Surfeit Of Curses

Draco hadn't been able to get beyond Chapter Five in his book. The first thing Lucius had done when he saw Draco was order him to destroy the "Muggle inspired trash novel from a no-account publisher", so Draco had pointed his wand at the book and murmured "Conflagrio," then shut his eyes, so he didn't have to see the pages burst into flames.

Earlier that afternoon, Draco had spent almost an hour in front of his mirror, getting rid of the hex marks on his face and arms; the ones which weren't visible could wait until after dinner. It had required enough concentration that he'd been able to ignore the family's two remaining house elves, who were unpacking his school trunk and emptying the last shelves from his groaningly full bookcases. Since he was old enough to turn the pages, his father had brought home books from the family's publishing house almost every night, and since Draco started at Hogwarts, a few times each week, his daily package from home had a tiny book or two tucked among the sweets, which he would Remaximize only when away from his schoolmates' eyes.

But all those books were things his father wanted him to read: military history, scholarly tracts on the superiority of Pure Magical blood (his father had written the foreword for one of those) and on rare occasions, reprints of Muggle novels which described the corruptness of Muggle culture. While watching the elves take all his books away, he thought about one he'd read during his second year about farm animals that became Muggles, and another about how Muggles in America treated the ordinary women they suspected of being witches. Draco had been horrified by such bizarre perceptions, and spent winter break during his second year staying up almost all night in the empty Slytherin common room, avoiding nightmares about hangings and burnings.

Of course, he always read everything Lucius sent to him. Owls flew to Hogwarts from Malfoy Manor with questions for Draco to answer about the books, and he dutifully sent back his replies, explaining why a certain charm cast by Grindlewald enabled the destruction of a Siberian forest, or how Muggle use of nonmagical creatures showed the importance of proper control of transfiguration spells. But ever since third year, and his first trip to Hogsmeade, which was also his first time inside a real bookstore, he had been making at least some of his own choices about what to read. All the militaristic novels from Lucius had created in him an interest in these alternative history books, but he had left most of his collection under a loose stone in the floor of his dorm, carefully wrapped in an anti-mildew spell, and had only brought two books back home.

And now, he had only one still hidden away, was risking unpleasant consequences for the one Lucius had just confiscated.

He never thought of these sessions in Lucius Malfoy's study as punishment. They just were. Every evening when he and his father were home, for almost a dozen years, before he was allowed to have dinner, almost from the time he was able to speak in complete sentences, Lucius and Draco had their Talk.

Before he had gone away to school, and still during school breaks, the Talk always followed a similar pattern. Draco would be summoned to Lucius' study, and usually had to wait for his father to arrive, standing on the rug in front of the thick mahogany desk, while the heads of various magical creatures that hung on the walls growled and bared their teeth at him; there was still an empty place for the Hippogriff head his father had hoped to hang a year before, next to the vampire's skull on a plinth. When Lucius would finally arrive, he would usually be carrying a flagon of dark, viscous liquid, which he always placed on the same corner of the same low table. Without a word to his son, he would cross the floor to an alcove, and settle himself in an hard, dark, leather armchair; Draco, on cue, would move to the matching ottoman.

Draco would lean forward, and Lucius would bring his forehead to meet his son's, with a blunt bump.

And then Lucius would begin the questions, the critical comments. First, biting questions about his day, inspired either by the reports Narcissa had made when he got home or by Draco's written account of everything he had done since he awoke. Next, exasperated questions about his Quidditch practice, and whether he had read any of the books Lucius had left on his night table. Then, quizzes about the details in the articles he had marked in the paper at the breakfast table, whether a certain decree from the Ministry of Magic was pigheaded or merely ignorant, or the political and historical background behind a particular announcement from that sessions' Warlock's Convention. If Draco answered too slowly, or incorrectly, or, worse, inappropriately, Lucius would knock his head into Draco's, again and again, sometimes softly, sometimes hard enough that Draco saw stars when he closed his eyes. But the knocks never seemed to affect Lucius.

And on these ordinary days, after as few as twenty minutes, or as long as two hours, when he had satisfied himself that he had asked every question he wanted Draco's answer to, Lucius would stand up, say something like, "Another day wasted. I hope you'll find the strength in you to do better tomorrow," then turn and walk out to the dining room, with Draco following a few steps behind.

In some ways, the Talk was like reading from a script. In other ways, it was all improvisation. It required all Draco's concentration to listen to the every question and create a quick reply, especially a reply that would match what Lucius wanted to hear. Over a decade, Draco had developed the ability to change his answer mid-sentence if the look on Lucius' face, in his eyes, or the tone in his voice told Draco that what he was saying was wrong, stupid, not appropriate for a Malfoy. It sometimes worked.

On the unusual days, the days when Lucius came home frustrated by some underling's incompetence, angered by some shopping spree of Narcissa's, or otherwise troubled by some machinations in the wider world, the questions and criticisms were more relentless. On the rare days when he came into the study smiling, his lips thinly curled, the tone of the Talk was lighter, and the head bumps fewer.

But every Talk on the day that Draco came home for a school break was a long one, because Lucius always had hundreds of questions about the term and Hogwarts, and the questions about the outside world would be saved for the dinner (and sometimes the breakfast) table. Even though Draco's daily letters home were full of his task lists, book reports, Quidditch practice summaries, and almost word for word repetitions of whatever speech Dumbledore had made to the school, or comments about things (other than potions) which Snape had made in class or in his rare visits to the Slytherin common room, Lucius seemed to enjoy hearing the reports again. And if Draco mentioned a sentence or a gesture during the Talk that had never made it into one of his parchment-roll long letters home, Lucius would gesture with his wand, making yet another black mark on the tablet on his desk.

And on the first evening home from his fourth year, with Lucius distracted by the unpleasant attention paid by the rival Warlock Press/Digest newspaper to the disappearance of his star reporter Rita Skeeter, the Talk was likely to be unpleasant. Draco had already decided to hold his one card until he truly needed it.

Unsurprisingly, Lucius' first round of questions was all about the torrent of curses that had knocked him out on the train. How could Draco let down his guard around a Mudblood, especially when she was accompanied by that Potter boy and that Weasley? "Why have I wasted hours teaching you about throwing and blocking curses?" "Why were you so rude to your mother in the car?"

Put a little blame on Crabbe and Goyle, that's plausible. Let him know that it was five against one, plus two useless idiots. Nobody can win when the odds are that uneven...Ask for some extra practice this next week, extra reading, extra anything that will show that I never want this to happen again, that will prove to him that I want to be strong, want to fulfill his expectations...Explain that the aftereffect of the curses and the hexes made me bleary on the ride home...Offer to do whatever it takes to make it up to her for the words, to him for the embarrassment.

And somehow, however he put those thoughts into words, Lucius accepted them. Two hours of practice each evening after dinner for the next week, working on throwing and blocking curses, not just one against one, but three, four, five against one. It would be painful, Draco knew, dealing with so much hexing, but he'd try to show Lucius that he had the strength, and could develop the power, to meet his expectations.

Lucius began a rapid-fire series of questions about the final days at school and Draco's marks, then asked "And what did the old man say about that student?"

play dumb, like you don't know exactly what he's referring to, like you haven't been hearing whispers for days that he was there, that he saw everything, that he knows what You Know Who is planning. don't give him knowledge he could use to hurt, to kill...

"He told us that the Dark Lord had killed him. He said," Draco fought to remember Dumbledore's exact words. "He said that the Ministry had told him that he was not to tell us that Dark Lord was involved."

"Did he say 'the Dark Lord' or did he use our master's real name?"

He's not my master. And I don't want him to be...

"Dumbledore used his name. He isn't afraid to do so - not like the rest of the teachers. Dumbledore also said that some of the parents will be horrified that he told us - word for word, he said 'either because they will not be-lieve that Lord Voldemort has returned, or because they think I should not tell you so.'" Draco paused, pulling his eyes from the rug to his father's face, without moving his head. His neck was starting to ache from bending forward.

Lucius simply said, "Continue."

"Dumbledore went on to say that "he believes that the truth is generally preferable to lies, and that any attempt to pretend that Cedric died as the result of an accident, or some sort of blunder of his own, is an insult to his memory. Then he made us drink a toast to Cedric's memory, and then..." Draco paused again. Lucius' reactions to any mention of Harry Potter were generally something he liked to be far away from. Last time, his ears had been ringing for hours. "He asked us to stand, and drink to Harry Potter, because, um, he thought that Potter had, um, showed the sort of bravery that few wizards have ever shown in facing the Dark Lord." Draco felt himself trying to shrink away from himself, without moving a muscle, bracing himself for Lucius' likely rage.

It didn't come. Lucius pulled back into his chair, tapping his wand against his knee. Green and blue sparks shot towards the waterglasses on a nearby table, tipping them over so they spilled their contents onto the rug. Draco jumped off the ottoman dropping to the floor so he could put the glasses to rights, but before he could reach them, Lucius pointed his wand towards him and said, "Sit. Did I say you could get up?"

No sir, of course you didn't say I could, but I am fifteen and if I want to straighten up the glasses that you just knocked all over the floor, I will do just...

"No, sir. I apologize for my actions. I just thought," Draco began, sitting down.

"No, you didn't think," Lucius interrupted "You just acted, and acted like a servant. Stupid boy. Pay attention to me. Focus on me. Did you toast that Potter boy?"

"Of course I didn't!" Draco tried to sound affronted at the suggestion. You should have. From the rumors that were flying around school, he showed more guts that night than anyone expected. Why can't you be brave enough to stand up to Lucius for one moment, and say something real? "I did stand up for the toast for Cedric, though."

"Why on earth did you do something as stupid as that?" Lucius leaned forward so quickly that Draco didn't have time to steady his neck, and the bump almost made him tumble off the back of the ottoman. "You beat that Hufflepuff in Quidditch twice! He was nothing compared to what you could be, what you should be if you paid attention to me once in a while! And he didn't even try to defend himself when the Dark Lord destroyed him!" Lucius grabbed Draco's wrists and held them tightly, punctuating his words with a dozen bumps. Draco shut his eyes and held himself still, willing himself not to react to Lucius' words or the headache that was growing behind his eyes.

Draco fought to interrupt Lucius' tirade and make his voice heard. "I didn't want people to talk about why I didn't stand. I was afraid that it would call too much attention to you, sir."

"I wasn't told anything. Nobody would dare say anything to my face, but people were whispering, saying that Potter said you were there, with the Dark Lord, that night."

Lucius stood up and began pacing around the room. "So Potter was saying things? Nobody said anything about anyone else? Anyone other than Potter and that Hufflepuff boy?"

"Yes. I mean, no. Nothing about anyone else." Why? Why does he look nervous? Can't ask. Want to know, but I know the rule. Don't ask questions. If the time is right, I'll be told, and if the time is wrong, I'll just wish I hadn't asked.

"If you're asking about people who other students were talking about, nobody's discussed anyone but them, at least not that I've heard. And all Dumbledore said after that was that the Triwizard thing was set up to develop links between the different schools, and everyone from Beauxbatons and especially Durmstrang are welcome at Hogwarts in the future."

Lucius stopped pacing. "He said 'especially Durmstrang?'"

"He didn't exactly say, but he definitely implied it," Draco added slowly, watching his father's face and preparing to change the description of Dumbledore's tone if he had to. Lucius' expression didn't change; he seemed to be focusing on a shelf of books on the wall behind Draco.

Then, Draco's expression changed to one of surprise. Lucius did something he rarely did during a Talk - he asked Draco a question that didn't call for repetition or an expression of liability and remorse. "Do you know why he implied this 'especially Durmstrang' idea?" Draco replied that he didn't know exactly why. He'd had a suspicion that it had something to do with Karkaroff's absence from the Leaving Feast, and more than a few of the Durmstrang students had let it be known that he hadn't been around since the night of the third task, but he didn't know any details.

"I shouldn't even be telling you this - our Master <Not mine!> doesn't want me to tell you anything about our preparations for what he expects is coming, but Dumbledore said that because he knows that Durmstrang will not be a school next year. It is being renovated this summer, into a base for our Master. <I said, not mine! Why can't I just say it?> Karkaroff - how shall I say this - will not be needing it anymore." Lucius stopped and turned back to Draco, with a small smile on his lips and his arms crossed over his chest. "And that is the primary reason why you and your mother are leaving the country for the summer, for a relaxing vacation, a lot of Pegasus polo, and a chance to get some color into your cheeks."

The sudden change in subjects caught Draco off guard. He thought that nothing his father said during a Talk could startle him, but the switch from what Draco assumed were horrible things happening to Karkaroff, to a summer in the Pyrenees with his mother's family was wholly unexpected. All he could think to say was, "Um."

Lucius was obviously nervous about telling Draco anything more about any Death Eater plots. He said, "You're smart enough to realize that given everything that's happened over the past week, there will be no chance for you to visit anyone in England this summer, aren't you? I am certainly too busy to spend time with you, your usual summertime tutors are all very preoccupied, and nobody wants to have to worry about a self centered adolescent."

Draco's bit his lips and stopped himself from crying out, "I am not! I could help you!" Why on earth would you want to help him? And what would you help with ? Levitating muggles? Questioning prisoners for You Know Who? Polishing torture instruments? He just asked his father, "Are you the only one who thinks of me that way?"

"Nobody spends any time thinking of you, other than me, and, for some reason, the Dark Lord has deigned to mention you, along with a few other teenagers. His instructions to me, and a few others, were to keep you as far from the planning as possible until you turn sixteen, so for the next seven months," Lucius sneered, "you're supposed to continue your little boy studies and your little boy Quidditch games, and when you're old enough, you'll learn why. I don't even know why - if I had my way, you'd never go back to that school, with that old fool corrupting your mind with ideas of brotherhood and the irrelevance of bloodlines and some concept called 'cooperation'."

Draco could tell that Lucius was working himself up to one of his rants about the evils of Muggle influence on wizards, and, focusing on his breathing, let the words wash over him, nodding every so often, and but really thinking about anything he could do over the next few months to postpone the day when he would have to submit to the man his father called "Master."

It wasn't that Draco agreed with Dumbledore and his crowd. There was a place for people who didn't come from wizarding families in the magical world, and that place was in service to the old wizarding families at least for five or six generations, until they became acclimated to the Magical world. The Manor was almost completely staffed by Muggle-born witches and wizards, who took daily potions to make them more compliant with Lucius and Narcissa's demands. They had their wands which they used to cook, clean and organize the house, moving silently through the rooms and halls, supervising the elves, sleeping in the attic, serving for a few years, until the affect of the potion lessened. Then, they were unceremoniously cast out with a bag of galleons, to struggle to reenter either the wizarding world, which was difficult with the stigma of having worked for the Malfoys, or to rejoin a Muggle world where they had not lived for a decade.

A zap of sparks to his arm shook Draco out of his reverie, and focused his attention back on Lucius, who was saying, in a voice hard enough to cut glass, "That school seems to have annihilated your focus! Since you seem committed to paying no attention to me, after dinner, you'll be spending a few hours in Concentration." Draco swallowed his sigh by grinding his teeth together. "I do hope that it will help you remember that a slipup in your focus has serious consequences." Stupid, worthless, useless mind, wandering away like that, deserves to be punished, deserves anguish and misery...

Lucius crossed the floor and sat back in his armchair, and stared at Draco's unblinking, unfocused eyes. He let out a long breath, and said, "It's necessary. You'll understand when you're older."

"You've said that before."

Lucius went on as if Draco hadn't even spoken that defiant sentence. "I am going into dinner. It's been a damned long day, with one crisis after another, that damned reporter's still missing, and some crusading freelancer claims to have precognition and wants to do an investigation into the Dark Lord based on her..."

Something Lucius had said switched a light on in Draco's memory. The reporter. He could live without the piano he had hoped to trade that knowledge for, since he had an enchanted Fake Book, with an enchanted keyboard that he could play to lessen the need to work his fingers on real ivory keys. Better to have no piano than to spend hours in Concentration. "I know where she is, Father."

Lucius paused. "Where who is?"

"Rita Skeeter." Draco continued in a rush of words, because if he didn't get them out fast enough, Lucius would never listen to him. "Hermione Granger, you know, the mudblood, has her in a jar, she found out that she's an Animagus and threatened her with exposure and told her that she'd release her if Rita promised not to write any more stories about Potter."

It seemed like a light had gone on in Lucius' eyes. "She's in a jar? In a Muggle house?" He laughed harshly. "I told my team to look for a beetle, but they said that would be impossible to find, and now my own son, a completely ignorant boy, managed to learn what all my investigators could not! How wonderful!" Lucius stood up, pulled Draco off the ottoman, and threw his arms around him for less than a moment. Draco stiffened, shocked by the sudden contact, and as Lucius released him, he shuddered. "Draco, I have a very important task for you - let's see if you can be useful at something. I want you to go pay that mudblood a visit tomorrow, and get my star reporter back."

Draco swallowed, pressing his hand against a console table. It was now or never. "What will you do, if I accomplish this?" Lucius looked at him sharply, a question forming in his eyes. "I mean," the words spilled out, almost pleadingly "if I have to go to into the Muggle world tomorrow, I should be well rested so I can concentrate on what has to be done, and it will be hard to do that if I spend tonight floating in your sensory deprivation chamber, concentrating on whatever it is you want me to focus on, memorizing whatever ..."

"Correct. You should have a good night's sleep, and it should start in about three minutes." Draco blinked. Lucius always finds some way to make getting out of a punishment into something almost as bad, doesn't he? "You are excused from dinner, and you are excused from Concentration tonight, but if you fail in your task tomorrow, the consequences will last until the day you leave this house, and may even follow you to your uncle's."

"I understand, sir. Please make my apologies to my mother, for my absence from dinner tonight." Maybe nobody cleaned up the leftover cookies in my room from this afternoon ...or I may find a Cauldron Cake in some forgotten robe. Draco nodded slightly and turned to walk out of the room, when he heard his father whisper, Staisi. Draco's feet froze to the ground, all his muscles clenched. He couldn't move anything below his neck, as he heard Lucius' voice so close to his ear.

"I like your technique, boy." Lucius was almost whispering. "Very savvy, holding that little card, and using it to rescue yourself. Don't go to bed tonight thinking I didn't see right through your game. You get away with things because I let you get away with them. You're nothing without me - remember that."

Draco forced a smile and murmured, "I hope you understand that I know that I learned from an expert."

Lucius snorted, stepped forward so identical gray eyes met at close range, Lucius' harsh, and Draco's with a tinge of unease. "After all the time I've spent working with you, if I didn't think you'd learned anything by now, I would just throw you away, and start all over with a new family. Don't ever presume that you're worth enough to me to keep me from doing that if you cross too many lines." Draco had heard that so many times before. When he was younger, especially on the nights when Lucius had left him to spend the night on the cold balcony outside the master bedroom while the warm lights burned in the house, he had been terrified that Lucius would someday cast him out from his life, from the family, from everything familiar, and fulfill the threat. It was worse his first years at Hogwarts. Every time the Hogwarts Express pulled back into Platform 9 3/4, Draco had been terrified that nobody would be there to pick him up, that his father had a new family, that he was what Lucius had said, useless, worthless, meant to be ignored.

Somehow, the threat's power had lessened. Lucius loved him, didn't he? He spent so much time with him, teaching him Dark Arts, playing Quidditch, trying to mold him into the son that a father as powerful and strong and smart and controlled as Lucius Malfoy deserved. Why would he do all those things if he didn't care for Draco? Not every student at Hogwarts had a father who owled a letter every day, and sent presents from home a few times a week, or bought excellent brooms for an entire house Quidditch team. Draco thought, why would Lucius throw away all the years of work?

Draco realized that the freezing charm had been released, and he could go upstairs to his almost empty bedroom. Lucius finished his whispered threat, saying, "Go. Get out of my sight. I want you to owl me as soon as you have news tomorrow - and I expect it will be good news. We don't like anything else at the paper, do we?"