77. Clandestine Magic
Draco sat on his favourite bench in Hind Green, pondering the problem. He knew for a fact that his birth had been carefully recorded. He also had no doubt that his mother had kept the Family Register of all things when they had left the manor. But the ancient book bound in dyed dragon hide was nothing anyone outside the wizarding world should ever lay eyes on. He, on the other hand, had no idea what Birth Certificates in the non-wizarding world would look like, let alone how to obtain one.
There was only one person he could ask for advice.
...
Like so very often, Mrs Highbury was busy. She hardly looked up from the computer monitor when Draco entered her office.
He apologised and said he'd come back later.
"You wouldn't be here if it wasn't important," she said, her fingers still dancing across the keyboard. "Out with it."
"I need a Birth Certificate," he said, getting straight to the point instead of wasting more of her time with polite phrases.
"Of course, you do..." She paused and looked at him. "Don't your parents have a copy?"
He shook his head mutely. It felt less wrong than lying with words.
"What about your probation officer? Can't that lazybones make himself useful once in a while?"
Draco flinched inwardly. Probation officers were a most unsafe topic.
"Well, I suppose not," she sighed. Reaching for a pen, she said, "So let's get this sorted out quickly; you can't afford to miss out on too many training sessions. What is your full name?"
"Draco Ophiuchus Malfoy. Do you want me to spell Ophiuchus?"
"No, unless it isn't spelled the same way as the constellation."
"It is the constellation. Draco is one, too."
"Right, now that you mention it..." she murmured, scribbling away. "Date of birth?"
"Fifth of June, 1980."
"Place?"
"Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire."
She hesitated for the briefest moment before she wrote down the words.
"Your father's full name?"
"Lucius Coriolanus Malfoy."
Draco didn't see hesitation this time.
"Your mother's?"
"Narcissa Lyra Berenice Malfoy née Black."
Leaning back in her swivel chair, Mrs Highbury gave him one of her probing looks.
"Well, thinking about it now, there have been hints all along – you knowing your lineage a thousand years back or home-education," she said. "There is something about you, Mr Malfoy, that points to a certain background. I can't really put it into words. It's something subtle, something that shines through at times in your stance or in your manners despite your... no, maybe I shouldn't say despite because even your eccentricities add to the picture."
"Eccentricities?" he echoed, horrified.
She smiled.
"Wearing crazy clothes is mostly considered ordinary behaviour in university students these days, which renders the clothes in question far less uncommon than intended and – sadly – undermines thereby the whole effort. In effect, wearing torn jeans and a Greenpeace t-shirt won't help you stick out of the crowd, but wearing a jacket that looks as if it came straight from a Jane-Austen-movie definitely will."
With a pang of worry, he looked down at his jacket.
"No, the old one," Mrs Highbury said. "This one here is perfectly fine."
He closed his eyes for a moment to let the realisation sink in – for months he had walked around in an outfit that triggered attention!
"I wasn't aware of that," he said, opening his eyes. He felt a bit faint. "What about the parka?"
"The parka? What should be wrong with a parka?"
"I don't know. It's just that I'm not particularly knowledgeable in this area."
Except that he was. His mother had made sure he knew which attire was appropriate for which occasion and what would be out of place. Only her guidelines were completely useless where he currently lived.
"Well, men seldom are," Mrs Highbury said in a tone that dismissed the matter. Pointing to the notes she had made, she continued, "I'll do what I can. In the meanwhile, you should go back to revising."
"Thank you, Ma'am."
"That's all right." Her right hand already darted back to the computer mouse. "If you'd please excuse me."
...
They met again the next day, early in the afternoon. Mrs Highbury, looking quite obviously pleased with herself, gave him a large manila envelope.
Bemused, Draco scrutinized the rather unimpressive envelope. The sender was some office in Wiltshire, the addressee the library.
"Er, thanks," he said. "What exactly is this?"
"Your Birth certificate! And it's a curious story how it got here so quickly. I phoned the General Register Office first because that seemed the most sensible thing to do. They said no, they hadn't an entry for a Draco Malfoy but gave me the numbers of several local offices. I phoned them one by one – I lost count of how many calls I made and how often I got redirected. Nobody seemed to have ever heard the name Malfoy. I was beginning to think you didn't exist at all, that you were a figment of my imagination, or else that my facts weren't correct even though people who lie about their name will probably choose something ordinary like Paul Wright or David Williams instead of Draco Ophiuchus Malfoy."
Draco swallowed. The thought of going by an assumed name had never, not even for a single instant, occurred to him. Just what kind of Slytherin was he?
"I'm sorry for doubting you," Mrs Highbury went on, a hint of embarrassment in her voice. "Then another thought struck me – what if I was dealing with some sort of witness-protection programme? All at once, I was afraid my asking around might cause actual damage. I was about to quit when one of the civil servants I had spoken to earlier called me back. It's indeed a good thing that modern telephones can store the caller's number, but that's just by the by. Back to the story – the solution was quite banal. The man apologised and said your whole family had been overlooked for some reason when the accumulated data were transferred to a computer-based access system a few months ago. He had found the original paperwork and asked me how many copies I needed and where he should send them. I was rather stunned and couldn't think of anything else but to give him the address of the library. That was yesterday in the afternoon, quite late actually, and this letter was in today's mail" – she pointed to the envelope in his hand – "The swiftness borders on miracle. If I didn't know there is no such thing, I'd say that was a piece of magic."
Magic! Draco very nearly dropped the envelope. His heart hammered at top speed, his thoughts raced.
How likely was it that the letter had got here by magic? Mrs Highbury had phoned Muggle offices. But who had phoned her? You didn't see the person at the far end of the connection! What if a Ministry clerk had contacted her, a special employee who was well versed in making phone calls?
"Come on, don't look so scared," Mrs Highbury said, still smiling. She seemed far from suspecting that there might be anything wrong with his Birth Certificate or the way she had got it. "The problem is solved – more quickly than one could have hoped; the poor bloke must have been really ashamed of his colleagues' blunder. And the definite boon is that you can attend lessons right away."
"Yes... thank you," he managed to say. He felt dizzy. Little black spots were dancing before his eyes. "Thank you very much."
"You're welcome," Mrs Highbury replied genially and went back to her office.
He had to sit down; his legs refused to support him.
What had possessed him to ask for help? Why had he not thought of the risks? What if Mrs Highbury's actions had alerted the Aurors or other Ministry clerks? What if they had wised up about his current whereabouts?
It had been a long time since he had last felt like he did in this moment. He was shaking physically, and it took him almost an hour to regain enough composure to get up from his seat and leave for Hind Green.
...
78. General Certificates of Secondary Education
He ran very slowly, the manila envelope clutched tightly in his hand. After about another hour he was able again to think coherently. If somebody intended to come after him, they would be here already.
But he was still shocked by how close he had come to violating the Code of Conduct. He doubted that he was allowed to use a service that was – no matter how remotely – linked to magic. And a link had to exist even if Mrs Highbury was correct and had indeed talked to the same civil servant twice. Said servant and his colleagues kept records on children born to magical parents. They needed a source of information in order to do this. (*)
And he needed to be more cautious in the future.
He ran on for a while longer before he sat down on the bench under the large oak tree, opened the envelope, and took out the CERTIFIED COPY OF AN ENTRY OF BIRTH. It stated his name and the names of his parents as well as date and place of his birth. It also confirmed that he was male. His father's occupation was given as landowner.
About to put back the document that proved his existence, he noticed that there was something else in the envelope – a small, rectangular piece of plastic, bearing the words National Insurance Numbercard, a cryptic combination of letters and numerals and his name. Attached to it by a drop of glue was a short, formal letter in which unknown people apologised for their negligence and expressed their hope that he hadn't been inconvenienced by it.
Sighing, he dropped card and letter back into the envelope. It had taken him more than a year to find out what phone numbers were. How long would it take him this time to solve the puzzle?
...
The next morning he went to show his Birth Certificate to the pompous city clerk who had thrown him out the other day. She allowed him to pay the required fee, and then she gave him a timetable that listed all available training sessions.
From this day on, he attended a great number of those sessions. They were not lessons in the strict sense. The instructors would answer questions if they thought them relevant for the exams, but most of the time the examinees-to-be were asked to demonstrate their skills.
They had to write essays, for example. The topics were often strange ones like "How does the author create sympathy for the heroine?" Draco muddled through such assignments with utmost difficulty. Reflecting on his own views, motives, deeds, and desires was already hard enough, and here he was forced to contemplate the mindset of other people – people he didn't even know. That was why his essays were mostly rants about the impracticality of the task. To his surprise, he got points for them – never the full score, but enough for a pass grade.
He was also made to read newspapers. There were about a dozen different ones issued on a daily basis. Some of them were brimming with advertisements, but had little else to say. Some spouted the same sort of nonsense like the Daily Prophet. He knew better than to buy any of their codswallop. After all, he could tell how they obtained "information". He himself had fed half-truths and downright slander to a reporter who was notorious for her sensationalist articles. The memory of how proud he had been of his childish coup embarrassed him. Once more, he wished he could forget.
He kept to the more serious newspapers but didn't like them, either, because they destroyed another of his illusions. He had believed the world of Muggles to be peaceful. But there were, in truth, all sorts of conflicting interests between hundreds of countries that featured a confusing variety of leaders, prime ministers, dictators, and presidents. There were severe environmental pollution, diseased cattle, border disputes, and actual wars. The fact that those wars were taking place in far away parts of the planet quenched his alarm a little, but not quite. He'd rather he did not learn such news so he read only the required passages and not a single line more.
Things he deliberately avoided aside, he worked hard. He prepared every training session by going through his notes, re-reading relevant passages in the textbooks and answering the related questions from past exams. His success, however, varied widely.
He was good in Maths and French. The instructors soon suggested he should sit the exams for the higher tier.
He did fairly well in scientific experiments, especially in Physics. Calculating the density of a stone by measuring its weight and the amount of water it displaced was a clever enough method for people who were not able or not allowed to use a charm. He even managed to secure a few points in Chemistry by meticulously following the printed instructions handed to him.
He was absolute rubbish at ICT. Whereas with other subjects the classroom was usually half-empty, and he seldom saw the same faces again, with ICT there was always a crowd. He was most of the time partnered for practical work with a boy from the Middle East. Abdul usually grabbed mouse and keyboard and worked away in a brave manner while Draco had nothing to do but to look on. Luckily, the bloke seemed to know what he was doing; they never got less than two thirds of the credits for a session. The downside was that Abdul rarely opened his mouth to give a word of explanation or to say anything at all.
When Abdul fell ill and Draco had to team up with Keesha-Jolene, a scrawny, slow-witted girl who hardly dared to touch a key, he accomplished nothing. He often botched up so badly, he had to re-start the machine. That was why he finally asked Jeffrey for help.
To Draco's discontent, Jeffrey turned out a to be horrible teacher. He couldn't explain very well, jumped from topic to topic, and left about every other sentence unfinished. Instead of giving clear and concise instructions so Draco might try his hand, he became quickly impatient and did everything himself. This way, Draco got a work account for the library as well as an email address – he had to remember a different password for each – but he didn't know in the least how to use them or how to bring some such thing about if need be.
He soon gave up on Jeffrey's "help". At that point, he had half a mind to drop ICT altogether. If the subject was compulsory for Muggles – so what? It wasn't compulsory for him.
He still went to the next training session because otherwise he would have had to idle away one and a half hour until the Science training started. For once, he had the workstation all to himself, and he just toyed around without proper aim and purpose. Things went surprisingly well. The machine obeyed his casual orders without arguing back or quitting its performance for no apparent reason. Thus slightly encouraged, Draco turned to his assignment despite his initial resolve to not even try. The first step worked just fine, and so did the second and the third one. Feeling thrilled, Draco leaned closer – and promptly, the spreadsheet malfunctioned.
Abdul returned the following week. He operated mouse and keyboard again, and Draco took notes. He carefully wrote down what keys Abdul pressed and recorded every mouse click. A lead to the correct working steps had to be somewhere in these protocols because Abdul scored more points with each training session.
Instead of preparing for oncoming ICT sessions, Draco spent time on analysing his notes. When he found recurring patterns, he learned the respective sequences by heart, hoping that repeating them would help him during the exam.
The instructors kept reminding the students to revise. But Draco couldn't afford the luxury of revising because he was still in the middle of learning things for the first time. Consequently, the exams approached much faster than he was prepared.
He sat one in the morning, started swotting up on the next after lunch, and struggled to fit in between some of the still unread books.
He skimmed through a number of biographies – Hannah Cowley, Robert Falcon Scott, Dorothy Hodgkin, and John Lennon – trying to grasp at least why these people were considered remarkable. He read a treatise about weather and climate the night before he had to sit the Geography exam. He rushed through an ancient Latin text on viticulture but gave up rather quickly on all books about image editing software, web design, and other computer-related topics.
...
79. Changes
After the last exam was over, it took him several days to emerge from the trance-like state into which he had worked himself. He felt drained. He didn't do much besides watching the sailing boats in the marina or prowling the pedestrian precinct. He spent the energy he could still muster on shopping for a few items of clothing – a pair of trousers, socks, shirts. He chose fabrics that were gentle to the skin and checked whether the stitching was neat and tidy, and he also made sure to buy only such clothes that allowed him to blend in with the crowd.
It was already summer. Without the cool breeze from the sea, the heat would have been almost unbearable. Autumn, winter and spring had passed without him paying any heed. But not only the seasons had gone by unnoticed. He had not thought of the Easter holidays of two years ago. He had not taken a break from learning on the first of May to remember the night of the battle. He had missed his own birthday again.
So, in a sense, the plan had worked. Distracting himself from his troubling memories had been a major objective. Aside from that, he had wanted to pick up a few scraps of useful knowledge here and there. Concerning himself with Muggle exams had definitely not been the plan. In the end, however, he had worried about nothing else than passing exactly those exams. Just how absurd was that? He couldn't even pinpoint the moment in time when he had begun to take seriously what had initially been a pretence intended to keep Mrs Highbury from getting more suspicious.
On the other hand, he had gained knowledge – quite a lot of it and in many areas: the polyester that made up ten percent of the cloth of his trousers was a special type of plastic, the name of the present prime minister was Anthony Blair, and cars weren't powered by electricity but had to be fed with petrol. And that were just a few examples. He had discovered sciences he hadn't before known existed.
He hoped he had done well enough in the exams to be allowed to study Biology at "A-level". Yes, he would keep studying as long as it didn't draw suspicion to his person. A limited few of the answers he craved might be attainable in the world he currently resided in, and the laws of genetics seemed to be a promising start.
...
He bid Mrs Highbury goodbye for the summer and negotiated with Mrs Bates an absence of several weeks even though the landlady told him that he didn't have to leave this year. The twins would be staying so she couldn't let the flat to holidaying families anyway. But Draco longed for the beach. He longed for swimming and for sketching. He would be back by end of August, well in time for the new courses to start.
As he didn't have to carry his belongings to a locker in the basement this time, he merely tidied up his room. He wrapped little stacks of old banknotes into pieces of newsprint or put them into small plastic bags and stored the packages in his rucksack beneath towels and underwear. He would try to change as much money as possible in the course of the coming weeks so he wouldn't have to worry about fees and expenses for a long while afterwards.
...
He neared Trethwyn in early afternoon. Passing the village by, he headed straight for Mr Penwith's place. But the three small, old buildings weren't there. A big hole gaped in the ground where they had been. Two excavators were busy digging the hole even deeper.
Draco stood there for full ten minutes, staring in dismay at the scene.
Then he walked slowly downhill. There were changes in the village, too. The well was no longer dry. Thin jets of water trickled out of the nozzles. Four garish sun umbrellas stood on the pavement in front of the bakery. Plastic tables and chairs were crammed into the narrow spaces between them, and a small number of people sat there, taking tea or eating ice cream. Draco knew none of them. Tourists, he concluded.
He was a tourist himself. At least, that was what the villagers took him for. And he needed a bed for the night.
He went across the square and into the tourist office. The woman behind the counter recognised him instantly.
"Mr Malfoy!" she beamed. "Welcome back to Trethwyn."
"Good afternoon, Ma'am. How are you?"
"Fine, thanks. And you?"
"Fine, too. But... what happened to Mr Penwith's house? Where is Mr Penwith?"
The questions wiped the smile off her face.
"He died," she said softly.
Draco shook his head. Jory had always talked about recovery!
"You didn't know, did you? I understand he had another heart attack, worse than the first. It happened in February; the exact date I don't know," the woman said. "Jenna, his daughter, took him straight from the hospital to Glasgow last October. She's married there, in Glasgow. I think Jory and his wife would have taken him in for the winter. Jory and Gorran Penwith were close; he would have been fine. But Jenna persuaded him to come with her. Or maybe he knew he hadn't much time left and wanted to see his grandchildren one last time. Frankly, I don't think the big city agreed with him. He wasn't a man for big cities." She paused and sighed. "Jenna sold the house a few weeks ago. She sold it to that Mr Webster, the son-in-law of the baker. He has some high-flying plans, that man – ice-cream parlours, wellness hotels, golf courses. I'm not sure whether that will work out. Trethwyn isn't large enough for such stuff. There are already enough posh resorts around. People who want to spend their holidays in fancy nightclubs and at swimming pools go there. To Trethwyn, people come for the quiet and the intact landscape. I suppose you do. I doubt a golf course will appeal to our regulars. Maybe Mr Webster will lure a few moneyed tourists here, but we will probably lose in turn some of those who have come here for years. I'm afraid you'll be among that number. You're here to ask for an accommodation, right?"
Draco nodded.
"And here is where the trouble starts. With any truly low-cost alternative gone, prices are already rising. Mrs Craddick asks twelve Pounds now, breakfast included. But I'm afraid with her, breakfast will most likely mean a bit of toast and a cup of luke-warm tea. If I were you, I'd opt for The Merry Fisherman. Agreed, it's not exactly cheap, but they serve a decent breakfast. It's the fairest deal you can get in Trethwyn these days."
"How much is a room per night?"
"Fifteen Pounds." She made an apologetic gesture. "I'm sorry."
"Well... I don't have much choice, do I?" he said while balancing the twice-as-high-as-expected price against the benefit of not having to spend money on breakfast at the baker's. It didn't quite even out.
"Here," she said and put two sheets of paper on the counter. One was for Tomas Gill, the pub owner, the other one was a sketchy map of the south coast with a lot of orange dots along the Coast Path. Each dot had a number. The woman turned the map over. "Here is a list of low-budget accommodations. I usually give it to backpackers who want to walk to Land's End or to St Ives. Just in case you'll decide you can't afford The Merry Fisherman for the whole summer."
...
Draco didn't go to the pub directly. He ambled along the beach instead, lost in thought. Somehow, he had taken it for granted that he would find Mr Penwith feeding his chickens whenever he came here.
He remembered having read in a textbook that the average life expectancy for non-wizards was about seventy-five years, and Mr Penwith had probably been older than that. He told himself that they hadn't even been well acquainted. Draco hadn't known of a daughter Jenna or of any grandchildren, for example. All conversations they'd ever had strung together might amount to about half an hour.
He felt saddened nonetheless. Maybe the reason was that he had tried to save the old man. But his efforts had been futile...
Then again, if Mr Penwith had died that morning, lying in the dirt of the chicken run, he wouldn't have seen his daughter and his grandchildren again... All of a sudden, a memory floated up, a memory that had been buried very, very deep. Draco recalled the day of his grandfather's funeral. He had been made to wear formal dress robes, and his mother had explicitly forbidden him to cry, saying it would be indecorous and, above all, unmanly. Oh yes, he had wanted to be a man at the age of five and to prove his manliness to the rather large assembly of adults. Now, aged twenty, he didn't care anymore. He knew he was weak.
Rummaging around in his rucksack for more handkerchiefs, he gave in to tears he should have cried fifteen years ago.
...
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(*) Following a Muggle law of 1875 that made birth registration compulsory, the Ministry of magic took measures that ensured automated register entries for children born to wizarding parents. The objective was to prevent the recorded number of inhabitants to differ form the actual number of people in a given area lest such discrepancies make the Muggle authorities suspicious.
However, the practice was highly disputed, and especially more traditionally minded witches and wizards objected to it. Therefore, the set of employed charms was modified. The entries were still created automatically, but they were now charmed in a way that Muggle clerks would overlook them unless somebody enquired explicitly about a specified person.
Mrs Highbury made such an enquiry. Unsurprisingly, the civil servant found no information in the computer database because due to the applied magic all entries concerning the Malfoy family were overlooked during the IT changeover. The spells nevertheless worked properly – they made the Muggle remember the original recording written on paper.
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...
to be continued
...
Author's notes:
(1) My apologies for keeping you waiting again.
(2) Many thanks go to Kevyn, TheMightyKoosh and Nooka for beta reading and advice.