– the Dark Lord, the Cruciatus Curse, those were, perhaps, only the beginning.

“To keep your mouth shut about this,” Draco pointed to a bead of sweat that trickled down his neck and, as the saleswizard’s hands closed round the neck of the satchel, strode from the room in a swirl of black cloak.

It was, finally, with a sigh that he stepped out of the bathroom, a white towel – yes, white -- even Narcissa wondered, when more frustrated at him than usual, why he did not dye his towels black when he could not bear clothes of a different colour – wrapped round his torso, his usually immaculate white-blonde hair a little tousled and very wet.

It fell into his eyes; the pale, very whitish-blonde tinge of the former standing out against the cold, cold grey of the latter in a way that would have made Narcissa roll her eyes, because she knew he would want to flaunt it.

He looked good, he knew, in the clothes he had selected, the black of the T-shirt highlighting the steel-grey of his eyes, and bringing out the blonde of his hair.

It was Braine, their house-ghost, who had once been an influential Malfoy himself.

The flames died, the voice faltered into nothingness, and where the remains of the burnt envelope should have been, glowed a tiny spark of black-purple that slowly died down into cold silence.