An antique silver letter knife slid cleanly through the kraft paper envelope, and Draco set it down and pulled out the folded parchment inside.
Draco,
Glad to get your letter. No need to worry about helping right now. Ron's phone call sent Uncle Vernon into a complete rage — he's never liked wizards touching Muggle things — and now I've been told no more calls.
He's also banned Hedwig from carrying letters, so she's going mad stuck inside. I can only send this with your owl. I can't write long — if he sees a conspicuous messenger he'll board up my window again.
P.S. Sirius is planning to collect me on my birthday and bring me to Grimmauld Place. Will you come and visit?
P.P.S. The bag of syrup tarts you sent was incredible. Thank you.
Harry
Draco folded the letter and set it on the desk. He poured a measure of owl feed into the dish by the window, and Jean — his eagle owl — regarded it with composed dignity, let out a single satisfied note, and began to eat.
So Sirius hadn't gone straight to collect his godson. That was unexpected.
He thought about it. Perhaps not so unexpected, actually. Sirius Black was inheriting the full weight of the Black family estate — the vault at Gringotts, properties across the country, various investments accumulated over generations, and whatever else the Black family had tucked away in the usual places. Untangling all of that would take time. And Grimmauld Place, by any account, would require considerable work before it was fit to house a twelve-year-old.
What was the house-elf's name? Kreacher. Yes.
Jean finished her feed, hopped across the desk to peck affectionately at his fingers, then turned and glided out through the open window into the garden below.
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Draco spent time in the garden most mornings.
It connected directly to the suite kitchen — a quiet space with several old oaks and a sweep of roses, including some varieties he recognised from Malfoy Manor. The familiarity was welcome.
The suite itself was more comfortable than he had expected. Lucius and Narcissa, true to their habits, had decamped to South America for the summer and deposited their son at his grandfather's spa with the cheerful efficiency of people who had long since decided that grandparents were what summers were for. The suite next to Abraxas's had been arranged without fuss: pale yellow walls, dark oak furniture, herringbone floors, tall windows looking out over the garden. Clean lines and old money.
He had also discovered, on the desk in the study, an old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone.
He had been looking for a reason to use it.
He hadn't found one yet. But the coaster with Mrs. Granger's handwriting on it was sitting in plain sight on the corner of the desk, which was a kind of reason in itself.
He turned his attention to his correspondence.
Earlier that morning, George had written to say the experimental acne treatment — tested first on Ron, which Draco felt was both brave and appropriate — was working well. Draco picked up his quill and wrote back:
"Progress on the acne treatment is encouraging. We should now be looking seriously at the cosmetic range — hair and beauty items in particular. We need another survey first. Ask your female friends, your sisters, your mother. They'll all be customers eventually — find out what they actually need, what they'd pay for, what would make them willing to part with their Galleons without thinking too hard about it.
"The priority should be products that save time. A practical witch would rather spend an extra half hour reading than standing in front of a mirror. If we can make something that's quick, effective, and doesn't require expertise to use, that's our market."
He paused with the quill hovering, thinking without meaning to about a particular girl's hair — unruly and thick and somehow extremely vivid when tied up, but smooth and bright and entirely transformed at the Yule Ball. She had used something then, some potion or charm. He had never asked what.
She'd never done it again, as far as he knew. Which made sense — she wasn't the sort to spend an hour on her appearance when there were books to read. She'd consider it a waste.
His mind produced, without his permission, the image of her in his borrowed cap, squinting at a skateboard wheel with absolute focus.
He added a line: "If we can develop something that genuinely shortens the time involved — fast to apply, no complicated steps — we'll have something worth selling."
He signed the letter, sealed it, and wrote a second note to Ron, short and direct:
Ron,
Stop ringing Harry's house. If you want to send a letter, use a small, quiet owl at night when the Muggles won't notice.
Draco
He called Jean back from the garden. "Find Ron," he told her. "And his brothers, if they're together." Jean butted her head briefly against his wrist, then lifted off and became a pale shape against the summer sky.
"Dobby."
The crack of Apparition was immediate. Dobby materialised in the centre of the room with the barely-contained energy of someone who had been hoping to be called and had been ready for some time. His enormous eyes fixed on Draco with luminous devotion.
"My most noble and admirable — "
"Yes, thank you, Dobby. Quietly." Draco pinched the bridge of his nose.
Dobby pressed his lips together with visible effort. He could not entirely stop swaying.
Draco wrote quickly: "I'd love to visit you and Sirius. I'm sending Dobby rather than an owl so your uncle doesn't spot anything — he's a house-elf and can go invisible. If you find this letter appearing on your table, that's why. I've also sent along some cake from the kitchen."
He handed the letter to Dobby along with two wrapped packages from the kitchen table. "Invisible the whole way. No magic of your own — I mean it, Dobby, nothing that could be traced to Harry's address. Deliver the packages and the letter and come straight back."
He held Dobby's gaze until the house-elf gave a solemn nod, ears swivelling forward. Then Dobby vanished.
The room settled into welcome quiet.
Draco looked at the stack of unopened letters on the desk — Nott, Zabini, Parkinson, Flint, several investment managers, two Muggle solicitors representing property matters — and decided they could wait another hour.
He picked up the gold-wrapped gift box from the corner of the table and left the room.
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Slughorn's suite was at the end of the same corridor, behind a door with unusually fine carved moulding. Draco knocked three times. There was a pause of several seconds, then Slughorn's voice from inside, warmly indolent: "Come in."
The room was, predictably, magnificent in its excess. Soft armchairs, footstools, stacks of books, a piano that had clearly not been played recently but whose presence seemed to comfort him, boxes of crystallised fruit, cushions of various sizes deployed without apparent system, and in one corner a writing desk buried under an impressive pile of envelopes and silver photo frames — the correspondence of a man who collected people and liked them to know they were collected.
Slughorn sat in the largest armchair, apparently mid-correspondence. He set his quill down when he saw Draco and brightened considerably.
"Sit down, sit down." He had already noticed the gift box. He took it from Draco's hands with the comfortable efficiency of a man who was used to being given things and unwrapped it with no pretence of indifference. "Crystallised pineapple! Your grandfather's been at it again, the old fox. Well, I shan't complain." He ate one immediately, eyes half-closing with pleasure. "Now then. What brings you here?"
"I had some questions about potion-making, if you have time," Draco said.
"Time is the one thing I have in surplus," Slughorn said, settling back. "Ask away."
Draco asked first about dragonpox.
The change in Slughorn was immediate. The warmth left his face as though it had been Vanished. He set down the crystallised pineapple with some care. "Dragonpox," he said, in the tone of a man naming something he does not enjoy naming. "Child, that is not a subject for casual inquiry. I've lost friends to that disease — several, over the years. Even Gunhilda of Gorsemoor's treatment is a partial measure at best. As for improvement—" He shook his head. "I've wasted time trying. It cannot be done at our current level of knowledge. Don't let it draw you in."
He regarded Draco with genuine sternness. "You're young. Don't spend your youth on an unsolvable problem. Pick something achievable."
"Of course," Draco said easily. "I was only asking out of curiosity. It's the Hogwarts problems I'm really concerned with."
Slughorn's expression recovered. "That's more sensible. Go on, then."
Draco asked about the Shrinking Solution, a Skele-Gro variant, and a Strengthening Solution — specifically about reducing the side effects of each. Slughorn answered with evident relish, warming to the subject within a few sentences. This, clearly, was where he was happiest.
"That's a sharp way of approaching it," Slughorn said, at one point. "Most students only ask whether the potion works. Very few think to ask what it costs the patient."
"Professor Snape refined the Mandrake Restorative Draught earlier this year," Draco said. "He adjusted it so patients recovered without the usual cold and stiffness. I found it instructive."
"Severus has always had an instinct for that kind of thing," Slughorn said, with the fondness of a teacher who knows which students vindicated his attention. "Talented minds ask the questions no one thought to ask. That's where excellence begins."
Draco let a beat pass, then said, with the careful lightness of someone raising something as an afterthought: "There's one other matter, if I may. I have a friend who's interested in potions — she happens to be in Bath at the moment. Would you be willing to see her as well?"
A flicker of hesitation crossed Slughorn's face.
"She's exceptional," Draco added. "In second year, she brewed Polyjuice Potion on her own. Successfully."
Slughorn's expression went through several rapid changes. "Polyjuice Potion? That's a fifth-year standard at minimum. You're saying a second-year—"
"Brewed it. Yes. Without assistance."
There was a silence. Then Slughorn leaned forward slightly, the look of a man who has just spotted something valuable. "I would be very glad to meet her," he said, with a sincerity that Draco found entirely legible. "Please, send her along whenever suits."
"I'll tell her today," Draco said, rising. "Thank you."
He walked back down the corridor at an unhurried pace, thinking.
Slughorn was simple to read once you understood his logic. He hoarded talent the way other men hoarded gold — not out of malice, but out of a genuine, rather touching conviction that exceptional people were the world's most interesting resource. His collection of students was not cynical; he actually liked them, and he would not have been nearly as easy to handle if he hadn't.
His one fixed principle was self-preservation. In Draco's previous life, when the Malfoy name had meant Azkaban and Dark Marks, Slughorn had not looked at Draco once. That had not been cruelty — it had been Slughorn operating by his own consistent rules, the same rules that had led him to side with Dumbledore during the war despite everything it cost him. He had stayed at Hogwarts. He had duelled former students who'd become Death Eaters. He had not done it gracefully — he had done it late and reluctantly — but he had done it.
Not all Slytherins chose the Dark Lord. That was worth remembering.
And Slughorn's particular kind of Slytherin wisdom — the long calculation, the identification of the winning side, the refusal to let belief become liability — was worth studying closely.
Draco pushed open the door to his suite, crossed to the study, and found the coaster on the corner of the desk exactly where he'd left it.
He picked up the telephone receiver and, with the careful deliberateness of someone doing something for the first time, began to dial.