Chapter 9 – Pale Dingy Truth
"Father, what-what are you doing here?" Draco stammered in shock
"I came to see you play, son," Lucius added insincerely, "Well done."
Draco stood frozen beside the sink as his father casually strolled around the locker room, pretending to take interest in the things hanging on the walls. Draco noticed that his father seemed pale, almost lighter than his white-blond hair, but something else that Draco couldn't put his finger on was different, too and he thought that maybe Azkaban had brought his father even closer to evil.
"Why did you allow your mother to throw half of our belongings away?" Lucius asked bluntly.
Draco didn't answer; he had not expected this question and it was puzzling that it was the first thing that his father brought up. He looked at Draco, waiting for an answer, but it never came.
"There were a few items that I specifically told her not to touch, and now they are missing," Lucius was still scanning the walls.
"What items?" Draco asked, but for some reason the moth popped into his head instantly.
"It's not important what they are, Draco. I just need to know where your mother stored the rest of the items. I've already searched out private chamber and found nothing that I have dire need for."
Draco was afraid to speak; he knew his father was masking his true anger and he didn't want to see it unleashed. Nevertheless, Draco told what he thought was the truth.
"She binned them," he said, "I don't know where, but she said she'd just gotten rid of them."
Lucius's chest swelled with disappointment, and Draco kept his eyes on the floor. His father edged slowly closer as he spoke:
"There will be consequences if you aren't telling me all that you know, son. Your mother already knows that."
Draco snapped his head up to lock with his father's gaze.
"What did you do to her?" Now Draco's temper was rising along with his fear.
"Don't concern yourself with what was coming to her, Draco, I just need to know if you have kept anything from the house here at school," Lucius's face was only a foot away now, and Draco felt conflicted about telling his father about the moth and the potion. Lucius cocked his head, awaiting a response from his only heir, and the silence seemed to last a decade as Draco finally decided to protect the moth until he knew more about it.
"There was a phial of potion. It was orange-coloured and it looked really old and had no label, but I don't have it anymore."
"Where is it?" Lucius looked menacing.
"I dumped it during class. My bag spilled along with everything on the table and I thought it was a leftover potion from the lesson. It wasn't until later that I realized which phial I had emptied," Draco was close to fainting as he met his father's furious eyes. Lucius looked as though he wanted to kill someone, and instead grabbed the back of Draco's neck, pulling his ear closer so as to whisper.
"That potion was incredibly valuable, son, do you understand?" Draco stared at the ground once again, and nodded his comprehension and his father released his harsh grip, "How do you expect to repay me, Draco?"
Draco swallowed and replied quietly:
"Take it out of my inheritance?"
Lucius laughed slightly.
"You don't understand after all. You see, that potion has been in our family for many years and I was intending to use it. It wasn't valuable in price, my son, but personally, and you will be home during Christmas to repay me, and you can believe me when I say that you will regret your indifference."
With that last threat, Lucius strutted out of the locker room and most likely down to Hogsmeade village to disapparate. Draco was shaken, and he had no idea whether his father had really been there or if it was another one of his odd visions. Then he reminded himself that not only was the moth locked safely away in the castle, but his neck felt bruised where his father's hand had gripped him unmercifully.
Draco made his way out and back up to the castle, looking over his shoulder to the path leading to Hogsmeade to see a figure walking toward the little village; it definitely wasn't a vision. The statues passing by in a gray, stone blur, Draco was contemplating his father's words, and he realized that his father actually intended on using the potion meaning that he knew what it was. Nobody Draco knew of could possibly be under threat of receiving a love potion from his father, and his mother's face popped into his head just before he entered the common room.
Draco's thoughts were washed away as the whole of Slytherin house was pouncing to congratulate him and pat his back for the win on the Quidditch pitch. While his friends and classmates drank butterbeer and hooted and hollered until well after midnight, Draco tried (and failed) to keep in good spirits with the daunting threat of his father hovering over his head.
Sleeping was a difficult task as Draco imagined himself being tortured in different ways by his father or an array of death eaters. Every time he was woken up by his nightmares, he shook off the thought of his own father being on that level of cruel, but after the meeting not long ago, he no longer knew what to believe.
Successfully ignoring the moth for three full weeks, Draco had plenty of time outside of class to test more antidotes with Hermione, but this proved disappointing. The next two antidotes did nothing but give Hermione a stubborn case of the hiccups, and Draco felt close to breaking down completely.
It was late in the evening during the first week of December when Draco and Hermione were finishing the sixth potion on his list. Almost half of them had failed and Hermione was starting to get suspicious.
"So, why do you have me testing all of these? If they're such innocent potions, why can't you just take them?" She was leaning against one of the sinks holding the little phial.
"Don't you trust me?" Draco asked moving to lean on the sink next to her.
"I do, but I just don't get it, Draco. I feel like you're tricking me into taking something potentially poisonous."
Draco sighed and turned to face her, "Look, I'm not trying to trick you, and I'm not poisoning you. I just thought since you're amazing at every subject, you'd like to help me with this. At least we get to spend extra time together, right?" Draco buttered her up just enough.
Hermione kissed him and drank the potion down. Expecting nothing to happen, Draco just watched her casually. She blinked a couple of times, and looked around the room slowly.
"You okay?" Draco asked looking closer.
"Yeah, I- What is this potion again?"
"I told you, it's just a simple pep-"
Hermione suddenly vomited right in front of Draco's feet, clutching her stomach.
"Draco! What- Argh! What did you give me?"
"We need to get you to the hospital wing," avoiding an explanation, Draco put his arm around her, leading her out of the washroom hastily, "Just tell Madam Pomfrey that you might have eaten something bad, okay?"
"Why?" Hermione was doubled over as they tried to hurry through the corridors.
"Just, trust me, please?" Draco was so panicked he almost forgot which way to go to get her to the nurse.
Hermione vomited again just a few feet from the door, and Madam Pomfrey must have heard as she had rushed out to greet them in a flourish.
"What happened?" She inquired, lying Hermione down on a bed and fetching a basin.
"I don't know," Draco lied, "We were walking along and she just puked! I think it was something she ate."
Hermione was too focused on trying not to heave again to stop Draco from lying, and Pomfrey shooed him away.
"I'll visit tomorrow morning, okay?"
Hermione just glared at him before dropping her head into the basin, and Draco knew he was in serious trouble. He ran back to the girls' bathroom to grab his bag, and bolted to the Slytherin common room.
"Blaise, upstairs, NOW!" He ordered as he rushed through.
Blaise followed him to the secluded dorm, as Draco launched his bag across the room with a crash.
"What happened?"
"She got sick! I gave her one of the antidotes and she just got sick! What the hell am I going to do?"
"Okay, just calm down mate, I'm sure there's something we can figure out. Where is she now?"
"The hospital wing, I told Pomfrey it was something she ate," Draco sat on the edge of his bed and dropped his head into his hands.
"Okay, so when she gets better we can, um..." Blaise trailed off into thought.
"I don't think she'll let me give her another one. She was already getting suspicious about me not trying any of them. I still have six left to try, too!"
"Well, maybe once you repair things, you can just slip the new ones into her butterbeer when we're all in Hogsmeade, or Tell Weasel-ette what really happened and have her do it during meals?"
Draco's head was reeling, but Blaise seemed to make a lot of sense.
"That's actually a great idea, Blaise. I mean, my best friend knows what really happened, why shouldn't hers? Plus, she can act as a sort-of inside agent, and let me know if the affects start wearing off or anything like that. Then again, if somebody sees her, she could then blame it on us, and we would be in very serious-"
"Draco, you're rambling."
"Sorry," Draco sighed heavily, "I'll visit her tomorrow and see whether she hates me again or not."
The next morning Draco was awake earlier than he intended to be, but it made sense to visit Hermione before anyone else had a chance to. He walked through the chilly corridors alone, and extremely nervous; it was as though he was walking to his own execution. The door was unlocked and Hermione was sleeping peacefully on her bed. Once at her side, Draco grasped her hand, attempting to gently wake her up.
Hermione's eyes fluttered open and she squinted at him through the morning sunlight that was peeking through the window.
"How are you feeling?" Draco asked, trying to be as empathetic as possible.
"I'm okay," her voice was a bit raspy, "was vomiting until about midnight, but I feel better now."
"I'm so sorry, Hermione," Draco meant every word. Never did he intend to give her a harmful potion.
"It's okay. I know you didn't mean to, but after what happened last night I want you to try every potion with me from now on okay?"
"Sure," he said, relieved that she wasn't angry.
Hermione was out of the hospital wing by lunch time, and as Draco sat at his house's table, Harry and Ron glared at him, and even Ginny looked upset. They knew something happened because of him, even after Hermione told them it was food poisoning.
After classes, Hermione sat with Draco and the other Slytherins in the library, as Draco looked up what would happen if he took an antidote with having taken a love potion. He was lucky Hermione was distracted by her Charms essay, and he finally felt completely at ease after reading that antidotes have no negative effects when brewed properly.
This also meant that the antidote they tried the night before wasn't brewed correctly at all, and Draco made a note to remake it and double-check every single step he took along the way. Usually Draco tried to brew the potions himself as Hermione blabbed on about anything and everything, but next time he would ask her watch him diligently.
The next day as Draco was packing up his bag to leave the potions classroom, Snape asked to speak with him.
"Yes Professor?" Draco stood on the other side of Snape's desk, waiting to hear news about the moth.
"I wish to speak with you in my office around nine o'clock this evening," Snape made it sounds very important.
"Is this about that moth?"
"Yes, but I shall not say anymore about it here. Tonight, Mr. Malfoy," Snape excused him and Draco stalked off to his next lesson intrigued. He decided to give the potion-sampling a break for a few nights so Hermione could recover fully, not to mention he had some homework to catch up on before his meeting with Snape.
The corridors were deserted when Draco made his way to the potion master's office, and when he arrived Snape was already at his desk with the moth in front of him. Draco took up a chair and waiting for Snape to say the first words.
"As I have said, Draco, this is an extremely powerful item, and I'm sure it is no news to you that it is also riddled with dark magic. I don't know what exactly it is, but I do have a hunch about what it could be. On another note," he paused for a moment, "I believe it belongs to your father."
Draco was stunned.
"How do you know?"
"When you had those visions, do you know who occupied them?"
"No, I didn't even recognize who I was. At least not from the voice anyways," Draco felt that the voice was definitely familiar, but hadn't given it much thought until now.
"Well, I had a couple of dreams of my own, Mr. Malfoy, and I am certain that they were very similar to your own. One was about a young man at Hogwarts asking a dark haired girl to Hogsmeade, and getting rejected. Does this sound familiar to you?"
"Yes, that's exactly what happened in the first dream that I had," Draco's nerves were on edge, and he sensed that no pleasant information would come from this meeting.
"I see that you failed to recognize your own father's voice. You see, I grew up with him here, and let me assure you that he is not who you think he is," Snape had leaned slightly closer to Draco from across the desk.
Draco was nervous; he had never expected to hear horrible things about his father, especially from Snape, a fellow death eater.
"What do you mean, sir?" Draco broke the long, uncomfortable silence.
"Your father always got what he wanted, and I can assure you that when he didn't, things got ugly."
Completely lost, Draco gave the professor a confused look, and Snape simply sighed.
"He was rejected from Bella in his sixth year at Hogwarts, and many times might I add," Snape explained, "I heard that after school had ended, your father tracked her down and tried to woo her. When that didn't work, he moved onto more cunning plans: He convinced her sister that it was really her that he was in love with. He used her for years to try and get to Bella, but the right time never came. With the Dark Lord's downfall, and the convictions of death eaters, as well as your birth, your father never found an opportunity to catch her."
Draco thought for a moment before trying to grip onto what Snape was saying.
"So you're saying that my father is actually in love with my aunt, and he's been using my mother this whole time to get to her?"
"It is very unpleasant to think about, but yes, basically."
"Why?" Draco was disgusted. Not only had he been lied to his whole life, but his mother deserved to be treated far better than that.
"I don't know, Draco. All I can say is that this item holds a very strong connection with your father and his love for Bellatrix. It would be best to not only keep it hidden, but also keep it away from him. Nobody knows what his intentions are for it, and I believe we'd be safer not to find out. Now, I bid you goodnight Mr. Malfoy, and I'm sorry I couldn't be of anymore help."
Draco walked back to his dorm slowly with the moth weighing his pocket down more than ever. The hatred rising towards his father was nearly impossible to keep in, and he wished he could stay at school over the Christmas holiday. He was far too worried about his mother and scared of his father more now than ever to even think about requesting to stay in the castle.
Pushing his anger aside, Draco contemplated what Snape had told him about the moth. Still not knowing what it was or what it did, Draco had to keep it away from his father. As Draco laid his head down on his pillow with the moth tucked away in his trunk this time, he thought about his father's intentions. The recent conversations with his father and with Snape were twisting through his head.
He nearly sat up at the thought of the love potion. His father was intending to use it, and Draco could now see clear as day that Lucius was going to use the potion on Bellatrix. His epiphany didn't keep him awake half the night, but the mystery of what the moth was going to be used for kept Draco's eyes open until nearly dawn.