Missives From Moscow, Or, Draco Malfoy and the Order of the Augurey

Missives From Moscow

"Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."

- Oscar Wilde, A Woman Of No Importance

I'd been travelling Europe for almost half a year now, after I left Hogwarts with my wand, a travelling cauldron and a liberal scattering of Sickles and Traveller's cheques concealed about my personage. I spent a week working in a wizarding bar in Paris, scrubbed streets for a month in Prague with a toothless Hag, then a week at Durmstrang, seeing a young witch I knew who was working there. Just a normal gap year for a wizard school-leaver who doesn't want to settle down into trade, politics or academy just yet. I had checked into a cheap hostel in Moscow just this afternoon. It had been recommended to me by another wizard I met in Kiev, but I wasn't entirely sure why. It was grey as every other building in the district, the room was minute, and the price was hardly competitive. The secretary at the desk, however, wasn't too surprised when a few sickles fell out of my pocket when I pulled out my identity papers, so perhaps they were a little more used to our type than the typical hostels I'd encountered since Calais.

My brother had a job with the Prophet, had a front-page picture a while back actually, and he'd given me an address for a colleague of his who was working for the Wizarding Pravda here in Moscow. I was going to go and see him tomorrow with a package my brother had asked me to deliver. In the meantime, I was going to go sightseeing in the evening, and, more immediately, I was hoping that the borscht was red with beetroot rather than anything else, though I'd put nothing past the shaven-headed runt that cooked (and I use that for lack of a better word) the meals here.

It was at that point that I noticed a vagrant eyeing me through the window. When he realised he'd been seen, he shuffled off, but not, as I had supposed, away into the streets but to the door, which he opened noisily. He loped across to my table and collapsed into the other seat, and grinned at me through his hood and a long fringe of greasy, dirty blonde hair. I smiled weakly, signalling to the runty barkeeper to throw him out, but the stupid Russian brought a beer across. My Russian simply wasn't good enough to make him understand, so I waited and watched whilst the tramp drank his beer.

Something about this struck me as wrong, I realised what it was- rather than gulping down his beer as most starving beggars would do, he sipped it gently with a degree of manners unsuited to his clothing. He drank slowly and quietly, drained the glass, then pulled back the hood of his coat. It was at this point that I realised his coat was more of a sort of robe, and that at the chest a badge had obviously been torn off. A moment passed, then he flicked back his hair, and let his robe reveal a wand.

"It's me, Creevey," he said. Must have been in his early twenties.

"Wait a second, and you are?"

"You know who, Creevey. I ran away when you were fourteen, and I didn't come back. My father tore down half the school looking for me, or so I hear. And I'm tired of running, Creevey. I want to tell you my story. Then I want you to go home and tell my father."

He looked at my Muggle clothing.

"You're hardly the messenger I'd have picked, but my father is too sensible to kill the messenger of his son's return, even if he is a brainless, Mudblood Gryffindor."

I was rather put out by this, as you might understand. But I knew who he was, and it made perfect sense.

"The old prejudices still there, Slytherin? If you don't think I'm worthy, and I think you know that I am, then just say it. If not, cut the bloody insufferable snobbishness, and give me your message."

"Fine, fine. I'm a Malfoy, what do you expect? Although considering my choices and lifestyle, Malparle would suit me better, hmm? Fine, you don't know French. Ah, the miseries. So, my message. I suggest you take a quill, it will be rather long, tedious, and no doubt pretentious. I have only talked to my father once in the past five years, and he'll be wondering what I got up to. As for the pretentiousness, I'm sure that you'll appreciate that the school of hard knocks has failed to knock out the fabled Malfoy wit."

"I would never have guessed. Okay, but your family owes me, wizarding debt. And I'm not going straight back to England- I've got at least half a year until I want to settle down, and I'm not ruining it to play messenger, even for you."

"Very well then. The Malfoy family is in your debt for the standard measure of time. Still, though, I'm disappointed that you won't hurry up back there. Of course, I'm sure I can starve on the streets of Moscow for another six months. No no, don't mind poor Malfoy, a merciful Gryffindor like yourself "

I sighed. I considered going back on my word briefly, but a debt was a debt. The Malfoy name still had some worth amongst the old guard of the Ministry. I took out a quill and parchment from my pockets. The runt looked on curiously.

"Fine, Malfoy. I'll lend you a bit of money too then. But I'm still sticking to my original plan."

"Oh," said Malfoy, grinning once more, "and when you return to my father, wear white. It's a little, well, allusion that we have. On no account wear black- I'd hate to see the old bastard topple off a cliff."

I looked at him blankly. What the hell was he going on about?

"And once again, you haven't a clue, Creevey. It's a terrible time we live in when even the myths the Muggles know of are unknown."

I could see that it was going to be a long night.

"You do know that your father is in Azkaban, Malfoy? Running for the cliff-face is suicide whether he makes it or not. Your debt to me is growing rather rapidly, you know."

"I know perfectly well that he's in Azkaban. The Ministry and Voldemort were not the only ones who had spies and infiltrators. But I digress. You know how the year started, with the death of a number of Muggles in the villages surrounding Hogsmeade. You might not have realised that there was a certain pattern to them, though the intervention of Hit Wizards and a pair of Aurors prevented it from being completed. A pattern of 13 villages, with Hogsmeade at the head, the 13 diamond scales of the Slytherin Snake. My father told me that Voldemort had an eye for symbolism, although few appreciated it at the time, understandably."

I stopped him.

"I'm perfectly aware of the deaths, Malfoy. We were banned from Hogsmeade visits that year, and after... well, of course there was no after."

He nodded. I swallowed down a few more spoonfuls of the red-stained meat.

Malfoy eyed it.

"I beg your pardon, Creevey, but your manners are insufferable. Here I am, starving, on the streets for two months, and you don't even offer me any food."

"Sorry. Fine."

I gestured to the runt, pointed at the bowl I had finished, and handed him another few roubles. He scuttled off to the kitchens.

"Get on with it then, Malfoy."

"As I have said, the year started with a number of deaths. I knew perfectly well they were coming, my father may be harsh but he trusted me. How could he not? I had been raised in the same way he had been raise., He and his father, and his father's father, and his father's father's father, and so forth ad infinitum ad nauseam, had been brought up in that familiar and firm manner, and it'd be a poor show of the fortunes of the Malfoy family if he became the first unable to trust his son. My father's allegiance to Voldemort was merely an addendum to the Malfoy method of child-raising, a footnote to step up the programmed distaste of Muggles to wholesale slaughter.'

He ate another three spoonfuls of borscht, and continued.

'The Jesuit priests in the village, who had been responsible for the early education of the scions of our dynasty, had a saying: Give me a child, and I will give you the man. They were not entirely right, as you can see by the young Malfoy before you. However, my behaviour towards Mudbloods such as Hermione and yourself can easily be explained, though not, I suspect, excused."

"Fine, so you were raised to hate Muggles. That still doesn't explain why you ran, why you founded the Augurey, why you're not strung up in Azkaban with the other Death Eaters."

Draco pulled back his fringe to behind his ear with a snort of annoyance. I noticed a small nick was missing from the left ear lobe, as if an ear-ring had been cut away, or as if some Muggle had hoped for a ransom but decided against it. Curious, but inconsequential, I decided, as he ignored my stare and kept talking.

"I was never a Death Eater, Creevey, and I am revolted and disappointed by the assumption that I became one the moment I turned sixteen. Lord Voldemort was a genius, albeit evil, and I use that in the most precise sense of the word. He would never have accepted some pubescent wizard-in-training into his inner circles. However, my father had decided that I should be tested in my sincerity to serve his master. It was that which set, as the cliché goes, events in motion."

"Even when you led the Augury, nobody knew why, just that it was, and that it was there to help. Why explain it now?"

He looked ruffled.

"I told you before. I wish to return to my father," he said, but I knew enough of him to know that he was lying. However, I didn't want to push it any further. The way this was going, I'd be here for some time.

"Fine. So, you hated Muggles, because you were raised to do so, and your father decided to test you. You've told me nothing that I don't know and nothing your father does not know. Why not cut to the chase?"

"Because, Creevey, I am trying to build up an idea for you of my position in the world. There are nuances of my life that have been explained away as jealousy of Potter, as a sheer hatred of my father, and they are wrong. I wish to assure you that I am not the subject of some cheap Lockhart novel, as some have made me out to be, but a human being. Now, if I may get back to my life?"

I let him continue. I knew he was holding something back, but he was intent on continuing.

"As I was saying, my father decided to test me. He had set a number of little assignments, to spy on Snape, to hinder Potter, to obtain particular spells kept in the Restricted Section. Nothing I wouldn't do anyway, and nothing that Potter himself hadn't done so far, but my father made sure that I could not always tell if my actions were the result of his desires, or my own. He decided to test my resolve and my pragmatism. On my birthday, the third day of Christmas, I was taken to St Mungo's to kill a man."

He silenced me with a wave of his hand as I tried to open my mouth.

"Stop trying to interrupt, Creevey, or I'll seal your lips with a Binding Curse and be damned with the consequences."

I decided to shut up. I was curious, but not that curious.

"I was woken up at six, and went to the dining room where my mother and father were waiting, as they had done on all my birthdays for as long as I could possibly remember. A number of presents, wrapped in satin of various colours and bound with green ribbons in various shades, had been laid out on the table, and, after my father had wished me a happy birthday, and my mother had hugged me proudly, we walked to where the presents lay.'

"My father handed me a parcel- as always, I would take what he gave me and wait until tomorrow for the gifts others gave. It was long, thin, but it wasn't a broomstick- I already had the latest Firebolt, and I knew that if another model was out it would have been between the legs of the Slytherin team all term.'

"Oh, do stop scowling like that, Creevey. You know perfectly well that I had enough skill to play on the team. And it was hardly as if Potter won his matches on a Cleansweep. Anyway, I'm getting away from myself. I untied the bow of the ribbon, and unwrapped what was inside. A box, black felt, with clasps on the side, and imprinted on the top, in gold lettering, 'Borgin & Burkes'.'

"Dark Magic then, and I opened it more eagerly. If I was back in that room once more, with all the knowledge I have gained, I would do the same again- the forbidden was something I could share with my father against the world, and when he gave me such presents I could feel his fondness for me. Looking back, I could say it was a parody of normal life, giving me presents with a potency that only Muggles seemed to match in the toy guns and swords they gave their children. But their presents would make you a childish killer for a day and no more, whilst the toys my father gave could thresh the soul from out of a man and make it yours for life.'

"Inside the box lay a rod of ivory, and at its tip was an inlaid black pearl of prodigious size. Spiralling around the staff was a pattern of thorns, and when I reached to pick it up I felt the tips press into my hand, not hard enough to draw blood, but close enough to remind me what was there. It disturbed me then, and disturbs me even now, when the full implications of it keep me awake at night. It was like a maggot, the type with sheer white bodies, except someone must have blown a breath of nicotine over them.'

"The black pearl seemed almost alive as the candles of the chandelier above me burned. Taking it from out of the box, I grasped the staff with both hands, and my father looked on approvingly. I didn't yet ask what it was; I wanted a short time to feel for myself the energy flowing through it, uninterrupted by my father's explanations. I knew anyway that he would give me no help until it was almost too late.'

'Twisting it with my right hand, I traced with my left the silver thorn up the shaft. As I did so, a peculiar, shrill sound in my ear began to cry out. My father looked on, delighted by my quick discovery. My finger ran round the staff to the tip of the pearl, and I was eager to work out its purpose. As I reached the end of the staff, where the black pearl gleamed, the cry turned to a scream. Persistent and steady as a whistle and as I reached the end and touched the pearl, a drop of some liquid, heavy than water, ran across my finger, welling from within. I cupped the tip within my hand.'

"Still the scream continued, but I could put up with it for as long as was needed to divine what the staff was for. I looked down at the table where the water began to fall. The black felt of the box was turning white wherever the water dropped, and I could no longer feel the pearl in my fist. I tried to unclench it, but my hand had numbed entirely. Where the water streaked down my arms I could see my already pale skin turn as white as bone. Even the veins were white. Now I could see a frosty tinge of blue in the skin. Like a marionette held by a palsied puppeteer, I forced the rod onto the floor- trod on it- pulled it- tugged- failed. The wailing in my head continued, but I was used to that now.'

"I looked out at my father. He grinned proudly, as if to ask how I liked my present. There was no use asking for help from him, not until my heart would stop its pumping. My mother had left the room; she was no stranger to cruelty, but she took no pleasure in it. As I keeled over onto the floor like a statue, my knees locking with paralysis, I could see a House Elf place a few trays of food on the table, and inside I laughed at this grotesque parody of normality. I was no longer pulling, and still the staff screamed. I realised that even my eyelids would no longer move. It was then that my father walked around the table, slow as a pall-bearer, leaned over to look into my eyes, and whispered a charm.'

"None of the warmth came back to my body but I knew I was safe. My father sat down in the chair next to where I lay, took my frozen hand in his, and we waited together whilst I returned from the numbness of the paralysing rain.'

I sat and watched Malfoy. He looked down, sighed, then looked back at me again. As if he had only just realised that he was talking to me, he reverted back to his grinning self once more, and spooned up the last of the borscht.

"And that," said Malfoy, pushing back his fringe once again, "was the first hour of my sixteenth birthday."