Fanfic #36 The Choices We Inherit by Ave Imperium(HarryPotter)

This fanfic is about a male oc reincarnated into Harry Potter two years before Draco as a Malfoy. It's kind of a dark fic with the mc suffering a lot, but I think it's an interesting story that has a lot of potential. Also there's a lot of times skips, like barely any time is spent at hogwarts.

Synopsis: One man reborn cannot save the world. But perhaps he can save his family. Reborn as Draco Malfoy's elder brother, these are the choices he must make. Not a SI. No bashing.

Rated: M

words: 40k

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13847739/1/The-Choices-We-Inherit

Here's the first chapter:

He had never believed in an afterlife. Humans were blips on the cosmic radar, exceptions in a great void. Once the lights were out, that was it. A brief flash of consciousness before an eternal sleep, the great return to that unfathomable time before birth. Yet here he was, conscious, in a dark place. Someone was screaming, and it was so painfully loud. It reverberated through his being and roared through his head. Who was right? Whose hell was he in now?

He moved, pushed by some invisible force, and for the first time he felt the body within which he was caged, and it felt weak, stunted, limited. His eyes would not open, he couldn't breathe -shit. Had the Buddhists been right all along? Was this rebirth? Despite the absurdity of the moment, a spark of excitement shot through him as another scream shook his surroundings. Rebirth. His memories were faint, like the echoes of childhood, but they were there. This was an extension on the Reaper's loan. A chance to continue everything he'd left behind.

In the end, perhaps it was best that no one remembered their birth. It was an entirely horrible experience and he screamed his way through it all. Anyone who thought you could go through it in any other fashion had never experienced the miracle of childbirth from the inside out. He kept his eyes squeezed shut against the light and cried so loud that he barely realized it was over until someone put him into a pair of beautifully gentle and warm arms that smelled just right. That was enough to quell his tears long enough for him to open his eyes and look up into the beautiful, but exhausted face of the woman who could be none other than his mother. The possibility that he had inherited even a fraction of her looks was rather comforting. Her shining blond hair was mussed up and her skin was flushed with exertion, but quicksilver eyes danced with a protective love that made him feel far safer in this vulnerable little shell than he had thought would be possible.

"My little Cato," she murmured, a finger running his cheek. He stared up at her, dazed with fatigue.

"A fitting name," said a man. He stepped into Cato's vision and Cato frowned.

"He doesn't seem to like you very much, does he?" said his mother with a small smile. Tears had dried against her skin and as the flush of exertion faded, he realized she looked deathly pale.

The man sat on the side of the bed and put an arm around her shoulders, an indulgent smile on his face. "Give him time, my dear." His hair was long, nearly as long as his wife's, and he had those same grey eyes that seemed to be cut from a knife's edge. An oddly familiar man, dressed to the nines, as if he were attending a Victorian ball.

"Lord Malfoy," said another person, hidden from Cato's sight by a pile of blankets and his mothers fiercely protective embrace. "The child is healthy, and shows none of the signs of being… abnormal. I would advise putting him through the Vuckner Squib Test before the…" The rest of her words faded into the cacophony of thoughts that had erupted in Cato's mind. His eyes bulged and small fingers clutched at his mother's satin robe. Malfoy. Squib. Was this some sort of twisted fever dream, caught between death and life and fed the strangest of fantasies? But his mother's smell, the beating of his heart, the voices. It all felt far too real, far too logical. A deep breath became a small cough as he snuggled into his mother's embrace and closed his eyes. A desperate, curious part of him wanted to sit up and take in everything around him with desperate hunger. But before he could even try, he felt an overwhelming sense of exhaustion outweigh any plan but sleep. Everything else would have to wait.

II

The first years would forever be branded in his mind as some of the worst he had ever had to suffer through. He was almost driven quite insane as his weak little shell struggled to keep up with his mind. Pudgy fingers clutched at objects clumsily, and his mouth struggled to make even the simplest of words. Since when had tongues become so horribly clumsy? In the future, he endeavored never again to think of those hundreds of times when his mother -Who he was now quite sure was Narcissa Malfoy- changed him. Ultimately, it was his first bout of accidental magic that saved him from his maddening boredom.

"Now, the young wizard drew his wand and cursed the evil muggle with…" Cato would have screamed his lungs out, but he had grown to care for this woman who looked at him with adoration in her normally cold eyes and read him ridiculous bedtime stories. He had always hated the squalling of children and felt just a little bit guilty about inflicting that on her in turn.

But it was easy to see how a normal child like Draco could have developed within this environment, she was fiercely protective and let no one but her husband and a single house elf even touch him. But she loved him. So instead of screaming, Cato closed his eyes and tried to tune out her words and focus instead on the possibilities. What sort of books existed that had a muggle equivalent? What author had written in both worlds? Had Hemingway been a wizard, or perhaps Verne? A tingling sensation crossed his skin, like the shot of adrenaline one might feel before jumping from a high place. His mother fell silent, halting in the middle of a sentence. "Lucius," she called, her voice echoing through the room.

It took only a moment for the door to open and a head to appear over the crib within which he had been settled. "I have business with Him," said Lucius, his voice taut as a wire. "What?"

A pause as a rustle of pages. "Look," said his mother.

"An account of Vernian Travels in the Age of the Explorers. Curious bedtime story for a baby."

"I didn't pick it," said Narcissa, in a voice that thrummed with tightly wound excitement. She lifted Cato out of his crib and held him up so he was looking straight into his father's tired, careworn face. "He did. He swapped them, from within my own grasp."

Lucius took him in his own arms, his eyes as bright as his smile. "Of course he did," he said, and Cato resisted the urge to squirm and reach for his mother. He was much less comfortable in Lucius's arms. But the man deserved the moment, accidental magic must have been an incident of pride in wizarding families. Lucius leaned over him and he heard his parents exchange a quick kiss. A positively scandalous show of affection in the Malfoy Household. "You chose his name well," said Lucius.

"I knew." Her mother took him back into her arms. "I knew from the moment I saw him that he would be special."

And after that night, his mother read from Verne every time she put him to bed, and Cato spent his entire, horribly boring days waiting for those brief moments of stimulation. He ground every word she read into his brain, doing what he could to commit them to memory. What else could he do during the day but ponder her words? Was he going to play with his dolls? Well, he did do that on occasion too. A man had to stay entertained somehow.

When she finished with Verne, she moved onto a title that Cato had never heard before and must have been uniquely magical, from A Frenchman's Time With the Indian Witches to Pyramids, Pythons and Promises, My Days in Egypt. And so went on his early life, a tortuous mix of learning and boredom that left Cato yearning for the days when he could, if nothing else, walk and read by himself. Because then, at least he would then be able to explore the new, magical world around him.

III

His mother's smile was tight, and his father was frowning more often. The thrill from his first bout of magic had faded with the last of the winter snows, and his mother was beginning to press him continually to speak. "Can you say Ma-Ma, my dear?" she would say, stroking his hair. But Cato had found that he rather liked the company of his own mind. Over a year trapped within his own body had confronted him with two hard choices. To come to terms with himself and find satisfaction within his own thoughts, or to go insane. It was not a hard choice to make, and he wasn't entirely sure he hadn't gone a little loopy, but he felt comfortable enough waiting until he could actually speak without lisping like an idiot. But one night, he was finally forced to speak. His parents were in his room, arguing, their voices hushed. The lights were off and moonlight spilled into the room, illuminating the beautiful painting on his ceiling. It spoke of the Spanish Armada in a far different manner than Cato recalled from his life as a muggle. Had there really been a prominently placed Malfoy on a cliff, calling the Storm to England's aid?

"You need to stop reading those books to him, Narcissa. He is clearly incapable of understanding, and it is becoming difficult to excuse his continued silence to the rest of the family."

"He understands," replied his mother, her tone unyielding with conviction. "He loves them, I can feel it."

Lucius sighed and Cato got the distinct impression that this was not the first time they had discussed this. "I spoke to Doctor Patrocle when I was in Paris."

"Lucius!" said Narcissa, her voice suddenly as sharp as jagged glass. "If word gets out that Cato still doesn't speak… Even the Flint's little goblin can grunt some words." Ouch, that was a bit of an insulting parallel to draw.

"They'll find out eventually, if this continues. The Doctor said we should return to simpler books. No child can even begin to comprehend…" Lucius stopped and Cato heard a book opening. "Apsworth."

"Cato is no simple child," replied his mother. "…But- Alright. I suppose." Cato frowned, he would die before he was subjected to a single additional moment of Wilbur the Wizard and the Six Evil Muggles.

"No," he said, sitting up in his crib. His voice unnaturally high, the words bizarre in a mouth that felt too small for them. Suddenly two faces were staring down at him, their silvery eyes like mirrored moons.

"Cato," it was his mother. "Did you say something?"

"I don't," Cato frowned in concentration. "Want Wilbur. I want Apsworth."

His mother's stoic mask promptly broke as she picked him up and hugged him tightly, her eyes wet with emotion. It would not be the last time that she cried over him, but in the future, Cato would comfort himself with the thought that the first time had been out of pride.

And so, he was finally introduced to his aunt -and godmother, imagine that! He tried not to as often as he could. She arrived in a whirl of chatter and excitement, bursting through their door and offering Cato an entirely new perspective on the Bellatrix he had come to expect. Where the one that the future would witness would be deranged, emaciated and bloodthirsty, this one reeked the sort of imposing will and beauty that made men blush and look away. She walked like she owned the ground itself and had a feverish gleam in her eyes, betraying the figments of madness lurking within.

"Cissy, is this my godson?!" she said when she arrived, swooping forward and bending down to look into Cato's eyes from where he hung in his mother's arms. She regarded him intensely until he reached forward. It felt surreal to be confronted with someone who had murdered and tortured their way through the past years. He grabbed a lock of her hair. "Bellatrix," he said.

The witch he had come to associate with death and madness teared up and sniffed, practically ripping him out of her sister's arms. "He already knows his favorite auntie's name, isn't he perfect!"

Lucius looked confused and glanced at his wife. "Yes…"

Her clutch was protective now. Was that blood underneath the lapels of her robe? Why did she smell like a wood fire? "What? You think I'm not his favorite aunt? I'm his godmother!"

"Bella," said his mother and her voice held the same placating and soothing roundness to it that she used on him. "Of course not. But we hadn't even told him your name… We wanted you to introduce yourself."

Bellatrix huffed. "Of course he knows my name, he loves me." She held him out again and kissed his brow. "Don't you my beautiful little boy?"

IV

He was almost two when Draco was born. It did not come as surprise. After all, he had watched his mother's belly swell with life. Still, it set a ticking clock for events and Cato could finally look at the path ahead and know what would happen, when. It also alleviated the minor concern that he had been Draco's replacement in this world, he wasn't sure how he would have felt about that. But now he knew Harry Potter would be born in only a few short months, he knew which Halloween would change things forever. His parents had been doting on him even more with every passing day. His mother, preoccupied as she was still managed to muster the energy to bring him to play dates with the other snotlings, for no other reason than to show him off to the parents. Him and his 'incredibly developed' vocabulary. He felt no compunction to dumb himself down for the people around him, even though the first time he had refused to talk and she had, in turn, refused to read to him for three days. A little bit of motherly vengeance for embarrassing her in public. She knew exactly where to hit to hurt, but he couldn't bring himself to stay angry at her. She was Narcissa Malfoy, complicit in the deaths of countless folk, and yet Cato loved her, for she was his mother, and she in turn loved him unconditionally.

When he was finally allowed to look at his brother, he spent a long time staring. Once again, he was hit with that familiar sensation of displacement. It was as if a veil had been delicately deposited between him and the world around him. He was a mirage within a world of substantial beings, a fever dream, and his hand would pass through his brother like smoke. But his brother's hand was warm, and it curled around his finger tightly. And Cato saw not the snotty boy he had become in the stories, but the limitless potential of what he could have been.

He looked up at his mother, whose eyes were still rung with the exhaustion of childbirth even after so many days. "He will be good," he said in his solemn, ridiculous little voice. She smiled and reached out a pale, trembling hand, running it through Cato's hair. "He will. Though I do not think he will be able to step from your shadow."

V

"You're weird," said the girl. She wrinkled her nose, reddened as it was by the cold, and crossed her arms. Cato bit back a far too 'mature' comment about what she could do with her opinion and shrugged. "Go away then," he said. They were standing in the snow near Gringotts while their respective mothers traded gossip and pleasantries that sounded an awful lot like thinly veiled insults to Cato.

"I'm Marietta," she replied, puffing out her chest. "My mum is very important. She works with fire."

"Alright," said Cato, looking at his mother despairingly. Oh to be bereft of the chains of childhood. But all she did was glance in his direction with a dangerous glint in her eyes. Behave was the underlying message and with a long-suffering sigh, Cato stretched out his pudgy hand. His smile must have been convincing enough because Marietta smiled back. "I'm Cato. My mother is also rather important." Much more important than yours, he thought. Petty thoughts were an acceptable sin, he was only four, after all.

"Marietta, we're leaving," called her mother.

"Bet she doesn't work with fire," said the girl, she stuck her tongue out and turned away. "Coming, Mum!" she called before scampering off after her mother.

Cato stuffed his hands into his sleeves and resisted the urge to blow on them as he followed Narcissa deeper into Diagon Alley. He had once asked her to carry him when out in public but: "Such displays of affection are good enough for those with lower lineages than ours," had been his mother's reply. It had confronted him with the harsh reality that he had been able to ignore up until his mother began to take him outside of their restrictive social circle. His family had strong beliefs and he wasn't sure how to feel about them. Sure, he had been a muggle in his past life, and he certainly had no interest in serving anyone who would so willingly toss their followers to the side in the manner the Dark Lord did. Yet, a little voice inside of him told him to savor this position into which he had been born. He was at the top of the world, born into unbelievable wealth and given the chance to enjoy the privileges offered to him by pure blood. He grimaced. It was easy to talk of noble ideas and moral behavior when one was a few rungs lower down the ladder, but here… now? Not so easy anymore.

"Stop," said his mother. Cato took in his surroundings. They had walked into a side street, well maintained with even pavements and straight houses rising on either side. Golden light spilled from their windows invitingly in the gathering December gloom. Before them was a small alcove, a little taller than a man and within it stood a grave-faced statue. His stony face was pitted by the chisel of time. He seemed to stare down at Cato, his dark eyes bearing down on him with stoic intransigence. A toga spilled down around him and in one hand he clutched a scroll. A small plaque was attached to the wall beside him, far too high for Cato to see. He felt a little tremor run through his body and he stepped forward, his eyes glued to the statues', as if it were simply a moment until it would step out of the alcove and speak. A thin layer of snow covered the man's weathered arm and just as Cato felt a strong urge to clear it away, a chilly breeze surged up around him and dusted the statue of snow.

"Cato," he said.

"Cato," confirmed his mother. "Senator of Rome, follower of Apollo and a bastion against the encroaching corruption of his society." She put a hand on his shoulder. "The very instant I held you in my arms, I knew you would follow in his footsteps. Every mother knows their child's name at a proper birth. A magic more powerful and ancient than mine drives this instinct." The weight of the man's gaze, dead for millennia, seemed to lay even more heavily on his shoulders and Cato broke his unwinnable staring contest. Had his mother sensed the conflicting ideals he had been weighing within his mind? But then her nails dug into his shoulder, sharp enough to make him wince. "Above all else, Cato was a politician, my son," she said, her voice was as cold as the wind on his cheeks. "You may be beyond the children of your age, but you will smile, you will talk to them, you will get to know them and you will be unfailingly polite. Do you understand?"

Cato tried not to struggle against her painful grasp, and nodded mutely.

"Cato?"

"… Yes Mother," he finally said. Her grip softened and Cato refrained from rubbing his shoulder gingerly.

"Good," she said, her voice softening. "You will one day be a lord, and all these people will be your servants in all but name. It would behoove you that they like their Lord, so that they do not seek your downfall." Cato frowned at the ground, though he welcomed this minuscule morsel of the political education that he could only still dream of.

"What about fear?"

His mother looked down at him with an inscrutable face for a few moments, before shaking her head. "Sometimes I miss the innocence you have never had," she murmured, running a thumb along his cheek. "It is a gift you have been sorely deprived of."

VI

Cato put down his book and repeated the wand movement slowly, his pencil taking place of a wand. Cato had once asked his father to hold his wand, ignoring the rather odious thoughts that rose up in his mind at the expression. His father had quite flatly refused, and thus had ensued a long monologue about proper conduct in regards to other people's wands. He sighed and sat back. In a life long ago, he had loved to read, absorbed knowledge with a slow, methodical approach. Now he tore through books with a nigh-unrestrained greed, devouring basic magical theory books like cheap novels, then re-reading them again. To the man who had once had such power beyond his reach, the mere idea that he could shape the world around him with will and wand still sent thrills through him. His raids on the Malfoy library had eventually led him to less child-friendly books, to the point where his mother had insisted that all the inappropriate material be shelved out of reach. Which was not a particularly challenging thing to do. Even for a six-year-old Cato was frustratingly short. Still, his father had taken it upon himself to occasionally 'forget' a book in more accessible places. They were never very risqué relative to what one might find in the Malfoy Library, with the worst being a rather expansively titled 'A Basic Approach to the Uses of Blood Magic in Wallachia to Halt the Advances of the Ottomans in Europe.' It was tantalizingly vague, no doubt exactly as his father had intended.

He frowned. "Dobby," he called. The iconic elf popped into existence, bowing low and bobbing his head. "Young Master Malfoy, sir?"

"Is my father in his study?"

Dobby bobbed his head. "Yes, young master. Would the young sir like to have his arrival announced?"

"No," said Cato. "You can go clean my room if you'd like," he added, smiling as Dobby nearly bounced with excitement. Cato had ensured that, if nothing else, the elf would face none of the torments he underwent in the past - future - fiction - (whatever the stories in his past were). He deserved that much, at least.

Today was the day of a difficult discussion. A discussion he had been putting off for far too long. The time had never felt right, and try as he might, he couldn't get his parents to disregard his age. They looked at him and saw a prodigiously precocious child and almost certainly treated him more maturely than any other child his age, but they still treated him like a six-year-old. Yet this subject could not wait forever, and the sooner he got to it, the better. Occlumency was incredibly rare, and as far as he knew from the past, only a handful of people in Britain could even perform legilimency. But if he was going to go school with two of the men who could, he'd make damn well sure that they wouldn't catch even a glimpse of what he knew. The risks were beyond imagining.

Cato knocked once and waited. He had taken pains to dress appropriately, though he rarely did dress otherwise. There was something uniquely pleasing about being able to dress in beautiful clothing every day, and the act of changing to fit the proper period of the day was strangely meditative. As it stood, Cato had already elected for his evening garb, which consisted of a robe of deepest green, buttoned at the front with silver buttons and collared by grey silk. It was a fine piece that his mother had commissioned for his birthday. Cato had not missed the significance of such colors, which did not align with the Malfoy black and gold.

"Enter."

"Good evening, Father," said Cato as he stepped into the room. His father's study was surprisingly sparse compared to the luxury enjoyed by the rest of the estate. A well-built desk, a black rug and a painting of the late Romulus Malfoy hanging above the desk and staring down imperiously at Lucius while a small fire crackled merrily in the fireplace. Bookshelves lined the room on every side, filled to the brim with a riot of tomes ranging from, from the few glances Cato had sneaked over the years, transfiguration to French Guinean tax law. The man himself was seated at his desk with a pile of paperwork in front of him. This was, if nothing else, perfectly timed. Lucius would leap at the occasion to distract himself from the drudgery of administration.

"Ah, Cato," he said, leaning back and setting down his quill. "You have already finished your readings for today?"

"Yes, sir," said Cato blandly.

"And the exercises that Mr. Apexis gave you?" That had been a little more challenging than the readings. Magical arithmetic was an entirely different beast from muggle mathematics, and Cato had not even had much talent with those, in the past.

"I did them this morning, Father."

"And?"

"The question relating to 7 and the way in which it modifies any calculation it interacts with was challenging," he grudgingly admitted.

Lucius smiled and nodded. "Understandable, most children are not taught about the Rule of 7 until they are nine."

Cato took the veiled compliment with a nod and murmured thanks.

"And the lessons in propriety?" Damn.

"I have class with Ms. Parkinson on Tuesday, sir. I will have it done by Sunday."

"See that you do." Lucius turned back to his papers, as if he had been the one to summon Cato to his office for a report.

Cato frowned, before stepping forward and clearing his face. "I had a question, Father."

Lucius raised his gaze again. "Yes?"

Cato had spent hours debating with himself on how best to broach the subject before realizing he had no option but the direct approach. "I want to learn Occlumency."

His father's quill cracked against the parchment messily and the man's face morphed into a deep frown, throwing his elegantly arrayed features into disarray. "What did you say?"

"Occlumency, I-"

"Where did you hear about that?" snapped his father, getting up and walking over to Cato with such intensity in his gaze that he took a step back.

"I-I read about it."

His father knelt in front of him and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Where?" He said, giving Cato a small shake.

"I forgot," he replied lamely, averting his gaze and swallowing nervously.

The slap came as a surprise, and the surprise forced a cry from Cato's lips as he reeled back, held in place by his father's iron grip. "You will not lie to your father," he said in a sharp tone. "Where did you learn about this?"

Cato rubbed his cheek and glared at the floor. "I don't remember," he muttered again. What was he going to say, I learned about it in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?

His father didn't slap him again, but his jaw was set. "I forbid you to mention such things again to anyone. For your lies, you will be banned from the library for a month."

"But Father": gasped Cato, his eyes wide.

"No!" said his father, raising his hand to forestall any more comments. "Not another word from you." Lucius rose. "We will not speak of this again until you are of age. If I see even the slightest hint that you are looking into it before then, I assure you that the consequences will be far more severe."

Cato glared at him sullenly until Lucius sighed and waved his hand dismissively in his direction. "The mind arts are not for children. I will not have my heir reduced to a gibbering, addled carcass because of his own curiosity. Now go!"

VII

A knock on the door broke Cato out of his reverie. He had been staring at the same paragraph for the past fifteen minutes, his eyes digesting the words while his brain wandered down the futures many alleys. Cato slammed the book shut and look at the title with disgust. 'R. Pickles Guide to Basic Human Transfiguration' had definitely been an overambitious goal. It was about as esoteric as his father's political plots and demanded a foundation of knowledge so far beyond him that it wasn't even funny. "Enter," he said.

His brother edged into the room, peeking around the door. Draco was six, and Cato could already tell that he would never turn out like the Draco he had once read about. His mother had been right, Cato cast a long shadow, and rather than resent it, Draco had adapted to his status with childlike determination, often stating that he would be 'much gooder' than Cato one day.

Cato smiled. "Hey."

"'Morning," said his brother, clinging to the door frame. "Mother said to stop studying and come play quidditch with me."

Cato rose and looked out the window. A lively spring morning flourished before his eyes. The gardens were full of life and blossoming flowers and Father away a herd of hippogriffs were being shepherded by one of the servants. "She did, did she?"

"Yeah," said Draco, shuffling his feet.

"Yes," corrected Cato. "I suppose we'll have to go and verify this with her, won't we?"

Draco shook his head fervently. "She's gone, uh, to Diagon Alley."

"It's Saturday." Cato grinned. "We both know Mother is here until at least five o' clock."

Draco hung his head in such a sad manner that Cato almost gave in on the spot. "Will you come play Quidditch with me anyway?"

Cato grinned and walked over to him, ruffling his brothers neatly arranged hair. The boy scowled, but it quickly morphed into a smile when Cato nodded. "But next time, try to think up a ploy that isn't so easily dismantled." He paused. "Better yet, just ask me to play with you."

"But you never say yes!" whined Draco. "You just wanna read stuff." He said, glaring at Cato's desk as if it were the source of all his troubles.

He wasn't entirely wrong, though. As far as Cato was concerned there was nothing less reassuring than floating on a broom in the air, even when the child models only went up to 3 feet high. It didn't help that Draco was already significantly better at it than him, a point his brother would gladly reinforce at dinnertime any time they played, much to his parents' amusement. Rebirth hadn't stopped Cato from being an outrageously bad loser and it grated on him every time.

"Point taken," he said, playfully shoving his brother out of his room and slamming the door shut. "Come on." He felt a swell of warmth as he followed Draco out the room and saw his excited smile. It was not something he had truly believed he would ever feel, and yet here it was, and it was real.

VIII

Rays of sun pierced the heavy banks of fog spread across the lowlands surrounding the Malfoy manor. Relative to most magical households, the Manor was a rather recent addition to Britain's wizarding heritage. The Longbottom manor and the Black Estate (though now in ruins) were both significantly older. It had been built upon the ruins of the ancient Malfoy keep, brought low, as it was, by rogue elements that mistrusted Malfoy's old influence at court. Smoke rose from the small servant homes hidden behind a strip of trees and the gamekeeper, Alfonse, was doing the rounds, feeding the white peacocks and tending to the deer that his father kept for hunting. Cato sat with his father on an open dais, separated from the Manor by a covered walkway who's roofing merged into the graceful glass cupola above them.

Lucius had not yet acknowledged him. He sat, one leg crossed over the other, with Le Clos du Sorcier in his hands, the pages rustling in the gentle morning breeze.

Cato turned eleven today, and his father had not yet even looked at him. The silence stretched on until the crunch of feet on gravel announced the arrival of a stately man with silver hair and a thin mustache. A silver tray floated beside him and when he stopped beside the table that separated Cato from his father, he flicked his wand delicately. At once, an assortment of breakfast elements floated down onto the table. He poured them each a cup of steaming coffee and stepped back.

Cato grimaced. He had appreciated coffee in his past existence, but either his palate was too young, or his new body rejected it, for he could not abide the taste. "Just tea for me, François," he said, nudging the cup aside.

"French, Cato," admonished his father.

François gave him a small smile as Cato rolled his eyes. "Just une thé pour moi, s'il vous play," he said in stilted French as François gave an exaggerated wince at his error, quickly returning to his stoic expression when Lucius looked up.

It turned out that an adult in a child's body did not have the proclivity for languages that a typical child did, as exemplified by his mediocre grasp of the language, and Draco's increasing mastery. It was rather more humiliating than being beaten by his brother in Quidditch.

The butler stepped forward, a new mug in hand. "Non," said his father. "Cato n'est plus un enfant, il apprendra à aimer la boisson des hommes." François nodded deferentially as Cato slowly deconstructed his father's flawless, rapid-fire French. It seemed that he would only be drinking coffee from now on. He sighed.

"Comme vous voudrez, Mon Seigneur," said François.

"Ce sera tout, merci." The man bowed once more at the dismissal and left with the tray.

Then, finally, Lucius put down his paper, folding it neatly.

Now, after what seemed like the entire morning had gone by, Lucius looked at him. "Good morning," he said.

"Good morning, Father," replied Cato, his voice laced with a touch of impatience. His knee bounced up and down below the table.

Silence reigned once again until Lucius rapped the table, the sound as sharp as breaking glass. "My father brought me here on my eleventh birthday, just as I brought you, and just as you shall do to your heir." Heir. The word sat heavily between them, pregnant with unspoken responsibilities and expectations. "He spoke to me of the necessity for his son to turn towards the pursuits of adulthood, and that the time had come for me to adopt my title as heir to a house that has existed, uninterrupted, for nearly a thousand years." Lucius laced his fingers atop the table. "This is a speech I have long known would be unnecessary with you. You are a son and heir of the likes that this house has rarely seen, and I am more proud of you than you may know. When I am dead, I have every confidence that you will lead this house to greatness."

Cato stared at him, for a moment at a loss for words. Never, ever, did his father speak so well of, well, anyone. A small flash of warmth suffused him and he smiled up to his father with genuine affection, born of eleven years of kinship. "Thanks," he said.

"Thank you," corrected his father easily, with a smile of his own.

"I want to do well. I want to make our House proud," said Cato and he meant it, bowing his head so as to avoid his father's gaze. And I will never let Voldemort set foot into my home, or touch any of you again. There would be a day when plans would be put into actions, plots would unfold, and he would have to challenge everything his family had stood for since the rise of the Dark Lord. On that day, if his father yet lived -and he dearly hoped he would- then he would perhaps look upon Cato with scorn in his eyes, with fury at the betrayal of his pride and joy. But today he would bask in the glow of his father's approval, and pray that in a distant future, they might find themselves again in such a position, after the chaos of the coming years had faded.

"I expect nothing less from you," said Lucius, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a black ring, with a droplet of topaz embedded in it. The gem seemed to glow with its own light. "This is l'anneau du Prince, an heirloom each Malfoy heir has worn since it was commissioned by Antoninus Malfoy in 1450. He crafted it to preserve his stricken son from the plague, and it is said that in return, the plague claimed him instead." Lucius put it into Cato's outstretched hand and closed his around it with a firm squeeze. "It still holds such protective properties against most known diseases and it will shield you from poison. Over the centuries, Lords had added to it in whatever way they saw fit. Put it on."

Cato nodded and slipped it on mutely, the ring molding itself onto his finger quite firmly. A sharp spike of pain lanced up his arm and he gasped, recoiling, but his father seemed unmoved. A moment later, a tidal wave of sensations crashed into him and he reeled back in his chair, his hands flying to his head. There was an owl with a letter from him circling the grounds. Draco was in his room, the hippogriffs needed to be fed and as his eyes opened, the air seemed to glow with the magic that had seeped into the very bones of the estate.

Then it faded, and with it went the overwhelming amount of information, until it was little more than a gentle nudge in the back of his mind, utterly alien and yet utterly at home. He looked up at his father with wide eyes, his breath short with the thrill of ancient magic. "This, this is amazing," he managed after a few moments.

His father nodded and took a sip of coffee, a pleased expression on his face, and Cato got the distinct impression that he had passed some unknown test. "Happy Birthday, Cato."