Relationship Scandals, Assault, Murder
“There’s Septimus,” said Natalie, “I like that one. Nice flow to it. Septimus Malfoy.”
“Hm,” Melania mulled over the name. The two witches lounged in the hidden library within the Malfoy Manor, house-elves serving them tea and cookies as they chatted about baby names for the child Melania insisted she and Abraxas would, eventually, have. Natalie was shuffling through an assortment of fan mail that Winky Crockett “didn’t want to deal with” because they were sappy, lovestruck valentines from fans all around the country. She thought they were hilarious.
“Our first thought was Cassius,” said Melania, “after your grandfather.”
“Fair point. . . might be confusing though. People like Slughorn still remember Cassius.”
“Yes, Abraxas brought that up. And then, of course, it could be a girl.”
Natalie allowed a house-elf to refill her cup of tea and swung her legs up onto the couch to stretch out. The team had a long practice that morning, after which Antonin Dolohov had escorted her back to the Malfoy Manor, per Tiberius’s request that she wasn’t supposed to know about. But she had wheedled out of Dolohov that her former desire to live at the stadium was being overriden.
“Any ideas there?” asked Natalie, laughing to herself at a valentine that erupted with confetti in the shape of tiny golden Snitches.
“My mother insists if we have a girl we name it after her side of the family, the Blacks,” Melania blushed and nibbled on a cookie.
“Lots of options there,” said Natalie, remembering her recent encounter with Alphard Black.
“Yes, but I hope we have a boy. Then we’ll name him after your side of the family.”
“Just don’t name him Brutus,” said Natalie with a shake of her head. “That’s the one Malfoy name I don’t like.”
“No,” agreed Melania with a giggle. “I prefer Nicholas. Or Lucius. Both haven’t been used in a while.”
Natalie handed her cup off to a house-elf so she could lean back against the couch and let her limbs grow limp, leaving the stack of valentines in her lap. With a relaxed sigh she closed her eyes and nodded. “I like those.”
“And what about you, Natalie?”
Natalie’s eyes snapped open and she shot a look at Melania, sitting on the couch opposite the glass-topped coffee table between them. Melania raised her eyebrows.
“How are you and. . . Tom. . . .”
“He doesn’t like to be called that,” she mumbled, barely loud enough for Melania to hear. Natalie closed her eyes again and sank back into the cushions. “Tiberius had me escorted back here from practice so obviously I am not to be trusted taking care of myself, much less another person.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have picked such an immature godmother,” teased Melania.
“I’ve got that written in a contract,” Natalie said. “You can’t rescind it.”
She heard Melania sigh. “I suppose we are both getting ahead of ourselves with all this.”
Natalie’s eyes flew open again and she looked across at Melania. The witch was quickly becoming a budding socialite. “Wait, have you heard any rumors about me and Alphard Black?”
“Yes, actually,” said Melania. “I was visiting Druella last week and she mentioned her mother-in-law was trying to convince Alphard to court you.”
Natalie restrained a laugh at the terminology. Druella’s mother-in-law would be Irma Black, Alphard’s own mother. “Did Druella say why Irma is trying to convince him of that?”
Melania shrugged. “Why not? Alphard is Irma’s second eldest son, and she’s very proud to have produced the most Black children of this generation. Now that they’re getting older, she has nothing else to do besides matchmake and read gossip articles.”
“I see,” said Natalie, glancing up at the ornate golden chandelier above them.
“Why do you ask?”
“I ran into Alphard in Diagon Alley, right before going to Bulstrode’s,” she said, “he mentioned something about it. And about grandmother being partial to it.”
Melania hesitated as if afraid what she was about to say would come out wrong. “I think Domitia is very. . . stressed. . . with everything that’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
Melania took a cup of tea from a house-elf and sipped it before explaining. “Well, she lost her husband and then her daughter years ago. Her son is the Minister of Magic, her grandson is heading an internationally-renowned company — her grandson who isn’t even twenty-five years old and. . . and her granddaughter is playing for the English national team — you haven’t even been out of Hogwarts for a whole year and you did just get injured in the last match. She has a lot of high profile people to worry about.”
Natalie stared up at the chandelier, “I didn’t think of it like that.”
Melania smiled as if she already knew. “Not to mention all the Triple I business she’s still involved in — worrying about silly stuff like marriage is probably a nice break. Abraxas complains about Russia whenever he has a chance.”
“Yeah, Russia sucks,” Natalie grumbled, thinking about the only match where she hadn’t caught the Snitch.
“Plus you do look very much like your mother, and likely remind her of Theia, so she could be worried you also might run off with a Muggle and she’ll never see you again-”
Natalie made a retching noise. “I would never-” her statement of disgust was interrupted by the library door bouncing open. In strolled a fuming Winky Crockett. His face was as red as his hair, save the pale white scars across his cheek, and he was clutching a stack of what looked like thick parchment and glossy documents. Beside him was Tiberius Malfoy, who looked angrier than Natalie had ever seen him.
Natalie sat up, looking between her agent and her uncle with concern. Anyone who had good news did not walk into a room like that.
“Melania, dear,” Tiberius addressed Abraxas’s wife in a strained voice. “If you could leave us. We’ve some urgent news to discuss with the national team Seeker.”
Melania sent a sharp look at Natalie, who sighed and fell back against the cushions, closing her eyes. She heard Melania murmur a small greeting to Winky, who returned it, before the door clicked shut behind her. There was silence for a minute before Tiberius snapped.
“Sit up,” he demanded, his voice growing closer. Natalie’s eyes shot open and she obeyed, solely because she had never heard him as furious as he was now. She looked at Crockett, wondering what was going on. Winky dumped the pile of parchment he held over the back of the couch. It was a collection of smaller newspapers and tabloids; they knocked aside her pile of fan mail and scattered everywhere.
“Look through them,” said Tiberius, walking around the couch to take the seat Melania had occupied just moments before. He had a smaller stack of glossy parchment under his arm but he did not give it to her. “I’m sure you’ll find some familiar things in them.”
Shuffling through the pile Winky flung at her, a chill ran down her spine. They were mostly celebrity gossip tabloids and there were about a dozen photographs from her excursion to Diagon Alley the other day. Some showed her walking with that bloke Gerard, some showed her with her arm looped through Alphard Black’s, heading into Fortescue’s. Her hair was dark in those, but the headlines stated nonsense about her adopting disguises to fool wizards. These were followed by a shot of her outside Fortescue’s with her hair its usual color, Alphard giving her a worried look.
“Oh shit,” she muttered.
“Yeah, oh shit is right,” Winky said loudly. “What the hell were you thinking, Natalie? Running off to Diagon Alley — do you even know this bloke?” he snatched up one that showed her arm-in-arm with the starstruck fan outside Bulstrode’s Befittings and waved it in front of her face.
“No,” she said in a quiet voice.
Crockett picked up one showing her with Alphard Black. “Changed your hair, really? All it did was give these gossip tabloids plenty of fodder to jump on you with. Go on, read one. They’re making you into some duplicitous slut who’s in a relationship with multiple wizards. Alphard Black got dragged into this too, so you understand how bloody stupid you’ve been.”
“I’m sure his mother will love that,” she said under her breath then glanced between Tiberius and Crockett. “There’s a story about Webster’s latest sexual conquest every other day in-” she glanced down at one of the tabloids, “in Charmin’ Cheers — so why is this such a big deal?”
Tiberius stood and crossed the room to hand over the parchment he held. She took the stack and skimmed through; they were still celebrity gossip tabloids, but the themes were much more morbid. Someone had gotten pictures of her knocking the cushion with the fake Snitch away from the fraudster in Knockturn Alley, holding her hand out towards him, and of him then collapsing onto the ground. To top it off, there was a shot of her stepping over his motionless body as she ran after Tom Riddle. The headlines and articles all questioned if she was a crazed murderer and ought to be locked up.
“Oh,” the implications dawned on her. She looked up at Tiberius. His face was contorted in an expression of controlled fury.
“Do you know how lucky you are, that we have a say of what gets put in the Prophet?” he asked through gritted teeth. “You go out once and give these low-life tabloids a field day. Relationship scandals, assault, murder. None of us even knew you had left this house and returned.”
“So. . . is that bloke dead?” she ventured the question.
“No, lucky for you,” said Tiberius, “he’s in critical condition at St. Mungo’s. I managed to get Fabienne Lestrange to personally take him on under her so we can try to keep this a bit more quiet. But she has no idea what happened to him or how to help him.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” she insisted, “he was trying to pawn off a fake of the Snitch I kissed. I didn’t mean to — I dunno what happened, it wasn’t intentional-”
“This would have been a lot easier if you had said something as soon as it happened, Natalie!” hissed Crockett. “This isn’t Hogwarts anymore, there are a lot — a bloody lot — more eyes on your every action, with much more drastic consequences.”
“I know that!” she growled.
“No,” said Tiberius, giving her a sharp look. “I don’t believe you do.”
“You can’t just wander off into Diagon Alley, even with some shitty disguise, stroll about with different wizards and then attack another for selling a fake Snitch,” barked Crockett. “Are you bloody mental? The entire wizarding world has its eyes on you!”
“You could at least not shame our family and others, at the very minimum,” Tiberius pointed at one of the tabloids that glittered with photographs of her and Alphard Black.
She dropped her eyes to the tabloids across her lap and said nothing.
“Natalie, your actions reflect not only on you, but on myself, as Minister of Magic, and on Abraxas and Triple I,” said Tiberius. “Need I remind you of the situation we are currently locked in with Russia, both on the Ministry’s front, and Triple I’s. Scandals amongst anyone boasting the Malfoy name are of no help to our family.”
“Okay, okay,” she swept up all the tabloids and slammed them into a stack. “So. . . is it fixed?”
“Bloody unbelievable,” muttered Crockett before he tugged out a small piece of parchment from his pocket. “Yes, we’ve managed to patch up your fucking disaster of a trip to Diagon Alley as best we could. You’re going to have to sign this though.” He handed her the parchment and she glanced it over.
“Why?”
“To move one million Galleons from your Gringotts vault and distribute them between the vaults of the owners of all these shitty tabloids to get these photographs and articles removed from circulation.”
Natalie looked between her uncle and her agent. “Is that going to work? They’ve already been published.”
“No one is going to complain about being a hundred thousand Galleons richer,” Tiberius dropped back down to the couch, still looking very angry about the situation. “And you really don’t have any other options.”
“Does the Department know?” she asked, “about the whole. . . Diagon Alley thing. Not the paying off that we’re — that I’m — doing.”
“Yes, everyone knows,” said Tiberius, ignoring the last part of her comment as she scrawled her signature onto the parchment and flung it back at Crockett. “The Laments are not happy, as you can imagine. Fortunately, nobody wants to press charges for your attack on the wizard in Knockturn Alley; he isn’t conscious to do so himself and none of his family have come forward about it. But Ian Rowle did personally come to my office to offer his Auror services to babysit you if it’ll mean we can avoid making the entire country look foolish-”
Crockett slammed a hand on the back of the couch she sat on. “Because you obviously think you can act however you want and expect us all to clean it up for, like some sort of spoiled brat-”
“Enough, Winky,” Tiberius interrupted Crockett’s explosion. He turned to Natalie and she knew she would not like whatever he was about to say. “The Department is suggesting — and it would be unwise to see this as an optional suggestion — that you stay out of the public eye for a bit. Lay low and remain here when you aren’t practicing with the team-”
“I went out once,” she said in annoyance. “Once! It’s not my fault I got mad-”
“Yes, it is!” thundered Crockett. “It literally is your own fault if something pisses you off!”
Natalie ignored his outburst and addressed Tiberius. “So, there won’t be Aurors babysitting me then? I thought Rowle didn’t like having to keep them at the stadium all last month. Why’d he offer them to babysit me?”
“Matt Lament has tasked the Aurors with general team security. There will not be a need to take up Rowle’s offer, but-”
“But Antonin Dolohov will continue to be my babysitter back from practice. I thought his job title was Assistant to the Minister of Magic, not Babysitter to the National Team Seeker.”
“Maybe don’t act like a child and job titles won’t need to be reassigned?” suggested Crockett.
“Shut up, Winky!” she finally cracked under his incessant remarks, jumping to her feet and glaring across the couch at her agent as the newspapers, articles, and fan mail flew all over the room.
“Enough, both of you!” barked Tiberius. He crossed the room to stand at the end of the couch and glared between them. “The matter is settled and, hopefully, the lesson has been learned.”
“And I’m short a million Galleons.”
“Please,” snorted Crockett. “A million Galleons is like ten Sickles to you. And it’s your own bloody fault, so don’t start on that.”
Natalie ignored him again, turning to Tiberius. “I can’t go to my house at all?”
“No,” said Tiberius, “the Department doesn’t want to take any chances. I’m taking responsibility by having you stay here.”
“Then. . . can Tom Riddle visit?”
“Oh, your actual boyfriend?” interjected Crockett. “Not the ones you stroll through Diagon Alley with?”
“Winky, I swear to Merlin you will end up in St. Mungo’s like that fraud from Knockturn Alley.”
Her agent shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Just trying to keep you out of trouble, boss. Mainly, out of Azkaban, at your rate.”
Tiberius sighed, “Riddle can visit. But I am not taking responsibility for any of the frivolous gossip that spins out from this situation.”