Murder to Malfoy - D.MALFOY

[4]

Daily walks around the grounds of their manor had been a normality for Ivy and her father ever since she could remember and maybe even before then. She found it to be a bonding exercise r and loved every second of it all, especially the days where rain would randomly take over the sky and they would run into the house with laughter echoing around them. The walks had stopped due to Ivy's mourning period of her brother, the time where she spent all of her time in her room without so much as contact from anyone else but Meline - when she would bring her food which would mostly go uneaten.

"Do I have to go?" Ivy grumbled, arm linked with her fathers as they climbed the outside steps to the manor.

He shrugged, "You should get used to being back in society before school, so it's not so much of a shock."

She nodded, feeling somewhat convinced and knowing that it would be a great disappointment to both of her parents if she didn't go - that was just something she could see in his eyes at the very mention of her not going. "That's a good enough point. Try and steer Maman from making me dance with 'eligible bachelors?" she chuckled softly, remembering the tortuous events that Fin had to save her from last time. They became a very good and rather scary buffer.

"If that is what you wish, I shall do my best. Though your mother is rather stubborn in that sort of predicament," he chuckled, the first time she had heard such a sound since her brother's death.

"Sadly so," she sighed, smiling softly at the now awfully noticeable change in her father. He seemed happier, more content yet the longing would always be there. For all of them. But maybe, just maybe they were all learning how to live with it.

-

At just gone midday, Ivy somehow managed to find herself trying on multiple costumes that he mother had suggested even though she had already bought a dress out with Fin. After she finally gave up, well partly, Ivy retired back to her room to dress with some of her mother's jewellery and lipstick in hand. She, not so gracefully as she really did not have the energy for such events that evening, pulled on her dress. She had bought it from a costume store, picking out the nicest outfit there that she later had Meline modify with some of the other elves. She chose to be Juliet, picking a dress that mirrored medieval-style put had a natural modernness to it. It was tight to her chest, stopping just below where the bra would sit before it flowed out like a usual dress of that time would -minus the hoop skirt. It had thick straps on the top of her shoulders and then winding fabric that tumbled down her arm stopping at the cuff where a beaded bracelet lay. And it was rather riské - as her mother would put it - showing a little more than Juliet would have back when the play was set. It was a deep blue, almost black with silver embellishments in various places. She had liked the green one but felt it a little cliche, given where she would be spending the evening - in cahoots with the so-called 'Slytherin Prince'.

What utter bullshit that was.

She, Blaise and her parents travelled in their car with a driver. The car had been enchanted to have many more seats than they would actually ever need and Ivy always sat in one of the back two seats - the one that her brother used to sit in front of always. Blaise sat by her side, dressed as a rather attractive looking pirate with a hat and one of Luna's greener crystals hanging around his neck as a makeshift talisman. She looped her arm around his as soon as they stepped out of the car, knowing what her mother was likely to be plotting and wanting to have him there to stop it.

The ball, like always, was the same stuffy affair with near a hundred people all dressed in various extravagant outfits and walking around like they owned the world. Drinks were clasped in nearly everyone's hands - that was something she didn't like about these affairs, the open bar that didn't really mind sixteen-year-old drinkers.