Morgana woke late the next morning, to the sound of two of her three roommates discussing the May Day Dance, which was taking place the following weekend.
"Good morning, sleepy head." Liliana Krum smiled as she noticed Morgana stirring under the covers, and Tilly Maguire followed her friend's eyeline.
"You came in late last night," Tilly commented in her soft Scottish burr.
"I was out searching for hippogriffs," Morgana mumbled sleepily.
"And?" Liliana demanded. "Did you see one?"
Morgana slithered herself upwards so she was leaning back against the pillows.
"Not even a hoofprint," she snorted in disgust.
"Oh." Liliana looked disappointed momentarily. "Better luck next time then."
Morgana was aware that, most of the time, her friends simply humoured her inquisitive nature, but she also knew they admired her determination and her dedication to discovering the truth. If a rumour about hippogriff sightings was going around, Liliana and Tilly knew Morgana wouldn't stop searching until she'd either proved or disproved it.
"I did meet someone, though," Morgana continued slowly, after a moment's hesitation. "A man".
Liliana and Tilly's attention turned quickly back to her. A man? It clearly wasn't anybody they knew, or Morgana wouldn't have bothered mentioning him.
"What did he look like?"
"What did he say?"
The two girls spoke at the same time, making Morgana grin briefly.
"He didn't say anything," she said, answering Tilly's much easier query first. Then she paused again, as though she were considering Liliana's question carefully. "As for what he looked like...I recognised him from somewhere, yet I know I've never seen him before...He was tall, well-dressed, looked like a gentleman, I guess you could say...Carrying a cane."
Morgana looked away, pretending to search her mind for details, but in reality, she needed no prompts - she still knew precisely what the man looked like, his haughty face was the last thing her memory had shown her before she'd dropped off to sleep the previous evening.
"His eyes looked like they should have been cold, but they weren't...And..." Morgana paused again, not meeting their gaze.
The other girls looked at her curiously. There was something in Morgana's tone that they'd never heard before, and they glanced at one another as she continued.
"He had long blond hair," she finished, her words coming out rather quicker than she had intended them to.
There was an awkward silence for a second before Liliana whispered behind her hand in mock secrecy: "She didn't notice much about him, did she?" causing Tilly to giggle, and Morgana to cast her friend a quelling look.
"Lucius Malfoy." A sultry voice carried across the room. None of the girls had noticed Jacq Mulholland come back into the room, and they all stared at her questioningly.
"Lucius Malfoy," she repeated. "He's Draco's father...You know, that slippery little blond creature in Slytherin?"
Morgana, Liliana and Tilly nodded in unison, and Morgana immediately saw the similarities between father and son.
"He's very clever, shrewd, fabulously wealthy, but not, by all accounts, a very pleasant man. Works at the Ministry of Magic, even though he doesn't need to, and -" Jacq lowered her voice, and looked around the room as though to check nobody else was listening. "They say he's a Death Eater, and a member of You-Know-Who's inner circle."
Liliana and Tilly gasped, but Morgana somehow wasn't totally surprised. She sat staring contemplatingly at the royal-blue curtains at the foot of her bed, and said, almost to herself, "He really was quite beautiful."
Jacq looked seriously at her best friend. "Be careful, Morgana. Lucius Malfoy isn't someone you want to be getting mixed up with."
Morgana gazed back at Jacq for a long moment, and then she laughed lightly. "It doesn't matter anyway...He's likely already forgotten that we met, and it's not like we're ever going to meet again, is it?"
