Objects of Desire

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe (inclusive of Hogwarts School, all recognizable characters mentioned, and all institutions, situations, events and happenings) is copyrighted by J.K. Rowling and her corporate affiliates. The following work is fan fiction and is considered by the author to be a respectful parody of Ms. Rowling's work whilst acknowledging its derivative status. No commercial use of this work is intended nor is any revenue being made from it or any website which it may be archived on.

Prologue

The Long Kiss Goodnight

Lucius Malfoy had always been one to err on the side of caution in most every enterprise that he undertook to do. The trick of successfully being Lucius Malfoy was to make sure that no one realized that he chose always to err on the side of caution. His choice of wife had been a prime example. He had wanted, rather desperately, to have a son who would look remarkably like himself, so he chose Narcissa over her sister Bellatrix because she looked so much more like him. He had been this way for almost his entire life, with a few notable exceptions, including the one that directly led him to his current quandary. He had thoroughly believed that the Dark Lord would win eventually and if he didn't, well, he was Lucius Malfoy and he had money, and money was supposed to speak volumes in the Ministry. Not it would seem, when he had been unmasked, sent to Azkaban and escaped only to have the damned Dark Lord defeated in battle by an adolescent boy. So in retrospect, no, that had not been one of his best choices.

He did not regret joining the Dark Lord. Being a Death Eater had afforded him pleasures that the common society would never have allowed, not to mention the sheer accumulation of power that had placed him in a league of his own. He was never supposed to found himself in his current predicament. Not that that was helping him now. What he did regret was that he hadn't had a back up plan in case it all went tits up, which it had done so spectacularly. Snape had told him, warned him even, but he hadn't listened. Severus Snape had done the right thing; a double agent, so that no matter who had won, Snape had come up smelling like the proverbial rose.

It was too late for that particular regret. He had watched the Dark Lord die, and Lucius supposed he could call him Voldemort now. He wasn't coming back, along with most of the people he had flippantly called his friends and then they had caught him with no less than seven stun spells. So it was three weeks at St Mungo's to get him fit for trial, then sent home for a week under a binding spell and then on to the Ministry to be tried, found guilty (inevitable really) and sentenced to receive the Kiss. Now why couldn't they have just decided to kill him? He had expected the Kiss, however, and that was where his magnificent cunning had kicked into action. At the Manor, before the trial when he had been weighing up the pluses and the minuses and coming up with 'Oh Merlin they're going to give me to the Dementors',he had found the potion he needed. Thanking all the Gods he could think of that he had known Severus Snape so very well for so very long and Lucius had watched the meticulous little git work in the minutest detail, that he confidently put the potion together and drank it.

He had been counting on the Ministry to allow his son to come and see him before the Kiss. It was something he should never have counted on and now he was in possibly a worse position than he the one in which he had started. Without being able to tell Draco what to do, he was going to have to rely on the hope that someone would figure it all out. What if no one did? Worse, what if someone did and just plainly didn't care less? On the face of it, that scenario looked to be a distinct possibility. No, this was not good at all.

He sat in silence, staring at the door in front of him and biting his nails. That bastion of moral indignation, Mad Eye Moody, was pacing around, smiling and whistling a merry little tune. Lucius had absolutely no doubt that the bastard had asked to be the one guarding him, and he hadn't seen a smile quite so large as the one Moody had displayed at his trial when the guilty verdict had come down. On the other side of the door, his wife was being 'kissed' good-bye in full view of around fifty spectators that included their own son.

The door opened all too soon and they carried his beautiful Narcissa out. He stared for a moment, taking in the familiar curves of her body, the blonde of her hair, and the regal up turn of her nose. She wasn't Narcissa any more though. Narcissa would never have allowed her mouth to hang slackly open like that, so that a thin stream of drool would run down the side of her face and pool in her hair, and her eyes, once blue and bright, were glazed and dead looking, like a fish kept out of water too long. There were fates worse than death and he was looking at the most horrifying aspect of it. His eyes widened and his mouth went dry, not from sorrow for his lost love, but from pure unadulterated fear.

"Your turn now, Malfoy", came the graveled, expectant voice of Mad-Eye Moody. The smile that Moody had displayed at his trial was back on the scarred and disfigured face in front of him, and one might go so far as to say that Moody was positively beaming. Lucius swallowed what little spit he had left and stood up, straightened his robes and smoothed his hair. They were nervous habits left over from childhood. 'Always straighten yourself out, and always make sure you look immaculate'. From somewhere deep in his memory a voice further admonished; 'Lucius, brush your hair, you look like something a gnome dragged in'.

"Now don't you go worrying about prettying yourself up," Moody chuckled, "you're on a sure thing here, it'll enjoy kissing you all the same."

Lucius pursed his lips a little and stepped forward, concentrating hard on the process of putting one foot in front of the other as he walked with as much dignity as he could muster through the door.

***

Draco Malfoy was sitting in the front row of a small auditorium that he really didn't want to be in. He had watched his Mother go, watched her turn her face up to the Dementor as it came for her, and she had gone quietly. She had even closed her eyes as though it was a kiss of passion. It was so very typical of his mother. Nothing was going to make Narcissa Malfoy flinch. He had set his jaw completely solid and didn't blink. It wouldn't do to start crying now, as Narcissa would never have been able to abide that. He had wanted to leave then; Draco had seen enough, and he didn't need to see any more, but Narcissa and the three before her had been nothing but warm up acts. It was time for the main event, and Draco was required to stay for the entirety of the macabre spectacle. The Ministry had decreed that he should and would come, as a moral lesson to the son of a couple of Death Eaters. 'Don't do what your parents did! Look what has become of their folly'.

He sat between Albus Dumbledore and Snape. Dumbledore was on the judicial council and he had been one voice on the jury who had declared his Father guilty. Snape had come as moral support for Draco. Snape chose to sit in stony silence, whilst Dumbledore looked stern and unhappy. The elderly Wizard had made no secret of his disapproval of this 'Barbaric Act', but what other punishment could there be that would appeal to every member of the Wizarding community? Albus didn't believe in the Death Penalty either and Azkaban couldn't hold every transgressor. The public had cried out for the Kiss and Cornelius Fudge, his grip on power perilously close to failing, had given in to his public, for the good of the Wizarding World, of course.

His beloved father, Lucius, came through the door, followed by a positively glowing Moody. Lucius walked slowly, almost shuffling, with his eyes wide as he focused on the chair in front of him. His face was a mask of something that not one single person in the room would ever have thought they would see on Lucius Malfoy's face. Fear. Pure unadulterated fear. He sat down, unsteadily in the chair and turned his face, catching Draco's eye, gray meeting gray, along with a wealth of unsaid good-byes. Draco's fists balled in his lap, his knuckles turning white. He clenched his teeth and watched as his Father turned to face the Dementor…and panicked.

Lucius tried to get up, out of the chair, an instinctive reaction. The need to survive uppermost in his mind, and the Dementor swooped on Lucius as soon as he moved, smothering his strangled cry with its mouth. Draco felt a sob rise loud in his throat and escape, and he felt both Snape and Dumbledore grab him and still him. Lucius was struggling like someone being forcibly suffocated. His body writhed, as his hands flailed wildly at the Dementors back, hitting it ineffectually with ever failing strength. Lucius never thought to close his eyes against the horror. He kept them wide open and focused on the thing that was destroying him. A long slick tear streaked down the cheek visible to Draco and he howled muffled screams into the Dementor's sated throat.

Draco watched it happen. He watched as the flailing hands began to slow, fade somehow and suddenly a plethora of disjointed memories came storming over him like a torrential downpour. He was two and on a broom stick that flew only a foot off the ground and he was riding it, laughing with the gurgling laugh of a toddler, whilst his father was next to him, holding his hands, and turning on the spot so that he could fly around and around, his blond hair blowing freely in the breeze. He was four and at the beach, up on his father's shoulders, being taken out into the deep waters he would never have reached alone. He was five and it was Christmas. He was trying to force a mince pie into his father's mouth and Lucius hated mince pies, but he kept laughing and Draco had been able to push it in….

"NONONONONONONONONO." He was screaming it as Lucius's hands fell slackly at the sides of the chair and then Lucius' eyes blinked, blinked again and started to glaze.

Draco stood up trying desperately to get to his Father, all the while knowing it was too late. His fingernails bit into the tender meat of his palms, drawing blood and Snape pulled him back; wrapping long black clad arms around him and turned his face from the sight. Draco began to cry into the curve of Snape's shoulder, as long and loud as a child lost in the dark. Lucius was still and gone, 'the bringer of light' had been extinguished and Snape was pulling Draco away, out of the room, and away from the gossiping, blood crazed and leering crowd. It was, as Dumbledore would later recall, Snape's first act of genuine kindness and support in years.