Chapter 5 | The Ministry
Draco lies awake most of the night, running through scenarios of what will happen if his father fails to convince the ministry to let him keep his wand. More than once, he finds himself clenching the smooth hawthorn wand and admiring it in the pale strip of moonlight through the window, thinking of running away. Grabbing a fistful of floo powder and...
That's where his mind stops. He would have nothing. No money. No strings to pull, no favours to cash in on. If he managed to keep his wand, he could show those Muggles a thing or two, imperius a few of them to work for him, and be set. But he would have no magic. No training. They would hunt him down. Destroy his wand.
He tosses and turns and keeps waking in a cold sweat with the lingering nightmare of starving in the muggle streets poisoning his mind. Thinking of walking everywhere, not being able to do magic, being a burn mark in the family tree, "that Draco, what a shame, such wasted potential..."
The moon slides past the windowsill, giving way to the faint purple glow of sunrise. He can't stay in bed any longer.
Draco rises from bed and glimpses himself in the gilded mirror leaning against the tapestried wall. His ordinarily sleek hair is sticking in all directions, hanging in pale strands across his forehead. There are dark, tired bruises of sleeplessness under his eyes. Fleetingly, he thinks of an empty skull, and envies the dead.
He runs his fingers through his hair, combing it back into the illusion of control—an exact replica of the photographs he's seen of his father as a child, and his grandfather before that.
Lucius isn't in the dining room when Draco arrives downstairs. The room is cold to the bones. Draco stands still, like a lifeless ghost robed in darkness facing the colossal fireplace, staring into the black cavity of the basilisk mouth.
The familiar clicking of Lucius's shoes on the marble wakes Draco from his standing sleep. Draco steps towards the fireplace, expecting his father to reach for the alabaster jar of floo powder.
"Not today, Draco," he says coldly, holding his arm out for side-along apparition. Relieved at least about this, Draco places his hand on Lucius's forearm, and feels the familiar tug in his gut, wrenching him and his father through space and time in a tangle of robes and vacuum of air that lasts only an instant.
He learned quite young to land solidly on his feet and to clench his teeth until the nausea subsides. He barely notices it now.
They're standing in the magnificent atrium of the Ministry of Magic, with its vaulted golden ceilings and inky black floor with a gloss like ice. Draco has been to the Ministry a handful of times—as a child with his father—and remembers two things: how the men his father threatens always relent, and that the Ministry reminds him of Malfoy Manor. He wonders dully if the same wizard built it.
Without a word, Lucius joins the flow of witches and wizards towards the lifts, dodging those who are sooty and bedraggled, stumbling out of the fireplaces. Draco can't help laughing at a particularly pudgy, stout wizard with cheerfully rosy cheeks and mustard-coloured robes eaten by moths. The wizard trips over his own feet, colliding into a stern-looking wizard in front of him and dropping a briefcase to the floor—it springs open to release a cloud of particularly agitated goldfinches.
Lucius whips around, seizing Draco by the arm and twisting him forward with a look of disgust. "Hurry up, Draco, stop lingering around. The kind of wizards they've been employing lately is disgraceful. Might as well be muggles."
They crowd into the lift, which flutters with inter-departmental paper mail planes. The witches and wizards in the lift could have all been cut from the same mold: dull brown and grey robes, dull eyes, dull faces and dull silence. They pass level one and a handful of wizards pour out of the lift. Draco finds himself bored instantly despite the smoldering dread in his gut. He wishes he was back in the atrium so he could try out a confundus charm with his new wand on some of the ministry commuters arriving by floo powder. The dread rises in his throat when he remembers he might lose that wand forever.
"Level two: Department of Magical Law Enforcement," the cool female voice says.
"Go on," Lucius says coolly, prodding Draco in the back. They exit and the lift whizzes out of sight, leaving a soft, dry silence behind it.
His father is rapidly disappearing down the plush crimson-carpeted hallway. Draco hurries to follow. His eyes catch a plate on a door as they pass: Department of Intoxicating Substances—and with a jolt of excitement, it's all he can do not to sneak in. What he wouldn't give to pocket a few vials of their inventory to test out on other unassuming first years at Hogwarts…
"Ah, here we are," Lucius says, stopping abruptly in front of a door marked Improper Use of Magic Office.
Draco expects the door to reveal a towering room whizzing with inter-office memos and packed with dozens of witches and wizards at desks, but is surprised when the door opens to reveal a room not much larger than a broom closet. A bird-like woman with spectacles perched on the tip of a long, straight nose is surrounded by precarious stacks of paper that tower to the ceiling, irregular and crumpled and sorted by no filing system that Draco can imagine. The room smells vaguely of stale crackers. Draco wrinkles his nose and wonders how anyone could let themselves live their lives in this horrid tiny room. A scratched nameplate on the desk reads, Mafalda Hopkirk.
Draco eyes his father, noticing the same look of disgust on his face.
"Mafalda, a pleasure to see how you've..." Lucius pauses cruelly, "...redecorated. I distinctly remember only six stacks of wrongly convicted cased of underage magic. Looks like you've got at least ten more here, what could you possibly be doing? Tell me you're not starting to accuse every witch or wizard child who accidentally turns their cousin into a newt during a playground quidditch game?"
When Mafalda speaks, it reminds Draco distinctly of a shrill house elf. He has to hold back a snort of laughter.
"Lucius, I assume the reason you're here is for Draco?" her lips are pursed like she's swallowed a lemon. "I'm afraid you're not getting anywhere with that one, especially as it was an unforgivable curse. Of all magic, what a thing to teach your boy."
She tsks and her quill, which had been arrested in thin air, begins to twirl across the page like a ribbon.
"What I teach or do not teach my son is none of your concern," Lucius drips in anger. "I thought your little trace was too rudimentary to detect children in magical households in the first place."
Mafalda's eyebrows rise so high that Draco thinks for a moment they may soar from her head. "Oh you think so, do you, Lucius? Well, the Auror Office has been very eager to monitor the occurrence of Unforgivable Curses in young witches and wizards, since he-who-must-not-be-named slipped through the system one too many times in his youth. Mr. Moody sees it as an opportunity to catch former Death Eater families in the act, and surely this is a sign of success."
Draco is stunned by her daring. He's never heard anyone—anyone—speak back to his father this way. He's sure wands will be out before he can blink. To his surprise, his father contorts his face and presses on sourly.
"I'm sure you wouldn't want your department audited for falsely accusing the son of a very devoted patron of the ministry. Especially given all the..." His eyes scan the room with distaste, "...downsizing they've been doing lately. Ah, one two many mistakes, I suppose. I heard about the joke of a case where the Rothschild boy was convicted of underage magic that his house elf performed. No amount of favours for obsolescent people like Mad-Eye Moody will remedy the disaster of a department you run. Really, Mafalda. It's as if you're asking to be dissolved."
Mafalda straightens, trembling in nervous defiance. "I won't be threatened by you, Lucius!"
"Well," Lucius says icily, "I suppose you'll learn sooner or later."
Draco catches one last glance at Mafalda as his father turns his back and sweeps from the room—her eyes stunned wide and lips pursed so small he could have pointed his wand at them and hissed, "evanesco" and her face wouldn't have changed one bit.
He enjoys the distraction until he sees his father has disappeared from the room, and Draco realizes that this woman—the one hope he had—just said she wouldn't change the conviction. Draco hurries after his father, wondering if he would ever consider running away.
...
"I simply can't be seen showing preference, especially where an unforgivable curse is concerned," Fudge says regrettably.
"Then don't be seen," Lucius oozes.
Fudge holds his palms open in helplessness. "I'm sorry, Lucius, my hands are tied."
"Cornelius, I'm going to be frank. Karkaroff has offered my son a place at Durmstrang, so regardless of your answer he will have a place in a magical school. Draco would receive an education much more aligned to my expectations than at the crackpot school of Dumbledore's. I just hope for your sake that you see your advantage in giving young Draco here a second chance, especially given the…precarious position you're in. Crawling to Dumbledore doesn't give the ministry confidence in your—quite frankly, novice leadership. You certainly wouldn't want to trigger a vote of no confidence. I can help you avoid such an outcome."
Fudge shifts uncomfortably.
"Lucius, I'd prefer if the boy wasn't in the room for this conversation," he says, looking sidelong to where Draco stands.
Draco expects his father to bully Fudge into letting him stay, but Lucius immediately snaps, "Draco, out!"
He sulks his way to the other side of the heavy oak door, pressing his ear to it intently to try and overhear. Not a single vibration. There must be an imperturbable charm on it. Draco leans miserably on the wall, waiting in silence, realizing that this might be the end of his life before it begins. He sulks and tries kicking at the door in annoyance, but his toe simply bounces off a wall of air inches from the door.
He wonders if his father really has gotten him admission to Durmstrang. If he has, he'll be able practice all kinds of dark magic. A a twist of fear runs through him at the thought of the other wizards from death eater families who would be much more experienced than he. He feels cold with sweat and hates that the first desperate thought to enter his head is his mother, wondering if she can talk his father out of it.
...
After what feels like an hour, his father emerges with a cool, calm expression.
"You can kiss Greece over the holidays goodbye," he says to Draco, walking swiftly past him towards the lifts.
Draco's stomach drops. "WHAT?"
Was he going to Azkaban? Had it gone that badly? Lucius stops on the spot, and Draco almost runs flat into him.
"The matter is handled. Consider it payment for readmission to Hogwarts," Lucius says. "It's time you learned the consequences of acting thoughtlessly."
Draco thinks about whining back at him, persuading him to let him go—what was he going to do, spend Christmas with the house elf? But another question is burning on his mind more.
"Did I really get into Durmstrang?"
Lucius snorts. "Karkaroff looks out for himself. You would have been in, if we had paid enough."
Draco can't help his eyes becoming round as dinner plates.
"Oh yes," Lucius says, "and we could have. Today is the day you're seeing the true nature of power, Draco. Galleons can make trials and letters disappear. Without lineage and wealth you'd be just as well-off as that Hopkirk woman. Pray you never see that day."
[...MORE TO COME...]