The Winterscapes

The Winterscapes - Chapter Eleven

Malfoy Manor was set in the snow like a hard, cold diamond in a shiny white gold ring. The snow on the grounds was frozen and icy, and ice covered the branches of the dark leafless trees that surrounded the house. Draco was met at King's Cross by two of the family house-elves, who handed him a portkey in the form of an old book and Disapparated with his trunk.

The portkey brought him to the front step of the Manor, waiting for the iron inlaid front door to be opened. In a moment it swung open, revealing a house-elf called Matti standing in the gray marble foyer.

"You is home!" the house-elf squeaked. "Master and Mistress are waiting! Follow me please." The foyer was circular and had many doors leading off into various rooms and corridors. Matti led Draco down a corridor, empty save for the hunting tapestries and portraits on the walls, to Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy's private sitting room. "Master Draco is home," the house-elf announced him. Draco was almost bursting with concealed excitement. After he greeted his parents, he was officially home for the Christmas holidays and could do whatever he liked.

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Less than a week into his holiday, Draco was awoken well past sunrise by two owls hooting and tapping at one of the windows of his high tower bedroom. He groaned and rolled out of his warm bed, rubbing his eyes as he crossed the room to the window to let the birds in. They circled the room once, dropped one object apiece on his ancient escritoire, and flew back out into the winter air. One left a small parcel, and the other had dropped a piece of parchment. He took them both back to his bed and opened the parchment addressed to Mr. Draco Malfoy in emerald ink.

He allowed himself a self-satisfied smile and a shout of "Yes!" as no one was around to hear. The letter was from Hogwarts--he had made full marks on all of his exams and term projects, except Herbology and Transfiguration, but that was more than made up for by all the extra credit he had earned for his mammoth Arithmancy project. The second was addressed simply to Draco. He unwrapped the brown paper, which had concealed a small silver colored box and a scrap of parchment that he scanned quickly before crumpling up into a small ball.

Draco-

Do not open before Christmas. I hope you are having a fun holiday. Happy Christmas!

Love,

Sara

Oh, shit, I forgot to get her a present, he thought. He opened the box and squinted at the watch inside. It's so tacky. I can't wear that. Oh well, I was getting sick of her anyway. Before going back to sleep, he threw the watch, the brown paper, and the box into his lit fireplace, and resolved to break up with Sara via owl post whenever he got around to it.

When he finally went down to the breakfast room that day, his parents were still sitting at the polished, gleaming table drinking tea and discussing room arrangements for various cousins and Narcissa's mother who were portkeying in from Paris for the Christmas Eve feast. There were still plates of food left out on the table for Draco. He ate a piece of bacon as he listened to them talk.

"Will the little girls be coming to the Averys' Christmas Day ball?" Lucius asked.

"No, but my mother will," said Narcissa.

"What little girls?" Draco asked.

"Elise and Jocelyn, my favorite cousin's two daughters," answered Narcissa.

"Oh," Draco said. "I got my last term's marks today." He pulled the parchment from Hogwarts out of his pocket and handed it to his mother.

"That's wonderful, darling," she said as she glanced at the parchment and passed it to Lucius.

He read over it quickly. "Excellent, though I expect you to do better in Transfiguration next term. Herbology is a waste of time, of course, you can always get someone else to crawl around in the mud for you, but I will not tolerate less than perfection in Transfiguration."

"Yes, Father," Draco said.

Lucius and Narcissa stood up. "Come find us in the library when you are finished eating, Draco. There is something we need to speak to you about."

"Can't you say it now?" Draco asked. He always felt a bit nervous when his mother and father wanted to talk to him about something; it felt as though he had done something he knew he shouldn't have done, and they knew it and were going to confront him. He couldn't think of anything that he had done wrong, but he felt nervous all the same.

His father turned around and gave him a look as he led Narcissa out of the room.

Draco fidgeted outside of the library for a bit before he opened the door and went in to join his parents. His mother was sitting at the leather-covered desk, going through newspaper clippings, and his father was pacing in front of one of the bookshelf-lined walls. Draco pulled a chair up to the desk, across from his mother, as did his father.

Lucius cleared his throat. "We wish to impress upon you the seriousness of your situation, Draco. Up until now, your life has been privileged and carefree, but as you know, in less than two weeks you will be returning to Hogwarts to complete your last year, after which you will become an active follower of Lord Voldemort. A place in the ranks of the Death Eaters is assured to you, because you are our son, but you still must dedicate yourself, your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions, to the cause. If you yourself do not, Lord Voldemort will know it. Do you understand?"

Draco nodded.

"And also we want to answer your questions. I know that I had many when I was your age, before I received the mark," Narcissa said.

Draco's cheeks burned. This is embarrassing. A heart-to-heart chat about my feelings on how they're forcing me to join the Death Eaters. .

When Draco didn't say anything, Lucius spoke up. "Why don't you explain to us why you are so dedicated to the cause? Lord Voldemort will surely ask you."

Oh God. I think they're serious. "Um ..." Draco began. "Well ... the cause is to stop Muggles from influencing Wizarding society, of course. To protect our magic."

Narcissa pursed her lips. "That is correct, Draco, but I do not think you understand any of it. Think about this: most Muggles do not even believe in magic. Isn't that ridiculous? The very force that holds the world and life together, and they do not believe in it. They fear it. If they knew there were those who could channel and direct that power, they would wish us dead."

"But doesn't Lord Voldemort--that is, don't we--wish they were dead?" Draco said.

"Of course not," said Narcissa. "We only want to stop the meshing of our worlds. To completely separate Wizarding society from Muggle. Do you know that before wizards began marrying Muggles, there were no Muggle-borns? All Muggle-borns have some Wizarding ancestor, however distant, after all. By that token, there were also no squibs. Foolish wizards say that we would have died out had we not begun marrying Muggles, but they are mistaken. Squib rates are rising at alarming speeds, while the birth rates of wizards with full magical ability born to Muggles and mixed unions are staying largely the same. And magical blood is becoming more and more diluted. Not to mention, the ridiculous prohibitions the Ministry places on the use of magic were not instated until Muggle culture began to seep into our world. The cause is to protect Wizarding society, which in turn accomplishes our larger goal, to protect magic itself, but do you understand why?"

Draco nodded, and then pointed to the newspaper clippings on the desk, all of which were reports on the deaths and torturing of Muggles and Muggle-born wizards. "If all Voldemort wants to do is separate wizards and Muggles, why does he use so much violence to accomplish his goals? Wouldn't the Ministry respond better to solid arguments about what is happening to the world as magic is diluted? Wouldn't they see that allowing Muggle blood into our world is the cause?"

"Many wizards before you have tried using reason to convince the thick-headed idiots at the Ministry of these things. It has never worked; they just do not see it. Yet Lord Voldemort at one point came closer to cleansing our world than anyone before him, and we will follow him, though his methods are vulgar," Lucius said.

"And," Narcissa added, "Lord Voldemort himself is a half-born. I believe he uses such violence to separate himself from the Muggles in the eyes of his followers. Besides, an outlet is necessary for the Dark magic that has built up below the surface of the world since the Ministry's bans on its used. It has to go somewhere, and the bloodshed provides a place. Don't forget that magic has two faces, and you can't have one without the other."

"Exactly," Lucius nodded approvingly at his wife.

"Why is the leader of the cause a half-blood?" Draco asked a question that had always puzzled him.

"Well he shouldn't be a half-blood, of course," Lucius said. "And he wouldn't be if it wasn't acceptable for wizards to breed with Muggles. Lord Voldemort is the last heir of Slytherin, who was perhaps the greatest wizard of all time and certainly the first to see the dangers in allowing Muggle blood into our world, and his heir has the raw magical ability and cunning that that implies. Power and cunning are two things that are necessary in a leader, and a leader is necessary for tactical purposes in a cause."

That night Draco snuck out of his bedroom. He wanted two things: some hot cocoa, and to be somewhere where he knew there was no chance of his mother or father walking into the room. Fortunately, hot cocoa could be had in the kitchen, and his parents never, ever went in the kitchen.

When Draco was little he had had a nursemaid, but he also spent a lot of time being looked after by the house-elves. Before he was old enough to try and imitate his father by kicking them around and screaming at them, one or two of the house-elves would bring him along as they cleaned various rooms and generally ran the manor. Accordingly, Draco had learned some of their passageways through the walls. He reached the third floor landing and ducked behind a moving tapestry of Merlin playing his harp for the maiden Nimue. The passageway seemed much narrower to a seventeen-year-old Draco than it did when he was seven, but it was dry and devoid of all dirt or dust. The walls were made of unfinished stone, and tallow candles were floating in the air below the five-foot high ceiling, giving off a warm yellow glow. Draco was careful to duck below them. After several turns and cramped staircases, he could hear the noise of high-pitched voices and banging pots and pans. He soon came upon a round hole in the wall, which he climbed through, and entered the kitchen.

"Master Draco!" exclaimed several of the kitchen elves.

"Is you hungry?"

"Does you want more dinner?"

"Is you cold?" The littlest elf hurried to put more logs into the fire.

"I want hot cocoa," Draco said. He sat down at the huge woodblock table in the center of the kitchen, and shortly the elves lined six mugs of hot cocoa in a row on the table to his left. He took the one closest to him and drank. When he was finished he pulled his journal and a quill out of his robes. He wrote:

I'm going to be a Death Eater. I think it's finally starting to sink in. I never particularly wanted to be one. It's messy. I never particularly didn't want to want to be one either. I need to be because there's nothing else for me to do. I can't let mudbloods and Muggle lovers rule the world. It'd be like school only worse because it would be serious then. The world could fall off of its axis and all that. Mostly I wish I didn't have to do anything, but I feel guilty for saying so. I think that's my sense of responsibility and duty acting up. Damn parents and damn them passing on their values to their offspring.

Of course. Of course, it's not like I wonder if the ideals of the cause apply to all mudbloods. You-Know-Who is a half-blood, after all.

I better stop now. He shut the book.

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After the Christmas feasts and balls, and presents, relatives, and festivities, there was a lull in Draco's holiday. The days leading up to the New Year. They were wholly welcome and enjoyed, until New Year's Day itself brought Lucius, smiling broadly, into the conservatory where Draco was feeding dead rats to flesh-eating plants.

"Ah, Son, there you are. I have good news. Lord Voldemort has informed me that the date for your questioning and Marking ceremony is June twenty-second, the day after you leave Hogwarts. I believe Blaise Zabini and Emma Moon will be receiving their marks on that same day. Are you pleased?"

Draco nodded. "Yes father. Thank you for telling me."

"Of course, my son. I had better go inform your mother; she will be very proud."

Draco waited until he heard his father's footsteps grow softer and softer as he left and walked down the marble hall. Then Draco unlocked the door that led from the conservatory to the rose garden, and ran out into the cold. He kept running until he was away from the main parts of the grounds. Away from the maze, away from the well-kept lawns, and away from all the buildings. He had no cloak or heating charms, but he stood there for a while, shivered, and let the snowflakes fall down around him.