Notes:  Yes, I know June 25 went by about eight hundred years ago.  Lauren, it’s coming, I promise!
By the way, readers, Lauren’s account is ‘addicted to harry potter’.
Other Notes: The toad comment came from a reader.  I fell in love with the insult and resolved to
incorporate it somehow.  Full credit for the phrase is given to ZONKOFRED.
Even More Notes:  “Damsontongue” is up!  Go read and review it or I’ll hunt you down and trample
you.  I know where you live.  I’m coming, Clarice.

It’s been forever!  I’m sorry this wasn’t updated, but with the Great Fanfiction Scare over, and
myself back from a long trip and a bout of food poisoning, Part Twelve is finally here.  Joy.

For Earth is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

by Pata
 
 

Chapter 12
History Repeating
 

As the memory faded, I sneaked a look at my father’s face.  Surprisingly, he looked rather calm, in
comparison to the unnatural red his face had been before.  He stood slowly, holding onto my mother
for support.  He was not pacified, only stunned.

“Draco,” he said to me, “you were…in love with the Mudblood?”

I looked around, frantic.  “No!  No, I…it was just a…façade…experiment…I was lying to her…
she…was…”

The head judge drummed his fingers on his lectern.  “Spare us your lies, Mr. Malfoy.  Lucius, please
take your seat.”

“No,” my father said quietly.  His voice rose in both volume and confidence as he continued, “No,
I will not take my seat!  My son has gone against everything the Malfoy name stands for!  My son
has brought shame to my family!  My son slept with a Mudblood!”

Here, Harry stood up, facing my father directly with glittering emerald eyes.  “What is wrong with
that?” he demanded.

“What is wrong with it?” My father’s voice piqued shrilly.  “She’s not pure!  She’ll be mucking up the
bloodline!  She’s a dirty…”

“Lucius Malfoy, listen to yourself,” Harry snapped.  “Your son – your son, your very own flesh and
blood – is in love with a perfectly good woman!  Look at her.” He gestured wildly to Hermione. “She’s
beautiful, smart, nice.  She’s polite, committed only minor crimes, she’s forgiving, she helped in the
downfall of evil.  She’s everything you could ask for in a girl, in a daughter-in-law, if it comes to that!
And your son loves her.  That should be enough for you to love her too!”

My father slammed a hand on the chair in front of him, screeching, “She’s a filthy Muggle-born -”

“I don’t give a damn about what her bloodlines are, Lucius!” Harry cried.  “She’s a woman, she’s a
person!  She has feelings too, you, you…toad!”

“How dare you!” my father yelled, raising his wand.

“Lucius, please!” the head judge interrupted, but my father was furious, enraged beyond belief.
The judge continued, “Put the wand down, Lucius.  No magic is allowed in this courtroom without
permission!  It is a felony!”

For a moment, it looked as though Father might disobey, but he thought better of it and threw the
wand aside.  It sparked slightly as it hit a wall, but he paid no attention.  He launched himself at Harry,
catching the boy around his shoulders and pinning him to the ground.

Harry screamed, using all his weight to force himself and my father into a somersault, switching the
positions so that he was on top.  My father punched him in the face, but this only angered Harry more.
The boy sat up on my father’s stomach, holding him down on the ground.

Unfortunately for Harry, my father was an experienced fighter and very strong.  He brought one foot
up and pushed it against Harry’s chest, then the other; with this tactic he forced Harry to the ground.

“Justice,” Hermione started.

“Let them be,” was his only answer.

Clearly having the advantage now, Lucius kicked Harry in the stomach, then gave him a nice punch
on the arm. With all limbs held motionless, Harry fell back on more disturbing methods. As my father
socked his shoulder again, Harry’s teeth flashed out of nowhere and sank into my father’s wrist.

“This is crazy!” Hermione yelled.

Father cursed very loudly, yanking his bleeding skin free of Harry’s jaws. His fingers found Harry’s
throat, and Harry coughed and choked loudly as my father increased pressure on his airways.

“Justice, please,” I begged.  “Couldn’t one of them get seriously hurt?”

The head justice replied, “If it comes to that, I will stop them.  But let us see how this plays out.”

“Justice,” I began again, but his attention had returned to the fight.

Harry was making some guttural moans and hacks, sounding much like early cavemen must have
sounded before the development of language.  Frantic now, he managed to get his arms out from
under Father’s elbows, grabbing the fingers that were choking him and clawing like there was no
tomorrow.  He managed to get a secure hold on my father’s left hand, finally peeling it off, and then
yanking himself free of the right hand.

He coughed until his airways were fully functional again, holding Father’s hands in his own to keep
them from returning to his throat.  When he had his voice back, he demanded, “What is it about
Muggle-borns that makes you so mad?”

My father freed his hands from the boy’s grasp, rolling off him and getting onto his hands and knees
on the floor.  He panted heavily, glaring daggers at Harry.  His voice was thick with poison as he
replied, “Do you really want to know?  The truth might shock you.”

Harry brought one leg up and kicked my father in the back, flattening him out of the floor with a
loud rush of air from his lungs.  He lay motionless for just one moment to get his wind back, but that
one moment was enough for Harry to pin his arms and legs back and sit down on his body to hold
him perfectly still.  The boy sneered rudely, “What, is it like a pureblood thing?  I’ve got some news
for you.  I may have been raised with my Muggle cousin and his family, but I am a pureblood.  So
do you want to tell me – and the rest of the courtroom – or not?”

Father struggled uselessly against the arms that hold him. He spat bitterly.  “Why do you care? You
don’t care about me, or my past.  You don’t need to know why I am the way that I am.”

“Do we?” said the judge, a slight hint of amusement bleeding into his voice.

Lucius’ recoiled slightly, but not enough. “You want to know? Fine, I’ll tell you why I hate
Mudbloods. One of them broke my heart.”

“Elaborate,” snapped Harry.

“Oh, you know her,” said my father, sucking pleasure from every word. “You know her
very well, Potter.”  He paused, his lips curling into a sadistic smile.  “Well, no, that’s technically
incorrect, isn’t it? She died just after you were born, I believe.  At Voldemort’s hand.”

Harry’s eyes were clouded with confusion, a mixture of denial and disbelief.

“Yes,” my father mused, “quite a tease, she was, really. I was hormonal. She was my sweet,
succulent fruit of Eden.”

Was it my imagination, or were those tears in his cold blue eyes?

Harry shook his head, mouth agape, refusing to believe.  “You can’t possibly mean…”

“Oh, I slept with your mother, Potter,” my father drawled, so slowly and cruelly that it seemed to
physically pain Harry. Lucius licked his lips, drawing the joy from each low, enunciated syllable.
“We were seventeen. By the pond, late one night over Christmas break. It was freezing, but we
didn’t care. We didn’t even know, we were so lost in ourselves.”

I was just as shocked as everyone else in the courtroom, but no one was as stunned as Harry.
He was positively floored. “My mother would never lay with you,” he spat.

“Oh,” whispered my father, “wouldn’t she? She loved it, Potter. She loved me. I was on Cloud
Nine with Lily Evans for a year and a half. And then it happened. Voldemort came. He rose. He
was there, Potter.  You couldn’t possibly comprehend.”

His voice was pained as he spoke, and a tear leaked from his eye. Harry was failing at trying to
shut his mouth. He was speechless.

My father lamented in a tortured voice, “He took her, as bait.  I was of prestigious blood, a great
prize for any grand villain.  But I wasn’t thinking about that, I wasn’t using my brain - I would
have done anything to get my Lily back.  You know what I did, Potter?”

Harry could naught but stare.

“I sold my soul to Voldemort in exchange for Lily. I held out my arm and received the Dark Mark.
That’s what I did to save your mother’s life. I will serve Voldemort eternally so that your mother
would live.  And then she left me alone, nursing the perpetual pain. She went to James and used him
as a fucking crutch!  I sat there in the cold Slytherin common room with Severus and took orders
from that asshole Voldemort for years, holding on only for your mother. And you know what he did?”
Rage blended with the pain in his tone.  “He killed her.  He used me and that annoying bludgeon of
a human being, Peter Pettigrew, and he killed her!  That night in Godric’s Hollow, I screamed and
cried and froze under my layers of robes, weeping in the wind for hours, Potter.”

He stopped, breathing hard.  Harry released him.  Lucius wiped the single tear from his cheek,
glaring at each of us in turn.  “I died that night.  I became an apathetic wreck of a man.”  He made
a disgusted noise.  “That is why I hate Mudbloods.  They’re ungrateful, horrid, impure tools for
sick-minded wizards who take advantage of them, and they crowd and they crowd and they just
keep crowding up the world.”

Here he paused. When he spoke again, his voice was trembling. “And they’re beautiful. Why are
they all so beautiful?  Why are they all so out of reach?”
 
 
 

Back to Chapter 11
Chapter 13