The Malfoy Project

𝟔𝟐 - 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐃𝐚𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐝

✼¹

     The Astronomy Tower is extraordinarily cold tonight. And dark. In the blue silence, the only sounds are the wind, the only movements the cyclone of snow whirling outside.

     It is too cold to be here, but the main castle felt too stifling, too near to everyone else. The tape recorder sits in front of me, large and threatening. On the table next it, a bottle of elf wine I had stolen from the kitchen, and next to that, a neat, bone-white envelope. I reach for the envelope, but pull away at the last second, turning my attention to the recorder.

     I run my fingers over its surface. It is a sturdy thing, made of quality metal and plastic, and assembled to perfection. The knobs are solid between the fingers, and the plates spin as if they have just been oiled.

     It seems like only yesterday when I had lugged it out of Dervish and Banges, Mr. Tuttlehorn waving after me, pleased with the amount of money he'd just made. I'm going to be a journalist, I had thought. It was also what Susan said. How silly and naive I had been!

     From my satchel, I fish out two reels and slowly fit them onto the plates. Then, winding them taut, lower the glass lid shut. I complete the process so smoothly my mind barely registers it. I hit 'play'.

     Lucius' voice fills the room with its droning monotony. It tells a tale of a family, so rotted from within that its branches, thickly gnarled and apparently impenetrable, swarm with maggots and damp underneath; and of two brothers, who had sworn to protect each other. It prophesied of a disaster to come: an argument so terrible it split their bough in half and changed the narrative of the Malfoy lineage forever.

      And as I listen I remember the cold silver eyes boring into mine. They look at you either as if your skin is made of glass, or not at all, as if you do not exist. The large hand, resting on snake eyes, emerald and glinting, gripping it so hard the knuckles turn a pale yellow.

     The voice carries on, explaining how one brother had earned the favour of his family, and the other, excommunicated, was burned off the face of history forever — for history was dictated solely by those who had the power and money to change it —, never to be seen again.

     Two brothers. I had sat before one of them, but where was the other? It was something I don't have to ask — he is where they keep those of unsound mind: a terrible place, white and sterile, where people scream, bound to their beds, and batches of the Drought of Peace are brewed by the dozens.

     It is nothing strange. The most bizarre and insidious things happen behind the closed doors of the rich every day. Family members lost, gained, exchanged back and forth through betrothals and other unspeakable methods. It has been this way since time immemorial, a story repeated to death. People are tired of it. They already know what's going to happen next.

     But the reason why I had taken up this project is because I am not interested in what happens next, but the 'how's and the 'why's. I look at a painting and wish to separate every single brushstroke, to observe the bending of the bristles, each one so purposefully placed at the right time, with the right pressure. How?

     I want to know what propels the artist's arm across the canvas in this manner, a perfect swirling of precision and madness. What little sparks in their brains, what buttons being pushed and levers being pulled, that compelled them to pick cerulean and not cobalt? Why stroke forward and not diagonally? Why?

     I press the stop button and at once the silence floods back in. I replace the reels. This time, the staticky voice of a woman rises into the darkness.