Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

my past has tasted bitter for years now so I wield an iron fist
grace is just weakness, or so I’ve been told
I’ve been cold, I’ve been merciless
but the blood on my hands scares me to death
maybe I’m waking up today
I’ll be good, I’ll be good
and I’ll love the world like I should, yeah
I’ll be good, I’ll be good
for all of the times I never could
—— I’ll Be Good by Jaymes Young

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chapter one: ill met by moonlight

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October was bracingly crisp and golden as an apple. Hogwarts grounds were bathed in earthy browns, burnt oranges, and buttery yellows of fallen leaves, and yet untouched by the autumn frost. The day had been fresh and bright, the gloaming sky was dipped in lavender and honey, but all of nature’s beauty was lost on Hermione — she only saw red.

Nothing seemed to go her way today.

Brushing and braiding her hair into a demure plait was a particularly arduous task this morning, it had no doubt found the humidity of the castle highly disagreeable, her breakfast tea burned her tongue, and there was an awful, infuriating, hide-our-heads-in-the-sand-let’s-blame-everything-on-the-demented-and-attention-seeking-Boy-Who-Lived article in the Daily Prophet she could barely stomach reading.

She’d forgotten her Transfiguration essay in the dorm and had to sprint all the way back to the Gryffindor tower to get it. On the way back, the right buckle of her t-bar shoes broke, tripping her over worn, smooth stones and causing her to spill the contents of her satchel all across the corridor. As she crawled on her hands and knees, picking up her books and parchments, and Vanishing the dark spill of her broken ink bottle, a gaggle of fourth-year Ravenclaw girls passed, pointedly snickering at her behind their hands. 

Worse still, she was late for Charms because of the whole ordeal and even though Flitwick dismissed her apologies with a congenial smile, Hermione’s cheeks still burned brightly as she was forced to take the only available seat left, all the way in the back of the class, next to Michael Corner, a dark-haired boy whom she found one-third cute and two-thirds creepy. He’d asked to borrow a spare quill from her because he’d forgotten his and Hermione just knew she’d never see that turkey-feather quill ever again.

Then, as if to add salt to her bleeding wounds, after lunch in Herbology class, Seamus accidentally sprayed some pungent sapling puss over her outer robes, which wouldn’t wash-out with spells and she had to ask one of the retainer elves to clean it for her in the utility room. 

Now, Hermione was doing her rounds of the halls of Hogwarts alone, because Ron had begged off his Prefect duty to sneak off with Harry to the Hufflepuff common room, where apparently the semi-finals of the autumn chess tournament were being held and he had an ongoing vendetta against Gillian Ossett, who’d beat him during a previous match.

Hermione had finished patrolling the western side of the fifth floor — responsibility that was originally assigned to Ronald — and was striding down the east corridor, having checked the Divination Tower for stray students, and making her way towards the Prefect’s Bathroom; a regular, non-enchanted map of Hogwarts in one hand and her wand at the ready in the other. She didn’t particularly like the look Graham Montague gave her when he shoulder-checked her on the way towards dinner and it was better safe than sorry when prowling the castle’s empty corridors alone at night.

Her path was illuminated by the sparsely lined everlit torches, snug in their ornate sconces, their light soft and warm like buttered yam — it was oddly comforting sight, she thought, their flickering fire with its dancing shadows amongst the cool stone walls. That’s when she heard it — a stifled sniffle and muffled rustle of robes. Hermione tensed and quietly pocketed her map; adjusting her tight grip on her wand, she rounded the corner to find—

Nothing. To find nothing at all.

Except the life-sized marble statue of Gregory the Smarmy on which moonlight from the nearby window cast its pale shine. She frowned, the sight of the ill-favoured thing tickled her memory, urging her to remember… something about it. Hermione pursed her lips and waited; patience was a virtue, or so people who couldn’t immediately achieve results claimed. Four heartbeats later, she heard it again — a gentle little wheeze of someone struggling not to cry.

Ah, she thought with a prick of sorrow, recalling her own First Year and how lonely she’d been. Shoulders relaxing, Hermione confidently walked forwards. She remembered now, there was a secret passageway behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy; Fred and George had told her about it years ago, it must have slipped her mind. Hermione murmured a soft Lumos and the tip of her wand lit up, irradiating her immediate vicinity and dispelling the need to rely on dim moonlight.

She rounded the statue and peered behind it. There, shrouded in shadows, hid a boy, his knees drawn-up to his chest, his anxious-looking, erubescent face illumined by the cool, pale-blue light of her spell. He looked young, a First Year probably, his face fair and fine-featured with a high forehead and tapering chin; he had familiar blonde hair, but his red-rimmed eyes were a soft, pale blue, so unlike his brother’s.

Oh, Hermione realised with a start, it was Malfoy.

She had been aware there was another Malfoy who’d joined Hogwarts this year — who hadn’t noticed the appearance of the infamous Slytherin Prince’s younger brother during the Welcoming Feast? — but, according to both Ginny and Lavender, he hadn’t been seen by society since their Mother’s unfortunate accident, spawning rumours of his untimely demise and — what Hermione was sure was infinitely worse for the rich, pureblood elite — supposed Squibhood.

The boy before her was neither dead or magic-less, he was, however, obviously crying. Alone. In a dark, secreted corridor. Merlin help her.

What was his name? It was another constellation name, she was sure, as equally old-fashioned and unusual as his older brother’s. Hermione rummaged in her brain, but drew a blank.

“Hello,” she said.

The boy kept silent. He just stared at her, his eyes round and full of trepidation. They flicked towards her Prefect badge, then her Gryffindor patch, and narrowed ever so slightly. 

“Um,” Hermione began, feeling woefully out of her depth. She was much better with younger students than Ronald, but they were all predisposed to heed her, since she was the Prefect of their House; none of them had been the younger Slytherin brother of her antagonistic, unrelenting academic rival, Draco Malfoy. “Are you all right?”

That, she immediately concluded, was a stupid question. The Malfoy boy’s expression said as much, too.

Deciding she ought not be cowed by an eleven-year-old, Hermione deftly slid in the narrow gap between the statue and the wall, and into the hidden passageway. Once inside, she’d assessed her surroundings. It wasn’t in terrible disrepair, no-doubt maintained by Hogwarts’ army of elves, but it was dusty and she spotted a suspicious-looking stain at the foot of the statue, that could either be grease or blood or some other unfortunate bit of liquid.

Feeling the Malfoy boy’s inquisitive stare on her, Hermione refused to feel awkward, and cast a quick Scourgify and a Tergeo, before gingerly sitting down by him and primly folding her legs at her side, crossing them at the ankles, and pulling the hem of her skirt over her stockinged knees.

“Hello again,” she said, turning to face him, and extended her hand. “I’m Hermione Granger.”

Slytherins, she snorted inwardly, at the sight of his tapered gaze, so suspicious. Still, he tentatively took her proffered hand and shook it. Hermione was surprised by how icy his hand was. She wondered how long he’d been hiding here.

“A pleasure,” he drawled, comparably to his brother, if with palpably less firm self-assurance and innate haughtiness, “Scorpius Malfoy.”

“Well, now that we’re acquainted, mind telling me what are you doing out of dorms at,” Hermione mentally calculated, “roughly nine-thirty p.m., give or take? It’s almost curfew.”

“Nothing,” he said, which was clearly a lie and they both knew it — his tear-stained, flushed face and hoarse voice spoke a different story. Then, “I was exploring.”

“Uh-huh,” Hermione said, drawing out her vowels. “All the way until curfew?”

To his credit, the boy didn’t miss a beat. “Hogwarts is ten centuries old. Full of riveting stuff.”

“Any reason you’re tucked away behind the statue of the illustrious Gregory the Smarmy?”

“Got tired. Needed a bit of a breather.”

“And your face?”

“Allergic to dust, it’s quite terrible actually.” Scorpius gave an insouciant shrug and immediately winced.

Caught you. “What’s next? Your shoulder hurts because you’ve got chronic fibromyalgia?”

“Chronic fibro-what?”

“Never mind that,” Hermione said, pulling at Scorpius’s school robes and eliciting a squawk of incredulity out of him. “Where are you hurt?”

Scorpius had given her a look of such utter bewilderment and deep offense, one would think he was a blushing village maiden being ravished by a passing dissolute rake. “What in Salazar’s name are you doing?” he gasped in as calm a voice as he could — which was to say, it was not calm in the least; as he tried to yank the collar of his school robes out of Hermione’s grasp to no avail.

“Oh, don’t whinge, I’m not trying to hurt y—Stop struggling! You are going to make your injury worse! Merlin, what delicate sensibilities you purebloods have!” Hermione huffed in frustration, then deciding to take matters in her own hands, she cried out in rapid succession, “Nox! Petrificus Totalus!”

Scorpius, who’d been half-way standing and trying to wrestle his robes back on, suddenly went rigid; his arms snapped to his sides, his legs sprang together, and he swayed like a pendulum for a moment. He was stiff as a board and before he could fall over onto his side, Hermione sprang forwards and caught him by his shoulders, internally wincing and hoping she hadn’t pressed onto his injury.

“I’m not going to apologise for the spell. You ought to have listened to me, I’m just trying to help,” Hermione said, matter-of-factly. She glanced down at Scorpius — his eyes were moving frantically, wide with distress, but his jaws were jammed together, so he could neither speak nor scream. “I am sorry if I frightened you, though. That was never my intention and I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

Scorpius’s air of resentment hadn’t quelled and Hermione quietly sighed. With a wave of her wand, she summoned a torch out of the hallway and it flew into her outstretched hand. Spotting an empty sconce nearby, Hermione stretched out, balancing Scorpius’s paralyzed body with one hand, and deposited the illuminant into it. Then, she propped Scorpius up against a wall as delicately as she could and carefully pulled his robe off his left shoulder, then loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, to reveal the beginnings of a great violaceous bruise blooming across his shoulder and collarbone.

With conscientious, gentle hands Hermione prodded the contusion, determining its severity. With a steady wrist, she traced the injury with her wand and clearly enunciated, “Ekuhmonathai.” She watched with satisfaction as the condensed blood broke down and got reabsorbed into the boy’s body. Then, with a flick of her wrist and a muttered Condeliquesco, the swelling dissipated, too.

“There now, all fixed,” Hermione said, smiling brightly, as she buttoned-up and straightened up his clothes, smoothing out the wrinkles on his robes. “No reason to fuss over.”

Scorpius’s aggrieved glare said otherwise, and, well, objectively speaking, he wasn’t in the wrong, Hermione surmised. But it was for his own good — it was too late in the evening to visit Madam Pomfrey and rudimentary healing spells were far too advanced for a First Year to perform.

With a muttered Finite Incantatem from Hermione, the boy’s body slumped and slid down the wall into a graceless heap.

“You realise that had you explained what you wanted to do and given me a chance to respond, you wouldn’t have had to incapacitate a First Year student and I wouldn’t have been manhandled in a dark corner like a three-knut trollop,” Scorpius hissed out as got to his feet and edged away from Hermione. She was about to object, but he barrelled on, voice rising in pitch, “I have a jar of bacta in my trunk, impeccably brewed and bottled by my own brother. I would have been just fine without your heedless meddling.”

Hermione pursed her lips and tapped her wand against her hip. “You’re a scornful child, aren’t you? You remind me strongly of him, your brother.”

Scorpius straightened up his spine and jutted his chin, he looked every inch a Malfoy. “It would be an honour and a privilege to be like Draco.”

Of course it would, Hermione thought, sullenly. Still, if she wanted for Scorpius to open up about what happened to him, she ought to stop being inimical towards Malfoy while speaking to his own younger brother. She deftly slid her wand into its holster on her forearm as a sign of suspension of hostilities. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Scorpius relaxed his shoulders at the action. Hermione grimaced, it didn’t make her feel good to intimidate First Years.

“I suppose your brother is not without some charms,” she acknowledged with a sigh, “he’s—” authoritarian and obnoxious; disgustingly argumentative, actually; uncomfortably astute and remarkably “—clever, I’ll give him that.

“You say he successfully brewed bacta for you?” Hermione’s inquiry received her a succinct nod. “Quite impressive.”

The compliment hadn’t eased the last bit of tension out of Scorpius, but he looked decidedly less hostile. He moved to sit back down at the foot at the statue and motioned for Hermione to do the same. Once she did, he said, stiffly, “Thank you. For healing me. I didn’t quite appreciate the way you’ve handled it, but I recognise your intent and I thank you for your help.” He gave her a sharp look. “This is not an acknowledgement of whatever perceived debt you suppose I might owe you. Your actions do not behold me to you.”

“Of course not,” Hermione drawled, a wry look on her face, “wouldn’t dream of it.”

Scorpius nodded primly. “Right.”

In the amber light of the torch, Hermione studied his face. There was something uncanny about how well-groomed and faelid-nordid the Malfoys looked — a harmonious amalgamation of sharp and angular features; all high planes and clean-cut angles. There was very little softness there, with exception of the curves of lips and distinct, arched eyebrows. And yet, Scorpius looked impalpably different from his brother. Most obviously, his eyes were round and limpid blue; a stark contrast to the almond-shaped Black eyes Malfoy had, as deep-grey as glowing embers of charcoal, equally bright and hazardous.

“Ready to tell me how you got a bruise the size of a quaffle?”

Scorpius’s gaze cut away towards the floor and he shifted nervously. “Not particularly.”

“Fair enough.” She fished a bundle out of her robe pocket and unfurled her lace-trimmed kerchief, revealing three neatly stacked rubescent savory treats. “Want a pumpkin pastry? I nicked a few from dinner.”

Scorpius gave her a pitying look, but took one nonetheless. “If that’s a bribe, it’s a poor one. Especially since you’ve revealed your agenda not even a minute ago.”

“I make for a poor intriguer, yes,” Hermione laughed, high and clear, “but I thought you might be hungry and it felt a shame not to share.”

Scorpius eyed the pastry warily and bit into it. As he slowly chewed, healthy colour returned to his cheeks. “Huh, it’s not bad.”

“You’ve never eaten one?” Hermione asked, surprised. 

“I’m not fond of squash,” he said, wrinkling his nose rather cutely, “but beggars can’t be choosers and Astoria insists I shouldn’t look a gift pegasus in the mouth, which is a load of rubbish if you ask me. Brother says one ought to look the gift pegasus in the mouth, nose, and ears before letting it anywhere near one’s proverbial stables. Ideally, also inspect all of the leg muscles, double check its pedigree, and maybe give it a good wash, too, just in case.” He nodded smartly, looking Hermione straight in the eye. The gravitas he was trying to adopt was somewhat lost on account of a bit of pastry being stuck to his cheek. “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and all that.”

Hermione swallowed a smile. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

By the time Scorpius had worked his way through all three pastries, quarter of an hour had passed and Hermione felt the chill of the castle’s stones seep into her limbs. Once again, she wondered how long Scorpius had hidden here and whether or not he’d caught a cold. She had to instruct him to get a Pepper-Up Potion from the Hospital Wing first thing in the morning. She opened her mouth, ready to tell him just that when—

“It was the older kids, Sixth or Seventh Years. They caught me after Herbology, all alone. Pushed me around a bit, sliced my bag open, and then cast an Incarcerous on me,” Scorpius informed her in a disturbingly detached tone of voice. “They left me there for hours, till the spell wore off — thought it was funny to tie a Malfoy up like a Christmas roast and serve him up to werewolves in the Forbidden Forest.” At the sound of Hermione’s horrified gasp, he hurriedly added, “I wasn’t actually in the Forbidden Forest, mind you — they’re plonkers, not mental — but, it was close to the border still and well...”

“You were still afraid,” Hermione said and grasped Scorpius’s hand tightly with both of hers. A trickling sensation of guilt clawed at her heart — she regretted her high-handed and aggressive approach to him and his situation prior. No wonder he’d begrudged her interference. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Scorpius shrugged. “I was stupid. I shouldn’t have been caught on my own. A Slytherin must never be alone, that’s the rule. Brother will be so disappointed, he warned me to be mindful and alert.” He looked down, his hands clutching his knees in a white-knuckled grip, and it suddenly struck Hermione how terribly young and vulnerable he looked, much younger than his eleven years. “Not everyone in Hogwarts accepts me.”

Odd that, Hermione thought. Tyrannical tendencies and insufferable behaviour aside, Draco Malfoy was a charismatic little shit, unequivocally the most popular Slytherin in the castle, a flock of minions and sycophants fluttering around him like a charm of finches. It seemed almost inconceivable that malignity would befall the youngest Malfoy with a patron like that. Or that his Slytherin Prince of a brother would permit it. Or perhaps he would, she thought, uncharitably. She hardly knew Malfoy outside of their academic encounters and found his character to be dubious at best; Harry and Ron certainly never had a kind word to spare about him. Mayhaps it was not beyond the realm of possibility for him to bear acrimony towards his younger brother, or simply, and probably most terribly, not care.

Still, she kept her thoughts to herself. It would not do to upset Scorpius further. “They have to be punished. If you know who they are, I’ll report them to the headmaster.”

Scorpius gave her a sideways look, but kept mum.

“You do know, don’t you?” Hermione ascertained, shrewdly. She leaned closer towards the boy, a flare of righteousness urging her on. “If you know who they are, Scorpius, you have to tell me.”

A shadow fell over them as moonlight bent around whatever—whoever—was suddenly blocking the entryway and Hermione’s heart stuttered, froze, and leapt into a sprint as a cold wave of dread washed over her, prickling her skin. She felt the chill of his breath before she heard him. 

“What does he have to tell you, Granger?”

Hermione slowly turned her head and there stood Draco Malfoy, all in black; he was a shadow amongst shadows, cloaked in unimpressed air, born of privilege and adroit competence.

“Draco!” Scorpius cried out, elated, and jumped up, rushing past Hermione and over to Malfoy in a blur. He rammed straight into his brother with such force that Malfoy reeled back into the corridor proper with a sharp exhale. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have been alone! And I shouldn’t have hid afterwards!”

“That’s quite all right, sweetling,” Malfoy said, gently. From her vantage point, Malfoy’s sharp-featured face held an expression of tender affection that was unexpected and foreign to her. Hermione bit her lip, feeling oddly uncomfortable by their display. “Calm now. Tell me — are you whole? Are you well?”

“Um…” Scorpius fumbled and momentarily Hermione thought he’d relay her coercive healing session, but he didn’t. “I’m all right,” he said, with poorly feigned confidence.

Malfoy’s brow furrowed and he gripped his brother by the shoulders, peering into his upturned face for a prolonged moment. “Ah,” he said, voice feather-soft. “I see.”

Scorpius ducked his head and stepped away from the embrace, busying himself by straightening his robes.

Hermione rose unhurriedly, dusted off her skirt, and soundlessly slipped through the narrow entryway. “Malfoy.” She greeted the Slytherin with a curt nod, fingers nervously flexing. When he responded in kind, she continued, “I was asking Scorpius who had attacked him.”

“If you’re referring to the three Gryffindors who assaulted him, then they’re dealt with,” Malfoy informed her, arching one dark-blonde eyebrow challengingly. He was standing with his spine ramrod straight and his shoulders squared, as if one might forget the breadth of space he occupied if he didn’t claim every bit of it at all times. “Twenty-five points from each and four weeks of detention in the dungeons with Snape.”

Hermione bit the inside of her cheek. Seventy-five points was a substantial set-back for Gryffindor in the race for the Cup — Merlin! They were from her House! — but, given how they’d left an eleven-year-old student tied-up by the Forbidden Forest, she couldn’t find it in her to be particularly sympathetic about the loss. Still, something prickled in the back of her mind. “And you find that satisfactory?”

Malfoy snorted ungraciously. “For bearing ill-intent and violence on my flesh and blood, and insulting the son of a Great House? Hardly. But in the realm of Hogwarts, I suppose scrubbing potion cauldrons by hand for a month is adequate enough punishment, and I shall have to content myself with it.” He put a beringed hand on the base of Scorpius’s neck and the child shivered at the touch. “If you excuse us, Granger, we shall retire. It’s well past curfew now, I have a child to put to bed, and you have rounds to finish.”

Without so much as by your leave, Malfoy spun on his heel and strode south-east towards the stairwells, guiding Scorpius with a firm hand, their school robes billowing behind them. Idly, Hermione wondered if they were charmed to do so, she wouldn’t have been surprised if they were.

Then, Scorpius Malfoy looked over his shoulder and waved in farewell.

✨✨✨

“Your hand is cold,” Scorpius said, once they turned the corner.

“Is it?” Draco asked, withdrawing it. “I apologise. I’ve been outside.” At Scorpius’s curious glance, he elaborated, “Searching. For you. Salazar’s beard, I thought something had carried you off into the Forbidden Forest, Scor.”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you where I was.” Scorpius twisted the ring on his left pinkie finger, a brother to Draco’s heir’s black-gold signet ring. He’d felt it grow hot in the passageway several times, but he’d ignored the summons. 

“Yes, you should have. It was childish of you to hide and ignore my messages, and as you’re oft to remind me, you’re a child no longer.”

They descended the moving stairwells and Draco put a protective hand on Scorpius’s back again, this time between his shoulder-blades. “I understand why you did it — you were scared—”

“Humiliated, more like,” Scorpius snorted.

“There’s no shame in fear, what matters is how you face it,” Draco said, not unkindly. “I’m not mad—”

“Just disappointed, right?”

Draco shook his head. “No. Not disappointed. I was deathly worried, scared out of my wits—”

“That’s a lark. You’re never witless.”

“Young man, will you ever let me finish or am to be interrupted in perpetuity?”

Scorpius gave a bright, innocuous smile and Draco laughed, ruffling his hair. “Cheeky imp.”

“I am serious though,” Draco continued. They stopped at an alcove, waiting for the stairwells to change. “I was scared beyond belief. Circe, if something had happened to you, I wouldn’t know what I would do. Scorpius, look at me and listen carefully: you mustn’t do anything like this ever again. Don’t go anywhere alone and don’t ignore my messages. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Scorpius said, feeling meek and guilt-ridden. “I’ll be good, I swear it.”

“Good lad,” Draco said, nodding. “I can forgive you anything — arson, murder, and skeeving off lessons — but, I’m afraid I would never forgive you if your misadventures make me prematurely grey haired.”

Scorpius laughed, instantaneously feeling better, his prior morose mood all but dissipating. Had Draco truly been cross with him, he would have mentioned Mother, bless her soul, and how it would have broken her poor heart to see her youngest son so unruly and ill-mannered. Mother was a sensitive topic in the Malfoy household — Father hardly ever spoke of her, contrastingly Draco — who wielded her name and authority with the best guilt-trippers out there — was full of stories and fond memories. Scorpius himself remembered Narcissa Malfoy faintly, but he missed her something fierce.

They had jumped over a trick step when Scorpius asked, “How did you find me?”

“Deductive reasoning and a little bit of help.” Draco tapped the silver serpent on his necktie pin, it twitched and winked its green-malachite eye conspiratorially. Scorpius immediately grasped his own identical pin.

“You put a tracking spell on me?”

“Not quite. A tracking spell wouldn’t effectively work in Hogwarts, there are too many magical interferences. In any case, it’s a simple pairing charm — it wouldn’t give me your exact location, but I can sense the trace amount of my own magical signature pulsating from your pin. Afterwards, it was just a question whether or not I could infer your location from what I’d gleamed.” Draco grimaced. “Took me longer than I would like to find you. I tried Avenseguim first, but it took me to your bag by the Forest as the charms on your robes impede it — I wonder if I could circumvent that by imbedding a homing rune into the material — and then I spent Circe-knows-how-long combing through the area. Did you bite one of them? There were traces of blood, but it wasn’t yours.”

“I did,” Scorpius said, proudly.

“Smart. Never give up with a fight.” They reached the bottom of the Grand Stairway on the ground floor and Draco took his hand off Scorpius’s back. He watched as Draco tapped his signet ring and murmured into it. Then, “Speaking of your bag, here is it. I fixed it when I found it.”

Scorpius hadn’t noticed before, but Draco had his satchel slung over his shoulder. It was black-leather, high-quality and buttery soft, embossed with an elegant S.M. in gold ink on the corner of the front flap, imbued with a feather-light and self-refreshing charms, for cleanliness and ease of cary. Draco and he had received a twin pair of school satchels last Christmas, a gift from Scorpius’s Nuncle.

“Don’t worry,” Draco added, as Scorpius took the bag with a quiet Thank you. “I removed the dirt smudges on your homework, you haven’t lost your essays.”

They weren’t ten paces past the Great Hall when he asked, “Are you hungry? Do you want to stop by the kitchens?”

“No.” Scorpius shook his head. “I ate.”

“Ah, yes, Granger’s pumpkin pastries. Good to know you can, actually, consume pumpkins, despite your multiple assurances to the contrary. Should I ask the elves to stop putting a pitcher of apple juice by your seat, hmmm?” At Draco’s words, Scorpius blushed and ducked his head. Draco laughed. “Never knew all it took for you to cease to be a picky eater was a pretty witch’s smile.”

“She was pleasant enough. She didn’t have to share with me, you know. I’m nothing to her.”

“You’re blood of kings, Scorpius, you’ve never been nothing,” Draco said with unyielding assurance. “And Granger — pleasant? Self-righteous and intolerably peremptory, more like; count yourself lucky you’ve never shared classes with her — she acts like she’s never wrong, which is a load of rubbish! Just last week she mucked up her Transfiguration assignment, but try telling her that she’s got something wrong if your name isn’t Minerva McGonagall! She—” Draco cut himself off and took a deep, steadying breath. “In any case, she trounced you soundly, buddy. Were you but a few years older, I would be decidedly concerned about how easily a girl had indisposed and stripped you in a dark and dusty corner.”

“Draco! Stop!” Scorpius whined, hiding his face in his hands. “You’re incorrigible!”

“And you’re far too young to make me an uncle, so hold off from girls for a while, please.”

“My two best friends are girls,” Scorpius pointed out, just because he could.

“Ah, yes, the pulchritudinous Astoria Greengrass and the dynamical Ivy Warrington,” Draco drawled, as they made their way into the dungeons proper. “Warrington had been the one who’d alerted me at dinner when she couldn’t find you.”

Scorpius looked down at his feet. Astoria had gotten a rash from the spores of Puffapods they’d been working with and Professor Sprout had taken her to the Medical Wing after class. Ivy had intended to keep him company as he was finishing up tending to his seed-pods — Herbology was his best class and Scorpius aimed to excel beyond the norm — but, she had wanted to catch her brother, Cassius, before his next class, and Scorpius had dismissed her, telling her to not wait up. That had been a mistake. During the first night after Sorting, Professor Snape had informed the First Year Slytherins of rules they would live by throughout the duration of their stay at Hogwarts. One of them was: a Slytherin must never be alone. Hogwarts was not kind to serpents.

“Ah, so guilt motivated her,” Draco said after Scorpius had relayed the situation.

“Don’t punish her!”

“Scorpius,” Draco began slowly, turning to face his brother, “do you suppose I would harm an eleven-year-old girl?”

“No,” Scorpius huffed, “but I know you — you’ll say something to her and make it sound like you don’t mean anything by it, but she’ll feel bad for days!”

Draco chuckled. “I see how it is. All right, I suppose that girl learned her lesson, too.”

There was something odd about that, Scorpius realised, how contained Draco was keeping himself. His brother was not prone to fits of temper; he was a rational, cold-blooded being — but, he was fiercely protective of those close to him and had a vicious streak a mile wide. Scorpius expected avowal of just retribution for the affront dealt him, but... instead, Draco was suspiciously easy-going.

He frowned. “This is not the way to the dorms.”

“No, it is not,” Draco replied, but did not elaborate.

Swerving his head in confusion, Scorpius wondered where they were going. He supposed he would find out soon enough. There was no reason to ask stupid questions when he could exercise a bit of patience.

They snaked through the winding passageways and corridors that made up the labyrinth of Slytherin dungeons in silence. By the time they arrived at a thick, oak door of one of the unfamiliar, abandoned classrooms, they were on one of the underground levels of the dungeons, deep in the bowels of Hogwarts.

Scorpius looked up at his brother — he was lanky for an eleven-year-old, but Draco was much taller than most boys his age, and Scorpius had to crane his neck to meet his gaze. Draco’s grey eyes were fever-bright and glinting savagely in the flickering torch-light.

Oh, Scorpius thought, understanding washing over him.

Draco knocked on the door, three short taps and a long one. It opened to reveal the curly-haired head of a grim-faced Theodore Nott Junior. “Hello, Scorpius,” he greeted, pleasantly. “I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

“Yes, thank you,” Scorpius said and gulped audibly.

“Come along now, little prince,” Draco called over his shoulder as he entered. “Don’t dawdle.”

Scorpius did as was asked of him, jumping slightly when the door shut soundly by Nott, leaving the Malfoy brothers alone. Or so Scorpius thought until he saw the others. By the far east wall, three figures were strung up by their wrists like lamb-cuts at the butcher’s. They were tied up at the ankles and wrists with thickly coiled rope, and white rags stuffed into their mouths, which hadn’t deterred their impotent attempts at screaming.

Draco, who was making his way towards them with silent steps, placing each foot with care and precision of a stalking predator, fanned the fingers of his right hand almost lazily, then quickly made a fist, but never took his eyes off Scorpius. He must have cast some spell, Scorpius realised, because the three Gryffindors who’d but hours prior been laughing at Scorpius’s own misfortune, were now wiggling about soundlessly.

“When Filch threatens to chain students up and dangle them by their ankles from the dungeon ceiling, he is not jesting,” Draco explained, his voice deceptively mellow. “This is the old punishment. It fell out of fashion centuries ago. Ordinarily I wouldn’t endorse something so crass, but tonight I’m making an exception.”

Scorpius watched the three boys, caught between horror and fascination. They weren’t that much older than Draco, nor taller or bigger, and they certainly didn’t look like much now. Emboldened, Scorpius walked forwards until he was mere meters away from the boys who’d bullied him since September, who’d finally caught him today and told him he’d be lucky to have a werewolf snack on him.

“They were brass necked little tossers, weren’t they?” Draco asked, his unruffled tone belying the cold look on his face and icy fury rolling off him in palpable waves. Scorpius nodded. “How shall we deal with them?”

Scorpius reeled back, whirling to face his brother. “We?”

“Yes, we. They’ve attacked you, Scor.”

“I—I—I… I don’t know… I don’t want to do anything to them.”

Draco studied him, intently. “Shall I let them go?”

“No!” Scorpius cried out. “Perhaps… leave them here? For the night? To scare them a little?”

“Is that what you want? For them to be scared?”

As scared as I had been?, Scorpius thought, recognising his brother’s intent. Is that what I want? He wanted to get away from here, to not see the darker shades of his brother’s nature. He wanted them to pay in sanguinary, to make them suffer as he had suffered. He didn’t know what he wanted at all.

Scorpius nodded, and Draco took out his wand.

He watched as his brother strode forwards. Scorpius did not want to feel pity for the three Gryffindors, so he snuffed it out. They weren’t in any real danger. Draco was just scaring them. But as Scorpius thought that, something shifted in the abandoned classroom. The air felt cool and biting, as if it was winter outside.

Scorpius glanced at his brother; he was wearing a disturbingly vampiric facsimile of a smile. Sparks of magic were dancing around Draco, like eels they whipped and slivered in the air, flashing blue and purple, and red and green. When Draco spoke again, he sounded eerily like Lucius Malfoy: “Now, gentlemen, did you honestly think I could stand idly by while someone hurts my brother? You’ve had your fun, now is the time to pay for it.

“Let me express myself as plain as pikestaff, you worthless cunts: If a hair is touched on Scorpius’s head, I make you bleed.” Draco’s wand hadn’t even twitched when two deep and wide parallel cuts appeared on the shortest boy’s cheeks.

“For a single bruise on him, I break a bone.” This time, the middle one’s leg jerked, twisting at an unnatural angle, the white of his shinbone peeking through the pant-leg. He screamed, as soundless as a corpse, but Draco quickly moved past him towards the blonde at the far left. He stepped closer until they were almost nose to nose.

“Had your actions caused any lasting damage to him, I promise you on the bones of my forefathers, I would have made you suffer in unimaginable ways.” Draco dug his wand into the blonde boy’s chest, twisting it deeper and harder with every word. He must have cast a spell, for the ringleader jerked spastically.

Acid-green torch-light cast ghoulish shadows across the entire chamber, twisting palid faces into sun-bleached skulls and making Draco’s shadow dance grotesquely. 

The eyes of all three were filled with terror, but Scorpius forced himself not to look away, his mouth feeling dry and tasting of blood. “I think they’re scared enough,” he whispered.

Draco glanced at him over his shoulder and stepped away. “My brother possesses a quality of mercy I fear I myself lack. You best remember what I’ve said — I don’t make a habit of repeating myself.”

When they exited the chamber into the empty corridor, Scorpius asked, “What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’ll spend the night there, and in the early hours of the dawn, Theo will come by and take care of it.” Scorpius nodded. Nott ‘taking care of it’ meant he would patch them up and send them back to their dorm, unable to share what had transpired tonight, but they would remember and they would fear. “As far as the rest of the castle is concerned, those three were dragged to McGonagall’s office by Pansy Parkinson shortly after dinner, lectured thoroughly and punished by our illustrious Deputy Headmistress, and are currently sleeping away in Gryffindor tower, as secure as newborn lambs.”

It was a long time before Scorpius finally asked, “Did I have to watch that?”

“Yes,” Draco said, softly, his eyes as kind as their mother’s had been. He gently grasped Scorpius’s hand and the younger Malfoy drew strength from his brother’s warm palm. He felt as young and lost as he had been when Mother had her accident. The world wasn’t kind to those who didn’t fight for their place in it, and Scorpius was foolish to forget that. “Everything has a price and actions have consequences. The price of today was your fear and their pain. Every failure is a lesson, Scorpius, and each lesson makes us better. You must learn from today.”

They stopped before the entrance to the Slytherin dorms and Scorpius looked up to read the inscription above the threshold: unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno.

“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”

Chapter Text

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chapter two: beware the ides of Blacks

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The undergrowth beneath Hermione’s feet was pliant and moist — sleek, practically dripping, from yesternight’s rain, and rich and fragrant with petrichor. The dense canopy blocked out all sunlight and shrouded them in violet dusk, casting long shadows on the narrow path before her and obscuring all that laid beyond the surrounding trees.

She stepped on a twig and it crunched satisfactorily, then she purposefully dug in the heel of her shoe and the fallen pine needles cracked sharply beneath it. Forests have secrets, Hagrid had told her the first time she’d ventured into the Forbidden Forest during her First Year detention — they hid things, separated one world from another.

Hermione crashed through the dense wood, hoping — practically praying — to stumble upon one of such secrets.

“Er — are you sure this is the right way?” Harry asked her, voice low and pointed. In the back, Umbridge jogged noisily after them, huffing with strain, but her wand was aimed, ready and unflinching.

“Oh, yes, quite,” Hermione said, steelily. She’d heard Umbridge trip over a fallen sapling, but marched on, uncaring, as she called loudly over her shoulder, “It’s a bit further in!”

“Hermione, keep your voice down,” Harry hissed, hurrying to catch up with her. “Anything could be listening here—”

“I want us heard,” she whispered back, skipping smoothly over a shallow ditch.

If Hermione were to be honest with herself — it was during moments like these she understood why the Sorting Hat had placed her in Gryffindor over Ravenclaw, all those years and moons ago. She’d barely had an inkling of a plan of action, back in Umbridge’s office. It could not even rightfully be called a plan. It was an impulsive, by the seat of one’s pants ruse, but it was something and a tenuous something was much more preferable than being subjected to Cruciatus Curse on school grounds.

She’d been surprised at how eager and greedy Umbridge was to follow Harry and her alone, heedless of Cassius Warrington’s — who’d seemed to take up the role as temporary leader of the Inquisitorial Squad today in lieu of absent Malfoy — pressing insistence to accompany them. But Umbridge’s mistake would be her gain, and Hermione intended to capitalise on it thoroughly.

This is not going to go the way you think, she reflected, with no small amount of rancour.

It had not.

It had not gone the way Hermione had anticipated either.

“You all right there, Hermione?” Ginny asked loudly, and Hermione nodded fervently against her back, arms winding tighter around the redhead. Ginny’s back was warm and firm beneath Hermione’s cheek, broad from years of Quidditch and reassuring in its steadiness. Her hand-me-down school robes were soft and a little bit threadbare, they smelled faintly of coffee and orange blossom of Ginny’s perfume, and that peculiar ionised smell of magic that permeated everything in the Wizarding World — sweet and pungent like a burning wire, like the air before a thunderstorm, like the first spark of lightning.

“No, but I will be,” she squeaked, burying her chilled nose against the dark fabric to warm it up. “I just have to keep my eyes closed.”

They were seated atop the silken, sooty back of a Thestral, flying above what must be, by Hermione’s mental calculations, either Pitmatic or Yorkshire. Ginny’s knees were firmly lodged behind the creature’s wing joints, her frozen hands threaded through its long, thick mane. Hermione sat behind her, febrile and tense, having adamantly refused to brave the flight on an invisible horse alone.

“It really is beautiful up here,” Ginny said, off-handedly. Her hair glowed brilliantly in the dying light of the blood-red sunset. “If I wasn’t unnerved by speeding miles above ground without any visible means of support and terrified for Sirius, I think I would be enjoying myself. It’s certainly a smoother flight than on a broom. Do you reckon the herd will let me ride one of them again? They seemed friendly enough.”

“Yeah. After licking Harry and me clean of blood,” Hermione laughed, nervously. She shivered, a blade of wind had cut straight through her robes and wool jumper. “They have papillaes on their tongues, did you know? It’s not at all like a regular horse’s, more like a cat’s.”

“They are predators,” Ginny agreed.

“Breeding them in captivity is strictly regulated by the Ministry, but not for the reasons one might assume. They are carnivorous and easily attracted to blood, so they tend to wander into Muggle areas, thus their population must be monitored. I think… Hogwarts has the only trained herd of this size in the whole of Great Britain,” Hermione informed her, matter-of-factly. To the left of them, Luna gave a tinkling laugh and Hermione reflexively peeled an eye open, regretting it immediately. To her great internal distress, Luna was casually sitting side-saddle and running both her hands through an albugineous cloud. Hermione felt her voice get shriller as she continued, “And the Malfoys, of course, have a whole flock of them on their estate, along with other winged equines, several stable-worths, I bet.”

Ginny shifted to peer down at Hermione, which wasn’t the easiest given how Hermione was significantly taller than Ginny, yet crouching so deeply she was practically molded against Ginny’s back. “How do you know that?” she asked, incredulously.

“Per usual,” Hermione answered, shrugging lightly. “I read a lot. And pureblood aristocracy tend to have simultaneously highly detailed accounts of their lineages and properties, and incredibly obscure personal histories. Sacred Twenty-Eight records can be rather fascinating, in that stuffy, haughty way of the upper-class elite.”

“Found anything interesting on the Weasleys?”

“Technically, while you are part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the Weasleys have been pointedly referenced as a mere footnote in the Directory since its third edition due to public disregard of its pro-pureblood policies. Ergo, you don’t get many historians champing at the bit to compose archives of your family’s no-doubt engrossing history, but I remember a mention in the Annals of Pureblood Great Britain: Volume Seventy-Six. The Weasleys used to have a moderately-sized property down in Wales, but lost it roughly eight generations ago due to poor financial decisions.”

“That tracks,” Ginny snorted. “The Burrow has been the family house for the last… five? six? generations, I think. Greatgrandpa made a lot of expansions to the place, it’s hardly the same now as it was back when it was built.”

As the two girls descended into discussing the finer points of Wizarding architecture, twilight fell: the sky was turning to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars. Soon only the bright lights of Muggle towns gave them any clue of how far from the ground they were, or how very fast they were travelling. Hermione’s braid had long since unfurled and her unbound hair was snapping mercilessly in the wind like a creamy river of honeyed golden-caramel, stark against the steadily darkening sky.

Hermione had braved opening her eyes again, and was studying the landscape — her face flushed prettily from the cool, slapping air — when she heard Ginny ask over the rushing slipstream, so faintly she almost allowed herself to think she imagined the words, “Are you ready to talk about what’s been eating at you since the forest?”

Hermione’s fingers flexed and she shook her head, curls whipping wildly. “Nothing’s been eating at me. I’m fine.”

“Hermione,” Ginny implored, very gently, her voice laced with solicitude akin to her mother’s. She was regarding Hermione over her shoulder through the periphery of one glinting eye. “When we found Harry and you, you were trembling something fierce. For a moment there, I thought you were catatonic.”

Hermione swallowed thickly. She was so very terribly scared then, she thought she’d doomed them both. When the centaurs showed up, Hermione felt triumphant, but her joy quickly turned to ashes in her mouth once they ceased and threatened Harry and her. As soon as Grawp crashed through the woods, things went to hell in a handbasket quicker than Hermione could process them.

She felt guilty, too.

Hermione hated Umbridge, proper hated her — the woman was vile, odious, and unrepentant. She was a kiss-up-kick-down bureaucrat who represented everything Hermione thought was wrong with the Wizarding World’s arbitrary system of government. But she hadn’t wanted her maimed, or ruined, or… dead. No, Hermione told herself, they weren’t going to kill her. Centaurs were proud, territorial, and aggressive, but they weren’t violent brutes, they were intelligent — far more intelligent than wizardkind gave them credit.

Hermione explained as much to Ginny, and the other girl contemplated her words with a thoughtful frown. “I think you are too compassionate for your own good sometimes, but I understand where you are coming from,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t worry about Umbridge too much. This isn’t the first alteration between wizards and centaurs, and it’s certainly not the most significant. They’ll keep her prisoner — at worst, they’ll spook her thoroughly and starve her some — until Fudge can barter something for her release. She’ll be back pencil-pushing at the Ministry and wreaking havoc on society within the month, trust me.”

Hermione sighed and propped her chin onto Ginny’s shoulder, slotting her cold cheek against the other girl’s freckled one. “All right, Gin, if you say so.”

“I do,” Ginny said, brightly, her white teeth flashing in the dusk. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Would you like for me to recant in chronological order or alphabetical?”

“Oh, hush. More often than not, my miscues add excitement and colour to the bland dolority of mundane life. Besides, I’m not the bleeding heart who’d been unduly concerned for the welfare of the horror that is the fulsome Dolores Umbridge, the pernickety tin-pot Hitler.” Noticing Hermione’s considering purse of lips, Ginny asked, “I had used the expression correctly, haven’t I? Dean called her that a few times.”

“No, it is an apt delineation,” Hermione replied, thinking Umbridge really was a control-freakish minor official who enjoyed throwing her weight around. “I’ve been thinking—”

“Owl the Daily Prophet: Hermione Granger is thinking—”

“Why the Ministry?” Hermione cut-in, dark eyebrows knitting in contemplation. “What’s so important there that Sirius had to go to the Department of Mysteries? What’s in the Hall of Prophecies?”

“I’d wager a wild guess and assume prophecies,” Ginny said, drily, earning a pinch to the side from Hermione. “The better question is: what will happen if we’re too late?”

“Harry would know if we were,” Hermione supplied, tentatively. “Wouldn’t he?”

Both girls focused their gaze on Harry’s figure ahead of them. He had molded himself to the back of the Thestral he was atop of like it was a riding broom. His wild hair was flailing in the strong winds like an inky-black gloriole, and poorly-secured school cloak trashing behind him like a banner. Harry had been unravelling at the seams from frustration and fear for Sirius ever since his vision during the History of Magic exam. 

If the worst occured and something did happen to Sirius, Hermione asked herself with a shiver of distress, would Harry be able to handle it? She was afraid she knew the answer already.

Hermione’s stomach jolted as the Thestral’s head abruptly pointed downwards. She gave a piercing, ear-splitting shriek as Ginny and she slid forwards a few inches along its neck. Shooting her right hand towards the front, she seized the invisible mane with all of her strength as her left hand wrapped around Ginny’s midsection all the tighter.

“Just hold onto me!” Ginny shouted over the torrent of wind. “I won’t let you fall!”

Hermione nodded quickly, pressing herself flush against Ginny’s back, her chin digging into the top of the other girl’s shoulder, and vowed to herself she’d never fly on anything ever again. Before her, the bright streams of lights of Muggle London were growing larger and multiplied on all sides; she could see the tops of buildings and lambent squares of primrose-yellow windows. Hermione watched as cars and busses crawled along the city streets like colonies of ants, streams of their headlights shining like luminous insect eyes — splashes of fulvous and smalt and coquelicot and heliotrope; they painted the city with ribbons of vivid colour.

As precipitously as before, they were hurtling towards the pavement and Hermione squeezed the sides of the Thestral with her thighs with every last ounce of her strength, bracing for impact, but the horse touched the pavement as lightly as a shadow, seemingly having nullified all of its momentum instantaneously. Magic, Hermione huffed internally, feeling somewhat miffed. She could never quite grow accustomed to how effortlessly and insolently it broke laws of physics.

She slid from the creature’s back with as much grace as she could and landed on wobbly legs. Beside her, Ginny hopped off with a little more assurance, only to immediately stumble forwards before Hermione caught her by the elbow. 

“Steady there,” she muttered, and looked around at the street devoid of people, where an overflowing yellow skip stood a short way from a vandalised red telephone box, both drained of colour in the flat orange glare of the streetlights.

Ginny patted the Thestral appreciatively and thanked it in a low voice, as Ron struggled to his feet from where he had topped off his horse, muttering, “Never again. Never, ever again… that was the worst…” Privately, Hermione agreed with him. Off to the side, Neville jumped down, shaking like an autumn leaf, and Luna dismounted smoothly. All the while, Harry was standing in the middle of the street, staring intently at something unseen before him.

“Where do we go from here?” Luna asked, pointedly, and as Harry led them towards the battered telephone box, Ginny caught Hermione’s wrist and gently squeezed it.

“Stop worrying so much, you’ll give yourself wrinkles,” she whispered, teasingly. In the fuliginous eventide, Ginny’s round, hazel eyes were almost black and her titan hair shone like a beacon. “Harry acts sometimes like a feckless berk, but he doesn’t fold under pressure. Everything will turn out all right. Have faith.”

Hermione gave a sharp nod, drawing strength from Ginny’s nonchalant assurance, as the six of them poured themselves into the cramped telephone box.

Ginny was right — Harry did hold under pressure.

But everything did not turn out all right.

Hermione couldn’t stop herself from involuntarily trembling as she soundlessly creeped down the stairs, mindful of keeping her head low, and trying not to wince each time her bruised hip and back made contact with the stone steps. Below her, in a sunken pit of the Death Room, encircled by Death Eaters, Harry stood on an illuminated raised dais, a stone archway behind him, its depths murky and rippling. Off to the side, one of the largest Death Eaters had seized Neville from behind, pinioning his arms to his sides and lifting him off the ground as Neville struggled, kicking at the air. Several Death Eaters laughed and Bellatrix Lestrange slithered towards the pair, an ecstatic smile lighting her gaunt face as she delicately pinched her wand betwixt her fingers — for the first time since Hermione clapped her eyes on the sectionable witch, she looked transported, alive with excitement.

Hermione’s insides plummeted sickeningly.

“I had the unique pleasure of meeting your parents, boy,” Lestrange said, saccharinely, tracing a long-nailed finger down Neville’s cheek and jaw as she studied him. “Let’s see how long you shall last before you crack… yes, yes, crack like an egg and spill out all of your secrets… just like dear mumsy and daddy. Unless,” she turned and looked at a petrified Harry over a bony shoulder, “Potter would like to release the prophecy into our possession, yes?”

“DON’D GIB ID DO DEM, HARRY!” roared Neville, who seemed beside himself, writhing and thrashing, as Bellatrix performed a swift, non-verbal spell and tied his legs up before he could kick her. “DON’D WU DARE GIB ID DO DEM!”

Lestrange raised her wand and enunciated, clearly and softly, “Crucio.”

Neville’s agonised screams rang through the chamber, echoing and amplifying, growing shrill and manic as seconds trickled on. Then, the Death Eater dropped him and Neville fell onto the floor in a heap, twitching and howling. At the sight of him, panic coursed through Hermione, causing her chest to constrict and she felt as though she could not breathe properly. She bit down on her lip, hard enough to draw blood and slid down the last step, carefully positioning herself in a shadowed corner and clutching her vine wood wand in a white-knuckled grip. If she got captured now, the Death Eaters would have more leverage against Harry. She mustn’t allow that.

“That was just an appetiser, to get you acquainted with things to come,” Lestrange said, flicking her wand so Neville’s screams stopped and he laid sobbing at her feet. She smiled, almost prettily, and gazed up at Harry. “Now, Potter, lest you want your little friend to have a taste of the entrée, give us the prophecy!”

I must be strong, Hermione told herself, willing her hands to stop shaking. I must be brave, like Harry, like Neville.

To perform an Unforgivable, one had to mean it, she recalled from fake Moody’s lessons during their Fourth Year; they were unlawful spells, not because of their consequence, but because of the unambiguous intent required to cast them. Crucio needed raw hatred, Imperius necessitated a will strong enough to subjugate, and Avada Kedavra demanded a sliver of one’s soul as payment for the murder.

Hermione raised her wand, steeling herself.

Unexpectedly, high above her, two doors burst open with a loud bang and five more people charged into the room like white streaks of lightning: Sirius, Lupin, Moody, Tonks, and Kingsley. Immediately, Hermione turned on her heel and sent a Stunning Spell at the nearest Death Eater. She did not wait to see whether it made contact, but sprinted towards her friends. The Death Eaters were completely distracted by the appearance of the members of the Order of the Phoenix, who were now raining spells down on them as they jumped from step to step towards the sunken floor.

Through the throng of darting bodies and the flashes of spell light, Hermione could see Harry trying to get to a crawling Neville. Dodging a jet of red light, she dove to the floor as a knife sailed past her ear. With a shriek, Hermione rolled away from a stampeding Death Eater, who was clawing tentacles off his face that had, but moments prior, been his hair. A stone floor next to her exploded as a stray spell hit it, leaving a smoking crater right where Hermione’s left hand had been only seconds before.

Scrambling to her feet, Hermione dashed towards the dias, and saw a lanky Death Eater pull Harry close and lift him off his feet as he seized him by the throat with one hand. Harry’s face was starting to turn purple around the edges, and the Death Eater was pawning at him with his free hand, trying to grasp the prophecy. Suddenly, Neville came lunging out of nowhere, jumping on the Death Eater’s back and trying to jab Ron’s wand into the eyehole of the mask—

“Stupefy!” Hermione shouted once she was in range and the man immediately relinquished Harry as he keeled over sideways. His mask slipped off — it was MacNair, Buckbeak’s would-be-killer. Neville whirled around and his face split into a grin when he saw her.

“Herbiome!” he cried out, relieved, as Harry coughed harshly and rubbed his throat. Hermione tackled both of the boys as Sirius lurched past them, duelling a Death Eater so fiercely their wands were blurs of smeared watercolour.

“No time!” she said as Harry pulled both off them to the side, out of the line of fire and towards the looming dias. “We have to get out of here!”

Abruptly, Harry slipped, toppling over to the side before either Hermione or Neville could catch him. Moody’s magical eye spun away from them across the floor. Its owner was lying on the side, bleeding from the head, remaining eye and tongue swollen grotesquely. His attacker was now bearing down upon Harry, Hermione, and Neville. Dolohov, whose pale, haggard face twisted with gleeful schadenfreude, sent a cold spike of fear through Hermione.

“Tarantallegra!” he shouted, his wand pointing at Neville, but it missed because Harry pushed him out of the way. 

Dolohov grimaced, and made a slashing movement with his wand Hermione instantly recognised and yelled, “Protego!”

A transparent, blue-tinged, concave barrier erected itself in front of the three of them and Hermione felt something hot streak across her shoulder like a blunt knife. The force of it knocked her against Harry, who grabbed her by the waist and held her steady. Hermione’s shoulder smarted some, but the Shield Charm absorbed the worst of the attack.

Dolohov snarled. “Accio proph—”

Sirius had hurtled out of nowhere, ramming into Dolohov with his shoulder and sending the shorter man flying out of the way and skidding on the floor into a tumble. With a flick of Sirius’s wand, Dolohov’s black robes swiftly swaddled around him like a cocoon, and Sirius smirked at them, winking, “Missed me, kids?”

“Look out!” Harry warned, adjusting his grip on the prophecy, and Sirius spun around, pressing down on a de-tangled Dolohov, their wands flashing like swords, sending multi-coloured sparks flying from the tips.

“We hawe do ged oud od here,” Neville said. Hermione wished she’d had enough foresight to have learned some basic healing spells, so she could fix his broken nose. “Dhe odhers are—”

“Petrificus Totalus!” Harry cried out, and Dolohov’s arms and legs snapped together sharply, and once again, he keeled over backwards, landing with a sound crash on his back.

“Nice one!” shouted Sirius, forcing their heads down as a pair of Stunning Spells flashed by them like red streaks. “Now, I want you kids to scramble—”

Neville yelped as a stray spell knocked into his back. He collapsed abruptly just as Hermione tugged both Sirius and Harry down by their shirt-collars; a jet of green light had narrowly missed Sirius. Hermione frantically searched for its source. Across the room, she saw Tonks fall from a hallway up the stone steps, her limp form plummeting and bouncing from stone seat to stone seat, and Bellatrix, wild-eyed and triumphant, running back towards the fray.

“Harry, safekeep the prophecy; Hermione, grab Neville; and all of you — run!” Sirius yelled, dashing across the chamber to meet Bellatrix in a dazzling display of duelling magic. Kaleidoscopic spell-light clashed and resonated, and splintered in a shower of golden sparks. Hermione did not see what happened next. Kingsley swept across her field of vision as he threw his purple robe at a pockmarked Rookwood before sending him flying with a well-placed kick to the solar plexus. Another jet of green light flew over Harry’s head as he launched himself towards Neville, and Hermione quickly threw up another Shield Charm over the three of them — it blocked a stray spell and dissipated with a fizzle.

“Can you stand?” Harry bellowed. When Neville gave a jerky nod, Harry tossed Neville’s arm over his shoulder and hauled him up. Hermione grabbed Neville’s other arm, supporting his weight the best she could, but Neville’s legs would not bear him — they were limp and boneless. Then, out of nowhere, a man lunged at them and they fell backwards with a yelp of surprise, Hermione tangling with a moaning Neville as the man bore down hard on Harry.

“The prophecy, Potter, give it to me!” Lucius Malfoy snarled, white teeth flashing, as the tip of his wand pressed hard between Harry’s ribs.

“No—get—off! Hermione, catch it!” Harry flung the prophecy across the floor and Hermione scrambled up, kneeing Neville in the stomach on accident, as she hastened to scoop the glass ball to her chest. Malfoy twisted around the waist and pointed his wand at her, but Harry jerked his knees up and jabbed his wand into the man’s pelvis, yelling, “Impedimenta!”

Malfoy was blasted off, soaring across the room and smashing into the opposite wall, a trickle of blood running down his temple. Harry scurried away and knocked his back against the dias where Sirius and Bellatrix were now duelling, deadly and incomparable. Hermione — already on her feet and wand at the ready — watched as the air rippled, briefly turning iridescent like an oil spill, and a tall Death Eater materialised out of thin air. He knelt down by a dazed Lucius Malfoy, grabbed him by the waist, and lifted him smoothly up. He aimed his wand at Harry, but before he could draw breath to strike, Lupin had jumped between them.

“Round up the others and GO!” he commanded, sending a red jet of light towards the pair, only to be parried by an arching purple spell.

“Hermione, let’s go!” Harry yelled, his face red with exertion. He’d seized Neville by the shoulder of his robes and lifted him bodily to the first of the stone steps.

“I’m an idiot.” Hermione ran up to them, feeling like she should slap herself on the forehead, and tapped her wand over Neville’s head. A dark-green wave washed over him and Neville gave a shudder. Surprise dawned on Harry’s face as he tugged Neville up and easily heaved him onto his back.

“Feather-light Charm,” Hermione explained. “We’ll find out if it’s all right to cast on humans after we get out of here.”

Neville wheezed out an incoherent sound in accord and Hermione hoped she hadn’t just resigned him to a floaty existence where he’s experiencing only a tenth of the normal G-force.

“Prophecy’s with you?” Harry asked as they crawled on the floor beneath the benches. Hermione nodded, then a thud was heard above them and they all froze in suspense. Peeking out, Hermione cautiously watched as the same tall Death Eater deftly hopped from bench to bench, avoiding Lupin’s attacks.

“Coast is clear,” she muttered, once the pair had moved away in a swirl of smoke and flashes of spells. 

They were almost at the foot of the stairwell when a figure appeared directly above them, framed in the doorway from the Brain Room, and shouted, “He is coming!”

The effect was instantaneous. Immediately, the Death Eaters struggled to reassemble, and Rookwood, half of whose face looked melted off, cackled rambunctiously. 

“He’s coming,” Rookwood echoed. “The Dark Lord is coming!”

Hermione’s head whipped back around, but the figure in the doorway had vanished, and flashes of light winked in and out of existence behind the entryway. Gnawing worry settled at the bottom of her stomach; Hermione hoped the others were all right.

“SIRIUS!” Harry roared, thunderously. “LOOK OUT!”

“Come on, you can do better than that!” Sirius’ voice echoed around the cavernous room. Ducking under a jet of red light, he danced away from a snarling Bellatrix Lestrange, light and swift on his toes.

She snapped her wand like a whip and the second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest. The laugher had not quite died on his face, but his eyes widened in shock — a red flower bloomed atop his robes, bleeding into the white fabric of his shirt. He stumbled backwards, and careened off the dias and into the sunken pit.

“Why, yes, cousin. I can do better than that,” Lestrange said, smiling wickedly, and edged towards the rim of the dias. She stared down at Sirius from above, grey eyes twinkling like twin stars. “Good-bye, Siri. Avada K—!”

A piercing, guttural roar resonated throughout the chamber and a massive something — swift and shapeless in the darkness — leaped onto Bellatrix Lestrange from the side, biting her wand-arm with a bone-shattering crunch. As the witch shrieked in pain and fear, it viciously tore her arm off at the shoulder, splattering blood across her face and hair.

An animal, Hermione realised. It was an animal of some sort, though she couldn’t see well enough to make out what species — black, sleek, with a stocky, muscular build and a long tail. It landed softly and dropped the ragged, ripped off limb, still clutching Lestrange’s wand, before it stalked forwards, preparing to pounce once again.

“No, wait!” Sirius shouted, and the massive beast swivelled its rounded head towards him, just as Lestrange slashed her remaining arm in a graceful arc, screeching an unfamiliar curse, and wrenched away, her skirts and robes coiling about her legs. A sharp yelp of pain was all her attacker had emitted as it was blasted away towards a nearby wall, smashing into it soundly and sliding down onto the ground.

Then, several things happened at once. Sirius had pulled himself upwards by the edge of the dias and shuffled towards the crumpled figure as speedily as he could, heedless of both incapacitated and uncaptured Death Eaters in his path, as well as his bleeding injury. A red-faced Rodolphus Lestrange had blocked Lupin’s yellow-hued spell with a Shield Charm and dashed towards his wife, who’d clamped her hand over her stump, a look of pure, unadulterated rage twisting her face horrendously.

“I’ll kill you!” Bellatrix screamed. Rodolphus grabbed her about the waist and began to spin them into a Side-Along Apparition. “I’ll see you dead—!”

Before she could finish, the pair Disapparated from the Ministry. Bereft of Lestrange’s enraged bellows, the chamber was almost silent until Sirius let out a piercing keening, drowning out the animal’s low, gurgling whimpers.

Then, Dumbledore swept into the chamber.

✨✨✨

I must not fear.

Draco Malfoy smoothly stepped out of a tall, marble fireplace, black dragon-leather wingtips hitting the polished walnut floor of the East Wing’s Green Drawing Room in Malfoy Manor.

The room was commodious and beautiful: as the name implied, it was outfitted in an intricately embroidered silk wallpaper of pale green, tastefully well-furnished, and decorated with several artworks from the German Romanticism movement. Draco glanced back — the fireplace was freshly swept and cleaned, but there were several grimy footprints on the floorboards, and ash and Floo powder had been tracked onto the expensive silk rug. Draco frowned and checked the antique Ming-dynasty vase atop the fireplace; it was mostly full, freshly raked through, and the Floo powder inside was celadon in colour, not crimson.

Interesting, not domestic travel then.

Draco snapped his left arm sharply, and his wand fluidly slid out of its leather holster beneath his white, pinpoint shirt, and into his waiting palm. Three cleaning spells later, all traces of trespassers had vanished. Narcissa Malfoy would not stand for anything less than pristine and had instilled the same level of appreciation for neatness in both of her sons. However, it was quite peculiar that none of the house-elves, from the veritable army Malfoy Manor housed, had come to tidy-up the mess. Lucius must have ordered them to keep out of the way — either to safeguard from stray wandwork or preserve his visitors’ privacy.

Draco narrowed his eyes, analysing and identifying the patterns in underpinning data; things grew curiouser and curiouser, and he’d felt the keen unease bubbling up in the pit of his stomach since he’d been summoned into Professor Snape’s office. After his last exam of the term, Severus informed him that his Lord Father had bid his presence post-haste. Draco had a gnawing suspicion he could extrapolate where things were headed — nowhere pleasant.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

“Ah, Draco,” Lord Lucius Malfoy, titled as Marquis of Wilton, greeted, sweeping into the room, his long hair gleaming under the bright, white light of the charmed, sempiternal candles. “You’ve arrived, and not a moment too soon.”

“My apologies, Father.” Draco inclined his head. He was arrestingly tall, lean and athletic, with long, lissom limbs and powerful shoulders, and at sixteen, at height with his father. He’d noticed Lucius did not have his cane with him, so he must have already had his wand on his person.

Lucius wielded an ancestral wand, belonging once to Armand Malfoy — eighteen inches long, made of elm wood, with a dragon heartstring core — and Draco had never seen Lucius wield another. He must have though; Draco knew Lucius well enough to surmise that he would never deliberately handicap himself in his youth by learning magic at Hogwarts with a wand that did not choose him. Draco was not fond of conjecture and speculation, but he was perceptive and had a propensity to postulate probable conclusions, the truth of which was premised on the strong evidence he ascertained. 

Lucius studied him, a peculiar look briefly crossing his supercilious, well-formed face. His eyes were the colour of a frigid winter dawn and they, however, remained unmoved. Draco squashed the urge to squirm under Lucius’s shrewd gaze — the one that never failed to make Draco feel like he was an idiot infant.

“I trust you’re well. How are your studies going?”

“Splendidly. Top of the year, as expected.”

“And your brother?”

“He’s performing excellently.” Draco raised an eyebrow. “Had Severus not reported his progress?”

“He had,” Lucius said. “No matter, we shall speak more later. Come, make haste, we don’t have any time to waste.” And with that, he glided out of the room with the same briskness and dramatism as he’d entered it.

Draco followed Lucius down the well-lit, oxblood hallway adorned sparsely with gilded candelabra and an occasional moving painting. He glanced out of one of the windows as he passed — dusk was falling; the sky was painted with broad strokes of burnished bronze and orange shafts of crepuscular sun-rays refracted through the wooly clouds. Mentally, Draco assessed the resources he had on his person — his wand in its holster, an eagle-feather quill and some spare bit of parchment in the pocket of his robes, the heirloom pocket-watch in his waistcoat, and a thoroughly charmed, dragon-leather coin purse he’d always kept in the innermost breast pocket of his jacket. Seemingly, there was not a weapon in sight.

They had taken a left turn before Lucius’s pace waned as they entered the manor’s entrance hall. Brilliant and spacious, it was four stories high, bracketed by wide ivory columns, and arched up into a stained glass ceiling. By its grand, twining stairwell stood a rangy, raw-boned witch gowned in an expensive set of black silk robes. She had thick, wild hair that was secured away from her proud, patrician face with a ruby-encrusted circlet his mother had favoured. Her thin, downturned lips had a pronounced philtrum and once she’d laid her Black eyes on him, they curved up into a genuine grin.

“Nephew,” Bellatrix Lestrange greeted, delighted. “I have missed you.”

“Likewise, Aunt Bella,” Draco said, warmly, and stepped into her embrace.

Draco had always been of two minds about his aunt Bella. He remembered the times, long ago, when she used to be fun. She was the last of the Dark Lord’s followers to be apprehended, prosecuted, and incarcerated; and that had happened just six months before Mother’s accident. Before she was caught though — unsurprisingly due to a carelessness on her part, during a rare visit into Muggle London, for one of her ‘stress relievers’, as she used to call them — Bellatrix Lestrange, at large and wanted by the entirety of Wizarding Britain, was a stowaway at Malfoy Manor, making her a rather constant presence in Draco’s early years.

For all of her psychotic tendencies, she was oddly fond of him and Scorpius, though she hadn’t had a motherly bone in her entire body, and thus was never inclined to tend to either of them when Narcissa had fallen sick. Draco supposed she viewed Scorpius and him as adorable pets, kittens or some other furry little creature. Nice to stroke their hair, pinch their cheeks, and play around, but she wouldn’t want to give birth to one. Bella had been the one to teach him how to fly a broom, actually. She did it in a typical Bella fashion: she had thrust a boom into his hands, grinned at him broadly, and promptly thrown Draco out of a tower window.

Draco peered down at her, studying Bellatrix closely; she was much too pale and gaunt. Her skin was papyraceous and her hooded eyes were lined with mauve bruises — years in Azkaban had sapped most of her health and even depleted her once proud beauty. Yet, he could still see the remnants of the regal sense of self and the great good looks of the Black family — so strongly reminiscent of Mother it sent Draco’s chest aching.

“Circe, what has that ghastly place done to you? Worry not, we’ll take care of you,” Draco said, truly believing it. He ran his hand through her dark hair fondly. It was untamed and dry beneath his ministrations — mentally, Draco gauged roughly what cocktail of potions she’d need to be put on to regain her vitality. There was an accomplished Mediwizard at St. Mungo’s, who was as skilled as he was discrete. Draco would have to owl him come morn. “You’re home now, Aunt, with family.”

“Cissa raised you to be such a good boy.” Bellatrix petted his cheek affectionately, and a scarlet shadow fell across her face as a wyvern in the glass mural above chased a wood nymph in an endless circle. “However, my sweet, now is not the time to concern yourself with trivialities. For tonight shall mark the dawn of a new age and we must prepare ourselves for it.”

Instantly, Draco’s reality came crashing violently back into cold, cruel focus; his breath caught in his chest painfully as his brewing suspicions emerged to the forefront of his mind with crystalline clarity.

“The Dark Lord...?”

“Is in the great chamber, awaiting our progress, with Pyrites and Pettigrew attending to him,” informed Lucius, voice deep and modulated, speaking for the first time in a while.

Draco slowly nodded, digesting the information. Last he heard, the Dark Lord was down in Transylvania, hauled up in that ancient castle he took an uncanny liking to. Now, he was a guest in Draco’s home, and was currently in an adjacent room with but an oak door and a bucket full of square meters separating him from Draco.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

“He wishes not to be disturbed, he’s preparing,” Bellatrix said, exuberantly, smiling once again. “You shall have to wait a bit more to greet him properly, Draco, dear.”

“Yes,” Draco said, hollowly, barely registering anything aside from the growing dread welling up inside of him like the coalescing of a thunderstorm. He’d passingly wished he’d had the foresight to take a Calming Draught before going to Severus, but alas, the potion dulled the mind and the senses, so perhaps it was for the best he was acutely aware of his circumstances. Instead, he let the familiar, soothing wave of Occlumency ripple and echo through his cavernous mind, seizing his fear and composing him once again. “Yes, of course. I must not presume upon the Dark Lord’s time.”

“Speaking of time, we have none of it,” Lucius pronounced, striding towards Draco, a bundle of dark cloth in his hands. “Here, change into this and be quick about it, boy.”

Draco glanced down, recognising it as a set of utilitarian robes and armour. Quickly, heedless of either Lucius or Bellatrix, he peeled off his outer school robes and turned, folding them into a neat pile on the bottom step of the grand stairwell. Underneath, Draco was dressed casually for his station, but immaculately nonetheless in a bespoke three-piece tweed suit in dark grey; over which, he donned the metallic-grey body-armour — a brief examination of the dragon-leather determined it to be Ukrainian Ironbelly hide. Strapping on the silver-plated, protective arm and leg guards, he forwent the boiled-leather breastplate in favour of remaining in his waistcoat and jacket. After pulling over and securing the black wool robes, Draco paused, staring at the last article Lucius was handing to him.

It was silver and intricately engraved with arabesque patterns — a Death Eater’s mask, its mouth sewn shut.

Gingerly, Draco took it and looked up. Both Lucius and Bellatrix had already donned their robes and masks, their eyes were blazing and anticipatory behind the narrow slits.

“Go on, nephew,” Bellatrix urged him on, stepping closer and smoothing out the wrinkles down the front of Draco’s robes. “Soon, you’ll join in truth our esteemed ranks as one of the Dark Lord’s loyal servants.”

“It would be a great honour,” Draco softly muttered, casting his eyes downwards as he slid the silver vizard on. I must not balk, he thought, screwing tight his courage, willing his spine and liver to become dragonwrought steel, even as a repugnance burned a path down his throat, passing through his heart and shackling his limbs. I cannot yield. I must bear it all.

“We shall depart tout de suite,” Lucius drawled, marching towards the outer parlour where the visitors’ Floo was installed. Bellatrix trailed him like a teetering shadow, belying the ferocious, prodigious nature of her duelling style. “The others await.”

The others, Draco brooded, the words snagging his attention like a rusty nail on a cashmere thread as he followed his elders some paces behind. There were others and the Dark Lord awaited progress. They were planning to usher in the dawn of a new age, huh? Curiouser and curiouser, and promising to be not at all to his liking.

Stealthily, Draco twisted the heir’s signet ring he always wore on his left smallest finger, then slowly ran his hand through his hair, finally listening to the message he’d been concerned about ever since his ring grew hot in the northeast hallway. “Six chickens have flown the coop,” Pansy’s husky voice whispered into his ear, “searching for the dog star.”

At once, pieces of a puzzle had fallen into place, yielding a much clearer picture; the realisation sent Draco’s mind galloping clean through the remnants of the fog of confusion besieging him prior. A trap, he concluded, for Potter. Dispose of him when he has but a few allies. He’d serve as excellent bait to reel Dumbledore out of hiding, too. Two birds, one stone. But to what end; for what purpose? 

Patience, Draco cautioned himself, biting on the inside of his mouth to ground his thoughts, lest he played his hand too soon. He mustn’t look either too eager or too apprehensive — he was a Malfoy-Black, only sharp-witted self-containment for him. He would ascertain everything in due time. He was a Slytherin, and Slytherins act only when an opportunity presented itself and not a moment sooner.

In front of him, Bellatrix stepped into an ornately carved, elephant-bone fireplace in the stylish parlour room, adored in warm grey wallpaper along which an embroidered crown of kingfishers animatedly hopped from branch to branch. With a handful of green Floo powder, she vanished in a swirl of emerald flames.

Next, was Lucius’s turn. He stepped forwards, creating a silhouette of green that nearly rendered his face completely covered by the room’s darkness. “Whatever you must do tonight,” he warned, sparing Draco not a glance as the flames took him away, “remember whose son you are.”

Alone, Draco closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. He had never forgotten who his father and mother were. He could not forget, not ever, not even when he tried. Then, he stepped into the roar of green fire, whirling away.

When Lucius, Bellatrix, and Draco arrived into the Ministry of Magic, they were greeted by a reedy, dark-haired man with a thin goatee streaked with silver and a great overhanging forehead shadowing two glinting eyes. He was Pius Thicknesse of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and within ten-minutes of meeting him, Draco could discern he was operating under a skillful application of the Imperius Curse. It was fine, complex work which permitted Thicknesse to continue his job to satisfactory performance — no doubt cast by either Lucius Malfoy, whose finesse with the spell was by no small part due to generations of selective breeding shaping Malfoys into natural experts at the mind arts, among other great and enviable talents, or the Dark Lord himself.

Once Thicknesse informed them he had linked his fireplace to the Floo Network, Lucius specified and disengaged the security system monitoring the ministerial Floos. He left his office, with Lucius’s permission, and Draco listened as other members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement bid each other farewell as the working hours drew to a close, and within ten minutes, the Ministry of Magic closed for the day.

Then, the others arrived.

The fireplace flared back to life, and they emerged, walking single-file, accoutred in the same black wool robes and dragon-hide body armour as Draco and Lucius. Among them were many Death Eaters who had been featured in the Daily Prophet’s article circa January about the Azkaban breakout: Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, Augustus Rookwood, and Bartholomew Mulciber. In addition to them, the gathering also consisted of Alfred Avery, Vincent Crabbe Sr., Theodore Nott Sr., Richard Jugson, and Walden MacNair.

After the twelve Death Eaters and Draco descended into the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, Lucius instructed Draco to accompany the weedy, pigeon-hearted Alfred Avery, whose fiendish disposition grated on Draco’s nerves, and assist him with whatever private mission the Dark Lord had entrusted Avery with. Despite the countless shortcomings of Avery’s personality, his loose lips proved to be a veritable gold mine of information for Draco.

While Avery skid around the purpose of his assignment, Draco deduced the Dark Lord was searching for two items in the Ministry: a prophecy about him and Harry Potter, and something else — something that had made its way into the Department of Mysteries only recently.

Which, in itself, raised a number of questions: what was Potter’s purpose in this entire prophecy-retrieving affair? Had the Dark Lord meant to ambush Potter and eliminate him, Draco could understand the cloak-and-dagger approach, but clearly, Potter was here only to retrieve the prophecy so then later, the Death Eaters could purloin it from him. Thus, why couldn’t the Dark Lord cut out the middle-man, as it were, and retrieve the bloody foggy-globe himself? He had the foresight and the resources to ensure his followers would be able to entrench upon the Ministry undetected, surely, it was far more logical to obtain the prophecy without informing Potter and Dumbledore of its acquisition by involving them?

After an explosion shook the Hall of Prophecies and cut Draco’s contemplations short, Avery touched his left arm briefly and informed Draco that Lucius had summoned him to aid in the apprehension of Potter, and before Draco could protest, he scampered away into the dimly lit corridor towards the Truth Chamber. Unwilling to face Lucius’s wrath for his non-compliance, Draco acquiesced.

Presently, Draco cursed all of them: he cursed the Dark Lord; he cursed Potter for his inane plan and only having five more school-aged comrades on his side while facing twelve marked Death Eaters and an unwillingly present school-rival under a Disillusionment Charm; he cursed Avery for being a self-serving knave; but, most of all, Draco cursed himself and his damnable curiosity, for it shall surely be the cause of his untimely demise one day.

But never was anything great achieved without danger*, was the pesky thought on the forefront of Draco’s mind and he hated himself for knowing it to be true.

“Oh, fuck this,” he growled through gritted teeth and pushed, muscles straining, finally shoving a chunk of the fallen ceiling off. Draco rolled out from beneath the rubble, finally catching his breath. His uncle Rabastan better hope to never fucking meet him in a dark corner, for Draco would do terrible things to a man who thought it was acceptable to cast offensive magic when his fool head was stuck in a perpetual aging-deaging loop. What kind of ignoramus cast a poorly controlled Bombarda on a weight-bearing wall? One who advocated the movement for pureblood supremacy, apparently.

Groaning, Draco got to his feet and checked himself for injuries. Finding none, he straightened up and considered his circumstances. The fuck was he doing? He did not want to be here. He did not want to chase in inutility after his schoolmates when he had no inclination of aiding in their capture and would prefer to snoop through the twelve chambers instead. The Department of Mysteries was on the cutting-edge of Europe’s esoteric magical research, and Draco would sooner take advantage of the opportunity this impromptu field trip presented him rather than involve himself in whatever the Dark Lord was scheming.

He glanced down at the rubble at his feet and smirked. He just might still be able to further his own goals.

“RON? GINNY? LUNA?” Draco heard Potter bellow in an office up ahead as soon as he had finished and dusted off his hands. Just a few moments later, he watched, still Disillusioned, as Dolohov and Jugson rushed past him and towards the Gryffindorks.

The part of him that he supposed was his rarely-vocal conscience reprimanded him for his inaction when children his age were in danger, and because it had the audacity to sound like a disappointed Scorpius, Draco told it to kindly stuff it and ran after the pair of Death Eaters, wand at the ready. He caught up to them forthwith, stopping briefly in the entryway to assess the situation, before joining the skirmish.

“Silencio!” cried Granger and Dolohov’s gruff voice abruptly cut-off. Her strikingly pretty face was smudged with dust and sweat, and her pink wool jumper was torn at the shoulder, but otherwise she looked intact and uninjured. Meanwhile, Potter looked a lot worse for wear, but somehow had the presence of mind to successfully petrify Jugson with a Full Body-Bind Curse. “Well done, Ha—”

Dolohov made a sudden slashing movement with his wand and a streak of purple flame was ready to hit Granger across the chest, but Draco’s wandwork was faster.

“Carpe Retractum,” he exclaimed, and a purple rope made of light wrapped itself around Granger’s mid-section and hurled her away from where Dolohov’s curse was aimed. With a wince, Draco realised he’d poured too much magic and overshot — instead of depositing her by Potter, the cord of light smashed her into a bookcase, where she was promptly deluged in a cascade of heavy books. 

Well, Draco reasoned with pink-cheeked embarrassment, a few bruises is preferable to being cursed with an unknown dark spell.

Before anyone else could react, he’d sent a well-aimed Stupefy Duo at Dolohov, who’d lit up with its orange glow and crumpled on the floor in a dead heap. Quickly, he ducked back into Time Chamber proper and hid behind a column, feeling the Disillusionment Charm wear off. He waited, but neither Potter nor Granger nor Longbottom questioned who’d stunned Dolohov, and before too long, they hurried past him and towards the Brain Room.

Draco breathed a sigh of relief and, out of habit, pulled out his pocket-watch and checked the time. Then, he twirled his wand around his person, as though he was wrapping himself in a rope, and felt the sensation of a raw egg being cracked onto his head as the charm travelled down his body — within a moment, he was Disillusioned again and hastened out of the chamber. Things were rapidly spinning out of control.

Fifteen minutes later, Draco deeply regretted not breaking Dolohov and Jugson’s legs when he had the chance. He’d swerved on his heel, spinning out of the line of fire of Dolohov’s Killing Curse, which the Death Eater had unsuccessfully hurtled at Moody before Disappariting next to the Auror and clubbing him over the head with a wooden table leg. Draco fluidly bobbed and weaved through the fray, ducking and rolling out of the way of stray spells and occasional throwing knife that Bellatrix favoured. There were several setbacks of duelling under a Disillusionment Charm, however, the advantages preponderated over them.

Finally reaching a wall, Draco put his back to it, and with a flick of his wand, cast a Engorgio on Rodolphus Lestrange, swelling the soft tissues of his hands and face, and then a Scourgify to burn the outer layer of skin off. He supposed cursing one brother was as good as cursing the other, and thus, considered Rabastan’s prior offense absolved.

Draco tossed a Freezing Spell at Rookwood’s flank when Lucius Malfoy smashed soundly into a wall to Draco’s left, not two feet away from him. Instantaneously, Draco sprinted towards him, feeling his Disillusionment Charm fade again with a shimmer. He knelt down by a disoriented Lucius, wrapping an arm around his waist, and cooly pulling him up, balancing Lucius’s weight against his shoulder and hip. He noticed Lucius had lost his silver mask.

“Can you stand,” Draco asked, eyes not leaving the three Gryffindor stooges — one of whom had undoubtedly blasted Lucius into a wall and cracked his skull, if the blood on his temple was anything to go by. He levelled his wand at them. “Yes or no?”

“I think so,” rasped Lucius, just as Remus Lupin leaped in front of them and sent a Stunning Spell their way. Draco made a sharp, upward movement and parried it with a Revulsion Jinx — the two spells clashed and fizzled out mid-air.

He aimed an Alarte Ascendare at Lupin and, squeezing Lucius about the ribs tighter, dragged him towards a nearby column and propped him up against it. 

“Stay here,” Draco instructed. “Try to regain focus.” And with that, he spun around, throwing up a blue-tinged Protego just in time for it to absorb Lupin’s Full Body-Bind Curse.

The Gryffindors had long since scampered away, but Draco did not particularly care about them. He supposed he could always make Potter pay twice-fold for Lucius’s injuries at school — it was not a pressing matter. Remus Lupin, who was talented enough with a wand to warrant a position as a Defense Against Dark Arts professor, however, was.

“Confringo!” Draco shouted, vaulting over a wooden desk and flipping it over to the side with a kick to use as an impromptu shield. “Depulso!”

Lupin had deftly evaded the Blasting Curse and expectedly walked right into the path of Draco’s Banishing Charm, soaring through the air a few feet before he cancelled it with a Finite Incantatem. But the brief respite was enough for Draco to pull out a phial of Bundimun Secretion and toss it on the floor between Lupin and Lucius, bracketing off the former from the latter — the lime-green substance oozed and bubbled, its pale vapours rising high and stringent as it rotted away the stone floor.

Lupin cursed, stomping on the edge of his robes as they disintegrated from the acid, and made a sharp cut with his wand, yelling, “Diffindo!”  

The table behind which Draco crouched sliced neatly in two. Draco rolled out of the way and leaped over a bench, landing on a farther one, before rotating on his heel and launching a tried-and-true spell sequence that Lupin was hard-pressed to withstand.

Draco jumped from bench to bench, making sure to stay out of Lupin’s reach so he’d be forced to utilise long-distance spells, rather than close-combat ones. He glanced over his shoulder, eyes finding the Black cousins expertly duelling one another. The split-second distraction was enough for Lupin to take advantage of and aim an Expulso on the bench beneath Draco’s feet, blowing it up.

Draco toppled off and slammed into the ground hard, groaning as he felt a few big wooden splinters lodge themselves into his thigh, just below the body armour. He sent three Blasting Curses at Lupin’s feet, one after the other, as he crawled away and dragged himself up. Quickly, he checked his injury — it wasn’t deep, but Lupin had successfully temporarily curtailed his higher agility, evening out their odds of victory.

Draco launched himself forwards, casting a Flipendo Maxima, but Lupin was swifter and casted a Fumos — milky grey smokescreen billowing out of his wand rapidly and cloaking the third of the room in a cloyingly sweet-smelling mist. 

Draco cursed and cut his wand upwards; the smoke reformed and solidified in seconds to become a swarm of pursuing daggers, soaring through the air towards Lupin, who conjured a sheet of iron in front of himself just seconds before the daggers imbedded themselves in it.

Out of nowhere, black ropes quickly wrapped themselves around Lupin in tight coils before turning into living snakes, ensnaring Lupin and snapping at his face, fangs dripping with venom. Draco stood there for a numb moment, breathing heavily, feeling his heart hammer against his chest like a war drum, before snapping his head up.

Lucius stood behind Lupin, his outrageously long wand still trained on an incapacitated werewolf, and looked far more composed and lucid than he was when Draco left him. “Come,” he commanded, outstretching his left hand towards Draco, who obediently shuffled towards him. “We don’t have much time.”

He grabbed Draco by the shoulders, spinning them into a Side-Along Apparition, and the last glimpse Draco caught of the Death Room was of Sirius Black freezing half of Bellatrix’s body as she snapped a fire-whip at him.

The Malfoys swirled back into being on the far side of the Atrium. It was a long and splendid hall with polished, dark wood floor, its peacock blue ceiling was inlaid with ever-shifting, gleaming golden symbols. The walls on each side were panelled in shiny, castaneous wood and had many gilded fireplaces set into them. To such a fireplace, Lucius currently strode, with Draco hot on his heels.

“You must leave,” Lucius ordered, and threw Ministry-issue dark green Floo powder into the fireplace, which roared to life with a bright flare. “You cannot be found here. They cannot see you.”

“And you?”

Lucius studied him for a moment, his eyes the palest of blues in the flickering firelight and chillingly calculating. “I cannot—I must not. The Dark Lord would not take kindly to me abandoning the cause. Avery must retrieve—ah, nevermind that. The mission is paramount, it takes precedence over everything.”

Except your heir, Draco thought, not quite certain of his conclusion. Lucius was not the sentimental type. This must be motivated by other reasons. 

“Yes,” Draco said, swallowing thickly and stepping towards the fireplace. “I understand.”

“Wait.”

Draco froze, turning back. Lucius crouched down and pulled a silver dagger out of his right boot. Distantly, Draco wondered if Lucius was far more kindred to Bellatrix than either of them let on. Straightening up, he said, “Give me your palm.”

Draco did and Lucius slashed it open deeply with the dagger, hot blood spilling out of the wound and onto the polished floor. Then, Lucius pulled off his signet ring and pressed the face of it into the gash, letting the hefty ancestral gemstone steep in Draco’s gushing blood.

“Tu fui, ego eris. Tu fui, ego eris,” he chanted, and after a tense moment, Draco’s voice joined in, too. A dazzling, prismatic display of blood magic surged around them like a tornado, swelling and ebbing with each brilliant pulse of the lapidified wyvern’s heart — a whirling, viscous pool of swirling emerald-green and bruise-purple spirals. “Tu fui, ego eris.”

“Blood of my blood, bone of my bone,” Draco recited next, knowing the words by heart. Frost clung to Draco’s skin and a dreadful cold seeped into his marrow, just as smouldering heat rose in rivulets of steam around them and burned Draco from within. “Flesh of my flesh; bond to the heart of stone, the light that brings the dawn. Power you yield and power I bore. Time flows on, both present and past; death is the first, and is also the last.”

The ring burst with virulent magic, the gemstone bleached of its smaragdine colour, and turned transparent for a heartbeat before soaking up the almost-black blood and becoming purpureal. A bright-gold aureole engulfed both Lucius and Draco, and Draco felt the signum inked on his skin blaze hotly and briefly, before all of the magic swiftly syphoned into the signet ring like twisting snakes.

“Resurgam de profundis,” Lucius rasped out, pale brow beaded with sweat.

“Ad ignem ad lucem,” Draco replied, blood rushing in his ears thunderously, throat hoarse, and stray sparks of magic jumping from his fingertips. With shaky hands, he took the ring and pulled it onto his left hand’s fourth finger, where it magically adjusted size and changed shape. Then, Draco stared assessingly at the previous Head of the Noble House of Malfoy.

Lucius Malfoy was a Lord — The Lord in the eyes of his liegemen and his word was law; punishment for disobedience ranged from severe to exorbitant. He was a colossus in his field — a puppet-master and manipulator extraordinaire. Morally particularistic and one of the most powerful people in European Wizarding community, he was a man to be dominated by, or to fight fiercely, and he was pitiless.

Draco never understood him.

“Take care of Scorpius,” Lucius instructed and pushed him into the fireplace. The last thing Draco saw before the green fire consumed his vision was the man who raised him, staring back at him, a strange, foreign emotion welling up in his eyes and spilling over, etching itself into Draco’s memory.

Chapter Text

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chapter three: fly where eagles dare

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—— August 1992 —— 

“Draco, peel yourself off the shop window, it’s unseemly.”

Draco reared back quickly from the arch-headed, plate glass of Quality Quidditch Supplies’s front façade. He had been peering excitedly at the store display, where a top-of-the-line racing broom was exhibited: sleek and swift, made out of polished ebony, it was black and silver with revolving stirrups and had long, very straight and smooth tail ends.

It was beautiful.

Reluctantly, Draco tore his eyes off the broom and obediently walked towards his father. The two of them were shopping in Diagon Alley for his Hogwarts supplies with Mipsy, a young, pink-cheeked maidservant elf with a propensity to sneak Scorpius treats from the kitchens, who was carrying their purchases. The day had been rather pleasant; the weather was bright and sunny, and the Malfoys had not encountered any acquaintances who’d infringed upon their time. Draco could almost pretend it was a leisurely father-son outing.

Lucius Malfoy tapped his cane on the rounded, ashen cobblestones and studied his son for a prolonged moment before his eyes cut to the rout of noisy Hogwarts students crowding the Quidditch shop’s storefront. “Tell me… what were your grades from last year’s exams?”

Draco drew himself taller then, tugging his waistcoat down, his spine was as straight as a guardsman’s awaiting inspection. “In the top ranks. Scoring in the ninety-ninth percentile in all of my classes barring History of Magic, where I scored in the upper ten percent.”

“Hadn’t Severus mentioned something about your Potions scores?”

Draco brightened with palpable pride. “He had. Best Hogwarts had in years.”

“What a talented son I have,” Lucius murmured softly in acknowledgement, even as his face remained inscrutable. “Such a laudable achievement deserves a worthwhile reward. Let us strike a deal: if you get into the Slytherin Quidditch Team on your first try, I’ll gift the team a brand new Nimbus Two-Thousand each.”

“Make it Nimbus Two-Thousand-and-One.”

“You dare to barter when you’re in a position of weakness? Cheeky. Very well, if you insist, I’ll do so, but only if you get the Seeker position.” Just like me, was left unsaid.

Draco paused, mulling over his options, before deciding to press further. “Can Scorpius get one, too?”

“No,” Lucius said, decisively. “Your brother is much too young for such an advanced broom. He’ll have to contend himself with your Suisei model, and even then, I won’t let him have it without casting protective charms on it first.”

Draco ran his tongue over the back of his teeth in contemplation. Suisei was Japanese-made and used to be the top broom on the market before the Nimbus Two-Thousand was released. Draco’s was only three-years-old and well-maintained, Scorpius shouldn’t feel too put out by inheriting this particular hand-me-down. Especially since he was only eight-years-old and, by all rights, too young for a proper broom of his own. 

“All right,” he agreed, thrusting his hand forwards, “it’s a deal.”

Lucius calmly shook his son’s hand and nodded. “Yes, a deal.”

Draco coughed lightly and stepped away, busing himself with looking over the supplies list. His cheeks were flushed from excitement and the tops of his ears felt hot. “We have to go to the bookstore next to pick up what seems to be Gilderoy Lockhart’s entire bibliography. May we stop by Magical Menagerie on the way? I think Scorpius was terribly lonely last year. He’s not used to being without my company since Mothe—”

Draco hastily cut himself off, inwardly cursing himself to be a dim-witted fool, but the damage has been wrought. What little good humour had creeped into Lucius’s gaze drained away in an instant, his expression shuttering off. The sun shone as brightly as British summer would permit and the sky above remained a cloudless blue, yet Draco felt a dreadsome chill seep into his bones.

He looked away, a familiar sensation of unfeeling detachment washing over him, and, distantly, he wondered if it was possible to love someone so strongly, so fiercely, one buried one’s heart with them when they were gone.

Draco felt phantom hands brush his hair, then his face; he felt nails scrape his neck and evanescent fingers cup his chin. He heard his mother’s gentle voice whisper into the shell of his ear: “If a man sits in despair, deprived of joy, with gloomy thoughts in his heart; it seems to him that there is no end to his suffering*—”

“Mipsy,” Lord Malfoy called.

The elf hurried over to them. She was outfitted smartly in the standard uniform of their Great House — a black dress, a white apron, and white, lace-trimmed cap, which almost fell during her hasty, sloppy curtsey. “Yessum, your lordship?”

“You are to accompany Draco in his errands. Do not take one step away from him. If anything happens, it’s your head,” Lord Malfoy ordered. “Find me once you’re done.”

He settled one hand heavily on Draco’s right shoulder; the hefty Malfoy signet ring hit his collarbone sharply, the cold metal biting Draco’s skin — it was leadened with power, charms, and bloody history. Lucius Malfoy stared down at his eldest son, and Draco tilted his face up and unabashedly stared back. Dispassionately, he considered, not for the first time, if his father could sense his buried trepidations, his dissembling heart.

Lord Malfoy squeezed the bones of Draco’s shoulder and calmly said, “Try not to get into trouble.”

Then, he briskly unhandled Draco and walked away. The sound of his steps was swallowed by the street’s cacophony as a path was cleared before him; the crowd parted like the churning waters of the Red Sea. People easily made way for Lord Malfoy, the assortment of feelings manifesting on their faces in his wake ranged from acrimony, to apprehension, to reverence, to abject horror.

“That went away,” Draco unthinkingly echoed aloud his mother’s whisperings, his eyes unwavering from his father’s departing figure. “This also may.”

—— June 1996 ——

Draco Malfoy rolled backwards out of the parlour room’s fireplace in a graceless heap of black robes and flailing limbs, and groaned.

He pushed himself up into a sitting position, body heavy with exhaustion, and furiously tore the silver mask off, hurling it into a far corner of a room, where it smashed into a wall with a crack. Draco grit his teeth and gripped his sweaty hair, pulling it. A spike of sullen resentment tore through his chest, even as an involuntary sob escaped him. 

Lucius had—he’d—

It was fine, Draco told himself as he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, repressing the urge to scream. Everything would be fine. He was Draco Malfoy. He would get through this. He could get through anything.

Draco took a series of deep, steadying breaths, letting his anger and distress pass over and through him — ocean waves over smooth stones at a beach, unfailing and sempiternal, until nothing remained.

Several minutes later, Draco dragged his left leg closer, tearing at the fabric of his trousers and examining the injuries — they were not deep, but the wooden splinters were rather sizable and the tissue around them was tender and crusted with drying blood. It would be prudent of him to take care of it now, before he limped his way into a raging infection. Draco took out his wand from his trouser pocket and began to pull jagged splinters out.

A Tegeo siphoned off the dried blood, then a Scourgify burned away the dirt and grime. Draco gritted his teeth from pain. He extracted the dragon-leather coin purse from the innermost breast pocket of his jacket, rummaged in it, then withdrew a fist-sized glass jar and unscrewed the metal lid. Inside was a translucent gelatinous substance, as thick as grindylow slime. Draco generously slathered it onto his thigh, hissing sharply as he felt the telltale cold burn of bacta. He tore a wide piece off the bottom of his robes, scouring it with a Scourgify before transfiguring it into a clean, linen bandage and wrapping it around the healing wounds.

He sighed, got to his feet, and glanced down at his filthy, torn robes; there was dust in his hair and blood on his suit — he made quite a sorry sight. Pansy would renounce their lifelong friendship if she saw him now. He ought to contact her, send signs of life, else she’d wring his neck for excessively worrying her. Habitually, Draco pulled out his pocket-watch to check the time—

His eyes widened.

A mad, wild glee bubbled up in his chest and spilled out in pearls of chortling laughter. The object in his hand was decidedly not his pocket-watch. It was made out of untarnished sterling silver and looked like a miniature lantern. Long and thin and engraved with runes, it hung on a slender silver chain, which pooled in Draco’s palm like a coiled serpent. In the middle of the lantern was a clear, sparkly crystal sphere, inside of which a delicate silver hourglass was suspended.

It was a time turner.

Draco threw his head back and his laughter turned maniacal as his whole body shook with it. Oh, Circe, this was absolutely brilliant.

Immediately, a tricky scheme surfaced from the depths of his consciousness and muscled its way to the forefront of Draco’s mind, overwhelming the buzzing multitude of abstract thoughts and half-formed questions until only it prevailed. The plan was ambitious and reckless, and the stakes were high, but he would gain everything by it — there was no question in Draco’s mind he’d follow through.

“Wenzel!” he called, pocketing the time turner, and the elf popped into the parlour with a snap and a mild-mannered Yessir. “Report,” Draco said, inspirited, his grey eyes fever-bright. “Where is our august Dark Lord? What of his attendants?”

Wenzel’s large brown eyes locked onto Draco’s left hand. “Young Master is… Lord of the Manor?”

“Yes, yes.” Draco impatiently waved him off. “I am the new Head of House of Malfoy. We shall discuss succession of power later, Wenzel. Tell me quickly: where is the Dark Lord?”

Wenzel nodded and complied, stringy fingers nervously worrying the hem of his black tailcoat. “His Eminence, the Dark Lord, departed from the premises not ten minutes ago. Wenzel knows not where, sir.”

Draco paced the length of the parlour. “Who was in the manor upon mine, Lady Lestrange, and Lord Malfoy’s departure and where are they currently?”

“His Eminence, and Masters Pyrites and Pettigrew. Presently, Master Pyrites and Master Pettigrew are in the great chamber, taking tea. Camomile with honey.”

Draco raised an eyebrow, gazing down at the anxious creature. “No one else is in the house? Are you quite certain?”

“Yes, Master Draco. Only Wenzel and the staff elves, and upstairs the—”

“What of the grounds?” Draco cut the elf off. “Anyone who is not part of the household lurking outside the manor’s walls?”

“No, Master Draco. Master Lucius had ordered everyone to remain within the manor and cancelled all appointments.”

Draco smiled fiendishly. What a stroke of fortune, he thought, gleefully. It seemed opportunities were tripping over one another to hurl themselves into his lap. He would make for a poor Slytherin and even poorer Malfoy if he did not exploit them thoroughly.

“Wenzel, find Ulrich and tell him ‘red cardinal is preparing for the winter’. He’ll know what to do. If he gives you any instructions, you are to obey and enforce them as if they came from my mouth. Then, inform the household of the succession. I am the new Head of House of Malfoy and my word is absolute law. Scorpius is my heir presumptive. From now on, none of the Malfoy elves answer summons from Lucius Malfoy or Bellatrix Lestrange, and you are to disregard any and all orders from them. Understood?” Wenzel nodded mutely, eyes as wide as saucers. “Good. You are dismissed for now.”

The overwhelmed house-elf vanished with a pop, and Draco clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together, thinking through stages of his plan. The prudent part of him cautioned to curb the excitement, forewarning vigilance and care. He glanced at the eighteenth-century longcase clock standing by the far wall and took note of the time.

Draco picked up the half-empty jar of bacta from the floor and tossed it high into the air, before catching it with one hand as he pulled the coin-purse with the other. He stuck his whole arm into it, depositing the jar into one of the boxes in the Elsewhere, and briefly rummaging inside the folded space until his active search had triggered the magic and his fingers found what he was looking for — a round compact mirror.

(Once again proving that few spells were as singularly convenient — and also technically illegal for non-licensed practitioners, but that was a negligible factor — as an Undetectable Extension Charm. Take that, Theodore Nott Junior and his ‘Fourty-Seven Unique Uses of Accio, or Fuck You, Draco, Bet You Cannot Think of a Fourty-Eighth’ thesis, pinned last Christmas to the Slytherin dorm’s notice board.

Arguably, Draco could have simply purchased a new mokeskin pouch once the magic on the old one had started to wear off, but then he would not be able to modify the Elsewhere to his personal preferences — and where was the fun in that?

“Because it was such fun to lose three fingers on your hand, huh?”

“I didn’t lose them,” Draco argued in the tone reminiscent of Professor McGonagall’s introductory Transfiguration lecture for First Years, earning himself a snort from Theo. “They were momentarily misplaced. In any case, Pomfrey reattached them easily enough.”)

Then, with a sweep of his robes, Draco exited the parlour room and proceeded to actualise phase one of his plan.

The great chamber was the palatial Malfoy Manor’s most magnificent space and one which — unlike the numerous lavishly decorated and grand drawing rooms and music rooms the manor boasted — had not been refurbished since the Jacobean era, granting it a stately and dignified atmosphere. The chamber was a celebration and demonstration of wealth and sophistication, imposing in its bright splendor.

Draco understood why Lucius had allocated the Dark Lord to it. One could never too frequently or too subtly remind one’s autocratic leader whose support and connections funded the bulk of his radical revolution on British soil.

Still, it was inconvenient to his plans that those mangy twits, Pyrites and Pettigrew, were being entertained in the chambers where the portrait of Etheldreda Opitria Malfoy resided. Only child of the British branch and Head of House of Malfoy until she was succeeded by her third son, Abraxas Cepheus Malfoy. She was Draco’s great-grandmother and headstrong, ironfisted woman, but a notorious busybody and a gossip; she had died late in life at the birthing bed, along with her stillborn daughter by her affair with Herbert Burke, whose portrait was prominently featured in the Ministry of Magic’s auditorium for his contributions to protecting wizarding Britain’s interests in the Egyptian Affair in the fifties. Hopefully, Lucius’s discretion meant he had sent all portraits on the ground floor out of their frames.

Wand at the ready and with soundless steps, Draco crept towards the great chamber’s double doors, one of which, luckily for him, was ajar. He pulled the compact mirror out of his trouser pocket and surreptitiously used it to spy into the room and its occupants.

Pettigrew was… being Pettigrew. Draco had met the man a handful of times and despite his perpetual attitude of cowardly subservience, he was remarkably unoffensive, if rebarbative and visually remindful of a rodent. He was happily lounging in a wingback by the towering fireplace, feet propped up on a footstool, and eating a cream tea scone with surprising delicacy.

On the other hand, Basil Pyrites was a dandy wizard who had a penchant for wearing white, silk gloves, which he often stained with blood. He was smartly-dressed and blond, much like Lucius, but where Lucius was sharp and suave, Pyrites was superficiality personified. He was staring out the far window, his hands clasped behind his back, as he spoke about Blodwyn Bludd’s latest album, On The Far Side Of, and how it was a betrayal of Bludd’s integrity as a musician now that he had stopped killing his victims.

The scene was oddly domestic. Draco grimaced and shook the unpleasant thought out of his head, setting to work. He burst through the door and, before either man could react, stunned both of them in quick succession with two well-aimed Stupefies. Two Incarcerous spells and a flick of his wand later, the bound and gagged unconscious men were floating past Draco towards the parlour room he left but a minute ago, where they would remain until his return. Draco glanced at the portrait above the fireplace and breathed a sigh of relief — his great-grandmother had not been privy to the scene.

Well then, Draco thought, onto phase two.

He approached the grand stairwell, bit his thumb, and with his blood traced a rune for FAITH in the air. It blazed into existence with heatless fire, the bold strokes and sleek curves burning out in a flash, and Draco watched as the smooth marble steps shifted and divided, sliding to the sides one by one, to reveal the underground entrance into the bowels of Malfoy Manor.

Draco walked forwards and it was like stepping into the darkness of a grave.

As he descended the ancient stone steps, torches flickered to life illuminating his path and bathing the narrow passageway in deep red light. He was not sure how long he walked — it felt like hours, though it must have been minutes. He could not have been down here for too long, or the timer spell he’d set to keep himself on schedule would activate, but he also knew his ancestors were not above impregnating the stones with time dilation magic and powering it for centuries with ritualistic blood sacrifices to safeguard their sacred chamber.

And secure it was — the chamber resided deep beneath the manor, below the cellars and the vaults, below the dungeons and the crypts; surrounded at all sides by the soil brought from their motherland, from the place where Morgan le Fay swore vengeance and birthed the first member of their Great House. The surrounding land was steeped in Malfoy blood and permeated with the deep strength of their ancestral magic, whose sole purpose was to protect the family at all costs.

When Draco finally entered the chamber, his breath caught in his throat.

It was not a large space, square and thirteen feet in length on either side, but it was minatory and ancient, the oldest structure in the demesne, and against the far wall, shining in the darkness, was the coveted Heart of Malfoy. His legs ate up the length of the chamber in two strides and Draco knelt before the everlit fireplace that burned with eerie colourless flames. Inside of it lay an iridescent hearthstone the size of a newborn babe’s skull — it glowed from within, as radiant as the sun.

Draco stared at it, watching the colours within the hearthstone shift and churn, drawing him in and swirling before his eyes with innumerable shades, each more beautiful than the last. He could feel his own magical core grow warm within his chest and echo every pulse of light from the hearthstone, reverberating through him, clawing into his bones, and etching itself into his marrow. In the otherworldly stillness of the chamber, the sound of his loneliness resonated, his heartbeat picking up and driving him mad with its speed. Relics of remembrance like shipwrecks dragged him down further and further into vortex memories of the things he loved, the things he lost, and the things he never had. He could see it, at the edge of his consciousness, the burning shadow—

Draco slapped himself, and it was like a sudden rush of water through his heart and lungs.

Unsurprisingly, the first thought that came to him was that he was not letting Scorpius into this place any time soon. He shuddered, and realised his skin was clammy with cold sweat and he was breathing laboriously. Draco swallowed heavily, and deeply sliced his palm open with a muttered Diffindo, sticking it into the hearthflame.

The world burned.

The pain spiked through his nerves with electrifying clarity, searing into his heart and mind, and yet he found himself unable to move, unable to speak, unable to scream. His throat seized tight in a vice and his body petrified from magic as he felt like his arm was being flayed and cooked alive.

I must not balk. I cannot yield. I must bear it all. I must, I must, I must.

Draco grit his teeth and shut his eyes, stars exploding behind his eyelids in flashes of white. When he opened them, he watched, in mute horror, as the skin of his hand boiled and bubbled, blisters swelling and bursting and oozing viscous liquids. The flesh of it singed and burned and blackened, curling off the bones in strips of charred crimson, and scattered into dust and ash within the colourless flame.

Blood of my blood, bone of my bone.

Words were wind, naught and useless. This was an ancient rite, beyond chants and incantations — it necessitated lifeblood, demanding a sacrifice, to forge a bond. He had to endure it, until the iridescent hearthstone was besmeared with his blood, until it quenched its thirst and had its fill of his pain.

Flesh of my flesh, bond to the heart of stone.

The heart of stone, the white heart in darkness, the light that brings the dawn — the Heart of Malfoy. The glow of it dimmed with each passing moment even as the chalk-white hearthflames rose higher and higher, engulfing the fireplace. Finally, the hearthstone was caked with his blood and Draco yanked his hand out of the fire, drawing it close to his chest and cradling the limb. When he looked down, his pupils shook — it was whole and unmarred, as it was when he entered the chamber.

Magic, Draco thought, with a jolt of irritation. He was born to it, yet it never ceased to amaze him what a fucking menace it was.

“This better have forged the bond, or I’m having strong words with the portrait gallery,” Draco muttered and reached deep into himself. He tuned and strummed the strings of his magical core like one would a violin, and listened to the drone and hum of magic reverberating in the stale air.

Ancient magic thrummed through the stones like the song of a battle drum: promising strength and protection to those of Malfoy blood, and woe and heartbreak to their enemies. Next to it, Draco could feel the quivering magic of the house-elves, lively and rapid like the palpitations of a mouse’s heartbeat. And then his own, high and clear and strong, like a blackbird’s song.

Draco got to his feet and dusted off his knees. Few estates could compete with the power slumbering in Malfoy Manor’s walls, the impenetrable warding that had only grown as centuries passed. Now it, and all the other properties connected to the hearthstone, were under his control. Draco smiled smugly; a bit of pain and trauma was a small price to pay for such power.

He focused and mentally searched for the thread that connected the hearthstone to the estate’s wards. Once he found it, Draco grasped its strings, and they burned and twisted, resisting interference, but Draco gripped them and pressed his will into the magic. Sweat beaded his forehead and his muscles strained, but Draco persevered and forced the magic to obey, to bend to his desires. Finally, it yielded and Draco impressed new commands onto the wards: all rights of entry onto the estate were revoked, and those who could access it must have both Malfoy and Black blood in their veins.

After the initial struggle, Draco spent an hour fine-tuning the wards to his specifications, and inculcating into them that he was Head of the House and not Lucius. Additionally, he had strengthened them to the best of his abilities, but although he had studied and researched wards and protective enchantments for years with the specific intent of making them impregnable to undesirables, he was only a teenager, and even knowledge and talent could not overcome the deficiencies of youth.

Draco sneezed and looked around the chamber. It really was intolerably dusty here, it must not have been cleaned in centuries. No Malfoy would have permitted a house-elf to enter the sacred chamber and no Malfoy would have stooped as low as to clean his own quarters. Draco rolled his eyes and cast a series of cleaning spells, removing all but the most ingrained dirt — good thing he was not the sort of Malfoy his ancestors imagined would seize control of their Great House.

Draco moved towards the stairwell and placed his foot on the first step, when he turned back and spared the Heart of Malfoy one last glance before walking away. In this darkness, he had met his creators; and it could not be denied, the story printed in his blood.

✨✨✨

When Draco entered the parlour room, he was pleasantly surprised to find that only seven minutes had passed since he’d left it last. The sacred chamber was definitely imbued with time dilation magics. He made a mental note to research those and find a way to utilise them — for one, the time he spent on his projects would increase exponentially, and he would be free to indulge in the labs to his heart’s content; for another, the commercial value of such a magic would propel his family’s wealth into the stratosphere.

Before his mind could gallop away with the thrilling possibilities, Draco reined himself in and refocused on the phase three of his plan.

He summoned the silver mask he’d discarded prior and put it on. Then, he turned to look upon the unconscious Pyrites and Pettigrew, bound with thick ropes and gagged. They were slumped against one another in the centre of the room.

Draco flicked his wand in their direction and, compelled by a Mobilicorpus, they floated up and hovered at his hip level, rigid like planks of wood. He waved his wand in a circle around them before cutting through it from the top, casting a Bedazzling Hex. He watched as the figures of the two men involuntarily shuddered and wavered before turning invisible. Draco tilted his head this way and that, examining his captives; they were mostly unseen, save for the nearly imperceptible shimmer of their silhouettes indicating their presence. The spell would suffice well enough for his purposes.

He took out the time turner, grabbed a fistful of one of the men’s robes, and turned the silver knob on the side of the crystal sphere one-and-a-half times. Draco watched the time rush backwards around him, smudged figures flowing like shadows through milk, then, he and his cargo were delivered out of the time bubble with a quiet pop.

Draco glanced at the clock behind him. Everything was going according to plan.

He twitched his wand, and the two men shuddered like puppets pulled by invisible strings and drifted into the fireplace. Then, Draco sauntered into the fireplace himself and, with a handful of green Floo powder, vanished in a swirl of emerald flames.

Draco stepped out of a fireplace for the fourth time today, shoes scraping against the dark wood floor, followed by his invisible Death Eater prisoners. A glance to his left told him he’d arrived at the correct destination: Ministry of Magic’s Atrium, fireplace number fourteen, the same one he had been sent through — will be sent? — by Lucius not too long ago. He put the time turner back into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out his trusty coin-purse, summoning an Erumpent horn out of it.

Thicknesse had assured Lucius he had disengaged the security system monitoring the ministerial Floos, but the public Floos in the Atrium each have an internal log of destination points, which were accessible by Floo Network Authority. An inconvenience for Draco, for it was an easily recoverable trace of his presence at the Ministry during the Death Eaters’ infiltration.

He cast an Ice Jinx on the Erumpent horn and tossed it into the fireplace. Once, the Erumpent horn was exposed to fire, it would blow up and destroy the fireplace along with all the evidence. The Ice Jinx was there to delay the reaction, as Draco did not want to inadvertently detonate his past self — future self? — in the process. Internally, he bemoaned wasting an expensive Class-B Tradeable Material ingredient, but, Draco reasoned to himself, the benefits outweigh the squander, even if he was motivated by paranoia.

Stepping away from the scene of a future crime, Draco frowned and tapped his wand against his thigh, mulling over possibilities and their probabilities in his head, thoughts expanding in multiple directions and analysing patterns. However improbable, he reminded himself, plan for the absolute worst. Then, at least you’d be pleasantly surprised by whatever happens.

Right then, onto phase four. He had loose ends to tie up.

Swiftly, Draco Disillusioned himself. Now was not the time to get cursed by those hex-happy classmates of his as he was dressed as a Death Eater and prowling the Ministry.

As he soundlessly made his way towards the Brain Room, Pyrites and Pettigrew tugged after him by an invisible tether like a fishing boat towed through the sea, Draco pondered. He did not remember being passed a time turner, which narrowed down his options to five potential avenues of action. Briefly, Draco wondered if the Muggle theory of ‘when time travelling, one cannot touch oneself’ was full of shite or not — it sounded plausible, but contact between matter with identical genetic composition did not equate to matter occupying the same space, thus, it was most likely a load of bollocks. 

“RON? GINNY? LUNA?” Draco heard Potter bellow like a cow in heat once again. And just like last time, Dolohov and Jugson rushed past both him and his equally Disillusioned past self on their way towards the office where the three Gryffindors were very loudly hiding.

Draco made his way into the chamber, edging his way around the mayhem and debris by hugging the wall, and watched as the quick, threeway skirmish unfolded. Then, the other Draco ducked behind a column, his Disillusionment Charm extinguishing with a ripple, and Draco took out the time turner, readying his wand. Soon enough, Potter, Granger, and Longbottom ran past both of them, and once his past self tucked his pocket-watch back into his waistcoat pocket, Draco cast the Entanglement Spell with admirable swiftness. It linked two objects together of approximate size and weight, switching them. When the silver time turner flickered out of existence on his palm and was replaced by the familiar sight of his pocket-watch, Draco breathed a sigh of relief. He hoped superposing an object as delicate and volatile as a time turner would not blow up in his face. Literally.

Once the other Draco Disillusioned himself and dashed out of the Time Chamber, Draco lifted the Bedazzling Hex off his Death Eater captives. He broke the Mobilicorpus spell with a slash of his wand and the pair of them collapsed onto the floor awkwardly. Draco knelt by them, examined the tightness of the ropes, and pulled back the eyelids on either man to check their vitals. They were still unresponsive, but, just in case, he cast a Stupefy each. One could never be too careful.

Briefly, Draco contemplated leaving a calling card of some sort, so Aurors who would inevitably find the bound and gagged Death Eaters could appreciate how he’d delivered them to the Ministry: stunned, gift-wrapped, and on a silver platter. His pseudonym should be properly striking and dramatic — something like, Great Sage Equalling Heaven or The Dragon of the Morningstar; utterly senseless, but they sure sounded impressive.

Draco snorted, getting to his feet. It was an entertaining thought, but such action would be ultimately inutile and counterproductive to both his anonymity and the thinly veiled charade that the two men had simply left the manor of their own accord.

He made his way into the office belonging to Time Chamber’s Department Head and darted towards the cumbrous desk in the middle of it. It was littered by papers and folders, and ravaged by stray spells, courtesy of trespassing Gryffindors, but given that the main stock of time turners was stuck in an endless loop of falling over, un-falling, and then re-falling back in the chamber proper, it was the only place where Draco could find—

There!

Draco shot his arm out and grasped the silver time turner before it toppled off the edge of the desk. He examined the item and grinned wolfishly — he’d closed the time loop. 

Draco paused, frowning. Or did he? 

He’d cast Implicatio on the time turner and bequeathed it to his past self, before he had actually obtained it. However, one of the fundamental rules of time travel stated that nothing could be changed because anything the traveller did merely produced the circumstances they had noted before travelling. Theoretically, his actions should have closed the loop, because the loop had always been closed.

Draco cursed and rubbed the back of his neck, kneading the tense muscles. Deliberating time travel always gave him a headache. It was Theo’s forte and area of interest, not his.

He cracked the fingers of his right hand, one by one, as he mentally checked all the boxes and methodically examined his plans. Technically speaking, phase five was optional. He did not have to do it. But what was he going to do until enough time passed for him to initiate phase six — cool his heels and be a spectator to the skirmishes which will soon unfold in the Death Chamber?

“As if,” Draco snorted, and stalked out of the Time Chamber in search of Avery, determined to uncover what the private mission the Dark Lord had entrusted the pinched-faced Death Eater with was.

Finding Avery was easier than Draco had expected.

Subduing Avery was another matter.

The pair of them were in a dark, shadowy room full of planets floating in mid-air. One third of the solar system had collapsed and scattered on the floor, and Pluto was a smoking, shattered crater by which a Disillusioned Draco was crouching. He had expected Avery to still be in the Truth Chamber, so when he made his way there, he had been surprised to find him rummaging through the office of the Space Chamber’s Departmental Head, muttering obscenities to himself.

Cooly, Draco evaluated the situation. His muscles ached, his stamina was nearing its limit, and there was a residual tremor in his hands from the rite in the Malfoy sacred chamber. If he was a wiser man, he would have abandoned his quest for uncovering the Dark Lord’s plans and quit while he was ahead. But cleverness was not wisdom, and Draco, in full possession of the former, had never claimed ownership of the latter. He studied the older man with a trained eye and grimaced — Avery was in rude health. The odds were not in his favour. Draco closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. Inhale. Exhale. He jumped out from his hiding place, exclaiming:

“Stupe—!”

“Expelliarmus!”

Draco’s wand ripped itself out of his grasp and sailed across the room into Avery’s waiting palm. 

“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” Avery said, smiling. He had discarded his silver mask some time ago, and in the dusk of the chamber, his pallid face took on a ghoulish, sunken look. “Revelio.”

Draco felt a chill sweep down him and he knew Avery had broken his Disillusionment Charm. He ducked and rolled, narrowly escaping a red spell Avery threw at him and tucked himself behind fallen Jupiter. 

“A spy or a traitor? I wonder which one you are? Come on, little mouse, it’s time to play.”

“How did you know I was here?” Draco asked, pitching his voice low, eyes darting around the room, searching for an advantage. Keep him talking, he thought, when he’s talking he’s not casting. He had to buy himself time to come up with a plan.

Avery pointed at a silvery looking glass perched on the Department Head’s desk. “I found a lovely Foe-Glass in one of the offices. Seemed a shame to leave it there, all alone and unspoiled, so I decided to put it to good use for my Master. And what do I see in it? I see you, little mouse. Snooping where you ought not to, crawling on your belly, a prey primed for a strike—Confringo!”

“Protego!” Draco threw up a wandless blue-tinged shield just in time to absorb the Blasting Curse and break on impact. He vaulted out of his hiding place and rushed at Avery, shouting, “Depulso!”

Avery flew across the chamber, hitting the back of his head against Venus, and Draco thrust his hand forwards, willing magic to yield to him. “Accio wand—!”

“Reducto!” roared Avery, blood trickling down his face. The curse hit Draco’s wand mid-air, blasting it into large splinters. “Diffindo!”

Draco spun on his heel, barely avoiding the light green arc that would have sliced him in half like a scythe. He had no time to process the destruction of his wand or the near decapitation as Avery tried to set his robes on fire with an Incendio. Draco leaped out of the way and sent a bolt of blinding white lightning, but Avery dodged and it hit Neptune behind him, smashing it into smithereens and setting them aflame.

Draco jumped forwards, aiming to tackle Avery to the ground, but the Death Eater caught him in a Momentum-Reversing Spell and hurled him against a thick pillar, smashing him against the stones soundly. Draco slid down, coughing; his vision swam. He tried to get to his feet, but felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his side. Then, a shadow fell over him and Avery was there ripping the arabesque mask off his face.

“Draco Malfoy,” Avery said, voice dripping with poorly controlled glee. “Lucius’s boy — a traitor? Oh, this is positively splendid. He’s so arrogant, your father, so full of pride over his name, his status, his two perfect, flawless sons.” A sly look came over Avery’s sharp features. He rolled his sleeve up, exposing the Dark Mark, and put his wand on it — summoning his Master. Draco’s insides chilled. “One of whom is not so perfect, as it turns out. Who would have known Lucius’s pride and joy is a filthy, double-crossing traitor? You will drink your fill of sorrow for your disloyalty to the Dark Lord, little mouse, and your brother… is he as faithless as you? His bright future is tarnished by his brother’s treachery… I wonder what the Dark Lord will do to him? Will he cry and scream, or will he show true mettle when we—”

Whatever Avery wanted to threaten Draco with was cut short when Draco kicked him viciously in the knee and yanked him down by the front of his robes, felling him. When Draco Malfoy got angry, his blood ran as hot as magma, boiling and sizzling and rushing through him thunderously, but his mind never lost its faculty to think, thus with anger came a terrible, dark clarity and a coldness that burned like no other. And, at the moment, nothing made Draco angrier than listening to sadistic and sanctimonious Alfred Avery talk about Scorpius.

Draco launched himself forwards, grappling for Avery’s wand. He felt Avery claw the side of his face, scratching it and drawing blood, but he managed to yank the other man’s wand and slam it against the smooth stones of the floor, snapping it in half. Avery howled and forcefully kneed Draco in the stomach, making him gasp in pain. Taking advantage, Avery bore down hard on Draco, pushing him steadily against the floor with growing force, and wrapped his hands around Draco’s throat, squeezing.

“Before you go any further,” Draco rasped in-between shallow breaths, “know this: today is not the day, and I am not the one.”

The momentary befuddlement that came across Avery had distracted him enough for Draco to manage a swift, solid jab to the jugular with a hook fist, crushing the windpipe. He scampered away as the Death Eater violently wheezed on the ground, gripping his throat.

Draco quickly took out his coin-purse and summoned a small, leather pouch, dumping its contents on Avery, before darting behind the pillar for protection. He gave a frosty smile, his grey eyes hard and sharp, and bright with malice.

“Incendio.”

Avery exploded.

Well, not literally. Draco did not have enough black powder on him to blow up anyone, much less a full-grown man, and the explosive Theo and he had cooked up in their lab was not nearly as refined as the ones Muggles produced. But it had done its job — Avery, while neither mutilated nor eviscerated, was lying prostrate on his side, body covered in patches of burns, robes charred and smoking.

Draco limped over, cradling the right side of his ribs, and kicked Avery. Hard. He waited a moment and kicked him again a couple more times. Avery didn’t respond.

Then, without preamble, Draco fell to his knees and rolled over onto his back, breathing heavily, adrenaline leaking out of him with every shallow exhale. His tongue darted out. Once, twice. He clutched his hands so tightly together that the knuckles strained. Finally, he glanced at Avery out of the corner of one eye. His chest was moving. He wasn’t dead. Draco breathed a sigh of relief.

He pushed himself up into a sitting position and slumped forwards, limbs drained of all energy. His tense muscles screaming in protest, he uncurled his spine, and rolled his neck and shoulders, joints cracking like logs in a fire. If Scorpius was here, he’d snicker and call him an old man.

Today, Draco concluded, was terribly tiring. Magical duels, physical fights, painful blood rituals, time travel, infiltrating the Ministry of Magic, a near death experience — it was hard to believe just a handful of hours ago, he was in Hogwarts, sitting for his last exam of the term.

Draco dragged his palms down his face, hauled himself towards Avery’s unconscious body, and started going through his pockets. There he found what he was looking for: the mysterious object the Dark Lord had sent Avery searching for in the Department of Mysteries.

Draco examined it with a critical eye; it did not look special, but many powerful things were deceptively plain, thus he wrapped it back into the white linen cloth and carefully deposited it into his coin-purse. He gave the office up ahead a long, contemplative look before shaking his head. Appropriating a Foe-Glass for his personal use was an attractive prospect, but he decided he had tempted fate enough today, what with all the secrets he’d looted from the Department of Mysteries already.

As if urged by some entity with a penchant for dramatic timing, seven blue jays flew into the Space Chamber, circling Draco, before swooping down gracefully in formation and landing in front of him. Draco smiled, and gently petted the biggest one in the middle, her eyes dark and sparkling like twin elderberries.

“Good girl,” Draco said, and the bird tweeted happily. 

She was a golem he had made, designed for espionage and information gathering; the other six birds were her copies he’d hastily transfigured from the rubble when his uncle Rabastan had destroyed half of Time Chamber with his unfortunate spellwork. The Department of Mysteries was on the bleeding edge of esoteric magical research, and since he had trespassed already, he might as well use the opportunity to his advantage.

Time turner was such a useful tool, it gave him a chance to collect his little birds now, rather than have them secrete themselves in the Ministry till later notice.

“Get in,” Draco ordered, and opened the coin-purse wider. The seven birds lifted off and flew into it in a line, one after another, vanishing from sight and into Elsewhere.

Phase six was complete.

Draco spared a smoking Avery a glance. Phase five, too; if semi-successfully.

Speaking of Avery. Draco rummaged in his coin-purse again and, after a moment, extracted a black-leather potion-kit bag, and started going through its contents. In an ideal world, Draco would cast a Memory Charm and then a False-Memory Charm on Avery, and they would be invincible and faultless, and not even the most gifted Legilimens would spy neither the trace of Obliviate nor the artificiality of the new memories; and Draco’s identity would be safe from all. However, it was not an ideal world, thus a) Draco had never practiced neither Memory Charms nor False-Memory Charms — though now he made a mental note to grow proficient at them; and b) he was a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them — casting complicated magic pertaining to the mindarts as a magically exhausted, wandless teenager was a one way ticket to the Janus Thickey Ward for permanent spell damage.

Thus, in lieu of casting a Memory Charm, he had Potions.

Draco, none too gently, tipped Avery’s head back and poured three potion bottles down his throat: one bog-green, the other milky-white, and the third was the colour of a Jobberknoll feather. Avery swallowed all of them and a few heartbeats later his skin turned as black as doxy eggs, then it flashed scarlet red, before returning to his normal, unhealthily pale shade. Perfect; Avery would recall none of what transpired today, and what little he would remember would transform thoroughly into unrecognisability by the drunken nightmares he was about to experience.

Draco tucked all of his instruments back where they belonged, got to his feet, hobbled over to where Neptune’s debris was still aflame, and picked up the remains of his wand. He stared down numbly at the broken pieces.

His wand had been quite beautiful — uniformly a glossy jet-black, warm to the touch, and its handle resembled a hawthorn tree’s thorn, the wood there was knotted and fissured. It was too late to lament the loss, yet Draco felt it keenly. The hawthorn wand hadn’t been his first wand, far from it, but it had been the first one that chose him and it had served him well. A pang of regret shot through him; had Draco known what tonight would entail, he would have grabbed his unregistered wand from the dormitories on the way to Severus’s office.

There was a crash and then shouting behind him, and Draco hurried towards the Death Chamber to investigate. Teetering on the edge of the entryway, favouring his injured side, he observed as the still-functioning Death Eaters rallied around Rookwood, but there were very few of them and their adversaries circled like sharks. A flash of red light caught his peripheral vision, and—

“SIRIUS!” Potter roared from down below. “LOOK OUT!”

There was a moment where time, as it was, seemed to stop. In all probability, it was just Draco Malfoy’s heart.

He ran.

Chapter Text

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chapter four: to the manner born

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«SPECIAL EDITION: HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED RETURNS!»

«DUMBLEDORE, POTTER VINDICATED»

«DARK LORD DUELS DUMBLEDORE: INVESTIGATION AT THE DEPARTMENT OF MYSTERIES CONTINUES»

«EXCLUSIVE: HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED HAS RETURNED TO THIS COUNTRY AND IS ONCE MORE ACTIVE!»

«HARRY POTTER: THE BOY WHO TOLD THE TRUTH»

«DES MAGES NOIRS SONT RETOURNÉS!»

«DARK LORD’S DARK DEEDS: HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED FLEES FROM THE FORCES OF THE LIGHT»

The Daily Prophet, The Daily News, The Wizarding World News, Wizarding Times, The Observer, Le Cri de la Gargouille, and, for once, even The Quibbler, spoke with one clear, resounding voice — Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore were exonerated, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned.

Sunlight streamed through the open window and a breeze blew through the room, billowing the delicate lace curtains and rippling them like pale flags, twisting them up towards the chandelier and out of the grasp of Crookshanks’ claws. He laid in full sploot on an ivory-coloured rug, bushy tail swishing in agitation, and watched, lyncean and yellow-eyed, as the multicoloured silk ribbons danced in the air like eddies on the surface of the sea.

The room was bright and airy, as rose and white as a whipped strawberry pavlova. The furniture was wooden and cream-coloured. The upholstery, coverings, cushions, and pillows were all blush-pink, and the walls were sprouting murals of a watercolour forest canopy in shades of beige. Shelves were lined with rows of proudly displayed Steiff stuffed animals — bears and horses, monkeys and giraffes, lions and lambs, dogs and cats, and a family of otters showcased at the center of the menagerie.

This was Hermione Granger’s childhood bedroom in her grandmother’s house, starkly different from her urbane, pastel-blue-and-purple Laura Ashley bedroom in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London, which was overflowing with books and full of traces of the wizarding world. The Grangers drove to the north-east edge of Somerset — mere days after Hermione arrived at King’s Cross from Hogwarts, moist-eyed and mute as a turnip about how tempestuous her end of term had been — for the annual summer holidays with the maternal side of the family, as Christmas was routinely spent in South of France with the elder Grangers.

Presently, Hermione, dressed in a sky-blue sundress that flattered her cool complexion, sat cross-legged on her bed and scrutinised, with a frown, the assorted newspapers fanned out across the rainbow quilt, her mind astir as the clamouring chatter of summer cicadas outside the window.

Rumours continue to fly about the mysterious recent disturbance at the Ministry of Magic, during which He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was sighted once more. Highly placed sources within the Ministry have confirmed that a number of trespassers have been apprehended, but no official statement has been released by the Auror Office. 

Hermione quickly scanned the article on the front page of The Wizarding World News. 

‘As the investigation is still under way, we are not at liberty to release any names or details,’ said Rufus Scrimgeour, the head of the Auror Office, neither confirming nor denying that the trespassers in questions are none other than Death Eaters—

“Ugh!” Hermione cried out in annoyance and chucked the offensive paper onto the edge of the bed. Earlier in the day, spurred by shock and panic that had followed an unsettling letter delivered by an owl, she had made her father drive her to Wizard’s Thatch — a thriving wizarding market town-within-a-town sequestered within the old part of Bath. She’d purchased every available paper at the newsstand, each disappointingly sparse with the details. Certainly, the papers parroted one another and proclaimed the ‘return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ with unmerited confidence and ardor that had escaped them just weeks prior, when Harry had been, to quote a particularly vexing piece, a ‘feeble-minded attention-seeker roped into perfidy by Dumbledore’s malevolent machinations to undermine the Ministry.’

However, beyond the prosaic fluff, there was a patent dearth of information regarding the events that had transpired in the Department of Mysteries, and absolutely none of them spoke of the Death Eater arrests or their developments. Even The Daily Prophet, that over-priced, rumour-mongering rag, had brushed past the topic with nary a thought.

Why was that? Hermione wondered. Was it truly because the Auror Department was following procedure and treating the cases with sensitivity and due diligence by withholding details of an ongoing investigation? She would like to think so, but her experience with the wizarding world’s criminal justice system did not inspire confidence in it.

Cringing from light paraesthesia in her right thigh, Hermione got up, walked over to her desk, and picked up the thick, ecru-coloured parchment that had prompted her inquiries. She gingerly unfolded it and read it once more, examining each word carefully and committing it to memory. Were there more sinister causes for the Ministry’s silence? Hermione hoped not, and yet… a troubling thought prickled at the back of her mind. Had the Death Eaters bought their way out of incarceration?

“Meeeeooooow,” Crookshanks yawned and stretched on the floor next to Hermione’s besocked foot, sinking his claws into the rug with relish.

“Yeah, Crooks, I don’t know either.”

“Hermione!” Hector hollered with the hearty might of a twelve-year-old boy who was too lazy to walk up a set of stairs to fetch his cousin. “Aunt Emma says dinner is almost ready!”

“Be right there!” Hermione shouted.

She gathered all the papers off her bed and rolled them up before dropping them into the rubbish bin. She folded the letter back up, and deposited it into a table drawer right next to her wand before closing it. Neither her grandmother, her aunt, nor her cousin knew about her being a witch, and it was best she kept it that way.

When Hermione walked down the stairs, she was surprised to see her younger cousin waiting for her at the curtail step. Hector was small for his age, slim and slight, with a face like autumn acorns, both in shape and shade, and pointed, impish features. For years, Hermione had hoped he would show signs of accidental magic and join her on a train to Hogwarts, but such dreams were left behind when Hector’s eleventh birthday came and went, and no owl arrived bearing a Hogwarts invitation letter.

She was truly the lone witch in her family.

“Heads up,” he said. “Mum thought it’s a grand idea to invite the Lindleys from down the street to Nanna’s birthday party.”

“Who are the Lindleys and why should I care?”

He gave Hermione an exasperated, put-upon look that clearly judged her intelligence to be wanting. “Misses Lindley is a solicitor and practically Mum’s new best friend. Her husband does something or other with model boats. The reason why you should care is that they have three children, the eldest of whom is your age and a boy.”

“Oh.”

“Exactly my thoughts,” Hector snorted. “I tried to run interference, but if Mum mentions a Michael to you, abandon all hope.”

“I don’t know why she bothers, I’m only in Bath for a few weeks during the year,” Hermione said, eyeing a grape juice stain on the edge of Hector’s sweatshirt, and wishing she was seventeen and free of the Trace so she could discretely Vanish it away instead of forcefully compelling herself to ignore it.

“I think she’s got it into her head that you’re hopelessly unromanced in that dreary, WALKMAN-banning school of yours.”

“It’s not dreary,” Hermione weakly protested, the tops of her cheeks turning pink. Her First Year, Professor McGonagall really did issue a ban on students bringing their WALKMAN onto school grounds after Hermione’s set itself on fire in the Gryffindor common room when she tried to listen to it. It was a rather embarrassing affair, and she wished she hadn’t recounted a heavily abridged version to Hector, as he never let it go.

Hector rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t know, now, would I? You never take pictures of it.”

“I told you electronics break in the area. There’s something wrong with the electromagnetic field there.”

Admittedly, box cameras were not technically electronics and she had albums full of pictures she’d taken with her disposable Kodak cameras over the years, but she shared few of them — mostly candid shots of Harry and Ron, and the Weasleys at the Burrow, but never of Diagon Alley or Hogwarts. Even to her parents’ accustomed eye, the locations were strange and peculiar, and it was almost impossible not to have something magical going on in the background. It never ceased to send a hollow pang of wretchedness through her, how she was unable to share neither the truth about herself nor the wonder of it all, but perhaps Hector’s ignorance was a kindness — he could not miss what he did not know, he would not have to tolerate a world empty of magic.

“What could possibly be wrong with it? The school is in the Scottish highlands, not the Bermuda triangle,” Hector grumbled, but let the subject go as the pair of them rounded the corner and stepped into the living room. Hector immediately made a beeline towards the television set, into which his gaming console was plugged in, and promptly deposited himself on a thrown cushion in front of it.

Nanna Rose’s living room was spacious and well-furnished, decorated in deep sea-foam green and adorned with ornately printed flower-patterns on the wallpaper, furnishings, and textiles. The antique armoire showcased delicate porcelain figurines and the bone china Wedgwood set. Much like the rest of the house, it was neither chic nor twee, but welcoming and sweet, if old-fashioned. Naturally, Hermione’s eyes drifted over to the mantel above the fireplace, where a collection of family pictures were displayed. She could see herself in most of them — pale and skinny, wild-haired and buck-toothed — at various stages of growth. The Pooles used to live close to the Grangers before Hermione went to Hogwarts, and then Aunt Charlotte and Hector lived with them during her divorce with Uncle Jordan, before moving out of London and in with Nanna Rose three years ago. As far as extended families went, theirs was a tight-knit one.

“Dad is trying to bribe me with a brand spanking new N64 and the latest Mario game,” Hector explained.

“Is it working?” Hermione asked, curiously peering at the screen on which the opening cut-scene flashed into life.

“Meh,” he shrugged. “I could use a little more bribing — he did go back on his promise to put more effort into seeing me. My shattered trust, however, could probably find the strength within itself to believe him again… if I was to be gifted a Game Boy Pocket the magazines have been raving about.”

“Yeah, good luck with getting that past your Mum,” Hermione snorted, though she was positive Hector would manage to sweet-talk Aunt Charlotte into allowing it. If he had come to Hogwarts, Hector would have doubtlessly been sorted into Slytherin.

She studied her cousin’s profile pensively and ran an affectionate hand through his dark, wiry hair. Mayhaps it was a blessing in disguise that he was a Muggle. Hermione did not dare to contemplate what would happen to a Muggleborn in Slytherin House. Once more, her thoughts strayed into melancholy, out of which she was pulled by a low voice coming from the kitchen. 

“Hermione, child, come here.”

“Coming, Nanna.”

In the sunflower-yellow kitchen, Hermione was treated to a sight of her grandmother sitting at the table and sealing the lids on the last of the cherry preserves. Before her, trays of sugar plums were spread out; some were cooked and covered with linens, and others were still waiting for their turn in the oven. The evening sun shone through the open windows and turned her grey hair into a silver aureole about her face. She looked up and smiled at Hermione.

“Sugar plum?”

“Yes, please,” Hermione said, and popped one in the mouth, its tart sweetness melting on the tongue. “Mmmm, delicious, Nanna. They’ll be a hit at tomorrow’s garden party.”

Nanna Rose’s eyes crinkled in delight. It was hard to tell how old she was. Hers was a small face, weazened with age, with velvety skin stretched thinly over strong features, hollowing it out, but one could see clearly that she had been a great beauty in her youth. Her daughters looked just like her, too. Aunt Charlotte and Hermione’s mother were close in age and so alike they could pass for twins: both were striking women — gracile and graceful as a willow tree, with skin like porcelain, straight black hair, and large, light hazel eyes. Hermione was their mirror image, sans her caramel-brown curls and small, upturned nose, both of which she got from her paternal grandmother.

The maternal line in their family had been unbroken for generations.

Aunt Charlotte came through the backdoor from the garden, with an armful of blooming magenta-pink astrantias. “Hermione,” she said, toeing off her muddy boots before stepping through the threshold, “fetch me the crystal vase from the dining room.”

Hermione complied, and half-a-minute later, was filling the vase with cold water in the sink. “They look beautiful,” she said, stepping closer to her aunt to admire the damask-smooth petals.

“These Star of Fire blossomed marvellously, didn’t they?” Aunt Charlotte arranged them into a bouquet. She picked up the vase and turned to carry it towards the dining table when she stopped abruptly and looked up at Hermione. “Goodness my, I’ve just noticed, but you’ve sprouted like a weed. How tall are you, love?”

“She’s just sixteen and she’s my height already,” called Emma Granger from the dining room, laughing. She was setting the Villeroy & Boch dinnerware onto the blue linen tablecloth. “She’ll grow taller still.”

“Speaking of teenagers,” Aunt Charlotte began, and Hermione knew she was in trouble. “Isla is coming over tomorrow for the party with her family. She has a lovely son your age, Hermione. Michael is a polite and smart young man. Isla says he wants to study to be a doctor. I’m sure you’ll get along. He’s almost as clever as you. Got four A-stars for his A-Levels.”

“I’m not sure we’ll have much in common.” Hermione nervously inched away from her smiling aunt. “I’ve just finished my… GCSEs. Haven’t even picked my A-levels.”

“I’m not asking you to marry the boy on the spot,” Aunt Charlotte said, a knowing look in her eye. “But make an effort to get along. Perhaps you two can be friends. You hardly have any outside of your school. And he is a very lovely boy, truly. I wouldn’t encourage an association with a miscreant or a rascal, dear.”

“I, for one, do not oppose this courting business at all.” Nanna Rose shuffled over to the two of them, having deposited her jars of cherries into the pantry. “Michael Lindley will take one look at our Hermione and fall madly in love.” She patted Hermione’s cheek affectionately and the apple of it blushed prettily under her grandmother’s scrutiny. “Look at those high cheekbones and those eyes — bright and clear, like sunlit chips of amber, and as lovely as a cat’s. Your Mother says you have my look, but you will grow into a woman far more beautiful than either of us ever was, you can see that plain as day. Perhaps, your own daughters will eclipse all of us.”

Hermione’s fingers flexed and she shook her head. “I think those are a quite a while away, Nanna.”

“Not too long, I hope,” she said, a worryingly teasing gleam in her eyes. “I’m not getting any younger. In fact, tomorrow, I’m getting older!”

“Stop—”

“Your old grandma is practically decrepit now, dear.”

“—please, I’m begging—”

“Spare her some mercy and let her see her great-grandchildren before she shuffles off this mortal coil.”

“Nanna!”

“Babushka,” Hector whined loudly from the living room, waving a grey, three-pronged controller in the air. “Stop embarrassing Hermione. If she could get any redder she’d turn into a tomato, and I need her alive. She promised to help me and this Super Mario 64* game isn’t going to beat itself.”

“Your cousin isn’t a tomato, she’s a blooming English rose and she blushes like one, too,” Nanna Rose corrected, her face alight with mirth. “But all right. Children, finish your game while we wait for Dan to return and then it’s dinner time.”

Relieved, Hermione scurried out of the kitchen as fast as she could, Nanna Rose’s delighted laughter following her out the room. She deposited herself next to Hector and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, I owe you two now.”

“I’ll consider the debt repaid if you take me to both HMV and Zavvi in the city centre.”

“Since when have you been so materialistic?”

“I’m twelve, Hermione,” Hector said, slowly, with a deadpan look on his face that said he thought she was being deliberately obtuse. “I’m still figuring out who I am, and I guess the Hector Poole I’m growing into really, really likes video games.”

“Fine. I have some spare money, I’ll take you shopping,” Hermione said and picked up the second controller. “Now, observe the master at work, young grasshopper.”

“Please,” Hector laughed. “You could barely beat Sonic the Hedgehog and it was released five years ago.”

Seven minutes later, Mario was being crushed by a Whomp.

Hermione watched mutely as the death animation played on screen.

“So,” Hector drawled, “grasshopper, huh?”

“Shut up.” She clicked on the saved file and started the level again. She could produce a corporeal Patronus and brave flying across England on the back of an invisible Thestral, she’d be damned if she would relent to a digital Italian plumber. Before she could run the level halfway through, the front door burst open.

“Beautiful ladies and a very handsome gentleman, we were blessed by Lady Luck: they were having a deal at Tesco’s,” Dan Granger said in lieu of a greeting as he shouldered his way through, carrying a heavy plastic bag and several boxed crates. “Guess who brought home three crates of fresh strawberries and enough boxes of meringue to give you diabetes just by looking? Me, Daniel Granger! There’s more than enough for the guests tomorrow, so tonight, we gorge ourselves on Eton mess like kings!”

“I’ll get the whipped cream!” whopped Hector and bolted towards the pantry.

Hermione got up and went to help her father with the groceries. He made some sort of joke she didn’t catch, but everyone broke into titters and Hermione beamed at the sight, basking in the autumn-rich, ember-warm glow of her family’s laugher. 

For the span of an evening, she forgot about the perturbing letter she’d received that morning from Professor Dumbledore.

Dear Miss Hermione Granger,
I fear I am contacting you with some troubling news—

✨✨✨

Harry woke up tired.

Scratch that.

Harry woke up exhausted.

He glanced at the automatic clock on the bedside table. The screen glowed in the dim, lavender light of the summer morning, bold red numbers flashing: 6:15am. Harry groaned and burrowed back into the warm covers, screwing his eyes tightly shut and wishing he could go back to sleep to re-dream himself.

When Harry dreamt, he dreamt of Little Hangleton: of a cold smoke seeping out of colder throats; of a misting cauldron and a ragged shadow rising from it; of a darkness falling and a spiral downwards; of a waning, topaz-yellow moon and a sky bathed in green; of his shivering heart and rattling lungs, and his body gripped in the confines of fear; and of a boy, bone-white and bone-dead.

In Harry’s dreams, he did everything right.

He laid abed, listening to the soft sounds of his shallow breathing and counting seconds as they rolled into minutes, submerging himself in a slice of eternity. Eventually, the sky brightened enough to shyly shine yolk-yellow light into the room and splinch his narrow bed in twain, and the twitters of sparrows and finches nesting on the apple tree outside the window overcame the mournful dawn song of the lark. The clock face flashed 7:58am and Harry blindly pawed at the bedside table for his glasses.

He made his bed, changed out of his sleep clothes into wrinkled jeans and a faded T-shirt, which were simultaneously too baggy and too small for him — he had grown a lot in a short space of time and Harry’s clothes refused to accommodate him any longer — and padded downstairs on besocked feet to make breakfast for the Dursley family.

Harry had finished folding the omelettes and was busy frying strips of bacon on the pan when a roar of a speeding automobile sliced through the quaint tranquility of Privet Drive. Harry glanced over at the Dursleys. Uncle Vernon jerked up in his place at the head of the dining table in the living room, bushy brows knitting in a frown over the top of his morning paper, and Aunt Petunia stilled and tilted her head curiously from her place by the kitchen window, where she was making a pot of English Breakfast tea. Dudley was still upstairs sleeping.

There was a sound of a dying engine, a closing of a car door, scuffle of shoes against the brick sidewalk, and, finally, a precise, sharp knock upon the dark-brown door of Number Four Privet Drive.

The Dursleys exchanged silent stares. It was early Saturday morning, and the household was not expecting visitors.

Harry blinked, then a fat drop of grease sparked off the pan and onto Harry’s wrist, and he bit back a curse and stuck his hand under cool water to ease the burn. He turned his attention back to the sizzling bacon, peeling the twelfth and last strip of it off the pan and dumping it onto the plate with the others.

“Clumsy boy,” Aunt Petunia commented without any real bite as she passed him. She wiped her hands on the front of her checkered apron and opened the door. The stark daylight and the contrasting shadows the figure in the entrance cast upon her did odd things to her visage — her long face paled miserably and her blonde hair acquired an odd lime-green tint to it.

“Tuney!” cried Sirius Black jovially, white teeth flashing with unpleasantness. “I could say it is delightful to see you after all these long years, but I’d be lying.”

Three things happened at once: Aunt Petunia shut the door in Sirius’s face; Uncle Vernon stumbled out of his chair, roaring ‘GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!’; and Harry fumbled with the plate of bacon he was holding, almost dropping it, before he managed to settle it on one of the counters.

The door burst open.

“Now, now, that wasn’t very welcoming,” Sirius tut-tutted, still smiling, his distinctive, dark-grey wand delicately pinched between the fingers of his right hand. “You’re being a rather ungracious hostess in turning a guest away at the door.”

“Get out,” Aunt Petunia bit out. She clutched at the hallway wall, knocking framed pictures of Dudley askew. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry noticed that Uncle Vernon froze halfway across the room, stilling like a stone statue, his beady eyes blown wide with terror and rolling wildly.

Sirius took a step forward, then another, and another after that, until he had passed the entryway and walked into the house, backing Aunt Petunia into the living room. “My, without even a word of greeting. You used to pride yourself on having stellar manners, as I recall. Is my memory failing me in my old age? Forgive me, I’ve spent twelve years in Azkaban — it’s as dreadful a place as one could imagine and terrible for the mind. Has Lily ever told you what it is? No? Shame. You’ll fit right in.”

“What do you want, you freak—”

“Hello, Harry,” Sirius greeted, and with a flick of his wand Aunt Petunia lost her voice. She grasped her throat with shaking hands, eyes bulging, her mouth snapping mutely like a fish. “Go pack your trunk, we’re leaving.”

“What?” asked Harry, dumbly. His fingers turned numb and some sort of explosion took place at the pit of his stomach.

“Pack your trunk. I’ve promised you, haven’t I? To give you a different home,” Sirius said. At Harry’s prolonged silence, his expression turned uncertain. “Unless you don’t want to anymore—”

“Are you mad!” exclaimed Harry, voice cracking. “Of course I still want to!”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you I was coming. Everything’s been terribly hush-hush since June. Dumbledore warned—”

“How much time do I have?!”

“To pack?” 

Harry nodded. 

“However long you may need. You won’t be returning here anytime soon, so you best take your time and pack everything.”

“Great!” Harry was already at the stairs, taking two at the time as he practically flew in his haste towards his small bedroom. “I’ll be down in fifteen!”

“Meanwhile,” he heard Sirius’s voice carry upwards from the living room. “Tuney, you and I have a lot to talk about…” 

The rest of what Sirius was saying was lost to Harry when he stumbled into his room and shut the door, gaze ricocheting off the walls and the objects, finding no purchase in his haste.

His trunk was still not fully unpacked from when he had returned from Hogwarts three and a half weeks ago, and Harry kicked it open and pulled an old canvas duffle bag — another hand-me-down from Dudley. Immediately, he dashed about the room and began to stow his belongings. Harry threw himself under the bed, wrenched up the loose floorboard, and emptied his hiding place of all food and valuables. He swept the stack of spellbooks atop the table into the duffle bag and jerked all the clothes off their hangers in the wardrobe and into it, too.

Harry double-checked every nook and cranny of his sickly peach bedroom for forgotten knick-knacks and spare quills, and took down the barely-started star chart of Uranus and its satellites he’d been assigned as Astronomy homework. Hopping around, Harry gathered up the mess of tangled robes in the corner of the room and threw them into his trunk unceremoniously, atop his most prized possessions — the Invisibility Cloak he had inherited from his father, the Firebolt broomstick he had got from Sirius, and the enchanted map of Hogwarts charmed by the Marauders. 

He seized Hedwig’s cloaked cage, wherein the sleeping snowy owl hooted in discontent, and sprinted back downstairs where he was met with a peculiar sight of Sirius casually leaning against a pale adler door frame. Aunt Petunia’s best fine china cup and saucer floated before him with a spoon self-stirring hearty black tea. Meanwhile, Aunt Petunia was sitting at the dining table, grasping her hands firmly on top of it, a haunted expression pinching her face.

“I’m afraid our time together has come to an end, Petunia,” Sirius said, spotting Harry. He straightened and dismissed the floating cup with a flutter of his wand. It placed itself delicately on the polished wood table and Aunt Petunia flinched when the spoon clinked against the porcelain.

Sirius’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “You best remember what I said: mayhaps, we’re all freaks — but, every one of us is certainly more dangerous than you.”

Harry’s eyebrows rose. It felt very strange to be standing here in Dursleys’ surgically clean kitchen, beside the top-of-the-range fridge and the wide-screen television, watching Sirius calmly threaten an ashen-faced Aunt Petunia. Harry had never seen this side of his god-father — darkly smooth and disturbingly Slytherin. As soon as the thought arose, Harry dismissed it with a shake of his head. Sirius was Sirius, true-hearted and lion-brave, and Harry’s staunchest ally. He would never wish him ill.

“Is this all?” Sirius asked, frowning lightly as he examined Harry’s baggage. At Harry’s nod, he clicked his tongue and tugged the duffle bag off Harry’s shoulder as his trunk cheerfully rolled by itself out the magically opening door, preceding both of the wizards through the entryway.

“Mum, Dad? What’s going on?” Dudley’s confused voice wobbled from the top of the stairs, but Harry spared him no thought.

He stepped out of the house, and he did not look back.

The car in front of the house was a gleaming silver convertible circa nineteen-thirties or forties — a sporty thing with a BMW logo shining at the front — and although Harry knew precious little about cars, it looked like an absolute classic.

Sirius tapped his wand against Harry’s things and Harry watched as they shrunk to a ninth of their size before Sirius deposited them into the trunk of his car. For the first time since his arrival, Harry had the time and presence of mind to take in his godfather’s appearance.

He was dressed in a well-tailored linen suit of creamy-white and a pink dress shirt that he left unbuttoned at the top. Startlingly, Harry realised that Sirius looked healthier and younger, by far, than Harry had ever seen him before. His face had lost its sunken, pallid quality and although he was still gaunt about the cheeks, he looked every inch as haughtily handsome as he did in the old pictures with Harry’s parents. His grey eyes were sparkling, brimming with good-humour, and his thick, dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance Harry could never have achieved.

Sirius clapped his hands together. “Shall we depart now?”

Harry nodded jerkily as something lodged itself in his throat. Hope, he realised, elated. Wild and free, beating its wings in the cage of his chest.

Sirius put his hands on Harry’s shoulders and peered down at him, expression softening, and a wide, white-toothed smile bloomed, gladsome and honeyed. “Prongslet, how do you feel about Venezuelan food?”

Less than an hour later, Harry had found himself in a secluded, quaint eatery in South Kensington, his perpetually messy hair windblown and spiked upwards by Sirius’s speeding-laws-breaking driving. Sirius had ordered for the both of them: grilled chorizos, arepas filled with chicken and salty white cheese, spinach and feta empanadas, and a plate of golfeados. The breakfast was warm, rich, and savoury; far heartier than Harry was used to, but delicious all the same.

“Norrell, bless his fastidious, pernickety soul, is set on bleeding dry the Ministry’s coffers. Twelve years in Azkaban!” Sirius cried, imitating the plummy voice of the named partner of Strange & Norrell law firm, who were representing Sirius in both his trial and his lawsuit, Black v. The Ministry of Magic. “Charged without a trial! A gross miscarriage of justice! The man is the epitome of sedulity, but Merlin’s hairy arse, he’s as keen as a bloodhound. If Barty Crouch Senior hadn’t passed to his eternal reward, Norrell wouldn’t have settled for having the man’s job — he’d demand his prick and balls, too.”

Harry was munching on the last piece of golfeado — a twisting pastry with cinnamon, cheese, and caramelised sugar — and nodded, listening to and weighing Sirius’s words. Apparently, Peter Pettigrew was amongst those arrested at the Department of Mysteries back in June, and the reappearance of the tragic victim of the notorious mass-murderer Sirius Black among the living cast a shadow of doubt on the veracity of Sirius’s arrest back in nineteen-eighty-one. Presently, Sirius was on probation until the conclusion of Pettigrew’s trial, but Harry suspected he’d be acquitted on all counts, if the dismissal of the criminal charges during his own trial was anything to go by. That, and Gilbert Norrell sounded singularly determined to ensure Sirius would receive the reparations he was entitled to and more.

“Will Fudge resign?”

Sirius nodded over his cup of cream coffee. “He got into a right mess after June. My lawyers—”

“I thought it was only Mr Norrell,” Harry said, surprised, “but you have lawyers, as in multiple?”

“I didn’t even know I had them until a few weeks ago, but apparently my proxy has arranged for Lord Black to employ a whole swarm of those blood-thirsty sharks on retainer.”

“You’re a Lord?” Harry sputtered.

Sirius’s gaze grew glazed. “My father—Lord Orion Black—had not disinherited me, neither in official nor unofficial capacity. I was never stricken from the will, never disowned… my mother made me think the family had cast me off when she blasted me from the tree… mayhaps my father held out hope I might return into the family fold, or he’d couldn’t bear the dishonour of renouncing his own firstborn son. I shall never know the unvarnished truth of it, but...”

“You were not abandoned,” Harry whispered, realisation dawned on him with shining clarity. He wondered if this was where Sirius’s recent lightness of bearing had stemmed from. “Not truly.”

Sirius laughed, darkly. “Circe, Uncle Alphard might consider it the greatest betrayal of the prodigal ways that I am so willingly naming myself a trueborn son of the House of Black, but yes.”

Harry tried to wrap his mind around the revelation. Sirius had hated his family’s elitist, blood-purist conduct, had revelled in his own rebellion and refusal to abide by their blood prejudice, and yet, he looked relieved by the news. It felt like a betrayal.

Is it though? You would relish it, too, Harry’s mind whispered, ruefully. Had the Dursleys welcomed you, had they embraced you, had they shown that they could love you — you would have forgiven them, you would have forgiven everything. Your loneliness is bone-deep, Harry Potter, and you have a yearning, hungry heart.

“Your mother’s portrait is going to have kittens,” Harry said, smirking slightly, and tension he hadn’t noticed before had bleed out of Sirius’s shoulders.

After they had finished their meal and Sirius paid the bill — Harry had tried to protest, but then he remembered he hadn’t had any Muggle money and sheepishly quieted down — they stepped out onto the street and into the sultry July sun. Sirius’s curling hair gleamed under it and he pulled a pair of aviator sunglasses from where they were tucked into the front of his shirt, looking over at Harry, assessingly.

“You need new clothes.” It was not a question.

Harry shifted nervously, acutely aware of how poorly he was dressed. “I don’t. I have better ones in my trunk.”

“You do,” Sirius said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I am not parsimonious as Petunia, I have more than enough galleons to afford to dress my godson nicely. Especially now that I have access to the family vaults.”

It was not that Harry hated shopping for clothes, but he had never particularly enjoyed it either. The clothes that were not Dudley’s hand-me-downs, Aunt Petunia had bought for him at second-hand charity shops or the local Woolies*, if Harry was lucky. He had adamantly opposed Sirius’s original plan of taking Harry to Bond Street to purchase high-end or designer brands — and Harry refused to show up at either Selfridges or Fenwick department stores looking like he was a step-above homelessness.

In the end, they compromised.

That was how Harry found himself being dragged through veritably every clothing store on Oxford Street. He’d gotten a number of new sets of socks, undergarments, and comfort clothes from Marks & Spencer. In House of Fraser, he’d gotten three warm coats — one autumn and two winter — and two light jackets, as well as several boots and trainers, and a pair of dress shoes. Debenhams was larger, and thus, there were more things to get: jeans and trousers, wool jumpers and flannels, hats and gloves and scarfs, but Harry drew the line at spending fifty quid per T-shirt. Hence why Harry left H&M and United Colors of Benetton stores with more bags than he could carry — Sirius bought him button-down shirts, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, joggers, and a sundry of other apparel Harry barely remembered trying on.

The worst part was the salespersonnel; they were brilliantly accommodating and helpful, and readily measuring and complimenting the boy who’d they were dressing under Sirius’s watchful eye. Sirius, who was well-spoken, well-dressed, and roguishly charming, whom every single one had absolutely loved on sight and was eager to please, and whose wallet seemed to be as bottomless as his enjoyment of Harry’s misery.

“You are a good-looking lad, Prongslet.” Sirius laughed, like a heartless demon that he was. “You ought to wear clothes that fit you.”

Four hours and a haircut done by a professional and not Harry in a bathroom with a pair of kitchen scissors later, Harry was sitting on a bench in a pair of snug Diesel denim jeans and a Gryffindor-red Benetton polo-shirt that the salesgirl had assured him made his green eyes brighter, and was tiredly eating a soft-serve ice-cream Sirius bought for them off a food-truck at the corner of Regent Street. It was lunch-time, but Sirius had determined they could afford to spoil their appetite with a pick-me-up.

Harry mindlessly ate his ice-cream and watched as people hurried past them, feeling the heavy weight of Sirius’s leaden gaze on him and choosing to ignore it.

“You look so much like James, Harry.”

A bittersweet pang shot through Harry’s chest. Unkindly, he briefly wondered if Sirius truly saw him as himself — as Harry, just Harry — and not as an extension of Sirius’s dead best friend. He tried to quash the feeling. It was not fair to Sirius nor Harry. He asked himself why he was acting so petulant and irascible. Sirius had gotten him away from the Dursleys, surely it ought to have made Harry happy. It had, for a while, and yet, he could not quite shake the feeling that something was afoot; that Sirius was while not necessarily lying — not saying everything either.

“I’ve told you before, haven’t I? How I’d run away from home when I was sixteen with naught but the clothes on my back. Your father, my best friend, took me into his house then. He and his parents had fed me, clothed me, gave me a roof over my head, and showed more solicitude towards my well-being than my own mother had,” Sirius said, his voice deceptively even. “Your father took care of me so I could take care of you in his stead.”

The shard that had impaled Harry’s heart cracked and shifted, almost dislodging, but not quite.

“Whatever happens, Harry, you must remember: I will always love you and I only want what’s best for you.”

Then, Sirius got up, threw the uneaten waffle-cone into a nearby bin, and walked towards his car. Harry followed him.

The ride was silent save for the radio playing Spice Girls. When they stopped at a red-light, Sirius said, “Harry, you are turning seventeen—”

“Sixteen,” Harry corrected.

Sirius blinked. “What?”

“I’m turning sixteen, not seventeen.”

“I… are you quite certain?” Sirius asked, peering down at him.

“It rolls around every year at the same time for the past fifteen years, so, yeah, I’m positive,” he snipped, bristling. He loved Sirius, but sometimes a terrible, shabby thought tickled the back of his mind: what if twelve years in Azkaban had muddled his mind, like Mrs Weasley suspected. Instantly, he regretted his thoughts. He was tired and cranky and proper hungry, it was not Sirius’s fault.

“Huh, almost a man grown,” Sirius said, a far-away look on his handsome face. “I guess Paws wasn’t being difficult then. I’m so used to thinking of—ah, nevermind, we’re almost here.”

The car turned a corner and Harry looked around. He was not familiar with London, but he knew enough to know that he’d never been in this particular neighbourhood. “We’re not going to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place*?”

“No, it was deemed uninhabitable and is under heavy renovations. We are staying at Avondale House*.”

Before Harry could ask Sirius to explain, the car stopped in front of a grand, lush garden square and the building that was facing it. Sirius got out of the car to gather Harry’s shrunk baggage and purchases from the trunk, leaving Harry alone to examine the house.

Calling it a house was a gross understatement.

It was a picturesque seven-storey detached mansion. Ivory-coloured and faced with white stucco, it had row-upon-row of large, impressively arched windows and a projected porch terrace bracketed by lofty, Graeco-Roman columns — it was opulent and imposing and cooly pristine. Blooming wisteria snaked and climbed the façade of the mansion, and dripped off window-frames like mauve tears.

“Home sweet home,” Sirius said with strained joviality, and clicked Harry’s dropped jaw back into place. “There is no Fidelius Charm on it, unfortunately, but we’re working on setting one up. Regardless, the wards on it are second to none, otherwise Dumbledore wouldn’t have approved of you staying here for the summer.”

“Whose house is this?” Harry asked, finally gathering his wits. He scooped up Hedwig’s cage and trudged after Sirius.

“You’ll know soon enough.”

The inside of the mansion was as phenomenal as the outside: high-ceilings, patterned wood floors, intricately designed cornices, a shimmering chandelier, and it was only the entry hall. Harry felt woefully out of place. Did anyone in the Order of the Phoenix even know a family that could afford something like this? The simmering unease that bubbled within Harry’s heart for hours now had finally burst and overflowed, sending a shudder through his limbs. It wasn’t right—something was wrong—what was going—

“It’s us!” shouted Sirius, closing the door and casting some sort of spell on it afterwards.

“Oh, and here I thought it was Death Eaters entering my house so politely with a key, my mistake,” said a drawling voice.

Harry’s eyes snapped towards the figure who’d entered the hall from the room to the right and visibly paled. 

“Malfoy?” 

Draco Malfoy gave a thin, close-mouthed smile, which conveyed nothing pleasant. “In the flesh.”

“Harry,” Sirius said, brightly, ignoring Malfoy’s disobliging attitude and impelling him forwards with a gentle push to the back. “Meet my son: Draco Black.”

Chapter Text

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chapter five: of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy

.

“You should not be calling me that, it creates unnecessary misunderstandings.”

“What is there to misunderstand? I am your father.”

“If you want to get technical about it, yes, however that was not what I was referring to.” Draco leaned his shoulder against the dark-oak wall panelings of the peacock-green drawing room, and loosely crossed his arms and ankles, skilfully feigning nonchalance. He took care to keep tension out of his limbs and features, but the thirteen-inch blackthorn wand that had once belonged to his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Aleister Malfoy, was tucked securely into the leather holster strapped to his forearm and available at a moment’s notice.

Unperturbed, he pointed out, “I’m not a Black.”

Draco observed a groove of poorly concealed displeasure as it etched itself between Sirius’s dark brows, pulling the smooth skin of his forehead tight. Idly, he wondered how his father ever managed to survive to the age of majority as a scion of a Great House when he had such a tenuous grasp on self-possession. Sirius’s face was uncomfortably familiar and as transparent as a still mountain lake — one could see every ripple his thoughts and temper left upon it.

“You are to me.”

“A noble sentiment, but if you wanted to give me your name, you should have married my mother.” Draco watched, hawk-eyed, as Sirius predictably flinched, but did not refute.

Instead, he diligently tucked an angora-wool blanket around Potter’s senseless body and put the back of his hand against Potter’s forehead, measuring his temperature. The golden boy was prostrated by the fireplace on a nineteenth-century méridienne sofa, having collapsed in the entry hall. Draco had anticipated Potter would either go numb from shock upon seeing him, or, what was more likely given his quintessentially Gryffindor personality, fly into a fit of blind rage — he did not predict, however, that Potter would fall in a dead faint and drop like a stone into Sirius’s open arms.

An unexpected turn of events, but not an entirely unwelcome one. This gifted Draco a whole avalanche worth of ways he could take the piss out of Potter during the upcoming weeks. It was a small, petty victory, yet it gave him comfort all the same.

“How long do you think he’ll stay like that?”

“I reckon ages. He got that dramatic flare from James. It’s the Peverell blood in them,” Sirius said, palpably brightening at the memory. He straightened up and smoothed out the fine wrinkles on his linen trousers. His eyes shone. “Lily was never prone to histrionics. She was the most sensible girl I’ve ever met.”

Not a quality one could have attributed to Lavinia Malfoy, Draco thought plaintively, but held his tongue. He hardly imagined the child-woman, who’d abandoned her family to run off with the estranged Black and got heavy with child out of wedlock at barely nineteen, could have been the sensible sort. Free-spirited and vivacious, and perhaps dreamful and selfish, too, but not sensible. In Draco’s dreams, she was beautiful, wildered of thought and spirit, and her eyes were kind.

“We should wake him up,” Draco declared, turning away. “An Enervate ought to do the trick, or the house-elves can bring a flask of smelling salts, if you think Edgar Linton here would prefer the gentle fragrance of sal volatile* to being shocked awake.”

“Harry isn’t suffering from a brain fever — he’s just fatigued and stressed, understandably so. We should let him rest and he’ll be right as rain soon enough,” Sirius said, passing Draco. “Follow me, we’ll talk elsewhere.”

Draco rolled his eyes, but pushed off the wall nonetheless.

It was difficult for him to fathom how someone as dull-witted and boorish as Potter could endear himself to Sirius so thoroughly. For as long as Draco had known Sirius, his every third thought was of Potter and nary an hour passed without him mentioning the ill-mannered philistine. Ordinarily, even looking at Potter’s dour face gave Draco indigestion, but upon seeing him together with Sirius, his distaste was overshadowed by a flare of foreign emotion. It set Draco’s teeth on edge and left a sickening, sharp taste in his mouth akin to the flavour of rotting flesh. It made him want to reach for his wand and inflict unpleasantness on something or someone.

It made him wish Scorpius would forgive him, if only so Draco would not feel so impotently bitter and alone.

A waxy glim of resentment sprouted between his ribs, burning long and steady beneath the edge of his heart, blackening it.

The music room of Avondale House was grand and full of splendor. It was an airy, bright space with a scintillating atmosphere, as effervescent as a champagne flute. Climbing vine and rosette motifs decorated the cream and gold walls, and watercolour-soft, gently playing instruments were frescoed onto the paneled ceiling, inlaid into the pocket doors, and carved into the room’s marble mantle.

At the centre of it, stood Scorpius’s grand piano — an elegant ebony instrument with a beautiful tableau in gleaming gold painted on the inner part of the lid, enchanted with dancing peacocks. Sunlight streamed in multicoloured rivulets through the stained glass windows onto the antique violin that Narcissa had taught Draco how to play and the new cherry-wood pedal harp he’d purchased as a gift for Astoria Greengrass’s upcoming twelfth birthday.

It was one of Scorpius’s favourite places in the house, and thus the one Draco visited the least this summer. Consequently, Sirius stayed out of it, too.

If there was tension in the room, Draco remained indifferent to it as he sat down in one of the silk-cushioned chairs by the tall windows and examined how the fairies spun and twirled among the flowerbeds on the glass. A periwinkle-coloured fairy with long brown hair smiled and blew him a kiss, before pirouetting away. Contrastingly, Sirius paced the room thrice before finally speaking.

“This was Andy’s.” He brightened as he picked up the violin and examined it, twisting it around and observing as the sun gleamed off the well-polished body. “I recognise it by the distinctive rippled patterns on the wood.”

“It’s mine now.”

“Oh,” Sirius said, putting the instrument back down. “Do you play?”

What else would one do with a violin? Row a boat? “Yes.”

“Are you any good?”

“I’d like to think so.”

He was not. In reality, he paled in comparison to Scorpius, who was the much more accomplished musician between the two of them. He had the talent and the drive and the love for music, along with the gift of perfect pitch. Draco had none of those things, just nervous energy he needed to channel constructively and a penchant for dramatism.

“Right.” Sirius coughed into his fist, turning on his heel and away from Draco. “Circe, this is uncomfortable.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Draco drawled, gaze finally fixing itself on Sirius’s face. “It isn’t like one of us impulsively brought in an uninvited, antagonistic guest to stay indefinitely with mere hours of prior notice, isn’t it?”

“So it does bother you.”

“Of course it bothers me. In what asinine reality would having Harold shit-for-brains Potter as my new roommate not bother me?”

“His name is Harry, as you well know. And he’ll hardly be your roommate.” Sirius snorted, and resumed his pacing, tucking his hands into his trouser pockets. A habit which Narcissa had trained out of Draco by rapping on his knuckles with her wand. “Besides, calling this place a townhouse is a gross understatement, it is monstrously large. I wager if you put your mind to it, the two of you can probably live comfortably without running into each other — there is more than enough free space.”

In spite of himself, Draco gritted his teeth. Potter, Potter, Potter. It always came down to Potter, didn’t it? The-Boy-Who-Failed-To-Die was like a curse upon the House of Malfoy. If it was up to Draco, he’d chuck Scarface at the Dark Lord at the first given opportunity and be done with the wretched brat. “Doesn’t Potter have a cohort of freckled, ginger paupers to leech off? Must his saintly holiness encroach upon your charity, too?”

“I’m his godfather, he’s my responsibility. If I am to stay here with you, he will, too.” Sirius had the gall to give an insouciant shrug as he persisted in ignoring Draco’s digs. Either Draco was witnessing a rare display of thick-skinned temperance — unlikely, given Sirius’s notoriously hot-blooded temper — or he was weaving an obscure, poorly constructed scheme. Which, in Draco’s less-than-humble opinion, was downright insulting — Gryffindors had no business playing mind games; it was like watching someone try to win a game of checkers while their opponent was playing wizarding wizarding chess. “And Harry wouldn’t have come here, had you not judged Grimmauld Place to be uninhabitable and decided it needed to be brought up to your lofty housing standards. It wasn’t in great condition, but we would have made do.”

Unfortunately, if Sirius was trying to goad Draco into an emotionally driven response, he was succeeding.

“There was mold in the insulation, the weight-bearing planks had rotted through, and there was a bloody hippogriff living in the master bedroom! Given the amount of dark artifacts scattered around the place, who the fuck knows what sort of evil, hallucinogenic, gangrene-giving spores were floating through the air. I wasn’t letting Scorpius’s lungs get within ten feet of that sanitation hazard, much less live there!”

Sirius’s mouth twisted in amusement. “I’ve survived living with the evil spores for three years, I’m sure Harry and I would have handled ourselves for another summer just fine. You and Scorp wouldn’t have even had to step foot in the place, I would have been more than happy visiting you two here.”

Draco suppressed the annoyance welling up inside of him. For the last two years, he’d spared neither funds nor effort to build an incontestable, efficacious legal case for Sirius, along with overseeing the legal team he’d hired in Sirius’s name. The reason why Strange & Norrell were able to overwhelm the Ministry of Magic’s legal representatives with frightful promptness was they were preparing for the trial years in advance. He hadn’t expected Sirius to fall upon his knees and crumble with everlasting gratitude, but the lack of even a sliver of consideration was beginning to grate on him.

Furthermore, Sirius’s careless facetiousness was stirring the embers of his temper.

To lose patience is to lose the battle, the voice of his old governess Madame Zhao cautioned. Draco centered himself, calling upon his remaining shreds of forbearance. “I am not paying Healer Curdle Junior an exuberant amount of galleons—”

“Can’t you find another semi-corrupt, available-at-all-hours Mediwizard to live in your back pocket? Frankly speaking, Milk Curdle is beyond creepy.”

“—to get your health in proper order, for you to just waltz back into that oversized petri dish—”

“Piotr, what?”

“—to huff lead paint and catch legionellosis.”

“Well now you’re just showing-off.”

A corner of Draco’s eye began to twitch. “Do you take anything seriously?”

“Of course, I’m always Sirius.” The man threw the quip over his shoulder with a roguish grin as he spun on his heel, head tossed back as he studied the enchanted fresco on the ceiling where cherubic blonde angels dozed on fluffy pink clouds. 

Draco exhaled sharply through his nostrils, deciding to approach the problem from another angle. If Sirius wasn’t going to listen to logic, Draco would just have to brute-force him into submission. A minuscule part of him questioned how sane it was to proceed like this — Lucius would never let him get away with talking even a fraction as brazenly as he did with Sirius without immediate corporal punishment. As soon as it came, Draco stomped on the thought, extinguishing it.

He began as coolly as he would open a chess match with the aggressive Latvian Gambit: “You haven’t been attending your court-mandated therapy sessions with the Mind Healer.”

This took Sirius by surprise and he stopped his pacing. “How could you possibly know that?”

“I have my ways. After all, for all intents and purposes, I am your guardian—”

“You must be sorely mistaken,” Sirius scoffed haughtily. “I’m neither elderly nor disabled, and do not require a caretaker. I appreciate you handling the legal and financial aspects—”

“Have you not been paying attention to the judge’s ruling?” Draco smirked unkindly and got to his feet. Standing upright, he was taller than Sirius by not an insignificant amount and he used every centimetre to his advantage. “Until you have cleared the psychological evaluation and attained a clean bill of health, I, as your closest living relative of age, have power of attorney over the estate. Moreover, you made me your proxy two years ago, and since then, I was handling everything pertaining to the House of Black. As far as the Wizarding World is concerned, I have full jurisdiction over your life.”

Sirius snarled, his starlight-grey eyes as hard as flint. “You wicked snake.”

“Thank you.”

“You grossly miscalculated. Do you honestly think I care about that rotten money or the damnable title?”

Draco cooly raised a blonde eyebrow, staring down his nose imperiously — Sirius would not cow him. Draco was already of age, Lord of a Great House through bloodclaim and right of conquest, and — Draco preened at the thought with no small amount of spite — Avondale House was his alone, had been for years. He had earned the property through gile and might, restored it with his own abilities and assets. Sirius’s precious Potter was permitted entry and granted sanctuary at his tender mercies.

Narcissa had imprinted an important lesson upon Draco early on, one he took to heart and never forgot: When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.

Thusly, move Sirius he shall.

“I think you care about your freedom and you care about that overrated Scarface,” Draco pointed out. His smirk sunk into an almost-scowl and he stepped away, folding his hands behind his back — a picture of smug arrogance beneath a thin veneer of artless sincerity. “Right now, you can’t so much as sneeze without my permission. Everything is going through me and requires my approval. Including all affairs pertaining to you.”

If Sirius was a different sort of man, he would have probably struck Draco for his insolence. Instead, Draco swore he could hear Sirius’s molars being ground into dust as he grit his teeth and stared daggers at him. No matter, the plot was almost complete and Draco had what he wanted within his grasp. All he had to do was give a little push.

“A cage is a cage, no matter how golden, isn’t it so, Padfoot? Right now, you are no more free than you were a few months ago, stuck in a rotting house with hollering portraits as your only company. And a caged man can hardly be a guardian to the most notorious orphan in the Wizarding World. Not when the mental stability of either of you is cast into doubt. But...”

“That ‘but’ has strings attached. I know your kind well enough to understand this little power play isn’t without a purpose.” Sirius narrowed his eyes, his hands clutching into white-knuckled fists. “So, what do you want?”

My kind? There is no-one like me, only me.

“I’m a fair man,” Draco said, mockingly magnanimous. “My terms are simple: stop wasting Curdle Junior’s time and effort, he’s only trying to get you better; and attend the sessions with the Mind Healer. Put in a fraction of the effort you exert in vexing me and get your life in order.”

Sirius stared at him for a prolonged, tense moment before spilling into chortling hiccups. He crouched down, burying his face in his knees as he gripped his hair and screamed in frustration. “Are you serious!? This is what you’ve been trying to blackmail me into?”

“No,” Draco deadpanned. “You are Sirius.”

Sirius’s laugh took on a hysterical quality. “You’re a dreadful child. Absolutely awful.”

He reached out and grasped Draco’s outstretched hand, getting to his feet. Sirius swayed a little before he latched onto Draco’s forearm and clutched it painfully tight, nails digging in. He squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, almost crushing, and then he let go. “It’s so hard for you to admit you care that you’d rather paint me into a corner than be earnest. Who’d doubt you’re a true Black when you’re this shamelessly manipulative?”

“Manipulator is such an ugly word,” Draco sneered, forcing himself not to cradle his arm. He sat down in the chair he’d vacated but minutes prior and smoothly crossed his legs. If he felt pain, he did not show it. “I like to think of myself more as an outcome engineer.”

“You realise you could have been a normal person and just asked me?” Sirius sighed and ran his hands through his hair. He stretched his neck, cracking it, and turned away, looking out the window. “Something like: ‘Daddy-o, you handsome rascal, you’ve been a housebound figurative on the lam from the law for all the years I have known you, I would like for you to stay with me this summer so we can spend some quality father-son time. Go fox hunting, or fishing in Wales, or catch some erant Death Eaters. Bond a little.’ Or: ‘Sirius, old chap, despite your sunny smile being positively radiant today, you are looking a bit haggard. I am sincerely worried about your health. Please, for the sake of your one and only child, be more mindful of your condition and improve your constitution. Your concerned son wishes for his Papa to live a long and happy life.’ Honestly, if you delivered one of these beauties, even Snivellus would tear up from the heartfelt sentiment.”

Amusement fluttered across Draco’s face before he caught himself and smothered it. “For curiosity’s sake, why in these thought experiments, am I always paying you disingenuous compliments?”

“Because your dear old Dad deserves to be lavishly praised after spending—”

“Twelve years in Azkaban,” Draco recited, drolly. “Yes, we all know.”

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” Sirius lamented. At Draco’s incredulous gaze, he added, “No need to look quite so shocked, it’s just Shakespeare. You might consider yourself the paragon of intellectual virtue, but your old man received quite a thorough education, thankyouverymuch.”

Suddenly, Sirius seemed to deflate, his posture sagging and fingers twitching nervously. A clammy hand of guilt crept up Draco’s spine, grasping the base of his neck in an uncomfortably tight vice as a stifling brand of regret burned itself upon his breast. He pushed these feelings down, and away from his consciousness — they were emotions Draco refused to entertain. Guilt and regret were for those who lacked the fortitude to commit to a path and walk it regardless of consequences.

“Withal, you are heartless and impudent and far too disgustingly clever for your own good,” Sirius said without any real malice. He gave a heavy sigh, a shadow darkening his handsome visage as he threw himself into an ornate chair beside Draco. “You truly are your mother’s son.”

“Which one?”

“Either one, I suppose.” A pause. “Perhaps, given the circumstances, you grew to be more Narcissa’s than Lettice’s.”

“Lettice*?”

Sirius laughed. “We all called Lavinia that for her curly hair.”

“A taunt,” Draco surmised, frowning.

“Which grew into an endearment. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, son,” Sirius said, pointedly.

Draco scowled. He could predict in which direction Sirius was steering the conversation. Deciding to forego the tediousness of verbally circling one another like two puffed-up peacocks, he addressed the heart of the matter: “You want me to arrange for you to become Potter’s legal guardian.”

Sirius barked a sharp laugh. “Are you a Legilimens? Because you plucked the question right out of mind.”

“It’s not difficult to guess your agendas. You’re as transparent as the Bloody Baron and, coincidentally, just as handsome.”

“Them be fightin’ words, son.”

Draco ignored him. “Regardless, my condition remains the same: make an effort to get better — no more skeeving off healing sessions or emptying potion vials into the potted plants. You might think your liquid diet and fresh air cure all ailments, but you — as you like to often point out — spent twelve years in a maximum security prison whose wardens quite literally have been sucking out your soul. You won’t fully recover unless you receive professional help. In exchange for your full cooperation, I’ll bribe someone of a high enough position in the Department of Magical Law to make Potter your official ward.”

“And…?” 

Draco rolled his eyes. “And I’ll make an effort to be civil to the wretched twerp, but I’m not going to be his friend.”

“That’s fair. You don’t have to like him, and Circe knows neither of you get along,” Sirius paused briefly, giving Draco a long, assessing look, “but he’s been through so very much, you must be kind to him—”

“Oh, must I?”

“Please, son, I’m tired, I don’t want to fight anymore. Try not to be difficult—”

I am being difficult?

Immediately, Draco wanted to rage, his patience finally snapping. Instead, he stifled the words before they could escape and masked himself behind a withering glare, knuckles straining white beside his thighs. Black blood might be flowing through both their hearts, and it was a potent bloodline, as the infamous quicksilver temper of its members was oft to remind, but he and Sirius were not one and the same — though Draco’s pride was inflamed, his blood was not. The man who lost his temper lost the fight, and Draco refused to give ground.

He soundly cracked the knuckles of his left hand, decision made.

“The kindest feeling I have for Harry Potter is that I am unwilling to bloody my hands by personally slitting his throat or poisoning his wine. The only reason that scrawny pickle self-marinating in misery and ill-fate is allowed into my house is because you wanted him here. Do not mistake my tolerance for acceptance.”

The careworn lines on Sirius’s face grew more pronounced, but unexpectedly, he remained calm. “Why are you so against Harry?”

Why wouldn’t I be? Draco seethed. He hated Potter. The skinny runt was an undying plague on his life; that ought to be enough of a reason. Moreover, his presence in Avondale House put an unwelcome spotlight on it, leaving everyone in his surroundings in peril. Which, much to Draco’s chagrin, included people he cared about — Sirius, who was heedless and reckless, and had the survival instincts of a lemming, and Scorpius, who was the last person Draco wished to be in the orbit of Hogwarts’ infamous danger magnet.

Regardless of how well-warded Avondale was, he’d rather not take chances with his cute little brother’s safety.

“Why Potter?” Draco asked, minutes later, voice spent.

“I made a vow.”

“Unbreakable?” Even if it was, there were a few ways around those. Why he knew a Persian magus in Knockturn Alley who could—

“No,” Sirius confessed, softly. He put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. When he spoke again, it was careful and he enunciated each word. “But this is a vow all the same and one I aim to uphold.”

Draco paused, studying Sirius’s haggard visage.

In a way, he understood why Sirius clung to his promise with desperation — Harry Potter was his last chance for honour. A scion of a Great House with blood as pure as his pledged many an oath in his life, even before he understood what they meant. Obey your father. Love your mother. Protect the family. Honour your House. Defend the weak. Respect the strong. Obey the laws.

“You swear and swear and swear, until there is nothing left of you. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other. If you remember any lesson of mine, son, then remember this: it is better to not pledge yourself to anything at all than suffer to be an oathbreaker,” Lucius had explained when Draco was young, too young to fully grasp what his father had meant.

He understood now.

“So you are choosing Potter. Again.” Like you always do.

Sirius’s voice was a rustling whisper. “I’m not choosing either you or him, can’t you see? I don’t know what Narcissa and Lucius may have told you about me, but—”

Nothing, they told Draco nothing at all.

Neither of them had ever spoken more than in passing about either the imprisoned Sirius Black or the late Lavinia Malfoy. They had never shared the secret of Draco’s birth, he knew that all by himself. For all intents and purposes, Draco was raised as the eldest son of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy — they had reared him, clothed and fed and educated him. Narcissa had tended to him when he was sick and taught him how to ride a horse; Lucius had given him his first sabre when he was six and brought in the First Wand of Persia to be his Duelling Master shortly thereafter. They had claimed him as theirs when he was two-years-old through a bloodrite and inked his name into the binding scroll of succession. Draco contemplated sharing this information with Sirius, weighing what it would cost him, what it would gain him.

In the end, he kept his silence. If Sirius could not bear to part with his secrets, then Draco would hoard his own and pour over them like gold.

“If you didn’t want the Malfoys to have me then you should have never followed Pettigrew on your own,” Draco concluded, patience spent and voice like shattered ice. “Do not blame them for taking in and raising an unwanted, half-dead child after you have all but forsaken him.”

Before Sirius could utter a word of defence, Ulrich materialised in the music room with a soft pop.

“Pardon this humble servant’s intrusion,” he said, bowing at the waist. “Master Sirius’s guest has awoken.”

Sirius sighed and got to his feet. “I hate to part on a sour note, but I better take care of this promptly.” Before he walked through the door, he paused. “Don’t storm in if you overhear something you don’t like. I want Harry calm and he won’t be if he sees you. Actually, just don’t eavesdrop. At all. Please.”

He left.

Then, a second later, Sirius’s head appeared in the doorway again. “And don’t think you’re off the hook. We’ll talk more later.”

“Got it,” Draco said, the set of his chin drawing unbecomingly mulish. He’d rather bury the subject altogether — Malfoys were not open by nature; as people and as a family they preferred to let their grievances rot in silence, to fester and wither within their hearts rather than suffer the indignity of bearing them.

He leaned back in his chair, and reflexively ran his forefinger down the side of his face and neck until it snagged on the roll-neck sweater he wore. Startled, Draco jerked his hand back swiftly and suddenly asked Ulrich, who was patiently waiting by the fireplace, “How did it go?”

“Swimmingly, Young Master. Ulrich did as Young Master instructed and waited for the signal. Once Ulrich saw Young Master crack the knuckles of his dominant hand, Ulrich Apparited into the drawing room and tried to rouse the guest. Ulrich was unsuccessful, but Ulrich thought it would be most prudent to be timely, thus he Levitated Master Sirius’s guest off the settee and dropped him onto the ground. The young guest woke immediately.”

“Good job,” Draco said, smirking and wishing he could have witnessed the scene. 

Ulrich was the most senior elf on staff and the most competent — his position granted him much leeway and creativity in how he chose to interpret his Master’s orders. He was a pawn Draco patiently advanced into a queen-piece: he was once assigned by Lucius as infant Draco’s nursemaid, then he became a toddler’s playmate, and then a child’s personal elf. Now, Ulrich was head elf of the entire estate appointed by the new Lord Malfoy. Granted, access to said estate was presently severely restrained, but it did not make Draco’s control over it any less palpable.

“Ulrich is pleased he served the Young Master well.”

“You know,” Draco said conversationally as he got to his feet, “I am no longer Young Master.”

The old elf’s wrinkly face stretched into a smile, toothy and crooked, the corners of his dark blue eyes crinkling. “In the eyes of this old elf, Young Master will always be Young Master.”

“If you wish to be sentimental, who am I to deny you?” Draco patted the elf’s head affectionately. He straightened his waistcoat and took out his pocket-watch, checking the time. “How’s Scorpius?”

“Young Master Scorpius remains secluded in the west wing. He took his lunch in his room and, presently, he is on a fire call with his friend.”

“Who?” Draco knew all of Scorpius’s friends. Just last year, he had surreptitiously arranged for an oblivious Scorpius to share a compartment with Ivy Warrington, Astoria Greengrass, and Daniel Page on his way to Hogwarts. Fellow First Years whose personalities and attitudes Draco screened and deemed to be appropriate companions: all of them were the younger sibling of someone who was still a Hogwarts student, and they were various degrees of smart, supportive, and open-minded. In the end, Scorpius’s innate charm did its magic and he became fast friends with the three children, even bridging the chasm of Page’s sorting into Ravenclaw.

“Young Miss Warrington.”

“Ivy?” Draco asked, surprised. The girl was optimistic and resourceful, but she was also hard-headed and stubborn, and not the sort one would confide emotional troubles in. He anticipated Scorpius would reach out to Astoria, who, for all her shyness, was compassionate and level-headed. “What are they speaking about?”

Ulrich shifted nervously. “Young Master, it’s a little…”

“Ulrich.”

The elf’s ears drooped. “Young Master Scorpius hadn’t used names, but he and Young Miss Warrington spoke of your Lordship and… of Master Sirius.”

Draco cracked the fingers of his right hand, one by one, as he considered the situation. Perhaps Astoria would be too understanding of a friend to unburden oneself to; Ivy was far more direct and brutally honest — was that why Scorpius chose to speak with her? Or was it because he feared Draco would manipulate Astoria through Daphne? Cassius Warrington was directly in Draco’s circle of influence and one of his acolytes, but he was not in the inner circle. Controlling him would require certain maneuvering he was not at liberty to perform without revealing cards he was not yet ready to. Had Scorpius calculated this?

Despite the circumstances, Draco’s heart swelled with pride at the thought.

“Or perhaps he knows,” a familiar voice spoke and a frightful chill went through Draco, freezing him to the bone. He turned his head and stared. Vague sickness gathered in his stomach, acid churned and wobbled up his throat as airways tightened, and a prickling mix of dread and despair swept through him.

On the velvet stool by the harp sat a slender woman dressed in expensive silk robes of creamy-pink embroidered with gently swaying blue hydrangeas. Her long blonde hair shone gold in the streaming sunlight and she gently picked the strings of a harp, playing a soft, melancholic tune Draco didn’t recognise. The light around her prismed, fracturing into kaleidoscopic hexagons, and the air grew denser — leaden and stale, the oxygen drained in a heartbeat.

“While there may be people bowing down to you now, their blood and tears may turn into daggers headed for your heart when the time comes,” Narcissa Malfoy said, her voice echoing in the hollowness Draco’s ribcage, reverberating and growing deeper with every word, drowning out the rush of blood through his ears.

“Is the Young Master displeased?” Ulrich asked, brow wrinkling in confusion. “Ulrich can replace the harp.”

“Do you think I am wrong, dearest?”

“No,” Draco croaked out, voice hoarse. He wasn’t sure whom he was answering — the vision of his mother or his elf. When he spoke again, it was with forced surety as he fought to recover his composure and deported himself with shreds of dignity. “No, Ulrich. It’s a fine instrument. I was merely admiring it.”

He jerked his head away, unwilling to look at Narcissa. For a brief moment, Draco let himself wallow in the emotions galloping through his heart, twisting and straining it. After a few seconds of rumination, he packed his feelings into a small black box and turned the key.

Draco took a breath, straightened up, and squared his shoulders, willing the studied nonchalance back onto his visage. He consciously flexed the fingers of his right hand, squeezing and spreading until the skin tingled, and the old scar across his palm began to itch from the strain.

“Ulrich, provide me with a detailed report on everything Scorpius and Ivy Warrington spoke of today.” Draco spoke with a Lord’s voice, wielding a Lord’s power, and he was to be obeyed at all costs.

Ulrich tugged uneasily on one long ear, but bowed his head all the same. “Yes, Young Master.”

With a wave of the hand, Draco dismissed the house-elf and walked through the oak doorway and into the entry hall. Across from him, the door into the drawing room was tightly shut, but it did not stop him from hearing Harry Potter’s shrill cry of MALFOY!? three times in a row.

“Sharp as a marble, that one,” Draco muttered, passing by and walking up the grand central stairway, two steps at a time.

He had business to attend to.

✨✨✨

Avondale House* was an imposing, lavish residence.

It was built a century after the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy had been signed and long after owning a property in the heart of Muggle London fell out of fashion amongst the pureblood elite. 

The Great House of Malfoy was an ambitious, discerning, and driven family, but they had an inbred weakness for their wives, and Octavius Malfoy, eldest son of Corvinus Malfoy and heir apparent of the Great House of Malfoy at thirty-nine-years-of-age, was a prime example. On the behest of his distant cousin, beloved wife, and ardent socialite Sofia Malufoiski, he purchased the sizable plot of land in the middle of upmarket Belgravia, spent six months cleansing and blessing the soil via paganistic rituals, and built upon it a weekend residence for entertaining and to house the family’s overflowing collection of arts and antiquities.

The result was a Palladian-style mansion made up of six floors and two underground levels, two family wings, adjoining servants’ quarters, a conservatory, and a lush garden. The interior was dripping with French-inspired luxury and outfitted practically everywhere with architectural flourishes: silk damask wall-hangings, parquet flooring, ornate plaster ceilings, enchanted vignette, gilded swags, frescoes, and elaborate skylights.

Thus, Avondale House was primed to be a gold pit for generations to come.

Half a century later, Aleister Malfoy, eldest son of Octavius and Sofia, and the martial-minded warlock whose wand Draco current carried upon his person, trivialised Avondale House by naming it to be ‘a minor townhouse’ and reallocated half of its budget to the war campaign he spearheaded through the Napoleonic Wars. During the height of the Great War in nineteen-sixteen, Aleister’s great-great-grandson, Corvus Malfoy, had abandoned the property completely, etching Statis Runes into its walls in an effort to preserve the building from irreversible dilapidation. However, a wizard’s house without a wizard was akin to a body without a soul, and Avondale House fell into ruin.

Seven years ago, when Draco won ownership of Avondale House by besting Lucius for the first time in a wizard’s duel, it was in a much more pitiful state than Grimmauld Place was presently — without a steady influx of organic biotic residual magic, buildings intended for magical beings deteriorated in structure and spirit; without purification and renewal, the flux of magic imbued into their foundation would fester and seep out to poison the surroundings.

Reason number seventeen-hundred-and-thirteen on the list of ‘Why Number Twelve Grimmauld Place Was Utterly Uninhabitable’: the circumambient Muggle neighbourhood needed to be purged of fifteen-to-eleven-years worth baneful remnants of magic before it a) completely poisoned the Muggles living in that cul-de-sac and b) grotesquely morphed the house further into degeneracy.

Precisely why Draco was sitting in his study behind a vast oak desk with its four legs carved into massive snarling wyverns, pale hands resting atop the smooth green leather-top. The rushlight, which stood in the centre, shed a clear white ray, softly illuminating the chamber, and making uncouth shapes and shadows on the walls from the rolls of parchment strewn about the desk.

He was reviewing the financial forecast a senior solicitor at Strange & Norrell drew up for him. Renovating Grimmauld Place was a costly, tedious affair, but he did not anticipate it would put a strain on the quarterly household budget. Since he’d contracted them last, Ptaclusp Associates started using time loops onsite to increase the workforce and optimise the workload. He ought to owl them and request a quote...

The fireplace roared to life in a towering blaze of green, and Draco shot to his feet, wand sliding out of its holster and into his waiting palm, a curse halfway out his mouth—

“My, my, Draco-kins, is that any way to greet a lady?” Pansy Parkinson asked with deceptive pleasantness as she gingerly stepped out of the fireplace, long skirts swishing.

“You couldn’t have possibly seen me draw,” Draco said, rolling his eyes and retracting his wand before sitting back down.

“No.” Pansy’s beaming smile was full of false cheerfulness. Her hands fluttered over her silk-blue robes, a simple non-verbal wandless spell dissipating ash and Floo-powder clinging to them, and she fluffed up her sleek black bob before smirking slyly. “But I know you, and you’re frightfully easy to predict.”

Draco huffed, but said nothing. Pansy was his oldest, shrewdest friend and they closely knew one another for thirteen years — a long time to learn a person. He watched warily as she glided across the room towards him with softly rustling steps and conjured up a comfortable wingback next to his own for her to sit.

“How did you get in here?” he asked, turning back to his papers and studiously ignoring both Pansy and the silver orb that hovered above his desk to his left. He supposed she had most likely harassed, cajoled, and bribed Odalric, Ulrich’s less-competent, soft-spined twin-brother, into unlocking the Floo for her. Admittedly, he could also guess why she was here, too.

Pansy unfastened her cloak and discarded her velvet slippers before unhurriedly climbing fully into the armchair and tucking her stockinged feet under her. He idly thought that Kiyoko Parkinson would have had a fit at the sight of her daughter in such a state. 

“Why are you asking questions to which you already have the answers?”

Draco felt a muscle in his neck twitch. “What do you want?”

Long-nosed, perpetually-blushing Periwinkle materialised next to Pansy with a pop, a cup of her favourite tea — sweetened peppermint laced with honey and lemon — resting atop a silver platter the elf carried. Pansy graciously smiled, accepting it, and the crooked-eared house-elf melted into a puddle of congeniality before retreating out of the room with a bow. Pansy unhurriedly blew on her steaming cup and raised an eyebrow, pointedly.

“Can’t a girl visit her dearest, bestest friend out of the goodness of her pure heart?”

Draco put down his ink-pen and turned to face Pansy fully, skepticism rolling off him in palpable waves. “What pure heart?”

“We were worried about you, you prick.” Pansy’s pretty face twisted into a scowl as she dropped her façade. She set her cup down with a sharp clink. “You vanished after the final exam. Snape obviously knew something, but was less helpful than a Hufflepuff in an Arithmancy class. No one hears anything from you for an entire month. On top of that, you haven’t been returning our letters or accepting Floo calls. The Manor is unprecedentedly, entirely, and firmly closed off. And do you know how much effort it took me to slither through the wards of Avondale? I swear the security in this place is tighter than a nun’s arsehole.” Pansy let out a huff, blowing her blunt bangs askew. “To add insult to injury, I had to hear from that wretched rat Charles Milverton that you’ve been admitted into St Mungo’s Intensive Care Unit in a critical condition. Do you know how much I paid that little creep to keep a lid on that information? You owe me a pair of sapphire earrings.”

Unfazed, Draco looked down his nose at her. “Are you quite finished?”

“Not even close. Papa is thinning from the pressure the Ministry is putting him under and balding from anxiety about You-Know-Who coming to collect favours; Mama is so adamantly pretending everything is normal she decided to put on a show of society events to reel in potential suitors; and Peony, Poppy, and I are caught in-between the two of them.” Draco quirked an eyebrow at the news. Pansy had turned sixteen in May; it was rather early for marriage proposals. “Theo’s beside himself with worry about your bloody ungrateful arse and his house is the latest stomping ground of the local silver-masked insurrectionists—”

Draco jerked up; sudden, piercing panic rushing through him like icy water. “Is the Dark Lord among them?”

Pansy bristled with indignation, sending him a dark glare. “No, you moronic twat. Do you think he’d stay there if he was? He’s not suicidal.”

Draco clenched and unclenched his fist, reflexively working the scarred tissue of his right hand, thinking. He operated under the impression that Nott Senior had been apprehended at the Department of Mysteries along with the other Death Eaters. He should have known better than to assume, and yet here he was, making an arse out of himself. The lack of concrete information he had about the Dark Lord’s movements and the development of the Death Eater trials was a grave oversight on his part. He had been discharged from St Mungo’s five days ago — more than enough time to gather proper intelligence, in his opinion.

A part of himself that twitched and jittered like an over-caffeinated jackalope who hadn’t had a night of full sleep in months or maybe even years, argued that he was already eyeballs-deep in projects and responsibilities, and if he ever wanted to keep those handsome looks of his beyond his teen years, he needed to stop trying to do everything himself and delegate better. He had the money and the connections to hire people to do half of his work, and finding someone trustworthy to gather and consume mountains of information of varying degrees of validity to produce an analysis report was surely easier on his nerves than spending hours upon hours reading between the lines of newspapers and duplicated Ministry reports, and listening to and subsequently paying off dozens of info-brokers.

Draco put a pin in the idea, and moved on.

“How’s he doing?”

“What do you think? Although no-one of more questionable character than those who already live there moved into his house, there are still dangerous people roaming around. Theo’s Mum is keeping a keen eye on him and has locked him away in the family wing.” She paused for dramatism and Draco winced when she delivered the punchline. “With his brothers. He isn’t in peril, but he’s most definitely not enjoying the summer.”

“What about Blaise?”

“His Mum dragged him off to the Caribbean with her newest husband for a ‘family holiday’ and took away his Floo access.” She rolled her eyes, momentarily exasperated. “He’s been sending me weepy letters containing far too much personal information.”

“Daphne?”

“Madder than a box of frogs. She knows you put on that bloody bone ring and it’s blocking her visions of you.” Pansy took a sip of her tea and gave him an arched look, her eyes glinting mischievously. “Coincidentally, she has a message to pass on: if Scorpius doesn’t come to Astoria’s birthday party next week, she’ll shove your broomstick so far up your arse, you’ll be spitting out splinters.”

Draco felt a bead of sweat roll down his temple. Daphne Greengrass tended to be as serious as a late-stage dragon-pox. “Daff paints a vivid picture.”

“Quite.” Pansy smirked, viciously basking in his disquietude. “Speaking of pictures, mind telling me why a VoyEYEr is hovering above us? Did you become a degenerate in your time away from me, mmmm?”

A smooth glass sphere about the size of a Norwegian Ridgeback’s egg was suspended in the air above the desk; it glowed with a faint silvery light and rotated about a vertical axis continuously, the picture inside of it remaining stationary. Within it, one could see the transmission of the inside of the green drawing room where Sirius and Potter currently sat atop an upholstered green velvet sofa. Draco had left one of his blue jay golems in the room where it perched itself on a dark-oak window cornicle, shrouded by shadows and surreptitiously keeping surveillance.

Draco hummed and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together in contemplation. “Alayne is keeping a keen eye on things.”

Pansy tilted her head sideways and squinted up. “Uh-huh. I can see that you’re up to something shady again. It’s just… What in the bloody hell is Harry Potter doing here?”

“Being a pest.”

“Isn’t he always? I’m going to need you to explain this development in detail.”

“Sirius picked him up. Like a mangy stray.”

“And brought him into your house?”

Draco’s jaw muscles clenched and unclenched. “No, Sirius threw him off a bridge and Potter’s vengeful ghost followed him home like a case of bad hair. Obviously.”

“Well, the two of you are patently related. The thoughtless disregard of other people’s feelings must be an inheritable trait.”

“Pansy.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, was I supposed to pretend you’re unflaggingly kind and considerate? After what you put your friends through — very specifically, what you put me through — this past month? I don’t think so.” She put her empty cup onto the saucer and placed it soundlessly on the desk, her calculating dark eyes never straying from the Visio-Orb. “Why can’t I hear what they’re saying?”

“I promised not to intrude or eavesdrop,” he said by way of explanation. “Technically, I’m doing neither.”

“Just watching what they’re doing, right? Merely some harmless, wholesome, home-grown intelligence gathering and espionage. Ancients, you never change. Even in your own house you act entirely too much like you do at Hogwarts,” Pansy snorted. “Don’t you ever get tired of being the nosiest paranoiac prat around?”

“Am I supposed to take this inquiry seriously or…”

She slapped the smirk off his face. Draco spluttered indignantly. “Hush you. Now activate the sound, I made no promises to your father-dearest, and I’m curious to hear if Potthead is spilling his deepest and darkest. He certainly looks like he’s taken a Diffindo to the gut.”

Draco paused, considering, hesitating; apprehension coiled in his chest like a rattlesnake yet possibilities tumbled around his mind like spilled marbles, and burning curiosity tugged on his gut. Disregarding Sirius’s request was neither principled nor responsible, but Pansy’s demand provided the necessary ethical ambiguity for him to argue out of penalties in the highly unlikely chance his surveillance were to be discovered. Loopholes were a Slytherin’s best friend, Draco thought, and tapped the Visio-Orb three times with his wand, muttering a spell.

There was a sputtering, hissing noise, before Potter’s crackling voice rang out, clear as a bell, “—he’s vile and cruel!”

“Vile is a strong word…”

“Skipping right over the cruel comment, huh?”

“It’s a bit difficult to refute that, but he’s a good kid at heart… deep down.”

“Padfoot, you can’t be serious.”

“I’m always Sirius.”

The two of them smiled the same tired, crooked grin before breaking into peals of laughter, and without realising it, Draco scowled. He watched as fluttering light from the fireplace cast shadows across their faces, blurring the features, and shading their dark hair into identical black. In a dimly lit room, Sirius and Potter looked frustratingly alike.

It set his teeth on edge.

“This isn’t a trick, Harry,” Sirius said, kindly, and gently took Potter’s hands into his. “Draco isn’t going to smother you in your sleep with a pillow. Trust me on this.”

“I trust you, always. It’s him I don’t trust.”

“Then trust that I want what’s best for you; I’ll keep you safe. And believe me when I say Draco isn’t planning anything nefarious.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, for one, four hours heads-up is hardly enough time to plan a dastardly scheme, even for him. For another, for as long as I ask it of him, he’ll try to make it work. He’s not a bad kid.”

Potter snorted. “Right. Just misunderstood.”

Sirius shook his head, smiling wryly. “No, he’s about as misunderstood as a hex to the face. He is, however, misguided. His intentions are not inherently malicious, but the way he acts on them is more than a little troubling. Whatever passes as a moral compass has been skewed by years of indoctrination and positive reinforcement of his worst qualities—”

“You say that like he has any good qualities. All of him is the absolute worst—”

“Disregarding your justifiable, but not appreciated complaint against my son’s admittedly dubious character, one of his… well, not positive, but definitely useful characteristics is that Draco is as paranoid as he is overprotective. Which means he’s warded Avondale to be the second — or now, maybe even the most protected private property on the entirety of the British Isles. Undeniably, you’ll be the safest in Avondale, where magic shields you from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his merry band of unhinged extremists. I can keep an eye on you.”

“That’s very comforting,” Potter drawled in an adequate imitation of Draco. “My heart is overjoyed to hear that I’m safe from Voldemort. But, here’s a tiny, miniscule flaw in your plan: I’m now housemates with Malfoy, who, might I remind you, has portrayed himself as Voldemort’s ardent and very vocal follower for years.”

Sirius sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Draco is neither thrilled with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named nor is he a follower. If anything, his rise to power would probably highly inconvenience him in achieving his goals. I’ve been listening to his complains on the subject for a whole month—”

“What even are the slimy git’s goals?” Potter grumbled.

A thoughtful look crossed Sirius’s face. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure Draco himself fully understands what he wants, or what he’s working towards. But as long as his ambition aligns with ours, he’s not a threat.”

“That is confidence inspiring. I feel so safe now.” Potter threw himself back onto the sofa and crossed his arms petulantly. “So you’re saying, I need to trust Malfoy not to sell me to Death Eaters for one corn-chip.”

“I’m saying trust me, Harry. I’ll deal with Draco.”

Minutes trickled by like grains of sand and when Potter spoke again, it was with a querulous tone of grudging resignation. “What makes you trust His Supreme Unscrupulous Buttbrain?”

Sirius smiled sadly; then answered, simply and honestly, “That’s the thing: I don’t. He is every inch a Black, and that makes me wary. And yet he is my son. How can I not love him?”

Draco grimaced, his grey eyes flickering to Pansy’s pensive face, and with a harsh swish of his wand, he cut the audio. Sirius’s words hammered in his brain like a heartbeat, making him dizzy. He bit on the inside of his cheek, drawing blood, and focused solely on his breathing — emptying his mind, untying each thread of confusing feelings one at a time.

He felt hands, soft and small, grasp his — the warmth of them reached all the way to his heart. He’d missed her, and he hadn’t realised just how much until he’d been completely without her for the first time in his life. 

They stayed like that for what felt like hours, but must only have been mere minutes.

When Pansy finally spoke, it was high and breathy and full of false cheer. “That was certainly illuminating. Apparently Potter and I agree on something: you are a miserable bastard.”

“Bastard?” Draco barked out a hollow, tired laugh. “Yes, technically speaking. Miserable? Actually… also, yes.”

Pansy raised a round, bony fist, threateningly. “I can and I will beat the information out of you. Don’t forget who is the reigning wrestling champion.”

“You haven’t managed to get me in a headlock in years and you know it,” Draco drawled, rolling his eyes.

“Draco Lucius Malfoy—”

“That is not my middle name.”

“I will hex you into the next week, or so help me Ancients—”

“Scorpius isn’t talking to me right now,” Draco finally confessed, softly and shamefully. “He can’t even stand being in the same room as me.”

“What did you do?” Pansy shrieked, eyes rounding.

“Hey! I resent the accusation. What makes you think I did anything?”

“As long as I’ve known him, Scorpius has acted like you hung the moon, scattered the stars, and the sun shines out of your arse. You had to have done something for him to be angry at you.”

Draco ran a hand through his hair, hesitating. “I explained exactly who Sirius is… and how we’re related.”

“I gather Baby Malfoy didn’t take it well?”

“A gross understatement,” he snorted. “He was livid. I can’t believe I ever worried that Scorp might have been born a Squib — he levitated me and tossed me out of the room like a sack of potatoes.”

Pansy drummed her well-manicured nails on the oak desk, the deep-green of them matching the kingfisher brooch she’d pinned to the front of her robes. “You almost sound as if you admire him.”

“I do. It takes power to use wandless magic, even accidentally,” Draco pointed out, voice laced with unconcealed pride. “I was thoroughly impressed.”

“Then tell Scorpius that, not me. And apologise, for Merlin’s sake, Draco. I know the concept of regret is foreign to you, but you ought to offer a suitable solatium for your wrongdoing.”

“You’re saying I should buy him another Abraxan?”

Pansy slapped his shoulder three times, hard. “Stop being purposefully obtuse! I am saying you need to be contrite — make an attempt to acknowledge your failures and admit to them! You’re not an idiot, so stop acting like one!” She dragged her hand across her face, unknowingly smearing her lip rouge. “Ancients preserve me and my last thread of sanity. Let me give you step-by-step instructions: you go to Scorpius; you ask to talk to him; you fall onto your knees and prostrate yourself, slamming your forehead on the ground, offering your sincerest, deepest apologies; and then you beg for mercy until Scorp grants you clemency.”

“Is a dogeza really necessary?” Draco asked, a corner of his mouth twitching.

“It is essential, you nitwit.”

“All right, so I shower him with gifts and hope I can buy my way back into his good graces, got it.”

“You’re such an intolerable nincompoop, I don’t know why I’m still friends with you,” she grumbled, but her tone seemed to have lost most of its heat.

Draco turned to face her, feigning shock as his hand flew to his chest in an exaggerated pantomime. “Intolerable? Ç’est moi? Me thinks prolonged exposure to Theodore Nott Junior has addled your wits, Miss Parkinson.”

Pansy’s hand darted out, grabbing Draco’s sharp nose in between the knuckles of her middle and index fingers, and harshly tugged on it. “You’re awful and I hate you.”

“Love you, too.” Draco rubbed his reddening nose. “And must you always resort to violence? Who will marry a savage gremlin like you?”

“Then I shan’t ever get married,” Pansy sniffed, haughtily, turning her nose up. “I’ll do something else — run off to the Americas and become a curse-breaker.”

“Your mother will surely love that.”

“She has Poppy and Peony and Primrose, she’ll manage. Speaking of my mother, this has been fun, but I’ve got to go. Poppy can only keep Mama preoccupied for so long before she notices my absence.” Pansy got to her feet and put her slippers on. From her vantage point, she looked down at Draco and her cat-like eyes narrowed. “You look like shit.”

Draco chuckled, curling hair flopping into his face. “Thanks, I appreciate the compliment.”

She tilted his head up and peered down at him, her pitch-black eyes studying his face shrewdly. She gently ran her index finger between Draco’s brows, smoothing out a fine frown line, and traced the dark circles beneath his eyes with the pads of her thumbs. She cupped his cheek and Draco leaned into the touch, closing his eyes; the skin of her palm was cool and smooth.

“Whatever you’re thinking — cease it at once. It’s not your fault and you’re not the problem,” she said softly, her other hand combing his blonde hair away from his face. “Now, stop avoiding your friends, make-up with Scorpius, and get some sleep. You look like you’re barely hanging on.”

She’s not wrong about that, Draco thought. A moment later, she wordlessly withdrew her hand, and he missed the warmth of it. A roar of green-flames marked Pansy’s departure. The only indication of her presence was the empty cup on the desk, the smell of her floral perfume lingering in the air, and the renewed weariness weighing down on Draco.

Finally, he opened his eyes. In front of him, the Visio-Orb was showing Sirius and Potter embracing, patting each other on the back, before the former threw his head back in soundless laughter. With a glower, Draco grabbed the sphere and hurled it across the room. It hit a wall and shattered on impact.

Everything has a price. Everything has consequences.

“Every failure is a lesson,” Draco said, grimly. He absentmindedly touched his neck, fingers itching to pull the fabric of his sweater down. The still-healing scar tissue ached from the remnants of the dark curse. “And each lesson makes us better.”

.

.

.

* sal volatile is another name for ammonium carbonate.
* Draco’s birth mother had a bunch of names I was workshopping through [Octavia, Lucretia, Invidia, Symphora, Perdita] before I settled on Lavinia as it felt appropriately old-fashioned to suit the HP-world, had Latin origins as Malfoy names oft to do, and was rare enough to be interesting and evocative. I found out that in medieval England, the name Letitia had appeared in the form Lettice and I was immediately sold on the idea of nicknaming her Lettice Malfoy just for the lulz.
* When I picture Malfoy Manor, I’m thinking of something among the lines of Waddesdon Manor and Chatsworth House. Avondale House’s exterior is all white-columned Regency style that is more or less reminiscent of the townhouses at Park Crescent, but the interior is based on Halton House.