Winter Allium

The dim glow of a dying fire was the only viewable light outside the Malfoy manor in Wiltshire, England. Looking past the surrounding trees beneath night's watchful eye, furnished wood floors, crème-colored walls and high wooden banisters were visible. Inside the manor, three chandeliers hung from high ceilings and a fireplace was pressed against a back wall near extensive bookshelves. The fire had recently fallen to scattered embers and the room grown chilly. It suddenly burst into flame, as if by magic, and coated the walls in a warm glow.

Paintings wrapped around the walls, most of them portraits of the same family. A graceful and tired looking mother, a noble and condescending father, and an unhappy boy. Pale hands of the father gripped on the boy's shoulders as he stared out the frame with sad, young eyes. As the portraits continued decorating further down the walls, the family's age ascended. The boy changed from melancholy to a hidden tension, and by the most recent painting he had an expression similar to that of the father. Long, controlling fingers that had held the boy's shoulder tightly in the paintings of his youth were slightly more relaxed, but still held an amount of domination. The woman, her skin once pale and fair, began looking her age, a wisp of gray hair amongst the blond. The family in the portrait barely moved, keeping solitary stance unlike the other paintings around the room which held different subjects.

A regal ship tossing in the surging sea, its sails billowing, narrowly escaped the occasional bolt of lightning. In another, a serpent coiled around a fountain at dusk. Gloomy portraits of other witches and wizards, relatives of the family, also looking subtly patronizing.

Alone was a cheery painting towards the back corner, cluttered near the bookshelves as if someone had tried to hide it. A meadow with a bubbling river and a doe, all just after a misty sunrise glistened in a haze. Big, full clouds blew gently and the wildflowers swayed as the doe grazed timidly. Soon a fawn trotted over and they chased around the field. At the bottom corner of the painting was the signature: Narcissa Malfoy.

In the center of the large room stretched a long, dark, wooden table. Silver and china gleamed under the dim light of the chandeliers and small house elves bustled around, carrying plates of fine meat, cakes, breads and steamed vegetables. There were only two chairs at the table that night, one on each opposing end and farthest from each other. On the end nearest the fireplace sat the woman from the family portraits, rigid and tense, but her gray-green eyes held a certain gentleness. Her gaze continuously bent over her food, down the table to her son. Elbows on the table and hunched over his plate, his blond hair reflected the flickering candlelight with startling accuracy. His hair was fine and fair like hers. It had been many years since she ran her hands through her boy's locks. A house elf set a steaming plate of venison down with a loud clang. She bristled and the boy looked up.

Oh, he looked just like his father.

The house elf nearly whimpered and bowed before scampering back off to the kitchen. Silence sustained, nearly echoing through the tall room until soft rain pattered on the high windows. Narcissa glanced over her shoulder at the cheerful painting. It brought her a small gleam of cheer during times like this. When her husband was missing from the table and she knew she couldn't tell her son why, even though he had a clear idea of where he was. It just wasn't something they could talk about, let alone at the dinner table. The bouncy fawn appeared from behind a spruce tree and joined its mother at the stream, taking careful sips of the cool water. The doe lifted its head to the worn woman, blinking its big eyes, and she smiled.

"Mum," came the soft voice from the other end of the table.

She turned around, embarrassed for her poor table manners, and set down her fork. "Yes, Draco?"

He hadn't touched his food. "You watch that painting a lot."

A small reminiscent smile, a nod. "I do."

Draco nodded and took a sip out of his goblet. His mother thought maybe that their conversation had ended, and sadly turned back to her meal. But he said, "You painted it for father, didn't you. When you first met him?"

An almost incredulous look came to her face. She hadn't told him that; she hadn't told anyone except her husband, and even he might've forgotten. Narcissa had locked away her pallet and brushes nearly a decade ago. "How did you...."

"You look at it when you're sad. It makes you feel better." He looked halfway between indifferent and worried. "I've seen you. You've looked at it at least once for every meal he's been gone."

Silence. Narcissa lowered her eyes. "Finish your dinner," she said barely above a whisper, feeling a burning sensation behind her eyes. The sound of a chair scraping on the floor told her that Draco was standing. So she wouldn't have to speak she slid a small, lady-like bite of venison between her lips and chewed slowly.

The house elves had stopped moving and were looking at Draco. "Some day I'm going to paint something for you." He watched her bowed head for a moment longer, and left the dining room. Narcissa waited for the sound of his feet treading slowly on the staircase before burying her face in her hands and crying.

The Cunnings Cemetery, a dark and windy place, sat on a small hilltop. The hilltop was halfway between the countryside and a small, remote town of England. Under normal circumstances, the gates were kept locked until the caretaker decided otherwise. But no one really cared to visit there any more, nor were they ever near it--it was placed strangely on the side of a long, winding road near vast fenced-in hills. So the cemetery was lost amidst the ivy and tall spruce and willow trees bowing over the graves. Dates on the tombstones dated back to early as 1781, and at first people came to read the names of the forgotten. But eventually the tombstones became unreadable due to weather and wear, and the sightseer or passerby lost interest.

It was around two o'clock one particularly chilly morning toward the end of August, when a most unusual thing occurred. A long, stick-like wand pointed at the lock on the gate, and a deep voice whispered hoarsely, "Alohamora." The gate slowly opened, creaking all the way, and a few sleeping pigeons flitted away from their dark trees. A dozen pairs of feet walking quickly, lightly, in a single file passed through the gates. Ends of cloaks and robes dragged on the dirt and moss covered ground.

Tiny globes of precipitation from earlier that day slid down the cold tombstones. It had rained for days and the soil was on the verge of being considered mud. The new trekking feet sank into the earth, leaving the first footprints that had been there in quite some time. The gate swung shut behind them and locked itself. The line of followers walked on.

From afar they would all appear to be a line of grim reapers, hiding their scythes in their long dark cloaks. Long, pointed hoods covered their faces, and only fingertips were visible under tattered sleeves. Their sight would have given an onlooker chills as they marched on. In the front of the line was a man, his hood thrown back, watching ahead with cold, suspicious eyes. His hair was loose and spilled over his shoulders like flaxen silk threads. There was a thin layer of fog on the ground before them, the willow's vines dipping into its frosty blanket. His eyes fixated on a statue before him as they made the rest of their way to their destination.

There was a relatively small group of others already gathered around the statue, alike in the same hooded cloaks. They were before a stone angel with sad eyes holding her arms as if asking to weigh something in her small hands. There was a crack going through one of her eyes and down the side of her face. The walkers joined those standing, finishing a second row in the circle.

They were witches and wizards, all under service of the Dark Lord. Most widely known as Death Eaters, those present were responsible for many previous attacks on Muggles and half-blooded wizards. They had formed a half-circle around the angel, but not to gaze into her stony melancholy. Instead they gave their attention to the man--if he could qualify for one in his current state--sitting at her side.

His pale, spider-like hands were the only body parts visible, but everyone could see that he was frail and worn. There was something darker that separated him from the others, things they couldn't begin to fathom. Lord Voldemort had murderous secrets that not even his most trusted followers knew. In his left hand the wizard held a long, gnarled wand, and he sat disrespectfully on a casket. Another hooded figure, this one shorter than the others, stood behind him with his hands drawn to his mouth. The right one shone silver in the moonlight, before it hid behind a cloud. Everything was deathly still.

"Step forth," the Dark Lord called in a terrible voice, like a muffled scream or a strained whisper.

The wizard of the second group with the long white-blond hair stepped forward out of the crowd. Passing the others, he bowed before Lord Voldemort. When he raised his head Lucius Malfoy's cold eyes glimmered with malice, even in the moonless night.

Draco awoke early one chilly and damp morning to the loud slam of the front door. He swallowed and realized his throat felt like ice. A nightmare had been gripping his mind, but he couldn't place what had happened. All he remembered was the statue of an angel.

There were footsteps in the floor below. It couldn't have been later than six o'clock, and he listened with fox's ears. His father wasn't supposed to return for another whole day, but the slow, steady trod of footsteps told him that Lucius was in fact home. Draco pulled the sheets over his head and Lucius ascended the stairs. He heard his door creak open. Silence, and then the door shut again. As the footsteps grew further and further away, he peeled the covers back and stared at the ceiling. Today was his last full day of summer. In the morning he would be waking up and heading to Platform 9 ¾, and then boarding the Hogwarts Express. Draco groaned and lazily hit his pillow.

All summer he had done nothing but sit at home or fly his broom. Once he stayed at Vincent Crabbe's house with the other dolt Gregory Goyle, but that proved to only sitting around doing nothing. Since he figured he would have more fun doing "nothing" alone, and left. The visit had been his mother's idea any way, an attempt to get him out of the house and having some sort of social life during the holiday.

There was also to be some sort of a family reunion, but there was an argument over how far back on the family tree to go for invitations. Lucius had strongly disagreed against inviting any grandparents other than Draco's; his father and not Narcissa's. Draco had never met his mother's parents. Every time he had a chance Lucius somehow got him out of it. He had never met any great grandparents either, or anyone older than that. He knew he had them, and always figured that Lucius didn't get along very well with Narcissa's side of the family. Needless to say, that summer's family reunion never happened.

Dinner that evening was just as quiet as it had been the night before, and the night before that. The house elves had to clean a thin layer of dust off Lucius' chair that had collected when sat unused against the wall. Draco forced his food down, not wanting another stern, disappointed look from his father. He wasn't hungry though. He hadn't been, not for a while. It was strange, though he wasn't eating as much as he usually was, he didn't look like he was losing any weight. But he did feel tired, worn down. Weak.

"That Eggleston," growled Lucius quietly, drowning the silence. All heads turned to him as he stared angrily down at his steak, which was practically still mooing and chewing grass. Stabbing it, torrents of pink rushed across the silver plate. "He's got the whole bloody Ministry in a nervous wreck about the return of You-Know-Who. He keeps going on about how since he did nothing last year that this is the time for him to strike." The table--and even the house elves--fell into a silence. Lucius quickly changed the subject. "No idea how he came around to being Minister, but I wouldn't trust him for the job."

Narcissa cleared her throat timidly and tried, "Perhaps he'll be impeached?"

"Of course he won't be impeached, he was practically Fudge's right hand man!" Lucius nearly dropped his fork. "Everyone seems to think he's just bloody perfect for the job. Weasley's got everyone on some tangent about how he's going to turn out just fine, he's just having a bit of trouble with all the pressures of being Minister."

Draco rolled his eyes and cut into his steak. "At least he's not as awful as his sons." Lucius fleetingly looked at him out of the corner of his eye.

"Draco's first day of school is tomorrow." Narcissa tried to sound as if starting casual conversation, but Draco knew well by then that she was reminding Lucius. He nodded.

"Then I will be there." He said it in an all-too determined, lighthearted way for it to be what he was really thinking. If he had clapped Draco on the back in another false attempt to look fatherly, he wouldn't have been surprised.

He knew that he wouldn't be there; they all did. Promises were something Draco didn't bother listening to any more. Something more important would suddenly pop up, something that had to do with the Ministry, or so he said. Lucius hardly ever had to work with the Ministry, other than on days he went to his office.

"Father, I thought you said you wouldn't be home for another day."

Eyes on his plate, Lucius answered, "Something came up that I must be here for."

There would be another 'party' soon that he would hold for all of his Death Eater friends. And Draco would have to stay upstairs in his room, and Narcissa would stay in bed reading the book she had been reading for months. She still hadn't gotten past page twenty-three, because she spent her time trying to tell herself that her husband wasn't doing anything wrong. Draco used to sit on the staircase and watch in horror at the meetings in the den, before someone would shut the door. Eventually the gatherings came so often that they didn't faze him anymore, and he stopped sitting at the stairs.

Draco knew what lay beneath the finely furnished floors underneath them at that very moment. Illegal devices and weapons and spell books of the dark arts. Lucius had kept them there for ages. That was why all of the 'parties' were held in the dining room, he suspected, for better access to the chamber.

"Another meeting," Draco assumed in only half question, quietly.

Lucius nodded. "Another meeting." The rest of the meal was spent in silence.

A girl of sixteen sat tiredly at the breakfast table of her home, morning's first light beginning to stream through the windows. A cauldron hung over a small fire with a wooden spoon stirring itself. The cauldron's contents, a cross between oatmeal and porridge, were beginning to bubble menacingly. But the girl wasn't quite awake enough to notice. The house was a fairly normal sized house on the countryside, by a field of cows and chickens, away from Muggle towns. It held shelter to four inhabitants, two of which were busily stumbling around the house in an attempt to get ready, other than the girl at the table. The other was somewhere off at work, as usual. The girl sat, cheek on her weak fist, looking at the cauldron with half-attentiveness.

Footsteps came romping down the stairs, and a wizard strode merrily into the kitchen, humming a Muggle graduation song. Pompous Circus-rats, or something like that. He did this every year on her first day of school and had such high hopes for her graduating from Hogwarts with flying colors. Though he was a year past forty, his age didn't affect his maturity at all. He smiled widely; it always reminded her of a cat.

"Deirdre, lighten up, will you?" His voice rang with a hint of Irish over the English dialect. "Thought you'd be ecstatic for the first day back. It's your last year, you know. Do you remember how dull you said spending the entire summer in France was?" A grunt was all he received as made his way to the cauldron. "And what is this?" He leaned over to sniff it and made a face.

"You know I can't cook, Kiel." A smile stretched across her mousy face in a lazy way similar to his.

"Ah, there's that smile. That's more like it. Don't want anyone getting the wrong impression of my favorite little niece!" He grabbed her cheeks and pinched them hard, speaking in baby gibberish.

Yelping, she swatted him playfully. Thus followed a quick tousle of play hits ending with Deirdre a good-humored headlock. "Say you give up!" Kiel strained as if she put up a decent fight.

Deirdre's mother suddenly announced her presence with: "Oh, knock it off, you two. Someone's going to get a black eye!" She stood fixing the cuffs of her sleeves, eyebrow cocked. Her strawberry blond hair was pulled tightly in a bun, her face tense, showing mental aging against her fairly young physical appearance. Her eyes quickly turned to the fireplace. "Oh, Merlin! Deirdre, you know you couldn't even toast bread if we had a toaster! Please, if you'd have just asked me I would have done it for you...." She hovered around the cauldron which was now bubbling ferociously.

"Sorry, sorry!" Deirdre rushed, and Kiel rolled his eyes.

"Oh, come on, Ivey," he prodded, "These are her last hours of summer holiday, let her have some fun. Besides, in a few more hours she'll be out of your hair until Christmas holiday." He threw a wink at Deirdre who laughed sarcastically.

Ivy scowled. "I just don't want her to be late, we're already behind. We need to be at King's Cross in ten minutes!"

"What are you on about, it takes two bloody minutes to get everyone there by floo powder, and we've got plenty of --"

"Uh," Deirdre called in distress, unable to think of the right charm to stop the boiling. Her wand was pointed weakly at the cauldron. Kiel rolled his eyes in good humor and waved his wand at it. The horrible breakfast concoction reached a slow simmer.

The three of them peered inside and noticed a large bubble emerging. After they all took a quick jump back, the bubble erupted. They were greeted with an awful smell of burned and splattered breakfast, like a mix between old fruit. Ivey waved her hand before her face and sighed heavily. "Well, I suppose we'll have to get you something at the station. Merlin, Deirdre, I pity your potions master. Come now, gather your things."

Minutes later they were in front of the fireplace, putting on the robes they wore for floo travel. Ivey didn't prefer her family's clothes getting dirty, so she made them wear separate pairs and carry kerchiefs to wipe soot from their faces. At last everyone was ready to go, and the labeled flowerpot that held sandy, gray powder was outstretched to Deirdre.

"Deirdre, do you really want to wear those on your first day of school?" She eyed the worn and ripped jeans, who looked like she didn't know what she was saying. "I mean, we bought you a new pair in France. Your uncle dragged me in to that Muggle store for those, you know." Her eyes traveled up to Deirdre's rather messy hair, which held a twinge of pink underneath its brown. After years of arguing, Ivey finally gave in and just let her daughter dye it. "Just a hint, Deirdre, I mean it!" Though it had turned out a rather vibrant pink, and over the summer she ordered it to be toned down.

"I just wanted to wear these," Deirdre said. "Where's Norvin?"

Norvin Doolittle was her soon-to-be step father. He was a young wizard of fair, dirty-blond hair with squared fringe and a pointed nose. Born in England, he later moved to France to become a professor at Beauxbatons for the charms class. Ivey met him in a local chocolate shop while vacationing in Paris. Kiel didn't take too much of a liking to him, being the protective older brother of Ivey but he was learning to tolerate him. Though, usually when Norvin visited, Kiel made a quick appearance and then stole Deirdre away to the Leaky Cauldron for sweets of all shapes and sizes, much to Ivey's dismay.

Ivey fixed her powder covered robe and made a face. "You know he's busy with traveling between Beauxbatons and back to London. He's trying to come and see you off, really, you know that, Deirdre. Quit being such a thorn in his side about it." Norvin was good hearted and sensitive, but always busy around this time of year. Since he met Ivey in Deirdre's second round at Hogwarts, he had never come to see her off.

Frowning, Deirdre took a handful of floo powder and stepped into the fireplace, her suitcase trailing behind. "Well Kiel's an Auror, you'd think he'd have more reason to be gone," she grumbled. "He's my uncle, and I see him more than my stepfather."

Ignoring her mother's pleading looks for not this again, she threw the powder onto the floor. "Diagon Alley!"