Year Three — Chapter 8: Ties of Blood (Expanded ~1,800+ words)
Durmstrang was built for weather and war, not letters and love. The corridors were sized for armored men and bad news; doors opened like verdicts; windows let in just enough light to keep you honest. And yet, for a week straight, ravens and hawks kept finding Ivar Malfoy wherever he happened to be—at breakfast, in the dueling yard, on the parapet where the wind auditioned to be a knife. Paper kept arriving like fate had decided to learn cursive.
He didn't hide them. He never had. He read them with the same unhurried confidence he used to dismantle a hex—publicly, calmly, and with that maddening half-smile that made admirers sigh and enemies grind their teeth to dust.
"Another love letter from your weather," Jannik said, flopping onto the bench opposite Ivar and immediately helping himself to the better half of his friend's breakfast. "If it rains confessions, please aim the clouds at me."
Klara slid in beside Ivar with the clean quiet of a sword returning to its sheath. "You don't need confessions. You need discipline."
"Discipline is a confession," Jannik said solemnly. "From muscles to ambition." He pointed at the wax seals with his knife. "Greengrass. Bones. Delacour. Oh, good. The international relations module."
Ivar broke the Greengrass seal first. Daphne's hand was a study in restraint—elegant, deliberate, the ink so even it could have marched on parade.
Lord Black, she wrote, (and he could feel the provocation in the title), our mothers keep tea hot and rumors hotter. The Ministry whispers that you may be a disruption. I approve of disruptions when they topple chairs that keep liars comfortable. This contract between our families can be a leash or a bridge. I prefer bridges I help build. Do not mistake stillness for softness. When the time comes, I will act. If you intend to lead, don't treat me as cargo. Treat me as crew.
Jannik whistled. "Marry her brain."
Klara's mouth tugged, almost a smile. "Crew is a good word."
Ivar nodded once, quietly pleased. Bridges, not leashes. Crew, not cargo. He could work with that.
He cracked the Bones seal next. Susan's script had warmth even when it cut right to the point—the kind of handwriting that could write a lullaby and a warning on the same line.
Ivar—my aunt is careful, and I love her for it. But careful doesn't mean frightened. She knows who you are becoming, and she knows what that might mean for the rest of us if you come home breathing storm. People at the Ministry talk like you're a headline with legs: "Black heir." "Foreign prodigy." "Too young, too much." I don't care what they say. You asked me what I wouldn't forgive. I told you: cowardice, and cruelty without cause. You haven't shown either. Keep it that way, and I will walk beside you—no matter whose nerves it rattles. If we are bound on paper, fine. But I want to be bound by choice first.
Klara nodded as he read, as if she'd been waiting to hear someone say that in plain words. Jannik rocked back on his bench and pointed at his heart. "I felt that. Here. In my charisma gland."
The last seal was pale blue—the Delacours'—and Fleur's script was a dance that cut when it needed to.
Mon roi noir, (Ivar smirked; Jannik pretended to swoon), the British papers are learning you exist. Good. Kings who hide are actors; I prefer monarchs who cast their own plays. But hear this: when they look at you, they will also look at me. I do not kneel to prophecy, and I won't kneel to your shadow either. Dance with me or leave me to dance alone. Send me something true—not a performance, not a rumor. You.
Ivar's grin turned feral. Chaos incarnate for friends, nightmare for enemies; for equals, he offered a mirror and a dare. "Very well," he murmured, and pulled a fresh sheaf.
He wrote in three hands—his English spare and knife-clean for Daphne, his English gentled with candor for Susan, and his French allowed to swagger a little for the woman who'd asked him to send himself.
Daphne, he wrote, we agree on definitions. Stillness is what blades do before they strike. You will not be cargo aboard my ship—crew, yes; quartermaster, if you prefer; co-architect of the bridge we'll both be crossing while we build it. I won't write you poetry about politics. I will hand you nails and a hammer. When the chairs you dislike start toppling, pick who sits on the floor, and I'll respect the choice. In return, when I overreach, tap the table—once—and I'll listen. Twice, and I'll stop. A third time, and I'll forgive you after you cut me.
He sealed it in green wax and reached for the next.
Susan, his quill moved, thank you for saying the quiet parts out loud. Headlines are made of ink and appetite; I'm made of bone and intention. I'll give you three vows: I won't trade your name for conveniences; I won't use your kindness as a ladder; and I will never choose applause over the truth I have to live with in the dark. I am not gentle with enemies. I promise to be gentle with yours—until they insist on becoming mine. Tea sounds better than a Ministry briefing. Name the place, and I'll make the time.
He sanded and sealed, savoring the weight of clean promises. Then the French:
Fleur, he wrote, truth: I am a storm that learned to mind the cutlery. I laugh loud; I burn warm; I ruin enemies like weather, and I keep my own from getting wet. You asked for me, not my reputation: I like old runes, new knives, and the sound a room makes when everyone realizes the joke is a plan. I don't like cowards, damp handshakes, or men who think a contract is a leash they can yank from a chair. Send me something true in return: what do you defend with teeth? I'll show up with better teeth.
"Better teeth," Jannik repeated, delighted. "Yes. We're starting a dental practice after the revolution."
Klara slid the letters toward the waiting raven with the careful approval of a quartermaster checking ships leaving port. "Good," she said simply. It was her highest praise.
---
The letters were the polite flame. The heat of the day—its chaos—came later.
By late morning the yard was a slice of ice and glare. Fourth-years with old resentments and fifth-years with fresh ones watched Ivar run drills with the group he'd started to call "the table" as if they could understand what held the structure up by staring long enough. Mila kept pace with him—her new brace enchanted to listen better, her gloves rune-gripped—while Klara brutalized the air into respecting her, and Jannik invented a cheerfully illegal charm that turned miss-cast stunners into fizzing whirligigs that distracted opponents and amused friends.
"Stop naming your misfires," Klara told him as a ring of violet sparks drew a smiley face in the air above Anton Yaroshenko's head.
"They become better-behaved when you name them," Jannik replied, earnestly. "It's called pedagogy."
Anton slapped the smiley face away with a snarl, pride still a raw wound from being shown his own reflection in a duel he thought he'd win. He stalked toward Ivar, wand high. "Try that trick again, Malfoy," he spat. "Let's see if you can make a fool of me twice."
"I never try the same trick twice," Ivar said pleasantly. "I try the right one once."
"Kill him with kindness," Jannik stage-whispered. "Or confetti."
Klara's hand tapped Ivar's elbow. It looked like affection; it was also a code: attention on the left; he's not alone; anticipate.
Two boys flanked Anton, second-string goons with first-string shoulders. Their plan had been written by a bad teacher: hard spells first, panic later. They split, came from either side, and Ivar turned with a smile that said thank you for arriving on time to your humiliation.
He didn't duel them. Why waste technique on amateurs? He stepped inside the lead boy's reach and touched his wand—the elderwood tip a kiss that woke a rune—and the wand shrieked out a banner of silver letters: I AM NOT READY. Laughter cracked around the circle. The second boy—flushed, furious—chucked a Blasting Hex that would have shattered a knee if it hit. Ivar barely moved. His shield curved like a lazy grin, sliding the force into the snow behind him where it puffed up harmlessly and revealed a lost glove. That glove somehow became a mascot by dinner.
Anton didn't throw a spell—not yet. He threw a word: "Coward." Then he lunged like a boy who didn't know knives don't care about adjectives.
Ivar's wand flicked. No dramatic fire. No shouting. A clean bind brought Anton to his knees without forcing his nose into the snow. He stepped close enough to lend the boy his dignity back if he wanted it. "This is me, not killing you with kindness," Ivar said softly. "This is me giving you time to figure out who you are when no one is watching."
Anton flinched—not because of the hold, but because of the honesty. He struggled, then stilled. Ivar freed him with a thought.
Mila's breath fogged beside him. "You could've broken him," she said, half-question, half-accusation.
"Broken things take longer to fix," Ivar replied, and meant it. "Bent things can be bent back. Or they can learn a new shape."
Klara measured him with a sidelong look and gave one small nod. She didn't forgive softness. She respected precision.
---
They were halfway to the hall for lunch when a new raven stooped at a velocity that suggested gossip had learned to fly faster. It landed on Ivar's forearm with old-world dignity and presented a black envelope with the Black crest stamped deep enough to be a small threat.
The parchment inside wasn't anyone's hand in particular—no Narcissa melody, no Lucius geometry. It was the house, which had learned to sign its own letters since Sirius's star fell sideways and Regulus's winked out. It said three words that felt like an oath:
Build your table.
That was all. As if the house knew that simplicity is heavy when you write it in iron.
He passed it to Klara. She read it once, pressed it back into his palm, and said, "We're already doing that."
"Then we'll do more," he murmured, and turned the noon meal into architecture.
He made room at their bench like a general reassigning borders. "Mila," he called, and the second-year came with the wary gratefulness of someone who expected generosity to cost extra. He put her between Jannik's jokes and Klara's steadiness, then waved two third-years over—boys who had stopped jeering longest ago—and asked them a question about footwork that made them feel badly taught and newly important. At the far end, a first-year girl sat so straight it looked like she was balancing a book on her head inside her skull; Ivar slid his honey roll down the bench without looking and kept speaking as she made a sound like a small miracle.
"You're recruiting like winter," Jannik told him around a mouthful. "Everybody inside the door before the wind starts interrogating spines."
"Winter is honest," Ivar said. "It tells you what it is and then keeps being it."
Klara broke her bread in half and handed the larger piece to the first-year before the girl could protest. "We do the same," she added, as if it were the simplest instruction in the world.
An hour after lunch, Volkov caught them outside the ritual chamber and tapped Mila's brace with two knuckles. "This listens better," he said, which was high praise. "It will listen more by spring if you stop pretending you don't need it when pride speaks louder than pain." He fixed Ivar with a stare that had educated generations out of dramatics. "And you. Your circles are clean. Stop borrowing risk you don't need. If you die, I'll have to grade the others, and I refuse."
"I'll survive out of consideration for your workload," Ivar said gravely, and Volkov made a noise that could have been a cough and could have been laughter if laughter smoked cigars.
---
Dusk dragged its violet claws across the sky while Ivar wrote his replies to everyone else tugging at the lines of his life. He wrote Daphne again—a single page of logistics about who would sit next to whom at a hypothetical table and what a refusal would cost. He wrote Susan a paragraph titled What I Won't Do to Win Over Britain (he listed lying about what I believe, hurting children for theatre, and pretending fear is wisdom); then he hedged with a P.S.: I will terrify the guilty as an educational service. He wrote Fleur a small map of a ward he'd been composing in his head since morning, annotated in French with three jokes and one admission: I like that you say no and mean yes to the right things.
When the ink dried, he didn't reach for the staircase to the dorm. His feet took him down instead, the way river water finds the deeper channel just by being itself.
The ritual chamber took his warmth and returned its own—a cold that didn't bite so much as brace. He didn't chalk a circle. He said, in Parseltongue, the words that made the room turn its face toward him.
"Good evening."
The pressure under his boots increased, like standing on a chest that decided to inhale. You build, the stone said—not in syllables, but in a tilt of gravity that carried meaning. You bind. You break what must be broken. You are kind where it is a strategy and cruel where it is a kindness to the future.
"Accurate," Ivar said, amused. "Add this: you protect what sits at your table."
The dark approved. He felt it in the way the torchless air seemed to glow. He thought for a moment—of Daphne's blade-pure words, of Susan's principled spine, of Fleur's fire asking for fire back, of Mila's careful step turning into a precision weapon because someone finally saw it right.
"Blood binds," he said, softly. "So does choice. I will have both."
The chamber—ancient, patient, pragmatic—answered with the only benediction it ever gave him: Crown.
He laughed on his way up the stair, bright and young and impossible not to follow.
And above, in the hall where boys bragged and girls judged and the wind made everyone honest, the table he'd set made space for one more chair.
He didn't have to say who it was for. Everyone had already guessed.