Harry Potter 1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **Usual fare: I do not own Harry Potter, neither am I making any money from this story.

**Summary: **ABRAXAS MALFOY/TOM RIDDLE. When Draco finds his grandfather's memoirs he unlocks a past he never knew beginning in the winter of 1941 and the passion between Abraxas Malfoy & another boy. As Draco reads, his family unravels and the dark lord looms on the horizon…

**Author's Note: **This story plans to cover three generations. First, Abraxas Malfoy and his creation of the bond between the Malfoy family and the Dark Lord; next, Lucius, and how he deals with the consequences of his father's actions and, finally, Draco and how his knowledge of his grandfather, his father's commitments and Voldemort converge. It will not quite be chronological, however. Present time is the summer at the beginning of the fifth book, whereas the text for Abraxas is his memoirs, which begin in 1941, are not so much the truth of events as they happened, but how he remembers them, as an older man. There will be intervals of Draco and Lucius, then Abraxas, mostly alternating chapter by chapter. Think of the story not as a straight narrative, but rather as a prism which reflects each Malfoy from different angles. "M" indicates a change of scene. I have written three chapters already so I've got a feel for where this train is headed. (This introductory chapter is short, but fear not, following ones will be longer!) "Paterfamilias" is Latin for "father of the family."

One thing to note: In HBP Draco says that his grandfather "Always spoke very highly of you Slughorn, and said you were the best potion-maker…" However, at that moment Draco was trying to inveigle himself into Slughorn's good-graces, so I have chosen that Abraxas dies before Draco was born, because it fits my take better. I mean, I _could _work it that way, but it would be less poetic. So I'm doing it _deliberately._

**Paterfamilias**

_In which Lucius wonders what to do about the Dark Lord, Draco looks for his father but finds his grandfather, & Abraxas begins his tale._

**M**

It was an appallingly hot summer which marked the Dark Lord's return. The weather seemed as sleepy as the wizarding community was at that moment. Lucius sat on a bench near the rose gardens, under the pleasant shade of a cedar tree. It really was ridiculously warm. His eyes drifted to where Draco was practicing quidditch over the lake, a green and silver blur against the hazy afternoon sky, causing Lucius to smile. _He has no idea what this means… _he thought sadly. Draco had the luxury of growing up in a world free of obligations. Narcissa was a good mother and Lucius considered himself to be a reasonable parent; but the Dark Lord's return changed everything and Lucius knew that the paradise he had spent so many years trying to create was in danger.

The rub was, of course, that Lucius was faithful to the Dark Lord. He would, he knew, do anything asked of him. _But I did not plan for this. _Lucius had taught his son the old ways, the things that mattered, emphasizing the natural superiority of pure blood… but he had been vague when it came to the Dark Lord, vague when it came to Abraxas Malfoy – his own father – and vague about what servitude to Voldemort actually entailed. In short, Lucius had romanticized events, ensuring his son would still look up to his father with respect: as a heroic champion of purity.

How his father would have laughed! _Oh, Lucius, as if the Dark Lord could ever have been vanquished! Even Dumbledore would call you a fool! You have neglected Draco's education, brought him up to lead a charmed life. Just as when Lord Grindelwald was defeated, people said it could never happen again and forgot – you have forgotten, Lucius! _

And it was true, he had forgotten, had slipped into the same false sense of security as the rest of Britain. _I do not know if I can do it again… there is such a difference between then and now, _he thought solemnly. His mark began to burn and he looked back up at his son and did not smile.

**M**

Draco landed gracefully on one of Malfoy Manor's balconies, but spoiled the effect by almost tripping as he got off. _What a boring summer!_ Gregory was in Germany visiting his aunt and uncle and Vincent had been allowed to go with him. Draco had asked, but his father had refused, saying that Draco was _not_ going away at such a critical time. Draco could have understood this, had anything actually happened, but as far as he could tell, the Dark Lord hadn't even called on his father since the final night of the Triwizard Tournament. Besides, what did that have to do with him? It wasn't like _he_ was the one the Dark Lord needed. It was totally unfair that Voldemort's return should, of all things, stop him having fun. _I won't get to see anyone until September, _he moaned to himself. _Shouldn't life with the Dark Lord back be better – not worse? _

Resolving to ask his father again, Draco made his way down the hall to his father's study. He knocked. Unusually, the darkly polished wood simply swung open under the pressure. _Odd, _thought Draco, _father locks it when he's not in. _It was messier than usual too. By the smell coming from the fireplace, someone had just used the floo network. A smile spread itself across Draco's face. He'd often wanted to have a good exploration of his father's study. He checked for the black cloak hanging behind the door. It was gone – his father was definitely out.

He went through the papers on the antique walnut desk, a guilty flush on his cheeks. A few Ministry reports that his father clearly wasn't meant to see, some of which Lucius had made notes on in green ink. Draco moved across the soft carpet to one of the bookshelves, pulling out random volumes. Mostly they were books on wizarding law. Then a black-bound book caught his eye: '_The First & Second Dark Lords of the 20th Century: A Comparison,' _by Abraxas Orion Malfoy. _Grandfather wrote a book? _Draco got it down and had a flip through.

'_This book is dedicated to my son, Lucius, may he prove to be a better man than his father.'_

Draco raised his eyebrows. He'd never known his grandfather – he'd died of Dragon Pox when Draco was only a lump in his mother's stomach. Funny that. He'd caught it too, later, but all Draco had to show were a few little poxy scars on his chest. Obviously, he'd never met his grandfather, but he'd seen photographs. The same long hair as his father, but graying; grey hair and grey eyes and the same pointed face Draco and Lucius had, but very different at the same time; there was lightness in those photos, something more graceful and leisurely, lacking the intensity of Draco's father. Looking back on it, Draco wished that he had known Abraxas. It would have helped him to understand his father too, probably.

The book was very boring, all of it about blood-purity and the different ideologies of Grindelwald and Voldemort and the traditions they had inherited. Describing them as the "reactionary forces against ministerial control," seemed dry beyond belief. Then Draco caught sight of handwritten note at the bottom of the page

'_A drop of Malfoy blood,'_

Hearing someone coming up the stairs, Draco fled - the book in his arms - to his rooms in the east wing. He sat on his bed with the book, re-reading the note. _Is it a clue to something or just a note? _Curious, Draco picked at a scab on his elbow and then touched the words with his reddish finger. Immediately, the book changed. The bookshop print was replaced by beautifully neat handwriting and flipping through, Draco saw that there were sketches too. In particular, Draco was drawn to a labeled sketch of the Dark Lord, whom Draco had never seen before. It was very well done, and snake-like eyes blinked up at Draco creepily. Draco turned to the beginning of again and read a different dedication.

'_I dedicate my memoirs to the man known as Tom Marvolo Riddle, may never forget our times together.'_

Draco had a feeling of hearing that name before, but he couldn't think where. Curling up on his bed, he began to read…


	2. Chapter One

**M**

**Disclaimer: **Usual fare: I do not own Harry Potter, neither am I making any money from this story.

**Summary: **ABRAXAS MALFOY/TOM RIDDLE. When Draco finds his grandfather's memoirs he unlocks a past he never knew beginning in the winter of 1941 and the passion between Abraxas Malfoy & a boy called Tom Riddle. As Draco reads, will it begin to change his own choices?

**Author's Note: **I have tried to make the dates accurate, but if you know more, please tell me. Think Brideshead Revisited with a twist and you've sort of got where I'm going. With the sex, I'm not the sort of person who likes to spell everything out, because I feel that suggestion is actually more potent than detail. "Ave atque vale," is "hail and farewell," and forgive me when Abraxas quotes from _The Importance of Being Earnest_, he doesn't know the muggle play - I'm just me being an ass. Also, an "Oscar Wilde" used to be used as a synonym for a gay man. One other point: I have tried hard not to use contractions with Abraxas' language, in an attempt to convey his formal upbringing. You might notice that other characters will say something natural like: "It's a nice night," but Abraxas will always say "It is a nice night."

**PS -** Wizards celebrate Christmas… _WHY? _Christmas is a Christian festival in honour of the birth of Jesus, right. So… why would wizards think Jesus so amazing? Any one of them could perform his miracles… except raising the dead, maybe. Certainly wizards aren't Christian; witchcraft and all that. Or maybe they started their own religion ignoring those bits of the bible? - Or… _what_…? It never occurred to me before, but now it's really bugging me. I really want to ask J. K. Rowling!!

**_SO…_** in my world Christmas was introduced to the wizarding community during the Victorian Era, about the time Prince Albert and Queen Victoria instituted Christmas as we celebrate it today in England, with all its surrounding accoutrements, such as Christmas trees. This was the result of the particularly forward-thinking Minister of Magic Sir Flestrin Galsworthy - a scion of the muggle peerage whose witch mother was the renowned Transfiguration expert, Portia Lambert. Sir Flestrin was responsible for many of the liberal, muggle-orientated reforms of the nineteenth century. He believed that the wizarding population would benefit from the Christmas festival to replace the traditional Winter Solstice, which included such sports as 'Stick the muggle,' and 'Muggle baiting,' or even worse, the notorious 'Snowstrom,' where drunken wizards would pursue terrified muggles across the snow, usually on broomsticks, whacking the muggles with sharp pine branches. In an attempt to put a stop to this, the minister – amidst howls from the conservatives – banned these activities and instituted "Christmas" as a parallel to the muggle festival. This included trees, gift-giving, and a celebration of goodwill, but left out the religious elements of muggle Christmas. Even in 1941 this was not fully ingrained, and ministry officials still often spent Christmas obliviating hysterical muggles and arresting inebriated wizards.

Actual story, you say? Certainly…

**Paterfamilias**

_In which our hero, Abraxas, introduces himself, his friend Ciceron & makes Tom's acquaintance; Ciceron gets let down & Tom & Abraxas hit it off & pursue a mutual acquaintance; Draco questions his mother; Lucius is late for dinner, insists on vegetable mastication & uses a pensieve; & we meet our hero again, in less happy circumstances_

**M**

It was in the winter of 1941 that my life began to change drastically from what it had always been. For all that I lived in interesting times – Lord Grindelwald was besieging England, fighting against the British ministry and the elite known only as the Order of the Phoenix, plots against the government were always in the papers – I had remained if not ignorant, then insulated from the war. My father, Erasmus Malfoy, was Minister of Magic. You would have thought, with this being so, that I should have known a lot more about events, but I did not. My father remained in our London townhouse; a long way off, it seemed to me, as the floo network had been disconnected for what seemed like forever, as a wartime precaution. I saw him briefly, maybe once or twice a year, and I would probably see him for Christmas dinner this December.

But something began at Hogwarts that year, which changed my trajectory altogether. The castle was cocooned by snow and faces were either ruddy with frost or pale under dark cloaks and scarves. The Slytherins were quiet, almost as if we were hibernating, waiting for the spring. I was in my seventh year at the time and though I was aware of Tom Riddle, then in his fourth, I would have been hard-pressed to remember any of his personal details, other than the fact that he was a half-blood and therefore inferior.

It was at one of Sluggy's little informal soirees – a languid evening of snobbery – that I first truly met Tom's acquaintance. Sitting in an armchair in Professor Slughorn's office and sipping a glass of brandy I watched as Riddle entered the room. Although he walked confidently, I could see the tension in his dark eyes. As there were no other chairs left, he sat down beside me, his long legs uncertain, like a skittish Granian thoroughbred. I remember thinking him a fifth or sixth year, due to his tall frame and almost adult features. Horace was chatting amicably with my friend, Ciceron Harkiss, and did not notice the tall boy's advent.

"What is it you do here," Riddle asked me, almost snidely, "just appease Slughorn's love of power and money?" He was obviously affronted by the fact that I was the minister's son. Clearly, this was not a member of the set. Second-hand robes and a difficult attitude, coupled with, I could see, an inferiority complex which he wore like a talisman.

"Was that an insult or a question, Riddle?" I asked coolly.

He thought for a moment. "A question, I think."

I set down my brandy glass and looked at him critically. "This is a _select_ club, and everyone in it is either important or Sluggy thinks they will be in the future. I personally find it rather onerous, but it's one way of spending these tedious winter evenings."

The boy's dark eyes were piercing and it seemed as though they were looking into my soul. "You despise Slughorn," he announced, "you despise everyone here… so do I."

I laughed lightly, "Perhaps I do, but do not tell Ciceron; it would break his heart."

"Why do you care?"

I was speechless. _Why did I care?_ I thought it over carefully and discovered that I was completely indifferent. _How novel, _I thought, _a fourth-year with a brain… _I gave him another looking over …_attractive too. _"I care because I was taught to care, Riddle. Were you not?"

He looked at me curiously, head cocked to one side. His lips opened in reply, but a stronger voice overrode his words.

"Ah, Tom! So you've met Abraxas? Good, good…" Tom smiled, lids lowered, eyes modestly fixed on the floor. Slughorn turned to me. "Tom here is a regular genius, you know; best marks since Professor Dumbledore. You should introduce him to your father, I'm sure they'd find a lot in common!"

"Father is exceedingly busy, Professor, I am unsure of his presence even during the Solstice..." My throat was suddenly sore.

"Oh – of course, dear boy, of course… How is Mrs. Malfoy, then, still as beautiful as ever?"

I longed to say that, as a result of father's absence, she had turned to drink and other men. "As beautiful as ever, Professor," I echoed.

Slughorn beamed at me and twirled his gingery moustache. "Good. _Charming_ woman, your mother," he turned to regard another student, but added, over his sloping shoulder, "Make sure you introduce Tom to all the right people, Abraxas."

Riddle slung a sideways glance at me and raised his eyebrows. "You can use him," I said simply, "but he will expect to be able to use you in return."

"Promise the moon," Riddle recited smugly, "but never give it away."

I giggled and took another sip of brandy. "What year are you, Riddle?"

"Fourth."

"For a fourth-year, you are quite the chap, Riddle."

"Thank you." His mouth stayed a straight line, but his eyes began to smile at me.

I passed him a glass of brandy. Riddle sniffed it tentatively, but seemed unsure of what to do. _Yes, not part of the set. _But Slughorn thought he was worth bothering with and I wanted… _what did I want? _"It's just brandy, Riddle; swirl and sip."

For some reason this annoyed him and he glared at me resentfully, deliberately setting the glass down with a clink. "Are you always such a snob, Malfoy?" he said coldly.

I replied lightly, as if his words had no effect. "Oh, do _not_ be a bad sport over brandy, Riddle. You are being childish." I tossed my head and stood up. "Anyway, I think I might retire for the night; _ave atque vale_, Riddle."

As I turned to shut the door I saw him watching me in the dim fey-lights, with a look somewhere between incomprehension, anger, and longing.

**M**

Ciceron had not been impressed. "He isn't worth your bootlaces, Abraxas," he told me as we sat together, relaxing on my bed, "why did you talk to the half-blood anyway?" He pouted and narrowed his amber eyes.

"I was being polite, Cissy," I said, irritated at his enquiry.

"Don't call me that. Anyway, you didn't look very polite."

"The little fag was rude, _Cissy_."

"Ha! No wonder he looked upset afterwards." Ciceron ran a hand through my long hair. "Am I still coming for the Solstice?"

I was dreading the thought yet another December with Ciceron. _Merlin, have I nothing to look forward to? _I knew with certainty he would make love to me on Christmas Eve, covet all my presents in the morning, and everything would be appallingly dull. _Yes, Mr. Malfoy, I loved your speech. No, but of course you look darling Mrs. Malfoy. Doesn't she Abraxas? Oh, your dress robes are perfect. Shall we repair to the "music" room, Abraxas? _A bit of upper-class innuendo that would always slip past my parents; how _sick_ of it I was! Then his Uncle Ralf would turn up secretly around nine to take him to a highland snowstrom – which my father would never allow me to go on.

"I could not imagine Yuletide without you," I said wearily.

He smiled and wrapped his arms around me; as we were alone. No dormitory for the son of the minister. (You could take apartments then, marking out the wealthy from the merely middleclass and the poor. Now Dumbledore has changed it all in the name of equality. I could not prevail upon my fellow governors – despicable bourgeois, all of them – to veto the saintly headmaster. Lucius was forced to share with all kinds of lower-class of riff-raff – how I _loath_ Dumbledore!) Ciceron drew my hair aside and mumbled something into my neck that sounded like "I love you." I closed my eyes and fought off a shudder.

**M**

Nothing felt as it had last year. Ciceron was boring me, but I was too entrenched in my habits to drop him. More than that, school was not as I had hoped either. My marks went down as my interest waned and as I looked at myself in the mirror one night before dinner I saw something missing. Mother's wavy, white-blond hair, long and loose around my shoulders, father's small mouth and pointed face, mother's grey eyes, father's pale complexion, mother's defined eyebrows and father's straight, classical nose. I bit my lip. Father's expression when irritated. _Where was Abraxas? Was there nothing about me that did not solely depend on being a Malfoy – nothing that spoke of me alone?_ I tried to make a face that was definitively mine – but I could not see myself.

I do not know why, but I wanted Riddle in that moment – wanted someone who moved in unexpected ways and did not know the etiquette that had been mine since birth. He would make my self-satisfied family sick, and would that not be a jolly Christmas?

**M**

He was in the common room, reading a book on hexes. "Riddle," I called smoothly, "talk to me for a moment, will you?"

Raising his eyes, Riddle did not quite cover the surprise from his face. "Malfoy," he nodded, getting up.

"Come with me," surprisingly, he did not question my words.

I locked the door to my small sitting-room with a flick of my wand. Only then did he react.

"What do you want, Malfoy?"

_You._

"Why do you think you are here, Riddle?"

The boy considered. "I insulted you at Slughorn's party and you want revenge," his dark eyes glinted, "I warn you… you'll regret it." He drew his wand on me.

I raised my eyebrows. "As if a little temper caused me any discomfort! Are you always this arrogant?" It was a slick rejoinder and I smirked at him, walking closer. "I think _you_ are quite adorable, Riddle."

He drew back, completely nonplussed. "I… _what_…?"

My smirk deepened, "Surely you must have heard the rumours –" I glanced casually at his book, still clutched in his hand, "Ah, but of course, you never were a social creature, were you?"

His eyes were wide with shock. "Y-you're, you're an Oscar Wilde?"

"Is that some sort of muggle expression?" I sniffed, pursing my lips.

Riddle snarled and raised his wand again. "I'll kill you before you do it."

I lowered my eyelids and put my hand over his wand-hand, gently pushing it out of the way. "Have you even been _loved_, Tom?" I asked softly.

"No," he whispered dropping his wand on the thick, royal-green carpet with a thud, fear in his eyes.

I kissed him, calmly, gently and persistently. I snuck a hand around his neck, smelling the brilliantine in his short, jet-black hair.

**M**

A sample of my appalling poetry, found in my charms textbook:

_He was beauty, in black and white,_

_With eyes that tipped the balance_

_Between infernal and divine._

_He was softness and sinewy strength,_

_He pinched fantasy into force,_

_Breath riding up my spine._

_He was a virginal libertine, _

_Stark naked, perfectly tarnished,_

_& mine, mine, mine, mine!_

**M**

"YOU SLEPT WITH _RIDDLE!"_ Ciceron virtually screamed, tears forming in his eyes. "You are _Adonis_, Abraxas; what could you possibly want with that little _half-breed?"_

I sipped my tea, "He amuses me, Cissy, and you have become so _dull_ lately."

We were sitting in the common-room; it was only early evening, but with all the lamps on in the dungeons, it could have been midnight. Ciceron had stormed over, furious at being replaced. But I was tired of his drama.

"Harkiss," a voice acknowledged from behind my armchair. A hand snaked down to caress my hair possessively. Tom had gone up in our small Slytherin world, raised by me to high status within the House. Riddle still spoke little and buried himself in study, but his insecure manner started to dissipate and he began to be seen as more than a bookworm.

"He's a _sneak_, Abraxas, a dirty little _girl_!" Ciceron gasped angrily, "And he's certainly not a gentleman!"

"At least I'm a wizard, Harkiss. You're just an overbread little squib."

I said nothing.

**M**

Tom and I sat together in my sitting-room. A house-elf had prepared tea for us as we relaxed by the fire, the heat of it making our faces flush.. "You could've had anyone you wanted, Abraxas. Why did you choose me?"

I leant back into the soft armchair. "…Because _you_ are definitely _you_ and not me."

He raised his eyebrows. "Harkiss isn't you." He took a sip of tea; hardly any milk and no sugar.

"His parents have been friends of the family since _forever._ But I feel like I know Ciceron inside and out – cosy, not… _exciting."_

"You excite me too," Tom said seriously. He moved over to me and knelt, putting his hands in my lap, clasped... "You're perfect. I think I'd kill you if you left me."

I laughed and batted him playfully.

**M**

"I hate muggle studies," I sighed. "Fancy not being able to fly, Tom, can you imagine that?"

I watched a nameless grey bird outside the window, soaring in a snowy sky. Tom's face was careful, his eyes also on the bird. "I was raised as a muggle." He said it softly, "And not being able to fly is the least of their problems. Muggles _starve_;Abraxas... muggles die easily_." _His mouth was tight and I felt that he had not meant to say it.

"Have you killed a muggle, Tom?" I said, not knowing why I asked.

"No, but sometimes I want to." Again, the quiet voice, but I could hear that it was on the edge of something sharp. He was so tense, so bound into the tight little universe inside his head.

"I have a great aunt who has a muggle-skin handbag."

He laughed, as if something huge had just been let out of him. Laughed and laughed and laughed; great, high spasms of laugher. I joined in and we rolled on the carpet together. "You're _perfect_, Abraxas, perfect, _perfect!" _He yelled it out to the world, but I shushed him with my lips.

"I know. Everyone says so." I rolled on top of him.

"What do you want to do? I mean, after Hogwarts?" His adoration was different from Ciceron's: harder, less comfortable. My hair fell all over his face.

"Live," I whispered. "Be nothing like my father. What about you?"

Tom closed his eyes. "I don't know really… I – I think about it a lot, but I only know I don't want to work for the Ministry, whatever Sluggy says." He opened one eye and looked away. "You'll think I'm foolish to pass up the opportunity…"

I raised an eyebrow. "You are right, I think, and not foolish at all. Besides, you pass the time brilliantly, dear, even if you are," I replied, affecting a conjugal manner.

He frowned and sat back down beside me. "Is that all life is to you – passing the time?"

"What have_ I_ to look to, Tom? I have everything everybody else wants already. What ambition can I have?"

He looked solemnly back. "Would you be ambitious for _me_, Abraxas?"

"Certainly,"

"Would you really?"

I kissed him and did not reply.

**M**

We were in the Prefects' Bathroom and the door was locked impregnably. Tom had said it was a charm irreversible by another wand. I teased off my clothing and slid a toe into the water. _"It's scalding!"_

"Am I melting?" Tom queried, already in the giant bath. "Well, please yourself. I'm quite contented with my current view."

I jumped in and attacked him. We spent a pleasant hour sliding against each other in the bubbles. The mermaid on the wall covered her eyes. Finally, dizzy from the hot water, I lifted myself out and sat naked on the cold stone.

"Aphrodite rising from the foam," Tom murmured, swimming over.

I kicked him. "I am _not_ a woman."

"You could be, with all that beautiful hair. I once saw a picture of your mother in _The Daily Prophet; _it's the same look."

This made me wince. "Do not say that again. I hate it when people do. I will cut it all off, and then what will you say?"

"Alright, I won't… 'Immensely powerful giant palomino,' that's what the textbook says. I adore your mane, my Abraxan."

I sighed. "I've heard all the horse jokes, Tom. Do _not _make one. I wish I had a normal name like you."

"You don't. Tom's a beastly name." He rested his elbows on the stone beside me. "I want a different one."

"If wishes were clouds it would rain forever."

"I suppose so."

I slipped back into the warm water beside him. "I know someone who decided to change their name."

He raised his eyebrows and put his arms around me, "Oh, yes?"

"Mm. Lord Grindelwald."

Tom perked up, interested, "Really?"

"Yes!" I sniffed, "_Apparently, _his original name was Klaus Muntz: not noble at all!"

"I always imagined him looking rather like, I don't know, a taller version of his muggle minion Hitler," he confided.

This set me off again, snickering. "My dear Tom, that is simply the most absurd notion I have heard all day and _I _had N.E.W.T. level Transfiguration with Dumbledore."

"Shut up." He pulled me back into the water and stopped my mouth.

**M**

Draco put the book down. Wow. He certainly hadn't thought it would be like _that._ His grandfather was… well… definite and… _and horny… _Draco's mind supplied. You weren't supposed to think about grandparents like that! The half-hour Dinner gong sounded, bullying him into getting changed and leaving the memoirs. _Stupid mother – why can't I just turn up in my Quidditch gear? _He groaned, knowing Narcissa would fuss.

As Draco walked down the hall, he wondered about "Tom Riddle." He had definitely heard the name somewhere before… but where? _"Mr. Riddle…" _his father had said it at some point, Draco knew. He thought back to the dedication… "Tom Mar_volo _Riddle…" _When had father said it? It had been at a party_, he thought, _when I was little… "Oh, Lucius, you really do have the most enjoyable gatherings…" "Why, thank you, Richard; it's a pity that the esteemed Mr. Riddle is not here to see it." _Draco still didn't get it, and he wasn't sure if father had meant it sarcastically or not. _"Have you ever killed a muggle?" _Draco could _feel _he was just off the answer… Then he looked up, stopping to think, and came face to face with a portrait in oils; a dear old lady in pastel silk. Then Draco realized and ran down the corridor, up to the fourth floor and into the Green Salon. _There…_ over the fireplace.

_Tom Marvolo Riddle – 1953_

An elegant looking man in his twenties, straight black hair; pale skin stretched attractively over high cheekbones, arched eyebrows and large, glistening, _red _eyes. _Oh Merlin! _The painting looked at him disdainfully. "Aren't you the horrible little boy who went round with an ink bottle some years ago?" Draco kept moving, out and back down the stairs. _Red eyes, red eyes...! _Grandfather had an affair with_ Voldemort?! _In some weird way it made sense… but, did father know? _He must, _Draco thought. _If nothing else he's read the book too, probably. _Struck by how normal Tom Riddle sounded – a half-blood too, who would have thought? – It was, Draco thought, _Abraxas_ who was strange to him: like a more extreme version of his father, except his father wasn't gay. Tom's insecurity, his preoccupation with study, and his thirst for recognition were more understandable to Draco than Abraxas' indifference. It was all spinning round in Draco's head – the tea, the bubbles, the Dark Lord, the kissing, the muggle-skin handbag and, most of all: the enigmatic figure of his grandfather.

**M**

His father was late for dinner.

"I hope he's alright," Draco's mother worried as she and her son sat opposite one another at the long, polished dinner table, food lain out before them, but untouched; the head of the table vacant. "I'm loath to start, but I think we might have to." It was seven o' clock. The Malfoy dinner was always at six thirty precisely and no member of that family had ever been late for as long as Draco could remember. They had waited for a whole thirty minutes.

"Mother…" Draco decided to exploit his mother's preoccupation with her husband.

"Yes darling?" Narcissa asked; anything to avoid having to actually start eating.

"What was grandfather like, the one on father's side?"

"Abraxas…?" Narcissa said vaguely. "Oh, terribly dignified. I was _so_ scared of him, even though he was an invalid. To tell the truth I still think of him as _Mr. Malfoy_; always so formal, even with Lucius. A real gentleman – he always kissed my hand when greeting me – I didn't always approve of how he treated your grandmother, though, but –"

"– My apologies, Narcissa… Draco…" His father hurried into the room looking slightly disheveled, his blond hair starting to come out of its neat ribbon, "I was kept late." …_Kept late for by whom and for what? _They could guess by whom, but were both dying to know what could be more important than the family dinner. Draco shared a look with his mother. _We won't ask, _her blue eyes said.

They began to eat in silence.

Nothing was more central to the Malfoys than family, and their collective purity was simply an extension of that fact. Draco's mother came from a large family and regretted the fact that she had only ever been able to have one child. "But wouldn't you have _liked _a little brother or sister, Draco?" she asked him annually. He wasn't so sure… he'd heard bad things about siblings.

His father was a bit different. Narcissa was a natural parent, but Draco's father… well, he tried. It was understood, that Lucius' parents were… disinterested. Draco couldn't even remember if it had ever been said, or if he'd just sensed it. (How odd that thought was now that he knew his great-grandparents were the same!) But his father had ideas about how a father _ought_ to behave. How he should never miss dinner, for example. How he should pat his son on the head, be strict with him about his allowance and always make sure to take him to things like quidditch games. Draco loved his father for it, even if it sometimes seemed a bit pompous, so this unexpected behavior shocked him.

"Draco was just asking me about your father, Lucius," Narcissa said conversationally as she sipped her elf-made wine.

For some reason his father looked startled, "I-indeed, Draco, why this sudden interest?"

"Oh, I don't know… just realized I didn't know much about him, really." Draco played it down, unnerved by his father's intense stare and how his nostrils were flaring; always a bad sign.

"Well, I suppose it's only natural. But now is not the time, Draco. Eat your vegetables."

_Typical, _he sighed inwardly, _so father to change the subject… I wonder why he's avoiding answering… and why he was late… I'm sure it's all to do with the Dark Lord… _The veggies were so cold Draco had to use magic to re-heat them.

But he didn't ask any more questions that night.

**M**

Lucius Malfoy sat in his study, the candlelight flickering across his pale face. _He had missed dinner. _In some families that might be common place, but his family made everything a tradition – which he had now broken. He read reproach on the faces of his wife and son, and was now avoiding Narcissa by not going to bed. It seemed to him a dreadful omen of what was to come… And his son's question, after all these years, _at that moment!_ Abraxas seemed to have been resurrected along with the Dark Lord.

He ran his hands up over his forehead and then walked slowly over to a high shelf and lifted down a silver chalice using his wand. Putting the tip of the ash wand to his temple, he drew away a wisp of gossamer thought that trailed through the air to swirl into the chalice…

**M**

_His mother, Lady Phyllis Rosier Malfoy, sits at her mirror in a long, cherry-silk kimono, running a brush through her straight brown hair and piling it up with her hands. "Luci, dear, pass your mama that bottle, the blue one."_

_A small blond boy passes her the perfume bottle and asks "Why doesn't papa love mama?"_

_Phyllis' eyes begin to glisten and she takes her child onto her lap and whispers "Because mama doesn't make him happy."_

"_Mama makes me happy," the child says loyally._

_A knocking at the door; his mother startles, clutching her son, "Y-yes?"_

"_Phyllis," a nasal yawn of a voice –- "I will not be home for dinner, so do not bother the elves for me."_

"_But you know tonight is my dinner party." Phyllis stands up, Lucius in her arms, but made no attempt to go to the closed door._

"_Precisely, my dear; I cannot conceive as to why you cultivate such dull people," answered the disembodied voice through the door._

"_I've invited the minister's wife. She particularly wanted to meet you." Phyllis kisses the boy in her arms and hugs him._

"_Hah. That hag should be locked up along with her muggle-loving husband. I will be back late. Do not wait up."_

_Footsteps sound down the corridor._

**M**

_A ten-year old Lucius strolls down the hall when he stops still, hearing someone groan. Tilting his head, he moves to the entrance of his father's study. The door is slightly ajar. He peers in and sees a strip of porcelain torso lying over the heavy, dark-wood desk. A man's back is facing him, robed in black. "Oh, you devil…" someone moans; his father's voice - Deh-heh-vhil._

_Lucius crouches closer, mesmerized. _

"_I missed you," says the other man quietly. His voice has a slight London accent. A hand rubs itself reverentially up the torso._

"_Not half as much as I missed you, darling," – Dahhhaling – "Phyllis is _such_ a bore, all tears, with her ridiculous melancholia. Damn father and his 'marriage of convenience.' It lacks convenience in the extreme."_

_Now two hands caress the torso. "If you like, we could make arrangements…?"_

_The creamy torso raises itself into the arms of the black-robed figure, connecting to a long, graceful neck, just as white, and swathes of wavy blond curls; the face is still hidden behind the other man, but Lucius is now certain which is his father. _

"_Arrangements, yes, you _are_ good at those… whom shall we blame though?"_

"_The door's open, I'll just shut it." As the man moves, Lucius glimpses his father, completely naked, sitting on the desk, utterly relaxed, like a baroque statue. But the other moves toward the door and Lucius bolts down the hall, fearful of discovery. A hand grabs him roughly by the collar, yanking him back. The study door is now shut. Lucius is alone in the hallway with a pair of horrible red eyes staring murderously at him. "If you tell anyone anything of what you heard or saw, there will be consequences – is that understood?"_

"_Is there something wrong?" His father asks impatiently from the study._

"_No," the red-eyed man replies putting a long finger to his lips, "It's nothing." He slips back into the study, shutting the door behind him._

**M**

_A blond boy sits in the rose-garden, his mother's favourite spot, inhaling the scents. He is wearing black dress-robes and a heavy funeral sash. _

"_Lucius!" a voice cries from somewhere beyond the roses. The boy does not turn his head, but silent tears fall from his eyes and he scrunches up his face, breathing heavily. "Lucius!" the voice again – Luhh-ci-hius!_

_Finally, his father rounds the corner, a pink blotch of anger on each of his pale cheeks, like too much make-up on a china doll. "Whatever are you doing out here?" he says breathlessly, eyes full of anger. "Such a stupid boy, your mother's funeral was an hour ago and you missed it entirely!"_

"_I didn't want to go." The boy stares at the gravel path._

"_I thought _you_ liked her..."_

"_I didn't want to see you pretend to cry."_

_Abraxas twists his son's ear, forcing him to his feet. "Do not speak to me that way…" Although the gesture is angry there is hardly any emotion in the words._

"_I saw you with that man!" _

_Twisting the ear harder, so that the boy cries out in pain, his father lowers his mouth to Lucius' free ear and whispers softly, "Oh, yes? Well, there are things that happen to little boys who lie… Nobody likes a liar, Lucius."_

"_It's true! It's true!" Weeping, the boy falls in a heap on the ground as his father releases him._

"_..As if anyone would believe the stories of a child…!" he says it lightly, tossing the words into the air as he steps over his hysterical son and walks toward the house._

**M**

Lucius Abraxas Malfoy lay down next to his wife, moving close so that his own body touched her soft curves. She wore a pretty blue nightdress and her body felt warm against his skin. Narcissa rolled over to embrace him, her lips drawing near his. _We fit together so perfectly,_ he thought.

"What's going on, Luci?" His pet name, the name his mother used, the name Narcissa whispered in the darkness when they snuffed out the light.

"I don't know. I feel as if my father is reaching out from the grave to stroke the back of my neck. The Dark Lord was talking of him… and now Draco… I want him to stay dead."

"He _is_ dead, Luci; he cannot hurt you any longer."

"Then why do I feel so apprehensive?"

"Shhh…" She kissed him and slipped her arms tightly around his waist, as her forty-six year old husband began to sob.

"_Luci…"_

**M**

Draco sat up in bed, his grandfather's book propped against his knees. He couldn't wait to read more, certain that the autobiography would hold the keys to the memories that remained looked behind his father's cold reserve, and the secret life of his grandfather that Lucius was determined to keep hidden from him. Draco had never been more hopeful of finally understanding, and so he continued to read…

_Tom and I began to spend all of our time together between classes…_

**M**

**Please review, don't let the author starve! Or Tommy will get you!**


	3. Chapter Two

**Disclaimer: **Usual fare: I do not own Harry Potter, neither am I making any money from this story.

**Summary: **ABRAXAS MALFOY/DARK LORD/LUCIUS and maybe DRACO. When Draco finds his grandfather's memoirs he unlocks a past he never knew beginning in the winter of 1942 and the passion between Abraxas Malfoy & a boy called Tom Riddle. As Draco reads, will it begin to change his own choices?

**Author's Notes: **The family tree book Abraxas is flipping through is magical, so it shows the true thing – including unacknowledged children with undesirable persons. Secondly, I know wizards in Rowling's world don't wear pants, but in my world – like in the movies – they do… just _because_. Third, the reason Voldemort doesn't avail himself of polyjuice potion is that he has only a lock of the relevant hair and he wants to keep it. Not too much Draco this chapter. He has, like, one paragraph!

**Thank you to my three angels: MandaPandaAR, Shaitanah and Lady Baelish. **

**Paterfamilias**

_In which we hear from our villain, & his lordship reveals certain so-far hidden facts to the reader, remembers Christmas with Abraxas at Malfoy Manor where he makes the acquaintance of Mr. & Mrs. Malfoy & finds himself tempted; Draco gets told to lock himself in his room & Lucius receives a visit from and old friend._

Lord Voldemort lowered himself onto his plain black bed and wandlessly caused the dusty, matching bed curtains to draw themselves, shutting out the world. His small, private space was totally silent and there was no light to disturb the comfortable darkness. He was nowhere and everywhere at once, in a pocket of the universe he had himself created from the air. So unlike… yes. _How could one imagine him without his splendours; always ready to remind everyone of his direct descent from Morgan le Fay… _Voldemort closed his eyes and revelled in memory…

**M**

"… Tom?" Abraxas asked it sharply.

"What?" He was only half listening, sitting on his lover's bed, reading an excellent book on shape-changing.

"You are staying… for Christmas, in school, I mean?" As always with Abraxas, the tone was lethargic.

"Yes," Tom answered, still not focusing on the other, "I don't want to go back to the orphanage… obviously."

"Oh." The older boy was silent for a few seconds and then said, slowly, "So… might you consider coming to Wiltshire with me?"

At this, Tom put the book down and a warm tingle ran up and down his body, making him shiver. "You mean, spend Christmas with your family?"

Abraxas sniffed. "_Hardly_: mother will be going out to parties and father will only be home for the twenty-fifth. I will be _horribly_ bored if you do _not_ come, Tom."

Tom just gazed at his friend, absolute adoration glowing out of his sharp features. "Well that settles it – I'll have to come, if only to alleviate your boredom."

**M**

They got off the train and Ms Smithson, the minister's secretary, met them. She had cropped red hair and wore a knitted, green cardigan "Master Malfoy, your father instructed me to portkey the two of you to the manor directly; London is not the safest place for young gentlemen." Abraxas sighed audibly and whispered: "Father probably doesn't know I have my apparition license…" Tom nudged him gently and said nothing.

Touching the paperweight the secretary produced, the two of them were spun to the front door of the Malfoy family home.

Tom's mouth was open. "This is… Abraxas… you _live _here?"

"It is rather large, is it not? I have always found it a trifle _too_ large myself."

_He really has no perspective_, Tom thought, and found himself angry. The house was so decadent it took his breath away. A long front of white stone, beautiful curved windows, galleries and turrets crowned in powder blue; it was beyond even_ his_ imagination. Age-old luxury dripped from every stone and every fountain, the snow giving it a baroque dusting of heaven. "…No wonder you're such a snob, I suppose it has servants too."

"Of course," Abraxas replied, his grey eyes colder than the ice on the steps. Tom said nothing and followed the other boy in, entering the marble hall and going up one of the velvety staircases, staring at the gilding and evidence of the wizarding history so absent from his own life. It made worms of jealousy coil in his stomach. "Just leave your luggage there; the house-elves will bring it up to my suite."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "That's rather blatant, isn't it?"

"Not with my parents," Abraxas rolled his eyes, "they would not notice if I had a dance, invited fifty guests and smashed all the furniture."

Tom smiled tentatively, "Well, I don't think I plan on going _that_ far…"

**M**

The two lay in Abraxas' sumptuous bed, their bodies close under the warm, soft covers; snow drifting past outside. _God, it's so warm in here. _Not for the Malfoys the freezing December mornings that had made him want to curl up and cry – the air was heated by magic… or maybe just by Abraxas. Tom felt as if he were lying in state with a monarch, maybe Louis XV, or someone equally decadent; the elves had sent up hot-chocolate laced with liqueur, plus a dish of chocolate truffles, and he smiled properly at last, gazing into those unique grey eyes; they really had no colour, so silvery. "Do you love me?" It just sort-of slipped out, almost without his noticing.

Abraxas chewed a truffle thoughtfully, and Tom took another moment to stare at the perfect face and wonder what the hell he was doing in bed with it.

"Not yet," he said finally, having finished eating. "But there _is_ something magnetic about you, Tom. I am not sure you are even aware of it."

"Magnetic?" Tom repeated, surprised. "You're the magnetic one!"

"You are quite wrong." Abraxas smiled patronisingly. "For every one wizard or witch I attract, there are fifteen jealous fools who loath the very idea of someone like me. You used to be one of them, remember?"

Tom grunted and drew a hand along the curve of Abraxas' shoulder, mesmerized by the expanse of alabaster skin. "What did Harkiss say to you when you were like this?"

Turning onto his stomach, the other boy closed his eyes as Tom's fingers ran over his back. "He used to say I was… his Adonis. It seems rather silly now." He let Tom roll him over, his long hair lying tousled on the pillows, Tom looking down at him. Their lips met, hot and tasting of dark chocolate.

The door was flung open and a witch spun into the room, like a blond hurricane. _"Abraxas!_ What _is_ this I hear about you being abominable to darling Ciceron?"

"Mother, I –"

She glared furiously at Tom, who sat up in bed, uncomfortably aware that he and Abraxas were naked under the sheets. "Swapped brooms, have you? Mrs. Harkiss has told me everything _and I will not have it in my house!"_

"_Mother!"_ Abraxas' face had become ashen, his lips a frightening blue, the china dishes and mirrors exploded and Tom felt a magical energy begin to pulse around the room. Mrs. Malfoy's face completely changed and she rushed to her son's side. He began to scream, a one-note drone of pain, and his eyes rolled up so that Tom and Mrs. Malfoy stared into unseeing whites. Tom was almost too shocked to do anything by stare in horror as the boy began to convulse and the fire in the grate began to spread, setting the room alight, getting hotter and hotter...

Mrs. Malfoy pointed her wand at her only son and everything stopped and went black.

**M**

Tom awoke in a room he had not seen before, a study, he thought, opposite Mrs. Malfoy, who was scrutinizing him from the chair opposite. "You are a _half-blood_," she said pointedly, glaring at him.

"Yes," Tom looked away.

"Erasmus, my husband, believes in half-bloods, but not in his _own_ family." Her grey eyes said it even more clearly than her words; _that stare, like I'm made of dirt._ "But you've seen him and I dare not obliviate you."

"Seen him?"

"My son has severe daimonepsy, Mr. Riddle; he lives on potions just to attend school. He cannot go outside for fear he might fall and his magic react."

_Daimonepsy. _Tom almost felt like sniggering, despite his feelings for Abraxas. Daimonepsy was the phantom that stalked the pure-blooded, a rumour only whispered about. The ministry had officially denied its existence. Caused by the constant intermarriage of cousins and the stagnating magical genes, daimonepsy made a person's magic overreact to the merest upset, the slightest emotional upheaval, and inflict itself on itself or anyone close-by. The drugs his lover would have to take would be strong and affect his mind as much as his magical core. _The minister's son!_ What irony. "Does anybody else know?" Tom asked.

"Certainly not," Mrs. Malfoy sneered, "as if we would advertise it! Only myself, my husband, his personal healer and Ciceron … and now _you_… I trust I have not made a mistake?"

"No, no, you haven't Mrs, Malfoy. I… your son… I worship the ground he walks on; I would never betray his trust."

"I am pleased, Mr. Riddle, that you told me that. Abraxas is not an easy person; he takes after his father in that respect." Unconsciously, Mrs. Malfoy raised a manicured hand to her blond hair. _Are his whole family this beautiful and this superior? _"Unfortunately… the minister would take a less favourable view should he discover his son's… predilections. You were not _my_ choice, but I suppose you will have to do. Ciceron was _one of us_, you understand. But if he doesn't care for him…"

Mrs. Malfoy stood up and walked to the window, her hourglass figure swaying in blue satin. "Take care of my son's secrets, Mr. Riddle." She turned back, "You will promise?"

"I promise."

**M**

Abraxas lay on the bed, looking exhausted but still, Tom thought, exquisite; lying on silken pillows among golden tassels. The older boy did everything in such style, even look ill. Tom would be furious with jealousy if he didn't know that this was _his_, in some way, too. The house-elves had doubtless cleaned the room and mended the furnishings, _papering over the scandal._

"Oh… Tom… are you there?" a soft murmur from the bed, "So now you know… my _secret_." He spat the word out contemptuously. The gilded bedside table was covered in bottles of odd-smelling liquids which glittered in the light of the fire. A house-elf was tending to him, dabbing his brow with bluish oil. Tom moved to Abraxas' side and the elf squeaked and disappeared. Tom picked up the flannel and leant over Abraxas. He smelt of herbs and his mother's perfume. "You see? I could not escape my cage even if I wanted too. I have no say; you know – they just shove all the horrible concoctions down my throat."

"Now I know why you don't play quidditch."

"Or go outside, or duel… I _hate_ it, Tom, hate it so much! Sometime I lie for hours unable to move…"

Tom thought of the luxury and the privilege and the cost of the potions and said nothing, certain it would do no good. But the idea of Abraxas' _dependence_ began to stir something in him, not a nice something, but a nasty, possessive, something that said _he's yours forever of you play it right, yours and yours alone! If you use his confidence correctly, his isolation will do the rest… _Tom crushed the voice, but it echoed in the back of his mind. He reached down slowly to put his hand to Abraxas' forehead. It was cool, but there was something electric about it, and Tom could almost see the magical aura fluttering around the prone boy. _Pink… interesting… _He said nothing, but continued to stroke Abraxas' face.

"I really like you, Tom. Ciceron would be dithering about, worrying. He is much like mama in that respect. I cannot abide pity."

"What happens after a seizure?"

"Oh…" Abraxas waved a hand vaguely, "healers come and I am to remain in bed for a week and am told not to use any magic… _so _tiresome. Father will be upset when he comes. He has convinced himself, you see, that I will grow out of it."

"That's highly unlikely."

"The healers agree with you. Still, the _scandal_ and all that, I would probably have to hope for the best if I were him. But, no, I do not think anything will change either." He stared at Tom frankly, "It gets ever so dull, Tom, I am _so_ glad you are here."

**M**

Lord Voldemort held the wand gently with his long fingers. Oak and unicorn hair, 12 and a half inches; a very British wand and in good condition too, he had seen many wands in his time and this one was particularly fine. A wand for ceremony and incantation; oak could be very powerful. He continued to rifle through the small box: a lock of hair, the letters, and the photographs, even a glove – sent over Europe to Croatia, where Tom had been researching. It was dove grey, the colour of those eyes, monogrammed A.M. and scented with some spicy cologne that smelt of money. He pressed it to his face. A kid glove, which had covered that flawless skin… he shuddered at the thought of the pox that had ravaged it. Putting the glove down, he took out the photographs. A picture of himself and Abraxas that Christmas, taken in the library by Mrs. Malfoy – who had fancied herself a photographer at that time. He, standing, dressed in plain black robes, looking into the camera, smiling, glancing occasionally at Abraxas, who sat in front of him in an armchair wearing an embroidered dressing-gown and looking bored…

**M**

"Thank Merlin she has finally gone. Mama is _such_ a dilettante – one really should leave these things to professional people," Abraxas sneered as his mother retreated with her tripod and camera. He was unable to walk at the moment, as one of the essential potions had the odd effect of making him loose feeling in his legs. Tom had dealt with this by enchanting an armchair to set itself down wherever the older boy wanted. Besides, it enabled Tom to go and explore the library without leaving Abraxas behind. "Of course, you are right," the blond boy continued, "As powerful a wizard as you are cannot possibly have ignoble ancestry." He opened a huge and well-thumbed tome. "Riddle… _Riddle_…" There was several minutes of page turning and then: "I think it really must be your mother, Tom."

He swallowed. "That… _can't be_… are you sure?" He felt his blood begin to pound_. "…Your mother died giving birth to you – she lived just long enough to give you your name…Tom…"_

"Certain, I am afraid. What was your mother's name?"

"I… _I don't know_…" He felt sick. His mother was the witch. _His mother who had abandoned him? …A witch? …To let herself die? _

Abraxas stared at him, raising an aristocratic brow, "Tom? Do you mean to say you do not know_ anything_ about your mother?"

Looking away, Tom swallowed again. "I… my… my grandfather's name was Marvolo." _I'm not crying, I can't be crying…_

"Marvolo is…" Abraxas continued flipping pages, "I _have _heard that before… Gaunt? Yes, Marvolo is a Gaunt name. You _are_ in here. Tom Marvolo Riddle: son of Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle."

"_What?"_ Tom edged toward the book. His name was there, in red ink, while others were in purple. "Red signifies illegitimacy," Abraxas explained, "but look, Tom, _look_ at the wizards in your line." Tom took in the names, which included Salazar Slytherin himself. Something swelled inside his chest. "…It's not Morgan le Fay." He said self-deprecatingly. Abraxas glared at him. "Slytherin was a noble man. He fought for his beliefs. It is an excellent pedigree, and most fitting. You are certainly no muggle. I hope you will espouse your great ancestor's cause; these mud-lovers require a lesson."

Tom thought about those that had teased him in the orphanage, the hunger, the bombing, the cane, _and his father…"_

"You're right, they do."

**M**

Erasmus Malfoy, the Minister of Magic, arrived on Christmas Eve, accompanied by Ms Smithson. Tom was sitting with Abraxas by the fire in the Green Salon, when he came in, leaving the secretary in the hall. Tom realised that Abraxas had inherited his father's pointed face and slightly pinched mouth, although Malfoy Senior had straight brown hair, cut short in the modern style. _For his voters, presumably, _Tom thought snidely. He came over to them. "Abraxas," he said stiffly, "your mama tells be you had another… episode."

"I did, yes." Abraxas stared into the fire, the firelight flickering in his sullen grey eyes. Mr Malfoy placed a hand on his son's head, fondling his long hair. "So much like your mama – who is _this?"_ he left his hand in Abraxas' silver-blond hair.

"This is Tom, papa – a friend from school." Tom extended a hand, which the minister shook firmly. "Good, good… well, Merry Christmas!" Mr. Malfoy patted Abraxas on the head again and left.

"He left rather fast," Tom commented.

"He is a busy man," Abraxas replied, a sad half smile on his lips.

Dinner wasn't what Tom would call pleasant. Ms Smithson was invited to dinner – Tom had the feeling this was some kind of deliberate snub. She sat on his left side, while Abraxas sat opposite. He didn't mind this: the other looked stunning in the candlelight, his grey eyes luminous with their intimacy, hair shimmering and golden. The fact that he had to be levitated into his chair just made him attractively vulnerable. Tom spent the dinner staring across the table, unwilling to be distracted.

"So," Mrs Malfoy began, her smile quivering slightly, "how is school?"

**M**

Christmas morning dawned late for the two boys. "Do you want to get up?" Tom asked, eager to give Abraxas his present.

"Not particularly," Abraxas said without turning to look at him. "I do not care to receive their presents, especially since we should not be celebrating a _muggle _festival at all."

"But… I got you something..." He had spent all his savings on a beautiful silk scarf.

"I do not want it," the tone was frigid.

"_But_…!" Tom felt like something inside him had died.

"I said _no_."

**M**

Lord Voldemort picked up a letter. Abraxas had given back all his letters just before his death, unwilling to leave them for Lucius to read. The Dark Lord glanced at his own letter, full of endearments, care and affection; his lover's letter; cold, business-like, formal.

_Dear Tom,_

_How is Hogwarts, still as dull as ever? Merlin, but I miss it. Here I spend most of my time in my rooms, writing letters. You remember what we spoke of? I still remember the blood dripping from our wrists. A new type of warfare is being developed, Tom, war by owl. I campaign against my father's policies by writing to our friends in the Wizengamot and also to those whose influence is less noticeable. It will take time, but I have begun it. Soon you will have finished school with the highest marks in history, I am sure, and then we shall be unstoppable. There are many for whom the ministry's attitude is repugnant and they lack only a leader. I am preparing them for you. _

_My health is deteriorating. It is these new potions, I am sure of it. I lack even the energy to get up. Holding this quill itself is exhausting. I believe it is because I had a fit in front of father – only a small one – but it disturbed him and he is having a dinner party tonight… _Threepages of news and then, just before the signature…

_I long for you,_

_Abraxas_

Skeletal fingers rip through the stack of letters, throwing them onto the floor.

**M**

Lucius moved across the drawing room. Draco had left the radio on. He sighed, snuffing out the lights with his wand. A tenor sang to a mournful waltz:

"…_Life is a dance we must learn,_

_Into the night we will turn,_

_Time holds the secrets of our song,_

_Moments are given then gone…"_

He reached the window and gazed out into the darkness, drawing the curtain aside.

"…_Come have this dance with me, darling,_

_I'll hold you tight 'til the dawn,_

_Let the night see how I love you,_

_So the moon can tell the sun…"_

A peacock shrieked from the lawn, _why didn't I kill them off when he died? _His father had bought then – said they added real beauty to the grounds. Abraxas had been quite fond of them really, which had been pretty impressive for him. Lucius hadn't been the only one jealous of that love… _Was that a figure in the gardens? _Yes, he could see it was; striding toward the front door. He let the curtain fall and turned the radio off.

**M**

_Spending the Solstice with Tom was more of a holiday than I had expected,_ Draco read, as he lay in bed. _We spent long mornings abed and our afternoons in the library or walking in the gardens… _Draco wasn't sure he really cared for the soppy bits – Abraxas was quite into poetry and some of the stuff was just… too gay for him, to put it politely. A lot of time was also spent insulting Draco's great-grandfather, the last Malfoy Minister of Magic.

The door opened and his father came in. "Time to go to _sleep_, Draco," Lucius said firmly, taking the book and putting it down on the beside-table; without looking at it – luckily. Draco snuggled under the covers; his father kneeling down beside the bed. "Things… are going to be different around here, Draco, and I want you to listen carefully," Lucius' tone brooked no argument. "Go straight to your rooms after dinner, ward your door, and have the house-elves bring you supper there. There will be no more going around without your wand – carry it always – and if you… _see _anything… _strange… _do not interfere, and come to me as soon as you can. Is that clear?"

_What? No late nights? _"But father…!" Draco began.

"No arguments! You will do as I say – is that clear?"

Draco sighed, "Yes, father."

Lucius stood up and walked to the doorway and with a wave of his wand the lights extinguished. "Goodnight, Draco."

"'Night…"

The door shut.

**M**

Lucius double-warded his son's door before returning his wand to its sheath and striding quickly up the hall to Narcissa's suite. She was half-undressed, her robes loose from her shoulders, silvery-blue lingerie framing her bosom. She made Lucius ache longing to just lie with her and forget. He approached her and bent his face into the curve of her neck, inhaling her perfume. "I have guests tonight," he lied, _only one comes on a night like this,_ "ward your door."

"Draco?" she asked, blue eyes wide, her pink lips whispering the name. He wrapped himself around her, "Safe in bed and protected by this house as well as my spells." He paused. "I may not return until tomorrow morning..." They kissed.

"Be careful, Luci," she said as he turned to go.

He didn't answer.

**M**

The tall, cloaked figure waited outside the glass doors of the ballroom. Finally he saw Lucius emerge, coming toward him to open the door. His face looked drawn in the moonlight and Lord Voldemort thought he appeared older than his 42 years. "My lord," he lowered his head as Voldemort entered and closed the glass door behind him. _So much like his father… _the Dark Lord watched that glorious hair fall across his face as he bowed.

They said nothing, Lucius leading Voldemort up a flight of stairs and lighting the candles in a set of south-facing rooms decorated in warm colours, maroon and terracotta, with silvery furnishings. Fresh lilies were arranged on a side table, but otherwise the room bore no signs of habitation. A painting hung above the bed: luminous grey eyes, wavy white-blond hair, and a pointed, almost gamin face. _Why did you leave me? _The Dark Lord gazed up at the painting, _how can I bear it? _

**M**

Lucius could feel his heart-rate increasing with every step closer to the room he came. His father's rooms remained as they had been at the time he passed away. Lucius never came here… it was too painful remembering. "Take everything off," the Dark Lord ordered, still focused on Abraxas' portrait. _How have I come to this? I am forty-two, head of one of the noblest_ _families in England… _he too stared at the painting, hatred in his own grey eyes, standing naked in the candlelight, unafraid, but bitterly conscious of his position.

Voldemort looked at him once, his expression inscrutable, before going to the wardrobe and taking down a creamy silk shirt. Lucius forced himself to remain calm, picturing his wife's face. The Dark Lord began to slowly button up the shirt, first the cuffs, then the front – right up to his chin. It smelt of must and that spicy scent that always wafted around his father. Then a waistcoat done in silver embroidery, then soft linen trousers, then an apricot cravat – to which Voldemort attached a diamond pin – and eventually, one of those long embroidered dressing-gowns father had worn instead of robes as a badge of his status as an invalid. This one was in peach velvet with silver Japanese cranes and long tassels. All this was done without the Dark Lord looking at his face. He felt sick. That long yew wand twisted and Lucius felt his straight hair curl with soft waves. He glanced sideways into the mirror – _Merlin, how can I bear it?_

"Lie on the bed," still, Lord Voldemort refused to look. Lucius lay on the bed his father died in and watched expressionlessly as his Master took off his cloak. "For this small time, you will refer to me as Tom."

"Yes… Tom." _I am doing this for Narcissa, I am doing this for Draco, I am doing this for Narcissa, I am doing this for Draco… _

"If you could speak how _he _spoke…"

"Of course, Tom… I should be happy to." _Don't clench your teeth, smile… You've done this before you can do it again…_

Finally, Voldemort turned and approached the bed. Lucius lowered his eyelids, forcing himself to appear interested. "I have missed you…" the Dark Lord said, pressing himself against Lucius.

"And I you, my darling Tom…" _Dah-ahh-ling. Merlin help me! _Long fingers loosened the cravat and lipless kisses began to trail up his neck.

"Abraxas… _Abraxas_…!"

**M**

**Please feed the author – we need love too! **


	4. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer: **Usual fare: I do not own Harry Potter, neither am I making any money from this story.

**Summary: **ABRAXAS MALFOY/DARK LORD/LUCIUS and maybe DRACO. When Draco finds his grandfather's memoirs he unlocks a past he never knew beginning in the winter of 1942 and the passion between Abraxas Malfoy & a boy called Tom Riddle. As Draco reads, will it begin to change his own choices?

**Author's Notes: **In case you missed the clue, Draco doesn't know about the daimonepsy because Abraxas has written it out. "…_walking _in the gardens…" pure-blood honour and all that. Here's where integration with the books starts proper, in terms of plot and dialog – but I've tried to put a bit of a different spin on things. I am trying for canon though.

**Paterfamilias**

_In which Draco relishes new authority & reads about the end of another holidays; Lucius speaks to the Minister of Magic on certain matters & encounters first Dumbledore: with whom he discusses the time & who has a memory of his own; & then Arthur Weasley & Harry Potter, which causes him to muse on adolescent vocabulary; Draco & Lucius experience the curious incident of the dog in the daytime & finally, Abraxas confesses that all is not quite as one would think. _

Flavian, Draco's eagle owl, winged his way into his master's room, dropping a large envelope on Draco's bed. _Hm… Hogwarts list…_He rolled over and ripped it open, read down the school list and –

_Congratulations, Mr. Malfoy, you have been chosen as Slytherin Prefect. Your badge is enclosed. _

And indeed, when he tipped up the envelope a silver and green badge fell out, decorated with an ornate 'P.' _Well, that'll be a bit of fun… _but both Potter and Granger probably got chosen too – so no real victory. _I'll be able to put the Weasel in detention, though. _Draco smirked and examined the badge from all angles. _Should have expected it really – _but the truth was he hadn't been thinking about school at all… _I'd better do some homework…!_

**M**

Lucius Malfoy gazed at the atrium fountain wearing an expression of mild disgust. It was so… tasteless. He'd always thought so – one of those ghastly modern things done in the fifties, a happy space between Grindelwald and Voldemort. The smiling goblin was particularly offensive; _a love-struck goblin is kind of creepy... my mind's wandering. _He turned to see Albus Dumbledore striding quickly across the room in flowing, midnight blue robes. _Good colour, that…_ He doffed his hat. "Headmaster…! How _nice_ to see you… have you come to get dear Harry Potter out of Fudge's clutches?" he asked lightly.

Dumbledore smiled back, "Naturally, Lucius."

"Sad affair… the Ministry ought to mind its own business if you ask _me_... Stick to regulating werewolves and so forth..." It was true. The Ministry wanted to discredit Harry Potter all by itself, the fact that the Dark Lord had sent the dementor notwithstanding; although Voldemort, unlike Cornelius Fudge, had hoped for something rather more permanent than a court hearing. "I must say, blue really _is _your colour."

The old wizard peered at Lucius over his spectacles, affecting a knowing look. "Er – thank you, I like it… I don't suppose _you_ had anything to do with this…?"

Lucius clicked his tongue. "Of course not, headmaster… I wouldn't dare touch anything so terribly bureaucratic; besides, I supported that bill – when was it, two years ago? – to lighten the 1875 regulations; a pity it didn't quite pass… My appointment with Cornelius is _afterwards_, not before… his eight-thirty… hmm – I suppose that means he expects the boy's hearing to be rather quick…"

Those twinkling blue eyes hardened to a diamond glint. "Is there something else waiting in the wings then?"

"If by _something else_ you mean that I am hosting the annual St. Mungo's charity ball, then yes," he smirked "your invitation should be owled to you by next month at the very _latest_…"

Another knowing smile: "Pride comes before a fall, Lucius…"

"I have no idea what you mean, Dumbledore… you're remarkably cryptic sometimes…" he replied innocently, "all _I _know…" he checked his silver pocket-watch, "… is that you're now – ah – _seven_ minutes late…"

**M**

…_Dumbledore sat in his chair, twiddling his thumbs. A smart rap on the door, "Oh, do come in!" Mr. Abraxas Orion Malfoy… Merlin, I haven't seen him since he left school… Beauty undiminished. So many years… he wears it very well – but I very much doubt he has much inner beauty left…_

_Malfoy senior lowered himself into the chair before Dumbledore's desk. An emerald as big as one of Fawkes' eyes shone on his left hand, against a creamy velvet glove. "Lovely to see you again, Albus… your owl indicated that there was some problem with dear Lucius?" He looks like he hasn't been outside for months… like a china doll dressed for a garden party – perfect, but slightly unnerving. You are defined by the company you keep, I suppose. Still, I hope to salvage the boy. Dumbledore leant forward, "Yes, Lucius' behaviour is, quite frankly, deteriorating." He took a breath. "His best friend, Mr. Rookwood, told Professor Slughorn that Lucius had gone swimming in the lake at two o'clock in the morning… that he has become increasingly irritable and that, more seriously, he has been taking this anger out on younger students." _

"_Then get the caretaker to hang him upside-down for a few hours." Mr. Malfoy examined his immaculate gloves. "I really do not see the relevance of this, headmaster, it seems rather… trivial. Some of your recent initiatives, on the other hand…" _

_Dumbledore frowned, "You're not alarmed by your son's behaviour?" _

_Abraxas laughed, "Lucius is hardly sixteen. Do not all adolescents go through something similar? Mind you, bullying is intolerable – I shall see to it, Albus, never fear. A Malfoy ought to set an example."_

_Dumbledore looked well into those cold eyes – like a January sky. "I'm afraid what I mean is that your son is depressed, Abraxas - this behaviour is but a symptom of the fact..."_

_The proud nostrils flared. "Nonsense, my son is nothing of the sort. He has everything a boy could want – he is a Malfoy." _

_Dumbledore's eyes widened. Erasmus was a snob – but this behaviour was simply astonishing… the conceit! The headmaster sighed again. "Are you sure you can think of nothing that could be making Lucius unhappy? I merely desire to help, you understand?"_

"_Nothing, I assure you, Albus."_

**M**

_Is one child more deserving of love than any other? And who counts any child happy who has not looked into that child's heart? _As Albus Dumbledore walked into the courtroom he thought of the blond boy he had failed to save – because he had not found the courage to act. The fate of little Draco weighed heavily on the headmaster's mind as he arrived to save Harry Potter… _And the sins of the father shall haunt his children to the third and fourth generation…Merlin protect him – for I can do nothing. _

**M**

Cornelius Fudge was miffed. "This sort of thing must stop, as I'm sure you're aware, Lucius… Harry… well… she will shake things up a bit!"

"But… _Umbridge_?" Lucius asked the Minister, "Surely her _breeding_ precludes her…?" They were talking in the corridor together outside the Minister's office. Lucius had known Cornelius at school. Slytherins hang together… _or separately… _Lucius thought snidely.

"Well…" Fudge began, "It's alright for _you, _old chap – but this _is_ the modern world we live in. Of course it's deplorable, but _really…" _

From the corner of his eye, Lucius saw them: the red-headed imbecile and the juvenile menace. The pain of his failure in the graveyard burnt away at his insides as he looked at the Potter boy. Arthur Weasley, however, was a different matter.

"Well, well, well… Patronus Potter…" He tried to smile for Cornelius but it came out tight and thin, teeth clenched. "…The Minister was just telling me about your lucky escape, Potter. Quite astonishing the way you continue to wriggle out of tight holes… _snakelike, _in fact…" It was an insult, looking at the boy's red face and vivid anger. Someone more certain of Lucius' acquaintance, Severus certainly, would have taken it as a rare compliment.

"Yeah," the boy jeered, "Yeah – I'm good at escaping." _Your command of the English language is clearly somewhat _less_ than good. _Lucius turned on the chaperone. "And Arthur Weasley too… what are _you_ doing hereArthur?" _Merlin, I hate that man. _

…_It had hurt so much… the pain of it… burnt onto his arm like some black fire – dark, hot pain – he could still feel it as he sat, collapsed in the hall, no one to tell. The tears came fast and silent, frightening him with their force. How did this happen –? He touched his face; his nose was running, mixing with the tears in the hair that fell over his face. _

"_Are you alright?" Red hair, a concerned smile, happy blue eyes… A boy without care; a boy with a mother and a father who loved him – it make Lucius sick and words stuck in his throat. "Shall I get the nurse?" A hand landed on Lucius' shoulder, it was warm. _

"_Go away! Go AWAY!" he shrieked. The other boy stepped back, astonished. Lucius spat at him. "Don't make me kill you, you fucking shit!" He ran..._

"I work here," Weasley snapped.

Lucius breathed softly, "Not _here_, surely? I thought you were up on the second floor. Don't you do something that involves sneaking muggle artifacts home and bewitching them?" Cornelius coughed slightly to hide a laugh.

"No, I-"

"What are _you_ doing here anyway?" the boy interrupted rudely.

_What a horrid little brat. _"I don't think private matters between myself and the minister are any concern of yours, Potter." He smoothed the front of his robes, "Really just because you are Dumbledore's favourite boy… you must no expect the same _indulgence_ from the rest of us… shall we go up to your office then, minister?"

"Certainly," Cornelius nodded, and did not even acknowledge the Gryffindor duo, "This way, Lucius…" _And this is why you can never win, Dumbledore – because your influence is moral, and the higher you go, the less there are. The modern world we live in, indeed… _He fingered the purse full of galleons in his pocket.

**M**

The Malfoys were at the station, smoke billowing about them. Narcissa wore deep pink silk, a scarf wrapped around her pale neck, fluttering in the wind with all the colours of a ripe nectarine. Her eyes were shut as she tried to kiss Draco, who was trying just as hard to shake her off, aware the censure of others. "Mother-!"

"Come, come, Draco – give your mother her due." Lucius commented good-humouredly, fingering the head of his cane. He caught his son's eye as Narcissa smothered the pale young cheeks in kisses; the pain of adolescent pride. He smirked and patted his son on the head, ruffling his hair. "Father and son discussion now, darling," he told his wife as he winked at Narcissa and drew Draco aside, putting his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"_Father…"_ Draco moaned, "We had the talk _last _year."

Vague memories of a talk concerning contraceptive charms and his son blushing like a Weasley surfaced in Lucius' mind. "No, Draco… not quite _that _discussion. Just remember – you are a descendant of Morgan le Fay… a Malfoy. You –" A black shape caught his eye. _A dog with Potter – how interesting…_

"What is it, father?"

"That dog – with Harry Potter… Severus has told me a tale of a black dog…" he leaned close, so that their pointed noses almost touched. "The dog is Sirius Black. Potter's faithful mutt; always one to put sentimentality before prudence…"

"What are you going to do?"

"Investigate." The whistle blew. They shared a tight, brief hug and his son ran for the train. "Goodbye Draco!"

The proud parents watched the train depart. "I wish he didn't have to go…" Narcissa said softly into Lucius' ear, leaning against him. He snuck an arm round her waist. "Would you prefer he be home when your sister returns?"

His wife's face hardened, "I forgot about her."

**M**

_Potter baiting is getting dull_, Draco thought. _He's not playing along anymore. I can't believe the Weasel got the badge – it's like giving it to one of these two goons. _Greg and Vincent lumbered along behind him as they sat down in an empty compartment. "What're you reading, Draco?" Greg asked, as he fumbled around in his pocket for something.

…_Our hot breath smelt of wine and chocolate and our bodies were slick with sweat;_ _amongst other things. Tom's eyes were glassy, a happy smile on his face: "Going back to school after all this time together seems like some cruel joke…" He said sleepily_

"_Gods like to play cruel jokes on mortals – it is their pastime…" I said carefully, running a finger down his chest…_

"Just a school book," Draco said quickly. "Why don't you two go and beat up first years or something…?"

**M**

…Mother gave me a hug that morning, I remember it vividly, as it was the last hug she would ever give me; she smelt of rosewater and she held me tightly, standing on tip-toe to kiss my cheeks. Her face was powdered, but the crinkles in her face betrayed her age. She looked sad, as if she somehow knew death was near. I flung her away, eager to be off with Tom – whose appraising gaze made me nervous of appearing too filial.

On the train, Tom took both trunks – his own looked considerably lighter – and we managed to find a compartment to ourselves. We sat on the same seat and I lay down, putting my head in his lap, feeling tired. I closed my eyes. Just then, a fat girl burst into the compartment and, tripping in the doorway, fell hard onto me. "You…!" I began, but Tom got in first. The girl scrambled up, attempting to straighten her robes. _"You insolent little monster," _Tom hissed as he pointed his wand at the door, _"How dare you pollute this place!" _

"I'm sorry…!" the girl mumbled, "I'm going!" Her eyes were bugging out as she stared at Tom. I stared too. With his lips drawn back, his teeth clenched and his face rigid; he looked like a madman. _"I will make you pay for this!"_ He flicked his wand at her and she began look ill, whimpering like a kitten, her big body shuddering. It was disgusting, reddish froth bubbled out of her mouth and I started to feel nauseous myself, just watching. "Stop it Tom…" I said, drawing back. _"Stop it…"_

He ended it, casting another spell and heaving her out, with a strength I would not have credited to his thin frame. "She won't remember a thing," he told me matter-of-factly, "God, I haven't been so angry for ages... little tramp." He sat back down beside me, putting an arm around my shoulder. "Are you alright? I love you." It was a kind, quiet voice. And his eyes were clear and sane. I leaned against him, speechless. It had all happened so fast. Just like that… The generations of insanity that ran through the Gaunt line were staring at me out of Tom's chiseled features... under all that poise was something I had never encountered before: fury. He squeezed my hand. "You look pale…" he gently pushed my hair back behind my ears. "You know I'll always be here for you – you know that?" He pushed his face into my neck. "I could have killed that girl…"

And then it came to me – and you will be horrified, I know, dear Posterity. Do you know what I thought? It was terrible and very beautiful. _I can use you. _Yes, it's the truth. Do you think a half-blood would start a crusade for purity? You think he cared, back then? No. You think _he_ had the keys to unlock the dark secrets that lie at the edge of magic? He did not. But he was gifted beyond belief. And there is a fine line between genius and insanity…

"_I love you too…" _

**M**

The book fell from Draco's hands. His compartment could have been the very one… it was eerie and he shivered. "What's wrong, Draco?" Vincent asked. "You look like somebody just died…"

**Sorry about the delay, uni work and so on. Please tell me your thoughts! **


	5. Chapter Four

**Disclaimer: **Usual fare: I do not own Harry Potter, neither am I making any money from this story.

**Summary: **ABRAXAS MALFOY/DARK LORD/LUCIUS and maybe DRACO. When Draco finds his grandfather's memoirs he unlocks a past he never knew beginning in the winter of 1942 and the passion between Abraxas Malfoy & a boy called Tom Riddle. As Draco reads, will it begin to change his own choices?

**Author's Notes: **O…K… I have not abandoned you, my faithful! This was a hard chapter and I have been VERY busy failing assignments! Re-reading what I have already written, I realize that Lucius is both 42 and 46. I shall be mean and state FOR THE RECORD that he is 46 and hopefully it won't happen again. Thanks to MandaPandaAR for reminding me of my obligations. Um… yeah, I had I wee glance at your bio… um… yeah, seems I've included the one thing you hate most… um… yeah. Sorry.

**Paterfamilias**

_In which Draco skips a few pages & Pansy makes an entrance; Lucius buys lunch & receives a letter; Severus takes 10 points from Gryffindor, picks up our tale & act accordingly; Our Villain gets changed and behaves badly & Our Hero has altercations and faints repeatedly. _

Draco took deep breaths. The book lay on the seat beside him, closed. _What does this mean for father? _He hadn't really thought about it that way before. His grandfather had been Voldemort's… lover. Surely that was one of the reasons for Lucius' high position within the circle. An eye on Vincent and Greg, who were safely eating pasties, he flipped ahead – something he'd never been tempted to do before.

**M**

…His letters were always full of elaborate endearments, as if to make up for their plain grayish paper. But, of course, this letter was different. His slanted, rather rushed handwriting had given way to a blackened mess – blots of ink all over the place. Sitting at my desk in the warm evening, I sighed as smudges came away on my white gloves. _What a mess. _There were many words blotted out and misspelled (a rarity for him) and its words were harshly ground into the thin paper.

_As you __**know**__, we receive the Daily Prophet at Hogwarts. My friend, Evelyn Nott, enjoys reading the gossip pieces out to everyone. You are marred married. Were you planning on MENIONING this to ME? Or am I __**just**__ your protégé – irrelevant to your dynasty? THE TRUTH!!__** Please**__… I will make her wish for death, this appropriate woman of yours! I will twist my nails into her eyes and long section blotted out …her __**screames**__ will make __even you__ flinch - __**YOU!**__ Her lips I will burn away… and you can make love to her __**ASHES!!!! **_How DARE you!!!! How DARE you – Harkiss was right about you. You** care** for NOTHING and **NO ONE** but YOURSELF!!! And somehow I will find the strength to kill _**you.**_

V.

How does one reply to such a missive? I sent him something temperate and neat, which explained that Phyllis and I had been engaged since we were three and that he should not elevate my intercourse with her to such levels. Making love? Our coitus was for nature's consequence and instigated by our parents' orders, not for pleasure – though she might have found some, I did not. Her round breasts and fishy smell disgusted me. She had no wit, and her conversation was soporaphic. I struck her across the face once… just to see if she would cease talking. She did not, merely began complaining about something else. I was afraid that Lucius might inherit her faults, for he was very like when he was younger; but I am pleased that he grows less like her with each passing day. Her death was good for him…

**M**

Once again, Draco flipped forward, looking for something he couldn't even name.

…_Of course, I was nervous of his return. Lucius had grown up a bit since he left… I wasn't quite sure how to manage them both. Tom would require my constant energy and attention, which might leave the little savage free to plot some mischief, and Merlin knows I have not nearly as much strength as I would like. Something must be done. I would interview possible governesses tomorrow, house-elves being too easy to manipulate for a clever child._

Pages turned under increasingly sweaty fingers.

… _Our experiments were coming to fruition, although Tom had been in constant pain for weeks, his voice hoarse with screaming. He cautioned me not to un-ward the door until the next new moon, no matter what he might say to convince me. The process outlined in the journal had seemed so much simpler than this – although Tom's modifications must, of course, be correct. One more day and then we would see the results of our efforts. My sleep was scant that night and my hair clung to my sweaty neck, uncomfortable and hot. How would he look? He might even be dead – impossible, I knew, for him to die now – but the thought preyed on me all the same._

_Finally, holding my wand tightly, I un-warded the door. It opened easily, enough to make me draw back. But there was silence from the room beyond. I took a few tentative steps forward. "Tom?" I called, gazing at the smashed furniture, the gashes in the wall-paper and bloody stains on the carpet, "Tom? I have brought you your wand. It is over."_

"_Abraxasss__…?" The voice was barely audible, raw and new… quite unlike Tom's pleasant tenor. "Did it work…? Am I…? There are no mirrorsss…" He was lying under the bed, I realized. I leaned under. Gently, I pulled him out; his body shaking uncontrollably. __"Abraxasss__… I cannot… it is… I am in so much pain…"_

_I could do nothing but stare. His skin was the__ colour__ of blank paper, leeched. He was so emaciated… like an__ inferius__… and his nose had… disappeared, transformed into reptilian slits. His eyes, I was used to seeing red, but now they were no longer human, the pupils elongated and feral. Together we had turned him into a monster. He lay in my arms as I had so often lain in his and I was suddenly attacked by a vicious sense of guilt. Could I have been wrong? But Tom had hated himself… his sickening lack of self-confidence could appear at the most awful of moments. What we had begun had to have been worth it – would be worth it – if I did my part as well as he._

"_I am here, Tom, I am here," I stroked his face. "It had worked perfectly, I assure you." I could not tell him how revolted I was, as I pulled him up onto the remains of the bed. "It is over now. You will never have to endure such pain again. Nothing can hurt you now, nothing…" I gently pushed the wand into his left hand. _

"_Ki__ssss__ me…" he murmured, his lips like old parchment. I forced down a shudder, but did nothing. __"Kisss__ me!" he demanded again, more insistently. My mind had frozen. He sprung up, uncurling to a full seven feet. "You dare draw back!" he hissed. "After all this, you dare! When you convinced me to subject myself to this processs, you did not have such thoughts!" He grabbed me roughly by the hair and dragged me to my room. I cried out, and felt the tears running down my face. What had I done? __"Yess__!" he almost screeched, in that high, unnatural voice… "So many mirrors in your__ roomsss__ Abraxass__… always…" For a moment he forgot me to stare into a mirror, leaning close and touching his long fingers to the glass. __"Your opinion, my love?"_

"_You are terrifying, Tom. Absolutely terrifying..."_

_He laughed but did not turn to look at me. It seemed impossible that but a minute ago he was shivering under a bed. "Now I am truly Lord Voldemort…" he said wondrously. But my own strength had given out and the room faded away from me, Tom with it. _

_I awoke feeling weak, my eyelids almost too heavy to move. "Abraxas?" the voice was close, intimate. "You fainted…" There was a wet sensation and I realized his tongue was in my ear._

The train shuddered and Draco was jerked out of his reverie. Pansy stood in the doorway. She had cut and coloured her hair over the summer so that now it was in a sleek honey-blond bob, slightly scary with her dark eyes. Her snub nose was in the air while her long eyelashes were lowered suggestively under raised brows. She wore a clingy, deep-pink robe, clearly waiting until the last moment to change into her uniform. "Hey, Draco," she said and sat beside him. "What's that book you're reading?"

"Er – '_The First & Second Dark Lords of the 20__th__ Century,' _it was written by my grandfather." It wasn't quite a disaster; he managed to sound smug at his grandfather having written a book.

Pansy easily took the book from him and placed it beside her on the seat. "It sounds _fascinating, _Draco." She turned to Crabbe and Goyle, "Get out and quit staring," she snapped. They went, with only a hint of confusion at how to get out the door at the same time. This left Draco alone with _The Menace. _It was held, by a consortium of Slytherin boys, that Pansy Parkinson was possibly the only girl in the school who could go from ugly to utterly and disturbingly sexy in five seconds flat. It wasn't her _body, _they agreed, but what she _did _with it that made the difference. They were going to go on to reason as to how she accomplished this remarkable feat, when Blaise said "Like Professor Snape," at which point the topic had dissolved in favour of Blaise Zabini's torment.

Draco, whose head was still full of Voldemort, wondered if Pansy would look ok with red eyes… probably. Everything looked pretty bad on her. But when her cleavage was in your face that didn't seem to matter so much… "So, how's things?" she asked, somehow on his lap, "everything ok with your parents?"

"Yeah," Draco answered, "they're fine… yours?"

"They're cool." There was silence. "So…" she said vaguely, "want to make out?"

"Ok."

**M**

Lucius sat in Cornelius' office, waiting for the minister to arrive. It was late afternoon and Fudge had been delayed by reporters. If Lucius hadn't already seen the reports before they got to the Minister's office, he might have been tempted by the papers on the desk, but there was nothing to do but wait. Sometimes money took all the fun out of espionage.

Casually, Lucius exited the office to take the lift to the atrium; he strolled confidently down the corridor to stand, quite naturally, outside the corridor leading to the Department of Mysteries.

A secretary came out, clutching a ream of papers with a few memos flying after her, pretty auburn hair in a tight bun, very kissable. "Can I help you, sir?" Her voice was just as crisp and business-like as her robes and he wondered what she would look like without them. No ring, he noted. He smiled at her, "What is your name?"

"Claire Somerset, sir."

"How nice… would you be averse to my buying you lunch, Claire?"

She blushed attractively. "You're married, Mr. Malfoy." _Ah, I find myself__ recognised_She said it as if reminding him to brush his teeth.

"Indeed, happily married, Miss Somerset. Surely eating at the same table would not jeopardise that?"

"I suppose not," she said stiffly. "I'm off at one."

"Excellent. I'll meet you in the atrium at one-fifteen."

**M**

Claire Somerset _knew _she shouldn't have agreed to lunch with the illustrious Lucius Malfoy. Basic common sense dictated a definite no. He was married. Everyone knew that half the ministry and nearly all of the Wizengamot were in his pocket. His enmity could break a person like her. But everything seemed fine. They were drinking expensive white wine, eating oysters and he was the epitome of gentlemanly conduct.

Claire found herself happier than she had been in ages. A dreamy quality settled over her features and she was sure Lucius would kiss her soon… and wouldn't that be nice? She'd had a crush on him for ages, hadn't she? Where were they again? Did it matter? He was lovely… surely he would kiss her soon? Wouldn't he?

"_Claire,"_ said that wonderful voice. _"Where do you work in the Department of Mysteries?" _

"I don't, really – I'm just a secretary, mostly cataloguing how many cups of coffee working wizards need to survive… totally top secret."

"_Is there anyone in the department who has been acting… oddly recently?"_

"Oh yes," she spoke hastily, wanting to please him, "Bode – he's been having emotional problems, Natalie told me his wife left him, poor thing." Lucius asked her a few more questions about Bode, which bored her… He ought to be talking about _her._

"_Ah – quite – now, Claire, you aren't under a curse or a potion, are you? You're just a bit tipsy, isn't that right?"_

Clair considered this. Who would want to harm her? She was special. Hadn't he sad she was special? "Of course I'm not under a curse!" she laughed.

"_And if anyone happens to ask you, tell them you were having lunch with Bode… out of – ah – concern. We must keep our love secret, you understand?"_

"You love me?" She knew it. It was the happiest moment of her life.

"_How could I not?"_

**M**

Severus Snape was good at corridors. He'd even go so far as to say he _liked _corridors. Corridors had excellent visibility; sound tended to carry down them and for him to proceed along one required multiple students to part in fearful waves. He found these facts comforting. As a person who has been alone for a long time, he took his daily pleasures from such things.

In this case, the voices which carried to his ears were those of Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Weasley, who seemed to have gotten into the proper Hogwarts spirit already, though it was only the third day of term. Severus strolled over, positioning himself directly behind Weasley. _One, two, three… _"What exactly is going on here?" Experiencing a shiver of delight as the Gryffindor froze in mid-harangue, he raised a pertinent brow. "Mr. Malfoy?"

Draco's eyes were calculating, his lip bleeding, and his pale cheeks coloured by a guilty flush. "Weasley was… insulting my father, sir."

"I trust you said something equally vitriolic about Mr. Weasley's own progenitor?"

"Hey…!" Weasley moaned, a bruise on his freckled cheek, "Malfoy said-!"

Snape's eyes glinted, "Ten points from Gryffindor, Mr. Weasley, for insolence. Now get out of my sight." The two boys fled in opposite directions. However, it seemed that one of them had dropped their books. He picked them up, two textbooks and a third, titled in gold: _'A Comparison of the First and Second Dark Lords of the 20__th__ Century,' _by Abraxas Malfoy. He flipped it open at the back page.

_But I am dying. Tom is with me, though Lucius is elsewhere – he will rejoice at my death, of course – but those red eyes continue to watch me even as my body rots without and within. I itch all over and cry out during the night. It has been a long road and my words are almost at an end. A finite air hangs around the bed curtains as I cast aside yesterday's hopes of recovery. The afternoon light is golden at the end of the bed. I suspect Lord Voldemort would end it now if he had the courage, but of course, but even he must wait. He is away now, but he promised to return this evening, leaving me to complete my story in his absence. He has not left my side in three days. I see mother sitting on the other side, waiting – my escort, perhaps. She is silent. I feel sure I will die tonight… tonight is… yes… the full moon – I have been watching it swell in the sky all month. Narcissa's boy… perhaps he may decide to be born… but my words are spent. _

_Abraxas Orion Malfoy_

Severus blinked. _Surely Draco doesn't actually carry this around in his bag? _The boy's stupidity was mind numbing. This book probably contained written proof of Lucius Malfoy's status as a Death Eater. Weasley himself could have taken it straight to his father.

Severus locked the book in one of his desk draws and sat at his desk, his fingers almost itching to get it back out. Whatever happened, Draco would not get the book back. That boy needed a strong dose of paranoia and the idea that anyone in the school could be privy to his family's darkest secrets was an excellent stimulus toward caution in the future. Not all teaching was done in the classroom, after all. Perhaps he ought to return the book to Lucius…?

Leaning back in his chair, Severus thought about the first time had had met Abraxas Malfoy. He had been all of twenty-two, young and eager. He felt his dark mark twinge just at the thought. Few people knew Abraxas' true role within the circle, fewer still credited it, but Severus had the luck to have caught his eye.

**M**

He had been ushered into an elaborate bedroom, decorated in warm colours, everything with gilded edges. Lucius stood behind him in the doorway. "He's in there. Be careful, Snape," and the door closed with smart click.

"Do not mind my son," a voice drawled from the bed, "he can be rather tiresome. Please, sit." There was an armchair on the left side of the bed and Severus gingerly sat down, his eyes never leaving the man who had spoken.

His hair was long and blond, like his son's, his mouth small and cherubic, set into a porcelain face. The eyes were pale grey, hard like the diamond pin he wore at his neck. He gave Severus the impression he got up only to dress for bed. The mood created was rather like what Severus would imagine someone looking at a manticore lying in the sun would feel: relief that the creature appeared placid, but dreading the time that it might decide to end its morning ritual and look for lunch.

"The Dark Lord speaks very highly of you, Mr. Snape," Abraxas began. In his right hand was a long, lacquered cigarette-holder and blue smoke curled above it. Abraxas inhaled deeply. "He insists that you are the only man with a reasonable chance of fooling the great Albus Dumbledore. Why is that?" He blew a smoke ring.

"I consider myself an expert at dissimulation, sir."

"Then how do I know you are not lying?"

Severus' expression was carefully blank. "That would be your prerogative, sir."

Abraxas began to laugh. "Oh you _are _good… but placing an informer requires a subtlety somewhat lacking in our powerful leader." Another smoke ring, "I assume you are already a skilled occlumens? And that the Dark Lord distrusts you because of it?"

"You speak the truth."

"Cautious for a youth, are you not? So much the better, we need more like you and less idiots like little Bella Black. You are a valuable commodity, Severus… now, what do you know about the Order of the Phoenix?"

**M**

Oh, Abraxas Malfoy had been the best asset the Dark Lord would ever have. If Severus' loyalty had been wavering, it was secured for another few years by Abraxas alone. The man had controlled an extensive network of spies, some of whom Lucius had inherited, while others had simply disappeared. Papers were always strewn over the bed, awaiting perusal. Often Severus would walk in and there would be a tray bearing parchment and ink on the man's lap, an expensive quill in his right hand. This small book doubtless held a rich yield of secrets and it would do no harm to learn them before giving it back.

After all, if Lucius was stupid enough to let Draco take such a precious book to school, then he had only himself to blame if Severus found something… useful. Reverentially, Severus unlocked the draw and began to flip through, searching for mention of Lucius.

**M**

…It was one of those rare days that found me up and about. Tom had asked me to expect him that afternoon. I stood in the morning room, flexing my knees slightly just for the sensation of movement. Tomorrow might bring a relapse and I resolved to take the opportunity to take a turn about the house and perhaps into the gardens.

As I walked down the hall I became aware of a noise, a… squeaking… like mice or similar. Intrigued, I turned into the spare suite where I thought to source of the noise might dwell. As I turned the handle, a whimpering began… as if someone were trying to hold back tears.

Long, white fingers were pressing against my son's face, held against the wall by a tall, sinuous form. Lucius' face was streaked with tears, trembling like a creature caught in a snare. I cried out and gripped the doorframe tightly, like a drowning man. _"How… you…you…!"_

Tom whipped round; the first time I had seen those reptilian features slack with shock. "You're… up," he managed faintly, letting go of Lucius, who fled past me, his footsteps echoing in the silence between us.

"How… how long have you been _doing that _with my son?" I breathed, feeling almost paralysed by shock. Tom worshipped me. It was the foundation on which I built everything which I thought or said about him. _Surely… surely…_

"_Abraxas_… I…" He came toward me, towering above as I slid down the doorframe. He attempted to gather me in his arms but I jerked away.

"Do not touch me… you _creature…_"

He slapped me across the face. "I love you!" he snarled, continuing to hit, "and I would have tortured you long ago for the pain you cause if your constitution would allow it!"

"_Tom…!"_

"You deny me my _rights!_ You sulk, you protest! Your snivelling son is nothing! But if you would be _nice _to me for once… if you would only _let_ me…!" He started to stroke my face, gently rubbing his fingers over the bruises that were doubtless forming. I wished my wand were not lying beside my bed, for I would have hexed him rather than subject myself to the kiss that followed. Darkness took me.

I woke in my room, dizzy and sore and once again unable to move my limbs. Tom sat beside me on the bed, red eyes determined. "You had an episode," his tone icy, "you shouldn't distress yourself like that…" He stood up and took a hairbrush out of one of my draws and repositioned himself behind my shoulders. "Remember how you used to ask me to brush your hair?" The brush worked delicately through a knot. Still, I remained silent as those long fingers twined through my hair, "…such beautiful hair."

**M**

_Dear Lucius,_

_It may interest you to know that I have come into the possession of a certain volume written by your father, Merlin grant him peace. In it, he expresses views which might be said to be… controversial? It is also rather illuminating as regards certain episodes in your family history. Fortunately for you, I rescued the book from the Gryffindors your son almost gave it away to. _

_As your friend, I shall state my expectations plainly. I require you to vouch for me in all meetings and enhance my standing with the dark lord. That is all. In return I shall your secrets as safely as I do my own._

_Sincerely,_

_S. Snape_

**M**

Lucius went to the window of the music room, watching the owl wing its way across the autumnal sky. The carpet was old and faded except where that piano had stood, gone now, of course; as if he would allow it to remain.

_He sat at the piano, his fingers hovering above the keys. Both his parents played, his father even more dexterously than mama had. But Phyllis died before teaching her son anything more than a few nursery rhymes. Nervous, the thirteen year-old placed his fingers in what he thought the correct position and played a chord. Suddenly, the lid was slammed down on his fingers. He screamed and jerked them away, pressing his hands tight to his chest._

"_Just what are you doing?" His father said, tone droll. "Please do not pollute the air with your feeble skills, Lucius, you will only embarrass yourself." Mirror-like eyes full of spite._

The owl perched on the ledge and Lucius opened the window and removed the letter; a Hogwarts owl, perhaps a letter from Draco? Opening the letter, he read and re-read its contents, his anger tripling with each successive sentence.

**M**

Pansy sat next to Draco, happily spreading marmalade on her toast. As she was not expecting mail, she didn't look up and the shower of owls descended on the Great Hall. But a movement (or perhaps a lack of movement) beside her caught her attention: Draco Malfoy was staring at a howler. The older Slytherins began to jeer, thus giving the younger ones permission to join in. "Present from your father?" asked a 7th year girl sweetly. Draco, glaring murderously at her, reached to open the ominous scarlet letter. _Oh Merlin… _Pansy edged away and covered her ears. But the voice when it came began as quietly sinister:

"_I had thought, Draco Tiberius Orion Malfoy, you to have at least a modicum of intelligence. I see I am to be disappointed. Your actions, of which I'm SURE you are aware, are a disgrace to your ancestors! THAT YOU COULD RISK EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR IS SIMPLY EXTRAORDINARY! HAVE YOU NOT THOUGHT? HAVE YOU NO IDEA OF THE RISK!? YOUR MOTHER IS DISTRESSED AND I AM COMING TO CALL AT THE SCHOOL TO TALK TO YOU AND YOU HAD BETTER HAVE A READY EXPLANATION!" _

The letter exploded, singing Draco's plate. Pansy tried to place a hand on his back, but he shrugged her off, not meeting her eyes. She looked around, no one looked unhappy that better-blood-than-thou Malfoy was getting some come-uppance. Pansy hoped it wouldn't hurt too much.

**M**

**Thanks. Please give me feedback and tell me it was worth finishing the night before my Latin test. I NEED to have some justification! **


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Harry Potter, Angst, Romance