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Everyone was waiting for the Dark Lord’s command.
But into that perfect silence crept another sound, extremely fine, extremely dense, almost imperceptible.
The slow, dry friction of scales dragging across stone.
Two faint green points of light kindled in the dark, and then the serpent’s massive, coiling body slid out of the shadows, moving straight toward Jiang Fengyue beneath his faintly trembling gaze.
It was Nagini.
The rasp of scales against stone was infinitely amplified in the deathly stillness of the hall.
She came directly for him, her ice-cold snout nearly brushing his knee, and then that heavy, scale-covered head lifted.
An enormous, icy weight pressed down onto Jiang Fengyue’s left hand.
Like countless blunt blades dragged slowly through flesh.
He couldn’t stop the pained grunt that escaped him.
The rigid scales ground down onto the delicate chain across the back of his hand, and as Nagini’s body writhed in slow, deliberate motion, they drove it deep into his flesh.
Time seemed to stop.
Every person in the hall watched in silence.
Ivanclay’s eyes had gone red with excitement.
Jiang Fengyue kept his breathing as steady as he could, trying to hold the searing pain to something manageable, until Nagini’s tail finally cleared his hand.
By then, his left hand was a map of bloody gashes, scraped raw by the scales.
He looked at the butterfly on his middle finger.
Still poised as though about to take flight.
The little snake’s head was stained with blood now, and the chain across the back of his hand — glistening with red — seemed to have drunk deep of his life’s essence.
If anything, it was more striking than before.
stunning.
Jiang Fengyue watched it quietly.
Then he lifted his head.
Just as he had expected.
Voldemort was watching all of it with playful, unhurried amusement.
The Dark Lord’s brow lifted in genuine surprise.
Earlier, the boy had been grief-stricken, burning with indignation.
And now, of all moments, he raises his head?
Jiang Fengyue blinked.
The expression he had been wearing — the deliberate one, slowly dissolved back into composure.
He met the Dark Lord’s scarlet eyes, and smiled.
He raised his left hand.
Blood specked his chest.
The fair skin of his hand was crisscrossed with open cuts, droplets still falling steadily.
The emerald at his wrist had drowned itself in red, blazing impossibly bright.
Jiang Fengyue held his smile, no fear in it, no shame, no anger, and bowed.
Perfectly still.
Flawlessly precise.
Set against the contrast of elegance and blood, he looked like something that had descended from the moon itself, carved from ice and cold light.
Heartbreakingly beautiful.
He parted his lips.
As though he were about to call out something.
Nothing came.
The Dark Lord understood why.
He had no right to say Master.
Yet he found My Lord beneath him.
And the address Your Highness had not yet been granted.
Voldemort finally moved.
He straightened, abandoning his lazy slouch, and placed both hands on the armrests carved with coiling black serpents.
A sharp crack of movement.
All twelve house heads rose to their feet, heads bowed, awaiting his word.
Only Jiang Fengyue and Ivanclay remained kneeling, one before the Dark Lord’s throne, one prostrated at the foot of the steps.
“Yaxley Parkinson has insolently offended the Dark Lord.” Voldemort’s voice carried the weight of a sentence already decided.
“Ivanclay.
Bring him before me tomorrow.”
Terror sank its teeth into his chest and held.
Sweat dripped steadily from his forehead to the floor.
He knew exactly what awaited his son tomorrow.
He could not open his mouth to beg.
“…Yes, Master.” He ground the words out through his teeth.
Among the other house heads, several exchanged glances of bewilderment.
Nagini’s earlier performance had led even them to read it as a signal of the Dark Lord’s displeasure.
The rest turned their thoughtful gazes toward the young Malfoy still kneeling on the ninth step.
The corner of Jiang Fengyue’s mouth lifted, barely a fraction, and then he heard Voldemort’s voice, faintly threaded with amusement.
“As for you, young Malfoy.
Doing something wrong — well.
A punishment is still a punishment.”
Jiang Fengyue’s entire body went stiff.
Ivanclay’s head snapped up, eyes bright, lips parting in anticipation.
Yes, give him the Cruciatus.
Rip him apart from the inside!
Ivanclay’s mouth curled into something vicious.
“Using a dark spell that only causes pain.” Voldemort tutted, lightly.
“It seems Abraxas hasn’t taught you enough.”
Below the dais, the Malfoy house head stepped forward at the mention of his name and gave an elegant bow.
“As your punishment,” Voldemort said, the corner of his mouth curving, “you will copy the Compendium of Dark Arts three times.
I imagine the Malfoy library has a copy.”
Jiang Fengyue blinked.
He stared at Voldemort’s handsome, dangerously unreadable face.
That’s the punishment?
He wasn’t the only one stunned.
All twelve house heads were uniformly taken aback.
Since when had the Dark Lord handed down anything this light?
It was practically like using a wand to idly circle a kitten, teasing it.
The Dark Lord paused.
Then added, “You may use a self-inking quill.”
Even Abraxas looked surprised at that.
With magic assistance, what kind of punishment was that?
It wasn’t even teasing a kitten anymore.
It was handing the kitten the wand and watching it pounce and gnaw to its heart’s content.
Ivanclay stared up at his master on the dais in disbelief.
His son had been harmed.
And the Dark Lord was openly, blatantly partial to Lucius Malfoy?
He didn’t dare question it.
He turned and glared fiercely at Abraxas instead, only to find the long-haired man already watching him.
Cold and still, one hand resting on his serpent-headed cane, fingers moving in a slow, idle stroke.
The expression of a man regarding a maggot.
Ivanclay whipped his gaze away and knelt quietly.
Jiang Fengyue sat with that information for a moment.
He had thought he was beginning to understand a little of how Voldemort’s mind worked.
But the man before him had just slipped back out of reach.
That wasn’t good.
It would make him very difficult to handle in the future.
Jiang Fengyue’s lashes trembled.
He saw Voldemort move, suddenly and fluidly, his upper body leaning forward.
A pair of large hands closed around his jaw.
Certain.
Unhurried.
One thumb pressed in with just enough force to drag across the soft flesh beneath his chin, moving slowly until it grazed the vivid red of his lips, and stopped.
Voldemort leaned close, studying his face with careful, almost clinical attention.
A barely perceptible light passed through those scarlet eyes.
At this distance, Jiang Fengyue could count the lashes on Voldemort’s eyes.
Looked at the flush rising through the pale skin of Jiang Fengyue’s jaw, and smiled, satisfied.
“I grant permission.”
Permission for what?
Jiang Fengyue was briefly lost.
Then understanding arrived.
The platinum-blond youth tilted his head back, exposing his throat, and bowed with perfect reverence.
“Thank you for your grace, Your Highness.”
The Malfoy Heir Assault Incident came, at last, to a close.
When Jiang Fengyue returned to the manor, exhausted to the bone, Fifi took one look at the back of his hand and let out a shriek that could have shattered glass.
She wailed and fetched healing potions and wrapped the wounds with trembling hands, and she swore, on a house-elf’s honor, on everything she held sacred, that she would absolutely not allow the noble Young Master Malfoy to be left with a single scar.
Jiang Fengyue did not sleep that night.
Not because of the pain.
Because he was copying the book.
A self-inking quill.
Just because the boss says you’re allowed to cut corners doesn’t mean you actually do it.
Get caught slacking and he might not say a word to your face, but come end of month, you’d better check your performance bonus very, very carefully.
His bandaged hand, wrapped to something roughly resembling a pig’s trotter, he pressed into service as a paperweight.
Fifi bustled around him the entire time, refilling the quill with ink, pressing fruit into his good hand, hovering.
He had to get this finished by morning.
Hand it to Abraxas first thing and ask him to deliver it to the Dark Lord.
That was efficiency.
Sure enough, when he yawned his way downstairs the next morning and held out a thick roll of parchment, Abraxas stared at it.
Jiang Fengyue waved a hand.
He forced himself alert long enough to exchange a few words of greeting, watched Abraxas tuck the parchment under his arm and head for the door, and then made immediately for the stairs.
Passing through the second-floor corridor, he nodded to his late grandfather’s portrait on the way up.
He buried himself in velvet and didn’t want to hear about anything until he’d slept himself out completely.
That sleep went straight through to evening.
He came downstairs in his dressing gown to find Abraxas just stepping through the front door.
Abraxas looked him over and raised his chin with measured disapproval.
“Mind your deportment, Lucius.”
Jiang Fengyue made a vague sound of acknowledgment.
Then Abraxas held out a slip of paper.
From the Dark Lord.
For him.
Jiang Fengyue unfolded it.
Extraordinarily beautiful calligraphy.
The pen strokes sharp enough to nearly cut through the parchment.
One brief line.
I’m eagerly awaiting it.
Abraxas’s voice carried a distinct undercurrent of amusement.
“I have never once seen the Dark Lord write a reply to someone your age.
It seems you’ve earned his satisfaction considerably.”
He looked up and found something warmer than amusement in Abraxas’s eyes, the particular approval of a man looking at his heir.
“Lucius.
You will be the Dark Lord’s most capable subordinate one day.
Of that I have no doubt.”
Abraxas had also brought back a piece of news.
Ivanclay had brought Yaxley to see Voldemort privately.
No one knew what was said.
What everyone knew was that when the two of them came out, both their faces looked dreadful.
Jiang Fengyue filed that away and paid it no further thought.
The most important thing right now was to finish eating, go back upstairs, and sleep again.
Tomorrow was the first day of term at Hogwarts.
He yawned.
Hogwarts.
Considerably more worth looking forward to than Voldemort’s Manor.
➤ Next: Torrent of Music