Impstar: This story will be shorter, yes. Not everything has to be an epic saga like the Black Queen series. (Thankfully.) When I was planning the story, I was shooting for somewhere in the 80-110 thousand word mark. So a nice, normal-sized book. And I'm glad I don't plan for it to be longer, because the last several chapters have just been fighting me tooth and nail.

It doesn't help that I have two distinct but related plot bunnies just ravaging my brain, and I know that if I stop to work on them before this story is complete, I'll never finish. Even if I might have seven pages of notes written out for one of them already. :-(

Chapter 13
Life in Hogwarts

Draco closed the door to the suite where he had essentially dropped off the other Adventurers and started down the corridor to one of the large halls that led to the grounds. If he were to be entirely honest with himself, he was not decided on what to make of the fact that all three of them had volunteered to stay at Hogwarts while he waited for Dumbledore to collect enough gold to settle his bill. He could not think of anything they could have heard about within Hogwarts and wanted to take for themselves – how could they, when none of them grew up in the Wizarding World? – so the only reason they had to stay was to keep him company.

That was… an unfamiliar feeling, being wanted, and not one he could say with confidence he had felt since his mother gave her life to save him.

He had dealt with any number of Adventurers since he struck out on his own two years ago, and none of them had ever offered to stand by his side for this long. Then again, the feeling was mutual; it was not as if he had ever offered to show any of his other temporary co-workers around New Diagon and Hogwarts. If this group had not contained Harry Potter, he could not say for sure that he would have made the offer to this group, either. He had just been so curious; here, for the first time, was another wizard who had sought out the magic of this world. What was he like? Where had he been for all these years?

To find that the beloved child of the old world had been raised among Muggles and chose Gaian magic because he knew of nothing else was a surprise. It left a host of questions in his mind, questions like whether Harry would have taken the same road had he been raised amongst other wizards or if he would be half as interesting were he just another wand-waver.

Questions that in all honesty he did not want the answers to.

Out on the grounds near the edge of the former Forbidden Forest stood rows and rows of houses. None of them were anywhere as grand as the manors that had once been the old families' showpieces, but they fulfilled their functions well enough. The castle was large enough that there were rooms available for nearly everyone who wished to live in the safety of Hogwarts without anyone being forced to build new properties on the outskirts, but that did not lend nearly the glamor of having a family home. If there was one thing the grand family lines prided themselves on, it was having enough opulence to choke a hippogriff.

Traveling down the lines of houses, he came to a subdivision that was far more familiar than any other. Even now in these times of drastic change, the Wizarding World could not let go of the divisions that had nearly ripped their society apart before Draco was born, when a terrifying man known only as the Dark Lord made empty promises to lead them into a golden age. Families of like minds on politics and magic clumped together, viewing all others with disdain and building walls to keep anyone 'lesser' from from right-minded wizards and witches.

An indescribable expression twisted his lips, part humor and part derision. Where he stood now, even fifteen years later, voicing such thoughts on politics of a lost world was an invitation to be cursed and left in the mud to crawl his way back to the castle.

A few turns led him to a house standing on a hill, and he climbed up the cobbled sidewalk to the door. Lifting his fist, he banged it twice on the door and took a step back. It was not a blond who opened the door, however, but a dark-haired young woman. He knew from personal experience that she was actually not unattractive, but that fact was easily missed whenever she had her nose wrinkled in disgust as it was now. "Oh," she said, her voice containing all enthusiasm of someone finding a cockroach in their morning porridge. "So you are back."

"Hello to you too, Pansy," he replied with a sigh. "What are you doing here?"

She huffed at him and brushed him out of her way. "Despite how much of a disappointment you are, I reserve the right to check on my fiancé. Now if you will excuse me, I have better places to be than speaking with you."

He shook his head as she walked away. There was a reason he wanted nothing to do with Pansy Parkinson: she was just so bloody weird. Pushing the door fully open, he stepped inside the house that had been his home for half his life, even if it was not any longer. The walls of the house were bare and cold, the life that had once filled the manor absent here without his mother around to soften the harsh edges and atmosphere. The furniture was made more to impress than to offer comfort. Even the colors of everything were unwelcoming.

"You know you are not welcome here," a voice said, and from around the corner stepped his father. The years had not been kind to Lucius Malfoy, not that he would ever allow anyone outside the family to know this. Grey hairs had been clipped close to his temples, turning his previous long locks into a long ponytail. The wrinkles at the corner of his eyes were hidden under any thin layers of skin cream. He still stood tall and firm, the cane at his side for decoration and to hold his wand rather than support.

Much like Draco's own cane, the younger blond thought.

"Not unless you have finally come to your senses and left behind this childish obsession. I can see from your clothing you have not," his father said with a sneer.

"Believe it or not, I didn't come to fight this time." Draco reached into the pouch at his side and pulled out a slim, dark wand with silver tooling. He held it out, and his father's eyes widened as much as he knew his had when Hermione revealed it to him. "I found Mum's wand."

His father looked at the wand, and the older wizard's face become even more like stone than it normally was. "Where did you find that?"

"I had to go back to the manor. Where else could I have gotten it?"

The fist his father had on the cane in his hand tightened as though he wanted to squeeze the life out of something, and he all but ripped the wand out of Draco's grasp. "I shouldn't be surprised," he spat. "I thought you would respect your heritage at least, but that was clearly a fool's expectation."

"What are you talking about?" Draco demanded. This would not be the first time his father tried to take him to task for some imagined slight, but normally he did not do so with such vehemence.

"That was our family home. It has housed the Malfoy line for generations. And you broke in and plundered it like some base burglar," his father said with a sneer. "I expect you were not just in there for you mother's wand, were you? You took everything that our family has gathered over the years and broke it all down like scrap."

"If by 'scrap', you mean the very magic all of you are using to keep this castle going and the wards strong so you can keep living like you did over a decade ago, then yes," he shot back. "Perhaps it has escaped your notice, father, but I am the only reason you, Dumbledore, and everyone else living in this castle have been able to pretend the world hasn't moved on without you. What good was our family's wealth and possessions doing us in a manor caught between worlds and filled with the undead? Nothing.

"Not to mention, I don't think you exactly have the moral high ground when it comes to respecting the family. You're the one who is marrying a girl his own son's age."

His father stood straighter, displaying not a shred of guilt for his choice of wife. "You left me with little choice. I need an heir to whom I can trust the future of the family, not an ungrateful brat who will go gallivanting off and throwing away his magic for cheap tricks even a Muggle can perform. Look at you! You even bear the same tattoos they use to adorn themselves. The Malfoy name can only be carried by a proud Pureblood, not a blood traitor like you."

Draco stared at his father for a long moment, wondering how the older man could be so blind. "You're as big a fool as Dumbledore," he finally said, earning a stern glare from his father. "Your wand is failing you as much as mine did me, but you cling to it as though without it you will fall into the abyss. I took a Mark because this world has power if you would just open your eyes to see it. Power even to cast spells from Earth.

"I still remember what you and Mother taught me. A Malfoy does not bow to others' whims. A Malfoy does not turn up his nose at power. A Malfoy does whatever is necessary to advance his family. Yet here I am, rich and strong, only for you to brush me off as though I am some kind of disgrace and at the same time hold out your hands for the scraps that I deign to bring back to you." He sneered at the man he had once, a long time ago, looked up to as the epitome of what a wizard should be. "In all those lessons, you never once said that the power and influence 'a proper Malfoy' should seek could only be that which you approve of and understand."

His father looked at him as though seeing him for the very first time, but whatever thought was lurking behind the steel-grey eyes was unknown to Draco. "What a Malfoy should or should not seek is not something you need concern yourself with any longer," his father finally said. "As of today, I strip from you the name you have betrayed. You are a Malfoy no longer. You are not my son."

Draco stared at him in horror. Was… was his own father truly casting him out?

His father – no, Lucius – was not yet finished. "If Azkaban exists on this world, seek out Sirius Black and ask him if you are enough of a disappointment to join his family. Otherwise you can find a Muggle willing to take you in since you are so enamored with their way of life. Whichever you choose to do, you are not welcome here. Do not cast your shadow on my doorstep again."

"…What are you doing?"

"What I should have done years ago when it became clear you had no interest in our way of life." Lucius pointed at the door. "You had two paths in front of you, to be a wizard or to be a Muggle. You made the wrong choice. Now you have to live with it."

Harry glanced up when the door to the suites Draco had led them to opened again. He could understand why Draco did not want them wandering around unsupervised, or at least he thought he did. This was a new location that, from everything Draco had told them, was less than amicable to their kind, particularly Dudley and Hermione. If they ran into anyone who wanted to express that displeasure at their presence, Draco might be able to talk the situation down before anything physical occurred.

He could not help but rethink the wisdom of spending their time in this castle if there were as many risks around them as the blond had intimated. They would be safer if they returned to Diagon Village and waited for Draco to return. On the other hand, all three of them could see themselves in Draco; he had been abandoned by his people just as they had been by theirs.

The very Sorcerer he was thinking of walked through the door, and his expression immediately put the Fencer on edge. "What's wrong?"

Draco startled and gave him a look before letting out a broken laugh. "I guess raiding our family home was too much for my father. He officially disowned me."

"What?!" His shout drew Dudley and Hermione from different rooms in the suite. "Why did he disown you? You said your manor was the last place you knew about. After this, there's no more mana to be had, right?"

"Strangely enough, he didn't let me get to that part." The blond slumped into a chair. "Not that it would have mattered in the end anyway. He's already engaged to a girl our age because it gives him a better chance to beget a 'proper heir'."

"Eww," Hermione muttered.

"That was more or less my thought, too."

"Fathers can be pieces of shite like that," Dudley said, rubbing his upper arm uncomfortably. It did not take a genius to figure out why. He had likewise been disowned for his choices in life, for seeking out the Spires and adventure. Harry would have been as well had Vernon and Petunia ever considered him family in the first place.

"Thankfully the Spires mean we are not trapped with people who don't wish to understand us," Hermione said into the resultant silence, clearly trying to raise his spirits. "We have the chance to make our own way in life.

"Since we're here, though, we might as well make the best of it. You lived here for years, right? Mind showing us around, at least the places we had best avoid? I'd rather not go traipsing through someone's bedroom if I can help it."

"It's as good a way of killing time as any," Draco said after a moment. "If you're thinking about seeking out adventure here, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. There are few places left in the castle that have yet to be explored or used for some other purpose."

That dampened their enthusiasm some, but there was little else to spend their time so they filed out of the suite and followed along as Draco led them through the halls of the castle he had once called home. True to his word, several wings of the castle had been claimed as residential quarters, filled with people who before the Transition had their own homes and lives but retreated to the castle when the world changed. Other rooms and hallways in turn became stores and shops where the use of the wizards' former currency was still alive and well.

It was the classrooms, though, that were in some ways the most interesting.

"You weren't kidding about the demand for new wands," Dudley said into the silence that fell over them as they looked through a window at a bunch of eleven-year-olds trying – assuming Draco was not lying to them for his own amusement – to change beetles into buttons. Why that was considered an important skill, Harry would be hard-pressed to even try to explain, but that was what they were watching. "Replacing those things every few years must have earned whoever makes the wands a fortune."

"Not really. It used to be that a wand would last a wizard his whole life as long as he didn't do something stupid and break it. It's only here on Gaia that wands have a limited number of uses."

"And they use up those wands learning parlor tricks," pointed out Hermione. She shook her head. "I thought the elders back in the Riverlands were stuck in the past, but this is on an entirely different level. It's like no one, not the teachers or the parents or anyone, has figured out that all the rules are different now."

Draco cleared his throat. "We, wizards, as a culture don't do well with change. I don't really understand why, if it's because we're accustomed to changing the world around us instead of the other way around or some other reason, but it is the way it is. Before the Transition, one of the big debates was what to do about Muggleborns because they all wanted to make changes to magical society to bring it more in line with the Muggle world. That wasn't even a recent argument; it had been going on for decades without an answer. Bring them to a whole new planet, and it's no surprise they don't know what to do, so instead of addressing reality and changing their way of life they just ignore it and pretend everything is fine.

"I can't say I have much room to criticize them for that," he said after a couple of seconds. "After all, I've spent the past two years bringing back magic to enable that very behavior. I climbed a Spire, took a Mark, but I never thought too hard about what I would do once I ran out of places to plunder. If they asked me for advice on what to do now, I wouldn't have much to offer them."

A bell rang as the Adventurers climbed a tall tower, summoning those same students they had watched for the noontime meal. Draco threw the trapdoor open, and they exited onto the top of a tower with a fantastic vantage point over the surrounding valley and all the fresh air they could ask for. Harry had not noticed the faint claustrophobia he had started feeling being surrounded by stone like that until he was outside of it. "Say what you want about the people, but the view is gorgeous," he whispered.

"That it is," the Sorcerer agreed, leaning against the stone parapet next to Harry and gazing out into the distance. "This was always one of my favorite places to come to relax when I was in school here. It was like looking out and seeing the entire world sprawling out in front of me, just waiting to be explored."

"Could do without that guard tower sticking out of the forest, though," Dudley chimed in.

"I supposed you're— What do you mean, 'guard tower'?" The Knight pointed at a grey tower just visible over the top of the forest, and Draco shielded his eyes with his hands and stared out in that direction. "What is that?" he finally asked.

"Shouldn't you be the one to tell us?" asked Hermione with raised eyebrows.

"I stood here every day for years. Some days more than once." Draco lowered his hands and shook his head. "I have never seen that before."

"You did say it's been a couple of years since you were a student," Harry reminded him. "Maybe they built it to help keep monsters out or something."

"Which would make sense if they didn't have wards to do just that. Again, this society has a near-pathological fear of change," Draco said. "There's basically no chance they would build a physical defense when a magical solution is available. This is weird.

"Thankfully, I know someone who just might know what in the world is going on here."

This Draco is such an eerie contrast to the one in canon. Of course, so is Dudley, so I guess that's just par for the course.

With the Towers in play, we can finally get back to the adventuring portion of the story.

Silently Watches out.