Chapter Text
From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.
from Thomas Gray, 'Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes'
***
Draco Malfoy had always known he was lucky.
He’d heard it so many times that it had to be true. Growing up, elderly witches would ruffle his mop of golden hair fondly, whispering to each other: so lucky, this one. What a charmed life he’ll lead. He’d received gift upon gift from his doting parents, always bestowed with a kiss on the cheek and a warm aren’t you a lucky boy? His father a rising star in the Ministry, his mother the darling of the pureblood social scene; he’d held court over his peers like it came naturally – and, of course, it did. Everything was laid out in front of him, as for Malfoys of generations past: success at school, beautiful pureblood wife, and charming friends. Fame and fortune, all but guaranteed.
Hogwarts had been an unpleasant surprise. He hadn’t counted on Potter – always there, always besting him at everything – and for the first time, Draco’s certainty had begun to waver. But he consoled himself with thoughts of everything he had that Potter lacked: parents who adored him, an enormous family home (so much better than the Weasleys’ shack), and that glittering future waiting right around the corner.
Then fifth year arrived, and life began to slide slowly, inexorably downhill. You don’t realise how lucky you are, nephew, Bellatrix had hissed in his ear, nails digging vice-like into his forearm as she thrust it out towards the Dark Lord. But even then – father in Azkaban, the smell of burning flesh in the air as Draco tried desperately to contain his screams – even then, he’d still believed. Then Dumbledore’s body had fallen limp from the tower, and hot tears of shame had stained his cheeks as Snape tugged him through the corridors, muttering angrily: count yourself lucky that I was there to get you out of this one.
To the Manor, next, where Voldemort – obviously unhinged – had made his home, and with him a den of bloodthirsty werewolves: such tender flesh, young Malfoy, lucky we’ve already eaten tonight, isn’t it? Everybody whispering, tense and anxious; his mother weeping, quietly, at night. Nothing going according to plan – and the realisation that maybe he wasn’t quite so lucky after all.
Worse was to come – poor Vince, hapless to the last; Voldemort defeated, and his father, half-crazed, muttering under his breath: of course, we were unlucky this time, Draco, backed the wrong Thestral, but don’t worry, it’ll all work out, you’ll see, mere seconds before the Aurors dragged them out of the Great Hall. The torture, and the trials (poor baby Death Eater! Bet you thought you’d get away scot-free, yeah? That Daddy would be there to pay your way? No such luck this time, I’m afraid!) and before he knew it, everything he’d known – everything he’d been promised – was gone.
Just like that, Draco found himself completely out of luck.
Things might have ended there too – Draco alone, depressed and out of options – but for one chance discovery; a single stroke of fortune so great it eclipsed all that came before. Fate placed those eggs right in Draco’s lap, giving him the opportunity to reclaim the future he’d always been promised. In fact, as Draco told himself a thousand times afterwards, fate practically forced his hand!
It had seemed the most incredible windfall, at the time. It was only years later, as he crouched, frightened and sick, on his bathroom floor, waiting for Harry to return with the Auror force in tow, that Draco began to rue the day he’d ever ventured into that attic.
***
He found them on a Monday. Not that that really made any difference to Draco; he hadn’t bothered to keep track of the days once they began to blur together in the first few months after his trial. He didn’t need to look at a calendar to know that he’d wasted a whole year of his life. Imprisoned in his childhood home, he wandered from room to room, invented pointless ways to pass the days and shouted at the house-elf – all the while, trying desperately not to think about the future. The folded Prophet on his breakfast table each morning taunted him with descriptions of a changing world, running endless articles about the importance of moving forwards, healing wounds, building a better society for everyone.
Everyone who’d been on the right side of the war, it seemed.
At first, things hadn’t seemed so hopeless. Two years really wasn’t that long, was it? He’d survived this far, after all – not just the time spent under the same roof as a hundred dangerous lunatics who’d seen murder as sport, but also the hell of the trials that followed. After all that, he’d relished a little peace and quiet, burying his head in textbooks. He’d enjoyed the freedom to study for his N.E.W.T.s without pressure after the disaster that had been his sixth year. And of course, to begin with, he’d received news from his friends almost every day.
Yes, once upon a time, he’d felt truly missed. Pansy – allowed back at Hogwarts to repeat her seventh year – would send long, rambling letters; pages and pages of gossip he didn’t really want about people he didn’t really remember, studiously omitting any mention of the war. Greg’s owl had brought short, melancholic notes from Spain, where he was living with family friends and working as a magical housebuilder. Blaise’s missives had been frequent and hilarious, filled with convoluted tales about his mother’s latest conquests. Draco had even received a couple of – late night, and obviously drunken – messages from Theo, filled with a truly stomach-churning mix of wistfulness and pity.
But all that had been months ago.
Back then, there’d been Howlers too, with every grieving relative seizing the opportunity to berate the only Death Eater outside of Azkaban. With Incendio not an option, Draco had opened the red envelopes each day with shaking fingers, ready for the combination of self-loathing, vigorous denial and wretched misery which left him dreading the post-owls’ arrival. But recently, with only the Prophet arriving each morning, he even felt nostalgic for the Howlers. Being hated, he realised, was preferable to being forgotten.
The day in question dawned windy and overcast. It was the weather patterns and the changing of the seasons that Draco paid attention to these days, and as he took his breakfast in the morning room, he stared out miserably at the trees shedding their leaves all over the Manor’s perfectly manicured lawn. Summer was definitely over, and the prospect of a second cold, dark winter spent trapped indoors loomed large once more. Even the Manor itself seemed tired and gloomy, worlds away from the bright, illustrious mansion that Draco recalled from childhood. Most of the interior furnishings were gone anyway, confiscated by the Ministry after the war. The grand piano had been dragged roughly out of the ballroom; three deep scratches along the parquet floor all that remained. The message was stark – the days of magnificent concerts and glittering balls were long over. More ominously, the damaged Persian rug in the drawing room had also disappeared, leaving a still-smouldering hole where Nagini’s venom had worn through the floorboards. Neither Draco nor his mother had made any effort to replace the missing furniture or repair the damaged fittings; they both tended to keep to their own living quarters, purposefully avoiding all the unsettling echoes of days past.
But that fateful Monday, gazing out into the blustery grounds, Draco decided it was high time for all that to change. His mother had received the very least welcome kind of post overnight – an owl from Azkaban, bearing an abrupt, impersonal letter which she’d left out for Draco to read with his breakfast. His father’s ill health was deteriorating further, and the doctors didn’t expect him to survive the winter. Now, Draco might have spent months deliberately suppressing any stray thoughts about his father, but if he was truthful, he’d long known that this might happen – the haunted look in his father’s eyes the last time they’d spoken had shaken Draco to the core. But suspecting something and holding incontrovertible evidence in your hands were two very different things.
He sighed, pushing his breakfast plate to one side. With each day holding so little purpose, Draco knew how easy it was to allow darkness to creep in, to let fear paralyse him in its grasp. He worried for his mother, for how she would react when the inevitable happened. Broken by the trials and grieving the loss of everything she’d known, his mother had already fallen into a pit of despair, so consumed by thoughts of what might have been that at times she hardly stirred from her bed. Draco understood. Some days, it was all he could do to leave his own room.
Draco stared down at the parchment, as though by wishing hard enough, he might change its contents. His father’s demise would make Draco the legal head of the household. The practical implications were too significant for Draco simply to add to the growing list of tasks he was avoiding. He had no idea what the household even comprised anymore. He would need to make an inventory, and soon. Once his house arrest was finally over, he was damned if he was going to spend one more second in this cursed pile of bricks.
***
The Manor had two enormous attics. Although Draco hadn’t been up there in years, he remembered them well from childhood as huge rooms filled with treasure, everything half-concealed by sackcloth. He’d dragged his friends up there any moment he could for games of hide-and-seek amongst the old furniture, or to rifle through boxes filled with papers, searching for hidden gems. His parents were less keen, always trying to dissuade him from exploring the chests and drawers for fear of uncovering hidden Dark items. He felt a sudden jolt of nostalgia as he remembered huddling with Pansy in an old wardrobe, the two of them giggling madly as all his mother’s house-elves searched for them outside.
But as he stood at the top of the stairs, Draco could hardly reconcile those memories with what remained today. This attic, too, had been ransacked, that much was clear: the place was chaos. Parchment scrolls were strewn all over the place, along with hundreds of old books – spines broken and pages loose. Ink pots had been upended over the lot, rendering everything barely legible. A set of antique dining chairs appeared to have been swung against the wall, fragments of their broken legs mixing with large shards of what was once a Chinese vase. The oak wardrobe still stood in the centre, spilling its contents – torn silk and lace, mostly – haphazardly onto the floor before it. Was there anything of value left up here? Draco seriously doubted it.
He swallowed, considering his options, when all at once he spotted an intact box tucked discreetly in a corner. He took a few hopeful steps towards it, when a sudden wave of panic knocked all the air from his lungs. The sensation of déjà vu was instant and all-consuming, and he could do nothing but stand, paralysed, bile rising in his throat, his mind trapped back in the Room of Hidden Things. Merlin, he needed to leave this place, and quickly; to lock the door and never return.
The usual anxiety began to well up inside him, making his head spin. Gasping for breath, his legs carried him over to the wall, where he closed his eyes, pressing his forehead and his palms against the bare plaster. God, this was a bad one. He could even hear the distant crackling of Fiendfyre, straight out of his nightmares, as he tried to focus on his breathing. Crack – crack – crack it went, the flames licking up the walls, devouring trash and treasure alike. Crack – crack – crack, as he watched Vince fall into the inferno, eyes wide and mouth open in one final, agonising scream. Crack – crack – crack as he grabbed Potter’s hand, swung himself up onto the broomstick…
Yet, this time, rather than fading a little with each calming breath, the noise only seemed to be getting louder. Much louder, and closer too. Draco squeezed his eyelids shut tight, inhaling deeply once more. Bitter-tasting powder coated his tongue and entered his lungs, making him choke violently, and his eyes shot open. He barely had time to register the way the plaster was fracturing all around him before the entire wall gave way and he fell forwards into darkness.
The tumult subsided. With a mounting sense of dread, Draco scrambled to his feet, flecks of plaster falling from his hair to the floor. He looked around, eyes widening with surprised delight as he took in his surroundings; for he seemed to have stumbled upon some kind of hidden storeroom.
In the middle, cases of silverware were stacked next to a large antique chest (Draco ignored the loud scratching noises coming from within), and hanging on the right-hand wall were an array of weapons: a huge golden crossbow, and several ornate daggers and longswords, with brightly-coloured jewels shimmering on their handles. But much more interesting to Draco was the rest of the room, which was lined with shelves, and behind a shimmering Stasis charm, hundreds of neatly labelled jars and bottles. It was a potions store-cupboard to rival even Snape’s. But just as he was marvelling over its beauty, he turned his head, and that was when he first saw them.
He instinctively took a step back, heart hammering in his chest. Wiping the dust from his eyes, he checked, and checked, and checked again. For sitting right in the middle of the imposing wooden cabinet, silver and shining and as beautiful as anything he’d ever seen, were five large Occamy eggs.
***
Draco had always had an aptitude for Potions. He was sure that the other houses thought that Snape was biased in his treatment of the Slytherins – and maybe that was true – but Draco was certain that his own high marks had nothing to do with nepotism. The final confirmation in that regard had been his N.E.W.T.s, which he had taken remotely earlier in the year. He’d brewed his final exam potion in the tiny lab he’d set up next to the wine cellar while the examiner from the Ministry watched his every move, face screwed up as though Draco smelled of Crup shit. If Draco had made a single wrong move, he knew that bastard would have delighted in marking him down, and it was with a great deal of satisfaction that, when the two hours were up, he’d been able to hand in his vial of Dreamless Sleep, shimmering violet and faultless in appearance.
Confirmation of his O grade had arrived back in the summer, affording him a few rare days of excitement and optimism. He’d received Owls from his friends – the last he’d heard from any of them, in fact – with news of their marks and confirmation of their plans for the future. Draco was, of course, well aware that with a year left of his house arrest, he wouldn’t be starting the potions apprenticeship he’d always dreamed of. But something about their success buoyed him enough to send off a few speculative Owls to well-respected potioneers around the country, mentioning his grades, the extra-credit work he’d undertaken and that he would be looking for a position from July 2000.
His good mood lasted for precisely as long as it took for the first owl to return. Two potioneers sent terse responses that they didn’t expect to have a position available. Another reply curtly declared that no Death Eater would ever be welcome in their apothecary, and certainly not as an apprentice. Draco had half expected these rejections, though, and had secretly been waiting for the response from Slug & Jiggers. The proprietors there were old family friends, who’d always hinted at parties with a wink and a nudge that Draco would have a spot reserved to work for them. But the friendship had gone quiet during the war, and as the weeks passed, it became clear that they weren’t even going to deign to reply. He hadn’t bothered with Hogwarts – he still remembered McGonagall’s disdainful response to Draco’s request to return for his N.E.W.T.s. He knew a lost cause when he saw one.
Lacking the focus that the N.E.W.T.s had provided, Draco drifted through the days aimlessly. He’d briefly reflected on his other talents and come up with only two. His childhood dream of playing professional Quidditch had already seemed laughable given the disaster of his Potions applications, and was even more ridiculous now after a year of lounging around the Manor stuffing his face with comfort food. And then there was Occlumency, which he had briefly considered as a foundation for a career in the Unspeakables, but which on further thought just reminded him of his Aunt Bella and made him want to vomit.
It was at this particular low point – his mother growing more distant and self-contained every day, his father’s health failing, his old friends all off pursuing their own new careers, the Malfoy name disgraced, and no career prospects on the horizon – that Draco had ventured into the attic on that fateful Monday.
To anyone with even a passing knowledge of potions, Occamy eggs meant one thing and one thing only. Draco had no idea which of his legion of ancestors had stored them up there and when – and it could have been any of them; it seemed a very Malfoy thing to do, after all – but he knew for certain why they’d kept them. Those eggs were going to save him.
He was going to brew Felix Felicis.
***
Technically, it wasn’t the first time Draco had brewed Felix. All N.E.W.T. students had attempted it as part of the curriculum, but Felix was especially complex and unstable, and perfection was by no means expected. In fact, as it took six months to stew and they only started brewing it in the spring term, they had been judged purely on the appearance and characteristics of the initial mixture. Draco’s had seemed fine, but he knew that didn’t mean much.
Of course, the slightest mistake at any point in the process would not only render the potion useless, but also very likely fatal. In perhaps a concerning indication of his current outlook on life, rather than dissuade Draco, this concept held a bizarre appeal. He didn’t want to die exactly, but he couldn’t see a great deal to live for. What better test of his worth than brewing a potion so complicated and dangerous that only a few potioneers in the country even bothered? Death in the prime of his life by potions misadventure did have a touch of the romantic about it, after all.
And there were five Occamy eggs. A single egg could keep someone supplied with the potion for over a month (not that anyone would be daft enough to use Felix full-time, of course). Aside from the obvious personal benefits – he could take some and then re-send those applications – he would certainly regain his status as a legend amongst the Slytherins. Imagine being able to offer almost unlimited access to Felix! He’d have to do it subtly – there was a reason it was a restricted potion – but Draco had never had qualms about dipping his toes in murkier legal waters. And he could hardly be blamed. After all, he’d tried to do things the right way already, hadn’t he? And look how far that had gotten him.
So, first things first: how to avoid detection? His mother wouldn’t be a problem – even at her sharpest she’d been a master at turning a blind eye to those things she didn’t want to see. Nowadays, they could go entire weeks without speaking. The shadowy figure Draco hardly saw, who slipped in and out of rooms with eyes downcast, who hardly seemed to know where she was most of the time – well, he could probably have moved his entire laboratory to her chambers without being noticed.
Harder to deceive would be Collins, Draco’s probation officer, who visited once a month and inspected the house from top to bottom, running his finger along the top of portraits and peering under tables in a blatant attempt to drag out an easy job as long as possible. After hours spent traipsing sullenly around the estate, he would stand over Draco and check his wand to ensure everything cast was Ministry approved, shooting him threatening looks throughout as though he expected to find an Unforgivable hidden amongst the household spells. The man was a jobsworth, and a pain in the arse, and was bound to stick his nose in any business Draco had. So how on earth would Draco explain his tiny N.E.W.T.-level lab being in constant use? And what if Collins recognised the Felix?
After a careful afternoon’s thought, Draco concocted a plan. He would enrol in a distance learning Advanced Potions Diploma. He’d considered it before, but quickly dismissed it as inferior to an apprenticeship and (since they were usually run from abroad) often sneered at by the more traditional British potioneers. It should provide a cover for his use of the lab, and, he supposed, help occupy his mind while the Felix brewed. The discovery and his plans had afforded him a new sense of purpose, and he hummed to himself as he wrote out two applications: one for the Diploma, and a second to expand the laboratory space.
As expected, his mother didn’t bat an eyelid when Draco caught her on the way out to the garden and told her of his plans – she made some vaguely positive noises about his ‘using his time productively’ and that was that. Equally predictably, the Ministry was unable to fabricate an excuse to deny Draco the chance to study for his Diploma, and he was gratified when, at the end of Collins’ next visit, he reluctantly performed an expansion charm on the lab. So excited was Draco by the success of his scheme, he had to work hard to keep his face neutral when Collins threw him a cursory “don’t even think of getting up to any funny business, all right?” on the way out.
Draco spent that evening making several visits to the storeroom, the entrance to which he had temporarily hidden by Reparo-ing the plaster and dragging a bookshelf in front. He collected the necessary ingredients, all helpfully preserved by ancestor unknown, and carefully carried them down to his lab. Only when he’d laid everything else out did he fetch the first delicate Occamy egg. He set it down with shaking hands in the middle of his bench before stepping back, heart pounding, to check the ingredients for a final time. This was it. He’d read and re-read the brewing instructions until he was confident that he could recite them in his sleep.
Ignoring the butterflies in his stomach, he picked up his first ingredient – a scarlet Ashwinder egg – and got to work.
***
Stubborn to the last, Lucius Malfoy clung to life far longer than anyone expected. It wasn’t until late January – fittingly, the coldest day of the year – that a Ministry representative arrived at the front gates, bearing the dreaded letter of condolence. Draco immediately declined to accompany his mother to Azkaban to view the body. As she glanced over at him, fury behind her damp eyes, Draco steeled himself for a tirade about his cowardice or lack of filial duty – but his mother merely lifted her chin and swept past without a word, heels crunching along the icy path.
The funeral took place in the Manor grounds, just the two of them and the Ministry wizard who conducted the ceremony. Draco and his mother stood side-by-side, not quite touching. There was no eulogy and no crying. Draco watched as raindrops gradually darkened the stone of the newly transfigured tomb and wondered if his mother was thinking the same as him: how much his father, ever infatuated with displays of pomp and circumstance, would have loathed it all.
Back inside the Manor, his Felix still months away from completion, Draco resumed his attempts to inventory the contents of the house with renewed vigour. Whoever had looted the estate in the name of reparations had done a thorough job; from the attics to the cellars, everything not under a permanent sticking charm had either been destroyed or removed. The contents of the storeroom would sell, and a few damaged pieces might be salvageable after a careful Reparo, but they wouldn’t fetch half their original worth. With the Malfoy vaults emptied by the Ministry – Draco and his mother were surviving on a measly weekly stipend – and the cursed house unlikely to find a buyer so soon after the war, the stark truth seemed to be that the fabled Malfoy fortune was all but gone. As Draco moved around his lab, ignoring the growing knot in the pit of his stomach, he stole occasional glances at the Felix bubbling away in the corner: their one remaining chance at a way out.
***
Winter meandered into spring so gradually that Draco hardly noticed, until, one morning, he came downstairs to find that Itti, his mother’s single remaining house-elf, had set the breakfast table out on the terrace. There were buds on the wisteria and the peafowl were strutting around the lawns, enjoying the sunshine after a long winter. Draco didn’t blame them. Through the dark nights and miserable overcast days, he’d been unable to shake the dread that had settled over him like a shroud at his father’s funeral. But that day, looking up at the skylarks wheeling and circling in the cornflower sky, with the sun kissing his cheeks, Draco felt the pressure ease, just a little. There was a golden glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Barely a week later, Draco found himself standing behind his cauldron, holding a tiny glistening vial up to the light. He checked it thoroughly, turning it over and over in his hand. Was the consistency perfect? Was that sediment in the bottom? But no – however hard Draco looked, he could find nothing to suggest that the potion would lead him to a sticky end. His Felix was outwardly flawless.
Focussing on his impending good fortune and trying not to dwell on the alternatives, he raised it to his lips and took a tiny sip. To his surprise it tasted tart, rather like an underripe gooseberry, but not altogether unpleasant. For a few seconds, nothing happened. He stood perfectly still, anxious, the only sounds around him the drops of gold splashing gently across the surface of his potion. All at once, from the centre of his chest, a warmth began to spread through him. Faster and faster, it moved, until it was rushing outwards through his entire body – a tingling in the tips of his fingers, a prickling in his scalp. And with it came a tremendous, almost overwhelming sensation of confidence, of certainty, of potential.
He hadn’t felt this powerful since… since fifth year, maybe? He’d been existing entirely, it seemed, as a hollow shell; only now, finally, was he being filled with the essence of the person he wanted so desperately to be. As the warmth surrounded him, suffused him, he felt his fears, his doubts – all his negative emotions – leaving him, one by one, fluttering away as though out of Pandora’s box. Never again would Draco Malfoy be seen as worthless, aimless, or cowardly.
So engrossed was he in these wonderful new sensations that he hardly even noticed his legs carrying him towards the stairs and into his bedroom. When next his vision cleared, he was standing in front of his writing desk. Draco had often fantasised about the day he would finally get to sample his Felix. He’d always envisaged that he would begin making the most of his good fortune by reapplying for the apprenticeship jobs; so it was with some surprise that instead of reaching for a blank piece of parchment, he found himself rummaging through the very back of the top desk drawer and pulling out a pile of forgotten half-finished letters.
After his trial, after the horror of the Veritaserum, he’d been so overwhelmed with shame and embarrassment that he’d briefly planned to write letters of apology to those he’d wronged over the years. Katie Bell, he’d thought. Loony Lovegood and Dean Thomas. Vince’s mother. Granger. Various Weasleys. Maybe even Potter, if Draco could work up to it.
He’d started half a dozen letters, but he’d not managed to finish even a single one – the words simply wouldn’t come. The letters had sounded petulant, whiny, and false, and in frustration, he’d temporarily shoved them in the drawer. Time had, of course, dulled both the memory of his trial and the acuteness of his shame, and he’d never come back to them. But now, he found his hands itching for a quill.
His eyes lit on the top page; a piece of parchment containing just eight words.
Dear Mr Longbottom
I am writing to apologise—
Yes, this was the right one. This was definitely where he should start. Draco sat down, dipped his quill in the ink pot, and began scribbling. The words flowed like they never had before.
From the first day we met, I treated you appallingly. I don’t offer any excuses, except that I was young, and stupid, and – I’ve now come to realise – a bully. As you know, I’ve been on house arrest since the end of the war, and I’ve had plenty of time to think about everything that happened. I should have sent this straight after the trial – I wanted to send it straight after the trial – but I didn’t have the courage. I don’t expect, or deserve, your forgiveness, but please know that I am truly sorry, for everything.
If you would ever consider coming to the Manor for afternoon tea, I would be very pleased to receive you.
Regards
Draco Malfoy
Draco sat back and stared at the words he’d – apparently – written. It wasn’t as formal as his previous efforts, but that was probably not a bad thing. Sounding like a pretentious twat was unlikely to endear him to Longbottom, after all. It was also disturbingly earnest, and certainly more Gryffindor than anything he’d ever written before. And what about that last line? Would he be ‘very pleased’ to receive Neville Longbottom as a guest at the Manor? It certainly wasn’t a possibility he’d ever entertained before. But if Felix had made him write it, then he would send it and see what came next. It was, in Draco’s opinion, highly unlikely that Longbottom would even finish reading the entire letter, let alone arrange a visit to his former tormentor.
But Draco wasn’t worried. He had a good feeling about things. He didn’t need to dwell on it, and so he handed the letter to Itti and put it out of his mind, as easy as that. He got to his feet. That was enough writing for one day. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and the Manor gardens were always beautiful at this time of year – why was he wasting time indoors?
His mother was surprised, but pleased, when Draco asked to join her for a walk with the Crups. Since his father’s death, she’d insisted on wearing only black, and had become – if it were possible – even more reclusive. Draco had deliberately avoided spending too long around her since the funeral for fear she’d bring up the war, his future, or something else equally awful, so he was pleasantly surprised when on their turn around the garden none of those topics arose. The initially uncomfortable silence was quickly broken when Draco tripped over into the Alihotsy tree, causing him to burst into an uncontrollable fit of giggles. Eventually, both of them were bent double with laughter. After that, the conversation flowed freely.
Much of the time was spent discussing the plants, which were flourishing despite the neglect of the past few years. Draco made note of several which would be useful for potions ingredients and encouraged his mother when she expressed an interest in taking up gardening again. Altogether, the morning passed quite pleasantly, and for the first time in months, they ate lunch together outside. When he was done, Draco stared up at the clear blue skies, and was surprised to find his thoughts turning to Quidditch. He spent the afternoon racing around the estate on his old Nimbus, chasing a practice Snitch until the sky grew dark around him. He returned to the house, his body aching, completely exhilarated.
It had been, he reflected that evening, the best day he’d had in years. Clearly, he’d brewed a perfect batch of Felix. He would have to sample some more, and soon.
As Draco was getting into bed, he heard the tapping of an owl at the window. The message was brief.
Malfoy,
Surprised to hear from you. I must be mad, but I’ll come to the Manor. How’s Saturday afternoon?
Neville