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Wiltshire, western England.
Malfoy Manor.
The manor lay hidden among Muggles, rising from the earth like something out of a dream, a tiered Baroque castle that caught the light and threw it back in layers of cold radiance.
Fountains scattered like pearls across the vast courtyard, their crystalline mist drifting upward into the open air, rousing the proud white peacocks on the lawn to flare their wings and cry.
The House-elf Feifei moved through the corridor at a near-trot, a gilded carved tray held perfectly level in both hands.
Not a single drop of sherry escaped the crystal glass.
Three vivid raspberries rested atop the surface, glossy as fresh wounds, flanked by a spray of emerald mint leaves, arranged with the kind of care that could only come from genuine devotion.
On the second floor, daylight slanted through the snow-white gossamer curtains lining the long balcony and fell across the paintings mounted reverently along the corridor walls.
Feifei made her way past each one, murmuring small greetings to every Malfoy ancestor as she went, her small figure pressing onward toward the far end of the hall.
The ancestors watched in silence as she receded into the distance, watched her raise a trembling fist and knock at the French-carved door.
She waited.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
Thirty.
After three consecutive days of silence, the door finally opened.
Feifei exhaled a breath she seemed to have been holding for hours, eyes already brimming, and rushed inside.
The ancestors withdrew their gazes.
Portraits rustled back to life — a quiet sigh of collective relief — each figure returning to its own business within its gilded frame.
Deep in the corridor, in that outrageously luxurious room, Feifei sobbed her way to the side of the enormous rosewood bed and wailed.
“Young Master, you have finally deigned to summon Feifei!
The Master has been terribly worried about you these three days — Feifei has been beside herself with worry…”
The velvet quilt shifted.
A snow-white arm emerged from the bedclothes and draped itself lazily over the edge of the mattress.
A platinum-blond head surfaced next, leaning bonelessly against the headboard.
Satin-smooth hair cascaded forward over the chest.
The youth swept it back with one idle hand, revealing a face of sharp, fine-boned beauty, the kind that stops a room, and after three days without stepping outside, his skin had gone almost translucently pale.
That face, already the sort people couldn’t look away from, now carried a hint of fragility.
But when his eyes moved, they blazed like dawn light across water, and Feifei choked on her own sob, both long ears curling inward into bashful spirals.
“What are you so frightened about?” The youth’s voice was easy, faintly amused.
“Nothing major has happened to me.”
He reached out and lifted the sherry glass from the tray, tipping it back in a leisurely sip.
The liquid was sharp and clean going down.
The body, which had apparently never tasted alcohol in its life, reflexively coughed up tears.
Feifei shrieked in terror.
Jiang Fengyue laughed through the coughing.
What a sheltered little lordling, never even touched wine.
Raised far, far too gently.
Still.
What a body.
No illness, no injury, strong and vigorous to the bone, and even after glimpsing death’s door three days ago, it was already surging back with life.
He drained the rest of the glass in one go, set it back on the tray while Feifei watched through shining tears, then turned his head to study the strange-faced creature before him with calm, unhurried attention.
Absolutely loyal, he’d heard.
The young master smiled slowly.
The elf looked even more besotted.
“Has Father returned?” He wound the tail end of his own blond hair around one finger, turning it into a loose ringlet.
“The Master is still at the Ministry of Magic, Young Master.
He told Feifei that the moment you were willing to come out, Feifei must send word at once.
He has already said he will return this evening to see you.”
“Has he.”
Jiang Fengyue’s hand stilled.
Something shifted behind his eyes, brief and unreadable.
“Prepare Father’s favorite dishes for this evening.
Mine too.
The Hogwarts letter has arrived — fetch it for me.” A pause.
“And the wine.
Not a word to Father.”
“Your command shall be obeyed, Young Master.” Feifei bowed low, then backed out of the room facing him, the door clicking shut behind her.
Jiang Fengyue nodded once, satisfied.
Whoever said House-elves were troublesome had clearly never had one.
The efficiency alone was extraordinary.
The sole heir of the Malfoy line stretched his arms overhead and stepped out of bed, bare feet landing on the Aubusson hand-woven carpet that covered the entire floor.
He had on nothing but an oversized white shirt, its hem barely reaching past his thighs.
As he moved, the fabric swayed, and the pale skin of his inner thighs flickered in and out of view.
He drifted to the window without ceremony and leaned against the frame, watching the fountain arc and fall across the estate below.
A white peacock on the lawn caught sight of him with one sharp eye.
It tilted its head.
Then, appearing to recognize him, it spread its wings and lifted off the grass, landing on his shoulder and rubbing its head against his cheek.
He tapped it once on the crown.
It pecked his fingers in delight.
So the disguise wasn’t too clumsy, at least.
The peacocks believed him.
The House-elf believed him.
That was a start.
Lucius Malfoy.
Jiang Fengyue narrowed his eyes.
He’d been seven years old, living in a shack beside a rubbish tip, surviving on whatever he could scavenge, when he’d come across the book for the first time.
He’d only read a little of it, a rare moment of idle comfort in an otherwise grinding life.
The name had lodged in his memory: a minor villain’s father, the bigger villain behind him.
Back then, his entire mind was taken up with four words: rise above the rest.
He’d had no patience for fiction.
That book was the exception only because he’d found it in a bin and had nothing else to do.
Later, once he’d grown, his attention shifted entirely to the future.
Power filled every corner of his thoughts.
He never read that kind of novel again, and what little he remembered of the plot was vague at best.
The peacock had flown back down to the lawn.
Jiang Fengyue swept a cold look across the estate and smiled, not warmly.
What a terrible position to land in.
A conglomerate with its major backer on the verge of ruin.
It might limp along on lies for another few decades, but liquidation would come eventually.
It always did.
And of all the bodies in this world, he’d transmigrated into a Malfoy.
Power?
Wealth?
He let out a short, humorless sound.
He’d wanted those since he was seven years old, dragging himself through filth on the streets.
He’d fought for them at twenty.
By twenty-five, he was the brightest new name in City A.
By thirty, power and wealth both sat in his hands, going nowhere.
A noble title?
Old blood?
The soul inside this aristocratic body didn’t even bother to sneer properly.
He’d pulled down plenty of so-called old-money families in his time.
High society had its rules, and he’d learned them all, and he’d broken them where it suited him, and he’d ground those ancient names under his heel regardless of how low his own origins were.
A gutter-born wretch without a scrap of pedigree had still made them choke.
And this body, for all its pure blood and noble bearing, had long since bent the knee to Voldemort.
His life and death were another man’s to dispose of as he pleased.
Jiang Fengyue’s contempt was absolute.
He did not like that at all.
The rules of the wizarding world meant nothing to him.
Pure-blood supremacy was garbage, Voldemort himself was a half-blood.
And Mudblood?
He laughed quietly under his breath.
That one, actually, fit him rather well.
He was precisely the sort who had clawed his way up from the filth, one step at a time, a staircase built from bones.
So what?
Nobody knew better than him what real power was worth.
The only genuine asset here was this body, healthy, vigorous, untouched by illness.
A pity the original owner had been personally run to ground by a pack of Death Eaters three days ago.
And there was one other good thing…
The jasmine tree beyond the window stirred in the breeze.
Jiang Fengyue extended his hand.
His platinum hair lifted gently in the wind, and his magic, vast, unrestrained, answering him without a wand or a word, reached out and plucked a sprig of pear blossom from somewhere in the gardens below, delivering it neatly into his palm.
The youth turned the spray of blossoms over in his fingers.
His eyes, cool and remote as a winter moon, narrowed slowly.
He closed his hand.
White petals crumbled between his fingers, and the branch itself began to disintegrate, inch by inch, ground to dust by nothing but his will.
He watched the last of it dissolve into the air.
Magic.
Now that was something worth having.
In a world like this one, so utterly unlike the world he’d come from, anything less than the top would be an embarrassment.
For now, though, he was only an heir.
Malfoy Manor did not yet answer to him.
He would need to play the part of the dutiful young lord a little longer, keep his head down, keep the mask in place.
He was too weak for anything else.
He couldn’t raise a hand against the Dark Lord.
Couldn’t move against that white wizard either.
He couldn’t even defy Abraxas, the current family head, in a direct confrontation.
Jiang Fengyue turned from the window and began preparing himself for the evening, for dinner with the man who was, nominally, his father.
Was he aiming too high?
He didn’t waste a single second on the question.
Jiang Fengyue had been born from nothing, raised himself out of the gutter, and climbed until there was nothing left to climb.
That kind of man did not entertain the possibility of failure.
He never failed.
➤ Next: Abraxas — Into the Unknown