Rating: T for language.
Summary: Days before his sixth year at Hogwarts starts, Harry witnesses a strangling in Diagon Alley. Upon returning to school, he falls in love, without forgetting for a moment that there is a vicious murderer on the loose. The new Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher is entangled in a puzzling web of deceit and abuse of which Harry, Dumbledore, Fudge, Snape, Filch, the Malfoys and the dead each hold but one piece.
KILL YOUR DADDIES
Prologue: Damage, Ltd.
August 9th, 1971, Grimmauld Place 12
There were stains of food and drink all over the upholstery, but neither of them paid those any mind. Being the next youngest, they had been ordered to bring up Regulus, get him out of sight, since he had made a total fool out of himself, puking on the curtains, into one of the Etruscian vases and into the scandalously low neckline of Bellatrix. For once, he had managed to be more of a disgrace to the family than his older brother was, no mean feat. Naturally, Sirius and his cousin had been smart enough to shanghai some more booze while they did.
Now Regulus was out cold on the floor, with his head slipping off a dirty gold-tassled pillow a little more with every snore he made, and they had no plans of going back down and acting grown-up again.
Sirius had heard people talk about the upcoming event down-stairs, but he couldn't quite believe it. His snootiest cousin, the one who never passed up an occasion to rub Remus's nose into the fact that he was a half-blood, the one who never ceased to bug him about his hanging around in 'mixed company' as she called it, was going to marry that slick, underhanded, pointy-faced parvenu of a ...
'Malfoy? Malfoy!' he asked, shaking his head.
'Yes. Lucius,' she answered, making sure to look unruffled. But the way she was playing with the ribbons of her bodice, looking at nothing in particular, was a dead give-away. She wasn't too sure of the choice.
Still shaking his head, Sirius said, 'I've always known you were raving mad.' He leaned back and stretched out on the floor, then arched his back like a cat and sighed, on the carpet before the long chair Narcissa was in.
'Thank you, cousin. It seems to run in the family,' she answered, looking down at him.
'I bet you fifty Galleons he's worth shit in the sack,' Sirius said, grinning sartorially, turning toward her and leaning his head on his hand.
'I love your word-choice, Sirius. Worth shit in the sack, right? Compared to whom?' she laughed, feeling pleasantly adrift, not wholy there at all anymore. Not anywhere. She stuck a leg out to her cousin, holding it over his face, bringing it closer slowly.
Sirius raised his hand and tickled the back of her knee. 'There is a method to your madness, isn't there?' he said, kissing her stockinged ankle. He still had his hand under her knee and was sliding it up the back of her thigh.
Narcissa nodded, hiking up her robe and skirts. Her family was as good as ruined, and the long and short of it was that they needed the Malfoys' support. Besides, she didn't think Lucius looked all that bad. But if what Sirius said were true ...
She finished her punch, made her two years younger cousin finish his, and did not quite remember what they'd got up to the next day, only that it had been good and the room they were in looked a disgrace when they were done. And Regulus, bless him, had managed to sleep through all of it. The laugher, the bumps, the giggles, and more importantly, the pushing and pulling, the moans, whimpers and groaning.
Three months later, Narcissa knew it had not been good enough for the trouble it had got her in. But Bellatrix was there to help her smooth out the waves, and Lucius had always had the good grace of pretending not to know. And it would take care of itself, eventually, and disappear.
TBC
