Chapter Four: Falaise House

25th of December, 1992

Christmas was always a social affair at Malfoy Manor, but this year it felt hollow. For the past decade, its sense of cheer had always been fueled by Draco's poorly contained excitement. Cato supposed his parents were happy to humor him, given his own reserved approached to Christmas. But this year for some completely inexplicable reason -which had nothing to do with the Gala at all-, Draco had seen fit to stay at school for Christmas and the halls felt empty without his childish glee. He had claimed to be staying for Quidditch, which was not even a particularly convincing claim since they had their own pitch.

In an interesting twist of fate, Draco had chosen to compete for the position of chaser in this life, which Cato felt quite comfortable crediting himself with. After all, it was he who had tempered his brother's rivalry with Harry Potter, talking to him deep into the night on one heady summer evening the year before. Utter hatred had been avoided, boiling down to a simmering resentment and rivalry.

Still, he envied him, thought Cato as frost-frozen grass crunched beneath his feet. Every since he first lesson with Mr. Grey he had been plagued by sporadic but excruciating migraines and his grades had slipped dramatically. He sighed and glanced around, passing a hand over his brow. The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the grounds and painting the sky with exquisite beauty. The mornings steady, familial calm had given way to music and laughter as the Manor filled with guests. He paused near the doors and took a moment to collect himself, staring back out into the grounds, where the odd couple lingered under the illusory privacy of the occasional thicket or tree.

The Gala had, as it had every year, attracted some of the finest folk from England, and a few from beyond. Lucius had even spent the past two days drilling Cato on a seemingly hodgepodge assortment of Arabic and Chinese customs he had collected over the years and deemed useful for him to know. The hall and the Ballroom beyond were packed with such an assortment of the wealthy and influential that it was almost impossible to make one glittering dress from another, or where one set of robes ended and another began. Snow drifted from the ceiling, disappearing a foot above the guest's head and reflecting the light of a thousand candles like so many jewels and the whole thing was enough to overwhelm Cato's senses for a few moments.

"Cato! There you are!" He fixed his smile on as a girl maneuvered through the crowd and walked over to him. Her skin was dark and her eyes practically black, each starkly contrasted to her silver robes and eyeliner. She was his age, and still looked very much like a dressed-up, child. As with every other ball in which Narcissa had forced Cato to take a date, he in turn forced down the discomfort born from the duality of his existence and reached out, taking her white gloved hand in his. "Lucille, I was just out for a breath of fresh air." She grabbed his hand and practically yanked him towards the ballroom.

"Yes, well, the dances have started and the photographers are there… -and your mother wants pictures of us!" her words tumbled out in an excited flow and her eyes shone with excited glee.

It was her first time in the social spotlight, but it was not a first for him. It seemed as if every year the photographers were more invasive, their lenses flashing out increasingly suggestive pictures while stubbled jaws spat obscene questions.

"Right. Joy," he said as Lucille guided him into a sea of spinning bodies, flashing cameras and lively violin.

And so he was lost into the madness of the crowd, a practiced smile on his face and Lucille's hand on his arm. Cameras flashed pictures of them and reporters threw questions their way, which Lucille was all to eager to answer and Cato ignored with the stately ease of the rich and powerful. They danced, elegantly, drank sparingly under their parents watchful eyes and mingled strategically. Cato spared a long moment with Lucille Delavaste's father, the Capitaine de la Guarde, which was just another way of saying Head of Aurors in France. Then, he and Lucille split as he danced with a handful of his friends and acquaintances, flitting from a painfully long dance with Juliette Yaxley to a quick waltz with a young but stately Daphne Greengrass and onwards through a myriad of names and faces, smiling all along.

In the end, Cato felt that he had performed quite well, and left a markedly positive impression of himself with Hector Delavaste.

Hours later, the music had wound down to the drip-drop cadence of soft piano and the dance floor no longer vibrated with excitement. Couples now held each other close as decorum gave way before the powerful pull of wine and Cava. He could see the Parkinson's dancing elegantly to the side, their daughter staring hungrily at their duet from a distance. The photographers had been expelled from the property for some time, lest the glamor of high society crack in their presence, and reveal the humans beneath. Now even his mother was sharing a gentle, swaying dance with Lucius, a soft smile on her painted lips. Both of them looked like something pulled from a storybook, picturesque in their beauty, heroes of their own story. The affectionate smile forming on Cato's lips crashed into rubble. Azkaban waited around the corner for his father, if anything went wrong.

It was Ernie Macmillan, of all people, who pulled Cato out of his reverie. The younger boy was dressed with the reserved excellence of old money and his brother was at his side, a good head taller and strikingly handsome. As they approached, Cato pushed himself off the table upon which he had been leaning and inclined his head. "Ernie, Robert," he said. "Are you retiring for the night?"

"Yeah," said Robert easily. His collar was unbuttoned just enough to hint at a tattoo which had been the scandal of the Macmillan family last year, and the hottest topic of witch weekly. "My brother had something to say," he added, nudging Ernie forward.

The boy's back stiffened and he flushed, but to his credit he looked Cato in the eye and stretched out a hand. "Thank you for the invitation, Heir Malfoy-" Robert scoffed and rolled his eyes and Ernie turned around with a furious scowl on his face. "What? Mother said that it was the proper way to address him!"

"Sure but- Nobody even… You know what, if it makes you happy, go for it," said Robert, casting Cato a long suffering look.

"Well, anyway, thank you. It was a most excellent evening," said Ernie.

Cato grinned at them and shook Ernie's hand firmly. "It was a pleasure to have you here. A House Elf will escort you to your quarters, and I hope to see you at tomorrow's brunch in the gardens," he said formally, bowing his head once more.

Ernie gave his brother a meaningful look, as if to say 'See? That's how a heir acts.' But his brother just pushed him towards the door. "Perfect, now bugger off, I want to talk to Cato." And when Ernie had left, all in a huff, Robert turned back to Cato and smiled. "Ernie thinks we're in 1880, but he's right on one count. Hell of a night. I'll miss them."

"Miss them?" asked Cato, his senses perking up at the scent of some secret.

Robert looked around then leaned forward. The music was gentle, but melded with the continuous gentle chatter around them, Cato felt like they were in a small bubble of privacy. A false sense of security in a place like this, and so he leaned forward in turn. "I'm not planning on sticking around after I graduate this summer. Me and Zara are eloping."

"I can already picture the headlines," murmured Cato with a thin smile. "Macmillan and Muggleborn Elope." They shared a small laugh and Robert squeezed his shoulder. His eyes were alight with drink and his tongue was loose.

"I can't stand it anymore. Masquerading for seventeen years like a monkey for the crowds. I don't know how you do it. I'm bloody well done with this entire joke of a country."

"I think you will surprise less people than you think," said Cato.

"Why?"

"You weren't meant for this… this…" Cato waved a hand aimlessely around them. "Society. Maybe in twenty years you'll be ready for it. Remember that passage Apexis made us memorize in our lessons?"

"God, which one?" said Robert, rolling his eyes. "I wasn't exactly paying attention."

"BREATHES there the man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart has ne'er within him burned,

As home his footsteps he hath turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?"

Robert scoffed and shook his head, a fond smile on his lips as he grabbed a glass from a passing servant and took a sip. "I can't believe you remember that."

Cato slapped his back, upsetting Roberts glass. "You'll return eventually, once you've burned out that need to see the world. I'll have a hut made for you on my property so you have a place to live after your father disinherits you."

"I'll miss you," said Robert, suddenly serious, and his face reflected a deep well of worries, hidden well beneath the many layers of his personality. "But I don't plan on coming back for a long time. You fit into this, you like this way of life. But it's not for me."

Seventeen years old was still so young, and the boy before him was burdened with the absolute certainty that that age gave to people. The conviction that they were right, and that they could never change their mind on such an important issue. He smiled. "Go on upstairs, Rob. You can plan your escape later."

But barely was he gone that another voice came to disrupt Cato's contemplations. "Sir?" François had appeared beside him, dressed quite smartly in black robes that split at his waist, revealing white trousers and a large belt inlaid with his seal of Stewardship, polished until it gleamed.

"Bonjour, François," said Cato, smiling as the man grimaced down at him.

"Even with a simple greeting, your accent is that of a beginner, Mr. Malfoy."

"It is hard to excel at everything, even for me."

"Indeed. And where is your date most charming?" Asked François.

"Retired for the night, her father insisted, thankfully." François smiled. Of all the people in his life, Cato sometimes felt the safest sharing his deeper thoughts with the Steward of the House. This serious, occasionally stern and always proper Frenchman had held him as a young boy, taught him French, helped him with his arithmetic homework given to him by that infernal Mr. Apexis and shown him around the grounds on countless walks.

"Your father wishes to speak with you in his office after the dance."

"Should I be concerned?"

François patted his shoulder as the music swelled sweetly, a single high note arching above them like a beam of light. "No. This will be a great moment for you. As it was for him."

When Lucius came to fetch him, his sculpted cheeks were red with alcohol, and his smile cracked open the cold vault of his face with more sincerity than Cato could usually find. "Father, how was the last dance?"

"Perfect, as it is every year." Lucius stopped in the middle of the room, across from where Cato was leaning on a bookshelf. "It reminds us both of simpler days."

Depth of emotion was usually not in his father's lexicon, and Cato bounced against the shelf uncomfortably, the old wood digging into his shoulder blades. "That's good."

But his father didn't seem troubled. Instead, he went over to his desk and leaned against it with a sigh. The hearth was cold and the room was lit by a singular flickering candle. "Cato." Lucius frowned, his finger tapping relentlessly against his desk. "I am not adept at the handling of children."

"You do fine with Draco."

But his father was already waving a dismissive hand. "Draco is a normal boy. I cannot handle his tumultuous humors, but I know what is expected of me. You…" He trailed off and his gaze drifted into memory, unfocused. "Sometimes I think you were an adult from the day you were born."

Cato's mouth went dry and he ducked his gaze to the black carpet. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"Take it as neither that nor an insult," said his father. "But it has always made me uncertain of how to treat you, and that uncertainty has bred distance." He was looking at Cato now, dead serious. The rapping of his finger was sharp with the tang of his rings. "It is a disturbing thing to see an adult's gaze in a child's eye."

He seemed to be on the edge of some grand proclamation and Cato licked his lips and looked around the room with quick, nervous glances. It was suddenly suffocatingly small, the candle all too revealing of his expression. His father pushed himself off his desk and took out his wand. A nasty flash of paranoia snaked through him as Lucius stretched out his free hand, a facsimile of a smile on his face. "Come, I have something to show you."

Cato forced himself to dispel the phantom fear as he took his hand. Then, suddenly, he was experiencing the horrible squeeze of apparation, his ribs were compressing his lungs, they were going to burst… A blast of chilly, salt-laden air slapped him and he opened his eyes.

They stood hand in hand on a path of flagstones laid so carefully that they cut a smooth, mottled line through the grass. To one side, beyond a picket fence, the ground dropped away to reveal a gaping abyss. Under the moonlight, Cato could see waves reflected far below, and the white rocks of the cliffs, like the bones of the earth, exposed by the gnawing sea. To the other side, the land rolled away into the horizon in fertile layers of grass, wind-danced trees and fields.

His father nudged him and when Cato looked up at him, he saw a complex series of emotions on his face. "Look ahead," he said.

Cato did, and couldn't help a small, sharp intake of breath from escaping his lips. A house hugged the edge of the cliff, but it was not really a house. Its main body was long, lining the cliff like a parapet of white and brown stone, with columns running down its proud and many-windowed exterior. Three towers peeked from it, one open at the top and broken by teeth like merlons, two closed by tapering roofs. Each was tall, and impossibly delicate in the moonlight.

An orchard separated them from it, and the rustling of leaves, the shifting of grass and the sighing, breathing sea filled his sense with the heartbeat of nature. The manor was perhaps a fifth of the size of the Malfoy residence at first glance, but when Cato saw it gleaming like some fey castle under the stars, he knew deep down that he wanted to see the dawn from its windows, burning the ocean into a bronze mirror.

"This is where the first Malfoy stepped onto English soil," said his father quietly, as if he feared breaking Cato's reverie. "It has been ours since we aided in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, granted to us by the Crown."

"It's beautiful," breathed Cato.

"It is yours."

Cato's head whipped around and he stared up at his father. "What?"

They began to walk. "When I was seventeen, my father brought me to this exact place, after the Gala of '71, and told me it was mine." Lucius snorted, his eyes warm with memories. "I did not believe him. He called me a fool boy."

Cato laughed, still drinking in the sights around him. A stream cut through the orchard like a strip of silver. "Then he told me it was all mine. Not his. Mine, to manage as I pleased. My own estate…" He trailed off and for a moment, Cato wasn't sure if it was the moonlight, or whether his father's eyes were wet. He felt a sudden stab of guilt at the thought that he had never inquired much about his grandfather, or his relation with his own father. Had they been so close that his memory provoked tears in a man he had never seen cry? "Ah. Well. My father was not me. But the bluntness of his words suits me just as well. So. This is yours."

He looked down at Cato and Cato suddenly felt a warm swell of affection for his father. He had never been troubled by their careful distance, not really. He had almost welcomed the barrier that separated him from the notorious man, from this murderer and torturer. But how many times had his father tried to build a more substantial bond with him, uncertain of how to handle his oddly precocious child? All those moments sat in his office, listening to him describe this or that venture, all those books left out for him to read. Cato looked his father squarely in the eyes. He found that there was a space within him, somewhere deep down, that did not really seem to care about the dark past that this man had painted. "Thank you." Only two words, but he filled them with sincerity for every past act gone unrecognized.

His father smiled back fully and squeezed his shoulder. "Well, this is yours, but your mother will not allow you to live here until you are at least of age. It would break her heart. That was her condition for giving it to you early." They were among the fruit trees now, still blooming and vivaciously green despite the deadly winter chill. "Until then, I will do as my father did for me and teach you. Estate bills, servants, land ventures, business, renovations, game keeping… Alright?"

It felt like a missing puzzle piece had clicked into place in Cato's mind, and now the familial portrait was complete. He looked back at the Estate. He could wait a few years before the dawn over the ocean became his morning view. "I'd love that."

The rest of break went by with that fleeting speed of treasured moments, gone so fast that all it left in its wake was the bittersweetness of times gone by. Cato tried to savor every moment with the determination given by his foreknowledge. There would be one or two more Christmas like this before everything changed. He spent every morning in lessons with François or with his mother, learning either French and gentlemanly decorum from the former, and law & land from the latter.

Every year, it was as if some new facet of the world was tilted to the light and revealed in its myriad reflections. Who knew that to hold a herd of hipogryphs one had to have a permit and agreement from the Gryffindor Estate? It was something his mother chafed under continuously, remarking on the exorbitant fees the Estate demanded, and the way in which the managers -A prominent circle of Ex-Gryffindor purebloods- were unfairly biased towards fellow alumni of their own house.

After that, his mother took him with her to meet the Goyles, whose own land was adjacent to the Malfoy Estate proper, though they were really tenants in all but name. There the massive, burly and scar-covered Mr. Goyle gave a stunningly eloquent report on the herd and their constant issues with parasitic flobberworms. Cato personally penned a letter to their potion supplier in Rotterdam requesting the proper poisons, under Narcissa's careful gaze. She approved it with a nod and a smile, and Cato felt a little silly for the pride he felt.

Afternoons were devoured at breakneck speed by his father, who set aside many of his everyday tasks and dedicated hours to walking through Cato's new estate, Falaise House. Perhaps most heartwarming of all were the many stories he interspersed their walks with. Such as his and Narcissa's first (and only) Christmas alone in this house, caught by a snowstorm. The small smile on Lucius's lips as he recounted his many moments in these halls revealed to Cato a man he had scarcely known in his life.

But business took over once more in the evening as they poured over ledgers, tax reports, permits and their various revenue reports. It was dry work, fueled by François's artfully prepared coffee, but they were some of Cato's favorite moments.

So for the first time, when the day arrived to pack up for Hogwarts he was left with a deep sense of melancholy as he regarded his empty room. Somehow, he doubted there would be another Christmas like this one again.

A/N: Thank you for reading.