Unforgiven

"Um, Draco?"

Draco jumped, startled, and turned to see Crabbe staring at him through his Yeti-like fringe. Not for the first time, Draco looked upon his minion and rejoiced in his own elfin genes.

"What?" he snapped, irritated.

"Uh..." There was a pause, and Draco waited patiently for Crabbe to remember what he had been about to say.

"We need to go to..." Another pause. "Charms!" the Yeti finished triumphantly.

Draco shook his head as he stalked from the Common Room, and started up the staircase to the Entrance Hall. Some people, he thought, just shouldn't be allowed. Half-bred Yeti's included.

By the time he reached the Charms room, he was lost in thought again. The dream was attacking him with a vengeance now, but worse still, he could now remember bits of it. Gone were the days of waking up in a confused haze, with only that aching, desperate sense of loss. He almost missed those days. Now he was plagued by that memory, and others, and the image of his father kept popping up, his hands covered in blood, and endlessly babbling "I'm so sorry, oh Helen I am so sorry...". This had more shock value than anything else; never in an eternity would he have expected to see Lucius Malfoy acting like that.

Although what really stunned him were the feelings of boiling hatred and betrayal that he felt every time he saw the image.

He staggered into the classroom, chose a desk near the back and collapsed into the chair behind it. He was exhausted. Not only because of the dream, either; nowadays Draco was spending all his free time in the library, desperately trying to learn the Renovation Charm, but the desired results were staying frustratingly out of his reach. He either over-did them, or he under-did them, but there seemed to be no happy medium. But without that charm, he didn't know how else to clear the rest of the diary.

He thought back to the dream-image of his father. Draco was actually in very little doubt now, as to whom the diary had belonged. He couldn't believe he would be feeling this strongly otherwise; he was a Malfoy, after all. He wasn't meant to have emotions. He thought of the little girl, Helen. How old had he been at the time? Had Helen been older or younger? For some reason he couldn't quite fathom, the urge to answer all the questions, all the small, stupid, pointless ones as well as the important ones, had suddenly grown within him. It had grown so much it was like a craving, a mania. He had to get the answers.

And now, Draco was stuck. He couldn't do the Renovation Charm. And what else could he do?

Of course, there might be another option...if he could just ask someone else to do it for him, maybe...then snatch the parchment away once it was done, so that they couldn't read it. But who was there? Flitwick had said that everyone had been having trouble with that charm this year, and it would look suspicious if he asked another year; he never normally associated with them. So who could do it?

Well, said a small voice in his head, there was always -

No.

The force of the opposing voice was almost like a physical blow.

Absolutely not. The mere - the mere thought of asking her for help literally turned Draco's stomach. It almost made him feel sick. Besides, as clever as she was, what if she polluted and damaged the parchment in some way? After all, it was written on by a Pure-blood - what if her Mudblood magic sullied it?

He shuddered. She probably couldn't do it, anyway. It was pure magic. She would never be able to contend with it. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

No, then. Not Granger. But what could he do? There was nothing left to try. Uneasily, Draco tried to fight down the sick feeling of desperation fighting to escape from him. What could he do?

And then, quite suddenly, the answer was given to him, as his eyes focused at last on what they had been staring blankly at for the last ten minutes.

It was the blackboard.

And it had "Reversal Charms" written on it.

* * *

It was several hours later. Draco lay on his bed, once again, with the parchment out in front of him and the curtains drawn. Everyone else was at dinner.

He looked at the parchment. He hadn't gone to a single lesson today, after Charms; instead, he had hared to the library, and spent the whole day Charming things, and then Reversing them, and now, finally, he felt ready to test the diary. After all, Draco reasoned; if it didn't work, he would know it wasn't his father, because the diary was otherwise too old. He tried not to think about what would happen if it did work.

Carefully, he concentrated on the age of the parchment, and pointed his wand at it. "Rescindere," he whispered.

And then he could say nothing at all.

* * *

My name...my name is Lucius Malfoy...oh, fuck...

The blood. The blood is everywhere.

It's still on my hands, I'm sure it is, I've tried everything I can to get it off. Water doesn't work, I've used Scouring Charms, even the cheese grater doesn't work; the harder I scrub the more there is. I tried a Muggle thing, wire wool, even that didn't work. It's everywhere. Everywhere.

I deserve this, I know. Why was I so fucking stupid? Why? Why didn't I ever realise how much more powerful than me He is? I'm grateful really, grateful; the rest of us can live now, but not -

Oh, Helen. Helen, why? Why did I have to do it? With my own hands? And WHY AM I FEELING LIKE THIS? I shouldn't have a conscience, I am a Malfoy, for fuck's sake, but the guilt is driving me insane...but I had to, he would have killed me otherwise, and the rest of us! But now, I have killed her, because I needed a bargain...Fuck, what am I saying? I wanted to cheat the world and bargained my own daughter's life to do it, because I just wanted more wealth, and then I wanted forgiveness, and then I wanted re-acceptance, and then I fucking sacrificed her, and possibly Draco too... But oh, Helen...I keep going over her life in my head, it's driving me mad...only yesterday, I remember her playing in the garden with her brother by the lake, she said there were merpeople down there, and that one day she would swim down to them...Christ, that was only yesterday, and now she's gone...oh, God, Helen, what have I done? I am so, so sorry, Helen, my Helen, so sorry, and Draco too...I don't know how to save you now.

But you mustn't find this diary. No one must ever find it. I'll put an Objectivity Spell on it, and an Ageing Curse, and then I'll lock it away in one of the rooms here. No one will ever find it...

Rest in peace, Helen.

I loved you.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy poured himself a whisky in the silence of his home. He had had a long, exhausting day; a meeting with the Ministry of Magic, a meeting with the Dark Lord, a meeting with Cornelius Fudge, a meeting with Narcissa, and then the in-laws...

Bolting the whiskey, he poured himself another. Sighing, Lucius paused for a moment to savour the taste of fire in the back of his throat, before settling himself comfortably back into his chair. He felt his energy melt slowly away.

He was just on the threshold of sleep when he heard a quiet tap on the door to the drawing room.

"Come in," Lucius called drowsily. He kept his eyes closed, and remained where he was, in the comfiest chair. He didn't even think to offer his visitor a whiskey. Lucius Malfoy had never been one for paying his guests common courtesy.

He heard soft footsteps drawing closer to him, and wondered who it was. The footsteps stopped. It didn't sound like an elf, and the Dark Lord would have just Apparated straight to him. There was a silence. Idly, Lucius waited for his visitor to speak.

The silence stretched on. Then -

"Crucio."

Nothing could have prepared him for it.

Every atom in his body rose up and screamed, and he with them. He felt his tendons ripping apart, felt his sinews slice open, felt the irreparable damage as his brain fibres separated one by one, he felt his nerves tearing themselves in half, felt his bones disintegrate, he felt his nails being sheared off and his tongue splitting, he felt every joint spin and rotate on the spot, until they were wrenched apart, the ligaments snapping away and the soft tissues being mashed down to a paste, he felt his shoulder blades being torn away, and his eyeballs liquefying, and running down his blistering cheeks, he felt his skin shrivelling off his bones, and every hair become a razor and carve inwards, he felt his stomach burst, and his flesh seared as he bathed in his own stomach acid, and one by one, his ribs burrowed themselves into his lungs, which began to fill with blood and collapse excruciatingly inwards, choking him, and all he could feel was the pain, the pain, thepainthepainthepainthepain-

And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

Trembling, Lucius felt himself over. He was still there, intact, except for his vocal chords, which were raw from his screams, and his left hand, where a few shards embedded in his flesh were all that remained of the whiskey glass. Panting, he lay on the wooden floor, awash with the echoes of agony flooding through him, but basking in the cool feeling of pain disappeared.

He didn't know how long he lay there for. Vainly, Lucius struggled to concentrate, but he couldn't. He just looked upward through a fog, dimly aware of the house-elves scurrying into the room, only to be blasted away by green light, and the figure standing over him, ever silent. He kept blacking out, and coming round again, always to be greeted by the same fog. His limbs felt leaden; any effort to move them on his part was sheer agony, and so eventually he gave in, and just lay there, tears trickling down his temples, through his hair and to the floor below.

Finally, after an age the fog cleared. Lucius blinked a few times, and scrabbled feebly to get up, his hands, drenched with sweat, slipping against the polished wood. The figure stood and watched for a few moments, then leaned down and hauled him roughly into a chair, before turning its back and storming angrily to the window.

There was silence once again, only broken by Lucius' ragged breathing and occasional whimpering. He sat where he had been put, in terrified submission. Who had done it to him? Not the Dark Lord, it couldn't be, although he did have plenty of other enemies. He glanced at the doorway, and saw, with a jolt, the scattered bodies of around twenty house-elves, their long, ungainly limbs splayed across the floor.

Time dripped away. Lucius made no attempt to move from his chair, although as he began to recover he became uncomfortably aware of his awkward position and maimed hand. The figure at the window did not turn around.

And then, at last, just as Lucius was beginning to think properly again and arrange his thoughts, the figure turned.

The shock nearly made him faint again.

"No," Lucius whispered. It couldn't be, it just couldn't...

"Yes," Draco shot back. His voice was raw, and unsteady, and his fingers where white around the knuckles where he clung to the window sill. The other hand clenched his wand, which stayed firmly fixed in Lucius' direction.

Painfully, the man tried to swallow. "My hand..."

"I don't care."

Lucius Malfoy stared at his son. "Why?" he whispered.

When he answered, Draco's voice was cold, and hard. "I'm choosing to believe that you aren't questioning my lack of concern about your hand," he snarled. "But either way, it doesn't matter. You're not asking any more questions. I am. I want answers."

Lucius said nothing to that.

Draco paused for a moment, and then began. "Fourteen years ago," he said, "you decided that the Dark Lord alone wasn't good enough for you. Why."

Lucius sat bolt upright. "What?"

"You heard."

The man stared across the room at the boy, crowned with silver in the firelight. But not really a boy anymore, Lucius thought suddenly. God, when did he grow up?

"I saw an opportunity to protect my family whatever the outcome of the Dark Rising would be," he said quietly.

"Who told Voldemort?"

For the first time in fourteen years, Lucius began to feel the echoes of the old panic.

"I never found out," he said, fighting to keep control and trying to ignore the increasing agony of his hand. "Whoever it was was first killed along with the others."

"Who else was spared?"

"No one," Lucius said, almost whispering. "No one else survived."

There was a pause, and then Draco slowly made his way across the room to his father's chair. He placed his hands on either arm of the chair and leaned forward, until their faces were barely an inch apart, and Lucius was hemmed in, only able to see shadow from the fire where his son's face was. But those eyes, those gleaming grey eyes still shone, and they contained a malice and hatred Lucius had never seen there before.

"And so what did you do," Draco forced the words out, "to save your own pitiful skin?"

And the guilt came crashing back.

For fourteen long years, Lucius Malfoy had lived with the fact that he had sacrificed his own daughter, his beautiful, innocent, three-year-old daughter, so that he could be fashionable again, and his only defence had been to blot the memory away. But now...now his son was standing before him, all grown up, and forcing open the barriers. The memories engulfed his mind; Helen playing, Helen crying, Helen laughing, and there was no longer any place to hide...

The tears returned. "I killed her," he whispered.

"Say it again."

"I killed her."

Draco stood, and marched away to the window. He stared at the glass, at the rain pouring down it. He had been right. Helen had been the price...

"Who was she?" he asked quietly.

Lucius looked up. "Your sister," he answered, his voice catching in his throat. "Your twin sister."

"My twin?"

Draco spun around. A twin. Not just anyone, but a twin. His wand arm, he realised, was raised almost level with his shoulder, pointing the wand straight at his father's chest. He tried vainly to relax.

"Why?" he asked, shakily. "Why her?"

Lucius slipped off the chair and on to the floor. "It was the deal!" he sobbed. "The Dark Lord found out, and in that same night he killed the witch who had told him where she stood, and came after the rest of us! And I don't just mean those involved, Draco, entire fucking names where destroyed! I had to try something!"

"Then why didn't you give yourself?"

Draco was aware that he was actually shouting now, but he didn't care. He had never been so angry.

"I tried!" Lucius screamed. "I fucking tried! But he wouldn't accept it! He said that I had to choose between you or Helen, and sacrifice whichever I chose myself, and then the other one..."

He stopped. Draco looked at him, breathing harshly through the adrenaline. He had never seen his father like this, acting as though he actually gave a damn about something other than his reputation. But he didn't stop to wonder. He was too wrapped up with Lucius' last comment.

He took a deep breath. "The other one what?" he asked, quietly.

Lucius closed his eyes. "I chose Helen," he whispered. "And so she was the sacrifice. But...there was another part to the bargain."

Slowly, he lifted his head, and looked up and his son, standing tall above him. He didn't want to carry on. Draco looked like the new Lucifer, terrible and merciless, and for the second time in his life, Lucius felt a genuine fear for his own life.

"I chose Helen," he repeated, "and so you..." he swallowed. "You were to be given fifteen years, until you were eighteen. At the end of that time, if you didn't join the Dark Side..." he trailed off.

Draco glared down, fighting to control himself. "I would be sacrificed too?" he said quietly.

Mouth dry, heart thundering, Lucius nodded.

Draco's eyes blazed. Draco was the wrong name for him, really, Lucius thought dazedly. Lucifer really would have been more apt.

And then, all of a sudden, from the other side of the room came the unmistakable sound of someone Apparating. The two of them looked up.

It was Lord Voldemort.