The fall afternoon was dim with fog and brief interludes of misty rain, not enough to soak to the bone through their thick woolen coats, but the trail of their cloaks that bled like silk down their backs drifted through the sodden grass and mud and leaves collected at the hems. They drifted through several miles of dark forest and appeared in a wide field covered in blankets of fog and the overhead pale sun could not guide their way, though it was light enough to go without wands. Still yet, were it not for their misguided youthful abandonment, the two young men might have worried that they could not see what forty paces in front of them was, let alone what peaked along the horizon.
"Theo," one of the boys said, stopping as they encountered a field of tall grass. "I think we've surpassed the Zabini property line."
Puddles were forming along the stalks of the marsh. He pocketed the book in his hand and the quill. The pages were scribbles of drawings of plants and leaves, composed from careful study of the plant itself in the wild.
Theodore Nott was a lanky looking young man of twenty, with horn-rimmed glasses he magicked to be impervious to rain droplets, allowing him to see. He was dressed sharply in all black, a green cloak trailing off of his shoulders and clasped at his neck with a silver emblem bearing the markings of his family coat of arms. He was a sharp jawed, freckled man with light amber eyes and a shy smile.
"Can't have," he replied, his voice ringing through the quiet, "We should be able to move east as far as we can until we hit the river, then we will be around the Black Manor."
Black Manor was once Brympton House, previously opened to Muggles, until Cygnus Black acquired it for his family and closed it to the public over twenty years ago.
"Lucius," Theo said, twisting his lips into an easy smile, "Even if we do accidentally tread onto their property, I doubt we need to explain ourselves with all of this fog."
"True enough," the man replied, nodding his head.
Lucius Malfoy was from Wiltshire, which bordered Somerset to the east. Candra Zabini was from their year when they were at Hogwarts and one of their companions whom they were visiting, but he had declined their invitation to walk in this weather and stayed behind, complaining of a headache, but refusing spells or remedy. Theodore had no real interest in Herbology, but he humored Lucius's passions because he was the only one who allowed him to speak at length of Arithmancy and Wizard's Chess and because Lucius was adept with Potions that rid him of the frequent pains in his back.
They passed through the flat of field, their boots and cloaks sodden with mud. The field was a short stretch, perhaps not a field at all, but instead a wide clearing, and then they were trailing through the woods once more, winding through ancient trees with spindled branches, gnarled and covered in brilliant explosions of warm hues. Lucius stopped to capture the particular likeness of a tree on a page while Theo charmed the mud and water from their boots and cloaks, working so quietly and efficiently that Lucius didn't notice, for he was crouched with his knee against the forest floor and the other propped up, his journal against his thigh as he worked.
When he was finished with the basic details, he closed the journal and they continued through the forest. Theo was certain they would meet the river soon and could turn around, but they were out of the thick of the forest and making their way up a sloping lawn when suddenly high stone walls were looming above them through a thinning of the fog as mist swirled around them.
Lucius glanced at his friend, who had his hands on his hips, peering at the silhouette of the mansion with a stunned expression.
"I believe we passed the Zabini property line," Lucius retorted.
"Nonsense," Theo replied with a smile, "This is but a very large boulder in the shape of a home. We have not yet made it to the river, so we are not there yet."
Lucius rolled his eyes. They met with the side of the home, near to the front of the home, which Lucius knew to face north. It was likely they skirted through the forest at a northeast angle and just scarcely avoided the river, and he thought their manicured gardens and pathways were on the west side of the home.
"Do you think they have charms on their home to alert them when someone comes on the property?" Theo asked him, "Would it be improper to Apparate back?"
"It is doubtful we even can Apparate on their property," Lucius responded, "We should walk nearest the door and see if they are home. If they are not, we will turn down the drive until we are off their property and Apparate there."
When they rounded the corner of the manor, they found the large paned windows were shrouded by curtains and no light poured from them. The curtains too were drawn on each window, making it impossible to tell if anyone was home or not.
Theo grasped Lucius by the arm. "It seems, if they are home at all, they may not be welcoming visitors. Instead of Apparating back home, let's walk some more. After days of playing cards and reading in the drawing-room with Candra, I need the fresh air."
"Very well," Lucius consented easily because he did not mind the exercise.
They walked round the house and Theo, after some deliberation, decided upon the direction back west, but he walked around the edge of the home until they were on the back, where the veranda and high garden walls were erected as the courtyard. Lucius lifted his eyes to the top floor window and paused at the sight. There, bathed in a calm yellow halo of light, was a young blonde woman, her hair braided from the nape of her neck, running over her shoulder. Her dress was white, the fabric pooling down the high backed chair she was sitting in with her legs curled to her chest, a book resting against her knees. She flipped the pages—a saucer and cup of tea were hovering midair near her right arm, waiting for her to reach for it to drink.
"Narcissa Black," Theo announced, brushing against Lucius's shoulder with his own as they both looked up at her. "She was two years behind us at Hogwarts. I recognize her from my family's lineage book."
Lucius nodded his head. "That's right. I've never actually spoken with her."
"Well no, you wouldn't," Theo remarked, "She'll only just enter society this winter. You've had no occasion to talk to her unless you were at school."
"This winter?" Lucius replied, "That seems so late."
"Either her parents dote on her," Theo said, "Or they struggled to get her older sisters engaged first. Either way, she won't be an eligible bride until then."
Marriage and engagements were all anyone could think of in their society. The Sacred Twenty-Eight was obsessed with blood purity and prosperity, securing each successive line with offspring was paramount to their existence and continuation of friendships. This aspect of their society, arranged marriages and the concept of blood superiority was not an allowed topic of discourse. It was treason to suggest one's parents were wrong, that their political decisions and society's practices were less than scrupulous was a guaranteed way of losing one's entire inheritance, family, and prospects. Lucius's own parents had not secured a wife for him, but the time of his youth was dwindling, and he knew it. The only reason he reached twenty unwed was because of the sheer volume of marriage requests and interviews. Letters arrived from other countries, cousins of his mother from France wrote in to ask for an opportunity to interview and try their hand.
A woman worthy to be titled Malfoy must have had about her the most serious of accomplishments. His mother spoke ten languages and was renowned in her knowledge of Herbology and Potions. She achieved the highest ranking marks of Beauxbatons in her year. If one used her as a rubric for what his own wife should be modeled as it would take interviewing every pureblood witch in the world and then some. His perfectionist mother and father may never find his perfect match, which admittedly suited Lucius, who rather liked haunting through thick blankets of fog than dancing and spending countless hours pretending to listen to suitors.
"Her eldest sister was in our year," Theo said, and Lucius shook himself from his thoughts, aware he had not been listening to him at all. "Bellatrix Black, you remember?"
"But she had black hair," Lucius remarked, "And so did the younger sister. Andromeda?"
Theo nodded. "Correct. Narcissa is the only blonde. Strange, don't you think?"
He knew very little of the Black sisters. They passed through one another in their circles. He danced with Bellatrix during ballroom dances more times than he remembered. Lucius felt like most of the festivities were blurs for him which he spent repeating the steps with rigid perfection that his dance instructor had forced onto him until the steps and motions were instinct, and he let his mind wander through the rest. He could have seen the youngest of the Blacks before, could have danced with her numerous times over the years, and Lucius knew he had never really seen her before until the moment he looked upon at her window.
By the time they were through the thick of woods which straddled the Zabini and Black property line, it was pouring rain and neither of them could see well or hear one another through the torrential sheets of freezing water. Lucius took Theo by the wrist and pulled him up a hill. They clambered over slick grey stones as they made their way to higher ground, scrabbling. He tried to shout to Theo, but his voice was lost in the rain and the wind. The fog was swirling out of cadence as the rain obliterated their view, and when they finally made it to the top of the hill, they realized they must have been at quite a high peak in the woods.
They found a very large tree and slipped beneath it to rest. The leaves were spread so thick that the rain could not reach them, and they rested their backs against the trunk of the tree. The sweet smell of sap reached him, and dried pine needles clung to their clothing. Lucius slung his wet over his shoulder and twisted it, allowing the water contained within the strands to drain out onto the ground beside him.
"What an adventure!" Theo exclaimed, "There is never a dull moment with you, Lucius."
"I cannot take credit for the rain," he remarked passively.
Theo crossed his legs and dried his clothing with his wand, though Lucius thought it was done in vain. Still, Lucius dried his hair and clothes himself, if nothing more than it was something to do while they waited out the rain.
Twenty minutes later, the rain reduced to a small sprinkle that they could manage, and they made the rest of the journey back to the Zabini mansion. They dried themselves again before they opened the back door from the garden and wound up the stairs to a lounge that Candra's parents had designed for their children to spend leisure time in. Candra was there with a tray of sweets and a radio, listening to a Quidditch match. When the young men burst through the door, he gave a great shout from fear and leaped up from his seat. Upon taking in the sight of them, he relaxed and glared at them.
"You idiots missed most of the game," he announced, cracking each knuckle on his hands, as he folded himself back onto the couch.
Lucius and Theo exchanged amused glances. "Yes, the most richly fascinating thing in all of the world is Quidditch," Lucius retorted, "The preoccupation the magical community has on it, I will never understand—"
"Just because you're a pompous intellectual incapable of exerting any physical ability," Candra interrupted, "Does not mean you are allowed to judge the rest of us for enjoying the sport. Which does, as a matter of fact, possess depth and qualities you don't understand."
"I could play Quidditch," Lucius argued, "How difficult is it, really?"
Candra played on the Slytherin Quidditch team through Hogwarts, and while he did not move on to become professional, it was not for lack of skill. He was a Beater, a very good one, and during a recreational game with friends (excluding Theo and Lucius) he took a particularly nasty Bludger to his back, and while the Healers had done their best, it never healed quite right and hurt often, keeping him from playing for any length of time. He described the pain as knots of cartilage in his lower spine, which he sometimes went to have massaged for particularly painful bouts of it. Now it seemed to be responsible for also causing his migraines.
"You could not play Quidditch, Malfoy," Candra replied flatly, as he stretched his legs out upon the table in front of him. "Stick to your leaf drawings. You're far better at those."
Lucius glared at him as he took a seat at a drafting table and procured his journal from his pocket and placed it upon the surface. He opened the thin pages to the tree he had been sketching earlier. Theo turned the radio upon and laid out across one of the other couches that Candra was not occupying, and he was lulled to sleep by the rhythmic sounds of the announcer and cries and shouts of the stands. Or perhaps he was merely exhausted from the rain and the walking, but regardless of reason, he soon plucked his glasses from his face, folded them onto the table near Candra's sock-covered feet, and rolled onto his side to sleep.
Sometime later in the evening when Theo woke, Candra decided that they should journey to a pub. The game was over, and clearly it had not gone the way he wanted it to, for a vein in his forehead was continually throbbing. All three men Apparated outside of The White Wyvern, which was indistinguishable from any ordinary pub except for the patrons that sought it out were generally purebloods.
It was a small, cramped room with deep wooden accents and stone walls. A hearth was opposite of the bar across the room, and in between were various high tables and booths. A makeshift dance floor was on the far right in front of a raised platform, where a wizard sat playing bagpipes. Swinging lanterns above them cast a warm glow of light across the room and the fire was over warm, casting condensation all along the tiny square panes of glass of each window.
Lucius had never seen any young women from their society in a pub, and in fact, he was certain the only time he had ever witnessed such a thing was The Leaky Cauldron, usually with their families at lunch during their back to school shopping. But tonight, there were multitudes of women with their newly minted husbands. This was perhaps newfound freedom for them, as unmarried women would not be seen here lest they face serious scorn. Some faces he thought he recognized, and the finery of their robes and gowns suggested that they were pureblood witches.
Lucius and Theo sat at a table while Candra ordered a pint from the bar. Lucius unclasped his cloak from his throat and draped it down the back of his chair. Candra returned with several glasses and a pitcher full of beer, and Theo poured the contents into the cold glasses. Candra opened a thin metal case from his pocket containing thin cigars (cigarillos, he had heard him call them) and he passed them around as he took a deck of cards from a nearby table and started to shuffle them.
"We could have drunk and played cards at your home," Lucius commented lightly, as he pressed the tip of his wand to the cigarillo and inhaled as the flame struck and smoke entered his lungs.
Candra rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but there are no birds there 'cept my mum."
"These women are married," Theo acknowledged, raising his eyebrow.
"None of you know how to have fun!" Candra snapped, "Logic doesn't apply here, mates. They're beautiful women, drinking in public and dancing, shedding one of the two thousand layers of social etiquette. Revel in the disobedience, gents, you'll never have these moments of freedom after you're saddled with some sap of a woman who plays pianoforte and sews pillows, all while wearing a corset and pouring your tea."
"Not sure if I should be impressed by these saps of women," Theo said, "Or frightened by their ability to multitask."
Lucius laughed, a sharp of a sound that came out of him unexpectedly, and he understood what Candra meant by pressing the importance of a change of scenery. It was nice to place oneself into a different environment. It was like he could wear a different skin when he moved from forest to house to pub, each a different version of him that was valid and true but separate from each other.
"Both," Lucius said, "Always both."
They drank late into the night until they felt lighter and freer than before. The night became an intangible blur. Lucius, spinning a woman around the dance floor with a cigarillo in one hand, Candra roaring with laughter and smashing his fist against the table at the sight of them. Only to realize that it was not a woman at all, but Lucius was turning a coat rack in his arms instead of by the front door. Upon realization, he was doubled over in laughter.
A barman crossed over to him and clamped a silver bracelet onto each of their wrists, which they were too drunk to discover how to remove.
"No Apparating, now, young masters," he said, "For your own good."
But they drank more and forgot about the indignation of the bracelets, and soon they were howling at a particularly innocuous thing that seemed funny at the time, but one Lucius would never remember. They played cards unsuccessfully, and Lucius magicked them to scatter and explode all over the room, sending Theo reeling against the table. It was late into the early, dark hours of the morning when the barman kicked them out, and they ran down the alley. Candra stripped himself of his robes and ran, screaming, down the main street of Knockturn Alley and Lucius and Theo dissolved into frantic laughter, running the opposite direction.
They stopped to catch their breath in an alley between a potions shop and a ticket shop for betting, and Lucius leaned against the slick, wet stone building and inhaled, taking the sobering cold air into his lungs.
Theo was watching him, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. Lucius sighed heavily. His throat and chest were hurting from smoking too much. He was at a peak of almost uncomfortable drunkenness, where his limbs felt overly heavy for his body, but his mind was still unbalanced and swirling.
"Can you imagine," Lucius started to say, though he had no notion of what he intended to say.
And anyway, he didn't have the time to, because just as he was trying to collect what he wanted to say, Theo leaned in him kissed him, his expression one of innocent curiosity mingled amidst the blurry look of inebriation.
Lucius had no objections and kissed him back earnestly. Theo leaned his body into Lucius's and captured his mouth deeply, one hand curved along his jaw. Lucius groaned and slid his hands up Theo's chest, his thoughts a jumble of lust and pent up frustration. Pureblood men were not as reined in by rules of civility regarding their virginity, but no pureblood witch of their society would dare sleep with them without a promised, socially recognized engagement, and so despite the men's freedom, they scarcely got much relief unless they strayed from pureblood women, of which many did. Since Lucius was unwilling, he spent a good deal of his time in the middle of the night stroking himself beneath the layers of his blanket and bringing himself relief from the constant dreaded feeling of lust he held contained inside of himself.
There was a loud commotion from the end of the alleyway, and they jumped apart from one another.
Theo and Lucius quickly fixed their appearance and walked back up the alley, unsteady and drunk. They heard a loud pop of someone Apparating away. As they came near to the main street of Knockturn Alley, Lucius stepped into a bit of water, splashing it across his shoes and trailing his cloak end through it. He thought nothing of it until he tripped over an object on the ground he had not noticed, and he righted himself before falling. He turned around to see what he had tripped over, illuminating the tip of his wand, and then the breath went out of him.
There on the cold ground was the body of a young pureblood witch with her throat slit, blood spilling out of her, curling around the edges of the stone and draining down the alley. The water Lucius had stepped in was a pool of her blood. Her cloak bore a family coat of arms he didn't recognize.
Theo back to the pub to get help. Lucius stared in silent shock, trying to still his body from what he had just done and what he was seeing. He reacted involuntarily and walked a few feet from the girl and vomited up the contents of his stomach, the euphoria of the alcohol finally overwhelming his body.
He heard footsteps and someone swung around the alley and latched onto him. He yelped as a body shoved him into a wall and held him up. His back slammed into the stonewall and the air went out of his lungs and left him gasping.
"Anyone asks," Candra hissed into his ear, "I was with you the whole time. Got it?"
He released Lucius and he slid against the wall, his head spinning. "Yeah," he agreed easily, without thought to why Candra would even ask him that.
The long night continued a miserable stretch of time. Ministry officials arrived and arrested the three of them, twisting their arms back behind their arms with magic ropes that twisted tightly against their wrists. They took their wands and took them back to a lower chamber of the ministry in a holding cell, prior to transferring them to Azkaban, where they would remain until they questioned them.
"Candra asked me to say he was with us the whole time," Lucius muttered quietly under his breath to Theo.
They were sharing a bench by themselves. Candra was demanding his father.
Theo looked at Candra and then gave Lucius a sharp look. "But he wasn't."
They were interrupted by a loud swing of slamming doors and a scurrying of commotion. The intimidating figures of their fathers came around the corner. Abraxas Malfoy took the lead, holding his dragonskin gloves delicately in one hand, his elegant cloak swirling around the floor. Unlike the other two fathers, he did not look particularly cross to have been woken in the middle of the night. He was too careful and charismatic to let anger get the best of him.
"You have arrested my son," Abraxas remarked, as the Ministry wizard unlocked the series of cell locks, "You were going to place him in Azkaban for reporting a murder? He's not a commoner, he's a Malfoy, a name which clearly means nothing to the likes of you. I'll speak with the Minister about this incident, to be sure…"
His voice was cold and cutting, the tone he used when he knew he needed to press his will onto someone else. Abraxas swept into the holding cell with Theo and Candra's father. The officer waved his wand and the ropes binding their wrists behind their backs disappeared.
"It's four o'clock in the morning, boys," Mr. Malfoy announced, "Do you have any idea how worried your mothers are?"
"Sir, please, we should question them first," the Ministry official argued, "They need to stay here until we have administered Veritaserum at least. You're impeding on official ministry business."
"The word of a gentleman is always true," Mr. Malfoy snapped, "That you can be assured. You will not poison my son. I'll take this investigation matter up to your superior. Come, boys, I think a good deal of rest is required."
"Sir," the wizard protested, "A young witch was murdered tonight. One of your Sacred members. If they know anything that could help—"
Mr. Malfoy paused in the middle of the door and turned his head. "These boys had too much to drink at a pub and went out for a walk for fresh air and to sober up, where they stumbled upon the poor wretch's body and did the responsible thing. You would punish them for it? I think not."
He placed an authoritative arm on Lucius's shoulder and led him from the room. The other men and their fathers followed behind them as they all collected into the lift.
"Too much to drink, eh, boys?" Mr. Nott asked, squeezing Theo's cheek affectionately. "I have many memories of doing such a thing at the White Wyvern myself."
"I don't see why you couldn't have played cards at the house," Mr. Zabini remarked, his voice simpering, "There were plenty of drinks there to indulge as well."
Abraxas laughed lightly. "That is not nearly as entertaining. Drinking is a social act, no doubt."
The three families parted ways once they reached the darkened atrium of the Ministry. Abraxas chose the Floo Network as a preferred route, and Lucius was abundantly aware that he may have chosen it just to torture Lucius, as he retched upon falling from the fireplace of his father's study. His father chuckled lightly and took his cloak off, hanging it up on the hook by his door. Then he sent Lucius to bed after placing a vial of tonic in his hand for the hangover he would no doubt feel the next morning.
In the early hours of sunlight, he woke, feeling first the blinding and stabbing agony of a headache. His limbs were heavy and pained. His back was aching. He reached for the vial on his end table and downed the contents entirely, unconcerned of the correct dosage, though it was so small he thought it must have been a single dose.
His room was a high ceiling room with aged grey floral wallpaper an ancestor had brought from France and papered themselves. Warm hued dentil molding made of mahogany trailed along the upper and lower edges of the walls. One half of his room was covered in built-in bookshelves, six of them in fact, all floor to ceiling eight-shelf bookcases, which were evenly filled. Plants dotted every other surface in his room, particularly several were stacked on the windowsills on the wide paned windows that faced the south gardens. He had his own balcony too, which sported many other pots of plants. There was a large desk in the center of his room and a drafting table in the corner for his drawing. He also had two oversized and handsome chairs near his bookshelves for reading, with a table in between them, and a fireplace, which was sparking merrily with an early fire.
His head stopped spinning enough that he could touch his feet to the cold stone floor and slip a robe over his body. Twisting it off at his waist, he wandered out of his room to the main bathroom chamber. His parents stayed on the second floor, and he the third, so he was alone in the use of this wing of the house almost entirely. Some of the bedrooms had been magicked shut, and he had never been able to pry them open. No spells seemed to work to undo them.
He ran a bath and floated through the water, choosing to forgo the heavy use of perfumes and oils, as he thought they might entice his head to ache. It was now a low throbbing that disappeared as time went on. When he finished, he let his hair dry naturally after toweling through it, and he dressed quickly and went downstairs to the smaller dining room, where they usually had breakfast and lunch or had afternoon tea on occasion with visitors. The dining hall was reserved for massive groups of people, the entire community could fit in it if needed.
Both of his parents were already seated at the table reading separate papers. His father fancied The Daily Prophet, like most magical folk, but his mother read Witch's Weekly for most of her news sources and in particular, she preferred their gossip column. They had a specific section on the Sacred Twenty-Eight so that each family could keep up with the news, though anyone who was anyone would have already had previous knowledge of the engagements and childbirths.
"Ah, there you are," Mr. Malfoy announced, folding his paper by his plate, "We nearly thought you would sleep through breakfast."
Lucius sat across from his mother. His father took his natural seat at the front, though when he was absent, he and his mother traded off sitting there. He avoided the heavy sausages, bacon, and gravy, and instead plucked a piece of toast and spread a soft, very thin layer of bergamot marmalade over the bread. He poured a cup of coffee before he spoke up.
"I think I should have," Lucius muttered.
Both of his parents chuckled and shook their heads. Lucius took a bite of toast and read the front cover of the Witch's Weekly magazine that his mother was holding.
"Is that the girl we found last night, Mum?" he asked, gesturing to the cover.
"Oh yes," she remarked, twisting it around so that she could read it. "Scarlet Greengrass, she was in your year, did you know her?"
"No," Lucius replied, but he also knew that he could have spoken to her and not remembered. There was no doubt in his mind that he probably danced with her many times, but as he thought, the only girl that stuck out in his mind was Narcissa Black in the window.
Abraxas shuffled his paper to look at the front cover himself. "Tragic thing, she was so young."
"Her parents filed for divorce," Mrs. Malfoy said, "Unheard of in our community. They are calling her death suspicious, but I have no doubt they should consider the possibility it was suicide. A young unmarried girl, beautiful as she was, ruined by her parents' distasteful acts?"
Lucius never knew a single-family to divorce. He knew there were companions who hated one another, peers of his whose parents slept in separate beds or were loath to spend any time together, but they did not separate. One broke a contract that way, not only with one another but with the society as a whole. A divorce could spark a heated argument, a rivalry for generations. It just wasn't done.
"Mum, what do you know much about the Black family?" he asked.
She glanced up and looked at him curiously. "The Black family? They have had a few unscrupulous family members, blood traitors, on Orion and Walburga's side in London. I've heard their boy Sirius is wild as ever, entreating himself to live with the Potters now. It's very embarrassing. But Druella's girls are very fine indeed. Not at all like Sirius."
"The ones from Somerset?" he suggested.
"Yes," Mrs. Malfoy responded easily, "Drue has three daughters. Such handsome names, but I always forget them—ah, there's Bella, Andy, and Cissy."
"Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa," Abraxas said, flourishing their full names with poise.
His mother nodded. "Yes, that's right. Druella and I meet with some of the other wives in the area for our book club. Why do you ask?"
Lucius recounted the story of Theo's misdirection that led them onto the Black property. He ascertained that they went to the front door, but the curtains were drawn, and that later he saw the youngest girl from the window reading.
"I was only wondering if I needed to send a letter," Lucius said, "To apologize for intruding."
"I shouldn't think that is necessary," his mother said, "The family was having dinner with the Lestrange's last night, but Druella mentioned that Cissy was ill, so she had perhaps stayed behind to recover. I doubt she noticed you and Theodore."
He nodded his head quietly. Abraxas shuffled his paper again and turned his keen eyes upon him.
"Have you seen her up close?" he asked, "This Narcissa?"
Lucius shook his head. Abraxas nodded to himself and went back to the paper.
"Ophelia, perhaps you should extend an invitation to the family for dinner," he said, "Lucius can explain the accidental trespassing to them. We can better acquaint with them. Cygnus is a very powerful man in the Ministry, he's on the Wizengamot court."
It was decided then. After breakfast, his mother sent an owl with the invitation for the Black family. His father moved back to the study, and he was left alone. He slipped his cloak on and wandered through the gardens for a while, drifting through the soft mist of rain that fell on his shoulders and down his cloak, until his mother grew worried and ushered him back inside so that he did not catch a cold.