A/N – The last chapter, barring an epilogue, which should be completed very soon. The very last segment of this chapter was a drabble named 'Hypocrisy', which I put in Speculations. I thought it fitting.

Thanks so much to all my reviewers.

Disclaimer – I don't own Harry Potter. I'm making no money from this story. Don't sue.

Chapter 18 – Ambition Unleashed

Time passed, and soon their years at Hogwarts, the last years of their childhood, came to an uneasy end. Some went to university, some went straight into rich, idle affluence, some went into jobs, and some went into Auror training.

Thirty of them went into the Death Eaters, among them Lucius Malfoy and his younger brother.

They were only eighteen years old.

The Eating of Death was a sordid business, they found. Not that either of them had expected it to be glorious and romantic, but they'd thought, at the very least, that it would be more than dressing up and terrorizing muggles and muggle lovers –

Terrorising them.

Torturing and killing them.

Indulging in every possible sin and depravity, answering to no law but Voldemort's law, restrained by nothing – not mercy, not conscience, and not simple human empathy. Service with the Dark Lord was a license to let loose all the demons and darkness that normally lay buried, hidden and denied, in the depths of the human soul.

The senseless killing revolted him. Every muggle girl or woman he killed reminded him of Kate, but he knew they were watching him, waiting for any signs of weakness or indecision…Grimly determined, he steeled himself to atrocity.

It was necessary:

For his continued survival

(A young mother, fiercely barring the door, screaming for her children to run)

For the assassinations he was slowly, carefully planning

(A green flash and a young, angelic boy stumbled and fell, his face contorted with terror)

For his dreams of a de Sauvigny future

(A young girl, helpless, vulnerable, turned to him, begging, her eyes clear, terrified green…)

For legitimacy.

Anton de Sauvigny, Dominic's father, arranged a position for Luc in the London branch of the House. This small mutiny against Anne's complete and utter ostracism of her elder, bastard son was a telling indication of the way the wind was blowing in the House – once, she might have been able to enforce her mandates. Once, she might have been able to keep Luc away from the family, and vice versa.

But not now.

Now, he was nineteen years old, and everything that Dominic and Michel had promised he would be – intelligent, pragmatic, financially perceptive, and above all, progressive. Too long had the House been ruled by conservative, Gryffindoric leaders who lacked the divine spark of madness and inspiration that had so characterized the first Jean-Marc, the great founder of the trading giant that had once spanned a whole empire. This bastard Malfoy, who was of the blood, but not raised within the limitations and conventions of the House – he could take them higher, and further, than they had ever dreamed of rising…

Foolishness, of course. It could never happen – there were too many others before him in the legitimate chain of succession. Aethan the current Lord, and Aethan's brothers Julian and Andreas. Their sons: James, Sean, Adam and Tarquin. Dominic and Michel.

And, finally, Caine himself: Caine, the golden, privileged youth who was so diametrically opposite to Luc, and whom the traditionalists regarded as the most promising leader of his generation. Caine, who hated Luc, and whom Luc hated just as bitterly.

Luc could only come to power if, and only if, all of those with a greater, legitimate claim were out of the way. Surely, that could never happen.

"My lord," he spoke carefully, respectfully, his eyes lowered and his head bowed. "Have I your permission to pursue a personal vendetta?"

"You would seek to waste time on your petty affairs in my service, young Malfoy? You have not truly dedicated your whole being to our Cause?"

Greatly daring, he raised his eyes to Voldemort's red, hypnotic ones. In later years, after death and defeat, Voldemort would shed his human skin and begin to resemble the monster he truly was, but now, in the years of his true power, he was the charismatic leader of every pureblood legend, every glorious childhood stereotype…

"My lord," he answered cautiously, "everything I do is in the service of the Cause. But I believe I could be of far more service as the leader of the House of de Sauvigny, rather than a minor, bastard scion."

Thin, harsh fingers gripped his chin and forced his neck up to an extremely uncomfortable angle. "I've been watching you, young Malfoy. You killed all those green-eyed muggles without a single hint of remorse. I think that everything that you do is in your own service, not mine." A laugh, terrible in its amusement. "But it pleases me to watch you at work; you're so conscientiously thorough. Very well. I am curious to see how you will eliminate everyone who stands in your way while retaining your lily-white reputation. Your hypocrisy is always so very entertaining."

There was no hint of anger, or resentment, or anything but perfect calm as he bowed his head in acceptance of his lord's verdict. Voldemort watched, amused, as he left the room. The boy hated him, hated serving him, and hated everything he stood for. However, he would continue to cooperate so long as he held out the chance of achieving everything he had left to dream of…

At twenty years old, in the first glorious flush of adulthood, Caine de Sauvigny – rich, handsome, and charismatic – should have been happy. He should have been wildly confident, convinced that he could shape the world to his own desires, take what life gave him and turn it into nothing but success. Instead, he walked with extreme caution, mistrusted everybody, including his own family, and was, under the bravado, secretly terrified.

He was beginning to feel hunted. His two uncles had died in an explosion at the London headquarters of the House. Months later, his closest companion and oldest friend Adam was killed in a disastrous Auror mission. Tarquin and his muggleborn boyfriend had overdosed on cocaine in their flat in Soho, sparking a furor over the unhealthy muggle influence on the youth of wizarding society. And finally, James and Sean had gone overseas one weekend and never returned.

The Aurors, with no time for a story of a cousinly feud, dismissed the attacks as coincidence. If, indeed, they were deliberate, then there was a plausible explanation – the muggle-loving House of de Sauvigny was a major economic pillar of the economy, and surely these deaths were merely aimed at destabilizing it. No one listened to his increasingly hysterical tales of a malevolent, secretly ambitious half-brother who was plotting to take control of the House.

But Caine's sixth sense was thrumming like a plucked string. The next in line after him, now that the others were dead or disappeared, were Dominic and Michel, who were Malfoy's puppets. They would turn the House over to Luc, claiming that he was by far the best candidate. No one would object, because everyone admired and pitied the bastard Malfoy, the safe Malfoy, the tamed Slytherin, who had once loved a muggleborn…

For years, Caine had hated, resented and secretly feared his Slytherin half-brother. Watching Luc, watching his easy ability and his vivid charisma, seeing the fascination he could inspire, was like watching a darker, more fully realised reflection of himself. He had recognized long ago, jealously, that Luc was stronger than he was - stronger, more ruthless, and infinitely more determined to succeed. The resentful sense of inadequacy had hardly been crippling, until Luc had intruded on the one place Caine had been sure he would never have to compete with his brother – the business side of the House. And the slight wariness had never blossomed into anything more than momentary fear, until his cousins began to die…

One by one by one, methodically, he eliminated them, all those who stood in his way. First, the explosion – a crippling shock, one that he, too, had so nearly been caught in, should anyone suspect his motives. Then poor Adam, dying so nobly in the line of duty, and Tarquin, caught cohabiting with his mudblood whore.

He could say the word now, with all of the appropriate prejudice and contempt. He'd been practicing.

James and Sean, the twins, had been taken and murdered together, and Aethan had had a fatal heart attack brought on by stress, grief, and overwork. That left, after two years of concentrated effort, only Caine. But he was willing to wait, to draw it out, to make it the most exquisitely tortuous torment – all the others had been mere obstructions, obstacles in his path, and he had dealt with them dispassionately.

But Caine… He hated his half-brother as he had never before hated anyone else. Caine had his family's unconditional acceptance and love, while Luc was incidental, a second, accidental son sharing in the heir's shadow. Caine had every single opportunity in the world presented on a silver platter and laid at his feet, while Luc had to fight for every advantage, for every scrap of power and influence.

Caine was legitimate, and would – unless fate and a stronger will stepped in – inherit everything that Luc had ever desired. In Luc's eyes, nothing – absolutely nothing – would ever absolve him of that one, unforgivable sin…

Somehow, Moody was not surprised to see the identity of the latest Death Eater victim.

"So someone was hunting him," he said, grimly amused.

Harcourt squinted down at the sprawled, stiffened body of Caine de Sauvigny, the golden child of the House. "Malfoy was at the Lestrange's charity ball all last night," he said dryly. "He made a point to be noticed; there are full colour photos in the gossip columns."

Moody grunted. "That doesn't mean shit, and you know it. He's a canny bastard. He'll have got someone else to do it."

"No," Harcourt said absently, bending down to examine the bloody, bluish-white corpse. "He might have got someone else to do the others, but he would have done this himself. It's the culmination of years of ambition and hatred – the others were business, but this was intensely personal."

"You sound so sure of it."

"Oh, everybody knew it. It was open knowledge in Slytherin."

"Then why," Moody growled, "if everyone knew of this famous hatred, of this unlikely ambition, does no one report it, or do anything about it?"

Harcourt looked startled. "Why? Because we were all Slytherins, and he's a Malfoy. Because everyone liked Luc, and everyone hated Caine. Because if he did, indeed, succeed in gaining the top spot, then it would be much better to be firmly on his side than against him." He shrugged. "It's better, sometimes, to be discreet; until you're sure it's to your advantage to talk."

"Discretion," Moody said, ominously calm. In the five or so years he'd worked with this young Slytherin cub, there had been a number of such moments of ominous calm. "You don't care that he's been deluded into thinking that he can use the Death Eaters for his own purposes? That he's murdered eight of his relatives and who knows how many others in this race to the top?"

"Oh, yes, I care," Harcourt answered, a flash of heat showing through his normal calm. "But until we can prove it, there's nothing we can do. He was seen, all night, at the charity ball. He has alibis for every single other murder, too; there's no way we can pin any of them on him. None of his friends and peers will talk, and the de Sauvigny won't talk, either –"

"I hardly think Anne de Sauvigny will take her darling boy's murder lying down. She'll move heaven and earth to see the bastard punished."

"Normally, yes, she would. But I hear that her husband's death shocked her, I understand, into a temporary decline."

"What does that mean?" he inquired sharply. Harcourt had his uses, and one of them was his uncanny ability to pick up inside information and gossip.

"It means, sir, that there was a palace coup even before Caine died. She's been gagged. They must have known that something like this would happen..."

"So they won't talk either." Moody drew a deep breath, walked a little while away, and smashed his fist into the wall. "The bastard had this planned, didn't he? He's had this all neatly planned out for months, probably years."

Harcourt said nothing, but stared down at Caine de Sauvigny, dead and abandoned in a lonely, filthy alleyway. "Poor bastard. You didn't even stand a chance."

It was raining. It always did, at funerals.

Luc looked suitably grave.

Anne looked old, embittered, worn; the last of her followers weary, defeated by youth, charisma, and terrifying ruthlessness.

The young ones, ambitious, rebellious, disenchanted youth, proud and arrogant in their certainty, were too far gone to pull back now – but even they tiptoed around Luc's connection with him

Don't mention it –

Don't make it true…

In the rain, Luc remembered another cold, grey, blustery cemetery. And, just for a moment, it all tasted of ashes.

He banished what might-have-been.

Malfoy eyes steady, focused, opaque: humbly, he accepted responsibility.