Draco Malfoy is a little bit crazy (draco_delirus) wrote in cr_noughts, @ 2017-03-07 15:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2007, draco, lucius |
WHO: Draco and Lucius
WHAT: a conversation - COMPLETE LOG
WHERE: Malfoy Manor
WHEN: Friday evening (3rd)
WHY: to prepare for Draco going back to the brothel
Images passed through Draco’s mind as he sat on his bed; a medley of flashbacks, fantasies, and uncertainties. One second he would be back at school, another he would imagine a different life where he wasn’t Draco Malfoy, and then would come an isolated memory that felt strange, like he wasn’t sure if it really happened or not. The whole was disjointed, but there were recurring themes. The same scraps of a scene would come through again and again; a scene with a mirror, a knife, and Harry Potter. There were gaps, big gaps in the whole event, and the parts he could remember he could not put in any order that made sense, but that didn’t stop his mind from trying.
Another, calmer theme was of a white room. Ever since he had been at the brothel with his father, Draco had found his mind going back to that room and the brief feeling of peace he had experienced in it. His brain couldn’t dwell on it for long - other pictures would intrude, as well as occasional semi-coherent thoughts - but it kept coming back. He wondered if he might be able to hold that image, and that feeling, for longer if he had been in the room for longer. He wished that he might go back.
Draco shifted slightly and felt a familiar pang of pins and needles travelling up his leg. He had sat in one position for too long again. With a slight wince he straightened his leg and allowed the blood to resume its proper course.
The first thing Lucius always did when he got home was strip himself of the clothing he swore smelled like teenage fear. Almost as ritual now, he would change while sharing his week, and a joint, with Narcissa, and he would not see Draco until dinner. However, a bunch of middle-aged people trying to get pregnant all at once was fucking with his schedule and this weekend he had to be back at the castle on Saturday, so Lucius felt the need to flush Draco out of his room early for whatever weird, awkward, ‘quality’ time they could spend together.
It was Lucius’ impulse (and right) to just walk into any room in his own house, but he was trying to treat Draco like an adult wherever he could, so he knocked, even thought it made him uncomfortable.
Draco heard a knock, and wondered if it was real. He decided that he didn’t have anything to lose by answering it.
“Hello?” he said uncertainly.
That was all he needed. Lucius opened his son’s bedroom door and entered. “I wanted to see you before dinner,” he explained, his brow knitting slightly as he approached his son on the bed. “I am only home overnight this weekend. What are you doing?” Draco was sitting on his bed, awkwardly, and seemed to be doing- nothing.
“Thinking,” Draco replied, although really that was too active a word for what he was doing. It was more that the thoughts were doing the thinking, and his mind was the receptacle. He usually would stand when his father entered a room, but with his leg still semi-numb, he didn’t trust it to support his weight, so he remained seating on the bed for a few seconds longer.
It was not as if Lucius had never sat thinking, but usually it was in the midst of doing something else. Draco looked as if he made time in his day to sit and do nothing but think. Everything Draco did now seemed odd in some way. “What were you thinking about?” Lucius was genuinely curious about what went on in his son’s mind.
Draco wasn’t quite so happy to talk about that, since half of his thoughts - or thereabouts - were unpleasant. For a split second his discomfort showed in his face, before a veneer came down, giving him a distant neutral expression.
“Different things,” he said. “Can I go back to the white room?”
“The white room?” Lucius’ thoughts first went to the room Draco had at St. Mungo’s, it was mostly white, then he remembered Toulouse’s room at the brothel. “Oh, you mean at Maison.”
That was actually a complicated question. Lucius left there the last time determined to never return, and certainly never spend his money there again. However, if there was some sort of social interaction, or sex, Draco was requesting he was reluctant to tell him no.
“Do you want to go alone?” Draco had never been out alone, so there was more than one thing here to concern Lucius.
That was a complicated question, and one that Draco hadn’t even thought of until it had been asked. He answered slowly, uncertainly.
“I want to be in there on my own,” he said. “With the blond boy. But I don’t know how to get there.”
That wasn’t quite right - somewhere in his brain was the information, but he couldn’t put it together.
“I do not mean in the room,” he clarified. “I mean, do you want to go to Maison on your own.” Lucius would be willing to bring Draco there, go somewhere nearby to wait for him, but the thought of Draco going alone unsettled him.
Draco paused and thought about it. “No,” he said. “Do you want to come?”
Want? No, he did not want to go with him. What he wanted was for Draco to have the ability to date an appropriate girl, get married and be on his way to having his own family. What he wanted was for the ‘man’ to whom he had dedicated his life to not have destroyed his son’s mind. But Lucius rarely got what he wanted.
“Yes, I will be glad to go with you.” This, though not ideal, was as good as it could get. As much as he wanted Draco to be able to go alone, as things stood, he did not want him to go alone.
Draco smiled a natural smile, not a very common occurrence for him. For a second his face looked animated, like it had before The Incident, and then it was gone, and it was just a regular absent smile again.
“When can we go?” he asked. “You are so very busy with work.”
“Ummm..” Lucius thought, leaning against Draco’s desk. “I can message Maison tonight and enquire about Toulouse’s availability. Maybe he has some time in the afternoon tomorrow.”
Draco nodded. “Thank you, Father,” he said. That done, his brain moved onto a completely new topic. “Have you seen Mother yet?”
“Yes,” he said, following Draco’s flow and change of subject, thrilled that he had continued the conversation at all. “I have been home for a couple of hours. Have you spoken to Rava this week?”
Although he himself zipped between subjects, Draco wasn’t used to other people doing the same thing. He didn’t know why his father had brought up Rava.
“No?” Draco said. “Was I supposed to?” Had he missed something? Why hadn’t Mother reminded him?
“No” Lucius answered. “I just thought you might. Oh,” he realised then why Rava might not have been in touch. “The journals have not been working. That is all anyone in the castle could talk about all. bloody. week.”
“Haven’t they?” Draco asked. He hadn’t noticed. He rarely looked in his journal. “What happened to them?”
Lucius smiled; this was an actual conversation that had not stopped yet. “I have no idea. No one in the castle seemed to know. I have never seen this happen before.”
Draco nodded, although he wasn’t sure why he was doing it. “I don’t know either,” he said. Again, not sure why he was saying that. Of course he didn’t know.
Well, it was good while it lasted. “I hope they are repaired soon,” Lucius mused. “I am not comfortable not being able to quickly and easily contact your you and your mother. I do not even know who is in charge of repairing them. It is not as if only one company sells journals.”
Draco had nothing really to add to this conversation, and smiled awkwardly. “Perhaps the Ministry will say something,” he guessed. He didn’t know why they would, but they might. Or the post office. Did the post office have anything to do with the journals, or did they just do owls? Draco was beginning to drift away again, as images of owls flew across his mind’s eye, some random owls, others known. He recognised Hedwig. Harry Potter’s owl. She died. Like Harry Potter…
And that attempt lead nowhere.
“I have started a fire, and put up a rain shield.” And by ‘I’, Lucius meant the house-elves at his direction. “Put on a jumper and come sit outside with me.”
Draco’s head snapped up, as though interrupted from a much longer reverie.
“Yes, Father,” he said obediently. He could no longer remember what he was thinking about. “Will Mother be joining us?”
“She was going to take a bath before dinner, so perhaps not,” Lucius answered, wondering what thought of Draco’s he interrupted. “I will go first to my office to draft a message to Maison and meet you in the drawing room courtyard.”
“Yes, Father,” Draco repeated. He stood up. “I will meet you there.” It would be easier to go straight out there rather than sit in his room and make himself remember he had to go outside.
“Good.” Lucius reached out and patted Draco’s upper arm, giving a light squeeze on the last, before turning to go. He left his son’s room feeling as if they had a very normal conversation. As normal as one wherein a son asked his father to make an appointment and go with him to a whore house could be. But there had been give and take, more than four exchanges, and no need to search for something new to talk about. Yes, it had been very successful, and Lucius felt lighter as he walked the dark corridors of his home.
In his office, between hits on his ornate, hand-carved pipe made of human bone, Lucius sent an owl to Maison de Réconfort inquiring about Toulouse’s availability. That done, he finished his bowl, poured himself a liberal drink, and took that down to the courtyard.
Draco was waiting for him, sat in one of the garden chairs. He looked awkward, somehow managing to slump stiffly. It wasn’t that he didn’t like being outside, but he liked going for walks. Sitting in the courtyard was different, like being in a room he rarely used. He looked up as soon as Lucius came out but he didn’t say anything.
Lucius did like being outside, as long as it was dark, raining, and not hot. He had put up a rain-shield that still allowed them to hear and see the rain without getting wet, or being subject to the wind. It was early still, but the cloud cover made it almost full dark.
Running his hand over Draco’s soft white-blond hair, Lucius gripped for a moment, effectively giving his son a one-handed head hug as he passed.
He sat on the garden sofa,across from Draco and pulled his wand to stoke the fire. With a heavy end of the week sigh he lounged back, leaning to one side, and taking up two and a half of the three seats. As formal as he tended to be, Lucius could recline, relax, and sprawl with the best of them. And he was never awkward, until it came time to try to converse with his son.
“How do you feel about having a sibling?” Lucius not only thought they would not be able to accomplish this feat, but he did not want any more children, he only wanted the one he had.
Draco gasped. He had forgotten - or repressed - that they were all supposed to be getting pregnant, and so the question came out of the blue for him.
“Is Mother pregnant?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how he felt about having a sibling. As a child he would have hated it, because he liked to be the focus of attention, but as an adult it was an entirely different question.
“No,” Lucius said disappointedly. “Your mother is not pregnant. Not yet. But she is going to have to be within the next twelve months.” Opening this conversation was Lucius’ way of making himself think about this topic which he had spent the last six months mostly avoiding, but they were running out of time. He was going to have to come up with some kind of plan to keep his wife from being given to someone else.
She is going to have to be? Draco’s brain scrabbled for context, and eventually rested on a part of a memory that he would have thought was a dream if it hadn’t been for what Lucius had said. It was certainly strange enough to be a dream. Voldemort had told them all to have babies.
“Oh,” he said. “Father, do I need have a baby?”
Lucius sat up straighter, this was not a conversation he could have in repose. “Yes, you need to have a baby. Do you remember The Dark Lord talking to us about it?”
Draco nodded. “I thought it was a dream,” he said. “We were all there and He told us.”
Even though he could remember it, he still couldn’t wrap his head around it. The idea of himself being a father - at this age and, even more, at this level of sanity - was so bizarre it didn’t even make any sense.
Yes, it seemed like a bad dream to Lucius, as well. “No, I am afraid it is all too real.”
Lucius was torn. He knew, in the spirit of treating Draco like an adult, he should probably tell him that there was a plan in the works for him to procreate with someone, but he knew he would not, unless Draco seemed very distressed about what was being required of him.
Draco didn’t want to have sex with anyone right now, but he knew that what the Dark Lord wanted, He got, so it was inevitable. It was an uncomfortable thought, but it was also such a bizarre thought that he couldn’t feel all that distressed about it until it actually had to happen.
“When?” he asked.
”You need to know who you are going to do it with by July. And have a baby in the following twelve months.” Lucius knew the deadlines for himself and Narcissa, and Draco, by heart. It was insane that he would be having a child and grandchild at the same time, assuming he could even have his own child. This whole operation was insane. And considering his son, that wasn’t a term he threw around lightly.
Draco sighed. “Not with Pansy,” he said. He liked Pansy in some respects - she was a useful person to have around, massaging one’s ego. She gave good blow jobs, too. But he didn’t want to mix his genes with her. She wasn’t very pretty, and she wasn’t that smart. He also didn’t want to have a reason to need to talk to her for 18 years, because she could get annoying.
”Alright,” Lucius readily agreed, he did not particularly like Pansy either. “Not Pansy.” He wanted to change the subject because he had basically made a deal with Rava Dolohov, on Draco’s behalf, but he was also curious about Draco’s thoughts on the matter. “We will find someone for you.”
Draco nodded again. He would probably forget this conversation later, or think it was another dream, so it wasn’t worth getting worked up about right now. This acceptance was probably what had made it possible for Draco to leave the hospital.
At this point, an owl landed on the arm of the garden sofa. Draco hadn’t seen it fly in and began looking around to see how it got there. They were outside, but there was protection from the rain. Was there a space the owl could fly in through or was the spell able to differentiate between animals and water? Lost in the contemplation of where the owl had travelled, Draco didn’t think about what it might be carrying.
Unfazed by the owl’s appearance, as he was expecting it, and had made allowances in his spell for it’s arrival, Lucius leaned forward and placed his glass on the side table so he could relieve the owl of its burden. “It is from the brothel,” he said while unfolding the message. Draco seemed to have a particular lack of interest in the owl.
“Toulouse has an open schedule from 10am to three tomorrow,” he read the note from Aziza. “Some on Sunday, but I have to be back at Hogwarts then. And there are nights available next weekend.”
At this point Draco had forgotten who Toulouse was. He had to backtrack through what his father had said for context. Brothel. Right. The white room.
“So we can go tomorrow afternoon?” he asked.
”Yes, you can go tomorrow afternoon.” Lucius reached into his shirt pocket for the pocket self-inking mini-quill he had brought down for his purpose. “How long do you want to be there?”
“Umm…,” Draco said. He had no idea. He might need to go after ten minutes, or he might want to stay there forever. There was really no way of telling until he got there. It would probably be be best to be optimistic, because he could always leave early but probably wouldn’t be able to stay late. “How long would be okay?”
“Whatever you want is okay,” he replied. Lucius would buy his son all five hours if that is what Draco wanted. “But I suppose it depends on what you want to do…” He was not asking for details, but getting a blow job was not going to take as long as actually having sex would.
Mostly Draco was just thinking of hanging out there. He wasn’t ruling out anything sexual happening, but it wasn’t his first order of business. He wasn’t sure what to ask for.
“Three hours?” he suggested.
Three hours? That was not the number Lucius was expecting. He really thought it would be half an hour, an hour at the most. But if that was what he wanted..
“Three hours,” Lucius confirmed, with a nod.
Using the coffee table as a surface on which to write, Lucius pinned a reply requesting the hours between 11am and 2pm, refolded it, and passed it into the beak of the waiting owl.
“We should leave at about half ten in the morning, Lucius said, once the owl left.
“Alright,” Draco said. He was a man of few words these days. He wasn’t sure whether to feel anxious about going out again, or relaxed that an appointment had been made and he was going to get to go back to the white room. He settled for feeling numb. Draco began to tap out a rhythm on the arm of the chair in which he sat.