I do not own any of these characters unfortunately. Thank you to my three (now 5) betas and my psychologist consultant friend!
Malfoy was rolled off the train by a couple of the DA members, along with Crabbe and Goyle, and lay, slug-like on the platform, seething, with his luggage beside him. His eyes, which seemed to be on stalks, rolled around to locate anybody who might help them out of this predicament. To his confusion, he caught sight of his mother, Narcissa. She was looking for him, her expression a little uncertain, as she tripped along the platform in a short Muggle skirt. Actually he wondered if his eyes weren’t working properly “ he had never seen his mother in a Muggle skirt. He wondered why she had come. The first time his mother had ever been to meet him from the train, and he resembled nothing so much as “ well, he didn’t know what he resembled, but considering the amount of curses with which he has been hit, he bet he didn’t look that pretty. …Hopefully she wouldn’t recognize him… He felt himself being rolled over, and then he came face (if he still had a face) to face with Mrs. Weasley, of all people. Her eyes were snapping with indignation.
“Arthur, I have found them “ I can’t think what those children were doing! You can’t even see these three are human. They look terrible. I’m not sure we are going to be able to de-curse them any time soon.” Malfoy looked around and couldn’t repress a snigger as he saw what Goyle and Crabbe looked like. Crabbe (at least he thought is was Crabbe) had a sort of slimy tail that he was flailing helplessly. The only thing that sobered him was the thought that he probably looked more or less the same.
Malfoy could hear Arthur Weasley, quieter, and more reasonable sounding, in a sort of mumble, “Well Molly dear, they were provoked….”
Mrs. Weasley cut in over him. “And provoking! Why couldn’t they just have Stunned them I’d like to know? It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad as this! Why, we may have to take them to St. Mungos to sort this lot out.”
Then Arthur, in a tone of reluctant admiration, “Beats me how they think of all they do. We never learned any of this stuff while I was in Hogwarts. I don’t recognize a couple of these curses.” Malfoy heard a squeal, which sounded a bit like Goyle. Mr. Weasley had obviously poked him with his wand. He heard a huff of breath, and knew Mrs. Weasley was about to retaliate. He shivered a little. Ron’s mother was rather scary when she got going. Hopefully it would only be Mr. Weasley she picked on. From the sound of things, Ron had got an earful earlier on, before he was sent back to the Burrow with Ginny. And serve him right too. Luckily, before Mrs. Weasley could start shouting at her husband, another sound made her pause.
Malfoy heard uneven steps coming along behind him, and vainly swiveled his eyes to see his mother. He heard a gasp, and his eyes rolled inwards on their stalks in shame. He could vaguely hear Mrs. Weasley trying to comfort his mother as she sobbed, which surprised him (he thought they couldn’t stand each other). But then again, who could ever understand women? Then things got a bit confused, but after a while, Arthur Weasley and a couple of porters heaved him into a taxi with his mother (he had the feeling he probably looked a bit like a suitcase now, and had no idea what had happened to Crabbe and Goyle) and he heard his mother give the directions to St. Mungos.
Later, looking like himself again, tall, blonde and debonair (if slightly sulky), he left St. Mungo’s Emergency Ward, and they took another Muggle taxi home. Malfoy sensed something different about his mother. For example: Muggle taxi. Hello? When had she started taking Muggle transport? What was wrong with the Floo system? He looked at her sideways, from time to time, trying to gauge what the difference was. Actually, it was quite interesting driving in a Muggle taxi through Muggle London, a place Draco had never been allowed to visit!
He had dreaded coming home with his father in Azkaban. The summer was bound to be boring, with Aurors keeping watch on the house, and he and his mother practically under house arrest, as everyone watched for signs of the Dark Lord. Crabbe and Goyle, with their limited imaginations, were quite content to go back home. They never did anything over the summer anyway, and would probably be quite happy under house arrest, so long as there were crisps and Muggle TV (which they both talked about ad nauseam, in spite of their anti-Muggle beliefs) available. Malfoy, however, sensed the degradation and humiliation keenly. Although he held his head high at Hogwarts even at the end of term, inside he felt bitter, betrayed and a little apprehensive.
He knew that the house had been searched, and a lot taken away. From his mother’s demeanor, she was taking things much better than he thought she would, unless it was a front. He wasn’t sure though, not having thought his mother capable of putting up a front. She looked the same, her pale hair twisted up in the elegant knot at the back of her head with not a strand out of place, but her cheeks were more flushed than he remembered, and her eyes brighter. However, there was no way he could talk to her yet “ not in front of the Muggle taxi driver.
As they reached the Malfoy mansion, and got out, Malfoy noticed the armed guards at the entrance. As he and his mother paid for the taxi, a tall man stepped out of the shadows, and came to help with the suitcases. He was definitely an Auror. Just as a test to see what would happen, Malfoy moved his hand to his wand holster. He never got to it.
“Expelliarmus!” Before he had touched his wand, it had shot into the air, and was caught by another, shorter man, with fair hair, scars and blue eyes with laughter lines, although he was not smiling now. He walked over.
“Draco Malfoy.” His tone was forbidding. “I think I will take this wand. You may have it back if and when you return to Hogwarts.”
If? Draco stared at him, horrified. It had never occurred to him that he might not be allowed back. He looked at his mother, and saw she was definitely upset now. The delicate flush had faded from her cheeks, and the pearls at her throat moved quickly. She put out her hand, pleadingly.
“Peter, please……. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet. Just give us some time!” Draco was completely taken aback when his mother crossed over to the fair man, and laid a hand on his arm. For a moment there seemed to be a resemblance between the two. Draco shook his head to clear it. He was obviously going insane. There could be no resemblance between the delicate Narcissa Malfoy and this scarred warrior.
Peter shrugged. “I am sorry Narcissa, but I am going to have to keep the wand.” He looked over at Draco. “Beautiful piece,” he said briefly, “I’ll keep it safe for you.”
Draco bit down hard on his lower lip, until he could taste blood. There were too many Aurors around for him to start a brawl, especially wandless. He held his head up, and let his eyelids droop scornfully. “As you wish.” He was rather pleased with the tone of voice. The drawling sarcasm sounded like his father. His mother gave the man called Peter a last look, and tripped up the stairs to the house with amazing balance, seeing as she wore ice-pick Muggle heels. A fashion Draco actually liked. Anything that caused discomfort to Muggle women, while at the same time enhancing their appearance, he approved of, and he bet his mother’s insteps really hurt. Draco inclined his head slightly to the two men in a regal fashion, and not making any move to pick up any of the baggage, followed his mother up the stairs.
Behind him the taller of the two Auror’s gave a whistle. “Arrogant little brat……just like his father! Well, this should be a fun summer job!” He hefted the two suitcases as if they were feathers, and turned to walk up the steps. The Auror called Peter used a levitating charm on the third, and followed. “I don’t know. I think the kid is headed for some very hard changes. I wouldn’t be too rough on him, Martin.”
Inside, Draco followed his mother. As he went, he looked around to see what had changed. All the dark furniture and pictures he remembered had been stripped from their places. The house seemed more spacious and light. He noticed with a start the rich blue cushions in various shades that covered the white living room furniture. A large, gaily colored print of sunflowers hung waving above the fireplace, replacing the portrait of his father that had hung there, and a blue vase and cheerful tulips had replaced the diseased hand that had taken pride of place in the middle of the mantel. He stopped in the living room, looking around, rather stunned. As a young child his house had positively scared him with its nagging, critical portraits and infestations of Dark creatures. But now it did not look like home. Narcissa went through to the kitchen, for a few minutes, and when she came back with a tray, she caught him examining the print.
“They took away practically everything belonging to your father. I think they were looking for Portkeys or something. This is the stuff I had before my marriage. It was in storage”. She gestured vaguely with her hands, and then sat down on the sofa, sliding a butterbeer over to the other side of the table for him. “Draco darling, we need to talk.”
Draco nearly dropped the butterbeer he had bent to pick up. Narcissa had spent the years he was alive systematically ignoring his existence as much as she was able, apart from perhaps the regular weekly package of sweets and cakes (though he strongly suspected these had been sent by the house elves). He never once remembered hearing an endearment from her. He looked up at her with deep suspicion, and it crossed his mind that the Imperious Curse might be controlling her. Slowly, and warily he sat opposite her, ready to move if she pounced. She looked very different still, and it suddenly occurred to him that she looked happy. He had never seen his mother truly happy. Her face again was flushed, and her smile seemed genuine. She was nervous though. Her hands clasped, and unclasped. He could not know how unnerving this was for her, sitting opposite her almost estranged son with his unnatural self-possession and suspicious but hooded gray eyes, so exactly like his father’s.
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Later Draco sat on his own in his room, trying to make sense of the confusion into which his mother had thrown him.
They were poor “ as the proverbial backstreet witch peddling love potions to squibs. All his father’s accounts at Gringotts had been frozen. He was reduced to Weasley status. It was more galling than he could ever have imagined. And he was growing out of his dress robes. However the money situation he had been afraid of “ the rest was unexpected, and therefore worse.
Firstly, his mother was thrilled that his father was in Azkaban.
“The only reason I stayed was you Draco,” his mother told him softly. “I wasn’t allowed to have anything to do with you but I couldn’t bear to leave. I know I am not brave, and that I should have protected you more, but I am not as strong as your father is. Oh Draco!” Tears rolled down her cheeks now, “ You can’t imagine what it did to me, seeing you turn eagerly towards the Dark Lord, always trying to please your father.” She twisted the ring on her finger, and her mouth trembled a little. “I never could please him, whatever I did. I loved your father so desperately when I married him, but I was so very young. When you came along, he was happy for a few months, and then it started again. Nothing I could do was right. And he started to bring his friends over.” She clenched her fists very hard, her eyes very bright. “I hated Tom Riddle!” (Here she had to wait while Draco choked on a sip of butterbeer). “Riddle used to visit us when we were first married, and I could feel him getting a grip on your father then, but I never knew what to do about it. And then when Lilah left, it was all over! Lilah was the only person who was ever able to manage him. He became hard on you “ so very hard. And when you started school it was worse. He didn’t want you to grow up to be anything less than he is now.”
Draco put his butterbeer down, his hand actually trembling. Most of the time it was as if Lilah had never existed, but here was his mother talking about her quite happily.
For eight years now, nobody in the Malfoy family had mentioned Lilah, except once. He had done so accidentally, when he was ten, and couldn’t bear her being gone any more. He had received a rare beating from his father for that. Lucius hated all forms of weakness.
His mother was carrying on, unaware how much she had stirred up in him.
“But in the end, we all make our own choices. I know I have not been a good mother for you, but think, Draco! Don’t throw your life away, and shut all humanity out of your heart! I want so much for you to be happy.”
She sounded like Happy Harriet from Witching Hour. Quite frankly, Draco found her loyalty to him nauseating “ he felt guilty at the fact that she had obviously stayed in a pretty terrible marriage to be near him, and he was still feeling sick at hearing Lilah’s name spoken in that fashion. He knew his mother had never really liked Lilah, and had resented the attention his father paid her, but Draco himself had adored her.
Lilah had been eight when he was born, a child that Lucius had ‘adopted’ at the age of four. Some said she was the result of an affair in his younger days, but where she came from only Lucius knew, and he was not telling. Lilah had been brought up as a Malfoy, and bore a striking resemblance to Lucius. Lucius had married the young Narcissa two years after Lilah had come to live with him. Draco could remember Lilah vividly. She had been the most wonderful thing in his life when he was little.
Later on, when he was older, he lived for the summers when she returned from Durmstrang, and filled the house with sunshine. He could still remember that terrible summer, when he was eight. She had got back from Durmstrang and announced over dinner to Lucius that she had a new, Muggle-born boyfriend who she had met on a town visit. The new boyfriend lived in London, they had been corresponding and she wanted to see him over the summer. She had been confident; her face beautiful and spirited, expecting that, as always, she would be able to wrap Lucius around her little finger. When she left, weeping and sore from the beating Lucius had administered her, she had not even been able to say good-bye to him. His father had held Draco back, as if Lilah was suddenly contaminated, while the little boy sobbed. Draco had received his first beating later, for crying. Draco had hated Muggles viciously after that. Muggles were not only the reason the wizarding world lived in hiding, they were the reason Lilah had left them, and the reason he had been beaten.
Draco got up and moved to the window, fixated on the one point in the conversation that had stirred him most.
“Lilah did not leave. She was thrown out.” He could hear his voice was harsh. “She was sixteen, and Father threw her out into the street. You didn’t stop him.”
His mother held out her hands, pleadingly. “I couldn’t. She was his responsibility, not mine. And she had a Muggle boyfriend. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t interfere.” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.
Draco listened unmoving, lip curled. To be honest, he did not know what he thought of the woman sitting telling him this. It came to him that his father had taught him to despise her, in a way. She had been such a nonentity in their lives.
After Lilah left, Lucius had lavished all his affection on Draco. It had been the two of them, and Narcissa had not really been part of that. Draco had been spoiled and indulged and made much of. The little boy had been taken along to all his father’s meetings and spoiled by all his father’s friends too. He was handsome and intelligent and well liked. He adored his father, admired him immensely and tried to be as like him as possible. It did not last.
After Draco had started Hogwarts, Lucius had become increasingly displeased with him. He still pandered to his whims and encouraged his whining, but was furious that Hermione Granger, a mere Muggle, had consistently better marks than him, and even more annoyed that Draco was not able to beat Harry Potter at Quidditch, even with the expensive brooms with which he had supplied Slytherin. He began to see Draco as weak, and tried to correct his behaviour by being harsh, and then cruel. Draco still tried his hardest to capture the attention and approval of his father, the man he admired most of all, but rarely managed.
Then Narcissa, now looking shy, a little coy, and very happy, confided a long kept family secret that had been hushed up. Not even Lucius knew. Her father, Draco’s grandfather, had had an affair with a Muggle woman before Narcissa was born. The result had been a baby boy. It transpired that he was now an Auror and working at the castle. Draco had not been mistaken when he had seen a resemblance between his mother and the Auror Peter. Draco listened to her burble and gush about how wonderful it was that she had found Peter (“My older half-brother!”), while his spine felt as if insects were crawling up it. Muggles in the family? Everybody had family skeletons, but this? His Grandad had an affair with a Muggle? Even a werewolf would have been better than this. It made him want to throw up. The only reason he didn’t crawl under the sofa and expire was the undeniable fact that his mother was happy. She was shining with happiness, and Draco, even though he found himself ambivalent about how he felt about her found that he did not want to stop her shining. So he stretched his mouth into what was supposed to be a smile (it was almost as frightening as Snape’s) and imagined Ron spitting slugs for all he was worth to keep it there.
Then Peter had come in. He had asked a few innocuous questions in an attempt to be friendly but Draco took them personally, and, after dinner, since Peter was obviously going to stay for a while, he ostentatiously pulled a book on Occlumency from the family library shelves (which were very depleted, with his father’s prized collection of Dark Arts books gone), and holding it up so that Peter was able to see the title, he read “ all evening.
By that time, he was so fed up with people being happy that he wasn’t pretending to be happy himself any more. Draco, feeling mixed up and miserably confused, was doing what he did best when he didn’t get his own way: sulking.