Brothers

Chapter Two

Summer's End

"You're a freak, you know."

Rivers glanced up at Draco. He had been avoiding contact with his twin. He didn't see them as being related in any way, and had no desire to get to know the boy well enough to start thinking of them that way. The Milligans were his family, no matter what had happened. So, two weeks had passed since Rivers had arrived at Malfoy Manor, school was around the corner, and he and Draco had passed no more than five sentences between each other. Now this snob of a boy was calling him a freak. He had been contently reading a book on Potions, his favorite subject, and Draco had entered the room without making a sound.

"Father and Mum both have blonde hair and you have brown--dark brown hair," Draco went on. "That's almost genetically impossible, you know."

Rivers stared at Draco. "Almost. Key word, Malfoy. Almost." Rivers had been calling Draco 'Malfoy' from the beginning, and was yet to even utter the name Draco. "If you thought before you opened your big mouth maybe you'd at least sound smart."

Draco's smirk, which he had been wearing since he entered the room, dissolved instantly into a snarl. He clenched his hands into fists and a pink tinge crept onto his cheeks. He struggled desperately for something to say. Thankfully for him his father's voice intervened for him.

"Rivers! Get down here!" Lucius' voice showed that he was obviously angry about something. So did the fact that he called for Rivers himself instead of sending a house-elf.

Rivers closed his book and stood. As he left the room he turned to Draco and said, "By the way, this is my room now. I don't go into your room, you don't go into mine."

Rivers left a fuming Draco and headed down the stairs. He made his way through the large house easily enough. Malfoy Manor was full of surprises, as Rivers had found out on his first day there. Things looked almost normal, but there were secret passages and storage rooms he had found. He hadn't said anything to anyone about them, though. He was sure that they were supposed to be complete secrets from just about everyone. Besides, he didn't want to shatter any possibilities of these being useful to him later on.

He entered the living room where Lucius Malfoy stood. "Mornin', Lucius."

Rivers had not been able to force himself to call Lucius 'Dad' and figured he probably never would. It didn't seem to affect Lucius any, so Rivers just kept calling him by his first name.

"Rivers, have you been going through my things?" Lucius looked at the dark-haired boy. He expected the boy to admit to it.

"No. I've been upstairs all day." Rivers shrugged and turned to walk away. He called back over his shoulder. "Maybe Malfoy did it."

Lucius knew very well that Rivers called Draco this. "How dare you accuse him of going through my private things? Draco would never do such a thing, you little--"

Only because you've trained him not to, Rivers thought. "It was only a suggestion, Lucius." He walked up the stairs backwards, his eyes on Lucius. "Nothing to get pissed about."

Rivers turned and walked back up to his room. Draco was still there, despite what Rivers had told him earlier. Rivers' gave him an irritated look, suspicion mounting in his mind, but Draco didn't seem to notice.

"So, what did Father want with you?" Draco was smirking again; he was sure that Rivers was in trouble.

"Oh, nothing. I just had a nice little father-son chat with Lucius." Rivers smirked. He had noticed that Draco was exceptionally sensitive when it came to dealing with Lucius.

Draco stood there, staring at Rivers, his rage building. At a loss for words Draco stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Rivers glared at the door for a moment. What right did Draco have to be in his room anyways? He glanced around, and after he was satisfied that nothing was missing he sat on his bed and picked up his book. Why did my parents have to dump me with the Ministry?

After unsuccessfully trying to read more of his Potions book he threw it into a dresser drawer and let himself gaze around his room once more. One of the many unused guest rooms in Malfoy Manor had been transformed into a rather large bedroom with a king sized four-poster bed with silver drapery. There was a desk in one corner of the room and a large, nearly empty bookcase in another. The only books there were a few on Potions, a few on Quidditch, some on Animagi, and a lone, old, tattered book on the Dark Arts. All four of these subjects were favorites of Rivers, and some he had read dozens of times over.

Rivers had seen Draco's room, and knew without asking or measuring that the blonde boy's room was larger. Draco's four-poster's drapery was green instead of silver, and in several places Rivers had seen a silver snake sewn into the material. There was a large snake carved into each bedpost. Rivers wondered if this was Draco's or Lucius' doing, most likely Lucius. Rivers didn't care that Draco's room was more furnished and had very expensive things in it and his didn't. The Milligans had never been wealthy so the way his new room was semi-empty reminded him of his old room back home.

School starts tomorrow, he thought. Might as well start packing now.

Rivers walked over to a large trunk that sat near his bed and ran his hand over the wood. He tossed the open pad-lock aside, opened the trunk, and stared at the inside; it was empty. The trunk was large enough to hold all of Rivers' belongings, or at least all that had belonged to him before he moved here. He opened the top drawer on his dresser and began to throw things into the trunk. He tossed in the books he had to have for the next year, the other things that were necessary for school, and almost all of his clothes. Silently he walked to his bookcase, took all of the books and put them into the trunk too. He threw in several other less important things, things he didn't trust in the care of Lucius and his ever-obeying house-elves. The last thing he put in there was a photo-album with a green and red covering. Across the cover there were gold embossed letters that read 'My Family' in brilliant cursive letters.

He forced the trunk lid to close, locked the pad-lock in place, and shoved the small golden key that had been in it into his pocket. He sat back down on his bed and stared at the metal plaque on the side of his trunk. It said, 'To our one and only son, Rivers, whom we dearly love. We will never leave you. "Muggles" honor.' It was dated three years ago, when he had found out that he was a wizard and that he was adopted.

Rivers scoffed. So much for Muggles honor, huh? At least I won't be here for a while after tonight, he thought. Tomorrow I go to Hogwarts. Then Rivers remembered Draco.

"No," Rivers corrected himself. "Tomorrow we go to Hogwarts."

////

Draco paced back and forth in his room, thinking about the past couple of weeks. His father had taken him to Diagon Alley the day after Rivers arrived for both boys' school supplies. Rivers had been left behind. Draco was all right with this; he really didn't want to be seen with his brother yet. The bookstore manager gave them curious looks when they bought two of every book. He had to admit that it was amusing to see the look on manager's face when he insisted that he needed two copies of The Monster Book of Monsters. The most embarrassing part for Draco was when his father left him to get new robes while he went on with his own personal business and Draco had to request for double the amount of robes he usually got. Madam Malkin had looked at him for a moment before continuing with her work.

"Why couldn't Rivers have come?" Draco had asked his father. He had decided that he'd rather have the whole world know about Rivers rather than to have anyone give him those funny looks again.

"Because I said so." This was all his father had said and over the years Draco had learned not to question his father, so he didn't.

When they had arrived home Draco had thrown the bags that contained Rivers' new things into Rivers' room, spilling the contents over the floor. He hadn't even noticed Rivers staring at him from beside the large window.

For the next two weeks Draco had avoided Rivers unless he had something insulting to say about him. For some reason Draco found it hard to come up with anything to say, and when he did get something good Rivers was always full of stinging retorts that caught Draco off guard every time.

Draco continued to pace his room. Life was not going the way he thought it should be. Draco stopped dead in his tracks.

A dull pain had suddenly blossomed deep in chest. Instantly he thought of Rivers. Was it possible that Rivers was somehow using some form of voodoo on him? No matter how preposterous the idea was it made sense to Draco, and soon he was leaving his room and walking down the hall.

Rivers' room was unsurprisingly far away from his and his parents' rooms, so he had plenty of time to think. Is it REALLY possible that Rivers is using voodoo or some sort of Dark Magic? Draco thought. After all he did grow up with Muggles...is it possible that he knows those things?

The gentle throbbing of the pain in his chest made him forget about Rivers' upbringing. It had to be Rivers doing this to him. He had never felt any pain like this before, not since Rivers had come...or had he? No, no, he thought. He pushed the idea that he had felt it before out of his mind. It had to be Rivers.

Upon entering Rivers' room Draco found his twin sitting hunched over on his bed, absorbed in something. Ultimately convinced that he would find Rivers clutching a voodoo doll he walked up behind his brother, making sure that he stayed out of view. Instead, Rivers was holding a Potions book. Draco crept closer and to the side to get a closer look at the book and thought he saw Rivers glance briefly at him. In a wave of panic Draco said the first thing that popped into his head.

"You're a freak, you know."

Rivers looked up at him, and Draco felt pressed for something to add, something to say that would convince Rivers that he really was a freak and that it wasn't something Draco was just saying to irritate him. The only problem was he didn't know what to say!

Then it hit him. He remembered something that his mother had told him when he was younger and had asked why he had blonde hair. She had said it was because both she and Lucius had blonde hair, and when their genes mixed the result of it was a blonde haired boy.

Hoping against hope that no more than a few seconds had passed since he had first called Rivers a freak, Draco went on.

"Father and Mum both have blonde hair and you have brown--dark brown hair." Draco smirked. "That's almost genetically impossible, you know."

He had almost told Rivers that it was genetically impossible for him to have brown hair, but then he had remembered that his mother had said, 'The child's hair will most likely be blonde...but sometimes you get brown, too...' He realized at that moment why she had said that, and he felt stupid not to have figured it out sooner.

Rivers simply stared at him. "Almost. Key word, Malfoy. Almost. If you thought before you opened your big mouth maybe you'd at least sound smart."

Draco felt himself flush with rage and clenched his hands into fists at his side. He searched himself for something to say and, once again, found himself utterly blank.

"Rivers! Get down here!"

Draco watched as Rivers got up and walked to the door, leaving his book behind. At the door Rivers turned and looked at him. "By the way, this is my room now. I don't go into your room, you don't go into mine."

He desperately wished to lunge at Rivers then, but he knew better. Rivers was probably in some sort of trouble with Father, so it would be best to let him go.

Draco gazed around Rivers' room, taking notice of the condition of the books in the bookshelf. He gave himself a little tour of the room and was about to leave out of boredom when he spotted something on Rivers' dresser that he had somehow missed. A photo-album.

Draco took this in his hands and ran his fingers over the gold embossed words on the cover. He opened the album. At first he was confused as to why the pictures didn't move like he was used to. Then he remembered that Rivers had grown up with Muggles, and that Muggle photos probably didn't move. Dismissing the subject he flipped through the pages, only briefly glancing at the pictures. Then he stopped.

The page before him was still early on in the album, but the pictures had changed. Rivers couldn't be more than five or six in the pictures here. Previously, the young version of Rivers was always smiling in the pictures he appeared in (which was the majority of the pictures), but now only a few of the photo's held smiling faces.

Draco continued to flip through the album, only spotting a grin or two here or there. He found Rivers' letter telling him he was a wizard. Next to it was several pictures, obviously taken very quickly in a few seconds time, where eleven-year-old Rivers was showing whomever was holding the camera the letter, a smile spread across his face.

He finished looking through the album quickly, only finding a few more photos with smiles or grins. The last picture of the album was of Rivers and his adoptive Muggle parents. Rivers had an arm draped casually around the shoulders of either parent, a wide smirking grin on his face, his hands spread as if to say 'This is my family, so what?' The picture was fairly recent, maybe taken a couple of months before.

As he looked at this last picture he heard footsteps coming closer and closer to the room. Draco snapped the album shut and quickly placed it back on the dresser. When Rivers re-entered the room Draco had just made it back to where he was before his twin had left.

"So, what did Father want with you?" Draco asked him, a smirk already on his face.

"Oh, nothing. I just had a nice little father-son chat with Lucius." Rivers smirked in return.

Again, Draco flushed with anger. He didn't know why his brother's statement enraged him when it was obvious he couldn't possibly have had any nice words with their father, but it did. At the present moment Draco didn't feel like getting into a verbal fight, nor into one that could possibly turn physical. So, instead of saying anything he stormed out of the room. He made sure to slam the door extra hard as he left.

He thought of the photo-album on Rivers' dresser. He felt the urge to go back and ask Rivers about it, but Rivers didn't know he had seen the album. His instincts to always have something on those you despised made him decide against it. As Draco entered his own room, he thought of all that had changed since Rivers' arrival.

Draco threw himself onto his large bed and punched his multiple pillows. He hated Rivers. He wished he had never come into their lives. Ever since Rivers had come his mother, the only truly good thing he had going for him in his opinion, began to spend the majority of her time locked away in her room. His father seemed to pay more attention to Rivers (negative attention was still attention), and it had become increasingly difficult to get anything from him. In the last few days it had become impossible and he took out his rage on the house-elves. Doing this, which had once brought him some form of pleasure, now only made him angrier.

They'll put him in Slytherin, Draco thought. And then I'll be stuck with him all year. Draco took a pillow and put it over his face. He didn't even bother to go down to dinner when Greeba, one of the house-elves, called for him.

./'./'./'./'

Lucius Malfoy stood by the very large window in his personal library. He was lost in his own thoughts.

I thought he was gone for good, Lucius thought. That boy turning up has ruined everything. Well, at least both brats will be gone for a while. I need time alone...to think. I'll be able to think better once they're gone. Everything will work out just fine, yes. It'll all be fine. Fine.

Lucius stared out the window into the fading light. It would be quite a long time before the house-elves dared disturb him to say that dinner was ready.

All my plans will work, even with that little whelp here. Perhaps he'll make them work even better...