Chapter 19

The interaction with Neville had been the high point of the entire excursion to be honest. I'd scurried away quickly, unwilling to stay and potentially ruin the successful impact on his life that I'd just had. The rest of the trip afterwards simply paled in comparison.

I also had the suspicion that Tonks was still a bit emotional over what had just transpired, mostly due to the fact that she kept saying how much of a good boy I was and cooing over me. She reminded me of my mother, which ok, she was a female relative twice my age, but still.

Acting on the same principle of which I had left Neville on. Namely, ditch them at the high point instead of waiting until everything devolved into an awkward silence. I managed to extricate myself from Tonks' loving companionship with several excuses regarding my probably worried parents, my dying grandmother, and the fact that I had left my oven on.

Alright the last two had been an exaggeration, even the first excuse about my parents had been enough for Tonks to start escorting me back to the party, but I swore to Merlin that her over-the-top behaviour was infecting me.

Sadly I did not get to see Tonks' face when I walked up to Mother and asked her in a very pure blooded manner when we were leaving, she'd already been dragged off by her mother Andromeda, who had intercepted us as we were returning to the party.

The answer by the way, to the question of when we were leaving, was another several hours from now. I simply nodded, and left the small conclave of ladies, who had been surrounding my mother as I'd asked the question, to their nauseatingly sweet compliments of how well-behaved I was.

The entire thing, humorously enough, reminded me of my first childhood all those years ago. When my parents would drag me off to a short meet-up with their friends over some coffee, that inevitably lasted several hours when I'd been promised less than one. Back then I'd spent the time bumbling around whatever neighbourhood we were currently in and almost always ended up playing either basketball or soccer with the local kids in one of the numerous open air courts.

I wistfully sighed as I leaned back against a tree, out of sight of everyone, and for once let myself get lost in nostalgia. Bumbling around right now, after all, was inadvisable, so the only place I could really go lose myself was in was my memories.

That was how I spent the rest of the party, thinking about my past life. Occasionally politely, but decisively dismissing other children that came over to play. I was a Homo Sapiens, I already had access to the greatest toy and tool of all time, my mind.

It was thus that my parents found me after the sun had already started its inevitable descent smiling foolishly at nothing while sitting behind a tree.

After checking that I was indeed fine, and had not been confounded, obliviated, or otherwise turned into a drooling moron, they couldn't help but crow at me -in a highly aristocratic manner mind you- about how much of a success the day had been.

I'd only been in the public eye for about a sixth of the time that I'd actually spent at St Mungo's, but for all the fact that the time investment was small, the effect was grand, well at least in comparison to the effect that any other actual seven-year-old had ever achieved.

My parents were so happy even, that they did not seem to mind the fact that I'd spent some of the time with Nymphadora Tonks the half-blood and Neville Longbottom the blood-traitor. They were rather unresponsive to my expressed wish of wanting to meet them more often in the future, but even that in itself was a victory considering who they were.

My real reward came later, once we'd taken the floo back home and had sat down at the dinner table with Grandfather to partake in, well, dinner.

"I've managed to learn the fidelius charm." Grandfather said proudly. He hadn't even waited until we'd finished eating.

"It only took you several years, I'm proud of you Grandfather." I graciously said in lieu of my mother and father seemingly being at a loss for words, and while the words may have sounded patronizing, they weren't.

One had to consider that the fidelius charm was something that pertained to soul magic, affected quite literally the entire world, and dealt with abstract matters such as information and truth. I couldn't quite remember, but I was fairly sure that the only one to actually cast the spell in the original Harry Potter verse had been Dumbledore. Although to be fair since the spell pertained to keeping secrets, it would not be unusual for more fidelius protected information to exist, but for it to be simply unknown.

"The effect this will have on our near and far-lasting future, the possibilities that spring to mind, amazing." Lucius finally managed to mutter out.

"Magic is Might." I drawled out, half-heartedly locking eyes with Grandfather, he knew what I meant.

He chose to reply to Lucius instead, disregarding my words, but if I knew him he filed them away for further discussion. "Yes, the possibilities are endless, well almost, the amount of secrets a soul can keep is limited, and we are only a family of four. Now the question is, who shall carry the secret of the library, and whatever other miscellaneous undesirable artefacts we can stuff into it." Grandfather said.

All eyes grudgingly turned to me, which made sense, I was after all the only one in the family with impenetrable mental walls. Another advantage was that well, nobody would suspect it, but the fact that this advantage stemmed from was a clear argument against this course of action. I was seven -almost eight!-.

I leaned back, considering if I should share the possibility that I had stumbled upon, and decided for it. It was an idea that I was not capable of furthering on my lonesome anyway.

"I would like to refuse. As you previously mentioned Grandfather, we have four family members, that means we have four secrets we can keep, three if no one else amongst us manages to learn the fidelius, since one can not cast it on oneself." I said, drew in some breath, and decided to drop the bombshell I had thought up. "I would like to keep my soul burden-free, for when we manage to hide a much larger and more profitable secret." I trailed off, staring into the distance.

"And what secret would that be Draco?" Grandfather asked patiently, knowing that my manner of speaking was simply there to serve a dramatic effect.

"The fidelius is a charm, beautiful, but limited in scope by the fact that it is wand-magic. It is reliant entirely on the magical capacity and the will of the user. The requirements rising exponentially with the effect that the information would have on the world if it were to be hidden and how many people and resources would need to be permanently blanked out if the information is already out there. However all wand-magic can be expressed ritually, just like all ritual magic can be expressed with a wand, disregarding scale. Rituals have the advantage -as I understand- that while they are lengthier, and require more resources. They also have a much higher potential output since one can draw the needed energy from sources other than oneself, and can even save up the energy over years to release it in a potentially world-changing event." I said simply, my mother being the first to catch on to what exactly I was implying.

"And what exactly would you seek to hide if it were indeed to work that way?" She asked sharply.

I raised an eyebrow, as if it was obvious. "Well, how about the fact that we ever served the Dark Lord, or the fact that we are a dark family? Maybe the information that the Malfoys even exist? How about casting the fidelius on the very medium used to bring it into existence? Magic itself?" I said, languidly sipping from my orange juice. "The possibilities are endless." I paused. "If it is indeed feasible." I grudgingly finished.

What got lost within the excitement that that particular thought experiment produced was the fact that I now, indeed, as expected, had access to the library. Well, more of it than I had before.