I don’t really know how to start this. I certainly never anticipated all the events and troubles that would come from me being in the wrong place at the wrong time (or maybe it was the right place at the right time?) Those events just seemed to keep galloping down so fast that there was never any time to pause, never any time to breathe.

Dad said I should write everything down so I can keep it straight in my mind. “Perhaps you’ll even learn something from it,” he joked; but really I think he’s just as curious as everyone else. I have to admit that I felt terribly guilty lying and keeping secrets from everybody as much as I did so perhaps this story can serve as my general apology as well.

The hardest part is starting it. You see, I’m not really sure where to begin. I’m not sure how much you know, or even who you are for that matter. Are there many of you? And do you or all of you even know who I am? Now, I’m freaking myself out. Not that that’s any better than conversing with you or all of you who may not even be there.

I suppose I could start on my dad’s first day of school, for that was the day he first met Harry Potter. Or perhaps I should begin with the fall of the Dark Lord, although if you were interested in that you could easily pick up a heavier and far better written tome than this one. I suppose I should begin with the day Dad met Mum.

My dad is Draco Malfoy. Yes, he is that Draco Malfoy. You know the name; you heard the gossip, let’s move on because he’s not that person anymore. Anyway, when Dad met Mum he was trying to quiet his five month old son, Scorpius, who was squalling at the top of his lungs. Oh, and perhaps I should mention that he was in a library. It’s become a family joke that we knew right away Scorpius would never be one for books. In any case, his wife, Astoria, had died three months before, leaving Dad with a troublesome baby that he didn’t know what to do with.

Enter Mum. She was at the library that day, too, and having an eleven month old baby herself, she knew all the tricks for getting one to shut up. Within seconds Dad found Scorpius whisked out of his arms and being competently rocked to sleep. Out of gratitude, he invited Mum over for tea. Apparently that cup of tea lasted for four hours and at the end of it Dad was grateful to have found someone who didn’t seem to give a damn about his past, and Mum just said she couldn’t resist the hopelessly lost look on his face. I have some trouble believing that though, as I have never seen Dad look anything but collected.

It wasn’t until three weeks later that Dad learned Mum’s story. She was a Muggle; Dad later confessed he’d thought she was a Squib if he ever gave any thought to it at all, which he didn’t, being a little too busy with baby needs at the time. Anyway, Mum had married a wizard whom shall henceforth be referred to as “that slimy git.” She didn’t know he was a wizard, she just felt young and defiant, and when the slimy git proposed she said yes, mostly because she knew her mother hated him. It wasn’t the best grounds for a marriage. So when the slimy git (I should just make some sort of freaky acronym out of it, TSG, to save on ink) got drunk a week after the honeymoon, odd things started happening. So Mum got him a bit more drunk (drunker?) and the whole thing came out.

Now, most people would be a bit put off by that and all, but Mum took it in stride. Being the daughter of two medievalists (her name was Elaine after the Lady of Shallot, did I mention that?) it seemed more like a dream come true. The best thing she ever got TSG to do was to bring her into the wizarding world and then leave her alone in the library. She found her niche right away and when she was three months pregnant and the marriage fell apart, Mum packed her bags, said thank you very much, and moved in with Jeanne, whom she had been researching with. Mum once said that she took to the wizarding world like a duck to water and never once looked back.

Not that any of that really mattered, because by this time Dad was well and truly smitten. Well, Dad was a bit nervous that Mum might learn about his past, and even more nervous that she might decide that he wasn’t what she was looking for after all, but he knew that at some point someone would make a snide comment and it would all come out. So he gathered up his courage and poured out the story of his life, sparing nothing, and watching her nervously from the corner of his eye. When he finished she said nothing, and he was sure she was going to leave. Instead she proposed.

So they got married and Dad adopted Jenny, and then they decided to round out their brood a bit more by having the twins and me. And of course, it was all going wonderfully until the year I turned eleven, because that was the year that everything started to fall apart.

It was about two weeks before September 1st and I had just turned eleven about a week and a half before. I was more excited than I ever knew I could be, because I would finally be joining my brothers and sister at Hogwarts. After years of watching them disappear on the train, it was my turn, and I had been ready and packed since the moment my letter was delivered. Mum was out in Muggle London, finalizing the sale of her latest book; this one was one of her rants about the virtues of English heroes and not needing to import some French chap (you did not use the name Lancelot in our house, it was tantamount to swearing) to do all the important heroic stuff.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Mum was a little nutty about Arthurian legend. She’d lived on a steady diet of it since she was born and seemed determined to cram as much of it down our throats she could by way of returning the favour. And just in case we tried to escape it, each of us (except Scorpius, the lucky bastard) would be reminded every time we heard our names. Jenny was the first, Guinevere Morgan Malfoy, and after that the trend just stuck. In a nod towards Dad’s side of the family the twins were named Gawain Orion and Arthur Leo. But Mum was really just saving it all up for me. As if any kid, wizarding world or no, could grow up without being ashamed, insulted, and made fun of with a name like mine. I think even Dad might have protested, but seeing her lie there all tired and dishevelled from labour, well, he wasn’t going to deny her a thing. Which is how I wound up being Emrys. Emrys Merlin Malfoy. And yes, it was after that Merlin Emrys, the greatest wizard of all time. There. You’ve had your laugh and so has the rest of the world. Let’s just say that my name has always been a sore spot and leave it at that.

Anyway, Jenny was making supper as a favour to Mum, and had dragooned Gawain into helping her since Scorpius had miraculously disappeared as he usually did when called upon to do anything useful. He’d earned the nickname Houdini by the time he was five, which just goes to show. Jenny was also periodically shouting at Arthur who was roughhousing with the dogs, Tennyson and G.K., in the livingroom. I was perched on the arm of the stuffy green armchair, trying to keep my feet out of the melee while practicing “swish and flick” with my new wand.

Ours is a bit of a loud household as you might surmise, so when the phone rang the first time it was a couple of seconds before anyone actually heard it.

“Phone!” Arthur bellowed toward the kitchen while G.K. knocked him over on the rug and sprawled across his chest.

“So answer it,” Jenny yelled back. “Can’t you tell I’ve got my hands full at the moment?”

“You could get it,” Arthur shot at me with an accusing look.

“You’re older,” I retorted. “If you don’t get it soon, it will stop ringing.”

“And wouldn’t that be a blessing,” he grumbled; but he pushed the dogs off and waded across the room to the desk. Picking up the phone he said in a voice quite unlike the one he had been using just seconds ago, “Malfoy residence, this is Arthur.” He listened for a second then made a face. “Just a moment, please.” He turned to me with a beseeching look. “They want Dad.”

“I’ll go.” I took the stairs two at a time and made my way to Dad’s study. Usually we aren’t supposed to disturb him if he is working unless it is an emergency, but I figured the phone call might be business. “Dad,” I said loudly, rapping my knuckles against the door, “someone called and they are asking for you!”

The door opened and Dad came out with a sigh. “I was actually making some progress, too,” he said ruefully, tousling my hair like he used to do when I was little. “Is it your mother? She’s rather late.”

I shrugged, but shook my head to indicate that it probably was not.

“Da- drat.” Dad never swore in front of us if he could help it, but sometimes words slipped through. We made it to the bottom of the stairs where Tennyson and G.K. were waiting for us since Arthur had abandoned them. “Not now,” Dad said absently, pushing through them, and wordlessly took the telephone from Arthur.

“Hello? Yes, I am Draco Malfoy.” There was a pause. “Yes, Elaine Malfoy is my wife.” This time the pause was longer, then suddenly Dad went white as a sheet and placed his hand against the desk as if to keep from falling over. “Yes, I understand. No, no, just a moment.” His voice was shaky and he fumbled as he pulled a piece of parchment over from the corner of the desk and began to write with a quill. His hand was so unsteady that the first quill he tried snapped under his fingers and he was forced to rummage for a second one. “Yes… yes. I understand. I will be by as soon as I can… no… thank you.”

The receiver tottered as he set down the phone and turned to face us.

“Bad news about the book?” Arthur asked, referring to Mum’s latest project which had consumed the Malfoy family for the last few months.

Dazedly, Dad shook his head. “Arthur, please get Jenny and your brothers.” There was a note in his voice I had never heard in his voice before and it scared me. I think it scared Arthur, too, as I had never seen him move faster in rounding up the family.

A few moments later we were all gathered around Dad on the couch; Jenny sitting on his right side and me on his left, Scorpius lounging over the back, and the twins sprawled on the floor at his feet.

“Your mother,” Dad began, but his voice caught. “Your mother is…” he paused, as though there were no words for what he had to say. He took a deep breath and began again. “That was the Royal London Hospital calling. On the way back from her publisher’s your mother saw an elderly woman being attacked by a young man who was trying to take her purse. When she went over to help the man panicked and pulled out a gun. The woman is fine except for a shoulder wound… Elaine… your mother died before they could get her to the hospital.”

For a moment we were all very still, waiting for him to tell us it was all a bad joke. Only Mum was the joker of the family, not Dad. Jenny was the first one to move.

Curling up against Dad’s side, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and said, “At least we still have you, Daddy.”

It was that little girl endearment that broke the dam, and Dad pulled Jenny half into his lap and said vehemently, “You’ll always have me, always.” Then he was crying, and we were all crying as well as we piled together on the poor old couch, holding on to each other as if we would never, ever let go.

I don’t remember much about the next few days. Everything was quiet in our house, and that felt strange. It was as if Mum had taken all the laughter and gaiety out with her. I wonder if it had been buried under the repressive weight of six feet of dirt like Mum’s coffin.

It was Dad who kept us functioning those next few days. He made sure we ate and slept. He double checked our trunks to make sure we had packed clean socks for Hogwarts. He was probably hurting even more than the rest of us the whole time, but he was the one who held the family together. I don’t think I’ve said it yet, but Dad is the real hero of this story, not me. If it wasn’t for him, I would still be laying in my room, staring at the ceiling, and wishing I could simply disappear.

Dad is the one who got me on the Hogwarts Express. With Mum’s death, all the excitement that had been building up suddenly drained out in a flood. I didn’t want to leave, not without Mum there to wave me off. I didn’t want to go to a school full of new people and try to forget how much I felt like I was dying inside. I didn’t want to pretend that everything was going to be okay because I knew that nothing would ever be okay again.

“You can write to me every day, if you like, and I will write back,” he promised as he shepherded us onto the platform. “You can tell me anything and everything; you can even send me Howlers every time you are miserable. But you are going to school. Remember how excited you were? It’ll be all right. You know that your mother would want you to go.”

I wanted to scream and protest right there on the platform despite the hundreds of watching eyes. But I didn’t only because I knew he was right, and somehow that made it worse than ever.

Dad held us all for a long moment before we boarded, studying our faces as if he was memorizing them for a later test.

Scorpius, oddly enough, was the first to notice the wistful look in his eyes and promised in a rough voice, “We’ll be home for Christmas. All of us.”

“I know.” Dad swallowed. “You’d best be off or you will miss the train. Jenny, keep an eye on Emrys. And Scoprius, Arthur, Gawain, lay off each other for the first month at least. I’d rather not get any more owls from the headmistress.”

“Yes, Dad,” everyone chorused except myself. “I’m not a baby,” I protested instead.

But my words were lost as we bustled onto the train. Jenny piled us into the first open compartment we found and we all but fell out the window as we waved to Dad. As the train began to move, he paced it, watching as the last of his family was slowly riding away from him. Just as the train began to pull away he called after us, “Don’t forget to write!” and then he was gone from sight.

We were a very quiet group on that train ride. Jenny had pulled out one of Mum’s old books, a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and was wading through the flowery poetry and memories of Mum reading us experts from it while she worked. Of all of us children, Jenny looked the most like Mum. It was the only thing that Jeanne could remark on at the funeral. It had been a small affair; only six people outside the family came. I couldn’t help but resent that the number was so small. It is sad how few people will publically admit to an association with our degenerate branch of the Malfoy clan.

But as I was saying, Jenny was growing up to look just like Mum. She had the same light brown hair, with a bit of the curl at the ends. Her eyes were the same clear blue as Mum’s, and lit up in the same way when she smiled. She even had the same determined chin and stubborn set to her jaw that told the world things were going to be done her way. The twins got many of Mum’s features as well although their faces were a bit more angular, their hair a sandy blond, and their blue eyes a somewhat darker shade.

Scorpius and I were fated to look more like Dad. But while Scorpius may have had the ash blond hair, his heart-shaped face and pale green eyes came from Astoria. He was the heartbreaker of the family, the kind of boy that girls have been falling all over themselves for centuries. Mum used to swear that he learned to flirt before he could walk or even talk. As for me, I was Dad in miniature. I had his white blond hair, his cool grey eyes, even the delicate bones of his face. All I had of Mum was her smile. Like hers, it looked a little too big for my face, stretching wide to give me laughter lines around my lips and crinkles in the corner of my eyes.

I’d never really minded resembling her so little, but I suddenly and desperately found myself wanting something else to hold on to, a little of her in me that I could keep forever. I hadn’t smiled since the day the hospital called with the news, and I felt as though I would never smile again. And so, I was denied the only resemblance of Mum I had. As I pressed my forehead against the cool, reflecting window of the train I tried to quirk the corners of my mouth up, but the only result looked forced and strange. The image in front of my eyes grew blurry, and I quickly dashed away the tears that had been building up.

I must have sniffed louder than I thought, since Scorpius reached over to tousle my hair, then angled his sketch book towards me so that I could see the drawing he had been working on of the twins as they sat side by side on the seat, reading from The Standard Book of Spells, grade 2.

“It looks good,” I said, like I always did.

“Thanks.” He fiddled with his pencil for a moment, adding a few lines here or there before adding in his best older brother voice, “Did you want to talk?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

Scorpius nodded in understanding. He pulled a couple of coins out of his pocket and pressed them into my palm. “I’m starving. Will you go and pick up a couple of rounds of Pumpkin Pasties from the trolley?”

It wasn’t much of a question. While I might balk at orders the others would give me, I had been Scorpius’s willing slave since I was three and he had taken me for a ride on his toy broom. “Why not?”

The corridor was still fairly crowded as people flitted from compartment to compartment visiting old friends and making new ones. It was rather overwhelming, and the snacks trolley was nowhere in sight. I clutched Scorpius’s coins so tightly they imprinted small circles into my palms, but I was too afraid of dropping them to loosen my grip. Slowly, I began to weave my way through groups of chattering people. Every so often I would glance back over my shoulder, trying to keep our compartment in sight so I would feel a little less lost and overwhelmed. It was during one of these backward glances that I ran bodily into someone else.

“Hey!” he protested as we both reeled backwards. “Watch it!”

For a moment I was tempted to say that he had obviously been paying no more attention than I, but as he looked to be Jenny’s age, I wisely decided to drop it. “I’m terribly sorry,” I said since Dad had raised us all to be polite. “But I was looking for the trolley. Have you seen it?” As he straightened his robes, I noticed the Gryffindor emblem emblazoned on the front. Gryffindors tended to have tempers from what I’d heard, so it was probably just as well I had decided not to be cheeky.

He started to answer then stopped and peered at me through slitted eyes. “What’s it to you, Malfoy?” he asked rather venomously.

“James!” a small red-haired girl scolded from his side. “Don’t be rude. You said you’d help me find Rose.” Pulling his hand, she tugged him along the corridor before turning back slightly to point in the direction I was heading. “The trolley witch is about six or so compartments that way. Good luck!”

As she spoke, the older boy pulled her away, not so subtly warning her to stay away from future Slytherins, despite her protests that Dad had said some of them were okay and he was just being a prejudiced git.

I found the trolley only a few feet past where the girl had said it would be. The kindly witch running it quickly filled my pockets with Scorpius’s pasties, and then insisted I take a Chocolate Frog as well since I looked like I needed it.

Back in the compartment, Scorpius handed a pastie to each of us, and when the twins said they weren’t hungry, Jenny insisted that everyone eat. The first bite seemed to stick in my throat, so I opened the Chocolate Frog instead and slowly nibbled away at it as it warmed my stomach and cleared my head. The card inside was Merlin. I stared at it like a bad joke, then wadded it into the smallest ball I could and kicked it under the seat.

Jenny peered out the window. “We’re almost there. You boys should get your robes on.”

Arthur and Gawain grumbled at having to put their book down, and reluctantly pulled their robes over their heads as the train pulled in at the station.

“Leave your trunk,” Scorpius reminded me as I reached for it.

“We’ll see you after the sorting,” Jenny added, pulling me into a quick hug.

I nodded, and stumbled off the train to where an impossibly large man was shouting, “Firs’-years! Over here!” A milling crowd of children was growing around him, and I noticed the red-haired girl who had helped me find the trolley. She flashed me a brief smile, and then turned back to her conversation with a boy with wild reddish-brown curls.

I hesitated, uncertain what to do, when the large man, Hagrid, Dad had called him, directed us to get in boats. I waited, near the back, until only a couple boats were left. Hagrid sat in one, taking up most of its available room except for a small bench in the back. I turned and started towards the other until I noticed it contained a familiar black haired head: Isadore Parkinson.

Ever since the war, Dad had not been on speaking terms with many of his former friends. A few, namely Pansy Parkinson and her husband, and a couple old Slytherin friends had stayed a bit longer. But the moment Dad married Mum, they stopped speaking to him except in pointed jibes and criticism. As Dad wouldn’t hear a word against Mum, whatever her heritage, he threw them out rather quickly. Pansy took this rather badly, and the few times that our family has met theirs in public, words are usually spoken.

There was no possible way that I was going to subject myself to sitting in the same boat as Isadore. He’d probably try to feed me to the squid at the first opportunity. And I was rather afraid that if he said anything about Mum, anything at all, I would kill him. It would not be ideal for starting my first day of school.

Quickly, I turned on my heel and marched over to Hagrid’s boat. “If you please, sir, may I join you?”

He looked a little taken aback as I stood there meekly, hands clasped loosely in front of me and staring rather determinedly at my feet. “Wouldn’t yeh rather be wi’ your friends?”

I shook my head wordlessly. “Please, sir.”

He looked at me suspiciously, then softened somewhat. “All righ’, then. Hop in, lad.” The boats began to glide smoothly across the black glass surface of the lake towards the twinkling lights of the castle. “Yer name?”

“Emrys,” I muttered. “Emrys Malfoy.”

Hagrid didn’t look surprised, only thoughtful. “Another Malfoy then, and the spittin’ image of yer father.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, in a determined effort not to cry. I’d be damned if I broke down like a baby in front of my class and particularly not thirty yards from Isadore Parkinson.

“Heads down!” Hagrid bellowed suddenly as the first boats began approaching the cliff, and I took advantage of the distraction to collect myself.

Then we were at the castle door, pouring into the Entrance Hall, and waiting for the doors of the Great Hall to open wide and admit us to Hogwarts’ exalted ranks. They parted at last, spilling golden light out into the hall, and blinking we crowded inside. A shabby hat was brought out, and began to sing, but I was too busy scanning the house tables to listen to its song.

Jenny and Scorpius sat at the Slytherin table, surrounded by a small group of friends, and about as far away as possible from those Slytherins who still clung to the pureblood point of view. Jenny tore herself away from her conversation with Serena Nott and Lori Donaghue to give me an encouraging smile. Scorpius, too, stopped flirting with a Ravenclaw across the aisle long enough to give a roguish wink. The twins were a bit further down on the Ravenclaw table, and were busy arguing with Corbin Edgewood over the exact nature of a circle, although Arthur did look up briefly as the hat’s song drew to a close.

A tall, dark-haired witch who introduced herself as Professor Sinistra began calling names off a roll, and I waited anxiously until, “Malfoy, Emrys.”

As the dark cloth of the hat dropped over my eyes, I could hear snickers from around the room. “Did she say Emrys? Kid thinks he’s some sort of big magician,” “Parents must have been delusional,” and “Only the Malfoys would be arrogant enough to…” whispered past my ears.

Hmmm, said a voice inside my head, What have we here? Another Malfoy… But where to put you?

I immediately thought of Scorpius. Ah, yes, Slytherin is an option certainly. But is it the best place? You seem to be shrinking away from the burden of your name. Perhaps Slytherin would not be the right fit.

My mind seemed to skip away and thoughts of the twins flashed before my eyes. Ravenclaw? You certainly are academically inclined, but is it enough for you, hmm? What is it you really want?

Thoughts of Mum suddenly filled my head. Little moments, from her laugh to the way she used to tuck me in at night loomed large in my memory. Again I could feel a lump trying to rise in the back of my throat, choking me up, and again I suppressed it with a deep, hard swallow.

Of course, the hat chuckled silently inside my head, why didn’t I see it before? You have the potential to be a great wizard, Emrys Merlin. I flinched and the voice continued amused, Yes, and some day you may even live up to the name you hate. And the house that will help you on the way to that greatness is…

“Hufflepuff!”

There was a shocked silence as I pulled the hat off my head and headed to the table under the black and gold banners. Defiantly, I sat down: the first Malfoy to ever be sorted into Hufflepuff. Me.

The best way I can describe my first three years at Hogwarts is to say that I shuffled through them like a zombie. I spent most of my time in the library, buried up to my eyes in books and hiding from the world in general. Between all the reading and hiding I became a very good student, my homework always well written, usually longer than necessary, and always done on time. But out of class I was sunk into a funk that only broke at home on Christmas and Summer holiday. I know he was still grieving too, yet somehow being around Dad just made me feel a little better, a little more like things could go back to normal someday. Dad kept me human for at least a few months those three years, and in case you forgot, he’s the real hero of this story.

Back at school, I made no close friends in Hufflepuff, but at least I made no enemies either. My housemates did not know what to do with me and my general state of indifference. However, being Hufflepuffs and thus having some greater measure of compassion than other people, I was mercifully largely left alone. I was not so lucky when it came to the other houses.

I’d always been aware that people carried an old prejudice against my family, but naively I had not expected to find it among my classmates. I was rudely disillusioned my first day when a pair of Gryffindors cornered me in the bathroom and proceeded to give me a bogwashing because, “the toilet’s where little shits like you belong, Malfoy.”

When they let me up at last and swaggered off laughing I was half-drowned, furious, and completely and totally ashamed. The experience was not to be my last. Nasty messes found their way onto the seat of my chair or into my bag, ruining my homework and covering my books. My elbow would be jogged as I tried to write, feet stuck out to trip me in the halls. Jinxes and hexes flew my way with astonishing regularity.

There were too many tormenters to fight, and I had no desire to run crying to Scorpius or Jenny, so I retreated. I spent my days under the safe if watchful eye of Madam Pince in the library, or near professors who more often than not would stop things before they got too out of hand.

I knew that my siblings had felt small acts of prejudice, but it seemed like the school had really been saving itself up for me. By my fourth year, Jenny had become Head Girl, and was rather universally loved by the professors. It probably helped that she was from Mum’s first marriage and therefore not a “real” Malfoy, although she would have decked anyone who dared to suggest that. Scorpius continued to float through school with astonishing ease. He had never been the best of students, but everyone liked him. He had a silver tongue that could charm you within five minutes, and he could talk his way out of any trouble he fell into. The twins, too, were largely left alone. Perhaps it was because Arthur had been named a prefect, or it could have been Gawain’s status as a Beater for Ravenclaw. Or perhaps it was simply because both boys were tall, stocky, and built like trains. All of which meant, if people wanted to take out their hostility on a Malfoy, I was the logical choice. The fact that I looked like Dad was just an added bonus for them.

I had expected Isadore to be the worst of my problems, but he had difficulty rallying the Slytherins against me because of Scorpius and Jenny. My real difficulties came from the Gryffindors. The ringleader of the little group of my tormentors was Bernard Creevy. He had lost his uncle during the Battle at Hogwarts, and although he had never met the man, he had learned to idolize him from his father. And with me being a Malfoy- well, obviously that made his uncle’s death all my fault and it was his duty to see that I pay.

Of course, Bernard was never alone. He was usually backed by Sam Hepplewhite, Douglas Singh, and Ryan Johnson. The older Gryffindors were no better. For the most part they turned a blind eye to their housemates. Only Rose Weasley would regularly intervene on my behalf, telling off the others for fighting in the halls. “Just like her mother,” I heard James Potter mutter once as she scolded him for being a prat. But even Weasley couldn’t be everywhere at once, so I hid and bore whatever happened, and generally lived in a tiny shell of misery without letting on how awful everything was.

Looking back on it now, I can still hear Jenny’s incredulous “But why didn’t you tell us? We could have gone to a teacher, stopped it all!” I suppose that would have made sense. Only I was too worried that even the teachers would affirm I was not worth saving. I didn’t want to tell Dad and worry him because I knew how much he hated to be touched with the shadow of his past reputation, how he hated us to be touched by it as well. The only person I could have told was Mum. But she was gone. So I decided to wait it out, and dispassionately counted the days until school would be over and I could leave this hell permanently.

By the time I reached my fourth year, I had no hopes or illusions that anything would be different. And it certainly began in the same way. We had barely been back a week when Bernard caught me just outside the Great Hall, his friends at his back, and a grin like Christmas had come early.

“Well, what have we here? Did you miss me dreadfully, Malfoy?”

“About as much as I’d miss a boil,” I muttered, staring at my toes and hoping that whatever taunting he had planned would be over quickly.

“Isn’t that a shame, especially since I went to such trouble to get you a present,” Bernard replied with mock sorrow. He reached into his bag and pulled out a brightly colored book. “Since you’re in the library so much I got a little light reading for you,” he snickered, thrusting the book under my nose.

I pulled back slightly and the title swam into focus, Murderers or Madmen: the Secret Lives of the Malfoys Revealed by Rita Skeeter. No sooner had my eyes adjusted to the words than the book pulled back and Bernard flipped it open.

“Read it,” he commanded, shoving it once more under my nose.

The insidious words crept across the page, and I choked slightly. My eyes fixed on the top of the page which read, “…and at the tender age of sixteen, Draco Malfoy, who had already revealed his true nature committing heinous crimes against Muggleborns and the savior of the wizarding world, the Boy Who Lived, eagerly joined the evil ranks of He Who Must Not Be Named…”

I knew this book. I remembered when it came out, I was eight, and Grandfather Lucius had died just one month before. Dad was furious with Skeeter’s gall in tormenting a grieving family, Grandmother Narcissa was almost hysterical. Only Mum remained calm, refusing to be worked up by “some cow who has the misapprehension to call herself a writer.”

In fact, on the day the book was due to appear, Mum got up early and apparated down to Flourish and Blots where she proceeded to buy the first copy they sold, along with several quills and a bottle of red ink. Bringing them home, she sat down in her favorite chair and read the book. Anyone passing by that afternoon would hear the scribbling of her quill in the margins, punctuated by comments such as, “goodness, don’t tell me she doesn’t even know the rules of comma application,” “couldn’t you come up with a better epitaph than that you mangy harlot?” and “that’s the thirty-second time you’ve used the word evil, are you trying to prove you have a limited vocabulary or do you simply not know how to work a thesaurus?”

Several times she would call out questions to Dad, then carefully correct some fact. At one point she had glanced to where I sat playing with the dogs and said, “Emrys, dear, I’m afraid we’ve been wrong for years. Skeeter seems convinced that we named you Ermine, and as you know, she’s quite the authority.”

Shortly before dinner Mum finally finished the book, her spidery red notations running up and down its margins. Taking her finished work to Dad, she let him page through it- he laughed heartily at some of her more florid phrases- then asked him to duplicate it for her. The next morning her annotated version was sent to Skeeter’s publisher. There was no reply, but the highly anticipated second printing of the book was abruptly cancelled, and for the next few months, Skeeter’s articles in the Daily Prophet were much more subdued than usual.

The other copy of the book we kept, taking turns adding in our own annotations. It became a peculiar ritual in our family that the best cure for a bad day was to take it out on the book. I wondered what had happened to it now; none of us had touched it since Mum died. Without her the humor just didn’t seem to be there.

“Read it,” Bernard snapped again, dragging me back to reality.

My eyes flashed, angry at being pulled away from any memory of Mum, and for the first time in years I felt as though she was standing beside me, egging me on. My tongue loosened and words began to fall from my mouth of their own accord. “Really, is that the best you can do? For starters, he was seventeen, not sixteen. And that is an awful run on sentence; did no one ever teach her how to write clearly? And wouldn’t nefarious be a better descriptive than evil, or do you not know that word because you’ve never opened a bloody dictionary!”

Bernard stared at me, mouth agape, as though his pet kitten had suddenly roared like a lion.

Flushed with victory I shouted at him, “You’d do better to find a book written by a credible source, or at the very least a literate one!” then turned on my heel and dashed out the castle door.

As soon as the first wave of fresh, crisp air hit me I ran, not sure what was happening behind me, not sure if anyone would give chase, but only knowing that I needed to get away from them all to hold on to what happened.

Mum had come back.

For a glorious moment I had felt her standing right beside me, and I was terrified that I would lose her again. So I plunged headlong into the one place that I knew would guarantee me privacy, the fringes of the Forbidden Forrest.

Now, you may be thinking that that was a terribly stupid thing for a young, distracted wizard to do, and you may be right. However, I was careful. I made sure I could see my way out, see the clearing at the edge of Hagrid’s hut, and reasoned that with Fang patrolling the area, not too many monsters would come this close.

So I curled up at the base of a large tree, nestled into a large gap in the roots, cushioned by a blanket of fallen leaves. And then I sat there, and as hard as I tried, I felt Mum slipping away from me all over again. My eyes closed on my hot and angry tears- the first I had cried since Mum had died, and my world was falling to pieces all over again.

I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again, the world had suddenly gone dark and heavy drops of rain were falling from the leaden sky. I blinked as the fat drops of cold water burst upon my face.

No sooner had I taken two steps from the shelter of my tree when the storm broke in earnest. The wind howled as it rushed through the trees, buffeting me this way, then that. The rain sheeted down, obscuring all vision, and then wind bounced the water up my nose and down my throat until I felt I had fallen under water. Soaked to the skin and half drowned, I stumbled back to my enclave in the roots of the tree and pressed my back as close to the rough bark as I could without sinking into it.

Leaves and branches whipped around above me, and I would jump as some of the larger limbs fell to the ground with crashes that were all but swallowed by the hungry roar of the storm. Once a tree not too far away plummeted to the ground, and for a moment my heart was in my throat as I prayed that my own tree would not do the same.

I don’t know how long the storm raged around me. To me, cold, wet, and afraid it seemed to go on for hours, yet looking back I know it could have been no more than a half an hour at best. I suppose the exact time hardly even matters, now. Anyway, as quickly as they had come, the howling winds pushed the storm away, and the rain and wind dwindled down to nothing.

I uncurled form my hiding place, pushing wet leaves off my hair and robes where they had stuck. My left leg had fallen asleep where it was curled under me, causing me to stagger as I stood. Steadying myself against the trunk of my tree I tried to shake some life back into it, wincing as a pins and needles feeling replaced the former numbness.

Shivering, I remembered my wand and cast a drying spell I had found during one of my library retreats. My memory must have been somewhat off, or the spell not terribly effective, for while my clothes became at least a good deal less damp than they had been, my hair and skin remained as wet as ever. Resigned to my cold and somewhat sopping state I hoped I could slip back to the Common Room unnoticed before a professor, or worse, Jenny, could tell me off for staying out in the storm.

I picked my way over the forest floor which was littered with fallen branches and slick with patches of glossy, wet leaves. I was halfway over the trunk of the newly fallen tree when a croaking squawk startled me into falling over to the other side. As I tumbled head over heels, a flash of bright red among the green and brown detritus caught my eye. Rubbing what I was sure would become a sizable lump on my head, I staggered over to the leafy top of the tree and peered in among the large and cumbersome branches.

A pair of beady black eyes stared desperately back at me.

I stood rooted to the spot by the most heart-wrenching and beautiful creature I had ever seen. I knew at once that it was a phoenix, although the brilliant orange-red plumage was lackluster despite the pearlescent film of water that coated it. A heavy branch trapped the bird in the rubble of what must have once been a formidable nest. Worst was the awkward position of the phoenix; I knew at a glance her neck was broken.

The other odd thing I noticed right away, and I couldn’t tell you how, was that the phoenix was female.

She gave one more strange musical croak which I felt wash through me with the faintest feeling of warmth, relief, and approval. Then her black eye closed, and I knew she was dead.

I should have left then. I was cold, wet, tired and bound to get in trouble as it was. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had just walked away. But I couldn’t. Seeing her lying there, all I could think of was Mum.

So I grabbed the end of the branch and pulled, feeling the rough bark scrape the palms of my hands. Slowly, inch by inch, the heavy wood rolled over until all the dull red plumage was exposed. Tentatively, I reached out a hand and stroked the soft feathers of the phoenix’s head. They gave way gently, but felt as stiff and lifeless as the broken body. Sliding down my other hand, I gently cradled her, then lifted her as carefully as I could.

She was heavier than I expected, and I half staggered over to the hollow in the tree roots where I had sheltered. Carefully I laid her down and covered her with glistening wet leaves. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, not really sure of what to say. “I’m sorry.”

Turning, I prepared to go when the faintest cheep met my ears. Whipping my head back around, I stared at the pile of leaves where I had buried the body. But nothing had been disturbed. The noise sounded again, but fainter this time, and I threw myself back at the fallen branch. Half buried in the wreckage of the nest and fallen leaves a second pair of black eyes stared back at me amid pieces of broken eggshell.

The phoenix had a chick.