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Fifi the house-elf was in an excellent mood.
Her esteemed young master had been humming to himself ever since returning from Diagon Alley the day before, and had even pulled her aside to talk for most of the night.
Just thinking about it made Fifi’s wrinkled little face scrunch up like a matcha mille-crepe.
She practically bounced down the hallway, tray balanced carefully in both hands, the delicate and dazzling object upon it catching the light with every step as she hurried toward the young master’s room.
Lucius had asked for this himself.
She had searched the entire treasure vault to find something that suited him, had even rummaged through the legacies left behind by the ancestral Madams of the Malfoy line, and at last, here it was.
Fifi darted joyfully through the long second-floor corridor.
Idle white peacocks drifted in ones and twos onto the banisters, their sharp beaks lightly pecking at the gauze curtains drifting in the air.
The enchanted curtains floated away on their own, playful and evasive, while the embroidered thorn-rose tendrils at their hems reached out curiously and twined around Fifi’s ears.
“What is that…
you are carrying?”
Fifi startled and curled her ears inward, cautiously looking up.
From one of the portraits along the wall, a Malfoy ancestor had set down his platinum-blue patterned coffee cup and was frowning down at the object on her tray, which scattered fiery light in every direction.
The house-elf’s dark green face flushed crimson.
She lifted the item reverently above her head.
“Esteemed Master Alpas, this is what young Master Lucius requires.”
That was all it took.
Ancestors from half a dozen surrounding paintings crowded immediately into Alpas’s portrait study, jostling for position, craning their necks to see what was on the tray.
Then they all went still at once.
“Isn’t that—”
“What does he want with this?
It does not suit his station.”
“Lucius has been so inscrutable lately.”
“…Children are always impossible to fathom at this age…”
The ancestors exchanged glances all around, utterly baffled as to what the young master could possibly be planning.
The grandfather clock at the end of the corridor chimed and startled Fifi back to herself.
She bowed to the portraits and hurried off toward the depths of the hall.
Inside the room, Jiang Fengyue was preparing for the Dark Lord’s summons.
The head of the Parkinson family had been kneeling at the Dark Lord’s feet since the moment the incident occurred, begging the Dark Lord to deliver justice.
Yet even now, not a single word had come from the Dark Lord in return.
No one knew what Voldemort was thinking.
But even without a formal summons, Jiang Fengyue had to be fully prepared.
That morning, when Abraxas had donned his cloak and set off for Voldemort’s Manor to attend a high-level meeting, he had still been murmuring reassurances on his way out the door.
The boy had looked genuinely terrified yesterday.
Today, Jiang Fengyue wore only a simple chiffon blouse with a ruffled collar.
His platinum-blond hair fell smooth and loose to his waist.
Not a single piece of jewelry on him.
The Malfoy heir lounged in a carved lacquer Rococo chair, a black leather book with embossed designs open in his lap.
The title on the cover read: A Practical Record of Advanced Dark Magic.
He rubbed at his eyes, still red-rimmed from staying up all night.
His face, already pale at the best of times, was paler still.
He had deliberately skipped the Refreshing Charm, only a small touch of magic on his lips.
His slender, well-jointed fingers tapped lightly against the page.
He raised his wand, thinking.
The spell he had cast yesterday was the Dark spell he had mastered the fastest, and exactly as the book described, when he felt that chilling, corrosive magic surge from the tip of his wand, all he had felt was a shiver of exhilaration.
A tremor that reached all the way into the soul.
Dumbledore had said the three Unforgivable Curses damaged a wizard’s soul, especially the Killing Curse.
Even seasoned Dark wizards treated it with extreme caution.
It didn’t just kill.
It reflected inward, corrupting the caster’s own soul, eating away at reason until madness set in.
The eldest daughter of the Black family was proof enough of that.
She had murdered any number of Muggle-born wizards in order to grovel at Voldemort’s feet, and her reputation for madness had spread accordingly, loud and notorious as a thunderclap.
Even Abraxas, in the memories Jiang Fengyue had inherited with this body, had been exceptionally careful about the Killing Curse.
He had warned Lucius early: learn it, yes, but never cast it except at the most critical moment.
Jiang Fengyue tapped his fingers idly against the armrest.
There was exactly one exception in the entire wizarding world.
The second-generation leader of the Dark side.
The man who used the Killing Curse the way other wizards used a basic disarm.
History’s greatest Dark Lord, Voldemort.
His mastery of the Killing Curse unnerved even Dumbledore.
He alone seemed to cast it without consequence, without the ominous curse ever clawing back into his own mind.
What boundless magical power.
What a formidable soul.
Even fifty years later, when he was resurrected again, his deterioration had nothing to do with the Killing Curse.
It was the insane act of fragmenting his own soul that had undone him.
Jiang Fengyue understood perfectly well why nearly every pure-blood noble family had ended up kneeling at Voldemort’s feet.
Dumbledore was powerful, yes.
But Dumbledore was a man with limits.
A Dark Lord who could overpower entire armies — a Voldemort wholly unconcerned with what the Killing Curse cost him, even in the feudal era, toppling a tyrant like that would have required thousands of soldiers.
In today’s wizarding world, where magical power was the only real currency, the calculation was even bleaker.
TAP.
Jiang Fengyue looked up as Fifi came through the door, tray raised above her head.
“Young Master, Fifi found it!
This one is the most beautiful — the most worthy of the young master!” Fifi announced in her high, reedy voice.
Jiang Fengyue studied the hand chain resting on the tray.
Any Muggle auction house would have paid a staggering price for it.
The skeletal platinum links climbed over the back of the hand and wound all the way up to the wrist and around the middle finger, its fire-play so vivid it needed no light source at all to dazzle.
He extended his left hand gracefully, holding it just in front of the little elf’s chest.
Fifi bent forward with great reverence and fastened the piece onto the young master’s hand.
A massive emerald sat at the wrist, ringed by countless diamonds fine as stardust.
The glittering constellation traced the platinum framework’s delicate lines up over pale skin threaded faintly with blue veins, and finally gathered at the middle finger in a butterfly of exquisitely cut gemstones, poised as if about to take flight.
At the butterfly’s heart, a slender little serpent gripped a moonstone chalcedony with unwavering precision.
That was enough.
Jiang Fengyue smiled, satisfied.
Fifi’s eyes went wide with delight.
She wiped her hands on the Malfoy-crest apron at her waist, then bowed low before the youth in the chair, so simply dressed, so thoroughly magnificent.
A soft knock at the door.
Jiang Fengyue raised his head.
Abraxas’s thick golden hair was combed back without a strand out of place.
He wore a formal silver robe and held his serpent-headed cane planted against the floor.
Those habitually sharp gray eyes paused for just a moment when they landed on the boy inside the room.
“You’re going dressed like that, Lucius?” Abraxas asked.
Jiang Fengyue curved the corner of his mouth.
“Just like this, Father.”
“Isn’t it rather plain?” Abraxas’s voice trailed off as his gaze caught on the hand chain blazing on Jiang Fengyue’s left hand.
He looked at it for a moment, then let out a helpless laugh.
“Not quite orthodox noble dress, child.”
A beat.
“But it works very well.”
The platinum-haired patriarch studied him with quiet approval.
“It suits you.
And it suits the moment.”
Abraxas lifted his cane and extended his other hand toward Jiang Fengyue.
Resting in his palm was a Portkey fashioned into the shape of a glove.
“Come.
The Dark Lord summons.”
Jiang Fengyue rose from the chair.
The instant Fifi heard the words Dark Lord, she folded herself nearly in half at the waist, trembling, nose nearly brushing the floor.
“Yes, Father.”
➤ Next: The Dark Lord