Saint Serita

Chapter Two

Draco instinctively reached for his wand but stopped his hand before its fingers could wrap around it. Using Alohomora would be unwise, he figured. Security Spells might have been cast on the door and could be used to trace any magic that was performed on it, along with the source of it. There might also be an Anti-Apparation Jinx surrounding the door, setting up an invisible barrier around the room, and anyone who tried to breach it would alert the Security Spells, no less. In other words, Lucius had the potential of discovering if his son had been sneaking around.

There's only one way in, then, Draco thought, locking his hands together behind his back and closing it eyes. It was a new brand of Apparation, developed by the Dark Lord, one more stealthy, left a trail less easier to follow, and most importantly, could bypass the Anti-Apparation Jinx. However, the secrecy it provided was given only to those with great mental prowess and concentration. Lucius had first introduced this novel form of magic to Draco only six months before, but he himself judged the entire process as being too tedious. To Draco, though, it required no extreme expenditure of energy, and its uses were many.

It wasn't complicated really. All it required was the visualization of one's destination, the crafting of its details, focusing intensely on it - and there. That was all. Draco had found this easiest when nothing else was interfering with his sight. Traveling to a familiar place required very little thinking, but Lucius's room...that would prove to be a challenge, when the fact he knew absolutely nothing about its furnishings was taken into consideration.

Okay, concentrate, Draco though, clenching his eyes so tightly it hurt. Father would have some huge and regal-looking bed...mahogany, maybe? A grand bed materialized in his mind, and Draco couldn't resist a grin. Once he had captured something - anything - in the room mentally, the rest would simply flow into the vacuum he was staring into. Matching nightstand, a few candles on top...bookshelf off to the side, full of spell books...closet, desk, and a chair with a robe thrown haphazardly on its back.

He felt himself lose touch with the world, entering the limbo between two spheres of being - a whirling in his head -

Draco's eyes opened slowly and he immediately doubled back with horror. It hadn't work! Everything was still black, still shrouded in darkness. He certainly wasn't outside the room or ever inside it...was it possible to be trapped beyond the confines of reality, existing as nothing but a group of disjointed atoms, floating in every which direction?

As if trying to prove his mortality, Draco flung his arms out, groping for something solid, tangible, something that was there.

"Shit!" he screamed, feeling his forehead collide with something, something that knocked him onto his back.

But he crashed onto a hard surface...a floor! For one glorious moment, relief overpowered the pain racking his back.

"You arse," he muttered, righting himself and dusting off his robes.

Of course he had made it. The Apparation never failed for him. His father's room was just lacking in light, all light. Draco was tempted to light the candles in the room, but still wary of whatever security measures Lucius might have implanted in the room, he was relegated to making his way through darkness. Keeping his arms outstretched in order to protect himself from any further collisions, he slowly inched forward, taking one small step at a time. He heard a tinkling of glass above. That must be Mother's chandelier, he thought, suddenly remembering that this had been Narcissa's room too. At one point.

His hands made contact with a panel of wood. It's definitely the closet, Draco thought. Without warning, exhaustion flooded through his body and, leaned against the closet door, he sank to the floor and ran a hand through his hair. The fading charm of his mother's voice echoed through his blank mind, and all he wanted to do was to lay his tired head on her shoulder one last time, to look into the aging face of the one person who had truly loved him and regarded him as something more than just an heir, the first and only scion of the Malfoy name.

How many times had she told Draco her story? Born the oldest of three siblings, Narcissa Black had been overshadowed by her sisters. Bellatrix, the youngest, proved especially adept at dueling and was very outspoken on social issues of the time, and Andromeda outscored her class on almost every exam. Narcissa was neither weak nor inept, but in comparison to her high-achieving sisters, her parents as negligible considered her. She managed to wrangle herself into a prestigious marriage with Lucius Malfoy, with whom he had not-so-subtly fallen in love while at Hogwarts.

She had always regretted the fact her marriage had been arranged, despite it being a pureblood tradition; it had taken away so much of the intimacy in their relationship. As much as Narcissa tried living normally with the man she loved, her in-laws were pressing her to deliver an heir and used every possible way to pry into her marriage. Absolutely infuriated with this invasion of her privacy, she adamantly stayed out of Lucius's bed until they let her be. However, when she returned to his bed, she found Lucius embarrassed by her standoffish behavior, and it was only with great difficulty and much coaxing that she became pregnant and at last gave birth to an heir. But in exchange, she had lost her one love and her marriage. In an effort to compensate for that, she threw her life into caring for the child, loving him, doting on him, praying that her son would grow up to be a better and kinder man than his father.

A rustling noise jerked him out of his nostalgia. Suspicious, he stood up and placed an ear against the closet door.

"Shut up, Marissa! Someone's there!"

"What? Stop lying! They never come until after midnight - "

"I said, shut up!"

Thousands of ideas spawned in his head as to who these people might be, but only one seemed to make sense to him. It seems that I have found the whorehouse, Draco thought, already preparing to visualize what might lie beyond the door.