Still My Father

He never cried. Not as a baby, sold to the Dark Lord before his birth. Not as a child, growing in a home where his father hit and cursed his mother constantly, where love and kindness were the furthest things from any mind. Not as a teenager, pressured to go against his instincts and join the man that had corroded his very being.

And he didn't cry now. He remained as cold and disemotioned as he always had been, if not more so. The façade he had kept for appearance had saved him from that show of weakness as well as his family's wrath, but had eventually destroyed him.

You are not my son. You are not Draco Malfoy.

The words echoed in his head, almost vibrating. He saw the man from another plane, kneeling on a marble floor, one leg twisted behind him unnaturally. The Aurors surrounded the two, father and son, hatred and malice the only thing common. The kneeling man tried to regain his dignity, tried to sit up a little straighter. He looked his only son in the eye and said again clearly, loudly, You are not Draco Malfoy.

"I am," he said aloud, snapping back to the present. He looked down at his pale hands. In the moonlight they were unrecognizable from another pair, ones that had struck and bruised him innumerable times.

Blood traitor, he heard. Betrayed by my own flesh.

The man gasped as he fell forward onto his stomach, the poison deeper infiltrating his veins. Draco and the Aurors looked on silently, Draco even more still than his mother lying dead in the corner, the result of a final curse.

The dying man shook out one last, cold laugh. With a shaky, pale hand, he pointed at Draco.

I do not know you. Not anymore. I always knew you were weak, worth nothing. A weak smile. They all knew.

Draco did not bother to ask whom. He didn't care much. The other Death Eaters, his supposed friends, all supporters of the Dark Lord. They didn't matter, not anymore. No one matters in death.

A twig fell from a tree above, the sound bringing Draco to attention again and halting his memory. He stared at the manor before him. "Home," he said sarcastically, and laughed. It had never been "home".

The manor loomed closer every step he took. He heard Hermione's footsteps behind him and stopped, waiting for her to catch up. As he watched her, he saw the tears in her eyes glimmer softly in the silver light, then dull as they slid down her cheeks. Somehow, the sight depressed him even further.

"Draco," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "Stop. I hate seeing you like this. You're just causing yourself more unnecessary pain--you don't need to--"

"I do!" he cried, stopping suddenly. He turned to face her. "You don't know why I'm doing this! You never will." He softened his expression as his eyes followed another tear in its twisting course down her cheek. He reached out, barely aware that he was doing so, and gently wiped the drop away with the side of his thumb. "Please don't cry," he said, almost begging. "It makes me nervous."

Hermione breathed a shuddering sigh. "I just don't know why you're doing this. And I don't like seeing you hurt...I can tell this is hurting you. Even if I don't understand all your reasons..." she trailed off. "He's not your father anymore. Never was." Her eyelids fluttered down a bit, as if in shame.

"That's it, Hermione. He is my father. Even if he didn't consider me his son, he always has been my father. Maybe not the greatest one at times," he said, trying unsuccessfully to put humor into his voice. "I mean...yours is a dentist. He's never told you how you were a weak, unworthy disappointment to his family. He never disowned you...never sold you to the Dark Lord, and he never will. But my father did do all these things. He was a horrible person. But he's still my father.

"But you betrayed him. Until sixth year, you'd always stood up for him, but then..." Hermione hesitated. "If he was your father, why would you turn against what you'd supported your entire life? Why would you disregard everything you'd been taught, if he really was your father?"

Hermione looked up at him. His silver-gray eyes flashed with a hidden emotion. Was it...regret? She couldn't tell. Maybe it was the moonlight.

He looked ahead at the manor and began walking again. "I don't know. But you know you'd have done the same thing, had it been your family." They both fell silent.

A few more minutes of walking led them to the front gates of the manor. Although he was the legal heir and owner of this monstrosity, Draco felt almost alien as he muttered the spell that opened the gates, even more so as he walked through them. Silently, they crossed the courtyard to the main door, and as Draco pulled the heavy key from the pocket of his cloak, he felt Hermione rest her hand encouragingly on his shoulder.

Inside, the manor looked exactly as it had seven months before, the last time Draco had seen it. Though Aurors had literally stripped it down in their search for Lucius's Dark materials, they had left in perfect condition for Draco to come home to after his seventh year at Hogwarts. And now he was back, and it felt more cold and lonely than ever.

Draco motioned for Hermione to follow. He led the way up a flight of marble and granite stairs and down a corridor, finally stopping and hesitating in front of a large oak door. Sighing almost painfully, he opened it and stepped inside.

It was a room he had been in many times: his father's study. He had been called there often on the occasions when his father was displeased with him, for whatever reason. Draco grimaced. It was not a room he remembered fondly.

He walked to the desk and found what he was looking for immediately. Hermione watched as he opened a drawer and brought out a tiny silver ornament, small enough to be concealed in a child's fist. Looking closer, she saw it to be in the form of a snake.

Draco placed it in the palm of his hand.

"Reveliscio," he whispered.

The tiny snake came alive in his hand, slithering and coiling around itself for a moment before becoming still again. Draco set it on the surface of the desk and looked at Hermione, who'd been watching curiously. He pointed to the wall opposite them, which she now noticed was free of bookshelves, unlike the other three.

"Watch," Draco said.

Hermione watched in astonishment as a door appeared in the wall, smaller than the one leading into the study but made of the same wood and carved with the same design: an intricate "M" with a snake curled around it.

"The Aurors never found it," Draco said. "Only someone with Malfoy blood could activate the key. A simple Revealing charm, but modified for privacy." He smiled with a kind of sarcastic amusement. "Guess I still am a Malfoy, then." He strode across the room and opened the door. Hermione followed. The look on his face was unreadable again.

The hidden room was much smaller than the other rooms in the manor. The atmosphere was the same, but other than some bookcases, the only other furniture was a black steel box sitting on top of a pedestal in a corner.

In a few minutes, Draco had opened the box and reached inside. Not wanting to intrude, Hermione stayed in the doorway. She watched as he drew a long, thin object from the box. His father's wand. He studied it for a moment then slipped it into the pocket of his cloak. He turned back to the box, searching again.

"I knew he kept it in here," he muttered to himself. Hermione saw him draw out another, smaller item. Hiding it in his hand, he placed it in his pocket along with the want. Before she could ask, he slammed the box closed and said, "Let's go."

Back in the courtyard, Hermione looked at Draco, confused. "Draco," she said, "Why didn't you ever tell the Aurors about that room?"

Draco stopped and looked at her. "I don't know," he said. "Memories too precious to share?"

"I'm serious."

"Me, too." He fell silent.

He walked to a stone bench next to the fountain. He sat down and motioned for Hermione to do the same. After a few minutes of staring at the shimmering water cascading from the fountain, Hermione spoke again.

"What else did you take from that box?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "That was my father's safe. Twenty-two encrypted spells on it, plus a Binding Hex for anyone who tries to open it and doesn't have--"

"Malfoy blood, yeah."

"Exactly. Here."

He reached into his pocket and brought out the most beautiful object Hermione had ever seen. "Is that--"

"My mum's wedding ring. He kept it in the safe so she couldn't get to it. She isn't a true Malfoy, just by marriage, so she couldn't even get into the room."

"But why didn't he want her to have it?" Hermione studied the ring. The white-gold band was inlaid with dozens of tiny rubies, and in the center were three largfe diamonds, the biggest in the middle. It glimmered and shone in the moonlight, gently reflecting the water in the fountain.

"It was cursed. He had transferred the Imperious curse to work on a nonliving thing, but attached it to her with a Bonding Charm, I think. That way, he had limited control over her, and she couldn't leave or betray him as long as the ring was enchanted. It's the reason she died the same way he did, if a little sooner, even though she didn't really have a reason to. She was weaker than he was, and his poison worked quicker on her..." he trailed off. Hermione gazed in wonder at the ring. "Why didn't he just put the Imperious curse on her?" she asked.

"She was able to fight it," he said. "Objects can't fight anything. So with the curse originating from a different source, then channeling into her, she had no power over it. Plus, no one could take it off her since they had no way of knowing she was under it, with it just being indirectly looped to her."

"How do you know all this?"

"He told me. Sixth year...it's the reason I started the whole 'betrayal' thing. I had watched him beat her so many times, had figured she was out of line and had deserved it...but after he told me about controlling her, I realized he was abusing her for his own sick pleasure. She didn't even have the free will to act against him. He hit her for no reason." He looked up at Hermione, more solemn than she'd ever seen him. "I guess I never even knew my own mother." He gazed down at the ring, then back at Hermione. Then he said the most unexpected thing:

"I want you to have it."

She looked at the ring again. "Draco..."

"Don't worry," he said quickly. "The spells were lifted when he died. You won't be...bound to me or anything." He smiled. "I saw how you looked at it when I first showed you, and I don't want it. Please take it."

She did.

As they walked through the gates and back toward the town they were staying in, Draco heard his father's voice in his head one last time.

Know that what you have done will curse you, this betrayal of your own destiny. Let it haunt you in your dreams.

It did, father. But it won't anymore.

Draco pulled his father's wand from his cloak pocket and, with one last look at the manor, snapped it in half.