Malfoy's Worst Memory

1.

The garage consisted of an L-shaped, single storey building with grey concrete walls and corrugated iron on the roof. On the shorter section of the L, on the inside where the two parts met at a right angle, a wide, rectangular archway opened out onto an uneven yard and as Draco approached along the narrow village road, he could see two cars inside, crouched like dogs in kennels. Lumps of equipment, all tubes and pipes and looking like chunks of dismembered viscera lay scattered around them and another pile of rusted metal sat heaped in one corner of the yard beside a pyramid of old tyres. The longer part of the L had square windows with stickers on the glass and faded advertisements posed at an angle on the ledge inside. The narrow door on that part of the garage lay ajar, with yet more adverts on the small window at the top, all for brands Draco had never heard of and didn’t care about.

At first he had no idea why there would be any fuss about the place. Everything looked just as it had the few times he’d been past the garage on his way to the Cottage. The dark damp stains had crept a little further up from the tufts of grass and nettles growing at the foot of the walls, and the iron roof had bowed and distorted in places, particularly over the longer part of the building, but otherwise it was still desolate and dirty, smelling of petrol and hot metal. It had such a solid, earthy, thoughtless feel about it that it could only have been a Muggle place. All machines and no magic.

Then the sound of voices drew his attention to one of the many oak trees that grew in the fields behind the garage and along the side of the road. Stuck in the junction of the trees boughs was another car, its metal body crushed until it had as many ripples as the iron on the garage roof. Its windows were a spiderweb of broken glass and its wheels had twisted inwards as if desperately needed the lavatory.

Draco then looked about and saw four others, all in the same state of ruin. One lay upturned in a field, exposing its filthy grey chassis. Another, bent in on itself in a tight V shape, was wedged between another oak tree and the dry stone wall that ran alongside the road. Bits of car, their steel entrails, littered the road and the stubbly wheat in the fields.

Arthur Weasley stood in the field looking at the car that had landed on its roof. Draco saw him stoop over to peer at something near the car’s wheel and recognised him by his receding red hair even before he turned and looked in Draco’s direction. Draco felt eye contact being made and grimaced as he did so. He thought about walking away or even ducking behind one of the trees, but then decided to hold his ground. This was his territory after all, and he had no reason to feel guilty. If someone had used magic on these things, then he knew nothing about it. Just because his father knew the owner of garage, and in fact had throttled him to death just that night, and had been seen wandering in the village afterwards, did not mean Lucius was involved. Draco frowned a little as he thought this and even his inner voice faltered towards the end and gave it up for a futile argument.

Weasley had seen him anyway and was now ambling across the field, hands in pockets and a thoughtful expression on his face. Draco set his shoulders back and gave him the haughtiest stare he could muster, refusing to budge and meet him at the wall or even on that side of the road. If Weasley wanted to talk, he could come over there.

‘Morning,’ Weasley called over. He was being civil, with only a twinge of dislike on the edge of his voice, therefore this was official, thought Draco. ‘Someone’s been having fun, by the looks of it.’

Draco said nothing. He stared blankly as Weasley clambered over the wall, knocking a few stones loose, then waded through the nettles and Queen Anne’s Lace on the other side of it.

‘You live near here,’ he went on. Again Draco said nothing. Weasley already knew they lived nearby. All he really wanted to ask was ‘Did you or your father, whom I can’t stand because he is better than I am and still welcomed into the bosom of wizard society, do this?’

‘See anything or hear anything odd last night?’

‘I was at my grandfather’s funeral yesterday,’ Draco told him.

Weasley looked suitably uneasy, obviously debating whether to fake some sympathy or not, thought Draco.

‘Oh,’ said Weasley. ‘Right, yes. Only someone decided to try levitating cars and throwing them at things last night.’

‘So why are you here?’ Draco asked him.

Weasley paused. ‘The Ministry need to look into it.’

‘I can see that but why are you here? You’re Misuse of Muggle Artefacts, aren’t you? Enchanting Muggle things to work abnormally, that sort of thing? Throwing them around can’t count, surely? Even Muggles could do that if they had the strength or some sort of machine.’

‘Using magic to throw them into a tree pretty much falls under the category of ‘misuse’,’ said Weasley. ‘Don’t think the Muggles designed them to be thrown into trees. Is your father at home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just we will have to have a word.’

‘My father has better things to do than throw cars around,’ said Draco.

‘That’s as maybe,’ Weasley replied, ‘but he’s still a wizard and he lives fairly near to all this. Perhaps it was one of your guests, had a bit too much to drink at the dinner last night.’

‘We don’t tend to invite that sort of person to our home,’ Draco told him. ‘We leave that kind of behaviour to wizards who don’t really care how they look to others.’

Weasley smiled, a sort of smile that said ‘You might well kill me but I’ll be reincarnated as a dragon and then you’d better watch the skies’. ‘Everything has to be checked,’ he said finally. ‘And if your father does know nothing about this, then he’s nothing to worry about, has he?’

Draco gave him the same smile back. ‘Of course he doesn’t need to worry. That’s one of the advantages of being well thought of. No matter how hard people try to discredit you or hurt you, there’ll always be people you can call on to help.’

Two other wizards, both in pin-striped robes, emerged from the back of the garage, shaking their heads and pointing to things around the yard as they chatted. Weasley waved to them and they veered over to meet him.

‘Right then,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll walk to your house. Lovely village this.’

Draco turned and walked away, heading out of the village entirely rather than back home so that he went in the opposite direction to the Ministry men. He made sure he kept his pace unhurried and casual until the road took him over the crest of the hill, when he raced sharply off and climbed over the wall into the wild land at the foot of the wheat fields. He knew a path that way that would take him out past the Red Lion and its rings of standing stones and out to the house without going through the village at all. It would be a longer route, but if he ran he would still make it ahead of Weasley and his cronies. No doubt they would linger on the way and look at the quaint little Muggle telephones or bus stops or something equally dull.

He found the house swathed in the same deep silence that had gripped it all morning, though it was not so much a sleepy quiet then as an apprehensive one, as if the whole mansion had its back arched and hackles up, ready to pounce. Just as he ducked through the gates, he heard Weasley’s voice drifting through the mist from the other end of the road and fathomed that he only had a few seconds to get inside and warn his father about the garage. This time as he looked around for Lucius, he braved going upstairs and trying the door of his father’s bedroom, though found everything undisturbed. The bed, in fact, did not seem to have been slept in at all. While he was there, thinking what to do next, there came a loud knock at the door and he heard Weasley calling, but could not make out what was said.

He rushed back downstairs and returned to the study. He tried the handle several times and still it refused to yield, nor did it respond to the complicated Alohomora charm he had seen Lucius use to unlock it. Perhaps he was doing it wrong, as there were a number of incantations required before the actual charm could take effect, and Draco had never needed to use them all before.

Weasley knocked again. Draco hoped he would get tired and go away, thinking that he was still out in the fields somewhere and Lucius was off on business or something of that sort. He held his breath, trying not to make the slightest sound, but at the same time growled at himself for being frightened in his own house. What could Weasley do, after all? If he caused any trouble, Lucius would deal with it before Weasley could say ‘Wizengamot’, but then Lucius was not there. Standing in the hall, clutching the study door handle, Draco realised that was what made him nervous. If Weasley and his friends were prowling around, his father should be there to deal with it. The old Muggle, the garage…everything was wrong somehow. For the first time since McGonagall told him he would be allowed some time off, Draco wished he could go back to Hogwarts. True, things there rarely ran according to any plan, but at least there were adults there employed to deal with any trouble. If necessary, in theory he could sit back and watch it all happen, safe in his dorm. In the house, in the hall, he felt like the only human being in a forest full of tigers, one of whom had caught his scent.

‘Mr Malfoy,’ shouted Weasley, sounding more insistent, as if his patience was wearing thin. ‘It’s the Ministry. We really do need to have a word, if you could just open the door.’

Draco closed his eyes and tried hard to remember the right order of words to open the study door, then tried again, keeping his voice at a low whisper. The lock mechanisms clicked indignantly and refused to budge. He stooped for a moment and tried to peer through the keyhole, but there was a key in the lock already. Draco sighed. Perhaps if magic wouldn’t work, he could resort to more earthly methods. An idea hit him and he reached over to the occasional table, where the day’s post lay unopened. He took the copy of the Prophet and unrolled it, then peeled off one sheet of paper. Sliding this beneath the door, he poked his wand through the keyhole until the key dropped out and landed on the newspaper. He pulled it out on the paper and then tried it in the lock. If one had a key, after all, perhaps the spell would automatically grant entry.

Whatever charm was on the key, whether it in itself was necessary to defeat the locking spells or whether it reacted to his being a Malfoy, Draco felt the lock give a satisfying crack as it twisted back, then he opened the study door and tiptoed in. Though Weasley hadn’t knocked again or shouted, Draco could still hear him and the Ministry talking in low murmurs outside, deciding what to do he imagined. He paused a moment before going fully into the study and watched the door, half expecting them to break it down, but he only saw their shadows flickering by where the light spilled in in a thin sliver onto the mat.

At first when he went into the study, his heart sank. He saw no one. The bright but cold sunlight poured in through tall, clear windows and bathed the place in a ghostly white glow, there was only steel-grey ash in the fireplace and a faint smell of alcohol lingering on the air. Then, however, he moved in further and could see into the far corner of the room, where a shallow alcove cut back from the main body of the study and housed rows of bookshelves and a leather sofa. He saw his father draped across the sofa, blond hair straggled over his face like a veil and one arm trailing down to the floor where a clutter of empty bottles sat. The stink of alcohol grew more acrid as Draco approached.

‘Father?’ he whispered, still wary of raising his voice. Lucius, however, did not stir and so he crouched down on his haunches, knocking over a few of the empty bottles, and shook his father by the shoulder.

As soon as he touched his father, Draco felt his body tighten from his heart down to the pit of his stomach and he frowned. The overbearing sense that things were not right returned and he shook his father harder, still calling to him in the loudest voice he could use without Weasley hearing. Lucius’ head lolled to the side and landed on Draco’s hand. His cheek felt cold. The tight feeling turned to a shower of ice spraying all over his insides.

‘Father?’ he called again, forgetting to keep quiet. A few tears welled against his eyelashes. Outside, Weasley banged on the door again. Draco realised he must have heard. He tried to wake his father once more, then, shaking as though his bones had turned to water, he hurried to the door. Even as he opened it and let Weasley and the others inside, he had no idea why he had done so, but though he struggled he could think of nothing else to do. He knew he had uttered something, but his voice didn’t belong to him any more. It was just a noise in the background. The only real sound was the rushing sound in his ear, like a waterfall crashing against rocks.

‘I think my father’s dead,’ he said, and that finally seemed to shake his brain back to the real world. Weasley tutted and made hissing sounds through his teeth as one of the others went to Lucius’ side and prodded him.

‘He’s not dead,’ the Ministry man concluded. Draco’s heart ached as if it was exhausted from beating so fast. ‘Not too healthy-looking either, though.’

‘What is it?’ asked Weasley. ‘Drink?’

‘No it is not!’ Draco shouted without thinking. It had only just begun to sink in that he had allowed this man into the house and that was bad enough, without having to listen to insults as well.

‘Best get him to St Mungo’s anyway,’ sighed Weasley. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’

The two Ministry men took on the task of moving Lucius off the sofa. Draco flinched as they touched his father, suddenly worried that Lucius might wake up and realise what he’d done. Then as they managed to raise him up, something dropped from his hand, a vial so small it had stayed hidden within his fist. Weasley picked it up before Draco had a chance to, and sniffed it. He raised an eyebrow and handed it to one of the others, who also smelled the mouth of it and looked deeply suspicious.

‘What is that?’ Draco demanded. ‘Tell me!’

‘Best get on our way,’ said Weasley. ‘No point in wasting any time. Come along, lad, you’ll want to be there when he wakes up, I imagine.’

As they went out, Draco realised Weasley had been diverting his attention. One of the other Ministry men, meanwhile, had skilfully pocketed the vial and stashed it out of sight.


2.

The hospital seemed to have its own sense of time, Draco observed as he sat on an uncomfortable chair and tried to keep his mind from shutting down through sheer lack of stimulus. He kept looking up at a clock on the wall opposite him, the only thing really to look at on that wall, and noticed that only five minutes had passed since he last looked up, yet it had felt like an age. Weasley and friends, meanwhile, stood a few yards down the corridor, just close enough for him to hear most of what they were saying but far enough to pretend they didn’t realise he could hear.

‘Well you know what it smelled like,’ said the man who had taken the vial from Weasley. (Draco heard the others call him ‘Bernard’ on the way to St Mungo’s).

‘The bastard was as drunk as a grindelow,’ whispered the other pin-striped official. ‘Probably didn’t notice what he was taking.’

‘All the same...’

They both looked towards Weasley for a comment, but he gave them a reproachful frown and shook his head.

‘That’s the thing with the rich,’ muttered Bernard. ‘Never truly happy. I think it’s the struggle to be happy that actually keeps people happy, you know? Wanting is better than having and all that.’

‘Rubbish,’ said the other man.

‘In-breeding, then,’ said Bernard, though on another ‘look’ from Weasley he quickly shut up.

None of them had spoken to Draco since they arrived. He had assumed that state of invisibility that, he observed, fell over minors whenever some disaster struck. Then he changed his mind and decided it was not a layer of invisibility but rather some sort of protective shield that kept adults at a distance, as if they were afraid he would bite them if they gave him bad news. That they would think him stupid enough not to have guessed what was going on irked him more than anything else. On arrival they had gone with the healers straight to the third floor, which was not only marked ‘Potion and Plant Poisoning’ but also had posters and pamphlets scattered about advising on the dangers of certain plants and ingredients and advising people what to do upon ‘accidental consumption’.

The healers had been gone ages, even by hospital-time standards, but Draco told himself that was good. That meant they were still working, and therefore they still had something living to work on. He still wanted to cry, though. He didn’t feel particularly sad or upset, but the urge was still there, a pressure inside his chest. The whole day seemed a blur when he tried to think about it, like those moving photographs made with faulty potions, so that they never really focussed properly and just showed dancing, incoherent shapes. Then, for the fifth time, he heard Bernard whisper the word ‘suicide’ and heard Weasley immediately shush him. Draco pretended to ignore them.

When the healer, a plump young woman with a rosy complexion and curling brown hair, finally appeared in the corridor, the group from the Ministry advanced on her before Draco could even get out of his seat. She, however, held up her hand and smiled politely, silencing the barrage of questions, and sidled past them to come over to Draco. She looked like the sort of witch that poorer wizards would think of as motherly, all cuddles and consolation. Clasping her hands, she sat daintily on one corner of the seat next to Draco and kept on smiling.

‘You must be Draco,’ she began. Her voice suited her; it was as sweet and thick as treacle and it made him nauseous. ‘Now, first of all, you mustn’t worry about your dad. He’ll be fine in no time at all.’

‘I’m not worried,’ Draco lied. He just wanted her to see he didn’t need the soft and fuzzy treatment. ‘Can I see him?’

‘Not at the moment,’ said the healer. ‘It’s best that he gets some sleep. Best you come back in the morning, perhaps.’

She got up before he could ask any more questions and turned her attention to the Ministry men, lowering her voice. It was definitely a shield, thought Draco. If he was invisible, why would they bother whispering?

‘The antidote seems to be working,’ she told them. ‘We’ll need to wait and see what the lasting damage is, if there is any, but there’s no immediate danger.’

‘Has he said anything?’ asked Weasley.

The healer shook her head and left them. Weasley then muttered something to his two henchmen and whatever it was sent them off down the corridor at a brisk pace. Weasley himself then wandered over to the seats, where he stood with his hands in his pockets, trying to smile.

‘Well now,’ he sighed. ‘Best get you home. Or do you want something from the tearoom first?’

‘No thank you,’ said Draco bitterly. ‘And I can make my own way home. I’m sure you’ve got other things to be getting on with.’

Weasley didn’t move. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as if debating some deep philosophical question. ‘Are you sure you want to go home on your own? Only, it’s a bit of a shock you’ve had, and much though there’s differences between our lot and yours, I’d not like to see you in that big house all by yourself at a time like this…’

Draco snorted out a laugh. ‘You honestly think I’d be seen dead in that hovel of yours? I might as well cover myself in mud and start oinking!’

Weasley’s forced smile faded. ‘Well, if you’re set on it.’

Draco assured him that he was and then strode out without looking back. He spent most of the floo journey back home trying to decide whether to laugh or punch something. Just thinking about the Weasley house made him believe he could smell manure and a creepy feeling prickled all over his skin as he thought about ginger hairs in plug holes, and goodness knows where else…

When he got back home, though, he noticed a white rectangle on the mat and found a note that had been shoved under the door. Scrawled handwriting told him someone had ‘left a few things outside, just in case you should need them.’ He guessed that it was Weasley’s doing and opened the door. A casserole dish and a box of biscuits sat on the step. He swore quietly and threw a glower at the world, hoping it would somehow fly across the miles and reach the Weasleys, then he picked up the food and went inside.

He had never noticed just how many clocks there were in the house until that evening, when he sat on the living room couch sifting through his homework projects without much interest, and the constant chopping and ticking noises grated against his nerves. After only a few minutes of it, he went upstairs and brought some of his records down to play just to fill the silence. He even began to miss having a house elf about the place, even one as irritating as Dobby had been, but their replacement elf still had a few months training to do before it would be sent to them. Imagine training baby house elves, Draco thought with a dry laugh. Somehow he could imagine Granger doing something like that, standing with her hair in a bun like McGonagall while rows of baby elves blinked up at her with huge eyes and learned how to obey and how to punish themselves. Of course, Granger would probably try to get them to rebel, teach them how to stand up for themselves, convince the stupid little things that they were worth something. If she could convince herself of that and the likes of Ron Weasley, then maybe she’d succeed too.

One of McGonagall’s notes said that the deadline for Professor Binns’ History of Magic essay on influential wizards had been extended for another week, since some students wanted to search through their own family history and find examples and tracking down relatives and records would take a little time. First good news all day, Draco decided, since he had not only forgotten to start the essay but had never got around to thinking up a topic either. Somewhere in the endless volumes of Malfoy history stored throughout the house there would be someone worth writing about. Looking for inspiration would keep his mind off things, though it would mean going into the study and it took him a long while to brace himself before he managed that.

The empty bottles were still on the floor by the sofa. He stared at them for a long time before he coaxed himself to clear them away. It occurred to him that he should write to his mother and tell her what was happening but although he pulled out some writing paper and checked there was enough ink in the inkwell, he stared at the blank sheet for ages and couldn’t fathom what to say. He then tried his homework instead and looked along the line of books on the shelves in the alcove, but lost interest in that too.

He was gazing dully about, his mind as blank as the sheets of parchment he’d left strewn about the desk, when something caught his eye across the room. On the wall adjoining the one with the alcove, there was a series of carved wooden doors with scenes of great wizards. Behind them, Draco knew from previous exploration, lay a drinks cabinet, a few more bookshelves holding more controversial volumes, and some other shallow cupboards in which were kept the family photograph albums, crystal and silverware and magical paraphernalia. One of the doors lay slightly ajar and a sliver of silver light shone through the gap. The sight would normally have worried Draco, since Lucius kept those cupboards securely locked and protected by spells as complicated as the one on the study door, but he was almost used to things being out of sorts.

Just to check that nothing had broken, Draco opened the cupboard and glanced inside. In that particular section, the shelves reached slightly further back into the wall, deep enough to hold a large stone bowl carved with dark runes and symbols and filled with a liquid that swirled and gleamed like clouds across the surface of the moon. At first Draco could not bring himself to approach the pensieve. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up just thinking about it, not just because he knew his father would kill him for prying, but also because he knew it could not contain much that was pleasant, not if it had been topped up recently. The cupboard had been left open. That meant someone, and Lucius was really the only candidate, had been in there within the last short while. In fact as he finally found the courage to open the door fully and move in closer, Draco saw his father’s wand still on the shelf beside the bowl.

Draco shook his head. He didn’t want to know what happened any more. It wasn’t his place to go sneaking around. But then what if his father really was ill? Would the healers need to know what went on? Would he not be better placed to protect his father from the Ministry if he knew what had occurred? He bit his lip and frowned. If there was nothing of any use in there, his father need never find out he had looked. It was up to him to take care of things now. He had to make the decision, even if he didn’t want to go up to the pensieve and look in.

Steeling himself, Draco took a deep breath and leaned over to look down into the glowing swirls.