Surfeit Of Curses

Once Draco made it back to his room, and devoured the half dozen Cauldron Cakes hidden under the false bottomed desk drawer in a Conservatore spell (he had long suspected that his father knew that he hid food in that drawer in case he was ordered not to leave his room, since the desk had been Lucius' long ago, but he'd never been called on the carpet for it), he was too keyed up to fall asleep easily. The warm milk that a servant left in his room every night, in a glass charmed to keep it warm, helped a little, but he wasn't really drowsy just yet.

It would be a good idea to at least go through the motions of getting ready for bed, and soon, he should pretend to be asleep, in case Lucius or one of his retainers checked to make sure he was following his father's orders. It wasn't as if there were many amusements left in his room anyway, since the piano and most of the books had been taken away earlier that day, and he didn't feel up to starting schoolwork just yet.

But first, he had something more important to do.

Draco had two objectives the next day - first, he had to rescue Rita from Hermione Granger, and second, he had to do it with as little magic as possible, because of Hogwarts' ridiculous rule about not using magic during school breaks. Since he was going to be away from the Manor, where his use of magic couldn't be detected by the Ministry, he couldn't just walk up to Hermione, Stupefy her, grab Rita and fly off to his father's office at the Daily Prophet.

But he could use his broomstick to fly to Hermione's house, and he could use magic if he kept it confined to the Manor. But first, he'd have to use the Daily Prophet's subscription department to learn where Hermione lived.

Hermione had a subscription to the paper. Draco knew that, because he'd seen the official Prophet Delivery Owls (All The News That's Fit To Fly™) dropping her paper at the Gryffendor table during the school year, and he assumed that she spent her summers in the Muggle world. Therefore, under Ministry of Magic regulations, during school breaks, her newspapers were delivered a day late, through the Muggle post, which picked up all the Magic mail from Diagon Alley businesses through a mail drop at the Leaky Cauldron, which meant that her address was in one of his father's subscription department's files, which he could poke through in the morning.

After he got that information, he could put part one of his plan into action.

He sat at his desk, focused on sketching out a schedule for the next day, when his door opened. An unknown face peeked in, young, with dark eyes and hair, very tan skin and a very slight build, and asked, "Draco? Do you have a minute? Your father said you'd probably be asleep - I'm glad I didn't wake you."

Draco rested his quill against his blotting pad and looked up, puzzled. Did Lucius have houseguests? Were relatives in town that his father hadn't told him about? "Who are you? And what are you doing in my room?" Draco asked suspiciously.

"May I come in?" Draco nodded, and waved his wand at the door, swinging it all the way open. He didn't get up from his desk chair, but turned impatiently to face the stranger, who stood, somewhat awkwardly, near Draco's desk. "I'm Dylan Vacchs, your father has brought me here for the next few weeks as your Quidditch teacher. I would've been here earlier, but," he grinned apologetically, "I had some broomstick problems and spent the whole afternoon in Diagon Alley waiting for repairs."

Draco felt his head start to ache. This Vacchs was certainly a good Seeker, had a reputation as a pretty good coach as well, but even though Draco loved playing Quidditch at school, both on the house team and in pickup games, usually in mixed teams with some Ravenclaws, training during the summers was very different. Lucius set up comprehensive training schedules with the coaches, and never hesitated to change the schedule if he felt that Draco wasn't improving enough, or sweating enough, or eating the wrong things, or, occasionally, having too much fun. He put his head into his hands and said, "My mother said you'd be training me this summer." He sighed without looking up. "Do you want me to change so we can start now? I know how to lumos the whole field, in case it takes me eighteen hours to find the Snitch. Or do you prefer to wait until Lucius gives you a ten foot long list of all the flaws you're supposed to work out of me this summer?"

Dylan's confused expression matched his words. "No way - I have a little unpacking to do, then your mother is supposed to give me a tour of the house." He didn't hear Draco's choked laugh at that plan. "I actually stopped by to say that your father cancelled practice tomorrow - said he had some project for you to finish first - so our six a.m. session is off.

Amazing. That's a first - finding Rita must be important enough that he'd let me off a scheduled session. "Is that what this Alarm Note is for?" Draco had picked the piece of ticking parchment off his dresser when he'd arrived back upstairs from after the Talk, which had been set for what he considered an obscenely early hour and what, he knew, Lucius considered the best time of the day for athletic activity.

Dylan nodded. "I'm going to reset it, then," Draco finished, pointing his wand at the parchment, and said "Septemus" with a small smile. "Much better."

"I'm not an early bird myself," Dylan added, "but with what your father is paying..." His voice trailed off.

Obviously. Why else would a top flight player spend the summer at this job, if not for the Galleons, the swimming pool, the access to the prototype brooms from the Quidditch magazine offices, and the chance to spend oh so much time with little me? Just another mercenary jerk, no different from last summer, or the summer before.

"Anyhow, do you want to go downstairs for a bit? You can tell me about the matches and practices you've been doing this past year," Dylan suggested, "and maybe a little about what it's like to play against Harry Potter."

"Oh," Draco said coldly. "Him." Why did every Quidditch coach want to talk about Potter? It was bad enough that he'd never beaten him in an actual match, did he really need to spend all summer analyzing his playing techniques in a perpetually useless attempt to find holes in his style. Draco thought that the reason he had a new coach every summer was because none of them had actually shown him something he could use to beat Potter, even though he had an otherwise enviable 3-1 win record each year. And maybe Vacchs' suggestion that he should leave his room was a trap, planted by Lucius, to see if Draco would violate his order to stay up in his own room. "Sorry, I don't think tonight is a good time," his voice devoid of the welcoming note he'd had in speaking to Vacchs before. "My father suggested that I call it an early evening, as I am sure he told you."

"You're the boss. Or, actually, your father is," Dylan corrected himself, "and if he said that he wants you to..."

"He did, and I will." Draco turned his back on the coach, picked up his quill, and returned to his parchment. He heard Vacch's footsteps move back towards the door, and spoke without turning, "I suppose I'm supposed to report to you when I get back tomorrow?"

"Your father told me that he expects you at the Changing House at five thirty tomorrow night," Dylan said quickly, as if rushing himself out of the room. "See you then."

Draco shut the door with his wand, focusing on his schedule. If Lucius expected him to be at practice tomorrow evening, then he had less time than he thought to complete what he was now thinking of as That Bug Project. He tapped the Alarm Note again, murmured Sextimus Media, and left his desk to get ready for bed.

Draco realized that he was looking forward to sleep. It had been a very long day, and the effect of the curses, the exhaustion and the pile of Cauldron Cakes was starting to hit him. Now that he'd showered, changed into dark grey flannel pyjamas, and finished the last cookie from that afternoon, his eyes and limbs felt so heavy that all he wanted to do was collapse into his bed. But he needed to do one last thing before sleep could claim him. He threw himself onto the floor and rolled under the massive bedframe, searching with his hands. There! Squeezed between the frame's slats was a possession that he'd never dared bring to school with him, which his father would certainly order him to destroy by fire if he ever found it. "Peppy," he sighed, pulling the stuffed Koala out as he spun back into the room. He'd worked a charm on Peppy during his first Christmas break at the Manor, making it impossible to locate the toy with magic, always hid him first thing in the morning, and only brought him out on the nights when he'd already had a Talk with Lucius. If his father was running late from the office, and there was a chance that Draco would be called downstairs after he'd gone to bed, Peppy stayed tucked away.

Draco climbed into bed, completely exhausted, wrapped his arms around the stuffed animal, sneezed from the dust, and fell asleep before finishing a thought about how incompetent the remaining House Elves had to be if they couldn't keep his room as dust free as...

A woman with red hair, leaning over him, whispering...what was she saying? Then kissing him. And again, she leaned down to him, whispered something, and he felt a kiss on his forehead. What was she saying? He could only catch a few words, "care," focus," "love," "fly," "buzz." Buzz? What was that buzzing?

He was so warm, his face pressed against the tickling fur of his bear [Author Note: yes, I know it's a marsupial, but tell me that if you were half asleep, you wouldn't think of it as a bear?] and it was so easy to ignore the buzzing from his Alarm Note. But the stupid thing was set to get louder every thirty seconds, and within a minute, it was so loud that he had to tumble out of his bed, and tap it with his wand to make it shut up. A quick tuck of Peppy back under the bed, and a speedy change of clothing into robes that were almost identical to the ones the Prophet's junior reporters wore, with extra pockets for things like Quote Quills, Parchment Notebooks with the paper's seal and motto on the front, and he was ready to head downstairs. He tucked his schedule into one of the pockets, and decided that before he went to Hermione's house, he'd change into some inconspicuous Muggle clothing.

Draco went downstairs hoping that his father had already left, and his mother was sleeping late, and when he realized that his wishes were granted, thought that it might not be a bad day after all. A pitcher of fresh orange juice was sitting on the breakfast room table - the oranges were Transported directly to the Manor before dawn each day from a wizarding orchard in Spain - so Draco poured a large glass, finished it in one gulp, and refilled it, to drink en route to London. A few pastries into his pocket would be his in-flight snack.

The golden orb was rising into the sky as he mounted his broom and took off on the familiar route to Prophet headquarters in London. As long as he stayed in the general path his grandfather had mapped out a century earlier between the Manor and the paper, he couldn't be spotted by Muggles, although he occasionally saw other wizards on his journey, especially when the moors gave way to small towns, then the outskirts of England's largest city. His journey took him over rivers and ponds that seemed to be on fire as they reflected the glow of the rising sun, and he was glad that he'd brought one of his dozens of pairs of sunglasses with him, since the glare from above and below was enough to blind his light eyes. A small storm to the west cast a rainbow over some fields, and he longed to leave the path - nothing was more fun than chasing rainbows, even if the gold at their ends was only Lepreuchan gold, which disappeared within a few hours.

Within ninety minutes of leaving the manor, Draco was zooming over London's buildings, occasionally glancing down at the little red busses, the bumbling Muggles wandering the streets, sometimes vanishing, for no apparent reason, underground, the wide, green parks just crying out for Pegasus Polo matches, and the horrible pigeons that occasionally fluttered into his flight path. "Stupid flying rats!" he yelled, distracted from his thoughts as his broomstick walloped one in its fat, gray chest. "Out of my way - I'm on a mission!"

As he flew, he'd been struggling to remember the dream he'd had the night before. All he could recall anymore was the memory of a woman's red hair, and that she'd been whispering to him - but he had no recollection of anything she'd said. He had the feeling that he'd had the same dream before, and that what she was saying was somehow important, but why? And could he spend any more time thinking about it, with the wide, yellow, Daily Prophet building sitting on the river that wound through the Alley. Owls flew in and out of all the open windows, some delivering the paper, others bringing stories in from nearby reporters (the foreign correspondents filed their articles via the Floo Network, or, if they were too far from a fireplace, by brightly colored and exotic birds), and dozens of owls brought advertisements from the paper's advertisers. When he was younger, Draco had loved hanging out in those offices, watching the creation of ads designed to catch the reader's attention. Some sang, others flashed in lights and colors, but none of that could compare to an October day when readers rested their teacups on the front section, and caused kitchens around the United Kingdom to explode in Wet Start Filibuster Fireworks. The Filibusters' insurance company had paid thousands of Galleons to those wizards and witches who joined a class action suit against the Filibusters and the Malfoys, but the paper hadn't been found liable at all, and Lucius had managed to add the Filibuster company to his growing holdings for less money than the insurance settlement had been.

But he had no time to dawdle in the interesting offices today. His first stop was Lucius' own office, because it was always safer to let his father know when he was accessing newspaper offices for personal business, so he flew straight to the Entrance Balcony on the eighth floor, dismounted, left the broom in the rack, and strolled through the door to greet his father's secretary.

"Draco! Are you home for the summer already?" Mrs. Timoner stepped away from her desk, with its rack of owls, neat piles of parchment, and the five foot long, leatherbound book that held Lucius Malfoy's appointments and meetings, to greet her boss's son with a hug. A tiny woman with dark grey hair, she had worked for the paper for over seventy years, could probably edit a story faster than the teams downstairs, and seemed to know every single newsworthy event that had happened in the twentieth century. Plus, she kept sherbet lemons in a never-emptying jar on her desk.

Draco nodded, grinned at her, lunging around the embrace to score one of the sweets, the same routine he'd had since he had first come to the office, brought in by Lucius when he was three years old, and trained to walk up to people and ask, "Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?"

"Four down, three to go," he replied, still with the grin, "and then I suppose I'll be here a lot more often, but with much less time to pop up here in search of sweets."

Mrs. Timoner gestured for him to lean down, so she could whisper to him, "I know he doesn't say it to you, but he's pleased with how you're doing in school." Draco stiffened. Lucius might say those kinds of things publicly, but Draco knew that was only to keep the family reputation up. Anything other than number one is just a digit, not worth counting. He tried to force the smile back; it wouldn't do to have Mrs. Timoner asking questions, especially since he didn't know exactly what Lucius had told her, and if his answers differed from whatever Lucius had said...He straightened up and asked if his father would have a moment to spare for him, in the near future.

The schedule book fluttered itself open to the correct day, and the schedule, in its multitude of colors, each coded to a different department or project, began announcing themselves, one by one. The secretary considered the day, and said, "he has a few minutes between editorial sessions in about fifteen minutes. Sit down, have some pumpkin juice," a full glass sailed toward the low table by the reception area couch, "and you can go in then."

Draco considered the options. He could try to visit the subscription department now, and explain to Lucius after, or wait the few minutes, and get the official okay before riffling through files. Or he could wander over to the center of the floor and look down through the atrium and watch the newsroom, five floors down, which would mean that he didn't have to make conversation. "I'm going to go watch what's going on downstairs, if you don't mind. Will you let me know when his door opens?"

"Of course, honey. Here, take this." Mrs. Timoner handed him a tiny glass owl. "It'll make a little hooting noise so I can signal you. Your father thinks they're better than yelling - you know how he hates to raise his voice."

No, I don't know that. I always thought that spending time with me was his favorite type of vocal chord exercise. Draco merely shrugged, picked up his juice, and moved to look down on the atrium.

For some strange reason, his father, despite all his anti-Muggle statements, had some affinity for Muggle architecture, and in the 1970's, had sent a team of Design Wizards to New York City, so they could study the Guggenheim Museum, and create a wizarding version as the Daily Prophet headquarters. The odd, round building, which gleamed white inside and outside, featured offices along the outside walls, and let the writers, editors and administrative staff look into the main newsroom at their leisure. It also meant that there were no stairs. Lucius Malfoy's office was at the top, with Mrs. Timoner just outside his door, and as the hall's floor curved and sloped downward, the other offices covered the right hand side. Giant abstract mobiles floated in the air, no strings or wires attaching them to the roof or the inside walls, and tiny jaybirds flew between the floors, carrying messages, and articles and other publishing paraphernalia from one floor to the other. Owls were definitely too large for that job.

He watched the staffers scurry around almost a hundred feet below, parchment nearly flying through typewriters that were enchanted to take dictation from the witches and wizards who sat beside them, composing stories from glances at the tiny notebooks of parchment that each of them carried, identical to the pad in Draco's own pocket. As each reporter finished a story, a wave of a wand sent it into the appropriate editor's IN box, for revisions from bright purple quills. They rhythm of the motions was so familiar to Draco, and somehow comforting to watch. Things had been very strange at school over the past few weeks, and the day he'd spent back with his parents was always as jarring to his senses as it always was, as he tried to adjust from being the outgoing, sarcastic brat his parents expected him to be at Hogwarts to the dutiful, organized, quiet bookworm they expected him to be at Malfoy Manor. But watching the daily task of creating a newspaper that a million wizards would read was both stimulating and soothing.

A red-haired witch waved at him from one floor down. He waved back, not really recognizing her, and for some reason, she yelled up at him, "You're Draco Malfoy, aren't you?"

He yelled back, "Of course, why do you want to know?" She gestured to him that he should wait a moment, popped into an office, and back out again, her arms full of papers, then bounced up the slope to him.

"Hi. My name's Cassandra," she said in an American accent. "I'm here on a journalism internship for the summer, and my editor thinks you might be the right person to help me out with a story."

Draco bit his lip and wondered at her question. Usually, Lucius liked him to stay out of the papers, and had only allowed him to talk with Rita that past year on background, and only approved of the quotations regarding the Hippogryff incident because he had been directly involved, and a lot of people already knew it. "Was it cleared with the publisher first?"

"Huh? Oh, you mean with your father. Um, no, it's a pretty new assignment, about the next generation in various prominent wizarding families, and I'm not supposed to even start on it until I finish my story on the new leather robes that Cuoio del Wizard is selling for the Fall season, so, what do you think?"

Now it was his turn to say, "Um." Should I let this girl put me into an article? Can I trust her not to misquote me, like Rita did? "If you get my father's assent, I can't really say no, can I?" And if you don't get his say-so, I'll be dead in a moat if I even talk to you without making it off the record, so... "But until you do, I can't say anything to you that might end up on the record."

Cassandra gave him a big smile and thanked him before turning around to head back down the ramp. But before she left, she spun back around and said, "Something about you makes me think you need a very good schnoogle. Maybe next time we meet!"

Draco was startled at her suggestion but thought that since the likelihood of his father allowing him to participate in that kind of a piece was pretty small, he wouldn't be speaking with her at length again. But it wouldn't do to be rude to any of the writers, so he just said, "Fine. See you later," as she left, murmuring, "Draco Malfoy, scion of one of the oldest wizarding families in Britain, arrives for the interview casually dressed in navy and khaki Kenneth Troll wizarding robes..." He couldn't help but laugh at this as she strolled away, leaving Draco alone again, wondering how much longer his father was going to be. If I don't get started soon, it'll be impossible for me to get everything done! He had pulled some papers and a quill out of one of his pockets, and leaned on the ledge, editing his carefully timed schedule, then jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"What an unusual surprise, Draco," Lucius Malfoy drawled. He was flanked by two of his senior editors, who both looked very serious and very nervous. "You remember Mr. McKenna, editorial page editor and Mr. Beck, from the business section? If I'd known you were out here, I would've asked you to sit in on our little meeting."

Draco had turned around and was facing his father, his back pressed against the stone wall that separated the hallway from the atrium. He hesitated before replying, "I didn't want to bother you. Mrs. Timoner suggested that I wait."

"Don't blame other people for your own decisions," Lucius snapped, still squeezing Draco's shoulder. "It's an attitude that will get you into trouble again some day. What have I told you about coming to the office?"

It was horrible being corrected like this in public. The way the editors were just standing there, watching their employer, reminded Draco of the way that Crabbe and Goyle would just watch at school as he criticized or talked and complained about other students and teachers, especially, at least publicly, Professor Dumbledore or Harry Potter and his sidekicks, but Crabbe and Goyle were just dumb students. These were grown men, smart, strong writers, powerful wizards, and still, beside Lucius Malfoy, they seemed nothing but silent flunkies, unable to utter a word without his assent. At home, Draco knew Lucius was the king of the castle, and everyone and everything - even Draco - was there because Lucius allowed them to be. To see this kind of power exhibited in public was another reminder that behaving in a way that displeased Lucius in any moderate or significant way could lead to Lucius following through on one of the many threats he'd made to Draco over the years.

And it always reinforced Draco's determination to not give Lucius a chance to really make good on any of those threats.

Lucius still waited for Draco's answer, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes almost glaring, but in a way that the average observer wouldn't necessarily notice. But Draco had seen that look hundreds of times before, and knew that his answer, even to such an insignificant question, needed to be correct. He tried to put some levity in his voice as he said, "That I should always tell you when I come by, and I shouldn't take advantage of the paper's resources unless there's no other option in the wizarding world, or at least in England."

Even this word-perfect repetition of one of Lucius' rules didn't serve to relax his father. He merely asked, "So, son, why are you here, instead of enjoying your school holidays?"

Draco didn't know how much he could say in front of the editors, who were still standing beside Lucius, silently watching the Malfoys' conversation, and tried to tell his father without words or obvious gestures, that it was something that might need to be private. Mr. Beck shifted slightly, saying, "Mr. Malfoy, sir, I really should get back downstairs. The Ministry of Magic's agriculture department is releasing futures numbers on Freeze-Charm Concentrated Orange Juice, and I need to make some assignments about it. May I..."

With a dismissive gesture, Lucius said, "We can finish this later. McKenna, I want the flow chart proposal for the editorial and op-ed plan on my desk by two this afternoon, and I want to see your draft of the one we'll run on Monday by four. You're both dismissed. Draco, in my office."

Lucius had a way of closing a door so it didn't make a slamming sound, but contained all the anger that would go into making a regular door become unhinged. "Don't sit," he said in a low voice to Draco, as he walked past his son to the chair in front of the ten foot tall plate glass window, with its view of wizarding London beyond. "Just explain why, after I told you yesterday that I was sending you to France to keep you away from everything that will be happening here this summer, you took it upon yourself to decide to play me a visit here, in the middle of everything? I have more important things to do than be bothered with looking after you. And did you skip Quidditch practice to come here? What the hell were you thinking?"

Draco's eyes were wide. "I didn't think..."

"And that's the second day in a row that we've had such a brilliant explanation of young Mr. Malfoy's decisionmaking process. Bravo," he added, applauding sarcastically. "You are an idiotic little child, and you have no idea what kinds of problems you are causing. Go home, Draco." He sounded completely exasperated. "I don't have any time for you now, and I don't even care..."

"But, father, you told me to go find Rita Skeeter today. That's why I came here. I need to get Hermione Granger's Muggle address from the subscription department because I have no idea where she lives, and without it I can't go to her house and then I can't rescue Rita like I promised last night." Stop whining, he thought to himself. Sound organized. "I made a schedule, see?" He opened his notebook and leaned towards Lucius, "Get address, go to house, return to paper with reporter, all with time estimates, and flying plans and everything."

A look of recognition had appeared on Lucius' face. "I did forget that plan for today." He didn't apologize, though. He never did. "Fine, go down to the mailing office, get what you need, and get going. When you have Rita, don't bother to come back here yourself - just drop her off with Mrs. Timoner, so I can debrief her, and figure out what charges we can bring that mudblood up on."

He looked back down at the papers on his desk; Draco fled from the office before his father could change his mind, and dashed the four levels down. The Daily Prophet subscription office was a wild room, filled with filing cabinets with their drawers half out, little white and green cards of parchment covering every surface, bottles of ink that had been enchanted not to spill, and one wizard, managing the multitude of records.

But the Subscriptions Supervisor was asleep, her head on a table, and Draco thought it was better to be quiet and find what he needed without waking her. Like Mrs. Timoner, the Supervisor (nobody knew her real name) had been here since the days when his grandfather had sat in the office his father now occupied, and instead of editorials encouraging Minister Fudge's policies, there had been news articles promoting versions of Muggle Cooperation Acts which weren't so different from the ones his father always criticized Ron Weasley's father for proposing and enforcing. The Supervisor had known his grandfather, and lots of other members of his family too, and his grandmother had once told Draco that he should ask her to tell him some stories about what being at the paper was like back then, but he never had, possibly because she always seemed uncomfortable around him, almost as if he shouldn't be wherever he was.

Even though it was unlikely that the Ministry would be able to tell whether he'd done magic, Draco didn't want to use his wand. As he'd learned when going through files to help his mother with the family Christmas card list a few years ago (over 1700 wizards were treated to a picture of Draco, Narcissa and Lucius on a flying carpet over Morocco, where the photo Draco kept trying to look over the side and Lucius kept pulling him back into the center of the shot), there were wards to prevent outsiders from rummaging through the subscription cards and stealing the Daily Prophet mailing list, but a wizard could flip through the cards by hand, if he knew where to look.

Hopefully, the letters are coded the same way as they were last time, every letter as its opposite. Which would mean that "G" would be in the file marked "T", which should be over here, between the "C" and "H" files...Cerebrus! There were at least 800 cards in the "G" file, but working from the logic that the letters went backwards in the filing system, those whose names began "Ga" should be in the back. After almost seven minutes of searching, Draco found a card (green for a Muggle subscription) with Hermione's name and address on it. He pulled it out, copied its information into his handy notebook and replaced the card before shoving the drawer closed, and escaping, all without waking the Supervisor.

Things were going well. As it turned out, Hermione's summer subscription address was in a town only twenty minutes by broom from Malfoy Manor. Draco managed to get his broom off his father's reception balcony and take off without being waylaid by any cub reporters, earnest secretaries or preoccupied newspaper publishers, and enjoyed the flight back home, although he was flying a lot faster than he had that morning, trying to make up for the time he'd lost at the Prophet offices.

One of the servants let him know that his mother had already left for a luncheon, and wouldn't be back for dinner, which was a relief. She had played Quidditch herself when at Hogwarts, as a Slytherin chaser, one of the few girls who had ever been on that house's team, and was still pretty good. If she was home when he was working with a coach, she would sometimes get on her broom and play along with them. This gave her a unique perspective on whatever flaws existed in his training and his abilities, which she, naturally, always reported to her husband.

Draco ran up to his room to change, and then went down the hall, to accomplish the last task before he left for the Granger house. Under the plan he had spent the previous evening working on, he didn't plan to spend much time walking around a Muggle house - he had been in few in his life, but seen some Muggle things in one of the Malfoy Museums of Malignant Muggle Culture while on vacation in Canada once, and he was a little nervous about all the confusing devices that Muggles seemed to litter their homes with.

Instead, he was going to spy on the Grangers in a different way, to discover where Rita was. And to do that, he had to go to the balcony off his parents' bedroom.

This was the place he hated the most in the entire house, but it was also the place that was the most useful to him. Stepping through his parents' bedroom to the balcony, he tried to shrug off the muted memories of being five and six years old, carried from the dinner table, up the stairs, down the corridors, through this room and onto the balcony, almost always screaming in hysterics. It was about fifteen feet long, and stretched the length of one of the picture windows. Its stone walls were five feet high, decoratively carved, with a few openings that were too small for even a little boy to tumble through, and gave some protection from the wind, and the overhang from the Manor gave even less protection from rain or snow. In the summer, the stone held the sun's warmth so close that the floor would burn him if he sat on it. There were a few chairs and some tiny tables. He wasn't allowed to sit on them, but he hadn't been stopped when he pulled them into a fort that he could tuck himself inside of, when Lucius would carry him onto the balcony and leave him there for hours, watching him from inside his warm bedroom.

If he was screaming or crying or pleading to come in, Lucius would just sit in a chair and stare, impassively. Draco could recall him sipping tea and watching him bang against the window, sometimes while he froze or get drenched, and once, get buried in the snow that tumbled in a rush off the roof. And once Draco finally quieted down, either from exhaustion or because he had gotten a hold of the emotions that Lucius so despised, Lucius would magick up a clock, which Draco could see from the balcony, to count down the minutes until he could come in, always using the same formula - one minute for every month that he'd been alive.

That blustery October evening when he was five and a half, the night that everything changed, was one of his oldest clear memories.

"But I don't like beets, and I don't want to eat them," said the tiny boy, his face still holding its round babyness, from one end of the long table. "Can I please have more of the pomfreys?"

"They are not pronounced pomfreys, they are pommes frittes," his father replied. "If you say it properly, you may have more."

"Pommes frittes," chirped Draco properly. Lucius waved his wand towards the dish on the sideboard, and Draco's plate was filled with French fries. He grinned and started poking at them with his fork.

Lucius continued, "Hasn't Mademoiselle Corday been working on your pronunciation? Narcissa, why do we keep these stupid tutors around if they're not teaching my son anything?"

Narcissa looked sulky, and said, "I know why you keep her on staff, and it has nothing to do with Draco's studies." Lucius glared at her, and drew his finger across his throat, then pointed to the servant who was standing beside the kitchen door, ready to get anything the family needed. "Anyway, you know I can't spend all my time looking in on his tutors - I am more than busy enough with my own life. We have the St. Mungo's Midnight In The Garden fundraising gala in three weeks, and I have flowers to organize and favors to buy."

"You can't expect me to sit around checking on all his projects. That's what mothers are for," Lucius said in a steely tone. " I have my own obligations, and if I don't fulfill them, books go unpublished, people are uninformed about the way the world should be, and before you can blink a spell, what do we have?"

"I know Daddy!" said Draco with a grin. "It's harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples and large bottles of Ogden's Old Firewhisky! Hurrah!"

"What the hell did you just say?" In an instant, Lucius had turned his dark look from his wife to his son. "Who told you that nonsense?" Draco's fork clattered to the floor, the smile disappeared from his face and he swallowed loudly.

Draco hesitated before answering. He knew that look, and it usually meant that hiding in a hard-to-reach space under the table was a safe thing to do, until his father finished smashing waterglasses above. He didn't think he could get enough of a head start at escaping, so he said softly "Master Nim told it to me on Monday. It's the theme from a poem in the Lockhart's Limericks for Learning book you brought home."

Lucius stood up, towering over Draco, who still sat in his chair. Draco looked up, and drew back as far as he could from Lucius' booming voice. "Don't you dare lie to me, boy. I've read all your books including that one, and that birdbrained author and his ghostwriters would never have gotten a radical idea like that past me." He reached down and pulled Draco up by his jacket, so he was standing on his toes, precariously balanced on the chair. Neither of them heard Narcissa pull the wine out of the icebucket where it sat cooling, as she stormed out of the dining room into the adjoining bar.

"But father, he read it to me." Draco was trying not to shake, but it was hard to balance. "He made me memorize it. Shall I repeat it for you?" The two of them had a parlor trick when Draco was trotted out at parties - his father would pull off the library shelves a book that Draco had read, usually more than once, then start a sentence, and watch the guests' surprised faces as the little boy recited from memory the rest of the sentence, sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a page, practically word for word. Poems had always been even easier to memorize.

Lucius lifted Draco fully off the chair, practically dropped him onto the floor, and, as he regained his balance, crossed his arms and said disdainfully, "Surprise me."

"Somebody said, "Let's all hold hands,"
So Lee held hands with Jean.

And Jean also held Helen's hand

While she held hands with Dean.

Dean's other hand held Sharma Joy's

While she held hands with Lee.

So tell me just how did I wind up

Holdin' hands with me?"

Lucius sighed and dropped down to his knees, so he was looking right into Draco's silvery eyes. He gripped Draco's wrists so tightly that Draco wanted to cry out, but he didn't. Lucius voice and mouth held a deadly sneer. "He told you that this poem means that Wizards like you and me should live in harmony with Muggles and Mudbloods?" Draco gave a small nod. "And what do you think, little one? Should we mix and mingle in such a vile manner?"

Draco didn't know what "vile" meant. It sounded like a trick question. His eyes were wide, and he nodded again.

In an instant, Lucius had pulled him off the ground by his wrists, grabbed his wand off the table and started moving to his bedroom, his son slung over his shoulder, yelling the litany of criticisms Draco had heard so many times before. He saw the familiar glow from the lamps in his parents room, and tried to twist his way out of Lucius' grasp, but his childlike pushes were no match for his father's strength. The sliding door to the balcony opened as they approached, and Lucius did something unusual. He stepped out, still holding a wriggling Draco in his arms, and moved so he was holding Draco by his legs, dangling him over the balcony wall, over forty feet from the gravel beneath. Draco voice had left him, and he was hysterically grabbing for the wall, trying to hold onto one of the small, decorative openings, but his fingers kept slipping loose. "Maybe I should drop you. Maybe that will be what it takes to get some correct thoughts to stay in your empty head. Maybe," Lucius paused, "you'd just bounce all the way down to the garden, but maybe you'll just smash all over the stones. Or maybe, if you want me to, I'll pull you back up and let you spend a few hours out here. You can write a nice little poem for me, to remind you that you should stay away from filthy sub-Wizards - they're no better than animals. Do you want me to do that?" Lucius looked down at his son, and shook him. Draco lost his grip on the wall and screamed. "Answer me!"

"Yes, please, please pull me up! Daddy, please!" Before he'd even finished the sentence, Draco already felt his feet back on solid stone. He dropped to the floor, gasping for breath and rubbing his ankles, avoiding his father's cold gaze.

"You have fifty five minutes to come up with something that will allow me to forgive you." He moved to the doorway and called into the house, "Charlotte! Get in here!"

Within a moment, a woman with a creamy complexion and chestnut hair stepped into the Malfoy's bedroom and looked at Lucius through heavy-lidded eyes. "Lucius, dear, I'm not used to being called at so loudly when you want me to..." She hesitated, seeing Draco for the first time, almost crumpled on the balcony floor, and continued in a hard voice, "What kind of game is this, Lucius?"

"This has nothing to do with our little game, my dear. This is part of your other job - the one where you tutor my stupid son." He nudged Draco with his boot. "Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and time him. You know the rules, Charlotte. In fifty five minutes, he can come back inside. Until then, he's supposed to do a little project for me out here - and it's nothing you should concern yourself with. I myself am going upstairs to fire a certain English tutor for insubordination, and I do mean, fire." Lucius missed the expression of horror on Charlotte Corday's face as he stepped through his room to the hallway door. "And since Narcissa is amusing herself downstairs tonight, after we're finished with Draco, you might not want to go upstairs by yourself. It might be a little smoky there. Oh, and close the balcony door. I don't want you getting too frigid tonight." He gave her an evil grin and walked off.

Charlotte turned back toward the balcony, and spoke briefly to Draco. "Sorry, sweetheart, but you're more than my job's worth." She held her wand, as if to close the door, and then paused. "Hmmm. Maybe not." She made a small gesture with her wand, and a small glowing ball flew out of the end towards Draco. He caught it. The sphere was no bigger than the Nerf Golden Snitch he used in his Quidditch practices with his father, but it was soft and warm. "Crush it between your fingers if your father comes back. I'll call out his name to let you know."

The little boy smiled and cupped the ball between his hands, staring at it, as Charlotte shut the door. He saw her take a copy of Witch Weekly off his mother's nightstand and settle into her chair. He shivered, and brought the ball up to his face. It felt so nice, and was much more pleasant to look at than the stone and glass walls of his present prison. As Draco looked at the sphere, he saw that it was made up of thousands of tiny pinpoints of light, all bouncing in random patters. Some were gold, some were silver, and a few were tiny, blue, glowing pinpoints. For some reason, his eyes followed the blue ones as they moved from the surface into the globe, and back out again. It was like being in a trance.

Draco had been in trances before. For the past few months, usually once a week, when he would Talk with his father, Lucius would have Draco stare at the tip of his wand, and focus on a tiny light there. At these times, he would hear nothing but his father's voice, and see nothing but the tiny wandlight, and he would just absorb whatever Lucius said, and somehow, remember it all for such a long time afterward.

But this little globe seemed to have a different affect on him. As he watched the blue lights, sitting on the stone floor, he felt his body start to turn, but he could tell that he wasn't actually moving. It felt the way it did at a garden party that summer, when his father had taken him in his arms and spun him around and around before they collapsed in a dizzy, giggling heap on the grassy lawn. Draco closed his eyes, but he could still see the glow of the sphere, and the blue lights danced behind his closed eyelids. He now felt like he was tilting from one side to the other, the warmth from the globe spinning through his limbs, and suddenly, even though he hadn't opened his eyes, he could see!

But he wasn't just seeing the globe this time - he was watching himself, eyes closed, crouched over, legs folded over each other, holding the glowing ball, which had wrapped little tendrils of blue light around his body, and back again into the ball. He couldn't feel anything but the spinning and tilting sensations, but they were quieter, like a noise in the background. He watched himself for a moment, then, struck by the strangeness of watching himself, Draco jumped, and felt a sudden pull as everything went blank for a moment. He opened his eyes, and felt his limbs, cold and heavy against the floor. The globe was still luminescent in his hands.

He shook his head, trying to rid if of that strange sensation, then he wondered, "Can I try that again?" This was obviously some kind of magic, but not one that he had ever seen his father do, or one that he had read about in any of the books in his room down the hall, or even in his father's library. Of course, he hadn't read the smallest bit of the books in the house, and knew that there were loads of different kinds of magic that he hadn't tried yet. He was too young to have held a wand, the day to day magic the servants did was not something he'd paid much attention to, and this kind of feeling was so different from the kind he had while watching people do Summoning and Banishing charms, or use Quote Quills, or make rides at birthday parties so much fun.

Draco focused again on the blue lights, closing his mind to the golden and silver streaks. Again, he felt the spinning and tipping sensations, closed his eyes, and suddenly, he didn't feel his body anymore. He was watching himself again, and moved to stand up, which was an odd thing to do without feeling his body standing. Since his view changed, he could tell that he was in an upright position. He looked down and saw himself, clothing, arms, body, and legs, but without the little globe. He was identical to the Draco that sat on the floor, but in this state, he was somehow floating, just a little above the floor.

How wonderful this was! He looked inside. Mademoiselle Corday was reading her magazine, and paid no attention to the boy outside the room. He could go find his father or his mother, or spy on the house elves, or even (he almost held his breath, then realized that he didn't seem to be breathing) leave the Manor and see the world. What an exciting, scary, strange idea! He floated up and looked over the ledge. It was such a long way down, though. Maybe he should stay where he was, and enjoy the absence of cold for once, and work on his father's assignment. That would be safer. That wouldn't get him into trouble.

From a long distance away, it sounded like someone was shrieking, yelling his father's name, but he was still looking at the stars which had started to appear in the inky sky, and he didn't pay any attention. Then, he heard the door pull open and his father's yell, "Draco! What are you doing? How did you get up there?"

The floating boy turned to look at his father and tried to speak, but he couldn't make himself heard. Lucius then noticed the Draco still sitting on the floor, and looked between the two with a puzzled and horrified expression on his face. Charlotte stood behind him, her mouth and eyes wide open, and her hand in front of it. Lucius turned to her and shouted, "What have you done to him?" He grabbed at his son, sitting on the floor, unmoving apart from the play of the light on his face, and Draco felt that strange pull again. The floating sensation disappeared, and with a tug, he was back in his body, looking into his father's stunned face.

Lucius knelt in front of Draco and pulled him into an embrace, knocking the globe from his small hands. He rocked them both back and forth, gasping, "What? What? What?"

Now, Draco could speak again. "I was outside myself, Daddy. Charlotte gave me a globe, and I was looking at it and then, I was watching me sitting here, but I wasn't sitting anymore. It was wonderful!"

It seemed now that Lucius couldn't find words. Draco could hear his breathing shallowly, as the rocking slowed. Lucius looked over his son's shoulder and glared at Charlotte, who turned and fled from the room. Finally, Lucius spoke, slowly explaining to Draco what he had done. "I didn't think it would happen yet, but I'm not really surprised. Your grandmother has the power to project herself magically, the way you just did. But it requires a lot of concentration and a lot of endurance to do it safely. What you did tonight was so dangerous, Draco. Promise me you won't do it again until I tell you that you can."

"But I want to. I could do it again right now, watch me, Daddy, please! I can if you give me..."

"I said no, Draco, and that is final!" Lucius dropped his arms and Draco slipped sideways to the floor. "I am canceling the rest of your punishment tonight, because you do need to rest after what you've done. And I will seal your room - no witch or wizard will be able to do any magic in there until I can trust you not to try this trick again." Lucius sighed. "And between finding you a new English tutor and hiring someone to teach you how to Project..."

"Why can't Grandma teach me?" whined Draco.

"Because she's off on a cruise around for the next six months and won't be back until Spring, and I don't think you want to wait that long, do you?"

"No, father, I guess I don't." A tiny smile appeared on Draco's face.

And Lucius smiled back, ruffled his son's fair hair, and said, "Now get up, and go to bed. Promise me you'll go right to sleep."

"Okay, daddy. I love you. G'night."

"And if you see Charlotte in the hall," his father finished, "tell her to come back in."

Draco sat on the familiar warm stone, resting his back against the sliding door. Almost ten years of practice had given him the ability to Project from almost anywhere, even Hogwarts, where he used the power to spy on other students and teachers. He could get almost anywhere in the school - generally, only Dumbledore's office, the rooms where teachers kept tests and, for some reason, Harry Potter's dorm room, were magically shielded in a way that even his Projection couldn't break. But that took a lot of energy and effort, and he didn't do it very often. When he was at the Manor, though, it was a lot easier to Project when he was sitting on the balcony, and if he had a reason to do it, Lucius and even Narcissa were usually willing to let him go there. Draco had long suspected that his father had some extra reason for encouraging his facility with the Projections, which explained Narcissa's leniency on this matter.

He closed his eyes, and immediately, tiny blue lights which were identical to those he had seen on the first night he Projected began darting behind his eyelids. He focused on the sparks and let his world fall away, seeing nothing but the sparks. Gradually, he no longer felt the stone against his body, he didn't smell the grass which was being cut by a gardener below. His hearing usually stayed the same when he was in a Projected state, and once he had fully projected, he could see as well as he did under normal circumstances. It always happened in a jolt - he was suddenly standing on the balcony, and as he was now taller than the ledge, he didn't have to think himself upwards in order to see out.

All was ready. He focused on the address, which he had memorized en route back to the Manor, and in an instant, found himself standing in front of a square, solid looking brick house, with a garden full of roses in front. A familiar girl was sitting on a lounge chair in the grass, a huge book on her lap and a Muggle pen in her hand. Hermione stood up, a look of mingled amazement and horror on her face as she saw Draco standing outside the gate. After a moment, she seemed to find her voice and yelled out to him, "First, what in the world are you doing here, and second why in the world are you here? You know that you can't come in here unless I invite you!"