Black And White

A sweaty Draco stood in the long entrance hall of Malfoy Manor, the foil in his left hand circling carefully with his opponent's as he analyzed the white-clad figure's stance.

"Father," he growled, "I'm an actor!"

Lucius advanced, lunged - felt his blade knocked aside and deftly caught under Draco's arm, pulled farther - it was dragging him off-balance - a dull prod in his side. Automatically, they broke apart and back to their starting positions. "You are a Malfoy first."

Lucius advanced swiftly, hoping to catch his son off-guard, but no such luck - he had trained Draco too well. The younger man retreated quickly as years of his father's fast approaches had taught him to do.

"I will never take a Ministry position, Father. I don't care how many favors you've had to call in - " Draco slowed just a bit, not enough for Lucius to notice, " - I am not taking it!" And then he was within lunging distance - a beat, a thrust, and - a touch on his collarbone, over his defence, just as his foil hit Lucius' chest. Point to Draco and back to their marks. "That was careless, Father."

"You're taking the job, boy, if I have to drag you into the building and force you to sign the papers at wandpoint!"

Draco advanced first this time, a headlong flèche, pushing off with his back foot and nearly running with blade outstretched and blinders on. Small wonder Lucius didn't skewer him through after an almost gratuitous parry. With narrowed eyes, he caught his son's bare forearm and held him, off-balance, to the spot.

"Now who's being careless, Draco? That is just the attitude that will get you killed one of these days. You are headstrong and can't be held to making decisions like this for yourself. You'll only get yourself hurt."

"So I'll hurt," Draco returned, passionate and low, "but I'll hurt on my own terms. I will never live my life under your direction, Father. I'm a big boy now, untipped blades and everything. You can't protect me forever."

"Untipped blades, eh?" Lucius repeated. He shoved Draco backward, away from him. As his son stumbled to regain his equilibrium, Lucius threw his foil to the ground, kicked it into a corner - Draco noted that his father must be starting into one of his white-hot rages to treat a well-made weapon so badly - and snatched two sharpened rapiers down from their brackets on the wall. One he threw point-first to his son, who sidestepped neatly so that the blade made a hole in the expensive rug instead of his rib cage, and tossed the other into his left hand as he slid easily into the en guarde position - left foot forward at a right angle to his back one, knees bent, left arm in line with his shoulder, right hand on his hip for balance.

Draco, recomposed, retrieved his weapon at great leisure from the Oriental carpet, knowing full well that moving so slowly would annoy his father and drive him further into his rage, and he thought arrogantly, a furious Lucius was a sloppy Lucius, both in words and actions, and therefore vulnerable. "I can get myself fired, Father. No matter how influential the Malfoy name is, even it cannot withstand the scandals I can create."

"And if you do," Lucius replied icily, his whole body stiff and tense. "I will cut you out of my will. You'll never see a Knut of the fortune you so glibly brag about."

Draco laughed coolly, as one would who knows he has the upper hand. "I am a Slytherin, Father. Did you ever think I would be content to merely live off your profits?"

Suddenly, Draco found himself turned roughly by the shoulder and pinned in place by a rapier at his throat, just below the jaw. His eyes followed the length of blade to his father's hand on the hilt, then to the gray eyes that matched his so well, now narrowed in blind anger. "Do not underestimate me, boy," Lucius hissed, unheeding of how much pressure he was putting on his son's throat. He was watching the insolent, fear-edged glare in his prey's eyes.

"The same to you, Father," Draco whispered, before lifting himself on his toes and falling backward onto the seat of his jeans. He scuttled back a few feet, out of Lucius' range, and wrenched his own rapier from the flooring. Careful to keep it pointed at his father, Draco regained his feet and squared off again, his lips curling into his trademark smirk. "Shall we continue?" Without waiting for a reply, he attacked, forcing Lucius to find his position and retreat at the same time. The elder man tripped, caught his balance just in time to avoid falling, but a little red flower bloomed on his snow-white shirt where Draco pricked him.

Draco quickly backed as far away from Lucius as he could for safety's sake, until his back was to the tall door that led to the drawing room. When he spoke, his voice was determined and unwavering. "I am an actor, Father, and a damn good one." Draco's eyes flicked to the point of the rapier clutched in his father's hand. "You, of course, missed my performances as Shylock and Petruchio." Then they fixed on the scarlet stain on Lucius' shirt. "Come to think of it, you've missed all my performances - (they moved to Lucius' right shoulder) - and my Quidditch games - (and slid to his ear) - and even my fencing tournaments." Draco let his gaze meet his father's, his expression as defiant as if he'd slapped the older man across the face. "In fact, Father, my governess was a much better parent than you could ever hope to be."

"Such cheek will not go unrewarded, boy," Lucius snarled, leaving all pretence of fencing behind and dashing at Draco, who bolted like a hare through the door. He skirted the roll-top desk and leapt onto the coffee table, skipped around the vase and back to the floor just as Lucius stormed through the door. "Stop, boy, and you won't be punished!" Draco paid him no mind, already skidding through the entryway to the parlor and dancing to the side to avoid his great-great-grandfather's glass cabinet of war medals. Lucius was gaining, however, and Draco could hear his footsteps on the hardwood floor. He pushed himself harder and raced down a flight of stairs unheeding of his direction, flung himself around a corner and down a hallway, opened the third door on the right, and shut it behind him mere moments before he heard Lucius enter the corridor.

Draco looked around, took stock of where he was. It seemed to be one of the hundreds of storage rooms in the Manor that held all the junk the Malfoys had collected over the years that wasn't fit for display. Of course, a Malfoy's definition of "junk" was very subjective; anything that didn't go with the current décor, for instance, or a priceless heirloom of no actual retail value, went into the storage rooms. In this particular one was an upright piano, a cloth-covered portrait of some ancestor or another, a gilded harp that was missing strings, an old claw-footed bathtub, and a dozen or so boxes filled with paper-wrapped trinkets. One such box, a huge one that must have previously held a refrigerator, was only partially full. Quietly, Draco stood and, doing his best not to disturb the dust and leave incriminating footprints, tip-toed to the box and climbed in. It was a bad fit - he had to duck his head between his knees in order to pull the top flaps closed - but it was better than being caught and beaten. He could hardly hear Lucius now over the beating of his heart, but he did notice when the door swung open with a creak. He held his breath. Lucius was prowling the room, searching. He knew Draco had to be in one of these rooms; the corridor was a dead-end. Idly, he trailed his fingers over the harp's strings, but they were hopelessly out of tune and only a dissonant cacophony resounded through the room. Frowning, he touched his hand to the vibrating strings to still them. He checked inside the tub, behind the piano, around the boxes - Draco utterly stopped breathing, convinced he would be found - but finally concluded that his son was elsewhere, and stalked out of the room.

Only after he was absolutely certain that he wouldn't be seen did Draco slowly open the flaps and gingerly climb out. There was a sore spot on his back where something that had felt a bit like a gravy boat had dug into it. Draco stayed close to the wall, tracking Lucius with his ears; it sounded like he was ransacking the room next door. Draco waited, breathing shallowly from his diaphragm for maximum silence, until he heard his father move to the next room and creak open the door. Then the black-clothed boy slipped out and retraced his steps along the hallway, around the corner, and sneaked back up the stairs.

Everything would have worked out perfectly - Draco would have escaped and locked himself in his quarters for a day or so, meanwhile climbing out the window and Apparating illegally into town; Lucius would have eventually realized his mistake and stormed around the Manor breaking things for a day or so before calming down, and everything would have returned to normal - if it hadn't been for that one loose stair.

As Draco was working his way up the staircase, willing himself to hear Lucius' every movement, he neglected to pay attention to where he was placing his feet, and so landed on a loose stair that squeaked so loudly in the resounding silence that Lucius heard it and, in his haste to catch the culprit, dropped the box of Tiffany flatware he was holding. He bolted around the corner and caught sight of a bit of movement at the top of the stairs, then charged up them in hot pursuit, his rapier still clutched in one hand. Draco's back was just disappearing up another flight of broad marble stairs when Lucius emerged from the first wooden one, and by the time he had gained those, he had also gained a few yards on his flagging son who was racing around the oval-shaped upper gallery. Lucius careened after him, putting on speed as seeing his quarry pumped more adrenaline into his system, until he was a scant twenty feet from the boy dressed all in black.

As Lucius closed the distance, Draco threw himself sideways in a vain attempt to circle back the way he'd come, but Lucius caught his pant leg, then his shirt. His father dragged him along by his collar into one of the rooms off the gallery and threw the sixteen-year-old boy forward over one of the armchairs. What breath Draco had left was knocked out of him as he clutched the chair's arm, but not being able to breathe wasn't his biggest problem as Lucius began beating him with the flat of the rapier, heedless of how hard or where he struck. The slashes sizzled on Draco's skin, overlapping old scars and bruises, but he didn't cry out, only hissed in pain when one of the cuts hit another of the new ones, which was often. Lucius hated when he screamed; it reminded him that it was his own son he was thrashing, not just an armchair or a house-elf, and he whipped all the more vigorously for it. Draco had learned early on to mute his yells. In the thick quiet, the sound of the rapier slicing the air was surmounted only by the rhythmic, wet strikes of metal on flesh, and the muffled groan that followed each one. Two cadences of ragged breathing worked a deafening counterpoint to each other. Draco forced himself to watch the little puffs of dust that materialized from the pattern on the armchair with every thwack, fixed his mind on those tiny clouds so he wouldn't feel the blistering pain, wouldn't smell the acrid tang of sweat and blood, wouldn't think about the salty taste filling his mouth or realize he was holding his breath in anticipation of the next assault.

The thrashings on his back grew eventually less brutal, less frequent. His father was tiring, until finally he brought the blade back up and let it swing limply to his side, harmless and inanimate. Draco gingerly, slowly, turned his neck to see Lucius slumped against the wall. The older man seemed to sense his son's eyes on him and lifted his head as if it took a great effort to return that stare. His gaze slipped from Draco's eyes to his back, still bent stiffly over the arm of the chair, the black T-shirt ripped and bloody red welts forming a twisted pattern over what might have been a cracked rib, or even two. He couldn't stop staring, even as Draco painfully straightened to some semblance of uprightness and began to hobble from the room. Lucius didn't get up, but whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Draco, I'm sorry..." His eyes were pleading and hurting, and if he weren't Lucius Malfoy, there might even have been tears in them.

Draco eyed the sad figure in white slumped against the wall and said clearly, "Shut up, Father," before continuing to limp out the door, round the gallery, and down to the kitchens, where the house-elves would put him back together and help him to his rooms. "I don't care anymore."