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In '71, Montrose names Lucius Malfoy as their first round draft pick. He's the first to be recruited straight out of Hogwarts since the War, and he's probably the best player of his generation. His signing bonus is record setting, and he keeps all of it despite the fact that he never plays a single moment of professional Quidditch. Two days before the season starts, the Ministry repeals the ban on non-Pureblood players, and at a press conference that afternoon Lucius publicly shreds his contract. He won't play with animals, he says. He has a black eye, a swollen cheekbone, three broken fingers on his right hand, and he holds himself like a man with broken ribs. He doesn't answer when the reporter from the Quibbler asks if he's been in a fight.
That night he takes the Mark, and for the first and last time his father tells him he's proud. He starts at the Sorbonne in January, only a semester late. Abraxes Malfoy dies a year later, and Lucius is inducted into Voldemort's Inner Circle in his place. He has the money to fix Malfoy Manor's roof, and he has the education his professors warned he'd regret not getting. But he never watches Quidditch again, not until his own son is old enough to play for Slytherin.