Chapter Text
It’s a dark and stormy night when they come to deliver Draco’s sentence. Of course it is.
The Manor gates swing open, a bit reluctant even as Draco bids the grounds to permit them entrance. It’s not a troop of Aurors trekking their mud through the halls—just his solicitor, Kendrick, and a magistrate from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Two people will bear witness to the demise of the Malfoy dynasty. It’s horribly anticlimactic and nothing at all like it had been for Father.
The bodies were barely in the ground before the Wizengamot had made a public spectacle of Lucius Malfoy. It turns out, there was very little dignity in a public trial.
The world right after the war had felt less like a storybook ending and more like a wound. The papers were bleeding editorials and public protests burned in the streets. The signs had opinions, the headlines were brash.
He Who Must be Held Accountable and
Love Not Hate and
Once a Death Eater, Always a Death Eater.
No one knew what they wanted; no one knew what to do.
Harry Potter stood in the middle of it all, grim, sturdy, and still trying to save everyone.
“We’ve already torn ourselves apart,” Potter had said, the day before Father was to be sentenced. Draco had pored over the image in the Prophet, had traced the lines under Potter’s eyes from behind the Manor gates. “The war is over. Why haven’t we stopped fighting?” His face still managed to be heroic in the newsprint.
It had all been very dramatic. Draco had never hated Harry Potter more, even if his subconscious obsessively indulged in the image of the Chosen One staying put, staying still and right there, because Draco told him to. Draco could still loathe the idiot and want to trace his dick across Potter’s lips. The two things needn’t be mutually exclusive.
It hadn’t mattered, in the end. In spite of Potter’s calls for leniency and restorative justice, the Wizengamot handed Lucius the maximum sentence—life in Azkaban, with no possibility for release. Draco’s still not sure what to make of it, if he’s upset or relieved. Lucius had certainly deserved it.
But then again, so did Draco.
Thunder rumbles outside as Draco leads Kendrick and the magistrate up through the winding halls. The portraits hide their faces as they pass.
It has been almost three years since Draco’s father was sentenced—three years during which Draco’s conditional house arrest had not been relaxed. He’s spent a lot of that time trying to coax the portraits out of their shame, trying to learn how to sit next to a fire and not have a small panic. Draco has discovered the loneliness that breeds in a solitary existence. He’s learned the tedium of waiting and the fury of helplessness.
Three years, he’s waited for the Wizengamot’s decision, and now its judgement is finally coming for him.
Draco, apparently, did not warrant the full consideration of the court. Kendrick said that they had deliberated on their off day, signed their verdict with a quick splash of ink, and called it an afternoon. A low-level magistrate was dispatched to deliver the news. After three years of waiting, the rest of his life had been decided in less than ten minutes.
Rain thrashes the windows, loud enough to blot out the sound of the fire roaring in the grate. Kendrick seats himself in a lavish armchair and gestures for the magistrate to take a seat. Draco settles across the room, as far away from the fire as he can manage. There’s a decanter of Ogden’s set beside their best crystal tumblers, as if this is a celebration and not an interment. The thunder claps loud in the sky, setting the mood.
The magistrate—Atticus, Draco reminds himself—pours himself a generous portion of their Ogden’s and looks smug about it.
“All things considered, Mr Malfoy, you are quite lucky.” Atticus pauses, lets the Firewhisky slosh over ice.
If it weren’t for the sneer twisting his lips, Atticus could be considered handsome. His strong jaw juts out across the intimate seating, his lips quirk in silent amusement, as Atticus makes Draco wait, just a little longer.
Draco crosses one leg, content to let the Ministry’s lackey take this tiny revenge; Draco’s used to the power plays of pure-blood politics. There’s condensation on his tumbler. He rubs his fingers against the glass.
“Probation, obviously,” Atticus finally says. “Considering the amount of time it took the Wizengamot to render this decision, we’ll accept your previous house arrest as time served.”
“You were still a child, when you were involved with the Death Eaters. It was a crucial factor in their final decision,” Draco’s solicitor Kendrick is saying, but Draco is struggling to focus.
“So, I’m not going to Azkaban?” Draco tries not to sound breathy. He tries not to sound grateful.
“No. You’re not.”
That, Draco thinks, is unexpected.
“It is an outcome for which we should be extremely grateful,” Kendrick is saying.
“The reparations, however,” Atticus goes on, gulping his whisky, “will not be cheap.”
Draco is a bit dizzy, probably a bit drunk, still processing his status as a free man.
“How bad?”
Kendrick purses his lips. “I’ll be honest, Draco. Quite bad. Lucius—well, someone was always going to have to pay.”
“All properties, assets, elves, and vaults attached to the Malfoy name have been summarily emptied,” Atticus says, his voice crisp.
“Emptied?”
“As of four pm today, you were living on Ministry property.”
They’d seized the Manor? Draco should have expected it. He should have—
“With one exception,” Kendrick adds.
“Oh?”
“The Bellcrest,” Atticus says.
Draco has no idea what or where the Bellcrest is.
“It’s been a Malfoy property for generations,” Kendrick says. “Pre-dates most of the documents I have detailing the Malfoy ancestral holdings. Not that it’s much to look at, compared to a property like the Manor, but still.”
This is news to Draco. He has never seen any of the secondary income properties; they had been various and scattered across the continent. His father found visiting them a waste of time, “And my time is money, Draco. Remember that.”
“The original title was in old English, magical verbiage completely unreadable. When we tried to transfer magical ownership, well—” Atticus pales. “It’s common knowledge, really. There is something wrong with the Bellcrest. The heart of that place beats rotten. Everyone says so.”
“Atticus is being dramatic,” Kendrick says, his laugh strained and false. “True, there is a history of disappearance and a few reports of strange occurrences—”
“—it’s more than a few,” Atticus snaps. “The Curse-Breakers couldn’t make heads or tails of the place—”
“—And so they decided to generously leave you with one remaining asset,” Kendrick says, interrupting Atticus mid-sentence.
“One.” Draco’s tumbler is slippery with moisture. Or maybe it’s sweat. He’s not sure.
“It’s down at the end of Limin, three blocks off Diagon Alley,” Kendrick adds. “Hasn’t had a decent property manager in years. Your father isn’t—wasn’t—” No one is sure if Lucius should be discussed in past or present tense, these days. Azkaban is a death sentence, after all. “—He didn’t care for a hands-on approach. He much preferred to watch the dollars roll in from the comfort of his study.”
“And Mother?”
“Mrs Malfoy is currently investing much of her remaining Black fortune in legal challenges,” Kendrick says, wrinkling his nose. Draco’s mother had been determined to appeal his father out of prison, as soon as the initial verdict had come down. “Your mother’s Black inheritance will sustain her. She’s asked me to encourage you to join her in Strasbourg.”
The row before Narcissa had left the Manor had been prolific. No raised voices, of course. Just his mother’s cool, “So, I can tell your father he should not be counting on your support?” and Draco’s own brisk, “Perhaps it’s best if you pursue your legal ventures on the continent, as I’m going to be of absolutely no help to you.” Crawling back to her now—he can’t. He just can’t.
Draco shakes his head.
“I’d thought not.” Kendrick’s face says that he understands.
“We decided to give you the opportunity to make the Bellcrest profitable. We’ll expect four percent of your annual earnings for the first five years. Recompense for the administrative costs required for your case,” Atticus says. Draco feels a strange urge to smash it his stupid lovely jaw line with the meaty side of his fist.
Because seizing the entirety of my family’s assets wasn’t enough, Draco wants to say, and then wonders what he has to lose. Why not take a strip off this Ministry lackey—?
“The Ministry’s generosity is duly noted,” Kendrick says, before Draco can speak.
“Generosity—!”
Atticus downs his whisky like it is a cheap shot at a pub and not five hundred Galleons a bottle, and snaps his briefcase shut. “Turn a profit or we’ll turn you out into the streets,” he says, smirking. “Gather your personal belongings and anything sentimental you can carry, and I’ll pretend I didn’t see it. Twenty minutes, Mr Malfoy. You’ve lingered on Ministry property long enough.”
Twenty minutes to collect his life and bid his ancestral home goodbye. Rage starts to rise, hot and caustic as bile in his throat. Or perhaps it’s just bile. Draco thinks he’s going to be sick.
You lecherous, scheming worm. Draco swallows. Nasty little paper pushing piece of—
“You can head off, Atty,” Kendrick says. “I’ll give Draco a lift.”
The rain rattles against the windowpane. Draco tries to shake the confusion off, like a cold chill or a winter coat. “A lift?” he asks. “To where?”
“To the Bellcrest, of course.”
Of course, Kendrick knows Draco’s magic is failing. Kendrick had arranged for the specialised Healers, for the Curse-Breakers and, eventually, and out of sheer desperation, one Muggle physician. Draco had thrown the idiot out the moment he’d wrapped a cuff around Draco’s bicep and tried to squeeze all of the blood out through his fingers. To resort to Muggle medicine. Honestly.
The prognosis, said the eighth Healer Kendrick had paraded through Draco’s sitting room, was not good.
“Magic is so much more complex than people are willing to admit,” Healer Bluespring had said, as she wiggled her wand above a complex diagnostic of Draco’s magical signature. “Everyone thinks raw power is innate, but it’s not so simple.”
“New age nonsense,” Draco had said, his words sour. There had been black lines wiggling between the diagnostic glow, the roots of his magical core gone dark and rotten. The soft glow of Healing magic revealed to Bluespring what Draco had already known; he was branded, inside and out.
“Consider your family’s magic,” Bluespring went on, unperturbed. She’d obviously served more than one cranky pure-blood, and proved immune to Draco’s nastier tendencies. “It’s rooted in history, in legacy, in property, and in pride.”
“I don’t need a lesson on my family history from the likes of you,” Draco had snipped. “I need to know why my magic is fail—failing.” He’d only been six months out of the war, back then, and the world had chafed him raw.
“Don’t you see?” Bluespring had said, not unkindly. More kindly than Draco had probably deserved. “You’ve lost all the things that make you magic.”
He’d thrown her out on her arse too—insisted Kendrick bring him another medical professional, “And do a more thorough check of their credentials next time, for Merlin’s sake.”
Kendrick knows everything there is to know about Draco Malfoy. It’s how all the old families manage their affairs. “A trim coin purse and only the most discreet solicitor,” Father had said. The sound of Lucius’s voice still hums between Draco’s ears.
It’s a kindness, for Kendrick to offer Draco a ride; Draco can hardly count on his Apparition these days. He’s as likely to end up ground beef across the countryside as he is to land in the Americas.
“Just here, Draco.”
Kendrick travels by magical car. It’s large and sleek. The rain is insistent against the glass.
“Here?” They’ve taken a turn off Diagon, three blocks south and then way down the lane. Draco has never been this far from the main road before. The shadows loom long.
“It won’t be so bad, once you grow accustomed,” Kendrick says, words awkward. Outside, the thunder rumbles. “It’s not so noble as the Manor, but it has potential. Nothing a firm hand can’t fix.”
“If you say so.” Draco looks out the passenger window, squinting through the rain.
The moment holds, taut between someone old and something new. Draco has known Kendrick his entire life—probably has more fond memories with the man than he does with his father. A lump rises, unbidden, in this throat.
Is this what passes for intimacy these days? Lord, he’s pathetic.
“Draco—”
Draco pushes the moment away. “You’ll be paid, yes?” Given the recent change in his finances, it seems important.
“Yes, Draco.” Kendrick smiles. “Did your father teach you nothing?”
“What do you mean?”
There are soft lines around his eyes. “Creditors and solicitors are always paid first,” he says.
Draco tries not to smile. Even if his most intimate relations are with an employee—an ex-employee, Draco reminds himself—he’s always liked Kendrick. But Draco has overstayed his welcome as it is, and imposing on Kendrick’s final kindness would be in poor taste.
He steels himself and gets out of the car.
“I was able to secure one of your Healers to conduct a follow-up appointment. They’ve been advised of your new accommodations and will attend the appointment by Floo.” Draco stands in the rain, next to the open passenger window. “I’ll be rooting for you,” Kendrick says, and the last thing Draco sees is a flash of perfectly white teeth, as the car pops out of existence; it still manages to splash water on his shoes.
It is still a dark and stormy night, when Draco first lays eyes on the Bellcrest.
The building is imposing, a hulking monster curled up on the horizon. It’s all brick, soaked bright in the rain, with large windows evenly spaced over its six storeys. Two torches burn on either side of an enormous wooden door, inlaid with cracked stained glass, all above a name carved in stone:
THE BELLCREST est. 1142
Take the Unknown Door
Thunder growls, as the cumulus clouds boil and bubble like a potion gone wrong. It’s all very ominous. There is something wrong with that place, the magistrate had said, and Draco can feel it, emanating from the ancient stone.
Inside one of the rooms, Draco hears a banshee shriek a note so pure, he expects the window to crack. There are other people living here, he thinks, almost absently.
Which means that, “It’s a—”
—and the realisation crashes over Draco in a wave.
“It’s a block of fucking flats!”
When Kendrick had said property manager, he’d meant it literally.
“No no no,” Draco stutters. His hair is soaked through, clumped wet against his forehead. “No. Don’t you understand! I can’t. I won’t!”
The wind spits the words back in his face.
Draco’s first thought is to return to the Manor, and his hand is halfway into his robes before he realises that he can’t. That the Manor is not his to return to, hasn’t been since four pm, and that he probably couldn’t Apparate there anyway.
His next thought is that there must be somewhere, anywhere else for him to go, because he cannot sleep in there.
Except there isn’t. Draco knows there isn’t.
And so he drags himself, and the Malfoy name, through the literal mud and towards his new home.
The carpet in the hallway is wine-red and filthy. “Hello?” Draco says, nudging the heavy front door open and tiptoeing inside.
Water splashes the carpet like blood.
“Is anyone there?”
Draco’s breeding demands some formality. Someone should be here, to greet a new guest. The corridor, however, remains stubbornly empty. All but one of the torches lining the walls is burnt out.
“It’s not much to look at,” a tiny voice says. “A bit like a horror movie, honestly.”
Draco jumps and sends water droplets splattering everywhere.
“Who—who said that!?” Draco spins, sees a mangy pair of couches slumped beneath the windows next to the entrance, spins again and sees another hallway plunged completely into darkness.
“Me, of course.” The voice is strange. It’s young.
Draco follows the sound until he sees a hideous countertop, surrounded by magically reinforced glass. A dim yellow light flickers from somewhere behind the desk, the magic thin and weak—Draco can feel it, he realises, humming in his blood, the pulse of the place soft and thready. There’s a small opening through which one could push Galleons. Or room keys, Draco thinks. Above the window is a metal plaque with peeling letters that read R E C E P T I O N.
Draco leans in close and squints through the dirty glass. There is just enough light to see a ponytail. “Who are you?”
“My father says it’s not safe to talk to strangers,” the voice says, as if this should be obvious.
Draco bristles. “You are sitting at a reception desk.”
The child, because of course he’s talking to a child, shrugs, as if this is answer enough.
“Well,” Draco splutters. “My name is Draco Malfoy and I own this dumpster masquerading as a property and so—
“Shh!” the child hisses, eyeballs bulging. “Don’t insult her. Bell is sensitive!”
“Bell?!” Draco is cold and he is wet, and he is at the end of his patience.
“She’s also vindictive. Insulting her is just a bad idea in general.”
“Why—who do you think you—you can’t tell me what to—”
The child sighs, as if Draco is imposing on her good graces and not the other way around, and jumps off the high stool she’d been sitting on.
“I suppose I should help you. You do look like a Malfoy.” And then says, in a stage whisper, “You also look a bit like a drowned rat.”
Draco flails, splashing more water all over the place.
The child emerges through a side door that leads out of the small office. She’s tiny, in that way children tend to feel, like a miniature human in baggy blue shorts and a pink T-shirt. There’s a strange plant peeking out of one of her pockets. It’s bright green with thick oval leaves that wave at him.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” she says, and the gall!
“Your plant just waved at—Wait! I do not wear—!”
She interrupts him with her hand, stuck out firmly into his space. “Hello, Mr Malfoy. My name is Jane. I live here.”
Draco looks down at her small fingers.
A memory rises up, unbidden and unwelcome. Draco had been just about her age that day on the Hogwarts Express. There had been messy hair, a lightning-bolt scar, and a face with an expression that had known at age eleven what Draco would not understand for years to come: his was a hand not worth taking.
Draco had never quite got over it, the day Potter refused him.
“I can’t say it’s a pleasure,” Draco says, and takes Jane’s tiny hand between his. “Your etiquette could use some work.”
Jane rolls her eyes. “If you keep acting all posh, I won’t give you a room.” Except that she’s already holding a heavy brass key. Still, Draco decides not to argue the point.
“I’ll show you the place tomorrow. Give you the grand tour,” Jane says, after she opens Room 218 and tosses him the key. Draco is halfway to the bed by the time he registers what she’s saying to him.
“Wait, why are you giving me the tour?” he asks, because Jane can’t be any older than eleven. Otherwise, she would be at Hogwarts. And how low had the property sunk that a ten-year-old was managing the new arrivals?
Jane doesn’t answer, just slams Draco’s door behind her.
It’s not until later, as Draco tries to pretend his sheets don’t smell like wet dog, that he wonders what Jane is doing up at that time of night. What she is doing sitting in that lonely reception room, with no one but the rain for company. The thought slips between the terrible sheets—the thread count must be abominably low—and by the time he drifts off, Draco’s already forgotten.
Draco sees his first door that very night, the wood heavy around the frame, the white paint flecked. The door is closed, but Draco can feel something behind it, something old and wide awake, calling to him from the other side.
He thinks it a dream.
Draco burns alive while he sleeps.
It’s teasing, at first. The fire makes him work for it. Draco runs for his life, through corridor after corridor. The walls are on fire, a thousand years going up in flames, and Draco can smell the secrets as they burn. Little deaths and small mysteries lost forever.
Don’t leave me, someone says, over and over as everything burns alive.
Draco’s nightmares used to pull their punches. As a child, he would dream of falling, slipping through endless sky, but he never hit the ground.
It’s not so easy anymore.
His dreams play with their food.
Draco burns alive that night, and when he wakes up, sweaty and screaming and choking on his bedsheets, he feels that split second of relief. A spark of gratitude that he gets to live.
It’s the smell that drags him back to his unfortunate reality.
“Are we housing wet Hippogriffs in this dump?” Draco mumbles into his pillow, keeping his eyes clenched shut. The pillow is little comfort—it feels as though it’s been stuffed with balled-up newspaper.
There’s paste in his mouth and sand in his eyes, and Draco can already tell his hair is an abomination. He knows he needs to get up. Lying in a pool of despair will not serve him.
“Lazing about. Typical fucking Malfoy.”
Draco’s eyes snap open.
There is a crowd outside his door. His door. His door that is wide open and why is there a crowd!
Draco’d been bone-tired last night. He remembers stripping out of his travelling cloak, peeling his trousers and button down from his soaked skin, and tossing his clothes unceremoniously onto a rickety chair across the room. He hadn’t the energy to dress for bed.
Instead, Draco had fallen into the terrible mattress in nothing but his pants, and hadn’t thought anything of it, because people don’t just parade into a person’s room to gawk at him like he is an exhibit in a zoo. That social faux pas would be unimaginable—
“Look at that pasty arse. Never worked a day in his life, this one.”
“Don’t be rude, Andrew.”
Draco yanks his horrible sheets tight against his body. “OUT!” he roars.
The crowd is unimpressed. A dozen eyes continue to gawk, and Draco suddenly understands, in a brutal moment of clarity, just how far he’s fallen.
The Malfoy name does not inspire anything anymore. At least before the war, it had inspired fear.
“C’mon, get out of here,” Jane is saying, her tiny hands pushing at the host of strangers. “Give the guy some space. We’ll come ‘round to meet all of you before the end of the day.”
“This doesn’t change anything,” a hoarse voice says. “I’ll not be taking orders from the likes of him.”
There’s some jostling, some soft sounds of agreement.
“Don’t worry Anya,” Jane says, soothing. “Nothing’s going to change.”
This rouses Draco. “Oh, like hell it isn’t—”
“Everybody out!” Jane says, again, and in a miraculous moment of benediction, the crowd begins to disperse. Vague threats uttered under furious breaths crackle like static, until only Jane remains.
“You need to work on your attitude,” she snaps. Draco is still in his pants. He is not prepared for a lecture. Especially not one coming from an actual child.
“Who do you think you are? Coming down here. Letting strange people into my rooms like I’m some animal to be ogled—?”
“—I promise you, no one was ogling—”
“I’m the master of this property and I will—”
The walls groan.
“You are not the master of anything, Mr Malfoy. Not by a long shot.”
“The title is mine—”
“You think anyone actually cares about that?” Jane snaps. “Sure, we pay our rent to your family. But this place was ours before you showed up and it’ll be ours when you leave.”
Draco is stunned into silence. There are spots on Jane’s cheeks. The tiny plant is sitting on her shoulder today, its brown roots clinging to the seam of her jumper.
“You need to stop being a jerk,” Jane goes one. “Be nice when I show you around, and then learn how to be really good at your job.”
My job? “My job?”
Jane rolls her eyes. “Now that you’re here, people are gonna start demanding that you actually fix up the place. Did you think you could just come and squat here?”
Draco hadn’t thought so far ahead. The conversation from the night before, with that idiot magistrate jutting out his judgy chin and chugging Draco’s whisky, is a blur of fury and shock.
“Turn a profit, Mr Malfoy, or we’ll turn you out on the streets.”
It’s not that Draco hasn’t been educated in managing an estate; he is a Malfoy, after all. But an estate is not a block of flats, and he’d always had house-elves and functioning magic and a substantial vault that never seemed to suffer, no matter how many Galleons the family spent—
“Sorry to disappoint, but you’re the last living Malfoy and the Bellcrest is your responsibility.” Jane bites her lip, head shaking back and forth in disappointment. “It’s not like we’re all delighted to have you here either, but it’s been years since we had a live-in property manager, so we’ll take what we can get.”
There are more than sixty people living at 1 Limin Ally and Jane marches him determinedly from door to door, enthusiasm unflagging.
“This is Anya,” Jane chirps as a towering woman with deep bags under her eyes glares down at Draco. “You met her earlier. She’s a banshee and an excellent opera singer.”
“You’d be so lucky to see me sing, Death Eater scu—”
“See you later, Anya!”
Jane remains unperturbed.
“Andrew really likes to read and he has a lot of nerve damage from extended exposure to the Cruciatus. If he starts swearing at you, it’s probably not your fault.”
A pipsqueak of a man with hair almost as blond as Draco’s picks the dirt from under his fingernails with the curved edge of a knife.
“Yes, it is. Your lot’s the ones who did this to me.”
“Right, see you later Andrew!”
As the parade of introductions continues, Draco starts to understand why his father never brought him to this place; the idea of Lucius stepping foot under the Bellcrest’s peeling ceiling is laughable.
“Hestia is an Ogre and has special dietary needs. She’s also an excellent gardener. One of the best!” The room smells like sulphur and iron.
Hestia growls in his direction. Draco takes it as a dismissal.
There’s a theme, Draco realises, as they walk from room to room. There are creatures and Squibs, the unemployed and the unmotivated. Draco’s not seen a single person with Blood Status pure enough to approach even half. Everyone he sees is either weak or poor, with barely enough magical power to scrape together for basic spells. No wonder the torches are going out.
Degenerates, the lot of them, Draco thinks, and then shudders because his thoughts have taken on his father’s tone of voice.
It takes the better part of the afternoon to meet the tenants. “We missed a few,” Jane says. “Emmett’ll never let you in. He hasn’t let anyone in since his wife passed. And Har—the man who stays across from you is a bit private.”
“Mmm.” They’ve wandered out onto the front garden. The grass is limp and balding and Draco can smell the rubbish bins, sweet in the heat.
It feels like a dream, like the ones he used to have before the war. He looks around at what’s left of his family, of the Malfoy legacy. A hulking pile of flats stacked on top of one another and left to fester.
It’s as apt an outcome as it is a depressing one.
“You can start working in the lobby,” Jane says, squinting up from beneath his elbow. “The couches are infested with Dust-Sucking Gnats.”
“How do you get rid of Dust-Sucking Gnats?” Draco asks, and lord, if that isn’t a sentence he ever expected to hear himself say.
“How should I know? I’m ten years old,” Jane says, grinning with all her teeth. “Besides, you’re the caretaker now. You figure it out.”