Tribute

Note: A little Yuletide ficlet for Chthonia and her incomparable Lucius! With beta thanks to Lazy_neutrino.

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Kingsley Shacklebolt's horned owl quite resembles its owner, Minerva thinks as the large bird executes a flawless landing on her desk, feathers flattened sleekly to its solid body against the winter wind. It sticks out a leg in a dignified manner, and suffers her to untie the parchment with never a ruffle.

Minerva breaks the Ministry seal, eyes scanning the parchment and the list beneath.

His name is there, of course, in second place after mad Bellatrix. She has known it beforehand; she was at the trials, after all. To exonerate Severus Snape, and to speak up for the Death Eater children whom the Ministry had swept up in the aftermath of Harry's victory along with their parents, and whom Scrimgeour was quite willing to condemn to the same fate.

Her own testimony and an interview with the Daily Prophet before the trials were not enough to save Draco Malfoy, however. The stupid boy, who bears the Dark Mark for all to see, has been sentenced to four years in Azkaban for attempted murder and the use of an Unforgivable 'under duress'. While for publicity's sake the Ministry is eager to get on the good side of Hogwarts' new Headmistress and Order of the Phoenix veteran, they won't humour her too far. The influence Albus wielded over them still rankles.

Lucius Malfoy, however, had been doomed from the moment the Aurors picked him up among the surviving Death Eaters right where they'd fallen after Voldemort's death. The final flare of the Dark Mark had killed the weaker - luckier - ones among them like Avery and Wormtail. But not Malfoy.

She tells herself that she'd only stayed to hear his sentence because she was already there; a gesture of acknowledgement to a former pupil. There was no testimony she could have given on his behalf, nor did she desire to. He wore the ice mask she had always hated, sharp eyes haughtily raking over the milling, hissing crowd packed into Courtroom Ten. He did not offer her a nod of acknowledgement when he found her among the spectators, although his eyes did.

The Kiss, in two weeks' time. No one could have expected anything different. How easily the Ministry embraced the Dementors back into the fold after their defection to Voldemort, she thinks; the same magnanimity is not extended to his human servants.

Two weeks and a day later, Minerva smoothes the parchment, then shuts it away in one of the carved drawers of her desk. Her blank face contrasts with the painted eyes of her predecessors along the walls. Albus' half-finished portrait sits on its easel by the window, not yet animated and wrapped in a piece of linen. Even if he were already with her, he wouldn't understand.

Wouldn't understand because he hadn't seen her some twenty years earlier, walking in Hogwarts' walled-in apple garden, on a very fine spring morning. He'd caught up with her there, Lucius Malfoy, and she still recalls dropping the apple blossom she'd been toying with, embarrassed at having been seen at such schoolgirlish behaviour.

They'd walked, discussing a special project on Animagus transformation for his NEWTs, and for a moment she had wondered what his form might be - a hunting bird, a peregrine perhaps, or some woodland predator - a marten, otter, or mongoose. Well, perhaps not the latter, not a snake slayer for such an accomplished Slytherin. But she'd known he would not follow those studies through to their final conclusion: too little relevance to his upcoming NEWT, not enough long-term gain. He had mentioned studying over Easter with Antonin Dolohov, a disciple of Durmstrang's famed Transfiguration Magister Stephan Grigorievich. Innocent bragging perhaps, from one of Horace's aptest pupils, if she hadn't been well aware that Dolohov was a dark wizard - and a lot more besides.

He'd kissed her there, in a ring of scrunched apple blossoms amidst the tart chill of spring morning; not sweet, arrogant or nervous - gentle, if anything. Of course it hadn't been the first time a hormone- or mischief-driven student had tried to press his affections on her, even if this was the first since the lines had begun to encroach on her mouth, eyes and neck, and her strict bearing had become less mask and more second nature. It was, however, the very first who had sparked in her an impulse to respond.

It hadn't been his looks - in fact, the excessive refinement of pureblood breeding repelled rather than attracted her, like the sort of over-bred hunting Crups that were all bone-structure, sleekness and streamlined ears, incapable of being anything but a testimony to their own worth.

More interesting had been the few instances of lively, eager intellect she'd seen flare in him, in class or during mealtimes in the Great Hall. Flawed by ambition, undoubtedly, but there. Unlike Albus, who had greater concerns and could turn a blind eye on all but a chosen few, and with less glaring selectiveness than Horace, she'd watched the students of all houses, even the Slytherins. The boy's desire for knowledge shone when he immersed himself in his favourite studies, even if, in time, he became less Lucius, and more Malfoy.

By seventh year, she would have thought Lucius Malfoy above any spur-of-the-moment passion, not with all the beauties of Black fawning over him. Nor could his Slytherin mind hope to gain anything from her, not so close to the NEWTs. In the end, she'd dismissed it as a dungeon-hatched prank.

She'd disengaged herself with all the dignity she could muster, with the same haughty mien she'd always reserved for the situation, and assigned him two weeks detention. Not with Arsenius Jigger as he'd have so richly deserved, but with Horace, who admired the young man's father and would use the time to touch up on his potions skills, Malfoy's weakest NEWT subject. He'd bowed to her with a lifted eyebrow that said he well understood the spirit behind the punishment.

It was an offence that would have warranted a complaint to the boy's head of house and a letter to his father, but although they would have made all the right noises, it would come across as the flusterings of an aging spinster. Minerva had no love for the Slytherin obsession with status, but knew how to play the game well enough.

Months later, as the world darkened and the war sneaked up on them on poisonous cat paws, Minerva found herself crowded between Alastor Moody and Dedalus Diggle in a corner seat of the Burrow's kitchen table as the Order went over a list of potential Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters who might be approached to work against him. The name Lucius Malfoy curled on her tongue throughout the discussion, like a sharp, elusive mint. None of the others brought up the possibility; he was, it seemed, abandoned to the enemy by name and breeding. Minerva herself kept quiet in the end, for lack of a reason to give. The name of a Death Eater, let slip under doubtful circumstances, was not bound to impress men like Albus or Moody. She had kept quiet ever since.

Her hand does not tremble as she serves the messenger two owl treats, which it nips off her fingers with dainty pecks. She opens the window, and it throws itself back out into the night.

She wonders what has become of his soulless body, with his son in Azkaban and his wife fled to the continent. A bed in St Mungo's spell damage ward, or in some less prestigious institution, no doubt. Not that it matters any longer.

Minerva closes the window and the warmth of the fireplace reaches out to embrace her again. She watches the sharp curves of the owl's wings beat and blur and become one with the dark. Back at her desk, she reaches for her quill and the stacks of parchments waiting for her, and returns to her work.

But at night, her dreams are bleak.

~ finis ~