JKR owns all official HP character
I would like to thank everybody who took the time to read. THANK YOU!
An extra thanks to those who reviewed.
Some of you mentioned that sometimes my spelling is off. I'm sorry about this, but English is not my first language so I'm doing my best and hope it will be good enough for you.
Feel free however to point any horrible mistakes I seem to repeat and I will try not to make them again
"I suggest you sit down for this young man".
"What"!
"You heard me, sit down".
"You are aware of the fact that technically you are a house elf and therefore not in a position to order me around, right".
"I, young men, have known you since the day you were born. When you cried, I made sure you were fed or got a new diaper. When you decided it was time to go crawl around the Manor, it was me who spend days chasing you around, making sure you would not get close to anything dark or dangerous. I spend seventeen years of my life making sure you stayed out of trouble and as far away from your father and his bad temper in order to keep you as safe and sound as humanly possible in a house filled to the brink with Death Eaters, dark artefacts and in the end, the Dark Lord himself. So I suggest you do something about that sarcastic tone of yours and try to remember some of those manners I'm sure I taught you along the way. And you will…. sit….. down. Now!"
"And just so you know, in accordance with Act 8 Paragraph 6 Section 3 of the Magical Creature Equality Act, all house elves were set free from their services and are no longer bound to their former Masters, which means that you are not my boss and I do not have to be here", she added for good measure while Draco moved himself from the doorpost towards the bed in the middle of the room and sat down.
"Why are you here then?"
"Because I happen to like ordering you around. That and someone had to keep an eye on this place. And obviously someone needs to keep an eye on you!"
"I don't need a sitter."
"Really, because from where I'm standing it looks like you can't stay out of trouble even if your life depended on it! Which brings us to the true subject of this discussion. Please explain to me how, in a manner of hours, you seem to have managed to offend the one person who is supposed to be on your side in all of this".
"Offend her! I haven't said two full sentences to her, how on earth could I have offended her?"
"Did it ever cross your mind that that's exactly why she might be offended? She doesn't seem the quiet silent type to me, so she must have said more than two words to you on your way over."
"She might have."
"She might have?"
"Yes, well, I might have missed some of it. I was kind of preoccupied with getting out of prison, you know. What did you say her name was by the way?"
"Pardon me?"
"You heard me!"
"Are you telling me you just "kind of" missed her introducing herself!"
The look on his face said it all. He had been preoccupied indeed! He could have just asked her again, any time really, but off course instead he had to go off and be all Malfoy and decide that would not do. Damn those genes.
"Well I suggest you fix this mess you got yourself in, during dinner, after which you can escort her to her new room in the family wing."
"No way!"
"Pardon me, again!"
"She can stay where she is, the West wing has been the guest wing ever since this Manor was build. She is a guest, she can stay where guests are supposed to stay!"
"The Dark Lord stayed in the West Wing"
"So?"
"So, it was stripped down to the floor boards by the Ministry and is currently the most dreadful part of this house and that includes the dungeons. That and the fact that anything they missed might still be hanging around there".
"I say again......soooo?"
"So you will escort your guest out of there and into a better and safer part of this house, because it would not reflect positively on you if she gets herself killed by some plant the Ministry people missed when they came to remove all things dark and evil ".
"No!"
"Why not?" she sighed getting quite impatient.
"Because I don't want her here. I don't want her to be here at all for that matter. She is just someone the Ministry send to make my life even more miserable then it already is and really, there is no need for that, I manage quite well by myself."
"First, you will stop wallowing in self pitty, young men! And secondly, as far as I am concerned, the young lady is here to make sure you get every possibility to make something out of your life within the boundaries the Ministry has set out for you. You might not like them, you might not like her, but she looks very competent to me and you will let her do her job, do you hear me?"
"She looks like she's 16".
"Well, there you go, you already found one thing the two of you have in common!"
That one earned her a glare but really, she didn't care. He could glare at her all he wanted. As long as he glared it meant there was still something left of the old Draco. The Draco that was going to get his act together, even if it would be the last thing she made sure off he would do.
"Do you really think she'll be on my side in all of this?"
"Well, there's only one way to find out, don't you think. You'll go downstairs, you will have dinner together, you will be on your best behaviour and you will let her have her say all matters concerning you. She just might surprise you!"
"What about the room?"
"What about it? You'll tell her you are very sorry to have housed her in the most run down part of the Manor and will offer to help her move her stuff to her new accommodations. It is not that hard to be polite and civil at the same time you know?"
"If you say so Mimi!"
"Well I do!"
"Mimi?"
"What?"
"Do you really think there are killer plants in the West wing?"
She had to chuckle at that.
"I hope not, but seeing how those Ministry guys spend most of their time wizzing off everything they could carry out of here, they might just have overlooked something in there. We better be save then sure!"
"Right!
"Good, now get yourself ready for dinner, it will be served at 7 sharp in the dining room. I guess you can find your way there by yourself and get your mess fixed."
With that she "popped" off into thin air, leaving him once again alone in his room.
Falling back onto the bed, he thought about a way to get back into the good graces of this Miss.......what was it again Mimi said.......Shacklebolt. That sounded vaguely familiar.
He should obviously have paid attention earlier; it would have saved him a lot of trouble. But it was quite obvious that Mimi was going to be there for the long run and she decided to give the girl a chance.
So he better swallow his pried and apologise to her during dinner. Oh joy!
Little did he know they wouldn't make it to dinner any time soon that night.
Lucinda decided to leave her quarters early and do some exploring before she would go downstairs for dinner. Instead of turning back into the direction she had come from, she decided to take a right and make her way through the big old oak panelled doors that turned out to open up into another hallway.
Only this part of the wing seemed to be even more run down than the part she had just come from.
Besides the dust and lack of maintenance, there were black burn marks all over the walls and some of the rooms were missing doors. She couldn't imagine how it would have looked in its glory days, but then again she couldn't imagine living in a Manor either. It was just so big. There was no way one family could effectively use all that space or furnish it!
Entering a particularly large room, she walked through, towards the windows and after wiping one of them clean with the tip of her sleeve, she could looked out onto what was left of the Malfoy gardens.
But instead of finding a unkempt lawn and an array of dead bushes like she expected, she was looking at one of the nicest views she had ever seen. The sun was setting, peeking out from under the far away hills, turning the sky a dark shade of icy blue, with little specks of orange and gold at the edges.
The last rays of light fell nicely onto the underlying garden, colouring the roses down below into the most splendid tones. The Manor's rose garden obviously had not been looked after, but it didn't seem to mind. It had grown into a breathtaking wilderness of roses that had found their way out of their defined spaces and had mingled with each other.
The flowers had managed to conquer quite a bit of the surrounding area and had covered what looked like a garden bench and had started to grow up a nearby gazebo, covering already one side of the little structure in a wide variety of roses.
With the sunlight falling onto it just right, it looked like a little peaceful paradise and she decided to have a closer look at it from the outside tomorrow. She had found something beautyful where she had never expected to find such a thing. Just the thought of that made her hopes go up for the future.
A loud grumble from her stomach alerted her to the fact that she had been staring out of the window for quite some time and dinner was most likely already waiting. Turning around on her heel, she stopped dead in her tracks after seeing the scene that was playing out in front of her.
After that all she could think of was letting out a deafening scream, that echoed through the Manor, hoping some one would come to rescue her.