Fic: How Distant
Title: How Distant
Characters/Pairing: Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Theodore Nott
Rating: PG
Word count: 2246 this part
Summary: Draco can't take it anymore. Malfoy Manor holds too many memories, and so few of them good. His parents are not pleased to hear he's decided to leave.
Author's Note: This is a sequel of sorts to my fic Nightmare but it can be read on its own. The title of this fic comes from a poem by Phillip Larkin named "How Distant". In particular the line, "How distant the departure of young men."
Draco arrived in the breakfast room at exactly 8, as he did every morning, and sat down in the chair he always sat in, between his mother and father, who sat at either end of the small, sturdy table, its golden yellow wood shiny in the sunlight that was pouring through the wide eastern window.
"Good morning, Draco," Narcissa said pleasantly.
"Morning," Draco mumbled, not meeting her eyes. He did not want to have a conversation about last night, when she had woken him up screaming from a nightmare, and was afraid she was going to draw him into one. He especially did not want to have that conversation in front of his father.
"That's no way to speak to your mother," Lucius said, from behind a copy of The Daily Prophet. Draco could see Potter shaking the Minister's hand and smiling at the camera from the front page o the newspaper. He glanced away from it quickly, a sick feeling settling in his stomach.
"Sorry, Mum," he said.
"It's quite all right, darling," she said, looking at him with sympathetic eyes, but to his relief, made no attempt to speak of the previous night's events.
"What do you want to read that newspaper for, anyway? It's just a bunch of articles about how Potter and his friends are so great," he said, looking back down the table at his father.
Lucius tilted the newspaper down, and looked at him with raised eyebrows. "An awareness of current events is an admirable quality in any wizard, particularly one of your breeding," he said, reprovingly. "Potter and his friends are the most newsworthy subjects at the present time." He didn't wait for Draco to reply, merely returning to look at his paper.
The admonishment stung, but not as much as it once might have. He suspected his father had lost a bit of his touch.
"Please eat, darling," Narcissa said, and Draco looked at the meal set out on the table. He did not feel particularly hungry, but he served himself some eggs, toast, and black pudding anyway, and poured a cup of tea by hand from the tall narrow teapot. The pot had a blue-and-white china design of a winding road with a young man walking down it into the distance, holding his wand in his right hand. Draco had always thought the man looked carefree and off to seek a great adventure, but now he thought he seemed to be fleeing from something, and indeed, the man would occasionally glance over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, and then pick up the pace. Though, of course, he never arrived at his destination.
Draco cut his sausage into small, bite-sized pieces, with all the care he would use for delicate Potions ingredients, purposefully taking his time with the task.
"What are your plans for today?" Lucius asked abruptly, folding his paper and setting it down beside him. Narcissa sent him a sharp look, but he didn't notice it, or chose to ignore it.
Draco didn't answer immediately, still cutting off the last piece of his sausage. Finally, he looked up and said, "I'm going to move out." He had not realized it was what he was going to say until he said it, and he immediately wished he could take it back with one look at his parents' dismayed faces.
Narcissa laughed the brittle, tinkling laugh that was the only laugh she ever used these days, though Draco distantly recalled that she had once had a beautiful, infectious laugh that invited you to laugh along with her. Draco did not laugh. "Of course, you are joking," she said.
"Not at all," Draco said, determined, now that it had been said, to not back down.
Lucius's face was stormy when Draco dared to look at him. "Where would you go?" he asked. "Perhaps to some flat," he asked, saying the word as if it were a curse word, "like some common Mudblood."
Draco shrugged one shoulder, not wanting to admit he hadn't thought this through very thoroughly.
His father's lip curled into a sneer. "This is your legacy and your heritage, Draco. This is where you belong. I absolutely forbid it."
Draco felt the immediate instinct to shrink back in on himself and say cheerily that it had been a small joke after all, but he doubted that would go over very well either. "I'm of legal age," he said instead, quietly, non-confrontationally.
Lucius scowled darkly. "I think you will find it hard to find a flat to go to with no monetary support. You've grown used to living within my coffers, but I will not support this ridiculous venture."
"Draco, think this through," his mother broke in, imploringly. He dared to look at her, and he thought he saw a glimmer of wet in her eyes. He looked away hastily. "We are your family. You must stick with your family, or you have nothing. Family is everything."
"I know that," Draco said, irritated. "How can you think I don't know that? After everything?" He said the last in an attempt to hurt them, for they never spoke of the events of the war even obliquely, preferring to act as if everything was perfectly normal, as if they had not been prisoners in this very house for over a year, as if they had not been terrified to walk the hallways of their own ancestral home. He felt a pang of guilt as the comment hit home. Narcissa looked as if she had been stung, and a shadow passed over Lucius's face, before it grew red with anger.
"I thought you did know that, Draco," Lucius said, his voice harsh. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Leave my sight at once."
"Happily," Draco snapped, feeling an anger of his own cloud his mind, and he stood up and walked rapidly out of the room. Behind him, he could hear his father's voice saying, "No, Narcissa, do not follow him. He is not a child any longer, and if he insists on acting like one, I will not cater to it."
Draco's face was hot with fury, and he felt sick to his stomach, as he stomped back up to the East Wing and into the room that still did not feel like his, in a house that no longer felt like his. His parents could pretend that everything was fine all they wanted, even going so far as to sleep in their old bed, that had once housed the Dark Lord when he had declared himself the master of the Manor, but he knew they still felt the heavy weight of memories that weighed him down, fear, and disgust at himself, waiting in every corner of what had once been the place he felt most safe. He sat at the narrow desk by the window, and considered what he should do next.
It was clear to him that he could no longer live in this house. His father was enraged and apathetic at turns, and his mother clung to him, throwing herself into every part of his life, as if afraid that if he was out of her sight for but a moment, he would be killed or captured. He busied himself in his old Potions laboratory, which was still stocked with some of Snape's supplies, and never spoke to anyone except for his parents. He hadn't left the Manor since the trial, four months ago, and none of his school "chums" had any interest in speaking to him. Goyle was in Azkaban, serving a 20 year sentence, even if he had wanted anything to do with Draco, Pansy had flown the country and was somewhere in France, last time he heard, and Zabini was still steadfastly refusing to reply to his OWLs or receive his Floo Calls. That left nobody, really, unless you counted Theo Nott, who he hardly did. They had never been friends in school, though he didn't think they had exactly disliked each other. Nott was probably the smartest of the Slytherins in their year. Draco was willing to admit that he was smarter than himself, even. He had managed to avoid getting the Dark Mark, despite his Death Eater father. On the other hand, Draco thought bitterly, it was not really the same situation. Mr Nott has never been a prominent Death Eater like Lucius Malfoy was, and he had never fallen so spectacularly in the Dark Lord's graces. Nott had never been given a suicide task that he was intended to fail, Nott had never had to eat breakfast in the morning with the likes of Fenrir Greyback breathing down his neck, and sneak to his bedroom at night, trying desperately to avoid his own supposed allies. Nott didn't even have to deal with over-protective parents, because Mr Nott had taken very little interest in his son's life when he was alive, and now he was dead, leaving Nott Master of Nott Manor, he took even less interest in it.
Master of Nott Manor. Nott was Master of Nott Manor, Draco thought, the wheels in his head beginning to turn. He was fairly certain that Nott lived alone there, with only an elderly House-Elf for company, and rarely ventured outside. It was possible he was lonely. And it was such a large house. Surely there was enough room for another person to live in it. It was unorthodox, true, but he had never thought Nott was the sort of bloke who stood steadfastly by tradition.
His mind made up, he retrieved some parchment, thick and silky smooth, with the Malfoy seal on its header, and a self-inking quill from his desk, and began to write. He had already thrown out at least five versions before he came up with one he deemed acceptable.
Dear Theodore Nott,
I hope that this winter is treating you well, and that my owl finds you content, and warm inside on this chilly morning. It is quite brisk outside, despite the sun shining through the grey clouds. I would hate to think that you were in any way discomforted.
I, myself, have come upon a very small hitch in my plans. Though I am personally in perfectly good spirits, as are my parents, and we all have a great deal of hope for what the future brings, I am finding that the time has perhaps come for me to take other lodgings. This is not to imply that there is anything wrong with the Manor, which is as beautiful and grand as ever, but merely that I seek a different point from which to view the world, and my many options.
I do not ask to impede on your hospitality lightly, but I would consider it a great favor if you were to find some small space within your home for me to stay for awhile, for old times' sake.
I await your reply with great pleasure.
Sincerely yours,
Draco L. Malfoy
Draco wrinkled his nose at the tone of the letter, which included more brown-nosing than he would have preferred, but he couldn't think of any one else who might take him in, and besides, the last year of the war had made him more than accustomed to brown-nosing whenever required. It was distasteful, but sometimes, it was a matter of life or death.
He opened the window next to his desk, and leaned out of it, whistling sharply for Aureolus, his owl. The large Eagle Owl arrived with reasonable speed, swooping out of the sky, and landing with grace, and a click of his talons, on the windowsill. He looked at Draco out of one imperious eye as he waited patiently for his orders.
Draco folded the letter with precise care, and slid it gently into an envelope, which he closed, and turned over. He sealed it with his wand, pressing the tip firmly against the paper. Green smoke cleared to display an intricate letter M, overlaid on the Malfoy crest in dark purple wax. He wrote Nott's name on the front of the envelope, and held it out for Aureolus, who sniffed it once and gave Draco a look as if he disapproved, but grasped it tightly in his talons. With a shake of his feathers, he launched himself out the window and into the sky. Draco watched him disappear behind some tall trees, before he turned away from the window.
His mission complete, Draco summoned a book on Potions theory from his bookshelf, but found he could not concentrate on it. He was so anxious for Nott's reply that his stomach felt as if it were floating and his mouth was uncomfortably dry. He kept licking his lips, and glancing at the window.
Fortunately, he did not have to wait all that long, and after an hour or two of trying to read his text, his eyes scanning over the same passages again and again, he glanced out the window for another time, and, in the distance, he saw a dark shape moving towards him quickly, forming into the familiar shape of his owl. Aureolus dropped a folded note onto his desk, and folded his wings behind his back to sit patiently beside his master. Draco reached to open the note with shaking fingers.
Malfoy,
You're pathetic. Fortunately, I've always had a soft spot for lost causes. When can you arrive?
T.N.
Next
Characters/Pairing: Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Theodore Nott
Rating: PG
Word count: 2246 this part
Summary: Draco can't take it anymore. Malfoy Manor holds too many memories, and so few of them good. His parents are not pleased to hear he's decided to leave.
Author's Note: This is a sequel of sorts to my fic Nightmare but it can be read on its own. The title of this fic comes from a poem by Phillip Larkin named "How Distant". In particular the line, "How distant the departure of young men."
Draco arrived in the breakfast room at exactly 8, as he did every morning, and sat down in the chair he always sat in, between his mother and father, who sat at either end of the small, sturdy table, its golden yellow wood shiny in the sunlight that was pouring through the wide eastern window.
"Good morning, Draco," Narcissa said pleasantly.
"Morning," Draco mumbled, not meeting her eyes. He did not want to have a conversation about last night, when she had woken him up screaming from a nightmare, and was afraid she was going to draw him into one. He especially did not want to have that conversation in front of his father.
"That's no way to speak to your mother," Lucius said, from behind a copy of The Daily Prophet. Draco could see Potter shaking the Minister's hand and smiling at the camera from the front page o the newspaper. He glanced away from it quickly, a sick feeling settling in his stomach.
"Sorry, Mum," he said.
"It's quite all right, darling," she said, looking at him with sympathetic eyes, but to his relief, made no attempt to speak of the previous night's events.
"What do you want to read that newspaper for, anyway? It's just a bunch of articles about how Potter and his friends are so great," he said, looking back down the table at his father.
Lucius tilted the newspaper down, and looked at him with raised eyebrows. "An awareness of current events is an admirable quality in any wizard, particularly one of your breeding," he said, reprovingly. "Potter and his friends are the most newsworthy subjects at the present time." He didn't wait for Draco to reply, merely returning to look at his paper.
The admonishment stung, but not as much as it once might have. He suspected his father had lost a bit of his touch.
"Please eat, darling," Narcissa said, and Draco looked at the meal set out on the table. He did not feel particularly hungry, but he served himself some eggs, toast, and black pudding anyway, and poured a cup of tea by hand from the tall narrow teapot. The pot had a blue-and-white china design of a winding road with a young man walking down it into the distance, holding his wand in his right hand. Draco had always thought the man looked carefree and off to seek a great adventure, but now he thought he seemed to be fleeing from something, and indeed, the man would occasionally glance over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, and then pick up the pace. Though, of course, he never arrived at his destination.
Draco cut his sausage into small, bite-sized pieces, with all the care he would use for delicate Potions ingredients, purposefully taking his time with the task.
"What are your plans for today?" Lucius asked abruptly, folding his paper and setting it down beside him. Narcissa sent him a sharp look, but he didn't notice it, or chose to ignore it.
Draco didn't answer immediately, still cutting off the last piece of his sausage. Finally, he looked up and said, "I'm going to move out." He had not realized it was what he was going to say until he said it, and he immediately wished he could take it back with one look at his parents' dismayed faces.
Narcissa laughed the brittle, tinkling laugh that was the only laugh she ever used these days, though Draco distantly recalled that she had once had a beautiful, infectious laugh that invited you to laugh along with her. Draco did not laugh. "Of course, you are joking," she said.
"Not at all," Draco said, determined, now that it had been said, to not back down.
Lucius's face was stormy when Draco dared to look at him. "Where would you go?" he asked. "Perhaps to some flat," he asked, saying the word as if it were a curse word, "like some common Mudblood."
Draco shrugged one shoulder, not wanting to admit he hadn't thought this through very thoroughly.
His father's lip curled into a sneer. "This is your legacy and your heritage, Draco. This is where you belong. I absolutely forbid it."
Draco felt the immediate instinct to shrink back in on himself and say cheerily that it had been a small joke after all, but he doubted that would go over very well either. "I'm of legal age," he said instead, quietly, non-confrontationally.
Lucius scowled darkly. "I think you will find it hard to find a flat to go to with no monetary support. You've grown used to living within my coffers, but I will not support this ridiculous venture."
"Draco, think this through," his mother broke in, imploringly. He dared to look at her, and he thought he saw a glimmer of wet in her eyes. He looked away hastily. "We are your family. You must stick with your family, or you have nothing. Family is everything."
"I know that," Draco said, irritated. "How can you think I don't know that? After everything?" He said the last in an attempt to hurt them, for they never spoke of the events of the war even obliquely, preferring to act as if everything was perfectly normal, as if they had not been prisoners in this very house for over a year, as if they had not been terrified to walk the hallways of their own ancestral home. He felt a pang of guilt as the comment hit home. Narcissa looked as if she had been stung, and a shadow passed over Lucius's face, before it grew red with anger.
"I thought you did know that, Draco," Lucius said, his voice harsh. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Leave my sight at once."
"Happily," Draco snapped, feeling an anger of his own cloud his mind, and he stood up and walked rapidly out of the room. Behind him, he could hear his father's voice saying, "No, Narcissa, do not follow him. He is not a child any longer, and if he insists on acting like one, I will not cater to it."
Draco's face was hot with fury, and he felt sick to his stomach, as he stomped back up to the East Wing and into the room that still did not feel like his, in a house that no longer felt like his. His parents could pretend that everything was fine all they wanted, even going so far as to sleep in their old bed, that had once housed the Dark Lord when he had declared himself the master of the Manor, but he knew they still felt the heavy weight of memories that weighed him down, fear, and disgust at himself, waiting in every corner of what had once been the place he felt most safe. He sat at the narrow desk by the window, and considered what he should do next.
It was clear to him that he could no longer live in this house. His father was enraged and apathetic at turns, and his mother clung to him, throwing herself into every part of his life, as if afraid that if he was out of her sight for but a moment, he would be killed or captured. He busied himself in his old Potions laboratory, which was still stocked with some of Snape's supplies, and never spoke to anyone except for his parents. He hadn't left the Manor since the trial, four months ago, and none of his school "chums" had any interest in speaking to him. Goyle was in Azkaban, serving a 20 year sentence, even if he had wanted anything to do with Draco, Pansy had flown the country and was somewhere in France, last time he heard, and Zabini was still steadfastly refusing to reply to his OWLs or receive his Floo Calls. That left nobody, really, unless you counted Theo Nott, who he hardly did. They had never been friends in school, though he didn't think they had exactly disliked each other. Nott was probably the smartest of the Slytherins in their year. Draco was willing to admit that he was smarter than himself, even. He had managed to avoid getting the Dark Mark, despite his Death Eater father. On the other hand, Draco thought bitterly, it was not really the same situation. Mr Nott has never been a prominent Death Eater like Lucius Malfoy was, and he had never fallen so spectacularly in the Dark Lord's graces. Nott had never been given a suicide task that he was intended to fail, Nott had never had to eat breakfast in the morning with the likes of Fenrir Greyback breathing down his neck, and sneak to his bedroom at night, trying desperately to avoid his own supposed allies. Nott didn't even have to deal with over-protective parents, because Mr Nott had taken very little interest in his son's life when he was alive, and now he was dead, leaving Nott Master of Nott Manor, he took even less interest in it.
Master of Nott Manor. Nott was Master of Nott Manor, Draco thought, the wheels in his head beginning to turn. He was fairly certain that Nott lived alone there, with only an elderly House-Elf for company, and rarely ventured outside. It was possible he was lonely. And it was such a large house. Surely there was enough room for another person to live in it. It was unorthodox, true, but he had never thought Nott was the sort of bloke who stood steadfastly by tradition.
His mind made up, he retrieved some parchment, thick and silky smooth, with the Malfoy seal on its header, and a self-inking quill from his desk, and began to write. He had already thrown out at least five versions before he came up with one he deemed acceptable.
Dear Theodore Nott,
I hope that this winter is treating you well, and that my owl finds you content, and warm inside on this chilly morning. It is quite brisk outside, despite the sun shining through the grey clouds. I would hate to think that you were in any way discomforted.
I, myself, have come upon a very small hitch in my plans. Though I am personally in perfectly good spirits, as are my parents, and we all have a great deal of hope for what the future brings, I am finding that the time has perhaps come for me to take other lodgings. This is not to imply that there is anything wrong with the Manor, which is as beautiful and grand as ever, but merely that I seek a different point from which to view the world, and my many options.
I do not ask to impede on your hospitality lightly, but I would consider it a great favor if you were to find some small space within your home for me to stay for awhile, for old times' sake.
I await your reply with great pleasure.
Sincerely yours,
Draco L. Malfoy
Draco wrinkled his nose at the tone of the letter, which included more brown-nosing than he would have preferred, but he couldn't think of any one else who might take him in, and besides, the last year of the war had made him more than accustomed to brown-nosing whenever required. It was distasteful, but sometimes, it was a matter of life or death.
He opened the window next to his desk, and leaned out of it, whistling sharply for Aureolus, his owl. The large Eagle Owl arrived with reasonable speed, swooping out of the sky, and landing with grace, and a click of his talons, on the windowsill. He looked at Draco out of one imperious eye as he waited patiently for his orders.
Draco folded the letter with precise care, and slid it gently into an envelope, which he closed, and turned over. He sealed it with his wand, pressing the tip firmly against the paper. Green smoke cleared to display an intricate letter M, overlaid on the Malfoy crest in dark purple wax. He wrote Nott's name on the front of the envelope, and held it out for Aureolus, who sniffed it once and gave Draco a look as if he disapproved, but grasped it tightly in his talons. With a shake of his feathers, he launched himself out the window and into the sky. Draco watched him disappear behind some tall trees, before he turned away from the window.
His mission complete, Draco summoned a book on Potions theory from his bookshelf, but found he could not concentrate on it. He was so anxious for Nott's reply that his stomach felt as if it were floating and his mouth was uncomfortably dry. He kept licking his lips, and glancing at the window.
Fortunately, he did not have to wait all that long, and after an hour or two of trying to read his text, his eyes scanning over the same passages again and again, he glanced out the window for another time, and, in the distance, he saw a dark shape moving towards him quickly, forming into the familiar shape of his owl. Aureolus dropped a folded note onto his desk, and folded his wings behind his back to sit patiently beside his master. Draco reached to open the note with shaking fingers.
Malfoy,
You're pathetic. Fortunately, I've always had a soft spot for lost causes. When can you arrive?
T.N.
Next