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The room smelled faintly of cedar.
Beneath a multi-tiered crystal chandelier, a strikingly handsome youth with platinum-blonde hair stood before the mirror, dressed in ice-white silk robes.
“My dear young master, three days without your radiance and it shines brighter than ever.
Look at those eyes — like star-gems.
I could simply fall in love with you.”
The clamorous mirror poured out flattery without restraint.
The youth it addressed was amused.
He curved the corners of his mouth, threaded his fingers through his flowing platinum hair, and swept it back.
This was the first time Jiang Fengyue had seen his body since the three-day magic surge subsided.
He studied the blonde youth in the mirror with mild surprise.
Aside from the golden hair and grey eyes, this youth bore a roughly thirty-percent resemblance to him.
He was puzzled.
What possible connection could a Westerner have with an Easterner?
Still, it was just as well.
At least he could stand the sight of it.
Jiang Fengyue undid the first button and looked down at his reflection with a commanding gaze.
Over a decade of holding high authority lent this slender body the unmistakable weight of someone accustomed to power.
The mirror immediately opened its great mouth and launched into even more excited praise.
“My master, my beautiful and majestic young master, you make me want to kneel at your feet.
Good heavens — I feel as though I am looking at Master Abraxas himself.
You shall be the most perfect Malfoy heir!
Everyone will be utterly entranced by you!”
“I have no need for entrancement,” Jiang Fengyue said lightly.
“Kneeling will do.”
He paid no further attention to the mirror’s lovestruck babbling, turned, and pinned on a brooch.
His mind, however, was already spinning at full speed.
Everyone believed the incident three days ago had frightened the young Malfoy heir out of his wits.
What no one knew was that Jiang Fengyue had spent those three days sorting through every one of Lucius’s memories.
Three days ago, it had been a Death Eater hunt.
That madwoman of the Black family and her husband had captured ten Muggle-born witches and wizards and ten Muggles, procuring prey for the monthly gathering.
It was a game reserved only for the upper echelons of the Death Eaters.
Voldemort sat upon his throne and watched alongside his trusted followers as those of impure blood wept in agony and were “purified.”
Lucius had not originally been qualified to attend.
He was not yet a Death Eater.
But Lestrange and Selwyn mentioned him, and that was enough to pique the Dark Lord’s interest.
The Malfoy heir was “specially permitted” to join.
Unfortunately, Lucius was not a brutal or audacious person.
He had only dared to hover at the edges and could not bring himself to raise his wand against the Muggle-borns.
Voldemort, for his part, had no intention of testing him on it.
Lucius was not yet worthy of the Dark Lord’s assessment.
During the hunt, however, a Killing Curse struck Lucius from behind.
The instant he collapsed, Jiang Fengyue arrived inside this body.
Experiencing magic for the first time, his mind fractured.
Through the blur, he saw severed limbs deliberately heaped together before him, crimson blood flowing steadily outward.
The corpse-mound was stacked like a Jingguan, flesh and white bone barely connected, held together only by threads of blood and sinew.
At the very bottom, a pair of eyes, black and white starkly distinct, bulged out like dead fish eyes and stared fixedly at him.
His magic went berserk.
After pleading guilty and receiving punishment, Abraxas brought him back to the manor.
For the three days that followed, all anyone knew was that Lucius Malfoy had been so terrified he never once left his room.
Jiang Fengyue rubbed his temples.
Fifi had already informed him that the current Malfoy family head, his father, was waiting for him in the dining room.
He could not delay any longer.
Time to meet this convenient father of his.
He simply hadn’t expected that the Malfoy family, described in the books as calculating, perhaps wildly ambitious, would be so…
warm.
As he stepped down the spiral staircase, the man seated at the long table had already looked up.
He was exceptionally handsome.
His skin carried the pallor that seemed to run in the family.
His golden hair was meticulously combed back and secured with a black ribbon.
His eyes were the standard Malfoy grey, cold and deep.
Yet as they settled on the youth descending the stairs, something in them softened, and warmth crept through.
Jiang Fengyue walked calmly to stand before him and, drawing on his memories with precision, offered a bow.
“Father.”
Abraxas looked him over carefully, head to toe.
Only when Jiang Fengyue began to feel uneasy did the man’s expression finally ease.
“Lucius.
I am very glad you are all right.” The Malfoy family head spoke gently.
“You refused all visitors these three days.
I was very worried.”
Jiang Fengyue paused.
In Lucius’s memories, Abraxas had been rather stern most of the time.
Right now, the concern on his face was entirely undisguised.
“I worried you, Father,” Jiang Fengyue said quietly.
Abraxas shook his head slightly.
“Placing you in harm’s way was my failing as a father.
I am glad you do not blame me.
And I am gratified that you have not lost the fighting spirit and pride that befitting a pure-blood heir.”
“I will never abandon the pride that belongs to me.”
“Father, during the hunt, someone cast an Unforgivable Curse at me.” Jiang Fengyue watched the man’s expression shift violently.
“To evade the strike, I wrenched my body out of the way.
That is why I could not get up.”
At the words Unforgivable Curse, Abraxas’s handsome face changed completely.
He reached out almost desperately to examine the youth, but the boy before him had already dropped his head in dejection and begun to apologize.
“I am sorry, Father.
I was too frightened.
It triggered the magic surge, and I brought shame upon the Malfoy family before the Dark Lord.”
“No!” The Malfoy family head let out a low growl, radiating boundless fury.
“That some mongrel dared to raise a hand against you — I will never let it go!”
If Voldemort was the Dark Sovereign of the wizarding world, then the Malfoy family, as his right hand, held the sovereign’s trust and supreme standing among the Death Eaters.
Add their noble pure-blood lineage and an aristocratic heritage that had never once fallen into decline, even in the Muggle world, Malfoy was synonymous with power.
Abraxas’s eyes flared scarlet.
This pure-blood family head burned with towering rage.
He pressed his hatred down and spoke to Jiang Fengyue in a low voice.
“I promise you, Lucius.
Everyone who dared to harm you, everyone who dared to defy you — they will pay what they owe.”
Jiang Fengyue looked at him.
He had to admit: Abraxas was a qualified father.
A qualified family man.
Better at it, at least, than he himself had ever had the chance to be.
“Thank you, Father.” Jiang Fengyue rubbed his fingers together without thinking.
He didn’t quite know what to do with Abraxas’s concern.
It felt like being handed a warm bowl of plain congee after starving for far too long.
He had wandered alone as a child.
Later, in his climb upward, he had kept others at arm’s length on purpose.
When illness finally put him in a hospital bed, there had been only a handful of people he truly cared about.
The Malfoys were a good family.
Abraxas was a good father.
Jiang Fengyue sighed quietly to himself.
It seemed he would have to dutifully play the son here.
“Father, this grudge, I will settle it personally.” Jiang Fengyue opened his mouth, each word precise and cold.
“Lestrange and Nott were so insistent on urging the Dark Lord to let me join that hunt.
I refuse to believe they had no part in it.”
Abraxas looked at him with faint surprise.
His son stood there composed, and in that composure something had emerged, a presence, an authority that hadn’t been there before.
His already exceptional features seemed almost to shine.
Abraxas nodded.
Abraxas was gratified.
“Child, you are right.
That you have this resolve, that is exactly what a Malfoy heir ought to have.”
Of course it was.
Jiang Fengyue went quiet.
Vindictive, cunning, just a touch of venal greed, willing to use anyone outside of family, the Malfoy family ethos was, truthfully, very much to his liking.
The dinner that followed proceeded in a thoroughly Malfoy fashion.
The family had no rule about silence at meals, only a great deal of etiquette.
Jiang Fengyue had crammed the rules of high society when he first clawed his way up in the world, so he managed well enough.
Abraxas found the boy’s transformation strange, yet he was deeply gratified.
Compared to the Lucius of before, fierce on the surface, soft underneath, all pride with nothing behind it, the child who had come through this ordeal was steadier.
Quieter.
More real.
His wife had died young.
He had raised this boy alone.
Something in Abraxas’s chest felt dangerously close to tears.
Jiang Fengyue, for his part, dined in composed silence while sighing inwardly.
The old father hurdle: cleared.
Hogwarts was nothing to worry about, they were all just children.
Even if his personality had shifted, a bit of smooth talk would handle it.
He thought it through.
There was almost no one who would scrutinize Lucius’s change closely enough to be a problem.
He could breathe easy.
Jiang Fengyue settled his mind, and in quite good spirits began planning to take Fifi to Diagon Alley tomorrow for shopping.
The Hogwarts term started in three days.
The Malfoy heir savored the vanilla panna cotta on his tongue and narrowed his eyes.
Hogwarts.
It had always been the most pristine place in the wizarding world, and the most fertile ground for power.
➤ Next: Diagon Alley — Words Unspoken