out for Bellatrix's amusement. The witch had lost interest when Hermione passed out for the third or fourth time (Aren't Mudbloods such fragile little creatures?), but now she has questions, and they could make a game out of it, and wouldn't that be fun?
The spell keeping Hermione airborne breaks and she hits the table with a thud and a scream that dies in her throat as Bellatrix claps a hand over her mouth.
"Shhhh, baby girl. None of that now. There's a rat in my little nest, and you're going to tell me who, aren't you?"
But all Hermione can do when Bellatrix removes her hand is sob and turn her face away from the other witch.
"Please," she says, her voice thick with tears. "Please, please, please, please."
"Hush, my love. It hurts, doesn't it?" She cups her face gently with one hand, forcing Hermione to look at her. "It will hurt worse if you don't tell me what I want to know."
"I don't know. I don't know. Please. I don't know."
Bellatrix's smile is wide and sunny and bright. "I so wished you'd say that. Crucio."
The scream that tears out of Hermione shakes her whole body, which seizes and convulses on the table. Bellatrix does not stop, does not slow down. She carries on with all the excitement of a child on Christmas Eve, and it's all Draco can do not to strike her down where she stands.
But he doesn't.
He forces himself not to tense up, makes himself keep his expression carefully neutral. No spy lasts long who can't control what his face and body language give away, and Draco's good. He's really good. He made it through Voldemort's reign, and more PHOENIX missions gone to hell than he can count. He made it this far. So he keeps his shoulders relaxed, and his expression blank, and looks for all the world to see like a man who has no more interest in the current proceedings than the polite curiosity demanded by geographical proximity.
No one who looks at him would guess that in that very moment Draco is planning in excruciating detail all the things he will do to Bellatrix when the time is right. Aunt dearest better hope Hermione kills her, because if he gets his hands on her before she does, he will take his sweet time showing her how well he learnt all the things she was at such pains to teach him.
It isn't long before Hermione breaks, though still longer than he would've liked. The trick is not to give in so easily it looks staged, nor to hold out so long one's mind shatters under the sheer weight of the spell.
"MacDougal," she says in a strangled voice, struggling to catch her breath. "Isobel MacDougal." MacDougal was another one of the names on Draco's list.
Bellatrix leans down and kisses her forehead. "Well done, beautiful girl. Yaxley, Karkaroff." The two men take a step forward. "Go handle our little infestation."
They Disapparate without a word. Nott, who had been hiding behind Karkaroff's larger frame, looks like he's about to puke.
Boot hasn't moved from where he still is on the ground, and Bellatrix seems to have lost all interest in anything but Hermione, who's whimpering and crying under her cruel hands and clever spells.
"We still have the matter of what to do about the Dark Lord's remains," Draco says. Only a fool would draw Bellatrix's attention back to himself, but sometimes needs must. They worked too hard to set this up for her to overlook the main point of this little farce.
Bella doesn't look away from Hermione, even smiles a little wider when the younger woman can't bite back a scream. "What can they do that others haven't tried?" she says, running her wand down the side of Hermione's face. "Our lord is protected by magic more powerful than any half-bloods and blood traitors would know what to do with. We'll get him back in good time."
Well, that just won't do.
"Boot," he says, and the man starts and seems to shrink into himself. "Where are they taking the remains? How do they plan to destroy them?"
"I— That is— I'm not—"
"Speak up, man." Terry doesn't want to be the bearer of more bad news, and who can blame him? But Draco needs Bellatrix to care. He needs her to know the where and the how and the who.
"Hogwarts. They're taking them to Hogwarts."
That gets the witch's attention. "Where are they taking him?" She lets go of Hermione, who heaves an unsteady sigh of relief. Boot looks like he might pass out.
"The Director— Parkinson said there's older magic in the castle than anywhere else in Britain. She said that they can use it, channel it to destroy what is left of He Who Must Not Be Named's remains."
Bellatrix looks at Draco, and there's something like fear in her expression now, something verging on panic.
"No! We must not let them. When are they moving him? It cannot happen." She's pacing now, tense and on edge, her hands shaking where they clutch her wand.
"Aunt, perhaps we could use this to our advantage."
She stops dead in her tracks. "Use it to our advantage how?"
"Hogwarts is the most powerful place in Britain. Any power they can use to destroy those remains is power we can use to bring our lord back. We have almost everything we need for the spell." Two of the Hallows, Riddle's bones, and a willing sacrifice. "If we make sure Potter is part of the group sent to Hogwarts, we'll have everything we're still missing in the one place with enough raw power for us to actually pull off the spell. The remains, the Elder Wand, and Potter's blood." He ticks them off on his fingers. "We can bring him back."
How is that for a carrot on a stick?
A flash of doubt flickers across Bellatrix's face and then it's gone, replaced by a wide, manic grin. "We can bring him back," she echoes with a dark glee.
"We'll never get into Hogwarts," Nott says, and Draco's money would not have been on him of all people pointing it out, though it suited him that someone had. "The wards around the school—"
"Wards can be torn down," Bellatrix says dismissively.
"We don't have the numbers to—"
"Are you questioning me, Nott?"
He shakes his head furiously, face ashen, but is spared having to reply by the intervention of Rodolphus Lestrange, who's not afraid of his wife by virtue of being almost as bat-shit crazy as she is.
"Nott's not wrong," he says. "There's too few of us to take down those wards. Maybe once we could have done it, but not now. It would take an army."
Draco does not volunteer a solution, does not say a word. It will not do to seem too eager. The trick to any good con is not to oversell it. He provided the bait. They have to bite.
"Pah, an army." Bellatrix wanders back towards the table, deep in thought. She pets Hermione's hair absent-mindedly for several moments, and then stops her hand mid-movement. "Whoever they send to Hogwarts with the Dark Lord, we'll make sure Potter and enough of our people are in that group. We'll need Death Eaters past the wards."
"It won't be enough to get the rest of us in."
Hermione yelps when Bellatrix yanks her hair back. "Tut tut," she says, her face only a few inches from the witch's, a deranged smile on her face. "You ever get tired of whining, Rodolphus?" She casts a brief glance his way, but when she speaks again her attention is all on Hermione. "We'll call up all our brothers and sisters. Every single Death Eater in Britain. We'll call up the werewolves and the giants, and Scabior's merry band of thieves and grave-diggers. You want an army? I can get us an army. Can't I, pet?"
But Lestrange is not easily convinced. "If you put the bulk of our forces in one place, PHOENIX and the Ministry will be on us before we even reach the school."
And here it is.
"Then we'll have to make sure PHOENIX and the Ministry are otherwise engaged, won't we? Carrow."
"Ma'am?"
"Boot here will find out when they plan to move the remains, won't you Bootsy?" Terry nods frantically. "Send word to our allies. Tell them it is time for them to prove their loyalty once and for all." She looks towards the man by the door. "Dolohov." Antonin Dolohov bows slightly, his features hidden behind an elaborate mask. "Wake up our sleepers. The moment we move on the school, I want them to take over PHOENIX and the Ministry." Bellatrix glances around the room, her eyes alive with excitement. "The time has come. This will be our moment of greatest triumph. Our lord will rise once again and we will offer him a world where pure-blood wizards rule, as is our right."
"As is our right," Barty Crouch says, nodding in agreement, and soon enough they're all echoing the same words, softly at first, like a mantra, and then in a crescendo until it becomes a war cry.
Hermione is lying still, her eyes open and unblinking, tears falling down the side of her face, but Draco does not miss the slight uptick of her lips, a blink-it-and-you-miss-it smile that does not last more than a fraction of a second.
It's her plan, and his bait, and he could not have come up with a better one if he tried. The Death Eaters have spent years trying to find a way to bring the Dark Lord back from the dead, despite the fact that it's never been done, despite the fact that it's quite impossible. The spell they're working on is a mismatched quilt of Egyptian lore and Celtic spells, and enough black magic to destroy anything it comes in contact with. It will never work, and it's a fool who thinks otherwise, but he's not taking any chances. He was part of the group of Death Eaters who retrieved the Resurrection Stone from Gringotts, and it took no more than a small sleight of hand to replace it with a fake.
Sometimes it doesn't take magic. Sometimes all it takes is quick fingers and a little misdirection. Hermione taught him that.
That very night, three house-elves Disapparate from Malfoy Manor without anyone being any the wiser. Misty goes to Shell Cottage, where McGonagall is hiding. Ziggy goes to Weasley Tower, where Harry and the twins are waiting for word. Dobby goes to Number 12 Grimmauld Place, with the intelligence Parkinson needs.
The twins had thought to hide a communication device in one of Hermione's arrows — a blend of Muggle tech and magic that no Death Eater would think to look for, let alone be able to find — and Scabior had very obligingly brought her bow and quiver along when he captured her, but Draco has his own methods of passing information.
Bellatrix and the rest of them think themselves so far above their company, that they never once stopped to think that the small creatures serving their every whim might pose any sort of danger to them, powerful, pure-blood wizards that they are. The house-elves at Malfoy Manor are so far below their notice that neither Bellatrix, nor Rodolphus, nor any of the others realised that they pose a glaring security problem. Because as it turns out, though the house-elves are perfectly happy to fetch and carry for any of the pure-blood inhabitants of Malfoy Manor, they only truly serve the Malfoy family, and Draco is the last member of that family.
Nine hundred years of Malfoys have lived on this land, many of them in this very house, and Draco is the last of his line. This is his land, this is his home, and these are his house-elves. And they're more than happy to do his bidding and keep his secrets.