Slate Grey Dragon

Series: Children of the Serpent, Part One.

Summary of Series: Children remember things no one expects them to. Those things change their futures forever. The children of Slytherin were never innocent.

Fic Title: Slate Grey Dragon

Rated: R for non-con, male rape, incest, child abuse. DARK FIC!!! If requested, I will up the rating to an NC-17.

Summary: Draco remembers his childhood and how it condemns him. Even as it shaped him, it killed him.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. None of this is mine. It all belongs to one JK Rowling and whatever companies can also claim rights. I am not one of them. This is a work of my mind and in no way reflects this site.

Reviews: I prefer negative or overly critical reviews to compliments, please.

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Draco Malfoy will never forget his eighth birthday. It was the first time his father ever tested him. Until that day, Draco’s mother had been his sole tutor in all things.

It should have been a simple test. Recite the family tree.

Draco began with himself and recited seven generations of ancestors flawlessly. It was on the second name of the eighth generation that he made an error.

“And he married Marie Genevieve Noir dela Nuit, born 1779,” Draco prattled off in his childish treble, not knowing what his words really meant. He opened his mouth for the next name, but his father raised a hand to silence him.

“Draco, repeat that name.”

There was something in Lucius’ voice that sent a shudder through Draco’s thin frame.

“M-Marie Genevieve Noir dela Nuit, sir…” Draco repeated as he focussed on picturing the appropriate page of the family tree book. He was sure he was correct.

“That is incorrect. Noir is pronounced n’wah, not noyr, idiot boy. Come here.” Lucius’ voice remained soft, almost pleasant even as the expression on his face made Draco want to cry.

Draco trembled as he walked up to his father’s desk, but he held his head up proudly as he’d been taught. “Sir?”

“Give me your hand.”

Draco’s hand was all but spastic; he was shaking so badly as he laid it against his father’s palm. He had to bite his lip to avoid crying out as the snake cane, the symbol he’d learned since infancy to associate with his father’s anger, rose in the air and whistled towards his hand.

Draco can still remember the taste of blood from where one of his canines punctured the inside of his lip.

The fear nearly left him when the cane stopped mere millimetres from his fingers. He tore his gaze from the dreaded weapon and a smile tried to crawl across his lips. It was only a test, or a warning. He was safe.

The smile withered before it could even bloom properly when he saw his father’s face.

Lucius’ slate eyes contained a dark, malicious fire. There was a resentment, or perhaps something else, that Draco didn’t understand.

“You’ve disappointed me, boy.”

Draco nearly wet his pants from the tone in Lucius’ voice, the cruelty was so clear.

There was a softly whispered word, the only detail of that day that Draco no longer remembers.

Letters erupted onto Draco’s palm, seeping a thin red line of blood in a perfect script. The pain was so intense he could taste it, metallic and bitter, in the back of his throat. The letters spelled the pronunciation of the word “noir.”

If he looks closely, even now, Draco can still see the scar. It’s part of the reason he never took divination.

Since that day, Draco has taken care never to mispronounce a word where anyone can hear him.

~~~

Draco will never forget his eleventh birthday. It was the day his father introduced him to Crabbe and Goyle.

“These are your new friends, Draco. Their families go back seven generations.”

After years of careful instruction in all matters related to blood ties and purity, Draco understood this statement perfectly. It meant that they were “new blood,” pure enough to be acceptable for companionship, but always to be treated as inferiors to those, like the Malfoys, who could trace their purity back more than 20 generations.

“Befriend them,” Lucius commanded, handing Draco an old wand he’d used recently to teach Draco some rather interesting spells.

Lucius left, closing the door behind him.

Three young boys were left, staring at one another.

Draco looked from the wand in his hand to the boys in front of him, then back again. To the best of his recollection, Draco had never been left alone with other children before. It was a little odd and he didn’t understand what he was to do.

“Hello,” Goyle muttered quietly. “I’m Greg.”

Draco rolled his eyes in disgust. “Of course you are. My father already told me that.”

Goyle looked crestfallen, and a little angry.

“Do you like Quidditch?” Crabbe asked, trying to stop a fight from starting.
Draco contemplated whether or not it was worth his time to answer. Seeing nothing better to do, he nodded his assent sharply.

A few moments later, the boys were engaged in a lively discussion about the sport. Draco would, in the days and years to come, discover that it was the only conversation the other boys could carry out, and that they always made the same statements. On this particular day, however, Draco found the conversation quite stimulating.

That is, he found it stimulating until it was sharply interrupted by his father storming furiously into the room.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lucius demanded as he dragged his son from the room by his arm and slammed the door.

“Befriending them!” Draco squeaked.

Lucius snatched the wand, which Draco had forgotten about, from his son’s hand and jabbed it into his son’s cheek. “I meant for you to use this,” he snarled.

He twisted it slightly, causing Draco to wince.

“You’re small, Draco, just as I was at your age. People don’t always agree with our family. You won’t be safe from your classmates unless you have bodyguards. You won’t have bodyguards unless you convince those two that double-crossing you is the single worst thing they can ever do. They have to fear you, you idiot. Everyone has to be afraid of you. It’s part of being a Malfoy.”

Draco gulped and nodded. The expression on his father’s face was, by now, familiar. It told Draco that if he put one toe out of line, he’d regret it for days.

Lucius handed Draco back the wand. “Now get in there and make them fear you. Remember what we’ve learned this past week?” He paused long enough for Draco to nod. “Hurt them. Make sure they know you are not afraid to do it again if they ever hurt you.”

Lucius opened the door and shoved his son through. Draco used the nastiest hexes and curses he knew.

He cried himself to sleep that night. To this day, he has nightmares of two young boys writhing on the floor under the power of his weak Crucio.

To this day, he wonders if maybe the reason that all Crabbe and Goyle can understand and talk about is Quidditch might be because of that day. He wonders if he caused it.

To this day, the memory makes him feel sick.

~~~

Draco will never forget the summer after fourth year. Near the beginning, his father caught him wanking in the bathroom.

Draco had hurried to cover himself, his face bright red, as he turned to his father. He tried, without much success, to hold his head high.

“Draco, that is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. A Malfoy does not perform such an act. A Malfoy finds someone to take care of the problem for him.”

Draco opened his mouth, still blushing, but nothing came out.

“You’re still a virgin, aren’t you?” Disgust coloured Lucius’ voice.

Draco nodded a terrified affirmative.

“You shouldn’t be, by now. You’re old enough to have found a girlfriend.”

Draco nodded.

“Yet you haven’t… Are you too frightened?” The tone was dangerous and warning lights went off in Draco’s head. He knew something awful was coming.

“We’ll take care of this. Take off your robes.”

Draco has forgotten, or at least tried to forget, what came next.

He remembers searing pain and harsh words. He remembers the flick of his father’s robes as the older man left the bathroom. He remembers lying on the cold tile floor for what felt like hours after his father left. He remembers slipping in a puddle of vomit when he tried to get up, though he doesn’t remember vomiting and he’s certain his father didn’t. He remembers gingerly cleaning dried blood and semen off of his bottom.

That was the first and only time he ever went to his mother for a healing spell after an encounter with his father. Even so, it was a day or more before he could sit properly and closer to a week before he could defecate without first casting a numbing spell.

Part of the terror of that memory is that his mother didn’t say a word about where he’d received his injuries when he went to her for help. He is sure that she approved.

To this day, he can’t stand seeing another male in the nude. Females are only marginally better. He hasn’t masturbated since that day.

~~~

Draco will never forget Christmas Day of his fifth year. That was the first time he ever met Voldemort.

Voldemort welcomed him and told him he could take the Mark at the next ceremony, which was scheduled for two days after the end of the school year.

Draco bowed politely, kissed the hem of the Dark Lord’s robes and started to back away in order to wait until it was time to go home.

Voldemort stops him with a raised hand and Draco was painfully reminded of his eighth birthday as he approached again.

A muggle woman was brought out. Draco was told to entertain his seniors with the woman.

As she screamed and cried on the floor, under Crucio, the only image Draco saw was that of two small boys begging for mercy, promising to do anything he wanted if he’d just stop.

Draco was then told to ‘humiliate’ her. He knew what was expected. With a flick of his wand, he disrobed her. He had to swallow to keep from throwing up when her body was revealed to the room. He hauled up his robes, kicked off his boxers and forced her legs apart.

She clawed at him and kicked until he found that he had no other option than to petrify her, something he did with a slight tremor in his voice.

He went to enter her, but found himself limp. He wanted to throw up, both from disgust at his actions and from terror that he couldn’t perform.

He let go of his robes, allowing them to cover the bits of him and the woman that should have been joined, and moved as though he were inside her. He prayed that no one could tell he wasn’t.

The petrificus, which he really hadn’t cast properly, wore off of the woman and she began clawing and writhing again. The sound of her screaming, so close, so loud, made him retch, though he managed not to actually vomit. He spat at her and stood up, covering himself with the same abrupt motion he’d tried to forget his father using that day in the bathroom.

“Why don’t you finish?” Voldemort asked suspiciously.

“That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done, allowing her filthy muggle flesh to touch mine.” He made a spitting motion again, surprised that his voice had worked, his throat was so dry.

Voldemort seemed satisfied, but Draco could see, in his father’s eyes, that the elder Malfoy was not.

When they arrived home, Lucius turned on is son.

“It was a bloody good thing he bought that, or you’d be dead right now.” In a rare display of physical, and not magical, violence, Lucius held his son against the wall by the throat.

Draco couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even fight back properly. He grabbed at his father’s wrists, trying to get a clear breath. His eyes prickled with tears and he heard blood rushing through his skull.

“I’ll teach you to embarrass this family with such cowardly antics,” Lucius hissed. He smashed his son’s head against the wall and Draco saw stars.

Tears flowed, uncontrolled, down Draco’s face. His father hit him in the stomach with the snake cane.

“Idiot.”

Lucius released Draco’s throat and the boy crumpled to the ground even as he took a shuddering breath.

Lucius levelled the snake cane at Draco and Draco remembers nothing but excruciating pain for the rest of the day.

To this day, one of his kidneys doesn’t work and he has occasional tremors in his hands and feet.

~~~

Draco will never forget the day he took the Mark, right on schedule. He was the only initiate who didn’t cry out when the brand was scorched into his forearm.

He suspects that the others were unaccustomed to pain. He pities them now.

He was welcomed into the circle, given his mask and his first task—to make up for his father’s stupidity at the ministry and to kill Dumbledore.

He felt a bubbling hatred deep within him that, even when imprisoned miles and miles away, his father could still visit pain upon him.

To this day, the mention of his father’s name makes him want to kill something.

~~~

Draco will never forget many days, and this is one of them. This is the day that he stands trail for his crimes as a Death Eater.

Rufus Scrimgeour looks down at Draco from the front of the courtroom. “Draco Lucius Malfoy.”

Here, Draco is seized with anger that, even here, his father’s name still comes up.

“You have heard the charges against you. How do you plead?”

Before Draco can reply, Dumbledore, who somehow survived that night on the tower, or returned from the dead, stands. “Minister, I would like to present new evidence that would result in and insanity plea. If you would care to examine Mr. Malfoy’s memories, I believe that you would find that childhood trauma resulted in his committing the crimes of which he is accused. I believe that time spent in St. Mungo’s would benefit him greater than any amount of time in prison. Please requisition a viewing of his memories.”

Draco rolls his eyes. The old man is still determined to save everyone, isn’t he?

Draco glares at Dumbledore. “My memories are mine, old man.” He turns back to the Minister. “I plead guilty.”

Scrimgeour nods. “It is the decision of the court that you be sentenced to a lifetime’s imprisonment in Azkaban.

Draco smirks.

To this day, Draco has always expected that he would end up there, alongside his father.

Though now, when he thinks back, he wonders if perhaps there might have been a way out. A doorway that was forgotten, perhaps, that he never went through.

As they lead him out of the courtroom, he pushes the thought away.

End Part One