Chapter 2 | The Manor
Draco sulks miserably through the black tiled halls. He's bored, his mother won't stop worrying over him, and his father cares only about gaining leverage with the ministry one official at a time. Scrimgeour, as the Head Auror, is the last and most difficult prize to win. Draco wonders vaguely why his father doesn't just imperius him. His father certainly doesn't seem to have any qualms with using unforgivable curses. At least, not in Draco's experience. His skin prickles uncomfortably.
He tries to banish his boredom by sauntering to his father's off-limits study. Draco isn't permitted inside, and he knows it. Neither is Dobby, for that matter. The cobwebbed corners are proof of that. The thought brings a thin smirk to his face. He's only dared enter once in his life, curious what valuable and dark possessions his father had hidden away—memoirs of the days the Dark Lord was in power.
Draco remembers the moment when, at 9 years old, he'd walked down this corridor to find his eyes drawn to an intricately carved wooden door, charred with age. Strange. He had passed this spot hundreds of times, and could have sworn that it should be a stretch of emerald Persian wallpaper—blank.
Curiosity had enveloped him as if charmed. His fingers rose into the air, touched the smooth, cool surface of the brass handle, and turned with slow deliberation. The moment a crack of hazy light emerged across the hallway carpet, Draco knew this room contained more than dust. The air was alive with a dark anticipation. It felt as if something in the room was stirring—seeking escape.
Draco had peered inside, catching a dim glimpse into the study—at something shimmering with an underwater glow. He had taken one curious step across the threshold when he felt pain shooting white hot up his spine, his hands contorting at his sides, his eyes peeled wide and a shrill scream that flooded his ears and must have been his own. As quickly as it had started, the pain drained, leaving him in a limp little bundle on the dusty rug.
"Fool boy. Keep your slimy little nose out of other people's business."
Draco remembers watching the liquid-like shine of Lucius's shoes tap away down the corridor, his robe fluttering over Draco's cheek in retreat.
He's avoided the study since that day. He's suspicious his father has a way of detecting him entering. He tried hard in the past to understand why his father lifted the protective charms on the study. Raids are still launched on the Manor, unpredictably. At first the aurors seemed to take pleasure in vandalism. Draco had often been woken in the night by the sound of items flinging against the walls as they searched.
Now, the raids come less frequently, and silently. His father wakes each morning, casting tracking spells to detect magical activity from the night before. Draco imagines the study is charmed against non-family members—there's no way his father would allow it to live in the open.
The idea of entering again had always brought with it a paralyzing fear. But today is different. Draco is itching to finally feel a wand in his hands—their trip to Diagon Alley is only hours away, and he's is jittery with anticipation to prove he's not just a child.
He pushes the prickling fear aside and steps into the study. It's deathly quiet. He has the sudden feeling of being swallowed into silence. The tall windows are shrouded in crimson drapes thick with milky dust. Sunlight filters in, casting a ghostly presence across crinkled parchment scattered on the desk. Draco scans the hulking mahogany shelves, eyeing rows of thick books he imagines—no, knows—are full of dark magic. For a moment Draco is tempted to lift a book from the shelf and memorize a few spells to test once he has his wand, but his father would notice the break in dust from sliding it off the shelf.
He glances round the room and spots a black book on the desk, small enough to fit into his pocket. He flips through the pages eagerly—all blank. Disappointing. He toys with the idea of pocketing it and leaving, but his eye catches on a dim jewelled necklace on a shredded bust. Egg-shaped opals are inlaid in tarnished silver vines. Something calls to him dimly from within the opal's mystic, watery glow. He steps slowly towards it, reaching out a pale finger. Moments from touching its dimly shimmering surface, something speeds at the side of his head like a rocket, attacking his perfectly combed hair.
Draco shrieks, swatting at the doxy that had been hiding in the dust. Its sharp little talons dig into his skull, and without thinking, Draco heaves a massive dragon hide book bound from the shelf and swings it above his head, knocking the doxy to the floor—out cold.
With a satisfied snort, he realizes he's found his amusement for the rest of the morning. He steps over the unconscious doxy towards the cloudy window. With a smirk, he kicks the velvet curtains into a cloud of dust. Two doxies burst into the air in a flurry of squeals—Draco swings the spellbook through the air and makes contact with one doxy in a puff of dust. The other is particularly quick and difficult to hit. The evil little creature becomes agitated enough to rise more of its kin from the heavy drapes and they chase after Draco who, without a wand, finds himself annoyingly helpless.
Several swings of the book later, he rips the last doxy from his hair, retreats and slams the heavy study door. He's steaming and in an ungraceful sweat. With his back to the oak door, he straightens his hair and imagines how he'll show the damn things who is more powerful once he returns from Diagon Alley with his wand in the afternoon.
With a sudden chill, Draco hears Lucius's voice. "How very...disappointing," Lucius stands stiffly in the doorway of the study—able to have seen the entire debacle. One pale hand is clenched around the silver serpent head of his ebony walking stick.
Draco's blood turns to ice. Why is his father's wand still sheathed? Any other day, and Draco would have felt the burn of the cruciatus curse before he even had an inkling that Lucius was there.
"I don't think I've ever seen such a pathetic display," Lucius says, wrinkling his long nose at his son, "Move aside." He pushes past Draco and into the study.
Draco stands, dumbfounded. His palms are clammy wondering when his father will decide that a verbal jibe is not enough. He should sneak away down the hall, but his curiosity holds him. His father draws a shallow, velvet box from his robes—and with a slow, circular motion of his wand, the milky opal necklace rises from the destroyed bust and floats gently into the box, followed by the lid with a dim SNAP.
Lucius pockets the box and turns to Draco, nose crinkled in disgust at the sight of doxy scratches across Draco's temple. "Get yourself cleaned up," he says, "you look like a disgrace. We leave for Diagon Alley in an hour." He turns abruptly on the spot, slinking down the hallway with a sweep of black robes.
Draco lifts his arms and furiously smooths his hair back, thinking again how he'd love a wand right about now to make the stinging doxy scratches disappear.
"An absolute disgrace, he's got that right," a voice sneered from behind him.
Draco whips around, eyeing the portrait of his great-grandfather with distaste. The man has the same straight blond hair of all the Malfoys, with a more distinguished chin and sharp cheekbones to match his unrelentingly sour temperament.
Draco makes a face at him.
The portrait is instantly agape. "A Malfoy wizard in my age would never have shown such disrespect! Lucius! Clearly your boy hasn't learned his lesson—get that wand out and teach him to obey his elders—"
Draco slips around the corner and dashes to the hidden servants' stairs, having no wish to hear the rest of his great-grandfather's disciplinary lecture. He's heard it plenty of times and quite honestly, it gets boring quickly.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Draco emerges onto the second-floor hall and passes the balustrade overlooking the checkered grand foyer. He steps quietly across the emerald carpet and presses on the door third on the right. It swings open to his bedroom.
It's oppressively ornate and dimly lit. A hulking four-poster sits against a long stretch of ebony paneling, with one tiny window set deep into the far wall overlooking the rolling grey hills. The cloudy sunlight illuminates a pirouetting streak of dust to the floor, leaving the rest of the room in shrouded shadow.
Draco throws himself onto the bed, a tiny pale figure dwarfed by the drapery. This day's been exhausting already. He wants nothing more than to have a wand in his hand and the day over with. He knows he should be getting ready for Diagon Alley. Instead, he finds himself unsteadily fearing that all his wishes for a wand will culminate in finding out that he can't do magic at all. Draco has shown very few signs of magic, a fact that his father has never been shy in reminding him. Other wizard children were said to have shown sign after sign. Draco remembers his friends' parents positively bragging about their children's uncanny ability to disappear just when they were in trouble, over and over again while Lucius pursed his lips together sourly, knowing full well that Draco had barely shown a sign. He often wonders if being at the receiving end of his father's curses are an attempt to squeeze some magic out of him.
The very first bit of magic Draco remembers was at four years old, when he had been told to finish a dinner that he had a particular distaste for. His mother had gone to lift the spoon to his mouth when the entire plate and spoon melted into the shining black table in a ripple of gold.
It didn't happen again for four full years. Draco had been playing a game of Quidditch at the Manor in the courtyard with Crabbe and some of the other boys when they made a bet on who could fly the highest. Draco, as the smallest of the boys, had been eager to prove himself and zipped past the others on his Cleensweep like a bolt of lightning, rushing into the sky so fast that he had felt a thrilling jolt through his spine.
He had watched the stark courtyard of Malfoy Manor grow smaller and more insignificant, and the higher he rose, the lighter he felt. The other boys staggered higher, just meters below him. He rose and rose, pushing the broom through the thin air until he could see for miles across the hills rolling distantly into the mist.
Draco remembers his entire body being alight with a rush of fierce joy. He pushed higher, the battering wind against his ears, the dim shouts of Crabbe and the others had fallen away slowly. He wouldn't just win, he'd fly the highest he'd ever flown. He was feeling particularly smug looking back at the tiny dots of boys on broomsticks when suddenly he hit a cross-wind so intense that with an alarming lurch, his fingertips slipped from the handle of the broom and he toppled in a cloud of black robes through the gaping air towards the ground below.
The other boys had flickered past his vision like distant birds. Draco had felt the stark terror of death alive in his tumbling body like electricity. He caught spinning glimpses of the unforgiving limestone courtyard growing closer, closer more violently until faster than it had all began, Draco's body began sinking into the stone as if it were made of the softest cushioning that stretched to receive him, springing back up to toss him playfully back to his feet. The other boys had landed, relieved at his survival, having missed the miraculous landing. Draco couldn't think of a time he'd ever felt so proud—and his father hadn't even been around to see it.
That's the last time he ever showed a sign of magic. He often questions whether it was a particularly vivid dream. He spends more time than he likes to admit trying to find a sign that he has any magic in him. He couldn't bear if he turned out to be a squib.
Draco pushes the memories from his mind and himself from the bed, running his fingers through his hair to slick it back into place. Enough of that. The magic is so close he can almost taste it.