The Long and Winding Road

Chapter Four: "And I Will Sing A Lullaby"

Draco's vision had cleared-- in fact, it was a little too clear. The edges of things looked sharp enough to cut his fingers if he dared to touch them. He gasped for air, his head hanging. There was a hollow ache in his chest. His breathing was the only sound in the room.

He felt awful, and this time he was sure it wasn't the Veritaserum.

"How do you know it's your father's journal?" Tonks finally broke the silence, sounding stunned.

"I can see it," Draco replied with quiet, defeated logic. There wasn't any point in trying not to answer. Not any more. "It's right there on the table. You can't see it, but I can."

"Does it say it's his journal on the cover or something?"

"No, it's got the old Venetian family seal on the cover. That's the Malafide, the first family crest that we know of. I think it's really old," he speculated vaguely. "Father told me that seal dates from the early thirteenth century, sometime after Constantinople was sacked by the Fourth Crusade."

"Seven hundred years old?" Aunt Andromeda echoed quietly. Draco had finally succeeded in surprising her. He gave her a half-hearted smirk.

"What makes you so sure this is your father's journal, Malfoy?" Moody demanded.

"Some of our heirlooms can only be used by the head of the family," he explained helplessly, his voice echoing weirdly in his ears. "Father showed them to me a couple of years ago-- Perfidus, the Malfoy ring, the Doctrine of Succession--"

"What's the Doctrine of Succession?" Shacklebolt asked, eyebrows raised.

Draco pointed impatiently at the table. "That is, of course!"

The book seemed to glare back at him.

It was almost a pity that no one could see it but him, because it was beautiful. A large, hand-bound volume, covered in deep red leather of a kind Draco had never seen anywhere else-- softer than doeskin, but with the subtle iridescence of snakeskin. He couldn't imagine what it was from; the book was the size of his torso, just small enough to carry, but the leather was all cut from one piece. Stamped in silver on the cover was an ornate tower with a vine of ivy winding around it, climbing counter-clockwise. The borders of the heavy parchment pages were edged with silver foil, glittering like starlight in winter.

"The book Moody found?"

"Yes," Draco said. "It's the personal journal of each successive head of the family. Possibly all the way back to Basileios of Constantinople. I don't know, I wasn't allowed to read it."

"While this is fascinating," Shacklebolt said, "it's not pertinent. We're on limited time if we want answers that will stand up before the Wizengamot... Draco, did you ever see your father using this book?"

"No." Malfoy clamped his teeth together, trapping the rest of the truth behind them, fiercely smothering the urge to volunteer it. I don't have to answer questions they don't actually ASK, do I?

Shacklebolt shook his head at Moody. "It's possible that it's not a journal at all, then. It was in the chapel. It might simply be where the family kept their birth and death and marriage records."

"I don't think so," a gentle voice sighed. Aunt Andromeda bent down to look him in the eye. "Draco, do you have a reason to believe your father used this as a journal?"

"...Yes." He'd nearly stopped himself from answering that time. His hands clenched on the ebony arms of the chair. He heard the wood creaking, as loud as a collapsing house to his ears.

"Why do you think so?"

Malfoy bit his bottom lip until he tasted blood, but it was no use. "...Because the Malfoy ring won't listen to a master that doesn't write in the journal, and Father can wear the Malfoy ring."

"It's a Dark artefact, then," growled Moody. "Both it and the ring."

"I don't know. I suppose it is," Draco said softly, and lowered his head, blinking rapidly. The perceptivity of Veritaserum was no longer interesting. It told him much too clearly that he was betraying his family's secrets-- that there was nothing he could do to stop it-- that even people who theoretically cared about him weren't going to help him.

"Where is the ring?" Draco heard Shacklebolt ask quietly.

"I don't know," he replied with painful honesty. "Father was wearing it during Easter holiday, but then I went back to school. That was the last time I saw him." He swallowed hard. "I would have seen him more recently than that, but he didn't come to any of my Quidditch games this year."

There was an awkward silence. Draco didn't look up, just blinked furiously. Crying in front of these people would be the final humiliation.

"Not you, luv," Tonks finally said, patting his hand very gently. "Kingsley's asking us... I didn't see it on him at the Ministry, but I had my hands full with Bellatrix at the time," she told Shacklebolt wryly, "and afterwards I was in no condition to notice."

Aunt Bellatrix? It sounds as though Tonks lost a duel with her. Draco's eyes widened. He'd met his Aunt Bellatrix for the first time just this year, during Easter holiday. Tonks is lucky to be alive.

Draco frowned abruptly at the floor, not at all sure he liked the idea of Tonks dying in a wizard's duel at the hands of his aunt.

Especially at the hands of his aunt, come to think of it. She was the scariest person he'd ever personally met, and that included Mad-Eye Moody. Easter holiday had been the most horrible two weeks he'd ever spent at home. Draco lifted his head to frown worriedly at Tonks instead of the floor. No, I don't think I like that idea at all.

Wait. Aunt Bellatrix is Aunt Andromeda's sister. That's who she meant when she mentioned her sisters. Draco boggled at this idea for a long moment. And Aunt Andromeda isn't a Death Eater. She isn't even a Slytherin. How did she ever get out of her parents' house in one piece? His respect for his new guardian went up a few more notches.

A new and horrible thought suddenly struck him. Aunt Bellatrix is Tonks' aunt, too, isn't she? Did she actually try to kill her own niece?

Morgan. I'm glad Aunt Andromeda showed up here first.

"The ring wasn't on Lucius when we brought him to Azkaban," growled Moody, while this new mental disturbance was going on. "Nothing was. I made good and certain of that."

"What if it can't be seen by anyone but a Malfoy, like the book?" asked Tonks, worriedly.

"I think it can," said Shacklebolt. "I've seen Lucius wearing a ring now and again, an old one. He was wearing it quite a lot a few years ago, after the unpleasantness at Hogwarts with the students being petrified... Draco, does the Malfoy ring you're referring to have a black stone set in a silver filigree band?"

"Yes. And the book isn't only visible to a Malfoy," he corrected Tonks, "it's only visible to the head of the family and their heir. You can't just go and get anybody with Malfoy blood." His mouth twisted. "Unfortunately." Not that there are many of us left anyway.

"Can the ring be made invisible?"

Draco frowned thoughtfully. "I don't think so. Father wouldn't show me what it did. He once said that it let him go places others couldn't, but I don't think he meant invisibility. And that would mean that the wearer was invisible, anyway, not just the ring..."

"The Veritaserum will be wearing off soon," Snape interrupted. Draco heaved a sigh of relief. "If you're quite through with him--"

"Not quite, Severus." Shacklebolt suddenly loomed at the edge of his vision. Draco tensed, keeping his head down. "Draco, would you be able to read this book?"

"I should be able to," Draco replied quietly, staring at his knees. "If I concentrate hard enough."

"Are you willing to read it for us, and transcribe a copy of what it says?"

Finally, an easy answer.

Malfoy lifted his head and looked at the Aurors, his eyes narrowing. He opened his mouth to reply.

Snape's hand descended on his left shoulder, his thin fingers digging in like talons, startling the answer off of his tongue. "Do not answer that," the Potions master ordered. Draco turned to stare at Professor Snape, and found his Head of House glaring furiously at the Aurors.

"We need to know," Shacklebolt said calmly in the face of Snape's hostility.

"I think Professor Snape is trying to say that you are asking the question in the wrong way," Aunt Andromeda said coolly.

"It's a simple question," Moody rumbled, fixing his eye on Malfoy. "Will you read this for us, boy?"

There was no other response possible. "No," Malfoy rasped, in a flat and hostile tone. "And I think you're a bunch of bloody hypocrites for asking me."

Tonks' eyes flew wide. Shacklebolt went very still. Malfoy sat up straighter in his chair and glared defiantly back at Moody. The air was so sharp that it glittered at the edges of his vision. The only thing keeping him seated was Professor Snape's hand on his shoulder.

"Hypocrites?" Moody rumbled threateningly.

"You're making me betray my family by threatening to throw me in prison and burn the house down, but you're supposed to arrest people for using the Imperius Curse. As if there's a difference," he spat scornfully. "As if it matters that you're using threats instead of a spell to make me break my word. I'd call that hypocrisy, wouldn't you?"

Horrified silence filled the room. The only people that didn't have some combination of outrage, surprise, and guilt on their face were Professor Snape-- who looked smug for some reason-- and Aunt Andromeda, who was watching with that strange little smile of hers.

"I find it interesting that he says this under Veritaserum, don't you?" she asked pleasantly of the room at large. "And while reacting to it very literally, too."

The silence got thicker.

Draco pointed wildly at his aunt, his heartbeat hammering behind his eyes. "Aunt Andromeda is the only person here who cares that I don't want to do this! NOBODY would want to do this to their parents!" He cupped his hands over his eyes, the light in the room finally too bright to bear any longer-- and became aware again of the hand on his shoulder. "Okay, Professor Snape probably cares," he mumbled conscientiously, "except I'm not sure because I've never been able to figure out whose side he's on and if he's on Dumbledore's he won't care because they all hate my family." Draco slid down into his chair, abruptly and painfully aware that his throat was really hurting. "And maybe Tonks, because she's so nice it's disgusting and she'd care about anybody, even if she is an Auror. She has really wicked hair, too. And she likes music. I miss music. Are we DONE now?" he demanded plaintively.

"No, I'm afraid not," Shacklebolt said, regretfully but firmly. "We need a final answer on this, Andromeda," he explained, in response to an icy glare that Draco couldn't see but knew had been delivered. A cool, soft hand came to rest on his other shoulder and squeezed. "If that's his answer, then we're going to have to arrest him. The information in this book could save lives just by giving us a detailed hierarchy of the Death Eaters. If Draco deliberately refuses to give us that information, the Ministry will be forced to take notice of it."

Aunt Andromeda sighed. Malfoy clamped his jaw shut, so hard that his teeth ached.

"Draco," Professor Snape finally said, rather sourly, "I would like to point something out to you, since it seems the representatives of the Ministry insist on pressing this issue."

Draco turned his head and tried to bring his Head of House into focus.

"Whatever you find in that book, it may very well be less damning than what the Ministry may find... expedient... to blame on your father," Professor Snape said, not looking at him but instead glowering at someone over his head-- probably Moody. "Particularly in the absence of anyone in good standing," and he sneered the phrase contemptuously, "to vouch for him." Snape's eyes dropped to meet Draco's, and the glittering blackness of them seemed to pierce right through his head. "You may wish to think of this as an attempt to clear his name, rather than a betrayal. If they accept it as evidence of what he has done, they must also accept it as evidence of what he has NOT done."

Draco's eyes widened. He hadn't thought of that.

"And if you cannot help your father," Aunt Andromeda added, "you may at least be able to prevent them from charging your mother with the same crimes. The journal may prove that Lucius kept Narcissa in the dark about a good many of his activities."

Draco sat up sharply, then winced. Hope apparently had the unfortunate side effect of making his heart beat harder. His pulse was about to poke his eyes out as it was.

"Will you translate the journal for us, Draco, or not?" Shacklebolt said, after a long, tense silence.

Draco looked up at them and sighed miserably. "I suppose."

* * *

Unbelievably, it was even more awful than he'd thought it would be.

His unexpected reaction to the Veritaserum was annoying, but not really anything he could call AWFUL. They just laid him down in a dark, quiet room for a while, with a Cooling Compress over his eyes. The dark and the quiet were actually harder to endure than the pain.

He could hear Professor Snape talking quietly to Aunt Andromeda out in the corridor, but he couldn't make out what they were saying, even with his hypersensitivity to sound. He just barely heard his Head of House irritably mutter something about "mildly abnormal reaction to water-based magic" in response to a question from his aunt; and a bit later, rather sharply, something about "hereditary eccentricity" and "perfectly harmless". After more hushed debate, he heard the Potions master enter the room and come to the side of the bed.

"Do not move." Long spare fingers pushed his shoulder down as Draco tried to sit up. "You will lie there and keep that Compress on your eyes until your aunt tells you that you can get up," Professor Snape's familiarly cutting voice ordered him. "She appears to be a sensible woman and will know when you are well enough to begin your work, if you answer her questions honestly. You are not to lie to her and tell her that you are feeling better out of some idiotic sense of heroics, do you understand?"

"Yes, Professor Snape," Draco replied meekly.

"Good. I have duties to attend to, but I will be back to check on your progress in a few days."

Draco felt a grateful surge of relief. His Head of House now knew where he was and who he was with, and he obviously had no intention of abandoning him to the Ministry's goons. "Thank you, sir."

Professor Snape removed his hand almost gently from Draco's shoulder, but then strode away from the bed without another word, obviously impatient to be elsewhere.

Unfortunately, Draco's respite didn't last long. The sensitivity of his eyes and ears eventually faded, and they immediately put him to work on the journal.

Draco was conscious of a guilty sort of anticipation when they sat him down at one of the library tables, stacks of blank parchment surrounding the blood-red book. He was going to have to transcribe a copy of his father's journal for the Ministry, and it was hard for him to imagine anything worse that could have happened than that-- but he'd also get to read it himself.

They had him start all the way back at the beginning of his father's entries, three years before Draco's birth. Father had only been twenty when his parents had died. He'd begun writing in the journal just before their funeral.

His father had picked up the reins of the Malfoy estates and investments with cool, seamless efficiency. He had set down the unfortunate details of his parents' deaths-- an accident while flying on a private carpet to visit the ruins of a Babylonian palace, rumoured to have once belonged to Hammurabi. He'd dutifully recorded their opulent funeral and subsequent internment in the family graveyard on the grounds of Malfoy Manor.

And then the journal moved on. Draco's grandparents were hardly ever referred to again, except for the occasional remark that a particular item had belonged to one of them, or a new ally had known them.

"Um... Draco..." Tonks said, after several more pages had gone by, detailing nothing more pertinent to his grandparents' deaths than the minor irritations his father had experienced in weeding out 'disloyal' servants in the Manor's staff.

"Yes?" Malfoy said stiffly. He wasn't happy to be doing this. He wasn't going to let anyone fool themselves into thinking they weren't forcing him, every step of the way. Whether they were family or not.

There was an awkward silence. Malfoy looked up impatiently and found Tonks staring down at the most recently transcribed page, chewing on her bottom lip. She looked as if she badly wanted to ask something, but didn't have the foggiest idea of how to say it.

"Well, what's the matter with you?" he snapped, setting down his quill.

"Er... this seems awfully... pragmatic," Tonks finally managed.

"Meaning what, exactly?" Malfoy asked, his voice rather flat.

"Were your grandparents ill, or something?"

"Not that I know of."

"It's just-- it's like..." Tonks stopped again.

Shacklebolt, who was reading each page after Tonks finished it, spoke into the silence. "It seems almost as if your father had been expecting their deaths," he said calmly, setting down the page he had been reading. "As if he were prepared for it."

Malfoy blinked at him for a moment, then down at the journal. A cynical puff of laughter escaped him as he drew the obvious conclusion. "Of course it does."

Shacklebolt went still. Tonks gaped openly.

"Are you telling us that your father knew his parents were going to die?" Shacklebolt finally said, carefully. "That he knew when it would happen?"

"No, actually," Malfoy said coldly, "I'm not telling you that. It doesn't say that at all, does it?" He picked up his quill and went back to work, his mouth twisted sardonically. He muttered under his breath, "My father was twenty, a powerful and experienced wizard with a family of his own-- yet had no independent funds or estate. Of course he didn't know they were going to die. And the moon is inhabited by little pink pixies," he finished, very quietly but very scornfully.

Shacklebolt hadn't heard him, but it seemed that his cousin had. He saw Tonks go an ugly shade of pale green out of the corner of his eye. She looked as if she wanted to throw up.

It suddenly occurred to Draco that he would have had the exact same expression on his face, if someone had suggested that he do that to HIS parents.

And that was when the awfulness started. Draco suddenly didn't want Tonks to look at him, for some reason. He couldn't identify what he was seeing in her eyes, but he knew he didn't like it. It made him feel twitchy.

The weirdly uncomfortable feeling cropped up more and more often as the day wore on-- a sensation of not wanting to be looked at while he wrote. It mostly seemed to be oriented around Tonks. Shacklebolt bothered him less.

Moody bothered him plenty, but only for the normal reasons.

Line after line went by under his hands, spatters of black ink staining his fingers, and eventually he stopped even looking up to gauge their reactions. He found it was easier to bear if he just disconnected himself as much as he could from what he was writing, and didn't think about the fact that it was going to be read by the Ministry. Or what that was going to mean for his father.

...I am content with Lucinda's progress, in spite of her continued lack of magical skills. She is intelligent and perceptive, and displays an appropriate degree of refinement. She is remarkably graceful for a two-year-old, and does not cry. The only fault I have noticed in her is a certain stubborn inclination to have her own way. It will no doubt become an appropriately commanding presence when she matures and does not entirely displease me-- although I have instructed Narcissa that she is to remind the girl that it is never again to be displayed to her father.

As for her manifestation of magical ability-- or rather, the absence thereof-- it is early days yet. I shall have more instructive toys sent for. She is too young for a training broom, sadly...

"Oi!" Tonks interrupted him. "Who's Lucinda?"

Draco started, yanked out of his self-hypnotised daze by Tonks' sudden question.

Who's--?

Lucinda.

The world abruptly tilted out of alignment, and the shapes and colours of everything around him smeared like water-colour paint in the rain. For a horrible, nauseating instant, he couldn't tell up from down. Draco dropped the quill and clutched at the arms of his chair, shrinking instinctively away from the other people in the room.

"Draco?" a female voice said, sounding worried.

"What's wrong?" a male voice interjected, and Draco heard a book thump down onto the table.

He started at the noise and shrank back further, trembling.

"I don't know, all I did... Draco! Oh, bugger--"

There was a murmur at the edge of his hearing, a deep, calm voice. It was saying something but he couldn't tell what it was--

His vision snapped back into place so suddenly that it was a physical shock.

Shacklebolt lifted his wand away, and promptly held out a hand in Tonks' direction. "Tonks, let me see that. Why was he Confunded?"

Malfoy glared at him, panting.

"I wasn't Confunded," he snarled, as soon as he had enough air to do so.

"Then it was a remarkable imitation," the Auror told him, scanning the page that Tonks had handed him.

"Kingsley, I didn't see anything there, honestly. It's just some blather about--"

Malfoy tuned both of them out and stiffly pulled himself back to sit in front of the journal. Stilling his trembling as best he could, he picked up the quill again and went back to writing.

"Draco...? Draco!" Tonks shouted.

"What?" he snapped, not looking up.

"Who's Lucinda?" Tonks insisted.

"No one important," he said coolly, trying not to flinch at the name. "Just ignore it. I can cut those bits out, I suppose, but Moody said 'word for word'..."

"No one important?" she repeated in disbelief.

"That's what I said, isn't it?" he sneered, in a rather belligerent tone.

Her hand came down on his paper, smearing the ink. Malfoy looked up in severe irritation. Oh, yes, let's make me do this twice! Once just isn't bad enough for a Malfoy, is it?

"Draco, do you have a sister?" Tonks asked him, her hair standing up in shocked white spikes.

Malfoy could actually feel his face hardening into something approaching his father's icy glare.

Tonks glared back. She obviously wasn't going to leave it alone.

DAMN meddling relatives, anyway. And damn these bloody interfering Aurors, too. As if we haven't been humiliated enough.

"Yes," he snarled.

Tonks stared expectantly at him, then looked bewildered when nothing more was forthcoming. "WELL?" she asked, impatient with curiosity. Even her nose was twitching.

"Well, what?" Malfoy replied in a positively glacial voice, going back to his copying.

He could feel her gaze beating fretfully on the top of his head. He ignored it furiously, transcribing his father's account of his initial steps towards forging an alliance with the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

"Shacklebolt, here, take over," he heard her say, and there was a loud rustle as she shoved the rest of her papers at him. "I need to talk to Mum," she muttered, quickly leaving the room.

Bloody hell.

Malfoy gritted his teeth and kept on writing.

* * *

Tonks did not return. Moody showed up shortly after she disappeared and took her place instead.

So by the time his cousin DID come back, several hours later, Malfoy was in a truly foul mood.

Aunt Andromeda was with her. Malfoy mentally cursed some more, throwing in some of the nastier Latin and Greek phrases he knew. English just didn't seem to adequately cover the situation.

Not until he picked up some more of his aunt's vocabulary, anyway.

"I think it's long past time for dinner," Aunt Andromeda said congenially. Malfoy wasn't fooled. "Alastor, an owl just arrived for you from the Ministry, as well. Shall we let Draco take a break?"

Malfoy was shortly left alone in the room with his unwanted relatives. He leaned back in his chair with a disdainful look at his aunt. He didn't even bother trying to follow the other two Aurors out of the room. He knew what was coming.

Aunt Andromeda smiled slightly as she sat down across from him, as if she were not at all surprised that he'd anticipated this. "Draco, I won't insult your intelligence by dancing around the topic. I'm sure you know what I'd like to talk to you about."

Malfoy nodded sullenly.

"Nymphadora tells me you have a sister?"

"...Yes," he muttered.

There was a long pause. "Can you tell me anything about her?" his aunt asked gently.

Malfoy glowered resentfully and said nothing.

"I checked with Alastor. He says that he remembers your sister, but only in a professional capacity. She apparently ran away from home when she was twelve. Your father reported her as a lost child and asked for the Ministry's help, but she was never found."

"I know that." To tell the truth, he very nearly didn't. He'd barely been eight when she ran away. He'd actually forgotten all about her, until his nosy cousin had asked him who she was.

Just as well. She was the greatest embarrassment to the family in centuries.

...A smiling girl bathed in spring sunlight, long silver-blond hair and Slytherin-green skirt flying in the breeze... jumping up and down in the Hogwarts Quidditch stands, screaming encouragement as he dove past her on his Nimbus...

A long needle of pain lanced through his head. Malfoy ground his teeth and shoved the dream image away.

Aunt Andromeda looked at him with a tiny frown creasing her brow, as if something puzzled her. "I also checked with Albus Dumbledore," she said more firmly. "He regretfully informed me that your sister was never sent an invitation letter to Hogwarts. She--"

Malfoy's eyes narrowed to viciously hostile slits-- and Aunt Andromeda's voice actually faded away under the force of the murderous glare, leaving her sentence unfinished.

"That was why she ran away from home, wasn't it?" she finally said instead, very quietly.

"Why don't you wait for me to finish the journal," Malfoy hissed, "and find out. That's the whole point of this little exercise, isn't it?"

"You don't want to tell me about it?" Aunt Andromeda looked perplexed.

"No. And I don't have to, either. She's not pertinent to the Ministry's concerns, is she?" he snarled, shooting Tonks a glare.

"No, she's not, as far as I can tell," Tonks said, also looking puzzled.

"Good." He jumped out of his chair and headed for the door. He wanted out of this conversation more than he wanted to stay away from Moody, and that was really saying something. "I'm going to dinner, then."

* * *

Malfoy sat back down and picked up his quill. His stomach was tying itself in queasy knots around his dinner. That had to have been the strangest meal he'd ever eaten. His aunt and cousin staring at him like he'd suddenly grown a set of veela wings, while he forced himself to eat, determined to prove that there was nothing wrong with him.

There WASN'T anything wrong with him.

A little voice in the back of his head suggested that if this were true, his stomach probably wouldn't be hurting as much as it currently did.

Malfoy angrily shoved this thought into a dark corner of his mind and went back to work.

Page after page went by. He wrote down the details of his father's establishment of a web of contacts within the Ministry-- most often via charm, but when someone proved resistant, via bribery. On a few occasions, particularly recalcitrant individuals had been invited to the Manor for supper... and after the meal, rather exotically flavoured with some of the things in his mother's garden, they were quite amenable to his father's suggestions.

Malfoy didn't even hesitate. He carefully 'reinterpreted' those incidents, editing his mother's involvement from the account entirely. It was the only thing he was able to do to minimise the damage. Eliminating the whole entry would have resulted in a suspiciously shorter transcription-- and Moody was standing over him, watching him like a rabid hawk.

As time went by, however, there were more and more descriptions of the 'unfortunate steps' his father had needed to take, to insure that the Death Eaters had at least one key person in every department of the Ministry. Threats. Blackmail. Magically assisted coercion. The unexplainable injury or illness of loved ones.

Voldemort had no intention of fighting the Ministry directly. Not when subverting it was so much easier.

There's what they were looking for. His heart sank straight into his stomach, making his nausea worse. Proof of conspiracy with the Dark Lord.

Malfoy wasn't really surprised. This had been just before his birth; the Dark Lord had been at the height of his power. His father had had no conceivable reason to be discreet in his private journal-- who would ever call him to account for his actions? He could imagine his father anticipating that the journal would someday be a treasured artefact: an in-depth account of the triumphant rise of Voldemort, written by his most trusted lieutenant...

Unfortunately, after the Dark Lord's fall it had been impossible for his father to dispose of his record of the events. Destroy the Doctrine of Succession? Utterly mad. The Warding Web would probably have turned on him. The Malfoy family artefacts certainly would have.

There was enough in this journal to convict a dozen people, not just his father. Malfoy kept writing, his shoulders gradually sagging, falling back into his listless grey haze of depression as the afternoon went by. He transcribed his father's accounts of framing officials to make way for more 'reasonable' successors, once their predecessors were sacked... the Muggle relatives of Mudbloods kidnapped and tortured, leaving broken bodies discarded like rubbish in abandoned buildings... power struggles within the ranks of the Death Eaters that inevitably left his father a step higher than he had been, a little bit more secure in his position.

The family was hardly mentioned, thankfully. His father had been far too busy during these years to bother writing about his home life.

The names of victims were mercifully few; locations likewise. The names of other Death Eaters were certainly involved in his father's memoirs, and that was bad; but if Malfoy remembered correctly, a good number of them been outed years ago anyway. He thought he'd read something referring to that in the newspaper, when he was younger... he couldn't remember how it had happened, but they'd been betrayed to the Ministry after the Dark Lord had been defeated.

Which would happen not too long in the future of this journal, actually. Malfoy had reached the events of early summer, 1980.

Harry Potter was about to be born.

Malfoy snarled and slammed the quill down on the table, suddenly furious. Tonks jumped at the sudden motion. "I'm tired," he muttered resentfully at her, flexing his stiffening hand with ostentatious displeasure. "I can finish this tomorrow, can't I? It's past suppertime."

Shacklebolt glanced out the windows. The sun was setting far away over the downs, sending fading scarlet beams to drench the Manor's gardens in illusory blood. "Yes, I think that's reasonable."

"Mum's probably been holding supper for us," Tonks said, perking up a bit as if she, too, were relieved to be stopping. She tidied up the stacks of parchment, leaving them worse off than before. "I'm starving."

Malfoy stood up and left the room without another word. He ignored the corridor that led to the dining room and kept going, stalking towards the stairs.

"Draco, don't you want supper?" Tonks called from behind him.

"No, thanks," he snarled. "I'm going to bed. I suppose I'm still allowed to sleep, aren't I?"

* * *

Draco stood in the empty corridor, staring apprehensively at the parallel ranks of doors that trailed off into the distant shadows. Cold drafts wound clammily around his ankles, turning his bare feet to ice on the marble floor.

He didn't know what he was doing here. He wasn't supposed to be here. Something had woken him up, but he couldn't remember what. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering in his black silk pyjamas.

He hurried down the corridor, hoping to figure out what had woken him before his parents discovered that he was out of bed. But door after door opened onto empty blackness, and every door that he opened made the corridor a little colder.

Draco hesitated, looking blankly into another void where a room should be, so cold now that his teeth were starting to chatter. The clicking noise bounced off the walls, alarmingly loud, filling the corridor. His parents would wake up. Maybe he should close some of the doors.

He turned, and the corridor behind him was crawling with shadows. Suddenly breathless with fright, he realised that the shadows were moving. Not in a natural way, dancing as the candle flames danced... but of their own volition, rising fluidly up the walls.

They were snuffing out the candles.

Draco panicked and ran, pelting down the corridor and up the nearest staircase, pausing on the landing of the first floor to catch his breath. The shadows had moved like water, and water always took the lowest path-- maybe they wouldn't be able to come up this far. There would need to be enough of them to flood the entire ground floor, after all.

Draco suddenly remembered that they'd already risen high enough to drown the candle flames.

There MIGHT be enough.

Draco tore further up the stairs like a mad thing.

He burst out a door at the top of the cobwebbed spiral staircase, panting, his white flannel pyjamas stuck to his body with cold sweat-- and screamed shrilly as something pounced on him from behind one of the dusty old storage chests.

"Gotcha!" shrieked a familiar voice.

Draco's fright dissolved in a burst of laughter, as he was bowled over by a whirlwind of blond hair and flannel night-gown. They fetched up against the wall of the garret, panting and giggling wildly, trying to muffle the noise and succeeding only slightly. The comforting smell of vanilla and cardamom, lemon and sugar cane, jasmine and warm flannel surrounded him, washing away his panic as effectively as if he had been wrapped up in a blanket and rocked to sleep.

The girl gave him a quick, fierce hug, then untangled herself from their kittenish sprawl and scrambled back over to the door on all fours. She pushed it shut, preventing any noise from reaching their parents on the floors below.

"Drake, you're late!" she complained.

"I am not! I was asleep! You woke me up somehow, you--!"

"It's time for school," the girl interrupted him primly, standing up and smoothing down her night-gown with immense dignity-- which she then promptly ruined by racing back over to him. She pulled him to his feet, herded him over to a battered table and stool and sat him down at it. "Don't talk back, young man."

Draco stuck his tongue out at her.

"Five points from Slytherin!" she scolded, giggling at the hideousness of the face he was pulling at her. She pointed at the drawing crayons and parchment on the table. "Write your lines!"

Draco pulled the writing implements over to him and wrote carefully, "My sister is a spastic headcase" at least seven times before she noticed what he was doing.

After an outraged burst of pummelling, she settled him back down at the table. Panting, she tucked her long silver-blond hair behind her ears. "All right! School starts in a week-- do you have your letter?"

Draco scrabbled around in the mess of parchment, but there was nothing that looked like a letter. He pouted at her. She patted him affectionately on the head.

"That's all right-- I'll write you one." She put her paper professor's hat on her head and sat down at the table with him, beginning the letter with an ornate loop of calligraphy. " 'Dear Duck-Boy--' "

"DRAGON! Not DUCK!"

"Quiet, you. 'Dear Noisy Brat... we can't find anyone better to invite this year, so I suppose you can come to Hogwarts in the fall... you'd better be grateful... we're only doing this as a favour to your sister...' "

Draco quietly scoffed at her.

"--I heard that-- '...so you'd better show up with all of your stuff and on time too, or else. Sincerely, Professor Dumbledore.' All right. It's official, you can go to Hogwarts. And here's a list of your school supplies. Do you have it all? You can't go off to school without your supplies."

"What do I need?" Draco said, bouncing eagerly on the little stool, making it rock crazily on its wobbly and much-mended leg.

"Parchment!"

"Got it!" He picked up their parchment scraps and tidied them into a neat pile.

"Quill!"

"Got it!" He added his crayons to the pile.

"School robes!"

Draco frowned and looked around the garret. With a shout, he raced over and pulled down an old dustcloth. Throwing it over his shoulders like a granny's shawl, he ran back.

She was nearly incoherent with laughter. "All right, that'll do, I suppose!" she gasped, holding her green florist-paper hat on with one hand. She composed herself with some difficulty and went back to the list. "Hmm, a brain-- you're out of luck there, Drake, you'll have to fake it..."

Draco threw a crayon at her.

"Stop that, you'll break them. Spellbook!"

"Got it!" Draco said, rummaging around on his hands and knees under the table, surfacing finally with a battered old book of garden charms, its cracked spine bound together with Spellotape.

She looked down her nose at the bedraggled specimen and sniffed. "Well, that'll do in a pinch. That's everything... Now, do you have your ticket for the Hogwarts Express?"

They'd pretended to take the train lots of times-- it was one of their favourite games. He pulled it out of the spellbook, where it had been stuck as a bookmark. Last time they had pretended to go to the Royal Gardens, where they'd turned all the snapdragons into real dragons and then had to save all the stupid panicky little Muggles. "Got it!"

"Good! Off you go!" she said, pointing towards the back corner of the garret, behind the wardrobes. They had a pretend train compartment and school room set up there, out of sight, so their parents wouldn't notice that they'd drawn on the walls.

Draco scooped up his things eagerly and dashed over towards the wardrobes-- and stopped. The scared, sick feeling fluttered back to life in his stomach. He turned and looked back at his sister, suddenly worried.

"...Aren't you coming, too?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm coming," she reassured him with her best smile, the one that lit up her face and softened the sharp edges of her features-- the one that made him want to run over and squeeze her tight. "They invited me ages ago. I'm going to be a teacher, you know, I already have the hat... Here's my letter, see?"

She picked up a piece of paper from the floor and waved it cheerfully.

And it burst into flames.

Draco froze in horror, his heartbeat pounding in his throat and choking him, watching helplessly as the flames leaped hungrily from the paper to the sleeve of her night-gown. She caught fire like a bundle of dried kindling and dropped soundlessly to the floor, her hair briefly flying upwards as she fell, dancing on the explosion of heat like pale golden leaves on an autumn breeze.

Draco dropped his armful of school supplies and ran back to her, stumbling frantically around the table, falling down next to the blackening pile on the floor that was so horribly still. He had to put it out-- what was the charm to put out a magical fire--

A wand. It hadn't been on his list. He didn't have a wand!

He beat helplessly at the conflagration with his bare hands, tears stinging his scalded face... but there was no one inside the flames. The fire snuffed out under his palms, scorching him. The impact of his flailing hands sent charred wisps of green paper and white flannel flying around him, smearing the black silk of his pyjamas with ash.

She wasn't there. It was as if she'd never been there at all-- only a figment of his imagination made of paper and cotton-- a sweet, false echo of encouragement and affection-- the fading scent of jasmine and vanilla from a broken bottle of perfume--

Draco screamed.

"Draco! Draco, stop, no!"

Draco jerked awake, gasping, the night air stinging his throat. His hands hurt. Aunt Andromeda had him by the shoulders, pulling him frantically away from his bedside table.

It was on fire. The flames were nearly a foot high, licking hungrily at the bedcurtains.

Draco sat huddled at the foot of the bed as she put out the flames with her wand, shuddering in the cold, sweat-dampened silk of his pyjamas. He said nothing.

"All right," his aunt said, slightly breathlessly, pushing her hair out of her face. "I think I'm going to have to put my foot down on you leaving candles burning while you sleep, Draco."

...That wasn't what was burning.

But the dream was fading from his mind as swiftly as water pouring out of a broken vase... and now he couldn't remember what had been burning. Only that he would rather it had been his Nimbus.

He stared blankly down at his own hands as she turned them over, looking for burns. He seemed to have escaped with nothing more than a singeing.

"Good, you're not hurt," she sighed, letting his hands drop. She looked up at him with a worried frown. "You were screaming again, Draco. Are you all right?"

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "I'm fine."

I'm not fine. I don't know why. But I'm not.

She hesitated, then got up from her perch on the side of the bed. "Do you need anything? I think I should bring you some tea-- you've hurt your voice again. Will you drink it, or would you rather just go back to sleep?"

Draco stared at nothing for a long, long moment, listening to his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Splinters of glass seemed to be stabbing into his temples in time with his pulse.

He finally looked up at her. "Do you know a spell that will let me sleep without dreaming?"

"Yes," she sighed.

"Can I have it?" Let me go away for a while, let me not think, please, please...

She hesitated. "It's not something to be used lightly, Draco."

"Please," he said in a raspy whisper, his voice shaking.

Aunt Andromeda closed her eyes and nodded, then lifted her wand again. A soft golden glow appeared at his temple. "Soporis," she said softly, and he fell away into silent darkness.