Draco soon learns that there's no privacy at Grimmauld Place. Anything you can be walked in on doing, you will. The first time he runs into Potter on the stair, just coming out of the toilet with his eyes bright and his cheeks flushed, his whole body screaming, "I just wanked!" he is stunned, then mortified. As he listens to Ron get his from Granger, the bedsprings creaking and groaning almost as loud as the huffing and puffing of the weasel's breath as he thrusts into her, he wishes wholeheartedly that he were deaf.
The first time he walks in on them, with their kinky ritual of mirrors and silk stockings, he knows he's finally seen something wrong. The weaslette is only sixteen, but she is on her back, moaning and writhing as her lover pumps into her. Her long legs are wrapped in pretty silk stockings and decorated with silk bows. They look for all the world like they should belong to a bride instead of a teenaged girl, and there is a little rosette on her bra, the same color as her cinnamon nipples that are being pinched between the man's fingers. All he can think is, that man shouldn't be doing that. He should know better. This is wrong. She sees Draco's gobsmacked expression in the mirror and screeches, clutching to her lover. Draco realizes she is orgasming and runs as far away as he can. He hides in his room under Harry's bed and shakes in disgust until dinner, when Harry comes to bring him to eat. He won't tell Harry what happened, and Harry stops asking as they walk into the dining room.
After dinner, Draco stays to help Molly with the dishes so he doesn't have to see them again, but the weaslette sits on the kitchen table, watching him. Her eyes are so blank and doll-like that he feels ill and wonders vaguely if she even cares what she is doing. Eventually all of the dishes are clean, the counters wiped down and everything put away. Molly makes him a cup of chamomile tea because he tells her that he hasn't been sleeping well and she sends him out of the room. As he leaves, Ginny stares at him silently. He heads to the room he has been sharing with Harry as quickly as he dares, but in the dark hallway he finds himself grabbed by the collar and slammed into the wall. His tea splatters wetly against the floor and the cup shatters. In the kitchen, Draco can hear Molly get up to follow the noise, but a pair of lips are growling next to his ear.
"Don't tell her anything. You didn't see anything," the man snarls at him and he stares at the glint of light reflected off of a dragon's tooth as he is shoved to the floor. Ginny minces up the stairs and into the hallway. She looks down at Draco, who babbles nonsensically about not seeing anything, and then she goes into her room. The man follows her and Draco's stomach turns. He is dry heaving in the floor when Molly, who is all terrycloth dressing gown and fuzzy slippers and smelling faintly of burned sugar, finds him sobbing sickly in a puddle of his own snot and bile. She helps him to bed and brings him more tea, and when Harry asks him what happened, he turns over and pulls the blankets over his head.
::
Harry is lying in bed when he realizes that he doesn't understand how Malfoy knew how to get to Grimmauld Place. He knows the Fidelius charm has expired, but the house is still unplottable. He thinks about asking, but when he looks over to Draco's bed, he sees that he isn't there yet. There is a sudden clatter of pandemonium in the hall, and Harry rushes to see what it is. The door won't open, he finds, but if he presses his ear to the old wood he can hear faintly the muffled thud of a body falling to the ground. When Molly enters a few minutes later with a weak looking Malfoy on her arm, it's all he can do not to demand with whom Ferret-face has started an argument. Then he sees the dark shadows under pale grey eyes and the almost arthritic shaking of too-thin limbs and realizes that not even Malfoy would pick a fight when he's this ill. He watches Molly put Malfoy to bed and waits for her to leave before asking what happened, but all he gets is sulking for his trouble. He thinks of asking Molly, but it's late and he knows she will only send him back to bed, so he rolls over so he can keep an eye on the tiny bundle beneath the coverlet in the next bed.
The next day, there is an odd tension in the house. Ginny is nowhere to be found, as usual, but Charlie is watching Malfoy like a hawk. Harry wishes that Charlie would see that the boy is simply too sick to do anything—besides, who has he got to turn to, anyway?—but Charlie's eyes won't leave the pale figure that staggers through the parlor skittishly. Even the twins are affected by the general malaise of the day, and their constant jokes seem to have hit a lull. Ron and Hermione seem to be having a bit of a tiff. Hermione is in the library reading—Ron jokes that she has been memorizing her textbooks—and Ron has been sniping at Malfoy all day.
"Come on, then!" Ron taunts from his seat on the plush sofa, "Tell us how your Death Eater friends killed Snape. We know it was you, anyway."
"Ron!" Molly's tone is sharp, and Harry can see the scowl forming on Ron's face already at her perceived treason.
"Oh, come on, Mum! He's been a Junior Death Eater for as long as I've known him. Surely you can't ignore that!" Ron's tone is sour, but not as sour as the ugly expression forming on Malfoy's face. The twins are fidgeting slightly and Fred stands up to leave, but George stays, almost entranced. Fred tugs on his brother's shoulder for a while, then gives up and leaves.
"Ronald," Molly's tone is warning, and her eyes flash dangerously. "There's no need to bring up the past."
"Mum, just because a snake licks your hand when it's injured doesn't mean it won't bite when it's well again," Ron's tone is sullen and whiny, and Harry suddenly can't see how this creature could be his friend.
"Ron, that's enough!" Harry stands, walking over to the chair where Malfoy is sitting, trying to catch his breath. Harry cups a bony shoulder in his hand and Draco's head jerks up. He stares at Harry for a moment before pulling away and looking around nervously. His tongue flits out, licking cracked and drying lips, and his eyes settle on Ron.
"He's right, you know," Draco's tone is conversational, and Harry is startled and half-hard at the sudden memory of Alexandre. "I was a 'Junior Death Eater,' as he called it. I wanted to serve the Dark Lord."
"Voldemort," Harry's half-though correction slips through as a whisper, and Draco nods.
"Voldemort. I wanted to serve him and destroy the results of what I saw as the Muggle taint on Wizarding society," Draco's voice is soft, but grows in strength. Ron is sputtering indignantly, but not standing up, so Draco continues. "I was…angry, I suppose. Angry that such a disgusting breed of people could be allowed to breathe the same air as we could, study the same things we could, and that everyone seemed to have forgotten."
"Forgotten?" Molly's voice is hesitant. "What has everybody forgotten, dear?"
"The old ways. The way it was before when Wizard kin and Muggles got together," Draco rubs his left arm, right over the Dark Mark that Harry knows isn't there.
"Bugger the old ways, Malfoy. You lot just use that as an excuse as to why smart witches like Hermione shouldn't be allowed to go to Hogwarts!" Ron's voice is clear and sharp, cutting across the room. "You think that because her blood's impure—just because she was born to Muggles—she's not allowed to breathe the same air as you? You're an utter bastard. Ten of you aren't worth her."
"Hermione Granger was not born to Muggles," Draco's voice is calm. Ron's indignant cry is ignored as he continues, "Do you know how the old magic works, Weasley? How it runs in the veins like blood, and how every part of your body can feel it, from your toenails all the way up to the roots of your hair? Do you think that just happens spontaneously? There's no such thing as a Muggle-born witch or Wizard, but there are loads of squib born people out there."
"What do you mean?" George asks.
"There is no magic spontaneously created, only magic allowed to die, to rot in the furrows and disappear forever. For every one so-called Muggle born witch or wizard, there are ten 'odd children' whose parents either didn't believe or never got their Hogwarts letter, who'll never know exactly why strange things happen to them. There are children in Britain whose magic has been so bred out of them that they simply pass under the notice of the Ministry. These children will never understand why, when they get really angry, the sitting room's window splits. They'll never know what a gift they've been given by their ancestors that their parents have thrown away.
"I doubt there's such a thing as a pure-bred Muggle anymore. Our bloodlines have mixed so thoroughly that almost every person in Britain has a magical signature. These people breed and they get the luck of the draw—sometimes, their child is born with enough power that he or she can go to a Wizarding school. Sometimes it is born so weak of magic that it dies at birth. Sometimes it is born a squib, with so little magical energy that it's almost Muggle. Then these squibs with their low-level magic breed and the resultant child is even less powerful, until all that's left is a tiny spark of power.
"People like Granger are extremely lucky. In her case, one squib line with a decent amount of power left in it—perhaps she'll look back on one side of her family and find she's got a grandaunt who was sent to a special finishing school and disappeared from knowledge shortly after, or her grandfather has no history before his nineteenth birthday. Either way, she'll find magic in her line if she looks for it—those people married into a line that was dying. Somehow, her parents have managed to create a functioning witch, but half of her powers are…slow. They don't work as well as other witches' do. She can't do charms, or transfigurations, or maybe she's pants at divination and can't fly a broom," Malfoy turns his eyes to Ron, who's staring at him with a mixture of loathing and reluctant admiration on his face, "as well as the other Wizarding students in her year. She'll study twice as hard as a pure-blooded classmate and maybe she'll be a better student than…her. But she'll never have a tenth of the power that other student shows, and she'll never be able to do all of the things her friends at school can, because her magic is so withered."
"What complete poppycock!" Hermione's voice is watery with tears of betrayal. She stands in the doorway and glares at no one as hard as she glares at Ron. "I've never heard such unmitigated racist propaganda in my life!"
"Hermione," Ron starts, and she storms over to him. He grips her arm and tries to pull her onto his lap, but she struggles and for a moment Harry is sure she will punch Ron. She doesn't, but she doesn't sit down, either. Hermione stands stiffly next to him, her arm caught. "Just listen a minute."
"Absolutely not!" she shrieks, suddenly clawing at Ron's hand.
"What's going on?" Ginny's voice floats in from the hall, where she stands. "Is Hermione unwell?"
"How could you possibly believe that because I'm Muggle-born my magic is inferior to yours, Ronald Weasley?" Tears are beginning to leak from Hermione's eyes and Ginny comes in to stand next to Charlie, observing the situation. Harry is sure that she and Hermione have been quarrelling again, and he's unnerved by the gleam in Ginny's eye as she sees Hermione's frustration. "How could you believe that pureblood Death Eater propaganda shit?"
"Mind your tongue!" Ginny's voice is clear and decisive, drawing heads around the room to look at her. Her face is suddenly flushed and she has shaken her hair loose of one of the blue bows she is wearing. It hangs limply, dangling from one strand to rest on her shoulder. "Not every pureblood is a Death Eater, and it would do you good to remember that!"
"Not every Death Eater is a pureblood," Malfoy drawls, and everyone looks at him again. "Every Death Eater has his own agenda. He has his own reason for believing Voldemort's lies, and you don't have to be a pureblood to toady to him."
"And why, then, do you? What's your reason, Malfoy, for wanting me and my family dead? Don't recite that 'they're killing magic' drivel to me. Tell me the real reason," Hermione demands, her face flaming with passion. Her hair is wild, and Harry can see in her both the shy English rose and Boudica, the warrior queen.
"My family has no history past the sixteenth century," Malfoy begins. His eyes drift to his lap, where his fingers are toying absently with the bottom hem of the Weasley jumper he has borrowed from George. "Unlike a lot of the British Wizarding families, we can't trace ourselves back to our Keltoi roots or claim that we were descended from the great Roman wisewomen. Before November 1523, we have no idea who our family was. We don't even know the family name. It could have been anything, for all we know. We do know that there was a small manor house belonging to the family that is still standing; it's there that I was born," his eyes lock with Harry's, and Harry feels his neck flush. "This manor is the only thing my family has left from those days because everything else was taken from us."
"What do you mean?" the words escape Harry's lips before Hermione's disapproving scowl can stop them.
"Autrefois, il y'un garcon. Il etait un garcon jaune et beaux. Mais les heurs de la vie etait moments douloureux…" Draco begins. It sounds like he is reciting a well-loved poem or children's story. He looks at Harry and begins to translate, "Once upon a time, there was a boy. He was a young boy, and beautiful. But his life was filled with sadness…"
::
There is a sudden pounding in the night that startles Lucien Leblanc from his sleep. His wife, Marie, is sleepily curled on his arm. Her nightcap has fallen loose from her head and for a moment the sight of moonlight on her hair is so captivating that he forgets why he is awake. Then Jehanne begins to cry and Clareta is running into the room to their little bed. Her little footfalls are almost completely overwhelmed by the raucous cries of people outside. Marie jumps up and races into the hall. Lucien follows her to the children's rooms, and as he stands outside the opened door of his son's room, he realizes two things quite suddenly: the air is choked by the smell of thatch burning, and Michel is not in his bed.
It is very much like Michel to be out flirting with the girls in town until it is far too late to be proper. It is not, however, very much like the family's roof to be on fire. Jehanne is shrieking in terror now, and Clareta has thrown her arms around Marie's neck, sobbing like the small child she is. There is nothing to do, Lucien reasons with himself, but to go out and face the crowd. He gathers his wife and daughters to him, clutching Jehanne's tiny hand in his own and curling a protective arm around Marie, who has Clareta on her hip. They are all in their night clothes, but Lucien throws back the front door anyway. The sight that greets him is truly terrible; it seems the entire town is there, and they've all got murder in their eyes.
"Leblanc, your wife is accused of witchcraft and consorting with the Devil," the ugly man standing at the front of the group states. His eyes are beady as they rake over the state of Jehanne and Clareta's undress. Lucien pulls Jehanne behind him to protect her from staring eyes and the man bares rotted teeth at him in a sneer.
"What is the meaning of all this?" Lucien demands. "My wife has done you no harm. Nor have I."
"Then you do not deny she is a witch?" Lucien feels as if he has turned to ice at the man's words. The denial is on the tip of his tongue, but he cannot bring himself to speak against her family, who for many years tutored the both of them in the intricacies of the craft, coaxing them slowly toward the perfect potion making skills, the most delicate transfigurations, and the most fluid charms work. "You see?" the man goads the crowd, "He cannot deny it!"
"My wife is no consort of the Devil!" Lucien finds his voice as the townspeople laugh mockingly.
"What other name is there for a witch? Come now, pretty thing, and confess your sins," another man, one Lucien remembers working in their plow fields last autumn, grabs Marie's arm, tugging her to him. His eyes rake over her eagerly and he pulls at her night shift.
"Confess and you shall be saved!" someone else in the crowd calls and chaos breaks loose. Jehanne is torn from his hand, her screams echoing long in the night. Marie is lost to his eyes as the townspeople begin to swarm into their pretty little home, taking everything they can get their hands around. He stares in horror as Clareta is slapped roundly across the face by a crone.
"Be still, you stupid thing!" the woman cries, shaking the child, and Lucien sees white for a moment. When the haze lifts, the woman's hands have fallen off and the people around her are screaming. Clareta has disappeared, as well, hidden by the throngs of people. The hag falls over in a faint and Lucien's eyes dart frantically for his family before a crushing weight hits his skull and all is dark.
When he awakens, the first thing Lucien sees is Michel, strapped to a large block in front of a roaring fire. There is a rod of metal sticking out of the fire and the man from before, who Lucien now recognizes as Msr. Baudelaire, the man who tried to convince him to sell their pretty house last autumn, is standing next to Michel, his hand pressed firmly on the boy's neck. In the firelight, Michel looks almost half of his seventeen years. His eyes are large with fright. He stares at Lucien as if he has seen a ghost.
"Papa! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry; I'll never stay out late again. Oh, God, Papa!" Michel cries, his fingers scrabbling against the wood as he tries desperately to worm his way out of Baudelaire's grasp. "Please, Papa, make him stop. Make him let me go!"
A piercing scream forces Lucien to tear his eyes away from his pleading son. Clareta is being bounced on the knee of a grim old hag. She is reaching for her mama, who is bound nearby. Clareta starts to sob and the woman makes a noise of disgust, shoving the child at someone nearby. He shoves her back and Clareta cries louder, hurt by all of the rough treatment. A peasant woman backhands her and Clareta sniffles in the dirt—Clareta, the child who could never stand even flower pollen on her hands has got mud in her hair. Marie chokes on a sob and Lucien rages against his own bindings to comfort her. Marie's white night dress is torn and bloodied, and he is wholeheartedly and selfishly glad that he was not awake to see why she has a large bruise on her calf in the shape of fingerprints. He cannot see Jehanne, but he can hear her screams and see the large crowd near Michel. He can see the way Michel will not look to the crowd, and Lucien realizes with a sickening lurch in his stomach that the boy has been placed to watch. Look at this, their actions say. This is what boys like you do to good girls. Lucien spits on the ground and is kicked in the stomach for it.
He does not see the exact moment that Clareta is pushed into the water to stifle her crying. He only sees as Marie fights against her bounds as violently as a she-wolf. He sees as the child is brought back out of the water and the cold thing is thrown at the feet of her mother, who sobs so brazenly that it seems her heart has broken. He sees as the crowd parts as Jehanne fights her way out of it, dagger in hand. As their tormentors approach her, he sees her eyes fly heavenward before she sheathes the dagger in her belly. Lucien tells himself that this is what the blood oozing down her legs is from. When the branding iron is pulled from the fire, it bears the words "of bad faith" and he cannot watch as the hot metal is pressed into his son's forearm.
He can hear acutely the sizzle of the hair burning and the dull popping sound of blisters forming and bursting as the iron is pressed into Michel's arm. The boy's screams are truly horrifying and the sickly sweet smell of burned flesh fills the clearing. He can hear the boy vomiting and Baudelaire laughing. He still has his eyes closed tightly when he hears the whistle of a sword and the two meaty chopping sounds when it takes more than one stroke to silence Marie's mad screams. His eyes are still closed as he hears Michel sobbing and panting for breath across the clearing and as he hears the murderer lift his blade again. His eyes stay closed.
When Michel is found three days later in the city of Rouen, half-mad and delirious with hunger, the scabs on his arm oozing blood and pus, he cannot remember his own name. All he can say, according to the milk girl that finds him wandering through the forest, is that he must get out of France. The townspeople suspect that he is a victim of the Inquisition, and they refuse to help him, but he is eventually taken to the lodgings of a pair of British wizards visiting the continent. They agree to take him back with them, but since he will not tell them his name, they call him by the name bleeding on his arm: Le Mal Foi.
::
Hermione says that the story is a pack of lies, that the Inquisition didn't start until years later and that Malfoy has been reading too many penny dreadfuls. She says he's making it all up and he only wants sympathy, but even Ron admits that it's a horrible story, and maybe Malfoy isn't so bad, after all, seeing as how he hasn't started a fight in a while, anyway. Harry doesn't know quite what to make of this assertion; he's glad Ron's willing to try to be friends—it keeps him from feeling sick when he thinks of Alexandre—but he's still certain that Ron is the one fighting with Malfoy in the hall.
In the past few days, Malfoy has come in with a split lip, a broken nose, and bruises covering most of his pale, thin body. Though he has fleshed out more than he was when he first arrived, Harry is still concerned, and at Harry's insistence, Charlie has been healing the worst of his injuries. Charlie has some sort of big brother sense, Harry figures, because he always seems to know when he's needed. The injuries vary between scratches down Malfoy's arm to horrible blotchy bruises on his legs and once a shoulder out of socket. When Draco staggers into the room one day, his eyes wide with shock and his face whiter than paper, his wrist broken and cradled protectively in his other hand, it is too much.
Harry bypasses Charlie in the hall, going straight for Ron's door. He can hear Hermione in there, but for once he doesn't care. He slams the door open to the sight of them, she with her face buried in his lap and he with his hands fisted in the sheets of his bed. Ron sputters angrily and Hermione mewls in embarrassment, pulling away and hiding behind the bed. Ron's cock hangs heavy, red and wet in the space between them, and Harry's eyes are drawn to it almost helplessly. Shaking himself, Harry steels his courage and strides over to Ron, punching him soundly in the jaw.
"You leave your hands off of Dra—Malfoy," Harry snarls as his friend curls on his side, clutching his face. Ron leaps at him and wrestles him to the floor, kneeling over Harry and punching back. Harry can barely fight back as Ron pants above him, sweating and crying he is so angry.
Molly rushes into the room followed by Fred and George, who pull Ron off of Harry. Draco stands in the doorway silently as the scene unfolds. His eyes are cool and condescending, but they jump nervously between the various Weasleys in the room.
"What in the name of Merlin is happening in here?" Molly demands as Harry nurses a bloody lip and Ron tries to hide his nudity behind a pillow.
"Ron's been picking bloody fights with Malfoy," Harry accuses behind the monogrammed handkerchief Draco has pressed to his lip. The blond boy rolls his eyes and hides his injured hand behind Harry's back.
"I've not effing touched him, Harry!" Ron's cry is indignant and he almost drops the pillow when he tries to throw his hand up.
"You've started a row with him in the hall every night for the past week! You've busted his lip twice, almost broken his nose, and now," a sharp kick to the back of his shin tells Harry that Malfoy clearly doesn't want his injury declared. "Now I won't stand for it anymore," he finishes lamely.
"You're batty! I've been with Hermione every night this week," Ron asserts, despite the muffled squeak from behind the bed.
"What?" Molly's yelp is barely a question.
"Ronald Weasley!" Hermione's tone is recriminating as she stands slowly from behind the bed. Her blouse is unbuttoned and her hair is a mess, but she is dressed and Harry suddenly feels a pang of remorse for involving her in the situation. "Harry, what on Earth has gotten into you?"
"Ron's been hitting Malfoy," Harry mutters, turning his face away from his friends.
"He has not! Where would you get such an idea?" she demands.
"Have you…you've been…Ron, are you…active?" Molly sputters, and Ron's ears go crimson. Fred and George laugh loudly and all attention is suddenly torn away from Harry.
"Mum!" Ron wails indignantly. "I'm never going to forgive you for this, Harry!"
Fred and George laugh even louder and Fred comes over to where Harry is standing. "Don't worry about it, mate," he grins, patting Harry on the shoulder on his way out of the room. Harry begins to follow him.
"Wait!" Draco grabs for Harry's arm, but winces and Harry realizes that he has reached with his injured hand. He grabs the pale arm well above the wrist and leads Malfoy to Charlie, who pales slightly at the obvious swelling and odd angle of the boy's wrist.
"Fix it, Charlie. Please." Draco's whole arm is trembling from pain and lack of treatment. Charlie's lips are thin and white as he slowly shakes his head. "What do you mean, 'no'? You've got to fix it! Look at him; it's pretty fucking obvious his wrist is broken. It hurts so much he's gone white!" Charlie stares at the arm Harry is holding, and then backs away slowly.
"I can't. I can't fix that," Charlie gasps, unable to tear his eyes away from the injury.
Molly's gasp is loud suddenly in their quiet discussion. Her voice is tremulous as she carefully touches Malfoy's wrist and watches him wince. "When did this happen?" she asks.
"Today," Malfoy's voice is quiet. "I fell on the stair. I tripped," his eyes are warning as he glances back at Harry.
"Ron pushed you," Harry replies.
"Have things like this been happening often?" her voice is tight.
"No," Draco says as Harry says, "Yes."
"All the time," Harry ignores Draco's glare. "Usually black eyes, split lips, and such. Almost every day."
"Every day?"
"No," Draco says as Harry says, "Yes."
It takes three hours and several favors called in by Arthur for Molly to find a way to get Malfoy to a doctor who is willing to keep a secret. The doctor shows them all how the bones in his wrist have been broken in three places. His arm has been twisted so fiercely that the tendons around the break are inflamed. It takes two different potions to stop the swelling so the doctor can even look at the damage, and after a dose of skele-gro and a pain relieving potion, Malfoy is sent back to number twelve under strict orders not to use his arm for a week. Molly blames the whole thing on herself, Charlie is subdued, and Ron refuses to talk to Harry, who won't stop glaring at him. Draco is curled in the armchair in the parlor under the watchful eye of Phineas Nigellus Black, who harrumphs threateningly whenever the sleeping boy is approached.