Note:
Warning: The story is going to really start showing its mature rating in this chapter. I'm not joking around with this mature rating. I know that sometimes it's placed on a story with little sincerity, but this is very legitimate. Please proceed with caution.
Une-papillon-de-nuit, I continue to love and cherish your reviews!
Character / casting notes:
Fynn Malfoy is a character of my own invention, meant to be the younger brother to Draco, who Narcissa died giving birth to. In Gaelic, Fynn means white and fair, while in Greek, it means brown or dark. I love the coexistence of those two meanings in the same name—and Fynn will certainly serve as a battleground between good and evil throughout this chapter and the whole story.
I thought that Elizabeth Moss (who plays June in the recent TV series "The Handmaid's Tale" was just too perfect to pass up for Eloise's casting. Let me know if you agree.
Okay, bear with me for this next one... I've decided to cast Timothee Chalamet as Corbin Willoughby, the Malfoys' horse keeper. I hope you will trust me on this one—I'm not one-hundred percent sure of it, but I think on some level, it works. Just read onward and hopefully you'll understand.
(Also, as a general note, you have probably noticed that many actors I've used for the cast have been American. Please discount that nationality, and imagine them as best you can with English accents—most of them have probably put on an English accent at some point during their career, so clips of their voices in that mode may be available out in the ether of the internet if your imagination needs an extra boost).
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling the Utmost Venerable.
Chapter Six Totally Optional Cast (in order of appearance)
Anya Taylor-Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alice
Elizabeth Moss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eloise Wickham
Jason Isaacs / Lee Pace / Harry Lloyd . . . . . Lucius Malfoy
Jack Gleeson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fynn Malfoy
Timothee Chalamet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corbin Willoughby
VI | Fall
1 September 1993
Malfoy Manor
Alice hesitates before starting up the long front walk to the tall wrought iron gate before the Malfoy Manor. The slight coolness in the breeze is a harbinger of autumn, but sends chills rolling down her spine despite the delight she knows she will take in experiencing that season for the first time. Remus had accompanied her on the muggle train as far as he could, but she'd then had to leave him on her own, to walk the streets of Bath before locating the magical entryway upon the Malfoy grounds. Remus had squeezed her hand tightly before bidding her farewell, and she tries to hold onto the warmth of his skin by keeping her hand in a fist—but it is quickly leached away, leaving her with nothing but her small carpetbag and her wand.
She continues to walk, her black brogues refusing to turn around or sway from the path, though Alice has started to wonder just how much trust she should put in Dumbledore. Before she has a chance to truly consider her other options, though, she has arrived at the giant wrought iron gate, twice as tall as her, and cold to the touch. The midmorning light slants down from the grey-painted sky, seeming more dimmed than it should be, as though by dark magic. The girl stands waiting for a moment, before she notices the little bell hanging from one of the menacing black spikes. She gets on her toes to reach it, and rings it a few times, the tinkling sound just loud enough to reach the front of the manor further down the walk on the other side of the bars.
Promptly, a thirty year old woman comes out the front door, wearing a long-sleeved and high-collared black maid's dress, with buttons at the wrists and a hem that brushes against the ground as she walks. Her blonde hair is covered by a white cloth cap, and she wears her bird-like face plainly, her lips and cheeks infused with color only by the shock of the chilly morning.
"Appointment?" says the woman upon reaching the gate, looking through the bars at the newcomer with a warning look in her eyes.
"I have no appointment. My name is Alice—I'm here to apply for the post as caretaker to Mr. Malfoy's sons," says Alice, the words forming shakily on her tongue, but less so than she'd worried—for there is something in the maid's face which makes her feel at ease. Or, at least, not alone in her skittishness.
"Of course," says the maid with an edge of nervousness in her voice, and a flash in her eyes that makes Alice suddenly worried, once more. "My name is Eloise. Let me show you inside, Alice."
She takes her to wait in a very dark room just off the entryway of the Manor. The entire structure of the giant house is heavy, crouched above her, and It's far colder inside than it had been, outdoors. She is left to wait alone for a seemingly endless two minutes, during which she can't stop staring at a painting on the opposite wall: a sleek panther paces very slowly between one side of the frame and the other, watching her with luminescent eyes.
Eloise carries in a tray of tea for her, and the two of them sit down in small chairs with red fabric upholstery, Alice on one side of the room, and Eloise on the other, the air between cold, dark and dusty. After a few minutes, Eloise looks up at the girl with an odd, slightly disturbed smile, and sets her teacup down on it saucer with an echoing 'clink.' She says, in her quiet, casual tone, "You shouldn't be here. It's dangerous." Her voice is both small and loud in the space. She stares blankly at the girl for a moment longer before picking up her teacup again and taking a silent sip, as though nothing had ever been said.
"Why?" says Alice quietly.
But she's too late, for suddenly, a whoosh of frigid air enters the cavernous room, as Lucius appears in the entryway. Eloise quickly stands up from her chair, setting the tea and saucer down, and Alice mimics her in clasping her hands in front of her and bowing her head slightly as the white-haired wizard steps into the room, his serpent-head cane clicking menacingly against the black floorboards.
"Miss Wickham," says his cold voice to Eloise. "Who have we here?" Both of them remain looking at the floor for a few stagnant moments, Alice's eyes boring into the wood, before Lucius steps further forward. Step, step, step, the heavy sound at once absorbed by the heavy curtains, tapestries and paintings; and echoing in the corners far overhead. Until, when Alice's gaze flickers upward, she can see the hem of his moneyed robes just a meter from the tips of her shoes. "You may look at me," says the cold deep voice again, sending a chill curling around her neck like a deadly serpent.
It takes a moment for her instincts to allow her to look up into the frigid, calculating face, barely managing to keep her own features still and free of trembles, though within, pierced by the wizard's icy eyes, she is nervous enough to simply disappear. The sudden threat he poses to her is undeniable, and she not only fears that he might somehow divine her identity, but that he might also give her up to the Notts—which, she knows intuitively, would be the beginning of her end.
But her face remains strong against the storm of fears, and Lucius's face does not betray any malicious intent.
"For the position-" starts Eloise from across the room, attempting to introduce Alice, still looking at the ground.
But Lucius cuts her off coldly, saying "I gathered," without looking away from the girl's face once. "What is your name?" he asks.
"Alice."
His face remains as dark and cold as before, not even the vaguest flickering of emotion crossing behind his eyes. "And how old are you?"
"Fifteen, Mr. Malfoy."
"And where do you come from?"
"Saint Frances convent, in Wiltshire, sir," Alice says, reciting one of the list of components constituting her false identity that Dumbledore had coached her on over the summer.
Lucius looks at her for a while, not even a slight narrowing of his eyes betraying his inner thoughts, leaving Alice to betray herself, or not... a wise tactic, the girl thinks, securing her jaw against his offence and maintaining her neutral expression. Two can play at the unreadable game.
After a time, he turns on his heel, walking past Eloise and out into the entryway, once again. The maid looks up for the first time, following him confusedly with her gaze, and Alice's eyebrows furrow at his action. The two look at each other as Lucius turns a corner in the hallway, passing out of sight. A quiet descends upon them until, suddenly, his voice echoes back to them through the corridors down which he has already traveled. "Follow."
"You ought to hurry," warns Eloise. "He walks quickly." And Alice, taking her carpetbag and wand with her, runs with soft footsteps past the woman and out of the room.
Lucius's strides are long and powerful, and she has to work hard to catch up and keep up as he strides through the dark, wide corridors, and up a grand, monstrous staircase to the second floor.
"You're too late to meet them both," he informs her as he walks. "The eldest, Draco, just left on the train to school. But Fynn is of the most concern, anyway." From the way he talks of his children, and the latter, in particularly, Alice fears that, perhaps, the younger boy might pose a great challenge.
The Manor is overwhelmingly huge, even more expansive than she ever could have imagined from the outside, and as they pass through the corridors her head begins to spin—she doubts she will ever be able to find her way alone through the dark, hardwood maze.
Malfoy's pace slows as he approaches an open doorway, midway down the main second-story hallway, through which hushed sounds of lonely play can be heard. He stands beside the door and looks at her intensely, motioning his head slightly, bidding her go through the door.
She does so, planting herself just over the threshold, her footsteps quiet as she cautiously observes, and then approaches the little white-haired boy playing with a wooden horse in the center of a massive rug. He doesn't look up at her, or at his father, but it's clear that he is aware of their presence, for he has stopped making sounds to accompany the pitiful movements of the toy, and something plaintive and wary has entered his downcast blue eyes. The boy cannot be more than three years old—Alice approaches him cautiously, knowing she wouldn't be able to bear if he recoiled from her. But he does nothing of the sort as she slowly sinks down to her knees, setting aside her carpetbag and keeping her wand in hand.
"What's your name?" she says quietly to him, though she already knows, from his father's brief lecture in the corridor.
"Fynn," he says in a quiet, soft voice, still not looking up at the stranger.
"That's a very strong name," says Alice, matching his volume. "I'm Alice."
An idea plants itself in her mind, and with a small smile, she draws up her wand, whispering "Piertotum Locomotor," under her breath, and performing the correct wand movement.
Suddenly, the wooden toy horse becomes animated, and gallops in circles around him on the carpet, whinnying and rearing up, making the boy laugh, his eyes sparkling as he looks up at Alice.
She has forgotten entirely about Lucius's presence in the doorway, and so jumps slightly when he speaks, his voice cold, but incapable of penetrating the warmth that has suddenly spread in a protective bubble around herself and the boy. "You begin immediately," says Lucius monotonously. "I will review the expectations with you later, when I have more time at my disposal. For now, Miss Wickham will show you around the house and grounds. I have business to attend to."
He leaves without another look into the playroom, his cape billowing out behind him as he hurries down the hall. But Alice and Fynn are unfazed, both of them kneeling on the carpet and smiling, watching the horse prance in circles, around and around.
Life in the Manor comes to be surprisingly simple and secure, despite Alice's initial wariness of what Eloise had said to her when they'd first met.
Daily, Alice and Eloise take Fynn on long walks around the grounds, witnessing the beautiful change of the seasons. Alice is introduced to Corbin Willoughby, who keeps and cares for the estate's five beautiful horses—a nervous young man, but he is warm enough to Alice, and she comes to enjoy his company.
Her day-to-day existence is simpler than it has ever been, and Alice quickly comes to adore the sense of freedom that comes with playing with Fynn on the grounds. At times, when she is laying in her too-large bed (she sleeps not in the servants quarters but on the same floor as Fynn's room, the better to be near him in the night), that she feels slightly trapped, the heaviness of the house, and a certain darkness, trickling around her. But even then, she is too exhausted, and falls asleep too quickly to become too troubled.
It can still be quite difficult to control her emotions at times, to stifle the extent of her true powers-especially on one occasion when she and Fynn are passing through a stretch of woods to reach the pond on the other side, and one of the Malfoys' two giant albino peacocks scares her half to death by simply stepping out from behind a tree. But as the household, the grounds, and the pattern that days start to fall into (morning meal, morning walk, midday meal, indoor play, outdoor walk, bedtime) grow more familiar to her, her magic becomes simpler to control. And at times, she can even trick herself into forgetting how much effort her subconscious is actively channeling into keeping a low magical profile.
Lucius Malfoy is, for the most part, a presence only in her mind. He is always away, busy, or otherwise brooding somewhere alone, so her days are spent largely unbothered by him. She and Eloise become fast companions, and Alice, in turn, seems to come as a relieving presence to the stable boy Corbin, who delights at the chance to teach her how to ride a horse. An unmatchable joy springs into her chest when she first takes Fynn up with her for a slow walk, with Corbin holding the bridle: the little boy's eyes brightening at the feeling of being on a real horse, after only every playing with miniature wooden ones in the nursery.
Ironically, Lucius requests the stable boy's presence in the house more than he ever asks for Alice's.
On one particular day, Fynn is away from the manor along with his father for reasons undisclosed, and Eloise is tied up with errands on behalf of the kitchen staff. Alice stays part of the day with Corbin in the stables, helping him tend to the horses and feeling such a friendliness towards him that she regrets not being able to tell him of her true identity, her true purpose at the Manor. Then, later in the afternoon, she moves indoors and out of the chill to wander around the Manor.
She attempts to acquaint herself with a number of the house elves, remembering Dobby's loneliness, and how he had recounted his misery while enslaved at the Malfoy house. But none of them so much as acknowledge her, hurrying away. She wonders at how easily she could free them with even the simplest pieces of clothing-but knows that doing so would be far too dangerous to risk and might, given Lucius Malfoy's volatile nature, result in grave consequences to her person.
In her wonderings she happens upon a painting: the corner of its frame sticking out from behind a curtain meant to hide it. She steps up to it curiously, pulling the curtain aside and sticking her head under it to peek at the painting beneath. She gasps when she does: it is a giant dark painting of a profoundly pale woman with brown eyes, beautiful lips and black and white hair. On the bottom of the frame, on a small golden plaque, is engraved: Narcissa Malfoy nee Black: 1955 – 1991.
For many minutes the girl examines the painted face, the dark eyes, wondering what sort of a woman Lucius Malfoy's wife had been before her passing. She would like to believe that she had been a gracious mother and wife, and that Lucius's hardness is partly due to her absence—but something in those painted eyes tells her that this optimistic idea would be hard-pressed to be the actual case.
After a short minute, footsteps can be hears echoing in the corridor outside, and the girl quickly replaces the curtain, her heart speeding up in her chest at the feeling that she's been doing something quite criminal by looking at the hidden painting of the dead woman. But the footsteps pose no true threat, and pass right by.
On one day in Mid-October, Lucius receives a letter his eldest son Draco's hand from Hogwarts, complaining of an injury at the hooves of a hippogriff. The wizard passes many hours in a state of thick anger: going around cursing about Rubeus Hagrid and Albus Dumbledore's stupidity.
But soon after, the letter is forgotten as the household falls to preparing for the annual Pureblood Hallowe'en ball, to be hosted this year at Malfoy Manor.
On the night of the thirty-first, the guests, (with the notable exception of the Weasleys) all members of the twenty-eight 'sacred' families of purest blood, fill the giant ballroom of the Malfoy manor. The servants have spent days fixing the room up to perfection-the chandeliers are adorned with bright candles, making the crystal on the tables below glisten.
Dark vines with maroon leaves adorn the edges of the room and the dance floor has been polished rigorously. From the corner, a string quartet plays the ancestral waltzes of the original trifecta of pureblood Slytherin families, and maids wearing simple black dresses and white caps float around among the guests silently and modestly, bearing champagne and a few secret flasks of pumpkin juice for the younger dancers—though most of the latter are caught up swapping partners at lightning speed on the dance floor.
The Hallowe'en ball has been long known to produce some of the most successful marriage matches, and many of the young ladies have come bedecked in the finest fabrics, their skirts wide and swaying, much to the suppressed envy of many older wives, who cling like nauseous birds to their rickety husbands' arms on the sidelines.
Eloise has been drawn into the group of maids serving champagne and sneaking pumpkin juice to some of the child guests (too young to be in school but too old to stay home), standing bored beside their parents, seeing no worthy opportunity to make any sort of exciting mischief. So, Corbin and Alice, left to their own devices without their older unifier, keep each other quiet company, standing in one corner of the ballroom, remote from the larger gatherings of people, and thus, furthest from attention. Alice thinks Corbin looks quite strange dressed up so nicely: his crisp white shirt and black robes a drastic change from his usual working slacks and shirt—but she doesn't dare tell him so, for something in him seems particularly fragile tonight.
And besides, her attention is quickly stolen away from any thought of something so simple as clothing, by the arrival of Haden and Vanessa Nott, slightly later than the other guests, but not so late as to be rude. She recognizes them immediately—simply knows who they are in her very bones—and thus feels slighted when the announcer reads off their names to the other guests, inciting some scattered applause among those not dancing.
The girl watches her mother and father with the utmost intensity from her reclusive, hidden corner, craning her neck as they move between the other older guests and once take to the dance floor, swaying modestly to one of the more mellow waltzes played by the quartet. She watches Haden's dark green cloak whip around the ankles of his boots, and watches the narrow skirt of Vanessa's deep purple gown swirl as she turns. Something about them seems so innocent, so desirable that a great well of pain and disheartenment comes into her throat at what had been told to her about their past decisions—how they had fought for Voldemort in the first war, how her father had tortured and killed the innocent while her mother had steeped in her own inactivity and depression at home.
And then, as Alice comes to consider this in greater depth over the endless minutes, she wonders how many of the others in the ballroom (all of them seeming so well and like fine individuals in their own right) have done things even more terrible than she could ever imagine.
And she is more right than she could believe: among the guests, though they retain a thread of formal talk, there is far more that is unsaid than that which is given voice to. Between each of the dancers and onlookers is a common network of unstated facts, tying each to every other, inextricably.
Bellatrix Lestrange is in Azkaban, along with countless others who would have otherwise joined the company tonight, but they do not talk of the imprisoned. They do not talk of the war, either, or of the defeated Dark Lord, alongside whom most of them fought. They do not acknowledge the physical wounds which are hidden beneath decadent robes and gowns, which had been gained in common battle, or the wounds of those of their group who had been imprisoned. But the greatest thing kept silent is the shared understanding that those who are there, still living, in the ballroom, are there not only because of sheer luck, but because, in some cases, they had been smarter than their currently-imprisoned counterparts. Or, at least, more corrupt.
After all, most of them had committed even worse war-crimes than those in Azkaban, and had only narrowly escaped life sentences by paying their way out—bribing some very high ranking people, all the way up through the levels of the Ministry, and straight to the Minister himself, in some cases, in order to keep their property and freedom.
But all of this silent darkness is covered up masterfully by a gilded, formal and even celebratory mood which they create for themselves out of thin air. Lucius, for example, holds Fynn in his arms for the first time since Alice has resided in the household, eliciting much adoration (or at least the appearance of adoration) from his guests.
Fynn, however, is uncomfortable in his father's arms (even if Alice is one of the few who can see this to be the case), and squirms as though in an attempt to get away. Alice, knowing that Lucius would be upset to say the least if others noticed his son's tendency to recoil from him, thinks fast: biting the insides of her cheeks with her molars in deep concentration, she conjures a little white butterfly, and makes it flit about above the dancers' heads. In effect, Fynn is distracted, and ceases in his squirming, effectively cheered and relaxed by the magic.
But it only lasts a minute before one of the young men on the dance floor becomes distracted from his dance partner's painstakingly done-up face by the fluttering white wings above, near one of the chandeliers. "Careful," Corbin murmurs to Alice, nodding his head in the direction of the young man, and Alice waits until the butterfly is separated from the unintended witness by the light of multiple candles before making it disappear suddenly. The young man on the dance floor shakes his head, clearly believing himself to have been seeing things, and promptly returns his attention to the young woman spinning around him.
Alice smiles a small smile to herself, proud that she'd amended her mistake before the magic could be traced back to her, and then smiles reassuringly at Fynn, who seems to understand that it is important for him to allow himself to be held by Lucius for a little while longer.
Eloise, too, had noticed the butterfly, and she makes eye contact with Alice from across the ballroom, raising a conspirator's eyebrow just before bowing her head, holding out her tray of champagne to a small group of women on the edge of the dance floor.
Thus there is no further risk posed to the fluidity of the event by Alice's spells, and the dancing goes on uninterrupted.
But the gilded mood of the dance is quickly dispelled when a small messenger wearing black robes steals into the ballroom and whispers something in Lucius's ear. The messenger had attempted to be discreet, but the rapidity of his entrance and prompt exit attracts the attention of other guests, and all of the musicians.
The formal festivities slowly dissolve into scattered whispers of worry as the music fades and then becomes nonexistent, and the just-received news spreads like wildfire throughout the guests. News that one Sirius Black, who had escaped miraculously from Azkaban that summer, has now broken into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—where most of their children are currently staying.
Promptly the façade of politeness and fluidity is worn away, and the darkness starts to creep out into the open, like black bugs crawling from the underside of a disturbed log in the woods. Suddenly, they are unified only by the thought that Sirius Black is a traitor in their eyes, and a dangerous madman—and this gives them more than enough cause to suddenly be gripped by fright for their children, who are suddenly at his mercy.
In just a handful of minutes, most of the guests have become uncomfortable and promptly excused themselves from the manor after thanking Lucius superficially, hurrying out of the ballroom to the designated apparition point in the corridor outside.
Once the ballroom has drained entirely of his guests, Lucius, too, leaves the room, and the servants are left to start cleaning up. Eloise and Corbin disappear into the controlled, almost choreographed, madness of the clean-up, an intricate pattern of tasks disturbed only by Alice as she hurries across the ballroom to claim the abandoned Fynn, taking him up in her arms. She escapes quickly into the now-quiet hall, carrying him up the stairs and towards his room, quelling his curiosities by fashioning another butterfly to distract him as she steals quietly through the halls and stairways, feeling it necessary after the unexpected turn of events to remain as silent as possible.
After singing Fynn gently to sleep, she remains there with him a bit longer, her body balancing on the edge of his small bed, her fingers brushing aside the white locks of his hair as she watches the tender rise and fall of his chest beneath his nightclothes.
But before too long, she decides to leave him there, and, easing her body from the mattress, creeps silently out of the bedroom, bypassing the door to her own room and starting down the stairs, aiming to go to the servants' quarters to ask Eloise a burning question: Who is Sirius Black?
The house is eerily quiet, and the silence only takes on magnitude as she goes down more and more staircases, eventually making it to the ground floor and then descending further. On the first underground floor, though, she hears a muffled sound from somewhere nearby. She pauses in her tracks, looking in the direction of the sound, and then feeling worry spike inside of herself when she hears it a second time—the same sound repeated almost exactly, at a higher pitch—clearly a sound of pleading; a pained whimper.
Worried, and incapable of resisting her curiosity, and her instinct to protect, Alice redirects her footsteps from their previous course, and follows the sound—which only continues to repeat, increasing in urgency as she grows nearer.
As she comes to stand just outside the door she realizes, all at once, that the pleading voice is Corbin's and, shocked, she doesn't hesitate before taking the doorknob in hand. Finding it locked, she whispers, "Alohomora," and then, with an outward breath of bravery, she pushes the door inward.
Corbin is the first one she sees: cowering in the corner with his knees tucked up to his chest and his head turned away, completely naked. She almost starts forward towards him but, upon opening the door a bit wider, Lucius comes into view, holding his cane aloft, his cape on the floor at his heels and his hair disheveled. The wizard turns to her slowly with a menacing smile on his face and says, his voice chilling with a razor-sharp edge, "Turn around and walk away, little dove."
Alice concentrates every fiber of her being on keeping her shock at bay, loosening her fingers around her wand and breathing in slowly. Corbin refuses to look at her, though her eyes bore stunned and horrified holes into his head. And though the girl hates herself for it, she cannot help but wither under Lucius Malfoy's icy gaze, and so she closes the door and does just what he'd told her to do, walking back down the hallway with measured steps and descending onward to the servants' quarters, her heart brimming with terror.
Eloise is easy to find: she is the last maid in the kitchen, tonight, polishing the champagne flutes and magically sending them to organize themselves on a shelf above the Wizarding oven. But Alice has no time or patience for marveling at the magical kitchen technology, and instead heads straight for her older companion, who turns upon noticing her, and sets down her work, seeing the girl's drained face and skittish eyes.
After being helped to sit down on a stool, Alice relays to Eloise everything that she had seen in the room upstairs, shaking by the end from an evil inkling that something even worse had been about to happen, something for which she had no name. Eloise confirms her suspicions by breathing in deeply, and then out again, her mind reeling as she prepared to tell the younger girl the dirtiest secret there is to be known around the Malfoy household.
"Mr. Malfoy makes a habit of rerouting his anger away from his sons, and taking it out on his servants, instead. But... that... is reserved for an unlucky few."
"What do you mean?" Alice says.
"Rape," whispers Eloise under her breath. This is a word that Alice only knows from the violent crime pages of the muggle newspapers that she would read when Ms. Figg wasn't looking. But now for the first time she seems to understand it's meaning better than ever before. "He's been doing it to Corbin for a time. There was another maid he had a while ago, who was his favorite—she was the governess for Draco and Fynn before you arrived to fill her post."
"Did she run away?" Alice asks, barely able to form coherent words through her feelings of horror and disgust.
"She was sent away," Eloise tells her with a shake of her head. "Sent away to somewhere even worse."
A jolt of cold terror shivers through Alice as she realizes the implications, and the sudden danger of her position, especially as she now holds the title of 'witness,' having seen the situation between the house's master and the stable boy in the room upstairs a few minutes before.
Eloise feels the panic emanating from her young counterpart's body, but knows that there is nothing she can do to help her, at least not for now. "You ought to hurry back up to your room. You shouldn't be found down here, and, besides, the house is a troubling place, tonight. Fynn might need you, upstairs."
So, taking her leave without another word, Alice goes back up the small servants' staircase, with it in mind to return to her room, get warm under the covers, and try to forget about the entire issue. When she gets to the floor just above, there is no sound whatsoever coming from that dangerous room down the hall—and somehow, this seems even more worrisome than if there had been screams.
She checks on Fynn quietly, finding him still fast asleep, before taking refuge in her own room. She takes off her day clothes quickly, replacing them with a rather stuffy servants' nightgown she'd been issued upon her arrival at the Manor, realizing that she'd completely forgotten to ask Eloise her original question about Sirius Black's identity. With anxiety poking at her insistently, she heads into bed, knowing that getting to sleep with all the events of the night still so present in her blood will be nearly impossible.
But no sooner does her head touch the pillow, than a sputtering sound can be heard from the small fireplace across the room, which she'd set earlier that morning to keep away the cold, and whose embers had been kept alive through the hours by the strength of the magic which had originally built it. She sits up sharply in bed at the sound, and looks over towards the fireplace, where suddenly the ashes have shaped themselves into a face—the face of Remus Lupin.
For a moment, she is so startled (still shaken and easily frightened from Eloise's news), her heart pounding in her chest, that fire flares up again in the fireplace as an extension of her emotion. But then quickly, calming herself, the flames disappear again, and she steps out of bed onto the freezing floor in her stocking feet. She mutters the Imperturbable Charm over her chamber door, before kneeling down on the rug before the fire, and staring, rapt, at the perfect cast of Remus's face in the embers.
"How are you doing this?" she asks in wonder, a smile quickly banishing the negative emotions crowding her heart at the sight of his familiar features.
"Yet another use of the floo network, my dear," says Lupin, his voice only slightly changed by the medium through which it is relayed to her. "I'm so sorry that I'm only now contacting you for the first time. I couldn't risk showing up in the wrong fireplace, you see. How have you been managing?"
"Quite well," says Alice quickly, not wanting to betray her true discomfort and fear to the wizard. "The little boy, Fynn, is an angel."
"Hmm," says Remus to himself, "an angel quite misplaced in that household, then, I'd wager." His ember-sculpted forehead shifts in thoughtfulness and after another moment of considering the girl's face, he says carefully, "But that's not all, is it, Alice? Is something wrong?"
Thinking fast, Alice decides not to tell him what she'd seen between Lucius and Corbin, instead casting her feelings off as something else entirely. "I am a bit worried by something, actually... do you know Draco, the older sibling?"
"Of course I know Draco Malfoy," says Lupin with a hint of distaste.
"What's he like?"
Lupin's face moves slightly as he tries to put it gently to the girl. "He's... troubled," he says after a time. "But he tries very much not to show it. And often, he does so in the wrong ways."
Alice nods her head at his answer, but suddenly a spark of fear appears inside of her, as she wonders whether, perhaps, Draco had ever been subjected to the same horrors that Corbin was regular victim to. The thought of the boy—Harry's age, she knows, and not too far from her own—being abused so terribly by his own father is unbearable. And she shivers to think what Draco might be like, as a result, if this were the case.
"How are Harry, Hermione and Ron?" Alice asks, quickly hiding away the new flame of worry, saving it for later examination.
"All are doing well," says Lupin, "but Harry has been in quite a state after Sirius Black's..." Lupin soon realizes that he had kept the news of Sirius's escape from Azkaban away from Alice's ears during their time at Hogwarts, and wishes he hadn't said anything. But he knows it's far too late by the brightening of her eyes, and the way her head bends further towards the embers in the fireplace.
"I heard about him at the ball, tonight. How did he escape from Azkaban? And how did he get into Hogwarts?"
"I don't know, Alice," says Remus. "But everyone is perfectly safe—the students are sleeping in the great hall tonight, and a number of us teachers have been sent out to search the castle and grounds." Alice's face contorts in one of worry, both for her friends and for the man at the other end of the floo network, as her minds concocts all sorts of terrible possibilities as to Sirius Black's identity and the threat he poses.
Remus, knowing what she's thinking, stops her before her mind can run too far away. "But wait a moment, Alice. First, you must let me explain just who Sirius Black is. I was best of friends with him at Hogwarts, before everything else. He would help me... with my more difficult school subjects, and we made some terrible mischief together. But then, after the War, he was framed for betraying Lily and James Potter, and sent to Azkaban. So, you say, he's quite harmless, contrary to popular belief."
"But how did he escape?" Alice says, enthralled, chills springing up along her arms and neck at the story.
"Sirius is an Animagus," Lupin says, giving Alice a moment to recall the term before continuing. "I believe the most probably theory to be had would be that he turned into a dog, and crept right past the dementors."
"Dementors?" says the girl, a new kind of chill coming into her body, one which leaning closer to the fireplace cannot banish.
"The Azkaban guards," Remus explains, his voice lowering. "Dark, dark beings, Alice. They feed on an individual's happiest memories so that, if they are allowed, they can rob a person of their entire soul with their 'kiss.' And a whole army of them have been floating around the Hogwarts grounds ever since the beginning of the year, as a so-called precaution. Harry has had quite a bit of bad luck with them, actually—one tried to kiss him before he even arrived in September, on the train, and Gryffindor lost last week's Quidditch match after he came upon one in midair over the pitch. His prized broom flew into the Whomping Willow and was destroyed; he spent days in the hospital wing after his fall."
Alice thinks she hears a creaking sound in the corridor outside, and suddenly her body turns rigid. She doesn't trust the spell on the door to work completely, so says, very quietly, "I think I ought to go get some sleep," hoping that Remus won't take her words as rude.
"I completely understand. And I should be out looking for Sirius. Pray Severus Snape doesn't find him, first." And without giving Alice a chance to ask after the identity of Severus Snape, Remus bids her a gentle goodnight, and promptly disappears from the fireplace.
Alice lays down for a time in her own bed, but the room has become extremely cold—more from the horrible feeling she has from not confessing the truth of her circumstances to Remus Lupin, than from the frigid winds blowing just beyond the windowpane.
So just minutes later, she gets up again, pulling a night cloak on over her nightdress and tiptoeing across the empty corridor, laying down on the thick rug next to Fynn's bed and staying there throughout the night, the sound of the young boy's steady breathing banishing her aloneness, dampening her fear and lulling her to sleep.
As October yields to November, Lucius becomes more cruel outwardly than Alice has ever seen him before. He kicks his house elves down stairs, hitting them with his cane if he's in a foul mood, and his very presence in the house is threatening to the girl, though she still rarely sees him.
Alice takes to the grounds with Fynn as often as she can, sometimes keeping them outside until her toes start to freeze, and then finally consenting to going inside—but just for a short while, to warm up and then come right back out, again. They spend much of their time in the stables, Fynn sitting with the help of a protective spell on top of one of the horses while Corbin (who remains silent about that night when Alice had seen him naked in the basement room, and subject to Lucius's whims) and Alice brush the others' manes, barely looking at each other, let alone conversing. Everywhere, there is a feeling of being spied upon.
Eloise, who accompanies the other three as often as she can outdoors, tells Alice that Lucius's temperament is partly because November is the month when his wife Narcissa had died—also the month of Fynn's birthday, but Lucius will have no celebration, as it had been the boy's own birth which caused the death of the woman he'd (supposedly) loved.
Regardless of Lucius's refusal of a larger party, Eloise and Alice work together to assemble a small celebration for Fynn's fourth birthday. He has no friends to invite, but they make a cake for him, in the muggle fashion (without using even a bit of magic to expedite the process), and spend the day along with Corbin in a magically-warmed bubble in the woods outside.
On that very day, however, their simple festivities are interrupted sharply by the appearance of Lucius at the edge of their safe bubble of warmth. Corbin's shoulders curl forward immediately at the sight of the wizard, thinking that the man's purpose there is to ask for his 'company' inside the manor.
But instead, this time, it is Alice that Lucius asks for.
"I have a matter of pressing importance to discuss with you," is the way he puts it. And as she looks warily at Eloise, and leaves Finn in the older witch's hands, departing the warm bubble to walk a few paces behind Lucius Malfoy back to the manor, Alice can only hope that he truly means what he'd said; that a discussion is all that awaits her, indoors.
His study is chillingly warm, a fireplace lit with enchanted green flames on the far wall. The room faces the grounds behind the manor, and when Alice first enters the room, she looks out the large windows on the foggy day, the worry banished momentarily from her heart at the beautiful sight. She can see the small ribbon of woods, and the silver-surfaced pond beyond, ready to freeze with the slightest drop in temperature.
But she is brought back to the danger of her situation when she spots the albino peacock (the symbol of the Malfoys' propriety and statue in society, necessitating good behavior). It is visible from far away, a white speck amidst the trees of the dark blue woods—and something about how far away they are from it, here, in his study, makes Alice feel quite unsafe. Lucius is free to be whatever he desires, in the dangerous privacy of this room—and no societal expectations are present to stop him.
"Sit," he says to Alice, motioning to a chair on the subordinates' side of his giant ebony-wood desk. She moves over to it silently and sits down with her hands clasped and situated between her quivering knees, as Lucius sits back in the menacing black, throne-like chair on the other side of the desk. He considers her for a time with those cold eyes for a time, before his lip twitches once, twice. "Is there anything you would like to tell me, before we begin?" he says.
The girl knows he is offering her a chance to, in a sense, 'redeem' herself, but she is unwilling to take it, knowing how easy it would be to betray herself by spilling information he doesn't already know. So, she doesn't' do anything at all in response to his question; merely keeping her head still, and not quite looking into his blue eyes.
"Pity," he says after a minute, the syllables that cause his teeth to come in contact like ice rattling through her blood. His posture changes in his chair, and he seems to lean forward slightly, without sacrificing his position of ease, of superiority. "You see, Alice Nott, I know who you are." He pauses, taking delight in the expression on her face as she truly registers his words. "I know who you were born to, where you were taken from, where you were taken to, and by whom. I know of your connections with that blockhead Albus Dumbledore, and The Wolf."
Alice's face falls even further into despair at this last, her shoulders curling inward at the implications of Lucius's words. "Oh, you didn't know?" says Lucius with a wicked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I would have thought a young witch as crafty as yourself would have pieced his monthly disappearances together by now. Though, to be fair, it took me quite a while, too, when I was in school with the freak."
Alice feels a tear suddenly slip from the corner of her eye and roll down her cheek. She never would have guessed that Remus was a Werewolf—but now that Lucius says it so blatantly to her, she feels daft for not having known it sooner. Of course, Lupin wouldn't ever have told her that his visits to Siberia were for the sake of others' safety. Likely, he was ashamed of his condition in the first place. A shiver of guilt rolls through her, and she continues to cry silently as it all comes into place.
The other contributor to her tears is the wave of dread that has rolled over her, and remained there, as though frozen in time, at the news of Lucius's knowledge of her true lineage. Dumbledore had warned her of the horrors that could ensue if she were taken into the clutches of certain dark individuals who wanted to manipulate her for her powers-and her greatest fear, in effect, has become that one such person might change her fundamentally, and that she would do bad with her abilities; that she would harm herself and her friends.
But one spark of hope lingers in the girl's heart, for Lucius has said nothing about knowing anything about the true extent of her magical abilities. She has kept herself safe on that front, at least—and good thing, too, for she is now sure beyond a doubt that if he knew about her power, he would be the first in line to subject her to just the sort of manipulation which she fears more than anything else in the world.
"Please," Alice manages through her rolling tears, "don't tell my parents I'm theirs." The plea sounds pitiful in her ears, and she is surprised to no end when Lucius's resulting smile doesn't accompany an outright denial of her request.
"I will do nothing of the sort, my dear," he says, his tone dripping with sarcastic concern. "As long as you agree to remain here. I must admit, my son is happier than I have seen him in his life."
Something in Lucius's eyes, deep behind their icy surfaces, seems to melt with sadness, but Alice has to quickly erase the thought from her head, knowing how dangerous it would be if she came to sympathize with him.
"You have become a true mother to him," the wizard continues. Something about the way he says the word 'mother' is terrible to the girl, and she feels her spine straining against the back of her chair, her every instinct screaming for her to escape the room—but her discipline, and her understanding that the man before her holds every advantage over her in this situation, keeps her glued stiffly to the chair.
She watches him anxiously for any sign of inner thought, but he offers her not even the slightest hint. After a minute of silence, drafts blowing in through the quietly rattling windows from the freezing outdoors, his mouth draws up into its terrible smirk, and he leans forward, the white strands of his hair shifting on his velvet-draped shoulders.
"However..." he begins, "as the muggles say, Miss Nott: double the bread, double the butter." Slowly, his every move indicative of his superiority, he stands from his chair and walks with measured steps around the edge of his giant desk, standing over her. The sudden quiet in his voice causes its intensity to triple, and his eyes cut into her skin. "My silence does come at an additional price."
She shivers as he walks around the back of her chair, his footsteps resounding on the floor, the green flames hissing from the fireplace across the room. "I have no money," she says, her voice small.
His footsteps cease as he comes to a standstill, a dark chuckle lodging in his throat. "There are... other forms of payment. Do not pretend to be a fool, girl."
She wants to scream for help, to pray that some kind soul might exist in the house, and that they might come to her rescue. But instead she sits silently, her whole body overtaken by trembles, as Lucius bends down over her, placing his large cold hand on her knee and looking into her eyes with a disabling intensity, his intentions clear on his face.
But this slow start does not trick the girl, and before she knows it, she has stood up from the chair, her legs carrying her shakily towards the door out of the study.
"Alice-" Lucius calls out darkly from behind her, causing her next footstep to hesitate above the floorboards. "You know what you have to do. Stop."
The moment of stillness is enough for him to lunge for and catch her around the waist, his powerful arm clamping her body against his chest. She wails, trying to get away, her arms reaching out for the closed door halfway across the room, but in her effort her knees buckle, and Lucius tackles her the rest of the way to the ground. Alice cries out sharply as her leg collapses at an unnatural angle beneath her, but the injury is the least of her worries as Lucius claps a hand over her mouth and nose, keeping virtually any breath from entering her body.
Her body straining to survive, she continues to squirm and kick, up until the moment at which the wizard settles his entire weight over her small body, pinning her to the floor, and crushing her lungs. Her vision fills with sizzling blue specks, the rush of adrenaline to escape her assaulter dampened by a contrasting survival instinct of even greater force: the instinct to save what little air remains inside of her body. Her body understands then and there, though her mind is still racing, that a choice must be made between getting away and remaining alive—and, as is its job, her body chooses the second option, for her.
He ruins her there on the floor, heedless of the screams and pleading whimpers of pain which she tries with all her might to force past his hand, never once giving up or falling silence, despite the hopelessness of her position. Her bones grind through her skin against the cold wood as he moves violently behind her, blistering pain taking over her entire body, tears wetting her cheeks as she screams, and screams, and realizes slowly, inevitably, that nobody can hear her.
After he is done, his member pumping a disgusting and inescapable dampness into her, he stands up, puts his clothes back in order, and tells her to return outside. "You wouldn't want to miss the cake," he says, his voice full of malice, before he turns and leaves the room.
But Alice cannot peel herself off of the freezing floor. She remains there, feeling the warm wetness from her body's struggle beading on the wood, joining Lucius Malfoy's lingering fluids, for what seems an eternity—before, finally, her limbs, working of their own accord, shakily bring her to her feet. Smoothing the rumpled skirt of her dress over her traumatized legs, she looks around, bleary-eyed, before she turns from the windows (the albino peacock completely out of sight, now), and limps out of the room.
These assaults become daily, and with each passing instance, Alice struggles less and less.
She and Eloise take shorter walks around the grounds, walking arm to arm, their heads down, Alice grasping Fynn tightly to her chest, feeling constantly watched.
The little boy comes to call her 'mama,' which makes her want to sob and scream. She has to work harder than ever before to make the child feel as though there is nothing wrong with her—traumatizing him with her grief and distress would cause her the greatest shame imaginable. She wants, above all else, for him to be happy.
Ruthless November winds tear leaves from their branches in torrents, only the deep blue evergreen segment of the woods retaining its hue, a greyness taking over the sky. The leaves curl and sail across the surface of the small pond, until that, too, freezes, trapping the leaves under a layer of ice to decay, without hope of escape.
Corbin tells Alice to make a place in her subconscious, a place she can retreat to, to escape when she's lying powerless on the floor, bent painfully over Lucius's desk, or suffocating against a mattress. The young man makes the survival tactic sounds so easy, but Alice can't figure out how to do it for the world. All her focus is trained on not causing her evil assaulter to implode with her power—which she knows in her very blood, in those moments when her pain, anger and bewilderment fill every part of her otherwise hollow interior, is well within her capabilities.
But even so, as November yields, in turn, to December, Alice becomes less and less sure of herself. Her magic seems to drain right out of her, and even the simplest spells are infinitely difficult to perform. Everything about her is numb, except, unfortunately, for her body: the feeling of him inside of her, cutting, harsh, aching, is what can't be escaped.
A week before the Hogwarts Winter Holidays begin, Lucius Malfoy receives a letter from his son Draco, and remains for two whole days behind the door of his study, allowing nobody inside. Alice waits nervously in her own chambers, expecting at any moment for him to request her presence. But no such request comes for almost the entire week. And when a request for her presence does arrive, it is not for the purpose she has become accustomed to.
"I have decided," says Lucius when she enters his study, "to have Draco remain at school for the holidays. I have reason to believe that Sirius Black may target the train on its way back to Kings Cross. You will take Fynn with you to accompany Draco until his studies resume. You will also serve as an ambassador to my concern for his safety."
Alice lingers, standing up with her hands in front of her and her head bowed toward the floor, expecting for him to approach her violently at any second. But no such action is carried out, and instead she is merely excused from the room, and told to prepare both herself and Fynn for their journey and two week stay at Hogwarts.
The next morning, Eloise sees Alice and Fynn to Kings Cross station, and to platform nine-and-three-quarters, waving them goodbye from the platform as the otherwise-empty train whistles and pulls out into the dull white December light of the London morning.
As she watches the grey, flat landscape of England pass by outside the windows of their compartment, Alice finds herself crying suddenly, large, soundless tears of equal parts distress and relief dripping onto her lap, some rolling onto her cheeks. Fynn looks up at her with his innocent blue eyes, and touches each wet bead of sadness with his little fingertips, brushing them away until they are all gone.
Spells used in this chapter:
1. "Piertotum Locomotor," which makes previously inanimate objects move
2. "Alohomora," the unlocking charm
3. Imperturbable Charm (incantation unknown), to cause a muffling sound barrier over Alice's door
Yeah. I really wasn't joking about the mature rating. I'm sure most of you have read worse, but I can never know, so I felt that the warning was necessary.
I feel like this chapter went a little too fast. I was trying to hurry through this really depressing part of the story wouldn't feel too slow to you all, and I definitely didn't want to stretch Alice's misery into two chapters, but I think I may have overcorrected. Let me know what you think-I am very open to constructive criticism!
Just today I realized, for the first time, that Domhnall Gleeson (who I listed as a potential Remus) is already cast in the Harry Potter films as Bill Weasley. That flew right over my head. Oops. I'm still keeping him in the cast as Remus, though. The canon police are just going to have to cope.
Sorry again for the late update—I had an interview yesterday, and also, the fire department showed up at my house because of a faulty alarm system which was quite stressful... Not to mention that the content of this chapter in and of itself was difficult to write. I have another interview this evening, and am quite swamped with work tomorrow, so the next update might be a bit delayed, as well. But I will be back within another day or two.
Don't be shy if you're worried about leaving a review in a different language—I can do my best to translate using Google, and I have an inkling that this site might do it automatically. I wish I heard more from you!
Thank you for not plagiarizing my writing!
On_Errand_Bad
9,938 words
Sunday, 18 October 2020