Albus Potter and the Prophesied Year

Ch 32 The Magical Quill

The second week in January everybody was at the dinner table when Astoria walked in and snapped, "The midwife confirmed it. I'm pregnant." She turned to Draco. "I let you in my body, so I have to share the blame, but I'm not happy. I'll bear this child, because I have to, or I can be denied income from the estate now and when you die, but I'm not going to raise it. You are going to have to raise it, and let me get back to my life."

"I hoped you could finally learn to enjoy the marriage bed," Draco pled.

"Forget it," Astoria sneered. "I thought I was through with sex and all that mess after I became pregnant with Scorpius, and I'm sure not going to have you in my body again." She looked at Draco and Narcissa and snapped, "Men! That's all they want!"

"I still miss that part of marriage," Narcissa reflected, ignoring Astoria's horrified look and Draco's look, somewhere between anger and frustration. "Lucius and I had a good marriage the first few years. I think he loved me, before the black mark, before he became involved with Riddle and the death eaters."

"Romantic love and all that tripe," Astoria snapped with a turned up nose, as she sat down at the dinner table to eat.

*

Friday January twenty Draco slipped into Knockturn Alley and stopped at Borgin and Burkes. He waited impatiently for the clerk to return from the back with his package and when he did, he picked up the magical quill, rolling it between his fingers. "How will I know it is the correct quill?" he asked.

"We do not know what it does," the clerk at Borgin & Burkes told him with a shrug. "We just had to let it soak in some long ago prepared liquid."

Draco took the quill home, and gingerly put it in his office, locking it in a drawer of his father's desk. His father's desk. After all these years it ought to be his desk and his office.

He made arrangements to see his father the next Monday.

Draco didn't like that quill. He didn't know why his father wanted it, and everything from Borgin & Burkes was a little suspect. Draco was frustrated that he still felt he had to obey his father in things like that. He wished he could have just told his father that there was no way he needed a one-hundred-and-fifty Galleon special quill.

*

Monday January twenty-third Draco came into Azkaban with the special quill, a piece of parchment, and a receipt for the two, and presented them to the guards. They examined both the quill and the parchment with a number of spells, but finally allowed him to bring the quill and parchment to his father. They copied the receipt on Muggle paper with a Muggle copy machine, and let Draco bring the copy in. He was told that his father could write with the quill on the parchment, but no one could bring either of them back out once they were given to Lucius.

"If the document needs to be presented to someone else we will copy it and give you a copy," the guard told Draco. "Nothing Lucius touches is allowed to leave the prison."

Draco went into the usual meeting room, and saw his father chained by his feet on one side of a desk. "I have the quill you wanted, father," he announced, showing it and the parchment to Lucius and placed them on the desk.

"How much did it cost?" Lucius asked, studying the quill.

Lucius had a scowl on his face, and Draco sighed. Was he ever going to be able to please his father? "One-hundred and fifty galleons, father," Draco replied. "It took about a month prepare it."

His father took the quill and parchment and started to write, "Draco has been a failure at every major task I have ever given him." As he started to write "him" the ink turned from black to red. When the ink turned to red Lucius took the quill and stabbed it hard into Draco's hand.