AN: And this, my dear readers, is the prologue to the climax of the story so far. In this, several hints are hinted at, and feints are hidden within feints within feints. Things will happen, and things won't. Look for them, like Russian dolls. Enjoy, and feedback would be lovely.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
And this: His mother's beauty cracked, and she screamed at him, crazy-scary, utterly certain of her righteousness. was stolen from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Sorry 'bout that.
Dedicated to: Carina and Isa, Catherine and Berna, and all those who reviewed. You are my motivation.
Chapter 17: Pre-shocks.
Ignorance is bliss.
- proverb
It was a surprise. Or more like a shock, really. A dull shock, like electricity. People think electricity would be painful, they imagine it as a sharp, tingly feeling all throughout, like the feeling you get when your foot falls asleep.
No, people are wrong. Electricity, if the voltage is high enough, will slam into you like you slam into a wall, and it will, yes it will, throw you back several feet. And you will stagger to your feet, bruised, bleeding, dazed and confused. And hurt. I guarantee. You will be hurt.
And if the voltage was really high? Oh, let's just put it this way, you won't even be able to stagger to your feet in the first place.
That's electricity. That's the kind of shock we're talking about here. That's the kind of shock Draco went through.
***
It began with a series of smaller shocks, building up to that one big bolt from the blue. Like aftershocks. But before the earthquake itself. he would later muse. Pre-shocks. And he would smile, dryly.
Of course, Draco would not know that those surprises were just pre-shocks. There was no way he could have known.
Until the earthquake came and swept him off his feet. Until the earthquake came and knocked down the world around him, reducing everything he ever believed in into worthless rubble. Until the earthquake came and broke him.
Maybe he should have listened to the pre-shocks. The surprises, that although unpleasant, could have saved him. After all, isn't ignorance bliss?
Unpleasant surprises, bearing gifts. Wasn't life beautiful?
***
"What a pleasant surprise." he drawled. "And I suppose you're bearing gifts?"
Draco Malfoy stood in the clinically white room, bound by chains and spells and charms, and his own pride. In front of him, behind a Shield, stood Narcissa Malfoy. She had aged, her eyes duller, her hair thinner. Her clothes were elegant and obviously rich, with the requisite grey badge that declare her a 'visitor to Azkaban Penitentiary Quarters'. A newspaper was tucked under a thin arm, and she held her wand tightly in her other hand.
Draco felt the first shock slam into him. Three hundred volts of electricity. he thought dully. Here's Mummy Dearest.
She looked at him, her gaze sweeping him from his tousled, matted hair to his bruised and bleeding bare feet. "You look a mess, Draco Malfoy." she said primly, meeting his gaze. Eyes as blue and as searing as lightning met eyes as grey as and as cold as metal. Draco smirked at her, behind the sizzling sparkle of the protective Shield Charm. "You don't look like Daily Prophet cover material yourself, Mother."
Narcissa's eyes narrowed. "Respect your elders, Draco. Didn't I teach you that?" Draco laughed. "No, you never really took time off to teach me anything, Mother." She looked at her son, battered and bruised, his lips set in a thin line, his eyes burning fierce beneath the tangled hair and dirt on his face.
He still fights.
A sudden change of topic. "Speaking of the Daily Prophet." she held up the folded newspaper. "Maybe you would want to take a little peek at this." Draco squinted at it. It seemed to be last week's edition, Rita Skeeter's version.
She tucked it back under her arm. "I'll give it to the guards later, to check for charms and wands, and they'll give it to you. I shouldn't worry about assassination attempts in this newspaper, if I were you, son." she smiled at the wary look on Draco's thin face.
"There's nothing harmful in this newspaper than... current events." she laughed at her own little joke. Draco took a deep breath. His first visitor since he was detained seemed to more than a little bit off her rocker.
His first visitor. It was the first shock. Of all the people, why Berna? Why now? What now?
He looked at her as she stopped laughing, his gaze calm and steady, but inner turmoil leaking out through the edge. Hermione should have been my first visitor. Like I was her first love. And she was mine.
"What do you want, Mother?"
And she was mine.
She looked back at him, her head tilted sideways. She was still ice-queen beautiful, with traces of prettiness in the line of her eyes and the fading smile on her lips. "I want a lot of things." she told him, sincerely, sweetly.
"A lot of things." she blinked, smiled, held up the newspaper, the headline too far away for Draco to read.
"But in the meantime, I merely want to... keep you informed." Narcissa Malfoy smiled, and it was the most terrifying thing Draco had ever seen. It was then, that he knew, that whatever was in that newspaper directly concerned him, and the people he loved.
"Not Hermione." he whispered. And she was mine.
She shrugged. "Maybe Hermione."
His fists clenched, involuntarily, and he could feel the binding magic prickling at him, nibbling at his skin. But something else was disturbing him, creeping in underneath his façade. It was dread.
You would think a prisoner in Azkaban would become used to it, that cold sickening feeling that sinks into your stomach at the approach of something you would rather not face, something you would rather not know.
And she was mine.
Draco clenched his teeth. "Out with it, Mum. Tell me now what you want me to know." On the other side of the charms, she glared at him. "You know, I have never forgiven you for marrying that Mudblood bitch."
And she was mine.
"And I, Mother, have never forgiven you for throwing me into Azkaban."
She smirked at him, and Draco found it unnerving, his own smirk, directed back at him from his own mother. "You deserve it. You deserve every inch of this, Draco. From the dementors to the unholy dirt, to the mental torture..."
"All because you did not heed my word."
Narcissa's voice had dropped to a venomous hiss. "It would have been so much easier if you had followed me. If you had married that Parkinson girl like your father and I wanted you to. Life would have been so much easier for you, Draco, if your Mudblood wasn't in it."
Draco felt the restraining magic tightening its grip on him, sensed the charms that held his arms fast strengthening. "Yes, Mother." he whispered through gritted teeth. "My life would have been so much easier if I hadn't married Hermione. So much easier... but then, my life would also have been incomplete."
Blue eyes flashed. "No, you're wrong. You could have done so well without that wench by your side, son. You could still have your fortune, your home, and your honor... if only you didn't marry her. If you didn't love her."
The charms buzzed and flashed as Draco pulled against them. "You can't stifle love. Love isn't something you muffle and tie down and throw away. Don't you know that?"
A wicked smile, flashes of the old Draco, spread over his pale face. "Ah, but then you wouldn't know that, would you? You've never loved. Your marriage to Lucius was fixed, and so was mine with Pansy." His tone was cold and bitter. "At least I had the sense to pull away from family obligations... obligations and rules that wouldn't do anything to me but seal my misery for the rest of my pathetic life."
His mother's beauty cracked, and she screamed at him, crazy-scary, utterly certain of her righteousness. "You're wrong! Your marriage to Parkinson would have assured you of lifelong comforts and riches, but no, you had to defy my rules and my expectations and go off the Malfoy path to wed yourself, to give yourself to some disgusting wretch with an impure bloodline! You dare insult your own parents' marriage?"
Draco's eyes narrowed, and a smile as sharp as a knife blade played on his bitten lips. "Still in mourning, then, Mother?" He tsked softly, his voice hiding venom. "You really should learn how to let go of the past, Mother... why waste your life on someone who doesn't love you back? Someone cold and dead and long-rotten under the outrageously expensive marble monuments you've put up in his name?"
"A name you will not be carrying on." she spat at him, her eyes steely blue slits in her pallid face. Draco smirked at her, the charms constricting him. "Unfortunately." he drawled, the sarcasm as loud and as clear as a church bell.
A breath.
Silence.
Narcissa touched her hair self-consciously. She straightened up, brushed off her dress, put a cold smile across her face. "That is enough." she declared frostily. "Enough. I will not stand any more of your insolence. I have had enough of it to last me a lifetime."
She held up the newspaper. "This will arrive to you later tonight. See to it that you read every single part of it. After all," a smile on her pale lips. "it would not do for a Malfoy to be behind on current events." One more sweeping glance at Draco's tattered prison garb. "No matter how detained they are."
Draco stared at her. Two can play at that game. "Oh no, Mother. It would not do for me to miss out on the wonderful goings-on of the world... goings-on that I, due to my current situation, am unable to partake in."
Narcissa laughed, then. Cold, cruel and chilling. "Partake in? Oh, my son. These events are events that you certainly play no part in, nor would you want to, for they do not concern you... and that, is the saddest part."
She smiled at him, at her son in chains and charms. "I bid you adieu. And mind you, those clothes look awfully uncomfortable. I'll see if I can send some over with your newspaper. It wouldn't do for a mother to neglect her son."
Draco glared at her, watched her as she walked out of the room and consorted with the dull-looking prison manager. Her ice-queen beauty was back again, the frigid cold sweeping the air.
Or maybe it's just the spring wind. Draco thought dully, watching as she handed the prison manager the newspaper.
Narcissa smiled at him one more time before he was led out of the room, at that smile chilled him to the marrow of his very bones.
***
It was when he had returned to his cell, and when he had recovered from the sickening chill of the dementors that had escorted him there, when he began to cry.
Draco Malfoy, for the first time in four years, leaned against the cold, dank wall of his prison cell, tipped his head back, and began to cry in ugly, racking sobs.
The tears were sticky as they ran down his grubby cheeks, and he made no move to wipe them away as the sobs tore themselves out of his chest. The dementors outside his door stood still, seemingly deaf, and if they heard anything of Draco's pathetic tears, they made no sign.
He kept on crying, well into the night, because of the pre-shock, and when the real earthquake hit, he had no more tears left to cry.
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Next chapter: The climax of the entire story. Stick around. :)