A/N: Hoping these turbulent times find you safe and healthy. Life is chaotic at the moment, but I'm pleased to finally have an update to share. For anyone waiting on "The Unforgivables," Chapter 10 is in my beta's inbox!

Sincere thanks to my incredible alpha Constance and my brilliant beta elle_morgan_black for their help on this.

TW: New Tags! Please read and heed accordingly. This chapter adds genocidal rhetoric, war, familial shaming and implied/referenced torture.

Enjoy and be well.

-sulis

. . . .

There wasn't an expression that didn't suit his father's face.

The detached acceptance, when the Wizengamot announced his father's lenient sentence.

The icy indifference, when his mother left one morning without so much as a word spoken between them.

The thick tension of rage, each day the Prophet smeared the Malfoy divorce and ruin through the public muck.

And the quickly hidden something Draco saw, every time he accidentally met his father's eye.

Even that whisper of unnamed emotion, furrowing at his father's brow - that something Draco found himself wishing was agony or self-loathing - even that looked like the model example of itself.

Draco had seen many of those same emotions in the mirror, on so similar a face. But on him, they looked somehow ill-fitting.

In his father all manner of misery looked graceful as a statue. In Draco it looked desperate; shifty. Like trying to stuff a seventh year in first year's robes. As if he wasn't built to stomach it.

He hated his father's elegant suffering.

Even in disgrace and ruin he was the sodding perfect Lord of the Manor. You could see it in his blood shot eyes, still haunted by that inherent thirst and talent for survival. No matter what befell his father, Draco knew an undercurrent of will still raged beneath the surface. Capable, determined and unstoppable; down for only a brief moment but certain to rise again. In short, a Malfoy. A Malfoy in the way Draco had never been able to get himself to be.

Draco didn't look like a tragically deposed Lord of the Manor bound for some kind of forgiving resurrection. He looked like someone else polyjuiced in his body. Ill-suited to the distinct nobility of the Malfoy profile, and unable to bear the weight.

Which all the time got bloody heavier, even when the damned war and all its destructive trappings were supposed to be over.

It would drive him mad if he didn't get out of this house. Stark raving. Tearing at the familiar, mocking wallpaper of his quarters. That same damn pattern he'd looked at his whole damn life.

Draco paced his room in the early hours of the morning, knowing he had nowhere to go.

The remnants of what had been 'his side,' had never really been his, and weren't there to return to. The new world being made by all the others, by Granger, didn't have a space cut for him.

Still, fantasies of that new world assaulted him in the middle of other thoughts. Visions of her: bright and shiny and thriving at the center of it. A veritable heroine, finally on her pedestal.

He allowed his thoughts to wander into daydreams. Of being welcomed by her; of being given something to do. A way to change the look on people's faces when they heard his name. When they caught the color of his hair rounding the corner.

His Governess had once said to him, as she ruffled his hair with a laugh, "No one will ever mistake you, Draco, for being anything other than a Malfoy."

Fuck it all to hell.

Even as a sodding ferret he'd been recognizable as a Malfoy. That name he'd carried in pride like a shield his whole life now hung over him like a curse.

But if someone like her, like them, if some perfect, luminary mudblood were to cleanse him of his curse…

It was his favorite fantasy.

Most days, like this day, he spent laying around his quarters, moping, getting himself off to feel good for a few minutes. Those brief respites of pleasure: his eyes scrunched tight, stroking himself to visions of Granger perched atop him, curls trailing down her spine, her head falling back with moan as she slammed down on his straining cock -

Gods, if it didn't make him come every time.

Somehow he knew she'd be loud. All that prim, tight-lipped virtue would crumble away, and in its wake there'd be the most depraved, needy words, frantic pleas and delicate little gasps.

The dream of having her bound and bucking for his palm on her arse had evolved into a million other visions: her splayed thighs trembling for him, muscles clenching against restraints. That sting of shock in her voice when she cried out his name at his first savage thrust.

During the day, she would be publicly affectionate with him and praise him for his heroic change and growth. They would accomplish meaningful things, side by side, and the world would marvel at the new, reformed Draco Malfoy. Then come the night, he'd have her on her knees, he'd bring her to the edge again and again, watch her struggle against the ropes and groan around her gag as he took ownership of her.

She'd be the perfect heroine swot for everyone else, and a compliant little whore for him.

That was the problem. Thoughts of her never came without both fantasies. Draco never could imagine his redemption without imagining some release for his darkness. Just as he couldn't imagine fucking her without also craving her approval. Maybe she could be both. Maybe Granger needed both too.

And then there were the other fantasies that would spring, unbidden, into his mind throughout the day. Fantasies that terrified him.

He'd see her photograph in the prophet, waving to a celebrating crowd, and imagine her hand in his.

He'd hear the gossip of her leaving the red-haired oaf, and imagine his arm thrown possessively around her shoulders. He'd close his eyes and be walking with her down Diagon Alley, their strides falling into step together as she curled into him, the scent of her, the warmth of her, all his.

Childish. Absurd.

The longing for it both sustained and disgusted him.

Hopeless as those fantasies felt - deluded, really - Draco knew something had to change. He had to find or make a new place in the world. Or find some blasted peace until he did.

His head throbbed. He wiped a palm over his brow and held it tight over his eyes.

Draco was living with a void of a person; like the Ogdens had burned a hole right through his father and what was left of The Great Lucius Malfoy was slowly trickling down it into black empty nothing. The void within his father had a pull Draco felt to his marrow, sucking at him all the time, to drown him too. Like a bloody dementor holed up in that study, pacing, not his father. Draco imagined himself twenty years in the future, pacing the same study, slowly dripping down the same damned hole.

If he didn't get away from his father's whirlpooling destruction, he knew they'd be driven to a confrontation Draco didn't want to have. Though at times it was all he wanted, even if he knew he was likely to come out on the losing side.

"Stop slouching, boy. Get up. I need to speak with you."

Uncovering his eyes, Draco looked up to see his Grandmother, Phaedra Malfoy, standing in the landscape over his desk.

She willfully ignored him for eighteen bloody years and then she came to his room to tell him what to do? Suddenly his fuckupery mattered, did it?

"Grandmother," Draco nodded. "Sod off."

Her elegant face contorted to bug-eyed outrage.

"Don't you dare speak to me that way, Draco Malfoy! I'd hex you myself if I had the body! Of course your father suddenly can't be bothered to teach you your place."

Draco stood and walked to the painting. "Father can't be bothered to do much of anything these days. Go tell him off, then."

"Salazar knows I've tried. He's removed all of the paintings from his study, and I can't reach him. With your Mother gone, I've had to resort to you."

The removal of paintings caught Draco's attention. "Why would father do such a thing?"

"He and Abraxas had a row. Lucius always did have a terrible temper." His grandmother shook her head disparagingly, as though this weren't a trait of every Malfoy man to walk the earth for the past several centuries.

"So did grandfather," Draco answered, crossing his arms. "What was it about?"

"I don't know. Abraxas didn't have time to tell me before Lucius did away with his portrait. I can't find him. You know what that means."

It meant that his father had put his Grandfather's portrait in the attic. Warded with a plethora of runes to protect the illegal, unregistered dark relics it housed, the attic was the only place within the manor from which inhabitants of portraits could not leave their frames. There were a few paintings that had been up there for centuries, having done one thing or another to anger the various Malfoy Lords throughout time.

When Draco was young, he'd thought there was really nothing that could be done to a portrait. They were already dead, afterall. And if you maimed their painting, they might suffer a bit of abuse, but in the end they merely moved to their neighbors' frame. The Malfoy attic, however, was an unspeakable sentence for a portrait: that of endless limbo. (If you were lucky, it was a limbo without a sheet tossed over your face, though many weren't.)

Your only escape from that fate once condemned to it, was the unlikely hope that a Malfoy descendant would someday restore you to your place in the lower levels of the manor. But some Malfoys lived their entire lives without going up there, let alone giving bugger all about a portrait that enraged their Great-Grandfather. The few times Draco had been up there, he'd heard them, calling out from under their sheets, begging to be brought back down into the house.

To be put in the attic was to be forgotten, or to be warned with the threat of being forgotten.

"I'm sure father meant it only as a temporary punishment. He'll restore him to his place when he calms down. Cool your cauldron, Grandmother."

At this Phaedra's eyes darkened to a stormy slate. "No, Draco. After what Septimus told me he witnessed, I don't believe so."

When Draco refused to take her bait and beg for the tale, she huffed with displeasure before blurting out, "He took a candle to him. His own father! Apparently Abraxas called him 'a perverted weakling' and then Lucius took a candle from the nearest table and held it to his frame. My son did such a thing!"

Draco felt his eyes bulging right out of their sockets.

"Father set fire to Grandfather's portrait?"

Phaedra nodded vigorously, a dramatic tear streaking out of her left eye. "Septimus said Lucius came to his senses a moment later and quickly put the flames out. But then to take him to the attic, Draco, the attic! You must go up there this instant and return him to his rightful place. "

She came to the edge of the frame, urgency knitting her pale brow.

"Your father is no longer fit to lead this family."

. . . .

Draco hated duty. But now, the ever dutiful Grandson and heir, he found himself trudging up the stairs, creaking open the thick wooden door, a puff of dust immediately billowing forth in every direction.

The voices started straight away, muffled from beneath the sheets.

"A Malfoy deserves his ri-"

"Mercy, please -"

"Hello? - Hello? -"

"Please, it's been 200 years -"

Draco slammed his fist into the door. "QUIET."

Silence immediately fell.

He couldn't help smiling slightly at the rush of power.

"Grandfather, it's Draco. Where are you?" he called out.

From the very back of the room, deep in the shadows, the answer - "Here, Draco. Good lad. Get this filthy thing off of me this instant."

Draco lit his wand as he reached the back of the room, throwing the sheet back off of the only portrait leaning against the far wall.

His Grandfather certainly appeared worse for wear. Squinting at the sudden light, Abraxas Malfoy could only be described as deliriously furious. Even his mustache was in disarray, the usual precision of his beard now a disheveled mess; the standard, sullen flaring of his nostrils, even more pronounced. He looked as if he'd climb right out of his frame and storm downstairs if he could.

"Merlin. Steady on, Grandfather," Draco said. "What brought this about, then?"

Abraxas' jaw tightened. "Your coward of a father. A shame to this house. Didn't even have the nerve to look me in the eye as he left me here. A waste of my seed. The salazar-damned coward."

Draco took a step back, leaning his weight against an old crate. "Is this about the Prophet then? The latest opinion piece on father and his lack of sentence?"

"No, boy," Abraxas grit out, eyes glazing with disgust, "This is about your Father losing his bollocks. That mudblood chit should never have been let through the gates."

Draco felt his throat tighten. He forced out the word he'd wanted to say for weeks. "Granger?"

"Who? No, boy - that so-called 'Governess' of yours. Absurd."

But that was ages ago. Surely Grandfather wasn't just learning of his father's dalliance with his Governess now. "What are you talking about?"

"I made him end it, when you were still a boy. Soon as I realized it had become more than the Lord of our name fucking the help. The fact that I even had to press it is an abomination. And now, now I find out that despite ending it, he's been following her scent like some needy lap dog. For over a decade." Abraxas spit to his feet. "Disgrace to our name. He's lost our fortune, our standing, and now this? Shedding tears like some bloody Hufflepuff over scum."

Draco's mind all but short circuited. His father would never. His father could never. For over a decade?

The shock was impossible to hide from his voice. "You saw father cry?"

The very idea was inconceivable. As inconceivable as Lucius Malfoy carrying a proverbial torch for a mudblood servant.

Abraxas nodded solemnly. "Don't you ever let me catch you doing anything so ridiculous."

"Why was Father crying?"

It was a question Draco found himself both delighted and afraid to hear the answer to.

"Mourning," Abraxas forced out an indignant huff. "As if a wizard can mourn a cockroach."

Draco braced his hand against the crate behind him. The memory of her freckled nose, scrunching in laughter, flooded his vision. The aching for her assaulted him and the vicious need for the comfort of her arms tore at his chest.

But before Draco could complete the fullness of that memory, his Grandfather continued. "The bitch was cleansed in a revel just before the battle. And my pathetic excuse for a son sits around crying about it, when he should have done it himself. Or at least claimed the credit, even if he was too useless to take part. Maybe then the Dark Lord would have treated us with the respect this family deserves."

Cleansed. Cleansed.

Was that the word for what it meant to rip someone like that from the world? Her laughter in his memory became terror then, and Draco imagined her screaming. His Governess screaming for help - and no one giving it.

Draco had been to revels. He'd been forced to participate in order to earn the mark. He had seen what they did to mudblood women. The sight of it, the smell. It had made him sick. The way those girls shook. They way they looked out at the crowd with wide eyes, like they were sure that there must be at least one soul amongst the hooded crowd that would show mercy. Even as the worst happened to them, they looked out for help. Draco could still taste the bile at the back of his throat he'd had to swallow back while watching.

Every commander had their own specialty for ending it. He'd only seen aunt Bellatrix's - the endless circle of Cruciatus - but he'd heard of the others and their methods. Avery, with his levitating and dropping. The Carrows and their slow, sculpting, butchery. And Dolohov. Dolohov with his twisted predilections…

Draco couldn't bear to imagine it.

Hermione Granger was still there, at the back of his mind, still writhing in agony on his drawing room floor, looking at him for that same mercy as his aunt carved those letters into her flesh.

He'd spent so much time imagining her writhing beneath him, crying out in ecstasy, moaning his name. Now all his fantasies seemed to mock him. Her pleasure turned to agony.

Her face began to blur. The vision was Hermione one moment and his Governess the next. Their faces switched back and forth as they twisted and screamed, and suddenly it was no longer his memory of the drawing room, but a thousand other horrors; their wide eyes, their hoarse voices, as they endured them.

Another mudblood without help or mercy, and Draco doing nothing.

Had his father been there? Had his father witnessed those horrors being done to his Governess? Stood by? Had he himself participated?

Draco imagined her, on her knees, caked in mud, those beautiful, warm eyes seeking his father's in the crowd.

His father, who had apparently loved a mudblood.

Abraxas' cold, didactic voice drew him back into the attic.

"Do you know what a mudblood-loving degenerate really is, Draco? They are worse than simply blood traitors, they are worse than mudbloods themselves."

Draco fist clenched tight; every fantasy of Granger taunting him like a ghost. Every time he'd told himself he was pathetic and disgusting for wanting her. But always that endless, endless longing.

His Grandfather continued, his austere voice carving deeper and deeper into his head: "They are years of intelligence, breeding, acumen and magical purity, demented into filth. The pureblooded wizard who seeks anything beyond a quick serviceable fuck from scum isn't worth the shite in that whore's bowels."

A burning lit inside Draco's chest. A new rage, so engrossing that he could barely breathe.

And still, his Grandfather's voice, pressing on -

"The mudblood-loving degenerate is perverted beyond being human," his Grandfather bared his teeth in a broad sneer, "They should be cleansed in revels themselves."

Draco hadn't made the conscious decision to reach inside his pocket for his wand, but there it was.

"Your father no longer deserves the name of Malfoy, Draco," Abraxas came to the edge of his frame, looking Draco sternly in the eye. "The line rests in you now. You must restore this family to its place. Do you understand? You must do what your Father was incapable of doing."

He must do what his father is incapable of doing. The words settled in him, and Draco felt the cold, certain calm of truth wash over his body.

"You're right, Grandfather."

Draco removed his wand from his pocket.

"If father hasn't the nerve to do it, I suppose I have to."

For the first time in his life, Draco looked his Grandfather in the eye with the confidence of his own power. Abraxas stilled, eyes narrowing.

And then the look of fear, astounding to behold, finally graced his Grandfather's face. "Draco?"

The spell flowed through him with the power of a dam released:

"Incendio."