The Malfoy Project

𝟖𝟏 - 𝐋𝐲𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐨𝐲

 ༻⚜️༺     

     The day I found out Lucius wasn't my father was on my tenth birthday. 

     By then, I had found that birthdays were not a cause for celebration. They were merely a drawing pin in the calendar for my parents to remember to buy more gifts than the previous year, so it could feel like they had fulfilled some part of their moral obligation towards me. 

     That morning I had awoken with a heavy dread in my stomach. The room was hot and stuffy, and the sun was too bright, escaping through the spaces between the curtains and cutting up the dark. I wondered, with indifference, what kind of fanciful gift would be waiting for me downstairs and closed my eyes again, trying to convince myself to be excited while simultaneously wishing for the day to be over.

     So it came as a surprise when there was a knock on the door and Dobby came in to deliver a envelope to me. Written on the front in sprawling cursive was my name, making it look it was addressed to a dignitary and not a young boy. The letter enclosed within was addressed to me from someone I first assumed to be Father.  

     It began with the words 'Dear Son', and spoke of how much he loved me and my mother, and how excited he was that I would be starting school soon. He described my mother as a 'wonderful woman', and that I must remember to take care of her, for he doesn't get to see her often, though she tries her best. It was signed 'L.S.M, Dad'.

     I never picked up on the fact that it said 'she tries her best' and not the other way round, even though Father was not home very often and Mother, on the other hand, always was. I was too preoccupied with the last word: 'Dad'. I traced my finger over it, feeling the dent in the parchment where the quill nib had carved those three letters. 

     Elated and vigour restored, I brought the letter down to the dining room, where Mother and Father were having breakfast, to thank them, but also to let Father know he made a mistake with his initials. 

     I will not speak of what ensued. All I will say is that I ended up in bed at night face-down in the pillow with a sore bottom, letter-less, and no more tears to spare. 

     Mother came in then to tell me the truth. I want to say it was an 'Eureka' moment when I finally understood why my parents despised me, why I was never good enough for Father, and why Mother sometimes could not bear to look at my face. 

     Instead, I received this information more like a passing factoid in a textbook, or the storylines of one of the Muggle novels: as something vaguely and temporarily interesting, like a distant shooting star, but at the end of the day it would not affect life as I knew it.

     I had put in some effort to look around, just out of curiosity, but after finding the Prophet article detailing the state of the cottage he was found in, I decided I did not want to know any more about the insidious underbelly of the wizarding world. Even if I did meet him, it wouldn't have made a difference because Lycus Sebastian Malfoy had suffered too much mental damage to even recognise Mother, much less a son whose face he'd never seen. 

     Besides, Father warned me that if anyone at Hogwarts found out Draco Malfoy was the illegitimate son of a crazy, drooling St. Mungo's loon, the Malfoy reputation would go down the drain and they would not let me on the Quidditch team, and that alone was enough to put a stop to my feeble endeavour of self-discovery.

     Despite this, I thought of him in secret. Mother had skimmed through their shared history with assiduity, taking care not to talk about how he looked, or what his personality was like, leaving me to my own devices to imagine the kind of person he was.