Objects of Desire - Prologue

The Long Kiss Goodnight

Lucius Malfoy had always been one to err on the side of caution in most things that he undertook to do. The trick to being Lucius Malfoy was to make sure that no one realized that he chose to err on the side of caution. His choice of wife was a prime example. He had wanted, rather desperately, to have a son who would look remarkably like himself, so he chose Narcissa over her sister Bellatrix because she looked so much more like him. He had been this way for almost the entire of his life, with a few notable exceptions. One had brought him to his current state. He had thoroughly believed that the Dark Lord would win eventually and if he didn’t, well, he was Lucius Malfoy and he had money and money spoke volumes in the Ministry. Not so it seems, when you have been unmasked, sent to Azkaban and escaped only to have the damn Dark Lord defeated in battle by an adolescent boy. So in retrospect, no, that had not been one of his best choices.

Not that he had regretted joining the Dark Lord, being a Death Eater had afforded him pleasures that the common society would never have allowed, not to mention the sheer accumulation of power that had placed him in a league of his own. Not that that was helping him now. What he did regret was that he hadn’t had a back up plan incase it all went tits up, which it so unbelievably had. Oh yes, Snape had told him, and oh yes, he hadn’t listened. Snape had done the right thing, a double agent, no matter who had won, Snape had come up smelling like the proverbial rose.

It was too late for that particular regret. He had watched the Dark Lord die, he could call him Voldemort now, he wasn’t coming back, along with most of the people he had flippantly called his friends and then they had caught him with no less than seven stun spells. So it was three weeks at St Mungos to get him fit for trial, sent home for a week under a binding spell and then to the Ministry to be tried, found guilty (inevitable) and sentenced to receive the Kiss. Now why couldn’t they have just decided to kill him? He had expected the Kiss, however, and that was where his magnificent cunning had kicked in to action. At the Manor, before the trial when he had been weighing up the pluses and the minuses and coming up with “Oh Merlin they are going to give me to the Dementors”, he had found the potion he needed. Thanking all the Gods he could think of that he had known Severus Snape so very well for so very long and had watched the meticulous little git work in the minutest detail, he put the potion together and drank it.

He had been counting on the Ministry to allow his son to come and see him before the Kiss, it was something he should never have counted on and now he was in possibly a worse position than he had started in. Without being able to tell Draco what to do, he was going to have to rely on the hope that someone would figure it all out. What if no one did? Worse, what if someone did and they just plain didn’t care less? Let’s face it, that was indeed possible. No, this was not good at all.

He sat in silence, staring at the door in front of him and biting his nails. That bastion of moral indignation, Mad Eye Moody, was pacing around, smiling and whistling a merry little tune. Lucius had absolutely no doubt that the bastard had asked to be the one guarding him, he hadn’t seen a smile quite so large as the one Moody had displayed at his trial when the Guilty verdict had come down. On the other side of the door, his wife was being kissed good bye in full view of around fifty spectators that included their son.

The door opened all too soon and they carried her out. He stared for a moment, taking in the familiar curves of her body, the blonde of her hair, the upturn of her nose. She wasn’t Narcissa any more though, Narcissa would never have allowed her mouth to hang slackly open like that, so that a thin stream of drool would run down the side of her face and pool in her hair, and her eyes, once blue and bright, were glazed and dead looking, like a fish kept out of water too long. There were fates worse than death and he was looking at it. His eyes widened and his mouth went dry, not from sorrow for his lost love, but from pure unadulterated fear.

“Your turn now, Malfoy”. The smile that Moody had displayed at his trial was now back on the scarred and disfigured face, in fact, Moody was positively beaming.

Lucius swallowed what little spit he had left and stood up, straightened his robes and smoothed his hair, it was a nervous habit left over from childhood. Always straighten yourself out, always make sure you look immaculate. From somewhere deep in his memory a voice admonished; “Lucius, brush your hair, you look like something a gnome dragged in”.

“Now don’t you go worrying about prettying yourself up,” Moody chuckled, “you're on a sure thing here, it’ll kiss you all the same.”

Lucius pursed his lips a little and stepped forward, concentrating hard on the process of putting one foot in front of the other as he walked through the door.

Draco Malfoy was sitting in the front row of a small auditorium that he really didn’t want to be in. He had watched his Mother go, watched her turn her face up to the Dementor as it came for her, she had gone quietly, she had even closed her eyes as though it was a kiss of passion. It was typical of her, nothing was going to make Narcissa Malfoy flinch. He had set his jaw completely solid and didn’t blink, it wouldn’t do to start crying now, Narcissa would never have been able to abide that. He had wanted to leave then, he’d seen enough, he didn’t need to see anymore, but Narcissa and the three before her had been nothing but warm up acts, it was time for the main event, and Draco was required to stay. The Ministry had decreed that he would come, a moral lesson to the son of a couple of Death Eaters, don’t do what your parents did, look what has become of them.

He sat between Dumbledore and Snape. Dumbledore was on the council and was one of the jury who had declared his Father guilty. Snape had come as moral support to Draco. Snape was sitting in stony silence, Dumbledore looked stern and unhappy. The elderly wizard had made no secret of his disapproval of this “Barbaric Act”, but what other punishment could there be? He didn’t believe in the Death Penalty either and Azkaban couldn’t hold them. The public had cried out for the Kiss and Cornelius Fudge, his grip on power perilously close to failing, had given in to his public, for the good of the Wizarding World, of course.

His Father, Lucius, came through the door, followed by a positively glowing Moody. He walked slowly, almost shuffling, his eyes wide as he focused on the chair in front of him. His face was a mask of something that not one single person in the room would ever have thought they would see on Lucius Malfoy's face. Fear, pure, unadulterated fear. He sat down, unsteady in the chair and turned his face, catching Draco’s eye, Grey meeting Grey. Draco’s fists balled in his lap, his knuckles turning white. He clenched his teeth and watched as his Father turned to face the Dementor…… and panicked.

Lucius tried to get up, out of the chair, an instinctive reaction, the need to survive, and the Dementor swooped on him as soon as he moved, smothering his strangled cry with its mouth. Draco felt a sob rise loud in his throat and escape, felt both Snape and Dumbledore grab him and still him. Lucius was struggling like someone being suffocated, his body writhed, his hands flailing wildly at the Dementors back, hitting it ineffectually with ever failing strength. He never closed his eyes, he kept them wide and on the thing that was destroying him, a long slick tear streaked down the cheek that was visible to Draco and he cried muffled screams into the Dementors throat.

Draco watched it happen, watched as the flailing hands began to slow, fade somehow and suddenly a plethora of memories came storming over him like rain. He was two and on a broom stick that flew only a foot off the ground and he was riding it, laughing with the gurgling laugh of a toddler and his Father was standing above him, holding his hands, turning on the spot so that he could fly around and around, that blonde hair blowing in the breeze. He was four and at the beach, up on his Fathers shoulders, being taken out into the deep waters where he would never have reached alone. He was five and it was Christmas and he was trying to force a mince pie into his Fathers mouth and Lucius hated mince pies, but he kept laughing and Draco had been able to push it in….

“NONONONONONONONONO.” He was screaming it as Lucius’s hands fell to the sides of the chair and the eyes blinked, and blinked again and started to glaze.

Draco stood up, trying desperately to get to his Father, knowing it was too late. His fingernails bit into the meat of his palms, drawing blood and as Snape pulled him back; wrapped long black clad arms around him and turned his face from the sight. He began to cry into the curve of Snapes shoulder, as long and loud as a child lost in the dark. Lucius was still and gone, the bringer of light and been extinguished and Snape was pulling Draco away, out of the room, away from the gossiping and leering crowd. It was, Dumbledore would later recall, Snapes first act of genuine kindness in years.

On to Chapter One