The Malfoy Project

𝙻𝚞𝚌𝚒𝚞𝚜 #𝟺 - 𝙳𝚊𝚖𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚂𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚝, 𝙷𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚅𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚒𝚗

✼¹

     

     I could not stop thinking about the kiss.

     It had meant nothing to me, just a ploy cooked up between Bella and I to lure Cissy away from Bas and back to her family. But while it wouldn't be entirely wrong to say things became rather awkward between Cissy and I, there was something different about the energy between us. Perhaps it was only I who felt it, or the both of us, I couldn't say for sure, but whenever we were together the air seemed to tighten, as if the particles had been magnetised.

     It changed the way I looked at her. What was once admiration turned into desire and a groundless anger. I saw the way she cheered him on at Quidditch matches; how she clung on to him like he was an angel sent from heaven and she a worthless, wandering mortal, and the anger within me grew and grew each time I clapped eyes on my brother.

     Sebastian was dooming Cissy to a lifetime of misery and poverty. Commonness. Even the word itself sounded vulgar. If they carried on that way, they would end up living in a run-down shack on the outskirts of wizarding society.

     There might have been twenty-eight families, but combined, the Malfoys and Blacks owned nearly half of the wizarding world. It turned only because we allowed it to. We were gods. Our empyrean bodies were clean and unmarred.

     Bas was the rotting limb that needed to be cut off.

     Oblivious to my growing dislike of him, he treated me the same way he always had: affably and cordially, patting on the back whenever I did or said something remotely decent. But of course he would; my brother had always been weaker at heart and mind — malleable.

     As for the Black sisters, I observed them all: Cissy, Ronnie, and even Bella. I watched how they moved, talked, laughed, ate, did their homework. And then I began to realise something. While the three of them could not be any more different in personality, there was one, singular trait they shared.

     It was that they were each capable of love. Love unending and immeasurable. In what ways it would manifest itself, that would depend on who they loved. But love is love, and love is weakness — anyone who wasn't a secularised fool would know that. I knew that. I knew they could be transformed.

     They could be weaponised.

     After that, the answer could not be any plainer. I would make Cissy my weapon. I would restore her regality and power, what she had lost while fraternising with my brother. And then she would rule by my side as I rebuilt our families' empires.

     I possessed no physical qualities worthy to fight against a love as powerful as Cissy and Bas', but there was no need for brute strength. I did not have to lay a single finger on either of them, because there was another entity who would do it for me: distrust.

     I knew that while she was kind and empathetic, it did not take away the fact that she still was a sheltered girl who grew up in luxury and did not know anything else. And I would gladly take on the role of the villain if it would mean teaching her that lesson.

     I began to sow seeds of doubt into Cissy's mind, bit by bit, day by day. It began with little things like jinxing her with dirt that could not be scrubbed off for days. I snapped her jeweled quill when she wasn't looking so she had to use the spare, scratchy ones from class. I flooded her private chamber with sewage and spiders so she had to sleep in the same cramped quarters as her friends for almost a week.

     Each time she ran complaining to Bas, he would only chuckle and tell her to stop whingeing about such silly, frivolous things. This frustrated her even more, and the more frustrated she got, the more stressed Bas became. He could not keep up with Quidditch and homework and having a social life and spare the time to indulge the childish grumblings of his petulant girlfriend.

     Once it was clear he wouldn't take her seriously, Cissy stopped telling him at all. She began to look for new outlets to vent; a new shoulder to cry on. I offered mine.

     I replaced her quill with a prettier, more expensive one made from a real Phoenix feather. I gifted her new silk sheets to replace her old insect-ridden ones. In fact, one day when she was out for classes, I refurbished her entire room. She squealed and 'ooh'-ed and 'aah'-ed and thanked me profusely, and then proceeded to invite Bas to her new room that night.

     I hadn't minded, because while Cissy may not have realised it yet, I knew she was changing her mind. Somewhere deep in the recesses of the soft pink thing that resided in her skull, a voice was whispering that she was making a mistake with Bas; that the correct solution to her problems was not a passive, gentle boy who wanted to pander to the masses but a shrewd, ambitious man who understood her wants.

     And Cissy did not want equality for Squibs or Mudbloods — not truly. She wanted the thrill that came with being able to fix the problems of people who did not have the same power or privilege she had. She wanted peer out from her ivory tower to throw Galleons to the adoring crowds below, and then retreat back to her fine marble and silk sheets and jeweled quills where she was safe from the stench of poverty and hardship. She wanted the same thing I did.

     She wanted to be a god.

     Things all came to a head at the Black's Easter ball. A lush, extravagant event the family hosted every five years. It was not held at Grimmauld Place but at Black Manor, a stately countryside home in the Northwest acquired in the late 16th century by Vulcan Black, the sisters' nth great grandfather.

     Unlike Grimmauld Place, the Black estate was a true testament to their wealth. Nearly twice the size of our own, its grounds included sculpture gardens, two lakes, and orchards that stretched so far they seemed to spill over the edge of the world.

     The house itself was a grand sandstone structure of four levels, each more vast and spacious than the previous as you ascended. There, the busts were not made of Carrarra marble, but French Sèvres porcelain, and its rooms housed tapestries and furniture totaling an amount you couldn't possibly conceive in your wildest dreams.

     I think Father had decided that Bas and I would each be matched with one of the Black sisters or another of the Sacred families in attendance. He wasn't satisfied to simply show that we were one of Britain's reigning wizarding families. He wanted to beat them over the heads with it, drive them into the ground like wooden stakes. He sat at his desk all day, his quill passing over cheque after cheque; bleeding Galleons into the open, gaping mouth of his ego.

     Five months before the event, he ordered a brand new carriage constructed for us to travel in and golden harnesses to cage the faces of our Abraxan horses. He also hired a jeweler from Brazil who would create a new emerald necklace for Mother. Three weeks before, an entire team of tailors and seamstresses was flown in from Italy to have our robes specially fitted.

     On the afternoon of the ball, Bas and I stood in the dressing room, staring at ourselves in the mirror as strangers and house elves ran circles around us, tugging and pulling and yanking and measuring and straightening our shoulders, and Bas hated every minute of it.

     "It's embarrassing," he retorted, wincing as his tailor accidentally pricked his leg with the needle. "What does Father think we are, parading us around like a pair of fucking showhorses. Honestly, this whole affair is a bloody circus. The amount Father has spent on all this could end world hunger."

     I spread my arms at the behest of the tailor working on me and said nothing. Bas was only half-right. It wasn't enough to end world hunger, but if liquidated, the Galleons from our assets and land would be enough to buy every single wizarding family in the country a decent-sized house and probably still have some leftover. It was enough to pay for school supplies for all the students at Hogwarts for their entire seven years. It was enough to end the Squib marches.

     And that is exactly why we wouldn't.

     I only smiled to myself. How glorious was it that we could hold this power; touch it, feel it in our palms? With one flick of our wrists, we could flip the world upside down; leave it writhing on its back.

     And how mouth-wateringly delicious was it to be the only ones who possessed this knowledge? How quaint was it that the common folk were so absorbed in their own banal lives they heralded our occasional donations-in-kind as an act worthy of canonisation? 

     How perfect.