A/N: I initially wanted to post this chapter after the holidays, but I was convinced to change my mind by one of my readers. And just to avoid being cursed to perdition by some of my more enthusiastic readers, I will also be posting the 13th chapter to avoid leaving you all hanging. But these 2 chapters will be the last ones I will be posting this year; I'll continue with the rest after the new year. Hope you like chapter 12, and do let me know what you think.
Chapter 12: Blood Rituals
Lucius appeared before a scene of what could only be called chaos. For several minutes, he stood staring at the colorful decors and thought he must have missed his Apparation point by several miles and materialized smack dab in the middle of a costume party or one of those Muggle events over in the Americas. But when he saw Dumbledore wearing a ridiculous set of robes with Arthur Weasley sitting beside him, it gave him little comfort that he wasn't losing his touch. Yet. At this rate, his constant exposure to the insanity that was the Weasleys just might tip him over the edge.
"Let's get this over with," he said aloud and started moving from the Apparation point of the Burrow to the well-lit activity area. He slightly shook his head at the confetti and banners put up, no doubt, by those Weasley twin horrors. Why those two were allowed to freely inflect their horrible taste and cavemen manners on the civilized world he would never understand; he shuddered to think what those two would to do to his own home were they allowed to step into it, which, thankfully, they were not.
He caught Arthur Weasley's eyes and gave a barely perceptible nod to him before his gaze landed accurately on his reason for coming who was, at the moment, looking petrified. With the grace of a cat, he strolled forward, his head high, his polished boots barely making a sound as he closed the distance between his son's family and himself. He ignored the other guests, but quickly saw a bunch of redheads gather together looking at him with disapproval. He dismissed them; he was not here to feed their animosity; as long as they kept to themselves, they could send the mother of all glares his way and he wouldn't give a damn. He also noticed the participants of tonight's rite separate from the other guests and started walking to the Burrow's front doors. He was gratified to note that everybody he had asked to be present had not failed him.
It took only a few seconds; his long strides brought him in front of Ginevra Weasley and his grandchildren. His eyes were on the twins, who had quieted down and were also looking at him, but he had been able to see that he'd been wrong about Ms. Ginevra Weasley: she was more than beautiful, she was exquisite. His son was a very lucky man.
"Ms. Weasley," he drawled softly, giving the young woman before him a slight bow.
Ginny took a step back involuntarily. She was shocked; shocked that this man was being so civil towards her, shocked that he'd been able to get past the wards of the Burrow, and shocked, most of all, that he'd been able to get near her without having one or two of her brothers throwing a hex his way. Where before the din of the Burrow's backyard was enough to trigger a headache, the quiet that fell around them was even more deafening. Even the gnomes seem to have stopped chasing themselves around, seemingly conscious of the thickness of the tension around them. She gulped as she watched her parents and Dumbledore coming toward her with comforting smiles on their faces. Seeing that, she began to relax a little; if they weren't worried that Lucius was there, then he might not know anything. Dozens of people have fair coloring, she could easily pass off any resemblance as coincidental, she assured herself while trying to covertly turn Luke's body towards her chest.
Her slight movement didn't escape Lucius' notice and he smiled a little. He took the necessary steps forward and looked at the boy in her arms who was struggling to keep his face from being smothered by his mother's chest. He transferred the black box to his left hand and raised his right to graze the boy's left cheek with the back of his hands. He was immensely pleased when the boy grabbed onto his hand and gurgled at him toothlessly, his little fingers playfully tugging at it up and down, his little feet kicking in the air excitedly. A smile graced the corners of his lips.
"Yes," he said softly, "I can see you'll make a fine heir, Luke Ian Malfoy."
Ginny jerked back in surprise and that effectively detached Luke's connection with his grandfather. "No!" she denied hotly, holding Luke tightly in her arms. The boy, not liking the tightness with which he was being held and being parted from his grandfather, started bawling again. Ginny ignored her son's distress. "He's my son, mine! He'll never be a Malfoy!"
Lucius' face became a mask of indifference as he looked at the defiant girl before him. "Then you should have lain with another instead of my son." His tone of voice would have ordinarily made any witch or wizard cower in fear; Ginny Weasley was apparently no ordinary witch, as he watched her face grow more belligerent and her spine more rigid. He wouldn't be surprised if her eyes started shooting fire next. "Come now, Ms. Weasley, I fully concede and acknowledge that you are a very intelligent and talented woman, but you're not smart enough to have created a baby without outside help." He controlled the urge to smirk at the pink color blooming her cheeks, doing so would probably do more damage to his campaign; he needed her cooperation in order for the spell and the ritual to work and alienating himself wasn't the way to do it.
Ginny hated the flush on her cheeks; most often it made her look guileless and innocent, when in actuality she was far from it, this man's spawn had seen to that. "Look, Mr. Malfoy, I don't know what you're doing here, but would you kindly leave? This is a family gathering and last I heard, you're not a part of it." She ignored her mother's shocked gasp at her rudeness; this was no time for her to display good manners; if she could get rid of Draco's father by behaving like a common alley cat, then so be it.
Lucius merely smiled at her. He hated hearing the boy cry, but if Ginny wanted to take her bile out on him, then he was going to oblige her. But he also wasn't going to leave until he'd finished what he came here for and after she heard a few things about Draco.
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Ms. Weasley. You see, I was invited." He watched interestedly as those brown eyes suddenly swung over to the quiet guests and hardened angrily when they found its victim.
"You!" she spat angrily. "You did this, didn't you?"
Lucius looked behind him and barely kept himself from laughing out loud at the scared look in Blaise's eyes.
"Ginny, please," Mrs. Weasley stepped in before Ginny started firing off hexes at the innocent wizard. "Your father and I were the ones who invited Lucius, not Blaise."
Ginny was so immersed in her anger towards Zabini that she almost didn't hear her mother. When what she said finally registered in her head, she stared at her in bewilderment. "What?"
Before Mrs. Weasley could answer, Lucius stepped up to Ginny. "May I?" And like Blaise, he didn't wait for her to say no and disengaged the crying baby from her arms. She hadn't even noticed that Luke had not stopped crying from the moment she had first denied him his grandfather. She went to retrieve her son from the former Death Eater but her mother stayed her.
"Don't Gin, he's not hurting Luke. Can't you hear he's stopped crying the minute Lucius took him from you?"
She didn't want to admit it, but her mother was right and the minute she opened herself up to the possibility that she'd been acting like a complete witch, no pun intended, she was ashamed to admit that she'd been hurting her son with her actions. One thought kept going over and over in her head: her son wanted to get away from her.
"He's made my own son hate me," she said quietly, staring at the powerful wizard holding Luke protectively.
Molly Weasley sighed exasperatedly. "Don't act like this, Gin. Of course Luke doesn't hate you, but you were near suffocating him. He could not understand why one minute he was enjoying playing with somebody new, then the next his breath is knocked out of him. Of course he'd be upset." She wrapped her arms around her trembling daughter; she only came to Ginny's shoulders, but she was determined to make her understand that she could not keep Luke from his destiny. "Look at them, Gin; he means no harm. Don't you think Luke would know otherwise?"
"But why, Mum? Why did you tell him? Why did he have to know?" she asked plaintively. "I thought you understood why I didn't want any one of the Malfoys to know. I thought you believed me." She watched as Lucius stepped over to Nicole and smiled down at the little girl. A real smile, not the usual smirk and sneer a Malfoy usually bestows on a Weasley.
Mrs. Weasley sighed again. "We'll explain inside, Gin. You have to trust your father and I, we would never do anything to hurt you and our grandchildren." She gave her a reassuring squeeze before looking up to the older Malfoy. "Lucius, it's time."
Lucius looked up from admiring the beautiful little girl when he heard his name called. He nodded at once when he saw it had been Molly calling his attention, and with Luke cradled in his right arm, the black box tucked inside his left, he motioned for Colin to follow him inside the house.
Ginny would have wanted to go and collect her son from Lucius, but her mother's hold on her wasn't loosening. So many questions were running through her head: What was going on? Why were her parents being so civil to Lucius Malfoy? Why were they so sure he wasn't going to do anything evil to Luke or Nicole? What was he even doing at the Burrow? And more importantly, was his presence here an indication that Draco also knew about the twins? Knew, and didn't care to come and get to know his children? So many questions and there didn't seem to be any forthcoming answers on the horizon.
When Ginny entered her childhood home, she forced herself to look at it the way a stranger would and she had to face facts: under no circumstances could the simplicity of the Burrow be denied. The front doors opened directly into a comfortable living room; there was a brick fireplace on the far right side with a mismatched set of couches arranged around a low coffee table that was, for once, free of clutter. Immediately to the right of the doorway, a set of stairs led up to the Burrows upper levels where the ghoul she had grown up with was even now making quite a racket. The door to the kitchens stood a few feet directly from the front doors, delicious smells wafting from the different dishes Mrs. Weasley had prepared for the christening.
Despite the passage of time, and the change of fortunes by some of the Weasley children, the Burrow was still bare of furniture or accessories save those that were considered essential. Only various pictures of redheads through the years graced the walls of the house, with several of Harry's and Hermione's thrown into the mix, the remarkable family clock given the highest order of importance by being placed on top of the mantel place. There were no elaborate portraits or paintings of value, no bric-a-bracs or chests of expensive useless china to mark the improvement of the Weasley family's Gringotts accounts. Except for Arthur Weasley's newly acquired arsenal of Muggle technologies, the Burrow was exactly the way it was when Ginny was a little girl: discordant, yet welcoming, and comfortable like an old pair of house slippers, yet also giving off a certain air of danger, as though seemingly aware of the nature of some of its inhabitants and would like to warn intruders to enter at their own peril.
Ginny loved everything about this house and, looking back at Lucius as her mother ushered her to the living room, she wished he would choke on the essence of love that was primarily the foundation of the whole edifice. She stood beside her mother, watching as more and more people started to crowd the cramped space. Lucius was standing at the head of the crowd, facing the fireplace. Her father and Dumbledore stood to his left, and Severus stood by his right side with Zabini beside him. As soon as Colin got near her, she immediately took Nicole from him, needing the comfort she could only get from her daughter.
"Ginny, could you please stand facing Mr. Malfoy, please," Dumbledore said softly, the twinkle in his eyes ever present and annoyingly clear. She obliged warily, wondering at the strangeness of all their behavior and having a very strong suspicion that the positions they had taken were somehow significant. Immediately, Bill placed himself on her left side with Minerva McGonagall beside him; her mother, who was standing by her right side, pulled Colin to stand beside her and slightly to the front. She quickly turned to look behind her when she felt somebody give her shoulders a reassuring squeeze; it was Harry. What the heck was going on? She started when Dumbledore banished the mismatched couches and the gathered wizards and witches started to spread out onto the available space, except Colin who had to be pushed by her mother to move along and to the right place.
"Mum, what's going on?" She asked hesitantly when she saw Lucius move forward and place the black box he had been carrying with him on top of the table, took his wand out and with just a tap and a barely audible spell, transfigured the coffee table into a glimmering black altar with intricate writings in gold around the outer edges of the gleaming black wood. Her eyes widened in horror when Lucius stepped up to the altar and placed Luke on a bed of red velvet. "What do you think you're doing?" She demanded angrily, shrugging off her mother's arms. "Leave my son alone!" She stepped up into the platform, glared up at Lucius and made to pick up her son with her free arms. Lucius was quicker.
"This has to be done, Ginevra," Lucius said gravely, gripping both her arms firmly. "If you don't want your children separated, then you have to let me continue."
"What the hell are you talking about?" She stared angrily at this man who was probably responsible for the ruthlessness and indifference of his own son. As far as she was concerned, no force on earth would ever be able to take any of her babies from her.
"Everything will be explained after the ritual," Lucius said, his hold on her never loosening. "Just know that no harm will come to Luke and Nicole."
Molly Weasley moved forward then. "Gin, please, there's nothing for you to be afraid of."
She looked incredulously at her mother. "Forgive me for thinking my son was going to be sacrificed by this man," she said sarcastically, jerking her head at Lucius. "It's not everyday you conjure up an altar in your home and then place your son on it! What was I supposed to think? That we were going to play spin the baby and whoever's `it' gets to do a dare?"
Lucius snorted. He couldn't help it. The feisty redhead was magnificent in her pique. If this was how she looked every time she got angry, he thought, no wonder Draco kept on igniting her fuse.
Ginny snapped her head back to Lucius. "Oh now he laughs!" she said, exasperated. She didn't know what to make of this former Death Eater who had almost killed her at age twelve.
Lucius' mask dropped in place once again. "Nothing can be accomplished by arguing now, Ms. Weasley. Luke is Draco's heir, deal with it. But right now he is illegitimate. You don't need to tell me how much you don't care about that," he said, forestalling what she was about to say. "I am well aware that if it were left up to you, we would never know of the boy and his sister. But this goes far beyond legitimacy issues. So if you would just indulge me for the few minutes it would take to complete the rite, I can get on with the explaining."
Ginny looked carefully at the earnest man but couldn't see any malice in his eyes. She looked at her mother who nodded at her in encouragement, to Dumbledore who was smiling and whose eyes were still twinkling, damn him, to the rest of the assembled friends and family. She really didn't want to relent, but if all these people were sure that what was about to happen wasn't some elaborate scheme to steal her baby from her, then shouldn't she see where this was going?
Biting her lip in uncertainty, she turned her back on the blond man. "Fine! But if I see so much as a single hair on his head being hurt, you'll wish you were born in an earlier lifetime." She was halted in her retreat by her mother. "What now?" she said wearily.
"Nicole, Gin?" Mrs. Weasley said softly.
Ginny half turned her body away from her mother. "What of Nikki?" But she had a feeling she knew what her mother was about to say next. And she was right.
"She has to be with Luke."
"But Luke was the first born. He's the heir. What does Nikki have to do with it?"
Mrs. Weasley sighed. "They're twins, Gin. True, one came before the other, but they have a connection neither you nor Draco will ever be able to break. Yes, Luke will be his father's heir, but Nicole will have to be a part of the ritual for it to be binding."
Ginny wanted to know what the `it' was, but knew she wouldn't be getting an answer from any of them at the moment.
"Fine! Fine!" She walked over to the other end of the altar; by the way Luke was positioned, she assumed Nicole would have to be placed in the same way but on the opposite direction. She carefully laid her daughter down, her head touching that of her brothers. She looked at them, laying there, so fair against such a dark backdrop and again started asking herself if she was doing the right thing, letting them do what they were about to do. But before she could act on her dubious feelings, her mother was beside her and guiding her back to their place in the formation.
When she had still been pregnant, before the scandal broke, she had envisioned several scenarios wherein Draco found out she was pregnant and his awareness, of course, meant Lucius would be as well. In one of her fantasies, she was strolling the streets of Diagon Alley and he would see her and come up to her and demand why she hadn't told him about the baby, before sweeping her into his arms and asking her to marry him, forsaking his family name and his wealth just to be with her. In another, Lucius had found out first that his son had tainted the family name by consorting with a lowly Weasley and ordered his henchmen to eliminate her; Draco had found out at the last minute and rescued her, apologized for the way he had treated her and asked her to marry him. Her favorite out of all her fantasies was the one where Draco hadn't known about her pregnancy, but he'd been so tortured by their one night together that he had been forced to admit to himself that he loved her after all. He'd then contrived a way to see her and explain why he did and said the things he did and asked her to forgive him, promising her that for as long as they lived, he'd love her and show her how truly sorry he was. She'd then told him about his impending fatherhood and he'd insisted she marry him right away, as he could not bear to live another day without her by his side. Of course, those fantasies were shot down to hell once her pregnancy became front-page material for the Daily Prophet and became the favorite topic for discussion several weeks after the revelation, with no Draco Malfoy in sight to declare his undying love and devotion. The reality of her situation was so bitter that had she not been the stubborn and prideful girl that she was, she would have given in to the depression she'd fallen in or else evolve into the apathetic person that Draco was.
In all her fantasies though, Lucius was always the bad guy, the one keeping her and Draco apart. In moments where she wasn't consumed with thoughts of Draco, she would be contemplating how Lucius would react to his son's rebelliousness and it showed her immaturity when she would feel quite pleased for getting one up on the arrogant autocrat. Never, in her wildest imaginations, did it occur to her that Lucius would be pushing for her to accept an alliance with the Malfoys through her children. If she wasn't sure they would think it odd, she'd already be slapping herself silly just to make sure she wasn't dreaming the whole thing that was happening before her very eyes.
As she watched, her body tense and ready to spring into action, Lucius picked up the black box and moved to the left side of the altar and laid it by the twin's heads. He placed his wand beside the box, then slowly placed his right hand over a symbol on the lid and pressed. She hadn't paid attention to the box before, so didn't really see what the symbol was, but when it slid open soundlessly, she barely resisted the urge to stand on tiptoes to take a peek inside it. The altar was too high for her to see even if she had tried it, of course, but since when has that ever been a problem for the curious? She snuck a peek at her mother and flushed when she saw she had been looking at her with a knowing smile on her lips; Mrs. Weasley was not ignorant when it came to her children's mischief and she was more than a match for whatever they could come up with, all seven of them had learned that the hard way.
She had been brooding too long on how best to sneak a peek at the contents of that box without having her mother getting on her case that she missed much of what Lucius was doing. She barely heard him chanting in a language she couldn't decipher; it wasn't French, that much she was sure of, it sounded more Italian but was also certain it wasn't that by the expression on Zabini's face. He had picked up his wand again and made a sweeping arch from Luke's bootee-covered toes to Nicole's. Still ignoring what the blond was mouthing off, she watched, fascinated, as a beam of light followed the movement of his wand then rose to envelope the three of them in the altar. The brightness of the light became blinding so that Ginny closed and averted her eyes, waiting for the stars to disappear behind her lids before opening them again. When she did, she saw that the light had turned into a diaphanous veil, like a wall keeping the rest of the assembly out of the focal point of the ritual. When she reached a finger to touch the veil, her heart started to pound in earnest when she felt a solid substance instead of soft, pliant mist. When she looked at the others, she saw that they also hadn't expected this to happen and were trying to maintain their composure in the face of what could possibly turn out to be more than they first thought. She looked at Dumbledore and for the second time in her life, she didn't see the reassuring twinkle in those eyes. Paling, she placed both palms on the wall separating her from her children and watched in horror when Lucius satisfied her curiosity and showed them the contents of the box.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
William Chauncy watched the blond aristocrat pacing in front of his cluttered desk in his shabby office. Ordinarily, he was not one to question good luck when it was being laid upon his door, but his profession also required for him to possess a certain degree of caution; in fact, it demanded it. It had served him more times than he cared to admit and though he was practically salivating at the thought of how lucrative it would be for his fledgling career to have a Malfoy as a client, he wanted all the chips on the table, so to speak; he didn't want to be blindsided later on.
"I want you to do this as discreetly as possible, Mr. Chauncy. I don't have to tell you the importance of keeping whatever you find out between the two of us." Draco stopped in front of the heavy-set man and crossed his arms. He was a pretty good judge of a person's character, and though he was not proficient in Legilimency, he could practically see what was going through the investigator's head. It wouldn't be boasting if he said that he would be a force to be reckoned with if his stipulations weren't followed to the letter; he wasn't his father's son for nothing after all. And his cunning told him William Chauncy was the best man for the job he wanted done.
As he continued to stand there, his piercing gray eyes fixed on the man, he had to admit that it would be hard to think of William Chauncy as anything but a jolly middle-aged man without a conniving bone in his body. He was tall, yes, but his body had gone to fat and his ill-fitting clothes could hardly conceal his potbelly. He was only in his mid-forties, but maybe because of the stress of the job, his curly brown hair had several gray streaks in it and his bushy mustache was almost completely white, giving him an appearance of a harmless old man or a doting uncle, or that dotty Muggle-loving old fool Santy Claus. Which was probably why he was very good at what he does; he could make anybody feel comfortable and safe and could extract information out of even the most loyal house elf. He was the perfect man for the job.
The perfect man for the job started tapping a slim black stick on the pad of paper in front of him. Draco was sure the paper was a Muggle thing, as well as the black thing he was holding which he'd used to write with, but he wasn't too concerned about his writing implements right then; if William Chauncy could provide him with the information he needed, he was prepared to turn the other cheek should he decide to don a pink tutu and dance his way to accomplishing the job he wanted done.
"What I don't understand is why you have decided I would be the best man to do this, Mr. Malfoy. I'm not saying that I can't do it," he added hastily, lest his prospective client took it to mean he was refusing him, "but I do seem to recall that Malfoy Holdings has a very efficient investigative agency. Surely, as owner, you have the prerogative to engage your agents on retainer on matter such as this?"
Draco smiled grimly. He was no fool; Chauncy was asking, as politely as he could, why he was prepared to overlook the abilities of his own pool of investigators when they were considered to be the best people in their fields. It was a laugh the way the older man tried to pretend mere curiosity; Malfoy Holdings' team of spies were dreaded, never just recalled, which was why he didn't want them handling this case. That, and their loyalties were concentrated on one man, and that man wasn't him. Yet.
"If you think about it, Mr. Chauncy, I'm sure you'll come up with the answer."
William Chauncy didn't even hesitate. "Lucius Malfoy."
Draco just smirked, neither confirming nor denying his guess. Mr. Chauncy shifted in his cheap faux leather high-backed chair and tapped the black stick on his paper again.
"How exactly do you want me to do this?" he asked after awhile.
"Like I said: discreetly."
"No, I mean, is there a limit to what I should gather? Do you want to know every tiny detail, or do you just want the pertinent data," Mr. Chauncy persisted. "There's no telling where my investigation will take me and I need to know right now if there is point where I should stop. A boundary, let's just say."
Draco frowned. He hadn't thought that far ahead when he'd decided to have Ginny Weasley checked out. Did he really want to know how many lovers she'd had between their night together and the present time? Did he really want to know the frequency with which she shared her bed and body with them? Did he really want to know if his father was one of those number? And for the purposes of argument, really, what would he do once he had all the facts in black and white? He was trying very much to ignore that alternate ego inside of him but with every passing minute, he was starting to realize Draco Jr. was one astute bugger.
Jealous much, Draco?
And for the first time since Draco Jr. made an appearance in his life, he answered honestly. Madly.
This is going to be so much fun! Draco Jr. cackled maniacally before fading into the recesses of his subconscious again.
"Mr. Malfoy?"
Draco looked sharply at the puzzled looking investigator. He realized he must have gone silent for a while and attempted to cover his slip. "Find out everything you can, Mr. Chauncy; I want to know all there is to know about Ms. Ginevra Moira Weasley from the names of her lovers to the name of the soap she uses. Don't spare any details; I want to know even the most absurd to the most scandalous rumors and I want verification of each. If you find out she likes to drink firewhiskey, I want to know many glasses she could drink in one night, how many times a week, what her limit is, and whether she has gone home with any random wizard after getting intoxicated and what she does with that wizard once they are alone. I don't care if you have to transfigure yourself into a fly to do that, but I want to know about everything."
Mr. Chauncy's eyes had rounded in trepidation as he listened to the blond man ranting. He had wanted details, but this was more than he had bargained for.
"I want to know what position she has engaged in while being fucked and I want to know how many dicks have entered that pretty mouth of hers and the names of those dicks so I'd know who I have to go after." Draco paused and took a deep breath, his eyes glittering madly. He was far away, to a place of his own making and he didn't care if he looked deranged in front of William Chauncy. He was expressing himself for the first time and it felt bloody great!
William Chauncy, on the other hand, did not know what to make of this young man before him. One minute he was all business and cool intellect, the next he looked like an enraged husband out to make any body with a penis who came into even the remotest contact with this witch into a eunuch. He was afraid to say anything at this point, not sure whether there was anything he could possibly ask that would not end with him carrying around his precious dick instead of it being attached to his body. He liked his dick where it was, thank you very much.
"Everything then," he said, then cleared his throat self-consciously when he realized he had squeaked.
Draco turned eyes that had changed to such a dark color William was afraid to break eye contact for fear of something happening if he let his guard down for just a second. When Draco only nodded curtly, he slowly released the breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding.
"Everything," Draco confirmed. "Don't worry about the cost, I'm prepared to pay for all the expenses you'll incur. Here, this should tide you over to begin with."
Mr. Chauncy took the proffered note and his eyes bugged out at the amount stated in the signed voucher. Five thousand galleons was certainly more than enough to tide him over for a year! Not wanting to appear overeager, he put away the Gringotts voucher inside his breast pocket with steady fingers, then ruined the whole nonchalance act by patting the area where the obscene amount of money was stowed away satisfactorily.
Draco ignored the excitement Mr. Chauncy was showing towards the money. Five thousand was nothing to him, he owned several pairs of shoes that cost more than that, but he knew it was probably more money than what the wizard made in a year doing what he did. And if he proved to be a font of information, Draco would later decide what kind of reward he would give him.
"I'll get right on it, Mr. Malfoy," Mr. Chauncy said heartily. "Rest assured I will leave no stones unturned in the course of my investigation."
Draco nodded. "See that you do. And take your time, Mr. Chauncy, I have a feeling you'll find digging for dirt regarding Ginny Weasley will not be as easy as you think." He turned his back on the investigator and started for the fireplace. He grabbed a fistful of floo powder from the mantel, then turned to look back and delivered one last warning to the man standing behind the desk. "Oh, and Mr. Chauncy? Should any part of our conversation reach the ears of certain people, I will kill you. Make no mistake about that." The threat was delivered so lightly that it was hard for anybody to believe it was a promise rather than an elaborate joke. He waited for acknowledgment of the threat and once the investigator nodded solemnly, he flooed back to Malfoy Holdings' conference room.
William Chauncy fell back on his chair and heaved a shaky breath. In the twenty years he'd been in the investigating business, he'd dealt with all kinds of people, wizards and muggles alike, and he'd been able to conclude that the clients who approached him for help basically suffer from the same problems; they were either too afraid to show too much emotion and lose their loved ones in the process, or they were too clingy and tended to drive away their significant others. Monotonous job, really, tagging after errant men and women. Statistically, eighty-five percents of his clients were females wanting to find out if their husbands or boyfriends were cheating on them, while the remaining fifteen percent were men who either wanted to find proof of their wives infidelities as basis for divorce so they could continue their affairs with their own lovers, or they were going after men who owed them money and who has suddenly vanished into thin air. For the last five years, he had been getting tired of doing the same thing over and over again, and had begun to wonder if this was all there was to spying. Sure, the scare Lord Voldemort gave the Wizarding world gave his profession a new thrill; you never know when you would suddenly encounter one of his followers and see your life flash before your very eyes. Business was a boom then, though he was doing much of the same thing still. When Harry Potter finally laid Voldemort to rest, though, his job became even more monotonous, and until two years ago, was seriously considering moving to America and see if the place could bring excitement to his life where England could not. Until Draco Malfoy stepped from his fireplace and presented him with an offer he would be a fool to refuse.
Threats to his life was something that he constantly faced, and he was no fool to take Malfoy's threat lightly. He knew the boy's history, and though comparatively speaking the Malfoy heir was still just a boy, he knew what he was capable of, knew how ruthless he could be, and had no doubt whatsoever that he could find ways and means to kill him in the most inventive and painful of ways. He'd heard rumors about his part in the war; some had laughed off the more fantastical tales and doubted even the more tame ones, but he knew as surely as he knew about the presence of a mole on his right temple, that those rumors were actually accurate accounts of his actions in aiding the cause of the light side. His ways may not have been exactly something the MLE's would endorse, but it got the job done as far as he was concerned. It was either them or him, after all, and the Malfoy's sense of self-preservation was too strong to be ignored.
Mr. Chauncy retrieved the voucher from his pocket and stared at the amount. From what he could gather after hearing what Draco Malfoy wanted done, he did not fit into the fifteen percent in his statistic. For the life of him, he could not think of a conceivable reason why the most eligible bachelor in all wizardom would react so violently to the prospect of finding out anything derogatory about a witch from a family who'd been at odds with his own for several generations. The fierce way the young man threatened to do bodily harm to anybody who had the misfortune of sharing the young woman's bed in the last year was chilling. Somehow, he knew that wasn't an idle threat either, and despite his natural cynicism towards the world in general and human relationships in particular, he was starting to feel sorry for the yet nameless men who'll soon grace one Draco Malfoy's hit list.
He stared some more on the figure he was holding. Was five thousand galleons enough money for him to involve himself in whatever drama was going on in the life of the crown prince of the Wizarding world's own version of Royalty?
Resolutely, he stuffed the voucher back in his pockets. The answer was an unequivocal yes! The money was great, but more than that, he thrived on the promise of excitement this particular job would bring into his otherwise boring existence. It was a test of his ability, and as he prepared to leave the tiny office he had rented in the shadier part of Diagon Alley, he was looking forward to finding out whether he still had the sneaky side of him that had made him such a success as an Auror fifteen years ago.
It was quite late when William Chauncy walked out of Gringotts. Thankfully, the wizard bank didn't believe in closing early, and after spending only thirty minutes inside its hallowed halls, he walked out of there with a new bounce to his step. His pockets were considerably heavier and his private accounts was significantly more substantial than it had been for years. There were several thoughts running through his head, but the foremost question was where Ms. Ginevra Weasley was at this very moment.
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Her whole body shaking in terror, Ginny pounded the impervious wall with her balled fists, her heart beating frantically as she watched Lucius carefully arrange a dagger, a goblet, a vial and a black velvet pouch on the altar; the contents of the damned box. The dagger was truly a work of art; she suspected that the handle was made of pure gold and she shuddered when she realized that the hilt was patterned to resemble the head of a snake, the handle that of its coiled body with the tail wrapped around one sharp edge of the blade. For its eyes, two black diamonds glittered menacingly; at least, it looked like it was a diamond, she had never seen one colored black before. The goblet was also something she had only ever seen in history books. It looked fragile and like the dagger, it was made of pure gold but instead of the snake design, the stem was of an angel, a cherub to be specific, its wings folded on its body, its plump cheeks pressed against one full side while its arms cradled the cup. Its stubby legs served as the base, with one leg bent under the other. The vial was shaped like a small urn and made of platinum with no intricate designs on it. It looked ordinary enough as well as the velvet black pouch, but Ginny was not fooled in the least, especially when she saw Lucius pick up the dagger.
"Please, anybody, do something!" she implored, her face pressed against the wall, her tears flowing unchecked. But she knew even before she asked that there was nothing anybody can do for her or her babies, not with the ancient repelling spell Lucius had cast on himself and the twins. All they could do was hope that Lucius really did not mean to harm Luke and Nicole, but with his past record speaking for himself, hoping for him to keep his word was foolish at best.
Ginny barely stifled a scream when Lucius run the sharp edge of the dagger against the pulsing artery of his right wrist, the dark blood immediately pooling and running down the side of the cut extremity, the viscous liquid slowly filling the waiting goblet. As soon as Lucius deemed the contents of the cup to be enough, he muttered a healing charm on his bleeding wrist, the cut closing without any trace of a scar. Her hysterical mind briefly admired his handiwork, especially since he did it without the aid of a wand, before she realized that Lucius performing wandless magic was something she should worry about instead of admire. She hastily wiped the tears blurring her vision when she saw Lucius replace the dagger inside the box; that was surely a good thing, at least her worry that he was going to stab one or both of her babies to death was appeased. Right?
Lucius next picked up the vial with steady fingers and let two drops of liquid to mix with his blood. Ginny saw the contents of the goblet start to fizz for a few seconds before it settled down again. He chanted some more incomprehensible words, both palms held over the goblet. Through with that, he took the final content of the box and with his right hand, took out a powdery substance and sprinkled it precisely over the goblet, chanting all the while. As the powdery substance (almost like fairy dusts) came in contact with the blood mixture, thick smoke started emitting from the goblet, flowing over the rim. Ginny was fascinated by the cloud, the silver/gray color eerily similar to Luke and Nicole's eyes, as well as Draco's, and as she looked up to lock eyes with Lucius, his as well.
Without breaking their staring match, Lucius dipped the index finger of his right hand into the cup and when he withdrew it, a ball of crystal silver hovered over his finger, the swirling mist inside the ball changing colors constantly from black to red to white, then to blue, to green and gray, and finally silver; it looked like a tempest brewing inside a fragile container. Lucius carefully moved his finger towards Luke's head, where the ball then hovered for a few seconds after Lucius had removed his finger before it descended on the boy's forehead. Luke did not seem to mind the foreign substance touching his skin, too engrossed in smiling at his grandfather, his arms reaching out to him, his stubby legs drawn tightly to his body. Lucius repeated the procedure with Nicole, taking the same care in movement he'd done with Luke.
Lucius took a step back from the altar and his eyes still locked with Ginny's, he began to chant the spell to complete the ritual. Ginny didn't know how she knew, but as she looked at Lucius, his words started to make sense to her though he was still speaking in a different language:
My Blood bears the legacy of Malfoys from generations past.
As the blood of my heart now touches yours,
So shall it flow in your veins.
And as your heart beats, everything that I am is yours:
My loyalty, my courage, my strength, my burden.
I give to you my history, my legacy,
And in witness of family, friends and enemies,
I say this now without greed, coercion or malice:
Life of mine flow through them
Life of mine I give to them
Blood of mine I offer to them
Blood of mine I bestow upon them
May the oath I speak now be heard through the ages:
I am Lucius Malfoy and this I have sworn
Luke Ian and Nicole Adrianne,
You are Malfoys born.
As Lucius was reciting the spell, the crystal ball penetrated the fragile skin of both infant's forehead, a silvery glow enveloping their body slowly from their head down to the tips of their toes until, to those looking in, the tiny beings looked more like mirages instead of two living breathing beings. As soon as Lucius finished the spell, the glow around the twins also dissipated, and along with the end of the ritual, the repelling spell also ended.
Ginny immediately rushed forward and picked up Luke, then with great difficulty, Nicole. Her pulse was still beating frantically, she doubted she'd rest easy for awhile yet, but she was just happy that her twins were obviously unharmed. She refused to feel ashamed for acting the hysterical mother earlier, she had every right to overreact to what was happening; she trusted Lucius about as far as she could throw him and it would take considerable effort for anybody to change her mind about him.
As she cooed to her babies, her parents, Bill and her friends surrounding her, she spied Lucius carefully putting away the implements of the ritual, Dumbledore, Snape and Zabini standing behind him quietly. As she was looking at them, she didn't miss Lucius stagger slightly on his feet before he was able to catch himself. Snape was beside him instantly but Lucius waved away his assistance, assuring the Potion's Professor and his life long friend that he was all right. Snape wanted to argue with him some more but one touch from Dumbledore silenced him. She briefly thought that the whole ritual must be quite taxing on the one performing it, if the pallor on Lucius' face was any indication. She surreptitiously kept an eye on the blond while rocking Luke and Nicole in her arms and braced herself when he started for her.
When he was standing in front of her, she raised her chin defiantly and looked him in the eye.
"I think it's high time for the explanations to commence, Ms. Weasley."
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A/N:
curly-sue: Yes, Blaise will appear from time to time. I have plans for our favorite Italian, but I'm still debating whether I'll lean toward that direction definitively or not. Depends really on the flow of the story. And I'm sorry about the cliffies, I don't actually set out to do that, it just somehow happens that way.
becca: Yes, it's a Malfoy, but not the one you want, sorry.
Gin: Yes, I'm keeping Blaise, I'm having too much fun playing around with his character to junk him. And like what I've told curly-sue, barring any major disaster, I have something extra delicious coming up for our Italian stallion.
Goldmund: I don't have the heart to say no to your request. Hope you liked the chapters.
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