The Changeling
"Every intelligent grandmother knows that the fire must not be allowed to go out in a room where there is a child not yet christened; that the water in which the newborn child is washed should not be thrown out; also, that a needle, or some other article of steel must be attached to its diapers. If attention is not paid to these precautions it may happen that the child will be exchanged by the trolls." (Herman Hofberg, Swedish Fairy Tales)
For the second time that day Lucius and Eleanor apparated at Malfoy Manor. Only his time Eleanor held her daughter in her arms and her mood was quite different from how she had felt after she had come back from the interrogation at the ministry. The time with the aurors had been nothing but a minor annoyance in comparison. Now, however, she had not only discovered that her little girl had been systematically tortured into displaying magical traits over the last few weeks, but she had also been told that her child might have no future as a true witch.
"Bammm!" crowed Lavinia happily and clapped her hands when she saw her familiar surroundings appear around her with a crack. She loved apparating much better than flooing: the whirling motion, ash dust and flames usually made her cry.
Eleanor watched Lucius call two house-elves to them and hand his cloak to Nibbs. Then he turned to her, his face looking grim.
"Give the child to Libby," he said quietly. "We need to talk."
"Lucius, she's just been to the hospital, and she got burned badly this morning – and not obliviated afterwards, I don't think we should leave her alone right…"
He interrupted her objections.
"We need to talk," he insisted, his voice level, but brokering no disagreement. "And I don't want her to be present. Give her to the house elf, Eleanor."
She glared at him in disapproval and set Lavinia on the floor where Libby quickly came up to her and took the little girl's hand.
"Go ahead, Libby," she instructed the elf. "Take her upstairs to her room, check her diapers and see if she needs anything to eat or drink. Play with her for a little. – Lavinia, Mummy will come and see you as soon as she can."
The magical creature nodded and regarded her out of huge phosphorous eyes while Lavinia let go of her robes rather reluctantly to leave with the elf.
Eleanor stood upright and walked towards her husband.
"This better be important, Lucius," she said.
Without another word he turned and walked towards the dining room. As they moved to sit at the long table various portraits of old Malfoy ancestors stirred in their frames on the walls and peered down at them curiously. By now Eleanor's worry and unhappiness had changed to exasperation.
She settled in, folded her hands on the old polished oak wood and looked at the blond wizard who faced her and now briefly closed his eyes as if to compose himself.
"Come on," she urged him. "I want to go back to Lavinia and see how she's doing. What can possibly be so urgent here?"
He finally met her gaze, his grey eyes expressionless.
"We need to talk about the child's future," he said neutrally. "Obviously the diagnosis changes everything."
She shook her head in incomprehension.
"What changes, Lucius? You heard the healer: she's just a late developer at the moment. We'll get another assessment made in a half year's time, when they can get a better idea of what's going on. Right now she doesn't need magic anyway. She's still years away from school."
He stared at her for a moment and then with a sudden movement leaned forward.
"By Azrael, don't play dumb with me, Eleanor! We have a squib in the family! Doesn't that bother you at all?"
Several of the watching portraits recoiled with exclamations of shock and dismay.
"We have brought the worst possible disgrace on our houses. Let's face it: I have fathered and you have born a wastrel."
"What? Lucius…"
He slammed his hand on the table, and she flinched at the interruption.
"Eleanor, we need to act swiftly and decisively to keep this from becoming public knowledge, from dishonoring our family. We need to organize, and we need to see this through together!"
She was still fuming over his description of their daughter as a wastrel and now exploded at him.
"See through what? Are you mad? You're talking about her as if you plan to toss her out with the garbage! Lucius, she is our child, and it's not even proven yet that she's truly a squib. The best I can do is try and forget what you have just said in the last five minutes!"
He swallowed, trying to overcome his own rising frustration and anger at her resistance.
"Eleanor, listen to me. Be reasonable! We have to make her a changeling, as soon as possible, before word gets out."
"A changeling? What are you talking about?"
He sighed, raking his hands through his hair, and for a moment she felt quite shaken at seeing him lose his usual composure like that. The last time he had been this distraught when they had found out that the Death Eaters had abducted Draco. He now reached over the table and grasped her hands for emphasis.
"You must have heard of the muggle myths of changelings, stories that fairies or trolls carry off muggle children and replace them with their own? Of course muggles tell themselves this happens, because the fairies prefer human children to their own brood, and so in their tales the prize is the muggle, the fairy offspring is merely a decoy.
Aside from that error and of course the fact that we are not really dealing with fairies here, there is some truth to those stories. Until about the 1850s, when some laws got changed, when a squib was born the wizarding family would abduct a muggle child, change the appearance of their own monstrosity and swap out the children. The muggle child was of course completely inconsequential and typically got killed and buried instead of the wizarding child. The squib was left with its foster parents to grow up as a muggle.
Now since laws forbid this practice it's only the last and the proudest of the pureblood houses who hold themselves to this tradition. We need to find a muggle home for the girl, a home where they have a female child of her age and rough appearance and make the exchange. We need to do this swiftly and in secret, before anyone suspects anything."
He stared at her, breathing hard, trying to gauge her reaction. She had not interrupted him, simply because she was too stunned to speak.
"Eleanor!" he urged her. "Are you with me on this? Answer me! What's wrong?"
She slowly shook her head.
"I can't even begin to think of everything that is wrong with this. I can't believe I'm sitting here, hearing you say this. You are talking about abandoning Lavinia in cold blood, about giving away your own daughter? On top of that you expect me to help you kill a two-year-old innocent muggle child? You are calling your own flesh and blood a wastrel, a monstrosity, a squib?"
Her voice was rising with every new question. She was clenching her hands into fists, trying to keep herself under control.
"Lucius you can't mean that! You can't mean any of it! Lavinia is our baby!"
He threw himself back in his chair in frustration.
"You can't let your motherly instincts blind you right now," he told her. "You have to think with your head, not with your heart. Look this is probably a one-off accident. We need to get rid of her and forget her. We can have other children, we can try again…"
She stood up so hard the chair behind her dropped to the floor.
"Lavinia is not an accident. She is your child. She is part of you. This has nothing to do with motherly instincts. You should have the same feelings of protectiveness as her father. If you don't then I know only of one monstrosity around here, and that's YOU!"
"Eleanor, listen to me…"
"No, Lucius, you listen to me: if you are really serious about this I will take Lavinia and I will leave, I swear to you! You and your wonderful, illustrious family will not have to bear the burden of being shamed with her. You can sit here and pretend none of this ever happened. I never happened, she never happened, the last nine years never happened. You already have yourself a nice wizarding, pureblood son and heir, your mission in life is fulfilled. Just sit here in your mansion and rot with the rest of the Malfoys in your own damn stuck-up pride!"
She didn't even wait for an answer. Seething with anger she stormed out of the room, dashing tears of rage from her eyes as she made her way to Lavinia's rooms.
Lucius remained at the table, thunderstruck at her outburst. He had anticipated resistance, after all, few mothers would ever willingly abandon a child, but her ultimate reaction stunned him. He had tried to make allowances for her affections, he had not proposed to simply kill the squib, they would actually be giving her a new home. He could not believe she would walk out on him over something like this, not with everything they had together, not after everything they'd been through.
He ignored the family portraits talking among each other in alarm and horror and walked from the room to intercept and stop his wife. He would try and reason with her one last time.
In the entrance hall he heard her hurrying down the stairs that led to the upper part of the house. She was carrying her daughter in her arms and a very distraught house elf was trailing after her. When she saw him, she moved the child over onto her hip and supported her with one arm while her other hand reached for her wand.
"Don't try and stop me," she called to him.
He stepped in her way.
"Or what? Are you going to fight me?" he challenged her in disbelief.
She halted.
"I just want to leave," she said. "Let me go!"
He took a deep breath, feeling anger at her defiance, but trying to give her one last chance to change her mind.
"If you leave, you don't ever have to come back," he threatened her. "No one walks out on me like that, particularly not my own wife!"
He watched her put her wand away and for a moment began to think that he had finally got through to her, that she would agree with him and stay. She didn't look angry and outraged any more and he realized, looking into her face, that she had been crying since she'd stormed out on him.
"Someone has to take care of her," she said quietly. "And you've just made it perfectly clear that it won't be you any more. If she needs to grow up among muggles, so be it. But I will be with her. You can't be a parent merely on the condition that your child meets your expectations. I am not walking out on you Lucius. You are doing this to us. You are abandoning us. If come to your senses, you will know where to find us. It's up to you. It's your choice."
For a moment she paused as if she wanted to say more, but then closed her eyes in concentration. Before he could reply he heard the crack of a disapparition and she vanished before his eyes. He compressed his lips in anger at her defiance, but even though he had a good idea where she had gone to, he refrained from following her. He had his pride, and anyway, once she had calmed down and thought things through he knew she would be back.
She would be back, begging him to forgive her, and then he could be the one who was unreasonable, who would make her plead with him for a change.
"We shall see," he sneered. "I'll have you eating your own words, soon. Just see for yourself what life is like in your little decrepit muggle house, without house-elves, without the attentions of your husband. You'll find that taking care of a two-year-old squib is going to be poor compensation for all that."
He looked down and saw Libby the house-elf stare at him in wide-eyed shock.
"What are you looking at?" he snarled and gave the magical creature a vicious kick. "Get out of my sight!"
Angrily he stormed from the hall and up the stairs towards his study.