The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

Chapter 2: The Fall and the Flight

Two weeks later

It was lucky the house at Grimmauld Place had several storeys and a basement still strewn with Dark artifacts, because if it had been smaller or duller, Draco thought he might have surrendered himself to the Dark Lord out of sheer boredom.

"Draco," said his mother one evening, when he made the mistake of saying this to her. "That is nothing to joke about."

Her eyes—icy blue and slightly feline, as if his own had been saturated with color—flicked nervously to the door. Draco knew she was remembering the manor, which for nearly a year had housed a steady stream of Death Eaters, all monitoring each other's words for hints of weakness or disloyalty.

Draco yawned and sank down in his ancient leather chair. "Please, Mother. You know how hard I worked to get us this exclusive reservation. I'm not going to leave it all to you."

Her expression softened, and her lips pulled briefly in a near smile. She returned to the Evening Prophet.

Draco's mother looked healthier than she had in a year. Her long blonde hair, which had been lank and dull every holiday, was brushed and clean now, and though her eyes still had the red tint of sleeplessness, her movements were less nervous. Her posture had regained the rigid perfection that Draco associated with black pearls and silk robes, the lavish parties of his childhood.

In general, she looked the way Draco felt: as if the previous year had been physically siphoned out of his body, leaving him lighter, able to breathe.

Draco ran his fingers over the chair's cracked, faded arms and experienced a rare moment of contentment. It was mid-July and pleasantly hot, and they'd pushed up the windows of the drawing room to let in a breeze. The Wizarding Wireless in the corner was humming with the Clantham Crickets' Symphony, and his mother was, if not happy, at least safe and comfortable. To top it all off, they'd received word two nights ago that Lucius had been smuggled the Draught of Living Death in Azkaban and was to be freed this weekend.

There was no owl post to the house, but the Prophet and any messages came through the Floo twice a day, ejected unceremoniously onto the kitchen hearth. The most eventful bit of news in the Prophet so far had been their shared obituary, which had run the week after their "deaths." Draco had read the piece out loud in a somber, priestlike tone that had made his mother smile with teeth, which she never did; there was a sharp canine she didn't like.

"Anything worth reading today?" he asked, propping his feet up on an ottoman whose ivory legs were carved out of troll tusks.

"Not particularly. The Ministry is conducting an internal investigation of the Department of Magical Games and Sports. They suspect someone there has been compromised."

"Magical Games and Sports?" Draco snickered. "Of course. All part of the Dark Lord's master plan to take over the International Association of Quidditch."

One corner of his mother's mouth twitched. "They think it's a side door into the Auror Office. Lax security in one department could mean a chain of Imperius Curses, et cetera, et cetera."

"Oh." Draco paused. "And? Has someone been Imperiused?"

His mother arched one thin eyebrow. "I don't think it's appropriate to discuss such things while we're here, Draco." She turned a page pointedly.

Draco kept watching her, amused. His parents always withheld information from him for about twenty seconds. They seemed to regard it as a good exercise in patience.

On cue, his mother sighed and looked over at him. "I didn't hear of any plans for that department. Of course, the Dark Lord will have jettisoned anything I did hear. He'll think I was interrogated thoroughly before my death."