Not Quite a Love Song, in Ten Scenes

Part 6: The Manor (or: Where the Heart Is)

Christmas holidays, in Malfoy Manor, were blissfully Potter-free.

Draco sat in the Manor's luxurious living room, sipping hot butterbeer as his mother cast Imperius on three dozen fairies. He watched them flitting around the branches of the tall fir tree, irridescent wings glittering between the green-and-silver Christmas baubles.

It made him wonder how Potter would look, frozen under such enforced obedience, and he leaned back into the soft leather of the couch to enjoy the thought more fully.

A few house-elves distributed black candles in silver snake holders. Others draped the branches in black tinsel charmed to slither around like thin vipers. The Malfoys had been honoured with the arrangement of this year's Dark Christmas Revel, and the Dark Lord loved such gimmicks.

Clattering and shrill shrieks downstairs from the kitchen made Narcissa Malfoy pause and sigh.

"Draco, dear, would you finish here, please," she asked. "It seems like your Aunt Bella is after the kitchen elves with the steak cleaver again, and we need all of them to prepare a proper Christmas dinner."

Draco sighed. Yes, elf chops would really go down poorly with the Dark Lord. He drew his wand to direct the fairies while his mother dashed out with surprising speed.

"Don't hold it by its tail, you dumb sod!" he yelled at one of the house-elves, who was trying to wrap a bit of snake tinsel around a candle holder. The charmed little thing squirmed and bit the air fretfully. "Honestly!"

He watched as the castigated elf began to wail, beat its chest and rend its shabby pillowcase. It being female, that was quite amusing to watch.

"Draco, language!" his father admonished from the couch, voice slightly raised to be audible over the elf's din.

"I'm sorry, Father." Draco waved his wand and cast a quick Ars Vivendi Charm on the silver tinsel as a final touch. It gamely began to slither around the branches of the tree. Perfect!

"Come over here, Draco," Lucius said after Draco had dismissed the house-elves.

Draco sauntered over to the couch table and sat on an armchair. Lucius Malfoy rested on the couch under a silver-embroidered quilt, still pale and given to regular lie-downs and bouts of frantic muttering after his recent release from Azkaban, courtesy of a certain numbered bank vault in the darkest depths of Gringotts. Now, he put the book he'd been reading on the table to scrutinise his son.

Feeling a little awkward under those stern, pale eyes, Draco looked down at the book instead. CONTEMPORARY REVENGE: CURSES TO LEAVE THAT WHIMP VIRIDIAN SHAKING IN HIS SLIPPERS.

"Is it any good?" Draco asked.

Lucius shook his head. "Near-Lockhartesque popular Cursology. They just don't write Dark Tomes like they used to." He made a dismissive gesture. "But that wasn't what I wanted to speak to you about. You've received an invitation to tonight's Christmas do at the Parkinsons', and your mother and I would like you to attend."

"But-!" Draco stared in horror. Miss his first Dark Revel, in his own home? How dangerous could it get? It wasn't as if he would see his father dancing half-naked on the tabletop, or anything else that would leave lasting mental damage! Pansy, on the other hand, just might.

Lucius interrupted his protest with a raised hand.

"I realise that this comes as a disappointment for you, Draco, but everybody of import will be there, and if you consider Pansy Parkinson too pug-faced and young Zabini too androgynous for your taste, you might always get to know the Patil sisters a bit better. Humungus Nott recently remarked that they turned out 'quite dishy'."

Draco shuddered delicately. "Padma's a minor know-it-all, and Parvati a Gryffindor!"

Lucius shrugged. "Well, a few years from now Hogwarts house affiliations will have blown over - your mother's own sister was a Ravenclaw, and it's a fact almost forgotten now."

"Yes, because everybody harps on her shagging that Muggle!"

Lucius prudently decided to change the topic.

"Be it as it may, we don't want you to attend the Revel. You're only sixteen - too young to be exposed to the Dark Lord."

"But Father, you were fifteen when you became a Dea-"

"Those were different times, then." Lucius permitted himself a nostalgic smile. "As it is, our Master is not overly... pleased with my services, both during his time of absence and then during that little... spot of bother at the Department of Mysteries." He fixed Draco with a sharp look. "He might consider you as a downpayment of my debts to him should you be present, and I don't want you involved in his affairs yet."

The cogs of Draco's mind started to wheel frantically. It was quite an unusual experience for him, so he stared past his father's face, eyes narrowed and pointed teeth worrying his lower lip. At last, he said very slowly,

"Father, I would very much like to meet the Dark Lord tonight." His eyes met Lucius's, and whatever his father read in them, it made him swallow the protest that seemed to be squirming on his tongue.

"Why?" he asked, calmly.

"Because I think I would like to extend to him a proposition that might be very much in his interest and would vastly improve the standing of the House of Malfoy in his eyes."

Lucius cocked his head. "The Dark Lord reacts extremely adverse to failure, my dragon. I will not approve of any scheme that might involve you turning yourself into his target. You are my only child and heir; improving our standing with the Dark Lord is not worth your life - or your sanity."

"Trust me, Father, our Lord will be delighted," Draco said forcefully. "I swear I can make this work."

"Well then, Draco," Lucius replied slowly. "Displays of initiative on your part do not come so frequently that I would want to discourage one. Your mother, however, will not be pleased."

His father suppressed a shudder, and his face pulled into a pained grimace. Draco could sympathise with the sentiment. Compared to his mother throwing a fit, Aunt Bella was as harmless as a baby bunny put to sleep in its basket with the Draught of Living Death.

"You had better go upstairs and select your best dress robes, then," Lucius said.

And so it happened that Draco Malfoy, after suffering a frantic embrace from his mother, a strangling one from his Aunt Bella, and a warning glance from his father, walked into the presence of Lord Voldemort - in his best dress robes and with every hair magelled into place - and announced, after sinking down gracefully on one knee,

"My Lord, I would like to make a proposition..."

~ tbc. ~
Next: The Lake (or: I've Been Missing You)