HP Fic: For the Sins of the Father (Part One)
For the Sins of the Father| R (domestic violence, child abuse, language, mentions of torture) 7,200 words
Draco, Astoria, Scorpius, various others, OC
Scorpius' childhood is far from idyllic. Trapped by a father who is by turns charismatic and terrorising and subdued by a mother who is desperately in love and hopelessly, painfully in denial, Scorpius struggles to understand what is right and what is good. When he's kidnapped for ransom by a tortured woman hunting for her father's killers, he is forced to confront his Malfoy identity.
A/N: I like to think of this as quite 'Boy in the Striped Pyjamas'-esque, there's an element of something very dark seen through innocent, slightly brain-washed eyes. Comments, con-crit both very much appreciated!
***
“Both your sins and the sins of your fathers," says the Lord . “I will measure into your laps the full payment for their former deeds”.
Isaiah 65:7
They move around a lot when he’s young, French countryside, Argentinean hills, he’s been there all. He doesn’t see much of any the places they go to, they always live high up, on a hill, secluded from the town and surrounded by charms that his father painstakingly puts up each time they arrive somewhere new. He doesn’t go to school, his mother teaches him in the living room, first words, then numbers then history, until he can draw a skull with a tongue like a tangled snake.
His mother talks about home a lot, not the house they live in, but that little island where she grew up, green hills she says, green hills and the bluest seas, woods that feel like home. You’ll see she says, everything will be better when we get home.
That becomes a mantra when things get bad. It’ll all be better when we get home she says curling up next to him, a bandage around her head.
‘You hurt your head again’ he notes ‘you should be more careful’
He doesn’t understand why his mother cries when she smiles ‘I should be more careful, I’m so clumsy these days, ‘
When he’s six, they move to England, on the West Coast. Home, says his mother, gripping his hand tight as they stand in front of the house that looks as if it’s in ruins from the outside. Home, it seems to him is nothing special, just a house, he doesn’t see how anything will be better just because of this.
But he sees the sea for the first time from that house. That, at least, is everything his mother promised.
He runs down with her from the cliff and stands on the edge of the vast expanse and thinks how easy it would be to walk in and never walk out. It’s the grey on that first day, like quicksilver, mercury that his mother keeps in glass bubble on a necklace, bottomless and impenetrable.
It doesn’t seem like that when he walks right into it, it isn’t heavy anymore. Bare feet snag on swirling seaweed and graze of shards of shell. Foam rushes in to claim his ankles, the ground drops away in front of his feet and he follows it until he is submerged. It isn’t metallic that close, it’s clear and beautiful and from the corner of his eyes he swears he sees a silver fish dart away.
He remembers that first time as the happiest day of his life, when he looks at his mother, she is changed. She looked young for the first time that day, alive, free, the woman his father must’ve seen when he first met her.
She’s a version of herself he’ll yearn for the rest of his life, the person he will search for but catch only glimpses of in late summer afternoons when the sun is so low that when he squints he can almost see the past.
The moment passes, they go back to the house, back home. She’s a different person then, meeker, faded from the seafront, a shadow of the woman he’s seen. For all the years he lives in that house, in all years she lives in the house, she’ll never go back to the sea.
The air is electric the day that the world changes. There’s a storm on the horizon, not that they see it, their own small family is too consumed by the lightning and thunder they produce in the house to be concerned with the surges outside.
He wants to go outside, that’s how it starts.
‘No,’ says his mother ‘it’s too rough, you’ll get swept away by the tide,’
He can smell the ozone in the air, briny gusts of wind blown through the kitchen window, flirting with the lace curtains Peggy the house elf put up.
His mother pulls out a box with the parts to a model airplane. Kisses his forehead and curls a hand around the nape of his neck, leaves.
He sits cross legged on his bed, assembling the parts, Styrofoam wings glued to the body, inserting the aluminium V with the wheels attached to in into the end into the capsule in the belly of the airplane.
The world outside is misty with soft rain that clings to the cold glass like teardrops. The house pulses with the tide that crashes on the shores below. He leans against the thin walls and feels the life-force through his back, each pulse synchronised with his own heartbeat.
There’s a motor on the airplane that winds up with a rubber band, he tries to place in it the nose, twisting it and twisting it again so it’s wound up in a figure of it but it snaps against his hand and leaves a red mark that stings.
Taking the plane and a spare rubber band he tries to find his mother, taking each the stairs two at a time and sliding his hands over the well worn banister. The wood is velvet and warm under his hands and the woolly carpet under his bare feet scratchy.
His mother isn’t in the living room or the kitchen but there are voices from his father’s study. He grips the rails of the winding staircase down to his father’s study tightly as he descends. The tips of his fingers are electric with anticipation. Rarely does he get to see his father these days. In his mind his father has become as dream, impossibly bright and brilliant.
His father’s study is almost as big as half the ground floor. He’s been there only once, a large wood panelled room with a magnificent fireplace and a big green leather chair behind a mahogany desk. He thinks of knocking, but as he raises his hands to the door the voices grown louder and he drops his arms, hand unfurling.
At first he doesn’t mean to listen, just sits, back against the wall in front of the door waiting for the voices to subside. But he gets caught in the story of the voices, different tones and pitches and when the voices get quieter he crawls forward and presses his ears to the door. Names fly in different voices, names like Weasley and Potter, Rabastan is on the run. Mark hunters. From the Ministry? He doesn’t understand much, he doesn’t who any of these people, any of those places but he listens. When there’s silence, he presses closer, eager to be a part of this, to have the knowledge even if he can’t use it. He doesn’t expect for the door to open, to fall into his father’s feet.
He sees true anger for the first time when his father drags him up by the scruff of his neck. Eyes so cold he thinks he might’ve been burned.
He scurries upstairs when his father turns his back and goes into the study again, airplane forgotten. He’ll find it again, years later, dusty, stuffed into a crack into the wall behind the swirled staircase, wings broken, motor snapped. He’ll wonder then if that’s how he is, how his mother is, wings broken, motor snapped, stuffed into the cracks in the walls of this house, this place called home.
Those disembodied voices leave the house well after the sun is fallen. The air outside is heavy with anticipation of the coming storm and inside, inside the air is quiet.
He remembers the light being especially yellow, brooding when his father comes into the sitting room, wand drawn.
‘Stand up,’ his father says and he does, stands up quivering with fear.
He remembers watching that wand and thinking put it away, put it away even though he couldn’t have known. He couldn’t have known what he’d do.
‘He’s just a child’ his mother begs ‘he didn’t mean to, he’s just a child’ she clings to him, trying to lower his wand arm.
His father is seething, his arms are iron, he draws her closer, face inches from hers, pure rage in his eyes. He pushes up his sleeve, up past his elbow, blue ink on white skin. ‘I was just a child, no one is too young to learn the consequences’
There are silent tears running down his mother’s face, she turns to him and stares for a second, all these tears. He wants to ask why, why are you crying. What will he do? There is no answer, except the sound of her footfalls running as fast as she can from the room. He’ll hear that door slam for the rest of his life.
His father’s hands are cold on his skin as he pushes up his sleeve. The tip of the wand, white hot.
Scorpius trembles, trying to pull away. His father places a firm hand on the nape of his neck, like his mother does when he’s crying.
‘Don’t wince, learn to be a man,’ words of advice, he’ll carry with him. He stands to attention, heels together. Yes sir. These are the things his father taught.
The pain is blinding, deep and slow, abrasive against the solid length of his bone. One, then two, three. He doesn’t wince even as his toes curl against the stiff leather of his boots.
His father bandages him up silently, wrapping the white gauze tighter and tighter until his arm is numb. When he’s done, he ruffles his son’s hair.
‘I’ll expect better from you next time,’
He lies in bed listening to the rain against the window pain later that night. He holds up his hand to the cool glass, lets the stinging be soothed. His mother comes and sits at his feet, tucks the duvet closer around him, runs a hand through his hair.
‘He’s a good man, you know,’ a sigh ‘he does the best he can’
He snuffles, curl deeper into his bed, further from her.
‘You shouldn’t test him so much, he’s told you not to listen at the door before, you’re old enough to know that now, this moving, it’s been hard on him. His friends, his family they aren’t close anymore, he’s hurting. But we’re home again now, you’ll see, things will get better,’
They do get better, the men with the steel tipped army boots and the black velvet cloaks come around less often. His father steps out of his study once in a while, sometimes he even plays catch with him, throwing the battered old Quaffle high, smiling when Scorpius catches it on the other side of the garden.
It was a sunny day, he’ll remember.
Listless, he wanders around the house, his mother’s out, her broomstick missing from the shed. He hears hushed voices in his father’s study. He sits on the bottom step of the winding staircase and listens in between the beats of the bounces of his old India rubber ball. He doesn’t have to strain, the voice that speaks most often is loud. Carrow he hears, Carrow, Yaxley, Lestrange, it’s his voice, the man with the wolfish grin and body like a mountain, raspy, gravelly, he shivers. Then his father’s voice, even, all of them? he asks, the silent assent, scraping of chairs, he stands up quickly, feet together in attention.
The door opens; his father is the first one out, the scarred man in out next, head bending to fit through the doorway.
‘Scorpius,’ he says, extending a hand and tracing the curve of the jaw with a single yellow nail ‘how good to see you’ a flash of pink tongue darts out of his mouth, it takes all of Scorpius’ will to not flinch.
‘That’s enough Greyback,’ the wolf man pulls away from him at the touch of his father’s hand. Scorpius avoids his father’s eyes. ‘You should go,’ his father’s voice is quieter than usual, more commanding. Greyback nods, walks down the hallway with his father, pauses at the doorway.
Scorpius watches the two of them, Greyback like a mountain bending towards his father who must be a third of his companion size but still carries an authority that crackles at the edges.
‘Think about it,’ says Greyback, bending close, whiskers almost grazing his father’s ear. That’s all he hears, captivated by the sunshine pouring through the stained glass window above the curve of the staircase. His father doesn’t reply, simply opens the door.
He waits for punishment silently; he knows the penalty for eavesdropping. Rolls up his sleeves, braces himself when his father walks by. No punishment comes; no wand digs into his forearm to split open old scars, his father walks right into his study. Slams the door.
The front door is still ajar; a sliver of sunshine forcing it’s way into the dark hallway. It calls to him, light dancing making his skin itch for the feel of sun on his arms, his shoulder. There’s no sound from the study, except that of rustling paper, his father’s quill scratching and scratching.
Only a minute, he tells himself, only a minute, just out in the garden. That’s okay, it’s alright. He opens the door, feels the sun on the bridge of his nose, warming. He can almost feel himself tan, except he never does, not even when they lived almost on the Equator, he just burned, red, blistering, but loved it, danced out on the sun baked ground and wouldn’t come inside even his mother called him her little lobster and pulled at his wrist from the shade of the patio awning.
He looks back at the house, glass panes from his window wink at him. The house is on a hill, bigger than it looks from the outside, a stony footpath runs from the back door of the garden, joining like a tributary to the cliff path that winds down to the beach below, there’s a sheer drop opposite the front door, tufts of yellowing grass cling to the sandy cliff. The cliff face is almost eaten away, only the charms that surround the house keep it from crashing into the sea. There used to be stone steps, now eroded by the sand that falls even in a light breeze. He doesn’t look for long, vertigo swirling his stomach and making his head spin, he’s glad of the white painted picket fence even if knows he won’t fall
He forces his eyes to look at the horizon instead, most days it’s grey out here, grey sea seeping into grey sky, the horizon indistinguishable except for the hump of dark mass he knows to be the island with the lighthouse. It isn’t grey today. The cobalt sea makes a clean cut across the sky, drawn as if by the pencils his mother sharpens to a fine point and then drags across a page against a ruler when she teaches geometry. The island looks green almost, a real place, rather than a smudge in the landscape, he watches the waves break against the rocks on the curve of the bay and imagines the force on his skin, cool water, foamy surf, he shakes himself impatiently from the fantasy.
He isn’t allowed to the beach alone, his mother never agrees to accompany him, sometimes when the weather is clear she sits in a deck chair by the fence in the garden and watches him play on the beach. She isn’t here now, but the crash of the waves is stronger here, a thrum through his body, a call that reverberates through him. Past the garden fence, the charms don’t work. His father forbids him and his mother agrees ‘too dangerous’ she says, ruffling his hair, kissing him, what would I do if something happened to you? What would I do? He ignores the wetness that dampens his hair, the protest of his ribs as her arms tighten around him.
The charm is electric on his arms as he runs past it, buzzing with anticipation.
He remembers the strangest things about that day, little pieces seared into his brain, onto the back of his eyelids, images that play when he closes his eyes. He slips down the cliff path, the edge of his shorts catch a nettle and as he runs past it snags on the cheap denim and tears a hole. Years later he’ll think about those shorts and feel a pang of regret, they were brand new.
It doesn’t bother him then though, he runs into the sea, submerges himself, swims like a fish. He counts elephants under the water, coming up , propelling himself out of the sea with one hand on the wooden posts that anchor the coast. He plays the game in the bathtub sometimes, squeezing his eyes shut and counting and counting, but it isn’t the same, the absence of cool porcelain knocking on the back of his head, the absence of safety sends a thrill down his spine.
He doesn’t see his mother return, a long speck in the horizon growing into a woman on a broomstick over the house, nor does he hear her calls, see her switching on every light, looking everywhere. In fact he can’t time has even passed until he surfaces and sees the pads of his fingers are puckered and wrinkled.
He barely feels the sting.
****
When he’s older, he shakes his head when people ask, tells them he was only nine, he doesn’t remember, they smile in relief ‘thank Merlin’ they say ‘it must’ve been terrible’. It was. He tries to not think about it when it’s brought up, but sooner or later the memory worms its way into his mind until the walls of the dank cellar are constructed around him and that smell he can’t quite place, stronger than rotting fish fills his nostrils. Fear he’ll realise later, it must’ve smelled of fear.
When he wakes, the world jolts in front of him, in and out of focus, the sounds are oddly loud and muffled . A sharp pain digs through his skull, boring into the nape of his neck. Impatiently, he tries to rub it, but rope twists around his still soft skin and sets his wrists on fire. His mouth feels full and swollen, oddly woolly, a gag he realises, his favourite T-shirt. For years afterwards he won’t be able to look at anything with stripes without vomiting.
He struggles to place himself, inside he thinks, inside, in a basement. He sees stone walls slick with damp and blue in the dark, a pair of yellow eyes blinking through a cage in the corner. There’s someone else too, he can see only her silhouette at first. She’s tall, skinny and even at that age he can tell she carries herself differently from other people, like a soldier, like the men who silently enter his father’s study and talk in hushed, urgent voices.
Sharp pricks twinge at the corner of his eyes, irrational. He wonders what his father would say, crying at so little. Weak, a disgrace, he doesn’t need to wonder, he’s heard it enough. It’s the smell that gets to him the most, sharp, sickly sweet almost, a blend of swimming pools too chlorinated and something stronger, and underneath it all a musty rotting smell, it that that makes his eyes water, it’s the smell.
Do something his father’s voice tells him, do something, don’t just sit there, you worthless little faggot He struggles against the restrains, chafing his wrists and ankles, silent, just as his father taught him.
‘It’s charmed,’ says a woman’s voice from the shadows ‘you won’t wriggle out,’ she’s young, barely older than the girl at the village shop who sells hard candy and bubblegum, things he isn’t allowed to buy.
He doesn’t stop struggling, pretend to be a Muggle, his father drilled into him, sitting in the living room, a couple of years ago when the Mulciber boy went missing, found dead later, he remembers. If you ever find yourself in trouble, pretend to be a Muggle, never tell a stranger your father is Draco Malfoy.
‘Oh, we’re playing that game,’ she says, as if she’s read his mind. She laughs, doesn’t sound like the shop girl anymore, more like Greyback, a short barking sound that makes his hairs stand on end. She turns around slowly, spinning on her heel. Still hidden in shadow, she walks towards him, he was right, she walks with the purpose of a soldier, every sway of her hips deliberate. She spins her wand in one hand she walks. Effortless.
He almost tips over his chair in a hurry to back away when she finally steps into the light. She can’t be more than twenty five but her eyes are impossibly old, icy eyes and weathered lines at the edges of his lips that have forgotten how to smile. There’s a scar curving from the hollow of her breastbone across her chest, disappearing into her tank top. It’s not the only one, puckered red skin crisscross her face, the corners of her lips, eyes, the hollows of her cheek bones.
She kneels in front of him and grips his head in one hand, curling her long gun hardened fingers around his neck. Bringing her face close to his, she rests her forehead against his, just as his mother does before kissing him goodnight.
‘I’ve waited so long for this, Scorpius,’ she says, rubbing his cheek fondly with the pad of her thumb ‘after all this time, and now you’re her and it doesn’t seem real,’
She gets up suddenly, tipping him back with the force of her released grip.
Scorpius gulps, she’s clearly insane. ‘I’m not who you think you I am’ he tries to say through the cloth, his words come out choked and muffled, impatiently she unties his gag and tosses it on the floor.
‘What?’
‘I’m not who you think I am,’ he says through stale gulps of air. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ rehearsed lines slip easily off his tongue, she laughs again.
‘Relax kid, I know exactly who you are, I know you want to spew out the same crap your father taught you but I know that you aren’t Tom Granger, a boy from town, you know all about magic, you know all about Draco Malfoy, your father, see because I know you, I’ve done my homework,’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says again ‘I don’t know who these people are and my name isn’t Tom, it’s Sam, Sam Greengras-‘
‘SHUT UP!’ she screams, jabs her wand into his throat ‘don’t play with me boy, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, WHO ALL OF YOU ARE!’
‘Please’ he says, his fear at least isn’t faked ‘please, I don’t know what you want, but let me go,’
She paces furiously in front of him, covering her eyes frantically, rubbing her temple with her knuckles.
‘I’ll tell you want I want,’ her voice cracks, her composure forgotten. ‘I want justice! I want justice for what your darling daddy did to me!’ she lifts up the edge of her top, exposing her ribs, mottled and dark with bruising.
Underneath it all are more scars, rough lines forming a skull with a tongue that looks like tangled snake. The same mark his father taught him to draw on old exercise books, the mark that’s tattooed on his father’s arm.
She lets the edge of her shirt drop before he can comment and pulls out an old Muggle picture from her back pocket. It’s creased, almost falling part but he can still see what it is.
A man, clearly dead, thankfully dead, is nailed to a cross, his eyes staring and his ribs broken from his spine so they spread out like wings on either side of him. The mark is carved into his chest.
Scorpius feels the vomit rise up in his throat.
‘See that,’ she says pushing it closer and closer to his face so every tiny detail is visible, ‘see this? This is what they did to my father, they sent this picture in the post! Your father did this to mine!’
Scorpius shuffles backwards, tipping precariously on his chair, just eager to get away. She advances too until he is plastered against a damp wall.
‘I just want revenge,’ she says ‘that’s all, I want what’s fair,’
‘He’s a good man,’ he says echoing his mother ‘he is a good man, he didn’t kill anybody, you’ve got the wrong people’
She grabs his arm, pushes up the sleeve to reveal crisscrossed scars identical to hers.
‘How old are Scorpius? Nine? Ten?’
His silence tells her everything.
‘You look like a smart kid, so you tell me is this the work of a good man, Scorpius? Is this the work of a good father?’
He gulps, he’s wondered this himself some nights, cradling his arm. He shakes his head ‘he’s just stressed, he doesn’t mean it, he loves me, I just test him sometimes, he loses his temper, it’s my fault really,’
There are tears in her eyes, tricks of the light. She crouches down and cups his cheeks in her hands ‘it’s not your fault, Scorpius, it’s his. You don’t have to live this way,’
There is no reply.
She pushes up her sleeve of her left hand, he can see six lines of ink, all dates written in Roman numerals starting from her wrist on the inside of her arm.
‘Alecto Carrow,’ she says pointing to the date first on the column ‘his brother Amycus, Rodolphus Letstrange, Rabastan Lestrange, Isolde Yaxley’ the names are familiar, heard through oak panelled doors, what now seems an age ago. ‘Seven is a magical number you know, I’m just looking for justice’
He looks at her closely, she doesn’t have cold eyes, not like his father when he gets angry, up close, they’re raw, deep blue raw pain, like the sea, warm, not impenetrable, not solid, forgiving.
‘Can you help my mother?’ he asks ,voice small, hates himself, but all he sees is his mother on her knees picking up glass shards, white gauze around her head. I’m so clumsy these days.
His captor smiles, ‘of course,’ she says ‘of course, I can help your mother,’
He nods, that’s all he wants, for his mother to not be so clumsy any more.
He drifts in and out sleep on that chair, finally waking when she shakes him.
‘Rise and shine,’ she says with a laugh but her brows are furrowed, hands agitated. ‘Your father’s coming, I want to help you and your mother but I need you trust me, okay?’
He nods again and she smiles.
‘Good, when your father comes, he’ll untie you and I’ll be hiding right over there’ she points to a section of the wall ‘it’s a trap door, I need you tell your father that I’m hiding in that chest’ she points to a large wooden chest on the other side of the cellar, ‘okay?’
‘Okay,’ he says voice quiet ‘are you going to kill my father?’
‘No’ she says smiling ‘I’m not a killer, Scorpius, I’m just going to make sure that your father is sent away, to prison, where he can’t hurt you or your mother, do you understand?’
He inclines his head ‘yes’
There are heavy footfalls above, floorboards creaking.
‘Remember what I said, okay?’ she whispers ‘it’ll all be okay,’
The footfalls are louder now, the door on top of the cellar stairs creaks open. Before he has a chance to speak, she’s gone.
It’ll be okay he tells himself it’ll be okay.
His father unties him one flick of his wand, crouching down he leans into his son.
‘Where is he? He asks, voice rough ‘where’d he go?’
Scorpius remembers what she told him tell him, he looks at the chest, hesitating.
His father’s wand jabs into the hollow of his neck sharper than hers. ‘I’m your father, boy, tell me where he is!’
‘She’s there,’ he says, raising his hand and pointing, to the blank section of the wall.
‘Go upstairs,’
Scorpius pauses at the foot of the cellar stairs. ‘You won’t hurt her, will you, Dad?’ Draco regards him with a flat stare for a moment then turns away.
‘Upstairs. Now’ he knows he can’t delay this time, he runs upstairs.
He gets his punishment for wandering away that night.
His father brushes his wand tip across his clavicle, along his spine. ‘Never put this family is such danger again, do you hear me?’ he whispers in his son’s ear.
He is a good man, he tells himself, he’s a good man, I just test him too much, it’s my fault. He stands to attention, heels together, he doesn’t wince.
He isn’t allowed out again without his mother. He isn’t even allowed out of his room for a year. He grows fond of painting then, paints everyday, on paper that his mother supplies under the door, on the walls when he runs out, paintings of every thing he can see outside of his window, in every possible light.
The scars on his arms, his chest, his back, heal over, puckered skin becomes faint on his torso, but the scars in his memories are less easily avoided. For months he dreams of the man in the photograph, eyes staring, his ribs splayed wide like wings. And when it’s not him, it’s his daughter, the girl with eyes like the sea.
I’ll save you and your mother she’d said and he’d believed her but his father was his father, he had to listen to him. He’s good man he tells himself, he didn’t hurt her, he’s a good man.
The night that his mother comes to his room, arm in a sling, lip still slightly bleeding, he thinks about that girl.
‘What happened, ma?’ he asks
She smiles, even though her lips must ache ‘I fell off my broomstick, would you believe it? I actually fell off my broomstick!’
No, he thinks, he wouldn’t believe it, not anymore.
His mother wants to frame one of his paintings, says they’re amazing, she carefully chooses one of a butterfly, the only one without the sea.
She’s so excited when it comes back from the framer’s, so proud, he has to smile with her.
It comes back in a small iron frame, black, wrapped in newspaper.
‘Can I have it, the newspaper I mean?’ he asks, innocently enough, there isn’t much to do in his room anymore, almost ten months since the basement, he’s read every book, painted every object, on every possible surface.
‘Sure,’ his mother replies and hands over the paper, already a months old, ‘I don’t imagine, you’ll get much entertainment though, it’s just boring politics, d’you want me to get you a comic or something from the village?’
He used to say yes before but he’s noticed recently that his mother has her accidents every time he says yes to something she offers. ‘No, this is fine’ he replies ‘it’s perfect,’
His mother smiles, ruffles his hair. ‘Okay, if you’re sure,’
He reads it cross legged on his bed, first the story of the boy who got splinched four different ways crossing the Atlantic, then the advice column, poring over Milicent Brennan’s love life, Dr. Verity’s reply.
He almost throws it away, each story pursued, but the edge of a picture catches his eye. It’s torn through the middle, not moving, black and white but recognises the eyes, the crisscross hatching on her cheekbones.
Astraea Pepper reads the caption, a renowned Mark Hunter, responsible for putting Death Eaters - Amycus and Alecto Carrow, Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange and Isolde Yaxley back behind bars in Azkaban.
The names are painfully familiar, the eyes even more so. The story accompanying the picture is mostly gone, but he brings the paper closer any way.
-pper was found in some caves near the beachfront it reads her body mangled , her ribs were torn from her spine and splayed like wings, the same position her father, Octavius Pepper was found in several years ago. There appear to be irregular pattern on the bones, that forensic anthropologists claim are teeth marks, on present evidence Aurors implicate notorious werewolf Greyback and claim that as yet undisclosed evidence points to other known Death Eaters still living in freedom today. Mr. Weasl-
Scorpius fights the bile quickly rising up in his throat; he has to get out from this house, from his father, this prison they’ve been living in.
The door of his room is unlocked still and he runs out, not caring if he’s too loud, if his father will hear.
The night air is stinging, bitingly cold, he runs.
Gravel slip through into his shoes, his arms catch on nettles leaving long white scratches along his arms, still he runs.
It’s dark, foggy and all he sees is those blue eyes, eyes like the sea. I want to help you, you and your mother.
Trust me.
Is this the work of a good man? A good father?
He used to think so, and now he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.
He stops running on the edge of the sea.
But there’s no reason to stop.
It’ll calm me he thinks, it’ll calm me, it’ll make me trust again, make me trust that he’s a good man, he wouldn’t do something like this.
He steps forwards, follows the drop of the ground until he’s submerged. He counts elephants under the surface, lets the brine water wash his confusion away.
He isn’t near the anchors this time though and his arms are lead. Who ever said that drowning was peaceful, like sleeping, was wrong.
Brine water forces it self into his nose, his mouth, raw and salty against the back of his throat, his tongue. He squeezes his eyes shut but water still pours in stinging and all he can see are those infernal eyes, eyes like the sea, forcing itself on him, crushing him.
I’ll save you, you and your mother.
There is no fade to black for him, only blue.
Strong arms pull him out, Peggy he realises through half closed eyes, a lungful of water, Peggy.
He sees his father for the first time in almost a year that night. He comes with a bottle of firewhiskey in one hand.
‘What did you do to her?’ he asks, brave, at last.
His father smiles, turning up the right corner of his lips, not really a smile ‘I don’t what you mean, Scorpius, but just remember if anything did happen to her, it was your doing, you pointed out the wall, thanks to you, I’m not in prison, you really are your father’s son, kiddo, I don’t give nearly enough credit,’ his father reaches forward to ruffle his hair.
He remembers a time when he would’ve done anything for his father to call him kiddo and ruffle his hair, tell him that he was his father’s son, now small praise washes over him, doesn’t seem worth the price.
***
He hears them arguing later that night, his mother’s voice raised for the first time he can remember.
‘What happened to you, Draco?
‘Stop shouting, Astoria!’ his father’s voice, cold, hissing, broken glass.
‘Our son almost DIED tonight!’
‘He walked into the sea, what was I going to do?’
‘you’re not the boy I fell in love with,’
A snort ‘ I most definitely am not. He was weak and pitiful, didn’t have the balls to step up for his family, I’m a man now, a real Malfoy’
‘You’re a fucking monster’
Smashed glass. A crack. There will be gauze on her head tomorrow, as well as the sling. She’s so clumsy these days.
Draco, Astoria, Scorpius, various others, OC
Scorpius' childhood is far from idyllic. Trapped by a father who is by turns charismatic and terrorising and subdued by a mother who is desperately in love and hopelessly, painfully in denial, Scorpius struggles to understand what is right and what is good. When he's kidnapped for ransom by a tortured woman hunting for her father's killers, he is forced to confront his Malfoy identity.
A/N: I like to think of this as quite 'Boy in the Striped Pyjamas'-esque, there's an element of something very dark seen through innocent, slightly brain-washed eyes. Comments, con-crit both very much appreciated!
***
“Both your sins and the sins of your fathers," says the Lord . “I will measure into your laps the full payment for their former deeds”.
Isaiah 65:7
They move around a lot when he’s young, French countryside, Argentinean hills, he’s been there all. He doesn’t see much of any the places they go to, they always live high up, on a hill, secluded from the town and surrounded by charms that his father painstakingly puts up each time they arrive somewhere new. He doesn’t go to school, his mother teaches him in the living room, first words, then numbers then history, until he can draw a skull with a tongue like a tangled snake.
His mother talks about home a lot, not the house they live in, but that little island where she grew up, green hills she says, green hills and the bluest seas, woods that feel like home. You’ll see she says, everything will be better when we get home.
That becomes a mantra when things get bad. It’ll all be better when we get home she says curling up next to him, a bandage around her head.
‘You hurt your head again’ he notes ‘you should be more careful’
He doesn’t understand why his mother cries when she smiles ‘I should be more careful, I’m so clumsy these days, ‘
When he’s six, they move to England, on the West Coast. Home, says his mother, gripping his hand tight as they stand in front of the house that looks as if it’s in ruins from the outside. Home, it seems to him is nothing special, just a house, he doesn’t see how anything will be better just because of this.
But he sees the sea for the first time from that house. That, at least, is everything his mother promised.
He runs down with her from the cliff and stands on the edge of the vast expanse and thinks how easy it would be to walk in and never walk out. It’s the grey on that first day, like quicksilver, mercury that his mother keeps in glass bubble on a necklace, bottomless and impenetrable.
It doesn’t seem like that when he walks right into it, it isn’t heavy anymore. Bare feet snag on swirling seaweed and graze of shards of shell. Foam rushes in to claim his ankles, the ground drops away in front of his feet and he follows it until he is submerged. It isn’t metallic that close, it’s clear and beautiful and from the corner of his eyes he swears he sees a silver fish dart away.
He remembers that first time as the happiest day of his life, when he looks at his mother, she is changed. She looked young for the first time that day, alive, free, the woman his father must’ve seen when he first met her.
She’s a version of herself he’ll yearn for the rest of his life, the person he will search for but catch only glimpses of in late summer afternoons when the sun is so low that when he squints he can almost see the past.
The moment passes, they go back to the house, back home. She’s a different person then, meeker, faded from the seafront, a shadow of the woman he’s seen. For all the years he lives in that house, in all years she lives in the house, she’ll never go back to the sea.
The air is electric the day that the world changes. There’s a storm on the horizon, not that they see it, their own small family is too consumed by the lightning and thunder they produce in the house to be concerned with the surges outside.
He wants to go outside, that’s how it starts.
‘No,’ says his mother ‘it’s too rough, you’ll get swept away by the tide,’
He can smell the ozone in the air, briny gusts of wind blown through the kitchen window, flirting with the lace curtains Peggy the house elf put up.
His mother pulls out a box with the parts to a model airplane. Kisses his forehead and curls a hand around the nape of his neck, leaves.
He sits cross legged on his bed, assembling the parts, Styrofoam wings glued to the body, inserting the aluminium V with the wheels attached to in into the end into the capsule in the belly of the airplane.
The world outside is misty with soft rain that clings to the cold glass like teardrops. The house pulses with the tide that crashes on the shores below. He leans against the thin walls and feels the life-force through his back, each pulse synchronised with his own heartbeat.
There’s a motor on the airplane that winds up with a rubber band, he tries to place in it the nose, twisting it and twisting it again so it’s wound up in a figure of it but it snaps against his hand and leaves a red mark that stings.
Taking the plane and a spare rubber band he tries to find his mother, taking each the stairs two at a time and sliding his hands over the well worn banister. The wood is velvet and warm under his hands and the woolly carpet under his bare feet scratchy.
His mother isn’t in the living room or the kitchen but there are voices from his father’s study. He grips the rails of the winding staircase down to his father’s study tightly as he descends. The tips of his fingers are electric with anticipation. Rarely does he get to see his father these days. In his mind his father has become as dream, impossibly bright and brilliant.
His father’s study is almost as big as half the ground floor. He’s been there only once, a large wood panelled room with a magnificent fireplace and a big green leather chair behind a mahogany desk. He thinks of knocking, but as he raises his hands to the door the voices grown louder and he drops his arms, hand unfurling.
At first he doesn’t mean to listen, just sits, back against the wall in front of the door waiting for the voices to subside. But he gets caught in the story of the voices, different tones and pitches and when the voices get quieter he crawls forward and presses his ears to the door. Names fly in different voices, names like Weasley and Potter, Rabastan is on the run. Mark hunters. From the Ministry? He doesn’t understand much, he doesn’t who any of these people, any of those places but he listens. When there’s silence, he presses closer, eager to be a part of this, to have the knowledge even if he can’t use it. He doesn’t expect for the door to open, to fall into his father’s feet.
He sees true anger for the first time when his father drags him up by the scruff of his neck. Eyes so cold he thinks he might’ve been burned.
He scurries upstairs when his father turns his back and goes into the study again, airplane forgotten. He’ll find it again, years later, dusty, stuffed into a crack into the wall behind the swirled staircase, wings broken, motor snapped. He’ll wonder then if that’s how he is, how his mother is, wings broken, motor snapped, stuffed into the cracks in the walls of this house, this place called home.
Those disembodied voices leave the house well after the sun is fallen. The air outside is heavy with anticipation of the coming storm and inside, inside the air is quiet.
He remembers the light being especially yellow, brooding when his father comes into the sitting room, wand drawn.
‘Stand up,’ his father says and he does, stands up quivering with fear.
He remembers watching that wand and thinking put it away, put it away even though he couldn’t have known. He couldn’t have known what he’d do.
‘He’s just a child’ his mother begs ‘he didn’t mean to, he’s just a child’ she clings to him, trying to lower his wand arm.
His father is seething, his arms are iron, he draws her closer, face inches from hers, pure rage in his eyes. He pushes up his sleeve, up past his elbow, blue ink on white skin. ‘I was just a child, no one is too young to learn the consequences’
There are silent tears running down his mother’s face, she turns to him and stares for a second, all these tears. He wants to ask why, why are you crying. What will he do? There is no answer, except the sound of her footfalls running as fast as she can from the room. He’ll hear that door slam for the rest of his life.
His father’s hands are cold on his skin as he pushes up his sleeve. The tip of the wand, white hot.
Scorpius trembles, trying to pull away. His father places a firm hand on the nape of his neck, like his mother does when he’s crying.
‘Don’t wince, learn to be a man,’ words of advice, he’ll carry with him. He stands to attention, heels together. Yes sir. These are the things his father taught.
The pain is blinding, deep and slow, abrasive against the solid length of his bone. One, then two, three. He doesn’t wince even as his toes curl against the stiff leather of his boots.
His father bandages him up silently, wrapping the white gauze tighter and tighter until his arm is numb. When he’s done, he ruffles his son’s hair.
‘I’ll expect better from you next time,’
He lies in bed listening to the rain against the window pain later that night. He holds up his hand to the cool glass, lets the stinging be soothed. His mother comes and sits at his feet, tucks the duvet closer around him, runs a hand through his hair.
‘He’s a good man, you know,’ a sigh ‘he does the best he can’
He snuffles, curl deeper into his bed, further from her.
‘You shouldn’t test him so much, he’s told you not to listen at the door before, you’re old enough to know that now, this moving, it’s been hard on him. His friends, his family they aren’t close anymore, he’s hurting. But we’re home again now, you’ll see, things will get better,’
They do get better, the men with the steel tipped army boots and the black velvet cloaks come around less often. His father steps out of his study once in a while, sometimes he even plays catch with him, throwing the battered old Quaffle high, smiling when Scorpius catches it on the other side of the garden.
It was a sunny day, he’ll remember.
Listless, he wanders around the house, his mother’s out, her broomstick missing from the shed. He hears hushed voices in his father’s study. He sits on the bottom step of the winding staircase and listens in between the beats of the bounces of his old India rubber ball. He doesn’t have to strain, the voice that speaks most often is loud. Carrow he hears, Carrow, Yaxley, Lestrange, it’s his voice, the man with the wolfish grin and body like a mountain, raspy, gravelly, he shivers. Then his father’s voice, even, all of them? he asks, the silent assent, scraping of chairs, he stands up quickly, feet together in attention.
The door opens; his father is the first one out, the scarred man in out next, head bending to fit through the doorway.
‘Scorpius,’ he says, extending a hand and tracing the curve of the jaw with a single yellow nail ‘how good to see you’ a flash of pink tongue darts out of his mouth, it takes all of Scorpius’ will to not flinch.
‘That’s enough Greyback,’ the wolf man pulls away from him at the touch of his father’s hand. Scorpius avoids his father’s eyes. ‘You should go,’ his father’s voice is quieter than usual, more commanding. Greyback nods, walks down the hallway with his father, pauses at the doorway.
Scorpius watches the two of them, Greyback like a mountain bending towards his father who must be a third of his companion size but still carries an authority that crackles at the edges.
‘Think about it,’ says Greyback, bending close, whiskers almost grazing his father’s ear. That’s all he hears, captivated by the sunshine pouring through the stained glass window above the curve of the staircase. His father doesn’t reply, simply opens the door.
He waits for punishment silently; he knows the penalty for eavesdropping. Rolls up his sleeves, braces himself when his father walks by. No punishment comes; no wand digs into his forearm to split open old scars, his father walks right into his study. Slams the door.
The front door is still ajar; a sliver of sunshine forcing it’s way into the dark hallway. It calls to him, light dancing making his skin itch for the feel of sun on his arms, his shoulder. There’s no sound from the study, except that of rustling paper, his father’s quill scratching and scratching.
Only a minute, he tells himself, only a minute, just out in the garden. That’s okay, it’s alright. He opens the door, feels the sun on the bridge of his nose, warming. He can almost feel himself tan, except he never does, not even when they lived almost on the Equator, he just burned, red, blistering, but loved it, danced out on the sun baked ground and wouldn’t come inside even his mother called him her little lobster and pulled at his wrist from the shade of the patio awning.
He looks back at the house, glass panes from his window wink at him. The house is on a hill, bigger than it looks from the outside, a stony footpath runs from the back door of the garden, joining like a tributary to the cliff path that winds down to the beach below, there’s a sheer drop opposite the front door, tufts of yellowing grass cling to the sandy cliff. The cliff face is almost eaten away, only the charms that surround the house keep it from crashing into the sea. There used to be stone steps, now eroded by the sand that falls even in a light breeze. He doesn’t look for long, vertigo swirling his stomach and making his head spin, he’s glad of the white painted picket fence even if knows he won’t fall
He forces his eyes to look at the horizon instead, most days it’s grey out here, grey sea seeping into grey sky, the horizon indistinguishable except for the hump of dark mass he knows to be the island with the lighthouse. It isn’t grey today. The cobalt sea makes a clean cut across the sky, drawn as if by the pencils his mother sharpens to a fine point and then drags across a page against a ruler when she teaches geometry. The island looks green almost, a real place, rather than a smudge in the landscape, he watches the waves break against the rocks on the curve of the bay and imagines the force on his skin, cool water, foamy surf, he shakes himself impatiently from the fantasy.
He isn’t allowed to the beach alone, his mother never agrees to accompany him, sometimes when the weather is clear she sits in a deck chair by the fence in the garden and watches him play on the beach. She isn’t here now, but the crash of the waves is stronger here, a thrum through his body, a call that reverberates through him. Past the garden fence, the charms don’t work. His father forbids him and his mother agrees ‘too dangerous’ she says, ruffling his hair, kissing him, what would I do if something happened to you? What would I do? He ignores the wetness that dampens his hair, the protest of his ribs as her arms tighten around him.
The charm is electric on his arms as he runs past it, buzzing with anticipation.
He remembers the strangest things about that day, little pieces seared into his brain, onto the back of his eyelids, images that play when he closes his eyes. He slips down the cliff path, the edge of his shorts catch a nettle and as he runs past it snags on the cheap denim and tears a hole. Years later he’ll think about those shorts and feel a pang of regret, they were brand new.
It doesn’t bother him then though, he runs into the sea, submerges himself, swims like a fish. He counts elephants under the water, coming up , propelling himself out of the sea with one hand on the wooden posts that anchor the coast. He plays the game in the bathtub sometimes, squeezing his eyes shut and counting and counting, but it isn’t the same, the absence of cool porcelain knocking on the back of his head, the absence of safety sends a thrill down his spine.
He doesn’t see his mother return, a long speck in the horizon growing into a woman on a broomstick over the house, nor does he hear her calls, see her switching on every light, looking everywhere. In fact he can’t time has even passed until he surfaces and sees the pads of his fingers are puckered and wrinkled.
He barely feels the sting.
****
When he’s older, he shakes his head when people ask, tells them he was only nine, he doesn’t remember, they smile in relief ‘thank Merlin’ they say ‘it must’ve been terrible’. It was. He tries to not think about it when it’s brought up, but sooner or later the memory worms its way into his mind until the walls of the dank cellar are constructed around him and that smell he can’t quite place, stronger than rotting fish fills his nostrils. Fear he’ll realise later, it must’ve smelled of fear.
When he wakes, the world jolts in front of him, in and out of focus, the sounds are oddly loud and muffled . A sharp pain digs through his skull, boring into the nape of his neck. Impatiently, he tries to rub it, but rope twists around his still soft skin and sets his wrists on fire. His mouth feels full and swollen, oddly woolly, a gag he realises, his favourite T-shirt. For years afterwards he won’t be able to look at anything with stripes without vomiting.
He struggles to place himself, inside he thinks, inside, in a basement. He sees stone walls slick with damp and blue in the dark, a pair of yellow eyes blinking through a cage in the corner. There’s someone else too, he can see only her silhouette at first. She’s tall, skinny and even at that age he can tell she carries herself differently from other people, like a soldier, like the men who silently enter his father’s study and talk in hushed, urgent voices.
Sharp pricks twinge at the corner of his eyes, irrational. He wonders what his father would say, crying at so little. Weak, a disgrace, he doesn’t need to wonder, he’s heard it enough. It’s the smell that gets to him the most, sharp, sickly sweet almost, a blend of swimming pools too chlorinated and something stronger, and underneath it all a musty rotting smell, it that that makes his eyes water, it’s the smell.
Do something his father’s voice tells him, do something, don’t just sit there, you worthless little faggot He struggles against the restrains, chafing his wrists and ankles, silent, just as his father taught him.
‘It’s charmed,’ says a woman’s voice from the shadows ‘you won’t wriggle out,’ she’s young, barely older than the girl at the village shop who sells hard candy and bubblegum, things he isn’t allowed to buy.
He doesn’t stop struggling, pretend to be a Muggle, his father drilled into him, sitting in the living room, a couple of years ago when the Mulciber boy went missing, found dead later, he remembers. If you ever find yourself in trouble, pretend to be a Muggle, never tell a stranger your father is Draco Malfoy.
‘Oh, we’re playing that game,’ she says, as if she’s read his mind. She laughs, doesn’t sound like the shop girl anymore, more like Greyback, a short barking sound that makes his hairs stand on end. She turns around slowly, spinning on her heel. Still hidden in shadow, she walks towards him, he was right, she walks with the purpose of a soldier, every sway of her hips deliberate. She spins her wand in one hand she walks. Effortless.
He almost tips over his chair in a hurry to back away when she finally steps into the light. She can’t be more than twenty five but her eyes are impossibly old, icy eyes and weathered lines at the edges of his lips that have forgotten how to smile. There’s a scar curving from the hollow of her breastbone across her chest, disappearing into her tank top. It’s not the only one, puckered red skin crisscross her face, the corners of her lips, eyes, the hollows of her cheek bones.
She kneels in front of him and grips his head in one hand, curling her long gun hardened fingers around his neck. Bringing her face close to his, she rests her forehead against his, just as his mother does before kissing him goodnight.
‘I’ve waited so long for this, Scorpius,’ she says, rubbing his cheek fondly with the pad of her thumb ‘after all this time, and now you’re her and it doesn’t seem real,’
She gets up suddenly, tipping him back with the force of her released grip.
Scorpius gulps, she’s clearly insane. ‘I’m not who you think you I am’ he tries to say through the cloth, his words come out choked and muffled, impatiently she unties his gag and tosses it on the floor.
‘What?’
‘I’m not who you think I am,’ he says through stale gulps of air. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ rehearsed lines slip easily off his tongue, she laughs again.
‘Relax kid, I know exactly who you are, I know you want to spew out the same crap your father taught you but I know that you aren’t Tom Granger, a boy from town, you know all about magic, you know all about Draco Malfoy, your father, see because I know you, I’ve done my homework,’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says again ‘I don’t know who these people are and my name isn’t Tom, it’s Sam, Sam Greengras-‘
‘SHUT UP!’ she screams, jabs her wand into his throat ‘don’t play with me boy, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, WHO ALL OF YOU ARE!’
‘Please’ he says, his fear at least isn’t faked ‘please, I don’t know what you want, but let me go,’
She paces furiously in front of him, covering her eyes frantically, rubbing her temple with her knuckles.
‘I’ll tell you want I want,’ her voice cracks, her composure forgotten. ‘I want justice! I want justice for what your darling daddy did to me!’ she lifts up the edge of her top, exposing her ribs, mottled and dark with bruising.
Underneath it all are more scars, rough lines forming a skull with a tongue that looks like tangled snake. The same mark his father taught him to draw on old exercise books, the mark that’s tattooed on his father’s arm.
She lets the edge of her shirt drop before he can comment and pulls out an old Muggle picture from her back pocket. It’s creased, almost falling part but he can still see what it is.
A man, clearly dead, thankfully dead, is nailed to a cross, his eyes staring and his ribs broken from his spine so they spread out like wings on either side of him. The mark is carved into his chest.
Scorpius feels the vomit rise up in his throat.
‘See that,’ she says pushing it closer and closer to his face so every tiny detail is visible, ‘see this? This is what they did to my father, they sent this picture in the post! Your father did this to mine!’
Scorpius shuffles backwards, tipping precariously on his chair, just eager to get away. She advances too until he is plastered against a damp wall.
‘I just want revenge,’ she says ‘that’s all, I want what’s fair,’
‘He’s a good man,’ he says echoing his mother ‘he is a good man, he didn’t kill anybody, you’ve got the wrong people’
She grabs his arm, pushes up the sleeve to reveal crisscrossed scars identical to hers.
‘How old are Scorpius? Nine? Ten?’
His silence tells her everything.
‘You look like a smart kid, so you tell me is this the work of a good man, Scorpius? Is this the work of a good father?’
He gulps, he’s wondered this himself some nights, cradling his arm. He shakes his head ‘he’s just stressed, he doesn’t mean it, he loves me, I just test him sometimes, he loses his temper, it’s my fault really,’
There are tears in her eyes, tricks of the light. She crouches down and cups his cheeks in her hands ‘it’s not your fault, Scorpius, it’s his. You don’t have to live this way,’
There is no reply.
She pushes up her sleeve of her left hand, he can see six lines of ink, all dates written in Roman numerals starting from her wrist on the inside of her arm.
‘Alecto Carrow,’ she says pointing to the date first on the column ‘his brother Amycus, Rodolphus Letstrange, Rabastan Lestrange, Isolde Yaxley’ the names are familiar, heard through oak panelled doors, what now seems an age ago. ‘Seven is a magical number you know, I’m just looking for justice’
He looks at her closely, she doesn’t have cold eyes, not like his father when he gets angry, up close, they’re raw, deep blue raw pain, like the sea, warm, not impenetrable, not solid, forgiving.
‘Can you help my mother?’ he asks ,voice small, hates himself, but all he sees is his mother on her knees picking up glass shards, white gauze around her head. I’m so clumsy these days.
His captor smiles, ‘of course,’ she says ‘of course, I can help your mother,’
He nods, that’s all he wants, for his mother to not be so clumsy any more.
He drifts in and out sleep on that chair, finally waking when she shakes him.
‘Rise and shine,’ she says with a laugh but her brows are furrowed, hands agitated. ‘Your father’s coming, I want to help you and your mother but I need you trust me, okay?’
He nods again and she smiles.
‘Good, when your father comes, he’ll untie you and I’ll be hiding right over there’ she points to a section of the wall ‘it’s a trap door, I need you tell your father that I’m hiding in that chest’ she points to a large wooden chest on the other side of the cellar, ‘okay?’
‘Okay,’ he says voice quiet ‘are you going to kill my father?’
‘No’ she says smiling ‘I’m not a killer, Scorpius, I’m just going to make sure that your father is sent away, to prison, where he can’t hurt you or your mother, do you understand?’
He inclines his head ‘yes’
There are heavy footfalls above, floorboards creaking.
‘Remember what I said, okay?’ she whispers ‘it’ll all be okay,’
The footfalls are louder now, the door on top of the cellar stairs creaks open. Before he has a chance to speak, she’s gone.
It’ll be okay he tells himself it’ll be okay.
His father unties him one flick of his wand, crouching down he leans into his son.
‘Where is he? He asks, voice rough ‘where’d he go?’
Scorpius remembers what she told him tell him, he looks at the chest, hesitating.
His father’s wand jabs into the hollow of his neck sharper than hers. ‘I’m your father, boy, tell me where he is!’
‘She’s there,’ he says, raising his hand and pointing, to the blank section of the wall.
‘Go upstairs,’
Scorpius pauses at the foot of the cellar stairs. ‘You won’t hurt her, will you, Dad?’ Draco regards him with a flat stare for a moment then turns away.
‘Upstairs. Now’ he knows he can’t delay this time, he runs upstairs.
He gets his punishment for wandering away that night.
His father brushes his wand tip across his clavicle, along his spine. ‘Never put this family is such danger again, do you hear me?’ he whispers in his son’s ear.
He is a good man, he tells himself, he’s a good man, I just test him too much, it’s my fault. He stands to attention, heels together, he doesn’t wince.
He isn’t allowed out again without his mother. He isn’t even allowed out of his room for a year. He grows fond of painting then, paints everyday, on paper that his mother supplies under the door, on the walls when he runs out, paintings of every thing he can see outside of his window, in every possible light.
The scars on his arms, his chest, his back, heal over, puckered skin becomes faint on his torso, but the scars in his memories are less easily avoided. For months he dreams of the man in the photograph, eyes staring, his ribs splayed wide like wings. And when it’s not him, it’s his daughter, the girl with eyes like the sea.
I’ll save you and your mother she’d said and he’d believed her but his father was his father, he had to listen to him. He’s good man he tells himself, he didn’t hurt her, he’s a good man.
The night that his mother comes to his room, arm in a sling, lip still slightly bleeding, he thinks about that girl.
‘What happened, ma?’ he asks
She smiles, even though her lips must ache ‘I fell off my broomstick, would you believe it? I actually fell off my broomstick!’
No, he thinks, he wouldn’t believe it, not anymore.
His mother wants to frame one of his paintings, says they’re amazing, she carefully chooses one of a butterfly, the only one without the sea.
She’s so excited when it comes back from the framer’s, so proud, he has to smile with her.
It comes back in a small iron frame, black, wrapped in newspaper.
‘Can I have it, the newspaper I mean?’ he asks, innocently enough, there isn’t much to do in his room anymore, almost ten months since the basement, he’s read every book, painted every object, on every possible surface.
‘Sure,’ his mother replies and hands over the paper, already a months old, ‘I don’t imagine, you’ll get much entertainment though, it’s just boring politics, d’you want me to get you a comic or something from the village?’
He used to say yes before but he’s noticed recently that his mother has her accidents every time he says yes to something she offers. ‘No, this is fine’ he replies ‘it’s perfect,’
His mother smiles, ruffles his hair. ‘Okay, if you’re sure,’
He reads it cross legged on his bed, first the story of the boy who got splinched four different ways crossing the Atlantic, then the advice column, poring over Milicent Brennan’s love life, Dr. Verity’s reply.
He almost throws it away, each story pursued, but the edge of a picture catches his eye. It’s torn through the middle, not moving, black and white but recognises the eyes, the crisscross hatching on her cheekbones.
Astraea Pepper reads the caption, a renowned Mark Hunter, responsible for putting Death Eaters - Amycus and Alecto Carrow, Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange and Isolde Yaxley back behind bars in Azkaban.
The names are painfully familiar, the eyes even more so. The story accompanying the picture is mostly gone, but he brings the paper closer any way.
-pper was found in some caves near the beachfront it reads her body mangled , her ribs were torn from her spine and splayed like wings, the same position her father, Octavius Pepper was found in several years ago. There appear to be irregular pattern on the bones, that forensic anthropologists claim are teeth marks, on present evidence Aurors implicate notorious werewolf Greyback and claim that as yet undisclosed evidence points to other known Death Eaters still living in freedom today. Mr. Weasl-
Scorpius fights the bile quickly rising up in his throat; he has to get out from this house, from his father, this prison they’ve been living in.
The door of his room is unlocked still and he runs out, not caring if he’s too loud, if his father will hear.
The night air is stinging, bitingly cold, he runs.
Gravel slip through into his shoes, his arms catch on nettles leaving long white scratches along his arms, still he runs.
It’s dark, foggy and all he sees is those blue eyes, eyes like the sea. I want to help you, you and your mother.
Trust me.
Is this the work of a good man? A good father?
He used to think so, and now he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.
He stops running on the edge of the sea.
But there’s no reason to stop.
It’ll calm me he thinks, it’ll calm me, it’ll make me trust again, make me trust that he’s a good man, he wouldn’t do something like this.
He steps forwards, follows the drop of the ground until he’s submerged. He counts elephants under the surface, lets the brine water wash his confusion away.
He isn’t near the anchors this time though and his arms are lead. Who ever said that drowning was peaceful, like sleeping, was wrong.
Brine water forces it self into his nose, his mouth, raw and salty against the back of his throat, his tongue. He squeezes his eyes shut but water still pours in stinging and all he can see are those infernal eyes, eyes like the sea, forcing itself on him, crushing him.
I’ll save you, you and your mother.
There is no fade to black for him, only blue.
Strong arms pull him out, Peggy he realises through half closed eyes, a lungful of water, Peggy.
He sees his father for the first time in almost a year that night. He comes with a bottle of firewhiskey in one hand.
‘What did you do to her?’ he asks, brave, at last.
His father smiles, turning up the right corner of his lips, not really a smile ‘I don’t what you mean, Scorpius, but just remember if anything did happen to her, it was your doing, you pointed out the wall, thanks to you, I’m not in prison, you really are your father’s son, kiddo, I don’t give nearly enough credit,’ his father reaches forward to ruffle his hair.
He remembers a time when he would’ve done anything for his father to call him kiddo and ruffle his hair, tell him that he was his father’s son, now small praise washes over him, doesn’t seem worth the price.
***
He hears them arguing later that night, his mother’s voice raised for the first time he can remember.
‘What happened to you, Draco?
‘Stop shouting, Astoria!’ his father’s voice, cold, hissing, broken glass.
‘Our son almost DIED tonight!’
‘He walked into the sea, what was I going to do?’
‘you’re not the boy I fell in love with,’
A snort ‘ I most definitely am not. He was weak and pitiful, didn’t have the balls to step up for his family, I’m a man now, a real Malfoy’
‘You’re a fucking monster’
Smashed glass. A crack. There will be gauze on her head tomorrow, as well as the sling. She’s so clumsy these days.