Let Loyalties Lie

The wooden heels of fashionably tooled leather boots clicked sterilly against the stone steps as Lucius Malfoy strode up the staircase into the office of Albus Dumbledore. In his hand he clenched the crumpled remains of the letter that had summoned him. He had left for Hogwarts almost immediately upon reading it, Flooing directly to Hogsmeade and flying to the school directly via broom. It was late afternoon, and the sounds of happy children, freed from classes for the remainder of the day, echoed even though the thick granite walls. The sudden change from shadowed stairwell to well-lit office was momentarily blinding. Lucius strode onward as if he could see perfectly, steps carefully measured, feeling out the room until his sight returned.

Behind the huge desk that dominated the room sat the Headmaster himself, face uncharacteristically grave. Even his robes were dulled, a dirty shade of blue that was barely a breath away from being gray. The phoenix was planted on its perch, snoozing in the light from the fireplace, tail feathers dropping harmless flames to the carpet.

"Lucius, I'm so pleased that you could make it. And on such short notice." A thin, veined hand waved him to one of the plushly padded seats, which Lucius took as his due.

He turned a cold, slate-tinted gaze on the old man and leaned forward in his seat. "What's Draco done to Potter now?" He had no doubt that whatever was urgent enough to call him for a conference involved Potter. It always involved Potter. That was the way the world turned.

"Always directly to the point." Somber blue eyes peered at him over the infamous half-moon lenses. The fire danced in the background as Dumbledore folded his hands on the desk. "This, however, has nothing to do with Mr. Potter. Your son has been acting..." There was a delicate pause while Albus visibly turned words over in his head, analyzing their meaning and making his selection. "Peculiar of late. I wouldn't have summoned you had his grades not been affected."

"His grades?" One whisper-pale eyebrow tilted upwards eloquently. "They've been slipping?" Long, elegant fingers unfolded and smoothed the letter against his knee. "Are your professors so incompetent that even a student of Draco's caliber is effected?"

Thin lips narrowed even more, but Dumbledore ignored the slight. "Draco's last Potions exam was scored at an eighty-three percent. Well below his average. He did not contest the grade."

Lucius sat back and carefully digested the information, fingers blindly creasing and folding the paper in his lap. The boy had never received any grade less than a ninety-seven, and that had been protested so creatively that Lucius had been summoned regarding his son's language. That had been less than two years ago, in Draco's fifth year. The news that he had taken a score more than ten points less than his lowest without argument was troublesome. "Is there anything else?"

"I'm afraid there is."

"You have my attention."

Dumbledore shuffled through the papers directly before him on the desk. At first, Lucius thought it was merely a delaying tactic while he organized his thoughts, but moments later four of the sheets were deftly separated and slid across the desk to him.

Making one final crease, Lucius left off his folding and reached across to pick them up. They were from Professors Snape, Flitwick and one unsigned, with the top a list of recent point deductions attributed to his son. Most of the penalties were for skipping class and breaking curfew. One had been circled in bright blood-colored ink and was explained with only a scrawled check point violation.

"I took the liberty of having the professors write their concerns regarding Draco down for you to examine yourself." Dumbledore tapped his own copy of the parchment. "As you see, the only deduction over ten points was just this past Hogsmeade weekend. Draco failed to check in with Professor Snape at the appointed time."

Lucius stared at the red-circled minus fifty on the incriminating parchment, mentally filing the information. It made no sense, but few things remained completely incomprehensible forever. Flipping to the other papers, he skimmed through the teachers' comments.

Lack of focus in class... falling grades... failing to come prepared with materials... passing notes in class... Flitwick. There was nothing in the cramped, tiny writing that spoke of anything Dumbledore had not already suggested. The next was more interesting.

Out of bed at abominable hours... Back in even later... Distancing himself from friends... Late for breakfast repeatedly, sometimes not bothering to grace us with his presence at all... Change of wardrobe... S. Snape.

The last was short and pointed. Deducted ten points seven times for loitering outside Gryffindor dormitory after hours. It wasn't signed, but the elegant curves of the words, accented with jagged stabs and sharp breaks could only be attributed to Hogwarts resident Animagus, Minerva McGonagall.

Sharp, clipped words broke the silence. "Why was I not informed of this before?"

Dumbledore's blue eyes lowered, more tired than old and edged over with hard knowledge gained from long years fighting a war and knowing that regardless of the outcome, neither side could win. Lucius suspected that his own eyes would look similar if he ever allowed himself to be honest. "There were... other considerations. At this time, however, those have been swept aside in Draco's best interests."

"Oh?"

Once again, the old man chose his words carefully, dancing around the truth in ice-shard heels and drooping faded robes. "You know that I am aware of your political activities. Is it possible Draco has become involved in them?"

A carefully masculine manicure was nearly ruined when Lucius started to dig his nails into the wooden arms of his chair. Fortunately, he was able to stop himself before damage was done. Unspoken words hung in the air, sharper than any sacrificial knife and just as deadly. Is he a Death Eater? they asked. If we look, will he bear the Mark?

Calming himself, Lucius focused on the Headmaster with a quiet intensity that bled blue-blooded honesty. "To the best of my knowledge, Draco is not involved in any type of politics, nor is he going to be until graduation. Well after graduation, most likely. If he is, it is entirely without my consent."

Some slight tension drained from Dumbledore's thin frame into the cold flagstones. "Then it's most likely the usual complaint of the young." He stood, indicating that the meeting was at an end. Lucius followed his example. They had both learned what they wanted, though the elder Malfoy doubted either of them were fully satisfied with the answer.

"I've taken the liberty of announcing your visit to Draco. He is likely waiting for you in the dungeons." Dumbledore smiled emptily, lips stretched tight in a silent acknowledgement of this, their only shared white flag. "You will undoubtedly wish to visit him." And question him. The words under the script were almost clearer than the farce they had just acted out. Lucius dipped his head in acknowledgement, folding the papers and slipping them into his pocket. Absently, he deposited his folded creation on the Headmaster's desk, having forgotten it in the press of more important matters.

"My thanks." He exited, footsteps jarring the flagstones. Behind him, a parchment crane watched him leave forlornly from the top of the desk.

For once, the stairs ceased their games and allowed him to descend directly into the dungeons. Vincent and Gregory were stationed on either side of the hidden entrance, like flash-frozen trolls. Their overly beefy arms were crossed in warning. He nodded to them.

"Boys."

Vincent ventured an empty smile, but his Mudblood brown eyes snaked over Lucius's robes all-too intelligently. They stopped only when they'd located the wand he'd hidden along his thigh and the various daggers stashed on his person, some no bigger than a pinky finger. They never even touched the hollow, useless length of elderwood he carried openly in his hip pocket. Gregory touched Vincent's elbow, then jerked his chin at the door once he had the other boy's attention. They both paused, Vincent's face stuck in a grin and the other carefully not blocking the gaping entrance. Both carried the vaguely mobile air of well-carved statues, as if they were waiting for just the right moment to leap into deadly action.

"Mr. Malfoy." Greeting done, Gregory hissed a password and slipped through the door, undoubtedly to spread word of his arrival. Vincent continued to stand aside, more firmly placed than he could have been in the actual doorway. He kept his own startlingly gold-green eyes on the elder Malfoy, gaze not hiding as much intelligence as his partner's had, but still deadly in its deceit.

They waited.

A faint, barely noticeable scraping noise came from within the dorm. Had the rooms beyond not been frozen in silence, he would have missed it completely. Gregory slipped out and took up his former place. The other hulking guardian of the door relaxed into a more natural stance. "He's waiting for you. Third dorm on the left. Everyone's out."

Lucius smiled, examining his son's self-appointed guardians. "Thank you."

The dungeons were more welcoming than he remembered, laced with a less fatal poison, but dangerous to outsiders all the same. Signs of life were visible in the dents in the cushions, the carefully hung scarf and a book left open for all to read. All were things that the Slytherins of his generation, in their paranoia and arrogance, had carefully avoided. He hoped they had learned from their parents' mistakes and banded together in their suspicion. The lack of a united front had always been Slytherin House's only weak point.

He wondered what had caused the change.

Third door on the left. The dormitory was, indeed, empty as the common room had been. Draco lounged on his neatly made bed, high collared shirt buttoned up to his chin in spite of the warmth from the fireplace, sleeves carefully folded up past the elbow to bare his unblemished arms. His hair fell around his cheeks to brush his chin, ungelled as it hadn't been since he's received his Hogwarts letter.

Not a book, sock or broom bristle was out of place. Not even a dust bunny dared poke its nose out from under the bed. There was only his son, the boy renown for buying new clothing rather than taking time to inform the Elves that it needed washing. The one Narcissa had been completely unable to make put away anything, whose non-clothing items the Hogwarts Elves had been explicitly forbidden to touch due to safety charms and anti-theft spells. The same boy that shared a dorm with four other, equally messy, teenage boys. There was only his son and the spotless room and no sign of any secret worth keeping, which was a secret in itself.

"Draco."

"Father."

Lucius didn't bother seating himself and Draco didn't rise. Father and son regarded one another with wary fondness. Draco had grown only a little since he'd last seen him in the fall, but he was no longer the tiny boy-child he once had been. "Dumbledore tells me that your grades are slipping."

"I'd hardly call a single exam 'slipping', Father."

His eyes plucked at the plain green comforter just beyond Draco's unmarked forearm. "He thought you might have joined the Dark Lord."

No sign of his reaction was visible on Draco's face, though his carefully uncovered arms showed that he had expected the question. "I haven't."

"So I see." Marble gray eyes slid around the too-ordered room. "If it's not that, then what is it? Your teachers are concerned."

Draco's chin tilted, and his posture became more adult, more assured, but that was all. His face revealed nothing. Grey eyes, the match of his father's, drifted around the room, finally lingering on a set of empty shadows. His smile, when it came, was full of things Lucius felt he should have recognized. "Let them be."

The fireplace popped and flared up, lighting the room even more with twisting golden flames. The starkness of the room, the neatness of the bed, his son's carefully perfect - but different, so very subtly different - appearance... They added up. He should have recognized the type of lie in use immediately. He had used it himself once.

Lucius watched his son think, and realized that more than his hairstyle had changed. Draco had become a man, and he had somehow missed the moment entirely. He couldn't decide whether to mourn the lost moment or celebrate the growth. "Who is she?"

Everything about Draco remained unmoved, but his breath caught. "What?" The youth's voice was measured, clipped like a length of unruly hair.

Lucius leaned against one of the dark wooden posters of the bed, arms crossed. "Is she someone you thought I wouldn't approve of?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Draco's pale, baby-smooth cheek pressed into his shoulder as he craned his head, eyes still staring fixedly at the shadows. Draco, Lucius had learned from experience, was a wonderful liar. Too good of one, in fact. His completely lack of reaction was more telling than a thousand fervent denials.

"I'm not an idiot. You've hidden the signs of your liaison well." He shook his head, ear brushing the chilled wood of the bedpost.

"We're not sleeping together." Pale lips flickered into an almost-smirk. "Not yet."

The secret that was invisible in the rest of the room hovered in Draco's eyes, soft with light from the fire and something else. This was, Lucius told himself, more serious than teenage hormones if they hadn't slept together. Something - someone else in the room stopped breathing, a sound that could only be noticed in its absence. His spine stiffened in a momentary rush of fear. When he and Narcissa had decided to wed, she would have nothing but to face his parents, his disapproving parents, with him. Draco was, if nothing else, his mother's son.

"What of Pansy? You're betrothed."

"She approves. We've agreed to dissolve it after we're old enough."

At least the boy had been thorough. Nothing would have been worse than having another scorned Parkinson. The family was still bitter about his own preference of Narcissa over their Tritiny. Pansy agreed; that was what counted. But there were other considerations... "If she's a Mudblood, enough research can undoubtedly uncover an impressive lineage." Lucius's aristocratic tones softened. "History can be changed, for the right price." He pitched his tone to carry to the corners of the room, where Draco's secret undoubtedly hid.

"We've discussed it. This one can't be."

Not of impure blood. That left... "She's against the Lord?"

A sharp, brittle laugh cracked his son's lips. "It's not a girl."

The pause was heavier than the entire castle.

"He then?" The other person in the room resumed breathing when he didn't burst into a murderous rage.

"Father, you'd rather it was a Weasley."

For Lucius, the room flickered with a dreadful darkness of realization, leaving him struggling not to show his sudden terror. A boy, he could deal with, but there was only one person in the entirety of Hogwarts worse for Draco to pair with than a Weasley. Every ambition, plan, dream and goal faded and shattered before his eyes.

Everything, for him, was over. With that one sentence, Draco had taken everything his father had ever done and trivialized it. It was Draco's story now.

Malfoys, through long generations of inner-family war, assassinations, feuds and hatred, upheld a single tradition faithfully, a tradition that not even the most vaunted of wizard families could lay claim to. Against those of other heritage, they fought together. Never in known history had two Malfoys sided on alternate sides of any dispute. They scorned the standard practice of taking both sides and ensuring the continuation of the family so thoroughly, many historians were shocked that the line continued strong.

Only disowned Malfoys ever stood against the family. Ever. And no disowned Malfoy remained living for long.

Draco was staring at him, eyes narrowed. They both knew now. Now it was only a matter of which road to choose. No matter what happened, what Lucius chose couldn't mean anything, because no matter what Lucius did, History would only remember Draco. Draco and him.

It was a repetition of the play-acting in Dumbledore's office. They both danced around the questions that needed asking, saying with tone and non-expression what they feared words would somehow bring upon them. In the shadows, he listened, soaking every piece of information up, undoubtedly planning to compare notes with Draco later.

It felt like one of his own daggers was presses against his throat, though he knew better. His were in their sheaths. But where were everyone else's daggers?

And the dance continued.

"Do his friends know? I understand they're not likely to be accepting."

"We were waiting to inform you first. They're... not likely to be discreet." Gray eyes remained lowered. "Is there a need for discretion father?" One slender, almost feminine eyebrow arched ever so slightly, imperceptible at any distance. What's it to be, Father? he asked with that bland expression. It's your choice. It's always your choice... Am I an orphan now, or will you face your Master and lie for the sake of my life?

Lucius took one last look at his plans, his power and name, and found them wanting under the new conditions. Let Draco have the story, if he had the courage to share the lead role and play the hero along side him. "For the moment. You will give your mother and I time to withdraw from certain political circles?" A wry twist of his lips kept him from biting them bloody. "This is not likely to aid our cause."

Draco wasn't able to keep the open shock from showing on his face, even as cultured as he was. Fabric scraped stone as he leaned against the wall, air pressing out from between tense lips in a sigh that wasn't hidden by what was undoubtedly an Invisibility Cloak. How cute. They hadn't thought he would support them - they hadn't planned for option C. If he hadn't just thrown away every goal he'd ever had, he might have found his son's expression amusing. Instead, it hurt that they had never considered his acceptance possible enough to plan for. The worst part was that he wasn't supposed to hurt.

"Will a week be long enough?"

"Enough." The cold stone floor of the dungeons pulled the tension out through his feet, leaving him hollow and old. He had choices in life, but Draco had just taken them away. It wasn't fair, but Malfoys seldom played by any rules but their own.

Family unity was never to be broken. Not for anything.

"This arrangement is likely to be permanent?"

"Extraordinarily so."

Another problem, then. In his experience, accidental pregnancy was seldom a concern in certain matters, though there had been one extremely entertaining incident when he had been in his own fourth year. But the line had to continue. "Your mother and I will... make arrangements." He grimaced. Narcissa was still a lovely woman, but he remembered all too well the terror that had been daily life when she had been pregnant with Draco. It was a large reason why they'd stopped at one. "Unless you two have spoken of the alternatives?" By some miracle, he didn't sound hopeful. Male pregnancy was risky, but surrogate mothers, false wombs... Magic could work wonders with the miracle of life.

"We will."

"That is all I can ask." He stood up straight, shoulder stiff from where it had pressed against the bedpost. "We'll owl you when matters are settled."

"Good evening then, Father."

Lucius left the room quietly, chin high, the echoes of his footsteps oddly doubled in the empty common room. Vincent and Gregory were still by the door when he left, looking grave. He supposed they probably knew. Draco had mentioned that Pansy not only knew, but endorsed it.

How many others knew? If he was so comfortable in the dungeons as to hide and listen in on a private conversation, likely most of the House. United Slytherin front indeed.

Halfway down the hall, out of sight of both the stairs and the dorm, he paused. The echo behind him continued for three steps after him before they ended. Wooden heel scraping, he turned. There was nothing but a sourceless shadow on the wall.

"Potter."

The air shimmered and Potter's head unfolded out of thin air as the hood of his Invisibility Cloak was drawn back. His eyes, the horrible green that they were, were flat, showing neither respect nor fear. The boy could have been a credit to the Dark, had he the option. Not that he ever had. None of them did anymore. "Mr. Malfoy."

"Take care of my son. He obviously won't allow me the pleasure any more."

"I will." The hood of the Invisibility Cloak began to rise, then dropped again. "Mr. Malfoy? Why?"

Jade shots of death stared at him, hiding horrible truths in plain sight but still innocent behind coy black lashes. On his forehead, like a twisted arrow impishly pointing at death, gleefully chuckling when none guessed its meaning, was the scar. He would have to become used to Potter's scar- to his unnatural eyes, and all the secrets they held. Secrets that Draco held as well, had held since they'd become virgin-lovers. He could almost understand their bond, looking into those eyes.

"We all have our loyalties, Potter. These are mine."

Potter nodded, black hair falling forward to hide both his scar and his hideous-wonderful eyes. "I suppose they're mine now, aren't they?" He raised the hood and vanished completely.

"Perhaps."

The cloak hissed snake-like as Potter resettled it. "They are." The rusting stopped, leaving Lucius with the horrible feeling that he was speaking with a spirit. "Thank you." Footsteps echoed gauzily, and Potter was gone. Lucius wasted no time making his own exit from Hogwarts hallowed halls, fleeing the frozen green stare that he could still feel on the back of his neck.