The Last Malfoy

Chapter 1: The Last Malfoy

Under a black sky, through a curtain of errant midsummer rain, they buried Lucius Malfoy in the same family crypt where fourteen generations of his ancestors had been laid before him.

Everyone agreed that his widow comported herself well. She wore a high-collared black gown with gloves and a black umbrella, showing as little skin as an abbess, and when she lifted the veil from her face to give the eulogy, not one tear crossed her pale cheek. A blond eight-year-old stood at her side throughout.

Draco did not speak during the ceremony. He was wet and cold, and his father was dead, and he didn’t want to talk to people.

“Such a shame,” said one of the mourners, an aged and skeletal dandy clad in a waistcoat of black-and-white checks. He fingered the short white triangle of his beard. “In his prime. And from such a great house…”

As if Brutus Travers wouldn’t have burned Malfoy Manor to rubble in exchange for one galleon and a firm handshake.

“Thank you, Travers,” said Narcissa. “Your kindness is as boundless as your generosity.”

Draco snorted. He had heard his parents speak about Brutus Travers before, and so happened to know this was an insult, but it was still true.

“I only hope it can do some good. Have they found Lestrange?”

Narcissa lowered her head. Travers shook his head, taking her silence as an answer.

“A terrible thing,” he said. “I could not conceive of it. It’s shocking, simply shocking.”

She pursed her lips and looked away across the graveyard. Rows of dead Malfoys rose like a silent battalion from the dark green earth, their white tombs pressing ghostly and pale through the fog.

Draco realized that one day he would lie there, too, in that cold silent earth beside his father, and it frightened him. He squeezed his mother’s hand.

“We are assured that the Aurors are doing everything in their power,” said Narcissa.

“Yes, and what powers they are,” drawled Travers.

“I fail to take your meaning.”

“My meaning? Nothing, nothing at all. Only that, if you forgive my presumption, sometimes I wonder if the Ministry’s politics do not favor… what shall we say? Men of your late husband’s disposition.”

Narcissa said dully, “We trust that the Ministry is doing everything it can. You must excuse us; my son is tired.”

He bowed. “Certainly. But my dear lady, please, if there is anything I can do, any comfort I can provide… Rest assured there is no favor too great, no request too extraordinary, that you can make of me. It would honor me most profoundly to be of any service to the heavenly Narcissa Black.”

She smiled without teeth. “I fear you are many years too late for that, Travers,” she said. “But if the same offer extends to Narcissa Malfoy, she will gratefully accept. Come, Draco.”

They drew away from the mourners. The fog was creeping over the black hills in long, ghostly fingers that reminded him of his father. It crowned the treetops and clustered around the parapets of the Manor, leaving a gilding of droplets on the windows and dripping condensation from the eaves. The cuffs of his trousers were dark and spotted with dew, and he wished that he were old enough to have a wand, so that he could cast a Scouring Charm, or better yet, a Disillusionment Charm, to make them invisible. Years in the future, he would still remember how he had fretted for his trouser-cuffs, even as they laid fresh dirt on his father’s coffin ten meters away.

He hadn’t really considered the fact that his father was dead. It was too big of a thing to think about. He could not take it all at once, but had to approach it gradually, skittishly, from the sides and in pieces, rushing in and catching little bits of it unawares — like the absence of a place setting to head the table at dinner, or the newfound silence that emanated from his mother’s study in the evenings, or the missing shadow over Draco’s shoulder while he worked at his Latin. These were the things that Draco understood. He was only eight, and he had never thought about death except in books.

He wished he could ask his father about it. Lucius would have said something arch and dismissive and yet utterly practical to comfort him, like: “Don’t be so pedestrian, Draco,” or “I do not intend to die; I have no intention of leaving my home vulnerable to that pack of vultures at Inland Revenue and their estate tax.” And then Draco would have felt better, and he would have asked his father for a game of chess, which his father might have granted if he felt like it; and they might have spent the evening that way, in a cool but somehow companionable silence, until Dobby came to put him to bed.

“Mother,” he said quietly. Narcissa continued to lead them away from the mourners.

“Yes?”

“When Mister Travers—”

“Speak softly, Draco,” she said, sotto voce. “Voices carry on the glen.”

“Sorry, Mother.” He lowered his voice. “What did Mister Travers mean? About Lestrange?”

Narcissa squeezed his hand tightly. So tightly, in fact, that he balked and grimaced, tugging fruitlessly at her grip.

“Damn him,” she said absentmindedly. Then, turning to Draco: “My darling, do you know where your father is?”

“He’s dead.”

“Yes. He’s dead. And someday you and I shall speak together, as grownups, about why that is; but that day is not today. Can you be patient for me, my sweet one?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Thank you.” She glanced back at the party, and then knelt, which so shocked Draco that he repressed a gasp: she would get grass stains on her skirts.

“Now, I know I have only just asked you a favor,” she whispered, “but I need one more.”

“Of course, Mother. Anything.”

“Your father is dead now—”

“This has been established.”

“—which means you are the Lord Malfoy. His house is your house; his name is your name. You are his heir. The last Malfoy, do you understand? The last real Malfoy left alive.”

“But you—”

“Are a Malfoy’s wife,” she said. “But not his blood. Do you understand the importance of blood, sweet one? You know that it matters? How much it matters? And why?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And you know,” she said, drawing him into her arms, “what you have to do now, don’t you?”

He felt her hands close around his shoulders and squeeze tightly. Her voice rasped low in his ear, with a sudden coldness that reminded him of nothing so much as Lucius.

“You must be brave,” hissed Narcissa, her fingers digging bruises into his shoulders. “Because the vultures are coming. They will scrape the flesh from this great house, and they will eat its bones. They will eat you. They will eat you. They will gobble you up and swallow you, if you give them the chance. You must eat them first.”

Draco nodded into her shoulder. He felt tears welling in his eyes and bit them back, sniffing angrily. It wouldn’t do for his first action as the Lord Malfoy to break down blubbering like a thankless child.

“Good. Here.” She took his hand and placed something small in his palm. He lifted it to the light: it was polished stone ring, inset with a black garnet, upon which was etched a double-headed snake, joined at the middle, entwined with an elaborate letter ‘M.’

“This is Father’s.”

She pressed his fingers closed around it. “It is Lord Malfoy’s,” she said, her voice suddenly clear and strong. “It was your father’s.” In a lower voice, she said, “Draco, they are watching.”

He looked across the lawn and noticed that the mourners had begun to drift away from the crypt, and were gliding slowly toward the Manor, their dark robes rustling over dew-silvered grass like tongues of smoke. He felt, rather than saw, that his mother was right, and their eyes grew hot on the back of his neck.

He looked at his mother, nodded silently, and put the ring in his pocket.

“Good boy,” she said, and if her voice trembled, then the tremor was gone by the time she spoke again. She said, “Shall we go on, my darling?”

Draco understood from her tone that there was no alternative.

His father was dead. He was the last Malfoy alive. And he would be brave.

Wordlessly, he turned away from his mother’s outstretched hand, and led the crowd of mourners out of the graveyard.