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Diagon Alley was always packed in the days before Hogwarts term.
The narrow, slightly worn alleyway seemed to have had an Extension Charm cast on it, wizards of every size crammed together shoulder to shoulder, a tin of sardines with wands.
Jiang Fengyue raised a hand and brushed nonexistent dust from his chiffon silk top.
The thick sweetness of cauldron cakes drifted through the air, tangled up with animal hay and the peculiar reek of pickled herbs from some shop further down, the whole mixture fermenting steadily within the press of bodies.
Young Master Malfoy’s nose wrinkled.
He raised a silk-gloved hand and pressed it, discreetly, over his mouth.
Abraxas noticed.
He raised his wand without fanfare and conjured a barrier.
“Thank you, Father.” Jiang Fengyue lowered his hand and said, flat.
“Much better.” He still hated crowds.
They wound his nerves tight, and certain smells, especially the concentrated smell of people, were simply intolerable.
This was not an absolutely safe place.
Abraxas smiled.
“I need to step into the shop next door.
Will you buy your books and quills on your own?
I’ll wait for you at Gringotts.”
Jiang Fengyue curved the corner of his mouth upward.
“Of course, Father.”
Abraxas raised an eyebrow, tone lightly teasing.
“I know your purse isn’t the problem.
But promise me — no more broomsticks.
Your N.E.W.T.s are next year, and I expect results when you graduate.
Results befitting a Malfoy heir.”
“…”
Jiang Fengyue’s mouth twitched.
On the surface, Lucius Malfoy was every inch the proud young nobleman.
Behind the scenes, apparently, he was as fanatically devoted to Quidditch as any ordinary young wizard.
There was something genuinely novel about watching the Malfoy patriarch looking so earnestly worried about his son’s secret obsession with what amounted to an online game.
Then again, Jiang Fengyue had never been addicted to anything.
Hm.
Except power.
He came back to himself.
The platinum-haired Malfoy heir gave a slight bow and turned a confident smile on his father, all flamboyant pride, all effortless control.
“Of course, Father.
I’ll come back to you with the best results Hogwarts has ever recorded.
A glory to the family name.”
Abraxas sighed, quiet and dry.
“I hope so.
I’d rather not see another O.W.L.
report with only five O’s.”
“….”
Jiang Fengyue sifted through the memories he’d inherited and found that very few students in all of Slytherin had actually scored better than Lucius.
So this was Malfoy-style parenting.
He pursed his lips.
A certain Weasley hadn’t managed a single O, and yet here they were.
Apparently British parents were just as grade-obsessed as the other kind.
He watched Abraxas disappear in the direction of Knockturn Alley, then turned back to the street.
Excitement flickered through his eyes.
He set off with an unhurried, elegant stride, observing the shops on either side without being obvious about it.
Every wizard he passed was careful not to brush against him.
They used their shopping as cover to steal glances.
Many Muggle-born and half-blood witches and wizards took one look and fled.
The sole heir of the Malfoy family, whose patriarch was Voldemort’s most trusted lieutenant at a moment when Voldemort nearly controlled all of Britain, was not the sort of person most people chose to linger near.
The Daily Prophet had been running pure-blood supremacy stories for months.
The Ministry had issued decree after decree targeting Muggle-born wizards.
Everyone with eyes knew Dumbledore was losing ground, that the Dark Lord now held absolute dominance.
Most wizards simply did not dare meet the gaze of a pure-blood heir at the peak of his family’s power.
Jiang Fengyue walked straight into Flourish and Blotts without glancing left or right, bought everything on his book list, and was heading back out when a sharp voice cut through the noise.
“Lucius!
What a coincidence — shopping today as well?”
His eyes darkened.
He turned around slowly, chin lifting, and looked down at the speaker.
The boy had a head of messy black curls that tumbled over his shoulders and a face dotted with freckles like scattered sesame seeds.
The eagerness that had been on his face froze the moment he found Lucius looking back at him.
He stared.
Jiang Fengyue’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Argus Parkinson.
The Parkinson family’s second son, a year below him.
A pure-blood, technically, but one who would never see an inheritance, a fact that apparently hadn’t done much for his personality.
“Is there something you need, Parkinson?”
Argus startled as if shaken awake.
He didn’t quite manage to hold Lucius’s gaze.
“I heard,” he started, then swallowed.
“I heard that great one granted you an honour.”
Jiang Fengyue’s expression went very still.
His gray eyes cooled.
He already knew exactly where this was going.
Life-and-death jostling for position was a constant among Voldemort’s pure-blood followers, everyone trying to knock someone else down a rung to claim the Dark Lord’s next reward for themselves.
That the business of the hunt had circulated wasn’t surprising.
He’d expected it.
What he absolutely would not permit was being mocked for it.
Argus seemed to find his courage from somewhere.
He raised his head.
A sneer pulled at the corner of his mouth, his freckles bunching together in a way that managed to be uniquely unpleasant.
“I heard you failed to live up to that great one’s expectations,” he said, voice bright with malice.
“You actually had a magical outburst during the hunt?”
“Lucius, you’ve truly disgraced us pure-bloods.” He made a gesture with his hand, one that carried a specific, deep insult in the wizarding world, and stared at the silent Jiang Fengyue with open contempt, laughing low and ugly.
“A few scraps of blood and severed limbs and some corpses, and you made the Malfoy name a joke.
I heard that great one went pale — left immediately, right there in front of everyone.
You disappointed him something spectacular.
To think you’d be frightened witless like some Mud, ”
The word died in his mouth.
Argus’s eyes had found Jiang Fengyue’s.
Those gray eyes held nothing.
Not anger, not contempt, not hurt, nothing at all.
Just a flat, cold absence, like looking through glass into an empty room.
Argus’s whole body went rigid.
A silk-gloved hand was already raised, a silver fir wand leveled at his chest.
At the tip, a blood-red light seethed and flickered, ready.
“No, you can’t use magic outside school, especially Dark Magic!” Argus’s voice shot up to a shriek.
“You have the Trace!
The Ministry will expel you!” He threw a desperate look over his shoulder, croaking loud as a frog, trying to pull in anyone nearby.
No one turned.
No one heard.
Argus looked around.
A barrier had sealed off the space around them, seamless, complete.
His knees went soft.
He understood then: from the moment he’d opened his mouth, Muffliato and a Notice-Me-Not Charm had already been in place.
Jiang Fengyue raised his wand with elegant unhurry and began to walk.
Step.
Step.
Step.
The shoes were custom.
Twilfitt and Tatting’s had come to Malfoy Manor specifically to make them, the uppers cut from the finest piece of crocodile leather, the soles from pearl fish skin, polished and finished through a process so painstaking and involved that even Twilfitt and Tatting’s reserved it for very few clients.
Those shoes struck the ground now with a crisp, unhurried click.
And within the sealed silence, through all of Argus Parkinson’s screaming and cursing and scrambling backward, each footstep rang out perfectly clear.
➤ Next: A Light Punishment