The Dancing Men, or

Should My Youth Some Harshness Show

Chapter 5

"Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything at all?" Dita asked.

Narcissa hesitated.

"What is it? Even if you don't think it's important."

"It may not help you at all. It certainly hasn't helped me. But perhaps you should see this."

She went to the wall by the fireplace, took out from somewhere a stick Dita realized must be a wand, and tapped the wall with a muttered statement. Dita didn't understand it, but it sounded Latin. Part of the wall faded away, and Narcissa reached her hand in and came out with a leather-bound book which she brought to Dita.

"When Draco first started Hogwarts, we bought him this diary, in case he wished to record his academic triumphs. Our library is full of the personal historical records of Malfoy achievements. Well, he did, and he continued writing in it all through school. It is bewitched so that no matter how much you write, there are always more pages. But I've never been able to read it. I have tried every encryption spell I know to make these pages give up their secrets, and none of them have worked."

Dita opened the book, and for a moment her mind boggled at the rows and rows of stick figures of the sort every schoolchild scribbles when he's bored in class. But these were no bored scribbles. Every page of the fat journal was covered in them, row after row, neat as writing. After staring for a moment, she began to laugh, long and hard. Narcissa stared at her as if she had gone crazy.

"Of course your little spells don't work! This is just plain writing, with a pen. It's a code, pure and simple, nothing to do with spells. In fact, it's so far from having to do with your world it's no wonder you could never figure it out! These are the Dancing Men!" She laughed again until tears came to her eyes.

Narcissa still stared at her, uncomprehending.

"This is a code from a Muggle book, and oddly enough, it's a Muggle book about one of my ancestors, my great-grandfather. He solved a mystery involving this enigmatic code of the Dancing Men. I'm sure many a child over the last hundred years has had a lovely time writing coded messages to his friends with it, since the story was published. But I thought your sort didn't read Muggle books. I mean your particular sort."

"We don't," Narcissa said coldly. "I can't imagine how he might have gotten his hands on such a thing…" She trailed off.

"Or do you?"

"Once, when he was eight, he brought a Muggle child home. When his father found out he had made friends with a Muggle, he beat him, and that was the end of that."

Dita winced, thanking mercy she had kept Lucia far away from such a father. "Eight years old is exactly the right age to start being interested in ciphers, and it's also the age many a boy becomes interested in the sorts of stories this particular cipher comes from. And no wonder he decided to write his diary in code. What boy wants his mother prying into his journal?"

Narcissa said stiffly, "It was my duty to know everything about my son."

"Huh," Dita said, unconvinced.

"Can you decipher it?"

"I can give it a try. If it's close to the original, it'll be easy, but he may have improved it over the years. Let me take it and try to work it out."

Narcissa nodded her head, slightly unwilling. "You should go. You have already been here far longer than I intended."

"It was necessary. Everything you have told me will help me to track your son."

"I don't see how learning about his schoolwork at Hogwarts can help you find him."

"I learned about far more than his schoolwork. Everything has come together to give me a complete picture of Draco, which will help me understand where he is likely to go and what he is likely to do. Now you'll have to take me home. I can't do that thing—Apparate."

Seconds later she was home and Narcissa was gone again. Making herself a strong cup of tea to counteract the unpleasant effects of Apparating, she sat down at her desk with the journal and was just reaching for the source material she wanted when Lucia returned home, dropping odd packages all over the table.

"Well, my dear, did you have a good time?"

"Some of the time. Look at this!" She shook a long black cloak out of a package and whirled it around her. "Hogwarts robes. Strange, isn't it?"

"A bit," Dita admitted. In black, Lucia looked more like a Malfoy than ever. She was usually given to dressing in paler colors, white, cream, beige, grey, looking like a little elfin creature when she did so. In black, all her aristocratic bones were thrown into sharp relief, and she looked disconcertingly like the portrait of Acheron Malfoy in Draco's room.

"Well, we got some other colors too, for when I'm not in class. And look at all these books!" she said gloatingly. "I wonder if I can read them all before school starts in a month. And I'm to have a cat—Miss Precipa promised me her grey kitten. Can you imagine a school that lets you bring an animal? And look, dragonhide gloves. Dragonhide! Isn't it weird? But here's the best thing, Mummy." She unwrapped her piece of velvet and revealed her new wand. "Apparently, Professor Dumbledore had Mr. Ollivander make it specially for me. It works beautifully, like it knows inside my head."

"It's beautiful," Dita said, a little doubtfully. Even after all these years, she still didn't understand all this fully, how you could take a stick and make it do things. She reached out a finger and touched it, and it just felt like wood, none of the odd sensations her daughter described when she talked about holly.

"And, Mummy—it's kind of a sister wand to Draco's wand. Young Ollivander didn't really understand why, but it seemed to be significant. He—he called me Lucia Malfoy. And—and people looked at me, and I heard somebody say, 'Those traitor Malfoys ought to be banned from Hogwarts. Ought to have their wands broken, the whole lot of them.'"

"Is that why only some of it was a good time?" Dita asked gently.

Lucia's sharp chin didn't quite wobble as she nodded. "Is everyone going to be like that? Including the other students at Hogwarts? And what about the teachers? Are they all going to just assume I'm as bad as the Malfoys?"

"Not all of them, but you may expect quite a few of them to do so. Especially people who had been particularly close to Harry Potter and his friends. They won't understand, at first. You're going to simply have to deal with unfriendliness for a while. Eventually they'll come to see you for who you really are, after they've lived with you, but it'll take time. You will have to demonstrate your good intentions and not respond to malice with malice. Don't try to not be a Malfoy; just be who you naturally are, a Bonnefoy."

"And what is a Bonnefoy, exactly?" Tears trembled on Lucia's lashes. "I'm the only one in existence, since you just made me up between your name and Lucius'."

"A Bonnefoy is intelligent and compassionate, a strong person who knows what is right and can lead others toward it."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've watched the only Bonnefoy in existence grow up, silly. I have excellent powers of observation."

Lucia laughed a little shakily. "So you do. You may thank your great-grandfather for that. Speaking of which, why are you playing with the Dancing Men?"

"Not I. Your brother. This is his diary."

"Draco used the Dancing Men for a diary? That's so…odd."

"It seems everything is odd and coincidental suddenly. I was just about to begin translating. Do you want to help?"

"Of course!"

"Go get your 'Adventure of the Dancing Men,' then."

As Lucia started for her room for the book, she stopped suddenly and turned back. "Mum, I think I know which House I want to be in."

Author's note: If you wish to see an example of the Dancing Men, or read "The Adventure of the Dancing Men," go here: http:/en . wikisource . org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Dancing_Men

(You'll have to take out the extra spaces between the periods in the address. FF . net doesn't like links, for some reason.)