"Obliviate!"
"A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent." (William Blake)
Lucius Malfoy strode up the broad curved stairs of the Manor that led to the upper part of the house and towards his bedroom. It was early evening and the sunlight that streamed through the tall gothic windows already showed the golden tints of sunset. It had been an aggravating and vexing day, from the confrontation with Sedgewick and the rather nasty surprise Eleanor had sprung on him in the morning to his secretary's interruption and the disorganized and confusing meeting over the murder of Dr. Morris during the afternoon. He hoped that at least the rest of the day would prove to be more pleasant.
Hopefully Eleanor would have some answers for him, and she would be waiting for him where he had left her earlier to make good on her promise. As he opened the heavy door to their bedchamber he was not disappointed on the first count. His wife was stretched out on their broad bed wearing nothing but an ankle-length grey silk slip dress. Her bare feet were peeking out from the flimsy fabric that revealed the curves of her body as she lay lazily on her side, her head cradled in one hand, while her other spread open the pages of a familiar-looking black book that was propped up against a pillow beside her.
He felt his lips stretch in an anticipatory smile and was just about to greet her when she looked up at him and the sharp glance that hit him made him stop cold in his tracks. Her face seemed a carefully expressionless mask, and tension tightened her mouth as she regarded him as if he were a stranger. She sat up and drew her legs up against her body in what seemed to Lucius to be a gesture of self-protection.
"Eleanor?" he asked her tentatively, having the distinct impression that something was seriously wrong with her.
Her stare did not waver and she licked her lips as if she was about to speak, but she did not answer him.
"What's going on?" he urged her, feeling truly apprehensive now. "What happened?"
She seemed to collect herself and come to a decision, but he still could not read her. Was she scared, angry, upset?
After a brief pause she picked up the book from the pillow, cracked the spine backwards to keep it open at the page she had been reading and pushed it over to him.
"Here," she said with some vehemence, her voice sounding rough and accusatory. "This is what's been happening. See for yourself."
He sighed. Would he ever live Narcissa's book down? Now even his own wife was shoving his ex's lies and slander back in his face. He felt anger rise in him in response.
"You too, now?" he challenged her. "Of all people, she managed to sucker you in, too, with her falsehoods and distorted half-truths? I thought you knew me better than that. What's she been feeding you? That I had numerous secret affairs while we were together? That I betrayed you? Does she have you believe what she wants you to?"
Eleanor's face still seemed closed off to him, and now she actually looked away from him. Her voice that answered him sounded lifeless and dull.
"It's nothing to do with me or with the two of us. It's about Draco. I can't believe I didn't see it. I can't believe I trusted you. Severus tried to warn me, and I actually defended you. I am so stupid! I was so blind!"
"Eleanor, I…" he said, but she turned away from him.
"Just read it," she snapped. "Don't try and talk your way out of this. Just see what she says. And then look at me and dare to tell me it isn't true."
He knew he would not be able to reason with her. So with a sigh he leaned his cane against the bedpost, sat down and picked up the volume at the page where she had opened it for him.
…I heard his terrified screams muffled behind the heavy oak door and despite my fear my motherly instincts over-rode all other concerns. Putting any thought as to my own safety out of my mind I rushed to help him, to rescue him from his own father.
It would not be the first time Lucius raised his hand against his only son, but I had never heard my little boy cry out in such pain and fear. This time I would not, I could not, stand by and watch. It had become too much to bear.
I crashed through the door of his study and froze at what I saw: he had thrown Draco's tiny body halfway across his desk and was laying into him wielding his belt like a whip. The child shrieked in pain as the leather and heavy buckle hit him with a crack. I threw myself over his small form and felt the chastisement on my own body as the belt made contact again.
It hurt beyond anything I had ever known. Lucius' face was white with fury, his eyes seemed unfocused with rage and it took him one more lash before he even seemed to realize that he was beating me now instead of his son.
With a snarl he grabbed my arm and threw me away from him. I staggered and fell to the ground.
"Get out!" he roared at me. "Get out of here!"
I trembled in terror, anticipating that he would have no compunction to hit me again, and felt tears streaking down my cheeks.
"Not without Draco," I sobbed, trying to get up, steeling myself to confront him…
The text continued on the next page, but Lucius closed the book with a snap and threw it back on the mattress. Eleanor was facing him again.
"Well," she challenged him. "Lies, falsehoods? Is she telling the truth about this, or is she making it all up? And even more important than that: is this the true reason why Lavinia had a bandage on her hand the other day, and why she is bruised and scraped every time I bathe her or change her clothes now. Is this the reason why Maleficia can't seem to look me in the face these past few weeks? Because she knows? Because she's seen it all happen before to Draco? What kind of monster would use his children like that? Look at me! Tell me! Did you beat Draco like that?"
She sounded angrier than he had seen her in a long time, but her last question also betrayed anguish. Lucius forced himself to look at her calmly. The seething fury he felt at Narcissa and the damage her words had wrought could not distract him now. He knew his wife well enough to realize that his next words could cost him his family. Where her daughter was concerned Eleanor took no prisoners. He composed himself.
"No, Narcissa is not lying," he said quietly.
Eleanor gasped, her deep green eyes widening in shock and outrage; and he realized that perhaps she had really only waited for him to deny it, to reassure her.
"What!..."
He lifted a placating hand.
"Please let me finish. Hear me out," he pleaded with her.
"The scenario she describes took place, but Draco was not 'tiny'. I still recall what happened: Draco was 12 years old. He was impossible to control at the time, would not pay attention to anything he was being told. Narcissa and the other Blacks indulged his every whim, and rules meant nothing to him. He would take and steal what he wanted – I caught him one time at Flourish & Blotts ripping pages with spells that he liked out of books. I had complaints from some of my Death Eater associates because he took stuff from other Slytherins at school. For crying out loud, he could have anything he wanted, he just had to ask for it.
I had given him one instruction that I was determined to enforce at all costs: my study was to be off limits to him. I had not made that decision arbitrarily – I tried to keep him out in order to protect him. I was a Death Eater. I had things in my possession that could kill him, or worse. I did not want to put his life in danger. One item in particular that I owned I needed to keep out of his reach.
I think you heard the story from Dumbledore or from someone else at Hogwarts? About Tom Riddle's old diary, and how it possessed and almost killed Ginny Weasley?"
Eleanor swallowed and nodded.
"You gave it to her," she said quietly.
"Yes, I needed to be rid of it. I knew that Voldemort would try to possess anyone weak and foolish enough to open the book and that he would use them to come back into existence. I told Draco, I explained, I made him promise me. And one day in summer I came home earlier than he had thought and found the door to my office open. He sat at my desk, the diary in his hands, smirking at me – and I lost it.
After months of worrying, after telling him over and over again I finally saw red. Yeah, I grabbed him and I pulled off my belt and I actually beat him. I am not proud of it, but at that moment I saw him, my only son, my only child, dead before me, his spirit destroyed and absorbed irrevocably into the Dark Lord, the last of the Malfoys gone because of his damn pig-headed stubbornness and willfulness. At that moment I wanted to punish him, I wanted to break his will, to have him for once obey me so I could keep him safe.
I was at my wit's end. Part of the reason why I slipped the book to the youngest Weasley a few days later was that I finally wanted it out of the house. Sure, the Ministry was conducting raids, and it would have been incriminating evidence, and I wanted to get back at Arthur for inconveniencing me through his annoying snooping, but I was more worried about Draco finding it again.
Of course Draco screamed bloody murder when I hit him – that should prove to you that he wasn't used to this kind of treatment – and of course Narcissa came rushing in. I don't remember if I hit her or not, I may have. To tell you the truth I don't remember much after I saw my son with Voldemort's book.
I know I lost control, and a parent shouldn't, but it seemed nothing else was getting through to him. If you want to accuse me, accuse me of exposing my son to the Dark Arts items I owned, but not for disciplining him in order to keep him safe."
He paused and looked at her. She had been staring at him intently throughout his explanation. Now she looked down and ran her hands over the cover of the book where Narcissa's picture was regarding them.
"She made it look like this happened when Draco was just four or five," she said quietly. "She never gave a reason for your punishment of him."
The blond wizard shook his head emphatically.
"No, that was the only time when I ever truly beat him, and I know he was about to rejoin Hogwarts for his second year when it happened, because during that year Voldemort made the Weasley girl open the Chamber of Secrets at school and I was dismissed as a governor. These days, looking back, I regret what I did to Draco. I should have handled it better."
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "That's Narcissa for you, telling half-truths that would set people against each other. She's good at that." His eyes never left his wife's face. Would she believe him? And if she did, would she understand?
He found he had held his breath when he saw he slowly nod. Her face softened as she regarded him though she still looked as if something was bothering her.
"Okay," she said. "I believe you. You owned up to what you did. If I have to take either your word for it or Narcissa's, I chose to trust you. It's just I don't know what to think any more, I'm so worried."
Her voice sounded small, uncertain, and Lucius, who had focused on her accusations with regards to Draco, now recalled her speaking also about his daughter. He bent forwards and captured one of her hands. He had been so busy lately with all the problems at the Ministry, he had had little time to see his little girl and to really talk to Eleanor. Everything had seemed fine.
"So tell me what's wrong with Lavinia. What's all this about Maleficia and about Severus warning you? What is this really about?"
Eleanor sat up straight and Lucius watched her twist some of the thin silk of her slip-dress in her hands as she tried to think of a way to tell him about her concerns.
"I'm afraid of what's been happening to Lavinia lately," she began, and then the words just came tumbling out: about the little girl's mysterious injuries, about Maleficia's evasiveness and about Severus' visit and his accusations.
"It's all so vague, I can't lay my finger on it. It could all have an innocent explanation and I could just be paranoid, but I still don't think it's right. And then when I read Narcissa's book all the pieces seemed to fall into place. It seemed such a horrible, such a simple explanation."
She hid her face in her hands.
"Gods, Lucius, what did I imagine you to be? What did I accuse you of?"
'Only that I was a father very much like my own,' thought Lucius grimly, but he did not blame his wife aloud. It seemed as if the implications of her words had just hit her and she was already appalled enough by her own suspicions of him.
He suddenly felt sick and tired of all the evasiveness, of all the lies, the deceptions and the divisions. If he and Eleanor couldn't trust each other any more, if they were not on the same fighting team, everything would fall apart. For a moment he wondered if all the seemingly unrelated incidents that had happened over the past few weeks were really interconnected, whether they made some perverse sense as parts of a plot to bring them down.
There was only one thing he could do, only one way he knew how to fight back. He stretched out his arms and pulled Eleanor towards him. For one brief second he thought he sensed resistance and his stomach lurched, but then she moved against him, flung her arms around him and buried her face in his long hair that fell over his shoulders. She trembled as he held her.
"I feel so stupid," she said, her voice muffled by the collar of his robes. "Everything else over the years has been easy in comparison, defying the Ministry, cheating the wizengamot, defeating Death Eaters, fighting Voldemort, even. I know how to defend against an open attack, how to use magic against magic. But this is different: thinking of someone harming Lavinia… I'm just going to pieces. I can't think straight."
He stroked down her back.
"We figure it out together. We'll be careful, we'll watch over her. I'll keep a close eye on Maleficia if you think she has something to do with it. Look, you need to be able to trust your instincts when you are an adept at Defense against the Dark Arts. I'm sure you're right about something being fishy."
He sat up straighter, pulling her into his lap.
"I will also go and hex the hell out of Severus for going round spreading rumors like that. If I'd known what a meddlesome fool he'd be I'd have thought twice about making him Lavinia's godfather," he added with some venom in his voice.
He watched her lift her head and smile up at him despite herself.
"There you go Lucius, thinking that going round and cursing a few folks is going to solve everything… Severus ismerely worried, just like me, just like you."
He sighed: "I have to do something. I feel we're fighting an enemy we can't see. From what you're telling me now maybe it's even an enemy who is powerful enough to attack us at home where we least expect it."
He began to tell her about the Ministry meeting, about the Weasleys, Umbridge, Spofford, the muggle detective, Sedgewick and Mundungus Fletcher's strange information regarding Octavian's old dagger. She curled up against him and listened intently.
"Do you think the dagger Fletcher showed you is the one that killed Dr. Morris?" she asked, looking up at him.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know yet, maybe he was just working my nerves. That's why I appointed Marigold Brannock to head our auror team. I was hoping that you might find out about their investigation. She would tell you, wouldn't she?"
Eleanor looked as if she was about to object, so he hurriedly continued.
"And maybe we won't even need to do that. I think whoever sent the Sedgewicks Narcissa's book has a hand in this whole affair, sowing distrust and suspicions. Maybe he is the murderer. Did you perform the detection charms?"
She lifted herself up and sat cross-legged on the mattress before him. With a frown she picked up the book and weighted it in her hands.
"Yeah, I did," she told him. "As you know, objects have a 'memory' and retain traces of the people who have touched them – that's how hauntings happen: a place retains the imprint of a human being and replays an event that had a powerful impact like a death or a heartbreak over and over again."
He nodded. "So who handled the book?" he asked.
She sighed.
"See there's the problem," she explained. "To obliviate people's thoughts and memories is easy, to obliviate the imprint of a person on an inanimate object requires considerable skill."
Lucius watched the image of his former wife smirk in triumph at him from the cover of her biography, and the blond wizard could already guess what Eleanor would tell him.
"Nothing!" She dropped the volume in frustration. "Believe me, I tried everything. I even looked up a batch of pretty esoteric reversion charms in the library. All I'm getting is a lanky man with spectacles bending over the book and reading. It's been wiped clean – expertly. Whoever is screwing with us knows their magic."
The wizard ran his thumb across his lips, lost in thought.
"You saw Alfred Sedgewick, the muggle who got the book in the post. So at the very least we know it's not just a muggle conspiracy, there's at least one wizard or witch in on this," he said slowly. "And the muggle detective and Dolores Umbridge wanted to pin it all on muggles, and Narcissa here is looking rather smug and happy at your failure. I really wonder why."