Making Headlines

Friday, 7 November 1986

10:00 pm

There was no business for the children to be up by this time of the night.

Yet, Darcie and Draco both were up, sitting on the same sofa within the Drawing room. Darcie hadn't gone to sleep, and Draco had been woken up when their father arrived some 15 minutes ago.

Her mother's voice was still as sharp and full of fury as it was then.

"See!" they heard her. "I told you not to let her have her way with this library and all. Oh, Lucius! You must have listened to her in the evening…"

"Are you really going?" Draco asked meekly, looking towards their parents' bedchamber. "Mother won't let you, I know."

Suddenly, the pitch and red fury in their mother's voice rose.

"How dare you suggest that?!" their mother shrieked. "Have you been confunded?"

The children shared a glance. Their father didn't like this word.

They heard the footsteps, heavy and hurried. Draco stiffened and pressed himself back into the soft sofas. Darcie took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet.

Lucius marched into the Drawing room, red-faced, his fingers tightening around his cane. He had spent the entire day at the ministry, and the traces of tiredness were apparent in his eyes.

Narcissa followed her husband, teary-eyed and sobbing.

Her father's cold gray eyes and her mother's blue settled on her face the moment they saw her.

"Ask her who talked her into this, Lucius," her mother said, throwing her arm aside. "It must be that Millicent, that bi… Just in the morning, her letter came. I knew she was doing something to our daughter. I told you…"

"Will you just give it a rest?!" her father snapped. He threw his cane on the sofa, and Draco edged away as if it would come alive and attack him.

Lucius let himself fall into the embrace of a chair with a tall back and cushioned arms. He took a deep breath and then looked at Darcie again.

Darcie matched his gaze.

"Did someone really tell you to do this?" her father asked as her mother's eyes moved between them, waiting to erupt at any unlikable notion.

"No, father," Darcie said, shaking her head. "It's my decision. No one swayed me, and no one even hinted anything to me."

"Don't hide!" Narcissa hissed, tears falling down her cheeks in thin streams. "What business does a 6-year-old have in Diagon Alley?! Tell your father what you told me. Tell him."

She was almost 7, but for once Darcie didn't think correcting her mother was the right way to go about these things.

"Is it true?" her father asked. "Why?"

"I do want to go to Diagon Alley, father," she told him, her mother's breathing speeding up. "I want to read, learn, and study, not attend to guests and spend most of my time playing the part of children (-"You are a child!" her mother snapped, but her father lifted his hand, letting Darcie continue-). And it's not about getting books and holding myself back, father. It's about opportunities and freedom. That's why I decided…"

"Yes, yes," Narcissa added, shaking all over. "Tell him what you decided…"

Darcie looked defiant. "That's why I've decided that I will join the Flourish and Blotts Bookseller in the Diagon Alley with an Assistance Occupation," she declared.

"A Page!" her mother spat, looking utterly disgusted. "A mere Page, Lucius! Did you hear her? Did you?"

"I heard," Lucius said slowly, a deep frown weighing down his face.

To Darcie, her father looked extremely sad, and if she wasn't seeing wrong, disappointed as well.

"First, no one will allow a 6-year-old to work in a shop…"

Darcie cut in. "6 and a half, father," she corrected, now unable to let this go on any longer, "and I've already got permission from the minister of magic herself. The letter I got this morning was her approval, signed and stamped."

Darcie suddenly picked up her mother's wand, resting on the table where she had put it, and shouted, "Accio letter!".

With a swishing noise, a letter came flying in her hands, passing between her mother and her brother. She handed the letter to her father.

Lucius seemed to lack the words to say, so he silently opened the letter and began reading. Her mother ran behind the chair and leaned over her father's shoulders to read it along with him.

Darcie saw their lips moving, opening, and closing, and knew they were finished when they simultaneously lifted their head to observe her.

"This is folly!" her mother commented, now looking beaten. "This can't be happening, Lucius. That woman has other motives, I am telling you."

Lucius put down the letter on the table beside him, poured himself a glass of water, and gulped it down.

"Second," her father continued as if the matter of letter had never happened, "I will not allow the name of Malfoy to be drowned in the mud till I, Lucius Malfoy, is alive, Darcie. What would people think, dear, have you thought of it? Darcie, the prodigy from the Malfoy family, the purest of her blood, works as a mere Page in a bookshop?! The entire wizardkind will spit on us. And here I have been having thoughts about you…"

Her mother was already beaming, but then something happened that made her smile go away. Something that turned her face into stone, something that made Lucius stand up and Draco cry.

One tear fell from the corner of Darcie's eye.

"What would they think, father?" she said, half sniffing, half smiling. "Don't you know what they think? Why don't you, when I heard the whispers all the time? Since I was small and smaller, I have been hearing them talk behind your back. About you, our family, and me. We are traitors, they say. A family of Death Eaters! Your own friends call you turncoat behind your back, father. When the wizardkind says the name Malfoy, they are not thinking of a Great Pure-Blood family, but backstabbing hooligans. Oh, yes, father. I've just quoted a sentence from the Daily Prophet verbatim.

"And I, Darcie Malfoy. The prodigy? Oh, mother, don't you know what they say about me? You do, don't you? Daughter of the Dark Lord. Child of Vol…"

"Darcie!" Narcissa, now looking blue and purple, approached her with one step and slapped her. "How dare you?!" she mumbled, her hands shaking in disbelief. "How could you?!"

The silence in the Drawing room was choking.

Near the stairs leading down to the ground floor, a tiny figure of red-garbed Dobby could be seen, sniveling, trembling, hidden in the shadows.

Darcie rubbed her eyes, but she didn't look down. "I am sorry, mother," she apologized. "That is the truth. We have wealth and status, I know. But I've learned from history that has never been enough to stand at the top."

Lucius had yet to add his voice to this rare silence. His cold gray eyes had become harder, and his cheeks undulated as he gritted his teeth. Clenching his fingers into a white fist, he turned around and said, "Go to your rooms, both of you. I will have no more discussion about this nonsense."

Sleep didn't come to Darcie, no matter how deeper she pressed her eyes shut. Lying on her bed, and gazing out at the full moon through her windows, Darcie thought she saw someone smiling on its spotted silver surface.

No. Not smiling. Whatever she saw on the moon, it was grinning ear to ear. A chill ran down her tiny spine. Where tiredness failed, apprehension succeeded, making Darcie finally fall into the dark oblivion of dreams, full of whispers and hisses.

One thing was certain, though.

Only five people stayed in the ancient Malfoy Manor, but not one eye out of the ten went to sleep dry that night.

*

*

Tuk-tuk! Tuk-tuk!

The thin layer of skin over Darcie's eyes cracked open by the thinnest amount.

Fingers of cold blue light were seeping in through the windows, and there was still the hint of a chilly fog outside.

Tuk-tuk!

Darcie forced her eyes open and saw an owl pecking at the windowpane. She recognized her.

"Cyra?!" Darcie threw off the blanket, jumped off the bed, and opened the window.

A light gust of icy wind and curls of fog rushed inside the room, and brushed against her skin, getting the rare chance.

Darcie shivered.

Cyra was a brown fish owl, female, and belonged to the minister of magic, Millicent Bagnold. The owl flapped her way to the table, and Darcie hastily closed the window behind her. [Image 1]

When she neared her, Darcie noticed a cylindrical parcel tied to her legs.

She let the owl have her favorite treat and untied the parcel. Unwrapping it, Darcie sat down on the chair and curiously eyed the rolled scroll first.

It said — Congratulations, Page 10, Editor Recommendation.

The understanding came to her now. With stiff hands, Darcie put down the letter and picked up the second cylindrical parcel over which the letter had been rolled by the minister.

Darcie tore away the brown covering and unfurled the magazine.

The faintest hint of a smile on her face looked like a defiant half moon in the blue morning.

Magical Today was a monthly periodical, issued every first Saturday of the month. It was an old and renowned scholarly journal that published papers of every kind from various fields.

The cover of today's issue stood out, for the figures shifting on it contrasted each other brilliantly.

One was Darcie, dressed in a gown, and trying to smile. The other was the minister of magic, smiling broadly and looking at Darcie.

Darcie took a deep breath, composed herself, and opened the magazine to page 10.

Bold letters attracted her dark green eyes to it instantly.

— On the nature of Dark Arts, Magic, and Intentions, by Darcie Malfoy, *with comments from Millicent Bagnold (minister of magic, O.M. - first class) —

Suddenly, Dobby appeared near her with an audible crack, his face towards the bed.

When he realized she was already up, the house-elf nervously said, "Master Lucius and Madam Narcissa are calling you downstairs, miss."

The way he was fidgeting made Darcie think of something. "What is it, Dobby?" she asked. "Is it the newspaper?"

Dobby nodded. He neared her, looked up in her eyes, and squeaked, "Dobby saw you, Miss Darcie…"

Darcie raised her eyebrows, standing up, her grip on the magazine tightening already.

And as she turned around to leave, Dobby completed his words, following her like a shadow.

"… on the first page."

*******************

AN: So the month is ending on an emotional note. Anyway, let me thank all the readers who have been with the novel till now. Thank you, without you, there is no novel.

If anyone wants to read ahead, up to 15 chapters, then consider becoming a Patron and support me. In the next month, I will upload a few Patron-exclusive side chapters, related to Side Characters. They will have no impact on the ongoing work. Take them as One-Shots.

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