misbegotten

a neurotic verse joint

four

the second attack

Breakfast on Friday was always a desultory sort of meal; there were few classes on Fridays and it was not uncommon for upper-year students, with clever mixing of electives, to schedule Fridays completely off. It was also a Hogsmeade weekend, and quite a few students had shucked off responsibilty in order to get a head start on the fun. The Slytherin table was half-empty; many students had already gone home, and many others had lazily slept in. Draco, however, ignored the tea as it came out, instead waiting, white-knuckled, for the owl post to arrive.

There was the usual murmur of acknowledgement as the owls came fluttering, except this time their wings sounded louder, pulsing and beating the blood in Draco's ears. He bit his lip – drew blood without even realizing it – and Lucius owl swept down in front him, stood on the table, and neatly dropped an envelope onto his empty breakfast plate. On it was the unmistakable Malfoy seal; the painstakingly-rendered serpent that Draco had looked at as a boy and thought remarkably intricate, remarkably beautiful, full of power and promise.

He snapped it open.

Dearest Draco,

Please be advised that you will be returning to Malfoy Manor this weekend. Permission has been granted. You are expected by Floo at precisely five o'clock this afternoon. Your mother and I shall be waiting.

Your Father and Your Blood

Lucius Malfoy

It was cold and informal, and at odds with the 'dearest' used in the greeting. Draco wondered at the parting line – it was traditional among older wizarding families, but Lucius had never used it before in a letter. He folded the letter neatly and slipped it into his pocket, darting his eyes about to ensure that no one had seen him reading it.

His eyes darted over to the place of Justin Finch-Fletchley at the Hufflepuff table, which was empty, but not because old Justin had finished his winter term early, or because he had possessed the foresight to pencil in a sleep-in day at the end of the week – oh no, Finch-Fletchley was absent from his place because he was in St. Mungo's being medicated and therapy-filled to death.

"Someone's joining you, Finchy," he muttered under his breath. The most frightening part was that Draco wasn't even sure how he meant the words, and his mumbling had held a strange mixture of resignation and malevolence. Pansy and Crabbe, who were the only other Slytherin seventh-years at breakfast, stared at him questioningly. He shoved himself away from the table, letter safe in the folds of his robes, and then he wasn't sure if what he was softly doing, as he walked away, was laughing or crying.

***

Ginny came sailing into the Great Hall and plunked herself ungraciously beside Hermione and across from her brother. She was late for breakfast, mainly because she had pretended to be asleep until Sara Poncey and Caroline Lovegood had finished their morning primping. She'd thought they'd never stop; seriously, it was ludicrous to spend so much time using Cosmetic Charms every day, not to mention a waste of energy. Ron nodded at her and said hello through a mouthful of egg, then swallowed. "Where were you last night at dinner?"

"Erm – nowhere, really. I wasn't hungry."

Ron took a swig of juice and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Those two girls in your dormitory came into the common room after you left, raving on about how you'd gone mad and run off."

"I was studying. They were annoying."

"Mm," Ron grunted, satisfied. He turned his attention back to his breakfast, seemingly unaware of the mildly repulsed look on Hermione's face as she watched him mow through his food. Ginny chuckled to herself. Harry was sitting beside Ron; he smiled at her faintly. He probably had it in his head that she was still fawning all over him in her head and didn't want to encourage her much. It wasn't that he wasn't good-looking – oh, but he was – and she definitely wouldn't mind him as her boyfriend, but Ginny felt very much like she had grown up in the past few months, and Harry really was just another boy. A handsome boy, certainly, but she had realized that it was a waste of energy to pine away.

Not that giving up the pining had helped much. She forked eggs and rashers onto her plate forcefully. No males ever took a good look at her, except Neville Longbottom, who apparently found her the least terrifying of all the girls in Gryffindor, and possibly Colin Creevey, whom she suspected might have a tiny crush on her. 

"A sickle for your thoughts, Gin," Ron mumbled.

"A whole sickle? My thoughts are valuable indeed," she grinned. "Did I look cross? I was just – er – thinking that I should get to work on my Transfiguration paper. It's due on Wednesday's class and it's supposed to be three and half feet of parchment long and I haven't got a single word written." This was not a lie; Ginny had the Weasley gift of procrastination. She intended to do it over the weekend, hopefully in the secret room behind the painting. Hopefully it wouldn't interfere with her newfound voracious reading; really, it was marvellous to be allowed to read books that most of the other students weren't. It was marvellous to have secrets.

"What?" Hermione, who had her notes scattered in front of her, and had been tuning them out until this announcement, looked positively ill. "That's only five days from now!" she exclaimed in a genuinely horrified tone. "Seriously, you ought to be down in the library right this minute, where there aren't any interruptions."

"Aw, come off it, Hermione," Ron laughed. "Just write really big, Gin. Like in eight-centimetre-high letters. Works for me every time." He motioned with his hands to indicate the size of his handwriting.

"McGonagall's not stupid," Hermione protested. "And, as I recall, you scored sixty-two percent on your last Transfiguration essay, Ron." She said this as if it were a crime severe enough to put a person in Azkaban.

"I know," he beamed proudly. "And I thought I wasn't going to pass it!"

Hermione was suitably affronted. "Honestly!"

Ginny looked away in amusement – Hermione and Ron, it seemed, would never quit bickering – and caught a glimpse of a figure slipping out of the Great Hall, trying to appear unnoticeable. It was Draco Malfoy – hunched over slightly, and pulling his robes around himself. Now why in the world wasn't he walking about with his rich little snob nose poked high in the air like usual? Ginny watched for a brief second – Malfoy's behaviour was seeming stranger and stranger, and quite suspicious, in the past few days. She couldn't rule possession out; it really did seem like the most likely explanation. I wonder if he's finally gone and snapped, she quipped mentally, except somehow, it was humourless.

***

Draco had taken the train to Hogsmeade and travelled by Floo at precisely the time Lucius had demanded of him. His only class of the day – Arithmancy at nine o'clock – had flown by in an unremarkable blur. His studies were beginning to hurt, he knew, but suddenly that seemed unimportant. And, truly, when had it ever been important? His name and his family assured him wealth and success whether he tried hard or not. It was hard to concentrate on school when it seemed as if vigilant studying would make no difference in the end.

Friday night was what he had expected. He'd appeared in the Malfoy fireplace and was greeted with a curt nod from his father and a stiff, spindly hug from his mother. He spent the evening boredly looking through the books in their library, all of which he'd already flipped through a thousand times, and listening to Narcissa's piano playing, which always seemed to echo through the house no matter which room he was in. He had liked to listen to her play as a child, but now the sound made him unreasonably angry.

Narcissa was the proud owner of an expensive antique Schreunfeldt piano – Schreunfeldt being the finest, oldest, and most-established maker of magical musical instruments in all of England – but even without the magical enchantments that compensated for a player's uneven rhythm, missed keys, or improper pedalling, Narcissa would still been considered an accomplished pianist. Of course, she played only melodies composed by magical composers, many of which required some subtle spellcasting as they were performed. The present piece floating through Malfoy Manor was a rather haunting and beautiful melody, languid and deliberately imprecise, each note pounded out like an individual sentence on it own. Draco felt it was appropriate as he scanned through the stacks of dusty books. Much like the entire manor, the library was stately, regal, yet melancholy.

He came to what had been his favourite section as a child – that which contained the books relating the Malfoy family. There were histories compiled by his ancestors, all with dull, moving sepia photographs, and, more recently, there were Lucius' and Narcissa's schoolbooks and yearbooks from Hogwarts. He pulled out one from their seventh year and flipped it open, almost carelessly. There were Potter's bloody mum and dad, waving and smiling and not knowing they'd be dead within three years. There was bloody Professor Lupin, looking pale and sickly but still smiling brightly. Snape was there, too, looking murderous as usual, with his dark eyebrows knitted together. And there was his mum, with her lip curled up like it always was. And – finally – he turned to the page with the his father, wearing a prefect badge and a trademark sneer. There was one photo of Lucius and Snape, along with Avery and the elder Crabbe and Goyle, with their arms slung carelessly around each other. The five Slytherin boys of his father's year. None were smiling, save for Avery's rather maniacal grin; they all had grim, tight-lipped looks about their faces.

Draco slammed the book shut.

For the rest of the evening, he paced about, doing nothing in particular, until it was an appropriate hour to go to bed. He realized, upon crawling under the blankets, that he had forgotten to attend dinner with his parents. They hadn't called him down, but they should have – but, then again, Narcissa's playing had been constant throughout the evening; he could even hear it now, fluttering through the fireplace at the foot of his bed. Perhaps things were more strained between his mother and his father than he'd thought, if they were no longer taking dinner together.

Not that it mattered.

Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon were more of the same. He ate breakfast with his mother, separated by the long dinner table, not really talking to each other. The rest of the day he spent reading up on schoolwork, simply because he had nothing better to do, and it seemed the most logical way to occupy his time without incurring Lucius' anger.

The Death Eaters went on the attack Saturday night.

This time, it was a home Draco recognized. Not elegant, but not run-down like the Weasley hellhole. A small, squat, well-kept home, belonging to the Brocklehursts – two parents working for the Ministry, the father an Auror, the mother in International Magical Co-Operation, and two children at Hogwarts.

One of the group used alohomora to open the door – which was stupidly uncharmed – and they crept inside silently, single-file, as if part of a formal procession.

Only the father was there. Isaiah Brocklehurst, who, like the Finch-Fletchleys, was asleep in his bed. Draco wondered at this for a moment; it seemed very uncourageous, indeed, to sneak up on an enemy while he slept. But being a Slytherin – a Malfoy – a Death Eater – all of it – was about deviousness and underhandedness, wasn't it? He felt very heavy and tired.

Brocklehurst was instantly flung up into the air by several Death Eaters wands, and spun about, much like those muggles had been, all that time ago at the World Cup. He was screaming, and Draco heard a Silencing Charm fly out of someone's mouth. He couldn't tell quite who. But he could tell who it was that stepped forward then – the same person possessing the fierce grin in his father's yearbook. Avery. The Death Eaters allowed Brocklehurst to hover in the air a minute longer, then the Auror was dropped abruptly onto the floor, where he instantly scrambled for his wand off the night-table. Avery picked it up and snapped it in half.

"Bastards," Brocklehurst mouthed through the Silencing Charm; the odd pantomime of speech was so absurd, so clownish, so out-of-place, that Draco's throat filled with bile. He tried to close his eyes and found he couldn't. They remained open to witness Avery drawing his own wand from his robes, slowly, as if savouring the experience.

"No." Lucius raised a hand to stall Avery. "No, let – let my son."

Draco felt as if he'd punched in the stomach. "Wh – what?"

"You heard me," Lucius said coolly. He indicated Brocklehurst, who was burying his face into the floor. "It is unfair of us to have all the amusement to ourselves. We must allow for the skills of youth. Kill him."

"You want to me to cast—"

"The Killing Curse." Lucius clapped him on the back, as casually and quickly as he would have if he were encouraging his son prior to a particularly important Quidditch match. "Come on, then."

His hand shaking, Draco pointed his wand down at Isaiah Brocklehurst. The prone man's body was still spasming from the after-effects of the Cruciatus Curse. Draco doubted that he could have moved if he wanted to. He tipped the wand up so it was aimed straight at Brocklehurst's forehead. Could he actually do it? The words themselves were so simple! Avada Kedavra, that would be all he would have to say, and it would be done. It seemed to easy, too cowardly a way to kill a man; there ought to be blood and struggle, he reasoned.

"Do it!" shouted Lucius, and now his voice was edging on hysteria. Draco felt his father pull at his collar and shake him roughly. It was an odd sensation; he rocked on his feet without really experiencing the pain Lucius meant for him to feel. "Do it now, you little coward!"

The other Death Eaters joined the chorus – slow, contemptuous.

"Kill him, boy—"

"I'd have expected better from a Malfoy."

"Do it!" Lucius' voice was high above them all.

"I CAN'T!" Draco screamed, and the room went quiet. Isaiah Brocklehurst's eyes went wide, and, Draco noted, a little hopeful. "I can't kill him," Draco whispered fiercely, and his wand slipped out of his hand and dropped to the floor. He fixed his eyes on it, unable to look back at Lucius, even with the masks on. Don't let them think I have betrayed them.

He never got to see what happened, precisely, to Isaiah Brocklehurst, because Lucius had instantly grabbed him by the collar, like a mother lion to a cub, and hauled him out of the room. But Draco did hear the Killing Curse, uttered near-inaudible behind them, and he gritted his teeth beneath his mask, thinking of the tiny speckle of hope that had dared to appear in Brocklehurst's eyes. Then the thought was shaken out – Lucius slammed Draco up against the wall.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Lucius leaned down, and his still-masked face was like a demon gleaming. "Why didn't you do it? You know I dislike weakness, boy. Are there things you aren't telling me?"

"I'm … I'm sorry, Father." He used the name without thinking about it and his mouth suddenly tasted sour-bitter. The horrible part about it was that most of him really was sorry, really was upset that he hadn't been able to do what Lucius had asked of him. I am weak, I am weak, he is right, I am weak.

"Bloody shameful," Lucius growled. He pulled Draco again, roughly, so that their foreheads were nearly touching. "A Malfoy is not weak. A Malfoy does not back away like a coward. A Malfoy knows to respect his name and remember all that it signifies, all that it stands for. Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes. Sir." Draco hated the knot of fear that was uncoiling in his stomach. It seemed implicitly wrong that he should be afraid of his own father, and he closed his eyes, hating the salty tears that were welling up in them. I am weak. "I … I won't fail you next time."

"You had better not."

"I promise – promise I won't fail you." He did start to cry, quietly, and suddenly he was very happy to wearing the mask of a Death Eater, and doubly happy that he had restraint enough to allow his tears to fall in silence. He was a sorry excuse for a son and for a Malfoy. Lucius could not see his tears, the tears of a coward. They went back to Malfoy Manor in silence. Draco knew it was childish, but, as he wept to himself, he could only think that none of this was fair. I'm not even old enough to Apparate legally. I can't cast the Killing Curse. I'm only seventeen.