Author's note: we did warn you that it would be a while before we updated again. -grins- we hope you haven't lost interest and gone on to bigger and better things. if you have, we hope that the sight of a story alert in your inbox would be enough to lure you back. and, if it is not, well, there is not much we can do, is there?
Disclaimer: checklist: write chapters, write essay, talk to friends, pretend to be jk rowling, remind readers to note the word 'pretend' in preceding entry...
--kyra
P.S. Those of you who can pick out the Twilight Movie reference I used will get a cyber cookie. Or maybe even two!
--Tamara


7: Sins of the Father

None were more surprised than Padma when, only two days after their meeting with Dumbledore, Malfoy voluntarily sought her out. He did it when no one was watching, of course, but word spread like mad at Hogwarts, and by dinner that night, everyone knew of it. Most people decided, for no apparent reason, that this meant that Malfoy and Padma had a secret passion for each other, and Padma eventually had to cast a personal ward around herself to keep off the jeering crowds. Only two people seemed above petty rumors and gossip: Parvati, who knew Padma far too well, and Susan. Padma spent an interesting hour in Arithmancy trying to decide whether Susan simply disapproved of gossip or whether she truly did not believe any of it. Padma hoped it would be the latter, but she knew she could never ask. It just wasn't the kind of thing one asked one's friend, especially a friend like Susan.

Of course, Padma herself had no real idea as to why Malfoy had voluntarily sought out her company either. He hadn't actually said anything, only greeted her almost civilly in passing and requested a private meeting at some later date. Padma, not sure whether to be happy or suspicious, had agreed to the meeting, and now all she could do was wait. It didn't do her nerves any good.

"It's no good dwelling on it," Susan instructed her day after day. "He'll let you know when he wants to see you."

"I know that!" Padma agreed. "I just wish I knew why!"

Susan looked at her shrewdly. "Does it perhaps have anything to do with your conversation on the stairs last week?"

Padma looked sharply at her friend, who shrugged, not ashamed in the least.

Padma sighed. "That's almost what I'm hoping for. That, at least would make sense."

"Oh? You think?"

Padma nodded. "Of course. He probably wants to swear me to silence or something."

"You don't think he just wants to ask for help?"

Padma snorted. "Oh, please Susan. Remember who we're discussing. This is Malfoy. He would never ask me for help! After you and Harry, I'm the last person he considers worthy."

"Then why didn't he just hex you in the stairs?"

To that, Padma had no answer, and she did not even attempt to BS her way out of it. Instead, she turned away, going back to her Arithmancy work. Susan, being Susan, didn't press her, for which Padma was infinitely grateful.

She spent the next two days fluctuating between irritation at the rumors and apprehension about the rumors. Harry didn't make things any better, and she began actively avoiding him. Every time she saw him, it seemed, he would make nasty remarks about Malfoy, and Padma was surprised to find how much that annoyed her. Of course she knew how the two boys felt about each other, but it seemed incredibly childish now. Couldn't they just get along?

She shook her head at that, grimacing at her own folly. Of course they couldn't 'just get along.' They were polar opposites. It was silly of her to try to change that. To distract herself from such foolishness, she turned back to her studying, turning the page of the book she was reading and pausing to jot down a meticulous note.

She was distracted by a tapping sound on the window. She – along with many other students, all of whom had been similarly knocked out of their states of scholarly contemplation – looked up to see a small black owl tapping impatiently at the glass. Luna, being the closest to the window, stood up and moved towards the window, her book in one hand. She opened the window to let the owl in, then turned and looked directly at Padma. Padma frowned. There was no reason to think that the owl was for her! None at all! It was probably just a coincidence.

The owl dropped a note in her lap.

Padma sighed, wondered how Luna could possibly have known, decided that it wasn't worth worrying about, and took the letter. The owl took off again and soared through the still open window. Luna shut the panes behind the owl, locking them into place once more. She sat back down, returning to her book. The other Ravenclaws returned to their tasks as well, leaving Padma ignored as she opened the letter.

Meet me in Potter's hidden room tonight before dinner.

D. Malfoy

Padma read it a second time, frowning slightly. Potter's secret room must be the Room of Requirement, but how did Malfoy know about that? She sighed. She would probably never know how he knew – certainly he would never tell her. So she would have to suppress her natural curiosity and go.

Luna drifted over towards her, face set perfectly into an expression of bland disinterest. Frowning, Padma covered the note with her book, setting her mind back to her studying with a ferocity that was odd even for her.

Luna smiled. "You don't have to hide it," she told Padma, taking the empty chair across from the older girl. Padma noticed that Luna still held her book. "I know what it says."

Padma frowned. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said stiffly.

Luna only looked serenely at her. "You're a good person for talking to him," she informed Padma, for all the world as though she had just complimented the older girl on a well written paper.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Padma insisted, but her voice sounded slightly weak to her own ears.

Luna shrugged, unconcerned. "He needs friends. He doesn't know it yet, but he does." She smiled. "And you need to get to know him too." She stood once again. "I'll see you at lunch." Nodding slightly, Luna headed for the door to the common room, stepping through it and vanishing around the corner, leaving Padma completely speechless in her wake.


Padma turned sharply, beginning her third trip in front of the blank wall that would soon turn into the door to the Room of Requirement. 'I need to talk to Malfoy,' she thought firmly. 'He told me to meet him here, and I need to talk to him.'

She smiled slightly as the door appeared in front of her eyes. Then her smile faded as full realization hit her. This was crazy. It really was. She suddenly realized that all of her frustration with Harry's inability to get along with Malfoy was just a way of expressing her own hesitation. She did not want to talk to him. She did not want to have to deal with him at all. But she had to. She had come this far, and she had to see it through. She would never be able to live it down if she turned around now. She opened the door.

He did not turn as she entered, but she knew that he had registered her presence. She closed the door behind her, then paused, awkward.

"Are you going to stand there all night?"

She scowled at the sarcasm in his voice, but did not answer. Instead, she stepped farther into the room and selected an armchair, sitting down cautiously. He still did not look at her. The silence stretched on and on until she felt almost compelled to break it.

"Well? Are you going to keep me waiting all night? I'd like to catch at least the end of dinner, if you don't mind."

Now he did turn to face her, his expression bitterly humorous. "My apologies. I did not mean to keep you from you supper. I fear that I must have been imagining things when I imagined that saying 'you don't need to be alone' meant that you were offering your own time. Please excuse the misunderstanding and feel free to leave. Far be it from me to keep you from the gourmet meal awaiting you."

Padma winced. That had cut deep. "That's not what I meant," she muttered.

He met her eyes at last. "Then please enlighten me as to what you did mean. I would truly hate to begin this with a misunderstanding."

"If I knew what you were beginning, I'd know if you were misunderstanding me," Padma pointed out, a little dryly.

He sighed. "All right. I have asked you here to discuss the matter you cornered me about last week. Do you need any more information to decide whether this is worth your time or no?"

She scowled. "Stop it," she snapped. "If you don't start acting like you want me to be here, then I will leave. Allow me to remind you that it was you, not me, who requested this meeting."

"So it was. Does that mean that you will hear me out?"

"If you start now I will."

He sighed slightly and settled back into his armchair. Padma steeled herself for a long speech; he seemed to be making himself comfortable, which meant he intended to stay for a while. "Very well. Precisely what do you know?"

Padma considered the many ways she could answer this. She knew what he was talking about, of course, but she disliked his imperious assumption that she could read his mind. "I before E except after C. Always carry your wand in your front pocket. Unicorns only approach virgins. 1.7724…"

"I do not care that you know the square root of pi," he snapped.

She blinked. "You knew that?" she demanded.

He sneered at her. "Not all Slytherins are brainless thugs," he informed her crisply. "And now it is you who is being deliberately obtuse, not me."

She sighed. "I'm sorry," she said. "But you did have it coming."

He did not dignify this with a response, though he did look slightly startled at her apology. Padma supposed that he probably did not get them often. "So, to rephrase my question, since you seem to need prompting, what do you know about what is happening between my father and myself?"

Padma sighed. "Only that he wants to make you a Death Eater," she admitted.

He nodded. "That is common knowledge, I assume," he muttered.

She shook her head. "No, not really."

He frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said it isn't really common knowledge," Padma repeated.

"I heard what you said," he said waspishly. "I was merely wondering how such a thing could have been kept private. Surely there are rumors."

Padma waved this away. "There will always be rumors," she informed him. "Recently, they feature the two of us embracing passionately in an empty classroom while we attempt to rip the clothes of each other." She snorted slightly. "All the Malfoy-as-a-Death-Eater rumors seem to have subsided under the weight of the Malfoy-and-Padma-as-Secret-Lovers ones."

He too snorted. "Ah the shallowness of youth," he said cryptically.

"Adults are just as shallow as youths," Padma pointed out. "And you seem to have gone fairly far astray from your original point which was, I believe, telling me just what else there is to your… problem."

"Problem," he repeated incredulously. "Yes, I suppose you could call it that. You could also call Potter's hatred for the Dark Lord a childish grudge. It would be approximately as accurate."

Padma shrugged. "So enlighten me," she said. "Teach me how much bigger this is."

He sighed and shifted once more in his seat. "Very well. I warn you, I may yet cause you to miss your meal."

She scowled. "Get on with it," she snapped. "You asked for my help, I'm here. Anyone would think you didn't want me here."

"I did not, in fact, expect you to come," he said honestly.

"Then you don't know either my curiosity or my morals," she informed him tightly. "Get on with it."

"You are correct, I do not know you. Which, perhaps, is why I decided to tell you this. Know that you are the first person I have told."

She growled. "Spare the theatrics," she said shortly. "I don't go in for melodrama."

"I am not being melodramatic," he informed her. "I am merely telling you that you should feel flattered."

"Yes, yes, I feel flattered," she said, growing more and more frustrated with every word that came out of his mouth. "Now get on with it!"

He shook his head. "You are quite impatient, aren't you?"

She stood. "Okay, that's that. You clearly don't want my help. I'm going to get dinner while I still can." She headed for the door.

She had almost reached it when his voice stopped her. "I apologize. I have behaved badly. Please, don't leave. I will tell you."

Slowly, she turned. He was once more not looking at her, but the polished arrogance of his voice had vanished. She was not quite sure what had replaced it, but it was definitely preferable. "You'll spare any commentary?"

He nodded.

She sat back down again, looking straight at him. "So what's wrong?"

"It begins with my father," Malfoy said after a slight pause. "As I'm sure you have deduced. My father… my father is a hard man. Life has taught him that he will never be given anything; he must take it. You may think that things are handed to us on a silver platter, but you are mistaken. We work for everything we have, and then we work to keep it."

Padma could not repress a skeptical lift of her eyebrows, and he shrugged. "I said you may not believe it," he repeated. "And, granted, our definition of 'work' might not quite fit yours, but that is immaterial. What matters is that a lifetime of having to take everything he wanted by force or trickery has left my father a bitter man. When the Dark Lord surfaced the first time, he seemed to be a dream come true for my father. Finally, here was a man who understood, a man who sympathized with my father's dreams and who gave him what he needed. There was a price, of course, but there is always a price. We have always known this. In this case, the price happened to be lifetime servitude."

He paused, then shook his head. "My father would have been a fool not to accept, and, despite his many faults, a fool he is not. He took the offer, and quickly rose in the ranks until he was the Dark Lord's most trusted servant. There he remained until the Dark Lord made his one fatal mistake: he tried to kill Potter."

He stopped again, regarding her sardonically. "Need I repeat the story for your benefit?"

"No," Padma said. "I know the story."

"Good. As I was saying, after that, things rapidly began deteriorating for my father. He went from being a trusted official to a pariah in mere months. Worse, much worse, in fact, was the loss of the Dark Lord's trust. Without the Dark Lord's power, my father was back to where he had been before: a hated, condemned man, one whom no one would welcome into their homes or invite to dinner. This was hard on him. He had gotten accustomed to being treated with respect, to being feared, and this sudden loss of status did not suit him in the least."

Malfoy shrugged. "So he found ways to show it."

Padma, guessing where this was going, gasped in horror, her eyes flying across Malfoy's form to try and find marks of old beatings. He shook his head impatiently. "Not via me," he said crisply. She relaxed slightly, then frowned. She opened her mouth to ask, then closed it. He would get to it in his own time… she hoped.

"He made enemies of the few friends he still had, and, after he had managed to acquit himself of any blame for his nefarious activities in the name of the Dark Lord, not even his former comrades in arms would associate with him. He had broken ranks, and so he was no longer one of them. The first few years were… difficult." Malfoy laughed harshly. "Which is as accurate as any other description, if rather too mild. To put in bluntly, he went through Hell. Unfortunately for me, he reemerged on the other side."

Padma frowned. "Unfortunately?" she asked.

He nodded tersely. "You don't think that going through Hell leaves you unscathed, do you?" he demanded.

"No, but…"

"But nothing," he snapped. "I will admit, my father was not the most loving man you could ever have found, but he respected my mother and myself. After he returned from his jaunt to the darker side of existence, he lost even that. He became the wildly self-obsessed man you now know. I am not saying he lacked in pride before, mind you, for he did not, but it was… shall we say subtle. After he returned from Hell, he lost all senses of the meaning of the word subtlety. He no longer hinted, he demanded. And the one from whom he demanded the most was, of course, myself."

He shrugged. "He demanded, I produced. I knew nothing else. You would not understand, of course, having no doubt experienced the kind of warm, loving childhood one reads about in child's stories."

Padma, remembering her mother's perfectionist attitude, snorted at this. "You could also say that Harry and You-Know-Who are best friends," she said, rolling her eyes. "But do go on."

He frowned momentarily, then shook his head. "Regardless, the fact remains that, ever since I entered school, I have been expected to be perfect. As I am sure you delight in noticing, I am not." He made a face. "It has… well, sticking with our euphemisms, I shall say that it is not appreciated at home. My father has recently taken it into his mind to 'improve my character.' Such improvements include, as you are obviously aware, an induction into the Delightful Society of Mass Murders which most people know as Death Eaters. And therein lies my problem: I, unlike my sire, have no taste for such things. Unfortunately, I do not have a choice. No, I am wrong. I do have a choice, it is just not one I like: I can accept my 'destiny,' as my father puts it, or I can accept a 'fate worse than death,' as has often been threatened."

Padma frowned. "So what do you expect me to do about it?" she wanted to know.

He considered this. "Quite frankly, nothing."

"So you just needed to vent?" she guessed.

Turning away once more, he nodded. She sighed. "And did it help?"

He glanced up at her, one eyebrow raised in skeptical irony. "Are you a psychiatrist now?" he wanted to know.

She crossed her arms, feeling oddly smug. "You never know," she said. "I might just try it."

He shook his head. "I don't advise it as a career path," he informed her. "It's not nearly as glamorous as it sounds."

"I wasn't aware that psychiatrists were viewed as being glamorous."

He shrugged. "It depends on who you are, I suppose. I can remember being quite enthralled the first time I…" Abruptly he stopped. "Never mind."

"You've been to see a psychiatrist?" She leaned forward, wondering just how far she could push him.

"I said, never mind," he snarled, his demeanor changing instantly. The patent Malfoy glare was back in force. "You may now go to dinner. I believe you will even be able to eat something."

Padma sighed, but rose. He would not tell her anything more, of that she was certain. In fact, she was shocked that he had told her this much. She moved towards the door, then paused. She turned back, only to be met with the sight of his back. "Um… thank you for telling me," she said at last. "I appreciate it."

He did not reply, and she sighed. Then, shaking her head, she opened the door and left the room, making her way down to the Great Hall, suddenly realizing that she was no longer very hungry.

8