Draco Malfoy and the Garage Sale of Pure and Abiding Evil

"This is so embarrassing," Draco Malfoy moaned as he dragged a rather large cardboard crate out the front door of Malfoy Mansion and into the miserable, wet world outside. "Mother, I can't bloody believe you."

"Do shut up, Draco," barked Narcissa Malfoy. "Now get that box of shrunken heads out here this instant, or so help me Merlin, I'll turn you into a toad."

"Being a toad might be better than this," Draco mumbled, but he did as he was told. "Bet you wouldn't make a toad do all this stupid heavy lifting."

Narcissa took a deep breath and looked to the darkening sky as if it held the secret to dealing with her only son. She exhaled and vaguely wondered how much she could get for his intestines on the Dark Arts black market (not that there was any other kind of Dark Arts market). She decided against disemboweling him, but only because she didn't fancy being by herself for very long. "Don't be silly, of course I would. Toads have to do their share. Hand me that stack of labels, would you?"

Draco threw the labels at his mother, sighed, and sat down on the muddy ground with a petulant squish. "I still don't understand why we have to do this."

Narcissa didn't look up from her stack of labels, which she was now affixing to the bottoms of the shrunken heads. "Do you want to be the poorest boy at school? Do you want new robes, since you're just going to roll around and get those all dirty? Or would you like me to start knitting you sweaters like that dreadful Weasley woman?"

"Mother, you can't knit."

"No," Narcissa said thoughtfully. "I can't. But unless you want me to start, you'll get back in the house and bring out the books from your father's library so we can sell them and get money and stop worrying about taking out an ad in I'm Poor! Magazine."

Draco grumbled as he stood up and went back inside. "Being poor is bollocks."

*

While no one was ever sure what exactly it was that Lucius Malfoy did for a living - Draco had always thought that he'd just sort of hung about and scared people into giving him money, like Crabbe had done in primary school - he had always managed to provide for his family, allowing his wife to sit around the house and drink elf-made wine all day while his only son fretted about his hair and blew up expensive things for the hell of it. But now Lucius was in prison - "bloody stupid man," Narcissa had said when she'd found out - and the bills were starting to add up. Narcissa had already forced Draco to cancel his subscription to Quidditch World Weekly, and she'd switched from elf-made wine to something Draco strongly suspected was prepared with shoe polish. They'd given all the house-elves clothes, and the mansion was starting to smell quite strongly of mold and cheap gin. Narcissa had taken to turning off the heat to save gas, and Draco had begun wearing all those stupid fur hats of his father's just so he wouldn't freeze to death at night. Or during the day, really. His mother had become astonishingly frugal since his father's arrest. He would have suspected that a Polyjuice-swigging intruder had replaced his mother if it weren't for the continued alcoholism and nasty temperament.

They'd been dining on porridge - it was the only thing his mother could make, and she wasn't even very good at that - one evening when Narcissa had looked at her son and announced that they'd be having a garage sale the next weekend. Draco had promptly fallen out of his chair.

"But Mother," he'd said as soon as he'd sat up, "we don't even have a garage. We have a carriage house full of old broomsticks and the bodies of people who crossed Father."

"It's a figure of speech, Draco," Narcissa had said, taking another swig from her mysterious mug. Something hissed inside of it. "We are going to sell everything we don't need, and that includes those silly hats."

Draco's hand had flown to the silly hat in question. This one had real bear's ears on and he quite fancied it, in the way that people often fancy the stupidest things imaginable simply because they're stupid. "What will Father say about this?"

Narcissa had shrugged. "I'd be more inclined to care if he hadn't gotten himself caught in the middle of a blasted Death Eater battle and thrown into prison. The Death Eaters' Wives' Fund doesn't cover loss of income caused by foolishness, you know."

"Father isn't foolish, Mother."

"Oh, yes, he is," Narcissa had said, tossing back another gulp of whatever the hell it was she was drinking. She burped delicately. "And that's why he's in prison, and that's why we're having a garage sale."

Draco had groaned and taken another halfhearted bite of terrible porridge. He'd gotten hold of his father at Azkaban that night, but apparently, Lucius was less concerned about his family's slide into genteel poverty than he was about his cellblock's poker game.

"Oh, Draco, it's so much better here without the Dementors," Lucius had said through the fire. He was wearing some sort of strange orange jumpsuit, and his hair had been twisted up underneath a bandanna. He looked happier and healthier than he had in years, which Draco resented, as any boy who had dined on porridge for three straight weeks would.

"I can see that, Father."

"We have recreation time now, you know. They let us play Quadpot."

"Yes, Father, that's great, but Mother is - "

"I'm sure your mother knows exactly what she's doing," Lucius had said, glancing over his shoulder. "Oy, Three-Fingers, keep your damned hands away from my cards!"

"But, Father - "

"Draco, do you want Father to lose the game and have to take bottom bunk in Fisty McRapesalot's cell?" Lucius had asked sharply.

Draco sulked. "No."

"Then listen to your mother. I'll talk to you tomorrow, after I TAKE THIS MAN FOR EVERYTHING HE'S WORTH," Lucius had yelled as his face disappeared.

Draco had stared into the fire for a long moment before dousing it ("Firewood costs money, Draco, and so does connecting to Azkaban, that's a bloody long-distance call"). Then he'd let out some sort of agonized moan and fell back against the carpet, not noticing how hard the floor really was.

"This is all Potter's fault," he'd muttered, readjusting that day's fur hat. It had a raccoon's tail hanging from the back of it. "Bloody. Stupid. Potter. His fault, all of it."

"No, it's not," said the mirror on the wall, and it would have followed up on this had Draco not hurled a brick at it.

"I was going to sell that!" Narcissa had shrieked from the next room.

*

The garage sale had started, and that did nothing to improve Draco's mood.

"Father wouldn't want you to sell that, Mother," he complained as Narcissa affixed a price tag to a large mahogany desk chair. It had serpent-heads for arms and had been in the family for generations; legend went that Great-Grandfather Abraxas had gotten it from the Devil himself. If that were true, Draco thought, the Devil himself had terrible taste in furniture and could do with a serious crash course in modern minimalism.

But it was the principle of the thing, really.

Narcissa stood up and flipped her long, blonde hair over one shoulder. "If your father didn't want me to sell off ugly family heirlooms, he should have tried a little bit harder to evade capture by the authorities." She unscrewed the top of her hip flask and took a sip. "Now go be a good son and try to flag down the passerby."

"Excuse me, what?"

"Draco, no one can see us from here. Go be a dear and stand at the end of the drive, would you?" Narcissa said, sitting down in the hideous chair and taking another drink.

"Mother, that's servants' work," Draco whined. "And it's raining. And I can't cast Impervious, it's not school-year yet."

Narcissa smiled sweetly and handed him an umbrella. It was old, and worn, and the handle looked like it had once been someone's femur. "We don't have servants anymore, Draco, you must have noticed. Now make Mummy happy and find us some customers."

Draco glanced at the umbrella unhappily. "Being poor is bollocks."

*

"Er. Garage sale up that drive, you hear? All the evil artifacts - uh, family heirlooms - you can imagine, all on sale up thataways!"

Draco may have hated begging, but he enjoyed yelling at people even more than he hated begging. It warmed him up, first of all, and his umbrella had turned out to have a hole in it. It seemed to be working, as much as it could - people on broomsticks were turning and flying up the Malfoys' drive at a fairly rapid pace. Draco smiled to himself, pleased, until he was hit in the face with what felt like a handful of mud.

"POTTER!" he yelled reflexively, getting angrier and angrier until he realized that Potter was miles away in Little Whinging and couldn't possibly be responsible for this. He cleared the mud from his eyes and saw a plump child on the other side of the street, wiping a fat hand on his coverall.

"You look funny," said the child, whose tricycle was hovering a few inches above the ground. "And my mummy says you're all a bunch of inbreds."

"I'll inbred you, you little - "

But the magical tricycle was already speeding away.

Draco looked at the sky through the hole in his umbrella and sighed. "Being poor is bollocks," he said, trudging up the drive.

*

A few moments later, Draco was enumerating his many woes to his mother, who was counting a stack of Galleons on an increasingly empty table.

"And a child threw mud at me, and my umbrella's broken, and this is awful, and - "

"Will you stop complaining for five seconds?"

" - it's cold, and it's raining, and people can see me, and my hair is frizzing, and I might be getting diptheria - "

"Draco," Narcissa said wearily, "I'll tell you what. If you sell one thing to one person, you can go inside. How's that?"

Draco paused. "One thing?"

"Yes, Draco. One thing. Anything. Can you manage that?"

"Fine, I'll take it. But you do realize that none of these people here are fit to be touching our things, Mother."

A woman browsing through Lucius' collection of whips and chains looked up. "Oy!" she said indignantly.

"Excuse him," Narcissa said to the woman. "He's just upset that I'm selling his Marvin the Mad Muggle playset."

"I am not!" Draco protested. "It's just... it's collectible, is all."

Narcissa tipped her head towards the woman. "Found him playing with it last week. Made the 'vroom, vroom' noises with the Muggle car, too."

The woman nodded sympathetically. "They never do like to grow up, do they?"

"ARGH," said Draco, who had really just been testing it to see if it still worked all right because you could never be sure about that sort of thing, and stalked off towards a table full of old books. A plump witch in brightly colored robes was flipping through the volumes, looking puzzled.

"Er, what are you looking for?" asked Draco, hoping he could get rid of something so he could go inside.

The witch looked up from The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter. "Do you have any Gilderoy Lockhart?"

"Gilderoy Lockhart is for uneducated plebians," Draco replied automatically, wrinkling his nose. "Really, you'd be better off stuffing your mind with something else. He's just crap."

The witch's eyes narrowed. "Uneducated plebians, eh? I'll take my business elsewhere, then," she said, walking away.

"Oh? And what other evil families are having garage sales this weekend?" Draco called after her, quite pleased with himself for thinking of such a clever retort.

The woman turned around. "The Averys and the Notts are having estate sales, since you asked, and I'm sure that Prunella Avery has exactly what I'm looking for."

"Oh," said Draco, not quite so pleased with himself now. "Well."

As the woman walked down the driveway, Draco noticed an even more unwelcome sight making its way up towards the lawn. It was tall, and freckled, and had the sort of red hair that God gives to the eternally unfortunate in an attempt to make up for their eternal misfortune.

And in terms of eternal misfortune, Draco couldn't think of anything worse than a Weasley witnessing his downfall.

"Oy, Malfoy!" yelled the Weasel, far more cheerfully than Draco ever would have expected. "Who's poor now?"

"Shut up, Weasley," Draco replied, gritting his teeth as the Weasel drew closer. He was tucked into one of those absurd sweaters his fat mother was always making, and his umbrella looked big enough to cover his whole family. They can probably only afford the one, Draco thought, looking up at the hole in his own. "What are you even doing here?"

"Gloating, mostly," Weasley said, shaking his umbrella so that a shower of droplets fell onto Draco's face. "But Mum always says that the best junk is rich junk, so I'm just going to have a look around, if you don't mind, and I don't think you're in any position to object."

Draco seethed. "Your foul hands aren't fit to touch any of the belongings of the Noble House of Malfoy, you prick."

"Yeah, yeah," said Weasley, examining a black bundle. "What the hell is this?"

"Ceremonial dress robes, Weasel," said Draco, "not that you'd know what such a thing looked like."

"Oh, do you use this when you all gather 'round and kiss You-Know-Who's feet?" asked Weasley, looking nonplussed.

"Don't be an ass, Weasley, the Dark Lord's feet are manky and disgusting," Draco sniffed. "Only Fenrir Greyback goes near them, and that's because he's bloody sick."

"It looks girly," said Weasley.

"Says the prat who went to the Yule Ball in a bloody dress."

"Oh, shut up." Weasley picked up a Chudley Cannons pennant that Draco would have never let his mother put out for sale if she hadn't waved her wand menacingly. "I've moved past that. And you looked like a vicar."

"Better a vicar than a girl."

"Eh. I quite like this, now," Weasley said cheerily, turning the pennant over in his hands. "Signed by the entire team, eh? Did Daddy pull some strings to get this, Malfoy?"

"No," said Draco grumpily; Lucius hadn't pulled strings as much as he had gently tugged on them and attached a few Galleons to the ends. "And I quite like it, too, but Mother is making me sell it."

Weasley clucked, sounding disturbingly like his own mother. "How much would you want for it?"

"More money than you've ever seen in your pathetic life, Weasel," Draco said menacingly. A fairly fat raindrop fell through the hole in his umbrella and landed on his nose. "So just put it down, will you?"

"Now, Malfoy, is that any way to treat a customer?" Weasley replied, looking stupidly snug in his thick sweater. "I think we should haggle."

"I don't know what that is, and I don't want to find out."

"It's when I name a price, and we argue, and then you give up and let me have it," said Weasley, ignoring Draco. The heavy rain rolled right off of his umbrella. "I'll pay you 15 Knuts."

"Preposterous!" said Draco, shivering. "I won't let it go for less than three Galleons."

"That's ridiculous, I could get them to sign one myself for three Galleons." Weasley ran one long, poverty-addled finger along the edge of the pennant. "Four Sickles, then."

"One Galleon," said Draco, looking at the house. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine it was quite warm. And there were a few fur hats he hadn't tried on yet.

"Ten Sickles."

"Five." The rain was coming down harder.

"Two."

"Fine! Fine!" yelled Draco, hopping up and down. The mud was making its way into his worn-out Italian leather shoes. "Just give me the bloody money and leave me alone!"

Weasley grinned and pulled two Sickles out of his pocket. "Pleasure doing business with you, Malfoy."

"Oh, shut up," said Draco, shoving the Sickles in his own pocket and turning around. "MOTHER! I SOLD SOMETHING TO SOMEONE! MAY I GO INSIDE NOW?"

"Don't yell, Draco, I'm right here," Narcissa said from five feet away. "And I don't know if a Weasley counts as a 'person,' technically."

Weasley scowled and walked down the drive, presumably back to whichever rock he'd crawled out from underneath.

"But I sold him my pennant, Mother, for two Sickles. I haggled," Draco said proudly, glancing at the front door of the mansion in much the same way a lion glances at a lame antelope that the rest of the pack has abandoned in a corner from which there is no escape. "And now I want to go inside, like you said I could."

Narcissa shifted uncomfortably, fingering her flask. "Well... you can't."

Draco would have stamped his foot had he not been sixteen and clearly above such behavior. He stamped both feet instead. "Why the bloody hell not?"

"Because I sold you to that gentleman over there for six Galleons and a bottle of elf-made wine," Narcissa said quickly, gesturing to a shifty-looking man in a big black hat. Human ears dangled from the hat's brim.

"WHAT?"

"He's a salesman at Borgin and Burkes," Narcissa said, crossing her arms. "He says that if your intestines don't go for much on the market, he'll train you up to run the register in the shop. He'll pay you a wage and everything. You can come home for the nights and keep Mummy company. Gave me an ear as a promise." She held the appendage up like it was a trophy. It still had an earring in the lobe.

A hailstone hit Draco's umbrella and poked another giant hole right through it. "I hate you, Mother."

"Oh, you say that now," Narcissa said, finally unscrewing the cap of her flask. "But you'll thank me later, when you're the best shop boy Knockturn Alley's ever seen!"

Draco glanced at the man in the ear-brimmed hat. Garage sales were one thing; being a common shop boy was quite another. He'd have to go in every day, and be polite to people, and work for his money, and -

"Being poor is bollocks," he moaned, trudging away.