The box from Zabini contained both less and more than was expected. There were not compromising wizarding photos, there were not dated records of the recreational activities of the guests. It was packed instead with transcripts of conversations and meetings, papers left unguarded by Ministry employees who should have known better than to keep them in an unwarded briefcase. Was there blackmail here? Of course, he could cause horrible dissent and mischief in the Ministry and ruin the lives of many prominent figures in government. But that was not what he wanted.
Influence is the currency of politics, and the transcripts and documents were, to the experienced eye, a snapshot into every level of power play, a full roadmap to the innermost workings of the very structure he wanted to bring to its knees. It was everything they had ever wanted, and it could not have come at a better time.
"Nettle!" An elf popped into view, bowing low. "Fetch Hermione, I need to show her this."
"The Mudblood whore is in the salon talking with the portrait of the blood traitor and disgrace to the name of Malfoy, Master sir, and she is most upset when elves disturbs her." He sighed and quelled an urge to rub his hand over aching temples. He really did need to see to changing the elves vocabularies, but there always seemed to be so many other things vying for his attention, and despite their language all of them were fanatically loyal to Hermione once they realized she would no longer try to trick them into accepting clothes.
"I'm sure once she sees what I have to show her she won't be upset at all, Nettle, truly. And this is quite important. If she fusses too much about it tell her to have that bloody interfering ancestor of mine drag her arse out of her portrait and come eavesdrop from the landscape there in the corner." Nettle looked dubiously at him but vanished with a crack. Hermione apparated in a few moments later, eyebrows raised.
"Draco, we really do have to have a meeting with the elves about their language, I realize they don't really understand what they are saying is offensive, but…" he held up a hand, cutting her off in mid-tirade and pointed to the stack of papers on the desk.
"I was just thinking the same thing myself, honestly, but not now. " He handed her a sheaf of papers. Her frown turning to one of curiousity she took them and began to glance down through. Midway down the first page she gasped and held one hand out. A chair skidded across the rug, the back smacking solidly into her palm and she she sat down, never taking her eyes off the paper. Draco's eyes widened. He had not realized that she had been attempting to learn wandless magic, not to mention had grown so proficient. Almost automatically he glanced to the picture on the wall above the desk, and nodded in acknowledgement of the figure now standing the forefront.
"So, you've been teaching her our language and coaching her as well, I assume?" She shrugged.
"Wands are useful toys, but only that. Once she began to truly understand her heritage she saw that the tool she had believed so precious was only a crutch."
"Her heritage? You can't be serious, she's muggle-born."
"She is fey, just as you are, just as most of the powerful witches and warlocks are. Not pure fey by any means, but enough of our blood remains."
"Potter as well?" She paused at this and a small frown creased her brow.
"No, not him I do not believe. Potter is, other. I have my suspicions but I cannot know for certain. This two dimensional existence…limits me."
"What do you believe then? It would possibly be beneficial to know, especially now."
"Ah, so now I become of use to you then. It has ever been the Malfoy way, I suppose. What of those papers?"
"Conclusive evidence that my father is teaching Potter the dark arts, for one. Conclusive for me at any rate, and I think Hermione understands as well. A location, one we will have to have checked. I know Potter did not put his new residence under Fidelius as Grimmauld was, but the Ministry has kept the location very hush hush. Until now. Notes of private meetings, transcripts of conversations that happened in Zabini's club. The fools should have known better than to speak so openly, how would they not realize that he could have blackmailed the lot of them."
"They never realized it because he never gave them reason," Hermione said simply, looking up. "Everyone wants a safe place they can go and be as like and do as they like. Zabini created that place in Bachannalia. He lured them with the promise of all the debauchery they could ever want in a setting that would be absolutely inviolate, and there is nothing that people want more than a privately public place to indulge. Over time he made it clear that there was no place safer for them to be as they wished. They let their guard down."
"And forgot that you never allow your guard down around a Slytherin." She nodded in acknowledgement and gave him a tight smile.
"He has to have been collecting this for years, waiting for the right time and the right set of circumstances to use it. He wants revenge for Neville with a determination I have rarely seen." Draco understood Zabini's motivation completely. It was something Hermione was only still beginning to learn. Growing up in Slytherin was far different than any place else. While guile, deception and manipulation were the lifeblood of Slytherin, there was also a strong core of loyalty. Slytherins stuck together against all others come what will, and a Slytherin's loyalty, once earned, was something to be prized. Longbottom had somehow earned both Zabini's loyalty and love. There was nothing the man would not do for him now, whether it be to kill or die for him, go to Azkaban or receive the Dementors Kiss itself. And Blaise wanted revenge for its own sake as well. Yes, he had likely been working on the plan for years, and if necessary he would have waited more years until he was in position to strike.
"If anyone finds out we know all this it will ruin him. They will realize that the club is the only common denominator."
"He knows." She cast him a sideways glance, as if measuring him, then nodded.
"All right. Then first we find your father. He may lead us to other things; at the least we will neutralize a threat."
"You can say it, love, this house is no stranger to patricide, it is the prevailing way an inheritance happens. We will find Lucius and then we will kill him. We must."
"I, Draco he is your father despite it all. Will you be able to…" she trailed off and he had to stifle a sigh. Her childhood had been far different than his own, filled with loving, supportive parents who nurtured and loved her. His had been blood and pain from his earliest memory, his only affection coming from some few house elves, his godfather, and the occasional vague regard from his mother as she acknowledge what a fine thing she had done in giving a son in the first child so there was no reason to have more. He had never enjoyed killing, not even in the height of the war, had seen it as a necessary chore to secure a win. If anything was disturbing him now, it was that there was perhaps a slight eagerness this time. He wanted Lucius to be dead, wanted to be sure the world, his world, was cleansed of the evil that was his father. He thought perhaps that it was a telling thing about his own character that it took this to make him look forward to killing with anticipation. He did not even wish Potter dead so badly as he did Lucius.
"It is complicated, but trust me when I tell you there will be no hesitation." He said only, and perhaps she did understand, Merlin knew she had gotten closer than anyone still alive to seeing what his life really was, what his father had made it. There were still memories he shied away from, memories of what they had had to do for the so-called greater good, memories of the atrocities committed by people he had grown up with, by his own blood. Even if he had had never suffered at Lucius hands himself he would do it simply from the memory of Lucius at one of the more horrendous of the revels, of the little Muggle girl no older than ten, perhaps not even that, screaming as his father fucked her while strangling her, his pleasure increased by her thrashing out her life force impaled on his cock. Hermione had not been there, he thought, though he suspected she had perhaps worse memories of that night than even he, as Voldemort had called both she and Bella to attend him in his private chambers that night. He had not seen her for two days after that night. Severus had been as close to frantic as Draco had ever seen him, and when Hermione had reappeared on the third day, pale, hollow eyed and silent she had gone straight past them all, up the stairs into the bath at Grimmauld Place and the water had run and run and run.
A hand on his brought him back to the present with a jolt and he looked down, noting that the marble edge of desk that he had been holding onto had cracked and the wooden leg supporting it to begin to blacken and char. He took a deep breath and passed his hand across the damage, leaving it pristine again.
"Mind the furniture," she said quietly, no rancor or overt concern in her voice. She knew him well enough to let him be for a few minutes after such a reaction. She knew he despised the visual evidence of his emotional turmoil, knew that he hated to be seen in less than perfect control unless in a moment of passion, and she allowed him the space to put the mask in place. After a few moments of concentration he looked to the portrait again, irritated to see the small smile of his ancestress.
"What are you so happy about, construct? Do you enjoy our discomfort?"
"I am merely pleased to see that our power has found a home in you," she smiled. "It comes so naturally to you now, magic bending to will as it should be. Do you still fear our language?" He opened his mouth, then frowned and shut it again. Truthfully he had lost the fearful respect he had of it, his days ago conversation with the portrait and her instruction on the theory and history of it from the perspective of one who spoke it simply as a conversational tongue had stripped much of the mystery away. He knew logically that he could say three words and strip the sanity of most wizards in hearing distance, but he could just as simply speak different words that meant simply 'hello'.
It was as if he could feel himself forgetting the wizarding ways he grew up with his entire life as the magic around him began to respond more and more to his will alone. He had not needed a wand since he was in his teens, but until recently he had thought the names of the spells as he cast, first in English, then Latin, then lastly in Ivernic as he grew more and more proficient in the casting. Now the magic seemed to leap to his merest thought. He was starting to forget the incantations of spells. He could do them all, but he did not need words or wands, simply will alone.
"I fear very little anymore. That is perhaps the greatest fear I have. Overconfidence has proven the downfall of all the mightiest."
"A wise concern, young one, but groundless so far, I think. You have such promise, I have hoped for someone like you for to be born for a very long time. You must give yourself to the magic completely, you know, if you wish to prevail. Even the smallest bit that you hold back will be your undoing. Fey magic is not destructive in and of itself, there must always be impetus. This is true also on the other side of things. Our magic is based in the world itself, we are one with it on a fundamental level."
"And Potter. You said you did not think he is fey, if not then what?" She sighed and he saw fleeting sadness in her eyes.
"I cannot be sure, even I was not that old, but I think perhaps there is nephilim magic in him." Draco frowned and shrugged, but Hermione was wide eyed.
"Never heard the term, what is a nephilim, a magical beast of some sort?"
"Draco, a nephilim is a fallen angel. She is trying to say Harry has, well, I can't explain it."
"If I am correct Potter draws his power from the otherworld, it is not stronger than the power you wield, but it is different, and such magics were never meant to collide. I fear it will be quite, volatile."
Potter, he suspected, was more to be pitied than anything else, and putting him down would be a mercy not only on the wizarding world, but for Potter himself. He recalled Potter as a boy, filled with the zeal to do good and save the world and he could not help believing that somewhere in the madness that core remained, and that the small boy inside was screaming in horror at what he had become.