Altered for the Altar

Everything is just as I left it. The furniture in my room is in the same spot that it was when I departed for the Malfoy’s, as are the trinkets that I found myself unable to bring to the manor. There has been no attempt to redecorate this space that I could practically feel my childhood self in, and I wonder if that’s because my parents had planned to bring me home all along; I wonder if underneath their exteriors of perfect smiles and great power if they really do love me.

Sitting down my suitcase and falling onto my bed, I realize that I can hear my mother two levels down. She’s yelling for the gardener (an aged Nymph that was severely hard of hearing) and my father sounds as if he’s hosting a few of his cohorts. The house is alive, a lot more than what I’d become accustomed to living at the nearly empty manor that belonged to the cold Malfoy’s, and it all wraps around me till I feel like I might explode from the euphoria at all the familiarity of it all.

I’m home and right now I don’t care that it might be temporary.

But as I lay there atop the soft duvet that feels like the sunshine streaming in through a big bay window, I can’t help but wonder what Draco would think of my home. I try to picture his facial expressions as I take him out to our garden and show him the wondrous magic that the Nymphs spin every afternoon. For a second or two, I even think about how he would react when I showed him the warm painted walls of our home and all the flowers shoved here and there. I think, after a day or two of staying here, Draco would be brighter.

I am still lying on my sheets when there’s a quiet knock at my door and my mother pokes her head in. She offers up a small smile when she spies me, the corners of her mouth upturning more than I can remember seeing before.

“Hello, dear,” she murmurs.

She looks me over as I shove myself up on the palms of my hands, her eyes growing brighter and brighter as she does. I am bouncing between thinking that she’s checking me for injuries or attempting to see if I’d changed in the span of time that I’d been gone.

Quickly, I look her over as well, taking note of the age lines I hadn’t noticed till now and how her cheeks don’t look as rosy. She looks tired, too, and as if she’s been slacking on meals this past week. I frown a little at picking up on the fact that her physical state seems to have declined since I’d left.

“Hi, mother. Are you well?” I eventually reply.

But she doesn’t answer right away, either. Instead, she chooses to seat herself down beside me and gently reaches her slender hand out to brush a piece of my hair away from my cheek. Her fingertips linger on the skin there, the kindest smile causing her mouth to expand even more.

“I’m fine, babette. How’re you? Did those Malfoy’s treat you well?”

The use of a French nickname she’d called me when I was younger lets me know that my father hadn’t lied when he’d told Mr. Malfoy that my mother was worried about me. Not only was it obvious in the way she was addressing me, but also in the way that she was starting to coddle me. She’d taken my hand in hers and nudged herself so I could rest my head on her shoulder.

My mother and I had always had a strange relationship. In public, she was strict and proper and allotted my care to a nanny who’d always accompanied us. However, in private, she was more caring—she wouldn’t ever win mother of the year for how she cared for me while we were inside our home, but she was margins better than when others were around. I’d never understood why she acted differently, but didn’t care when she was letting me cry on her shoulder about a boy or helping me with picking a dress for that night.

“Yes, mother. They treated me fine. Draco’s nice,” I sigh.

I’m cuddled into her side and she’s using the hand that’s not holding mine to stroke my hair.

“I’m so glad to hear that, my love. Do you like Draco? He seemed like a nice boy when I saw him,” she quietly says.

I reply, “He is a nice boy. Maybe you’ll be able to get to know him better sometime.”

After that, there’s silence. She doesn’t say that she wants to meet the boy whom I am betrothed to, nor does she question me on how well the relationship between Draco and I is progressing. The topic falls flat and I just let her sit there beside me, holding me like I was ten again.

We don’t move until my father comes into my room. He pauses for a second or two when he spots us, carefully looks us over, then strides to the large window that takes up the majority of one of my walls. He plants himself in front of it and shoves his hands into his pockets.

My mother continues to run her fingers through my hair, not even acknowledging my father in anyway. I feel the tension between them immediately.

“Things have changed, Elizabeth,” my father starts. “They plan has changed.”

“Do we have to do this now?” my mother grits out.

“You know we do. We’ve only got a limited time and for it to work, she needs to know everything.”

I’m confused now. My eyebrows furrow as I pick apart the words my parents had just swapped.

I don’t understand why I would finally be informed about something. Before, in the beginning of this, I’d been kept in the dark about nearly everything except what had been expected of me. I only grasp that whatever the new plan was, it was something that only the people in this room were going to know about.

“Fine,” sighs my mother. She pulls away from me, stands, and sweeps out.

My father lets out a sound much like the one my mother had just echoed and sits himself down on a chair shoved into a corner of my room. He leans forward so he can rest his elbows on his knees while peering at me rather fiercely at the same time.

“What happened a few nights ago has changed things, Elizabeth. We are no longer allies with the Malfoy’s and their Voldermort,” he says.

Eyebrows furrowing at this little bit of news, I stare at him curiously, wonder surging through my system.

Did this mean I wouldn’t be required to marry Draco anymore? Would I even have to go back to the Malfoy’s? Would I ever get to see Draco or Leal again?

“Are you ending the deal?” I ask.

“We’re transferring our allegiance, to be exact. Before the disaster at the Malfoys, a Mr. Remus Lupin paid me a visit. Seems the other side knew a lot more about the plan between Lucius and I than we’d originally thought. But he also knew about Voldermort’s murdering his own people, and so he propositioned me to ally with him—because it was safer, you see.”

“What do you get in return?”

My father smiles. “That’s the catch. Lupin said they’d be able to lend me a few people, maybe twelve or ten, to aid in my own war, only that that would not help me overtake my government. He said he if he were going to help me, then it had to be honest.”

At that moment, I feel the whole thing crumbling underneath me. My father’s reasoning for wanting his daughter to be married to some stranger wasn’t because he was worried about her ending up alone—it wasn’t honest or good or even a little bit of a decent cause. It was all because he was greedy, just a power hungry man trying to find the best way to get what he wanted. And this Mr. Lupin didn’t seem like the sort who’d want to have anything to do with a character like that.

It’s all going to end.

“It’s all over, then, isn’t it? The deal’s off,” I murmur.

“No,” my father shakes his head. “It’s not. Everything is working out brilliantly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’re going to lie, Elizabeth, to all of them. We’re going to play every single one of those fools and then let them help me get what I need to win our own war.”

Panic nearly paralyzes me as I realize that it will be I who will be doing most of the lying. My father won’t partake in near as much as I will have to. Draco will have to be lied to, as well as the few friends I’d made in his world, and I’ll probably have to fib to this new side that I’ve yet to meet. I wonder how long I’ll last before the lies will suffocate me and I’ll be left completely alone.

“How will this happen?” I manage out.

“When the final battle takes place in their world, we’ll aid our new allies instead of the Malfoy’s and Voldermort. In order to do that, though, we’re going to need you to funnel out information that you learn while you continue to stay with the Malfoy’s. I know the gist of the plan, but Lucius is slippery. We’ll be able to fight them better at the end if we know every little detail.”

I simply stare at him, eyes wide and fear coursing through me so thick that I feel as if I might be sick.

Immediately, I know that I won’t be able to successfully pull this off. I think there is absolutely no way that I, a person who’d was so fearful and panicky all the time, would be able to lie and sneak private information out to my father and the new side we’re aligned with. I’ll be discovered—Draco will know what I’m doing as soon as I start and then I’ll lose him forever.

When it was just lying to him, I thought that there might be a chance of apologizing to him and explaining things—that, by doing that, he might forgive me. But completely betraying him would shatter everything between us as soon as he finds out.



I’ve been here for two days now, spending the majority of my time with my father, listening to him as he goes over the new plan that he’d seemingly formed in a matter of hours. However, I can’t deny that it’s genius. I know that neither side will be able to predict the end result and that we’ll undoubtedly win. (That is, if I can pull this off without giving myself away.)

The joy that winning is supposed to bring, though, is clouded over with the guilt of having to lie and deceive everyone. I’d been battling with the idea ever since I’d been informed of the change of plan a few days ago.

I can’t sit back and rejoice with my father because in the back of my mind I know this is wrong. I know that fooling everyone in order to wage our own war is something that is clearly marked in the sand as a trait of someone who is truly evil. But I don’t want to think my father is that evil; he is my father and despite his treatment of me, I do love him.

As I lay under soft blankets on my bed, I realize that the euphoria of being home was shattered as soon as my father had uttered news of a new plan. That feeling had been replaced with panic, loneliness, and dread. All I wanted to do was be allowed to lay in bed forever and never be forced to face the future, which before had looked a little hopeful, but now just looked bleak and dark.

I miss Draco. I miss him so much that sometimes I try to remember all the time we’d spent together, only to end up crying because I didn’t know if we’d have anything when, months from now, he found out what I’d been doing all along.

Just as I’m about to shuffle myself underneath the blankets and hide from everything, there is a knock at the door. A maid says through the wood that my father is requesting me downstairs so I could meet our new visitor: Remus Lupin.

My heart starts to thud erratically in my chest as I realize that this is the start of a war so big and conniving and dangerous that I honestly wondered if any of us would be alive at the end of it.