Saint Serita

Prologue

"Goodnight, Draco," Lucius said coldly as he swept away, leaving his nineteen-year old son in his room.

It was what he did every night. By eleven, he was supposed to be sleeping. At or a little past midnight, his father would enter the room and tell him goodnight, although he wasn't supposed to hear it. But he did. Draco heard all the goodnights from the past month because he wasn't sleeping. Why rest when there was something else, something infinitely better to hear every night? Had he been really asleep, he would have missed it all.

It began as a mistake, really. Draco had suffered from insomnia for as long as he could remember and was instructed to take a goblet-full of Sleeping Potion every night. That was before the Great War, though. That was when that bloody Potter still ran free everyday, when hatred coursed through his body on a daily basis, when he wished death on The Boy Who Lived. Now he who had once lived had now died, and the Dark Lord had prevailed. The Malfoys had fought out a long and bitter civil war to claim supremacy over a rival pureblood family, the Blacks, and they had emerged victorious. Lucius was the Dark Lord's personal servant, and Draco was his heir and working up in Voldemort's favor. Potter was dead, Weasley was lying in a coma in St. Mungo's, and the Mudblood Granger was presumed missing. The Order of the Phoenix was lost and confused after their leader, that fool Dumbledore, had passed away, their members spread out too thinly and constantly hunted by Death Eaters.

Oh, yes, life was good. And for the first time in his life, Draco could find sleep. He could find peace. Yet one night, little over a month ago, sleeplessness had attacked him once again, and he lay in his bed, tossing fitfully. There was a ringing in his ears, and it was driving him mad. He clenched his eyes shut and willed himself to lie still, but the ringing was there, only louder! Frustrated, he tried to sleep again -

And then he heard it. Cries. Coming from...directly below him. Where his father's room was. Where he thought it was.

Draco was hardly a virgin, having his share of romantic and sexual endeavors while a student. With a guilty satisfaction and a pang in his loins, he remembered crazy nights up in the astronomy tower. The Slytherin seventh years would gather there and not light a candle. Clothes were shed and one could not take a step without hearing passionate voices of love.

So, it was hardly a surprise when he recognized the cries as those of pain...and of pleasure, of lust. The voices changed nightly, though he heard many more than once, ranging from high-pitches female squeaks to throaty gasps that were unmistakably male. Occasionally, he heard someone speak, one of those mysterious men. It wasn't until he had mulled over it for a decent amount of time did Draco realize they were the voices of his father's friends: Lestrange, Macnair, and others he had identified. He sometimes his own father's voice, that steely, purring voice that wrapped itself around every word and chocked it until it was on its knees, begging for mercy.

Staring up at his bed's sheer canopy, he grinned slyly. The thought of the esteemed and proper Malfoy Manor serving as a whorehouse was oddly amusing. He listened closely. Ah, there it was. The shrieking always came first, as if they hadn't gotten used to it yet, a fruitless, "Get off me, you pig!" or something of the like. Then a slap that sounded more like a whip, a tumbling body, a few more harsh words, the tearing of cloth, screams of terror and -

Draco smiled contently as unconsciousness took him. This was all the lullaby he needed.