Chapter 60

"Islington Town Hall does civil weddings," said Dee.

Dee and Draco were back at Whittington Hospital, staring at a computer screen in a nurse's area. Strictly speaking, Dee had no right to be there, but she'd volunteered at the hospital long enough to be given a bit of leeway by the staff. Besides, it was the graveyard shift, and the two teens were unlikely to be noticed any time soon.

"Your hands are still shaking," observed Draco.

"And you wonder why? After how you brought us here? You've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do."

"True, and I will explain everything, just as soon as your name is "Malfoy."

"Damn. They're booked up," said Dee, closing the applicable page on the web site for booking a wedding. "But now that I think of it, there is a third method to change my surname. Adoption's out, you've already explained. And it might be hard to get a wedding date on short notice. But maybe I could file paperwork to get my name legally changed to 'Malfoy'. Then you could tell me everything."

"No good," said Draco. "You have to be related to me. Merely having the same surname won't be enough to - " Draco's explanation was cut short by the powerful Malfoy family magic preventing him from disclosing family secrets. He struggled, and then continued.

"- to let me tell you what you want to know. Are you having second thoughts?"

"Are you kidding? Somehow you transported me from god only knows where back to the hospital, and you're damn right I want to know how you did it. You violated the fundamental laws of physics, and if you think I'm going to just let that pass, you can forget it. I'd say a "I do" a thousand times if that was the price of finding what who you are, or what you are."

"What time does this town hall place open?"

"Nine, but they don't do weddings right when they open, and they're booked up, anyways."

"Let's get some sleep. We'll go there tomorrow morning, and I'm sure they'll be able to squeeze us in."

"But where will I go? I can't go back to my mother's: that's the first place the police will look for me, if they've identified me."

"Stay here. I won't be gone long, and when I return, we'll be married. After that, I can tell you everything."

"And where will we go then? Where can we stay?"

Draco smiled.

"Hogwarts."

The magical obstacles protecting the Malfoy estate were not intended to keep out family members, and Draco passed through these as if they did not exist. His entrance onto his family's property went unnoticed, other than by one of his father's white peacocks sitting on a hedge bordering the lane.

"Silencio."

The albino bird's cry of alarm died in its throat.

"I always hated those damn things," whispered Draco to himself, proceeding along the path, staying close to the hedges and in almost complete darkness. The sky was heavily overcast and little moonlight penetrated. Draco did not follow the path all the way to the front door; a more careful entry to the home was called for. He stepped onto a side path and began to follow its long, winding route towards the back of the house, past the gardens (dormant now but a verdant splendor each spring and his mother's pride), past the water fountains, now silent but which burbled cheerfully in the summer, and the numerous garden gnomes, paralyzed by a Petrificus curse, decorated and then left to stand forever as silent sentinels of the estate.

Draco reached the back of the house, most of which was taken up by the Quidditch pitch. Before starting at Hogwarts, Draco had spent many a happy hour on the family estate, playing past sunset until the last rays of twilight were gone. Beyond the pitch was another path through the forest which, if he followed it, would take him to the very edge of the estate and the small cottage where he and Dee had hidden a few days earlier. On that occasion, he had been able to smuggle the badly stunned Dee onto the estate only because she was unconscious, magical barriers being no proof against a being incapable (however temporarily) of thought.

Draco approached a window at the east wing of the home, one which looked out onto one of the Quidditch goal posts: the window to his bedroom. Draco opened the window silently and effortlessly, without making use of his wand. Years earlier Draco had made sure of his ability to exit and enter the house quietly and without detection, and his parents never knew about his late night antics with his friends. Draco lowered himself carefully to the floor of his bedroom and closed the window behind him.

"Lumos."

Draco noted with satisfaction that his bedroom was untouched, his weak wand light revealing that his room was in exactly the same state as when he left it the previous September. His extensive potion making apparatus was untouched. His book cases were full, including the shelf of texts filled with his own copious annotations. A poster of Lasrina Brodie, keeper for the Kenmare Kestrals, stared down at him from a wall. The poster was a gift from Goyle. Seeing Draco, the poster's subject began to disrobe.

"None of that," said Draco, "I'm a married man now." His petrificus curse forever froze Lasrina, never to take her clothes off again.

Draco had no worry that a creak of a floor board would betray his presence; the floors of the ancient manor were of stone. As a precaution Draco silenced the hinges and knob of his door with a charm, and only then did he gently sway the door open. He stood with his back against the wall, listening intently. He took his pulse and counted, and only when the number reached six hundred without his having detected any sound did he step into the hallway, his wand out. There was no chance of an encounter with a house-elf; the enslaved creatures moved about the manor by apparition, or in the narrow passages that ran parallel to and behind the walls. He moved softly out of his room, and into a hall not very different from those at Hogwarts.

Draco crept along the wall past the spare bedrooms used for guests, the exercise room, the dueling room, and his parent's bedroom where his mother at that very instant lay awake, frantic with worry over her missing son, and to the main staircase. Then up the staircase and to his right, Draco found what he expected: the door to his father's study, his father's presence in the room betrayed by the glow of fire and candlelight coming from under the door.

Lucius Malfoy massaged his hand, trying to ease the writer's cramp. Unlike his son, he had never learned to use the wand with his left hand, and so had no magical means of reducing the inevitable strain that followed hours and hours of writing. He had always been a hard worker — noblesse oblige and all that — but of late he had additional reasons to immerse himself in the Dark Lord's service. For one thing, keeping himself busy was a way of holding at bay the terror of his missing son. Draco was the only surviving Malfoy, the only person through whom the ancient family name could be passed on. The family titles, the estate, the extensive family interests; all these would one day be Draco's. But if Draco were gone? The wealth accumulated over more than two millennia would be passed on to the next male in line, a distant cousin in a deservedly obscure branch of the family who had disgraced himself by being sorted into Hufflepuff. Lucius gripped his quill tightly and commenced once more to write.

There was another reason for Lucius to be particularly diligent in the Dark Lord's service. If Voldemort detected any flagging of spirit, any diminution in his minion's enthusiasm, he-who-must-not-be-named might think that it was Lucius himself who was behind the boy's disappearance, and that Draco had been hidden by the Malfoy family as a prelude to a betrayal of the Dark Lord. It was commonplace for wizarding families to take precautions with vital family members before embarking on a risky course of action.

The fire was getting low, and Lucius levitated a large log from next to the hearth and deposited it into the flames. Above the fireplace the face of his late father Abraxas stared out at him from his portrait, painted when Lucius' father was about the same age as was Lucius now. The artist had captured to the full the patrician haughtiness of the subject. Over the last few years, the portrait seemed to have acquired other attributes as well, and Abraxas stared out at Lucius almost with an attitude of reproach, as if the wounds the son had inflicted on the father in the last decades of his life had animated the portrait with a spirit of malevolence.

It had not been from choice that Lucius had unlawfully deposed his father and banished him to live in the cottage of the edge of the Malfoy estate. But the Dark Lord needed the full resources of the Malfoy clan behind him, and Lucius' father had no interest in becoming a Death Eater. As an alternative to allowing his father to be executed, Lucius had taken the matter into his own hands and, with his wife's help, had cursed his father so that the man exhibited all the signs of dementia. The healers suspected nothing, and everyone thought that Lucius was being dutiful by keeping his witless father close to home, rather than sending him to Saint Mungo's to be cared for by strangers. And so Abraxas had lived out the remaining years of his life, for the most part confunded, the rare episodes of lucidity lasting long enough only for him to become aware of his desperate situation before his son or daughter-in-law confunded him once more. Abraxas was grateful when the Dragon pox carried him off.

Lucius' mistreatment of his father caused him another worry, that his son was not dead, but alive and in league with Voldemort. Perhaps Voldemort saw in Draco a more eager, useful follower than he did in Lucius. Perhaps Lucius was to suffer the fate he had inflicted on his own father. It was not out of the question that Narcissa would help Draco, just as she had helped Lucius when it was time to get rid of his own father.

Lucius remembered the great sense of relief he had felt fifteen years earlier, when he had first heard the news that Voldemort's power was broken and the evil wizard was gone and probably dead. To be a follower of Voldemort was almost as dangerous as to be a foe, and many a time Lucius had wished that he could have maintained an easy neutrality in the battle between Voldemort and the rest of the wizarding world. But the first step, once taken, was irrevocable, and Lucius had been fully committed. With the return of Voldemort, the nightmare had begun once more.

Lucius put his quill to paper and was soon immersed in yet another letter, responding to a report from an agent sent to pick up the pieces of a Voldemort spy network, blown as a result of some fool's loose tongue. Lucius did not hear the door to his study open. Perhaps it was the way the flames in the fireplace fluttered with the change in air currents that alerted him to the presence of another.

"Draco!"

Lucius' love for his son made him leap up from his desk; his years of training and experience made him reach for his wand as he did so. But his son too had been trained, and far too well. In a trice Lucius found himself seated once more and paralyzed by the force of his son's wand work.

"Not exactly a nice way to welcome a prodigal son, reaching for your wand like that," observed Draco. "Perhaps mother can do better."

Lucius wondered what Draco could have done to deserve the appellation 'prodigal' but was interrupted when the boy raised his wand, and Lucius felt his jaws pried open, and his voice forced to summon the house-elf on night duty. There was a short, powerful pop. Blink appeared in front of the fireplace, turned to Lucius and bowed.

"You summoned me, master?"

Once more Lucius felt the odd sensation of his voice being controlled by another, and heard himself say,

"Fetch Narcissa this instant. It is urgent."

The house elf disappeared, and a few minutes later, there was a muted pop outside the door to the study. A short knock, and then Narcissa stepped into the room. A few steps more, and then Draco came out from behind the door where he had concealed himself. In an instant Narcissa was as helpless her husband, paralyzed by unfilial magic.

"I don't have all that much time, and I'll try to make this as brief as I can," began Draco, "but I owe you an explanation and it's high time you heard it. But first, some domestic business to attend to."

Draco waved his wand again, and Lucius against his will was compelled to summon the entire staff of house-elves. Six small figures soon joined the Malfoy family in the study.

"On this occasion, my son acts with my authority," said Lucius. This was all Draco could force the man to say and do without having to resort to the Imperius Curse. It was enough.

"Thanks, Dad," said Draco, turning to the elves. "I've good news for you all. From this instant, you are all free, everyone of you. If you like, you can remain in the service of the Malfoy clan, but only on the condition that you be paid. If you would prefer other service, I'm sure you will find a place at Hogwarts with Dobby." After speaking these words, Draco gave each elf an article of clothing, this being the only magical means of freeing them. Draco's socks each freed an elf. Another elf received the gift of a handkerchief, and with it, the freedom for which she had yearned for over sixty years. Narcissa's slippers liberated another pair, the belt to Lucius' robe completing the evening's manumission.

There were many house-elves who would be inconsolable at being summarily dismissed from a secure position as a loyal retainer to an ancient wizarding family. But no such elf existed at the Malfoy manor, a house of horrors for any servant, and no sooner had the elves been given their freedom than they disappeared, never to be seen again.

"Now that that's dealt with, time for more pressing matters."

A few more waves of Draco's wand, and his parents were no longer paralyzed, instead restrained by a powerful binding curse.

"You're worse than Potter! He lost me only one house-elf; you just turned away six more!" Lucius was beside himself, for house-elves were, for all practical purposes, irreplaceable. Lucius' rage was so great he temporarily lost the power of speech as totally as if he'd been subjected to the silencio curse.

"Improvident child! Is this how you reward us? By squandering your inheritance before you've even acquired it?" Narcissa could not imagine what life was going to be like without house-elves to attend to everything. She would actually have to hire servants, and perhaps even pay them! And what could she do if a servant murmured, or gave short answers? With elves, she could order one to use the whip on another. But with human servants, Narcissa could do naught to discipline them other than dismissal.

"I'm sure the elves will all find good homes. Let's move on to more important matters. I'm about to give you some news. While it's possible that what I'm about to tell you will make you happy, it is also possible that it may upset you greatly. The chain of events starts not with me, but with you, and the fact that neither of you was at King's Cross station to meet me when I came home for the Christmas Holiday."