Chapter Text
Vincent Crabbe always threw the best birthday parties. The day fell squarely in the heat of summer, smack dab in the middle of the month you and Gregory Goyle would spend at the Crabbe summer home. The estate, lined with handsome hedgerows and bushes sculpted into swans, bordered the Dorset coast. It’s a priceless plot of land, extending from the edge of the sea deep into the wooded countryside. The manor built on it is equally as impressive, a sprawling thing of grey stone and white birchwood.
Now, it’s buzzing with people gathered around the back veranda, spilling over onto the grass that fades into a sandy beach where the ocean waves lap it. Children, your acquaintances, other friends of Vincent’s are standing knee-deep in the water, collecting seashells and throwing small rocks at one another. The parents, still chatting about whatever it is parents chat about, are too far away to make out the mischief.
A particularly large rock bounces off the back of your skull. “Ow,” you say with a scowl, your hand coming up to rub the sore spot under your smooth blonde hair. Turning to look for the source of the blow, you see the birthday boy himself.
“Vincent,” you scold him, frowning, “That hurt.”
Vincent, to his credit, looks ashamed of himself. “Sorry, Draco,” he mumbles, rubbing his arm self-soothingly. Even though he could easily beat the snot out of you, Vincent never does. He’s always shied away from your scorn and sought your approval.
You give it to him. “It’s fine,” you reply, shrugging it off. It is fine. Even if you’re still frowning when Vincent’s mother picks up her skirt a few inches off the ground and begins walking through the wet grass towards the seashore.
“Children!” Mrs. Crabbe calls out once she’s within hearing range of you lot. You kids all look up from the strange low tide sea creatures you’re tormenting, the piles of seashells you’re trading. “Come in for tea!”
Reluctantly, you and the rest of the children leave the refreshing water and wade into the lawn, which becomes increasingly manicured as you approach the back veranda. You watch as Vincent jogs ahead and takes his mother’s hand. She’s short, but he’s still a little shorter, only coming up to her shoulder as they walk hand in hand back to the manor. Greg approaches from your side.
“He’s such a baby,” you scoff to Greg, loud enough that other nearby children can hear. “And he hit me with a big rock earlier, the brute.” You’re too young to notice the contradiction. Greg just nods. You look at him and squint. Why isn’t he saying anything?
“Yeah,” Greg adds after a long pause, a little breathless keeping up with your pace as you trod up the hill to the porch. “Yeah,” he adds through heavy breathing. You can’t help but feel disgusted by the way he wheezes just from playing with the other kids. It reminds you of your grandmother, the way her elderly body is so fragile she can hardly get from room to room without her pulse pounding and body aching. But she’s nearly 90 years old. Greg (and Vincent for that matter) are lacking in such an excuse.
Why can’t they just... Be normal?
Greg heaves himself, exhausted, up the steps to the veranda. You follow behind easily. The long table across the porch has been decorated with colourful tablecloths, doilies, and little animated origami animals walking around on their paper legs between the fine bone china. Down the white lace runner adorning its centre, the table is set with delicious-looking sandwiches, biscuits, scones, fruit, vegetables, and at the very head, a great big multi-tiered strawberry cake. Vincent sits at the head.
You take a seat a couple chairs down from him, leaving room for his mother and father between. Your own mother sits down to your left, and Father across the table from her. From your low angle, your view of him is obscured by an elegant stack of bonbons.
As the guests begin serving themselves their tea sandwiches and little cakes, Mother picks up your plate. You watch, with detached interest, as she chooses what you’ll be eating.
Things that make the cut: one quarter of a cucumber and cream cheese sandwich, plenty of vegetable sticks, two devilled eggs, and a strawberry.
Things her tongs hover near for just long enough to give you false hope: plump concord grapes, a third devilled egg, and a crumbly shortbread biscuit.
“Here,” Mother says as she puts your plate in front of you. It’s only a little disappointing. “Enjoy, Draco, love.”
“Thank you,” you say quietly as you pick up the dainty little triangle of sandwich and nibble on the edge. Her own plate remains empty. Mother folds her hands on her lap and turns to Mrs. Crabbe. You follow her gaze, and see the plump middle aged woman eating a devilled egg off a plate loaded with many more.
“You always put out such a nice spread, Angela,” Mother says with a tight smile, gesturing in a small motion to the table setting. “It’s lovely.” The compliment feels funny when she hasn’t taken a single bite of food since sitting down, but Mrs. Crabbe is used to it after all these years. She and Mother have been close friends for as long as you can remember.
“Oh, thank you, Narcissa,” Mrs. Crabbe smiles, and turns to her husband. “Lawrence bought the most wonderful new house elves while he was away on holiday,” she credits him, “You hardly see them, and they prepare the most excellent tea-time treats.”
“Consider my compliments extended as well,” Father says with a pleased tone. You peer around the stack of bonbons, and find him to be eating one, in front of a plate piled modestly with other sweets. When he catches your eye, he gives you a small smile, concealed from the rest of the adults with a napkin in front of his mouth.
You smile back at him, then lean back until you make eye contact with Vincent at the end of the table instead. He, like the rest of the children of parents’ fellow loyalists, had also been taught a very important lesson: Children should be seen and not heard.
So instead, you stare at your friend. “Romanian house elves are some of the best on the continent,” Mr. Goyle chimes in. You watch, eyes locked with Vincent’s as he shoves cake after cake into his mouth shamelessly. Nibbling on a carrot stick like a rabbit, you raise a single eyebrow as he goes back to the sandwich tray for several more. He just grins at you as he swallows mouthfuls of tuna salad and fluffy white bread. A drip of mayo comes out of his closed lips and lands on his white shirt, staining it irreparably.
You lose your appetite. You put the rest of your carrot down and look to Mother for comfort. She provides it, giving you an approving nod at the two eggs, few carrots, and single strawberry remaining on your plate now that you’re done. She pats you in the arch of your bony spine, where it comes away from the stiff-backed chair.
It helps, even when only a few minutes later you start wanting to pick at your food again. You can’t, though, now that Mother has given you that approval. You don’t want to disappoint her.
You tell yourself you’ll have a nice slice of cake soon, when Vincent blows out his eleven candles and they slice into that beautiful, marbled pink buttercream-frosted layer cake. Around you, the adults continue chatting away, different conversations springing up down the length of the long table packed with your family friends. With the Dark Lord’s loyalists.
Paying attention to what your parents and their friends are saying is beyond you, though, with how focused you’re becoming on this cake. The sugar-coated strawberries on top shine like glass, arranged in a pattern charmed to whirl around like the candied fruits are ballroom dancing. They look like little faceless people in gauzy skirts. The tufts of buttercream decorating some of them even look like little pointed hoods.
Soon, Vincent’s breath is extinguishing the ever-burning candles that light the top tier of the cake. Before you know it, slices are being cut by Mr. Crabbe and handed down the table. Your mouth waters as you pass on slice after slice of cake until all the guests seated to your right have one. Finally, your mother is passed the slice that would be yours. She looks over at you and realises, with surprise, that it’s intended for your consumption.
Her nose wrinkles. She leans in towards you. “You don’t want this, do you?” she asks you confidentially, as if she’s doing you a favour. You feel yourself deflate. You feel a gnawing hunger in your stomach.
“No thank you,” you say obediently, whether she’s aware that that’s what she’s fishing for or not. You do the right thing. The thing that will make Mother pleased.
She seems to enjoy returning the slice to Mrs. Crabbe. “Draco won’t be needing any,” your mother says, falsely sweet like those sugar-free muggle drinks she secretly keeps in the back of the root cellar.
Mr. Goyle seems a little agitated by this, his thick bushy moustache wriggling from side to side in annoyance. “Let the boy have a slice of cake, Narcissa,” he insists, and your ears perk up like a dog. You look at her hopefully.
She doesn’t even turn to look at you. “He doesn’t want any,” she proclaims proudly. Mr. Goyle looks over at you, and you do your best to wipe the expectant expression off your face. You expect nothing. You expect nothing.
“Well, alright,” he concludes, and you deflate. No one notices your dejected expression, too absorbed as they are in their own slices of cake. You watch enviously, your elbows on the table and chin in your hands, as Greg scarfs down his sugared strawberries and buttercream across from you.
Greg gets to eat whatever he wants. Vincent gets to eat whatever he wants. With their own two hands. Why does Mother still insist on feeding you like a baby? Like a useless little infant boy?
Your eyes slip from Greg’s lips to Father’s. The bonbons have been eaten down enough that he’s visible to you again, slowly taking small forkfuls of the dessert to his mouth. You watch him pick around it, eating all three candy-covered berries and little else. Father keeps his lips small and pursed as he eats.
Something catches your attention from the right. You spot the adults passing something between each other down the length of the table. You watch it approach until the man seated next to you hands it over your head to Mother. You get a glimpse of the thing; it’s a large flask. Mother unscrews the top and pours herself a shot of the liquid in her empty wine glass. Whatever it is, it’s green and foggy.
The flask continues to be passed around until every adult at the table is sitting with a mist-emitting slime-coloured glass of liquid in front of them. Silence falls. Without saying anything, about two thirds of the parents present unroll their sleeves, revealing the tattoos they have that match Father’s.
Who is standing now, holding his glass aloft.
“To the Dark Lord’s imminent return,” he begins as he always does, no matter the occasion. It’s ritualistic.
“Huzzah!” exclaims the adult crowd, and some of the children for good measure.
“To the preservation of wizardry!” Father pumps his glass into the air, just barely avoiding sloshing the toxic-looking beverage on his hand.
“Huzzah!” comes the reply, glasses raised.
“And... To the birthday boy, Vincent,” he finishes with a smile towards your friend. “Huzzah!”
“Huzzah!” the last committed pure-bloods exclaim, right before they throw back their bubbling alcohol. You watch your parents, Vincent’s parents, Greg’s parents, everyone else’s parents swallow down the slightly-glowing liquid. None of them are able to hold back their grimace. They drink the stuff every time they get together, but you’re not quite sure what it is. Sometimes, you’ve heard the other kids call it “Party Juice”.
You can’t help but assume that’s not quite accurate, by the sickened look on each of their faces, by the way the tattoos on their sweaty arms pulse and throb.
It looks... Painful.
Things always get very quiet at the table after the toast. The party winds down naturally.
That night, after the rest of the guests have taken their portkeys home, you, Greg, and Vincent are all crowded by the door of Vincent’s bedroom, watching and listening for an opportunity. Specifically, you’re listening for the charm from his parents to extinguish the lamps all across the manor at once, and watching the crack under the door for the light to disappear.
“ Nox majoris ,” comes Mr. Crabbe’s booming voice from down the Master’s wing to your left. A moment later, the lampfire lighting a sliver of the children’s wing from under the door disappears. For another fifteen minutes you wait, with your friends, in silence.
Then you give them a nod.
Vincent pushes the door open quietly. He knows just how to do it without it creaking. One by one, you creep out into the hallway. Foregoing the noisy stairs, you slide down the majestic hardwood bannister that lines the stairwell. For a moment, it’s like flying, and you have to hold in a joyful giggle. Then you land on the plush Persian rug in the hall. The wool scratches your hands and knees.
Now that you’re on the first floor, Vincent leads you all to a stairwell hidden behind a door in the scullery. It’s made of cold stone. So is the entire room the stairs lead down into, a chilly enough root cellar to keep food safe even without the preservation charms placed on the shelves inside.
There, sitting on an unused kitchen prep table, is the last slice of the bottom tier of the cake, all that remains since the end of the party.
“Jackpot,” Greg says, and you snicker. You rub your cold hands together and approach the cake. You get close enough that you can smell the sugar and the richness, even in the chilly air. It smells rich, decadent, delicious, indulgent... Sinfully good.
You pause, looking at it.
Vincent and Greg stare at you expectantly.
“Go on then, Draco,” Vincent says after a moment. “Didn’t you want some?”
“I did, but...” You aren’t sure what’s bothering you for a moment. Then it hits you. “What if we get caught?” you ask, biting your lip and staring at the few glossy glassy strawberries left on top. They’re dotted with smeared icing and look so delicious. “What if they tell my parents?”
Greg just shrugs. Vincent, a little bit fed up, reaches forwards and grabs a swipe of the icing off the top of the cake, sticking his fat finger in his fat mouth. You scowl. “Well, now they’ll definitely know,” you complain. Vincent laughs.
“I don’t think my parents will notice,” he says, as if it’s obvious. As if it’s normal. “Go on, have some.”
You stare down the cake even harder.
“Have some, Draco,” Greg implores you. “I want to go to bed.”
You stare even more intently at the strawberries that have been tempting you all afternoon, evening, and now night.
You pick one out of the icing and pop it in your mouth.
The sugar coating snaps like glass, letting your teeth sink into the juicy, sweet, overripe berry inside. It’s sweet, almost painfully sweet, and rich too when combined with the fatty base of the buttercream frosting smeared on it.
It’s fucking delicious.
It’s all you can risk.
“Mother would be so cross if she found out I was stealing from the root cellar,” you say, more to yourself than to your friends. Without another word, you turn on your heel and march back up the cold stone stairwell. Behind your back, Greg and Vincent exchange a look, but say nothing.
You all make it back to the children’s wing without any fuss.
Tucked into bed, you savour the flavour of strawberry on your teeth. You suck it all off of them, lick all the sugar off your palate, desperately remember what it was like to feel your teeth crack through the hard candy coating, for them to plunge into the soft fruit inside.
It’s almost enough to stop your stomach from growling as you try to fall asleep.