Chapter Six
I was half-asleep in the chair before the dwindling embers of the fireplace with Wuthering Heights slipping off my lap as the words and paragraphs blurred together under my slowly closing eyelids. I barely registered the soft tapping along the window until a particular hard gust of wind opened the flimsy balcony doors, and the owl soared into the room with an irritated hoot and landed on the back of my chair. I started and sat up from my daze and twisted around to take the bit of parchment from its extended leg. No sooner had I done so than it was off again, flying into the late winter night, beating its wings fiercely against the tide of snow and sleet falling. I broke the blue seal and unrolled the parchment.
Come outside. This was the entire contents of the letter, which had no correspondent or context enclosed, though I had little doubt of its authoress.
No other person in the world would call this late.
I tossed the letter into the fire quickly and dressed for the outdoors with a heavy winter cloak and black leather boots. I assumed I would be wandering out into the forest, which was thickly blanketed with snow. I slipped fox fur lined gloves onto my hands and swiftly left the manor to the south garden in search of Narcissa.
When I stepped away from the veranda and into the broad moonlit garden pathway, I was immediately bound with invisible rope at my wrists and ankles. I rolled my eyes, but waited until I heard the rustle of skirts along the hedges.
"Clever," I called out into the darkness.
A figure appeared to my right, brandishing a stout glass bottle, her face obscured in shadows. I expected she would free me and take me to the next part of this initiation, but she pulled the glass stopper from the bottom and held it up to my nose instead. I inhaled against my better judgement.
I lost consciousness in seconds, and all I remembered was swaying and stumbling toward the ground before everything went black.
When I woke, I was shoved upright into a kneeling position. A cloth of some sort was secured over my face, making it impossible to see. I heard little else—the snow consumed all sound but the hollow wailing of the wind and the faint snapping of limbs on trees. It was colder here and it cut and chipped away at my body. My heart hammered in my chest; would they leave me out here to freeze? Was this my initiation; how long could I survive the cold?
I struggled; my arms were bound behind my back and I felt, quite plainly, there was nothing I could do. It was an unusual feeling to experience; there were little to no times in my life which I could recall not feeling in control. And I had never experienced an instance where I did not feel safe.
My ankles too were bound and as my wand was secured in the inside pocket of my robes, I had no possibility of freeing myself. I was at the mercy of the Moonflower society.
"Are you awake, Mr. Malfoy?" a voice asked me plainly.
I thought I recognized its owner; Louisa Greyback, a lower level pureblood outside of the Sacred Twenty-Eight circle. It surprised me to find the society allowed anyone outside of the upper class inside, but then again, I was their first male member, so they must have little prejudice over their memberships. Louisa was, ironically, Marianne Nott's maid. Had I known she was a member before, I might have paid her more attention.
"Yes," I answered.
At once, the cloth obscuring my vision was lifted. I blanched and scrabbled backward. I was on the very edge of a cliff that dropped off to a frozen lake, and though the cliff itself was only seven or eight feet high, the shock of being so close to falling down onto the thick layer of ice below sent my instincts reeling.
Louisa giggled at the reaction. "I'm going to undo your bindings now, and you're to follow the candles."
She waved her wand and my arms and legs were free. I let out a sigh and rose to my feet; my legs were stiff from the cold. As soon as I turned to my left and saw the narrow pathway down to the lake, a candle lit, hovering in the air and blinked twice.
"Go on, now," Louisa said, and she pushed the flat of her palm against my shoulder blades to guide me forward. "And there will be no cheating with magic, sir, you'll have to get there on your own. Don't try it; we've already taken your wand."
With an irritated sigh, I moved toward the candle. As I passed by it, another burst into flame just ahead. It was a guide, to mark my path through whatever journey laid before me.
As I came to the rocky shore of the lake, a candle lit on the lake's smooth surface which was covered in a fine snowy powder.
"No," I decided, to anyone who could hear, "I'm not crossing that!"
The candle flickered in response. I glanced around me, but it was only myself and the bright white moon, splashing light across the over the lake. Louisa Greyback had vanished from her place on the hill.
"My boots are brand new," I called out, to whomever may have been listening, "Handmade. Italian leather. If anyone wishes to replace them if they are ruined by falling in…I'll give you the craftsman's address to send for another pair…providing, of course, I live…"
There was no answer, and presuming that the entire counsel of the Moonflower society did not care about my attire nearly as much as I did, I took a tentative step forward onto the ice. As I placed half of my weight onto the ice, it remained solid beneath me. Exhaling a breath I did not know I was holding, I moved my other foot onto the slick surface.
The candle in front of me went out and another appeared at the bank opposite of me.
Bollocks.
I wondered how my friends might have completed this exercise. Candra was an athlete and therefore would have accepted the challenge without regard to his own safety; he would have charged across the frozen lake and sprinted across, diving or leaping over any broken spots. If the ice broke beneath his feet, his body would have acted instinctively; no doubt he would jump over the cracks in the ice before he fell in. He was swift and action oriented, and I had no doubt he would have crossed the lake in record time without fear.
I could imagine Theodore would be standing as I was now, cursing and chronically overthinking, every crevice of his body overwhelmed with pulsing nerves and anxiety.
And Narcissa?
The lake might have parted to allow her to pass, for it might sense not only her fierce power and determination of spirit, but her grace as well.
But I was neither of them; it was just me and the moon, as I stood perhaps a foot from the bank unmoving, not wanting to take a step forward. I admit I was paralyzed by the fear. The unknown. The unknown of what could happen was more terrifying than the action of doing it, I thought. For I had never done anything, in all of my polite society ways. There was a standard to follow, a constant rubric on etiquette and how the machinations of dances and invitations to things worked. The integral system of my society was well-balanced, congenial; or so they were intended to be. Nevertheless, I knew it like a well-loved story. The beginning, middle, and end was always secured.
I was wandless and therefore powerless and could almost anticipate great monsters bursting from the lake to kill me, to wrap around me and drag me to the dark murky depths. My imagination was in overdrive, considering all the ways I could face death.
The silence swirling around me was the worst part of it. The quiet serenity of the late night made my thoughts a cacophony of sound; a crashing loudness, my brain an opus of words. Each assuring me I could not cross without facing my own reckless demise.
I meandered in my nihilism to that of Jane Eyre, who travelled alone from Thornfield sporting a broken heart and little in the way of opportunity. She used the last bit of money she possessed in the world to take a carriage away from Mr. Rochester, in a fury to leave the very source of both her love and pain. She made the journey for herself; a woman of strong mind and conviction, who knew what she needed.
She slept under the protection of the moon and trusted Nature to lend itself to her; she was turned away in her hour of need of sustenance by humans.
A young woman, only four feet and eleven inches and starving, suffered a greatly—her journey was one that pushed her to her physical limits and was a challenge to her heart and mind.
As a man of better standing and infinitely more resources, I suppose a frozen lake was only as difficult as one perceived it to be. I took a step forward and finding that nothing leapt forth to drag me down to hell, I took a few more. I grew less timid with each step.
Soon, I was in the middle of the lake and had nothing to fear. Exalting in my success, my heart felt lighter and freer than before, and suddenly the thing which I had overthought and dreaded became easy to bear, impossible to fear, and almost fun.
That was, until the ice began to crack under my feet. The tip of my boot went first, jutting into a hole in the ice that was covered by a fine layer of powdered snow. Caught, it sent me careening forward. I fell against the hard surface and my palms began stinging from the impact of breaking my fall. I wrenched my boot from the small hole in the ice, and as I stood up, the wind blew, scattering the powder behind me.
Bubbles gathered beneath the grey surface. The ice was significantly thinner where I stood. I shifted my weight backward, and that is when the first crack went through. I heard, rather than saw it, rivet through the ice where the heel of my boot was.
"Fuck," I muttered.
I could run, I thought idly, as I tried to force myself not to panic. My boots were not made for it; I would be just as likely to slip across the ice, as they had little in the way of traction. I cursed my vanity, as nothing could have been less useful to me now.
Carefully, I took a wide step forward and lifted the boot which had caused the crack in the ice and came to settle on solid, thick sheets of ice without bubbles. Assuming I had merely stepped onto a thinner block of ice, I continued forward with greater speed and less thought, considering this near miss an opportunity to not overthink. I accepted the luck I had in not falling in, and did not wish to waste it.
As I made it to the opposite end of the bank and stepped onto sure footing, I let out a small sigh of relief and twisted around to look at the lake, which seemed innocent enough, as the snow danced in the swirling patterns of the wind, and the moon shone above the copse of trees I had left behind.
Candles dotted my path up a hill. I walked up the steep incline, burning off the energy of excitement and fear crossing the lake had riddled me with. As I did, the wind became more harried and frigid, and I slipped the hood of my cloak over my head to mitigate the worst of it and the painful, bitter nips against my cheeks and nose.
I followed the candles through a dark forest pathway for approximately three miles, and when I broke through the trees onto the other side, I was exhausted and freezing. The moon was still high in the sky, but I felt it was lighter, growing closer to early dawn. There was one single candle left straight in front of me, and I hurried to it, hoping this was the end of the path.
The candle vanished as I stepped up to the edge of a cliff; this one was higher than before, upwards of sixty feet. I watched from the ledge, my hair sailing out in front of me with the rustle of the wind and whipping against the darkness. I watched a small candle blink at the bottom in the clearing.
"No," I said, backing up involuntarily and shaking my head.
After all this, I was not jumping off of a cliff to my death. An ugly death it would be as well; as soon as I hit the ground below my body would be shattered into a thousand pieces. I would be disfigured beyond repair. My parents would be able to identify me by my blood soaked hair and nothing else.
I looked around; there had to be another path which I could take. Perhaps if I backtracked through the forest, removed myself from the path, and headed due west, I could eventually come to a gradual slope or drop off that I could then route myself properly. However, that could take ages, and it was fiercely cold—my resolve was waning.
What if I was supposed to jump?
I wondered if there was someone at the bottom, ready to save me should I come tumbling off the side like a dolt set on jumping despite there being another, albeit more difficult way.
No matter which way I studied it, I could not decide if I was supposed to take the path outlined for me or the one not that was not. Would it made much of a difference either way? I watched the candle blink at me from the below and inhaled sharply, taking a ragged breath I knew might be my last.
In that moment, I determined I was just as mad as I was stupid. I was going to jump—not because I was brave, but because my feet hurt too much in my boots to keep hiking through the rough forest terrain.
There was nothing valiant about this inherent laziness; I was no hero for it. I was, however, incredibly stupid.
Three times, I tried to jump. Each time I made it to the edge, a panic went through me, and I turned away. The fourth try, I wobbled and almost fell off the side of the cliff and then I skittered back from the edge and fell backward onto my ass. My cloak obscured my vision and I was sure, quite sure, the entire universe was watching me and roaring with laughter.
Fifth time. I got back onto my feet and dusted the snow off. I inhaled through gritted teeth and then exhaled.
"Shit," I said, tugging at my sleeves, "Here goes."
Taking a running start, I ran to the edge of the cliff with my eyes closed, and the decision to plunge myself straight to my death was easier this time when I could not see below. I arced my body as if diving into water, but there none, only air. I opened my eyes and watched as I tumbled toward the surface below. The wind was a whirling, screaming mess in my ears, and the only thought in my head was that my famous last words were impeccably short sighted; that they were mere profanity than perfect prose or some clever philosophical statement.
At least I was the only one that heard them.
A quick, smattering thought interrupted everything inside of me, and suddenly—more than anything—I wished most in the world for my mother before I blinked out of existence forever. An ancient, twisted, and gnarled grief entangled my heart, knowing I would never see her again.
My swan dive toward the hardened earth below suddenly stopped its maddening rush; nearly ten feet from the surface, my body suddenly slowed, soft and light as the air itself, giving me just enough time to right myself and gently land on my feet.
I looked wildly around for another person, a wand that had performed the spell on my behalf, but there was nothing but darkness until the next candle lit a few yards in front of me and I followed the path forward into the next dense forest. I was nearly too shaken to move, but too cold to remain in one place, and so I followed on the path. Either I was becoming resolved in the matters of life or death, or I was in a perpetual state of shock.
This was a short trek, approximately a quarter of a mile or so. My entire body was trembling from the adrenaline of my fall and the cold, and I was aching at every joint from the pure fear coursing through my veins. This forest path drifted to a dead end, and I stepped into the clearing. A partially frozen waterfall was before me, and in front of the bank of swirling water was a large tree stump with a vial of potion on top of it. As I stepped forward, a ring of blue flames engulfed around me so that I could not run away.
Around the necks of the bottles were the words DRINK ME, printed in beautiful scrawling script. I picked up the vial and turned it in my hands, but it did not endeavour to give more description beyond that. For all I knew, this vial contained a myriad of poisonous plants I was well familiar with: foxglove, belladonna, oleander, hemlock. Any of these would take little effort or dosage to kill me.
I removed the glass stopper from the vial and sniffed, but it smelled at first like cherry tart; as I continued to smell, the scents unfurled in each other and there were hints of other things. Whiskey, freshly police leather, wet soil, and coffee; a soft perfume I could not identify. Hot bread fresh from the oven—parchment and charcoal.
Perhaps it was Amortentia, a potent love potion. A collection of all the scents that attracted me. A love potion could scramble my mind, send me to the brink of madness. It could ruin my life, I thought idly, as I turned the vial over in my hands. One sip and I might marry the person whose intentions it was designed for, and once they had my name, there would be nothing I could do to remedy it.
A single vial could destroy my life as I knew it. One drop on my tongue and I could possible commit my life to another kind of death. Yet, as I turned it over in my palm once more to the front of the label, I felt a sort of strange fascination. A part of me wanted it to ruin me, to destroy my prospects and my reputation. One drop; my life was forever changed. I didn't even have to make the decision of whom I was to marry; I only had to make the choice to drink.
The abyss waited for me, and so I met it by downing the entire contents of the bottle.
The flames around me disappeared, and a candle appeared in front of the waterfall. I walked around the small expanse of water and scaled the slick, semi-frozen rocks and stepped behind the waterfall into the dark winding alcove. I expected my doom. I was waiting for the figure beyond the cave, perhaps a makeshift altar and a wetting. I expected my life was over as I distractedly glanced along the dark, moss covered walls.
Now, I was standing in the corridor just before the main room and beyond me were winding paths to different parts of the cave; I could hear soft water echoing in the main chamber. Candlelight blinked inside, and so I walked in fully. The floor beneath me dropped suddenly, and my legs worked too swiftly to keep up with the steep descent, until I made it all the way to the bottom without falling. At the bottom was a table with a plate and a small single slice of cake. A small bit of parchment contained the words EAT ME on them in the same script.
I stepped forward and plucked the fork from the side of the plate and cut a tiny piece from the end of it. Delicately, I brought it to my lips and pressed it to my tongue. The fork in my left hand turned into a golden key, and a candle lit up to guide me down a right wing of the cave.
All this, and I had not felt the effects of the potion. I threw my life into a void and was rewarded with simple dessert and a key. My brain was on fire, churning through the physical and mental exhaustion of the initiation. I only hoped the end would come soon.
As I walked down the corridor, I felt a rush of wind. This cave must open, I thought, exposed someway to the elements outside. I could no longer hear the faint waterfall or drip of water. And indeed, the further I walked, the colder it became.
I saw clusters of night blooming flowers of pale white along the edge of the ground. There were faint holes in the ceiling above me, currently obscured by layers of snow above, but I knew the light cast through just enough to allow a source of light. Ivy crawled up the walls, somehow still surviving through the harsh winter.
At the end of the corridor, the cave opened into the outside; it was a crater, where the cave had caved centuries before. The night sky opened up to me in a tempest swirl of stars and bright moon. Light exploded before me—thousands of candles lit along the perimeter, floating in the air. A single path lay before me to a high-backed chair where a lone figure sat, her knees tucked together on the arm rest of the chair, her body twisted to the side with a book in her lap.
Ghostly shadows flickered behind me as I walked to the end of the initiation. When I reached it, Narcissa stirred from her throne and stretched her arms over her head, as if it were she who had the greatest burden of waiting and not I, who had made the journey.
"Took you long enough," she said flatly, and stood up, her willowy body crossing over to me.
"Kneel," she commanded.
With stiffness and effort, I sank to my knees before her. A figure behind me unclasped my winter cloak from my throat. She replaced it with one of silver, which lit up like diamonds against the moonlight.
Narcissa opened her cloak and slipped her hand into an inner pocket. She produced my wand, which I noted was subtly etched with tiny, silver ivy on the handle. It would not be noticeable as I casted, but would always fit in the palm of my hand like a secret.
"Your wand, Lucius," she said.
I accepted it from her grasp and pocketed into the secret pocket of the new cloak.
"Now," Narcissa said, "You have vanquished all the uncertainty in your heart, bravely trespassed through Nature and discovered both her beauty and her folly; you have slain no dragons but your own named Fear. You have pushed your body to its physical limit; you have taken leaps of faith tonight in your quest to us. You have journeyed to Wonderland like Alice without losing your head. You have proven yourself dedicated. You have proven yourself resourceful. Tonight, you chose to put your faith in us for your protection without knowing if we would lend it to you. I would ask you now to listen to the tenants of the Secret Moonflower Society and so become one of us. Do you wish to proceed?"
"Yes," I murmured against the silence.
"You will uphold the tenants of the Moonflower Society as of this day on January 30th at three twenty-seven in the morning," Narcissa said, "And on this day, Lucius Malfoy, you come to us to agree to the oaths of our society as I heretofore set forth: you promise to keep us secret and safe. You promise to sacrifice your reputation, your good name, and your status in order to protect the work we do. By accepting our society, you agree to safeguard what knowledge you glean with us and uphold our standards of procuring and salvaging lost languages and literature. You hereby agree to sacrifice your time, your sleep, and your dignity should the society call for it."
"Yes."
Narcissa did not look at me as she spoke, but she said clearly across the cavern so that everyone could hear. "By agreeing to these tenants which I have set forth, Lucius Malfoy, as your sponsor, I hereby grant your entrance into The Secret Society of Moonflowers. Please stand."
As I stood, the witches around me raised their wands and sent showers of blue and white sparks from their wands into the air. I saw that there were more than just the usual witches in the grouping, which could have only consisted of ten or so, but there were additional rings of silver cloak clad members tonight, all of whom had lifted their wands in solidarity.
From the partially obscured crowd, I saw the smallest peak of white blonde hair trailing down the shoulder of a witch at the very back of the group, and my throat constricted with emotion.