Draco sighed, tucked the letters into his pocket, and left the rose-scented courtyard.
Passing through the garden gate, he followed the dark staircase down to his potion-making room, and, his mind still troubled, returned to his little research project.
He was attempting to recreate a potion for treating Dragon Pox.
He recalled that someone had once produced an improved version of this potion, and, given his grandfather's situation, he had taken a particular interest in it, going so far as to seek out the guide to that improved recipe for study.
In his past life, his grandfather Abraxas had died of Dragon Pox... before Draco had even started sixth year. Now, that moment was drawing ever closer, and he had to do something, to see whether he might save his grandfather's life after all.
But these were memories from long ago, and there were a few doses in the recipe he could not quite recall with any certainty, so he kept trying different measures, over and over.
Only a wealthy young man like Draco, with no fear of wasting money, could afford to do this: adding different measures of the very same ingredient to a whole row of cauldrons, watching for the subtlest differences, searching for the one whose colour change most closely matched what he remembered.
And so it went, round and round.
He would not give up until the potion turned exactly the right colour.
Unfortunately, today was proving thoroughly unproductive.
Today was another wasted day. Not a single cauldron's colour matched the description in the guide he remembered.
He stalked away from the workbench to the armchair by the fireplace, turned, sank into it, and said to the empty air, his face stern, "Dobby, clear these away."
"Yes, little master!" Dobby appeared almost at once, with a shriek. He was dressed in a green outfit covered all over with bright red roses, looking rather like a small, mobile, and somewhat cheap rose garden.
Dobby seemed rather distracted today, and did not chatter away excitedly to Draco or share his news, the way he usually did.
He tidied the cauldrons in silence; the only sounds in the room were the clink of glassware and the shuffle of tools. Then, suddenly, the little elf let out a yelp; he had burned his finger on a cauldron not yet fully cooled.
Draco started out of his own thoughts... he had been dwelling on those letters. He waved his wand, and a glass of iced water appeared before the unfortunate elf. "Dobby, put your hand in that."
The little elf plunged his unlucky finger into the icy water and finally let out a sigh of relief.
"What is wrong with you today?" Draco finally noticed Dobby's odd behaviour. "You are not usually this clumsy."
"Dobby... Dobby..." The little elf glanced at him furtively, looking as though he wanted to say something, but could not quite bring himself to.
Draco said, impatiently, "I order you to tell me exactly what has happened."
"A few days ago, Dobby had some time off. Dobby thought he would go and see his friend... Winky, she is the Crouch family's house-elf, and she has always been very kind to Dobby.
Winky's family has only the one master to serve, Mr Barty Crouch, who has gone to work at the Ministry of Magic.
Yes, Dobby saw him leave with his own eyes, and thought he would visit Winky once he had gone. But that day, Dobby heard Winky speaking to someone outside the window, calling him 'little master.' Dobby went in to look, but there was no one there, only Winky."
Dobby poured it all out, explaining this troubling business in great detail.
"Barty Crouch? Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation?" Draco asked.
"Yes!" Dobby said anxiously, "Dobby asked Winky about it! But Winky insisted Dobby must have misheard. She would not say another word, and hurried Dobby straight out of the house! Dobby... Dobby is ever so worried about her!"
Draco glanced at Dobby's anxious face, a thoughtful expression settling over his own.
Barty Crouch.
A man in his fifties. He stood ramrod straight, moved rather stiffly, had short black hair, and a moustache like a toothbrush. He looked like some soulless mould, as though he had been measured out with a ruler.
Draco certainly knew of him. Lucius often spoke of him at dinner with disdain, calling him "pompous and tiresome," clearly not the sort of man who could be bought with money.
"He and Ludo Bagman are in charge of organising the Quidditch World Cup. That tedious old fool caused the Malfoys no end of trouble, back in the day," Lucius had said, displeased, at dinner one evening.
Draco could roughly guess what sort of trouble that must have been... Barty Crouch had once headed the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, championing a hard line against Voldemort's Death Eaters, and showing no mercy whatsoever during the purge that followed. The Malfoys had bribed a great many people to clear their own names, and knew perfectly well who the difficult ones had been.
Narcissa pursed her lips in distaste, a flicker of malicious satisfaction in her eyes. "His son was not quite so rigid, was he?"
"No, a top student at Hogwarts in his day, twelve OWLs to his name... a clever, courageous, devoted servant..."
Lucius said, a hiss of contempt in his voice. "He never held back his praise for Barty Crouch. Just thinking of how utterly stunned Barty Crouch looked in that courtroom is enough to cheer me up no end..."
Draco glanced up quickly at his father.
Narcissa noticed her son's movement, frowned, and seemed to realise this was not a suitable topic for the boy's ears.
"In any case, Lucius, you cannot expect everyone to like you."
Narcissa swiftly changed the subject, saying loftily, "He is a nobody now, he has no say in our affairs whatsoever. That title, Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, is really only for show; in truth, his career is finished. Staying on good terms with Cornelius Fudge matters a great deal more than fretting over him..."
"Quite so!" Lucius said to his wife, a hint of smugness in his grey eyes. "Fudge has been most helpful... he got me a seat in the Top Box for the final."
Draco quietly sipped his soup, listening as his parents carried on with their favourite dinner-table pastime: assessing every member of the Ministry of Magic, and working out which of them might prove useful to them.
In his memory, after the Triwizard Tournament, that grand event due to take place this year once term began, Barty Crouch's bones would turn up buried in the Forbidden Forest. Draco vaguely recalled that the school had never made the cause of his death public, and the Ministry's own explanation had been remarkably vague.
At the time, wizards had been almost wholly consumed by the devastating news of Harry's report that the Dark Lord had returned, rather than the mysterious death of some stiff, humourless, unpopular Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation.
Draco himself had once thought much the same.
Now, though... could Crouch's death have something to do with this family secret?
The unseen man... Draco suddenly remembered the snowball Harry had thrown at him last year in Hogsmeade, while wearing the Invisibility Cloak.
Perhaps someone had been wearing an Invisibility Cloak. Perhaps there really was another person in that house, and it had been neither Dobby's imagination nor some hallucination.
But why had Winky called him "little master"? Did that mean Crouch's son? Or someone else entirely?
Had his son not died in Azkaban long ago? Could Crouch have some illegitimate child, unknown to everyone?
And besides, how had Crouch actually died in the Forbidden Forest, in his past life?
Did he have some bitter enemy at Hogwarts?
Before one worry could be laid to rest, fresh doubts kept rising to take its place, settling over the boy's heart, and refusing to lift.
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