A/N: This chapter does have some intense scenes. So be warned.
Lies and Truths
Riddle and Lucius were in the middle of a wizarding chess match when Draco swallowed his trepidation and entered Tribute A. 'A', he'd learned, stood not for the fact that it was the first Tribute Riddle had built, or first in the line of Tributes — it wasn't — but for the Latin phrase Absit Invidia, or "Let ill will be absent." Each Tribute had one such saying etched on the frame of its entranceway that also served as its identifier.
Since Tribute A seemed to be the community centre of the Chamber, rather than a sleeping facility, Draco supposed its moniker was fitting. It held an extensive library as well as a potions laboratory, clinic, general storerooms of herbs and other items, areas for meetings and reading and duelling practice, and a beautifully designed rotund strategic planning space in the very center of the uppermost floor that served as the war room.
Riddle, who was facing the doorway, noticed Draco's entrance immediately.
"Draco! Excellent," he exclaimed, abandoning his perusal of the chess board. "Pardon me, Lucius, I simply must show Draco the purple self-peeling sprouts you and I were discussing this morning. I know he's been waiting to see them in their maturation for quite some time."
Draco's brow knit. He unquestionably admired the Chamber of Secrets' vast edible gardens, sure, but he had certainly never expressed such enthusiastic interest over a specific species of sprouts.
As Lucius twisted in his seat to look toward him, his expression indecipherable, Draco desperately tried to avoid his gaze. Instead, he casually tilted his head ever-so-slightly, his eyes locked on Riddle's in question.
Riddle raised his left eyebrow a touch in response.
The meaning was clear.
"Erm — right, the, erm… purple spouts," Draco said hastily, forcing enthusiasm into his voice. "Amazing! Didn't think we'd see them for another week at least!"
The smallest of smiles tugged at Riddle's lips. "Yes, I was nearly as surprised when I came upon them this morning." He stood briskly, holding out a hand as he stepped away from the table. "Come. These are just out the back."
Draco nodded and followed him across the Tribute's base. He braced himself to meet Lucius's painfully suspicious gaze as he passed the game table. "Good morning," he greeted pleasantly.
Lucius gave him a strained smile and nodded once, wordlessly.
His recent roar of, "I AM NOT THAT BOY'S FATHER!" rang through Draco's mind.
Draco swallowed the abrupt, suffocating ache in his chest at his father's acknowledgement, or lack thereof, gripping his cane more tightly as he continued outside after Riddle. They passed through the knee-high, wind-rippled grasses surrounding Tribute A to a fenced-in patch encasing, among other herbs and edibles, what did indeed appear to the be vegetable in question.
Riddle waved his hand, erecting a Muffling Charm. "Good recovery in there," he said, a hint of humor in his voice.
If there had been a wall nearby, Draco would have banged his head against it. "Really, sir? Purple sprout enthusiast?" he asked, only partly joking. "Now, in addition to suspiciously scar-covered, magic-less misfit, possible Sovereignty spy, bothersome or possibly deranged pseudo-son and Merlin only knows what else he thinks me as, I'm an obscure plant fanatic." He shoved a hand through his hair, letting out a small breath. "Brilliant."
Riddle glanced at him from the corner of his eye, squinting in the sunlight. His gaze held amusement. "As far as first impressions go, there are worse things to be thought as."
Draco frowned pensively at a clump of rosemary, then shook his head. "Short of cold-blooded killer, I've got nothing."
Riddle chuckled, leaning on his forearms against the fence's topmost cross-beam. After a moment, Draco mirrored the pose beside him, trying not to focus on the memory of the empty look in his father's eyes.
A breeze rustled his hair, and he closed his eyes briefly, savoring the closest he'd come to being outdoors, free, in over two years. Riddle had been explaining the Chamber's design to him throughout the week, along with Muggle concepts like permaculture and agroforestry. Here, the vegetation was thin enough that, a few feet away, Draco could see the Chamber's stone wall stretching up until it disappeared into the faux-atmosphere. Some metres to his right, however, the wall vanished again beneath the jungle-like trees and dense vegetation cover of the Tribute beside theirs, around which dark, low-hanging clouds had begun to gather, obscuring the top of the structure.
Riddle had explained that several of the Tributes were literally cloaked in different atmospheric biomes with their own seasonal cycles to maximize the diversity of edible plant life available, from Tribute A's Mediterranean climate, to his own more familiar Temperate, to the tropical thunderstorm unfolding to his right.
The sheer complexity of magic and planning needed to actually build this level of life in what amounted to an underground bunker was mind-boggling and fascinating. Let alone that they — all of Hogwarts, really — had been living on top of it for decades, and no one had the slightest idea…
"Listen, Draco," Riddle said suddenly. Draco glanced over at him. The older man had turned to look at him, his expression more serious. "You must believe I don't enjoy watching your father suffer any more than you do. But until his memories are returned to him, an unstable seesaw between blissful ignorance and confusion and anger is all he will know. The Restituo Draught has caused a handful of cases like this throughout its history; the condition progresses like dementia, or Alzheimer's, until his own mind—" He stopped abruptly, as if he'd thought better of his words. "Well, until his mind will be able to take the strain of the repressed memories no longer. We need to do everything we can — everything — to help him remember. You understand that, don't you?"
Draco swallowed and nodded limply, clasping his hands tightly in front of him as he stared down at the thyme and rosemary bushes.
"I realize how difficult yesterday was for you, but it got us somewhere," Riddle continued in a calm, encouraging voice. "Seeing your mother and the love they felt for each other significantly jarred your father's psyche. This may be the key we've been looking for."
He was leading him gently to an idea, Draco realized, and from that approach alone, Draco got the feeling it was one Riddle thought he wouldn't like. "What do you want to do?" he asked uneasily.
Riddle let out a soft breath. "Draco, I need to see what happened on your side during the Final Suppression." He paused. "And so does he."
Draco froze. For a moment, he couldn't breathe; then he swung his head around to stare in incredulousness at the man beside him. "But — But my mother—"
Riddle nodded, the intensity of his dark gaze never wavering. "I know."
Draco twisted forward again and sucked in a breath, gripping his hands even more tightly in front of him. Riddle's logic was clear to him:
If watching his wedding to the woman he loved shook something inside Lucius, then watching her death would surely do the same.
After several seconds, he said dully, "Alright."
His own voice sounded hollow to his ears.
Without a word, Riddle pushed himself up off the fence and conjured a vial. It took Draco significantly longer to gather himself, bowing his head over his clenched hands. His palms began to sweat, heartbeat shallow as he willed his mind to its darkest corner to retrieve the memory he had for over two years tried so desperately to repress.
Feeling nauseous to the core, he straightened, turning toward the man who'd been the closest thing to a mentor and father figure Draco had had in the absence of his own father.
"Ready?" Riddle asked in a low voice, his gaze compassionate.
Draco steeled himself and nodded, though every emotion inside him screamed in protest. He forced himself to stand utterly still as the dark-haired man drew his wand and brought the tip to Draco's temple. The corners of his eyes began to burn; he squeezed them shut, compelling images of the most horrific day of his life to the forefront of his mind as Riddle said, "Accio memoria."
It was all too long before the final wisp of the memory had been released. Once it was, Draco's shoulders slumped in relief; his left hand reached out, finding and gripping the fence. "That's that, then," he said tiredly.
Riddle placed a stopper in the phial now filed with the innocuous-looking silver liquid before he returned his attention to Draco. He gently placed an understanding hand on his arm.
"You're a very brave man, Draco," he said quietly. "I don't think you've been told that enough since that final day."
Despite the small bit of warmth the compliment generated inside his chest, Draco couldn't summon more than a weak nod in reply.
"I hope you know you're in no way expected to join us in the observation of this memory."
His words jarred Draco from the dark abyss into which his mind had momentarily descended. "No," he sad immediately. He cleared his throat, straightening. "No, I will." For a moment, Hermione's advice to him about his mother on the night they'd first stepped into the Chamber flashed through his mind, and he met Riddle's eyes. "For her."
"Then you must promise me you will not interfere. We will not leave that memory until it is finished, no matter what response its viewing may elicit. Do you agree?"
Draco nodded, though his stomach was in knots. "I do."
Riddle studied him for several seconds. Finally, he nodded, once. "Very well." He squeezed Draco's arm once reassuringly, then tilted his head toward the back of the Tribute. "Come on. Let's go back inside." As they began the short walk back, he added, "Though Herbologists might disagree, it's generally accepted that one can escape under the guise of discussing purple self-peeling sprouts for only so long."
Lucius was no longer in the Tribute's common area when they returned. Riddle suggested Draco locate him, while Riddle prepared the memory in the war room's pensieve.
Draco's gut clenched uncomfortably. "Sir, given what happened yesterday, perhaps… perhaps the less he saw of me, the better this all might go…"
Riddle glanced toward his stiffly standing form, then pocketed the phial and walked over to him. "Draco, your presence is in no way at fault for your father's adverse reactions to this situation. Not only has the draught muddled his mind, he's been kept in isolation for over a decade. You and I, we both know — that kind of treatment can do things to a man."
Draco clenched his jaw and nodded. Logically, it made sense; experientially, he knew it was true, but it certainly didn't make him feel any better while it was happening. "Right," he agreed, relieved his voice at least sounded less tense than he felt. "Of course."
Riddle gently clapped him on the back. "Now, go find him. Don't let yesterday discourage you. You've drawn him out more than I have on the days before that."
Draco already had a strong suspicion of where Lucius had gone. Indeed, as soon as he arrived at the library's partially-open door, he saw he was correct: his father was sitting in a plush leather chair with his back partially to the door, leaning over quite a large volume that seemed to have rather brightly coloured illustrations inside it. His worn prison garb of the week before had been replaced with an ordinary, dark robe with casual Muggle clothes beneath that must have once belonged to Riddle. Rather than falling down his shoulders, he had pulled his hair back from his face in a low ponytail, which thankfully reminded Draco less of —
Well, less of a man who was still not the father Narcissa had described.
His heart had begun pounding erratically, and he tried to force himself to calm down. Merlin's beard, this man didn't even care who Draco was or who he wasn't or what he did — Shouldn't that take the pressure off entirely?
After a moment, he swallowed his nervousness and stepped inside. "Erm — hello again," he said as cordially as he could.
His father's shoulders jerked slightly in surprise, before he swiftly turned toward the door. In his expression, Draco could see a curious mixture of visible relief mingled with suspicion when he saw who it was. "Hello," he echoed slowly, cautiously.
Draco shoved his free hand in his trousers pocket, hoping to appear as nonthreatening as possible, and unhurriedly walked over to where Lucius sat. "Reading anything interesting?" he asked lightly.
Lucius watched his approach with suspicious gray eyes. Then he looked down at the book, its pages spilled open on the small, round table at his side. "A bit of — of European wizarding history. Middle Ages to the Early modern period," he said in the soft-spoken voice with which Draco had become more acquainted over the past few days.
A tinge of hope sprung to Draco's chest, though he dared not express it.
His father had been a historian in the days preceding the war.
"I find the drawings… add a rather diverting quality to the lessons emphasized, don't you think?" the silver-haired man continued, turning the book slightly so Draco could better see it. Draco leaned over it slightly, studying the vividly animated illustrations that sprung from its pages. It was a children's picture book, he realized.
The familiarity of the drawings suddenly slammed into him.
"Oh! I know this!" he said in surprise. "This was one of my favourite books growing up! Mum used to read it to me all the time; she said you'd—"
He suddenly noticed Lucius had gone rigid.
Abruptly, Draco stopped speaking, panic shooting through his chest. Mentioning his mother and Lucius himself together when the idea of it upset Lucius as much as it did? What was he thinking?
He quickly fell back upon one of the things he did best — changing the subject to something more amusing. "Erm… here." He reached out and flipped through the pages until he arrived at his favourite illustration in the entire book— from the story of what Muggles called the Lambdon worm, which was actually a hybridized magical creature that had escaped from a local wizarding village after a bad storm.
The images depicted the progression of a tiny, worm-like organism into a man-killing beast that terrorized the Northeast English countryside. Draco supposed the illustrations were meant to be menacing, but to six-year-old Draco they had instead been riotously hysterical. Narcissa had later told him she'd known exactly what to fetch on the rare occasions he was grumpy.
"See this?" he asked, gesturing at the drawings. "This never failed to make me laugh." Even now, he couldn't help but chuckle at how ridiculous the "monster" worm appeared, while villagers cowered before it and then ran in terror.
Lucius bent over the page, frowning. "Is that a basilisk murdering small children?"
Draco mentally groaned. Merlin's ghost, now he's going to think I'm a sociopath who takes sadistic pleasure in seeing people viciously killed!
"No, no," he said quickly, gesturing at one of the drawings. "See the consistency of the red exoskeleton throughout? It's a Mongolian death worm crossed with a python."
"Ah, yes. A Mongolian death worm crossed with a python," his father repeated, as though that had been obvious all along.
"The point is that it's utterly ridiculous looking, not that it's killing things," Draco tried to explain. "When I was six, I couldn't believe anyone could be so afraid of something called 'the Worm' and looked like that."
To his relief, Lucius began to chuckle as well. "I see. The idea of any kind of worm acting as a metaphor for widespread terror really is quite absurd."
Draco nodded avidly in agreement. "Thank you," he said, the statement dramatically exaggerated.
This, he thought as their laughter faded. This brief moment was perhaps the most genuinely natural exchange he'd shared with his father since they had first met.
A slight smile pulled at his face at the realization.
"About… yesterday," Lucius suddenly said slowly. "I'd… I'd quite like to apologize for my outburst. I've been under a great deal of stress, you see, with all these… changes. But what I said to you wasn't fair."
Draco's lips parted; the apology was so unexpected that, for a moment, he wasn't sure what to say. "Think nothing of it. Really," he managed finally. "I can only imagine how disconcerting all of this must be to you."
"Yes." Lucius sighed heavily. "Yes, it really is." For a moment, his eyes darted toward the door before he cautiously stood, focusing closely on Draco. "I've been… thinking about all this quite a bit since then, and I've realized… You and I — We're really quite similar, aren't we?"
Simultaneously, confusion and hope billowed in Draco's soul. "I… I think perhaps we may be," he said carefully.
"Oh!" Lucius seemed surprised. "You suspect it as well, then!"
The hope began to disintegrate into pure uncertainty. His brow furrowed. "Forgive me, I'm afraid I - I don't know what you mean."
Lucius again peered cagily around the empty library before he leaned toward his son and whispered conspiratorily, "That they've tried to deceive you like they have me. Don't you see? They're using us both!" Draco must not have been able to hide his stupefaction, because Lucius expounded, "You poor boy, they've convinced you that you're my son — Utter lies to further their own twisted games!"
Such bitter disappointment surged through him that he couldn't find the ability to speak or even respond.
His father had not begun to remember Draco or his mother or his life; no, he was no closer to remembering who he was than the conservatives were to freeing themselves from Sovereignty possession.
"You see it now, don't you?" Lucius said excitedly, misinterpreting his lack of response. "How they've tried to manipulate your mind?"
Draco's mouth opened and closed before some place inside him was somehow able to respond. "Perhaps they have," he said dully, his voice lifeless. Manipulated it into thinking this could ever work, he thought. His eyes began to burn; he blinked rapidly, turning away to hide his emotion from Lucius's sharp gaze upon his face. He cleared his throat. "Why don't… you and I go for a walk? It's a bit — stuffy in here."
His father considered this before nodding agreeably. "You're fascinated with sprouts, are you?" he asked as they headed out the door, lowering his voice to a whisper. "But are you really? Or is this another fabrication they've made you believe?"
Draco managed to make half-hearted conversation as he led his father up the stairs to the war room. It was in and of itself magnificent: Low walls transitioned to a wrap-around glass ceiling that soared up toward the blue 'sky' until the pyramidal design converged in a single point. Riddle was waiting inside at the annular conference table, pouring over a few texts, when they reached the door.
Lucius immediately took a step backward; Draco swiftly caught his thin arm before he could tumble backward down the stairs. "No! Not more of — of this egregiousness!" He turned to Draco, his gray eyes wild, desperate, but he remained still in his son's grasp and made absolutely no attempt to run away; Draco wondered sadly if he even realized that he could. "Don't you see? It's trickery! Trickery, I tell you! You must not let them exploit you as well!"
Draco stared back into his father's eyes, unable to hide his horror at his growing paranoia. Riddle's assured voice from inside the war room had never been such a reassuring sound.
"No more tricks, Lucius." He had left his place at the table and was approaching them slowly. "Just history. That's what memories are — history. You like history, don't you?"
"I like… history…" Lucius said slowly, as if something about the sentence seemed right and familiar to him, but he couldn't elucidate what.
"That's right," Riddle confirmed, his calm, even voice almost hypnotic. "And what we're going to look at now will show you the history of the war we've been discussing all week. This is the final piece of that narrative; it explains how the people who imprisoned you also conquered us. Why no one has been able to step in all this time they've lied to you and used you. Take this chance to understand your enemies, Lucius. Only through understanding their motivations can you truly defeat them."
His father appeared to be strongly considering this argument. Draco was relieved when he took a small step into the war room. "It isn't of myself?" he asked sharply.
Riddle shook his head, turning toward the pensieve set in a beautifully carved mahogany wood stand. "Not in the least."
"Or that woman?"
Draco froze. Riddle paused, his eyes briefly landing on the barely-concealed heartbreak on Draco's face, before he turned toward the complete stranger beside him. "Lucius, I assure you — the only thing you will find in this memory is the truth. I suggest you allow yourself to be open to it."
Lucius stepped up to pensieve, the academic he was at his core unable to resist the tempting invitation Riddle had extended. His suspicion had seemed to fade, though only slightly.
"It was a year and a half into the second uprising," Riddle continued. He uncorked the dark memory Draco knew all too well and poured it into the silver basin. "Bella and I had begun to realize that the two prophecies I've briefly mentioned previously might not be referring to what we had originally hoped. We needed to buy time — a great deal more time. Unfortunately, we were informed by a reliable source that Dumbledore had very nearly completed a nefarious device — capable of eradicating all those who stood against him. We had no choice. We decided to flee to Bulgaria until the time was right to return, along with all those who supported our cause and wanted to join us." He paused, studying Lucius's face. "You look like you have a question."
Lucius looked startled, before he inquired deferentially, "There were those who… who did not wish to join?"
Riddle sighed and shook his head. "For every two conservative witches and wizards who believed in defending their own equality and freedom from practising the Dark Arts, there was at least one who believed they should simply accept the hand that had been dealt them and make the best of it — that standing up and speaking out would only make the situation worse."
"Do you think they were right?" Draco asked suddenly. He had remained a few feet farther from the pensieve than Lucius and Riddle, tensely staring at the swirling tendrils of silver he had hoped to never see again.
Riddle went silent. "No," he said after a moment. "No, learning what I have from you and Pansy, I think Dumbledore was prepared to use that machine on every person who didn't share his beliefs whether they asserted their rights or not. And he has." He glanced toward Draco. "Why don't you explain the plan that brought us to that final day."
Draco nodded; he was honestly grateful for the distraction. "The Sovereign - erm — Dumbledore had placed an International Anti-Disapparition Jinx around Britain's borders, and our Floo Networks had been blocked or disconnected so we couldn't leave the country," he recounted to his father. "Unless we broke into an official station, which we wanted to avoid, the only option we had was to travel by illegal Portkey."
He shoved his fingers through his hair, letting out a frustrated breath as he recalled the painstaking preparations for that November afternoon. "We were so, so bloody careful. We designed the Portkeys to be person-specific, so they could only be used by the blood of the people they'd been made for, and they couldn't be followed. We didn't meet in a central location — instead, we had distributed the Portkeys beforehand, over a matter of weeks, and they would all activate only for a ten-minute window on a single, agreed-upon day. Tom had cast a Fidelius Charm that concealed the entire plan itself, so no one who knew it could speak of it to even any conservative who didn't intend on coming with us. Tom and Aunt Bella had gone ahead of us to erect Anti-Apparition Charms in the possibility Dumbledore caught wind of our plan and followed us. It seemed airtight. But something—" A flash and a shatter echoed through his memory, and he swallowed back bile, "—something went wrong."
Riddle's dark eyes met his, deeply troubled. "Everyone else arrived. But you and your mother didn't. She was our Secret Keeper," he explained to Lucius, "and we realized a minute before the ten-minute mark elapsed that you and she weren't there." He shook his head. "It was a minute too late."
Draco squeezed his eyes shut briefly against the chaos of those final minutes. He gestured toward the silver liquid. "I think—" His voice cracked; he cleared his throat, trying to ignore the dread choking him, streaming through his blood, and repeated, "I think it'll make the most sense if you… see it your yourself, sir."
For a moment, Riddle stared deep into his eyes, and then nodded. He placed one hand reassuringly on Draco's arm, the other on Lucius's, and together they plunged forward into the memory.
The unfamiliarly beautiful Mayfair home in the midst of Muggle London that haunted his dreams suddenly surrounded him in the flesh. They had chosen it for the bustling activity outside and the sheer unlikelihood the Sovereignty would suspect any Old-Bloods would hide in so wealthy a non-magical area. As part of the Fidelius-protected escape plan, the property should have been invisible to the outside world for as long as Narcissa kept the secret within her.
Draco remembered the house well — it was the first time in his life he'd ever stood amongst such blatant opulence. The difference was even more stark after weeks of living in shacks and tunnels, hiding from the Sovereignty forces attempting to round them up and return them to the conservative village from which they'd escaped.
The excessively pristine living room was decorated in neutral taupes and beiges, save the line of bright flowers growing along the expansive windowsills. Inside it, Narcissa, Anna Maria Zabini, Blaise and Draco stood tensely, counting down the few minutes until the Portkeys on the small table beside them would activate — a small, heart-shaped treasure box and a delicate, crystal wedding diadem, which had both been used in their respective families for centuries. Each mother stood close to her son. Narcissa had rested a loving hand on the younger Draco's back, rubbing it gently, while Anna Maria held Blaise's wrist tightly in her hand, her eyes locked on the window and the inclement, late-fall weather.
"What is the time?" the beautiful cocoa-skinned woman asked tautly in a lyrically accented voice, reaching for the diadem.
"Still thirty seconds," Narcissa replied evenly, her eyes on the thin watch around her wrist.
Draco fought to breathe as he watched her and his sixteen-year-old self exchange quick, apprehensive yet encouraging glances, and in a dizzying wave he felt as though he was no longer simply observing but was again standing where he once had, under her loving gaze for one of the last times.
She looked back down at her watch. She wore the pale blue sweater that brought out the color of her eyes — Draco knew it had been a gift from his father many, many years ago. She had always called it her lucky sweater, donning it for interviews and other important moments, and for some strange reason it reassured him that she was wearing it then. "Twenty…"
"BLAISE!"
Narcissa and Draco started violently; the diadem fell from Anna Maria's hand and shattered, crystals spilling across the flood.
The nearly ear-splitting roar came again from the street outside, so powerful Draco could actually feel the vibration of the yell pass through him. "DAMN IT, BLAISE! ANNA MARIA, NARCISSA, I KNOW HE'S THERE WITH YOU!"
Anna Maria fell to her knees, mumbling Italian curses, at first trying to scoop up the broken diadem pieces before she simply summoned them to her. Meanwhile, Blaise, followed quickly by Draco, sprinted to the window. Past the rain-splattered glass, Draco could just make out the unmistakable form of Blaise's father and one of Anna Maria's many ex-husbands, Tomas Felixisson, pacing up and down the street.
"Bloody fucking Nora," Blaise swore. "It's actually him."
"Cazzo, che figlio di puttana!" Anna Maria exploded vehemently, her hands shaking as she tried to fit the diadem pieces together to repair them.
"I thought Tom said Tomas didn't want to come with us!" Narcissa cried.
"He didn't; of course he did not, you know how he disagreed outright with everything Riddle said! Che l'uomo stolto!"
"Then Tom would have wiped his memory of it. How could he possibly even know anything about it?! How could he trace us here?"
"BLAISE!" his father shouted again, his voice so loud he surely must have been using a Sonorus Charm with no regard to the Muggles giving wide berth as they walked around him. "BLAISE, I WAS WRONG! I SHOULD HAVE CHOSEN TO LEAVE— I SHOULD HAVE CHOSEN YOU!"
Draco squinted at the man as he continued to dart about erratically, his eyes frantically searching the line of grand estates. He glanced in concern at Blaise, who was watching his father stiffly, his jaw clenched, and then noted, "I don't think he can actually see us. He obviously doesn't know the plan's specifics."
"Well, just because he can't see us doesn't mean the world can't hear him!" Blaise suddenly exploded. "How bloody typical! 'Too late to change our minds? Certainly I must be an exception! Of course, I'll go right ahead and sign myself up now, in the most unsubtle, non-secretive way possible!' "
"ANNA MARIA! BLAISE!" Tomas shouted. "NARCISSA, PLEASE! YOU'LL LET ME JOIN YOU, WON'T YOU?"
"We can't; we have to leave," Narcissa breathed, a modicum of uneasiness entering her voice for the first time. She took a deep breath and crouched down beside her friend. "I can see why you divorced him," she said in a low voice, which caused Anna Maria to let out a strangled laugh. She placed her steady hand on Anna Maria's shaking ones. "Here. Let me help you."
With a murmured spell, the diadem fused back together.
"Will it still work?" Anna Maria whispered anxiously, staring at the presumably now-active Portkey as if it had turned into a poisonous species of Hungarian toad.
"I would expect so, but only for you and Blaise. Blaise?" Narcissa turned and waved him over. "Blaise, it's time! Hurry!"
Blaise and Draco both turned from the window simultaneously and exchanged an expression of matching apprehension and resolve. Then Blaise held out his hand. Draco clasped it, an easy smile tugging at his lips, and pulled his friend into a hug. "Best of luck, brother. See you on the other side."
Blaise clapped him on the back before they parted. "Beat you there."
As he walked back to Anna Maria, the willowy woman nodded at Draco warmly and looked toward Narcissa. "A presto, cara mia," she said with a light kiss to her cheeks, then held out the diadem to Blaise. As soon as he grasped it, they vanished from sight.
"A presto, my friend," Narcissa murmured to the air. Then her shoulders slumped slightly in relief, and she turned toward Draco and smiled, gratitude palpable in her eyes. "Alright, darling. It's our—"
"ACCIO NARCISSA MALFOY!"
"ACCIO MAYFAIR WANDS!"
With a scream and a shatter, Draco's mother and his wand were sucked past him and through the glass window at which Draco and Blaise had been standing only moments before. The window shattered, glass raining down on the polished wooden floor.
Instinctively, Draco dove to the ground to the window's right, out of sight from anyone on the street; in his shock, it never occurred to him that with the Fidelius Charm in place, they wouldn't actually be able to see the house, or inside it.
From outside came Narcissa's horrified scream. "NO!"
Draco's brain stopped working; his entire body started to shake.
He knew whose voices had summoned his mother. It hadn't been Blaise Zabini's father.
And without even his wand, he knew he couldn't fight them and win.
An amused, throaty purr floated inside the shattered window.
"Come out, come out, Little Malfoy. Time to play."
His mother's voice came again in a muffled shriek, "Draco, n—!"
But she stopped speaking abruptly, as if she'd been silenced.
No, no, no, no, no…
Draco squeezed his eyes shut, wrapping his arms around his knees. His nails dug into his palms so hard they began to draw blood. The plan had been perfect; foolproof. There was no way they could have known, could have found them. How could they have known?
His pulse throbbed at his temples so powerfully he could barely think, his hair and clothing soaked with sweat. His eyes darted to the Portkey on the table. It was blood-activated, and required the touch of both he and Narcissa to work. He couldn't use it, not without her. And he couldn't get her back, not when both she and his own wand had been summoned away.
But if Lily Evans' voice made his blood run cold, the next voice he heard shot terror through his soul.
"Mr. Malfoy, I'm afraid one warning is all you will get. Your mother is currently alive; if you would like to see her that way, come out immediately."
Draco stared up at the ceiling, blinking back tears. Then he decided.
He steeled himself, choking in several rapid, shallow gulps of air, and jerkily pulled himself to his feet. The rush of blood from his head was almost too much; he nearly blacked out and bent double to stop himself before he could. Swiftly, he stumbled to the beautifully carved maple, heart-shaped box. He held it up with a violently trembling hand and raised his other hand over it, closing his eyes. Desperately, he tried to cut through the suffocating panic to centre the magic inside him.
"Incendio," he breathed.
Flames shot from the Portkey, and he dropped it to the floor. As the heirloom burned down to ash, he stepped over it and to the front door. The seconds it took him to reach it felt like an hour. Every nerve in his body was firing abnormally; every other heartbeat skipped; he tried to reach for the doorknob and found the muscles of his hand would not obey.
Finally, he managed to jerkily work his stiff fingers around the knob.
He turned it, and pulled open the door.
The entire armed forces of the Phoenix stood packed in the street before him.
Of the mass of faces, Draco only saw one: His mother, her head pulled back by her hair by the leather-gloved hand of Lily Evans. Her eyes were wide, the tip of the First Viceroy's wand held to her neck.
The small flicker of hope in his chest that there somehow, some way might be a path out of this all but died. A shocked, apathetic numbness took its place.
Though his entire mind and body protested vehemently, Draco forced himself to step down to the street. Beside the still, silent Phoenix forces, it had suddenly become eerily empty, devoid even of Tomas Felixisson, even though it was mid-afternoon in a busy Muggle London district, and cars and people had been zipping past not five minutes before.
Cold rain began to strike him, though he hardly felt it. Instead, every breath cut into him like a knife; every step away from the Fidelius-protected building felt like he was walking barefoot on nails. As ropes magically bound his hands behind him and Arthur Weasley yanked him forward, Draco was only aware of his mother's pale blue eyes, tears tracing from them as they bore into his with a mixture of love and anguish that seemed like something out of a horrific nightmare, rather than reality. Silently, she mouthed urgently, 'Draco, I love y—'
A flash of green cut her unspoken message short.
A hoarse cry ripped from his throat as Lily Evans threw Narcissa to the icy, wet pavement and lifted a mobile to her blood-red lips, her eyes locked on the property from which Draco had emerged. After a moment, it must have become visible to her, because she reported, "SK has been terminated. Stand by."
Draco stared, stunned, at his mother's limp body and blank eyes, her damp, greying blond hair splayed out around her head like a faded halo. Then, before he realized what he was even doing, he was suddenly screaming at the most powerful Dark Lord that Britain had ever seen. "You - You said you wouldn't kill her!"
The Sovereign smiled forbearingly, as if indulging a small child. "I said no such thing. I merely said you would be able to see her alive if you came outside immediately. And so you did." His piercing blue gaze shifted away from Draco dismissively. "Had you waited any longer, she would have already been dead."
"MOTHER!" Draco tried to run toward her, but he was roughly jerked backward and to his knees. Before he could process what was happening, Arthur Weasley had forced open his mouth and poured a tasteless liquid down his throat.
"Where's the Portkey?" the Second Viceroy demanded.
Draco found the answer spilling forth before he even registered swallowing; his eyes widened in horror as he realized the liquid's identity. "I—destroyed it," he choked out hoarsely.
"You worthless boy!" Weasley backhanded him violently, then hauled him up again by his soaked hair. "Where are you and your other filthy Fusty insurrectionists headed, eh?"
His face stinging, Draco struggled with all his might to resist responding. With an irritated growl, Weasley twisted his hair painfully and Draco cried out in surprise, but try desperately as he did, after a few seconds, the Veritaserum still ripped the truth from his lips.
"I — don't know," he rasped brokenly, tears streaming down his face. "Bulgaria — somewhere."
"And is that rat Riddle going to be there with them?"
Silently, he screamed, No, no, no, no…
"I — I —He's — He — N… Yes," he croaked involuntarily, and immediately filled with shame at the admittance, however unwilling.
At that moment, Lily Evans' mobile dinged. She looked down at it, then smiled slowly. "The destroyed Portkey is of no matter. I have their exact position. The lot of them are still there presently, though they're becoming restless; apparently the window of travel is set to expire shortly."
Draco looked between her and the mobile in numb horror. The Sovereign noticed his expression and turned toward him with a pleasant smile. "It appears you are not as loyalty-inspiring as you think, Mr. Malfoy. It was not our intelligence, but one of your own who so readily shared the information for your capture."
Draco couldn't believe that; refused to believe that. There was only one way they could have been captured, and no one — no one could possibly have wanted to see his mother — his mother…
Her limp body and the scene before him blurred with tears and falling rain. "You're lying," he croaked.
"For the sake of your conscience, I wish I were." Dumbledore's attention shifted to Lily, whose phone had been pinging continuously.
"It appears they've used an Anti-Apparition Jinx on the entire area," she said. "We'll need to Portkey in."
"Very well. The location, if you please." Dumbledore glanced at her raised mobile screen, looked around him, and then lifted his wand. "Portus multiplicatus!" he thundered.
After a moment, over two dozen individual blossoms from the windowsill flowers now exposed behind the broken window levitated from the house, floating over the heads of the mass of Order members. "These items are Portkeys; they will lead us to those we seek," he announced, elevating his voice. "Grasp them in groups. As you may have heard, an Anti-Apparition Jinx has been placed on the area; as I will be raising an Anti-Disapparition Jinx to pen them in, I highly suggest you do not attempt to do either during the task you have been given." He looked toward Lily Evans. "You know what to do."
She nodded once, sharply, and reached up and grasped the daffodil hovering before her, while those around her did the same.
In the blink of an eye, she, Dumbledore and the 250 members of the Order of the Phoenix disappeared.
As soon as they'd gone, Weasley yanked Draco up and Apparated with him back into the Mayfair home. In the pensieve, the scene swirled to reflect the new surroundings. The Viceroy threw him to the floor; with his hands bound, Draco was unable to stop his fall, and sharp pain exploded through his side. He had hardly heaved in a gasp before he was body bound.
"Wait here like a good little scumboy," Weasley said derisively. "Once we've destroyed your traitorous kind, I'll be back for you."
No, no, no, no…
Cold terror exploded through Draco's body, but he couldn't speak or scream. He could do nothing - nothing but struggle for shallow breath in his figuratively and literally frozen body, soaked through and through from the icy rain, and silently beg and plead to any god or goddess that might hear him that Pansy, Blaise, his friends, that innocent people be spared the unspeakable horror he was currently experiencing.
Weasley turned and repaired the shattered window, then headed for the front door. His footsteps halted suddenly. "Oh." With a muttered spell, Narcissa's body materialized on the ground a few feet from Draco, a trail of blood running down her temple, her open, lifeless eyes boring straight into Draco's motionless ones.
A shocked gasp turned into a choking cough from his paralyzed lips, and Draco suddenly couldn't find the air to breathe at all as the Viceroy said, "I do hope you enjoy the company." He sounded utterly pleased with himself. "I've heard a rumor a great many Fusties have begun to sleep like the dead."
The door shut, and with a crack, he Disapparated.
Draco didn't remember sinking to his knees beside his bound sixteen-year-old self, but at some point he had, a single tear clinging to each of his cheeks as he stared at his mother's body. He was utterly numb to anything and anyone else around him lest he descend into the anguish and despair and devastation that he could still feel deep in his bones, as though the events of Mayfair House had only happened yesterday.
His gaze shifted to his younger self. His heart broke even more, if that was possible, as he watched tears bubble up from the boy's unblinking eyes and tumble down his cheeks to the wooden floor.
Grief surged through his chest, for his mother, yes, but also for... for the orphaned child he had become. He wished with all his heart he could tell that stunned, terrified boy that he wasn't alone, that all wasn't lost, that he would survive and so would more of the people he loved, that he would be given a second chance at life, no matter how uncertain it was, that he would witness the impossible - that all he had to do was hold on, be strong, never give up hope.
He wished he could tell him… but he knew he couldn't.
Even so, he reached a faintly trembling hand toward his younger self, but it simply passed through thin air. Slowly clenching his fingers, he pulled his fist back into his chest, hunched over himself and began to cry.
He didn't know how long he knelt there, beside himself and the body of his mother, until he felt a hand touch his shoulder.
Draco started, then reached up and with a single hand wiped his eyes. For a moment, he took a shuddery breath, briefly resting his head on his hand, before he raised his head and looked up at Riddle.
He stilled.
The gentle hand on his shoulder wasn't Riddle's. It was Lucius Malfoy's.
Draco tensed.
Please not now, he silently begged, his exhausted, grief-stricken mind unable to process the thought of facing any more of Lucius's unintentional neglect after the memory they'd all just witnessed.
Slowly, the tall man crouched down alongside him, his equally gray eyes locked on Draco's face, racing across his every feature.
Then, he breathed, "Draco."
Shock and fear coursed through him. His lips parted, and he again found himself unable to breathe. Tentatively, so painfully slowly, disbelieving hope unfurled itself inside his chest. "F…Father?" he whispered.
Lucius reached out a trembling, spidery hand toward Draco's face, his thin fingers hovering millimetres above the skin as they traced from his forehead to his chin. "My son," he choked.
Draco's lips trembled unsteadily, afraid to allow himself to believe what his eyes were seeing for fear of yet another heartbreaking disappointment. Still, he couldn't stop the young, fatherless boy still well and alive inside him from repeating desperately, "Father…"
Instantly, Lucius pulled him forward into a tight hug. "Oh, Draco," he croaked out thickly.
Draco desperately tried to hold back the indescribable flood of emotion that suddenly threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted to speak but his throat was choked, and he clenched his jaw to keep from sobbing. All he could do was clutch his father tightly as the elder man rocked him back and forth and whispered over and over into Draco's hair, "I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"
And together, they grieved for the woman they had both deeply loved and the fourteen years as a family they had lost.
-c-
A/N: Oy vey, I know that was a heavy chapter in terms of info and topics and backstory, but it was basically the bridge between the first half of the story and the second, and it was something Draco and Lucius had to get through. If anyone has ever had to help take care of older parents, you may emphasize with some of this.
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