It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men
-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
The stately owl winged its way over the hedges and impeccably curated grounds, arrowing straight for the large glazed window on the side of the manor. The window swung open as he arrived, and he landed on a smooth black perch, holding out one imperious leg in a silent expectation. When the house elf collecting the mail didn’t remove the letter quickly enough, he gave a displeased clack of his beak. The owl and its owners were birds of a feather.
The house elf glanced at the letter- the Mistress would want to see it quickly, but the Master would not count it among the urgent correspondence. Interrupting their dinner might bring punishment from one, but waiting to present it could just as easily bring punishment from the other. It was the choice between Scylla and Charybdis.
Making a quick decision, the elf snapped his fingers, using his inherent magic to summon the owl’s reward. He hastily snatched his hand back from the beak, barely keeping his fingers from getting snapped up along with the strips of bacon kept for the Malfoy’s owls.
A silver tray sat beside the window for this very purpose, and the elf placed the letter on it, arranging it in the center, propped slightly up so that the sender’s name was clearly visible. Draco Malfoy, in expensive green ink, was painstakingly lettered onto equally expensive paper. Beside it, he placed a silver letter opener, the blade polished so that each twisting vine and flower that decorated its handle mirrored his own face. The edge was sharpened perfectly, and it came to a sharp point.
The elf lifted the tray, then apparated into the dining room. While the Malfoys preferred their elves to be never seen or heard, they equally preferred necessary interactions to be as brief as possible, unless correction was required. Apparating in, loud though the sound may be, was considered far less disruptive than entering by a door and making them wait for him to cross the room.
“What is it, Dobby?” the Master snapped, eyes fixing on him with thinly veiled irritation. “You’re not to interrupt dinner, not unless it’s important.”
“A letter for Mistress Malfoy,” he said, proferring the tray. He kept his head bowed and eyes down, hoping she would look only at the tray and not at him. If the letter was for her, and she was glad for the interruption, then Master Malfoy would not object to its delivery.
She picked it delicately off the tray with long, slender fingers, and his eyes inadvertently darted upward to follow the movement, just in time to catch the corner of her mouth curved in a half smile.
He had guessed right. Narcissa Malfoy was eager for news of her son, and if she wished for the disruption, then Lucius Malfoy would not punish him for it. With a graceful and dismissive wave of her hand, he was released, and he appparated away, letting out a relieved breath. They had not told him he had failed his duties, and he need not punish himself for this. Not today.
In the other room, Narcissa lifted the letter opener from the tray, inserting it under the flap of the envelope and cutting open the paper. It left a clean, smooth line, and she slid the letter out. Draco had written at last. She had wondered the night before if he’d been too excited at the prospect of his first night in Hogwarts to send a letter. Now, as her eyes roved over the words, she found that they betrayed a different reason for the delay.
Dear Father and Mother,
I hope you are well. I am writing to inform you that I am at Hogwarts and I am well. Unfortunately, I have been Sorted into Hufflepuff. I don’t understand how this could have happened but I am very upset by this unexcepted development. My housemates are of a very mixed sort of society, and I do not look forward to spending this year with them at all. I will nuntheless continue to act as a Malfoy should, and hope that the indingity of my Sorting will not reflect too badly on our family. I’m sorry to write with such bad news. I will try to do well anyway.
With love,
Your son,
Draco
She let her fingers trail over the words. The occasional wobble of his quill told her much about how he’d been while writing – nervous, perhaps? Most certainly upset, though he’d said as much himself. And beneath the lines, she read his hope, a son’s all-consuming hope, that his father would be proud of him. She hoped he would learn to get on with his classmates, even if he never could truly be in the same circles and society as they were.
She hoped as well that she wouldn’t lose him the way she’d lost Andromeda. For all her sister had been a Slytherin, she’d heard her sister’s daughter had gone to Hufflepuff. She’d never spoken to Draco of his older cousin, and wondered if she ought to write of it to him, in case there were those in his house who remembered Nymphadora Tonks. Would he feel betrayed, if he learned it from them instead?
Lucius smiled at her indulgently, watching her read over the page again. She knew he would have waited to open the letter with his other correspondence, not wanting to appear soft or sentimental, but he was just as invested in their son’s future. But not for the first time, she wondered if he was invested for Draco’s sake, or for his own. Narcissa had grown up a Black, and she was no stranger to ambition or pride. She had plenty of her own, and she had never resented Lucius for his political ambitions, his more unsavory ties, or his vows to work toward blood purity in their world, no matter how distasteful the means.
Never, until she’d had a son. Now she wondered, if the Dark Lord had not been defeated, if Lucius had stayed on the path he’d been on – a path to greatness, but also to a life that left little room for family, affection, or children -
But it didn’t matter now. The Dark Lord was gone, and their lives had been set on a different path. Still, she hoped Lucius would not be too disappointed that their son was not in Slytherin. She had felt a pang of it herself – a fond and disappointed hope, born of nostalgia, that Draco would go to her old house, sit where she had sat, see the castle as she had seen it. But Lucius’ disappointment had always been of a harsher sort, and it stung Draco, who only wanted to live up to his father’s high expectations. No matter how he tried to hide it, a mother always knew.
She reread the letter once more, then lifted her eyes from it, and Lucius smiled. “How is our little dragon?” he asked.
“Here,” she said, passing him the letter. “He’s written about his new house.”
He gave her a puzzled look – it was odd, that she would wait for him to read it instead of telling him what it said. But she thought he ought to read this one for himself, and she wanted to watch him as he read it.
An intensely private man, Lucius didn’t often share his innermost thoughts with anyone, not even his wife. He was not an open man. But she had learned to read him, over years of marriage, and she would do the same now. If he couldn’t find the words to open himself up to him, she knew he welcomed it when she understood without any words at all.
His eyes widened minutely in shock as he began, and she knew he’d read the news the letter held. But beyond that, the rest of the letter, whether Draco had realized it or not, was an impassioned plea for his parents’ support. Lucius’ face went unreadable as he finished the letter. He took a moment, breaths measured and gaze distant, and she knew he was taking in the shock of it. Hufflepuff had not been their expectation.
Then he read it again, this time more slowly. She saw his mouth twist into the slightest downturn, and knew he’d reread the word Hufflepuff, written out in elegant cursive on the page. The frown disappeared again, though she wasn’t sure if that was due to Draco’s affirmation of his duty to the Malfoy name or simply because he’d recovered his usually iron control. When she saw his lips twitch very slightly as he reread Draco’s indignant report of the “indingity” of his Sorting, she knew all would be well. As long as Draco remembered his family name, and continued to live up to Lucius’ high expectations for the scion of his house, Lucius would adjust to the unexpected.
She would have to make sure Draco was still making the right friends and moving in the right circles. That would temper Lucius’ instinctive disdain for Draco’s house. It would have been easier, certainly, if he’d been in Slytherin. But Draco seemed conscious enough of the need to try, and she had managed society with an expert hand for a very, very long time. Even her husband had not always realized when his success was bolstered or enabled by her light hand on the reins.
“We’ll have to write back,” Lucius said thoughtfully, and she could see in the lines of his face that he was still displeased, though he had begun to resign himself to it.
“We shall,” she added. She knew she would usually be the one to write, and Lucius would add a few lines at the end, as was his wont in more personal correspondence. This time, she rather hoped it would be the other way around. She thought that Draco needed to hear from his father first, this time. And if Lucius inadvertently wrote a harsh letter, more used to talking to politicians than homesick eleven-year-old boys, she would be able to soften his lines with her own. He had forced down the worst of his reaction for their son’s sake, but it was lingering still. Hiding it with a politician’s deft hand would be worse than laying it bare. Honestly was rarely advisable in politics, but it went much farther with family.
She laid a hand on his arm. “I’d been planning to send him a care package anyway, for his first week. I’ll finish that while you start the letter.”
He gave her a look that said he knew exactly what she was doing, but only said, “after dinner,” and she knew they were agreed.
“Hufflepuff,” he muttered, disgruntled, as they went to bed that night. “My son, a Hufflepuff. I can’t say it’s what I expected. As if he weren’t the most Slytherin of the whole school. The Hat must be going senile.”
“I don’t know,” she said, rolling over to look at him. “I suppose…”
“You think he’s meant for Hufflepuff?” Coming out of Lucius’ mouth, the word was derisive.
“I think,” she said, “he is very loyal. To you, and to his family. And very dutiful to what it means to be a Malfoy. And he wants very much to grow up into someone you can be proud of.”
Lucius was silent for a long moment. Then he sighed, a long exhalation that held more in it than she knew how to read. She reached out to him, and he caught her hand halfway; squeezed it back, lightly.
“Well,” he said, and this time his voice was lighter. “Hufflepuff, then.” This time when he reached for her it wasn’t for comfort or for comforting, and when she responded, melting into him, they set aside the disappointments and worries of the day and lost themselves in each other.