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Draco POV:

I was still stunned by the revelation Arcturus just revealed to me. Everyone has always wondered where Grindelwald's collections went, but it has been a mystery for a long time. The only thing known about it is that Beauxbatons Academy occassionally recovers a book or two every now and again even to this day. Arcturus' voice brought me out of my musings.

"The next thing to discuss is your father." He said.

"I will not allow him to get his hands on anything even remotely related to the Blacks. As such, I will seal off the Black holdings until your majority to prevent this." He spoke, causing me to frown minutely.

"Oh? You're unsatisfied?" He said sharply.

I shook my head. "Of course not Lord Black. I'm simply worried about the investments. I had some plans to invest my own money in a few different muggle industries, but it doesn't particularly matter. I can do that with my own money and there are plenty of ways to accrue resources." I said.

He nodded in understanding.

"You don't have to worry about that. I will have Gringotts invest the Black holdings to the best of their abilities. Believe me, goblins are a greedy race that will do anything for money. They have not overlooked the muggle world and regularly do business there. A word of warning however. Never trust the goblins. They will always put their greed first." He warned me.

I nodded in understanding. I've never had much interaction with the goblins so I don't know what they're like firsthand, but from what i've seen and read about them, they're a greedy, violent and bloodthirsty race not to be trusted. The only reason they still exist is because wizards of the past couldn't eradicate them, they're too powerful. Especially in their caves.

"I will, however, leave this manor open to you. I will transfer the wards to you sometime before I pass on. The wards here are incredibly potent so use this place well." He said.

I smiled. "Thank you Lord Black." I said. 

I was grateful. This would give me a space of my own for research, practice, training or just a place to relax. It would be my own sanctuary. At least until I could build myself a proper wizarding tower. Maybe in the mountains or maybe a floating island? Food for thought.

"You're welcome." He said with a smile.

"Finally, your education. You have surprised me a lot in this meeting so far and I have no doubt your education is good. I still want to teach you myself however." He said.

"Truly?" I asked, excited at the opportunity.

I mean, the man is a legend in the wizarding world. It would be crazy to turn down the opportunity.

"Truly, brat. I want to teach you about business, politics and fighting. Have you started learning magic yet?" He asked.

"I have." Was my reply.

He nodded. "Not surprising. You have proved in our discussion so far that you can learn on your own just fine, so the most I will teach you is a few spells. What I will teach you however, is how to fight. The mentality needed and the basic skills required." He said.

"Once those two things are ingrained, everything else follows. It doesn't matter which school of magic you favour, the basics of fighting stay the same so that is what I will endeavour to teach you." He continued.

"Business and politics will mostly just be discussions after your training. You can learn them elsewhere but I must make sure the Black Heir can fight properly and make tough decisions before I go." He finished.

"Yes Lord Black, thank you for the opportunity." I said, smiling brightly.

I couldn't help it! The chance to learn fighting from one of the greatest fighters in recent history isn't something that can just be passed up. I was planning to start my training in warfare when I reached Hogwarts to take advantage of the ROR, but this will start me a little early.

He smiled. "You're welcome brat. Come back here as often as possible to learn from me. Only in the daytime mind you." He said.

"Yes Lord Black." I said.

He snorted. "Stop calling me that. Call me grandfather from now on." He said.

I felt slightly touched at that. We had only been speaking for less than 2 hours so far. I promised myself to make his last days comfortable.

"Yes grandfather." I said, smiling at him.

He got up from his seat.

"Right then brat. You should go home for now. I need to go to the ministry and Gringotts to arrange everything concerning the Heirship. Come back tomorrow so we can begin your training." He said.

I paused for a second.

"Apologies grandfather. I promised my betrothed that I would visit her and meet her family tomorrow." I said.

He seemed startled for a second.

"Right, your betrothal. Completely slipped my mind. The Greengrasses correct? Hmm... what do you think about your intended?" He asked.

"She's a nice girl. We share many interests and get along well just from our first meeting. We're friends at this point. Whether that leads to more than friendship, I can't say just yet. Only time will tell." I said.

He nodded. "Well, whether to tell her about the Black Heirship or not I leave to your judgement. I won't be around for much longer and you have a good head on your shoulders so I won't interfere. If you do tell her however, make sure that she doesn't spread it around before the Heirship is finalised. It should only take a few days." He said.

I nodded, already thinking of plans in my head. Now that Arcturus himself confirmed my Heirship of the Black family, I will be able to neatly sidestep the betrothal contract by presenting them with one for the Black family.

Since it is with the same person but for different families, the legalities of it become blurred and much harder to take to court. Historically, this type of situation has always been handled behind closed doors. Well, the backup plan of waiting till i'm older and tearing up the contract myself is still valid anyway.

"I will see you the day after tomorrow then brat. Come here ready for a workout. Hehehe. It will be fun to train someone again." He said, laughing demonically at the end.

I rolled my eyes. I could already imagine that it will be a painful process, especially if he wants to hammer as much into me as possible in the short time we have, but he doesn't have to be so over the top about it. Pain means nothing to me anyway. After experiencing my soul getting disintegrated in the afterlife, nothing else can possibly compare.

"Yes grandfather. I will be ready." I nodded.

He sighed, dissappointed that I wasn't intimidated if I had to guess.

"Go on then, get going brat." He said after a moment of silence.

I just smiled at him.

"Goodbye grandfather. And thank you again." I said.

-------------------------------------------------

Soon after, I was walking out of the fireplace back home where I found Lucius pacing back and forth, anxious for news. As soon as I walked through the floo network, he was already on my case. I was only gone for a couple of hours.

"Draco, how did it go?" Lucius asked, rushed.

I smiled. "It went well father. Lord Black hasn't yet made his decision about the Heirship, but I will be visiting him again the day after tomorrow." I said.

I was playing it safe telling him this. I doubt Lucius would want to jeopardise or interfere with the process of me becoming the Black Heir, but you never know.

"Well done Draco, well done." He said, relieved.

"So how did the meeting go?" He asked, curious.

I put on a serious expression.

"It was intense father. I can see why Lord Black is such a renowned figure. We mostly spoke about my views and beliefs. He was questioning me to determine if my views lined up with his to see if i'm suitable for the Black Heirship." I lied.

"Well, that's to be expected." Lucius said with his face cramped, no doubt remembering his encounters with Arcturus.

"Arcturus Black is very intense, I remember. I hope you will get his approval Draco, but I will not blame you if you don't. No one can influence Black's decisions. Damn. If only he didn't get involved personally!" He said, frustrated by the situation.

I remained silent but sneered at Lucius in my mind. What a coward. Lucius did many horrible things during the war, but he's the kind of person to bully the weak and fear the strong.

It was a good thing Arcturus got involved, otherwise the Black family would have gone to Harry. Assuming it stays the same as Canon of course and Sirius has made Harry his Heir. None of this showed on my face however.

"I understand father, hopefully we get good news." I said.

"Yes, yes." Lucius waved, already in his own thoughts.

"I will excuse myself then, meeting Lord Black has tired me out." I made an excuse to leave, I have better things to do.

"Of course Draco, I understand. Go rest." He said.

I took that opportunity and went to my room to change into something more comfortable, before heading out into the grounds. I don't have a favourite spot per se, but there's a grove of trees near the ward line in the back of the property that is very picturesque.

Laying down at the base of a large oak in the grove, sunlight streaming through the gaps of the leaves, I dived into my mind to sort everything I got from this meeting. My intensive scan of the library and the trunk full of books in the basement was the first thing I dealt with.

Quickly locating the shining star in the top of the tower representing my memory of the meeting among the countless other memory stars, I extracted the intensive scan as it's own memory from that before putting it back in it's place. Holding the memory of the scan, I began the tedious process of extracting one mental book after another.

These books I haven't read or understood yet. They will be added to my mental library so I can peruse them later. Despite there being over 2 million books and hundreds of thousands of scrolls, it didn't take more than 5 hours mental time, or roughly 1.5 hours real time, to extract them all.

It's not a long process after all. Everything is already there from the scan, I just need to separate and compile them. This was done in batches of hundreds at a time and only took a few seconds for each batch. It still took a while to finish due to the sheer amount.

From an outside perspective, i'm just taking a nap under a tree.

Once that was done, I brought them all to my mental library. I had to expand the room many fold to fit them all and by the time I was done placing everything on shelves, the library was massive. My own personal Library Of Alexandria. I couldn't be more pleased with my progress of accumulating knowledge.

Once I was finished, I was mentally exhausted and a couple of hours had passed in the real world. The whole process didn't take much effort, it was just tedious, boring and required constant focus. I only have to do it once however, and the results were completely worth it.

I sighed in contentment and threw all other concerns away for the moment, allowing myself to doze off under the tree like I been pretending to do beforehand.

I woke up a few hours later, feeling immensely refreshed. One of the benefits of training the mind arts is needing less sleep, reducing the hours of sleep needed to 3-4 hours a night, mostly for the body to rest and recover.

This 3-4 hours is reduced again by my body training. The magic circulation training enhances everything about my body, including my recovery speed. I barely need to sleep half an hour every day and that will continue to decrease with training.

When I do sleep however, I will feel completely refreshed and raring to go again.

When I got up, a quick flush of magic through my body got rid of any stiffness and another quick flush of magic through my mind did the same for any lingering drowsiness. Ah... I love magic.

I learned that afternoon tea is being served. It seems I missed lunch. Oh well. During afternoon tea, I ate a big meal curtesy of Dobby whilst chatting with mother. Lucius was there too, but he was distracted by something and not paying much attention.

Noticing his state, I spoke.

"Hey father. Can I please read the betrothal contract? I haven't read it yet." I asked.

"Hmm? Oh, the betrothal contract? Sure Draco, come to my study and i'll give you a copy." He said, still distracted.

I smiled. "Thank you father." I said, and went back to chatting with mother.

After eating, I followed father to his study where he took the original contract from a safe inside the wall. A quick flick of his wand and it was duplicated. He passed that to me and I excused myself.

I went to my room after that as the sun was getting low and a chill was coming in. Temperature barely affects me these days with my training, but going outside in cold weather will make mother worry, so I stayed inside.

I read through the contract and sure enough it was just like Daphne had said, a whole bunch of business jargon that boils down to a whole slew of rights and obligations that heavily favour the Malfoys. Priority purchasing at terrible prices, ownership of large land tracts, access to their contact network, backing Malfoy family businesses, etc.

Some of the terms included went into politics like backing prospective bills to be passed if a certain amount of the dark faction backs them and more. Hmm... the politics ones can be avoided if you simply don't show up to the wizengamot. It's not a mandatory thing.

That however will leave the Greengrasses even more isolated than they are now. It's a lose-lose scenario for them. I expected the contract to be bad already, but I was still surprised by the insidious nature of it. I'm sure there's other terms and conditions hidden here as well that i've missed, but i'm not a lawyer and all this legal writing is very complicated with many twists and turns.

As Daphne had been infuriated by, there was also a paragraph in the contract concerning her taking the Malfoy name. It was actually worded quite simply. This type of thing is fairly common in marriage contracts and is normally quite acceptable.

The only time when it would be insulting would be if the person was an only child of the family and expected to carry on their line. That would usually be solved privately.

In this case, it isn't technically insulting because the Greengrasses have two daughters. Any other family and this part is considered quite normal as there is another child to continue the legacy.

The insult and attempt to destroy the Greengrasses comes from what isn't written. Everyone knows Astoria suffers from the Greengrass' hereditary blood curse, so leaving the family to be continued by her is a death sentence for them.

Even if we go to the absolute extremes of biology and assume she gets pregnant the moment she has her first menstrual cycle, that's still a very chancy proposition for her. That's not even mentioning how monstrous that would be morality-wise. This isn't the middle ages where that was common, and the magical world never operated like that to begin with.

Putting down the contract, I sighed. After reading through it and understanding all I could on my own, I finally understood why Daphne was so worked up and why her parents were so furious with Lucius.

The contract is only signed for the moment and won't go into effect until we're married, but when that happens, the Greengrass family will essentially be slowly absorbed into the Malfoy family. That might be why the Greengrasses agreed, it gives them time.

It's more complicated than that of course, but that's the essence of it. I don't know what Lucius has done to force them, but it must be worse than the results of signing the contact otherwise Lord Greengrass wouldn't sign it to begin with.

I sighed and put it down on my desk, thinking. I'm not helping them get rid of the contract for altruistic reasons. I'm not a crusader of justice or anything. If I see a grave injustice right in front of me, I will take action to rectify it.

Like with Harry. If I never met the Guardian and wasn't tasked with it, I would've helped him anyway. I would've checked up on him due to simple curiosity because come on, Harry Potter! I would've done much the same as I have done so far simply because it was a monstrous thing Dumbledore has done to him.

Minor injustices I will either ignore or correct, depending on my mood at that moment. This situation with the contract I would classify as between major and minor. I am their best option at this moment, but certainly not their only option.

The simplest solution for them would be to hire mecenaries or assassins and put out a hit on Lucius. If it worked, it would have saved them from their situation for the moment. But not forever however. Someone else from the dark faction, or maybe even the light faction, would have taken over from where Lucius started.

I don't know why they didn't just up and leave the country, but there must be reasons why they didn't. Anyway. I will help them because I am in a position to help them. Plus, who would want to be married to someone that hates you? I'm not masochistic.

After sorting my thoughts out and putting the issue out of my mind for now, I left the copy of the contract on my desk and went to lie down on my bed, diving into my mindscape.

I appeared in my mental library and sat down behind the large desk I have there, looking around at the absolutely massive collection of knowledge. Slowing down my mind's perception of time, I started thinking about defenses.

The curse that grandfather is suffering from was absolutely horrendous and I don't want to be in any position where that can happen to me. To prevent this, my magical core needs defenses. I can leave the body for later.

Sinking deep into meditation, my consciousness arrived at my magical core. It was still the dark royal blue coloured star of magic, but now there was a river of magic leading away from it to my mindscape.

I started experimenting with my magical core trying to make defenses for it. First I tried to make forcefields around it, taking inspiration from my mind's defenses. The moment I tried however, I realised it wouldn't work.

I could do it and put a forcefield around the core, but it would stop magic from leaving and cut off the river of magic to my mindscape. Experimenting some more showed me that I was able to tweak the shield to allow magic outside the core and not in, fixing that issue.

That however, made it so that magic will no longer return to me. The river of magic flowing to my mindscape goes out and then flows back into my core, having spent some of it's energy powering the mindscape. Not to mention this would stop me doing the magic circulation training and would stop me absorbing ambient magic boosting my regeneration.

Some more testing showed that I could make the forcefield so that it would allow outgoing and incoming magic to pass, but then we're back to square one again. Some tweaking made it so that only my own magic is allowed to pass and outside magic is stopped.

This however ran the risk of curses that latch onto the targets magic to take effect. It's fairly uncommon, but not rare or anything. I continued to try and tweak it, but I never came across a result I was happy with. Maybe my ideas are too unimaginative?

My mental projection shook it's head and I decided to start over from scratch, putting the forcefield idea on the backburner. It's not a bad idea all told, just incredibly hard to impliment, so I will work on it in my spare time.

For now, I need defenses that work from the start. Then, I got an idea! Quickly moving to impliment it, I took some magic from my core and separated it so I have a chunk of malleable magic held in front of me by my will.

I waited a moment before feeling my core filling up again, confirming that this is just like using a bit of magic. When using magic, the magic separates from the core and then the core refills itself through the echo of the beginning in it's centre.

This is essentially the same, except that the magic is still in front of me. Focusing back up, I started to use my will and imagination to shape it and input commands into my creation.

Soon, I had a western dragon standing in front of me, the same colour as my magic. The commands it has are to defend the core from outside influence. I did as it was programmed to do and started circling the core, looking for threats.

I smiled at my success. This is a good start. Soon though, I noticed that the dragon started to lose power and would eventually dissipate to nothing. I frowned and dissmissed my creation, the dragon dissipating back into magic and re-joining my core.

Reviewing my process, I realised that I didn't include a way for it to replenish itself and few other things. I began the process again and soon had another western dragon standing in front of me.

This time, it would replenish it's magic from the core as it's being used. It's not connected to the core, but it's made of my magic so there's no issue with it refilling it's reserves. I tested it and it worked, the dragon would go to the core and replenish it's magic.

I reviewed my process again and soon dismissed the dragon, thinking of new things I could add. Soon, a process of creation and dissipation began as I tried out different methods of defense. The reason I made them dragons is simply because I like dragons. Plus i'm named Draco, meaning dragon. The name comes from the Draco constellation, following the Black family's naming tradition.

A few hours later, I smiled as I looked at my work. The dark royal blue star of my magical core was now hidden behind a thick mist of dark royal blue, unable to be seen. Numerous large western dragons with shimmering scales and horned crowns flew around the mist, looking for threats.

Occasionally, a dragon would fly into the mist and reach the core, replenishing it's magic before continuing it's duty. I was beyond thrilled with the end product.

The mist isn't actually mist. It's made of millions, billions of numerous tiny dragons that defend the core. They're a little different from the large ones. For starters, they have very little individual power and are designed to work together.

For another, they self-replicate when their magic is filled to the brim. These tiny mist dragons are designed to deal with any magic that insidiously worms it's way to my core over time, along with checking any magic of my own for foreign influence.

This would take care of any attacks that try to infect my magic through my body like potions, or through other esoteric means like sympathetic magic. They will attack whatever magic it is and eat it, before flying out of my body to dissipate into ambient magic.

The large dragons are for more straightforward attacks. They will intercept any piece of magic that directly targets my magical core and attempt to destroy it. They're a lot more powerful than the tiny mist dragons, but still not very powerful simply due to my overall power levels at this time.

The trick to them is that a more straightforward curse that targets the core directly will be blocked by them. This is because the dragons are large masses of magic inside the space where my magical core resides, so they can substitute themselves as the target of the magic, protecting my core.

After they are struck with a foreign piece of magic, they will fly out of my body and either attack the source if they can find it, but if not, they will simply dissipate into the ambient. They don't self-replicate, but that's not an issue. It doesn't take long to make them.

The beauty of it all was it's simplicity. Unless magic coming back to my core is EXACTLY the same as the magic in the core at that EXACT time, the defenses will attack. This means that even if an enemy gets a sample of my magic, they won't be able to engineer anything into it and send it back to me. 

Attacks from that angle won't work. Paranoid? Maybe, but i've read novels where comparable situations occured. By making sure that they won't let through anything different to my own magic at that exact moment, I basically had a foolproof method of defense.

My own magic from an hour ago will not assimilate back into me, even if nothing about it is changed. People are constantly changing and growing and their magic grows alongside them. The only way to get past my defenses is absolute, overwhelming force. At that point however, I would imagine I have bigger things to worry about.