"Would I look good in mauve?"

"If it was tailored properly," Regulus said distantly, too busy staring out the windows to join her in the back of the shop, let alone look at her.

"Of course," Madam Malkin said, unaware that she wasn't the one being addressed in the first place. "Would you like mauve robes, dear?"

"No. Just my work robes are fine. I don't need new dress robes; unlike some people, I didn't ruin them just before the school year." She shot Draco a look.

He wrinkled his nose at her. "I wouldn't need new ones if someone wasn't throwing around spells she's no good at."

"Company," Regulus said, floating over. "He looks awfully familiar, don't you think?"

"Um, hello?" a small voice called from the door.

"I'll be back," Madam Malkin promised, pausing in her pinning to hurry to the front. She quickly returned with a boy that was all bones and unkept hair. He had a face like someone Leo should know.

"That's a Potter if I've ever seen one," Regulus said.

"I'll be right with you," Madam Malkin promised him, returning to Leo's robes.

"Hello," Draco said. "Hogwarts, too?"

The boy blinked at him. His glasses were too large for his face. "Yes," he said.

"You're finished, dear," Madam Malkin said, pulling off the robes she'd been pinning while Draco started talking about Quidditch.

"Thank you," Leo said, stepping down.

Madam Malkin ushered the boy onto the stool, and Leo lingered in front of them. Draco was still talking, and Regulus was hovering close to the newcomer, staring as if doing it for long enough would let him see past his hair at his forehead.

"That's Hagrid. He works at Hogwarts."

Leo glanced at the half-giant standing just outside the shop. He looked just like Regulus remembered. "I'm Leonis," she interrupted before Draco could say anything. She bowed her head, keeping her gaze up and on the boy.

The boy stared at her, and his hand moved as if he wasn't sure if he should offer it or not. "Harry," he greeted in return. "You're going to Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," she said, glancing over at Regulus, who was grimly satisfied at the confirmation of their suspicions.

Harry turned to follow her gaze, trying to see what she was looking at.

"Have you already gotten your things?"

He turned back to her, and Draco shot her a nasty look for taking over the conversation. "No," Harry said. "Hagrid said to get my uniform first."

"We just have our wands left," she said. "Have you thought about yours? I'm hoping for cedar, myself."

Cedar, Regulus had once told her, his hands that weren't there held out in front of him as if they were holding anything but just air. Ten and three quarter inches. Unicorn hair. Brittle.

"I . . . don't know," Harry said, staring at her. "Do I have to choose?"

"That isn't how it works." She glanced towards Regulus again, who made a surprised, disgruntled comment about the boy's ignorance. Then she tilted her head at Harry, hooking her fingertips together and pulling hard against each other while she focused on the cold. "You look like a fir," she concluded.

"Is that good?" Harry asked in alarm.

"That isn't how it works," she repeated.

"That's you done, my dear," Madam Malkin said, taking the robes off Harry.

"I'll walk with you," Leo said, informing him rather than asking. When Draco opened his mouth to protest, she said, "You still have robes to be pinned. I won't be far." And then, "Harry." She turned and started out of the shop. She could hear Harry falling over himself to follow.

"Careful," Regulus warned.

"I know."

"What?" Harry asked, reaching the door with her.

She shook her head and pushed open the door. "It was nice meeting you."

"Harry!" Hagrid bellowed. "Who's this here?"

"This is Leonis," Harry said. He sounded excited, like she was something he was proud to show off.

"You can call me Leo," she announced to Harry, still looking Hagrid in the eye. Regulus didn't like many people; he'd never spoken ill of Hagrid.

"Oh. You're Lucius's kid, right?"

Leo lifted her chin, searching for that look. That look people got when they realized who she was. The Malfoy daughter, they always realized. What a shame.

But Hagrid didn't say that, and his eyes didn't either. Instead, a too-large hand reached out for her, and her nerves frayed at the threat of being touched. He grinned. "Nice ta meetcha, Miss Leonis," he greeted.

She bowed her head to him and ignored the hand. "Likewise, sir." Then she flicked her stare to Harry. "Do let me know if it's fir."

He lit up. "I will."

"I should go find out for myself, now, I suppose." She started to turn and then paused. "Oh," she said, because Dora would be proud if she did and kill her if she didn't. "Hufflepuff is a good house."

Regulus followed her down the street, though she supposed he never had much choice. "You're dramatic," he commented.

"Physician, heal thyself."

Regulus gave a sigh and floated into Ollivanders ahead of her. She scoffed and followed through the doorway. She found herself in the most chaotic scene she'd ever been in in her life, and it felt almost familiar.

"What was it like?" she asked needlessly. She'd heard this story dozens of times. And when he was in right mind, the story made sense.

"Good afternoon." The voice wasn't a large one, but it still seemed to fill the room. She wasn't quite sure when Ollivander had arrived at his desk, his eyes too wide and too sallow as he stared at her.

"Ollivander, sir," she greeted, bowing her head. "I'm here for my wand."

"Ah, yes." He beckoned her forward. "The Malfoy daughter."

"Yes," she confirmed.

"What a delight. I have been curious." He came around the desk and reached out with spindly fingers. He encircled her wrist, and she suppressed a shiver at the touch.

Leonis had been one. One year and twenty-six days, to be precise. Regulus hadn't meant to bind himself to her, but he hadn't been himself for a couple years at that point. Wouldn't be himself for a couple more. Leo wasn't sure he was himself now. He still stared at the air as if there was supposed to be something there that wasn't, he would ramble at times about things that didn't make sense, and he would just . . . disappear.

But Leo had been one when she became a haunted house. She was one when she'd started screaming when she wasn't sleeping. Sometimes, she wouldn't sleep without screaming. She'd learned to be afraid of things at a young age: water, hands, drinks. Narcissa had been in tatters, and Lucius had worn himself thin, calling in favors and offering up both bribes and blackmail alike so long as someone could help. So long as someone could fix her.

Leo had been one when people started looking at her like she was a particularly complicated arithmancy textbook—It's not complicated, Regulus had told her once. Try harder.—and prodded her with wands and spells and potions alike. Rough hands pinched at her freezing ones, warming solutions burned her pale lips, and strong magic peeled at the magic she hadn't even known she had. But it didn't matter how much Narcissa begged or how much Lucius sat beside his daughter night after night; no one had answers.

Your daughter is death, one of the seers had said. She only knew that because Regulus would repeat it sometimes, spiraling in delayed echolalia whenever he lost himself.

That was a word she'd looked up: echolalia. She'd found it all by herself. She did it too, sometimes, and she knew no one understood. She certainly didn't.

Draco spoke first—saying things like please and never—and Leonis spoke later. Things like Are you okay? and What happened? and You're scaring me. She would say it to empty air. Only to empty air. It took time—she wasn't sure how long, and Regulus still wasn't himself then; time was difficult to grasp when you didn't know yourself—for her to even notice that there were solid, flesh and blood people around her. And when she finally did address them, she asked why they were ignoring it. The noises. The screams. The blue.

Lucius and Narcissa shut it all down. Rambling to nothing could be many things: the result of a hallucinatory curse or simply the awkward learning of a developing child. But the contents of what she said? The things she talked about? The sounds she asked if they heard?

Hearing voices was never a sign of anything but Wrong.

They didn't touch her much. Now that she was older, she understood she wasn't always pleasant to look at—with blue lips and white at her fingertips and toes and ears and her eyes sunken and her veins too blue and her skin too pale and her angles too sharp and pupils too large and—just as she understood she was far less pleasant to touch. Your daughter is death, the seer had said, and Draco had cried one time when she'd put her cold arms around him, her fingers like rime on his neck. She knew now that touching her felt like being held under ice-water, and she'd learned young to be afraid of drowning.

She didn't touch people much.

Ollivander was holding her wrist, and all she could think was that the last person to touch her had been Draco just before their tenth birthday when he'd climbed into bed with her and said he'd missed her. She'd been gone; she had to be, of course, and without a wand, it had been hard to go where Regulus said and do what he wanted. Narcissa had been beside herself, and she'd piled blankets on top of her and ordered the elves to keep her supplied with hot chocolate for days. Lucius had looked her over, eyes red-rimmed, and told her that he hoped whatever made her think she needed to leave would never happen again. He'd asked her if there was anything she wanted, and it wasn't long before she was flying her new Comet 260 broomstick through the halls of the Manor while Regulus gave up stilted stories about his time as a Seeker.

But it was Draco who had snuck into her room that night and crawled into her bed. He'd admitted missing her in between snipes of her being an idiot and probably just not smart enough to find her way home after getting lost. He laid with her for fewer than five minutes, mostly draped on top of her with his arms around her as if operating as an anchor would keep her from leaving again. But then he couldn't stop shivering, and Regulus had suggested Depulso to get him away. She'd instead simply shoved Draco out of her bed with her foot and no words except for a shaky order to go have some soup.

And here Ollivander was, holding her wrist.

"This is your wand arm?"

It was as much a statement as a question. She looked down at where he was touching her. "No, sir," she managed, polite above everything. No one would give her what she wanted if she was rude about it. "I'm right-handed." She looked up at Regulus and his left hand.

Ollivander hummed loudly, turning to follow her gaze. He retrieved a tape measure from his pocket and dropped it. Instead of falling, it started taking measurements for him, starting with her right arm. "Fascinating," he said, disappearing between the shelves. Moments later, the tape measure zipped after him. He returned shortly after with a box and produced the wand for her. "Ash. Twelve inches. Unicorn horn."

"Gentle," Regulus reminded her. "It's—"

"Not a baton," she finished aloud, giving the wand a precise flick that she'd practiced for years with anything she could get her hands on.

The lamp on Ollivander's desk shuddered and shattered.

"I said gentle."

"I heard," Leo said firmly.

"No, no," Ollivander said, already collecting the wand from her and moving away. He kept his gaze on her as he did so, much like she'd seen their eagle owl do with a field mouse. He returned with a different wand. Then another. Another. Each time, he continued to stare at her.

"Has he blinked?" she asked at one point, keeping eye contact with the man as he paused over yet another box.

"No," Regulus said. "No. No. No. No."

She looked up at him as he hunched in on himself, red hands coming up to cover clawed ears. "It's okay," she said, reaching out to take the newest wand.

"Hawthorn," Ollivander said, though he seemed much more interested in what she was saying than what he was. "Dragon heartstring. Eleven and a half." Once it was in her hand, he said, "Quite flexible."

It felt Right when she fit it in her palm, and she wasn't sure how many things she'd had before that were Right. The soft spiral shouldn't have matched with the lines she knew her body cut, and the carved crook handle—engraved in a scaled pattern, overlapping, repeating—shouldn't have made sense against her cold palm. But they did. She gave the wand a flick like the others, and it was a burst of frost that erupted, the snow curling over the desk like art.

"Fascinating," Ollivander said, and all that mattered was that he didn't hold her wrist again.

She smiled and bowed her head. "Thank you. How much?"