In My Dreams [Draco Malfoy]

chapter one: brothers

INDIGO

By the time Mum and I pulled into the Zabini's drive in Dorset, I was positively famished, my stomach having taken to making whale noises a few miles back. The plan was to have lunch at the house with Blaise and his mother but we couldn't have stopped for food if we had wanted to.

Even in the year of 1994, the English countryside was just as idyllic and rural as it had been a hundred years before. There were service stations but none you could walk into and purchase a bag of crisps or a club sandwich. Forever, it seemed, we saw nothing but picturesque plots of green farmland, sectioned by lines of cobblestone and trees, and rolling hills that spanned out into the distance as far as the eye could see.

The drive was winding and surrounded by nothing but trees, and I watched as Mum expertly maneuvered around sharp curves and potholes. I had begun to think we were on the road to nowhere but she knew where she was going, so confident and sure. From a young age, I'd known to never question her judgment. So, as I felt our car pass through a barrier,—probably due to some protection spell or concealment charm—I was comforted to know her instincts had served us well once again.

Never question Mum's instincts, I reminded myself.

Soon, our thick encasement of trees had tapered off and we were suddenly thirty or so feet away from a baroque manor house, an obnoxious testament to the years of old and new money the Zabini's had managed to compound over the years. The sheer grandeur of it all brought about a queasiness within me. To think that we wouldn't receive any more than the legal amount of my late father's inheritance to avoid a lawsuit, while they lived like royalty. Don't get me wrong, I have no need for, nor do I want, any money that man made, but the stark differences between us and them definitely struck me harder than they ever had before...

Mum stopped the car about ten feet away from the steps and pulled the key out of the ignition. She heaved a sigh and looked to the house, her mind obviously swimming with last-minute doubt and fear. Seeing her like this—so nervous and flustered—triggered a wash of sympathy that fell over me like a cloud burst.

I took her hand. "Mum," I said, "let's go on in. We're already here, aren't we?"

I put forth a small smile, a small attempt at encouraging her and restoring any lost certainty. I had initially thought it was a feudal and pointless attempt at calming her but it must have worked to some degree because she allowed a small smile to form on her lips.

"Alright," she said. "Ready?"

I reckon she was asking herself that more than she was asking me but I still nodded and popped the passenger door open, hoping my quasi-show of undeterred confidence would instigate her own. After all, in the presence of an adversary, one cannot give them the satisfaction of seeing doubt. So, as casual and calm as I could manage, I went to the trunk and grabbed both of our bags. Mum insisted she could carry her own but I struck her down and let her lead the way to the door, which was twice my height alone. When we had climbed the front steps and stopped before the enormous oak entranceway, Mum went quiet again. She was pale, her face almost completely drained of color, and I began to wonder if she would faint or vomit. Her knuckles were white as she squeezed the car keys in her hand, turning it into a makeshift stress ball. I wanted to comfort her, take her hand as I had done in the car and tell her everything would be alright. But my hands were occupied with holding the bags, and I had no choice but to stand there like a useless idiot, waiting for her to collect her nerves.

Soon, she let out one more sigh, then raised her hand to knock. Before her hand could make contact with the door, however, it came swinging open.

It was that woman again. My half-brother's mother. "Oh, you're here!" she exclaimed happily. She put on a show of surprise but I knew she had been waiting. Her denying the fact would be inevitable but the odds of someone opening the door exactly as you go to knock on it were always slim.