Chapter One
A fine mist hung over the early morning hours of the grounds as I sat in the south garden on a white iron set of table and chairs. Storms must have come in the night, as there were debris of sticks and leaves littered over the ordinarily perfectly manicured lawn. Clouds of fog hung low over the tips of trees. Despite the damp, I was obstinately continuing my morning routine adopted over summer of having breakfast and coffee outside, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to bend with the changing of time and move back indoors.
I am convinced that no other season is superior to the fall, and it is that reason that it never seems to last long enough. I preferred to be outside as much as possible and away from prying eyes. My home was ornate, built and expanded upon by many generations since the early 1200s when my ancestors moved to the area from France. They settled in Wiltshire, and here the Malfoys have stayed. Anyone with any sense in their head has heard of my family, but only those who are a part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight are permitted intimacy with us. However, my society is dying, as I am often reminded.
We are the dwindling last of our kind and therefore more valuable than any gold, property, or bauble. It is my understanding that the rest of the wizarding world has chosen to intermingle with the non-magical folk, Muggles they are called, and thus the line of purity breaks down. The magic effused inside of us is less potent until it disappears all together. It generates lines of Squibs, or people born from witches and wizards who are incapable of any magic, likely due to the impurity in their line.
The succession and continuance of my family name has long since been the only goal of my family and others like mine. When generations of pureblood families found themselves with too many boys or girls, they married within. There is a book in my father's study with every family tree dating back centuries. I have witnessed some lines connecting offspring between cousins, between siblings, between father and daughter, and a few grandfather to granddaughter on some small occasions. The latter is rare. Cousins are entirely commonplace. My own parents share a line of relatives from the 1400s, but this is so far removed, I do not think it counts.
Anyway, with money being of little to no consequence in our lives, we must occupy our time with more important things. Society being the most valuable, as our influence directly impacts the ebb of flow of investments and new wealth. My father, while not a politician, has a great deal of influence in government. It is a hobby he finds most rewarding.
I am a recent graduate of Hogwarts and have spent the last two years somewhat idle, I suppose, having not found my calling toward any given occupation or task. This is quite normal, so my mother says. It is a brief interlude in time to discover myself before finding a wife.
It is not as if I think finding a woman to marry will be difficult. I could throw a stone into the garden bushes and probably find one waiting in earnest. The problem lies within me, I think. I have never been satisfied with any of the women I have danced and conversed with at dinner parties. Some of them are beautiful, every detail of their dresses is finely embroidered and stitched, and their hair is arranged in masterful ways. Still, it has never been enough to draw me from the quiet corners of my mind.
My own mother speaks over fifteen languages. She has translated many ancient magical texts and has been published; her contributions to society are endless. I found her translations in the Hogwarts library. Her life's work has been dedicated to the tireless pursuits of linguistics. I have admired her my entire life for her exquisite passion and drive. I only wish I had such a purpose myself.
You may think less of me for wanting more and many do. After all, the young ladies vying for a gentleman to marry make tremendous efforts to be so delightful to look at. But I should think that with the combination of nature and the Malfoy manor, there are certainly adequate amounts of beauty to behold—I want someone with a brain.
But I digress.
Rain impeded the rest of my quiet morning. It came suddenly, an outpour of the sky, and I had only just tucked the book under my robes and made a mad dash for the covered veranda when it erupted. Fat droplets fell upon my head and drenched me in the matter of seconds, but I kept sprinting in a vain attempt to spare the book.
My hair, which touches down past my shoulders, was sodden and stuck to the sides of my face and neck. As I opened the door and went inside, I was dripping a trail of water behind me. The south corridor veranda on the south side has two entrances. The one which I had come from was the servant's corridor and held the pantry and kitchen, as well as the laundry room and the rooms for the servants to sleep. The other door entered into the ballroom, which was a high domed room with floor to ceiling windows facing the south, east, and west. It had once been a very large conservatory, but the need for a room accommodating enough for grander parties became apparent, and my great grandfather had a smaller conservatory built on the west wing, and transformed the ballroom into its current configuration.
I hate hosting parties. Not that I particularly have much of a hand in it, as my mother is the primary planner. My father and I make sure to show up and smile politely, but I hate them. I hate the ritual, of dressing up and wearing a cravat, talking to people as if I have an interest or intimate knowledge of their lives. I can speak with someone and forget entire conversation by the time I turn around. Imagine, if you will, the exact sort of disaster this causes. People are just so boring.
As I came out of the servant's door, I was now in the northern section of the house. This contained the main foyer. I was in the corridor on the left, which held my mother's parlours and the breakfast room. The actual dining hall was on the right side of the house, just past the main staircase. However, I had erred in judgement in more ways than one, for as I stepped into the main foyer, I realized my mother had an engagement very early that day.
It was her book club, and the parlour door was open as I stepped in front of it. Mrs. Parkinson was the first to take notice, as she was facing the open door, and she gasped loudly and dropped her cup of tea onto the rug. And her reaction begot a dozen or so more, until all of the ladies in their fine dresses and coiffed hair were staring at me with shock. My own mother was attempting to control a convulsion of laughter, and I could see her lips twitching and her shoulders shaking.
"Why, Mr. Malfoy, you're in quite a state," Mrs. Zabini said, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh, do dry off before you catch a cold," Mrs. Nott said, "And do be careful passing the next parlour over, the young ladies are having their literary meeting as well."
I nodded furtively, my cheeks blushing a violent red, and stepped out of view of the door. No sooner had I done so, than I meandered into the view of the young ladies' club as well. They had significantly less practice at composure than their mothers, and most of them let out great, wild shrieks. I hastily turned away and escaped them without stopping to apologize for my appearance.
It had not occurred to me to dry myself when I stepped inside, and so instead I realized I was still dripping water all over the polished marble floors of the foyer. Once out of sight, I quickly drew my wand across my clothes and hair and deposited the excess of water into a nearby houseplant.
I have always been easily mortified. It is a reflex, to become uncomfortably embarrassed by mocking or teasing. Suffice to say, I wanted to withdraw from everything exceedingly fast.
My bedroom chambers were on the third floor. Previously, they had been on the second with my parents growing up, but when I turned fourteen, I moved to the third floor. Since there were only three of us in the manor, there was ample space. I had the entire third floor to do as I pleased, and yet I technically occupied one room. The room next to it was refashioned only this summer into a closet space.
This room was perhaps the greatest comfort to me in the entire house. There are many windows facing the southern wall and a balcony, one of the few the house even has, which overlooks the sprawl of the garden and forest beyond the stone wall gate. The room is long, rather than wide, and my bed and end tables sit on a slightly raised platform to the left of the balcony. The rest of the space is dedicated to bookshelves, plants, a large drafting table, another walnut desk for correspondence, and leather back reading chairs drawn around the fireplace.
I remained at my drafting table for most of the morning, fleshing out the details of a venomous Tentacula onto parchment. I was very well decided in stay out of the way of the ladies' book club now that my pride was properly wounded, but as I was on the south end of the mansion and they would leave from the north, I could not entirely tell when they left. It was of little consequence after some time, as I moved to reading after lunch and then spent some time in the conservatory with the mundane plants we grew for potion ingredients.
That evening, we attended a dinner party in Somerset at the Black family mansion. I had forgotten the arrangement in the first place, and so when my mother came to the stairs to remind me to dress for the evening, I was at first anguished upon realizing I had some social engagement to attend to and little time to ready myself for it. As I prepared and dressed in black dress robes, I was aware that my stomach was in intense knots and my fingers shook some as I wound the cravat at my neck and watched my reflection in the mirror.
It is standard that men, should they have long hair, keep it bound by ribbon. I loathe this fashion and find it too fanciful, but smoothed my hair back and tied it just the same. I must admit that vanity is my pitfall; I could spend an eternity adjusting pieces of myself until they are perfect. An errant, wild hair here or there must be smoothed. A button out of place must be corrected. When I was still growing considerable inches each year, I was constantly purchasing and tailoring robes to fit this taller version of myself.
At twenty, I seemed to have stopped flush at six feet one and a half inches. It is nearly intolerable; I want to end on an even number of inches, and so I wear shoes with a bit of a raised sole so that it evens out. I am fastidious about everything regarding myself. I know when I am over or under the weight I wish to be and correct it correspondingly.
That being said, we were nearly late to the carriage waiting outside because of me. Pureblood families are remarkable in that they want to possess extremely powerful amounts of magic but wish not to over indulge in it. Like many facets of life, we trended toward subtle displays of wealth and grandeur. It is impolite to even speak the word money to polite guests. Men shut themselves away in their studies to discuss finances and such things never make it to casual conversation. So, in regard to the carriages and homes, we went without magic. Many modern wizards design their homes using it exclusively. Their homes may defy earthly gravity, or perhaps they have corridors bend and shift outside the home, so when one walks to the second floor, they are walking not only outside but appear to an observer to be upside down.
My society perceives this as gaudy and a flashy and inappropriate display of magic. Most assuredly, magic went into the preparation and renovations to our home to make the construction of it much faster. But it was never meant to look like it. Manors should be timeless because generations of bloodlines will live there long after its creator is gone.
The Black family was split. One set lived in London—I believe Orion and Walburga Black, with their two sons. The ones who lived in Somerset had let a grand mansion which had once been in the hands of Muggles for some centuries, but it was now in the care of Cygnus and Druella Black and their three daughters. This property line jutted against a forest, and on the other side of that were the Zabini's.
We were very familiar with the Zabini family. They had eight children; two boys and six girls. I graduated with Candra Zabini and he was a close friend. The other family we were most intimately acquainted with were the Nott family, who likewise had four children. Their eldest boy, Theodore Nott, was also my companion from school. He had three younger sisters. This strange trend of daughters was found in nearly every household. The amount of pureblood witches vastly outnumbered the pureblood wizards.
As you may have probably already guessed, this created a good deal of anxiety. Bloodlines were at risk. Entire family names and wealth could be destroyed, as they could not be passed down without male heirs. The very fact that some families possessed only daughters meant that their name was doomed for failure at the start. And this was the problem of the Black family situated in Somerset. While Sirius and Regulus Black would carry the family forward, three daughters meant it was the end of the line for Cygnus and Druella.
I shook myself from these thoughts long enough to catch the end of a conversation my parents were having. My mother sat across from my father, and I was seated by the window on the inside of the carriage. My father sat next to me on the bench closest to the door.
"I want floral damask wallpaper in the first parlour," my father snapped, "It would draw less attention to that ghastly old vase on the fireplace your mother gave us ten years ago."
"My grandmother's ashes are in that! It's an urn!" my mother exclaimed, her hand fluttering to her chest in astonishment. She muttered something in French, though I did not quite catch it.
"It is hideous," he replied, with a small shudder.
The aesthetic of the mansion and how to provision and display every gift or trinket supplied to them by my mother's French family was the chief argument my parents had. They argued little of anything else. Not once had I witnessed them legitimately arguing, but they bickered over what our home looked like and how it was run. I suppose that men should have very little opinion on wallpaper or curtains, that my father should give my mother full reign as her status and gender implied to our society, but as I often found her pouring over my father's balance sheets and making corrections, so he felt a responsibility for the patterns, colors, and arrangement of furniture in any given room.
"It's very elegant, from the Gothic fashion," my mother replied, plucking at a stitching on her dress that was, by a mere fraction, crooked. She was unraveling it with her fingers—better to have a missing stitch than an imperfect one.
"It has a gargoyle's face fastened to it in the front and back," my father snapped, "Of course, it is a very good likeness of your late grandmother, I see why it was chosen for her eternal resting place, Merlin rest her soul."
"Abraxas!" she gasped. "You say such things too much and she'll come back and haunt you."
"Her snarling attitude and constant complaints of having chills is still reverberating through all of history and time, my darling, no doubt I will be haunted even without her ghost showing up in my study," he retorted.
My mother scolded him, but did so with a muted smile she could scarcely contain.
We arrived in Somerset just as the sun went down, and our carriage brought us to the winding drive to the mansion. It was a fourteenth century manor house, with large stone walls and ancient trees swaying in the front lawn. Our carriage stopped before a wide set of stairs which brought us up to a small courtyard, and then we walked to the black iron door. Their family crest was affixed to the front door, which was held open by itself to allow guests to enter.
I slipped through the threshold and was met with the subtle scent of flowers, and as I turned my head, I saw a rather large vase of bursting birds of paradise intermixed with lilies and snapdragons. The color arrangement reminded me of both summer and a sunset. Bruised aubergine purple offset with bright oranges and streaks of yellows and white puffed clouds of blossoms. Their manor had some Gothic influence, but they kept it well lit. The floors had been redone with wood to draw warmth into the room with the exception of the great hall just past the foyer, which they left the original marble flooring for dancing.
As guests, we were allowed to mingle and socialize before dinner. The host and his hostesses were about, I imagined, but I did not see a single one of the daughters. My parents dispersed from each other's sides, my mother to single out Mrs. Zabini and my father to join the men in the lounge to smoke. I was somewhat offset by my age; not old enough to join my father and not be bored senseless, and yet as I looked around, I could not find someone my age with which I wished to speak.
I should preface that my behavior in this instance is deplorable. Finding no one, I absconded to the right wing of the house and away from the others who were taking self-guided tours about the main floor of the house. They were admiring the pool room, the lounges, the dining rooms, and the ballroom, all in excess. And after dinner, no doubt they would venture outside into the gardens to admire this too—these sorts of things were half party, half exhibit—but I felt rigid in my cravat and overly nervous, so I departed on my own. I greeted no one on my journey, too drawn into my thoughts to remember my manners, and I stumbled around until I opened a set of walnut double doors and found myself in the family's library.
Immediately I was met with a swirl of smells—dust, leather, and tobacco. The tobacco was the strongest scent in the room, and I therefore gathered that someone was inside the room smoking. As the door closed behind me, I felt a great rush of air through an aisle of bookshelves. A window must have been opened to cause such a disturbance. In just a few moments, I heard a set of footsteps on the wooden floor and a tall silhouette appeared at the other end of the bookshelf.
The light was so dim I could not make out a face, but the shape was very obviously a woman, as she was wearing a slender ball gown with puffed sleeves and an empire waste. Lady's fashions were inspired by all walks of history now, some opting for Georgian replicas as the one I could see now, or other periods both earlier and later. While I am not an expert in female fashion, the only prohibited time periods it seems they could not draw from were ones where corsets were not used, though I had one some occasion seen young women in Diagon Alley wearing very modern looking attire. The ones who must have been Muggleborn wore fashions outside of witch aesthetics, opting for billowing peasant sleeves and pants that looked like bells. This was not the case for most of the witches I interacted with at all.
"Well, are you going to stand there, or are you going to join us?" the figure said, her voice cutting through the quiet of the library like a knife.
I had a mind to turn and escape the way I had come. However, that seemed quite rude and I feared what sort of humiliation might come my way if I did not acquiesce. So I nodded stupidly, my mind just a jumble of nerves, and walked in between the two lines of bookshelves to the black figure ahead of me. She turned on her heel and slipped away from the end of the row of books and disappeared to the right. As I came to the end, I turned and followed her.
There were dimly lit sconces on the back part of the wall that set the room aglow in warm yellow light. A group of women were crowded around with small wooden chairs around a wide window seat bench made of mahogany with a cornflower blue and faded floral cushion fastened on top of it. The twelve pane window was open outward and this, it would seem, was the source of the smell I encountered when I first entered the room.
She was blonde, her hair a mess of curls and braids, but she left it loose down her waist. There were pearls sewn into the braids and a crown of her hair wrapped around just above her forehead. She was wearing a dress inspired, I believe, from the late 1890s, with a modest collar buttoned up her throat and a subtle dark blue floral pattern, with long straight sleeves buttoned at her wrists. Her long skirt was pleated, but plain, and she was wearing boots rather than slippers. And in between her fingers was a cigarette, which she held partially out of the window to try and keep the smell from permeating out of the room and down the hall.
Each woman had a book in their lap. I realized that I had intruded upon some sort of engagement, though I had never heard of anyone having such a meeting during a dinner party. With the abundance of women in this generation, it shocked me to find that they were even here. They should be dancing with gentlemen. Idly, I thought, they should perhaps be dancing with me.
"I am sorry," I said, clearing my throat and backing away, "I did not think anyone would be here."
"Do you hide during all parties you attend, Mr. Malfoy, or just ones my family hosts?" the blonde on the window seat asked, her voice was intoned with dryness and thick, raspy sarcasm.
"I try not to make it a habit," I admitted rather sheepishly.
The other women exchanged glances and giggled. This was entirely too embarrassing—I can hardly stand the affects women have upon me. One laugh and I am reduced to a gelatinous heap on the floor. No doubt some of these women were the very same who were in a shock to see my state earlier this morning. Knowing I had undoubtedly managed to humiliate myself twice in one day in front of a similar audience was nothing short of an internal disaster.
"Well," the woman said, steading her gaze onto me, "You cannot leave now. I would be compelled to kill you if you did."
"I'm sorry?" I asked, stammering.
She unfolded herself from the window seat and the other women parted, shifting their chairs away from her. She took a drag from the cigarette and slowly made her way toward me.
When I was a child, my parents took me on vacation to France. In the marketplace, a man was in the street peddling for money. He had a leopard who could do tricks—jump through a hoop, catch toys in midair, that sort of thing. The prowling, predatory sort of walk the leopard had, the confidence of knowing it was above everyone else in nature's hierarchy, was incredibly silky and smooth and intimidating.
This woman had the exact same walk, like she knew she owned the entirety of the room and its fears, fancies, and happiness was held in the palm of her hand. When she said she would be compelled to kill me, I believed her at once that she would.
"Come, join us," she urged, as she stopped in front of me. "You do know how to read, don't you?"
"Of course," I replied, bristling, "Of course I do, Miss Black."
She paused. This ranking of her name was an error on my part which I realized at once. It was said as I was not formally acquainted with her, and therefore did not know where she was placed in birth order. However, I quickly surmised that this was stupid of me, as I knew Bellatrix Black from Hogwarts and also was aware that she was the eldest daughter.
Bellatrix would be called "Miss Black" whereas her other two siblings would be referred to as Miss Narcissa Black and Miss Andromeda Black. In recent years, this titling and ranking had lost a great deal of popularity in casual conversation and was reduced to simple surnames, but the Black family was as old as mine. They would, therefore, value and uphold the tradition more rigorously than families younger than ours. We set the standard for what other families should strive to be.
My actions showed her that I not only had no notion of her first name, but I knew little of her family.
"I suppose, with my eldest sister married and the next in line missing, 'Miss Black' is accurate," she replied, her eyes growing cold momentarily, and then her expression went entirely blank, as if she had forced the emotions back inside of herself.
Something akin to horror possessed my body at the realization that I had only thought I erred circumstantially by title, but instead had blundered through family secrets as if I had knowledge of their existence. I was about to apologize again, when Miss Black drew up a chair from across the room for me in the middle of the other young women and then quickly took her seat on the bench at the window.
"Now then, before Mr. Malfoy interrupted us," she said, crossing one leg over her knee. She plucked a leather bound book from her hand and flashed the spine toward the group. I saw, in old style print letters along the spine: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
"I have never heard of Brontë," I exclaimed into the quiet room of rustling pages and ladies settling into their seats.
Miss Black peered over the top of her book at me. "Well no, you wouldn't, Mr. Malfoy."
She cleared her throat and continued without delay, and I felt a mass of cobwebs in my throat so strong I could not protest or interrupt anymore as she began to read: "If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."
Miss Black's voice exuded sharpness and softness. She soothed in one instance and startled in another. A writer would be delighted to listen to her narrations.
"No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don't love me, I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here: to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest…Hush, Jane! You think too much of the love of human beings…"
I listened to her read paragraph after paragraph, mesmerized by the language and the cadence of her voice. I see now why Miss Black had an audience, though I had very little idea what Jane Eyre was about.
After she finished reading, the women who had been following along with their own copies sighed and clutched the book to their chests. They tucked away their novels into their reticules (charmed to hold many objects of any size, I noticed) and joined the forays of the party. Miss Black stayed behind on the window seat until they were gone and then she gestured for me to leave with her.
"I assume you have questions," she said, as she dabbed a bit of perfume at her neck and wrists to hide the smell of tobacco.
Her arm folded around my elbow and instinctively, I curled my arm and drew it toward her to be proper.
"Many, but I am not sure where to start," I admitted.
She opened the door and led us outside into the corridor. I followed her at length toward the dining hall—it would appear Miss Black was a much better keeper of time, as I had lost all sense of it since I had entered the library. We were very much due for dinner.
"The ladies and I read select novels," Miss Black replied, "Of course, the sorts of novels not found in the official reading material list. It appears, Mr. Malfoy, you managed to not only stumble into our little secret meeting, but you were also left unaffected by the spell we put on the door."
"There was a spell on the door?" I asked, as I had not felt anything.
"Yes, it was supposed to be a Confundus charm," she replied, "I suppose it didn't work."
At the long dining table, stretched to fit the eighty or so people at the party, Miss Black sat down and I sat next to her. I saw my mother and father, on entirely separate sides of the table and several seats down from one another.
Only newlyweds were allowed to sit with one another for a year, before they too had to separate and engage with others in their society. I suspect this rule comes from the abundance of arranged marriages and couples who do not wish to be near one another, though I have never been brave enough to voice that opinion. The table, at least, was not sorted by gender or marriage status, allowing single women to vie for seats near unmarried men.
"You read quite well," I told her, after a brief interlude of us arranging food and our plates in silence while others spoke around us.
"It is one of my selected talents," Miss Black said.
The women in our society may practice a number of talents, but they select four as their masters, and these could be magical talents or non-magical. Most choose the pianoforte, and I know that because I see them all lined up to write their name down on the sheet of parchment to take their turn at playing during a party.
My mother chose language, herbology, embroidery, and potions. While linguistics and plants were her passions, she thought embroidery and potions might grant her a bit of independent wealth should she not marry well. Instead she married the best eligible bachelor of her generation, so I suppose she had little need of her practical side.
"Your others?" I asked with curiosity.
Surely her other talents did not include smoking, though she seemed adept enough at it.
"Drawing," she answered, taking a drink of her elderflower wine. She placed it back onto the table and looked at me. "As well as other acceptable female occupations. Dancing, singing, pianoforte if I'm in the mood for it. Baking. Charms."
"I have the sense that only one of those is accurate," I replied.
"No wonder my Confundus charm didn't work on you, Mr. Malfoy," Miss Black said, with a small sneer.
"Well, you certainly draw, you've ink stains on your fingertips," I told her.
I placed my own hands on the table and turned them palms up to reveal the smudges of ink stains that never quite washed off. I am left handed, and so the ink remnants are more pronounced on the left than the right. When she revealed her palms to me, her right hand was smeared, but they were much darker. Either she had been drawing recently or she used more ink than me.
"I confess my second talent lies in writing," she said, "Not that I write for any audience but myself."
"Oh, yes, I have heard all ladies keep a diary," I said, with happy enthusiasm.
The result of my sentence turned her neutral expression into a piercing, angry one. I was once more reminded of the leopard in the marketplace, and nearly recoiled away from her.
When she did speak, her voice was clipped and even. "It is true, that many women keep a diary of daily accounts and their thoughts and feelings. But I trust you do not think that writing is merely a superfluous expression of self, Mr. Malfoy? I trust you do believe that women writing in this century is equal to the likes of which men mean to write? Do you say to men, when they admit their talent lies in writing, that 'gentlemen keep diaries' also? Would you even dare, or is it much more likely that you would ask a man, 'What sorts of things do you write, sir?'"
I quickly corrected my previous sentence and said, "What sort of things do you write, Miss Black?"
She seemed surprised by me and my quick adherence to her standards and agreeableness. Perhaps I should not have been so quick to alter my behavior for her, but I must admit she rendered me uselessly anxious.
I could account for most conversations I had with women. I would ask them of their specialties, discuss their favorite book if they read, or the weather if nothing else seemed to fit. I even pretended to listen to them discuss their dresses and ribbons at length. At most, I attempted to pay attention long enough to hear their feelings.
I did not know what Miss Black intended to say or do, what emotions I would conjure from her next. My curious nature compelled me to find this conversation resplendent as equally as it was slowly crushing me under the weight of nerves.
"It's a secret," she told me.
"I see you have many of those," I said.
She smiled to herself more than to me and turned her head away to join the conversation of the women across from her, who were discussing a book club novel from the sanctioned list.
I had little opportunity to notice or find Miss Black after dinner was completed and we were moved to the ballroom. She did not queue up to play the pianoforte, as I never assumed she would nor dance. Likewise, I would have requested to be added to her card were she present, but I never found her. By chance, I managed to catch Mrs. Black glancing around the room with apparent anger, perhaps looking for her daughter.
In the carriage ride home, I knew I had to be quite diplomatic with my word choice. If my parents sensed an interest in Miss Black, I would be thrusted into a whirlwind of courting activities. Miss Black would be made to interview her skillsets to myself and my parents, there would be chaperoned visits, and our families would become interwoven at parties both public and private. It happened before, with Pearl Parkinson, when I meant merely to inquire about the song she played one evening. It turned into a three month ordeal until I formally rejected the engagement. My parents were extremely vexed and they have been weary of me ever since, despite admitting afterward that a Parkinson was of little equal value of a Malfoy.
"What is the arrangement of the daughters again?" I asked into the quiet void of space between us. "I have been trying to remember all night. There is Bellatrix Black, and then…"
"Andromeda Black, the middle child," my mother interrupted, "And Narcissa Black, the youngest."
"Then Narcissa…she's the…blonde one?" I asked, wincing.
My mother, who had been lying sideways on the bench she had to herself, sat up at once. "My word, Lucius, you sat with her all through dinner and you cannot remember?"
I blinked, feigning surprise. "Oh. I suppose not. I merely saw their portrait and wondered about their names."
"Honestly, Lucius, this is precisely the behavior your mother and I have become concerned about," my father intoned next to me with a snap in his voice, "You hardly notice anything around you, and you cannot remember people when you have talked to them, you don't even listen to what people are saying to you. How do you expect to uphold the Malfoy name when you cannot be a diplomat? When you possess such meager social skills—you were not always like this, you were a very attentive young man when you came of age. When we first began influencing you to become the master of this family, you were ambitious and eager. I could barely get you to go to bed at night because you wished to learn so much, and now, it is as if you are listless and wandering, blind and drunk, through life without a cause or care in the world."
I should admit, I half-listened to his lecture. But in my defense, this was the hundredth time I had heard it.
"I remember speaking to Miss Black," I argued, for now my temper was rising and therefore I was obstinate and likely to say the wrong thing. "I inquired about her talents and she told them to me."
"Oh?" my father replied with a cold sneer, "And do indulge us, Lucius."
"She orates, draws, and writes," I said, and then I paused, realizing she had never told me the fourth one.
"And does she use quill and ink, charcoal, or lead pencil? Did you inquire to see if she painted her drawings afterward and in what medium?" my father said, "No, I can see by the look on your face you did not. These are the things you are supposed to ask. You must make people feel like you have a strong interest in their lives. You will become a greater influence by flattery. How many times have I told you? Learn intimate details of others and mention it later on at another event—it makes them feel important…"
"Abraxas, darling, please, I already feel rather hungover," my mother interrupted, lightly touching her forehead.
At my mother's complaint, he dropped the issue immediately, as I have no doubt, she was the only one who had perfect influence over my father.
When we arrived at home in Wiltshire, I woke my mother up from her quiet slumber on the bench across from us. She touched my shoulder as we made the trek up the driveway to the front door.
"It is all right to feel a little lost right now," she told me quietly, "It is your age, your burden, to not yet know what feels right for you."
I nodded, but I did not feel lost the way my parents seemed to believe I was. The truth is, I felt nothing. Nothing ensnares me, no passion pulls me from the depths of my life and elevates me to a grander cause. No talent or hobby drove me forward. I had no sweeping romance with which to base my life on. I was just empty.
Or so I thought, but as I settled down to sleep for the night, I laid on my back. I stared at the canopy of black silk swathed around my bed and wondered why I had never heard of Charlotte Brontë before, and a soft curiosity stirred inside of me.
The next morning I found my mother after I had breakfast outdoors. Today, it had turned so cold in the early morning hours that I had to fetch a blanket in order to eat outside, and so I was partially frozen solid when I caught her before she left for the day.
"I am looking for a particular book," I said, shutting the front door, "I wondered if you knew if it would be catalogued in our library?"
She folded her reticule in the crook of her arm and turned toward me. My mother had practically every book we owned catalogued and indexed in her mind. If I were to ask her for any book in the house, she would know where to find it.
In fact, she seemed to be responsible for most of the items in the house. I experienced, in my twenty years, many instances where I proclaimed I could not find something, only to have her waltz into the room and hand it to me from some area of the room I had never thought to look.
"Which is it then?" she asked me.
"The title is sort of lost to me now—the first bit is Jane," I said, "The author's last name is Brontë, this I do remember."
A cool and peculiar expression crossed my mother's face and I knew in that moment she had heard of it; neigh, I felt intrinsically within me that she had read it before. I felt very stupid then; perhaps it was a very obvious novel I somehow missed.
"I know it, but you won't find it in our library," she said, and began walking toward the large marble stairs.
"Should I place an order then at Flourish and Blotts?" I asked, following her.
A coughing sort of laugh issued from her throat. "No, you won't find it there either," she remarked. "Come along then, if you wish to read it, you had better hurry up. I'm late for my appointment."
I followed her all the way to the second floor and into my parents' master suite. My father was locked away in his study and would be occupied until the evening. I do not think he did much in the way of work; no, if I knew my father, he was pouring through a historical book on war.
She went into her closet and slid a collection of black robes off to the side, then tapped her wand against the back of the wooden shelf. The wood melted out of sight and in its place was a bookshelf. I had no idea my mother hid a personal book collection behind the confines of her clothes. I doubted my father knew either.
"Mother?" I implored.
"I did not think they were still doing this sort of thing," she admitted, with a wry smile, "I started it with Druella when I moved to this country, just after your father and I were married. I only thought to do it to make friends with the other wives, I never thought she would pass the tradition on to her daughters."
"The...tradition?" I asked.
"Yes, yes," she replied, "It's called The Secret Moonflower Society. Moonflowers—Ipomoea alba, a vine that only blooms flowers at night.'
"Thank you for the botany lesson, Mum; could you tell me what this secret society is?" I pressed.
She reached for a book and placed it into my hands. And there it was, a battered looking and small leather bound copy of Jane Eyre.
"Well, when I started it," she replied, "We read exclusively female Muggle authors."
I was shocked. I had never considered that she dabbled in such things. It was not necessarily that it was illegal or forbidden to read works by Muggles so much as that it was simply not done. Perhaps I should acknowledge that reading or appearing to sympathize some with blood traitors was scandalous indeed, and I do suppose this falls directly under that category. It would have been shameful for a wizard to seek knowledge of such things—perhaps for a witch, it was downright unacceptable. I had never considered my own mother, highly educated as she was, to be one who would wish to dabble. Likewise, it had never occurred to me that the other women of her society had read these novels, shared their thoughts and ideas of them in hushed whispers and secrets with each other.
It had never occurred to me that women did anything but either seek a husband or dote on one, manage households and raise children. Talents were marketing tactics, I thought, these specializations were to the benefit of husbands who wished for them to either entertain them or keep a woman's mind occupied.
"Does father know about this?" I asked her, unconsciously threading my fingers in through different pages of the book.
The paper was old and somewhat fragile and soft as silk against my fingertips. The printed words appeared to have been made on a typewriter, and the perfume of old paper and ink wafted toward me.
"No, and you shall not tell him," she told me resolutely, as she tapped her wand against the closet wall and reconfigured the wooden back. She pushed her robes back into place and guided me from the closet. "There are many things your young mind has not yet had the opportunity to learn, Lucius, but you are about to make a start."
She patted my shoulder and left me in the second floor corridor. And I stared at Jane Eyre, mystified that this book was a source of secrecy, a hidden gem threaded through generations of women. A book I had never heard of as a well-educated and rational gentleman of high society. I felt I should have known it, should have been well-versed in this sort of literature if half of my society found it worth reading.
Like a siren, the book called to me. Beckoned me to open it and read its secrets. So I returned to my bedroom chamber to yield to such a temptation. I curled up on the bed, my back against the headboard and my legs stretched out along the blankets. And then I began.