A Stranger Garden

Chapter 3.

2008

Something that looked so pretty in the morning sunlight really should not have such a dark reputation, Harry thought, as he, Andromeda and Teddy approached Malfoy Manor through the main gate. Harry had extremely mixed feelings about coming back to this place after so long, considering the last time he'd been here his, Hermione's and Ron's lives had been in such dire peril. Sometimes when he let the cold, harsh memories too close, they infected his dreams, and Hermione's screams as she was being tortured haunted him for a time.

It was hard to believe that such tragedies had occurred in this place when seen in this light. Some would call it a fairy tale setting, the cerulean blue sky setting off the riot of colours in the gardens, well manicured lawns sweeping grandly up to the impressive oak doors and down to a picturesque lake virtually surrounded by reeds. Even the albino peacocks seemed to fit this idyllic scene.

Perhaps Malfoy's incarceration here had not been such arduous punishment after all.

But then he remembered the echo of Teddy's anguish at not being able to show Malfoy his lake or not being able to go with him to special places for an outing and he realised that even the most beautiful place was still a prison if you couldn't leave it.

When an owl arrived for him this morning asking him to accompany Andromeda and Teddy to the manor, the refusal was immediate and reflexive but he refrained from voicing it and examined his reasons instead. What he discovered was an irrational fear that he'd find himself caught in one of his recurring nightmares, waking to a reality of being chained up in the dungeons.

In the cold light of day that was impossible of course. The Manor was empty, Voldemort long dead and gone and virtually no trace of the Death Eaters left to cause any trouble. He'd laughed at himself and responded to the owl in the affirmative. Ginny hadn't been happy about him going, asking him why he was all of a sudden interested in Malfoy again. But he wasn't doing it for Malfoy, he was going to support Andromeda and Teddy and that was all. Okay, so he was just a little curious about Malfoy after all these years and wondered what this Malfoy whom Teddy and Andromeda loved had been like.

Malfoy had been dead a few weeks but still the Manor grounds had an expectant air, as if it had been just waiting for its master to return home. It had a different master now.

Andromeda told Harry that she didn't intend moving here, even though Draco had left it to her in his will and it was much grander than her own small country house.

"It's not Teddy's home and it's not the home I made with Ted and raised Nymphadora in," she said. "Since the war, it's always been Draco's place; that's how we've seen it."

"What will you do with it?" Harry asked as one of the house-elves opened the front doors to admit them.

"Nana says I can choose whatever I like of Draco's to keep and then she'll board up the place for me for when I'm older if I want it," Teddy replied soberly. Teddy had forgiven him but Harry knew he was still mourning Malfoy.

"Do you know what you want?" he asked, looking around the entry hall, trying to curb his nerves about entering the drawing room again.

"No, not yet," Teddy replied, shaking his head and frowning.

Andromeda addressed the house-elf and it disappeared.

"Right, well we have the place to ourselves. Teddy, if you'd like to find something of Draco's, you know where his room is."

"What will you do?" Teddy asked his grandmother. Harry thought he could be mistaken but there was probably a little hint of apprehension in his tone. Harry didn't think Teddy wanted to go through Draco's things on his own.

"I need to go through Draco's housekeeping records and forward them to the solicitors who will maintain the house for us."

"You don't want to put a manager in here?"

"I don't want anyone in here that is not family," she replied. "I can just imagine choosing the wrong person who would hold Draco's family up to ridicule and expose his personal life to humiliation somehow." She shook her head. "No, better to leave it to the house-elves to do the physical maintenance and the solicitor to organise everything else. When Teddy is older he can make up his own mind what he wants to do."

Harry nodded. He had to admit that he wouldn't want a stranger going through his things, either. "Teddy, do you want me to come with you?"

The boy nodded and Harry followed him down the hallway, up a grand sweeping staircase and along a landing to a door.

He had no idea what exactly he had been expecting; some grand opulent bedroom where even the monster-sized bed appeared lost in the sheer size of the room, he supposed. It certainly wasn't an ordinary looking room, dominated by a huge bed and decorated, Harry would say, in early Hogwarts.

There were clothes piled on a chair in the corner, the bed was made and the pillows fluffed but there was the odd shoe left lying around the floor, several Cannons posters decorated the wall, Quidditch gear lay in another corner and the tops of the drawers were littered with books, empty sweet wrappers and scraps of paper. Someone didn't like house-elves cleaning in here too much, he thought, amused by that curious little idiosyncrasy.

When Harry walked closer to the posters he saw that the players in them had signed them all. Wow, what Ron would give for that! Teddy moved close to him and they watched as Joey Jenkins hit a Bludger towards an opponent and stopped to wave at them before the loop ended and started over again.

"He loved this team, you know?" Teddy said.

Harry shook his head. He hadn't known Malfoy even followed Quidditch. Harry's eyes followed the flight of Galvin Gudgeon, an old Seeker of the Cannons in what must have been his one good match, seeing as he was normally characterised by how many opportunities he missed, once even letting the Snitch bounce off the end of his nose. That may have been the reason Malfoy liked him; in one game back in Hogwarts the Snitch had been sitting at Malfoy's shoulder and he'd not even seen it, too busy taunting Harry at the time.

"I think I'll keep those posters. We talked about Quidditch a lot. Just like you and I do." Teddy gave a wan smile. "I wanted to know why he had such a useless player on his wall. You know what he said?"

"What?"

"He said that it reminded him that even the stupidest person could succeed at least once in their lives. Even Gudgeon had to have done something right to have landed the job as the Cannons Seeker, so there was a chance for him that what he had planned for the rest of his life might work."

Harry began to think that there was something worthwhile to Malfoy. "Did he say what his plans were?"

"No, but he did say he just needed one thing to go right and he would be happy." Teddy turned to him. "Harry, I like to think I made him happy, too, though." Harry saw the doubt in his eyes though and he hurried to reassure the boy.

"I'm sure you did. The way your grandmother speaks, he loved you very much. He would have been talking about his future, after he could leave here. No matter how beautiful it is, it's not freedom, is it?"

"That's what Nana said, too." Teddy leaned into Harry's side and Harry put an arm around his shoulder. "I miss him already, Harry."

.o0o.

Draco thought that probably the thing he missed most was music. Of an evening he'd liked sitting down in his drawing room with a large brandy and listening to beautiful notes wash over him and transport him to an emotional place he'd only ever experienced through music. The empty ballroom seemed to echo with silence and Draco found it hard to concentrate, but they'd not yet been able to give voice to inanimate objects like the Wizarding Wireless. He could make noise, talking, singing, hitting things, even playing an instrument - not that he could play any musical instrument at all - but he could not play anything prerecorded or the radio.

He'd not counted on things being so silent. In his plans, dreams, there had been the sounds of a man in pain emanating from the dungeons to keep him company and satisfy his thirst for revenge. He'd thought he could quite happily survive on those moans for years until he grew tired of the pitiful noises and disposed of Potter in some other way. Relishing the pain noises of another human had never really appeared macabre or cruel to Draco, seeing as his father had enjoyed torturing the odd Muggle and Draco had been used to those types of sounds coming from the dungeons. Inflicting that pain though was something Draco had not experienced and he'd pushed aside the niggling worry that he might not be able to administer the treatment. He'd always assumed, no, known that he would be able to make an exception for Potter.

If he thought that the Potter in his dungeons could feel pain, or if he'd remember the pain when he woke, then Draco would be down there taking out his frustrations and revenge on the body hanging in the chains, even if he got no response. He'd tried the second day. He'd walked into the dungeon with a knife in his hand, prepared to test out two theories. He wanted to know if portraits bled when they were cut or injured and he wanted to know if unanimated portraits could feel pain. What he'd discovered was that placing a cut across Potter's wrist just below where the cuffs bound him, only left a rather grotesque looking gash. Bloodless, though. And there was no response from Potter, so therefore he could only deduce that he felt no pain from the cut.

The one thing he hadn't planned on discovering, because he'd not thought about it, was that touching an unanimated figure in a portrait felt like touching a dead person, though strangely warmer. Warm but lifeless. Not like his mother. The one time he'd been allowed from the Manor in the whole ten years of his house arrest was the time they'd Portkeyed him to St. Mungo's morgue to identify his mother's body. Apparently they hadn't found enough of Lucius to identify but his mother had remained relatively intact. When he kissed her forehead goodbye, her skin had felt cold and hard and flat, not like his mother at all. He wished he'd thought to have her painted into this scenario but, at the time, all his thoughts had been on Potter and the revenge he was going to exact and by the time he'd wished it, she was already dead and it was too late. He had a small photo of her on his bedside table but being in a portrait made it lose its animation. It was better than nothing though.

So, after the second day, he hadn't been able to bring himself to go down there again. There was something decisively wrong with seeing an unanimated Potter hanging in chains. There was no smart mouth, no fight and no spark. If there was one thing Potter was known for it was never giving up. Draco was counting on that knack Potter had of fighting back, hitting Draco's raw nerve and goading him onto harsher punishments. He was counting on Potter's fight and anger to fuel his own. Even the most fun activity becomes boring after a time when there's no response.

Unfortunately, his plan had gone a fraction awry. Several times in the last few weeks he'd cursed his desire to live up to certain standards. If he hadn't felt the need to be appropriately attired for his, and Potter's, sudden demise then he'd not have wanted to travel to the Parisian tailor his family engaged to make their formal robes. Of course, he'd also wanted to take Teddy to Luxembourg Palace. It was his favourite place in the world, the place where his mother used to take him as a small boy to sail model boats and sit by the fountain hidden on the north side behind the trees. On sunny days he'd loved hiding under the shelter of the trees and feeding several ducks that swam on the water near the fountain. And he'd wanted to see it one more time before he died, so he could remember his mother fondly and not as he'd seen her last.

If not for his sentimental nonsense, he'd have asked Potter to the house as soon as he perfected the poison four and a half years ago. But he'd thought he could wait, never even considering that he'd be in any sort of danger on his first trip outside the Manor since his house arrest had been lifted. He had no idea who it was that killed him, had no wish to know who it was - nothing would change the permanence of his position now. He could only surmise that it was someone he or his family had caused injury to, or a family member. Revenge, the perpetual cycle, had waited a long time. Whoever it was had been patient, so now Draco could be patient as well.

In the silence.

Damn, but it was hard. He'd taken to singing to himself, humming songs he remembered, but his tone was flat and he could not carry a tune to the soaring heights his wonderful music could reach, so it left him disappointed and unfulfilled. There was a harp in the library. He'd always considered it to be an affectation, a prop, because no one in his family could play it. As far as Draco knew no one had ever played it. He'd first looked at it and thought that it would take years to train himself to the standard that he'd be happy listening to.

He took another look at it and sighed. Well, he probably had years and years ahead of him waiting until Potter croaked, so what better time than now? He could devote as much time as needed to learning to make his own magical music. Experimentally, he ran his fingers along the strings and they made a pretty, soft trill that made Draco's fingers tingle with excitement and his ears smile in appreciation.

.o0o.

In the end, Teddy had chosen to keep Malfoy's broom. Not to play Quidditch with, because Teddy loved the sport but didn't want to play, but more because he knew it was something Malfoy loved to do. He also chose to keep all the fishing gear, which wasn't stored in Malfoy's bedroom, obviously, but they could collect that later.

"One day you'll have to show me all over the manor," said Harry as they descended the stairs, Teddy carrying Malfoy's broom and a couple of photographs of Malfoy that had been on the bedside table. Harry would ask for a tour now, but he could see that this experience had been hard for Teddy. There must be a lot of happy memories here for him. Another time would do just as well.

The soft sounds of lilting musical notes reached his ears and he was instantly on alert. He stood still, grabbing on to Teddy and hauling him close. Despite not having to worry about attacks for a decade, it seemed old habits died hard, especially when he was trying to overcome old memories of this place.

"What was that?"

"It sounded like a harp."

"I thought this place was empty."

"It is. There's a harp in the library, Nana probably strummed her fingers over it."

Harry relaxed. Of course, what was he thinking? That there was some nefarious plot to kidnap him and hold him prisoner in chains down in the dungeon again? Stupid idiot, he told himself. He took a few deep breaths and let Teddy disentangle himself.

"You're right, sorry about that."

Teddy looked up at him, eyes troubled and deep blue. "I know you didn't like Draco, but this is his house and I did like him, so please keep your mistrust to yourself. He would never have set any sort of trap that could possibly have hurt me or Nana."

Perhaps the eyes were disappointed rather than troubled. Harry felt awful and foolish. "I seem to be apologising a lot today. I'm sorry," he said contritely. "Coming back here brings back bad memories, that's all. I thought I'd dealt with them, but apparently not."

"What bad memories? From during the war?"

Harry nodded. "But those are stories for another time." About ten years from now, Harry added silently. A ten-year-old boy just didn't need to know that people he loved had been held captive here and hurt. When Teddy shot him a look, Harry continued. "Let's go and collect that fishing equipment and then see if your Nana is finished. Perhaps we can stop for ice cream on the way home."

Teddy's eyes lit up at the mention of ice cream. "Can I get my favourite flavour?"

Harry grinned. "What is it this week?"

Teddy promptly turned his hair rainbow coloured and they both laughed as Teddy led him out to the stables where there was a room set up to store the fishing equipment.