"What did you want to talk about?" Draco asks his father, who takes a drink from Grundy.
"I was rather disappointed to learn that my son married in secret. Eloping." He scoffs as he swirls the whiskey in his glass. Draco takes his glass from the elf and takes a swig.
"Can you blame me for not sharing my wonderful news?" He asks with hostility and Lucius smirks slightly.
"When I heard that Granger's wedding to a Muggle didn't go through- I wasn't the least bit surprised to find out she was quickly bedding my son." He says as he walks over to the empty black fireplace and looms into the left over ashes from the previous winter.
"How is it you heard?"
"Oh come now Draco. A Deputy of a Political department, and one of the menacing trio getting married- news flies through the Prophet like a rain from a cloud. They were at her wedding and captured everything. I know very well that you have secluded yourself from most of our world, but I figured you'd at least still keep up with the news."
"I seclude myself for good reason. I'm happier living my simple life. It's less stressful and less barbaric. You can't tell me your flower shop work in the Muggle world hasn't relieved some of your huge amounts of stress that has stock piled up inside you." His father scoffs once more and finishes his drink. As he does, Grundy brings him another.
"What stress could you possibly have? You're the heir to our immense fortune."
"The stress is from you and mother. You know that, yet here we are discussing it- again."
"Only because I don't understand your logic. You are a bright, intelligent young wizard Draco and you piss your life away in Muggle London doing commoners work. At least your wife has some sense about her. Politics will keep you in good graces if you pull the right strings. It'll pad your pockets and keep your nose clean."
"Hermione isn't corrupt. Unlike some of your friends."
"Ah...you're talking about Baker- I assume."
"The fuck is his problem? Targeting Hermione that way. What did you tell him?"
"Me? I didn't say anything."
"I hardly believe that. Two days after she and I begin our life together and he has her pinned to a wall feeling her up and threatening her and I?! And how convenient for it to happen a day after I was shot in my pub." Lucius narrows his eyes and glares down at his son.
"Are you implying I sent Baker to hunt you for your indiscretion?"
"Your words."
"Draco- if I wanted you and your little wife to be killed- I would hardly send a bumbling idiot to do it. I had nothing to do with you getting shot. Just like I had little to no reason to have Baker go after Hermione."
"Little to no reason? You hate her and you hate that I love her. I hardly call that little."
"Please, Draco- don't be dramatic. I've never touched the girl."
"No- but Aunt Bella had and you enjoyed it."
"That's the past. Draco, you should learn to leave it there. You know what happens when you allow the past to fester inside your soul. Just ask your mother- though you're all too aware of it- I'm sure." He looks at him and both feel that slight shudder going through them.
"Have you ever fixed it?" He asks his father, blankly staring off at the doors his father had closed on Hermione.
"I don't know what you mean." His father mindlessly replies as he sips his drink.
"The South West of the manor. Have you figured out—."
"Figure what out? There's not changing what that half is." His father stares deep into the fire place and recalls the horrors that have happened to him in the Manor. The Manor where everything seems perfect.
Until it isn't.
He had grown up in the home.
It was his domain, but it didn't belong to his family.
Not all of it at least.
The south west side belonged to something....
Evil.
Growing up, it was at first just a ghost story his grandfather had told him- that his grandfather had told him: and the lines of fathers and grandfathers of Malfoy's told their son's for generations and with it- the house was slowly consumed more and more.
"You know it's hungry...don't you?" His father says without turning to look at him.
"What?"
"Anima Mea Visae Mihi. Soul's Crypts." The shudder intensifies in them and the bright lights in the room flicker just a bit.
"I thought you said never to call it's name."
"Can't avoid what's been growing since the dawn of time- Draco. It's hungry and ever changing. Last week...huh..."
"What?!"
"Last week...it began again. Changing." Draco's shoulders drop at the revelation.
"What do you mean? Changing? Changing what?"
"Passageways. It's been calling out and changing. Luring anyone who hears it."
"How is that possible. It's contained. Isn't it?"
"I thought so. I have been doing the ritual religiously since your grandfather gave me the house. I never miss the cleansing...but...but I think it's getting stronger. I think....huh...I think it's been feeding."
"Feeding in what?! Everyone in the house knows to leave that area alone."
"Aren't you listening, Draco?! It's too strong. It's changing the layout of the home and it's getting smarter. I think it's been calling to your mother...again."
"What do you mean again? She's never gone there. She knows better."
"But she has and you have too and I think...I think it's evolved it's tactics. I think it's learned how to...manipulate even the strongest of minds." He looks at his son, ashen face and dullard eyes. In the years he's been alive, Lucius has seen a lot of things and very little has scared him or shook him to the core.
But Anima Mea Visae Mihi is the one thing on this Earth that keeps Lucius up at night.
"You...you don't think..."
"I don't know...what to think any more...I don't know what to do- Draco. I've researched. I've continued to research since the first Malfoy's discovered it in building the home."
"Dad, I think it's time to just burn it down. To demolish this whole place before it consumes you and mother." Draco drastically says and Lucius whips around.
"It. Can't. Die. It can't be stopped- don't you understand?! Our family has tried everything since the first discovery of it and it's still here...we're still here" Looking at the walls around him, Lucius knows there's a reason the home his made of stone and marble, why the rooms are never ending, why the place is never lit for long, and why once you enter through the front doors: despair and grief take over you.
Evil feasts on the souls of those who enter and the South West end of the home is where you will be completely consumed by it.
"Is that why you've thrown the party tonight?"
"What?" Turning to look at his son, he knows what he's implying.
"It seems to me that every time IT starts getting hungry, you throw a party or some sort of convention and invite hundreds of people. You're trying to quell it."
"What! I do no such thing."
"Dad! You know it's dangerous! You know it's able to trick people into visiting the room- and yet you invite people here...but not everyone leaves." He shakes. He shakes at the realizations that his son is correct. "You're enabling it because you can't handle it."
"I DON'T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE IT!! NO ONE DOES DRACO!! IF I DID WE WOULDN'T BE IN THIS MESS!!" He booms and Draco pales.
"How many?"
"What?"
"How many has it taken? How many souls?!"
"When? Since the beginning?"
"How bout in the last year." His father goes quiet for a long time and he doesn't want to answer his son. He doesn't want to admit his folly. "Father!"
"105."
"105..."
"When I found your mother at the door a month ago...before we visited you actually...she was...she was talking to it. Stroking her finger over the grain of the door...like...like it was her precious child or something. When I went to her, her eyes...there was no white to them. She insisted we go inside to...to see her. I somehow managed to persuade her to leave the door and once I had gotten her away, she was back to normal. She acted as if she was never down there...but she seemed more...lost than normal. More angry and yet emotionless at the same time."
"Why didn't you tell me when you visited? Any of the times you visited?"
"I didn't want to frighten your mother. The last time she was in that room..."
"Yes...I remember."
"Her mind is still skewed about that night. She thinks I was the one who...who made her lose the baby. I was gone! I was in Brazil!"
"I know...I mean...I didn't at the time- I thought you came back, but when you took me away from the room...I understood."
"You were just four years old, Draco...there's a reason why we're never happy. IT takes a bit of us each time we stay in there...near there even. I'm afraid it's growing too much and...and I don't know how much longer it'll be before it consumes us all."
"Just leave it then. Leave the house. Let it rot and fester here by itself."
"A Malfoy must always reside in the home."
"Why?"
"I never told you this, but way back when the first Malfoy settled here, broke the land and built a home- they discovered a chest buried beneath the ground where the South West Room lay. By opening the box, he discovered the creature. The beast. The water of souls and deliverer of death. See the first Malfoy was married to a Muggle in fact that Muggle was related to the royal family line that is still to this day in the monarchy. But the Soul Eater did just that. It ate the muggle's soul and killed them, just after the birth of their son. The son went on to marry a pureblood witch and they bore a halfblood son and a halfblood daughter. The beast ate the daughter before she reached maturity. The son went on to marry a pureblood and they had three sons, all of whom survived. The eldest son had no child but won the home- he would later pass and the house would be given to the next and then the last. The sons of Malfoy's were now considered Pureblood and found the beast would not steal the souls of their pureblood sons, but any daughter born would quickly be consumed by some accident. Everyone from Armand to your grandfather and I found out that the Soul's Crypt- named by Septimus Malfoy- would never harm a pureblood male. However...for some reason...women Muggles and Purebloods alike...they don't last very long."
"Yet you keep mother here....and...and are you saying that...that I had...had a.."
"Yes...your mother and I wanted another child. We prayed it would be a boy...but Soul's Crypt knew...IT knew and...and it..." He sighs and Lucius, with tears in his eyes looks at his son. "There's a reason you were to marry a Pureblood, Draco. Though I despise anyone below us...anyone other than a pureblood...your children will never survive...not in this house."
"Then I'm not staying in this house."
"You must. The day I die- you must take over. You must research and stop it and contain it. Or it'll be worse than Voldemort. It'll get out into this world and it'll consume everyone until there is no one left."
"I didn't ask for this."
"And neither did I. Neither did your mother or all the Malfoy's before us. But it's our burden now. It's our responsibility to keep it satiated." There's a knock at the door and Narcissa opens it. Looking between her two men, she smiles and then frowns. "We're busy."
"I see that...I was just wondering...well..."
"What! Spit it out." Lucius bites.
"I was just wondering if either of you have seen Hermione?"
"No..."
"I sent her to dinner a while ago." Draco says and they all look at each other and their hearts pound hard in there chest.
And then sink.
No....
No.