Strange Days

Strange days - Dorcas Malfoy

"You're not a Malfoy by any chance?" said one of the twins, looking at her with marked suspicion.

"No," answered the blonde young woman with a slight overtone of exasperation, "as I have already told your brother, I am Ingrid Bøland from Aarhus. Now, have you got anything else like these Extendable Ears?"

"Not for long-distance hearing, no. I think you should try a Spy Shop."

"Maybe, thank you. Anyway, these will do me just fine" said the young woman. She paid with a hint of hurry and left; for she had noticed a disturbance in the back shop, and suspected that the news had finally reached them. Two years ago, Draco Malfoy had been barred for life from the Weasleys' joke shop; and she did not think that the accident of a mere change of sex would make Fred and George reconsider their opinion of her.

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It had taken so little time; true, a time filled to overflowing with events, so that to look back at it gave one a slight whirling feeling, of there being too much to hold on; and to tell it would need an analytical capacity to divide and to measure, to understand and to compare, which she had lacked even when she was a boy. Instinctive talent as she - he - had been at Potions, that was one thing that his, her, his mentor, Severus Snape, had never managed to cultivate in her. Even to reflect on the causes of successful Potions brewing was beyond her: he, she, achieved those results by a kind of inspired guessing.

And there was something else: when Snape pushed too hard - when he tried to show Draco the connection between ideas and facts, between rules and results, in his Potions work - he often raised a surprising anger, a violent revolt against the very idea of finding connections, of finding a reason behind the intuitive success. Snape had come to feel that Draco actually did not want to understand himself; on one memorable night, five days before the final battle, he had told him so to his face - and a previously golden teacher-pupil relationship had snapped for ever, beyond recovery, beyond explaining.

That was the first of the events that had followed each other with such bewildering speed, that to catch up and connect them seemed so impossible. There had been that talk with his mother, that had so turned his world upside down, that even the Dark Lord's spell a few hours afterwards could not have done more; and there was that dreadful, humiliating session with Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey - or was that before? Yes, that was before. It was when he was reeling from the shame and the threat that he had tried to speak with his mother - only to find that there was worse at home than even his own enemies had been able to brew for him.

First Dumbledore, then. First being routed out of bed one evening and dragged before the Old Fool - yes, that was the night before the Dark Lord's attack. (Was it really? It felt so far away, so long ago already.) He had expected that, or so he thought; his parents ought to have extricated him from Hogwarts by now, since everyone knew that the Dark Lord would attack any time - but nothing had happened, and he was still in the enemy's lair. No doubt Dumbledore intended to use him as a hostage. Draco was not concerned; first, because the Dark Lord would not be held back by hostages, and, second, because it was common talk at home that the Dark Lord had put a spell of good fortune and protection on him when he was still in his mother's womb. So the Dark Lord had himself protected him from the Dark Lord's own power, and for that matter from Dumbledore's; and the Dark Lord would attack whether or not Dumbledore tried to make any use of him. Draco felt remarkably snug, wrapped in the warmth of the march of events as in a comforting, protective blanket: the coming victory of the Dark Lord was his shield and emotional support in the world. That was why he was so fond of throwing it in the faces of Potter and his odious little friends: he felt certain that, whatever they did, whatever temporary successes they managed, the future belonged to the Dark Lord and to those He favoured.

But it was not any of these hopes and fears - though they had dominated his mind for months - that faced him in Dumbledore's chambers. The first thing he saw were Dumbledore, Madam Pomfrey, and Professor Snape - he with whom he had just broken, so violently, so finally, only a few days earlier - all sitting behind Dumbledore's desk, stern and appraising as a panel of judges. Behind them, on this side of the desk sat a man and woman in their thirties and a girl of maybe thirteen or fourteen, obviously their daughter, suckling a baby. If Draco had looked at the girl with some care, he might have recognized her; but the whole family were obviously Muggles.

Dumbledore did not give him the time to settle into his usual arrogant posture. "Well, Mr.Malfoy," he drawled, in a deadly accurate imitation of Draco's own bored drawl, "what do you think of your son?"

For a minute, Draco literally could not believe his ears. And when his mind finally reconnected, he found that the things he really wanted to say - a string of insults and threats, against both Dumbledore and his wretched Muggle guests - simply could not come. He was under the effect of an enchantment such as he had never heard of, one whose seizing of him, for all his power, he had not felt, and which prevented him from saying anything hostile or disrespectful to the owner of the room or his guests. He seethed, and was silent.

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The Bøland family, for their part, were moving as if in a dream that would not give way to day. A year earlier, during a trip to Scotland, something had happened to their thirteen-year-old only daughter, Ingrid. At first it had been clear enough: resting by herself under a lake from which the ruins of a romantic old castle could dimly be seen, she had been seen by a boy, and they had made love. She had told them the whole thing, without any concern, when they had come back from the nearest village; and there had seemed to be nothing strange - they suspected her, in spite of her extreme youth, of having some experience already - except for the rather indecent hurry with which she had informed them, and the detail she had used. The Bølands had been rather shocked, and had lectured her on her manners.

But as the hours, and then the days, went by, father and mother had started feeling that there was something wrong here. It began with the lecture itself. Ingrid, usually a child of no little fire and independence, had listened to it with a passivity that was, from her, shocking, just one step from listlessness. She had never referred to the event again; and as the days went on, she had shown an alarming readiness to fall in with any wish of theirs, and a corresponding inability to make choices for herself. Sometimes they felt as though their daughter had been taken from them, and a Barbie doll put in her place.

Then, on the ferry back to Denmark, things had changed; changed with startling, frightful power. As they sat together in one of the ship's dining halls, both parents literally saw Ingrid's face shift. Suddenly, she let out a howl that horrified them and made every other diner jump, followed by heart-rending sobs; and before they knew what was happening, she had jumped to her feet and started running away. When they caught up with her, she was half-way to the gangway, and was speaking, in Danish broken by sobs, of throwing herself in the sea.

And then the more horrible thing. Suddenly her mood ceased; she stopped struggling in their arms, and her tears came to an end as if they had never flowed. Here she was back, the Barbie doll, the quiet, obedient, instruction-seeking, passive creature they had come to know - not only ready, but quite willing to come back down to the dining hall with them. As if dozens of fellow travellers had not seen her start howling and crying like a mad thing! They went back down, but had their lunch in a different hall.

From then on, the Barbie doll began to alternate with the wretched, weeping creature that had appeared so briefly and so memorably on board ship; the doll, apparently, being less and less frequently in control, and the weeping girl more and more. It was as though the mystery that had seized their daughter's mind, and forced it into that unwholesomely unanswering, submissive shape that had faced them for weeks, were slowly falling apart and giving way; letting go at last of the miserable, violated, weeping, but true and undominated mind of their Ingrid. She no longer howled in public or threatened to kill herself, but she still seemed terribly, uncontrollably sad; and she could not tell her what was the matter with her - until a growing bulge began to suggest answers.

They found a respected and open-minded psychiatrist in one of Denmark's leading universities, and it was she - by what techniques they could not understand - who made Ingrid tell the truth: that what had happened in Scotland was not consensual sex, but rape, and that the boy had simply made her - in the sense of "forced her to" - accept his advances, by what means she did not know. Indeed, it was not even a matter of advances: he had seen her, spoken a few words, gestured, and simply possessed her as he pleased.

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(Draco remembered that afternoon by the lake. It was the slight disarrangement of the child's skirt as she dozed in the sun, showing a certain length of leg and stocking, that had aroused him; and once aroused, he had simply helped himself, using a few elementary spells to force her will into a shape that pleased him, and then leaving without any idea that he would ever meet again.)

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The story was so strange that the Bølands had trouble accepting it. They had to believe the desperate sincerity of their daughter; and to make matters worse, the psychiatrist informed them that, as long as she had been in her strange conditioned Barbie-doll state, everything that she had consented to do had in effect been part of the original rape. Her real will was still there, aware, screaming for release; as she had appeared, for weeks and weeks, that docile and responsive plaything, the after-effects of words and gestures had been with her, making her do as she was told; and the horror in her first howl of pain was partly aimed at them. Without wanting to, without any knowledge that they were doing so, the Bølands had all but taken part in their daughter's rape. Consciously, the girl knew the difference; unconsciously, it was not so easy. For weeks, she had been driven by their words as by the orders of her own rapist. It was touch and go whether she could ever regard them with affection again.

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It was through their doctor that word eventually reached Hogwarts. The medical profession, especially the doctors of the mind, have many contacts, some of which they do not easily reveal. The magical manipulation of a mind, and magical rape to go with it, could not be kept for ever from ears who were placed to hear such things; and so it was that, seven months after their return to Denmark, their daughter's doctor asked Mr. and Mrs. Bøland to meet her in private.

"Hello, Lars, Anne-Mette... sit down. I think you had better sit down to hear what I have to tell you."

The place was like thousands of psychiatrists' studies all over the world, homely, slightly shabby and lined with books. There always is something reassuring about a book-lined room: it suggests that the owner is a person you can trust, a wise person, one who has absorbed the many and deep things between those covers. So Lars and Anne-Mette Bøland felt more at ease than they would otherwise have, given the nervous and tense manner of Dr. Ruth Jorgensen; and they did not notice some things that were subtly different about the room - that some corners seemed darker, that it was difficult to look anywhere but where Dr.Jorgensen stood.

"I have made some tea, if you want. Well, you can imagine what I want to talk about."

"Ingrid?"

"Well... To be precise... Her condition. Surely it has struck you that it is a very peculiar kind of condition?"

"Yes, doctor, but we are not psychiatrists."

"Well, it was strange to me as well... and I am. Some of its features suggest what was reported of split-personality disorder or even schizophrenia, but she had neither most of the typical symptoms nor any of the physical imbalances occasionally associated. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure... But, to begin with, you do think that I am sane, don't you?"

This was so strange an opening that the Bølands did not know how to respond. Anne-Mette hazarded: "Well... I think so... I mean, we wouldn't send our daughter to you if we didn't trust you..."

"Good girl. Well, suppose I told you that magic is real?"

"Well... I mean, in a metaphorical sense..."

"No, no, no, Lars. I mean as real as the moon. As real as your nose." And suddenly they saw the teapot rise from its tray, pour tea into each of three teacups; one scoop of sugar for Anne-Mette, two sugars and lemon for Dr.Jorgensen, and no sugar at all for Lars; and the three cups fly to their respective hands. Then the shadows seemed to lift from the left side of the room, or else their eyes focused and saw for the first time - and they saw an incredibly tall, incredibly bearded old man with half-moon glasses and twinkling eyes, dressed in a silken cape shining with all the colours of the rainbow, who spoke to them in fluent Danish.

"Good evening, Mr. Bøland, Mrs. Bøland. I am Albus Dumbledore."

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And now here they were, with Ingrid and her new-born baby; so young, so much a child herself, and so shaky and fearful from the after-effects of her rape. And there was the boy who had done it. A boy, not a man, thought both Lars and Anne-Mette as Ingrid struggled not to look at him and held her own child closer to her for comfort. As a matter of fact, Draco looked even younger than his seventeen years, fresh-faced and immature; even the sneer he threw over his face in imitation of his elders did not help to make him look any older. Lars looked at his daughter in horror; she was almost trembling, he could tell, holding on to little Lars Jr. (as they had baptized him) as if to a doll - or a security blanket - her eyes darting to and away from the white-faced boy, scared and - what was worse - self-hating. Lars rested his hand on her shoulder, trying to give her some comfort; but he himself was trembling inwardly. It was dreadful that such an immature-looking youngster, hardly old enough to vote, could have done with his daughter's soul as he knew he had, that such power should be in such hands.

Draco was simply annoyed that what he regarded as a minor piece of self-indulgence had so come back to him; at a time, too, when his thoughts were on something so immeasurably more important. If the Old Fool had wanted to tell him off for it, why in the Dark Lord's name not wait until morning?

Dumbledore's eyes grew colder. "Mr.Malfoy? We are waiting for an answer."

Finally, Draco found the words he wanted. "I have no answer to give. Whatever happens to Muggles and Mudbloods is no concern of mine." Madam Pomfrey gasped in indignation, and Snape turned to her with a bleak expression that said, as clearly as words could, I told you so. The boy is beyond redemption.

Dumbledore's face did not alter at all; it had been cold before, it remained cold now. "Mr.Malfoy, you have one opportunity to do your duty, and this is it. If you do not agree to provide for your son, you will not only be expelled from Hogwarts in disgrace, but will have your face splashed all over the DAILY PROPHET and the Muggle press. You will face prosecution and Azkaban. What you have done is beneath contempt, and we are only giving you this opportunity because punishing you would do nothing for your son."

Draco's nostrils flared. "As you very well know... er, Professor... there are things that are to take place very soon. You will never have the time to do anything to me, and once things have changed, this sort of matter will be treated with proper consideration for wizarding rank and privilege. A mule is not the brother or the son of a horse, however it was born." His words, his speech patterns, his ideas and arguments all aped those of his father; but, in a face so visibly immature, so deprived of presence and impressiveness, they sounded even worse - like an evil caricature of something already evil. It was at this point that Snape snapped, showing his true face as he had not done for years.

"Two hundred points from Slytherin, Mr.Malfoy. You are expelled forthwith, but you will be held in Slytherin under arrest until the Dark Lord has been returned to the darkness where he belongs. Then you will be delivered to Azkaban. Meanwhile, everyone in Slytherin will be informed of the reason. As you know perfectly well, those who won't despise you as a rapist will despise you for having a Muggle-born son, and those who are so base as not to despise you even for that will still not touch you with a bargepole, because you are going to jail. Your personal prestige is destroyed. As of now, Mr. Malfoy, you are nothing."

He then went on in a more thoughtful tone. "It may interest you to know that, as long as you have known me, I have been a spy for Albus Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. And God knows I have tried. I have done everything in my power to make you appreciate the world as it is, the way that things exist and interact, the reason why your acts are always significant, why you always have to understand the import of what you do. You absolutely and positively refused to do so. Well, now the consequences of your actions will catch up with you, and you will not be able to dodge them, however hard you try."

And the spells in Dumbledore's rooms had prevented Draco from responding to Snape as he felt Snape deserved.

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Before they left the Headmaster's office, Snape cast a minor but unbreakable spell on Draco, to make sure he did not make a run for it and escape Hogwarts. Everyone, after all, knew that the day of the final battle was more or less here, and, apart from his crimes, it was unthinkable that Draco should be allowed to repeat what he had heard from Snape about his real loyalties. Then they left together for Slytherin, where Draco was to be imprisoned, Draco more or less bound to Snape by the spell. Draco walked sullenly alongside the black-clad Potions master in the gloom of the castle corridors, each busy with thoughts as angry, vindictive and savage as the night. Draco thought with rage and disgust of the seven years he had spent with the man now walking alongside him as jailer; years, he had thought, of mutual confidence and esteem - and from the beginning, he now knew, the man was a traitor. The thought made him almost physically ill; ironically, it had something of the same effect on him (if in a far lesser degree) as rape had on Ingrid. He wanted to vomit. When the Dark Lord won, he would beg to have the punishment of Snape, or at least to be allowed to witness it. But Snape was waiting for the hour when he could finally reveal his true loyalties and show his hatred for the master he had pretended to serve for years, knowing as nobody else knew how vile and revolting he was; his mind was on the vengeance that could finally be taken on all the evils he had witnessed, had been forced to take part in, had not been able to prevent, and on the final exposure, beyond recovery or disguise, of all the highly-placed villains who had shared in unhallowed feasts with him.

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The ugly surprises of that night were not finished yet. When Snape and Draco entered Snape's office, the first thing Snape did was to throw a handful of dust into the still burning fireplace. A head - a head that Draco knew all too well - appeared in the flames.

"Good evening, Severus. What news?" said Narcissa Malfoy without preliminaries.

"I'm afraid there is nothing good about it, Narcissa. All the things I told you about turned out to be true."

"Is that so," answered the fair-haired head in the flames, making it more a statement than a question. "Well, in that case, I would like a few words with that thing over there." And Lucius Malfoy's wife stepped out of the fireplace, composed and elegant, but clearly furious. Severus Snape left the room - and Draco was relieved, for a second: he had the opportunity to inform his mother of the housemaster's treason.

"Listen, Mother, there is something very important to tell -"

"To begin with," retorted Narcissa with deadly calm, as a spell suddenly silenced Draco, "you are no son of mine. No son of mine would have committed something so vile and revolting as raping a thirteen-year-old girl. And second, nothing you have to say is of the slightest interest to me.

"You seem to think that being born a Malfoy entitles you to anything you want; and that reflects on me. I have failed in my duty as a mother, since it seems I have not taught you that there are things that one simply does not touch. You have made the name Malfoy contemptible among wizards. You may think that your father does what he wishes, when he wishes, but I can assure you that your father would cut his throat before he did what you have done. And if he did not, I would cut it for him.

"Rape demeans you. Even the rape of a Muggle. I don't care about Muggles, but I do care about standards. Even your father, in spite of the political necessities he has to face" (both Draco and Narcissa knew that she was referring to murder and torture for the Dark Lord's advantage), "hates the very thought of theft and plunder. He would not take anything that is not his by right, for it would diminish him as a lord. Where you got this idea that you can go and just make free with what you want, I have no idea; it was not from either of us.

"Luckily, I can inform you that the House of Malfoy is not compromised by your crimes. You will be glad" (she grinned cruelly) "to know that I am three months pregnant. When you are sent to Azkaban, the wizarding world will be informed that you have been disinherited by High Deed of Patria Potestas, and that the succession to the title and lands of Malfoy has been vested in your younger brother." Narcissa then became thoughtful. "The ways of enchantments are strange. The Dark Lord cast a spell on us to insure that the Heir of Malfoy would grow up straight and uninjured until he could in turn provide an heir. The supposed Heir disqualifies himself; so, all of a sudden, I am pregnant at forty... and let us hope" (returning to her astringent tone) "that the next Heir is less of a disgrace to the name."

And she had left Draco, shattered and utterly alone, without even giving him the chance of answering, let alone informing her about Snape.

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And it was no more than twenty-four hours later that the Dark Lord made his move. It had been painful, of course; more painful than Draco had imagined possible. It was about two o'clock in the morning, as almost every resident in Hogwarts had woken up screaming, torn from sleep by pain equal to the worst curses; for to have one's body magically rearranged is horrible beyond description. And then the discovery... hundreds of children swarming out of dormitories and corridors, screaming, horrified; recovering from terrible pain only to find themselves changed beyond imagination.

But for Draco it was, perhaps, even worse. He had never expected to have to suffer for one of his Lord's plans. Yes, if he were asked, he would answer that he knew that the Dark Lord was ruthless (and good for him, he would add: he at least can see what has to be done), but there always was, at the back of his mind, a sense that he and his family had some sort of entitlement or claim on Voldemort's benevolence. He always thought as though whatever the Dark Lord did to win a battle would not affect him or his family; as though they could expect some special consideration. When, staggering from his bed to his bathroom, he first began to realize what had been done to him, he nearly fainted.

Even so, Draco had not lost hope. He understood almost at once who had performed the spell, and why; and once his mind had cleared, hope had risen tumultuously within him (or was it already, her?). This was - this must be - the day he had been waiting for all his life; the day the Dark Lord takes over, and the cleansing begins. Thoughts of his condition nearly faded; he walked slowly out to the courtyard, barely noticing the screaming rout of students around him, devoured by visions of the future. He was walking slowly because his heart was beating too fast, his breath was almost stopped; because his excitement was so overwhelming that it drew all of him inwards. Images of triumph, vengeance, blood, poured over his mind like water. He walked over to the gateway, stood, and waited.

And waited.

First it was merely impatience, the overspilled froth of happiness. Then the first creeping tendrils of doubt. Then the sudden, shattering sight: two figures, one extremely tall and bearded, the other slim and carrying a naked sword; and a black, unrecognisable corpse floating along behind them. For a second, Draco's mind rebelled against the obvious conclusion: the corpse could be anybody's, it must be a trick of Dumbledore's... No. No. Who else could have died in battle against those two? No. NO!

That was when Draco's world really came crashing around him. Small motions of delusory hope kept shaking in his mind, but they were nothing more than the remains of his shattered expectations. Deep down, he knew that he had lost; and he had lost in the worst way possible. The sorcerer who had changed him into... the name came to him on a wave of bitter laughter... Dorcas Malfoy, would never change him back again; and if there were any sorcerers left who had that power, they were his enemies.

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Only one thing worked to his advantage. In all the chaos, with students eddying and flowing around Dumbledore, nobody noticed him. He calmly walked out of Hogwarts and out of its magical precincts. Once he was beyond the belt of magical protection that prevented Apparation, he called on a skill he had only recently learned - and, with a crack, he was in London.

At first, he had intended to go straight home to Wiltshire. But a second before he Apparated, he thought better of it. With Mother in her current funny mood, and Father as good as on his way to Azkaban or exile, his - her - welcome at the Manor was dubious. Before he went there, he wanted to equip himself... herself... with enough gear to find out if anything was going on.

Draco/Dorcas Apparated in Knockturn Alley, where nobody was apt to question the appearance of a strange witch or anything she did next. He swiftly changed his clothes - which still hung loose about the new female body, remembering in their size and shape the boy he had been - into ordinary female gear. And then he went to Diagon Alley and Fred and George Weasley's joke shop.

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Dorcas had been so much the object of others' power in the last few days - spellbound and spoken to, compelled and driven, by Dumbledore, Snape, Narcissa, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all - that she had almost forgotten his/her power; it felt wonderful, now, when, for the first time in weeks, she was able to take action on her own, not be forced to do this and that by someone else. She had forgotten her own power, which was considerable. Buying the Extendable Ears, even, had been almost a shock. And now he was relishing the way that hearing his parents' conversation, unnoticed and hidden in the upper floor, put them under his power rather than the opposite.

"Well, my love," he heard his father say, "it seems that I gambled and lost."

"It does, doesn't it? I wish it had gone another way."

"No, you don't. Not really. You don't wish that the whole world should have become one vast slaughterhouse, with your husband in command of the butchers." His tone was so bitter that Draco was startled.

"Well... let us say that I wish the war had never started. That you had never been asked to make a choice between parties."

"Oh, yes, I agree. And I will never say I did not have fun. Being a Death Eater had its advantages... especially when word started creeping around... nobody seemed to know whether they should be kind to me because I was rich and important or because I would not think twice about avada kedavraing them if they bothered me. Merlin, there were times when I simply did not know how I managed to keep a straight face... and have you noticed how many suppliers never bothered to send in their bills?"

"That was because I made sure they were paid in time."

"Oh, OW! Darling, you destroy my male self-respect! You should have let me believe that it was because they were terrified of me!"

"They were, Lucius love. I assure you. Utterly terrified."

"No, you can't unsay it. I am undone and overthrown. Not even my butcher and baker and candlestick maker fear me!" And both husband and wife dissolved into laughter.

Dorcas listened in disbelief. Not only to hear her parents exchanging silly schoolboy jokes on the edge of ruin and Azkaban, but to hear the disrespect with which they spoke of the Dark Lord and his party was probably the most unsettling experience s/he had yet had. Draco had grown up wrapped in the prestige of the Dark Lord's protective spell and in the hope of his victory; and now his own father was speaking like a scoffer, and his mother... her tone was not clear, exactly. But there was more than an implication that she was a traitor.

Lucius' voice grew serious again. "The only good thing is that the House of Malfoy has a new heir. If you had not become pregnant, I have no doubt that the estates would have been confiscated after my arrest."

"Especially after what Draco has done." Dorcas, in her room upstairs, grew pale and angry.

"Especially after what Draco has done," repeated Lucius. "You know, we got something really wrong with that boy."

"You're not going to Disenchant him, are you? I think..." Narcissa's voice was suddenly smothered; after a few seconds, Dorcas heard her giggle, and realized that she had just been kissed.

"Darling, not that I mind, but what was that for?"

"For the caress to my injured pride, Narcie. You just let me know that you think I am a great enough wizard to perform sex-change spells. Thank you, sweetheart, but I am not."

"Oh."

"Before last night, there were only five sorcerers in Britain who knew the spell: Dumbledore, the Dark Lord, and the three members of the Ministry Office for Extreme Transformations. Before he went to Hogwarts, the Da... well, Voldemort... murdered all three, Vickson, Prewett and Carlisle. Then he was killed in turn."

"So Dumbledore...?"

"Is the only one left. And even if we did not want Draco to learn his... her lesson, I rather think that none of us would want to be in debt to Dumbledore, would we now?"

"No, indeed."

Dorcas had heard more than enough. With a crack that reverberated through the house, she Apparated back to Scotland, leaving her parents to realize that their conversation had been overheard.

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Morning in the Hogwarts Infirmary.

"But I have to go back to my own sex! As a woman, I cannot claim the succession of the House of Malfoy. It will fall into abeyance if I do not take it over."

"You are out of time," said Madam Pomfrey nastily, "miss Malfoy. There are already two legitimate successors in the line of Malfoy. Your mother has agreed to take care of Lars Bøland jr. and acknowledge him as her own grandchild, in addition to the baby she is bearing. It seems she feels that the House of Malfoy is going to need some strengthening in time to come."

For a second, Draco/Dorcas was almost literally speechless at this treason. "You mean that my father is under arrest, the Dark Lord is dead, and my mother is still free? And adopting Muggles? By God, I could tell you things... She's in it as deep..."

"...as I ever was, Miss Malfoy," came a cold voice from the other end of the room. "Your mother, like me, has long been a spy for the Order. Indeed, it will help your father's case that he knew for a long while and said nothing; apparently, he still loved her too much to give her away to the Dark Lord." Snape's long, tall, black-clad frame uncoiled itself from a rickety chair. He chuckled softly to himself. "It became almost a game among them, how much she could find out to tell his enemies, and how much he could keep from her... sometimes he would surprise with some pointless or out-of-date piece of information, just to show her. And sometimes she would not tell him that she knew already... oh, it was a strange marriage, your parents' marriage."

"But she loved him, and he loved her. I wonder whether you realize that they put up with you because you were a means to an end: to further the Malfoy bloodline? Well, now there are two more, so you lose your role. Your mother, like me, bet on the winning horse. You bet on the losing one; and you then were silly enough to go and annoy her. As you know, she is very angry with you for your rape of the Muggle girl; and I gather that she agrees with Professor Dumbledore and me that there is some poetic justice in making you find out what a woman's life is like."

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A woman. She was a woman now, in a world dominated by her enemies; in a world where she could find no safe support, no reliable friend or backer.

Dorcas looked into a mirror, for the first time since the horror began. She inspected herself critically. She made quite an attractive woman - perhaps a bit lantern-jawed, but the smooth complexion, natural fair hair and grey eyes made up for that. She looked at her body: long limbs, a narrow waist and a slender build added up to an excellent figure. She would much rather, she bleakly thought, have been ugly. She was still dependent on the Malfoy estates, and she knew all too well how they had grown down the centuries... arranged marriages and dynastic alliances. And alliances would be so much more important now that the head of the family was in Azkaban. She thought with horror of that allusion of her mother's, "find out what a woman's life is like"; to her, it suggested so much more than it said. And good looks meant that an arranged marriage would be so much easier to arrange... there must be dozens of elderly, politically powerful wizards eager to totter down the aisle on the arm of an attractive young blonde. And wizarding history proved that the knowledge that a woman had once been a man (or the reverse) added a touch of perverted charm to the union. Dorcas knew that part all too well: how many times had he sat up with pornographic "history books" telling in detail all the dirtier parts of the wizarding past, after curfew in Slytherin or Malfoy Manor? How many times had he masturbated at the thought of those semi-enslaved, feminized brides, and the rumours of what their husbands liked to do with them?

So that is how it ended. All but disowned by her family, yet rejected by the victorious party - the party which, in fairness (as Dorcas understood it) ought to have helped her if her own gave him the boot. No better prospect than an arranged marriage and being a good wife for whoever her parents sold her to in order to raise the fallen popularity and reinforce the political standing of her family - and that meant, she thought bitterly, of her father himself, of her mother, and of the two usurpers, Lucius Jr. and Lars Jr.

No, she said furiously to herself: that is not how it will end. I am the heir of the house of Malfoy, and I am a man. If it takes me years to do it, I will take my inheritance back.