That was Then, This is Now
Disclaimer: They do not belong to me, they have never belonged to me, and they never will belong to me.
Kristin: I'M HAPPY! I was sick and my voice wasn't doing too great, but I managed to sing my song without screwing up. This is really good considering I did it without music and a small mistake would have been pretty noticeable. Yay for me!
WARNING!!! This chapter has a bit of Lucius bashing, and a bit of child abuse, however, that part is kind of important if you are trying to figure some things out before I tell you.
***
Chapter Fifteen
Chibi Chibi jogged across the frozen grounds of Hogwarts, her heavy winter robes slapping against her legs. She had stayed with her father, talking, for nearly forty-five minutes, before leaving to go see Draco. She paused for a moment to catch her breath when he came into view. Now able to breathe easier, she bent down and gathered a handful of snow. She then crept up behind the off-guard young man, and dumped the snow down the back of his robe. He visibly jumped and screeched, sounding much like a wounded cat, while he vainly tried to fish the snow out of his robe. Chibi Chibi fell down to the ground, shaking with laughter. Draco glared pitifully at her for a moment before joining her in her laughter.
*
From one of the windows in Usagi's rooms, Sirius stood, gaping at the scene that had just unfolded in front of him. "My daughter, and a Malfoy?" Usagi smiled ruefully at his indignant tone of voice and walked up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head against his back.
"I said the same thing when I first figured it out, but he's not just a Malfoy. His mother..." she trailed off. Sirius nodded in agreement.
"Yes, his mother has to be taken into consideration, of course. But still, a Malfoy!" Usagi shook her head against Sirius' back, smiling sadly. She circled around her husband so that she could look up at his face.
"Yes, a Malfoy. She'll be good for him, Sirius. The poor boy needs to have a little bit of laughter in his life, and she will bring that to him. Just give him a chance." Sirius raised an eyebrow at his wife.
"If you've forgiven him for what he did to you," he paused as she nodded, "Then, I suppose that I can give him a chance."
*
Draco and Chibi Chibi sat on top of a boulder by the lake, huddled together for warmth. They had been sitting in absolute quiet for nearly twenty minutes, neither wanting to break the comfortable silence. Finally, Draco spoke up. "So, do you know how..." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and nodded.
"A while ago, I was visiting one of my mum's witch friends in Germany who lives as a muggle. There are certain roads in Germany that have no speed limits, and people can be a little inane at times. We were in a bad car wreck, and were rushed to a muggle hospital. I needed blood, or I would have died then. There was something...not right about the blood transfusion that they injected me with. It gave me HTLV-1. That progressed into leukemia, and here I am. Or, at least, that's about as much as I understand about it. I'm probably off on a few things, but you get the general idea." They lapsed back into a comfortable silence. Chibi Chibi yawned and laid her head on Draco's shoulder, ignoring the way that he tensed for a moment. He glanced down at her and an eyebrow shot up.
"Your neck is better," he murmured, and reached out a finger to stoke the previously gashed skin, inwardly smirking when she shivered. She glanced up at him through her eyelashes.
"Yeah, my mum healed it." He nodded, more as an acknowledgment than anything else, then resumed staring out over the lake. He glanced down when he felt a package being shoved into his hand. "Happy Christmas."
"What's this?" Chibi Chibi giggled.
"Why don't you open it and find out?" He pulled the wrapping off of the present to reveal a leather bond book, with a small, circular indention plated with silver on the cover. He flipped the book open and fingered the blank, creamy pages.
"A journal?"
"Close, but not quite." She pulled an identical book from her pocket along with a self-filling quill. "You see," she began as she scribbled on the first page of her book, "It is half of a pair. The books are magically linked. You write on a page of one of the books, and then when you tap it once with your wand, it instantly disappears from that book, and is sent to the other one," here she produced her wand and tapped the page that she had written on once. "Now, open your book to the first page and tap twice." Draco did as he was told, and saw Chibi Chibi's familiar handwriting appear.
"This is amazing. Where did you get these?"
"My mum helped me enchant them. Tap once to send, tap twice to make the writing appear, and tap three times to delete the message. Do you like it?" Draco looked at her hopeful face and could almost feel his heart breaking.
"I love it, but I can't use it." He winced as her face fell.
"Why not," she asked.
"If my father were to find out...well I don't think that he would approve." Chibi Chibi suddenly grinned.
"Is that all? Well, you don't need to worry about that." Without warning, she grabbed his hand, produced a knife from her pocket, and slashed the tip of his index finger. Draco watched in horrified fascination as she let his blood drip into the indention on the cover of the journal. After a few moments, she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, and wrapped it around his finger. She then waved her wand over the book, and murmured a spell in a language that sounded like nothing he had ever heard before. As she spoke, the blood was absorbed into the leather of the book, and glowed a dark red for a moment. When the glow subsided, she handed the book back to him. "Now, only you will be able to see what is truly written on the pages. To everyone else, it will appear to be filled with teenage trivialities." She laughed at the disbelieving look on his face. "My mum thinks that the summer is nothing more than extra time to study things that aren't taught in school."
"Ah, well, I got you something too, but I sent it away to have something done to it, and it hasn't returned yet. I can owl it to you before Christmas, though. Are you staying here for all of the vacation?"
"No. We'll stay for about three more days, and then we're going to portkey back home. I'll get you the address later."
*
Draco stood in his father's office in Malfoy Manor, suddenly wishing to be anywhere but there. He had been standing there for about ten minutes, and his father had yet to look up from the papers that he was studying on his desk. Finally, he looked up, and favored his only child with a chilling glare. "Do you know why I felt the need to speak with you?" He arched an eyebrow at his son's silence. "You are a disgrace to this family, Draco. You are friends with the daughter of an auror," he spat the words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. "There is no excuse for that, you insolent child. You should be punished for consorting with the enemy."
Draco remained silent as he watched his father lift his wand from his desk, and point it at him. He was strangely calm, almost detached, as if he was simply witnessing this happening to somebody else, not himself. He found it unusual that he was suddenly noticing things that would usually escape him, such as the fly that was buzzing near the open window, and the house elf that had led him to this room, slipping silently through the door. "Crucio," his father snarled.
Draco stood there for a moment, feeling nothing but a small ball of annoyance gathering in the pit of his stomach. Then, it happened. The pain was unbearable, as though someone was raking their nails on his brain. The coppery taste of blood overwhelmed his taste buds from where he had bit his tongue, trying to not scream; trying to not give his father the perverse pleasure of hearing him scream. He legs gave out beneath him, sending him sprawling to the ground. A fire from deep inside of him seemed to be trying to fight the curse, obstructing his sight with visions of a woman, no an angel, dressed in pure white, reaching out to him, his mother and several other women behind her. Above it all, he could hear laughter; the cruel laughter of a psychotic man who has recently given up on all hope. It took his poor, pain-filled brain several minutes to realize that the laughter was coming from him. No, his father would not hear him scream, but he would see him loosing his sanity.
This was the scene that Narcissa Malfoy was led to, by the same house elf that had informed Draco of his father's wish to 'talk'. Her son lay on the ground, his body convulsing with pain, his eyes rolled back in his head, and insane laughter pouring from his lips. Her husband stood, his wand in hand, a mixed look of horror and determination set upon his face. Narcissa was a strong woman in her own rights, taught from an early childhood in not only magical, but physical defense. She was as deadly without a wand, as she was with one, and had no problem with violence. Her hair, which had been arranged in curls on top of her head, had mostly fallen from its style during her hurried run towards the office. It framed her angry blue eyes giving her a wild look. Fury took control of her mind and her actions; within seconds, she had crossed the room, grabbed the wand from Lucius' hand, and planted her fist in his stomach. They stayed that way for several seconds; Lucius doubled over in pain, Narcissa's fist still firmly imbedded in his gut, and Draco still laughing as though his brain had not yet come to comprehend that the curse had ended. She finally pulled her arm back, repositioning at his neck, where she grabbed a handful of his robe.
"If you so much as point that wand in my son's general direction again, I swear that I will rip off your personal wand," she ground out, her gaze flickering down to the lower regions of his body for a moment, before returning to his eyes. "Do you understand me, you pathetic sniveling little worm?" He nodded weakly. "Then get out," she growled, shoving him away from her and towards the door. He stumbled out the door, making a hasty retreat to the other end of the manor, or at least as far away from his wife as he could manage for the moment.
Narcissa now turned towards her son. She loved her son at least as much as she hated her husband, if not more. He had stopped twitching, and his laughter had died down to an inane muttering. She knelt beside the boy and gathered him into her arms, stroking his hair and whispering words of comfort. Dark droplets of crimson blood formed on his lips, and dripped to the floor. Seeing this, Narcissa wiped the blood away, and cast a simple spell to heal his tongue. She whimpered as she rocked him back and forth in her arms, her tears falling, and mingling with his blood on the polished wooden floors. "It shouldn't be this way, dear heart. It won't be this way for much longer. She will save us. She gave us her word, and her word has always been good. Soon, you will be free from this hateful life. Soon, we will both be free. I promise you that."
***
Kristin: I was going to put in Christmas, but I liked it where I ended it. Christmas will be the next chapter.
Special Thanks to:
Silver Moon Goddess
Falconess
Solarmistress17
Firefly#1: Thank you. I did fairly well.
Final-Fan: This chapter should have answered your question. Don't worry you weren't a downer. Radiation is only one of the ways to get leukemia. I simply chose to have her get it another way.
Lunarian Amethyst: I'm flattered.
Dingzhe no Megami
'Sir/Lady Lupin' aka 'Heiress of Slitherin'
alexz
Disclaimer: They do not belong to me, they have never belonged to me, and they never will belong to me.
Kristin: I'M HAPPY! I was sick and my voice wasn't doing too great, but I managed to sing my song without screwing up. This is really good considering I did it without music and a small mistake would have been pretty noticeable. Yay for me!
WARNING!!! This chapter has a bit of Lucius bashing, and a bit of child abuse, however, that part is kind of important if you are trying to figure some things out before I tell you.
***
Chapter Fifteen
Chibi Chibi jogged across the frozen grounds of Hogwarts, her heavy winter robes slapping against her legs. She had stayed with her father, talking, for nearly forty-five minutes, before leaving to go see Draco. She paused for a moment to catch her breath when he came into view. Now able to breathe easier, she bent down and gathered a handful of snow. She then crept up behind the off-guard young man, and dumped the snow down the back of his robe. He visibly jumped and screeched, sounding much like a wounded cat, while he vainly tried to fish the snow out of his robe. Chibi Chibi fell down to the ground, shaking with laughter. Draco glared pitifully at her for a moment before joining her in her laughter.
*
From one of the windows in Usagi's rooms, Sirius stood, gaping at the scene that had just unfolded in front of him. "My daughter, and a Malfoy?" Usagi smiled ruefully at his indignant tone of voice and walked up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head against his back.
"I said the same thing when I first figured it out, but he's not just a Malfoy. His mother..." she trailed off. Sirius nodded in agreement.
"Yes, his mother has to be taken into consideration, of course. But still, a Malfoy!" Usagi shook her head against Sirius' back, smiling sadly. She circled around her husband so that she could look up at his face.
"Yes, a Malfoy. She'll be good for him, Sirius. The poor boy needs to have a little bit of laughter in his life, and she will bring that to him. Just give him a chance." Sirius raised an eyebrow at his wife.
"If you've forgiven him for what he did to you," he paused as she nodded, "Then, I suppose that I can give him a chance."
*
Draco and Chibi Chibi sat on top of a boulder by the lake, huddled together for warmth. They had been sitting in absolute quiet for nearly twenty minutes, neither wanting to break the comfortable silence. Finally, Draco spoke up. "So, do you know how..." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and nodded.
"A while ago, I was visiting one of my mum's witch friends in Germany who lives as a muggle. There are certain roads in Germany that have no speed limits, and people can be a little inane at times. We were in a bad car wreck, and were rushed to a muggle hospital. I needed blood, or I would have died then. There was something...not right about the blood transfusion that they injected me with. It gave me HTLV-1. That progressed into leukemia, and here I am. Or, at least, that's about as much as I understand about it. I'm probably off on a few things, but you get the general idea." They lapsed back into a comfortable silence. Chibi Chibi yawned and laid her head on Draco's shoulder, ignoring the way that he tensed for a moment. He glanced down at her and an eyebrow shot up.
"Your neck is better," he murmured, and reached out a finger to stoke the previously gashed skin, inwardly smirking when she shivered. She glanced up at him through her eyelashes.
"Yeah, my mum healed it." He nodded, more as an acknowledgment than anything else, then resumed staring out over the lake. He glanced down when he felt a package being shoved into his hand. "Happy Christmas."
"What's this?" Chibi Chibi giggled.
"Why don't you open it and find out?" He pulled the wrapping off of the present to reveal a leather bond book, with a small, circular indention plated with silver on the cover. He flipped the book open and fingered the blank, creamy pages.
"A journal?"
"Close, but not quite." She pulled an identical book from her pocket along with a self-filling quill. "You see," she began as she scribbled on the first page of her book, "It is half of a pair. The books are magically linked. You write on a page of one of the books, and then when you tap it once with your wand, it instantly disappears from that book, and is sent to the other one," here she produced her wand and tapped the page that she had written on once. "Now, open your book to the first page and tap twice." Draco did as he was told, and saw Chibi Chibi's familiar handwriting appear.
"This is amazing. Where did you get these?"
"My mum helped me enchant them. Tap once to send, tap twice to make the writing appear, and tap three times to delete the message. Do you like it?" Draco looked at her hopeful face and could almost feel his heart breaking.
"I love it, but I can't use it." He winced as her face fell.
"Why not," she asked.
"If my father were to find out...well I don't think that he would approve." Chibi Chibi suddenly grinned.
"Is that all? Well, you don't need to worry about that." Without warning, she grabbed his hand, produced a knife from her pocket, and slashed the tip of his index finger. Draco watched in horrified fascination as she let his blood drip into the indention on the cover of the journal. After a few moments, she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, and wrapped it around his finger. She then waved her wand over the book, and murmured a spell in a language that sounded like nothing he had ever heard before. As she spoke, the blood was absorbed into the leather of the book, and glowed a dark red for a moment. When the glow subsided, she handed the book back to him. "Now, only you will be able to see what is truly written on the pages. To everyone else, it will appear to be filled with teenage trivialities." She laughed at the disbelieving look on his face. "My mum thinks that the summer is nothing more than extra time to study things that aren't taught in school."
"Ah, well, I got you something too, but I sent it away to have something done to it, and it hasn't returned yet. I can owl it to you before Christmas, though. Are you staying here for all of the vacation?"
"No. We'll stay for about three more days, and then we're going to portkey back home. I'll get you the address later."
*
Draco stood in his father's office in Malfoy Manor, suddenly wishing to be anywhere but there. He had been standing there for about ten minutes, and his father had yet to look up from the papers that he was studying on his desk. Finally, he looked up, and favored his only child with a chilling glare. "Do you know why I felt the need to speak with you?" He arched an eyebrow at his son's silence. "You are a disgrace to this family, Draco. You are friends with the daughter of an auror," he spat the words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. "There is no excuse for that, you insolent child. You should be punished for consorting with the enemy."
Draco remained silent as he watched his father lift his wand from his desk, and point it at him. He was strangely calm, almost detached, as if he was simply witnessing this happening to somebody else, not himself. He found it unusual that he was suddenly noticing things that would usually escape him, such as the fly that was buzzing near the open window, and the house elf that had led him to this room, slipping silently through the door. "Crucio," his father snarled.
Draco stood there for a moment, feeling nothing but a small ball of annoyance gathering in the pit of his stomach. Then, it happened. The pain was unbearable, as though someone was raking their nails on his brain. The coppery taste of blood overwhelmed his taste buds from where he had bit his tongue, trying to not scream; trying to not give his father the perverse pleasure of hearing him scream. He legs gave out beneath him, sending him sprawling to the ground. A fire from deep inside of him seemed to be trying to fight the curse, obstructing his sight with visions of a woman, no an angel, dressed in pure white, reaching out to him, his mother and several other women behind her. Above it all, he could hear laughter; the cruel laughter of a psychotic man who has recently given up on all hope. It took his poor, pain-filled brain several minutes to realize that the laughter was coming from him. No, his father would not hear him scream, but he would see him loosing his sanity.
This was the scene that Narcissa Malfoy was led to, by the same house elf that had informed Draco of his father's wish to 'talk'. Her son lay on the ground, his body convulsing with pain, his eyes rolled back in his head, and insane laughter pouring from his lips. Her husband stood, his wand in hand, a mixed look of horror and determination set upon his face. Narcissa was a strong woman in her own rights, taught from an early childhood in not only magical, but physical defense. She was as deadly without a wand, as she was with one, and had no problem with violence. Her hair, which had been arranged in curls on top of her head, had mostly fallen from its style during her hurried run towards the office. It framed her angry blue eyes giving her a wild look. Fury took control of her mind and her actions; within seconds, she had crossed the room, grabbed the wand from Lucius' hand, and planted her fist in his stomach. They stayed that way for several seconds; Lucius doubled over in pain, Narcissa's fist still firmly imbedded in his gut, and Draco still laughing as though his brain had not yet come to comprehend that the curse had ended. She finally pulled her arm back, repositioning at his neck, where she grabbed a handful of his robe.
"If you so much as point that wand in my son's general direction again, I swear that I will rip off your personal wand," she ground out, her gaze flickering down to the lower regions of his body for a moment, before returning to his eyes. "Do you understand me, you pathetic sniveling little worm?" He nodded weakly. "Then get out," she growled, shoving him away from her and towards the door. He stumbled out the door, making a hasty retreat to the other end of the manor, or at least as far away from his wife as he could manage for the moment.
Narcissa now turned towards her son. She loved her son at least as much as she hated her husband, if not more. He had stopped twitching, and his laughter had died down to an inane muttering. She knelt beside the boy and gathered him into her arms, stroking his hair and whispering words of comfort. Dark droplets of crimson blood formed on his lips, and dripped to the floor. Seeing this, Narcissa wiped the blood away, and cast a simple spell to heal his tongue. She whimpered as she rocked him back and forth in her arms, her tears falling, and mingling with his blood on the polished wooden floors. "It shouldn't be this way, dear heart. It won't be this way for much longer. She will save us. She gave us her word, and her word has always been good. Soon, you will be free from this hateful life. Soon, we will both be free. I promise you that."
***
Kristin: I was going to put in Christmas, but I liked it where I ended it. Christmas will be the next chapter.
Special Thanks to:
Silver Moon Goddess
Falconess
Solarmistress17
Firefly#1: Thank you. I did fairly well.
Final-Fan: This chapter should have answered your question. Don't worry you weren't a downer. Radiation is only one of the ways to get leukemia. I simply chose to have her get it another way.
Lunarian Amethyst: I'm flattered.
Dingzhe no Megami
'Sir/Lady Lupin' aka 'Heiress of Slitherin'
alexz