It was a cool, crisp morning.
While the house-elves in the kitchen rubbed the sleep from their eyes, lit the lukewarm stove, and prepared breakfast for their masters, Draco Malfoy had long since woken up.
The boy soared into the air on his broomstick, the morning breeze brushing against the tips of his platinum-blond hair.
He circled his Quidditch pitch several times to make sure no one was around, then suddenly banked towards the lush woods surrounding Malfoy Manor, flying straight over the manor's walls.
Beyond the wall lay a vast, desolate wilderness.
A huge, weathered oak tree stood there all alone.
This was Draco Malfoy's secret refuge.
He had loved this oak ever since he was a child—its strong, rugged trunk stretched out like a pair of open arms, forming a great hemisphere of dense foliage.
In his past life, one August day, just before he was to leave for Hogwarts, he had flown out of the manor on a broomstick and stumbled upon it by accident.
Draco had sat atop that oak, quietly watching the scenery all day amid the calls of redstarts, robins, warblers, and blue tits.
Watching the sunrise climb slowly, and the sunset slip slowly away.
Back at the dinner table at Malfoy Manor, unable to contain his joy, he had excitedly told his parents about the tree, much to the bewilderment of Lucius and Narcissa.
Lucius thought that sitting idly in a silly tree admiring the scenery was a complete waste of time. The child should be putting his energy into potion-making and the study of magic—something "worthwhile" for a boy his age.
Narcissa, while she granted the tree was lovely, worried constantly that her precious son might fall from a tree so tall.
"Little Dragon, we grow plenty of trees in our own grounds. You may walk about and admire them to your heart's content. Why must you love some wild tree out in the middle of nowhere? There could be poisonous insects nesting in that trunk, for all we know. It isn't safe." Narcissa's blue eyes were full of worry as she looked at her son.
"All the trees at home are so stiff and boring! None of them are as tall or as beautiful as this one. Mother, you can see the whole world from up there! Come and see!" The eleven-year-old clung stubbornly to the top of the tree, arms wrapped tight around the trunk. "Anyway, you can't cut it down!"
The young mother's composure finally cracked; she went pale with fright. "Little Dragon," she called softly, "listen to your father and come down at once."
"You foolish boy, you're wasting our time!" Lucius snapped, head tilted back, furious. "This tree is dangerous. We're getting rid of it."
Draco was dragged down from the tree by his father without mercy. The trembling house-elves, cowed by their master's wrath, took up saws and worked together to fell it.
He watched, helpless, as the tree crashed to the ground. Overwhelmed, he wept.
He didn't understand what he had done wrong—why loving something so beautiful should bring it such ruin.
He never got the chance to make sense of it. Lucius was already there, scolding him for shedding tears in public; a Malfoy, he said, should never look so weak.
An innocent child, tasting the cruelty of the world for the first time, trembled under his father's rebuke and wiped away his tears—wiping the image of the tree from his mind along with them, leaving only a barren stretch of ground in his heart.
From that day, he learned to be cold, indifferent, and hard.
He never showed his affections again.
To love something was a weakness. Weakness led to heartbreak. Heartbreak earned his father's contempt.
Wearing one's preferences openly was no way to become a Malfoy his father could be proud of.
That was the absurd, fractured logic an eleven-year-old Draco had drawn from the whole affair.
Later, at Hogwarts, he saw many more oaks—in the castle courtyard, by the Black Lake, in the Forbidden Forest. All of them beautiful, but none stirred in him the same raw wonder as that first old tree.
This time around, he kept it to himself and never told his parents.
Having lived a second life, he understood something clearly now: not everyone could see the tree's beauty the way he did.
That vivid, living beauty. That steady, unshakeable beauty, untouched by shallowness or impulse.
Not even his own parents, for all their love.
So he chose to hide it, and let it flourish quietly on its own.
The tree had lived up to that trust, growing more vigorous year by year, and this summer it had given him a new reason to love it.
The boy flew to the crown of the oak and settled easily onto a thick branch, leaning back against the trunk to watch the first faint light climb above the horizon, birdsong drifting indistinct around him.
He waited until the light grew a little brighter, then switched on the Muggle mobile phone she'd given him and pressed the buttons one by one, with more care than he ever gave to brewing Veritaserum in his own workshop.
The phone rang three times before the call connected.
A girl's voice came through, still thick with sleep, soft as a newborn kitten's mew. "Draco?"
"It's me." His voice drifted out over the rustle of oak leaves like something lazy and half-asleep.
She yawned, coquettish, squinting at the daylight through her lashes and the sheer curtains. "Is it dawn already? What time is it?"
"Six o'clock," he said into the morning air, a note of grievance creeping into his voice. "I couldn't sleep. I missed you too much."
"Oh, poor thing," she drawled, yawning again, sighing softly down the line. "I really wish I could touch your hair right now."
"All right. I'll let you owe me, for now," he said, after a pause.
"I'll owe you, for now," she agreed.
"Next time we meet, I'm collecting—principal and interest both," he said stubbornly.
"Let's pay it back together, then..." she murmured lazily, more agreeing than arguing.
The corner of his mouth curved into a small smile.
In the Malfoy family's trophy room, Abraxas watched intently through the window as the boy dragged his broomstick back into the house, wiping away a thin sheen of sweat.
"How is the planning for the gathering coming along?" he asked Narcissa, who stood behind him.
"Word has gone out, and the calendar's already full. I've made sure every pure-blood family with a daughter of marriageable age has heard about it," Narcissa said evenly.
She stood beside a small table, her gaze sweeping over a richly painted vase laced with gold vines, filled with white roses freshly cut by the garden fairies. Noticing a small gap among the blooms, she reached out and straightened one, and only then did satisfaction settle over her face.
"Well done." Abraxas seemed not to notice his daughter-in-law's small adjustment at all, intent only on praising her efficiency.
On the display shelf beside him sat a golden, walnut-sized sphere asleep inside its glass case. "Is this the Snitch Draco caught in his first Quidditch match?" he asked, interested.
"Yes." Pride and old pain mingled on Narcissa's face. "He went through a great deal for it. Thirty-four broken bones, but he wouldn't give up until he had it."
"A tough nut to crack, this one." Abraxas said it thoughtfully, a glint of gold from the Snitch reflecting in his grey eyes. "Whatever a Malfoy wants, a Malfoy gets."
"You almost sound as though you admire his stubbornness," Narcissa said with a soft sigh. "It isn't such a fine quality when it comes to choosing a wife."
"Think bigger, Narcissa. Once that stubbornness is turned toward the family business, imagine the force behind it." Abraxas's voice dropped almost to a whisper. "Then it won't be stubbornness anymore. It will be unshakeable resolve."
He brushed a hand over the glass case, as though wiping away a speck of dust that had never been there.
"After I'm gone, you must handle this boy with care, and never let him drift from you. I have high hopes for him. Setting aside a certain irrationality where his heart is concerned, his intellect, his talent, his composure, his instincts—all of it, I admire greatly."
Narcissa looked at him, faintly startled. "You're leaving? You've only just come home. Won't you stay a little longer? Is something drawing you away in such a hurry?"
By her understanding of the old man, he ought to have stayed on a while longer to guide his grandson further.
As it happened, this was a delicate stretch in Draco's rebellion—he seemed willing to heed his grandfather, if no one else. At the very least, he didn't push back against him the way he did his parents.
Though the couple kept up a surface peace with their son, an undercurrent of awkwardness and unease still ran beneath it.
"I miss my private house outside London," Abraxas said, offhand. "I have matters of my own to attend to."
"But why the rush? Your seventieth birthday is at the end of the month—we wanted to hold a proper banquet for you," Narcissa said, puzzled that a man who had always loved parties and lively company should have grown suddenly so withdrawn.
"No need for that." The old man gave a short laugh. "Old age settles over you like a thick fog. I've grown tired of gatherings lately. I'd rather live quietly."
"But—"
"I am nearing the end of my life, and I may not have many days left. You cannot lean on me forever, Narcissa—don't rush to comfort me over it." There was something heavy behind his words. "Everyone has their own fate. No one escapes age and death."
He raised a hand to stop her from saying anything more.
"I know what you're thinking, Narcissa. You want me to speak to Little Dragon again. I've done what I can—I've said everything I have to say. Now you must give him time to sit with it and come to his own understanding."
He went on, weary. "As for you—I've given you what pointers I can. Isn't that enough? The rest, you'll have to work out for yourselves. As parents, this too is something you need to learn."
He never looked at Narcissa's face, keeping his eyes on the Snitch instead, his expression somber.
"One last thing. He's drawn to clever girls. Look over the eligible, intelligent daughters of the pure-blood families and introduce them to him, tactfully. Don't overdo it. My part in this is finished—now it's your turn to take on Lucius."
After Abraxas left Malfoy Manor abruptly at the end of July, Lucius and Narcissa began their clumsy campaign to win their son back over.
One morning at breakfast, Lucius mentioned, almost in passing, that they had decided to lift Draco's restrictions on communication.
"It would look rather poor if you went the whole holiday without a word to your Slytherin housemates," he said, not quite meeting Draco's eyes. "And it's inconvenient enough as it is, managing without the house-elves' help."
Draco nodded, expressionless.
"Yes, Little Dragon, is there anything you need lately? Tell your mother, and we'll get it for you—hard-to-find potion ingredients, a new broom, anything at all—" Narcissa smiled at her son, the very picture of a doting mother.
"Thank you, Mother. Just transfer the money as before—I can buy what I want myself," Draco said readily, biting back a private laugh.
Their efforts to win him over were, frankly, clumsy.
Still, all things considered, it worked out well for Draco. Dobby, who had been sitting on a paid two-week holiday in Africa, finally got the chance to prove his worth.
Before Dobby could even receive his intended assignment, Draco found that his parents had already filled his own schedule for him.
Three or four days a week, he accompanied Lucius on inspections of the family's properties, or was towed along through one social circle or another.
One morning, for instance, Lucius took him to the Port of Liverpool with obvious excitement, ostensibly to "inspect" a pair of cargo ships bearing the Malfoy crest that were about to set sail.
Draco surveyed the docks calmly and asked his father, "Where are these ships bound?"
"Those two, the smoking ones, are headed for Africa today—bringing back potion ingredients. Chameleon snails, Tepo warthogs, poisonous horned beasts. With any luck, something rarer besides." Lucius clicked his tongue, a note of regret in his voice. "Word was they'd found signs of a Nundu near a village out there, but your mother wouldn't hear of bringing one home."
"I'd say Mother showed good sense there," Draco said. "A creature whose breath can wipe out an entire village isn't something I'd want brought into England."
Lucius looked rather put out. "I never meant to keep it at the Manor. If you can get your hands on something no one else has, people take notice—and if we find the right buyer, it's a small fortune besides."
Draco caught where the conversation was headed and steered it elsewhere. "So, Father, what are the other ships carrying?"
"A few more are still being loaded—they'll sail for Calais next month, bringing timber in from Bulgaria." Lucius said it with studied indifference, though Draco caught the pride in the tilt of his chin.
"Bulgarian timber?" Draco asked, the name of the country tugging at something familiar.
"You remember the Bulgarian Minister for Magic—he shared our box at the Quidditch World Cup. That's where I first made the connection. Your mother and I called on him again after the tournament," Lucius said.
Draco nodded—that much was true.
Pleased by his son's interest, Lucius offered a bit more. "The Malfoy family's working with the Bulgarian Ministry on a new venture. We'll harvest ash from their forests, ship it to England, and sell it on to the Nimbus Broom Company."
"Are they developing a new line of brooms?" Draco asked, glancing shrewdly at the other ships in port. "Their handles haven't used this wood before."
Lucius shot him an approving look when he thought Draco wasn't watching. "Just so. They're trying to claw back market share, and they're experimenting with new wood to improve handle stability."
"Trying to borrow the ash-handle idea from the Firebolt?"
"Randolph Badmore's Firebolt was an overnight sensation—it's the official broom of every serious Quidditch match now, and it's forced Nimbus to sit up and take notice," Lucius said.
"But their old supplier—"
"The Selwyns?" Lucius said. "Not best pleased, I'd imagine."
"Is that their ship over there?" Draco asked, nodding toward a vessel flying an "S" flag, where several robed men were unloading logs and round wooden barrels.
"That's the one." Lucius led him closer, then jabbed one of the logs with his snake-headed cane, rather smugly. "All top-grade mahogany. They own a considerable forest in Africa—the mahogany they used to supply to Nimbus was very fine stuff."
Draco walked on down the dock and caught the smell of sulphur near the barrels.
"The Selwyns are into a bit of everything—timber, infrastructure, fireworks," he said to his father.
"That's more than fireworks—it's used in mining and blasting too. Theirs is the only family in the British wizarding world licensed for it; the Ministry gave them sole rights, a complete monopoly. An old pure-blood family, not as wealthy as us, but with enough influence behind them to hold that kind of ground." A flash of resentment crossed Lucius's face. "Once we're properly into mining, we'll likely have to buy the stuff from them ourselves."
"Given how deep the Selwyns' connections run at the Ministry, do you really think they'll let this slip away quietly?" Draco said. "They took on a good part of the Quidditch stadium construction last time, didn't they? They don't strike me as people who hand over profits without a fight."
"It's fine—we've already smoothed things over at the Ministry, and the approvals are nearly through. I slipped Fudge a private twenty percent, more than enough to tip the scales and put a stern, righteous look on his face while he does it."
"I imagine so."
"More to the point, the Selwyns simply can't supply what's needed right now—for all their pull, there's nothing they can do but watch," Lucius said, with no small satisfaction. "Developing new products takes ash wood, and they were slow off the mark securing it."
"Surely there are other timber suppliers in the market," Draco said slowly.
Lucius glanced at his son. "We quietly offered the Nimbus buyer a ten percent commission. He chose us over everyone else without a second thought."
Conversation after conversation like this unfolded, recounting one deal after another. Draco often watched his father manoeuvre stakeholders with a skill that bordered on the unscrupulous—and worked, more often than not.
A few days later, Lucius took him to the offices above his own potion-ingredient processing plant, letting him look down through the bright floor-to-ceiling windows at the workroom below.
"See those researchers, material handlers, inspectors, loaders?" He tapped the glass with his cane. "This one factory alone has over twenty different roles and a hundred employees. The leather works next door has another hundred. And this is only a small piece of the family's empire."
Seeing how closely his son was watching, Lucius went on. "Muggle-borns, half-bloods, even a few goblins work here. Surprised? Don't be. I've no quarrel with talent, wherever it comes from—so long as it doesn't try to set foot inside Malfoy Manor."
Draco frowned slightly but said nothing.
He swallowed whatever he was feeling and let his father continue.
"Every one of them depends on us for the wages that feed their families. If the Malfoy name fell out of favour with the pure-blood families and we lost our market share, these factories would close. We'd manage well enough, of course."
Lucius said it lightly. "We could lie about on piles of gold and never lift a finger again. But these people would lose their livelihoods overnight, and their children would go hungry by morning."
Over the deafening churn of machinery, Draco glanced at his father, startled to hear him speak, of all things, about the welfare of others.
"That's the truth of our world. For ordinary wizards—without connections, without exceptional talent—decent work isn't easy to come by," Lucius said coldly. "The Ministry has its entry requirements. Not everyone gets through the door."
"There must be places outside the Ministry," Draco said. "Somewhere—"
"Gringotts takes only the very best, like the Weasley boy, Bill—and even he had to spend six years in Egypt before they'd let him back to London," Lucius said, shaking his head. "Opportunity is thin on the ground everywhere. How many jobs do you think the little shops in Diagon Alley can offer, most of them run by two or three people at most?"
Draco stared down at the wizards moving about below the window, listening to his father tap the floor impatiently with his cane. "Think about it, Draco—when we have this much wealth, don't we owe something back?"
Spoken like that, the words sounded almost noble.
His father was playing the conscientious capitalist, full of compassion and civic duty.
But that wasn't really the problem, was it.
The real question was why there were so few opportunities to begin with.
Draco nodded respectfully, while inwardly he turned the question over: where, exactly, had it all gone wrong?
In his previous life, such thoughts would never have troubled him. Even freshly reborn, they hadn't occurred to him.
But lately, one worry had begun to gnaw at him more and more:
Could this world ever make her happy?
On the ride home, under Lucius's smug, satisfied gaze, Draco turned the question over in silence.
Why were there so few chances?
Why did talent so rarely get its due?
Why was the wizarding world—for all its magic, magic so plainly beyond anything Muggles could do—nowhere near as prosperous as the Muggle world she'd once described to him?
The remaining two or three days of the week belonged to Narcissa, usually falling on the weekend. While Draco endured his father's lectures on "the family business," his mother was eager to parade him through a string of glittering, hollow social gatherings, always populated with a handful of pure-blood girls his age.
Narcissa never once mentioned Hermione—neither kindly nor unkindly.
She would only occasionally remark on some pure-blood girl's family standing or particular merits—this one clever, that one from a powerful and influential house, another gifted at magic.
Now and then she would offer a subtler critique of their looks—their hair, their eyes, the state of their teeth.
"That girl isn't quite right, is she?" She glanced toward a girl standing in the corner, taking a sip of tea to cover the remark, and murmured to her son, "Something's off about her ankles."
"Thank Merlin those ankles aren't attached to me," Draco said, deadpan, staring up at the bronze chandelier, having not so much as glanced at the girl's ankles.
Compared with Lucius's blunt, heavy-handed methods, Narcissa preferred something subtler—gentler.
She never lectured Draco at length, knowing it would only irritate him. Instead she dropped the odd pointed remark into conversation, her touch light and careful.
Had Draco truly been an ordinary fifteen-year-old, he might have been fooled by his parents' belated attempts at reconciliation—might have believed they'd softened, tacitly accepted Hermione, or at least stopped objecting.
He might have believed they were simply, innocently, introducing him to the family's business and its social circles, with no further designs on his mind.
What they didn't know was that Draco was no longer so easily led.
Through his years at Malfoy Manor in his previous life—under the Dark Lord's tutelage—he had honed the art of reading people to a fine edge.
He knew his parents, and his grandfather, far too well; he caught the deeper meaning under every word, every tone, every small gesture.
They meant to go slowly—win back his trust, wear down his defences bit by bit, find the crack in his resolve, and strike when he least expected it.
Draco had no intention of giving them the chance.
His one true advantage was this: he had always known his parents better than they knew him—by seven years' worth of hindsight, seven crucial years.
This time, he had shut most of himself away early, leaving them more baffled by him than ever.
Even so, their manoeuvring left him quietly exhausted.
It was, he thought, exactly like watching them plan to cut down the oak tree he loved, while trying to make him love the neatly clipped hedges of the estate instead.
They called it "for his own good," never once understanding what he actually wanted.
But there was no use complaining.
At least he had more freedom now—to write to whom he liked, to go where he pleased—better than being shut up at home.
Draco kept up the act, appearing thoroughly unsuspecting, nodding along to his parents' harmless little opinions like any boy freshly reconciled with his family.
Once his correspondence privileges were restored, he sent only a handful of lukewarm letters—to Blaise, Pansy, Crabbe, Goyle, even a polite word to the reclusive Theodore—and carefully avoided writing to a single Gryffindor.
This eased the anxious watch Lucius and Narcissa had been keeping over him.
"Well? All this time, and not one girl's caught his eye?" Lucius asked his wife one evening, as she sat before her dressing table.
"It's not so simple! His standards are impossibly high—he won't so much as glance twice at most of them!" Narcissa said, a little sulkily, absently working face cream into her skin. "And some of them wouldn't pass muster with me, in any case. When it comes to choosing the next mistress of this family, we owe Little Dragon nothing less than the very best."
"What about the Parkinson girl? You haven't considered her? She's always been close to him, hasn't she?" Lucius offered. "Didn't he write to her just the other day?"
"Lucius, don't you dare bring her up! For Merlin's sake, give me some peace!" Narcissa snapped. "The last time I saw that girl, she threw juice in another girl's face in front of everyone and pulled her hair out by the roots! Utterly unbecoming!"
"Oh, Cissy, who wasn't a little troublemaker at that age?" Lucius said, waving it off. "They grow out of it. I'd wager she's changed since—"
"I saw her yesterday, Lucius!" Narcissa glared at him in the mirror, her face tight with irritation. "Yesterday!"
"Ah. I see. In that case... I'll leave it to you." Under her withering stare, Lucius suddenly felt distinctly guilty.
He obediently took up her comb and began working it through her hair. "I give up. Let me do what I'm actually good for."
Draco, for his part, had no idea how many conversations like this his parents had had behind closed doors.
At those parties, he was scrupulously polite to every girl he met, giving no one cause for complaint, while making sure his warmth never went beyond a certain careful distance.
He agreed readily whenever Narcissa offered her opinions on them—though in truth, he could never afterward recall a word she'd said.
He missed Hermione more with each passing day.
He often imagined, half-wistfully, what it would be like to run into her at one of these parties.
Every morning he went to the oak tree to call her—it was, in truth, the one thing that got him out of bed at Malfoy Manor.
On the strength of that single call, he could go back to the pitch and train for another hour or two, or lose himself in some long, dull book from the library, or focus hard enough to work through the finer steps of the Dragon Pox Improvement Potion, or brew Veritaserum.
On the strength of it, he could sit through his parents' lectures on power and money at the dinner table, watch his father's dirty little tricks and the harsher realities behind them, and trail after his mother through her endless tedious salons.
On the strength of it, he could keep playing the dutiful, well-mannered Malfoy heir—while quietly working, behind their backs, to undercut the family's own business dealings.
Yes. Draco Malfoy had a plan or two already in motion.
Dobby, who had grown thoroughly uneasy at being "paid to do nothing," was overjoyed to finally be given a task.
One day, Draco thought, his father would come to regret ever bringing him along on these inspections.
Still, the strategy of patience and biding one's time wore on a person eventually. By August, Draco could no longer bear the ache of missing her.
By then, his girl had returned to the Black family home and was busy brewing that month's batch of Wolfsbane Potion for Lupin.
One day, words lit up on Draco's ring:
I miss you. I want you.
He stared at them, so startled he very nearly lost his composure.
Such simple words, and yet they seemed to knit something back together in him—something tired, cracked, and worn thin.
For a moment he was back in that bright, sunlit afternoon in the Weasleys' workshop, surrounded by Fred and George's half-finished joke inventions, whispering to the ring: If you want me, call for me. Anytime.
She'd flushed scarlet on the spot.
She was such a serious, proper girl. She could be fervent, when the mood took her—but that was rare enough.
He had always assumed that, short of spying on her thoughts, he'd never get an admission like that out of her.
Getting Hermione Granger to openly confess to wanting him—that took some doing.
And now, of all moments, when he could least reach her or satisfy her, she chose to say so.
She's awfully good at torturing people, Draco thought, not without bitterness.
Outwardly he kept his composure, moving gracefully through Narcissa's party, offering the guests his calm, well-bred smile now and then. Inside, something had caught fire.
He couldn't refuse her. He never could.
So, knowing full well the risk, he made a request of his mother: he wanted to visit Harry at the old Black house.
Narcissa hesitated. "You want to visit Harry Potter?"
"His birthday was last month. I think I ought to give him something in person," Draco said evenly. "There's no harm in staying on good terms with him. We need to keep an ear to the ground with all sides, as Grandfather says."
"That's true enough—" Narcissa studied her son, suspicion flickering across her face.
Something about this felt off to her.
But it wasn't unwelcome, she decided. At least he wasn't asking to see that Muggle-born girl.
Even as she agreed, calculations were already turning behind her eyes.
Whatever the Daily Prophet said about him, Harry Potter had always been a wizard of real ability.
He'd performed remarkably well in the Triwizard Tournament—whatever methods he'd used to get there, the fact remained that he'd shared the Goblet of Fire's honours with another Hogwarts champion as the youngest competitor in the field.
And only yesterday, according to something Lucius had heard through his contacts at the Ministry, Walden Macnair had died of illness in Azkaban.
But it hadn't been so long ago that Narcissa had glimpsed him during a visit to Bella in Azkaban—he'd looked perfectly hale and strong then. There was no reasonable way he could have simply sickened and died since.
Which meant something didn't add up about Macnair's death. Fudge had no reason to hold a grudge against so minor a prisoner—unless he was covering something up. And if that was true, then perhaps Bagman's death hadn't been so straightforward either.
Which meant, in turn, that what Draco had told them—that Macnair had been working for the Dark Lord—carried rather more weight than she'd allowed herself to believe.
Which meant the claim that the Dark Lord had briefly returned from the ashes might well be true, Narcissa thought, unsettled.
No one wanted to hear that the Dark Lord had risen again. Fudge's political rivals would seize on it in an instant—and Narcissa had no doubt at all that he'd try to bury it.
If Draco was right, and the Dark Lord's brief return had truly been ended by Dumbledore, then Albus Dumbledore—the one man the Dark Lord had ever feared—would go on wielding considerable influence across the wizarding world for a good while yet.
Given the Malfoy family's rather chequered history, it wouldn't hurt—while still keeping her guard up around Dumbledore himself—to let Draco go on cultivating goodwill with Harry Potter, edging the family a little closer to Dumbledore's circle, and keeping the peace on that front.
And besides, she'd stumbled onto something rather more urgent, and meant to have it out with that wretched Sirius Black directly.
Narcissa made up her mind and gave her son a tight, forced smile. "I'll write to Sirius and see when he's free."