Year Three — Chapter 11: Letters and Lies (~1,850 words)
Durmstrang's winter had stopped pretending to be polite. Snow fell like a sentence; the wind signed its name on every door. Ivar Malfoy woke to the sound of the lake cracking—one deep, resonant note, like the world clearing its throat before telling a difficult truth.
He liked mornings that started like that. They made him honest.
Jannik did not.
"I reject dawn," Jannik declared from under a blanket shaped suspiciously like a stolen tapestry. "Send it back. Ask for a refund."
Klara laced her boots with clockmaker precision. "Dawn is not a shop."
"Then I shall commit a crime," Jannik said tragically, and peered out. "Ugh. It's bright. I hate hope."
"Up," Ivar ordered, grinning. "We're due in the yard."
Jannik groaned his way to vertical, hair obeying no laws of man or magic. "Fifteen more minutes and I'll be taller."
"That's not how time works," Klara said.
"It does for trees," Jannik countered. "I could be a tree."
"You're barely a shrub," Ivar said cheerfully, tossing him a glove he'd clearly stolen from somewhere and improved with a rune that made it warmer than it had any right to be.
They crossed the corridor together—Klara's steady gait, Jannik's amiable chaos, Ivar's deliberate ease—and descended to the yard. The air tasted like clean metal; the snow had crusted overnight, the top layer thin and treacherous as pride.
Makarov met them with the satisfied scowl of a man who had outlived several bad ideas and intended to strangled a few more before lunch.
"Combinations," he barked, then, to Ivar: "Two lengths on staggered shields. Then run them until the wind apologizes."
They ran. They layered shields. They bled heat into the cold and took it back. Ivar corrected Mila's stance with a touch at her hip that shifted weight, not ego. Jannik broke a fall with absurd grace and sprang up laughing; Klara cut a piece of air into obedience with a motion so spare it looked like nothing at all.
By second bell the sky had decided it was a blade. Makarov dismissed them with a grunt that meant good work, don't get pleased with yourselves, and they clattered toward the hall, steam rising off them like profit.
The mail came in with the smell of cold feathers and old newsprint.
A raven landed on Ivar's forearm and bowed as if accepting a title it had already earned. It held a green-waxed letter and a cream envelope tied with red cord—one from Wiltshire, one from the Ministry.
"Place your bets," Jannik said, running the pad of his thumb along a line of steam above his stew as if testing the weather. "Greengrass invites you to outwit a tea party. Bones requests an opinion constructed in complete sentences. Lucius sends… a chessboard."
Klara cut her bread with soldierly efficiency. "Open them. The room is already trying to do it for you."
Ivar broke the green wax first. Narcissa's hand flowed across the parchment, every letter a trained animal.
My son, she wrote, the Prophet has discovered adverbs. They speak of you "increasingly" and "curiously" often. Treat this like a prelude, not a chorus. One must never dance when the orchestra is still tuning.
Your brother writes that Hogwarts tastes like myth and cinnamon, that a red-headed boy will follow him into any mischief if dared, and that Professor Snape's glare is "satisfactory and encouraging." I found this charming. Your father found it a relief. He prefers clarity to charm, but charm often reaches rooms clarity refuses to visit.
Be as you are. Choose the rooms you enter. Remember that the Black name buys attention; your choices buy loyalty. I prefer loyalty. It comes home.
Ivar smiled without meaning to, the way one smiles when a sentence lands lightly and still leaves a weight. He folded the letter and tapped his thumb against the seal once.
The cream envelope wore the shimmering watermark of the Ministry like an apology for existing. Inside: a single page, sharp-edged, Amelia Bones' hand as tidy as the closets in her head.
Mr. Malfoy, it said. Informal courtesy. The Department has decided to do nothing, mostly on purpose. (You'd be surprised how often that takes more courage than it sounds.) We are monitoring certain… currents at Hogwarts as our actual priority. Your name appears in our notes under the heading "Observe, Don't Provoke." I thought you might appreciate the honesty. If you choose to walk under our roof in the next year, I can promise two things: you will be treated as a student; you will be treated as a factor. I find those truths compatible.
P.S. If you intend to build the kind of table you implied in earlier correspondence, consider a chair for someone who doesn't belong to you. Empires are built on loyalty; republics are built on inclusion; families are built on both. —A.B.
Jannik read over his shoulder and hissed appreciatively. "I like her. She writes like a sword you could eat with."
Klara nodded. "She's telling you where she stands without showing you her feet."
"And where does she stand?" Ivar asked.
"On principle," Klara said. "Which means on rock. Good choice."
Before he could pocket the notes, another bird shouldered space: a tawny owl with expensive plumage and worse manners. It dumped an envelope sealed in black with a sigil he recognized—the Nott crest, barbed and empty.
He slit it with the point of his knife.
Lord Black, it began, choosing the line that would annoy him least, rumors travel faster than reason. We hear you command as well as you cast. When you return to Britain (as all sons must), allies will determine how loud your footsteps sound. My son has been educated in restraint and practical history. We have a certain document—a diary—old enough to matter. It may amuse you. Correspond if interested. —Lord Nott
Ivar read it twice, not because it was complicated but because it came wrapped in the kind of confidence only fools bought at full price.
Jannik made a face. "That letter smells like old furniture and bad decisions."
Klara's mouth thinned. "The Notts are loyal to whoever whispers the oldest story in a room." She tapped the paper. "He's testing whether you can be made to believe his is worth hearing."
"Then we'll test back," Ivar said lightly, and slipped the letter into his pocket as if it were mildly interesting instead of potentially poisonous.
---
He didn't write to Nott immediately. He had other letters to answer first.
To Daphne, under Greengrass green:
Bridges: two names chosen. One from your house who thinks quiet thoughts with sharp edges (choose her; I trust your taste). One from a family whose chair always ends up near doors: a Macmillan, perhaps, or a Clearwater. You see the pattern. Build with both banks. If the table groans under weight, we'll add legs, not remove people.
P.S. If you can procure records of earlier Black–Greengrass dealings without starting a duel at brunch, do. I like to know which contracts thought they were larger than the people who signed them.
To Susan, in a hand that smiled even when it didn't curve:
Your aunt's note is honest in a way most institutions avoid. I respect it. It changes none of my plans and improves their weather. You asked me once to write the thing I would not do to win Britain. Here's an addendum: I will not confuse being feared with being right. If my table becomes a throne built on silence, tip it over.
P.S. In the mirror yesterday I saw a ceiling that lies beautifully. If your school ever invites me, I promise not to point and laugh. I will learn its lie and ask what it hopes to protect.
To Fleur, in French that admitted a grin:
Question answered: Beauxbatons would impress me in three ways—how you teach grace without making it passive, how you combine art with accuracy, and how your dueling circles forgive no one. In return: a rune-weave that binds steadiness to speed without turning either into a compromise. (See margin.) Also, a personal truth: I prefer a partner who will knock the crown off my head when I forget why I'm wearing it.
He sealed them, then drafted something very different: a letter to Lord Nott that read like an invitation to a duel disguised as tea.
Lord Nott, it said, thank you for the courtesy of your interest. I prefer documents with pedigrees—and purposes. Send the diary's provenance, and the terms under which you believe it should change hands. In return, I offer information you'll find more valuable than curiosity: Britain still believes Harry Potter is the prophecy child. I agree that prophecies are ambiguous, but I keep my eyes on certainties first. If your family is looking for relevance, choose certainties. Then choose me.
—Ivar Malfoy (Black)
He sanded it, sealed it with the Black crest (because one does not send a warning written in a whisper), and set it aside. Birds traveled on their own schedules; consequences didn't.
---
Durmstrang's afternoon went about its business: drills, lectures, rivalries the color of a bruise. Ivar turned one second-year's terrified Deflection Charm into confidence by stepping into the spell and letting it splash harmlessly against a shield so thin it was almost posture. He stole a fork and returned it as a knife and told the owner, "Tools are what you make them." He accepted a honey roll from a first-year with the solemnity of a knighthood and later slipped it to Mila with equal ceremony because she fought better with sugar.
Between classes he caught Jannik sketching a rune with his foot in snow, humming.
"What's that?" Ivar asked.
"Charm to make time feel longer when we're training and shorter when we're bored," Jannik said. "I call it merciful hypocrisy."
"That's already a Ministry policy," Klara deadpanned, earning a scandalized gasp from three eavesdroppers and a grin from Ivar big enough to warm the lamplight.
News moved through the halls in microclimates. One corridor claimed he'd been invited to Hogwarts as a guest; another insisted he'd declined with such elegance the invite wrote a thank-you note. The truth—yes; soon—hid itself like a well-bred animal.
By late afternoon, the first reply arrived: Daphne.
Two names, she wrote, without preamble. Astoria is too young; you knew I wouldn't say her, and you were right. I propose Tracey Davis—she hears everything and repeats nothing; and Penelope Clearwater—Ravenclaw, older, ambitious without cruelty. She'll accept an invitation if she thinks the room has problems worth solving. I recommend giving her one.
P.S. The contracts you asked about: two are clean, one is ugly. The ugly one involved a Black cousin and a Greengrass uncle who decided to teach "obedience." The house intervened. Your house. It paid debts and collected a spine from our side as a deposit. Never underestimate tradition when it's on the right side of a knife.
Ivar read it twice, felt the quiet satisfaction of a bridge receiving its first load and not sagging. He sent a one-line reply: Invite Penelope with a problem; I'll make sure it's important. And tell Tracey I trust people who keep secrets in their pockets rather than in their mouths.
Susan's answer came with a drawing in the margin: a teacup wearing armor. I approve the addendum, she wrote. I reserve the right to yell at you if your table turns into a pulpit. Tea: Easter break, Dawlish Street. If you bring guards, I'll laugh at you and feed them anyway. If you bring honesty, I'll make cake.
He underlined cake and wrote honesty above it, arrow between.
Fleur sent back a tiny ribbon that smelled like salt and wildflowers, along with pages where she had sketched his rune and improved it in one place with infuriating elegance. I will knock your crown off only to put it back straighter, she wrote. Do not get used to easy dances. I do not do easy.
He tucked the ribbon into his book of mirror notes and told himself it was for luck. He didn't believe in luck. He believed in tools that pretended to be luck until you learned their names.
As twilight rehearsed, a nondescript owl hammered at the glass. It had Nott's posture: patience stretched over insolence.
Lord Black, the reply read, provenance attached. The diary belonged to a schoolgirl in the 1940s with a gift for writing and a ruinous trust in handsome things. It was found in a manor sale, mistaken for ephemera. As for terms: discretion, payment, influence. You have more of the third than the first two; I have curiosity. Indulge it. We can both rise.
—Nott
A second sheet followed: a maddeningly thin history, dates wrong where it mattered, too right where it looked good. It reeked of almost. It also reeked of something else: a lie that had survived long enough to become architecture.
"Thoughts?" Ivar said, passing it to Klara.
"Throw it in the lake," she said.
"Eat it," Jannik suggested. "If you die, I will acquire your wand by crying convincingly."
Mila—quiet until now—ran a finger along the paper's edge. "It doesn't want to be read," she said. "Not because of magic. Because of intention."
"Correct," Ivar said. "And intention is heavier than spells."
He drafted a second reply, all ice and velvet. Lord Nott—curious indeed. I prefer artifacts that came to me honestly or enemies I can name. Send the book if you like being useful. Keep it if you like being interesting. I don't have time for interesting.
He sent it back by the ugliest owl in the roost and went to the only room in the castle where lying felt like an insult: the ritual chamber.
"Good evening," he said, because he always did.
The stone answered with that press of attention he had come to trust. Letters, the weight implied. Strings. Knots.
"Both," Ivar agreed. "We choose what holds. We cut what strangles."
The mirror from the day before still leaned against the wall, steel plain again, water memory dry. He didn't ask it for Hogwarts tonight. He asked himself for patience.
"We won't chase prophecy," he said aloud in Parseltongue, to the room, to his bloodlines, to the part of himself that liked running at horizons. "We'll build gravity."
The chamber approved the way it always did—with silence that felt like a hand on his shoulder.
---
Chaos, then: because leadership without laughter goes stale.
He returned to the hall in time to find first-years attempting to charm spoons into chorus lines. The spoons refused to kick. Ivar corrected a wrist, whispered one rune, and a dozen spoons tap-danced on the bench to a rhythm Jannik made up on the spot. Half the hall clapped; the other half pretended not to. Klara watched with the resigned fondness of a war veteran tolerating a parade.
Anton Yaroshenko slunk in late, sat at the end of a bench like a ghost who'd lost his haunting license. Ivar caught his eye deliberately and tilted his head: come here or keep drowning; your choice. Anton came. Of course he did. Ivar slid him a bowl and didn't speak until the boy ate twice.
"Thank you," Anton muttered, mortified by gratitude.
"Don't." Ivar's tone was easy but left no room. "Eat. Train. Learn to hold yourself in ugly moments. You'll be useful to someone someday—maybe even yourself."
Anton nodded like a man discovering a yes beneath all his no.
Mila arrived with ink on her fingers and a new steadiness in her ankle. She set her parchment beside Ivar's bowl without fuss. He glanced: mirror glyphs rewritten three ways, one more elegant than his original. He circled it. Keep, he wrote, and beneath it teach tomorrow. She glowed so hard the torches looked dim.
When the hall thinned and the coals lay low like cats, a final visitor arrived: a professor Ivar didn't dislike but never fully trusted—Karkaroff's second, a man built of frost and plausible deniability. He stood beside the table as if accidentally.
"Mr. Malfoy," he said, tone affable in the way snow can be affable while covering a hole. "A word. Visitors from Britain are coming through next week. Ministry observers. It would be wise to be… ordinary."
Jannik snorted into his cup. Klara's heel clicked once against the stone: warning, punctuation, both. Ivar smiled like a boy who had never heard the word ordinary and enjoyed its joke.
"Of course," he said. "I'll be the most forgettable thing they've ever met."
The professor blinked, uncertain whether he'd been insulted. "Good," he said finally. "Do be sure."
When he left, Jannik leaned close. "Are you going to be ordinary?"
"I'm going to be so ordinary they write it down in complicated words," Ivar said. "And then I'm going to be kind to one person they weren't watching."
Klara's eyes softened in the way granite sometimes does when it remembers it used to be lava. "That's how you win," she said.
"No," Ivar said, and knocked his cup against hers lightly. "That's how we build."
---
He wrote two more letters before sleep.
To Draco: Write less about Snape's glare and more about your friends' hands—what they reach for when nervous, what they hold when certain. Our enemies already tell us who they are by shouting. Our allies whisper with their fingers.
To Narcissa: Tea was hot in your last letter. I like it that way. The Notts are fishing in a lake I intend to freeze. Thank you for the hair; the bridge holds. When the Ministry observers come, I will be an ordinary boy with excellent posture. Tell Father my posture is an investment.
He sealed them, stacked them, and at last allowed tiredness to claim him.
Night in Durmstrang is a curriculum. It teaches you what the day made of you. The lake cracked again. The wind rehearsed being cruel in spring. Far to the west, a boy with a scar fell asleep over a book and dreamed of flying. In a house that had once called itself noble and forgotten what the word cost, a man named Nott reread a polite refusal and mistook it for an invitation.
And in the north, a crown hung on a bedpost while its boy slept, and his friends—one loud, one steady, one new and careful—kept the kind of watch that governments don't understand and newspapers can't print.
Morning would bring observers and opinions and opportunities disguised as interruptions.
Ivar would bring a table.