Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a perfectly ordinary day: a quiet walk beside the lake, his own company, nothing more. He’d excused himself from the Slytherin common room, announcing to his associates that he meant to practise a few new hexes. They let him go without question. They almost always did.
Lucius had always preferred the final week of term. With the rest of the school occupied by trunks and goodbyes, the grounds lay wonderfully deserted Ideal for practising certain more… advanced incantations, far from prying eyes.
Nothing that would warrant a raised eyebrow from the staff, naturally. Only a selection of curses from the slim black book his father had sent by private owl, the sort of gift that marked one as an heir rather than a child.
Term would end in a week. After the summer, as a fifth year, he would be a prefect. It had been decided the moment he was sorted. A Malfoy in Slytherin always became a prefect; his father sat on the Board of Governors and Slughorn collected names like potion ingredients. The badge was simply waiting for him.”
Once he’d worked through the hexes to his satisfaction, he allowed himself a brief respite.
He made for his favourite perch: a flat slab of sun-toasted stone right where the grass gave up and the shingle began, the lake lapping softly at its edge. In the deep green darkness below, the Giant Squid hung like a suspended thought, too familiar now to stir his interest. Lucius drew off his outer robe, folded it in a single crisp motion, and stretched out upon the rock, pale hair spilling against the warm stone.
He allowed himself a few moments of quiet satisfaction. His examinations had gone well—as had the whole of the year, truth be told. Next year would bring the O.W.L.s, his true proving ground, and he was quite ready.
The sky above was a pale, bleached blue, cloudless and utterly still. Lucius closed his eyes, giving himself over to the simple pleasure of the breeze against his skin.
A speck hung high up where nothing had been before. It had not flown into view; it had simply appeared, as though conjured from the empty air. Lucius squinted, his first thought unrolling lazily: a bird, perhaps, that he had overlooked. But the shape was wrong, and birds did not materialise out of nowhere. Nothing did—not inside the Hogwarts wards. Apparition was impossible here. Everyone knew that.
And yet.
Lucius sat up, his languor evaporating.
But as the shape plummeted, Lucius understood with cold certainty that it was no bird. It was far too large. The silhouette resolved into something his mind rejected—a tangle of limbs and what looked like wings, vast and dark against the pale sky. A hippogriff? No. The proportions were all wrong. Before he could form another thought, the air began to hiss, a high, thin sound that swelled into a roaring whoosh. The creature dropped faster, no longer falling but hurtling, utterly limp, straight toward the lake. It struck barely ten metres from where he lay.
The impact didn’t sound like a splash but a well-cast Bombarda. Loud.
The wave that erupted was immense. It hit him before he could draw breath to curse—a wall of cold green that drenched him to the bone. Only the sticking charm he'd idly cast on his robes earlier kept him anchored to the rock. Without it, the surge would have dragged him into the lake with it.
He was on his feet before he knew he'd moved, wand drawn, heart slamming against his ribs. Water streamed from his hair into his eyes, his mouth. He knew he must look like a half-drowned kneazle—undignified, uncomposed, utterly unacceptable for a malfoy but he could not look away from the churning epicentre where the creature had vanished.
For a long ringing moment there was absolute silence, just like the calm before a storm. The lake’s surface churned and settled.
Lucius was still staring, frozen in a way he would later find deeply embarrassing, when the lake heaved again.
The Giant Squid surfaced with a soft, surging rush, its great amber arms coiling through the water. Wrapped in one tentacle, cradled with a gentleness that struck Lucius as almost reverent, was that bird-like creature, its massive black wings covering its entire body. The Squid swam slowly, deliberately, to the shore where Lucius stood, and with a final, tender motion, deposited the creature on the grass at his feet. Then, without a sound, it slipped back into the green depths and vanished.
Lucius stared at the crumpled form. What was he meant to do? Simply stand here gaping? The churn of the lake was loud enough to carry; soon someone would come to investigate a professor, no doubt—and he would be ushered away before he could discover what this creature truly was.
The thought was intolerable.
But he would not investigate soaking wet. He flicked his wand and murmured the drying charm, feeling the water lift from his robes and hair in a single, satisfying breath of warmth. Only when he was quite restored did he approach.
Its wings were sodden, the black feathers clumped and heavy with lake water. Lucius cast a second drying charm, watching the moisture lift away in a brief mist. Then he knelt. The wings had plainly borne the brunt of the fall. With careful precision, he lifted the edge of one with a murmured Wingardium Leviosa—still unwilling to touch it directly until he was certain it posed no threat.
When the wing lifted, it uncovered a girl.
She was small—young, he realised, perhaps eleven or even younger—and utterly limp. She might have been the same age as Narcissa's younger cousins. By all logic she should have been dead; the height from which she had fallen was staggering. Yet there it was: the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest. She appeared human, or nearly so, but humans did not possess wings. Her hair was extraordinary, far longer than any witch or Muggle could grow without magical intervention. A half-breed, he thought. Or some Transfiguration gone catastrophically wrong.
She was dressed in a garment he recognised from his mother's old books: a chiton, simple and unadorned, of linen so fine it had turned nearly transparent where it clung to her damp skin. At one shoulder it was pinned with a brooch that might have been bronze, might have been gold, and was without question ancient.
After poking her with his wand and establishing that she wasn't about to explode, he considered his options. Madam Pomfrey if she was human. Hagrid if she wasn't. He wasn't entirely sure which category applied.
He reached for her wing.
It burst into flame the instant his fingers neared it.
Lucius threw himself backward, wand up, a curse half-formed on his lips—but the fire didn't spread. It was black, utterly black, rippling across the feathers like oil burning on water. And it wasn't hot. He felt no warmth from it at all, even standing close. The girl didn't stir. The flames simply consumed her wings, feather by feather, reducing them to ash that drifted away on the lake breeze. He watched, frozen somewhere between terror and a fascination he would never admit to later. It took perhaps a minute. Maybe less. When it was done, nothing remained of the wings but a faint dark dusting on the grass.
Her eyelids moved.
Not the flat green of Slytherin banners or the dull green of the Forbidden Forest canopy—this was deeper, older. The green of an emerald of the very highest quality, the kind his father kept locked in the Malfoy vaults and never let him touch. She gazed up at him without recognition, without the slightest fear, and he felt a sudden, vertiginous lurch, as though the ground had tilted. As thorough he was the one being examined.
The girl tried to force herself upright into something that might, on a generous day, be called sitting. It cost her visible effort.
When she had pushed herself as far as she could, she looked straight at him again. Her eyes dropped to his wand and fixed there with a wary, sharp intensity.
"Who are you?" Hoarse. Scarcely a whisper. But she threw the question at him like she expected an answer.
Lucius, now entirely on his guard, caught every syllable. The question should have been his. He was the one who had found her.
"The same question could be put to you." He was relieved to hear his voice emerge level and cool.
She stared at him then, a stare so fixed it made the skin at the back of his neck tighten. Then her face went slack—not faint, but drifting, the way someone looks when they're chasing a memory through fog. When clarity returned, pain followed. Her hand lifted, unthinking, and pressed to her forehead. To a scar. It sat above her brow, pale and half-faded, like a curse mark that had aged a long time.
He decided to press further.“What are you? Are you even human?”
She gave him a look of pure, withering annoyance. As though he were the stupidest person she had ever encountered. He was certain his question was perfectly valid.
“Are you blind,” she said, “or just trying to act like it?”
If he weren't still reeling, he might have snapped back. As it was, he only stared, wand still aimed between her eyes.
She rolled them—actually rolled them, as though he were a tedious little boy and not the heir to a noble house. “Do I look like a threat? I can barely sit up. Put the wand down and stop being a prat.”
“What's your name?” she asked. “And what is this place? It feels… familiar. But I can't remember.”
“Lucius Malfoy,” he said, moving a step closer.
At the name, something crossed her face—a flicker, quick and then gone, like a candle guttering in its holder. Recognition, or something near it.
“Malfoy,” she murmured, half to herself, as though she were trying to pull the word out of some deep, dark well.
“The name means something to you.” He stepped nearer still, now that it was clear she wasn't about to attack.
“No. And yes. I don't quite remember.” She lifted a hand and tapped two fingers to her temple. “It's all foggy in here.”
"A fall from such a height would be enough to cause significant trauma. Memory loss is not uncommon with head injuries." He paused. "Do you at least recall your name?"
She looked at him—through him, almost—her green eyes searching his face as though she might find something buried there. Then she lifted her chin.
"Yes. I remember my name." A breath. "I am Hiraeth Peverell."
The name hit him like a curse. Peverell. His mind raced back through the Malfoy library, through the genealogical charts his father had drilled into him since boyhood. The Peverells were a legend, a line so old it predated the Founders. And they were gone. The direct line had ended centuries ago, faded into the tapestry of other families. No Peverell had walked the earth in living memory. "You are lying." His voice came out colder than he intended. "The Peverell line is extinct."
Her eyes flashed. "Then I suppose someone forgot to tell me, because I'm standing right here. Well sitting. And breathing. Which makes me very much not extinct."
"You are an amnesiac who fell out of the sky. It is far more likely that you have confused a name you read somewhere with your own."
Her jaw tightened. Pain etched itself into the corners of her mouth, but her voice did not waver. "I don't care what you think is likely. I know my name. I am Peverell."
He stepped to her side and offered his hand. She eyed it a moment, then took it. He had to brace himself to pull her upright; she was heavier than she looked, or he was less strong than he liked to think.
A Peverell. If the name was true, his father would fire-call half the Board of Governors before dinner. The Prophet would run the story for days. And the wealth the old families still whispered that the Peverell's had left vaults untouched for centuries, fortunes accumulating in the dark. The possibilities multiplied with every heartbeat. And if she was lying? Well. A girl with no memory and no allies would need someone to rely on. People in debt were people in hand.
She was shivering. The chiton clung to her damp skin, fine as cobweb and just as warm. He unfastened his outer robe and swung it around her shoulders before she could protest.
She startled, then clutched the wool tight. "Thanks. I suppose."
"Can you walk?"
"I'll cope." She shot him a sideways glance. "I've had worse mornings."
He found himself almost wanting to smile. He offered his arm instead. "Then you can cope while holding on. The hospital wing is not close."
“What is this place?” she inquired as she took support from his arm.
“Hogwarts,” he heard himself say.
She seemed to drift in thought as he guided her toward the castle.
Her hair was becoming a problem. It trailed behind her in a dark, absurd sweep, catching on stones and snagging in the grass. Every few steps she stumbled as it tangled around her ankles
“Hold still.” He drew his wand. She flinched.
“I’m not going to harm you.” A swish, and her hair began to twist itself into a long, neat braid. It was his mother’s spell—one she had used on herself when he was small. He had picked it up without meaning to, and, well, his own hair was long; in private, he quite liked it braided. Not that he intended to tell anyone.
"Can you teach me this?"
"Do you even have a wand?"
"No. Not that I remember, anyway."
"Then I fail to see the point in teaching you."
She snorted. "Right. So you're just going to hoard it. Very generous of you."
"I seem to recall helping a black-haired girl and escorting her to the hospital wing."
"Well, a bit more generosity never hurt anyone."
then she looked around.
"Where is this, then?" She had a grip on his arm now, her fingers cool through his sleeve. "It's familiar, but I can't... place it."
"Hogwarts." The word left him before he'd thought about it.
She fell quiet, her brow furrowed, as though the name had stirred something she couldn't quite catch. He guided her along the path, the castle rising grey and familiar ahead.
They were halfway to the castle when a vast shadow fell across the path. The groundskeeper—the half-giant, Hagrid was striding toward them from the lake, his beetle-black eyes wide with alarm. Lucius resisted the urge to sneer. Of course the oaf would come blundering toward the noise.
Then Hiraeth's grip became a clench. Her fingers dug into his forearm with sudden, startling force, and when he glanced down, her face had gone tight and bloodless, her jaw clamped shut as though she were forcing something back. Pain. Or fear. Or something stranger still. She was staring at the half-giant as though she had seen him before and wished she hadn't.
Interesting.
"Malfoy!" Hagrid called, puffing slightly. "Yeh know what happened? Heard summat from the lake—" His gaze dropped to Hiraeth and his brow furrowed. "'Ere, what's this? Yeh look too young to be a student, you."
Lucius wanted to remark that she looked precisely the right age for a first year, and that a man of Hagrid's dimensions was in no position to judge the size of anything. He swallowed the comment. The oaf was staff. Barely.
"She fell from the sky." He spoke coldly, already steering Hiraeth forward. "She requires the hospital wing. You may inspect the lake if you wish—I am certain the Giant Squid knows more than I do."
He swept past without another word.
"Are you all right?"
She shook her head, a small, tight motion. "No."
"Then what—"
"When I saw him." Her voice was strained, thin. "That man. The big one. My head just... it was like something cracked open. I don't know why."
Blood began to drip from her nose. Lucius watched it fall, a single dark bead splashing onto the collar of his borrowed robe. His lip curled. Without a word he reached into his pocket and withdrew a white handkerchief, pressing it into her hand..
"You're bleeding. Do try not to stain the wool."
She blinked at the handkerchief as though she had never seen one before. Then, slowly, she lifted it to her face and pinched the bridge of her nose. The blood came anyway too much for a simple nosebleed, too dark against the white linen and for a long moment they stood there in silence while it seeped and seeped. When it finally stopped, her hand was trembling.
They walked on. It was several minutes before she spoke again, her voice rough around the edges. "What year are you, then? At this school."
"Fourth." He kept his eyes ahead. "The year is nearly over."
She nodded. A handful of students passed them on the path—a cluster of Ravenclaw girls who stared openly, whispering behind their hands. Lucius fixed his gaze ahead, refusing to acknowledge them. Hiraeth didn't so much as glance their way, as though being gawped at was something she had long since grown used to.
"What else do you remember?"
"Hogsmeade, a bit. The Forbidden Forest. This place." She frowned. "I think I've been here before. It feels like... remembering a dream."
"Perhaps you visited with your parents."
"I'm an orphan." The word landed oddly. Lucius glanced at her. "I thought you said you didn't have memories."
"I remember being an orphan, though." Her voice was flat. "That bit stuck."
Lucius considered this. Orphanhood was a stain in pure-blood circles a break in the line, a loss of continuity. But it was also, occasionally, an opportunity. An orphan had no loyalties. No one to answer to. She could be shaped.
"Where did you live, then?"
"A house." She shrugged. "There were... people. Three of them."
"What were they like?"
She was quiet for a long moment, her grip on his arm tightening slightly. "The man had a moustache and he was big. Fat, really." She gestured vaguely with her free hand. "And the woman—she was blonde, with a long neck, like a goose. And there was someone my age. Also fat. He ate constantly and screamed when he didn't get what he wanted."
"Their names?"
Her jaw tightened. "No. And I don't want to remember them. Or their names."
Lucius tilted his head. "Why not?"
She looked at him then, and her green eyes were hard. "Because they were Muggles. And they hated magic. I'll leave the rest to your imagination."
The venom in her voice was startling. Not the performative disdain of pure-bloods at a dinner party—real hatred, earned through years of suffering. Lucius had been raised to despise Muggles in the abstract, as one despised bad weather or poor breeding. This girl had lived among them. They had tried to crush the magic out of her, and they had failed.
She shrugged. "I don't remember clearly. But I think..." She paused, as though the memory was wispy and hard to catch. "I talked to a snake. At a zoo, I think. That's when I knew I was different."
The world stopped.
Lucius Malfoy, heir to a noble house, prefect-in-waiting, son of Abraxas and grandson of Brutus, stopped dead on the garden path and stared at a girl in a chiton as though she came back from death.
Parseltongue.
He stared at her as though she had stepped out of a tapestry, a myth made flesh . Parseltongue. The mark of Salazar Slytherin—the tongue of serpents, the legacy of the greatest Founder. His heart beat faster at the sheer, glorious purity of it. And then, colder, quieter, came the whisper his father let fall over late-night brandy: the Dark Lord himself possessed the gift. This girl had chatted with a zoo snake and thought nothing of it. She didn’t know.”
She didn't know.
"What." His voice emerged strangled. "What did you say to it?"
She frowned, misreading his shock. "Why? Is something wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"The snake. What did you say?
"I don't know—'hello,' probably. It said hello back. We talked about where he was from." She was staring at him now, wary again. "Is that a problem?"
A problem. He almost laughed. She had no idea. She had absolutely no idea what she was.
"No it is more that it is a rare gift. Not everyone can speak the tongue of serpents."
She rolled her eyes. "So I'm the freak. Wonderful." The sarcasm was so dry it barely made a sound.
"In a good way."
"Oh, of course. Being able to chat with garden snakes is a real advantage. What's next on the list of things that make me odd?" She gestured vaguely. "I can see magic, maybe?"
Lucius nearly laughed. "I assure you, magic does not have a colour. A few spells manifest visibly—the Killing Curse, certain hexes—but magic itself is invisible."
"You're wrong."
He stopped mid-step. She said it so calmly, so certainly, that for a moment he simply stared at her.
"And why, precisely, am I wrong?"
"Because magic has colour. Yours does, anyway."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"All right." She shrugged, utterly unbothered. "Don't believe me."
He exhaled through his nose. His patience, usually a well-maintained fortress, was developing cracks. He had already swallowed a Peverell, a fall from the sky, and a Parselmouth. What was one more impossibility?
"Fine. Tell me what colour I am, then."
And her eyes turned gold.
The green didn't fade—it vanished, swallowed by a flood of luminous amber, the colour of firelight through honey. Lucius felt his breath catch. He knew glamours. He knew illusions. This was neither. Her irises glowed as though lit from within.
"Sky blue." Her voice had gone strange—not tranced, but distant, as though she were reading something written on the air. "The main colour, I mean. But there's silver threaded through it. And bronze. And these little flickers of electric blue, like sparks." She tilted her head. "There's a black line too. Just one."
He knew of no ability that allowed a person to see magic as colour. The idea was absurd, the stuff of fairy tales. But her eyes had been green a moment ago, and now they were gold, and that was not a spell he could name. For a fleeting, deeply unwelcome instant, he felt stripped bare, as though she had peered past the surface and seen something he kept very carefully hidden. He crushed the sensation before it could take root.”
"You are deeply, profoundly strange."
“Yeah. I've heard that one." She blinked, and the gold receded, green flooding back like water reclaiming a shore.
They walked on. The hospital wing was close enough now that he could see the lantern burning above the door.
He spoke without looking at her. "I would strongly advise you not to mention this to anyone else."
"Why?"
"Because people destroy what they do not understand. I will look into this ability of yours. Quietly. Until I find answers, keep it hidden."
She was silent for a moment. "What's the worst they'd do?"
"The Ministry has a Department of Mysteries. They collect unusual magical phenomena. And the people attached to those phenomena often find themselves... detained."
"Detained." Her mouth twisted. "You mean experimented on."
"I mean precisely that."
She laughed—a short, unamused sound. "Brilliant. Fall out of the sky, nearly drown, and now I get to be a lab rat. This day just keeps improving."
The hospital wing smelled of lavender and something sharper beneath disinfectant potions, perhaps, or the faint metallic tang of Dittany. Madam Pomfrey looked up from her desk the moment the door swung open.
"Mr Malfoy." Her gaze sharpened. "What is the—" She stopped, catching sight of Hiraeth. "Who is this child?"
Hiraeth's hand clamped down on his arm like a vice. Lucius suppressed a wince. The girl had a grip like a Grindylow.
"I found her by the lake," he said smoothly. "She appeared to have fallen—from a significant height. She has no memory of how she came to be there, nor of her circumstances prior. She bled from the nose earlier." A pause. "She was wearing that."
Madam Pomfrey's eyes dropped to the chiton visible beneath his borrowed robe. Her expression flickered—curiosity, concern, the professional mask sliding back into place.
"On the bed, dear. This one. Sit back." She was already steering Hiraeth with the practised gentleness of someone who had handled hundreds of reluctant patients. "Let me see you."
Hiraeth went rigid as the matron's wand traced the air near her temples. Blood dripped from her nose, dark against the white linen of the pillowcase. She didn't seem to notice.
Lucius stayed where he was, watching. He had not been dismissed yet. And he wanted to see what the diagnostic charms revealed.
Madam Pomfrey's wand moved in complex, spiralling patterns the kind that looked like Arithmancy made visible. Light shimmered and shifted: green for vitality, gold for magical core, a troubled smear of grey that made her frown. She muttered something Lucius couldn't catch and flicked her wand again, harder. A string of runes flared—he caught corpus, sanguis, and something that looked like memoriam before it winked out.
"Is something amiss, Madam Pomfrey?"
"Nothing a more thorough diagnostic won't clarify." But her frown remained. She summoned a series of vials—Blood-Replenishing Potion, a pain-relief draught, a deep indigo tonic he recognised as a restorative for magical exhaustion. She pressed them into Hiraeth's hands one by one.
"Drink. Don't argue."
Hiraeth drank. Her face contorted at each taste, but she swallowed without complaint. By the third vial, her eyelids were heavy, her head lolling against the pillow.
Madam Pomfrey watched her for a long moment, then turned to Lucius.
"She'll sleep for several hours. You may go, Mr Malfoy."
"I would prefer to stay—"
"This is a hospital wing, not a waiting room. When she wakes, and if she asks for you, I will send word. Until then, you are in the way."
He did not appreciate being spoken to like an inconvenience. But Madam Pomfrey had been at Hogwarts longer than he had been alive, and she was one of the few staff members even his father spoke of with grudging respect. He inclined his head—a small, cold gesture of acknowledgment—and turned on his heel.
The door clicked shut behind him.
He walked away from the hospital wing in a daze. A great deal had happened in barely an hour. He had absorbed more impossibilities in that short time than most wizards encountered in a lifetime. A Peverell. A Parselmouth. A girl who could see the colours of magic.
His mind was definitely overworked, spinning through the implications—the potential profit, the potential trouble—and he could not quite settle on which was greater. He was, he realised distantly, not the composed, perfect Malfoy heir. For Merlin's sake, he wasn't even wearing his outer robe. He had apparently given it to a Peverell and walked away without thinking to ask for it back.
The moment he stepped through the entrance to the Slytherin common room, he knew something was amiss. Almost every eye in the room turned toward him. He was well known in the house his name alone guaranteed that—but it was unusual for them to stare so openly. Where was all the famed Slytherin subtlety?
.
Malfoy." Weystan Rosier intercepted him near the fire. He was a boy from a lesser branch of the Rosier line, the sort who attached himself to important names to borrow their shine. "Heard you were out on the grounds with a girl."
Lucius raised an eyebrow. "Who has been spreading such nonsense?"
"A first-year," said Seraphina Parkinson, appearing at Rosier's shoulder with the casual ease of someone who always knew where the interesting conversation was. "A first-year saw you on the path. A girl in your robe, Malfoy. Should we be preparing for an announcement?" Her eyes dropped to his shirtsleeves with a pointed little smile.
"She was a patient." Lucius's voice was ice. "I was merely delivering her to the hospital wing. Now, if you will excuse me."
He gave them a glare that closed the subject more effectively than any hex. They exchanged glances but stepped aside, and he walked through the common room toward the dormitory staircase without looking back.
His dormitory was empty. He sat on the edge of his bed, the green-tinged light from the lake pressing against the windows, and drew out a quill and a sheet of parchment.
—---------------------------
He had not slept. He had lain awake in the green-black dark of the dormitory, watching the lake-light ripple across the ceiling, and when morning came his eyes were raw and his temper was thin. At breakfast he buttered his toast with mechanical precision and did not eat it. Seraphina Parkinson opened her mouth to speak to him, took one look at his expression, and closed it again.
The eagle owl arrived at breakfast.
It swept down through the Great Hall with the arrogant precision of a bird that knew its pedigree, and it landed before Lucius's plate with a soft, imperious rustle of wings. Every Slytherin at the table watched as he detached the parchment from its leg. The seal was the Malfoy crest pressed into dark green wax. His father's personal mark.
My son,
I have read your account with the closest attention. You were right to write to me. The child you describe—if she is genuine—represents an opportunity that has not presented itself to this family in three generations. Perhaps longer.
The name Peverell carries weight even now, centuries after that line was thought to have ended. If she can be confirmed as a true heir, the legal and financial implications alone would be considerable. But it is the abilities you describe that most intrigue me. Parseltongue is a gift associated with Salazar Slytherin himself; a child who speaks the serpent-tongue would find many admirers in certain circles, and many enemies in others. We must ensure she falls into the right hands. Our hands.
The second ability—the perception of magic as colour—is rarer still. I have spent the night consulting the older volumes in the library. It is called the Sight, and it has not been recorded in the West for five hundred years. The last confirmed account dates to the Mughal court, where a seer was said to read the souls of men by the colours of their magic. If this child possesses the Sight, she is not merely an heiress. She is a weapon. Or a key.
You understand what this means. She cannot be allowed to fall under the influence of Dumbledore, or the Ministry, or any of the old families who would use her poorly and waste her potential. I will move swiftly.
You have done exceptionally well. I trust you will continue to do so.
Your father,
Abraxas
—------------------------
His father was planning something. That much was clear. The letter had been too brief, too certain. Lucius did not like being kept in the dark.
He had no obligations until the afternoon, so he made his way to the hospital wing. To check on her. That was all.
Madam Pomfrey looked up from her desk as he entered. "Mr Malfoy. If you're looking for your young friend, she isn't here."
Lucius stopped. "Where is she?"
"Your father," said the matron, with a slight tightening of her mouth that suggested she did not entirely approve, "filed a petition first thing this morning. An inheritance test at Gringotts. She left with Professor Dumbledore an hour ago. I expect her back by evening."
So that was his father's plan. A legal claim. A goblin test. If Hiraeth was confirmed as a Peverell, the wizarding world would know by nightfall. His father had not waited. He had moved before anyone else could.
Lucius found he did not know whether to be impressed or unsettled.
"Was she well?" The words left his mouth before he had quite decided to ask. "Before she left. Was she in good health?"
Madam Pomfrey's expression softened—barely. "Perfectly fine. A little disoriented, but physically sound. I gave her a clean bill of health."
"I see." He turned and walked back through the doors. Disoriented, but healthy. And at Gringotts, where goblins were no doubt already pricking her finger for blood and lineage. By tonight, everything would be different.
—-----------------------------------
He did not have to wait long. The news broke the next morning.
The Daily Prophet arrived at the Slytherin table in a flurry of wings, and before Lucius could even unfold his copy, he saw the headline screaming across the front page in thick black letters:
PEVERELL HEIRESS DISCOVERED—MYSTERIOUS GIRL FOUND AT HOGWARTS CLAIMS ANCIENT LINEAGE
Below it, a smaller line: Gringotts Inheritance Test Confirms Identity.
Lucius read the article twice. His father had moved quickly, and the result was now public knowledge. Hiraeth Peverell was real. She was the sole surviving heir to the Peverell name, and the vaults—ancient, untouched, their contents a matter of considerable speculation—were now legally hers.
His father had been successful. She had been telling the truth.
By midday, the second headline had begun to circulate: the Wizengamot had called an emergency session. A guardianship hearing was to be held within the week. The fate of the Peverell heiress would be decided not by her, and not by Hogwarts, but by the full weight of wizarding law.
Lucius folded the paper and set it aside. His father would win. Abraxas Malfoy did not enter legal battles he could not dominate. And when it was over, Hiraeth would come to the Manor. She would live under the Malfoy roof. She would be theirs.
The thought should have been entirely satisfying. it was not. he had a very bad feeling about this