𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽 | 𝒟.𝑀.

49 | ﴾ Once Upon A Dream ﴿

Five weeks after Madeleine was arrested, Draco Malfoy had started to lose all sensitivity. Defensively, he'd hardened up inside from the agony of each day passing without knowing if she was alive, without knowing the degree of torture she was going through.

After kidnapping Theodore Nott and nearly cutting his throat over the wellhouse hole, he had stopped crying completely. Thankfully, Nott had held true on his Unbreakable Vow. The blasts of fire coming from Madeleine's cell subsided in the papers, leaving Rita Skeeter with no tangible ammunition to rile up terror in the public.

It was a Saturday night, chilly with October doing it's best to begin killing off all of the leaves outside. Piles of debris were beginning to blow up against the Manor's doors and window sills. Somewhere in a contemporary garden plot beyond the orchards, Madeleine's pumpkin patch had overgrown with rotund gourds of all shapes and colours. The more barren the landscape grew, the more insidious the Manor appeared, like a haunted house attraction.

Draco and Narcissa sat in the formal dining hall that was dysfunctionally scaled for the number of people attending, that being two of them out of the thirty or so wing backed chairs. The fire provided very subtle and faint heat in their antiquated abode, and Draco's attitude only added to the chilly atmosphere.

He stared down at his food with wide, abstracted eyes, dragging his thumb along the edge of his steak knife just to feel alive. Narcissa ate solemnly, now having also lost two integral family members to Azkaban, four if one counted her grandchildren.

"You need to eat," she cautioned her son, who remained athletic but was losing his muscle tone from a lack of caloric intake.

He hung his head to the side, "How can I eat when she can't?"

Narcissa raised her eyebrows at him, "They don't starve them, don't be foolish."

He blew air out of his nose rapidly, "Yeah, rubbish no doubt. Dog scraps."

Narcissa closed her eyes with irritation, "Will you layoff with ineffectual morbidities that only serve to paralyze you?"

"No," he shot back.

She drifted scrutiny over her handsome and wicked son, "I found a distressing volume of fresh blood in the wellhouse. Either there was an animalistic brawl in there, or you've been conducting sinister business on the property. We discussed the disuse of this location for any further vulgarities."

Draco narrowed his eyes sternly, "You said it yourself; I am the lord of this estate now. I'll conduct whatever business I feel is conducive to our family's wellbeing."

"Theodore Nott, I assume was the victim," Narcissa said casually, as if they were discussing weekend plans and not someone's affliction. "There has been talk lately of your assaulting attempts to converse with him at the Ministry."

Draco laughed shortly, but not because he found the topic hilarious, "Conversing was never in the program. He fantastically made the error of forgetting that my professional skills are in tracking and hunting down my opposition for interrogation and torture. He got what he deserved, and he won't be alive much longer if I ever see him near my wife again."

Narcissa opened her mouth to object but was interrupted.

Both of their brilliantly blue eyes lifted to inspect a peculiar sound of fluttering against the monstrous double doors to the room. Akin to the rapid movements of a bird flapping it's wings, the sound grew and fell in height as whatever it was attempted to pass through the doors as if the physical massing were not there.

Just as Draco stood with his eyes narrowed and his wand out, Kreacher relieved the animated object's obstruction and the howler letter flew into the room, stopping to hover above the tabletop between the two remaining Malfoys.