jateshi | Fic: Aettryne Pæð (Draco, gen, PG-13 at most) Written for the Restricted Section Challenge

Title: Aettryne Pæð (The Poisoned Path)
Author:

jateshi
Characters: Draco
Rating: PG-13 at the most
Warning: Character death (non-explicit)
Word count: 1,192
Disclaimer: If I owned them, I wouldn't be eating Ramen as a gourmet meal. Rowling (damned that lovely woman) has yet to write-over the rights to me, so until then, they're hers.
Summary: The Malfoy's collection is as varied as the rumors hinted, and Draco reads them all. Written for "The Restricted Section" Challenge at

darkones.

By the time Draco Malfoy turned eighteen he'd handled some of the most dangerous books listed by the Ministry. The public Malfoy library was a well-respected collection of texts, a repository of knowledge contained within the mahogany-paneled walls which drew petitions from wizards and witches the world over - owls came in yearly from professionals, every last one of them offering some invaluable object or service to the Malfoy family in exchange for time spent with their library. Publically their library was whispered to rival the great Library of Hogwarts in certain specialised areas even if Lucius laughingly suggested that while Hogwarts may contain more books, the quality of the Malfoy collection versus the tomes at Hogwarts was unparalleled. That was the public face though, and the whispers which accompanied tales of the Malfoy library were often partnered with barely audible hints of the rest of the Malfoy's famed collection.

Very few were privillaged enough to get a glimpse at the public collection, mostly friends of the family and the rare Ministry researcher when Lucius needed to alleviate any suspicions from the Minister. Of the select individuals who were able to see the public collection, even smaller numbers were allowed to confirm the existence of the private library, let alone see it. Draco was a Malfoy though, and the heir of the Malfoy family - it had taken a demonstration of maturity to his father before the Slytherin student was at last escorted down to the hidden location, at last given the whispered password and incantation which would finally unlock the secret possessions of the Malfoy line. The first few times Draco had gone down to their private library, his father had been a few steps behind him, silently observing the way he acted towards the books.

Muggles scoffed and laughed at the old stories they read in faerie tales, and Muggleborns were even worse about it. That was why Draco had smirked when Dean Thomas - a Gryffindor, and friends with the Golden Boy - had gone into the Restricted Section and picked a book up with his bare hands. Draco didn't have to even look at the title of the tome to know what had happened, listening in rapt silence as the Gryffindor had first begun to whimper before screams of absolute terror were torn from his throat - it was an old wives tale, surely, but one of the rare truths the Muggles had picked up about magic and passed along. Instead of running a naked hand over the bindings presented outwards the Slytherin ran a glove-covered hand over the spines, the silk sometimes catching on the rough and uneven surfaces of the books it brushed across.

When the church, Draco once read, had believed that witches and wizards really existed, they had given their priests scraps of silk to carry. Silk - the legends where the church learned it from talked of spells and sorcery, faeries and dragons, demons and unicorns - dampened latent spells. If you wrapped an amulet in silk, the old stories said, then the spell would be contained. A Pureblooded wizard or witch knew that was only half of the truth - silk disrupted the magic on contact - and Muggles and Muggleborns thought it was a silly joke. A sharp-eyed Ravenclaw once asked Nott why every Slytherin went to the Restricted Section with a pair of gloves in their pocket - Theodore Nott, the good Slytherin that he was, quipped it was to protect their hands from touching the same surfaces a Mudblood had touched. It earned him a bloodied nose, when the Ravenclaw had lost their temper, but kept their real reason a secret.

The Malfoy vaults had every tome a Slytherin family could dream of. From the mundane and barely-restricted "Moste Potente Potions" which Hogwarts carried through handwritten grimoiries, the Malfoy collection was a dream. The first night Draco found himself unescorted by his father into the secret library, the dream had turned to a haunting nightmare - the books always whispered when Lucius was around. When Lucius was gone, dancing lovingly with his wife in their Great Hall while House Elves charmed the fiddles and harps and lutes to play, the books had grown louder, more seductive. Draco didn't read anything that night, spending countless hours roaming the organised stacks and listening as the texts seemed to come alive beside and around him, listened to their alluring words and tempting promises.

Some tomes were covered with human skin, leathery to the touch, and written in blood; bound together at the seams by dried sinews with a flattened artery tucked between the pages serving as a grisly placeholder. One of Draco's favourites, when he allowed himself to begin reading them again, growing used to their near-constant murmur of conversation with him and with each other, was one of the more quiet volumes. It was one of the more dangerous ones they possessed, Draco knew, and the book knew its power as well. It waited for him one night, the other volumes speaking in hushed whispers as the young Malfoy walked towards it, and then when he drew down onto his knees to stare at it the book was there.

Maybe his first mistake was listening when the book whispered to take off his gloves. Maybe his first mistake was coming back when the books knew he was alone, knew his father wasn't there to counter their promises with a steady reality. Maybe his first mistake was in wanting to read their knowledge in the first place, being willing to shed an innocent's blood just to prove he was "mature" enough to handle their power. Whatever the mistake was, it compounded tenfold when silver eyes read the first lines of Aettryne Pæð, setting wand to the infamous Poisoned Path.

Aettryne Pæð was old - the cover alone could tell any fool that - and it was rare. Of all the copies in existence the Ministry had kept tabs, tracked, and finally acquired every last one - except the Malfoy holding. They didn't even know the Malfoy holding existed, which was the way Lucius and his forefathers wanted it to remain - possession of Aettryne Pæð wasn't a crime. Reading Aettryne Pæð, on the other hand, even a single word from the title page, was punishable by Azkaban. The magics contained within the non-descript leather cover were so dark, so twisted, so gruesome that when Draco later asked, before showing his father just how good of a student he had been, Lucius admitted to never reading the book.

The Daily Prophet, for perhaps the first time, refused to accompany an article with a photograph. Lucius, the Auror on the scene was quoted to have admitted after downing a Calming Drought, had been hand-made into a grimoire. The evidence he went on to add, hinted that until he had been killed with the Killing Curse he had been kept alive through being skinned, branded, burned, bled by magic. Making another copy of Aettryne Pæð after all, a letter penned by Draco, left sitting next to his father's still-warm corpse, was a very involving process.