The Daily Prophet
Harry flinched as the vase a few meters ahead of him exploded noisily in a cloud of lavender sparkles.
“Good job, Draco,” Sirius praised. “That makes three out of ten. An improvement from last week.”
“Of course, it is,” Draco scoffed. “It’s impossible to do worse than zero.”
“You’d be surprised…” Sirius trailed off. He flashed a smirk for half of a second—as if recalling a funny memory—then returned to his usual blank, slightly bored expression.
He waved his wand to repair the three vases and return them to their homes on the conjured pedestals. “Alright,” he instructed Draco. “Try again.”
“It would appear that the Weasleys have finally come upon some luck,” Lucius drawled from behind Harry, tossing his copy of the Daily Prophet onto the coffee table before him.
“What do you mean?” Harry asked carefully, turning around to face the elder Malfoy. He had to shield his eyes from the warm summer sun beating down on his face over the outline of Malfoy Manor. From where Harry was standing, the canopy that protected the elder man’s fair skin didn’t cover his own.
“The Weasleys seem to have come into a bit of money,” Lucius explained to Harry from where he was draped leisurely over an outdoor sofa. Having accepted defeat in the argument for his vases (or anything else against Sirius, really. The man was more stubborn than his mother!) he decided to at least “supervise” to assure that nothing came to any serious harm. “Some relative abroad married rich then died recently,” he explained. “Left a large fortune to them, it seems.”
Harry frowned, knowing that likely wasn’t the truth. “How convenient,” he muttered.
“Yes,” Lucius hummed. “Apparently, nothing else is going on in the world right now because they’ve got a small article on the front page about their recent renovations. Apparently the cost has set some sort of new record. It’s even got a little picture above it.” He scoffed. “Honestly, I’m just surprised they would bother. They should have burned the little hovel to the ground and started anew.”
“I guess now that Dumbledore’s gone underground, the Prophet’ll be through slandering his name to the best of their abilities soon,” Harry mused.
Ever since Harry’s article went to print, Dumbledore’s face had been on every copy of the Daily Prophet with not a single positive word beneath it.
After the excitement of the restraining order, he was removed from the Wizengamot and deemed no longer fit to remain the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards. After that, all sorts of horrible articles about his past began cropping up as part of a vicious smear campaign. There had even been ads for a book coming out soon with claims of him having ties to Grindelwald in his youth.
Harry had determinedly ignored every single article, but he still caught the occasional glimpse of a headline when someone else was reading it.
Even then, the headline was describing a decade’s worth of ignored complaints against him in his role on the Wizengamot.
“Not slander,” Lucius corrected with a smirk. “It's written, so that would be libel. Of course, that also implies that what they’ve said isn’t true.”
“Well, if the gist of it is that he’s a self-absorbed, senile busy body, and a meddling narcissist, then, it must be true.”
“I’d have to agree.” Lucius snapped his fingers twice and Dobby appeared a few feet away, carrying a large tray of spiked lemonade. He shuffled over to where his master was lounging and offered him a clear cup with a green design on it. Lucius took it lazily, then shooed the house-elf away. He scooted over toward Harry and offered him one as well. Harry went to reach for a glass that looked the same as Lucius’ but Dobby shook his head vigorously, so he grabbed one with a yellow design on it instead. Dobby let him have that one with no arguments.
“At any rate,” Lucius continued, “at least now the Weasleys have the opportunity to start behaving like a real Ancient Family, instead of like grubby little peasants, the way they have been. Honestly, I never did understand how someone from such an upstanding family as the Prewetts would want to marry so far beneath them, the way that Molly did.” He shook his head in disappointment.
“Love knows no bounds,” quoted Sirius, having tuned in to the tail end of their conversation. “Molly never did like me,” he added as an afterthought, scoffing at the memory.
Lucius chuckled. “Well, of course not. Not after what you did to her brother.”
Sirius rolled his eyes. “I told you,” he huffed at the other man, “that was not my fault. Besides, she never would have found out about it if someone could just keep their pointy little nose in their own business.” Sirius glared at Lucius, clearly indicating exactly who someone was.
“What did you do to her brother?” Draco asked, abandoning his efforts to break the vases.
“Yes, Black,” Lucius taunted, taking a sip of his drink. “What did you do to her brother?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Sirius waved a hand through the air as if to brush the discussion away entirely. His face began to turn splotchy and red. If Harry hadn’t known the man to be so somber and aloof, he might have thought he was embarrassed.
Lucius laughed at him.
“Alright, Harry,” Sirius changed the subject. “Your turn.” Harry handed Dobby his cup back and rushed to take Draco’s place before the pedestals.
With Sirius’ guidance and what Harry was certain had to be no small amount of good luck, Harry and Draco had managed to break 5 out of the 10 vases each before supper time. At least now they’d managed to catch up to Hermione.
“Honestly, it must be impossible!” Draco complained as they began to clean up. “Nobody can be that good at aiming a wand.”
“Of course, they can,” Lucius disagreed. “All it takes is practice and determination. Having perfect accuracy with a wand can be the difference between life and death in a duel.”
As if to prove his point, Lucius rose from his seat. He pulled his wand from its secret compartment within his cane and waved it in a broad sweeping motion. One by one, right after the other with no pause in between, he struck all 10 vases, making them explode.
With the way they’d all been charmed, there was no doubting that Lucius hit them with expert precision.
“Whoa!” Draco was so impressed by his father’s skill that his eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he gasped deeply. He darted his gaze over to his father in excitement, smiling widely and bouncing on his toes for a second. “That was wicked! How’d you learn to do that?”
“Like I said, Draco. Practice and determination.” Lucius preened under his son’s praise.
Harry was rather impressed as well, but he didn’t have a “daddy complex” like certain other Slytherins, so his admiration was much quieter.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sirius wave his wand to restore the vases to their spots on the pedestals when he thought of something.
“Hey Sirius,” he asked. “Can you hit all the targets perfectly?”
“I’m sure he could at one point,” Lucius answered for him. “But after all those years in Azkaban, I imagine he’s a bit rusty.”
Sirius arched a challenging brow at Lucius, then turned to look at each vase individually. After a moment of calculation, he lifted his wand, flicking it once. A purple spark shot from the tip, splitting into 10 and striking each vase at the same time, causing 10 simultaneous explosions.
Harry and Draco whooped in surprise. “Now that is impressive!” Harry cheered.
“Indeed,” Lucius admitted begrudgingly. “Dobby! Drilby!” he snapped. The 2 elves in question appeared before him with a pair of loud cracks. “Clean up the rest of this mess, and make sure those vases return to their proper homes in pristine condition.”
“Yes, Master!” both elves said in unison. They scurried past him, Drilby moving a little quicker than Dobby. Lucius swung the bottom of his cane to give Dobby an impatient thwack on the behind as he passed by, urging him to hurry up.
When Lucius’ back was turned, Sirius reached over to give Dobby an affectionate rub on the head. The house elf flinched at first but then smiled up at him gratefully. Sirius waved his wand, setting the vases to rights again to make the elves’ job a little easier.
After supper, the boys were reading books in the Malfoy library. It was far safer than the one in Grimmauld Place, with only a single forbidden shelf of cursed books. So, they were allowed free reign to explore by themselves. Harry was elbow deep in a book on basic spellcrafting while a few feet away Draco made slightly awed faces at a book on advanced potionmaking. Sitting in a winged chair near the empty fireplace, Sirius was absently flipping through a book on werewolves, mind clearly elsewhere.
As Harry tried for the third time to follow an arithmancy equation that was a little too advanced for him to fully understand, there was a sudden thump on the roof. The library was on the top floor, so that meant something hit the outside of the building. He frowned at the distraction, then tried to refocus on his book. A second later, there was another thump, this one further in front of him. Almost immediately, there was another.
“Merlin’s beard,” Draco complained. “What is that?”
There was another thump, this time above Sirius’ head. He blinked into focus, then glanced upward, brows drawn in confusion. There was another one, this time in the chimney, causing ash to fall down. It made a small cloud drift out and coat that area of the floor in a thin layer of dust.
“Bloody hell?” Sirius grumbled quietly. He stood up, pulling his wand out of his sleeve and approaching the hearth to investigate. Just as he leaned down to peer inside, a large gray owl fell flat into the grate with a heavy plop and an explosion of soot.
Sirius jumped back, spluttering and coughing as it got in his mouth and nose.
The owl flipped upright quickly, then hopped rather than flew to Draco at the table, leaving a trail of soot in its wake. It landed beside him with about as much grace as it's landing in the fireplace. With both feet in the air, it wiggled one with purpose, indicating to the confused blonde that he should take the letter tied there. Draco did so, face contorted in disgust, and the bird immediately flipped upright again, taking off toward the nearest window.
Both Harry and Draco winced in anticipation for it to crash into the closed window, flinching on impact anyways. The window—now also smudged with soot—did not actually open at all. None of them did. They were merely there to let light in.
Harry took mercy on the poor despicable thing and gathered him up from his spot on the floor. He carried him past a frowning—and glaring—Sirius, then deposited him into the grate. From there, he flew upwards making a noisy ascent back to the roof. With one last thump on the roof, he took off again.
“Are you alright?” Harry asked, turning to Sirius with a barely suppressed grin. Sirius answered his question by finding a clean spot on his sleeve, then licking it, leaving a black smudge on the formerly white patch of fabric.
Harry snorted, failing to hold back a huff of laughter. “Sorry,” he chuckled. He pulled his wand from his inner chest pocket and cast scourgify to clean up the mess from the owl. Behind him, Sirius did the same, making sure to get inside his mouth. He smacked his mouth a few times at the dry feeling it left behind.
“You know,” he observed. “I might have actually found him funny if my mouth didn't taste like I'd been licking an ashtray.” He huffed in exasperation. “I need water,” he complained before leaving. “Whoever that is, tell them they need a new owl,” he called through the shelves.
At the table, Draco was already reading the letter he'd received. “It's from Weasley,” he explained. “George, to be exact.”
Harry rushed to his side. “What's it say?” He leaned over Draco’s shoulder to read it too.
‘Malfoy and Potter,
‘I know it's been long, I'm not trying to hear your mouths about it. But I’ve finally convinced Fred to give it up. We're going to Diagon Alley to get our school things on July 30th. We'll be at Fortescue's at 11.
‘See you there,
‘G. Weasley
‘P.S. Ron says you're still snakes.’
Draco scoffed at the final comment. “Bloody Ron,” he mumbled.
“At least he was smart enough to be discreet,” Harry observed. “He didn't outright state what he was talking about, in case the letter was intercepted.”
“Of course not,” Draco huffed. “This is George we're talking about. He's the smart one. Not like that idiot Fred.”
Harry didn't say anything, he just chuckled quietly. Draco turned red in the face and swatted him away.
“Shut up!”