第9章

'Young Master—'

A loud bang reverberated against the bedroom walls as a silver breakfast tray was briskly toppled off of the butler's supporting hold, clanging down onto expensive marble tiles.

'Get out!' hollered Riddle, shaking with anger in his silk robe, the morning's edition of The Daily Prophet crumpled in his fist.

'Master Riddle has ordered—'

'He can go to hell!' He yelled, 'Clean up this mess and sod off!'

'Young Master, I have to insist, Master Riddle has ordered that you are to be locked in your room until—'

'I WILL NOT, YOU HEAR ME? I…' He spilled an avant-garde accent table, sending decorative trinkets rolling speedily on the floor, 'GO!'

'Certainly, but please understand that you must remain here. Master Riddle will be home soon, he has personally called with directives concerning Young Master. I ask Young Master not to disobey his father,' the butler inclined his head demurely. He picked up the discarded tray and the broken glass, ran an efficient swipe over the spillage with the cloth straddling his arm, and retreated outside the room.

Riddle spat a vile curse at the closing door. He paced around his opulent bedroom in a rare state of dishevelment, knocking down more items from his shelf with grim satisfaction.

'Malfoy…' he croaked, 'I will make you pay for this.'

With a leer of disgust, he sleeked the paper scrunched in the crook of his palm and frowned disdainfully at the head title.

Anonymous Shareholder of VoldeMotors inc. Discusses Merger with Horcrux llc. without CEO Approval. -Colin Creevey. 24/10/ 2009.

Corporations merge all the time. It's one way to get higher returns for the involved parties—a classic win-win, competition-ousting move. But an obscure shareholder discussing a merger incognito with another company? That's not very common. Hell, that's unheard of. Who'd have the gall to do such a thing, you ask? Someone with eyes on the CEO chair, no doubt. Yesterday, an anonymous whistleblower sent The Daily Prophet a couple of emails between a VoldeMotors shareholder (going under the glib cognomen of Death/Eater) and Horcrux senior representative Amycus Carrow. The emails were published on other platforms simultaneously and can be easily accessed on the web. We still don't know who sir Death/Eater is, but we can all agree that he or she is in it for a hard time. Will CEO Riddle Sr. find out who did it? Here at the Daily Prophet, we certainly hope so! To be continued.

'That's right…' Riddle laughed coldly, his voice cruel and hollow in the high-ceiling room, 'this is not over…think your charity of not revealing my name will save you? My father knows it's me…he's already figured it out…' He gritted his teeth, 'who else will he suspect but me…'

The buzzing phone on his nightstand flashed with the expected name of Amycus Carrow.

Riddle watched it blankly, desiring nothing more than to smash the device against the wall. Instead, he cleared his throat, readying it to speak with practiced bravado.

'Amycus!' He forced through a plastered smile. 'I take it you've seen the—'

'Mr. Riddle,' Carrow barked ominously on the other end, 'you've allowed the emails to leak…?'

'Mr. Carrow, there was a mis—'

'The mistake was mine...I should never have entertained a half-wit, spoiled child like yourself! If this causes me prejudice in the slightest, you will hear from my lawyers, Mr. Riddle.'

'Listen, I know who did this, and I have a plan to—hello? Mr. Carrow?!'

With a raging growl, Riddle threw his phone on his rumpled bed sheets. He heard the familiar jangle of his father's approaching footsteps and stilled. He smiled crookedly.

'To be continued, Malfoy.'

暂停

After the budgeting was assigned, the meeting dribbled slowly, unnecessarily, to Draco's mounting boredom. It didn't help that the wall clock was darting rapidly toward 5 p.m, and that his muscles were practically twitching under his skin, impelling him to move.

'Mr. Malfoy,' hesitated one of his senior shareholders with slicked back hair dyed an unnatural black. 'I have seen the shocking news about VoldeMotors and Horcrux this morning…hasn't everyone?' he quickly glanced around, estimating the nodding heads. Satisfied with his census, he continued. 'Well, I couldn't help but think that it created a, let us say, well-timed diversion from the…the unacceptable crackdown on our young CEO, Mr. Malfoy Jr.' He focused on Draco, who slanted his head at him in a show of attention, 'I say, sir, that you ought to strike the iron while it's hot. Now seems to be the perfect timing for our last suggestion to you. Before the competitor's scandal dies out, how about you announce an engagement with a stable heiress of good fortune.' He made a dismissive grimace and fluttered his pudgy fingers, as though engagements were random, easy things, 'It doesn't have to be immediate, of course, but the happy news would turn the situation around beautifully for your reputation!'

'I appreciate your concern over my reputation, which you have already established.' Draco said. The shareholder opened his mouth, fumbling for words. 'But I agree, Mr. Fortescue. Now is the perfect time.'

Fortescue brightened at the compliment, unaware of the fact that Draco was barely keeping it together in his chair, his nerves humming with anticipation, feeling like a hyperactive kid all over again.

'A fantastic move, if I may be so bold,' chimed in the Chief Marketing Officer, a man with downturned crescent eyes that gave him a mysterious air and perpetual smile, 'it will be great for the brand image, and just in time for the ad campaign, too. I have to say, Mr. Malfoy, on this topic, that we cannot afford to push back the campaign preparations any further…we are behind schedule because of the unfortunate health incident of Mr. Malfoy Sr., as you very well know. I was wondering if you had accepted a proposal so that I could get my team working?'

One proposal to make, one to accept. Draco smirked behind his intertwined hands. He'd never thought one little girl would be at the intersection of both. She had no runner-up, too. Just the way he liked it. Talent, ambition, wit, dripping sweet face. He'd be a damned fool if he let her slip away from him.

'I intend to resolve these points by the next meeting.' He said, already buttoning his anthracite jacket over his waistcoat.

'So soon?' worried Fortescue, looking grave with his thick, equally dyed mustache. 'We do not wish to impose such a tight time frame, I'm sure.'

'Time is money, right?' Draco said, mystified by his own blatant impatience. How the fates had turned. The men nodded vigorously all the same. After leaving security reinforcement directives to his secretary, he walked out of his building and checked his watch.

It was five past late.

'Young Master,' appeared Dobbs, waiting by the family car. He asked to drive Draco to work and back whenever he had a message to deliver. Most of the time, his own. 'I've come to drive you back.'

Draco slipped into the passenger seat, 'I'm in a hurry.'

'Off to campus, I presume?'

'Yes.'

'Did Young Master have a pleasant day?'

'You can drop the honorifics, Dobbs.' Draco loosened his necktie, resting back in his seat with a contented sigh, 'You always do down the conversation, why not do it right off the bat for a change.'

'I suppose it would come more naturally if you could refer to me as Dobby once again,' Dobbs said, sighing wistfully. 'You were an affectionate child, in your own way.'

'Affectionate?' Draco scoffed. 'I was a terror. My parents received complaints every time I was out in public.'

'A selective terror then, I suppose. You listened to me,' Dobbs contested.

'I was hyperactive and shed a trail of traumatized pediatricians in my wake.'

'Ah, well, I suppose you did. But I'll never forget the time you tried to bake scones behind Nina's back for you mother's birthday. I look back fondly on those days, yes. The golden moments. Granted, the oven did somehow bust open and firemen had to be involved, but…golden moments nonetheless.'

'Bloody embarrassing,' Draco laughed quietly.

'I will resign myself to being called Dobbs for now,' Dobbs forged on, encouraged by Draco's apparent good mood, 'but I do not lose hope. I will have your children to call me Dobby.' He ended suggestively.

'I saw the housing options you mailed to me.' Draco said, deflecting the topic.

'Glad to hear it, but those are not the only options I mailed, hmm?' Dobbs persisted.

Draco raised an amused eyebrow. 'You're talking about the picture catalogue you've attached with a wink emoticon?'

'Ahem,' Dobbs reddened, 'That was, er, that was Nina's suggestion. Young Master, this is an important occasion for me. It is your first marriage, and I hope it will be a successful, prosperous, very long one! I want to see your first child look like a sweet little angel, so I took the time to select the best eligible heiresses.' He cleared his throat. 'I dare hope some of them pleased you?'

'Hard to say,' Draco replied, 'didn't open it.'

'Well there is a way to vex an old man, that!' Dobbs huffed. 'To think of all the trouble we went through, Nina and I!'

'I'm not going for an heiress,' Draco said. The sweet little angel part can be arranged, though.

'Why not?' Dobbs asked, surprised. 'You're an heir yourself. Nothing wrong with choosing a woman of your own rank.'

'I plan to,' Draco said, 'not this one, though.'

'Indeed? What other rank is there?'

'Compatibility.'

'Your author is showing, Draco.' Dobbs smiled heartily.

'Your honorific is dropping, Dobbs.' Draco sighed. His author wasn't just showing, it was taking over.

He didn't even mind.

暂停

'Nee Nee, Lu—nes!' Ginny busted into the living room, parading in her new bright red sportswear. 'How do I look? I got this baby on sale! Does this color accentuate my muffin top?'

'You don't have a muffin top,' Luna cheered.

'Really? I don't know anymore, I always feel like I'm carrying a food baby.' She shrugged, giving her stomach an investigative tap. 'I mean I am always eating. Hermione what…is that girl even paying attention, Hermione!' she catapulted a sofa pillow at the silent flatmate huddled on the cushioned windowsill, up till then successfully immersed in her new data science book. 'Do you think that since this cutie patootie,' she snapped, pointing at Luna, who was now slipping into her blue coat, 'moved in, you get a leave pass from boosting a girl's confidence?'

Hermione sighed, throwing her a disinterested look, before returning to her chapter on blockchain programming. 'You look like you always do.' She raised her eyebrows perplexedly. 'You just make it work, somehow…'

'That's right,' Ginny stroke a pose, fists up, looking fired up. 'I'm joining the volleyball team today. I need to look like I mean business.'

'Because of Harry Potter?' Hermione snickered at her book, flipping the page.

'Exactly,' Ginny grinned. 'What, thought I wouldn't own up to it? I do! I'm 21 and I'm hunting down a Harry Potter shaped soul mate, you geek!'

Hermione rolled her eyes.

'She's been into him ever since she went tramping off like a giant klutz on their turf and got knocked over by a stray ball and skinned her knee.' Hermione explained for Luna's benefit.

'I was salivating over your stupid dinner pic!' Ginny protested. 'I couldn't hear their warning over my stomach growling! Next time don't use those sparkly filters, it doesn't help, ya know!'

'Potter bandaged it for her,' Hermione continued, 'and ever since she's been harassing Coach Gryffindor to let her join his team.'

'And he finally said yes! Good thing Longbottom and Hannah eloped to open a flower shop up Leaky Cauldron St., right? That means dear Coach Gryff needs all the extra team members he can get.' She clapped. 'That's where I come in. Ginny to the rescue!'

'Rescue my eye. Harry will see right through your stalking game. Come to think of it, never mind, he probably won't. His myopia must be more severe than it looks since you've already been as obvious as you possibly can.'

'So what? Hannah did it, and she and Neville were adversaries! I've seen in my favorite dramas that the sports atmosphere is perfectly suited for matchmaking, thank you very much!' She twirled around at Luna, who was wrapping her lucky scarf around her chin, 'Where are you going, Lunes?'

'There's a constellation show at the Astronomy tower organized by my professor.'

'Oh, constellations? That's fancy art people for you. Have fun, Snitch us pics!'

As her flatmates left, Luna first and then Ginny, Hermione snuggled comfortably into her seat, enjoying the extraordinary peace of a Ginny-less living room. The bliss was short-lived, however, as she received a coded email from Blaise the following moment that had her cracking it for the next thirty minutes. The result was this:

Rin-Chan,

Meet me at the lab in one hour.

PS: Someone told me today that girls liked unpredictable excitement, so to make it worth your while I thought we could maybe finish up our tasks early then like set the lab on fire and run away in the sunset?

Fiery smooch,

Your unpredictable pyromaniac husband.

Hermione didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. A silly smile settled on her face midst her indecision. She quickly wiped it off and returned to her book. She liked denial, she thought determinedly. Denial worked.

Luna pressed the last number of the elegant, H-engraved observatory elevator. It opened on an archway tunneling into a large black double door. She pushed it open gingerly, and was welcomed by an enveloping darkness. As her eyes adjusted to the artificial night, she saw an explosion of constellation holograms shifting softly around the hall, stark and salient in the murk, throwing a faint white glow on the moving figures chattering around a large stone sculpture. A gigantic telescope was fixed in the background, distinguishable thanks to the moving stars delineating its form. Luna recognized Leus as he stood talking to another professor. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be the professor she had nearly butted into last night. How befitting, he only seemed to turn up in the dark.

Luna clutched her bag, feeling her heart pick up as she recalled, for the umpteenth time, her strange meeting with Draco Malfoy. She felt a fearful excitement travel through her, knowing that he was meeting her here, any time now. She looked around for him, wondering if she should send him a text to let him know she was already there. No, it would be impolite to rush him. It was already quite generous of someone so busy to spare her amateurish self the time of day.

If she was honest with herself, which she usually was, Luna knew she wanted to impress him, and it made her very nervous. Even though she did not expect to be picked, she still wanted to try. Perhaps he would encourage her, tell her she could try again next year. The very opportunity of being asked to lay out a creative pitch was already a small victory. She wanted to belong among the talented people at Hogwarts, she wanted to become someone her father could rely on, just as she had relied on his unconditional support for the last ten years. Maybe then, she would stop worrying about him so much.

She wandered around, peeking up at the slow-moving constellations, keeping an eye out for Draco. Unsurprisingly, she found the constellation before the man. It was the 8th biggest amongst the 88 officially recognized constellations, the constellation of the dragon, and it shifted unhurriedly past her in the pool of night. Luna framed it with her small hands, swiveling round her heels to follow it as it drifted above. Her frame caught someone instead.

'Miss Lovegood, are you enjoying yourself?' Leus asked, smiling as she quickly pocketed her hands and bowed in greeting. 'I like to organize these immersions from time to time, though you might have noticed that they are not particularly in vogue among your classmates. The Luminee twins are loyal customers, though,' Leus smiled, pointing at the metalhead twins who sat back in a corner, sketching furiously in the dim light. Leus sighed, his arms crossed behind his back. 'I find it helps slow us down, stargazing. There's a magic to it.'

'Yes,' Luna agreed, smiling, 'magic.'

'Ah, Severus, come.' Leus beckoned to the approaching professor, 'This is Luna Lovegood, the winner of the Greengrass Award for Artistic Excellence. Miss Lovegood, this is Severus Snape, Head of the engineering science department.'

Severus watched her through narrowed eyes, their intimidating light gauging her under angular, sable eyebrows. 'Artists are a most fascinating breed,' he deadpanned.

'Science and art are similar, don't you think?' Luna quipped, her tone as soft and level as the one she used to state facts, 'We work with numbers too, you know. Paint-by-numbers kits, to be exact.'

Snape's face twitched in the semblance of a smile.

'Humor aside, it does seem that numbers, in the form of symmetry and architecture, are inherent to art as well.' Luna said, 'Da Vinci's life work is a testimony of this. What do you think, Professor Hakim?'

'Numbers are everywhere,' Leus smiled. 'The quadrivium, from the medieval liberal arts, considered geometry as numbers in space, and music as numbers in time.'

'Interesting,' Snape said, his eyes twinkling with uncommon mirth at the intriguing blonde. He looked up, his eyes turning sharper upon zeroing in on a new comer. 'Your little stars seem to have aligned, Hakim. Look who's here, your first flesh and bone constellation.'

Luna followed Snape's eyes to the entrance. Draco was standing by the door in his business suit, looking at them. His hair was absolutely white, and an ethereal, hopelessly starlit glow surrounded his dark frame. Luna gasped wordlessly at the sight.

'Curious…' Snape commented to no one in particular.

Luna's heart fluttered like an autumn leaf in her chest, knowing that in seconds, she would find herself face to face with the man she wanted to impress. She stilled herself, quickly going over her text in her mind, before turning around and—she nearly jumped in surprise. Draco had closed the distance in her distraction, his grey eyes now flitting over her in a hot, interminable second. Even as they moved past her to the two professors, his scent latched onto her, holding her back like an invisible caress.

'Professor Snape,' Draco greeted. Luna watched with curiosity when the dark, night-spirit professor responded with a wink. 'Professor Hakim,' Draco continued, and Luna looked up to find his eyes fixed down on her again, 'allow me to steal your student for a while.' Leus silently waved an allowing hand. Though Snape's face flashed with surprise at seeing Draco look for this small Lovegood girl fresh out of work, so miniscule a stir it caused in his features that it faded unnoticed.

'It'll be quieter outside on roof,' Draco spoke quietly for Luna alone to hear. She nodded and bowed to the professors before following along. Her lips parted, releasing a discrete, jittery breath.

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