Come Hither

Chapter 1

Draco's Unforgivable Predicament

Thirteen torches burned weakly around the circular, dungeon-like room under thirteen dark-cloaked figures, and one which sat at the top, his unnaturally large, pale, spidery hands resting upon the armrests. There was no wind to stir their cloaks, nor did the figures move in any way themselves. In the middle of the room shivered an ancient-looking man, his bulging, protuberant eyes flying from figure to figure that surrounded him.

"I tire of your presence, Ollivander. Tell me about the Elder Wand and I may decide to spare your life, be it leaving you an inch from death or merely with fewer limbs, they are superfluous, after all... " There came a low hiss from somewhere near Voldemort's shoulder, and a smile dragged the corners of his lipless mouth upwards as one of his large and almost fluorescent hand came up and lovingly caressed a snake of giant proportions that slithered along the top of his throne. "Do you agree, Nagini, limbs are superfluous?" Voldemort's bone-chilling smile widened when the snake hissed again and flicked it forked tongue in the air, tasting, its slit eyes fixing upon...

The prostrate wandmaker lying on the grimy dungeon floor and upon whom were Voldemort's red slit eyes, his cold, high-pitched voice cut easily through the stale silence as he said, "Perhaps you need some motivation. Lucius, I believe your son is adequately skilled in the Unforgivables, is he not?"

"Yes, my Lord," said Lucius at once, and gave the figure next to him a slight push forward.

Draco tentatively stepped forward out of the black circular ring and drew out his wand.

Mr Ollivander's eyes, swollen and stark white with fear, shot to the instrument in his quaking hands. "Hawthorn and unicorn hair, ten inches exactly," he stuttered almost absent-mindedly, possibly delving into the nuances of his profession to calm himself, and was rewarded with shrill laughter that rang across the dungeon room. Mr Ollivander, however, remained transfixed on the youngest Malfoy approaching him.

"Crucio!" cried Draco.

More laughter broke through the circle. "Your son is weak, Lucius."

Draco didn't know from whose lips his father's name was hissed, his master's, or his great snake's, but under the gaze of the bleak torchlight afforded by several ancient torches lining the wall, his father held his immaculate composure.

"My Lord, he's young..."

"And pretty!" Macnair cut in, with a leering laugh that was echoed by the other Death Eaters before growling lustfully and launching himself at Draco. The wandmaker was taken aside and held tightly. Lucius watched the scene through the slits of his hood with cool grey eyes, as sharp as can be. The figure on standing closest to Voldemort shifted slightly.

The silence faded, and from the shadow of Voldemort's hood, there was a flash of red; the words seemed to have installed a seed in his mind.

"Perhaps your son, too, needs a little motivation; proceed, Macnair."

"Don't..." Draco whispered feebly, at the huge man, his voice cracking horribly with fear.

Macnair licked his lips obscenely and wrestled Draco to the floor, and the latter's screams reverberated off the walls as his silk black robes were torn off his body by powerful and perversely eager hands.

The figure on Voldemort's right shifted slightly again.

"Would you perhaps like to join Macnair, Severus? I see you can barely contain yourself."

"My Lord," said Snape quietly, "I confess I'm far from enthralled with a fifteen-year-old boy whose talent is negligible even in something as trivial as torture."

Meanwhile, Lucius turned to his master.

The giant snake was wounding itself around Voldemort's neck, brown diamond shapes flickering on its scales as bleak light fell upon them. There was a moment wherein Voldemort's red slits were fastened upon Snape intensely, but then he smiled at him and turned to Lucius, and he made what one would call a perverse attempt at raising an eyebrow, which he did not possess.

This expression of sorts meant he didn't outright forbid Lucius from doing anything, and perhaps because of this, Lucius swept over to the centre of the ring and pushed his wand into the temple of his son's assailant.

"Get off my son." It sliced through the laughter of the surrounding Death Eaters, spoken in a soft hiss that apparently could give pause from even one of the most corrupt of Voldemort's followers; Macnair searched out the eyes of his master for further instruction.

"Leave him, Lucius," ordered Voldemort in his thin, cold voice, which was entirely absent of mercy.

"But, my Lord, my son. Perhaps we could make another arrangement," Lucius suggested calmly.

These words rang through the silence that had befallen the dungeon room, except for Draco's erratic panting, and for several moments, Voldemort didn't speak. Then finally, with a soft stroke to his snake, he observed, "Your son is not able to cast mere Unforgivables. As such, he will need to be punished." The words were left to hang in a horrible quiet, but then Voldemort continued, and a malevolent smile curved his lipless mouth, "Yes, I must say, young Malfoy here is quite a sight, wouldn't you agree?"

The Death Eaters agreed wholeheartedly, or rather, heartlessly, in dark laughter.

On the cold, stone floor, Draco's chest heaved in panic. His face was devoid of colour, paler than usual, as his body was left exposed to the ring of dark-cloaked figures around him, his stripped chest and parted legs gleaming distinctly in the wan dungeon torchlight. His eyes were fixed passed Macnair, straight up at the black ceiling, clearly terrified they might stray to Voldemort, any of the other Death Eaters, or his father. Towering above him as though he weren't on his knees, Macnair bared his large, yellow teeth at Draco, growling lustfully once more, his unobstructed eye raking over Draco's pale, innocent flesh lying below him - those thin, shell-pink lips, his startling grey eyes wide in horror now, and long, white-blond hair splayed on the dungeon floor like an angel's halo.

"Until I give him another chance to prove himself again, young Draco here will... service us in our chambers." Voldemort's shrill laughter echoed those of his followers, but Lucius' figure moved not an inch.

"My Lord--"

"Never mind, Lucius."

The words were barely stern, yet they silenced Lucius at once as well the other assembled Death Eaters, whose robes rustled uncomfortably in the freshly tense air.

The endless length of the snake, as though sensing the closing, smoothly flowed down Voldemort's throne like the breadth of a wide waterfall, and the rest of its massive body fell to the floor with such a dense thump, it seemed to momentarily freeze all the muscles in Draco's body, for Draco went rigid, even though he had suffered the snake's accompany, by virtue of its owner's, for a number of months. His reaction, shared even by some of the Death Eaters surrounding him, was understandable, for Voldemort was inclined to use the snake as a live weapon, ready to be inflicted upon any of his followers who proved otherwise infallible in their malevolent endeavours, apart from their victims. Hence, how it grew to such an alarming size couldn't have been a mystery to any Death Eater.

"However, as you are a most valued servant, I will allow your son a little mercy." Voldemort's red slits swept over his disciples. "He will pleasure only the followers I deem worthy, and those chosen are never to force themselves on your son - they are to play a passive role only. That should give your son ample opportunity to show his true colours, the pretty whore he is."

Heading to the Apparition chamber next to the grand foyer in the higher parts of Malfoy Manor, Voldemort and his Death Eaters - among whom the most reluctant was Macnair - exited the dungeon in gales of cruel laughter, and bringing up the rear as though in venomous summary of all the new ills that now bode for father and son, the snake slithered unnervingly slowly and dangerously out of the room, leaving a hissing promise to those behind.

Lucius stood rigidly whilst his eyes followed the tail of Voldemort's snake until the iron door put it out of sight, and then, in the silent wake of the departed, Lucius' emotionless expression coolly took in Draco's appearance on the floor for a moment before he lazily waved his wand above him, and Draco's tattered robes repaired themselves around his small form. "Get up," he ordered dispassionately, and strode to the heavy iron doors after sneering in the direction of an emaciated Mr Ollivander, who was quivering in the corner, his terrified, bulging eyes following his figure as one withering hand grasped one of the bars of his cage.

Draco carefully stood up and followed, his breath hitching, and his forehead sweaty. For some reason, Lucius didn't open the door to walk out but stood in front of it as his distant gaze fell on a spot on its black surface. It was as though he was waiting for the muffled footstalls beyond the door to disappear completely. Then, a few seconds later, he swept the door open and strode out. In silence, Draco trailed behind his father as they weaved through the vast manor until minutes later, they stood in the more refined harshness of the master bedroom, and Lucius, after tossing his snake cane onto his pale-gold-quilted duvet, quietly drawled, "You realize exactly what you've gotten yourself into?"

Draco squinted down at the Axminster in shame. "I'm sorry, Father, I'll try harder to master the Unforgivables," he mumbled, his shaky voice thick with contrition, and the distance between him and the snake cane resting innocently on the bed behind his father did little to comfort him, though he knew that if his father had any ideas of punishment in his mind, it most probably wouldn't involve his snake cane - that was of far too assuring precedence, amongst other reasons.

Lucius continued as though uninterrupted, "You've managed to make yourself a whore for the entire congregation, Draco." The name was spoken with a soft, icy politeness - like the soft, cold metal, sodium. Steely, silver eyes stared down at the younger man. "Do you realize what damage this dealt to the Malfoy name, to me?"

Draco's throat worked for several moments, but he didn't answer. Besides the chilling silence that spiralled around them, the elegance of his father's room, with its striking silver finishes scattered about, its almost unforgiving spotlessness, and the masculine, scant presence of embellishments of ornaments or possessions, made his father's words register so much colder and more piercing.

"Look at yourself..." said Lucius, with the slightest note of a sneer in his voice, but the background of the room beyond him somehow seemed to nevertheless re-enforce it. Draco gazed up into his father's damning eyes after being roughly pushed forward in front of a tall, ornate mirror. "Long hair." Lucius weaved his hand viciously through Draco's soft, platinum-blond hair, glaring at him in the mirror. "...Your height, lips..." He stretched Draco's lips with his fingers so they formed two, thin, white strips. "...Hands..." Lucius held Draco's small, delicate hands in his own. "These are not hands of a man!" he all but growled.

By this time, Draco was shaking from hair to toe, and he had tears stinging the backs of his eyes, but he refused them and pursed his lips in defiance.

Lucius faced his son with glaring scrutiny for a moment before hauling himself to his full, rather impressive height, composing himself, and taking a deep breath. "Perhaps you could have done with that scar across your cheek I promised you, hm?" he said, glaring a hole into the top of Draco's head. "But if I dared to be honest with myself, I'd admit that your looks are partly my fault - your hair is undoubtedly from me, but your lamentable... petiteness is decidedly from Narcissa's line; curse your beautiful mother..."

Draco was looking down at his boots as a silent, treacherous tear finally tracked down his pale cheek, twinkling like a golden diamond in the soft light. His offended hands weren't even clenched in indignation but resigned to their judgement as not masculine and left to hang limply at his sides. The voice that he had treasured and respected since as long as he could remember his own name, heavy with pitiless disapproval, obliterated the minute pride he held for his hands that had stemmed from when he had helped Severus brew one of his many potions for the first time. Severus had held up his hand, and had taken them in with his eyes. Draco hadn't known why he had been doing this, and so had kept silent. A minuscule smile, but a smile nonetheless, had curled those usually stoic lips upwards, and he had said, "At least there's one thing right about you: the hands of a potion-maker - long, thin, deft, and precise."

Now that fondness was annihilated by this man, whom he held so dear, all because he was not strong or powerful enough to cast an Unforgivable, which had lead to the Dark Lord making him a rent pet for his sycophants to enjoy. He already knew that that Macnair animal had had it in for him since he was as young as eight; that haggard face of his had always been secretly leering and raking him from top down lustfully when no one was watching. Tonight, he had nearly gotten his longstanding wish; that one eye bearing enough malicious lust for both itself and the patched one, made his skin crawl. He hated Macnair, and he had vowed not to find himself in his repulsive company without either of his parents with him, lest he found himself in an unfavourable situation.

The way his father described and ridiculed him hurt deeply. How he had pointed out his weaknesses and flaws damaged his ego beyond measure, but more so his feelings towards his father. He loved this man, truly, even though he cut such a cold figure, and now to be judged and thrown aside like this, to be whored out to a horde of Death Eaters... When Macnair had launched himself upon him, he hadn't searched out his father's eyes, for he had learned that every time he did so, he would only be met with emotionless, grey slates, so much like his own and yet so different. He didn't think he could achieve such coldness as his father had, but he was required to do so - required to be the spitting image of him, required to be as cold, calculating, commanding, powerful, and effortlessly elegant, and he was most definitely required to be able to cast any of the Unforgivables at will.

Into what did he dug himself? Why hadn't he practiced more on his curses? Why wasn't he capable of casting Unforgivables? Months of studying, months of fervent fascination, buy now they turn on him. It was too late now; he had to carry his fate. The only thing that made it better, so that he wouldn't be hurt badly, was his father's reputation, and he was sorry to have bitten a chunk out of it. But at least he wouldn't be raped. Well, he would be in a way, but it wouldn't be as violent; he would be doing things at his own pace. This, however, didn't make Draco feel any better about it; actually, it was quite to the contrary, and it broke his pride cleanly in two on top of him feeling a fundamental and acute sense of betrayal by his very own body.

"I'm sorry, Father," Draco mumbled feebly, and felt as though the very air on which his words floated seemed to jeer at them.

For a moment, Lucius looked down at his only son with an expression that shifted from inscrutable to frosty before he turned on the heel of his dragon-hide boot and swept from the room.