Hello again and thank you so much for continuing your reviewing. As I've written before, it helps the inspiration a lot! This time I managed to finish my deadline at work, a nine pages long article, AND write another chapter on the pure waves of relief!:)
Oh and to Verronica: You're absolutely right. The language wasn't quite accurate in the last chapter. I'll blame the late hour and my swedish descent. It was written and posted a little too quickly. But I'll make you a promise to read it through a second time in the future, even though my nationality'll never make the grammar perfect.
And to all of you reading: Your compliments and comments are a warm hearth in a cold season. I can only hope to keep your interest as the story proceeds. Lots of hugs!

19TH DECEMBER: TRUTH

Sleep was a precious ally that refused to visit Draco this night.
When his eyelids finally became too heavy to stay up, after hours of agonized brooding, it was less than an hour to breakfast and no time seemed to have past at all when the frantic knocking on the door started.
"Draco? You're late! We're waiting for you!"
Without opening his eyes, Draco made his reply sound dynamic and alert, as if he had been awake for hours.
"I'm on my way, mother!"
"Five minutes!"
Draco groaned and stumbled out of bed with heavy limbs and a severe headache. At least he could hear Narcissa's footsteps becoming fainter as she moved away from his door.
This day was going to be terrible. If nothing else, his rotten morning temper told him so, as he dug out the silvery pocket watch from his robes and realised just how little sleep he had caught.
And all the events of yesterday were still fresh in his head. Thinking about it only made his head spin in the same circles as it had done during the night, when no sensible conclusion had surfaced.
Then again, most of the night had been wasted on trying to find any explanation, anyone at all, except the most obvious one to his father's behaviour.
It was with great bitterness Draco finally made his way down the stairs to have breakfast with the guests.

A number of curious eyes were upon him as he sat down at his usual place by the great table, making an effort to wipe out the sneer from his face and transform it into a smile.
He could feel Lucius watching him too, but he was set on ignoring it. Instead he turned to the assembled in his usual polite manner and made his voice spotlessly correct.
"Excuse me. I had to…see to some important business with the servants about the cleaning."
There. The perfect lie.
And immediately the room was buzzing with discussions about the efficiency of the house elves and stories about mistakes they had made in the private homes of the guests.
As expected, there was a sign of approval from Narcissa and none from Lucius.
He threw a careful glance in their direction.
His father seemed caught up in his role as the perfect host and used his irresistible charm that he never showed in private to catch admiration and respect from his visitors.
Well, almost never showed in private.
Draco glared at his schoolmates cynically, as they eagerly talked about their plans for the day. They dragged him into the conversation too and he participated in it automatically, but inside a black cloud was shaping.
He could bet a thousand Galleons that none of his friends had any problems even near the one that Draco had now. They just sat there with no bigger issues than what to wear for Christmas and none of them were visibly forced to participate in scary, insane games with a parent!
In fact, they all seemed to have slept very well and glowed with enthusiasm.
Pansy was desperate for his attention and Rowan threw angry glances at her, all while Edwin kept him involved in an advanced conversation about politics.
When the breakfast nightmare finally came to an end, Draco was more than grateful to leave the company of the adults and disappear to the frozen lake to skate with his three comrades.
He would have preferred being alone, but getting out of his father's sight was a great relief, since Lucius' presence made him extremely nervous.
But his exhausted brain was working furiously with finding a plan that enabled him to escape his duties and get some well-needed sleep.
And as he had feared, his privacy was invaded all too soon.

They had barely started to walk through the new-fallen snow before Edwin made himself and Draco fall behind the girls a few yards.
"Hey, Draco! Who is it?"
Edwin spoke in a low, conspiratorial voice and seemed to miss the fact that Draco started to fight the dark impulse of ripping his tongue out.
"What are you talking about?" He replied, hoping that his voice contained enough warnings about the subject.
But the arrow obviously missed its goal.
"Oh, come on! You're not fooling anybody with that mark! It must have happened after you left school, 'cause it wasn't there on the train home."
Perfect. Stuck with an inquisitive genius who didn't know when to stop.
"No, it wasn't." Draco answered, his voice carrying icy spikes that were almost visible.
Edwin frowned and looked insulted.
"Okay, cool down. No reason to get edgy!"
That did it. Draco stopped and faced him so suddenly, that Edwin had a start and took a step back when Draco drew his wand out.
"I'm…not…edgy!" Draco hissed, feeling close to murder.
Edwin's face got paler by the second.
"You're not edgy." Edwin echoed, as if some basic survival instinct took control over him.
Then Draco simply put his wand down and started to walk with long strides to catch up with Pansy and Rowan.
Some of his urges to make somebody pay for his bad mood were satisfied and besides, he had come up with a plan about how he would be able to spend the day alone.
When they reached the lake, it was obvious that only a small part of it would be good for skating. The ice was getting dangerously thin about ten yards out as could be seen by the darker surface.
Draco realised that he was going to need his best acting talents to pull this off.
"Aaw!" Pansy moaned. "I'll barely be able to make eights! Draco, isn't there any other lake?"
"No, but don't worry!" Draco said in a cheerful tone. "I know this lake like my inner pockets. It's just a trick of the light on the ice. It's not thin at all!"
As he had counted on, Edwin argued about it, fixing an anxious gaze on the ice, and Draco saw the perfect moment.
"Right. Then we'll test the ice, just in case."
He took the safety rope from Edwin and fastened it to a tree in front of three doubting pair of eyes. Then he grabbed a good hold of the rope and advanced out on the lake, making sure that his lifeline was winded several turns around his hands, just in case. After all, this was just supposed to look like an accident.

Naturally, the house got into a state of turmoil as Draco returned soaking wet, the frost already clinging to his hair, even though Edwin as lended him his robe and supported him all the way back to the manor. Rowan and Pansy had drawn their wands almost at the instant Draco had fallen through the ice and pulled him up in the blink of an eye.
Still, the shock of the cold water was impossible to prepare oneself for and Draco was genuinely shaken by the freak accident he had created. He was freezing down to the bone as if he would never be warm again.
As his mother accompanied him up to his room with a thousand reproaching words, he silently rejoiced, knowing that his father was out of the house, showing the grounds to the guests like a proud ruler. Draco would have hours to sleep undisturbed and since he had been involved in an accident, he hoped for once that Lucius would treat the situation like he always did if Draco was ill.
By staying away until Draco no longer showed any signs of weakness.
The house elves had prepared his room with extra covers and a big pot of warm tea and as he was finally left alone, he laid trembling for a while with chills rushing through the body, before drifting off to a merciful sleep.

When he woke up, there were tears in his eyes.
He drowsily wiped them away, trying to remember what he had dreamed about. Limbs aching with fever, he focused on the clock beside the bed.
Ten past twelve.
He had slept undisturbed all day and well into the night. His stomach was growling with hunger. He couldn't believe his mother hadn't been up to at least check on him at and wake him up for dinner. He was ill, damn it!
And Lucius seemed to have reacted all too familiar.
The hunger was so intense that he thought he smelled food in the room. A moment later he understood why.
There was a lidded bowl beside the bed, shimmering with a common servant-spell to keep the food warm. So at least somebody had been sensible.
Draco ate most of the spicy chicken soup before discovering a painful thirst for cold water.
He hated the way the fever played with his body!
With some effort he rose from the bed and put on a simple robe, before wrapping a cover around him. There should be a house elf around to bring the icy liquid up from the kitchen.
A quick glance at the hallway outside the door revealed no sign of life and he decided to walk down the stairs, quite certain that a night servant would be near.
In the library, close to the stairs, he found a fire was burning and the tiny elf that had replaced Dobby a few years ago almost ran into him in the doorway.
It looked panick-stricken under Draco's glare.
"Just get me water." Draco murmured. "And make sure it's stuffed with ice."
The elf piped something and ran off. Draco sighed and was just about to turn around when he discovered that somebody was sitting in the armchair in front of the fire, with his back to Draco. A few silvery strands falling forward over some old pages in an open book revealed it was his father.
Draco froze to the spot for a second, before slowly starting to walk backwards out of the room.
"Come here, Draco."
Damn it!
Draco approached the fireplace with careful steps, hoping that Lucius would remember that he was ill, whatever he planned to do.
As he finally stood next to the armchair, his father did not even look up from the book he was reading when addressing him.
"Sit down."
Draco looked at the other armchair next to the fire, but decided to place himself on the soft fur in front of it, since the heat from the fire would soothe the shivers from the fever somewhat.
He held the cover in a tight grip around him, feeling a strange safety from it, while staring into the fire and awaiting his father's next move.
But the silence was not broken and Lucius kept reading his book, as if Draco wasn't there at all.
Finally, Draco felt compelled to speak.
"I would have come down for dinner, father, if somebody had come to wake me up."
There. Just so his father knew he hadn't missed it on purpose.
"I made sure you weren't disturbed." Lucius replied, without taking his eyes from the book. "Since you caused quite a scene to escape your duties, I thought it proper to discuss this with you in private."
Draco felt his stomach turn to ice.
"Mother was quite worried." He said timidly, hoping to direct the conversation to a question about his health instead.
"I really wouldn't know." Came the chilly answer."Your mother and I have not talked a lot for the last fifteen years."
At this, Draco turned his head and stared at Lucius, who were still caught up with the book, looking as calm and unreadable as ever.
What was this? A personal piece of information from his father?
"You can't keep falling through thin ice, Draco."
Draco looked back to the fire as Lucius lifted his gaze from the pages and viewed him coldly.
"So, you should tell me about your little scheme now. After all…" His father returned to the book. "…you have nobody else to talk to."
Clenching his teeth together, Draco struggled to get the words out correctly. He wanted to protest, but found no argument to oppose the statement and he wanted to throw accusations about his loss of sleep last night, but that would be close to suicide.
Instead he controlled his temper and played along, as was the clever thing to do.
"What would you like me to speak about, father?"
"You can start with explaining to me why you thought your arranged accident would solve anything."
Lucius still had a calm voice, but it carried a small edge of accusation that cautioned him about lying.
"I needed to be alone."
"Indeed."
"And I needed to sleep and…think. I didn't sleep a lot last night."
He didn't dare to look at Lucius, but he could see in the corner of his eye how the older Malfoy closed the book and put it aside. Then he had that critical attention upon him again.
"I will not have you running from your responsibilities. The rest of your life will be flooded with them and you will need a lot more discipline if you are to manage the expectations people will put on you."
"I know, father."
"Your personal will has nothing at all to do with the name you are bound to honour. It is my name too, Draco, and it is my personal concern every time you step out of line. Do you understand?"
"Yes, father." Draco answered, but the rage was building up inside from the injustice.
Lucius arched an eyebrow, very demandingly.
"This is never going to happen again, is it Draco?"
"No, father."
But before he could stop himself the frustration boiled over and he added:
"Not if you don't make it happen."
"What was that?"
Lucius voice was sharp as a razor now and he rose from the armchair.
Draco leaned back against the armchair behind him with a small whimper as his father squatted down before him, grabbing his shoulders threateningly.
"Father, please! I'm ill!"
"You have yourself to blame for that!" Lucius snapped. "And you better listen carefully. You will be thrown into an arranged marriage like every Malfoy before you and there will be no friends, Draco, only convenient allies that are not chosen for your liking. And most importantly, there will be no one to trust. You will not even be able to turn your back to your future wife for a second, lest she stabs you with a knife to control the family fortune herself! That is your future. Now tell me where this childish behaviour fits in!"
Draco blinked.
He couldn't remember having such a long speech directed to him from his father ever. Not this long, not this personal or painstakingly filled with truth.
Throwing such a harsh reality in his face was a lot worse than a common slap or a punch.
He struggled to melt the information, but it was too much of a shock upon him at once and he started to grasp for words instead.
"I-I'm sorry, father."
"You should be. And you can choose to deal with this alone, shutting everyone out from your private misery, or…"
Lucius eyes were glowing in a very rare, open fury.
"…you can turn to the only person who really understands you at all."
Draco was almost holding his breath now, fighting to swallow the unwanted tears that tried to surface. He couldn't even explain why he needed to cry, he just knew it was a bad idea at the moment.
"I'm sorry, father. It will not happen again."
His voice trembled a little and he clutched the cover even tighter, but to his surprise, Lucius simply released him and rose to his feet.
The expression in his father's face shifted from anger to an unreachable coolness so fast, that Draco started to suspect it had all been a game to attain something.
With Lucius you never knew.
But the illusions that had shattered from the brutal statement were still mourned and the panic rising from the realisation of what it all meant was so engulfing that the fever seemed to increase to the double.
But his father simply lifted his book from the armchair and faced him one last time before heading out of the room.
"Go to sleep now, Draco. I expect you to be in time for breakfast tomorrow."
Then he left Draco alone with his thoughts.
Draco stared into the fire alone for a long time before returning to his room.
As he shut the door behind him, he turned to the cold decanter by the bedside and put out his thirst desperately.
Then he wondered if his father meant for him to sleep at all, as the first tears started to spill.