Lucius Malfoy sat in his study, immersed in reviewing financial reports. But the numbers stubbornly blurred before his eyes, giving way to intrusive thoughts about the newspapers and magazines lying on the edge of the desk. The last few days had been eventful, demanding reflection.
Three days ago, his son, Arcturus, had finally named his kidnappers. Not for nothing had Lucius hired a specialist of the appropriate field. Masters of mental magic, like masters of any other magical arts, had different specializations where they excelled. So, he had to summon a specialist from Italy itself. Family rituals, lying unused in the family library, also played a significant role.
But imagine Lucius's surprise when he heard the surname Unsworth. And even the name of the head of that family among others. He was slightly acquainted with Godfrey Unsworth — a man intelligent, calculating, and pragmatic to the core.
Lucius had been certain until the very end that he was incapable of such a reckless move. Godfrey understood his place in the magical hierarchy too well to lay a hand on the Malfoy heir, even over some school intrigue, even for such a ransom. Though, credit where it's due to Arcturus — the son's "childish" intrigue, albeit disastrous in its consequences, was executed with such elegance and cunning that it could single-handedly destroy the plans of an entire house, if not two. And if not for human stupidity, there would have been no consequences. His son understood his position in society. That's why Lucius didn't particularly blame his son.
After all, Hogwarts School is a training ground where young aristocrats hone their claws. And judging by how Arcturus had conducted such an intrigue, right on his own prefect's head... Lucius saw that his son, at the very least, would not become a victim in high society, where he would have to spend his entire life. No, he would be the one dictating the rules there. And Lucius himself had made plenty of mistakes in his own school days, with consequences — that's what a sandbox is for, to learn, sometimes from cruel, but non-lethal mistakes.
Precisely because his son had named Godfrey Unsworth, Lucius had not rushed with revenge. He doubted that Godfrey Unsworth, a lucky and intelligent wizard still far from the top league, could have committed such folly. In fact, it was a miracle Lucius remembered so much about that individual and family. Apparently, there was something interesting about this Godfrey.
Therefore, he wanted to verify everything, lest his son's memory had misled him and Lucius would go and kill those uninvolved. And he also needed time to do everything properly, otherwise Dumbledore might take advantage of it in the future. But he had been forced to act, yielding to Narcissa's insistence, who was already prepared to personally lead the assault on the Unsworth manor. Her maternal anger was... misplaced and overly emotional. But arguing with Cissa Black when it came to the children was futile and... dangerous.
He had to prepare everything within a day. Just twenty-four hours to ensure the revenge was perfect. Or rather, the goal was not so much revenge as a demonstrative and exemplary flogging. It was necessary to remind everyone that noble families remained untouchable, and any encroachment on them was punished instantly and brutally.
Everything was thought out down to the last detail. As soon as the Malfoy assault squad finished its work and vanished, aurors appeared on the scene. Bodies and the manor itself with evidence were purposely left behind. Of course, this was planned — otherwise, they wouldn't have appeared so promptly and wouldn't have known about the incident until morning. And they would have reported the information in a different light. The right people were informed in advance about the "crimes" of the Unsworth family and the reasons that prompted Lord Malfoy to take such harsh measures.
The information machine worked like clockwork. Instead of articles about the "brutal murder of the Unsworth family" in the Daily Prophet, The Wizarding World News, and the Warlock Warrior magazine, materials with the desired slant were published.
In them, at various intervals, it was reported that the Unsworth couple had been killed, but rumors were swirling that the family had grossly violated unwritten but accepted norms. And although the culprits and the exact reason for all this were not yet known, some juicy details were revealed: for example, that Oliver Unsworth had recently been placed in a private clinic because, according to information from anonymous sources, he had lost his mind. There was also information about the very strange and sudden enrichment of this family during the civil war with the Death Eaters and in the post-war period.
And all this about the act of wiping out an entire family had already been printed for the evening edition of the Prophet. That is, literally by the evening after the reprisal.
And the next morning, two days later, it was reported that Oliver Unsworth had committed suicide due to psychological problems. Of course, it was written that he had slit his own throat with a Cutting Charm. That same morning, other publications also wrote about the death of the entire Unsworth family, except for the vanished eldest son. And about the assumption that this Oliver Unsworth, learning of his family's fate, had committed suicide out of grief and mental issues. The private clinic, of course, officially stated that security there was top-notch and no one could have infiltrated. And they hadn't kept a close enough watch because the patient's condition was at an acceptable level for preserving personal privacy even within the framework of mental health care.
Simply because they didn't want to report that four unknown individuals had infiltrated and a dead body had been found in the room afterward. No one wanted to lose their reputation, especially the Master Mentalist trying to preserve his business. Everyone abruptly fell silent when a bribed Auror arrived on the scene and strongly recommended they keep quiet. He, of course, explained the consequences of loose lips, both in terms of reputational losses and business pressure or death that would await the Master Mentalist. Achieving Mastery in the guild didn't equate to having the power or strength to protect oneself. Especially when you weren't the most outstanding Master.
Literally in the block below in each of these issues, it was written that the Malfoy heir, Arcturus-Corvus Armand Malfoy, had already fully recovered from the "brutal kidnapping." As a gesture of goodwill and gratitude for the aid to his son, the House of Malfoy donated 10,000 Galleons to St. Mungo's Hospital. The paeans to the family in the Warlock Warrior sounded particularly flattering.
Of course, Lucius knew this, but was it for nothing that this publication belonged to the Malfoy family? For over three centuries, the Malfoys, as founders of this publishing house, had possessed one of the pillars of power — information dissemination. Thanks to its anti-Muggle and right-wing context, the magazines and newspapers of this publishing house had a wide readership.
Lucius put down his quill and leaned back in his chair. Currently, everything belonging to the Unsworths was being actively absorbed, and despite it being a drop in the ocean of what the Malfoy family owned... a drop here, a drop there — and soon you have a glass full of drops.
But most importantly, the enemies were destroyed, reputation restored, and power demonstrated. And even a small bonus and a reminder. And despite all this, much would now be different.
Lucius had revised his attitude towards personal and family security, and not just him. Despite everything, the incident had happened and couldn't be undone; much would be different, and Lucius understood that everyone would reconsider the security issue.
That's why a slight irritation was building within him. No matter how much he demonstrated strength, a series of similar incidents would surely begin now, although he and others would try to minimize this series thanks to his decisions.
It was also, of course, unnerving that he had to act too quickly, and now he had to deal longer with the Unsworths' property and holdings. Well, at least his son had been right...
He sighed. It seemed all that was left was to wait for his son to fully recover and absorb all the lessons this unpleasant incident had taught him. But that wasn't quite it. Lucius had learned much about his son, and it worried him.
He learned much from Godfrey's mouth, who, not wanting his dying wife to suffer, had told the truth. But he learned even more from his hounds sent to collect Oliver Unsworth's soul. They had learned everything in great detail. In everything, as per Godfrey's words, Oliver, his younger brother, was guilty. Godfrey himself, as Lucius had thought, wasn't foolish enough not to understand all the consequences of such an act. But greed and being halfway through the plan showed that Lucius had been mistaken about Godfrey's intelligence. And Oliver's mistake was atoned for only by the blood of his entire family.
Before he was briefed on the results of Oliver's interrogation, something happened that Lucius had not expected after the assault. The only Unsworth who could have escaped and was already being sought, had been killed by his son, Arcturus.
While he, with an entire squad, was storming the manor and trying to extract information from Godfrey, Lucius had not expected that, after sending his son shopping under the protection of two reliable and skilled fighters — former aurors — Arcturus would find trouble for himself in Diagon Alley. It turned out that Godfrey's eldest son had been walking around Diagon with friends all that time, and the irony and tragedy of fate was all the more bitter: Godfrey endured so much pain before death, not revealing his son's location, only for the one whose memory he had erased to kill his heir.
And it was precisely that word — "killed" — that unsettled Lucius.
To admit, Lucius himself, even during his service to the Dark Lord, hadn't particularly dirtied his hands in the literal sense. He was a treasurer, advisor, commander — in short, anything but someone who had to face the necessity of taking life directly.
Of course, he felt no squeamishness or moral dilemmas about it — none at all. Even without personal kills, he was in blood up to his ears, deeper than even the most hardened Death Eaters. More people had died by his order than by Bellatrix Lestrange's wand.
And when Lucius learned that Arcturus, in a rage, had pursued the only Unsworth he could reach, and after a series of failed Apparitions, suffering partial Splinching, still managed to kill his former prefect... it concerned him.
According to the guards, Unsworth had lured their son when he realized he couldn't escape. Apparently, to fight one-on-one without bodyguards, since the three of them were pursuing the guy because of Arcturus. The guy understood everything, so he muddled the Apparition trail, though he could have just stayed in a crowded place and been safer. When the guards finally found them, Arcturus, despite their words urging him to stop, coldly beheaded his school tormentor.
After the report, Lucius learned other details — about what had happened to Oliver Unsworth, who had lost his mind, and to those two... what were their names... Renfrow! The Renfrow brothers.
So, Lucius was in shock, as was Narcissa later, with whom he discussed the matter and finally understood the whole picture. Their eldest son was already asleep after treatment for Splinching, so they had to wait.
His son had managed, during the kidnapping, to kill one of the three attackers before being finally knocked out. After that, already wounded, with broken bones and everything else, completely exhausted, he had continued the deed. According to the crazed Unsworth, he had managed, wandless, to blow the head off the last of the Renfrow brothers. And then, in that state, grab and torture Oliver himself with a simple Tickling Charm to such an extent that he lost his mind and feared the charm and Arcturus more than the Cruciatus.
He was told all the details. As it turned out, Oliver was so broken and terrified of the thirteen-year-old boy that he didn't even need to be broken. He spilled every detail before death, begging not to have "that" charm used on him. It seemed like a made-up, cautionary tale about tickling to a third party. But Godfrey under the Cruciatus had said that the two brothers were already dead by Arcturus's hand. Lucius hadn't paid much attention to those words then.
When he finally saw the whole picture, he understood: his son, at thirteen, had already managed to kill three and drive another insane. Lucius was afraid to be proud of this fact, as he hadn't become a maddened Death Eater. Considering the boy's age and who his godfather was...
Of course, to hell with all that. Lucius wasn't thinking about his son being a murderer, or anything like that... no, he was unsettled by the details. Specifically, by the fact that Arcturus had chased after Benedict Unsworth while not in his right mind. And Oliver Unsworth had described him during the torture as a demon, full of rage, and Lucius began to guess what the matter was.
After his wife learned everything, she also assumed the worst outcome. Their son had inherited the worst ancestral curse of the Blacks! Many didn't even consider it a curse, but it was not for nothing that every Black studied Occlumency at least to a good level. Only that way could one avoid falling under the sway of rage in simple life situations.
It seemed this curse had awakened in their son, the curse that had been the main problem of the House of Black for a whole millennium. It was this rage that had destroyed hundreds of Blacks and ruined their entire family. No Occlumency would save if the rage had valid reasons. A weak spark, which the curse turns into a flame, could be extinguished by Occlumency itself, if one knew the method. But a strong spark creates a real firestorm that cannot be extinguished by anything.
It was hard to grasp how their perpetually cool-headed son could be the heir to this curse... Even those rituals insisted upon by the late Walburga Black apparently hadn't helped. Though if they could have helped — the Blacks would be thriving now.
Of course, this trait had greatly diminished hopes for the eldest son, and if the younger one didn't inherit the curse, Lucius would reconsider the heir question. In theory, the curse shouldn't have passed through the female line with a weakened manifestation of this curse. Calculations had been made before the engagement, but apparently, there were exceptions.
After talking with Narcissa, the next day they spoke with Arcturus as well, who not only recalled some details after Lucius's account but also admitted he himself had noticed something amiss and wanted to know what it was.
Narcissa told him everything. Currently, his son and wife were performing another ritual in the chain that needed to be performed precisely today — August 31st. Tomorrow, his son... though Lucius had started calling him "the Black son" in Narcissa's presence... was to leave for school.
And though Lucius still felt parental love for his son, he couldn't rid himself of a sense of distaste. After all, he wanted to see in his son not someone who dirtied his hands, but one on whose orders others did it.
Just as he, Lucius Malfoy, had done and still did. Just a couple of days ago, he had destroyed an entire family without casting even the weakest spell on anyone. For that, he had loyal people.
And he didn't want to infect the main branch of the House of Malfoy with such an ancestral curse.
***
August 31st. The last day before returning to Hogwarts, and I spent it lying on the floor of the ritual chamber. Not the most usual way to spend time, but necessary. Today, we performed the fourth ritual of the Vasat chain on me, called the "Dance of Magic."
Its essence was seemingly simple, but unpleasant for me. For an entire day after the performance, magic was to "dance" through my body — in uncontrollable, powerful surges, shaking everything in its path.
In theory, the ritual destroys even deeply rooted jinxes and curses, while also burning out any blockages in magical channels. In the long term, it prevents the rapid entrenchment of jinxes and curses, as if teaching the body an intuitive method of fighting them. It could be compared to antibodies that have learned to quickly spot viruses and combat them. But the most interesting part was that the ritual accelerated the growth rate of the magical reserve and, although unconfirmed, Vasat assumed the ritual even slightly increased its potential maximum size.
Even if all this amounted to just a few percentage points, a couple of percent acceleration in reserve growth was already wonderful, not to mention the chance to increase magical potential. Though, again, there was no proof... it's just hard to prove such a theory.
The ritual itself wasn't the hardest in the chain, at least among those I'd already undergone. The main thing was to draw a flawless ritual pentagram. Mother drew it herself, and I helped — mainly to gain experience. The pentagram was perfect, with clear, even lines and correctly placed ingredient blocks.
And so I lay in its center, feeling the chill of the floor through the thin fabric of the ritual robes. My back tingled slightly — simply because a few precise, shallow incisions had been made in specific places. The blood was to become a conductor, and the ritual's energy would pass through the wounds. Special ingredients lay in the pentagram's blocks: crushed pearl, phoenix ash, and a few drops of sap from some magical tree, gathered under a full moon.
I had even grown accustomed to my mother's monotone voice reciting the ritual formula. The pentagram beneath me flared with a soft blue light. I felt the magic thickening in the air, becoming almost tangible.
Through the ritual magic, all these ingredients were to seep through the incisions directly inside. In fact, they simply vanished without a trace after activation, transferring their energy. And I learned this... right now, as I learned.
And it began.
The first surge, like an electric shock, made me jolt violently. A piercing current forced my entire body to tense and arch. That was just the first. It was followed by a second, a third... They came in waves, each like a tiny, concentrated magical needle, trying to pierce through invisible barriers inside me. Exactly as if I were trying to pierce a hypothetical Petrificus with a concentrated stream of magic. Now, it was happening spontaneously, without my control, and not in one place, but all over my body at once.
Heat gave way to freezing cold, and then heat returned. A growing ring in my ears turned into a deafening roar, then just as suddenly subsided. I clenched my teeth, trying to breathe evenly, accepting each new surge and each tingle.
Finally, the ritual began to fade. The pentagram's light dimmed, leaving only the pattern on the floor. I lay there, my entire body humming as if a steamroller had run over it.
The result was supposed to be interesting. All that remained was to survive the next twenty-four hours. I took a deep breath, getting to my feet.
So, the ritual itself is easy to perform, but difficult afterward. An entire day of such torment. And my magic will be overexcited and unstable. Mother strongly recommended refraining from using any magic. The consequences could be rather unpleasant.
Yes, it won't be easy, but it's worth it. For what I'll gain, I'd be willing to endure it all, even for a whole week. Maybe I'll recant my words after about ten hours... but for now, that's what I think.
Tomorrow, the new school year would begin, and I was to meet it at the peak of my strength. And this was an acceptable price — I'd even say an excellent price!