Purebloods
Harry slid the purple plate back and forth over his wrist. He was so proud of it. Him, an actual pureblood? He still couldn't believe it. Even sitting in the posh dining room of Malfoy Manor with all the magic and pureblood superiority, he still found it hard to believe.
After receiving his Trinket last night, things seemed to move in a bit of a blur. He remembered sitting in stunned silence for a bit more as the adults in the room continued talking and making plans. They could have been planning their strategy to take over the world and Harry wouldn’t have noticed.
The children had been dismissed at some point. Harry remembered Draco tugging him along back to the playroom with the others, but the room had stayed somber and quiet the whole time. The results of the Trinkets had everyone in a similar state of shock. Harry vaguely recalled Pansy throwing a small fit about being “just like everybody else.”
In no time at all, everyone except Hermione and Harry had been called by their parents to return home. Then suddenly Harry found himself tucked into the bed of the beach themed guest bedroom and lulled to sleep by the barely perceptible sound of crashing waves coming from his enchanted duvet.
Now, he was sitting diagonally across from Severus Snape in the dining hall, continuing to be ignored by the man. On either side of Harry sat Draco and Hermione, with Mr. Malfoy at the head of the table. Narcissa was to his right, and Aunt Walburga was across from her, to his left and beside Severus.
Harry supposed he should get used to thinking of him as Professor Snape. Considering how dutifully the teacher was ignoring him, Harry couldn’t see himself ever being addressed directly by him. So, it likely didn’t matter, anyways.
"Harry, dear," Aunt Walburga called across the table in her deep, crackly voice. Harry turned his full attentions to her and sat up straight. Aunt Walburga had been kind enough yesterday despite his upbringing, but mostly that meant ignoring him. Even with him presenting as a pureblood, she was still a clearly racist woman. Harry wouldn't put it past the Black Family matron to hold him to a different standard than the others, regardless of blood status.
"After breakfast, I would like to ask you and Hermione to join Severus and I in the library for bit. With last night's discovery, we ought to teach you two how to behave like proper purebloods. We can't have you embarrassing my grandnephew's name by allowing you to behave like muggles when you arrive at Hogwarts."
"Yes, ma’am," Harry and Hermione agreed in unison.
"Thank you," Hermione added.
“Please, you may both call me Aunt Wally.” Aunt Walburga dismissed their formalities with a brush of her hand through the air. “All the pureblood children do.”
“Thank you, Aunt Wally,” Harry nodded at the elderly woman.
“Yes, thank you very much,” Hermione gave her a tight smile.
Neither of them could find it in themselves to despise muggles like Aunt Wally clearly did. However, Harry would jump at any opportunity to learn more about the wizarding world.
Hermione seemed equally as eager to learn the old fashioned pureblood traditions. She wasn’t Sacred 28 like the others, so she had never been privy to such customs the way Draco and some of the other children were.
Knowing their blood statuses, it was hard for the both of them not to feel like it was owed to them for having to spend so much of their life being oblivious.
"It's a shame, how it all works," Aunt Wally continued to the table as a whole. "The headmaster knows at birth whom all the magical children are. The muggleborns should be taken from their parents and raised properly in the society where they belong."
Narcissa looked over at her Aunt in surprise. Despite having still been racist, that must have been the most diplomatic thing she'd said about muggleborns in Narcissa's entire life. It was more than a bit shocking.
"Yes," Hermione agreed tentatively. "It does feel a bit unfair to have been deprived of the knowledge of the wizarding world. Especially if there were people who knew all along and just left uh… them in the dark. It’s like being denied a piece of our own heritage." She frowned at the way she began to stumble over her words. “Although, I’m not sure taking children from their parents is the best idea,” she added in a mumble.
Harry nodded his head in understanding. If he thought about it, it sounded a bit like what the Dursleys did to him. They knew he was magical, but hid it and lied to him for years, keeping him as far removed from his culture as possible. That was the same thing Dumbledore did with the muggleborns. Only instead of actively hiding it from them, he merely left them ignorant when he didn't have to. Like Hermione said, it left them deprived of their heritage just like he was.
"Wouldn't that be something that the ministry should handle?" Narcissa asked before taking a sip of her tea.
"No." Lucius shook his head. "The names are accessible to the headmaster at birth, but the ministry doesn't know about muggleborns until they're registered for school. Before then, they technically only exist in the muggle world and not at all in ours. So there's no way for the ministry to know without having been told by the headmaster first."
"So it all boils down to Dumbledore," Aunt Wally sneered. "I always hated him. Even as a teacher. Headmaster Dippet had always been much better."
"I must admit," Harry decided on a whim to voice his own opinions on the man aloud. "I'm not very happy with him either. I discovered that it's his fault entirely that I had to stay with my horrible relatives. They treated me like garbage my entire life, and never told me anything about wizards or my parents. Dumbledore knew all about it, but he made me stay anyways." Harry couldn't help but be resentful about it.
“Despicable man,” Aunt Wally spat offhandedly, before tucking into her sausage with a knife and fork.
“I don’t think Harry should have to go back,” Draco piped up. “He said before that they treat him terribly. He doesn’t deserve that!”
“I would love to never have to go back,” Harry agreed. “But I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You’re the savior of the wizarding world,” Draco scoffed. “I’m sure there’s plenty of places you could go. Loads of people would love to take you. You’d be spoiled like a king with just about anyone.”
“I wouldn’t want all that,” argued Harry. “I’m happy enough with the basics, really. Besides,” he shrugged, “I could never ask someone else to take me in. I’d never want to be a burden that way.”
“I’m a bit curious,” Hermione mused, fork suspended above her plate as she thought aloud. “Why did Dumbledore choose where to send you? I mean, I know he’s respected as the leader of the light side, and was You Know Who’s biggest rival. But what does that have to do with Harry? When you were orphaned, shouldn’t the ministry have been in charge of where to send you? I mean, they must have a department dedicated to the welfare of children, right? Especially after the war. I’m certain you weren’t the only one to be orphaned by the violence that took place. So why was the Headmaster the one to decide where to send you? Clearly, he didn’t make the best choice.”
Harry hadn’t thought of that before. When he realized that Dumbledore was the one to send him to the Dursleys, it never occurred to him that it would be strange that the headmaster of Hogwarts would be in charge of that.
“That is a very good question, Ms. Granger,” Mr. Malfoy smirked as he looked at her. “You are quite a clever girl.”
“I must admit,” Aunt Wally sighed loudly. “It is partially my idiot son’s fault.” Severus sent a dark look her way, but either she didn’t notice, or pretended not to as she continued on. “He was supposed to be your Godfather, Harry,” she told him. “Until he went and got himself arrested, the fool.”
“How do you know that?” Narcissa asked, so shocked that she didn’t even bother attempting to mask her astonishment.
“I may have burnt the blood traitor off the family tapestry, but he was never legally disowned,” she explained. “Only my dearest Orion could do that, and he was holding out hope that he might get his head on straight one day. He was a fool as well. Anything that happened to Sirius legally would appear in the official family ledger. So when the Potters were killed, Harry became a ward of the House of Black.”
“It was probably for the best that Harry never wound up in your son’s clutches anyways,” Severus added on stiffly. “Considering what it was he was arrested for.”
Aunt Wally scoffed loudly at that. “I never would have thought you were a fool as well, Severus.” She sneered at the man who, unashamedly, sneered back at her. “My Sirius was far too stubborn to have ever betrayed James Potter. If nothing else, he was absolutely in love with the man. Only a complete moron could ever believe he’d actually betrayed him.”
“Wait, what?” Harry had meant to mutter that mostly to himself, but he’d said it quite loudly. He had no idea what they were talking about. Clearly they were talking about Walburga’s son and Harry’s father, but he didn’t understand a thing she was saying.
“That’s right,” Mr. Malfoy chipped in. “I forget you had no idea what happened back then. It’s such a shame no one told you, considering how much of it is based completely around you.”
Narcissa decided to explain everything to Harry. “My cousin, Sirius—Aunt Wally’s eldest son—was best friends with you father since the moment they met on the Hogwarts train. They were as close as brothers. Little terrors they and their friends always were.” Here, Severus scoffed and rolled his eyes, stabbing a sausage vigorously. “Sirius and the rest of our family were always at odds with our beliefs. Mind you, this was long before we learned that we’d all been building prejudices off completely false pretenses.
“Our beliefs have always been aligned with… the wrong side of the war. Sirius wouldn’t stand for it, and it alienated him from the rest of us. Though for the record, the only person who bore the name of Black to actually join He Who Must Not Be Named’s ranks was Aunt Wally’s youngest son Regulus.”
“Bless his soul,” Aunt Wally added in, wistfully. Here Mr. Malfoy took an uncharacteristically loud sip of tea.
“The point is,” Narcissa continued. “When the war came to head and You Know Who attacked your family, the only reason he was able to reach you was because they were betrayed by Sirius. He was their Secret Keeper. That means their home was put under a very difficult charm that kept anyone from finding it. The only way for You Know Who to learn where it was, is if the Secret Keeper—Sirius—had told him. Such is the charm that it can only be told willingly, not via threats or torture.
“After betraying your parents, he went after their other friend Peter Pettigrew. I don’t think anyone is really sure why. He followed him out into the middle of muggle London and caused a huge explosion that killed Pettigrew and thirteen muggles. The only thing left of the poor man was a finger. When the Aurors arrived, Sirius was just stood there, laughing like a maniac. He didn’t even try to fight them off. He was convicted of mass murder and sent straight to Azkaban.”
“Without a trial, might I add,” Aunt Wally inserted. “More of Dumbledore’s doing. The barmy old wretch. I don’t believe a bit of it. He was always far too attached to those boys, and their other friend, What’s-his-name. When my Sirius ran away, he ran straight to go live with the Potters. After finishing school, he and that other boy bought a flat together. He was far too stubborn and loyal—even to that Pettigrew boy—for any of that to be true. I’m sure if he’d gotten a proper trial, everyone would have known that.”
“If you’re so sure he was innocent,” Harry asked, “then how come you never stood up for him?”
“I tried, but no one would listen to me. Why would they? Sirius hated me, my other son was a Death Eater, and the House of Black is quite famous for having no tolerance for muggles. I’m the last person they’d have paid attention to so soon after the war ended with tensions still so high. Besides, I’m sure he deserves to rot in Azkaban for any number of things, anyways.”
“Hold on!” Draco spoke up again, nearly shouting. While the conversation had continued, he’d been stuck on something else. “You said before that Harry is a ward of the House of Black! So that means he should stay with you Aunt Wally!”
Harry blanched. After hearing everything Narcissa and Aunt Wally said, the last place he wanted to stay was with Aunt Wally. Not that he’d have been too keen on the idea beforehand either. “I could never put such a burden on you!” he scrambled to say.
“But that’s where you belong!” Draco insisted.
“Oh no!” Harry argued. “I would feel absolutely awful forcing myself into your responsibility. Especially under such short notice. I don’t think that would be a good idea at all. Besides, I’m quite used to the Dursleys. I can handle them just fine.”
“But you shouldn’t have to…” Draco complained. Harry couldn’t think of a nice way to explain that perhaps he didn’t have to, but he could handle the Dursleys, and there was no way that he could handle living with Walburga Black!
“Oh it’s nothing to worry about anyways,” Aunt Wally cut in. “School will be starting soon anyways, so it hardly matters at this point.” Harry sighed in relief, glad she didn’t seem too fond of the idea either.
Harry had a lot to think about throughout the rest of breakfast. If learning he was pureblooded was a surprise, the conversation at the table that morning was merely bombshell after bombshell. He was absolutely wrought with nerves just trying to comprehend it all. Learning he was a wizard had tilted his world on an axis. Everything he’d learned in just that 24 hours had seemed to flip his world over completely and shake it around until its lunch money fell out of its pockets.
Breakfast seemed to stretch on forever after that, though conversation switched to a far less earth shattering topic.
Pureblood lessons in the library wound up being simple enough. It consisted of being drilled on facts about customs by Severus, and proper etiquette by Aunt Wally. Both Harry and Hermione were ordered to memorize the names of all members of the Sacred 28, as well as the entire Gaunt and Black Family Trees. They were also required to learn a fact or two about each family. At the end of an hour, they were each bogged down with a stack of books on the topics they’d covered, and warned to study them well.
After managing to escape, they caught up with Draco in the back garden and played chess for a while before grabbing a couple of broomsticks and playing hide and seek in the hedge maze. Hermione was very reluctant at first, having a mild fear of heights, but was eventually convinced by the boys when they promised not to go higher than the hedges.
After separating, it took them a good few hours to find each other again. Draco had a particularly good advantage having been so familiar with the labyrinth already. There were a few close calls, but eventually, all 3 of them had been tagged by the others and they found themselves settled around an iron table under a gazebo for refreshments. They were in the middle of the maze, tucked away in a nook to the left of a large fountain that marked the exact center.
The statue in the fountain was of a bathing woman and a pair of children. The woman lifted a large pot of water to pour over herself, while the children danced around her, tossing their own smaller pots at each other. Occasionally, the woman would turn to pour water on one of the children, then skip out of the way as the children threw water back at her.
“You’re a liar!” Hermione accused Harry, laughing as she pretended to be indignant. “You said you’ve never ridden a broom before today!”
“I haven’t!” Harry raised his arms up in defense of himself. “I’ve been raised by muggles! When would I have had the chance?”
“There’s no way possible you can ride a broom that well after only having been on it for seconds!” Hermione argued.
“She’s got a point.” Malfoy nodded with false suspicion. “You ride it better than I do, and I’ve been riding brooms for ages. Where’d you learn?”
“Honestly! I didn’t!” Harry laughed at the both of them. “It was just natural, I suppose. Like riding a bike, but far easier. And so much better,” he added as an afterthought.
“What’s a bike?” Draco asked, eyebrows drawn in confusion.
“Well,” Harry explained. “It’s got two wheels—one in front and one in back—and they’re attached by a piece of metal. It’s got handles so you can turn and pedals for your feet to make it move forward. Then there’s a seat for your bum. Muggles ride them to take them places. They’re much faster than walking, but they’re not as fast as cars.”
“I’ve seen a car before!” Draco piped up, excited to have recognized something. “I see them all over the place when we have to go to muggle London. I’ve never heard of a bike, though. Do they go fast?”
“Not as fast as a broom!”
“Good!” Hermione exclaimed. “Brooms go too fast!”
“What?”
“Are you mad?”
Both boys shouted at the same time.
“They are!” Hermione defended. “They’re dangerous! Someone could get really hurt if they fall! Especially up high!”
“Of course they can! That’s why it’s fun!” Draco looked at Hermione as if she’d lost her marbles. “Besides, how else are you supposed to play quidditch? It’d be right boring if all the players had to stay on the ground.”
Now, it was Harry’s turn to be confused. “What’s quidditch?”
Draco’s mouth dropped open, astounded. “’What’s quidditch?’” he repeated. “How can you not know about quidditch? It’s only the most important game in the world!”
“Hello!” Hermione waved an arm in Harry’s direction. “Raised by muggles! He only really knows what we’ve told him!” She rolled her eyes at Draco’s silliness.
“Right, right. I keep forgetting,” Draco brushed it off. “It’s only the best game ever. I’ll explain. You win by getting the most points, right? It’s played with three types of balls-”
“Three balls?” Harry couldn’t fathom being able to keep up with that many.
“Technically its four, because there’s two bludgers. Those ones are heavy—mean little things they are. They fly around and do their best to hurt everybody on the pitch and knock you off your broom.”
“That sounds horrifying!” Harry’s eyes were wide as he imagined being pelted with bludgers.
“Only if your beaters are no good,” Draco soothed. “Each team has got two of them. It’s their job to make sure the bludgers don’t hurt anybody on their team. They carry around bats to keep them away. Then there’s three chasers. They handle the other ball, the quaffle.”
“What’s a quaffle do?” Harry asked cautiously. He hoped it wasn’t as violent as the bludgers sounded.
“Quaffles don’t do much,” Draco continued. “The chasers use them to score points. They pass them back and forth between each other to try to keep the other team from catching them. Then they have to try and put them through one of the three hoops at their end of the field to get ten points each. Those are the goals. The goals are protected by a keeper from the opposite team.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Harry mused. “Keep the quaffle from the other team. Get it past the keeper, and through the hoop. Try not to get killed by a bludger in the meantime.” Simplified that way, it didn’t sound so hard. “Wait, what’s the third type of ball?”
“That’s the snitch. It’s a tiny gold ball with wings. It’s super-fast and super hard to see on a huge quidditch pitch. That’s what the seeker is for. It’s their job to find the snitch and catch it. Each team has one, and whoever catches it gets one hundred and fifty points added to their score. Then the game ends.”
“What if nobody catches the snitch?” Harry asks.
“Then, the game can’t end. They have to keep going until somebody catches it, even if it takes days. The longest game on record was three whole months long.”
“That sounds exhausting!” Hermione huffed as she imagined it.
“Yeah, but that’s only ever happened once. Quidditch is really fun! I’ve got a few quaffles, we should play!”
Harry grinned in excitement. “Yeah, that sounds fun!”
“There aren’t going to be any bludgers are there?” Hermione asked.
“No,” Draco moped a bit. “Father won’t let me use them anymore since the last ones I had took out all the windows on the south side of the manor. It’ll be fun anyways, though.”
Hermione nodded in relief before mounting her broom and lifting a few feet in the air above them. “Lead the way, then,” she said.
“Quidditch” wound up being more a game of catch than anything else. They all took turns throwing the ball back and forth, seeing who could throw the farthest, who had better aim, and who was better at catching. Harry seemed to be a natural at all of it.
At first, Hermione still had her reservations. When she saw how much better the boys were at catching the quaffle than she was, she began to get competitive. She clearly wasn’t the kind of person to not be the best at something. So she stopped paying as much attention to how far from the ground she was and started focusing more on the ball. She wasn’t anywhere near a natural at it the way Harry was, but she did alright considering she’d never played quidditch before either. By the time they had to pack it all in, even Draco was impressed with her progress.
“Still think it’s so dangerous?” Draco teased Hermione as they started to head in.
“Oh, absolutely,” Hermione didn’t hesitate to respond, making Harry chuckle quietly.
They were drifting on their brooms only a few feet off the ground, tossing the quaffle lightly to each other as they made their way back toward the manor. Moving slowly like this, Harry didn’t have a single hand on his broom and was steering with his knees. Whenever she went to catch the quaffle, Hermione did the same until she threw it again, although she didn’t even notice.
“It’s certainly fun,” she continued. “And I can see why it’s such a popular recreational pastime. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still terribly dangerous.” Harry sighed playfully, figuring that was the best they’d get out of her.
While the trio had spent the day outside, it turns out that the manor had been full of visitors popping in and out. So far, it was only the close relatives of people who’d attended the dinner party the night before. They had been coming to be endowed with Trinkets as well. According to Aunt Wally—who was spending the weekend at the manor—there wasn’t a single pureblood in the bunch.
The next morning, the children were woken by a house elf each. They were instructed to eat breakfast on Draco’s floor, and that they ought to make themselves scarce for the day. More guests were expected to come, but not all of them were quite as close to the Malfoy family as their dinner guests had been. Mr. Malfoy felt it most prudent to keep things as professional as possible to maintain a modicum of peace.
“I’m pretty sure that just means Father doesn’t want any of them to know that Harry is here,” Draco explained over a bowl of fruit.
Draco, Harry, and Hermione were sitting at a table in a nook at the end of Draco’s hall. It overlooked the menagerie where the ostentation of peacocks was kept when not allowed to roam the grounds. They were currently being fed by a pair of house elves who—judging by how often they were getting pecked—weren’t used to having to do that job. Hermione was distracted from her plate of Belgian waffles as she watched the poor house elves with a dissatisfied frown on her face.
“Why would he want to keep that a secret?” Harry asked.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t want anyone to bother you,” Hermione replied, still preoccupied by the scene outside the window. Finally, she turned to face the boys. “Or perhaps to keep them from bothering him with questions, or asking to see you.”
Remembering the reaction at the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley, Harry supposed that made sense. He certainly appreciated it. All the attention was overwhelming. Although, now that he thought about it, aside from the other kids, no one had bothered him about being famous at the dinner party. In context, that did seem a bit strange. Perhaps, Mr. Malfoy had asked the adults not to pester him. To be honest, he still would have expected a few stares or curious glances. But he hadn’t gotten anything thing. In fact, the adults there hardly seemed particularly impressed with him at all. He appeared to be just another child to them. He wondered what that was about. Not that he minded. He rather preferred it, as a matter of fact.
“That could be,” Draco replied to Hermione. “I think it might have more to do with the fact that there’s a lot of people that wouldn’t be happy to know that The Chosen One was here at Malfoy Manor.”
“Why not?” Harry questioned. “What difference would it make?”
Hermione nodded, as if realizing what Draco had meant. She decided to share it with Harry. “Because of the war, you know?” Harry figured that had something to do with it, but he didn’t quite get it. The tilt of his head expressed as much, so Hermione continued to explain. “Remember what Draco’s Mum said yesterday? Their family didn’t follow You Know Who, but they were supporters of his side of the war. I’m sure there are lots of people who are aware of that. So the people on Dumbledore’s side probably wouldn’t be too happy to know that you’re basically fraternizing with the enemy.”
Fraternizing with the enemy? Harry scoffed at the phrase. It made things sound so sinister when all he was doing was hanging out with friends. “That shouldn’t even matter anymore. The war’s over. Voldemort-” here Draco and Hermione both flinched- “is gone. And we know that everything he was fighting for was complete nonsense anyways. So, what difference does it make?”
Draco answered this, shaking his trinket between Harry and Hermione’s faces for a second. “We know that, but not everyone else does.” Hermione lifted her eyebrows at Harry to suggest that Draco had a point, and it dawned on Harry.
The rest of the wizarding world had spent generations believing in the same nonsense that Voldemort had. The same nonsense that sparked a war. They had no idea how wrong they were, and only had their centuries of misbelief to go off of. After believing something for so long, there was no way that they would so easily turn their minds to anything else. Even if it was the truth.
Harry himself had been so easy to accept it because he’d only really known about the wizarding world for hours when he found it out himself. Then after that, only a few weeks until he was endowed with his Trinket and was able to see the proof in the pudding. That wasn’t the case for everyone else. Accepting the truth wasn’t going to be so easy.
It all went just barely above Harry’s head. He wasn’t ready to think about wars and different sides and wrong or right. He just wanted to get through pureblood lessons, survive his last week with the Dursley’s then go and learn magic at Hogwarts. The war was over now. The threat was gone. Why couldn’t everyone just move on?
“Hello, Purebloods,” Pansy Parkinson’s voice floated down the hall as she made her way towards the trio. “It is quite an honor to join you today.” She bowed deeply as she approached the table, voice dripping with such over the top reverence that it made Draco laugh. “I do hope that I’m not bothering your graces,” she mocked.
“Oh, stop with that,” Hermione brushed her off. “Come, have a seat.” She gestured to the last empty chair at the round table, between herself and Draco.
“Are you sure?” she continued in her exaggerated voice. “I wouldn’t want to taint the pureness of your table.”
“You see how silly you sound?” Hermione asked, unable to stop from grinning. “That’s how silly all these blood purists and followers of You Know Who have sounded all these years.”
“I guess, you have a point,” Draco agreed, smiling as he realized that Hermione was right. “It does sound quite ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
“Of course,” Hermione continued. “And for no reason, mind you. That just makes it all the sillier.”
“Anyways,” Harry cut in, “what are you doing here? They told us we’d be keeping to ourselves, today.”
“That’s what my mother told me, too,” Pansy answered. “She’s helping your mum,” she jerked her chin toward Draco, “and Aunt Wally to write an article about the Trinkets. They’re going to put it into The Daily Prophet and Witch Weekly. They’re also supposed to be giving a whole bunch of other people Trinkets too, and my mum wants ‘an in depth look of how it happens’, or so she says.”
“Do you know who else is coming?” Draco asked.
“No, but I know they’re all people we used to think of as purebloods. My mother said there’s no way Aunt Wally would let anyone else through the floo.”
“Of course,” Hermione frowned, rolling her eyes. “Even if they’re magical blood is strong, she still hates anyone with muggle influence. I get that she’s not going to change her mind that fast, but it’s just all so stupid in the first place.”
Pansy shrugged, indifferent. “Hardly matters. She’s an old loon anyways. She’ll be evil until the day she dies.”
“Let’s just hope she doesn’t come back as a ghost,” Draco shivered in disgust. “That’d be the worst.”
Harry had never met a ghost before. He’d discussed them at length with Draco through their letters, so he knew that they were real, unlike what muggles believed. But he’d never seen one, or any evidence of one that he knew of. The way Draco described them, they didn’t seem quite as terrifying as muggles made them out to be. He found himself rather interested in them. Although, if Aunt Wally were to be a ghost, he didn’t doubt that she’d be exactly like the muggles believed. She’d been kind enough to him so far, but the more he heard about her, the more he feared her.
After a brief discussion of the various ghosts that lived in and around Malfoy Manor and The Parkinson Estate, breakfast was finished and the boys and girls split off to study for Hermione and Harry’s pureblood lessons in their respective rooms. Draco wound up being a very good study partner, but after a few hours, all 4 of the children were beginning to get stir crazy. Well, perhaps only 3 of them. Hermione seemed perfectly content to spend the rest of her day studying.
After lunch time, they’d all convened in the playroom to blow off some steam. After a rowdy game of exploding snap—with minimal card throwing—Draco found himself struck with an idea.
“I know something we can do that’ll help you with pureblood studies, and a way to spy on the adults!” he exclaimed.
“Why would we want to spy on the adults?” Hermione asked.
Draco shrugged, not really having a good reason. “Because I want to,” was the best he had. Hermione didn’t look approving, but he told them all to wait there while he darted out of the room for a moment.
When he came back, he had a mirror that was nearly as large as his torso. He set it up on the coffee table in the middle of the room and sat on the floor in front of it. Harry, Hermione, and Pansy came to sit around him and see what it was for.
It was rectangular, with a bronze frame and a stand to keep it upright. At the top of the frame, the bronze was shaped to look like a small child with his arms reaching out to hold the mirror up. He appeared to be looking down at the reflection of the mirror, smiling gently. Draco reached up to tap a finger on the boy’s forehead.
“Wake up!” he snapped at him.
The boy looked up at Draco, glaring at him in distaste. “What do you want?” he groused in a small voice with a heavy French accent.
“What do you think?” Draco raised an eyebrow. “Show me what your mother sees.”
“And why should I?” The mirror continued glaring.
“Don’t be like that. Just show me.”
“What if I don’t want to.”
“I will shatter you!” Draco threatened, losing his patience. Hermione gasped in horror beside him, muttering about how rude that was, but Draco wasn't paying attention to her.
“Fine! Fine!” the mirror relented unhappily. “But you shouldn’t be spying…”
“Don’t worry about me spying. Just show me the parlor.”
The mirror stuck his tongue out at Draco before it’s reflection rippled. When it stilled again, it showed a wide view of the parlor. There was a pair of twin girls sitting on a couch between their parents. They looked to be of South Asian descent and about the same age as the quartet in the playroom. Across from them was Narcissa, sitting primly in a chair beside Aunt Wally. Aunt Wally was in a matching chair, but was twisted around to face the fireplace. It was as if she was refusing to look at her guests. On the low table between them sat 4 velvet boxes.
In the far corner, Pansy’s mother was watching intently with a Quick Quotes Quill scribbling away on a long parchment floating in the air beside her. She had a parchment in her own had, taking notes on that as well.
The father of the family seemed to be talking just then, but there was no sound. That made sense. Mirrors were for seeing, not hearing. Narcissa replied back, politely enough, then glanced at her Aunt who continued looking away. The man placed a small bag of coins upon the table, then Narcissa reached for a velvet box and beckoned him over. He kneeled before her and offered his left hand, then Narcissa began the process of endowing him with a Trinket.
It turned red and he nodded, looking a little disappointed. He returned to his seat and his wife took his place to be endowed with her own Trinket. Hers was red as well, then one of the girls took her turn, walking away with a red trinket too. The last girl got up, very hesitant, but finally went to receive her own trinket. She appeared to gasp in surprise when hers turned purple, smiling in excitement before bowing to Narcissa graciously, then rushing off to show her parents.
Only then, did Aunt Wally turn to address the family, looking at the pureblood girl with an air of interest. Hermione scoffed at the woman.
“Okay,” Draco finally spoke up again. “Harry, Hermione. Time to put your skills to the test, who is this family?”
Harry thought to himself for a moment. Purebloods, obviously. Or not, according to the new standard. They were south Asian, but not a part of the Sacred 28, otherwise they would have met them on Friday. There was only the 2 girls present, so they didn’t have a named heir, otherwise he probably would have been first after the father. The girls looked the same age as Harry and the others, but with no brothers. They were also twins, which ran in the family for…
“The Patils,” Hermione answered just as Harry figured it out.
“Correct,” Pansy answered. “That’s Padma and Parvati. Despite being twins,” she gossiped, “they actually hate each other. They’re nothing alike and it really shows. Parvati’s the one with all the jewelry and the magenta robes. Padma’s the one in the dark green robes, who’s a pureblood. They’re always competing over everything. They’re going to hate each other even more, now.” She chuckled at the idea.
Not long after, the Patils flooed away and Narcissa levitated their pouch over to Mrs. Parkinson, who immediately stowed it away in a lock box beneath her seat. She read something off the paper in her hand, and Narcissa nodded, before placing 2 more velvet boxes on the table.
After a few more moments, the floo lit up green and in stepped an older woman, with a chubby boy practically clinging to her leg. When they moved to sit down, Aunt Wally actually seemed to greet them, although it was clearly begrudgingly.
“Okay,” Draco asked. “Who are they? This one might be hard,” he warned.
Harry contemplated it for a while, but he couldn’t quite figure it out. An older woman with a young boy? He couldn’t think of any purebloods that fit the description that didn’t have any older siblings. Well, the lady didlook rather old. Perhaps that was his grandmother.
It wasn’t until the boy’s trinket lit up blue to indicate he was a trueblood, despite his grandmother’s red that it finally clicked for Harry. He’d been looking terrified the whole time, but when Narcissa pricked his finger, he turned green in the face. When she let him go, he practically took off running to get away from her. “The Longbottoms!” he nearly shouted as soon as it came to him. He’d recalled something Draco had told him earlier and it all made sense.
“But, they’re Sacred 28!” Hermione disputed. “Shouldn’t they have been at the dinner party?”
“No,” Harry replied. “Because the Longbottoms actually hate the Malfoys and the Blacks. They’d never come to a party being thrown here.”
“Harry’s right,” Draco agreed.
“Then, why come at all? And why do they hate them?”
“Mrs. Longbottom has always been a big gossip,” Pansy offered. “If anything is going on, she’ll know. And despite being on opposite sides, she always manages to cart Neville around to all the pureblood’s houses for something. She’s proud of being Sacred 28, even if she didn’t agree with a lot of the rest of them. So she stays cordial enough not to cut off ties. She probably only came because she heard about the Trinkets and knew she wasn’t getting one anywhere else.”
That made plenty of sense to Harry, but Hermione wasn’t convinced. “But why does she hate them?” she questioned. “You said she’s cordial enough, so where would all the anger come from? And why’s Neville so scared?”
“Because Narcissa’s sister tortured his parents,” Harry answered. Draco had told him earlier about his mother’s psychotic sister, Bellatrix Lestrange. She was locked up in Azkaban with her equally crazy husband and brother in law for their crimes. According to Draco, she was far scarier than Aunt Wally could ever be, and the Malfoys wanted nothing to do with her, even before their discovery about magical genetics.
“They were on opposite sides of the war,” Draco explained to Hermione, who’s mouth was agape in horror. “Unlike my mother, my Aunt wasn’t neutral. She actually worshipped You Know Who. She was completely nuts. She’s been locked up for a long time for what she did to Neville’s parents. I say, good riddance.”
“Poor Neville,” Hermione sympathized. “That’s positively dreadful.”
“Lots of people lost family in the war,” Pansy posited. “On both sides. And for what?” She scoffed angrily, looking at the Trinket around her wrist. “All of it meant nothing, anyways.”
“All those adults who were fighting,” Harry started, shaking his head as he thought about his own loss from the war, “Voldemort, Dumbledore, all the people on either sides… They’re all idiots!” He realized his own parents were a part of that list, but he couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. They were all idiots. They were so ready to fight over something they were completely ignorant about, but no one had even stopped to do the research? Hermione had found it all out by coincidence!
“Well, at least we’ve got Hermione here to sort them all out,” Draco wrapped an arm around the girl in questions shoulders as he echoed Harry’s thoughts.
Hermione’s cheeks went red as she opened her mouth to protest. “Maybe I’m the one who pointed it out, but it’s all thanks to your parents, Aunt Wally, and Professor Snape that anyone’s doing anything about it. I didn’t really do anything but read a book.”
“Yeah,” Draco disagreed. “But you reading that book made a whole lot of difference. People are going to realize all the mistakes that they made, and they’ll have no choice but to fix it and change.”
“You know,” Pansy mused aloud, changing the subject. “I wonder what it’s going to be like at Hogwarts, if other kids have these Trinkets too. Do you think it’ll make things different?”
“I have no idea,” Harry admitted. “But then, I have no idea what Hogwarts would be like if they’d never been made in the first place.”
They sat around the mirror for a while longer, guessing more families. By the time dinner rolled around and there wer no more guests for the day, they’d guessed all right, and Pansy and Draco declared that Hermione and Harry had passed.
During their spying, the Trinkets had shown an overwhelming amount of red, with only 11 exceptions. There were only 2 other truebloods that they saw, the head of the Shacklebolt family and a very young girl from the Cattermole family. There was one unfortunate orange Trinket from a girl in the Abercrombie family who was near Astoria’s age, though her siblings and parents all presented as red. She and her mother left crying. There was also one large family that all showed up green.
Harry, Hermione, Draco, and Pansy spent a considerable amount of time trying to decide what creature they were mixed with, but couldn’t settle on anything.
Pansy went home after dinner, then the trio spent the remaining time before twilight flying through the hedge maze until it was too dark to see. After that, they washed up and went to bed, but Harry wasn’t ready to leave in the morning. He’d had a great time at the Manor, despite the strange tensions between the adults, and he could hardly imagine what it would be like to return to the Dursleys.
He allowed himself to be lulled to sleep by the barely-there sound of the ocean swell and the repeating mantra of “Only one more week until Hogwarts. Only one more week until Hogwarts. Only one more week until Hogwarts.”