Choices

Chapter One: Cruel

So don't give me respect, don't give me a piece of your preciousness

~Tori Amos, Cruel

***

Draco Malfoy slammed his way into his bedroom at the Manor in a fine sulk. It simply wasn't fair - he had been quietly pleased at the thought of leaving Hogwarts early, but his anticipation had quickly faded to boredom as the summer dragged on. His father had promised him something interesting this year, but thus far all they had been doing was flitting about the Continent visiting several of the more out-flung branches of the Malfoy family tree. Visiting relatives, many of whom had not seen Draco since he was a baby. If he heard one more wizened witch telling him how much he'd grown, he wouldn't be responsible for the consequences.

He flung himself onto his bed without bothering to remove his boots; if mud got on the covers, the house-elves could just get it off again - Draco wasn't disposed to care. Staring at the ceiling, he wondered whether he'd ever had a worse summer holiday. The extra two weeks had only served to make the long, boring weeks drag out even more. And the homework. Draco knew it was only a year until the N.E.W.T. exams, but the thick roll of assignments in his trunk hadn't appreciably diminished despite two days spent in the Manor's library and up to his eyebrows in books. He was paying for those two weeks of missed lessons now, with interest. Draco wondered how his father would take it if he complained about his workload. Not well, he decided. Lucius had spent half of the holidays conveniently vanishing on 'business' while Draco and Narcissa trailed from obscure great-aunt to second-cousin-once-removed. And his father wouldn't take kindly to mention of that, either - Draco was well aware of the nature of those little errands, and Lucius knew that he knew.

Oh, damn it all anyway. That Granger Mudblood will get the highest marks as always. She's probably got her Head Girl's badge already. Bloody Gryffindors. And Potter, Saint Potter, who never does anything wrong even when he's breaking rules right left and centre, he'll be Head Boy of course. It wasn't that he wanted the Head Boy's shield for himself, it wasn't. It was that his father seemed to think he ought to want it. Draco wasn't even particularly fond of the responsibilities that came with his position as Prefect, and certainly didn't want any extras. But the Malfoy Family Pride would not support anyone else in a superior position. Malfoys either held power or schemed to get it.

Draco flopped over onto his face, briefly wondering if he could be bothered to spend the rest of the evening flying over the grounds. He hadn't done any proper flying, let alone Quidditch practice, since he'd left the school, and he was itching to be in the air. It was little consolation that his hated rival, stuck with his Muggle relatives for the summer, wouldn't be practising either. Oh no, Potter was an instinctive flyer, and he could beat Draco to the Snitch without working up a sweat... Draco ground his teeth. God, why did everything always have to come back to Potter? He was Dumbledore's pet, and the best damn flyer in the school, and he'd always looked down his nose at Draco as though he was the one who was half-Mudblood and raised by Muggles, for goodness' sake! It just wasn't fair.

***

Draco kicked off from the ground, spiralling upwards into the freedom of the air. There was just something too invigorating about flight; perhaps it was the feel of the wind in his hair and the drag of gravity as he cornered, or perhaps it was just the idea of no longer being grounded. Levelling out from that first, dizzy rise, he could see the Manor grounds spread out below him, formal, manicured gardens leading off to pasturage and giving way in the distance to a patchwork of fields and forests. Up here, Draco could see the true scope of who and what he was: the heir to everything he could see. It was neither dazzling nor dizzying; Draco had been bred to riches and pure-blooded heritage, and took his family's status for granted. Instead it was more of a satisfied sort of feeling: One day all this will be mine.

Tilting the handle of his new Firebolt downwards, Draco dropped into a steep dive, angling himself towards the green turf of the family Quidditch pitch. The wind rushed in his ears louder than a thousand screaming banshees as he fell out of the sky like a descending angel, trading altitude for speed. He levelled out barely three feet above the ground, close enough to see the evening dew that had begun settling on the grass blades, jewelled gold and silver in the late-evening light. Draco could feel the heat of exhilaration in his face as he tilted upward, climbing again into the endless depths of the sky. Out here, he was no longer bound to the earth; all ties were severed. He was no longer a Malfoy, or a pure-blood, or a Slytherin, but just a seventeen-year-old boy on a broomstick. He had never felt so free in his life, and the thrill of it was tremendous.

***

Draco clasped his hands together to stop them from shivering. The darkness down here in the dungeons was a palpable thing, and the chill ate into his bones. But he was a Malfoy, as his father so often had to remind him. He endured it.

Lucius looked up from where he was crouched in the centre of the room trickling enchanted silver sand into a pentagram design, and frowned censoriously at his son. Draco winced internally, and straightened his spine, tossing his hair back away from his face. His father nodded and turned back to his work. Arrogance, self-confidence, hauteur - these were the cornerstones of the Malfoy bloodline (together with a healthy penchant for the Dark Arts, of course), and Draco knew how to display them. A Malfoy must never show fear, must never admit defeat, must never bow to anyone, Draco chanted silently to himself. Though he wasn't quite sure how the unofficial family credo squared with what was about to transpire in the dungeon.

By now, Draco knew exactly what was coming. That evening at dinner, his father had looked up from the cheeseboard and casually informed his son that the surprise he had been warned to expect would occur that very night in the dungeons below the Manor. Draco, suddenly fixed with a gnawing kind of suspicious dread, had spoken a polite but non-committal phrase of acquiescence. He knew better than to ask for more details; Lucius would tell him whatever he felt that Draco needed to know, and no more. As the son of his father, Draco was expected to display tact, discretion, and an impeccable sense of timing. Any lapses would be punished severely.

His father had fixed him with a cold gaze; Draco had met it squarely for a moment before lowering his eyes, seeing the anticipation that Lucius could not hide. "I know that you must have waited for this moment for some time, Draco," he remarked, and with that all the suspicions had crystallised into certainties. "Your patience will be rewarded."

Draco tucked a strand of hair behind his ear to keep it out of his eyes (it was time to get the house-elves to cut it for him again), and needlessly smoothed down the front of his robes. His father was placing five small, smoking bowls at the apices of his pentagram. The smoke was bitter, and stung Draco's throat and eyes. Lucius stood, stalking back towards his son as the five clouds of drifting smoke became columns, thickening as they extended towards the low dungeon ceiling. Slowly, the hazy pillars began to spin, coiling in on each other to form a twisted rope hanging over the centre of the pentagram. Draco watched, eyes tearing, as the smoke thickened until he was forced to close his eyes, squinting them shut to keep from being blinded.

A change in the taste of the air, in its pressure against his skin, popped his eyes open again. The bitter clouds of smoke had all but vanished, leaving just a few wreaths to drift about the confines of the room. And in the centre of the silver pentagram stood a spindly, shadowed figure, black even against the night of the dungeon. Where the light of the meagre candles was struck back from the rough walls and the dark velvets of Draco's and his father's robes, the figure seemed to suck it in, to swallow the light.

He felt the movement beside him as his father dropped to one knee, and hastily followed suit. Even with his head bent, Draco seemed to feel the movement of the tall, black-swathed figure out of the pentagram and towards him. He willed himself to stop shaking, he was a Malfoy and the family pride demanded it.

"Lucius, my servant." The voice was low, and hissing, and altogether far too close. The high harmonics that played around the edges of the words set Draco's teeth on edge. "Is this the boy?" He could see the hem of that lightless robe coming to rest before him.

"Yes, my Lord." His father's voice was different, Draco realised. He spoke almost diffidently, without the air of command that so often infused his words, with almost a fawning quality to his speech. "My son, Draco." And the complete lack of any kind of pride in his father's words cut Draco to the quick. He had always unconsciously assumed that he, the only son and heir, had the most important place in his father's heart. Now he saw differently, and it hurt more than he would have imagined.

"He has the look of the Malfoys," that hissing, grating voice continued meditatively. "Look at me, boy." And a hand the colour of rotten bone took firm, clammy hold of Draco's chin and lifted his head up.

Draco's mouth went dry at the sight. He had always assumed that his father's master was a man, a wizard, like any other. Perhaps more tall, more regal and commanding, like the statues and paintings of Salazar Slytherin that he had seen at school, but still essentially human. The face he looked up into now was anything but; hideous, maggot-white skin stretched parchment-like over a hairless, barely-fleshed skull. Slitted nostrils like a snake's above a bloody gash of a lipless mouth lined with tiny, sharp yellow teeth. But it was the eyes that transfixed him, the narrow, glowing reddish eyes that shrivelled his courage and curdled his vaunted blood until he was unable to scream or run or even collapse. Draco Malfoy stared for the first time into the face of Lord Voldemort, and forgot who he was, forgot his family name and the dark threads of allegiances, forgot everything except the uncontrollable terror that filled him.

Voldemort's fingers under his chin were cold, as cold as death, and Draco imagined that he could feel his own fate in the touch of those hands. He was trapped in those blazing eyes, unable to look away as his strength and will were sapped from him. He felt sick, and desperately tried to regain control of himself, to no avail. Voldemort was still staring into his eyes with a disgusting intensity.

"You have done well with this one, Lucius," the creature hissed at last, releasing Draco. Only the knowledge of what his father would do to him if he faltered kept his head upright; his muscles felt like jelly, and he was sure he was shaking. "Tell me, Draco Malfoy," Voldemort whispered languorously, still staring him straight in the eye, "are you willing to follow your father into my service? An honoured place awaits you."

Oh god. This was it, and Draco wished he could squeeze his eyes shut, wished desperately for some scrap of his courage to be given back to him. There would be no turning back from this moment, yet there was only one answer that would be accepted. "I know my duty, Lord," he finally managed to get out, hoping that his voice wasn't too cracked. "I am a Malfoy."

Voldemort continued staring at him for a moment, though Draco felt his father stir beside him. "So you are," the Dark Lord replied at last. "Very well, young Master Malfoy." And Draco had the sudden terrible feeling that Voldemort had seen straight through his pitiful subterfuge, right to the core of his fear. Shame held him steady despite the trembling and nausea as the dark figure turned towards his father.

"You have indeed wrought well, my Lucius. You are to be congratulated. Come, I have need of you." Draco watched as his father scrambled to his feet without a word of goodbye and joined his master in the centre of the pentagram, watched as the smoke billowed up again, shielding the pair from view. When he could see again, both his father and the Dark Lord were gone.

The trembling seized him then, and he slumped to the cold stone of the floor, shaking uncontrollably, with his eyes burning from tears he reused to shed. I am shamed enough, I have disgraced my family enough, he thought fiercely to himself, wrapping his arms around his knees as he huddled on the dungeon floor. It was a long time before Draco could pull himself sufficiently together as to be able to move.

Nausea gripped him as he made his unsteady way back up through the house to his rooms, and he pinched his upper lip hard between thumb and forefinger to try and stave it off. If he became ill in the corridors, the house-elves would inform his mother, who would undoubtedly inform his father. He slammed and locked the door behind him, then had to lean against it as another spasm wracked him. His rooms, which had always been safe to him, which had epitomised home, suddenly seemed flimsy as glass. His eye fell on a dragon paperweight fanning its wings on his desk - it had been a gift from his father for his tenth birthday, but suddenly was no longer an object of pride but a symbol of shame and humiliation and fear. "Oh god," Draco choked out, clapping a hand across his mouth as he staggered, retching, into the bathroom where he proceeded to vomit up everything he'd eaten at dinner and more, until there was nothing left to come up but acid bile.

Sitting back on his heels, Draco wiped his mouth weakly on the back of his hand. He felt clammy, covered in freezing sweat, and he was still shaking almost uncontrollably. When he filled a glass at the tap to rinse out his mouth, he watched in dull recognition as the water slopped about, splashing over his fingers and down his chin with the force of his trembling. His mind was locked in an endless scream of 'no!' but it had no force, it was as if it was shut away behind a glass screen, where he could watch it with detached curiosity.

God, he was cold. The sweat soaking his heavy velvet robes didn't help; he dragged them off over his head and left them in a heap for the laundry elves, struggling into a pair of pyjamas as he stumbled back into his bedroom. The bedding had been changed since the afternoon, he noticed dully, and his boots cleaned and left neatly by the wardrobe. Draco dragged himself onto his bed and burrowed under the blankets, huddling into a shivering ball to try and regain some of his lost warmth as he stared at the black-and-silver draped ceiling. Oh god, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?

He got no sleep that night.

***

With a hoarse gasp, Draco bolted upright in his bed, clutching at the covers. Yet again his sleep had been anything but restful, haunted by shadowy images of that pale, burning face, of those spidery hands clutching at him and dragging him down into darkness and flame. The only good part of the situation was the fact that as a seventh-year prefect he now had his own room; he didn't have to account to any of the other Slytherins over the nightmares. He hugged his knees miserably. Crabbe and Goyle weren't exactly the brightest of sparks, but even they had realised that something was wrong after two weeks back at school. Two weeks in which Draco had observed himself as if from afar as he withdrew more and more from the life that went on around him, as he became paler and more exhausted than ever.

His father still hadn't returned from wherever Voldemort had taken him off to, and Draco had drifted through the rest of the holidays like an automaton, his mind gnawing at itself like a trapped animal. Suddenly, his family, which he had been brought up to believe was the most important thing in the world, was stained by the fear which attached to Voldemort's presence. Draco wasn't sure he could ever look his father in the eye again, after seeing Lucius kneel and crawl to the Dark Lord, after having done so himself. For the whole of his life he had firmly believed that a Malfoy bowed to no one, that pure blood and old money would let him choose his own path. Now all his illusions were crumbling about his ears.

Draco knew that the Slytherins weren't the only ones puzzled by his abstraction. He could feel Potter's eyes on him in the Great Hall at mealtimes, during the lessons where he increasingly struggled to concentrate on his work. Ever since Potter had stuck his meddling nose into Draco's compartment on the Hogwarts Express, he had felt the incompetent twit watching him, staring at him constantly as if by the force of his gaze alone he could pierce Draco's mysteries. It was annoying, in a dull sort of way that buzzed around the outside of his awareness. When he could be bothered to care at all, anyway. Even the snide remarks Weasley was forever making had lost their bite in the face of the terrible dilemma he twisted on.

Dragging himself out of bed (he felt so heavy these days; exhaustion weighted his limbs even in the air), Draco began mechanically changing into his uniform and robes. Tugging a comb through his hair with none of his former grace, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Hollow-cheeked, sallow, and bruise-eyed. "You look terrible, dear," the mirror told him. Draco knew. It was caring that was difficult.

At breakfast in the Great Hall, the food tasted bland and pasty in his mouth; he pushed it around the plate with his fork, staring listlessly into the middle distance. He could feel Potter's ridiculous green eyes on him again, and could hear the concerned voices of Pansy and Blaise as they muttered to each other about him behind their hands. He ignored them, still caught in his own mind between loyalty and fear, shame and pride. A double bind; there was no way he could turn.

Draco didn't even duck as the owls soared by inches above his head. It wasn't until a thick scroll landed in his open palm that he recalled himself with difficulty to the present. Looking down at it, he saw that it was sealed with the family crest, and his father's own private starburst insignia in black wax. He could feel himself starting to tremble again as he stared at it. Oh god, this is it, this is where he tells me I'm a disgrace to my name and no longer his son...He cracked open the seal and unrolled the thick vellum, swallowing the lump of dread that was rising in his throat.

Draco:

Know that I am pleased with your performance on the night we last spoke. You have upheld the family name with honour and I am sure you are looking forward to the day when you are called to serve beside me. Our Lord is most complimentary of you and has informed me that he intends to receive your oath at his own hands as soon as you have graduated from that ridiculous pretence of a school. I am proud of you, Draco, and have no doubt that you will achieve great things for our Lord.

Your Father, Lucius Malfoy.

Draco stared blankly at his father's elegant signature, not noticing the way his hands were beginning to tremble or the parchment shake. Something within him seemed to be breaking, tearing apart and ripping his heart in two with it. He had waited so long, so many years, for his father to express this kind of pride, and yet it was all false, it was all an act... With a low moan, Draco pushed his chair back from the table and bolted from the Hall, parchment still clenched tight in his fist.