Death and Domain - Chapter 14

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The Express was pulling up on the platform when I woke up. My eyes felt like they'd been stapled together, and I tried to slowly blink away the grime from my eyes. Even my body felt sluggish, my legs and lower back aching like I'd run a marathon.

I guess interdimensional body swapping combined with a bad night's sleep has consequences on the body.

"Rise and shine," Isaac said on the other side of the table, flipping the charms book in front of him closed. He was no longer dressed in his school robes, so I assumed he'd left the compartment at some point.

Oh, to be able to walk freely without the threat of violence. A privileged man, Isaac was. Maybe it was karma from my past life. I'm sure I made plenty of people go through this over the years.

I put up a hand to shadow my eyes. The setting sun hung just above the horizon, its dusky light shining right on my face. Outside, London sprawled out in all directions, both a time capsule and a glimpse into the future. Georgian stock brick buildings butted up against glass-faced high rises. Leftover Roman roads criss-crossed high-speed train lines.

I'd only been to the city once as the man I was before, to close on a deal with a Polish gang operating within the city for some mutually beneficial exchange of goods. Octavian, on the other hand, had been to the Alley plenty of times before, though he'd never ventured into muggle London. The thought of horseless metal carriages riding around scared him too much.

That and the muggles, of course. Bigotry was weird in that way. It turned into fear when you weren't built to hate.

Then the walls of King's Cross Station were rising to block my view and the train came to a stop. I heard the doors of the other compartments in our carriage clacking open and loud voices filtered through walls. One group laughed as they stomped their way out, another pair of girls cried over the end of their time in Hogwarts.

Isaac stood up and took his luggage out of the upper rack. Then he turned to look back at me. "Not awake enough yet?"

"Something like that," I said, forcing a yawn. "But you can go ahead, I still want to take off the robes and all."

He didn't look convinced. "So you're not going to stay in to avoid Cassius and Justin finding you on the platform?"

I waved his concerns away. "An unintended consequence, I assure you."

Isaac laughed, shaking his head. "Whatever you say." He paused by the door for a moment, then cleared his throat. "I guess I'll see you in September, then."

I gave him a meaningful nod, to which he answered with a similar one before he swiftly left.

Despite how aloof he tried to play off in school, I suspected Isaac still had that need for friendship that's so natural and abundant in children and teenagers. The need to tell an interesting story to a friend, to share your woes, to conspire together.

I didn't blame him. I had it too, once. And I only felt marginally bad for intending to fully exploit that to my advantage.

After all, while I didn't know much about his home situation here beyond what little I could glimpse when he mentioned his father—and that wasn't much at all, the Selwyn name didn't bring up good-guy vibes to me. If I remembered correctly, they were all Death Eaters in the books. If he'd stuck by me, he'd get a friend and a one-way ticket out of a terrorist organization, as I doubted his father would let him off the hook from joining their little murder crew.

If that friend was trying to build his own organization, then what of it? At least I wasn't going to make him dress up in silly costumes and tattoo a piece of my essence into his arm.

I waited in the compartment until it was almost ten at night before venturing out. The one I was at had the windows facing the blank wall and not the platform, so I couldn't even scope out the place to see if Cassius and Justin had left already. But if I wanted to keep my promise of being more careful, at least on the day I made it, waiting them out was the way to go.

Thankfully, the magical station was nearly deserted when I stepped off the train. Most of the lamps that hung over the platform had been put out, and the only other person in the area was the food trolley lady, smoking from a tabac pipe at the other end of the platform, her legs dangling over the rails. The laughing lines of her face seemed harsh and burdened under the light of the pipe. She didn't quite look like the affable granny I was used to then and there.

Everyone had their days, I suppose. I could attest to that.

I had half a mind to join her for a smoke as I stood there on the empty platform. Then one of my two family elves popped up in front of me and I jumped at the sound of his apparition, barely restraining a very unmanly shriek.

I didn't want the trolley lady to get the wrong idea about me.

"Forley has been waiting for the young master for long time," the creature said, a squat, ugly old thing with long ears that drooped down to his shoulders. Beside his gnarled voice and the deep furrow lines of his face, the tufts of gray hair that stuck out of his ears like furry winter earmuffs showed just how old he was.

Octavian had a strange relationship with Forley. The house elf had practically raised him after his mother died, being put in charge of feeding and educating him by an absent Flavius. Of course, lucky as the kid was, Forley turned out to be almost as bad as his father. All bitter and mean from years of conditioning under his previous family, who had been wiped out during the war.

The thing was, Forley had simply never been abusive to Octavian like his father was, so the poor boy still had some stockholm-syndrome-esque form of affection for the house elf.

With those mixed feelings stirring inside of me, I decided to approach this with sober diplomacy.

I cleared my throat. "You have my trunk?"

The elf snapped his fingers, and there it was. "Folrey's had it for three hours. Master will not be liking the lateness. Master will punish Folrey… and the young master too." Then he gave me a short bow that even a blind man couldn't miss its derisiveness.

Ah yes, tardiness was a pet peeve of Flavius. On others, that is. He's made a name for himself for it, among worse things.

"Well, let's not leave him waiting for much longer then," I said.

xxxx

Turned out I didn't need to worry about being late after all. Flavius lived up to his reputation and hadn't gotten home in time for dinner either. No doubt he was out at a brothel in some gonorrhea-infested shithole in Knockturn Alley, or getting plastered with the last of the family's money. Both, if he was in one of his moods.

I pitied the whore that drew the short end of the stick today.

Sitting at our dinner table, one of the only pieces of furniture that hadn't been turned into booze money yet, I smiled when the second of our house elves appeared in the room with a full plate for me.

"Dipsey is very happy that Master Princelin is wanting to eat more." The plate floated down to the table, and she beamed when I started digging in right away. "Maybe Master Princelin will finally grow big and strong now."

I laughed in-between bites. "That's the idea, Dipsey."

The little elf giggled—a strange sound by all accounts—bowed low and popped away. She was a recent addition to the household, being bonded to the family only two years ago. Flavius had gotten her on a trade for my mother's jewelry when the other douchebag didn't want to fork out the gold. Thankfully for her, he was almost always too drunk to care whenever she made a mistake, so her spirit hadn't been broken quite yet.

In the silence left on her wake, I idly chewed on a piece of potato, looking around the dimly lit dining room. It was drab now. No paintings on the walls, no decorations on the table. The crystal chandelier that once hung down from the ceiling had been replaced by a few candlesticks.

In my mind, I could still conjure images of a better time here. The Prince Manor was no extravagant thing. In fact, given Malfoy's place—which Octavian had been to in the company of Celeste some years ago—was also called a manor, I was hard-pressed to condone the usage of the word for both houses.

It was like comparing a horse-drawn carriage to a spaceship. Sure, they can both transport people, but they're not exactly going to the same places, are they?

Now I'm sure Malfoy and his cretin son and wife lived in their manor just like Flavius and I did in ours, but we're not living quite the same way either. I certainly don't remember seeing any albino peacocks strutting around during my brief walk up the driveway, and if there's a single piece of marble anywhere within a ten mile radius of here then it's well hidden below the ground.

But this house had once been a home. When Ophelia Prince's presence still filled the halls with her sunny smile and soothing voice, when Flavius Prince was still a man that liked to play-fight his toddler son and fly up with him on his broom. Octavian held those memories tightly around him like a shield. Some nights, it was the only thing that kept him going.

Hell, even after Ophelia—who had never quite recovered from childbirth despite all that the healers at St. Mungus had tried—died when Octavian had just turned four, Flavius still kept his shit together for a few more years.

The drinking started first. Flavius hid it well until Octavian was eight or so, stashing his bottles inside his study or staying out late enough the boy wouldn't find him in the halls stumbling toward his room.

The shouting came after. Blaming Octavian for Ophelia's death. Blaming Octavian for how much money he spent on him.

That was his game. Blame it all on the easiest available target. All the world was against poor Flavius, conspiring against him, taking his gold, killing his wife, giving him a weakling for a son.

Then came the beatings. A slap here. A kick there. He became worse when the family vault emptied and he had to sell the heirlooms. Somehow, that was Octavian's fault too. And when he started forbidding the kid from leaving the house, telling Snape and Octavian's playmates and anyone else who might ask that the kid had become sick, there was no one there to see the black eyes and the split lips when Flavius got a little too overeager.

I knew all of that the moment I became Octaivn. But it was different when you stopped to think about it. Ruminating in those memories, remembering the taste of blood in my mouth, the feel of a bottle shattering against my arm, the smell of alcohol whenever he came tumbling into the house.

Now… now it really felt like me there, curling up in a ball or crying as Flavius wailed on me.

My hand clenched around my fork, the muscles in my forearm trembling as I pushed my plate away. It was good I was finished eating already, since I'd lost my appetite for food. I was hungry for something else.

As if the world had finally decided to tip the scales my way, I heard the front door creaking open, followed by heavy boots thumping into the house. And despite the sudden spike of fear that shot through my body, a sort of invasive muscle memory that told me to run and hide and curl up, I felt myself standing up, a wide grin stretching across my face.