Surfeit Of Curses

A Surfeit of Curses - Chapter 8

Disenchanted

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Look at you now.

You're disenchanted,

Can't believe how things can change.

Take a little out of life and things get strange.

Now you find the wishes you were granted,

Things you thought were in your hand,

Have slipped away.

How much can you withstand?

Draco never knew later how he got from the bank to Florean Fortescue's, how he found Professor Snape at a table in the shaded area near the front window, or exactly what he said when he collapsed into one of the curved wrought iron chairs and turned it so his back was facing the crowd of passers-by still on the Alley's streets.

He vaguely heard the professor ask him whether he found any good books at Flourish & Blotts, and whether the ride to the Gringotts vault was as disruptive to his stomach as Professor Snape always thought it was, and offer him a glass of Bubble Water. He must've been shaking his head and nodding in response or doing something that caused Professor Snape to just continue speaking, talking about this and that and stuff and nonsense and strangeness and ...

"Who's Alexander Malfoy?" The question burst from his mouth like one of Drooble's Best Bubbles, hanging over the table, filling the space between them.

Through the haze that wrapped around him, he heard Professor Snape cough and splutter and Draco mildly wondered if he was choking, but he didn't really want to tear his eyes away from that spot in the middle of the table that was so interesting, with its dark black stoniness and dull white speckles and drip of blue syrup. Yes, the table had to be studied and examined and then he wouldn't have to ...

Professor Snape asked, in a voice that sounded riddled with caution, "I'm not sure I know who you're speaking of, Draco. I'm don't believe I know anyone by that name."

Even though it was such an effort to move, to focus on the person across the table from him, when he could be thinking about so many other things like the way clouds looked reflected into soda glasses or the buzz coming from the satchel of the person sitting a few tables away or the way the hangnail on his left forefinger rubbed up against his thumb when his hands were clenched into fists, Draco's head shot up and his eyes were wide and clouded as he looked solidly at his teacher and spoke, punching every word. "Don't lie to me. I don't want to hear any more lies. I've had enough. I think I want to do is go and sort everything out, but I don't know where to begin researching to sort this, and I don't know where to even go and I can't understand why nobody ever told me and I am not even sure what I haven't been told or what is true or why I should believe anything you tell me since you've clearly been lying along with everyone else." He stopped, stood and grabbed for his satchel, said, "I don't have to take any more of these fewments," and moved as if to leave the ice cream parlour.

Professor Snape reached up and grabbed the sleeve of his robe, jerking him back into his chair. "Stop making a spectacle of yourself and shut up. You do not know what you're saying, and you could cause a riot with the wrong words, if anyone but me overhears you. I'm going to give you a sip of something to calm you down." At this, he reached into his pockets and began pulling out all sorts of things, little vials with coloured liquids, bags of things that looked like insect legs, four brown buttons and a copy of the previous day's Prophet. At this, Draco shook his head no, sealed his lips tightly and tried to look calm.

He knew he wasn't succeeding, because he could feel the flush in his cheeks and the sweat on his forehead and along the back of his neck. He hadn't exerted himself one bit, but felt his head and heart pounding as if he'd just taken three turns around the Quidditch pitch at the Manor, on foot.

He'd felt the same way for the past half hour. As Professor Snape began mixing drops of liquid from various of the vials that were now piled on the table, his tried to fit the shards of his recent memories back together.

He'd been looking at the odd Muggle gadget when the goblin's words made the floor fall out from under him.

"Mr Malfoy, the records I have here say this is your vault. Number 1154, a thirty year lease, paid for and signed November 15, 1978 by you, Alexander Malfoy, son of Lucius and Celeste Malfoy," he'd said.

Draco turned to look at the goblin, glared and twisted his mouth into a sneer, and asked, "Who?"

"Excuse me sir, but I don't understand. This must be your vault, the information I obtained above says so. See?" He showed Draco the parchment and read aloud, "Alexander Malfoy, born July 31, 1961, Apparating Learner's Permit Number UK8212866," the goblin pointed to the last entry on the form and went on. "The last access to the vault was on November 21, 1978 at 3:14 p.m. My, Mr. Malfoy, it's been a long time since you were down here. Have you been abroad?"

For once in his life, Draco didn't have an answer. He leaned against the stone wall and slid down to the floor, reached for the little black box, then looked up at the goblin's clipboard, while his brain tried to fit what he was seeing into some sort of context.

He couldn't do it.

There was no reality in which this information made sense. Had the trip on the Gringotts carts rattled his brain? He recited the Periodic Table of Amulets in an attempt to prove to himself that it hadn't. Was he in some alternative world? Had those Bertie Botts Beans he'd eaten en route to the Prophet been leftovers from the Flower Power™ line? This couldn't be real, could it?

A rattling noise startled him and he looked into the cavern's gloom to see another goblin walking towards them. "Is there some sort of problem here Movridus?" He took the clipboard out of the first goblin's hands and tilted it towards a torch, then asked, "Mr. Malfoy, can I help you with anything?" Draco still couldn't answer, and so stood there, looking at the goblin, who was clearly the managerial type. "Mr. Malfoy?"

He almost lost it there. The shiver that, about ten years ago, used to mean that he was going to Project without planning to do so, the way Lucius had forbidden so many times. He thought it had been taught out of him, but right now, his few conscious thoughts were clear. He was about to disintegrate, and he couldn't. He had to hold it together, or...or... or...

"Sir? Can I help you with something?" The goblin still sounded so damned solicitous, as if Draco was simply scrutinizing his most recent interest statement. It was not the most practical way to talk to a teenager in a trance. Especially when said teenager appeared in two places at once for a second or two at a time, two bodies, one solid, one transparent, in the same cross-legged position, knees just a few inches apart. But the infinitely polite goblins weren't about to question their customer, were they?

Moments passed without a word, as Draco made himself remember the rules, the practices, the methods of self-containment. He flexed his fingers, shrugged his shoulders, and made other little motions with his muscles, forcing his self back into his own skin. He made himself feel the stone against his back and under his legs and blinked again and again as he saw the flickering torches through his actual, mortal eyes.

He wasn't sure, afterwards, how long it took, but the goblins were, if nothing else, patient. Finally, he made the last test of his body's systems and strained to speak. "Just a little light-headed from the cart ride. You know how it is. Or maybe you don't, since you don't have the same sensation of motion as we wizards do," he said shortly. He had to lie, if he wanted to see what was in that vault. Obviously, there was some horrendous mistake, but Draco wasn't sure if it had been made by the goblins, by himself, or by someone else, and he had to figure out what had happened.

The managerial goblin helped him to his feet and while he still felt like he could fly to pieces again, the sensation wasn't as immediate. As he stood, he shoved the little box into his satchel and clung to the vault door as if it would keep him upright. Peering in, he saw piles of photographs, some wizard, others unmoving, which he presumed to be Muggle ones, boxes even smaller than the one in his satchel which had holes in them and also looked like they were made of platsic and piles of ScrolLock parchment rolls, the kind that Flourish & Blotts usually sold as diaries to Hogwarts first years because the locks could be charmed to be unopenable by adults. Lucius had caught him with one once, and had immediately thrown it into the fire, saying that if Draco wrote things that Lucius couldn't read, then Draco didn't need to read them either.

He didn't have room in his satchel for everything. He hadn't brought his ExpanSack™ since his regular bag was more aerodynamic, and the goblins might make a report upstairs if he emptied the entire vault into his too-small bag anyway, so he'd have to take just what looked most important. He flipped through the photos and saw one that made his knees buckle again, and was glad that he was still holding onto the door. He shoved that one, and a dozen others, into the satchel, along with two of the things that might be diaries and three more little boxes.

While he'd been looking through the vault, the goblins had been muttering to each other in Gobbledygook. When he turned around, he noticed that a third goblin had joined them, and was wagging an overlarge finger at Draco's original escort. "Mr. Malfoy," the newcomer said, "I apologize for Movridus's incompetence. Obviously, this isn't your vault, you're much too young..."

"Oh, but it is!" Draco interrupted. He wasn't going to let them take these things away. "I'm through with aging, had a portrait charmed which does it for me," he babbled. "This is Malfoy property, and I am taking these items with me. I do not want anyone but myself to be permitted to remove anything from this vault unless I authorize otherwise in person," he added, reciting words he'd heard Lucius speak when they'd gone to one of the Prophet vaults together the previous August. "If you don't take me back to the lobby right now, I'll make sure everyone hears of your, er, confusion today. You goblins don't seem to know which was is up, so can someone help show me the way out?"

The three goblins stared at him, as if that had been the last thing they'd expected to hear. He took advantage of the silence to quickly enchant his satchel so the goblins couldn't open it and remove any of its contents, then hoisted it onto his shoulder, and with more poise than he thought he possessed, jumped into the cart without opening the door. All throughout the ride back to the street level, Draco felt a terrible sense of urgency, as if he had to find out the full story as soon as possible and do something - he didn't know what, though - as soon as he knew it.

"Draco," Professor Snape's voice interrupted his thoughts. "I can't tell you what you obviously want to hear."

"Why the hell not? Afraid Lucius'll be angry at you for letting the kneazle out of the bag? Or are you all worried about what I'll do when someone tells me what's going on?" Draco's voice was breaking with every word he spoke, his tone almost matched his thoughts, which were incredibly fractured.

"No, I mean I can't. I literally cannot tell you what is suddenly in my head." Draco looked dismayed as the professor continued. "When you said that...that name, memories flooded my mind - things I hadn't thought about in over fifteen years, images of a life I thought I'd forgotten. I don't really know why I hadn't thought about any of that in so long, but I haven't and now that I have, I can't talk about it. I don't even think I could write it down."

This was another surprise in an afternoon already brimming with them. Professor Snape had to be lying, still, again, because there was no good reason why he'd say this. He knew Alexander Malfoy, and he had to give up some answers.

"Why should I believe you? How can you look at me and lie to me? I know you knew him - look at this!" Draco pulled a photograph from his pocket. It was a picture of three little boys dressed in summer garden party wear, waving at the camera. One had a riot of golden blonde curls and grey eyes the same colour and shape as Draco's, one had dark, poker-straight hair and a nose that was too grown up for his face, and the third looked exactly like Harry Potter did the day Draco had first seen him in the robe shop, except that Draco knew it couldn't be Potter. He hadn't grown up as a wizard, Gryffindor blood though he may have, and there certainly wouldn't be old fashioned pictures of him in a sailor robe. The blonde boy looked a few years younger than the other two, and Draco guessed that they were all somewhere between five and eight years old. "Tell me about this. I know this is you, and this one must be....it must be..." He interrupted himself. "I don't know how to ask you so that you'll tell me what I want to know." He was nearly pleading with his professor, and he never did anything like that. Not in front of anyone other than Lucius, that is. Even with Moody he had never begged, but he had never felt as desperate for information as he did at this moment.

Professor Snape continued to look at him, unspeaking, unsmiling. Draco wondered if he was even breathing, he held himself so like a statue. "Tell me it's not you. Say it's just a story. Some trick of Lucius' that he planted at the bank, and I'll give up and shut up and we can talk about something silly like what flavours of ice cream they have today. But tell me the truth, or I'll know." He really didn't know how he would be able to catch Professor Snape in a lie, especially about something like this, where he really had almost no information, save what he'd pulled from the vault, and he hadn't even had a moment to pull through that yet, but there was no other way to demand this. Professor Snape still didn't answer. He moved his mouth as if he was trying to make the answers come out, but nothing did. Draco watched as he pulled a quill from the pile of things he'd pulled from his pocket and tried to write on the menu, but he didn't seem able to make any impressions on the parchment.

Finally, Professor Snape managed a few sentences. "It's not a trick or a game. This is real, as real as anything else you've dealt with this past year, but there's something keeping me from telling you about it." Draco slumped in his chair. Until this moment, some part of him had been desperate to believe that this was all an elaborate mind game concocted by Lucius, just to make sure the day wasn't too easy, as if it had been in the first place. The professor went on, " I simply can't say it, or write it. All this knowledge is in my head, and I can't get it to you. I suppose I could go back to Hogwarts and see if I can pull them into my Pensieve, but that won't do you any good here and now."

Now, Draco was as puzzled by Professor Snape's inability to tell him things he said he knew as he was by the fact that the professor actually knew things to tell him about this person ... this "son of Lucius and Celeste Malfoy".

"Are you under a curse?" he asked, the logical and studious portions of his mind finally coming back into play. "Did someone put a spell on you?" They hadn't actually studied memory charms in Flitwick's class yet, but he hadn't lived in the Manor all those years without seeing Lucius put a few such charms on his enemies, and occasionally on his friends. Draco had suspected that he'd experienced a few himself, but the problem with memory charms is that it was so difficult to determine whether you'd had one, given the nature of the magic itself.

"I don't think it's a common charm. If it was, I wouldn't be able to remember all these things right now," Snape rambled. "And I have never heard of a potion with this sort of affect. However, the Dark Lord knew numerous charms and spells that even wizards well trained in the Dark Arts had never heard of. He researched so many things on his own, before his ascent to power and during those days, that Death Eaters never knew of until he needed someone for testing. And usually, he chose only those he could eliminate if the tests failed, or if they succeeded too well.

"He had a lot of memory charms in his arsenal, some which were used to make people go to his side, others which were used to eliminate enemies - not threats - he didn't see anyone as a threat, from what was reported at those times. This may be one of those, I don't know."

"If you can't remember, what good will a Pensieve be?"

"A memory charm doesn't remove the memory from your head, like a Pensieve does. Where would it go, if it did? There would be millions of memories floating around the world, and Muggles could bump into them. Think of the chaos if people suddenly started having each other's memories? No, a memory charm just blocks someone's access to the memory. They're still there, in your head, which is probably why I have memories about that photograph. What you said unblocked them."

"So what do you remember about the time in the picture, and the people?" Draco asked hesitantly.

I know exactly where that picture was taken and I know that Gemma Sugar took it and I know that we were at Narcissa Hart's seventh birthday party and..." He stopped, his eyes shocked at what he'd said. "How did I...?"

The puzzle pieces Draco thought he'd been fitting together tumbled into a heap. How could Narcissa have anything to do with this picture? He had always been aware of the fact that she'd been at Hogwarts with his professor, but neither of them ever mentioned it. Why would she have bothered to talk to him about Severus Snape, and why would he have discussed something so nonacademic with Draco in the first place?

"If I keep talking without thinking," Professor Snape was saying, "maybe I'll say something else relevant. It's as if all these memories have rushed back into me when I looked at the picture. I know this face, his name, things about when the picture was taken, but I don't have any context for them. I don't know the significance of any of this, and I can tell you, I've never been confronted with a memory like this - I don't know what these thoughts mean. Ask me something, and we'll see where it takes us." He sounded almost desperate. Do you have a question to get me started?"

Was there a question that would be vague enough to get him to state what Draco was now suspecting, that the golden-haired boy was Alexander Malfoy? Maybe a question about the other dark-haired boy would work - the boy who kept taking his funny, square glasses off and crossing his eyes at the photographer, Draco thought. "Tell me about the boys in the picture," he asked.

"You pointed me out surprisingly well. I think I'm about eight in here, and so is James Potter. Don't give me that look of surprise, you figured out that it was Potter's father already, didn't you?" Draco nodded and Professor Snape went on. "We weren't friends, we really only saw each other at everyone's birthday parties each year, at least until we went to Hogwarts, except that this was the last year that we saw Alexander," Professor Snape looked surprised at what he'd just said, but didn't even pause before going on, "other than during the summer because he started at Durmstrang that September, and didn't even come home for the holidays very often. I can remember every little detail of that day now, like the impersonators of Martin Miggs and his assistant Sindy and their bubbaloon tricks, and the fact that the ice cream was raspberry mint and the tray of candyfloss we discovered right after this picture was taken and how upset Lucius was when he saw the way it had gotten tangled into his son's curls." At this he stopped and clapped his hand over his own mouth. "Oh, hell, Draco. You shouldn't've heard it like that."

At that moment, Draco's mind was completely blank and filled with a cacophonous yelling. He said in a low voice, "I didn't. The goblins more or less told me when they opened his safe. I just needed to hear it from a wizard, I mean, maybe the goblins made a mistake. Or maybe the vault was really opened in 1878 - he's not the first Lucius in the family, and I wasn't sure I knew the names of every single one of my ancestors. But when I saw this picture..." He didn't feel able to speaking his thoughts just now, so closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips to the corners. "Is there anything else you can tell me?"

Professor Snape rubbed his forehead. "I don't think so. I'm definitely suffering the aftereffects of some kind of spell. Without another picture to talk about, I don't think I can sort all these memories out without my Pensieve. When I told you..." He stopped and pushed against his temples, then continued, "I can't even say his name again. It feels like my head is going to burst."

"It's okay," Draco said despondently. He looked at the professor, who was pale and sweating and looked like he was in a lot of pain.

"No, it isn't," he contradicted. "You've got a right to know everything," he said in a painful voice, "but there are parts of it even I don't understand. I only know how it began, and I don't even know how he died."

At this Draco dropped his head down to the table with a bang, and Professor Snape exclaimed painfully, "Damnit! I'm going about this all wrong. I don't think I can tell you anything else right now, I need to sort these thoughts out first or even get them out of my head. And in all this excitement, we haven't even finished our conversation from before you want to the bank, so I still need to speak with you about You Know Who."

Oh, right, Draco thought. He hadn't thought about Diggory or the part he himself had played in that insanity and the Dark Lord's return, at least not since the vault was opened. His head was still pressed against the cool stone table and his eyes were closed, as if that would let him avoid all this horrible, overwhelming knowledge. "I'm going to France soon, for the rest of the summer," he said. "I'm not sure there's a time to talk, other than now. Actually," he looked at his watch, "there isn't even that. I have to go meet Lucius at Corriander Cafe for dinner in about ten minutes."

"You have to what?" Professor Snape sounded horrified. "You are in no condition to spend two minutes with him now, much less a few hours. Send an owl, tell him you've taken ill, you slipped on the stones and hurt your ankle, you've had to go home."

"That won't work, you know." Draco sat back up in his chair. "If I go and keep quiet, he won't think anything of it, but if I don't show up, no matter what excuse I give, he won't let me, I mean, he won't let it rest until he knows what's going on."

"I don't think it's a good idea at all. You've had a terrible shock today - a series of them - and I'm not sure you'll be able to pull it off."

Why did Professor Snape sound so nervous? "I know how to get through a dinner with Lucius, and I don't really have an option right now. I'm not going to tell him about the vault, I promise!"

"You can't even tell him that you saw me today. And you certainly can't talk about anything I told you - not even by saying that you overheard or you heard a rumor about something."

"Not even about Moody being someone else? Because if I tell him that he won't be as angry about my Dark Arts marks."

"No!" Professor Snape shouted so loudly that the family three tables away turned to look at them. "He may know already, and if he mentions the imposter's name, then please let me know, but if he doesn't bring it up, don't you do so. One more thing before you go." A muscle twitched in the corner of Snape's gaunt mouth. "May I keep this picture? Just for a while, to see if it helps me control the memories?" Draco nodded. He didn't need that one in particular. There were three dozen others that he hadn't shown Professor Snape, still tucked into his bag.

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Draco was speaking with the maitre d' when Lucius arrived at the restaurant. He wasn't carrying his scrollcase, so Draco assumed that either Lucius was going back to the office afterwards, or might not even be coming home at all that night. Either option might mean a shorter dinner than Draco feared they would have, which would be a relief. Despite his promise to Professor Snape, Draco was fairly concerned that he wouldn't be able to hide his new knowledge from Lucius. It would be enough of a challenge hiding the satchel from him, but Draco didn't want to damage its contents by minimizing it, and certainly didn't want to leave it with the coat-and-broom check girl, who had stared at him a little too much while he'd waited for Lucius.

Before they went to their table, Lucius stopped in the bar to greet some rising ministry functionaries who were having drinks with two of Gringott's senior managers - a goblin whose name Draco couldn't pronounce, much less remember, and a wizard named Cantwell F. Muckenfuss. They spoke about the problems with the Galleon to Guilder exchange rate, then Lucius mentioned that Draco had been to the bank that day. The managers turned on him in an instant.

"Very concerned about our customer relations these days," the wizard said.

"Yes, we need to guarantee that our rising client base is satisfied with our services. Our witches on the advisory panel think we should even start putting seat restraints on the carts, for the children, they say. We're about to institute a rule that won't let them ride alone if they're under twelve."

"Draco's mother wouldn't let him in one of those carts until he was nine," Lucius interjected. Draco couldn't remember such a concern from Narcissa. Was Lucius mixing him up with Alexander Malfoy somehow, or was he telling a story to make Narcissa appear to be a concerned parent?

A pinch on his arm brought his attention back to the conversation, as he pushed thoughts of the day's discoveries to the back of his mind. "Draco, answer Mr. Muckenfuss. He wants to know about your goblin escort today."

"I am sorry, sir," Draco responded, suddenly remembering that he hadn't accomplished the thing Lucius sent him to Gringott's for in the first place - he was supposed to get twenty galleons, and he hadn't, because after all problems at the vault and his stunning discovery, he'd never gone to his actual vault. He couldn't tell the truth about having gone to the bank, because they'd ask the goblins and know he'd been to the wrong vault, and he couldn't exaggerate and say he'd lost track of time while speaking with Professor Snape, but if he outright lied... How would they know?

"I didn't actually make it to the bank this afternoon, father," he said, watching Lucius' face go pale. "I was walking past Flourish & Blott's and saw some really interesting books in the window and didn't plan to spend so long there, but, well, I did, and by the time I realized how late it was, Gringott's was already closed."

Now, Lucius gripped his arm again, as tight as a pinch just above the wrist, but with his entire hand, and Draco hoped it wouldn't cut off his circulation. His voice was conversational and his smile convivial, but Draco knew the look in his eyes as he spoke to the men from the Ministry and Gringott's. "You know how it is with teenage wizards these days - they don't pay attention to the world until the moment it effects them." This led to a discussion among the assembled grownups about the poor manners of young witches and wizards these days, and how in their day, such things would never be tolerated. As Draco stood and watched Lucius' interactions, he knew that it wouldn't be tolerated now either, but Lucius would give no indication of his disapproval until they were shielded from the public eye. Draco shifted uncomfortably as Lucius told the others that this was clearly a one time lapse by his son, whose marks at school and consideration to adults, especially Lucius and Narcissa themselves, showed him to be exemplary, especially in comparison to the lesser beings in his year at Hogwarts.

The conversation broke up when the charm the maitre d' had given Lucius began flashing and buzzing to let them know their table was ready. The restaurant was almost completely silent, with the only sounds emanating from the kitchen or up from the wine cellar where the sommeliers sorted bottles of wine as they Flooed in from around the globe. The Corriander was also famous for its scotch, and carried a variety of bottles from small wizard distilleries as well as a few Muggle makers who had been catering to the wizarding trade since the days when the two economies were more closely linked. A bottle of Granier from the Bardouin distillery was already at their table and a glass sat with each place setting.

Every table was topped with charm created by the Great Warlock Pauelzimmon, which created a Silent Cylinder around the chairs. That allowed the table occupants to converse among themselves and with the drink servers and not be heard at other tables, although they could be seen. It was common knowledge that other restaurants wanted to use the charm, but the patent on it didn't expire for another thirty years Even though Draco was sure that Lucius hadn't chosen the restaurant for its sound containing properties, Draco knew that he'd be taking advantage of it.

They hadn't been seated for five seconds before Lucius began yelling in that frightening way he had, his face completely impassive and his voice as loud as a fwooper call. "Do not ever dare cause me to lie in public, even to grasshoppers as insignificant as goblins and piddling ministry flacks," he began, before admonishing Draco to keep his expression blank and take this lecture like a man, then starting on a familiar subjects like the humiliation of the family and Draco's failures as a son. After a minute's recitation of criticisms, he pulled Draco's hand off the table and rested it, palm up, on the arm of his own chair. Lucius moved his chair to block the arm from the view of the other customers, then slipped his fork off the table and pushed it slowly and deliberately into the fleshy part of Draco's palm below his thumb.

Draco bit down on the inside of his lip, at the place where he held his teeth in Moody's classes when the curses were almost too hard to take. It was a fierce struggle to hold his face in that same bored mask that anyone who looked over at their table would expect to see on Lucius Malfoy's son's face, but he was good at holding that expression, and his mouth didn't twitch and his shoulders didn't shake and the little cry that escaped his throat through his tightly closed mouth shouldn't garner additional repercussions, because of that blessed silence.

And Lucius didn't stop talking, his mouth forming words through the expression that was a mixture of smile and sneer. The words were almost meaningless, "You need this," "You deserve this," "You make me do this to you."

Of course he did. Of course, he did. He knew that he did.

When Lucius finally pulled the tines away, Draco's hand was shaking. Lucius hadn't actually drawn blood, but the points made indentations in his skin that wouldn't disappear for a while, no matter how long he discretely rested his palm against the cool bowl of his waterglass.

While Draco was forcing his heartbeat to return to its normal rate, Lucius poured a glass of scotch for himself, and tipped a splash into the glass by Draco's plate. He took a large swallow from his glass, and Draco sipped as well. The liquor burned as it went down, but it also softened his shoulders and if he hadn't wanted to keep his hand in contact with the cold glass, he would've even settled back into his chair.

When his first glass was drained, Lucius refilled it, and insisted that Draco tell him exactly how he had tracked down Rita. He blanched, wondering what would happen if his story didn't match with what Rita said, but since his only options were to pretend that Doxies were attacking his ankles or tell Lucius the truth, he gave a minute by minute replay of the morning.

Lucius interrupted him. "You projected into a Muggle neighborhood?" he asked, his horror clear in his voice. "Is it your goal to do seven stupid things before lunch each day, or does it just happen that way?"

"I was incognito, in Muggle clothing," Draco lied. "I just went to learn where Rita was, then I was going to fly to the house in person to rescue her," he continued, covering his tracks with explanatory words. Lucius nodded and Draco continued, "But when I got there and found the jar Granger kept her in was open, I tracked her down and demanded she tell me where Rita had gone."

"How did you do that, if you couldn't touch her or perform the Rosaringhe curse to make sure she wasn't lying?"

"I had my wand with me, she didn't know I couldn't use it," Draco said. It was sort of true, his wand had been in his pocket, but using it against Hermione had never been a consideration.

"But given the way you reacted to her curse on the train yesterday, she probably wouldn't've thought you had the brains to use your wand anyway." Lucius shook his head in disgust and asked, "Did you threaten her?"

Draco didn't know whether yes or no would be the right answer for Lucius. He started to say, "no," but the expression on Lucius' face made it very clear that he had expected Draco to make a proper showing of Malfoy power and Malfoy strength. He turned the word into "not until I searched the house and found her in the yard. I appeared right behind her and pointed my wand at her and demanded that she tell me where Rita was. That's when she told me that she'd already let Rita go, and about Branford's spa." Lucius looked pleased with this tale, so Draco spontaneously ratcheted up the fierceness level and said, "then, I made her walk to the side of their little house and face the wall, with her hands against the stone and count to a hundred, so she wouldn't see me disappear and think I'd Apparated." He took another small sip of the scotch.

"You weren't concerned about her learning that you can Project?"

"No, I didn't think she'd learn about that today," he said, wondering why it felt to important to answer Lucius' questions with narrow truth where he could, when he was telling so many lies about everything he'd done, and when he was hiding so much in his satchel. He moved his leg to the left, to make sure his bag strap was still trapped under the chair leg, where he'd put it when they were seated. He knew it was paranoia to think that Lucius would Accio it during dinner, but better safe than sorry.

Draco continued with his moment of honesty with a verifiable account of his decision to send Kira ahead of him, his flight to London and the meeting with Rita. "Then, I came to see you, and I take it she showed up sometime in the past few hours?"

"She arrived just as I was leaving, and walked over here with me. I expect she's starting in on an investigative piece about the Triwizard." Lucius' had a few other questions about Draco's movements during the day, which Draco hoped were satisfied with his explanations as they supped.

When his Malossol canapé arrived, Draco, who had almost forgotten how ravenous he was in the events of the past few hours, devoured his portion in less than a minute, then sat and watched as Lucius ate silently and slowly, pausing his questions until he'd finished his course. And so it went for the rest of dinner, with Draco responding to Lucius' quizzing questions about that morning's paper, what the Mudblood's street and house looked like, and whether Branford's spa was crowded. Lucius asked a series of questions about the books at Flourish & Blotts, and Draco raided his memories for fragments of book titles and summaries that he'd read over the past few weeks, hoping that they were actually featured at the bookstore, in case Lucius checked up on him; the mildness he'd felt since he'd taken that first sip of Lucius' scotch had long since dissolved.

He felt a little queasy, but whether it was from the liquor, dinner itself, the speed at which he'd eaten, or the weight of the day, he couldn't tell. His personality felt almost fragmented. One portion was howling in a panic-stricken horror with a loop of the goblin's voice in his head, saying over and over, "Alexander Malfoy". Another quite calmly answered Lucius' probing questions. And then there was a third psychic chunk. This was the smallest and shakiest of all, stomped to a frazzle and nearly buried in the mental cataclysm that had overwhelmed him since Gringotts'. This part of his mind told him to hang in there and wait for a chance to sort out the mystery, and it tried to push away the questions, and wait to wonder at why he couldn't fit what he knew about Lucius around these new fragments of information - because that's all they were - dashes of words that might be facts, dots of explanations, and barely even a fragment of understanding.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It didn't get any better.

After dinner, Lucius sent him home on his own with instructions to make excuses to Narcissa about some meeting with various advertisers at the paper. A line from a song flicked through Draco's head while Lucius explained the importance of this particular advertiser meeting - "hear you've got a new girlfriend. How's the wife taking it?" - but he agreed to explain to Narcissa. He always did; it meant she got angry at him instead of at Lucius, but that was better than facing Lucius' fury if he failed to honor this little request. It wasn't often that he had an excuse to be belligerent to Narcissa, and even though he knew he shouldn't, he enjoyed those moments.

It's not like there was anything else to enjoy tonight.

Lucius did offer him some Floo powder, and his aches from so many broom flights over the course of the day made it a temptation, but Lucius might see his acceptance of the favor as weakness, might question him, might use it as an excuse to look through his bag. No, flying would be more practical, and safer.

Such a contrast to the morning flight, Draco thought as he left the confines of London airspace. Across the fields he saw dots of Muggle light on their roads, which sparkled from up here, although on the ground, they were silly, smelly, choked things; on the now-eerie darkened landscape, he saw the candle-like clusters that marked the presence of Muggles, and the jeweled glow from wizard houses. The difference was so clear to him, where the Muggle lights were mindlessly cold and hard, the magical ones were always matched with colours that glowed only at night like little circular rainbows in the dark. He concentrated on the lights, because it meant he didn't have to think about the heavy satchel hanging from the broom's tail. The patches of land where wizards were few and far between had none of the starlike concentrations he was comfortable with, so he was almost glad when he saw the Manor looming in the distance, looking like nothing so much as a hill to anyone who wasn't a Malfoy or accompanied by a Family Charm.

As he flew closer, he heard shouts coming from the Quidditch pitch. He knew without actually seeing that Narcissa was flying around, throwing goals, but as he drew closer he realized that instead of using servants and House Elves to make up the rest of the team, she was tossing the Quaffle back and forth with Vacchs, his coach. Her trilling, high pitched laughter mingled with the hoots from the owls that were entering and leaving their owlry.

Given the direction he had approached from, it was impossible to get to the Manor without attracting their notice. No matter her mood, Narcissa had pinpoint accuracy when it came to spotting him sneaking around, probably the result of all the attention she chose not to focus on Lucius' movements and whereabouts. The better part of valor would be to fly to them, claim exhaustion and hide out in his room for the rest of the night. He stopped as he approached the pitch, hid his satchel in some shrubbery, and kicked back into the air, flying to where Vacchs played Keeper, although not very well, as Narcissa took foul shots with the Quaffle. He tried to speak to the coach between her throws, but it was difficult. She laughed again each time the ball went thorough the hoop into the catching basket that always hovered behind the hoop during his practices.

Her laughter stopped as soon as she noticed Draco trying to catch Vacch's eye, and her eyes narrowed into slits of silver. "Dylan, you have company," she said, pointing so Vacchs' eyes followed her long fingernail to turn to Draco.

"Hey, kid," the coach called out, "Come and join us - I want to see how you do at throwing the Quaffle."

"Oh, he's wonderful at it, or at least he was before he started getting all high and mighty and seekerish," Narcissa said as she threw the Quaffle towards the hoop. This time, to Draco's surprise, she missed.

Did Vacchs know that he had originally been trained to be a chaser, Draco wondered. From the first time he flew, Lucius had taught him to throw and catch from a broomstick. Before he started at Hogwarts, even though he'd always ended his daily practices by seeking the toy Snitches, the focus had always been on the Quaffle, probably because Narcissa had played Chaser. Everyone expected him to do the same, join the team second or third year, and possibly even become Coordinator as a fifth or sixth year, as she had. Lucius hadn't played on the house team; he'd always told Draco he had other things to occupy his time.

Even the month before he started school, he spent some time hitting Bludgers and serving as Keeper, to keep his general skills up, Lucius always said, but his Quidditch coaches were still focused on the speed and accuracy of his flying, and his throwing and catching abilities.

~~~~~

"Are you done yet?" Lucius asked as he poked his head through the door of Madame Malkin's robe shop that hot July afternoon.

"Nearly," he called back, as the seamstress added placed the last robe onto the footstool that the messy, dark-haired boy had vacated half an hour before. There were a dozen black robes and another dozen in assorted colors - khaki, navy, dark grey, forest green in wool, and one in white linen, for an end-of-summer event at the Prophet.

"Ring all this up then," Lucius said to one of the witches as he entered the shop. Turning to Draco, he said, "Have you been dawdling and delaying them? I can't see why it takes so long to outfit a child, unless he's squirming."

"No, father, I haven't. They were helping another boy some of the time that I've been waiting," he said.

Lucius demanded of the witches, "I thought I told you to hurry with my son. We have other things to do today, and I do need to get back to the paper. If this is the kind of service you give to all your customers, it's a wonder the company is still in business."

"I am sorry, Mr Malfoy," the older witch replied. "But little Harry Potter came in, and well, you understand. We wanted to help him out, the poor dear."

Draco looked up and saw an expression he had never seen before on Lucius' face. He actually looked surprised! Draco assumed he himself did, as well. Harry Potter? That scrawny ragamuffin was Harry Potter? Draco had, of course, read Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the 20th Century and knew all about the Gryffindor line, but since nobody had been able to get a clear picture of Harry Potter, even though the Prophet had tried over the years, most wizards didn't knew what he looked like. Would Lucius be angry that he hadn't recognized him?

As Lucius paid, castigated the seamstress and arranged for everything to be sent to the Manor the next day, Draco busied himself by looking for his book and jacket, which had been moved during the hour-long fittings. As they walked down Diagon Alley to meet Narcissa at the wand shop (she had to get one too, because hers had become too warped to work properly) Lucius peppered him with questions about Harry Potter, and seemed to enjoy the opportunity to quiz Draco about what he'd learned about the Potters and Gryffindor in his history books and lessons, and his answers must have been generally correct, as Lucius didn't make him repeat anything. Draco then described what he looked like, repeated what he'd said, then remembered that he wanted to ask Lucius about racing brooms.

"Not today, there's no point, and I don't have the time," Lucius said. "If you really need a new one, you can wait until December. You don't need one at school, you shouldn't spend your time flying this year, because you should be studying. If your marks are what I expect to see, I'll consider it for Christmas or your birthday."

"But how can I keep up with my training? There's no point in practicing catching or throwing with my feet on the ground," Draco insisted.

"You're not going to be Chaser this year, and probably not next year either. The Slytherin team is well covered, since there shouldn't be many seventh years on the team this season, Seeker and Keeper will be open positions your second year, but you have nowhere near the size or strength to play Keeper, and there will be only one Chaser position open before 1993, since their captain is a seventh year this year. I doubt, though, that you'd be able to make Chaser over upperclassmen, who will be naturally stronger than little you, no matter how fast you fly or how accurate you are with your catching." He stopped walking and talking, and turned to face Draco, who had halted the moment Lucius did. "James Potter was an excellent Chaser, your mother says. They played against each other at school, you know."

Draco didn't know, of course. Neither Lucius nor Narcissa ever spoke about their time at Hogwarts, and everything Draco knew about the school came from his tutors or the battered copy of Hogwarts: A History that he'd filched out of the library earlier that year. "I wonder if young Mister Potter will show any of his father's talent. Even if he doesn't, if he turns out to be in Gryffindor, they'll probably make him Chaser anyway. It's almost a tradition."

"He didn't even know what Quidditch is! He's almost a Muggle!"

"Don't contradict me Draco. That doesn't mean anything. When you were three and went on a broomstick by yourself for the first time, what happened?" he asked as he started walking again.

I flew, Draco thought as he leapt to walk in step with Lucius. "It just moved for me. I understood it, instinctively. But I couldn't fly in Quidditch if I hadn't learned how, thanks to all your Chaser coaches. A bludger would knock my block off!"

"Would that be such a bad thing?" Lucius asked, sending a chill down Draco's spine. He always practiced Quidditch while wearing robes and a hat that were enchanted to absorb the brunt of the bludger attacks, because he rarely played with Beaters since a bludger took off a House Elf's ear a few years before. The robes allowed just enough of the impact to bruise him or even knock him off, so he'd learn to fly in a way that dodged their assaults, but they couldn't actually break his bones. But if Lucius had him play without his hat...

"You think I'll play against him, the way she played against his father?"

"Why do you think I've thrown Galleons to hire world class Chasers to train you? You're really almost too small for the position, but you've been taught enough strategy to be decent enough to make the team in a few years. All you have to do is ..."

Lucius was interrupted by the tinkling bell that announced their arrival at Ollivander's, and by the time Draco made a single beam of silvery light shoot out from his Applewood wand (grown at Hesperides Farm) with its dragon heartstring core (Lucius hadn't let Mr. Ollivander show him anything without a dragon core), he had pushed Harry Potter and even Quidditch to the back of his mind. He had never been allowed to use Lucius or Narcissa's wands for anything other than the occasional lumos spell, and now, all he wanted to do was try a few spells with his own wand.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It seemed, however, as if the world was conspiring against him. All he wanted to do was try a few unlocking and revealing spells on the collection of papers in his bag, but this time, Quidditch was intervening.

Narcissa told Vacchs to release the Snitch from the box of balls on the bench that was levitating thirty feet above the ground, just outside the bounds of the pitch. While he took the tiny winged ball from the case, she presented Draco with a challenge.

"You haven't played in how many months now?"

"I've been playing against teams of Slytherins."

"That doesn't count. How long has it been since you really had to work to win?"

He tried to explain that being Seeker was different from playing Chaser. "It doesn't matter how bad everyone else is, if I see the Snitch first, it's up to me alone to catch it."

"You think you're better than the rest of the team, then? What an ego you've built up! I see no reason for it," Narcissa said shortly.

Draco met her glare with a look of defiance. How would she know what he thought, or whether he had any reason to think he was good enough? She'd never seen him really play, hadn't bothered to come to any of the matches, although Lucius usually did, and whenever she joined one of his practices, she put him off his game with her shouted instructions and running commentary of criticisms. What was she going to pull tonight?

"Dylan, do you want a chance to analyze Draco's Seeker sense? We've paid you for two days coaching already, and all you've done is play with me, since he's been gallivanting around the countryside."

"It's so dark, I couldn't give him a proper overview in these conditions," Vacchs responded as he returned to join them near the center goalpost.

"Why not try?" she asked in a low voice. Draco tried to inch away, but she put on a quick burst of speed and grabbed the tail of his broom, which prevented him from escaping. "Let the Snitch go, and we'll see how long it takes the boy to catch it. We can go relax on one of the chaise lounges over there," she said, pointing her wand at one of the two-seat chaises that sat on the ground, and levitating it so it was on a level with their broomsticks. "One of the elves will bring us some ice cream, and we can have a little demonstration of my brilliant son's flying prowess." Her mouth was twisted in a smile that Draco knew so well.

Vacchs looked at Draco with an expression that clearly said, What can I do? "I'm actually getting tired myself, and if we are planning an early morning practice, we shouldn't be out much later tonight."

"One hour, then. If he can't get it within that time period, there's no hope for him."

For the next hour, Draco flew the length and breadth of the pitch dozens of times, varying his speed and his height as he squinted through the darkness. After about twenty minutes, the fog began to lay over the ground and trees, making it ever harder to see more than five or six feet away. There wasn't much light, certainly not enough of a glow for the tiny Snitch to catch the light, so all he could do was scrutinize the air and fly quickly and deliberately and almost purposelessly. He gave up on showing Vacchs any of the tricky maneuvers his previous coaches had taught him.

For a moment, he saw it streak across his path, and he turned wonderfully to follow its ascent, but as he drew close, it changed position more abruptly than it normally did, and flew straight towards Narcissa. He looked up and saw her catch it in her left hand, as her right was holding her wand. She'd Accioed the Snitch into her hand, to keep him from catching it. Bitch.

"Down to the ground you go," she cried out. "I won't let it go until you do."

That wouldn't be such a bad thing. He could just sit here in the middle of the pitch in the middle of the air and think about things and ignore her and count down the minutes until the hour was over.

Except that he couldn't. Lucius might overlook such rudeness to Narcissa, but not if someone outside the family witnessed it. Even if that someone was just a coach.

Vacchs might talk. He would need a memory charm. He could send an owl gossiping about the Malfoys that very night and a cover-up would have to be launched.

And it would be Draco's fault, Lucius would make that perfectly clear.

Within a moment, he was back on the ground, beside his broomstick. Far overhead, he saw Narcissa pull her arm back and throw the Snitch. He kicked off even before she brought her arm back down, spiraling tremendously fast back into the air to match the trajectory of Narcissa's throw.

He didn't even think, he just reached out his arm as he leveled off, and there it was, just over his open palm.

From a distance, he heard someone clapping. His assumption that it was Vacchs proved correct; when he joined them to put the Snitch back into the case, all Narcissa said was, "That wasn't really within the rules, was it?"

Draco started to explain that it didn't matter how long before the Snitch was caught, but Vacchs interrupted him and began a long explanation of Quidditch commentators through the ages and their views on the timeliness of Snitch-catching, before launching into praise for Narcissa's Summoning charm. He even compared it to Modesty Rabnott's Summoning of the Golden Snidget during a match a few hundred years ago. Draco was pleased both by the distraction and Vacchs' knowledge of Quidditch and traditional history. His coaches had usually been jocks - Ludo Bagman-types - with an interest in sports that overwhelmed any thoughts they had about other topics. But this Vacchs might actually be worth talking to.

Narcissa didn't look pleased. She looked sulky, which made it easier for him, after he grabbed his satchel and they walked back to the mansion, to quickly tell her the lies Lucius had asked him to pass on, then make his own explanations about why he was so tired and had to go to bed. The bit about having research to do was completely true, too. He couldn't be blamed if she presumed it was schoolwork research; he never said it was.

He held his breath as he mounted all the stairs and traversed all the halls, and as he opened his heavy bedroom door, the exhaustion he was wearing like a cloak fell away in the face of what he had to do tonight. He had to read as much as possible, because it was possible - no, probable - that he wouldn't have another chance. He wasn't allowed to spell-lock the door, so he wrapped the handle in a notification charm that would warn him if someone touched it.

Then, he unlatched the top of his satchel and dumped its contents onto his bed.

He hadn't had time to look through anything properly before, and he wanted to take his time and he wanted to rush through everything and absorb it in an instant and he wanted to rip everything to pieces before he even looked at it and he wanted to set fire to his room and burn everything to the walls.

Consequences didn't matter anymore.

Draco turned away from the pile and shoved stuff off his desk, threw his schoolbooks off the shelf on the wall, and tore a painting off the wall. He picked up one of his folders, which contained copies of the letters he'd sent to Lucius over the past few years and flipped through it, then began to pull out pages and throw them in the wastebin. Finally, he threw the whole file in, pointed his wand at it, and incinerated the pages with a breath of words.

Everything had to be destroyed. He couldn't look, he didn't want to see, if it all disappeared it would be as if it had never existed and he could do a memory charm on Professor Snape tomorrow, and find some way to wipe the memory of the vault from his head and he could go on like he had before.

Like everything was normal and ordinary and fine and good and safe.

Of course, it wasn't. Of course it wasn't. He knew that it wasn't.

He had to look at this pile. He owed it to Alexander Malfoy, whatever had happened. He had to keep this promise that he wasn't even sure he'd made, or if he had, why he'd made it. That vault had been locked for so many years, and the secrets it held had to be known by someone. Why did it seem that the someone had to be him?

He should be like Lucius. He should make the right decision and stick by it. He should not fear consequence, he should investigate truth. Lucius would never doubt himself. But would Lucius find himself in such an unguarded and unguided position as Draco was now in?

Or would he? Lucius really didn't know everything - the realization of that which had been growing in Draco over the past year was made clear in the his conversation about the Dark Lord that he'd had with Professor Snape that afternoon. Either Lucius hadn't known that You Know Who was behind the spell research Draco had done, or he did. And if he knew that, then he knew that a Death Eater was teaching Hogwarts' Dark Arts class, which meant that he'd given his tacit approval to everything Draco had dealt with in that class, including the Crucio final exam. And he had made Draco a party to Cedric's death, and he himself was involved, and...

And one by one, Draco's illusions were ripped to shreds, just like the papers from the vault that covered his bed, and the papers from his own files that covered the floor and whose ashes filled the wastebin.

He couldn't really think. He just didn't have enough information to decide whether Lucius had been oblivious or horrible, whether Lucius had been a liar or a victim of a bizarre memory charm. All he could do was pile the books and photos and little Muggle boxes into piles to make room for himself on the bed, and have at it, so that's what he did.

The photographs were so mundane they were fascinating. Each of them showed a curly haired boy with various other people in lots of different places. A picture of a ten year old at the seaside with Draco's grandmother, both of them enjoying Dotty's Drippless Ice Cream, a shot from the same time period of the boy in a school uniform with a red tie (not a green and grey Slytherin tie), an almost still image of a much younger Lucius with a woman and a baby carriage, a toddler held by Lucius and a middle-aged man with dark black hair and bright eyes, and the boy, almost grown, holding a broomstick. There was a photograph of a man Draco knew from photographs as his grandfather, sitting next to the little boy about three feet above the ground on a flying carpet, and a nearly still picture, which Draco initially assumed was a Muggle photograph, but which was really a normal picture of a still, empty room. Every so often, a bird flew past the room's windows. It looked like it was in the Manor, but the view was one Draco had never seen before; then again, there were so many corridors and rooms that he'd never been in, and this might well be one of those.

The journals took some time to unlock. Both were small, about the size of a small book, of a style that had been popular before Draco was born, as he knew from reading the novels his mother had read while in school. The outsides were of soft leather, well worn and stamped with markings that seemed burned by enchantments into the cover, mostly of twinned snakes in the form of figure eights or infinity symbols, depending on how he looked at it.

He ran through general opening spells and amulets, then remembered something in his drawer that might work. Lucius may've destroyed Draco's one and only diary years before, but the key wasn't attached to it when it was flung into the fireplace. It was in his desk drawer then, and somehow, it was still in there now, almost wedged between the side and bottom of the third drawer down from the top. When Draco had gotten his own diary, he had charmed the key so he was the only one who could open things with it, and as it turned out, the diary from the vault seemed to have been charmed to open only with a diary key, but it didn't matter which key, because the lock popped open and the scroll unrolled itself in his hand and opened to the last page. He felt something cold pass through him as he looked at the pages.

It was a small, tight script, written with the quill pressed so hard into the parchment that he could still see the indentations made by the nub. They were somewhat musty, and had a closed in smell about them. In a few places, the ink had been splotched by water before it had fully dried, and there were smudges of fingerprints along the margins, making some words hard to read. But read it he did.

March 5, 1975 - I will not be going home for Easter break. Did I expect to? His new secretary (Kathleen? Katherine? something like that) says he'll be on some fact-finding mission for the Death Eaters. Investigating new ways to ignore me, I assume. He could at least write the letter himself, but that would make him think of me, and I know he doesn't want to waste time on that. Scandinavia is fun to fly over this time of year anyway, more than it was at Christmas. It's a little warmer and less likely to snow, and watching ice fall into the sea with its crashing and splashing sounds is enough to sound out any real thoughts from my head.

March 9, 1975 - I was looking through some old newspapers in the library and realized that it's been three years since I was in England. I am glad, though. Every week, there's another report of a ministry raid on a pureblood family, and people are being sent to their prison with horrid regularity. Professor K says that it has nothing to do with eastern europe and we should not support either side, because if we chose, and the other side wins, we will be in danger. Father's articles, of course, say otherwise, or at least they have in the four months since Grand-dad died. I still can't believe he wouldn't bring me home for the funeral. I doubt he even bothered to go himself. I miss him. No, not HIM - why would I do that?

April 2, 1975 - I've been away for the past week, excused from school and everything. I couldn't bring you, because I didn't want her to see you and ask questions, but I've been on Nana's cruise with her, all the way to Leningrad and back - this was the trip she promised me when I started here (took her long enough). Food every hour of the day, and alcohol too. I smuggled a bottle of vodka back with me. Those thick coats are good for something! Levski and some of his roommates are going to teach me how to play Kopeks.

April 3, 1975 - Kopeks are bad. So are headaches.

April 4, 1975 - Vodka makes it hard to get work done. Kathleen sent me a letter from him today, asking if I could stay here for the summer. Some lie about renovating the Manor - because with thirty eight bedrooms, there wouldn't be anywhere for me to stay. They won' t prevent me from staying, they never do. I need to do some remedial coursework anyway. And he promises to visit in August, but I know he won't. And I don't much care. She also sent me last Sunday's issue - so heavy it took two snowbirds to carry it. The advertising sales have picked up since the fall. I should be impressed, but I don't want to be. Lots of advertisements for holidays outside England, and two articles about companies relocating to the Americas. No articles about Death Eaters, though. Can't tell if they were just quiet for the week, or if Father has been told to reduce the coverage.

April 30, 1975 - I am shocked. I am surprised. I don't know how to react. I have a letter from Father. In his own hand. And he spelled my name correctly this time. And made some reference to my last letter to him, which might mean that he actually read it. Weird. I don't want to write back.

May 12, 1975 - Next year, I will be taking three advanced dark classes - potions, spellcasting and runic history, even though I think I'll fail. Too many spells to memorize, and not enough magic to perform them. Why won't he just let me take theory and language classes? I don't need much magic for that. K says I have to be prepared for responsibilities, but I don't know what they are. His new secretary, I think her name is Nora, sent me a box of chocolate frogs (the first box from home that I've seen since Christmas!) and a memo that was distributed to the staff. Am I staff now? Maybe it should go into my file, or I could see if an incendiary spell will work. All they do is make my fingers black, and then K docks me. Nothing is worth it.

Most of the entries were full of similar complaints, cancelled plans and lessons. As the hours passed, Draco's body and head began to ache, and the more he read, the more he stared at the pictures' faces as they turned and smiled at him, the little remaining peace in him ebbed away.

He found a poem on a page by itself, half a dozen blank pages around it. It had no date.

I am dead on the end of your wire, 'til you twist and pull it.

Tension is all that we'll ever have.

May as well use it.

I am remote from you now, remote as old diary phrases.

Distant as candle light, absence itself.

Warmth is a curious thing, escapes at the merest chance.

Friction it so dearly loves friction, so it hates.

The lifeline is cold and abstract, thin and so easy to snap.

All that we control and all we constrain is

Cruelty, bitterness and pain.

At least three times, he reread the entry that Alexander had written twenty years before, to the day. For some reason, his hands were shaking and his eyes just would not focus.

So odd - two letters in a week. I don't think that's happened before, at least not since I started school, which is almost eight years. Obviously, Father received my year end class summary, and he was very displeased. But there's no way for him to punish me. What could he do? Not send me sweets? He hasn't done that in years anyway. Make me stay at school? Already done. If he wanted to hit me again, he'd have to see me, and he can't be bothered with that. About all he can do is send a note to the library and forbid me from checking out any books which aren't related to school, because 'anything that isn't important for classes is rotting my mind.'

When Draco had unrolled the first scroll, he planned to read the journals in an analytical way, as if they were pure research, just another original source that would give him the answers to a puzzle he needed to solve as quickly as he could. He made lists of events that Alexander referred to, and a chart of issues of the Prophet that he wrote about, to use for further research. With the first few entries, he hunted for clues as to who this person was and what had happened to him, but the mundane nature of most of the days made it so difficult.

An impression of Alexander from these private words - the thing that struck him as strangest was that he had almost no contact with Lucius, and never mentioned a mother, even though Draco now presumed that this Celeste was Alexander's mother. He couldn't figure out whether she had been married to Lucius or not, though. His descriptions of classes and the school suggested that he hadn't gone to Hogwarts either, but had gone to Durmstrang, but again, he never mentioned the school name in the pages Draco read, so he wasn't perfectly sure of that either.

Every ordinary little paragraph made him sick to his stomach. How could Lucius have had another son, another wife? How could people who had known Alexander, and now knew Draco, have never mentioned it? Why didn't Lucius ever say anything? And Narcissa - she clearly knew Alexander, that was clear from Professor Snape's story. Why didn't she tell him?

Draco wanted to flee his room and go into Lucius' library to see if he could find anything in there about Alexander or even about Celeste. What sort of parent didn't have any baby books or shoes or little notes or drawings from his son? He kept Draco's childhood things on prominent display, and Draco always thought he enjoyed showing those things off to visitors. There must be something there - even just a note tucked into an old book. It was a library, after all, and libraries were places where things stayed undisturbed until a searcher entered to find something important or wonderful.

He always felt secure in libraries. He had always felt comfortable and safe to have those walls of words around him. It was as if the printed pages were holding back the shadows that pressed around him, carrying memories from a time that was the past even before he'd ever existed. He didn't want to leave the diaries in his room, though, and he didn't want to bring them with him into the library, in case Lucius was in there. Even in the middle of the night, he sometimes spent hours in the library, reading; Draco knew this because there were occasions when Lucius woke him up and called him to come down to that large, burgundy and mahogany room, so he could share a passage from a book or a newly rediscovered enchantment. There would be time for that when he was supposed to be doing homework, or if Lucius went out of town.

Maybe the Dark Lord had taken all the things that mentioned Alexander from the Manor at the same time that he did the memory charm on Professor Snape. Could he have done charms on everyone at the Manor too? None of the servants who worked there now had been there more than fifteen years. And Lucius and Narcissa, and Grandma? Had something been done to them? Could he ask them questions, the same way he'd asked Professor Snape, and they would then be able to remember, and talk?

He wasn't sure he wanted to do that, though. Lucius would be upset that he hadn't mentioned the diaries over dinner, and he didn't have any proof that Narcissa had ever even seen Alexander after her party. If Alexander had gone to Durmstrang, as the journals suggested, he would've been away at school from the time he was eight or nine, and he clearly didn't come home very often, so he wouldn't've seen her over holidays. And how much could she really remember about a boy she'd known, maybe only briefly, thirty years ago? Sometimes, she couldn't remember what had happened the day before.

After a few hours of reading and thinking, he gathered the diary scrolls up, relocked the one he was reading, and tucked them under his bed, next to Peppy, where they wouldn't be found. He'd look at them again later, and if he had a chance, he'd read through some contemporaneous issues of the Prophet, especially the ones on his list.

Then, he turned to the Muggle things. He didn't understand why a wizard would hide Muggle boxes in a Gringott's vault, and he was sure that there had to be something very important in them. But Draco couldn't get the little boxes to open or do anything, no matter how many times he pushed the buttons or sent revealing spells over and through them, so he had to put them aside.

Who could help him with the boxes? He wanted to talk with Professor Snape anyway, to learn if he remembered anything more about Alexander. Draco also thought that he could also ask if Professor Snape knew anything about Muggle technology, but then he remembered that Hermione had grown up in a Muggle house, and might understand the boxes. He had promised to send her an owl with instructions for accessing the Malfoy Archives over the summer, and he could ask her about the boxes in the same letter, but there was a risk in that.

Lucius didn't screen his outgoing owls, Draco knew, but all owls, even family owls, that came onto Manor property had to pass through a review gate, to make sure they weren't carrying any hexed or jinxed messages. All howlers were rerouted to a hearing impaired House Elf who was responsible for opening and replying to them. It was possible - not likely, but possible - that if Draco got an owl back from Hermione with information about the boxes, Lucius would learn about it, and then he'd learn about what was in the boxes and in the diaries and in the vault and Draco wouldn't know anything about them anymore. He couldn't let that happen. It was too chancy to wait and see if he bumped into her in the library; he didn't have much time before he went on holiday.

He could go to her now, though. He could Project to her and bring a drawing of the boxes and see if she knew anything useful.

On his desk was a pile of parchments, so he Accioed one, and murmured Lingestar while pointing his wand, which inked an exact drawing of the large box and one of the smaller ones on the parchment. As the ink dried, he scooped everything else off his bedspread to hide with the diaries. Everything except that picture of Alexander with Potter's father and Professor Snape. He didn't want to leave that behind, so he put it into his pocket. He took the parchment into his hand and walked to the window seat that normally fit between the bookcases. Now, it hovered in the air just under the dormer window; it was the perfect size to sit on cross-legged.

Draco closed his eyes and felt his trance overtake him. His eyes were closed and he waited for the moment when he separated from his corporeal body, when he could see without eyes and hear without ears, but it didn't come. He couldn't pull away and out the window, and with a gasp, he realized that the parchment in his hands had fallen to the floor. He heard it drop and crackle as it landed.

His eyes flew open and he looked toward the horizon. The merest glimpse of navy blue was appearing through the blackness. He'd been up all night with his reading and dawn was coming. Even if I don't feel it, he thought, I must be too tired to Project, or the alcohol is suppressing it. But he had as much energy as a Billywing, he was sure of it. His mind knew best, though, and if it didn't want to let him out of the Manor, there was no charm he could use and no potion he could take that would let him force himself out. The only amulet that might be useful was, at present, locked in an adamantine case at the Museum of Tolerance at Stonehenge. There was no way to get it now.

He'd have to wait until tomorrow. Well, later today, actually, as morning was already here. Nothing could be done, so he might as well clean up and go to bed, although he might only be able to pull two or three hours sleep before his presence was needed, somewhere. He sipped the warm milk from the temperature- and freshness-controlled glass on his nightstand and got ready for bed.

Half an hour later, as he was drifting off to sleep, he remembered that he'd never written a list of the day's activities or tomorrow's schedule for Lucius. He shuddered as he imagined what he could write - "Met with Professor Snape to discuss my involvement in the return of the Dark Lord", "uncovered huge family secret in Gringotts vault", "impressed training coach by catching Snitch in unusual way", and at bedtime the next night, instead of "sleep", "Project to Muggle house to speak about family secret with alleged Mudblood."

For some reason, he didn't think Lucius would consider any of those things as proper activities.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Even if he had written a schedule, though, it would have been impossible to stick to it. Nobody woke him the next morning, so he woke himself with a start when the clock's hands were both just a little to the right of the twelve. He never slept this late, certainly not at home, so he jumped out of bed, pushed his dream about a skeleton who tried to perform a memory charm on him out of his mind, and prepared to dress before he saw the note on his desk.

Draco, when I had Dekky put a sleeping charm on your milk last night, to give you seven full hours of sleep, I didn't think that you might drink it when you woke up in the morning. Why else would you have had it at such an odd hour that you'd still be sleeping at ten thirty in the morning? When you wake up, let Mr. Vacchs know immediately, then go have something to eat. Meet him in thirty minutes at the pitch for your first training session of the summer. I expect to hear you've done better than you did last night. I will not be hone for dinner, but will talk with you before you go to sleep. Please wait in the family living room for me. I expect you to have finished the first six chapters of Worst Case Scenarios - Charms for Surviving the Unexpected by then.

He spent close to three hours running through his paces for Vacchs. The coach timed his cross-pitch flights at different altitudes, measured how long it took Draco to go from the ground to three hundred, then five hundred, feet in the air and used an Angulation talisman to check the curve of his turns. Vacchs didn't actually teach anything, but the various tests, he said, gave him an overall impression of Draco's abilities.

"What about my failings," Draco asked.

"You mean things we need to work on?"

"Things I can't do, things I'm not competant at. I'm sure Lucius and especially Narcissa let you have a scroll listing each and every one of them."

"Yeah, he gave me something, but I trust my own eyes, not those of a layman, and I can make my own conclusions about where you need work. I'm not saying there's nothing, but you've got the necessities down pat. Tomorrow, we'll see what you can do with Bludgers whizzing at you!"

Dinner was the most relaxing he'd had in weeks. Meals at Hogwarts were always noisy things, and it was unnerving to read at the table, other than at occasional breakfasts, because Vin or Greg would invariably spill something, or he would get caught up in a conversation about Quidditch or politics. Tonight, with Lucius and Narcissa away at a charity event, he was undisturbed, though the book Lucius had left for him to read was not the best thing to read over dinner, because some passages were unappetizing, especially those about being caught on a broomstick in a sandstorm while not being able to Apparate, and how not to get away from an alligator when you're stuck in quicksand and your wand is in your robe pocket which is currently three feet below the surface.

He barely looked up from the book as he walked to the living room and settled into the window seat. A few hours must have passed before he heard Lucius and Narcissa's footsteps, one stumbling and one steadying. Narcissa walked right by, but Draco leapt up from his cushions just before Lucius opened the door and told him to follow him into his study.

They sat in their usual chairs, and Lucius criticized Draco's sleeping habits, then began to ask questions Draco expected about how practice went, interspersed with quizzes about the various charms and ward overrides that had been described in the book. For a moment, Draco's mind wandered to the journals in his room, and to Alexander. He didn't see Lucius often, that was clear, but had he ever had a Talk like this with him? How did it go, what did he ask, where were they? In this room? This chair and this ottoman?

Lucius noticed Draco's moment of absent-mindedness and responded with a clap on both of his cheeks. "What did you have for dinner that you can't focus on me tonight?"

"Squid ink linguini with arrabiata sauce."

"And to drink?" He pulled on Draco's collar as he asked, "Did you have any of the wine?"

"No! I wouldn't, not unless you offered it to me. I know not to go into the cellars, or to send a servant in there without your permission!"

"See that you remember," Lucius admonished, releasing Draco's robe and pulling his ottoman so their knees and foreheads were pressed together. He changed the subject abruptly and asked accusingly, "Have you Projected today?"

"No, not since I went to find Rita."

"Do you remember what we read last summer, about the Chinese dragons?"

Possibly because of his own name, or perhaps because of Lucius' extensive collection of old Roman scrolls, Draco thought that most everyone liked to read things that had their name in it, so he was well versed in dragon history and folklore. He felt that he had little in common with actual dragons, and perhaps because of that had seized on a line from Hidden Crouching Dragon - Fireballs Through the Ages. "Chinese dragons of myth could make themselves as large as the universe or as small as a silkworm." They could also change color and disappear in a flash.

"I want you to practice the skills of the Chinese dragon. You can start with size - Project tonight as small as a silkworm. Tonight, I want you to scry for magic within five miles of Whinging Industrial Park. Deliver a report to me before you go to sleep, and tell me about anything you see."

"Why?" Draco wondered.

"Because I said so," Lucius said, pulling his head back and crashing his forehead against Draco's. He knew a moment before it happened, and braced his neck and shoulders so he wouldn't move when the blow hit. "And don't ask questions." He stood up and left Draco struggling to pull himself off the ottoman, still a bit dazed. "Go now. I want your report before sunrise. You can sleep until noon again, if the report is worthwhile."

"But what am I looking...." Draco began.

All Lucius said was, "You'll go from your own room. I don't want the noise of you crashing through her room to wake your mother." And that didn't answer the question.

If he hadn't woken up only ten hours before, he couldn't imagine how he'd have the energy to do this. The evening could've ended up like it did the night before, too little energy for such magic. It did give him a good excuse to Project to Hermione's without Lucius misunderstanding. He knew when Draco Projected and how long he was away, although he couldn't know exactly where he'd gone to.

Back in his room, he changed into dark clothing and sat on his window seat and entered his trance with ease. Within a blink, he found himself back on the Muggle street, although much closer to the house, and as small as Lucius had wanted him to be. He could change his size once he saw Hermione, but if Lucius had any way to know how he'd Projected, he wanted it to be clear that he'd followed directions.

A few moments deliberating which room would be hers, then he sent himself into a second floor room, where the too-bright light from one of those Muggle devices had illuminated her sleeping Kneazle in the window. Crookshanks didn't notice Draco as he appeared in the room, back to his normal size, and neither did Hermione.

The only light in the room was on her desk underneath the window, and Crookshanks was dozing atop of a sprawl of papers. He didn't see Hermione on his first glance around the room. He saw a few familiar books, like next year's set books for Arithmancy, Numerology and Grammatica, Level Three and Nelli White's newest analytical work, The Lemegeton Translations, but others he didn't recognize, and he assumed by their printing and binding that they were Muggle works. Why Hermione would be reading about pride and prejudice was beyond him, though.

He left the books and peered around the room, hoping for a clue as to where she'd gone, when he saw her. She was wrapped in a soft blanket and curled onto a window seat that looked oddly similar to his own. A book had fallen to the floor and her eyes were closed.

He leaned close to her ear and whispered her name a few times, but she barely stirred. Even as Draco's voice grew louder, she still didn't respond. He wasn't in any condition to tap her on the shoulder or shake her awake, since he didn't have any corporeality at the moment.

Charms were difficult in this condition, but simple ones were possible. He was a magical entity in this form, after all, and as he had been taught years before, if he could speak, he could spell. It might be possible to banish the book onto her lap, but that could hurt, especially if his aim was off. He could try to wake Crookshanks and hope that he would wake his mistress, but the Kneazle might react badly to a semi-invisible Draco and fall out the window or something.

He decided a summoning charm might be the least draining way to rouse her. He focused all his energy on her blanket, and Accioed it from around her body. She spun around for a moment, clutching for the cover, then jumped to her feet. At that moment, Draco realized what a big mistake he'd made.

She was wearing a long shirt that said Co-ed Naked Quidditch - Gryffindor Team in letters that flashed in alternates of red and gold, with a pair of green knee socks. The shirt had obviously been washed often, because parts of it were nearly diaphanous.

She looked horrified to see him.

"I am horrified to see you," she yelled, holding her hands across her body to shield herself. "Give me the damned quilt, you prat! And how the hell did you get into my bedroom?"

He spun around so she couldn't see his face. It felt like it had to be red, although how he could be blushing when he didn't have any blood actually coursing to his face was a mystery he didn't want to dwell on. Then, he tried a banishing charm to send the cover back to her, but all it did was flop around a bit, like a mattress in a swamp. "I can't pick it up. I'm..."

"In the astral state again, it's obvious," she said. "I would tell you to close your eyes but it's pointless, as you don't use them anyway, do you?" She stamped over to the blanket and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders, then looked at him and glared.

"Are you going to visit me every day? Should I make cookies? What do you need, that you couldn't just owl me?" she asked angrily.

"When I left here yesterday, I planned to find Rita, go to Diagon Alley and go home for training camp with my Quidditch coach, but ..." He lost his voice for a moment, and didn't know what to say next.

"What? Draco, explain or disappear, please," she said in an exasperated voice.

He launched into an explanation of his discoveries at Gringott's and what he had read and seen in the photographs. About a minute into his explanation, she sat back on the windowseat, and when he was halfway through, she slid off the cushion onto the floor. He just kept talking. When he was finished, her mouth was open and her palm pressed against it. For the first time, the weight of all the possibilities hit him, and he remembered something Lucius had said during a lecture about the Fwoopers and the Billywings. Because of a curse on the family about three hundred years before, every Malfoy could have only one male child, Draco remembered. He heard Lucius' voice in his head, saying, "one child at a time..."

And if there was a Draco in the world, then there couldn't be an Alexander. And if Alexander hadn't died - somehow, someway - there would've been no Draco. His existence was predicated on the nonexistence of the person who he'd spent so many hours thinking about, since the last time he saw Hermione. Aloud, he said, "I'm not a thing. What am I? Am I real? Am I anything? Everything about me is made up. There have been lies and things forgotten and from the way you're looking at me, I can tell that you've never seen a mention of him in any books either."

"Never."

By now, Draco was convinced that the Dark Lord had done something horrible to Lucius. If he tortured or killed Lucius' only son, that might've been how he got support from the Prophet when he was rising to power and gathering followers, and he said as much to Hermione.

She looked at him as if he were crazy. "Did you ever stop and think that this might not be You Know Who's doing? It might be your father's."

"It couldn't be. Why would he do something like that, to his own son?"

"Well, look at what he does to you."

"He doesn't do anything to me that I don't need, to teach me discipline and make me stronger and test and expand my powers. He doesn't do anything I don't deserve."

"You work so hard. You work for every grade you get. You spend more time on homework than anyone, probably even more than me, you do all these extra assignments, never talk back to teachers, at least not in class, well other than Hagrid, and that's pass/fail anyway. I know that you think it's important to you, but sometimes I wonder if you'd care this much if it wasn't for your father. You're operating under demands, his constant demands, that you can't possibly hope to achieve. If you get perfect marks on a paper, what does he ask?"

"Why didn't you get extra credit?"

"And if they're not perfect?"

"I have to do essays or speeches for him about what I missed, except he hasn't given me any assignments relating to my exam in Moody's class." Draco suppressed a shudder as he remembered his last Dark Arts class.

"Why not? Because it wasn't Moody? Or did you get all the essay questions right? I did..."

"Essays? We didn't have essays. We had a practical exam, although in my case, I think it was pretty impractical."

"Oh, that sounds interesting, what did he have you do?" Hermione asked curiously.

"It was not! It was horrible!" It was the first time he had given voice to what he'd thought about the exam, and he spoke about how fake Moody cursed each student twice, how he suffered the Cruciatus curse, then fought off Imperio. She was a wonderful audience, he thought, gasping at the right moments, then, to his surprise, reaching out as if to pat his hand, which was impossible, but a nice gesture nonetheless.

"I am such a fool," she said as she stood up and began to pace the room, muttering to herself. Draco didn't need to use his ears to hear, so he focused on her pursed lips to catch her subvocalizations. "Why didn't I listen why didn't I pay any attention when he complained about Moody fake Moody killer Moody - Crouch putting Harry into danger if I'd listened paid attention thought knew I didn't know all the answers Cedric wouldn't have Harry wouldn't have Voldemort wouldn't have but nobody listens to Draco popular Draco in control Draco father is dangerous Draco and I knew and I saw all the markers and I didn't and I should have and I hate ..."

"Hermione!" he yelled, and she started, turning to him with wide, glazed eyes. "I can't grab your shoulders or shake you to make you snap out of this. What are you talking about?"

She still didn't look perfectly alert when she replied, "I should have said something to somebody. When you complained about Moody, I was too concerned with what Harry would think about my spending time with you to let him know, or let Dumbledore know, what you were saying. And I shouldn't have been so self centered. If I hadn't been, then..." she almost choked, then tried to throw her arms around Draco. "Oops," she said as she fell onto the bed behind him.

He looked at her a little bemusedly as she sat back up. "Look, it happened, and there's nothing we can do about it. Don't blame yourself; Professor Snape knew a lot of it, and he didn't think there was anything he could do. I didn't want to tell the headmaster anyway." He had to cheer her up; it wasn't her fault, it was his. Or maybe Lucius', but definitely not Hermione's.

"We were so wrong. If Dumbledore had known....but he didn't." She pushed her hair out of her eyes with both hands, and said, "But if anything weird happens this summer, or next term, please let me know."

"I will," he lied. He wasn't going to tell her about his conversation with Professor Snape, about the spell research he'd been doing. She didn't need to know that!

"Now can we get to the real reason for my visit?" He pulled the parchment from his pocket and showed it to Hermione, holding it over the bed so no light would shine through its transparent form. "What is this?"

Hermione laughed. "What are you doing with Muggle things?"

"It was in the vault, and no, I do not know why Alexander Malfoy had Muggle things in his vault. If you tell me how to open the boxes, maybe I'll find out."

"You don't open them, you play them." He looked puzzled as she continued. "The small ones are tapes and the large one is a cassette player. See there, it's called a Walkman. I think they came out in the late 1970's. You take the tape and push this button on the Walkman," she said, pointing to one marked EJECT, "then put the tape inside so the end with the brown tape inside is facing the open end. Close the lid and push play, and you can hear what's on the tape!"

"That doesn't sound too complicated. It's like a PrivaBox, isn't it?"

"Somewhat, but you have to use earphones to listen. Did you find any in the vault?" Draco shook his head. "You'll have to borrow a pair from me. Should I send some by owl?" Draco shook his head again and explained about the mail security procedures.

"How about I leave some at the library for you, in an envelope? If you get caught with them, say they were a prank from someone at school, so to keep your father off your case. And you probably need batteries, since anything almost twenty years old would definitely be dead." She explained how Muggles use batteries to make their eclectical things work, which he thought sounded like too much effort for too little return.

"Can I end this on a light note, and push away all this melodrama?"

"How?"

"Where'd you get the shirt? The Slytherin team needs something like that."

"But you don't have any girls on the team!" she said, finally smiling again, and taking a step towards him.

He leaned closer to her. His sense of smell never worked when he was outside his body, but he thought he caught a hint of citrus coming from her hair. "It would be worth it to have something like that. So tell! Was it a present from Potter?" He tried to keep from stepping back from her as he ended that question.

"No," she said. "He wasn't even around when they were sold. The Chasers had them printed up right before the first game third year, and sold them around as a house fundraising activity, raising money for post-game parties and stuff. Right after the game with Hufflepuff, when Harry was still in the infirmary, Angelina Johnson orchestrated this big sale and distribution thing - two Galleons a shirt - and they were so funny, I had to get one. They sold out in about three hours. Now, can I ask you a question? Or are you going to play your usual trick and rush off again?"

"Would you curse me if I said I had to?

"Yes, but it wouldn't do any good, would it?"

"I don't know. Some curses might work, but I don't feel up to dealing with Crucio again."

"Then go, but find me at the library tomorrow. And bring an answer to my question."

"What is it then?"

"Draco, what in the world are you going to do?"