Living simultaneously in two places was, as it turned out, the absolute pinnacle of luxury.
For Orion, staying at Malfoy Manor while the rest of the student body shivered in the draughty corridors of Hogwarts was a revelation in privacy. The East Wing was quiet, warm, and entirely his own.
The operational cycle ran with the smooth, rhythmic precision of clockwork. Every evening at precisely ten o'clock, the mahogany door of the Vanishing Cabinet in his bedroom would hum with faint azure light, swinging open to reveal his Reflection Clone. They would initiate a seamless memory synchronization, downloading the day's lectures, the latest castle rumors, and whatever progress had been made in the Room of Hidden Things. The clone would then materialize and return back to Hogwarts the next morning.
Orion had toyed with the idea of periodically swapping places with his duplicate just for a change of pace, but for now, he was content to let his double shoulder the mundane burdens of being a third-year student.
Kreacher handled his meals with fanatical devotion, popping into the bedroom with silver trays laden with roast duck, warm pastries, and rich soups, bowing until his nose grazed the Persian rug before vanishing without a sound.
Avoiding Lucius proved laughably easy. The Patriarch of the House of Malfoy was practically living in his Ministry office, drowning in emergency Wizengamot sessions and backroom political damage control following the Hogsmeade disaster. He rarely returned to Wiltshire before midnight, and when he did, he confined himself strictly to his study.
Narcissa, however, was a vastly different calculation.
Orion had initially considered maintaining total radio silence, hiding his presence in his room to avoid complicating matters. But by Wednesday afternoon, after three days of pacing his quarters, he decided that sneaking around his own home was entirely beneath his dignity.
Fuck it, Orion reasoned, smoothing the front of his lounge robes. She is my mother. And she is far too perceptive to remain blind to her own house for long anyway.
He found Narcissa in the sunlit glass conservatory, delicately pruning a winter orchid with a pair of silver shears. She wore a soft, pale lavender gown, looking graceful, though a faint melancholy lingered around her eyes.
"I left the Manor," a smooth, familiar voice drawled from the doorway. "And yet, I also stayed at the Manor. A philosophical conundrum, wouldn't you say, Mother?"
Narcissa froze. The silver shears slipped from her fingers, clattering sharply against the stone potting bench.
She spun around, her blue eyes widening in absolute, disbelieving shock as she took in the sight of her thirteen-year-old son leaning casually against the doorframe, hands clasped behind his back, looking entirely unbothered.
"Orion?!" Narcissa gasped, taking a faltering step forward. She looked wildly around the conservatory, then back to him. "What... how are you here?! Did the Headmaster send you home? Did something happen to Draco?!"
Orion laughed, a quiet, reassuring sound, stepping into the warm glass room.
"Draco is perfectly fine, Mother. He is currently in the Great Hall, complaining about the weather and eating treacle tart," Orion explained softly.
He didn't spin an elaborate web of lies. He simply walked with her back to his bedroom and showed her the tall, gleaming mahogany cabinet standing in the corner.
"A Vanishing Cabinet," Orion revealed, running a hand over the polished wood. "Linked directly to its twin, which currently rests inside my expanded trunk in the Slytherin dormitory."
Narcissa stared at the runic carvings lining the interior, her breath catching as the sheer, staggering magnitude of the magical feat clicked in her mind.
"You created a spatial bridge," Narcissa whispered, looking at him with a mixture of awe and profound maternal terror. "You bypassed the Hogwarts wards..."
"The wards are built to detect foreign, hostile entities crossing the external perimeter, Mother," Orion explained, adopting his calm, instructional tone. "A synchronized sympathetic loop operates on localized spatial displacement. The wards simply register the arrival as an internal shift of mass."
He turned to look at her, delivering the emotional hook that he knew would resonate straight to the core of her Black heritage.
"I built it because Hogwarts is not as safe as the Headmaster claims it to be. We have had Trolls, possessed teachers, Basilisks, rogue Dementors, and now escaped Death Eaters blowing up the neighboring village in broad daylight. If a true crisis occurs, the Floo network can be severed, and the gates can be sealed. I wanted an emergency extraction route. A way to drag Draco out of that castle and bring him home without alerting anyone."
Narcissa's expression softened completely, tears shimmering in her eyes. The concept of an escape hatch for her children bypassed all logic, striking directly at her fierce, protective instincts.
"It is brilliant," Narcissa breathed, stepping forward and pulling him into a tight, desperate embrace. "Utterly brilliant, Orion."
She pulled back, her face turning deadly serious.
"You must keep this an absolute secret from your father," Narcissa commanded, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Lucius would attempt to weaponize it for political leverage with Fudge. And... and your godmother..." She shuddered slightly. "...Bellatrix would use it to launch an assault on the castle. Neither of them can ever know this exists."
"I have no intention of telling them, Mother," Orion promised.
Narcissa smiled, gently brushing her fingers against his cheek. "And... selfishly... it means I do not have to be alone in this massive, silent house. You can visit me occasionally when your father is away."
Orion offered a slow, brilliant, entirely charming smile.
"You have the equation backwards, Mother," Orion replied softly. "It means I can stay here, in comfort, and merely visit the school occasionally when an exam requires my physical presence. Your company is far more important to me than listening to Professor Binns drone on about Goblin rebellions."
Narcissa let out a bright, genuine laugh—the first real laughter he had heard from her since the summer—and kissed his forehead.
From that moment on, the dynamic in the Manor shifted entirely.
Narcissa became his inside operative. She monitored the Floo network, tracked Lucius's erratic Ministry schedule, and provided Orion with real-time updates on when the Patriarch was arriving or departing. With his mother running interference, Orion was granted total, uninhibited freedom of the entire estate.
He could use the ancestral dueling room, walk the snow-dusted grounds, or study in the grand library without the slightest fear of discovery.
It provided the perfect operational base.
He spent his mornings monitoring floo, waiting for Bellatrix to send word regarding the Dark Lord's whereabouts. He spent his afternoons refining the complex logistics of the Grand Theft Gringotts blueprint.
And, most importantly, it gave him the isolated, uninterrupted peace required to tackle the greatest treasure in his possession.
On Thursday night, locked securely within his bedroom while snow battered the windowpanes, Orion sat cross-legged on the floor.
"Inventory," he whispered.
The stasis grid opened. He reached his hand into the golden-bordered slot that had remained untouched since the end of his first year.
The Grimoire of Old Magick.
Authored by Merlin Ambrosius himself.
The heavy, ancient tome materialized in his lap. It was bound in dark, weathered dragon-leather that felt warm to the touch, humming with a deep, primordial resonance that made the fine hairs on his arms stand straight up.
When he had first unlocked the grimoire as an eleven-year-old, he had been forced to leave it in the void. His magical core had been far too immature, his knowledge base far too rudimentary; attempting to channel the raw, unshaped concepts of pre-wand magic would have fractured his conduits or driven him completely insane.
Now, however, Orion mused, running his fingers over the faded silver runes on the cover, the board has changed.
He had achieved his Second Magical Maturation. His core had deepened into a hardened, vast reservoir of power. His theoretical understanding was operating at a near-O.W.L. level thanks to the tireless reading and training of his clone. And his mind was fortified by Level 2 Mind Arts and Parallel Processing.
He was biologically, magically, and cognitively equipped to handle the truth.
"Let's see," Orion murmured, taking a slow, deep breath. "What the greatest wizard in history actually had to say about the universe."
He opened the grimoire.
A wave of ancient, unfiltered magical energy washed over the room, and Orion began to read.