Chapter Text
“Scorpius said something odd today.”
Forehead on his desk, Draco Malfoy sighed with exhaustion. He needed to speak with his mother because he was having a family problem and she wall all the family he had left. His father wasn’t around any longer, and his wife … Draco would kill to ask her just one more question. Any question. To hear her voice, her laugh, even just the angry huff she would make before telling him he’d done something wrong.
“He is eight.” Draco didn’t need to see his mother’s teasing smile to know it was there. She added, “They all say strange things at that age.”
His son’s words continued to bounce around his brain, a weight he could not lift from his shoulders. Work had begun to consume him the past several months and the strain was catching up. The room felt too big, the door seemed too far away, and his eyelids were so heavy—
“What did he say?”
“Hmm?” Draco lifted his head and leaned back in his chair. He slumped a bit and absentmindedly threaded his fingers through his hair. He’d been working since six that morning and must look quite a wreck. He asked, “What time is it?”
“Nine-thirty, Draco. Now, stop avoiding the topic of my grandson and say what troubles you.”
“He said I’m unhappy. He looked at me and said, ‘You smile because you know people want you to, not because you’re happy. You’re never happy.’” Draco shook his head. “How am I meant to react to my own son saying I am unhappy?”
Narcissa Malfoy turned the page in her magazine and, without looking up, said, “Perhaps you should ask yourself why you are not happy.”
Draco insisted, rather petulantly, “I am perfectly happy! My son makes me happy.”
“Your son is the only reason you are alive.” Narcissa placed the magazine on a side table and stood from the chair. “If you did not have Scorpius, you would have died of a broken heart by now. Your son knows you aren’t happy, and he does not know how important he is to you.”
“I’m certain he does. I tell him every day, as often as I can—”
“You tell Scorpius his art is wonderful and how proud you are of him, but the smile never reaches your eyes. All you think is that your wife will never see that painting. Scorpius is trying to make you happy and does not understand why he can’t.”
Draco finally faced his mother and withered under her gaze. Narcissa Malfoy was the epitome of wizarding elegance, dressed in a light purple summer robe and heels any reasonable woman would have left far on the other side of fifty. Not a hair was out of place on her head. Pale fingers with nails painted the most delicate shade of pink wound around the handle of her wand with detached ease.
He was once that same sort of effortless. That was the part of him Astoria loved most. She’d say, It’s like everything is easy for you, so being with you is easy for me.
“I thought the grief would leave.” Draco squeezed his eyes closed, molding the sadness into something manageable in the dark. “Instead, it sits inside of me. There is weight to it, and two years on it’s not gotten any lighter.”
“I had thirty years with your father.” Narcissa placed her hand on Draco’s shoulder. “Lucius will always be part of me and losing him was the most difficult thing I have gone through in my life.”
Draco opened his mouth to mention any number of things which ought to have been more difficult than losing his arsehole father, but went silent when his mother held up her hand.
“Your father was my partner always, and being one half of our whole was the only life I ever knew. It was a life I was happy to know. Lucius held me through two wars, through three miscarriages after we had you, the loss of my entire blood family. I have lost two sisters and a niece. The Black family line is extinct—”
“Theodore is technically—”
“—save for you my son.”
“And how close were you to losing me, too?” he snapped.
Narcissa was unbothered.
“You have every right to this grief, to all these feelings, but you cannot allow grief to be the only thing you feel.”
Draco certainly felt the exhaustion; Astoria’s loss was a heavy burden to carry. He sighed heavily just as their house-elf, Sprig, knocked on the doorframe. An older elf purchased from a neighbor in France after Scorpius was born and things around the manor needed an extra pair of hands. Wizened, with white hair sprouting out of his ears, wearing a robe with the Malfoy crest embroidered on the pocket. In a trembling voice, he said,
“Post has arrived, Master Malfoy.”
“Who the bloody hell is writing me at this hour?” Draco shook his head. It didn’t matter if the Supreme Mugwump himself had written; he is too tired. “I need sleep, so it will wait until morning.”
“No, Master Malfoy, it can’t.”
Draco stood abruptly from his chair, irritation evident in his voice when he said,
“Do not talk back to me! I said it will wait until tomorrow, so it will wait—”
Sprig held up a black envelope with “Malfoy” written in neat penmanship across the front. Draco knew he’d seen that silver lettering somewhere before, and it took a half-second for him to recognize the urgency of the situation. Sprig repeated,
“It cannot wait.”
Draco Summoned the letter, though he knew what it meant. It was the same as all the others. Narcissa eyed the envelope warily. She said,
“I suppose it was only a matter of time.”
The Lockhart estate had been the first to receive one of those messages. Marcus’s cousin, Micah, had been next. Then it was the wealthiest wizarding family in France, distant relations to the Blacks and Malfoys. Next was a wealthy family in Egypt, then Ron Weasley, and then … They came for Blaise. All robberies preceded by a warning, delivered in a black envelope with silver lettering on the front.
Draco’s exhaustion gave way to adrenaline. To fear. He ran the pad of his thumb across the lower edge of the envelope. Something wasn’t right; the black parchment was too smooth. There were no dents from an owl’s talons and no weathering from its travel. Draco’s heart dropped straight down to his stomach and his hands began to tremble.
“They were here.”
His mother headed for the door and said, “I will check the wards.”
“Check on my son,” replied Draco, “then the wards.”
Narcissa departed moments after the words left Draco’s mouth. He listened to her footsteps until they disappeared at the top of the stairs, then turned his attention to the envelope in his hands. A number seven was embossed in the silver seal. Draco had seen each of the first six envelopes printed on the front page of the Prophet. Draco retrieved a letter opener from his desk drawer and placed the tip beneath the flap. He split open the top and pulled out a single rectangular piece of parchment. Written in the same penmanship:
Best for last.
Draco crumpled the parchment between his fingers, then smoothed it out on his desk. A number of emotions crashed down on him at once, with fear and anger battling for top billing. He nodded to Sprig and said,
“Thank you. No one is to know of this. We cannot have this in the papers.”
“Of course. Nothing but discretion, Master Malfoy.”
Draco hesitated before saying, “I apologise for being curt with you.”
“Thank you, Master Malfoy. Your apology is well-received, though unnecessary.” Sprig nodded his head. “Will you permit me a question, Master Malfoy?”
“Go on, then.”
“I wonder, sir, if they can get past the wards, into the manor undetected, why wouldn’t they take what they came for right now?”
“I don’t know.” Draco huffed, “And I hate not knowing.”
.oOo.
Two minutes later, Draco knocked on Blaise’s front door. It was hardly an inconspicuous target, a seven-bedroom home in Ravenswood. Gated, protected by the best wards money could buy, and somehow not safe from those black envelopes. Blaise had two homes in Italy that were far larger, but this one was the target all those months ago. Blaise opened the door and asked, warily,
“What brings you over at this hour?”
Draco held up the envelope. Blaise frowned and opened the door further for Draco to pass through. They made for the kitchen and Draco threw the envelope down on the island. He stared until the six letters of his name swirled into something unrecognizable.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the clink of glass against the bar top in the corner of the room. Blaise was able to read his mind the way only a decadeslong friendship could allow, and immediately recognised alcohol was the only proper way to deal with this problem. Blaise opened a bottle of Firewhisky and poured them each two fingers. Draco downed his in one go and slid his glass over for another. He winced as the liquid left a trail of dull heat down his throat and grabbed the glass just as Blaise finished refilling.
“Are you worried?
Draco shook his head.
“These people have never taken much of value.” He wiped the corner of his mouth and admitted, “I resent the bastards believe they can break into my home.”
Blaise swirled the liquid in his glass and said, “Perhaps that is the point. Not to take something physical, but to take away our security. I was gone when they broke in, but Dean was here and nothing frightens me more than the thought of someone hurting him. Or, Merlin forbid …”
The thought was too painful to finish. Draco understood the reality of losing a spouse all too well. He pushed his glass across the island and Blaise refilled it again. Draco knocked it back and pulled the parchment out of the envelope as his throat continued to burn. He flipped it around so Blaise could read the message. Blaise frowned and asked,
“What the bloody hell does that mean?”
“Dunno.” Draco mumbled into his empty glass. “What’d yours say?”
“I received the envelope and the letter said, ‘Upstairs, second room to the left, closet, top shelf.’” Blaise swirled the remnants of Firewhisky ‘round again. “Where I kept my mother’s amulet. We still don’t know how they got through the wards, let alone through the entire house undetected. Dean heard nothing and saw nothing.”
“If they knew where it was, they’d been in the house already. This is what they do, then?” asked Draco. “They taunt you before they steal from you.”
“That was my assumption. My calculation was to leave it precisely where they found it. If they could get into the house again, I did not wish for them to go through Dean trying to find the amulet. I would not put him in harm’s way.”
Draco admitted, “I don’t know where to go for help.”
Blaise raised an eyebrow and laughed low in his throat.
“Draco, I love you, but you know where to go. There is only one person smart enough to expose the thieves pulling off the most brazen heists since before the first war. You don’t know whether she will help you.”
“There must be another option.”
“The Ministry said they would help me and my home was robbed before they could pull on their socks.”
“But—”
“The last thing you need is for Scorpius to be afraid in his own home. Draco, you owe it to your son, to your family to keep the manor safe.”
“I know!” Draco groaned, “I know, and I am terrified to ask her for help.”
“I thought you mended the relationship.”
“We—I mean, we don’t hate each other.”
“It seems you should swallow your pride and ask her for help.”
“Fine.” Draco nodded toward the bottle of Firewhisky and said, “Then I will be needing a hell of a lot more of that.”