728 Epilogue: Malfoy

In the bright glow of the deep blue sky, three owl messengers flew over the heavy cast iron gate into the imposing Malfoy manor with three copies of that day's Daily Prophet in their beaks. The Malfoys were having breakfast.

"Daddy, I want to read it too."

A little blond boy, about five or six years old, said with a hopeful look on his face. He stretched his head up to talk, even though he was sitting on a stack of thick cushions, and the armchair underneath was considered quite tall, as he was too short.

Nothing in the dining table seemed handy to him. The silver knives & forks and dinner plates, for example, were too heavy, which made it hard for him to eat. The others had almost finished eating, and he still had a third of the food left on his plate.

Draco spread the newspaper on the table and showed the little boy the moving pictures on it. Lucius and Narcissa looked up from their Daily Prophet and watched the scene in silence.

"Little Scorpius don't know how to read yet?" Narcissa asked.

Draco opened his mouth to answer. "I can read, Grandma, I can spell a hundred words." When the little boy looked up, inhaled, and interpreted, "Mommy showed me The 'Amazing Adventures of Mick the Wizard' comic, and she tried to get me to make friends at daycare before she got sick."

The temperature in the dining hall seemed to have dropped by ten degrees, or perhaps it was Lucius's gray eyes that dampened the mood in the hall.

"It was merely an idea," Draco said cautiously, "to drop him off in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. Little Scorpius can play games with the other children, listen to stories, learn counting and spelling, and continue his magic education when he gets home."

Narcissa and Lucius exchanged a look with each other, and Lucius said coldly, "The Greengrass family has raised a good daughter."

"Father, aren't you also very sociable?" Draco said defiantly, "Right here! This very table! Hosted more than one group of high-ranking government officials. Every year you allocate at least half a month to prepare decent gifts and make door-to-door visits ..."

"That's not the same." Lucius said impatiently to which Narcissa gave her husband and son a stern glare and turned to the boy, "Scorpy, are you done eating?" "Finished up." "Come to Grandma, little one. Haven't you been trying to sneak into the study and wreak havoc? There are quite a few portraits of our family members hanging there, and some of them will even talk with you."

"Really?" Scorpius's eyes lit up, and he hastily wiped his mouth with his napkin and wiggled himself off the cushions, "Is Grand Uncle Regulus there? I've heard all his stories, the warrior who faced the inevitable darkness alone!"

The corners of Narcissa's mouth pursed tightly, "There is, one in the other room, I'll show you."

She led the little boy away, and then the dining hall quieted down as Draco and Lucius, both father and son, sat at opposite ends of the long, elaborately decorated and patterned table, silently observing each other as if they were engaging in some sort of silent contest and confrontation.

"You should stay this afternoon when we have guests at home." Lucius said, as a few extra wrinkles creased on his pale, sharp face.

"Another get-together for networking?"

"Don't forget, you're a Malfoy!"

"That doesn't mean anything, I shouldn't have come back, I'm going to visit Astoria in the hospital."

There was a long silence, and the fire behind him splintered. "Fine," Lucius suppressed his anger, "you are now the director of the joint wizard-muggle hospital and have a lot of responsibility. Regarding the education of little Scorpius-"

"Don't worry about it, you seem to have more important things to care about." Draco said stiffly, "I would never let my child live in a room that is twelve corridors away from me. I miss that cramped safe house more than the manor I grew up in."

The safe house he spoke of was originally owned by Nicolas Flamel and later inherited by Felix who lent it to the Malfoys to hide from Voldemort. Draco also lived there briefly, and after the war, their family naturally moved back to the luxurious Malfoy Manor, but Felix did not reclaim that house yet.

Lucius looked a little dazed, back then when Selwyn was arrested and brought back into custody by the Ministry of Magic, in order to get a pardon, he voluntarily confessed a list of members of the Death Eaters, which included him, but then Hap openly admitted that Lucius was an undercover agent he had placed among the Death Eaters, in order to allow Snape, who was also a spy, to hide more deeply.

His attitude softened.

"Astoria ... How is she doing?"

"Same as usual," Draco said immediately, "I have been casting a healing spell on her once every week or two, but it doesn't take long for it to recur back, and it's gotten more recurring since Scorpius was born."

"That snakewood wand you're holding -" Lucius said with a serious look on his face, "is a wand that every healer dreams of, taken from a branch that branches off from the wand of Salazar Slytherin, and even it can't eradicate the blood malediction?"

"That curse is extremely potent, a curse that was imposed on an ancestor, passed on for centuries through the bloodline of succeeding generations of family members ... has manifested itself on her, and in recent years I have mobilized the most outstanding minds of both muggles and wizards, exhausted all sorts of methods, and have yet to completely conquer it. "

"I have advised you long ago to stay away from the woman of that family!" Lucius exclaimed.

"That's not what you said at first!" Draco snapped back. "You and Mother had such high hopes for her: fellow Sacred Twenty-Eight, equally powerful family, only to later find out that she had no interest in the whole bloodline crap. The incurable terminal illness did not break her, but rather gave her the qualities of cheerfulness, optimism, and compassion that the Malfoys lacked ... I think it's pretty damning that you're still pulling that clique crap."

"That's enough!" Lucius shouted. He glared at his son, gasping for breath, "That was necessary rhetoric to win the hearts and minds of our allies, not to mention that Selwyn has been coveting my position at every step, so I had to fight back."

"Even at the expense of standing against that man?"

Draco asked pointedly, "You know his attitude, as far as I know, he has never actively investigated his origins, no one knows who his real parents are - whether they are muggles or wizards, it makes no difference in his eyes."

His son's words woke him up, Lucius burst into a cold sweat, and the image of a polite young man came to his mind.

No, a middle-aged man. It is also wrong, age seems to have no meaning to him. Lucius once again recalled the wedding two years ago, only a few close people were given handwritten invitations, and judging from the size of the crowd, no more than a hundred invitations were handed out.

Today that invitation is placed in the Malfoy family vault.

Unlike others who were quite vocal - such as the small group that did not receive an invitation, consisting of some of the purebloods who escaped liquidation - Lucius witnessed the smiles ( with a hint of bashfulness ) on the faces of the newlyweds, would like to raise both hands and feet in support of this wedding.

In his mind, such a situation would become only worse for him if Felix Hap were to choose a mate from a Pureblood family.

This attitude stems from Lucius's reflection on his family's fate.

After experiencing Dumbledore's era and the two chaos brought by Voldemort, the Malfoys naturally were inclined to prefer order and, ideally, establish a solid bond with those in power. While people cheered the arrival of a new era, Lucius was deeply troubled, realizing that the Hap era was not stable and that people can change, just like the former Dark Lord. After the war, Hap was like an untethered kite, flying higher and higher, soon going to be hidden in the clouds, who knows when he would get bored with the existing life and suddenly disappear?

That's when a hand pulled the kite, and in the foreseeable future, more and more hands will pull the kite if they choose to have offspring.

Few bits of news could have cheered the Malfoys more than this. With Lady Bones out of office and Kingsley in power, Lucius' heart came alive again, and he cautiously reached out his probing tentacles, but he found himself an additional adversary - the Selwyn who hadn't hesitated to betray him in the courtroom, both of them vying for the support of the pureblood remnants.

"I've received a heads-up," the sobered-up Lucius said slowly, "that Mr. Hap intends to leave the floating island in Harry Potter's hands."

Draco frowned.

"I was under the impression that Potter had spent nearly half of his career stationed on the floating island for several years, due to the fact that basically most of his relatives and friends were staying there."

Lucius did not speak out loud, rather he mumbled something almost to himself, "In order to take over the floating island, first, the philosophy needs to be in line with Hap, and second, the ability to meet certain requirements, he is now the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, so there is no doubt about his basic management skills, and in terms of personal strength ..."

"Then there is even less need to concern." Draco said with complicated eyes.

"You've seen--" Lucius stared at Draco, then nodded, "It seems that information is true." He gestured to the newspaper on the table, "I guess it'll be announced during the Quidditch World Cup, his birthday is at the end of July, right? That's young, not even thirty yet ..."

Later that day, Draco showed up on the floating island with Narcissa and Scorpius.

Narcissa, who had spent the past two years only on her family's territory, at the moment gazed at the sight before her with some surprise: they were standing high up on a floating island, with hundreds of fireplaces lined up all around the perimeter, but they were quite different from ordinary fireplaces, except for the four corners, which were made of pure white stone, the rest of the building was empty, like large and small stone arches, with a flame burning in the air in the center of the arches. She glanced backward and the fireplace behind her looked the same, except the flame colour was changing from green to red.

In just a blink of an eye, two wizards stepped out of the flame, and after identifying their direction briefly in the same place, they headed towards a small white building.

"That's a registration office," Draco introduced: "First-time visitors have to specify their purpose of arrival and leave a wisp of magic. Originally there was no such rule, but the number of settlers has increased over the years and a new procedure had to be added for ease of management."

Narcissa didn't say anything, her attention was drawn to the row of flying brooms that streaked across the sky, all of them painted blue.

"Those are public brooms, slower than normal flying brooms with height restrictions, but the good thing is that both wizards and muggles can use them. It has a special enchantment on it that keeps people's butts glued to it to prevent first-time riders from falling off." Draco said with an odd look on his face.

"I know! That's a Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes innovation," the little Scorpius yelled excitedly, "I love going there!"

Narcissa glanced at Draco, who looked away with an expressionless face.

They left the fireplace area, then Apparated to a street where Draco dutifully acted as a tour guide.

"The hospital is nearby, you and Dad used to come here a lot before, but it's changed drastically in the last few years. In a physical sense, the floating island is bigger than it was two years ago, and by Muggle standards, it's considered a large city, with a capacity to accommodate over ten million people, but currently, there are only about a million inhabitants, which is pretty lively for wizards. Oh, and almost a third of those people are wizards, the others are scientists and their families who preside over various large-scale projects; government employees, corporate employees ... it also includes a certain number of tourists."

At that moment there was a deafening thump sounded in the air and a three-story-high bus appeared across the road. "A Knight Bus?" Draco was non-committal, leading the way through a sea of oddly shaped houses that bore the hallmarks of wizards - unconventional in detail, often violating certain laws of physics, and varying in appearance.

They passed through a low patch of rain clouds, their hair nearly brushing the black clouds at the nearest point, and yet the sun was shining brightly as they turned a corner. A grand white building appeared before them, this place is the first Joint Wizard-Muggle Hospital, with the simple name 'Joint Wizard-Muggle Hospital', without any prefix. The hospital logo is a winged-wand coiled by two snakes - whether it is a muggle society or a magical society, this logo can be associated with medicine.

Of course, if you look closely, you will find that the wand is a magic wand, and the snakes on it are similar to the giant ouroboros snake wrapped around the exterior of the floating island.

Across the street from the hospital, there was a concentration of unique magic stores from all over the world, and as the Quidditch World Cup approached, a steady stream of tourists arrived at the island in giant ships. Draco saw a familiar face among the group of women. Luna Lovegood was dressed in an eye-catching outfit embroidered with various magical creatures along with an oddly shaped blue brooch at her collar that looked a bit like a broken eggshell, the woman and children around her shouted excitedly.

A brown-haired man with a camera jogged over ...

Scamander?

This thought wandered around in Draco's head for a moment, then it was tossed to the back of his mind. They walked into the hospital, and along the way, muggle doctors and wizard healers greeted him, to which Draco responded with a nod. Narcissa watched all of this silently, with pride spreading across her face.

It was true that she and Lucius had financed and contributed to the construction of the hospital in its infancy, but within a few years, her husband had once again become obsessed with the game of power and moved back to England, where she could only hear about their recent breakthroughs on tenacious diseases and selections of the best treatments from newspapers and family gatherings during the weekends. It was obvious to her that she was a little out of step with the times.

They arrived at the entrance of the advanced ward on the fifth floor.

A woman dressed in a nurse's outfit strides over and said respectfully, "Mr. Malfoy, someone from Future World Corporation has sent a letter stating: Fourteen more high-precision instruments have passed the magic test, and their accuracy is guaranteed. We need your personal signature before we can collect them."

Draco signed the document quickly.

He was about to push open the door of the ward, but the assistant pulled out the memo like a muggle magic trick and tore off a page, "One more thing - Mr. Potter dropped by this morning and said he had something important to talk about, but you were not at the hospital at that time."

"I see, I'll reach out to him." Draco took the note and walked into the hospital ward.

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