Stronger Than Silver

Don't Touch Me, Please, Father. I'm Not Feeling Well.

Trigger Warning: Bulimia, Purging, Talk of Body/Weight, Emotional Abuse, Involuntary Body Check, Mention of Self-Harm, Cursing

(Author's Note: The touching in this chapter is not supposed to be, in any shape or form, sexual.)

"Yes, Father...?" Lucius regarded his father meekly, clutching at his right wrist behind his back. He attempted to encircle his left hand around his right wrist, straining to touch his middle finger and his thumb together. He had read somewhere that if your fingers could touch each other around the wrist, it meant that you had a normal body. Even better, if they reached past each other, it meant that you were thin. Much to his dismay, he could barely touch his fingers together. 

Abraxas Malfoy towered above his son with a menacing scowl on his face. He resembled an older version of Lucius, bearing the same light blonde hair, the same pale skin, and the same grey-blue eyes. However, he was nearly ten times more gargantuan, with his dark robes encrusted with platinum gold billowing out before him, and ten times more petrifying.  "Lucius..." he drawled, staring down at his fidgeting son. 

Lucius tried not to flinch at his father's icy, apathetic tone. "You tell me that you have disobeyed Sir Augustus's orders once again, have you not?" Abraxas thundered. Sir Augustus was the name of Lucius's private tutor. Before he could enroll his son in Hogwarts at the age of eleven, Abraxas sought proper primary education to prepare him first. There was no way that Abraxas could allow his son to spend five years at a muggle school and mix with the mudbloods, so a pure-blood private tutor was the best option. The previous afternoon, Sir Augustus Lestrange had ordered Lucius to study a quarter of the entire syllabus for physics and some other mathematical-scientific mumbo jumbo. His young brain ached at the thought of encountering another equation, so before he knew it, he had drifted off into a daydream of living in a palace made of candy and sweets of all sorts - chocolate, peppermints, toffee, gummies, licorice, wafers, lozenges, and caramelized apples. The palace was much like the old witch's candy house in Hansel and Gretel but much, much grander.

"Y-Yes... Father... I have..." Lucius stumbled, avoiding his father's cold gaze.

"Well, well," his father started with false humor, a small, phony smirk dancing on his lips. "Pity. Even someone as inept and ridiculous as the Weasley prat has made it so far in the wizarding world at the age of thirteen, and here we have you, a pampered child born into the next closest bloodline to royalty, who can't even read a textbook correctly," snarled Abraxas, his face morphing back into that of wrath.

He's right, Lucius thought. I really can't do anything right.

"Well?" Abraxas demanded.

Lucius drew out a shaky sigh and tried to stand up as straight as he could. "I'm so sorry, Father. I did not mean to disappoint," he apologized, eyes downcast. 

Abraxas gripped the younger Malfoy's chin and jerked it toward him, forcing Lucius to look into his father's merciless eyes. There was not an ounce of sympathy in those silvery blue pools. "You. Will. Look. At. Me. When. You. Speak," Abraxas growled, face so close to his son's that Lucius could smell the pungent mint on his father's breath.

"I-I'm terribly sorry, Father," Lucius tried again, wincing. His father's close presence sent frigid zaps down his spine. Every inch of Abraxas looked as hideous and nauseating as he was intimidating. His pasty skin looked and smelled nasty, his offensive eyes bore straight into his soul, his vulgar mouth shot spit all over his face and into his eyes, and his great blonde beard looked as musty and revolting as ever. Lucius wanted to scream.

"Better be," sneered the older Malfoy. "I have never witnessed as much insolence or stupidity as the amount you have shown, you good-for-nothing child. I sometimes wonder, why can't you be more like the other pure-bloods?"