"The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito." (Austin O'Malley)
Eleanor raked her fingers through her hair as she tried to compose the letter she had to write to one of her student's parents, a Mr. Weasly, who apparently worked at the Ministry in the Department of Muggle Affairs. It seemed he had brought home with him and then hexed some muggle artifacts, which was fine with her, as long as his twin sons George and Frank didn't take them to school with them and used them on their fellow students in her classes.
Agreed, the toaster that tried to snap people's hands had been amusing for a while, until the damn thing tried to actually toast the fingers of its unsuspecting victims, even without being plugged in! Now she had two of her class staying overnight with Mrs. Pomfrey for second and third degree burns.
It was hard to concentrate, because her mind kept wandering back to Lucius Malfoy's two letters she had received during the weekend of the obscuroom incident and then last Tuesday. The first letter had included her portkey bracelet and the message inside had struck her as terse and stressed. The second letter had been more in keeping with his usual epistolary style. Both however had been sent through the WOM with a Gillington postmark. It seemed discretion was still the order of the day.
Finally she read through her composition, hoping it was sufficiently grave and then called for Murry, her assigned house-elf to deliver it to the owlery. With the elf gone she was finally free to attack her wardrobe and get ready for a visit to Malfoy Manor. She felt a bit severe after writing the letter of complaint to the Weaslys and decided on a tall, black, button-up silk dress with a tight bodice and slim skirt that reminded her a bit of a 19th century lady's riding dress. Next she slipped on her portkey bracelet and stood back from her desk. "Abraxas," she intoned and found herself almost immediately in Lucius' bedroom.
She looked around with a wry smile. It seemed her lover had redirected the portkey before sending it back to her. He must have thought that preliminaries like meeting in the library just were not required any more, and that one could proceed directly to business. She shook her head in amusement. Next, of course, she noticed, that he was actually not there.
The room was empty, and really looked somewhat disheveled, compared to the last time she'd seen it. Aside from a dim oil lamp in a corner, the room was unlit, the incense burners were empty, and on the bed lay a heap of clothes, books and documents. She also noticed a splash of color on his nightstand. A delicate cut crystal vial held a single flame-colored tiger lily. Smiling, she tiptoed over to the bathroom and gave a quick rap on the door. No answer. When she peered in, she found it dark and also empty.
Another door at the foot of the bed led to a room she had not been in before. She again gave a knock to announce herself and then stepped into the chamber beyond. The room was better lit and as she took in her surroundings, she saw sudden movement: a house elf who had sat cross-legged on the heavy desk in the center of the room apparently polishing a silver candlestick, jumped off with an alarmed squeak and now cowered before her.
She thought she remembered the long nose, dirty pillowcase and sad, bugging eyes from her last visit. That surely was the house elf Lucius had given her cloak to the first time she had been at the house. "Dobby?" she asked. The little elf before her nodded and shrunk even more. "Please don't tell master, Dobby sat on his desk!" he pleaded with her in a quavering voice. She raised her hands, palms out. "'Course not, I promise. Where is he anyway?" The house elf looked up at her. "Dobby does not know, Eleanor Sartorius. Master left for London four days ago, and he has not been back since."
She lifted her eyebrows. "Do you know what he wanted to do?" she asked. "Dobby does not know, but mistress says he is down there whoring when she is all overwhelmed with organizing the big charity ball for St. Mungo's Hospital. She is very upset and says he does this every year, leaving all the work to her, and that it is most inconsiderate of him." Next Dobby looked horrorstruck at the silver candlestick he was still holding. "Oh, no, Dobby spoke ill of master." With that he proceeded to hit himself over the head with it, until Eleanor reached down and grabbed it.
"Hey, no time for that, Dobby. If you want to hit anyone, you should beat your mistress. After all she's the one who said it," The house elf shot her a surprised and shocked look but at least stopped punishing himself. "So obviously Narcissa is angry at him and has not thought of contacting the Ministry, filing a lost person's claim," she stated. "Oh no, not the Ministry!" exclaimed Dobby.
Eleanor thought for a moment. She was pretty sure that Narcissa Malfoy's general assessment of her husband's activities and his motivation to stay away from the organization of a social event was pretty shrewd, but she doubted that she was right on this count. There was too much going on with the race for the homunculus and Lucius' feud with George Lepidus for him to just take off and disappear for a week indulging in some debauchery. In fact, it was more likely that Lucius would have returned for their meeting, if he had been capable of it. The whole situation stank of foul play. Quickly she had made up her mind.
"Dobby, I think your mistress is wrong. I think your master is in trouble, serious trouble!" For a moment the house elf's eyes seemed to light up with an expression akin to hope, then he lifted the candlestick once more. Quickly Eleanor blocked another hit. "It's okay, Dobby. I'm sure it's not easy serving him, but that's what you must do. So will you help me save him?"
He nodded, ears drooping. "What can Dobby do?" he asked. "Well," she suggested. "If we had a hint, some idea where he was planning to go, who he was going to see…" The house elf looked down and thought for a while, then suddenly he fastened his large greenish eyes on her. "Does Eleanor Sartorius know how to skry?" he asked. She looked at him, understanding dawning on her. "Yes," she answered excitedly. "I do!" Dobby jumped up. "Master has a skrying bowl, and we have some of master's hair. Eleanor Sartorius can see where he is."
Eleanor rubbed her hands. "Let's get started. Help me, please, Dobby." The elf nodded and gave a shrill whistle. Soon another house elf appeared. They briefly conferred and then both scrambled from the room.
She took a moment to look around and found that she stood in a vaulted study dominated by a heavy old
oak desk and a huge cupboard that would have easily held a small dinner party. Three large gothic windows looked out into the darkness of night. The center of the wood floor was covered by a large red, black and grey carpet depicting geomantic figures.
She walked along the walls and inspected bookshelves filled with documents and magical treatises. Woodprints hang framed between them, and to her horror she discovered that they were pages cut from the Malleus Maleficiarum, the infamous Witches' Hammer depicting scenes of torture and execution of wizards and witches in grim and sadistic detail. She hugged herself. Whoever had decorated this room had had an abiding and deep-seated hatred of muggles and liked to remind himself of it. The Malleus had been one of the most hateful documents ever produced by muggles and had brought pain and horror beyond count to the wizarding world and to many innocent muggles as well.
As she was still immersed in her observations, the house elves returned. Dobby balanced a heavy water-filled brass basin, and the other house elf carried Lucius Malfoy's hairbrush, festooned with strands of his pale blond hair. She looked at them. "Great work! Please set everything down on the desk. I hope I won't be long."
The elves complied. Then Dobby looked up at her. "Does Eleanor Sartorius require anything else?" he asked. She shook her head. "No, Dobby, but I'd like you to stay. If I can call up a location, perhaps you can help me find out where it is. Does anyone come to this room? Draco perhaps, or Narcissa?" "Oh no, master's rooms are forbidden to anyone else, just as he never goes to mistress's rooms."
She felt reassured that she would not have to put wards on the door and sat down at his desk before the skrying bowl. She picked a hair out of the brush and floated it on the water. Then she unsheathed her wand and performed the gestures and incantations required to skrying. Moments later a silvery mist formed on the water and as it cleared she found herself looking out of Lucius Malfoy's eyes.
It seemed Narcissa had been dead wrong. If there had been any debauchery going on, it was long over, as Lucius seemed to simply be looking up at a high vaulted brick ceiling. His gaze was unsteady, occasionally deteriorating into blurred double vision. 'Legless and half passed out on some floor?' she speculated, then wrenched her gaze away and assumed a position where she could look down on him. As she immersed herself in the scene to the exclusion of everything else and became her own invisible persona she grew aware of her other senses. A very unpleasant smell of decay and putrefaction filled the cold, clammy room. And then she saw him.
Lucius was stretched out on a rough stone floor. Someone had bound his hands and feet with thick hemp ropes and forced a gag into his mouth that was tied in place with a strip of his black shirt. He was fully dressed, his cloak spread out underneath him, but the right sleeves of his shirt and coat had been ripped off and his exposed arm was heavily wrapped in white bandages.
On the black velvet of his coat lay several metal instruments, including a blood-letting knife, and the white cotton wrappings were saturated with blood at the bend of his elbow. She looked into his face and saw that his skin was almost as pale as the aura of blond hair that surrounded it. His ice-grey eyes seemed dimmed and clouded and she thought that he was fighting to hold them open as his heavy, long-lashed lids kept slipping down for longer and longer times. Lucius was slowly dying. She was sure of it, as she was sure of why he was dying.
As she shifted her position yet again she saw next to him a wooden box filled with dirt, and on it the naked body of a child of about six years, even though it seemed quite small for its age. The child had flaming red hair, just like hers, just like her grandfather's, she realized with a start. However, as she peered into the face she almost cried out with horror.
The child's features were completely blank. She felt with a jolt that the infant had no soul, that this moving, breathing body was just an empty shell, something not dead, yet not really living. The eyes were white, like boiled eggs, without pupils or irises, the features, even the sexual characteristics just rudimentary, mere sketches. As she tried to get her shocked breathing under control to keep the image steady, the homunculus opened his mouth that was caked with dried blood and started to scream. She moaned. The high-pitched screams were completely inhuman and sounded if anything like the screeches of a cat in heat.
Next to the crate, on the floor, Lucius began to feebly fight his bindings. As the empty eyes of the child blindly searched the room, Eleanor suddenly became aware of a connection. She fought her physical revulsion at being in any way in touch with this thing, but she could feel the bond despite herself. Desperately she waved to Dobby, who climbed up her chair and stood next to her on the seat, peering into the bowl. "Do you know where this is?" she whispered. The house elf shook his head. "Dobby does not know."
She took a deep breath. This meant that if she was going to find Lucius before it was too late, her only chance was to strengthen the bond to the homunculus and follow her instincts. Dumbledore had mentioned to her that as a Sartorius she would be able to rely on a connection. She directed her attention back to the bowl and bent her full awareness to the screaming abomination blindly staring up at her from the rippling water of the skrying bowl. With a start she realized that she had felt a faint echo of her current sensations outside the hidden obscuroom in the bookstore. Only then she had attributed it to witnessing the wanton destruction in the office.
A few seconds later the creak of a door distracted her and as she moved her focus she saw a door in the darker depths of the vault open and a black-clad man enter and step into the light. She had only once caught a brief glimpse of him when she had used the imperium detego spell on Filch, but she was sure that this had to be George Lepdius, the chief Death Eater. He was a tall, gaunt man of about fifty-five or sixty.
For a moment she saw his face as he seemed to stare directly into her eyes and she felt herself recoil. Some magical accident had scarred the right side of his face, where she looked into an empty eye socket. The right corner of his mouth was missing and what was left was curled up in a feral sneer revealing several yellowed long teeth. The remaining left side of his features reminded her that he must have been a very striking and aristocratic looking man in his youth and before his disfigurement. His cruel lips were narrow and sharply cut, his nose arched in a blade-sharp curve and the iris of his almond-shaped left eye seemed almost as black as its pupil. He still had a full head of raven-black hair with two gray-white streaks in it that started at his temples.
Presently he walked past her and knelt down by Lucius. She drew nearer and saw his bony fingers unknot the bandage and unwind the wrappings from the blond wizard's arm. He was not gentle, but while her lover stared at him out of hate-filled grey eyes, she did not hear him make a single sound through his gag.
Presently Lepidus started to talk in a quiet, toneless voice, taunting him. "Now you are trying to honor the Malfoy name, putting on a brave front, now when it's too late. Your father and I gave you every opportunity to become the greatest wizard that ever served the Dark Lord, but you threw it all away. You were wavering even before, always putting your own ease and pleasure before your duty, defying us. Look at Bellatrix, stuck in Azkaban, because she stood up for her beliefs, and just a woman, she puts you to shame! And now this treachery, and over what? This stupid, red-haired Sartorius witch you are besotted with. You are married already, and what do you have to show for it? One boy to continue the line, while other muggle-loving wizards like the Weaslys breed like rabbits."
He ripped the end of the bandage from where it had stuck to the skin and grabbed a bowl and the bleeding knife, deepening the broad jagged gash he had cut into Lucius' arm before. Blood welled up and dripped into the bowl, while Lepidus resumed his monologue. The homunculus was still wailing feebly.
"So what if Narcissa doesn't want to ruin her figure with another pregnancy? She is pureblood and you should teach her her duties. Your mother certainly knew better. But then again, your father never learned of her sacrifice. Well, I think I should tell you, so you know before you die. Your two older sisters that looked so like your father, and you, nothing of your father in you, spitting image of your mother, have you ever wondered why? I am responsible for your birth."
That remark finally got a raise out of Lucius, who again fought his restraints, violently shook his head and tried to shout past his gag. Lepidus sneered at him. "Sorry, Lucius, would love to hear what you have to say about that, but I can't risk you using your mouth for spellwork, a nice 'accio wand', perhaps? Anyway, if you think I lay with your mother, you're wrong, had too much respect for her and for your father for that.
But I told her the ancient magic she needed in order to bear your father a son, a boy to continue the line and the name. She really loved him. Beats me why, he wasn't very good to her, but she knew his desire for an heir; and he was growing desperate. So I told her, helped her perform the spells and seal the curse. I didn't want another old family to go. A few weeks later she got pregnant with you. When the time was up she knew she had to pay the price, but she never told your father. Then, with the first breath you took, she gave up hers as the spells demanded. Her life became yours. Now that's dedication to family for you. And now look at you and your pathetic whore of a wife and spoilt brat of a son. That's what your mother's life bought for the Malfoys? The three of you disgust me!"
He put the bowl down that had filled with Lucius' blood while he had been talking and brutally rewrapped the bandage. "You know nothing would please me more than to kill Eleanor Sartorius before your eyes and watch you watch her die. I'll make her go like that Lenting girl you killed, but you won't have your voice and wand to help her along. She'll live and suffer as long as it will please me. We'll see, if baby Falco here isn't too hungry and you last long enough, I'll give you both a good sending off." Lucius spat at him through the gag, but Lepidus got up, gave him a friendly kick in the ribs and then bent over the homunculus with his bowl and started to feed the screaming child.
Eleanor watched a moment longer, immobilized by the horror of what she had just heard. She now saw tears streak down Lucius' face. He had his eyes shut tight and his head averted, so Lepidus would not see him cry. Then she lifted her wand and erased the image.
For a moment she rubbed her hands across her face, feeling pretty much like crying herself. There was only one course of action she could take. She needed to rescue Lucius before the bleeding killed him, and she needed to destroy the foul creation in the box that thrived and grew on his blood. However, this time she could not send any letters to the Ministry calling down the aurors. She didn't know where the dungeon was, would not know until she got there. Lucius needed help now. She had no time to locate him and then waste valuable hours arguing with people and getting help. She turned to Dobby. "Please help me one more time," she asked him. "I will need a warm cloak and I will need a broom. I'll find your master and I'll free him."
The house elf nodded, sniffing though his long nose. "Dobby served master's mother," he said sadly. "Dobby loved her. She was very good to all the house elves and she was beautiful as a Veela. Dobby never knew." Eleanor watched as he jumped back to the floor and soon after returned dragging one of Lucius heavy fur-lined winter coats behind him, and his master's black broom. "Master went to London using a Gringotts portkey," he said. She nodded, knowing that Gringotts routinely issued portkeys for their lobby during business hours to customers who had deposited more than one million galleons with them. She shrugged into the heavy cloak and then followed Dobby who took her back into the bedroom where one of the windows opened onto a narrow balcony. She mounted Lucius' broom, attuned herself to the connection that she still felt to Falco's homunculus and lifted up into the night sky.