Chapter 29: The Sacred Twenty-Seven

The Malfoys have been officially removed from the list of the Sacred Twenty-Eight last night. It's now the list of the Sacred Twenty-Seven.

Of course the list isn't really official, not anymore. But it's still out there. Someone is hosting a site with the list, has made it accessible for every regular Y-pad, and they took the trouble of updating it.

And anyone who's heard the rumours about Draco, anyone who takes and interest in these things, will have checked the list.

Like I did.

I knew it was going to happen, and it was still a shock to see the new caption, The Sacred Twenty-Seven.

I can only imagine what kind of day Lucius Malfoy is having.

Even if he doesn't own a Y-Pad because it's modern filth, he'll still know about that new number. It's the one thing of interest to him, after all.

I don't bring up what happened when I meet Draco by the fountain in the Ministry lobby that night, but I can tell he knows. He misses the flirty smile Reuben flashes his way when we pass his booth. Normally I'd gloat about Reuben failing like that with petty schadenfreude, but tonight I'm just worried. I don't want Draco to be too preoccupied to flirt with Reuben, or bite his lip in that distressed way.

"You know what I'd really like to do tonight? Get a pile of pizza and watch recaps of Waltzing Wizards all night through," I say brightly. The smile that gets me is small but real.

"Sorry, I've already made plans for tonight. Marcus called and asked me to grab a drink with him. Obviously I would have loved it so much better to make you sit through hours of Waltzing Wizards. I do appreciate your readiness for self-sacrifice. I've said it before, you truly are hero material, Harry Potter."

I can't smile back. Marcus Flint, again? He reads my thoughts.

"He heard about the list, you know. He said he was sure having some fun would help, and that he wanted to take a stand, show his support and stuff. I had to say yes."

I guess. I still hate it. I don't trust Marcus Flint.

And then there's Lucius Malfoy, obviously.

"What if your father tracks you down," I say. "Seriously, I'm not okay with you going out tonight. It's a safe guess that your father is out of his mind with fury right now. What if he somehow finds you and does something to you?"

"He won't. He won't risk trying to Avada Kedavra me in a public place."

"He could always hire a killer!"

"You don't get him, Harry. Hiring someone to have me killed in a bar means he's got a good chance at getting arrested, and he knows that. My father will never risk being sent back to Azkaban, or sullying our name by being sentenced for murder. All he wants is keep the Malfoy name clean. Be the great Lucius Malfoy of Malfoy manor."

"I guess you're right. But still, Draco. Please stop meeting Flint."

"I told him it's the last time, okay? I told him I've got loads to do, which is nothing less than the truth anyway. So I won't see him again after tonight. Consoled?" -

You don't get him.

The sentence goes round and round in my head after Draco has Disapparated from the flat.

If that's true, if I don't get Lucius Malfoy, I've got to try harder. As an Auror I'm trained at analysing a suspect's mind to guess at their next move. And no matter what Draco said, his father is a suspect. Because if what my gut tells me is right, he won't accept being kicked from the ranks of pureblood aristocracy without a fight. Which means I need to figure out what he's going to do. And quickly.

So, Lucius Malfoy. What do I know about Lucius Malfoy.

He has always negated his own non-human heritage. He was obsessed with blood purity and unable to accept a part-fairy son. He tried to keep Draco's transformation at bay using dark magic that made his son sick. When he was in Azkaban, he used Crabbe, Crabbe who was permanently around Draco, who had Draco's trust. That's Lucius Malfoy's style. Just like when he sneaked Tom Riddle's diary into Ginny's trunk in our second year. Subterfuge, pulling strings, using others for his own ends.

Later, he made Draco come back to Malfoy Manor claiming he needed his help. He understood Draco's sense of loyalty, and he took advantage of it so he could go on casting curses at his son. Until Draco fled to London to try and build an independent life for himself.

Then, when Draco returned again, fully transformed and seeking shelter at the place that should have been his home, his father did the unforgivable, he attacked his own son with Sectumsempra to keep his fairy genes a secret. And he failed.

No Slytherin deals well with failure, and Lucius Malfoy certainly is no exception. And most certainly not in this particular case.

What if Lucius Malfoy has moved past making sense?

What if he is ready to face any risk just to still get at Draco? What if it's his last goal in life to destroy the son who made the Malfoy name disappear from the list of the Sacred Twenty-Eight?

I get my Y-pad to look at the list again, as if the answers lay in there.

What if. What if.

What if he'd even find himself ready to renounce his traditionalist ways for the goal of making his son disappear from the face of the earth, and to use something like a Y-pad?

Every Y-pad has a registration number that's kept on file in the Ministry. All data about Y-pad activities get stored there, too. The guys working in the Y-Mac Department can extract those data, and they do, if they have a court order to do so.

Or, in case they are my generation, if Harry Potter asks them to. -

For once, I've been lucky. There was still someone at his desk in YD, he answered my Video Phono call, and he wasn't a teen. My name worked its old magic.

Now I have a comprehensive list of all the search requests before me that have ever been conducted on Lucius Malfoy's Y-pad, sent by express owl directly from the Ministry.

Yeah, Lucius Malfoy does possess a Y-pad after all. And he has made use of it.

There's a lot of visits on sites with illegal content about plans to re-establish the old system. A lot of porn, too, involving school girls. And repeated views of Hermione's picture as class winner in the old Hogwarts' year books. Yeah, Lucius Malfoy is obviously a fully-fledged pervert, but that's not the worst thing about this list.

The worst thing is, I was right about him.

All these weeks he has been trying to kill his son. It's because of Lucius Malfoy that Draco fell sick like he did. I don't yet know how his father did it. But the endless search requests on the Muggle internet for anti-moth sprays and their mode of action are proof enough to me. He has looked up all the sites on insecticides. When I get my own Y-pad to check out one of those sites, on something called organophosphates, it's right there.

The poison affects the respirational tract and the nervous system, leading to nausea, fatigue, and later to breathing paralysis.

Draco's symptoms, to the letter.

But Lucius Malfoy never went near Draco since he moved in with me. What am I missing here.

As I go over the text describing the effects of organophosphates again, something flits about at the edges of my mind, like that black mouse in the Potions Section. Without really knowing what I'm looking for, I log myself into the Ministry's database.

Marcus Flint. Background and bio.

Pureblood, Slytherin, Quidditch captain, blahblah. His criminal record.

And that job at Azkaban. He's been working as a janitor in Azkaban.

I check the dates.

Why is it that I've never checked the dates before!

Oh Merlin.

Flint worked as a janitor in Azkaban from August 1st till September fifteenth. He worked there the night I saved Draco from the Dementor.

Suddenly everything is horribly clear.

Flint freed that Dementor and set it on Draco.

Flint works for Lucius Malfoy like Crabbe did before him, only he wasn't hired to jinx Draco, but to kill him.

Flint probably got impatient and tried to get the job done quickly with the help of a Dementor that night in September. And when the Dementor failed to do the job, Flint went back to using the method Lucius Malfoy had recommended.

Taking advantage of Draco's sense of loyalty towards a supportive friend, getting him to join him for a drink as often as it would take, and each time poisoning him some more with a spray that looks like a perfectly harmless deodorant and yet will eventually kill him.

Because it really is an insecticide, and Draco is a fairy half-breed.