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The Slytherins were startled to find that the usually self-disciplined Malfoy heir had arrived late, shuffling in when breakfast was nearly over.
His face was still annoyingly luminous, but his expression was sour as a vampire who hadn’t left its coffin in several centuries.
And that Argus, the very one who’d offended Malfoy, was strolling along casually beside him, still occupying the seat next to him at the table.
One cold sweep of his gaze at Crabbe and Goyle was enough; the two hulking boys didn’t dare approach.
The young snakes at the center of it all looked, and looked again, but none said a word.
Jiang Fengyue speared his soufflé and brought it to his mouth.
The fresh sweetness barely took the edge off the fire raging in his stomach.
He hadn’t eaten properly since the previous evening, and after a night without sleep, he was half a step from collapsing face-first onto the flagstones.
Beside him, the Dark Lord in his Argus disguise was in excellent spirits.
Even the pockmarks on that borrowed face had smoothed out.
All for the sake of the Dark Lord’s grand designs.
After everything was done, he’d had to drag himself through the corridors past midnight to find Severus and beg the key to the Head of House’s office, sneaking past Filch and his cat like an actual thief, while simultaneously being an actual thief, lifting Polyjuice Potion ingredients from Slughorn’s study.
Then, trapped in the dormitory, forced to stay up watching the Dark Lord brew potions with aristocratic precision.
Because the Dark Lord would not tolerate anyone being idle while he worked.
Finally, when the potion was ready and he’d soaked in the Prefects’ bathroom and collapsed into the big bed, he was woken from deep sleep by Voldemort in nothing but a bath towel.
He drooled over the man’s chest and stomach a bit.
Then he found pajamas from his wardrobe, presented them, and received a cold glare in return.
So he hauled out his trunk, bent over and rummaging through the space-extended case, and eventually unearthed a brand-new pair, the most comfortable ones he owned.
He cast an Engorgement Charm and presented them to the Dark Lord with appropriate reverence.
And then, after all of that, when he finally should have been able to sleep, he lay staring at the ceiling.
Jiang Fengyue let out a long breath.
He’d never had anyone share his bed before, let alone someone whose sheer presence pressed down on a room like a physical weight.
He’d curled into the far corner and spent the night counting the kelp drifting through the Black Lake.
He stared out at the mermaids and tried to calculate when the Dark Lord would leave.
A few days at most, he decided.
Whatever had driven the Dark Lord to risk Dumbledore discovering him here, returning to Hogwarts of all places, it had to be something significant.
Something personal.
But the outside world couldn’t function without the Dark Lord’s oversight.
He’d resolve whatever it was quickly, and most likely it wouldn’t involve him.
Jiang Fengyue kept his eyes open until dawn, sending silent desperate prayers to the kelp drifting in the Black Lake: please, please let the Dark Lord vacate his bed soon.
The bottle of Dreamless Sleep Potion, casually placed on the cabinet by the door and then completely forgotten.
He couldn’t really be blamed for that.
His mind had been rather thoroughly occupied.
The scrape of his fork against porcelain pulled him back.
He looked down at the soufflé he’d reduced to mush and shoved the plate away in disgust.
He looked at the black-haired, pockmarked face of ‘Argus’ beside him and lost what little appetite remained.
On a whim, he tried to mentally transplant Argus’s pockmarks onto the Dark Lord’s actual face, and found that they somehow added a kind of rugged, natural beauty.
He gave up on himself entirely.
A shadow fell over his plate.
Jiang Fengyue glanced up to find the seat across from him now occupied by seventh-year Barrett Nott.
The prefect was looking back and forth between the two of them with undisguised interest.
“So —” Nott drawled.
“You two have become inseparable.”
Every young snake in earshot swiveled to look.
Jiang Fengyue felt like a duck awaiting slaughter, being plucked clean.
He frowned.
“I don’t think you should be asking that question.”
Nott caught the implication immediately.
He leaned in.
“So it’s true?
This was at that person’s request?”
The moment that particular phrase landed, no name spoken, understood by everyone, the young snakes in the middle of the bench descended all at once.
Their plates had long since been whisked away by house-elves.
They’d clearly stayed for exactly this.
“We already asked Parkinson’s roommates this morning,” Greengrass said with a sly smile.
“They said he never came back last night.”
Narcissa leaned in from the other side and quietly cast a Muffliato.
“Cardipes was telling people first thing this morning — that you went to his dormitory last night to find Severus Snape.”
Jiang Fengyue’s eyes went cold.
“Where is Cardipes.
I believe he’s owed a lesson.”
“Already handled,” said Quidditch captain Vincent Avery.
April Shafiq, eldest of the Shafiq sisters, spoke with cool contempt: “Anyone who makes a habit of broadcasting Malfoy’s whereabouts has no particular need for a tongue.”
“Nott gave him a Tongue-Tying Curse,” Narcissa added.
“With a Stinging Hex attached.”
Professor Slughorn’s speeches about looking after one another were not empty words.
Every Slytherin operated under an unspoken law, you covered for your own.
Cardipes had stumbled across the Malfoy heir’s secret and made the mistake of feeling pleased with himself about it.
He’d only spread it to a small circle at the table, but he’d crossed a line, and lines in Slytherin had consequences.
“Hey — don’t change the subject.” Nott pulled the conversation back, dissatisfied.
“You were actually together last night?”
Jiang Fengyue glanced sideways.
The Dark Lord was cutting his steak with complete composure, not sparing a glance at the young snakes clustered around him.
He could only nod.
Flushed faces crowded in.
“So, that person really did give you two a secret mission?”
What mission.
The only thing he’d been assigned was the man himself, and the man was a migraine in human form.
But he nodded, put on his sternest face, and warned them not to breathe a word.
Nott immediately sealed his lips and drew a zip across them with one finger.
Jiang Fengyue screamed, internally.
Help.
The man himself is sitting right in front of you.
Guard your serpent gallbladders, dear snakes.
Stop talking.
“But Lucius…” April suddenly pressed both hands to her cheeks, going red.
“Is that person really as handsome as everyone says?
I’ve heard he’s so beautiful he barely seems human, practically a deity.
We’ve only gotten a few words out of Bella before she starts going off the rails…”
Narcissa nodded in deep solidarity, referring specifically to Bella’s tendency to suddenly lose her mind.
Several young snakes turned eager gazes his way.
Even the boys.
Jiang Fengyue stole a glance at the black-haired man beside him.
The Dark Lord was loading another piece of steak onto his fork, utterly indifferent, not once looking at the gaggle of snakes surrounding him, as though none of this had anything to do with him at all.
Jiang Fengyue turned back, the corner of his mouth curling up.
He said, voice warm, “Oh, yes.
Genuinely stunning.
Like a dark deity stepping out of the darkness, yet dazzling as Apollo himself.”
“Wow,” the young snakes breathed together, full of wonder and longing.
And a certain Dark Lord’s fork stilled over his plate.
Jiang Fengyue continued: “Not only that, he’s exceptionally tall, with an extraordinary figure.
The day I met him, he was wearing a suit, and I simply…”
“Lucius.”
He turned.
The Dark Lord, who had been ignoring the entire scene, crooked one finger and rapped it against the table.
His pale eyes were cold and sharp, and everything about him radiated the unassailable authority of a man who did not invite argument.
Jiang Fengyue’s smile only widened.
He turned back to face the man underneath ‘Argus’s’ skin, and finished the sentence.
“…lost my head entirely.”
➤ Next: Amortentia — The Conversation