Circumpolar

***Circumpolar***

Prologue

On a normal night, it took Draco Malfoy at least an hour to fall asleep. He was a light sleeper, and his body was very particular about certain conditions being met before it relaxed its grip on consciousness. The room had to be quiet and dark, the air cool and his blankets warm.

This night, however, with the temperature soaring into the nineties even past midnight and his bedroom at the manor stubbornly resisting any Cooling Charms cast on it (A Malfoy is unaffected by his environment at all times), Draco knew that sleep was a long way off. Despite his father’s insistence that Malfoys did not sweat, Draco could feel an unpleasant pool collecting in the small of his back as he lay sprawled, face-down, on his mattress. All the covers had been kicked off his elegant four-poster bed, especially that black and silver monstrosity that was roughly as hot and heavy as an overweight, sleeping bear.

His (numerous) detractors probably imagined that Draco spent his downtime plotting his own masterful rise through the ranks of the Death-Eaters. Often he did, but currently he was trying to think of things like glaciers, a bathtub filled with lime sherbet, and making quite sure none of his body parts touched. His pale limbs were stretched wide, fingers splayed.

It was England’s hottest summer in living memory. Some of the ghostly servants and various Malfoys who had left the mortal coil but not the Manor compared the godawful heat to the similarly oppressive summer of 1876. Luckily for them, they had no corporeal bodies, and were unable to feel the flattening heat this time around. Draco, who went around each day with his hair plastered to his face and neck, was not so lucky.

Reflexively, his mind turned to Potter, as it did more that was probably healthy. He hoped fervently that wherever the Boy Who Lived was, he was stickier, sweatier, and at least fifteen… no, twenty-five times as miserable as Draco was.

*** ***

Draco pointed his wand at the sky. “Snow,” he instructed the blue haze. It ignored him, although an inchworm dropped down from the maple tree he was situated under to dangle in front of Draco’s nose. He was about to Transfigure the inchworm into a ladybug, just to ruin its day, when his father suddenly appeared directly in front of him.

“Draco.” Lucius was dressed in heavy black robes and showed no signs of discomfort in the noon sunlight. “Frank Parkinson will be joining us for dinner. I expect you to be there.” His father’s granite eyes swept over Draco, who wore nothing but shorts and a petulant expression. “Do try to appear presentable.” He paused briefly, a tactic Draco recognizing as prefacing either an important pronouncement or a biting insult. “I’ll need you to attend us afterwards, as well. In my study.”

Draco grinned madly once his father vanished. An invitation to join his father in his study. Draco was no longer standing around the periphery of the Death-Eaters; now he would be joining the war.

*** ***

Dinner was typical, aside from the stifling air of the Great Hall. Narcissa made idle conversation, Lucius presided with maleficent authority, and Mr. Parkinson’s violet eyes darted nervously from Lucius to his son. Draco himself barely tasted his food. His stomach was dancing with nerves, his mind nearly bursting with pride and happiness at being included at last. Even this, however, couldn’t completely distract him from the sweat trickling down the back of his neck and the strands of his fine hair sticking along his jawline. He longed for the cool air of the Slytherin dungeons.

Mr. Parkinson’s nervous gaze alighted on Draco for a moment. “Pansy sends her regards, Dra-,”

Lucius cut him off peremptorily. “That was a lovely dinner, ‘Cissa,” he said as he pushed back from the table, as if Draco’s mother had been even the slightest bit responsible for it. She smiled back wanly. Draco and Mr. Parkinson mimicked the move, obeying Lucius as he bade them follow with a flick of his cane.

*** ***

Draco tried not to look around in fascination. He had been banned from the dungeon room in which Lucius did all his spells and potions since he had come into his powers at the age of ten. It had been a rather precipitous event: a black swan that had made the mistake of biting Draco suddenly found itself several hundred feet away and up a tree. The beast that had begun the day as a majestic bird suddenly found itself a squirrel, and since, both the squirrels and swans stayed well away from the youngest member of the Malfoy family.

The “study” was a bare, stone-walled room without decoration or furnishing; accoutrements could be summoned as needed. Scars on the wall spoke of manacles long since banished, a scorch mark on the floor was all that remained from a potion gone awry… or perhaps an “Incendio” that had fulfilled its intended purpose.

“Now, then,” Lucius drawled, looking down his nose at his shorter son. Draco felt a flare of fear/excitement under his ribs. He met his father’s gaze through silvery lashes and was rewarded only with the narrowing of Lucius’s grey eyes, the mirror to his own. “Shall we begin?”

Without changing expression, Lucius pointed his wand at his own son. “Silencio. Immobialarus,” the wizard intoned, almost lazily. Draco couldn’t even widen his eyes in surprise.

“Frank, if you please.” The corner of Lucius’s mouth lifted, the Malfoy equivalent of a pleased smile. Lucius stepped aside then, leaving the field of Draco’s vision, which the boy could no more change than he could reverse the tides.

A hand gripped his chin, and Draco found himself looking into violet eyes. Pansy’s eyes, he thought irrelevantly as Mr. Parkinson began murmuring in Latin, words that Draco’s shocked mind was unable to translate. Pain blossomed deep within him, crawling up his spine and through his synapses. His body begged to respond to the agony, to thrash about or scream into until his throat bled. All he could do, however, was stand and stare.

And then, “Obliviate.”

Surcease.

*** ***