A mother’s war: Cléone Malfoy, nee de l'Étrangé

It’s so quiet, she says, out of the blue and Lucius starts, so quiet. Like a tomb. A grrreat big marble tomb, now that he is gone.

Do you know what zey told me? she asks him, Dragon pox. Dragon pox! Ha. I told zem, he’s never had a day’s illness in his life. Strong as an ox, that one. Dragon pox, dragon pox, dragon pox. No no no no no. It is something else.

Lucius raises his eyebrows, something else, mother?

She rolls her eyes, blessed Cernunnos, have you no imagination?

You mean, Lucius hesitates, Nobby Leach?

No, she shakes her head decisively, not Monsieur Leach. He is not smart enough, creative enough. Besides he is entirely too honorable. Very much brave - eh, Gryffindor? Oui. If it was legal maybe a duel, but not so. This is something else.

She does not notice the way her son has gone very still. The way his knuckles turn white before he forces himself to relax.

Oh? He asks her.

Poison, Lucius. I do not - he would not tell. But he knewsomething. I know it - oh do not ask me how, it’s always like that with you and your English, how and who and where and why, I do not know, I just knowit. It wasn’t natural. You know it. You saw it. Say it.

Lucius pauses and then takes the plunge, Yes.

It is the work of a cunning mind. Smart and ruthless. Like these, how do you call them? Eh, your house, mon cher. Slytherin? Oui. But we are all from Slytherin here, are we not?

He nods weakly and forces himself to breathe evenly.

Lucius - she stretches her hand out and grasps his hand - Lucius my son, mon cher. You loved him, did you not?

How could I not? he answers simply, gently rubbing her fingers, not allowing himself to think.

Thenfind them, Lucius. Find them. Hurt them. Hurt them as they hurt us. Please,for me. Your maman.

He lifts her hand and presses his lips against her fingers, Of course maman, he murmurs.

She does not see how he holds his left arm stiff by his side as he leaves the room.

The Sacred Twenty Eight: the Noble and Most Ancient Houses of Mulciber, Rosier and Malfoy. (3/3)

The Malfoys, to their dismay, were not even deemed worthy of an insulting gift. Pretenders, the Mulcibers called them and blithely dismissed them as being generally unworthy of a gift. Their lineage was not old enough - even though they could trace their line back all the way to the Merovingian dynasty at least (more than several other families they could name) - and they had no dedicated family craft or magical art to speak of. That they had risen from obscurity and become one of the most powerful families in wizarding Britan seemed to matter very little to the Mulcibers. Parasites, said the Mulcibers, for the Malfoys thrived on the little games people in power played with each other and not on any magical skill of their own.

Worse still, the Malfoys were rather new when one compared them to the other families of the Sacred Twenty Eight. They could not trace their family line back all the way into legend as so many of the other families could - indeed they did not waste their time brooding over long family trees of dubious veracity. They did not claim divinity as the Lestranges did, nor did they claim to be descendants of famous and powerful sorcerers and sorceresses. No. They wore their badge of services rendered to William the Conqueror with pride - and wizarding society bought it for the most part. After all, not many could boast of having rendered services of a personal and delicate nature to the country’s monarchs.

The Mulcibers, however, proved to be a tiresome spanner in the works of the Malfoys’ carefully crafted story. Unspecified services to William the Conqueror were nothing to boast of, they said. Sailing with William the Conqueror was no great deed in itself. For all they knew, the Malfoys might have been William’s hangsmen - in fact it was quite likely, given the Malfoy family’s reticence on the matter of the nature of these services. Neither were services rendered to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the First of England enough to make the Malfoys worthy in their eyes. Politics, the Mulcibers believed, was a game anyone with a modicum of sense could play and was not enough to make the Malfoys exceptional in their eyes.

Thus it was that the Malfoys had to remain content with those artifacts they seized from wizards indebted to them - need we mention the Weasleys were among one of the unlucky families to have lost their prized heirlooms to the Malfoys (forever a sticking point between the two families)? - all the while aware that families like the Blacks and Lestranges were quietly snickering at them when their backs were turned. Aware and unable to do anything, for a gift is a gift and cannot be forced out of the giver. The snubbed Malfoys simply had to make do with a second rate (but nonetheless very beautiful) family sword. Not forged by the Mulcibers.

Some things, the Malfoys acknowledged, to their shame, could not be bought with money.

Not every Black went to Slytherin. Not every Lestrange was a seccessionist. Not every Malfoy was a muggle-hater.

The Malfoys never talked about Nephilius Malfoy, Abraxas Malfoy’s younger brother, and one of the few Malfoys to have firmly fought for the rights of both Squibs and Muggleborns.

Of course, he had a nasty way of showing up precisely when they didn’t want him around.

The Blacks simply stripped the family disgraces of their names. Off the family tapestry they went and as far as they were concerned, were no longer Blacks, even if they pretendedto carry the name as both Sirius and Alphard did.

The Lestranges had the simplest method for dealing with those who failed to toe the family line.

The ghost of Dido Lestrange will tell you exactly how.

Cosplay Tik Tok Compilation - Part 3 - Madi2theMax

The Malfoy family