Holyhead Harpies' Beater 2 Submission for QLFC
Play: Hamlet
Prompts:
2.(word) deceit
6.(word) feather
9.(quote) 'Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side' - BBC Sherlock
Scene 1
This wedding is wrong. The thought circled in Lucius' head as he stood, best man, at his uncle and mother's wedding. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It felt as though his father had died only yesterday, as though Lucius might open his casket and find his body still cooling. Perhaps he was just mourning improperly—everyone else seemed to have moved on; his mother certainly had—but in the months that had passed since his father's death, he hadn't so much as cried. Not that Lucius was much of a crier; his father had never approved of the behaviour, and his father's approval had always been everything to Lucius.
Father certainly wouldn't approve of this, he thought dully. He didn't have space in his heart for emotion. Maybe that made him the perfect Slytherin, but he felt like all it really made him was broken. He wasn't angry. He wasn't sad. He wasn't grieving. He wasn't anything. And it was killing him.
He watched as his uncle and mother kissed politely to polite applause and wondered how many other people disapproved of the fiasco. At fifteen years old, it would have been entirely improper for him to say anything about it, but why hadn't anyone else?
"Come, Lucius, dear," his mother said in a curt but quiet voice as she started back down the aisle, arm-in-arm with her new husband. He wondered, with a flicker of Gryffindor impetuousness, how she'd react if he started referring to her as "Aunt Camille."
"What are you smirking about, boy?" his uncle said with a frown.
Lucius straightened reflexively at the tone. His father had had the same one. "Nothing, sir." He carefully kept the scorn from his tone and expression.
His uncle eyed him for a long moment then smirked himself. "Probably just excited for the reception, eh, boy? Be sure not to get into too much trouble."
"Of course, sir."
The reception itself was a cloying affair, and as soon as the toasts had finished, Lucius escaped to the gardens. The sun was just setting over the tallest of the garden's yew trees. The door shut behind him and the noise was cut off, leaving him alone outside in the evening's twilight silence. He heaved a sigh of relief and slipped a muggle cigarette between his lips. With his father gone, the minor rebellion of it seemed insignificant—there was no one's approval to seek any longer.
Lucius took a long, deep drag, listening to the soft sizzle as the burn reached further up the cigarette paper. He felt instantly more at ease. The party went on without him, and no one came searching, so he sat in the cooling air and watched the sun set. He had fully relaxed by the time the last ray of light slipped beneath the horizon, his eyes shut against the faint noise of the party-goers within.
"Lucius, we must speak."
The voice… was impossible. Lucius' eyes flew open and he jerked to his feet, glaring into the darkness for the source of the trick. "Who's there?"
The voice ignored his question. "Come closer."
In any other situation, Lucius would have refused, but to hear your dead father's voice from the darkness… He had to know. Hesitantly, Lucius edged away from the terrace and into the trees, his heart pounding in his chest. A short ways beyond the treeline, he drew up short, alarm pulsing through him, as a ghostly form flared before him—one that bore his father's face and countenance.
Lucius' mind raced.
"It's good to see you, my son. It has been far too long that I've been tied to this earth without recourse. I need your help."
Lucius opened his mouth, but the figure raised its hand for silence.
"You want to know the whys and the hows, as any intelligent boy would, and there is much I cannot say and do not know. But this I will tell you: my soul is bound to this existence until my revenge has been wrought—I am trapped, and it is up to you to release me."
If thoughts chased themselves through Lucius' mind, he was unable to catch one long enough to examine it. He stared blankly. Could this really be his father, floating there before him? A specter in the night, bound to the earth by no will of his own? Such things were the stuff of fairy tales.
"Come, boy. Pull yourself together. There are things we must discuss; things that you must know." The ghost floated a little closer, settled his hand on Lucius' shoulder, and Lucius swore he could feel, beneath the icy coldness that splashed over his skin, the faintest hint of touch, like a feather ghosting across his shoulder. "The first of these is my murder," the ghost continued. "The second is what you must do about it.
Scene 2
Only a week later, Lucius was on the train to Hogwarts for his Fifth year. He sought solitude once more, in an empty car towards the back of the train. For the past week he'd spent all his time alone, sinking into his own confused thoughts, or else concocting half-arsed schemes he wasn't sure he could follow through on. His mother was worried about him, about the way he'd withdrawn, about the strange anger that suddenly lurked beneath the silence of his countenance. Lucius had offered her no words of comfort. Let her worry. Let her fret. Her deceit, her treachery, had earned her far worse.
The compartment door slid open. "Am I intruding?"
Lucius glanced up at Severus, a year behind him, but his best friend regardless. He thought about sending him away, but instead shook his head. "Not at all."
"Your mother sent me a letter," the dark-haired boy said after taking a seat. "She's worried about your sanity." He smirked. "I contemplated telling her it was long gone, but then decided it would be a touch inappropriate."
When Lucius' expression only darkened, Severus frowned. "Tell me."
Helplessness, an extraordinarily unfamiliar feeling for Lucius, swept over him. "I can't."
Dark eyes met his. "Trust me."
Lucius remembered those words, remembered a moment when their situations had been reversed, when he'd finally found out what haunted his friend's dark eyes, found out the source of Severus' bumps and bruises. He couldn't deny the request in those words. And so he began to explain about the ghost he'd decided really was his father. About the terrible conversation that had ensued.
"Murdered? I thought you said he died of dragon pox?"
Lucius swallowed. "It was poison. My uncle conspired to kill my father." He heard no emotion in his voice. There wasn't any in his heart either. He felt numb. Too overwhelmed by emotion to feel anything at all. Lucius wasn't sure it wasn't preferable, regardless. As Severus had once told him, sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side—and he couldn't afford to be on the losing side this time, not with his father's very soul on the line.
"To what end?"
"Money, power, prestige. My uncle gains all that came with my father's position in the family. All that would otherwise have come to me."
"And your mother?"
Lucius felt a momentary urge to curse something, and then the defences around his heart quenched the feeling. "I'm not sure what motivates her."
There was a long moment of silence. "And your father needs revenge…"
"My uncle," Lucius said. "I'm to kill my own uncle."
Severus swiped a hand across his face. "Bloody hell." A pause. "Have you got a plan?"
"No."
"Are you sure you can do this?"
Lucius snorted. "No. No, I'm not."
"You know I'm here for you, Lucius. Whatever you need of me."
Lucius gripped his friend's arm in gratitude and the rest of the trip passed in silence.
Scene 3
First term flew by. The last night available to him, Lucius capitulated and signed the sheet indicating he would remain at Hogwarts for the Christmas holidays. Severus frowned at him deeply from his seat by the fire.
"You can't put it off forever," he said quietly.
"I can't do it, Sev. Is it right to kill a man cold-bloodedly? And what if he didn't do it? What if it's all just some hoax?"
"You have all the proof you will ever have," Severus replied. "You saw his face when you mentioned the strange suddenness of your father's death. You saw his reaction when you spoke of his fortune in the death. You've done all you can to test the truth of the situation." He paused. "And quite frankly you sound like a Gryffindor, all morality and sentimentality. You talk of joining the Dark Lord, and next thing you're tucking your tail between your legs and preaching pacifism and forgiveness—"
"I could never forgive him," Lucius spat.
"Then you must avenge your father as you promised him you would." Severus leaned forward conspiratorially. "Take this."
Lucius took the small vial that was offered. "What is it?"
"It doesn't have a name. I invented it. But it will kill him. A couple of drops in his ear when he sleeps and he'll never awaken. It's new. No one will ever know what happened. Your father will be free from his bonds. You will be free from suspicion. And I'll be free of your sulking and moaning."
Lucius forced a smirk at the quip, but his attention was on the vial… the murder weapon… that rested so innocuously in his palm. Should taking a life be so easy as Severus thought? Easter, he told himself. I'll do it at Easter. That night he stashed the mystery potion away in the deepest recesses of his trunk and of his mind, and he turned his thoughts back to academics and social engagements. But each night as the darkness crept across the castle, the vial's existence haunted him just as his father's impatient apparition did.
Scene 4
The final night of Easter holidays found Lucius pacing back and forth across his bedroom. He'd made up his mind. He was doing it. It was now or never, and never was not an option, so tonight it would be. He hated himself even as he thought it, but he wouldn't—couldn't—let his father down. He was agitated. Fidgety. Anxious. Scared shitless. But determined.
He cast a disillusionment charm on himself, and another charm to quiet the sound of his footsteps as he crept down the corridor to his uncle and mother's chambers. His heart beat a staccato rhythm, as though his fear were choking it, preventing it from beating properly, but it was his breathing that worried him; he felt as though he could barely breathe, as though his breaths must surely be coming in audible gasps. They were going to give him away, he was sure of it.
He clenched the vial tightly in his fist. He almost hoped it would break in the pressure of his grip. Wished he'd have an excuse to back out. Except he would have no excuse. He would instead have to improvise. And that thought was far more appalling.
The bedroom door creaked as he pushed it open. Lucius froze in the doorway, his heart beating harder than ever, his pulse growing more erratic by the second. No one stirred.
He found his uncle in the dark. Took a deep, steadying breath. Unstoppered the vial. Poured three drops into his uncle's ear, fingers shaking terribly, stomach churning violently.
Then he left. He crept back out the door, slipped outside, and vomited off the second floor terrace. He kneeled a long while on the stone, shaking, crying. His father didn't appear. The sense of brokenness within him only grew, and he realized he'd shattered something within him that would never be able to heal, had lost something he would never get back.
Finally, he sat back on his heels and sparked a cigarette. He pulled the smoke into his lungs and it felt at home there, blackness meeting blackness. He smoked the thing until it was gone, and then he smoked another, and another, and he never felt more or less dead inside, so he kept smoking until the sun came up. His mother's scream jerked him from his chain-smoking stupor. He lifted his gaze from the massacre of cigarette butts surrounding him, and a mad chuckle escaped his lips. A twisted tangle of desperation and crazy. He flicked the rest of his cigarette over the balcony, and he rose to his feet, and he went inside.
