Malfoy's Worst Memory

1.

After the funeral, Draco joined the other friends and relatives in the front room of his house and smiled whenever someone offered him condolences. A few elderly uncles (who were probably more along the lines of great great great uncles) shook his hand and told him he would be best to remember the good times with his grandfather or bemoaned the frailty of life or capriciousness of fate. Some muttered about how unexpected Abraxas’ death had been, which surprised Draco since he could barely recall a time when his grandfather hadn’t complained of being ill, and some shook their heads and warned that ‘Dragon pox is a nasty one that can come at you any time!’ Increasingly, Draco understood why his mother had decided not to come home. If he had the choice of visiting the dark, haunted places of Scandinavia or being a room where the average age was about ninety, and only because he brought it down a little, he knew what he would do.

He kept an eye on his father throughout and mimicked Lucius’ stance and reaction to the well wishers. A few people told him he was the image of his father and he smiled at that. All around him, glasses chinked, the smell of alcohol and butterbeer snaked around, growing stronger with every passing hour, and the murmur of voices lay like a thick fog over the room.

‘I never understood,’ remarked one of the cousins, who lived in the South of France for the most part, ‘why the old man never came up here to live. Has to be better than the old Cottage. I mean, this is the ancestral home!’

‘Money, old thing,’ replied a great great uncle from Shrewsbury. ‘Abraxas’ purse had tighter spells on it than Gringotts when it came to spending. Honestly, the silly old fossil preferred to live in that old hovel than pay to keep this place in order, since there was only the boy. Said it was a waste of energy and money to keep up repairs and such like when no one was actually living in the rooms. Still, the boy’s done a marvellous job on the place.’

‘Funny old fish, Abraxas, but still he took pride on the family name, and that’s what matters I suppose. Never would see the Malfoy line disgraced. Oh, I know he went a bit odd towards the end and had muggles overrunning the place but…’ The cousin lowered his voice suddenly, though Draco moved in subtly to keep on listening. ‘…That’s down to the others, really, wouldn’t you say? I mean, if it’s obvious the old boy’s losing his marbles, you’d think the son would at least’ve sent a house elf up there to take care of things, but by all accounts, they brought the family elf up here.’

Draco gritted his teeth and wanted to tell them how many times his father offered to get another elf for the cottage and how many things Abraxas threw at him for suggesting it, but he glanced over and saw his father watching him and switched on his smile again.

‘Abraxas always did say there was something wrong with the boy,’ said the great great uncle, thumbing the rim of his sherry glass. ‘Never heard the ins and outs of it, but apparently there was some trouble with him. Spot of bother with Hogwarts or something. You wouldn’t know to look at him, though, would you, way he’s lording about now? But yes, I heard old Abraxas had an awful time trying to keep the boy in line, keep him out of one scandal or another. Surprising that the Blacks let him marry one of those girls, but then again the name does carry such weight, I suppose it might not matter so much what’s physically attached to that name.’

‘Strange there’s only the one,’ muttered the cousin. ‘Didn’t Abraxas ever want more children?’

‘Well, there was the matter with the wife,’ said the uncle, raising his bushy eyebrows almost to the brim of his conical hat. ‘Ran off, by all accounts.’

‘I heard she died when the boy was young.’

‘So Abraxas said, and so the official story went,’ said the uncle. ‘But strictly between you and I, I heard she went off to Europe somewhere with a fellow from the Ministry, someone from Abraxas’ own department, so they said. ‘Course, if you believe the rumours, she was at it from the very beginning, off with anything wearing trousers beneath the robes, if you get my meaning. One thing about Abraxas though, he knew how to contain a scandal. Good sort in that respect.’ The older man suddenly grinned and turned. ‘Lucius, dear little boy, how sorry I was to hear of your loss. You must be devastated…’

Draco wandered off while his father’s attention was elsewhere. He could only bear the smell of a room full of old wizards for so long and started to hope fervently that he would never end up as ancient and musty as they were. He had thought there might be some more famous wizards present, people whose names he could drop into conversations around Hogwarts’ dining tables for the next few months, but so far they all looked the same, dressed in black robes that they seemed to be shrinking into. It struck him too how pathetic they were, all distant branches of he family jealous of the power and fortune Lucius had. He then sat on the stairs and wondered if his grandfather might have left any more money. It made sense to think so. He knew his father had taken control of the family fortune some time after he was married, but Abraxas still might have had something squirreled away. There would be no opportunity to ask Lucius about it though, so Draco sauntered up to his room and closed the door.

He was debating whether his father would object to him playing some records, when he happened to glance out the window. His room overlooked the front drive and the wending path that went down to the main road. Darkness had not yet fallen completely, leaving everything bathed in an ultramarine glow, and so Draco could see right down to the gates and the road beyond. There, between the gate posts, was a solitary figure, standing with his hands in the pockets of a long, shapeless coat. Draco recognised the shape of the hat the figure wore and hurried downstairs to find his father.

A large group of relatives made their way out of the living room as Draco came downstairs into the hall, so he stayed on the staircase and watched them file into the dining room, until at last his father appeared, herding them like a sheepdog from behind.

‘Father!’ Draco whispered. Lucius glared at him and ushered the relatives, but Draco came down to the hall and touched his father’s sleeve. ‘Father, I need to talk to you.’

‘Not now,’ said Lucius in a low growl. ‘Go in and sit down and let us hope this meal is over swiftly, shall we?’

‘But Father, that old Muggle’s back again.’

‘Nonsense. They can’t get in here.’

‘He’s not in here,’ said Draco, ‘but he’s out by the gate, just watching like he was before. I thought I’d better tell you in case any of them saw him hanging about.’

Lucius nodded and looked murderous. ‘All right.’ He snatched his robes from a stand in the hall and threw them on over his black suit. ‘Go in there and tell them I shall be along presently. See that they get more to drink in the meantime. Honestly, Draco, if you’d told me this five minutes ago, I wouldn’t have sent them in!’

‘It’s not my fault,’ Draco muttered once his father was suitably distant. He listened to the front door slam as Lucius went out, then drifted towards the dining room with no real desire to go in. The older wizards were laughing as if this was an Ancient Runes Society fundraiser rather than a funeral meal, and most were still exchanging bits of gossip about Abraxas and his late wife. Draco listened from the door for a moment and wished his father would come back and catch them at it, just to see them cower. They could gossip all they wanted. At the end of the day they were the fringes of the family. Draco strode in and took his place at the end of the table with his head held up proudly, knowing he was what really mattered to the Malfoy family.

After about thirty-five minutes (according to the antique grandfather clock in the corner of the dining room), Draco gave another acidic smile and offered to see if his father needed any help. He slipped out before anyone could object, glad to escape the barrage of questions about how he was doing at Hogwarts; ‘wasn’t he in the same year as the Potter child?’ He revelled in the attention until that subject came up, and tried telling them that Potter was nothing, all reputation and no substance, not that they listened. Again, he thought, that was because they were nothing themselves, just spectators in the seats so far from the action they barely even knew what they were looking at.

Night had fallen fully by the time he got outside and the owls sighed loudly to one another across the brisk wind. Draco wandered a little down the drive, peering into the skeletal trees for any sign of his father. An avenue of iron lamps stretched off towards the gate and left puddles of orange light on the path, but did nothing to drive away the deep shadows in the grounds, and the constant shifting of the trees and bushes in the wind made it seem as if the place was full of people darting to and fro in the dark. Draco could see the gate, but the old Muggle was no longer there and Lucius had vanished. He listened, sure he could hear a vague murmur of voices somewhere in the distance, but had no idea which direction it might be coming from. In the cold air, sounds seemed to crack across the skies like thunder.

Pulling up his collar against the cold, Draco headed down the drive and made for the gate. He would make sure that Muggle had gone while he was out, and drew his wand just in case. It was not that the snapping twigs and owl hoots in the trees around him scared him, or that the shadows seethed around him as if they had just spotted some fresh meat. He just wanted to be able to defend himself if the Muggle tried anything, or so he told himself a few times as he approached the gate. The carved serpents on each post stared out onto the country road that ran along the bottom of the grounds, each with a lantern nestled in their coils. As Draco came closer, he made out a shadow underneath the left-hand post, something heaped on the ground. Whatever it was, it didn’t move, and so he steeled himself, tightened his grip on his wand and strode out onto the road. His heart thudded. The thing on the road had arms and legs. His brain slowly registered that it was a body, and that another figure knelt beside it, head lowered. In the feeble glimmer from the gate-light, it took him another moment to recognise his father, and when Lucius finally looked up, the lantern cast deep shadows over his face, giving him a grave and mournful air. He had his hands on the body on the road, around its throat.

‘Father?’ Draco whispered. He meant to speak louder but somehow his voice dwindled away to nothing and he had to cough to clear his throat. ‘What’s happened?’

Lucius sat back a little and Draco could finally see the body clearly. The old Muggle’s tongue lolled out of his mouth and his eyes seemed black in the half-light as he stared blankly into the trees. Draco had never been so close to anything dead before. Somehow the Muggle seemed larger, more solid than he should be, like a bag of sand lying there on the road. Draco’s insides tightened and shivers crackled up and down his spine.

‘Father?’ he asked again.

Lucius only then looked directly at him, as if until that moment he had been unaware of his son’s presence and the voice had startled him out a trance. He took a deep breath and stood up, backing quickly away from the body.

‘Are they all still inside?’ he asked.

Draco nodded. ‘Father, what happened? Did he attack you?’

‘I’ll need to get rid of him,’ Lucius muttered, more to himself than to Draco, but then he looked up. ‘Go back inside. I thought I told you to keep them all amused till I got back?’

‘You don’t need any help?’

‘Why would I need help? Simple Reducto charm, the body’s gone, the Ministry won’t notice anything suspicious. Nothing to be concerned about. Now go inside and just have dinner served. Say I’ve been called away or something and I’ll be back shortly.’

Draco stared at his father for a moment, wanting to ask him why he would bother to kill the Muggle in such a, well, a Muggle-like way so badly that he felt the question shoving against his lips, but he fought it and nodded, then slowly walked back up to the house. He threw one last look over his shoulder as he heard a crack come from the gate and figured that the Muggle’s corpse no longer existed, and again the shadows danced around the path, while moths fluttered, bone-white, against the glass of the lamps. He had no idea why he was so frightened or why everything, even the path in front of him and the trees around it seemed wrong, but he knew better than to disobey his father and so returned to the dining room.

2.

Draco spent most of the night staring at the cornice around his room’s ceiling, keeping his quilt pulled up right to his chin. During his few snatches of sleep, he dreamed of the old Cottage, of great black crows pecking at the withering lawn, pulling the eyes out of old toys half-buried in the leaf mulch. He dreamed he went upstairs, wooden floorboards creaking with every step he took and of finding a hallway full of doors, all of which were locked except for one, which led him into a bedroom with dark floral wallpaper and a musty smell, like old curtains. He saw something in the bed, a shape as if there was a body lying there, and ventured over, but as soon as he came close, the thing sat up. He saw the body, grey and wrinkled, dusted with wiry white hair on its chest and chin. The old Muggle clacked his teeth and stared at him so hard he could feel the look cut right through his flesh and into his spine. It was then that he woke up each time, and looked around his room for a long while until everything seemed familiar again.

His father had finally come home that night and dropped in on the funeral meal just long enough to apologise for his absence and silence the disgruntled mutters from the other relatives. Draco had waited, tapping the banister, as Lucius ushered them all out, or waited for them to disappear into the floo network, but as soon as the last great uncle left, Lucius swept off into his study and closed the door. Draco did not see him again that evening and said his goodnights through the locked door.

He watched the dawn creep up from behind the trees, a weak blue at first, then bright white as the sun arose, and listened to the birds in the grounds calling shrilly to one another, gossiping as fervently as the old relatives had. A loud scratching sound downstairs announced the arrival of the post. Draco crawled out of bed and wandered down to the hall, feeling as though someone had stretched his eyeballs, but all that remained of the owl by then was a soft, cupped feather drifting slowly to the floor. Draco paused a moment and listened for his father, though the house seemed abnormally quiet that morning, then collected up the pile of letters and parcels. The day’s copy of the Daily Prophet lay on top, with a note wrapped around it reading ‘By Subscription’, no doubt so that the owl would not expect payment. Draco wondered for a moment how the owls kept track of everything, but was too tired to give the matter much thought. He had a thick letter from Hogwarts, sent by Professor McGonagall, which contained several notes detailing the homework given that week, and the rest of the letters were addressed to his father, including one in his mother’s handwriting. He tucked the homework letter in his dressing gown pocket and went to the study.

The door was still locked, so he knocked and listened but heard nothing stirring within. He tried calling, but no one answered, so he left the letters on the occasional table outside in the hall and went back to his room to get dressed and decide how to spend his last few days of freedom from school.

Oddly, the house was just as still by the time he had washed and dressed, even though he sloped around without ever hurrying himself. He found the letters on the table where he had left them and the study door was still closed. He checked the living room and kitchens, but found no sign of Lucius anywhere, and so decided in the end that something pressing must have taken his father into London or somewhere. Perhaps he had gone to the Ministry to see about Hagrid, find out why the oaf was still teaching.

For want of any better plan, Draco put on his outdoor coat and left the house, closing the door as quietly as possible just on the off chance that Lucius was still asleep, though he had never known his father to stay in bed excessively. In daylight, the driveway cut through the trees and shrubs like a shaved strip across a head of dark hair, and though it had lost its shadows the eerie sounds, louder than they ought to be thanks to the chill, remained. Branches cracked and whispered all around him, rodents rustled amongst the leaves and unseen crows cawed loudly as if in protest at his being there. Even his footsteps crunched with frightening clarity, and he felt strangely small and uneasy as he wandered to the gates, as if, somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew he shouldn’t be there.

One of the lamps beneath the rearing stone serpents was still lit, its flame guttering until he doused it with a flick of his wand. Usually it would know to go off as soon as the dawn broke, but perhaps the thick mist swathing the road had confused it somehow. For a while, though, Draco stared at the empty patch on the tarmac where the old Muggle had been, until he imagined he could see the outline drawn in the dirt and fallen leaves. A light frost had fallen and everything sparkled, as if to mark out this place as special somehow. Perhaps that was why the light failed to go out, Draco thought, but could not think how the death of one old Muggle would be worthy of such note.

Although he could barely see more than a yard ahead of him, Draco followed the road towards the village. He tried using his wand to light his way through the fog for a while, but found it only illuminated the white curtain surrounding him, reinforcing it rather than slicing a way through. The trees appeared as if by magic through the whiteness and the carpet of beech nuts and twigs crunched beneath his boots. The sound pounded in his ears like a heartbeat, seeming to fill the place. All the while as he the cold gripped his throat and lungs and tried to squeeze the life out of him, his breath froze like the Hogwarts ghosts.

A shape appeared through the fog all of a sudden and he gasped, rigid with fright for a second. The hunched, grey figure rose from the grass and seemed to gaze solemnly towards its feet, silent and unmoving. Draco stared at it, his pulse as loud in his ears as his footsteps had been, until he slowly realised what it was and let out a deep sigh. As he ventured closer and the mist darted out of the way like a fairy that had found something better to do, he saw that it was only one of the dozens of stones that ringed the village, ancient things whose purpose even the Wizarding world had long forgotten. A little farther on he saw the first cottages of the village, shadows painted onto the fog, and he quickened his pace, glad to get into the heart of the place and away from the solitude of the road.

Though the village had its share of Muggles, many of the houses on its outskirts belonged to wizards, and a few even lived within the boundaries of the old stone circles. There was one shop in particular, a post office and grocers that looked no different than any of the other buildings and was completely unremarkable so far as the Muggles would ever see, was run by a halfblood wizard and his squib son, and sold magical provisions from a back room behind the counter. Draco went inside and found a few of the neighbourhood wizards already in there, and immediately felt better. The shop had a Muggle device, something called an ‘electric heater’ in one corner that oozed warmth and exuded a bright orange glow to battle the air of cold everyone brought in with them, and the smell of cinnamon, coffee and old paper wafted all around. Draco made his way to the counter, ignoring the other wizards, even those obviously queuing to be served, and smiled at the shopkeeper.

‘What can I do for you today, young Malfoy?’ he asked. He always spoke as if he was half asleep, with a slur on his words and one eye closed.

‘Three chocolate frogs and whatever cakes you have fresh made,’ Draco ordered after much deliberation. The shopkeeper withdrew to his secret room and sounds of rummaging drifted out to fill his place.

‘Heard your old granddad passed away,’ he called out from behind the coloured strips of plastic covering the doorway. ‘Sad to hear that.’

‘Yes, it was sad,’ Draco answered, thinking if the old man would shut up and look for the stuff, he could serve twice as many people in the same time.

‘Saw your father last night,’ the shopkeeper went on. ‘Seemed in an awful rush.’

Draco frowned. ‘What my father does is his own business,’ he answered, but stomach suddenly felt like the water in a boiling kettle. Why would his father have gone into the village that night? If all it took to get rid of the Muggle was a simple charm to destroy the physical remains, why go all the way down to Avebury?

‘Funny time to be about, though,’ remarked the shopkeeper. He finally returned with Draco’s food in a paper bag. ‘Wondered if there was something up?’

‘No,’ Draco snapped, fully aware that he was being pumped for information.

‘Nothing to do with the bother up at the old garage then?’

‘What bother?’

The shopkeeper shrugged and stared at the wall as if he could see through it and picture the garage, even though it lay on the other side of the village, nearer the old Cottage. ‘Been a couple of lads from the Ministry up there for the past hour. Something to do with those Muggle cars being bewitched. Yon fellow Weasley was in earlier, getting breakfast for him and his pal and asking directions.’

Draco felt suddenly colder than even the autumn chill would cause. ‘Did you say you’d seen my father?’

‘No,’ replied the shopkeeper. ‘No reason I should, is there?’

‘No,’ Draco muttered. He took his things and left the shop.

He stood outside for a while, leaning on the bright red post box attached to the shop wall, and let his chocolate frog slip out of its packet and hop off into the mist. He didn’t really notice it had gone and threw the packet away as well, then set his jaw into a stern frown and headed along the road that would take him across the village to the garage.

Something was wrong and he would find out what it was.