Winter's Flame

Azkaban, Draco decided as he stared at the vast black fortress, was not a nice looking place. The turrets were tall and narrow, and the outer walls had lethal looking spikes situated on top of them. The fortress was in the middle of a wide, murky green lake where evil black tentacles surfaced every now and then. The lake was accessible though an abandoned fabric shop in East London, where two burly wizards with wands thoroughly searched them for any weapons before sending them through the portal to the docking bay.
The boat glided silently across the water, Draco and his mother sitting on opposite ends. The fact that they were in a tiny dingy didn't bother him. All he cared about was seeing his father again, and telling him that he had finally beaten the centaur.
The boat pulled up outside the cavernous entrance to the fortress and the grate slid up noisily, powered by a hideous ogre inside who pulled the clanking chain. A lean Auror met them as they climbed out of the boat, eying them both with distaste. The Malfoy reputation had quite fallen when Lucius' involvement with the Dark Lord had got out. The Auror pulled out a grey wand and flicked it. "Accio weapons," he said in a strong voice that was completely mismatched with his appearance. Nothing flew out, and he gave a slight grunt of approval. "Your wands, please."
Draco and his mother handed both of their wands over without the slightest hint of expression. Narcissa's wand was a delicate creamy colour - quite long and thin, like Draco's, though his was a deep ebony black. "You'll get them back before you go," the Auror said. "Go to the end of the hall and you'll find somebody to take you up.
They turned and walked where they had been directed without so much as a thankyou. They found a huge bald and powerfully muscled man leaning against the wall, tapping his wand against his leg.
"Kingsley," Narcissa nodded.
"Mrs Malfoy," he answered in a rich voice. "Here to see Lucius?"
"The boy is. I'm here for my sister."
"Bellatrix Lestrange," he said with unmasked contempt. "Well, follow me." Draco didn't see what all the fuss was about. He quite liked his Aunt. She and her husband had stayed with them after they broke out of Azkaban. True, she was completely barmy, but what did that matter?
Kingsley led them through a labyrinth of hallways and up several flights of stairs, until they met yet another Auror at a fork in the passage. This one Draco knew.
"Lupin," he snarled, partly from hatred and every so slightly out of fear.
"Draco," his former Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher nodded gravely. His amber eyes shone in the dim light, giving the man a somewhat ethereal look to him. "Kingsley."
"The kid's here to see his father," the huge black man informed him. "I'm taking his mother to Mrs Lestrange."
"Ah," Lupin nodded. "Won't she be pleased? Now she can talk to something other than a wall." His voice had a slight dry note to it that Draco had never noticed before. Probably because he had to spend all day in a hallway looking at his shoes. Draco sure as hell didn't envy the bastard. Didn't pity him, either. Lupin had been one of the do-gooders involved when Lucius was sent to Azkaban.
Kingsley grinned and motioned for Narcissa to follow him as he took the left hallway, and Lupin led Draco down the right.
"Looking forward to school?" Lupin asked conversationally.
Draco flicked his eyes over towards him.
"I loved school when I was your age," he continued when Draco didn't answer. "It meant I could get away from home. Spend time with my friends. Do you have friends?" Draco frowned.
"I hear you're a prefect. So was I, actually. Lot of responsibility. Everybody looking up to you."
"Gryffindor," Draco rolled his eyes, speaking finally. "Bet you were a shoe in for Head Boy."
"What makes you think that?"
"At least one of the Head's is always a Gryffindor."
Lupin smiled faintly. "Well I was a shoe in for Head Boy. And the Head Girl was a rather pretty girl from Slytherin, if I recall."
"Gryffindor and Slytherin," Draco murmured. "That'd be a first."
"That's another thing," Lupin said as they paused outside a heavily locked iron door. He smiled wryly. "Despite what you might have heard, I wasn't in Gryffindor. It was Ravenclaw." He flicked his wand and the door clanged open. He held it open for Draco and, after frowning at Lupin for a moment, he walked inside. The door screeched shut behind him.

Lucius looked as urbane and cultured as he always had. The small stone cell was completely bare but for a mattress in the corner and a small wooden stool. Mr Malfoy sat on the stool by a barred window, his grey eyes fixed moodily on the greeney-brown waters outside. His long silver hair hung down in a loose ponytail, though it was not as smooth nor as neat as it usually was.
Draco stood uncertainly by the door, not sure what to do when his father didn't so much as look at him.
"What have I told you about lingering in doorways?" Lucius murmured, looking at his son from the corner of his eye. Draco relaxed when he saw the faintest hint of a smile in his fathers face. "If you look uncertain about being somewhere, everyone else will be certain that you're in the wrong place."
"Very good," he turned his body to fully face his son. "So, how goes the good fight?"
"Well, it's not actually going anywhere, at the moment," Draco said hesitantly. "The Dark Lord seems to have gone underground, and nobody's really told me anything much…"
"Idiotic bastards paid absolutely no attention to what I told them," Lucius muttered.
"And what was that?"
Lucius sighed patiently. "I ordered that if anything should happen to me, you were to take my place."
"Really?" Draco asked incredulously, a warm fuzzy feeling that may have been pride spreading through his body. "You said that?"
"Well of course I said that. Who else do you suggest that I trust?"
"Well… Mother?"
Lucius snorted, then glanced at the door as if remembering something. "We shouldn't discuss this now," he said warily. "That bloody Werewolf will be listening. He always watches me, you know. They all do. Bastards."
"Guess that's just what happens in prison," Draco shrugged. trying to keep Lucius calm.
"Yes, well I don't suggest it," he leaned back casually, as if warning Draco against a bad restaurant. "It's incredibly boring. The only comfort I have is that Bellatrix is getting madder by the day. Yesterday she was chanting 'Allah is my special Midget Lord' for five hours straight."
Draco's right eyebrow shot up. "Aunt Bella did that?"
"Mm."
"You can hear her?"
"Through the window. She's one floor up and about two or three cells that way." He pointed left.
"Left?"
"Right." Lucius frowned. "My right."
Draco raised his eyebrows. The was something slightly different about his father. Possibly the fact that he wasn't quite all there. "Mother's up there now."
"Her devotion to her husband is touching," Lucius said wryly. "What's she doing with our resident entertainment?"
Draco shrugged. "Said she had to give her something. Don't know what, though. But she stopped off beside some Muggle shopping centre in London before we came here." Lucius straightened, his grey eyes intensifying. "What centre?"
"Um… Anu? I think. She didn't go inside, though. She went into an alleyway beside it."
"That stupid woman," he growled, jumping up and trying to see upwards out of the window. A high squealing noise assailed their ears as a green glow appeared in the sky.
"Get down!" he yelled, ducking down. Draco, who had learned over the years to blindly trust anything his father told him threw himself onto the mattress. A low rumble shook the fortress, followed by a screaming explosion. Rocks and debris could be seen flying past the window. The yelling of Aurors could be heard over the shouting of the prisoners as, without warning, about thirty broomsticks zoomed past the window, then away again, this time loaded with dozens of Death Eaters that Draco recognised from various meetings and parties of his youth. The last two of the group to fly away were his aunt and his mother, the latter fixing him with a cold stare before she disappeared out of sight.

"I've told you, I don't know anything about it!" Draco snapped, angrily brushing his hair out of his eyes.
"You must have known." the Auror with a crazy eye scoffed. Mad Eye Moody, who he had thought was his fourth year Dark Arts teacher, but it was actually one of his fathers crazy partners in global domination. And while Draco fully supported the 'lets all kill Potter and rule the world' thing, he didn't appreciate being transformed into a ferret and bounced around the room. It was a pride issue.
"Why would she have sent me to a room with the only man who wasn't set free?" he gritted. "If I'd have known about it, I wouldn't have stuck around, would I?"
"He has a point, Alistair," Lupin sighed from the door. "I believe him. What I want to know is why Narcissa didn't rescue her husband?"
They both looked expectantly at Draco, who rolled his eyes. "I. Don't. Know. Can I go now?"
"Where, kid?" Moody asked. "Your dad's in jail and your mum's run off."
"Flown off," Lupin corrected absently.
"Point is, you've got nowhere to go."
"Yeah, I have, actually. Home. The house is still mine, isn't it?"
"Not 'till both your parents die, which unfortunately hasn't occurred yet."
"Alistair," Lupin said warningly.
"Well where're we gonna send him?"
Draco frowned. "Send me? Bullshit your sending me!"
"We could try the Dursley's," Lupin suggested with a wolfish grin, and Moody chuckled.
"The hell?"
"Dumbledore?"
"Bugger off!"
"Alistair?"
"Bugger off!" That one wasn't actually from Draco, and he would have been offended if the guy with the crazy eye didn't creep him out.
"When you get down to it," Mad Eye said, without really intending to be nasty. "Who would take him? I don't trust him with any of their lot."
"It's not Draco I'm worried about, it's them I don't trust."
"Same difference."
Draco sat back and rolled his eyes. "I'm still here, you know."
Lupin looked him up and down. "So you are."
"Remus, we can't deal with a kid right now," Moody growled. "Send him to the Ministry and let somebody else handle him."
"Why don't I take him?" Lupin asked.
"Because I refuse to leave with a Werewolf," Draco said bluntly. "More to the point, I refuse to live somewhere other than my home. Do you really think my mother will go back there? She's not that stupid."
"Fine," Moody waved. "You go home."
"Thankyou."
"And Remus goes with you."
"What?"
"You can't live there without a guardian, we can't let the son of a pair of criminals go loose," he shrugged. "Works both ways."
"If he doesn't want it, Alistair," Lupin said. "We can always organise somebody else…"
"Fine, ask Dumbledore, but he'll agree with me," Moody said confidently. "You need to learn to toughen up."
Lupin's eyes hardened momentarily. "You think I'm not tough?"
"No," Moody said bluntly. "I think you're a complete push over, and so does everybody else."
Lupin pushed his hand through his prematurely greying curls and muttered something under his breath.
"I heard that," Moody said. "Take the boy home. Me and Kingsley can sort this one out."
Lupin sighed. "Alright. Draco, let's go."
Draco glared at Lupin for a long second, then stood and walked out the door, not checking to see if he was following him. Kingsley was leading Lucius towards the room. Both his hands were bound behind his back, but yet he still managed to maintain his dignity. Their eyes locked for a moment and Lucius smiled slightly, a twitch in the corner of his mouth that anyone else would have mistaken as a nervous grimace. They passed by each other, and the link was broken. Draco felt a hand on his shoulder, the middle finger seeming was too long to be normal. Suddenly, remembering something, he shrugged off Lupin's hand and spun around. "I beat it, Father!" he called. "Last week! I beat it!"
Lucius looked over his shoulder and smiled in a way that Draco had seen only rarely. A true smile of fatherly pride. Then he was pushed inside the room, and the door clanged shut.