"You let him in the house?!" Lucius looked at Esme. Clearly unhappy of this turn of events.
"I'm right here, you know," Sirius said.
"Father's condition has a timeline," Esme said. "Sirius thought it better the children meet him before it becomes — complicated. It seemed reasonable."
"A letter would not have gone amiss."
"You would have received it after we arrived." A slight pause. "Non?"
An owl rapped at the sitting room window.
Esme raise her eyebrows at Lucius as if telling him, See?
Lucius pinched the bridge of his nose.
Esme said nothing. She did not need to.
That was when Lucius remembered. Esme had said it was time to meet the children. And that was when he realized four pairs of tiny eyes were blinking up at him. Three boys, and one girl. And is that child's hair blue?
"Well, Lucy —"
"Do not call me that."
"—these are your nephews and niece. Rigel, Corvus, Lyra, and Alphard." Sirius gestured at each in turn with the ease of a man making introductions at a garden party, rather than a guest in the grand entrance hall of Malfoy Manor addressing the current head of the House of Malfoy.
"Say hi to Uncle Lucy, kids."
A small chorus answered, hello and hi and one bright hi, Uncle Lucy that came from somewhere in the middle.
"Might I remind you, Black, that you are a guest in this house —"
"Am I?" Sirius looked genuinely interested. "Esme lives here too, doesn't she? Technically."
A pause.
"So, as her husband, I technically live here too." Sirius's eyes were bright with it now, the gleam of a man who had found something enjoyable and intended to see it through.
Lucius stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"Sirius." Esme's voice carried the specific quality she reserved for moments when he had made his point and was now simply indulging himself.
Sirius caught it. He had the grace to look slightly sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck, though the smile didn't entirely leave. "Right. Yes. Sorry."
He did not sound sorry.
Esme's mouth did something that was not quite a smile. She turned back to Lucius. "Shall we?"
Lucius's eyebrow twitched.
"Lucius, what is going on?" Narcissa appeared at the top of the stairs, one hand resting on the banister.
He looked up at his wife. "Esmeralda is here."
"Oh?" Narcissa looked confused. Why is Lucius upset? Esmeralda has been coming in and out of the house since her father-in-law is sick.
"With Sirius." A pause. "And the children."
Narcissa's expression underwent a swift and silent recalculation. "I am not dressed for this." She turned and went back down the corridor without another word, her footsteps already brisk and purposeful.
"You don't need to be formally dressed for us, Cissy!" Sirius called up the stairs.
A door closed. Not a slam — Narcissa Black did not slam doors.
Lucius closed his eyes briefly.
*****
The room was dark. The curtains drawn against the grey November light, the air close and still, nothing moving. It had the quality of a space that had been sealed off from the rest of the house and intended to stay that way.
Abraxas sat in the chair by the cold fireplace and looked at nothing. The discoloration along his jaw had spread since the last examination. He did not look at it. He had stopped looking at mirrors some days ago, which was its own kind of answer about where his thoughts had been living.
The door opened.
"Les rideaux." Esme's voice, before she was fully in the room. Matter of fact, the tone of someone resuming an ongoing argument rather than starting a new one. "I told you to keep the curtains open. The light should be coming in."
"This is Britain," Abraxas said, without turning. "There is no sun."
"Il y a toujours du soleil." She drew her wand without breaking stride and the curtains swept back in one clean motion, heavy fabric pulling aside to let in the pale grey November light. It fell across the floor in a thin, colorless line. "It is behind the clouds. It is still there. The light still reaches." She looked at him. "As does the benefit to you, regardless of whether you find it aesthetically satisfying."
Abraxas said nothing. His back still to her.
The light sat on the floor between them, thin and cold and entirely indifferent to his opinion of it.
Esme approached the bedside table and placed two potion bottles beside the lamp. "Don't forget to drink those," she said.
"Is that all?" Abraxas asked. His voice had the flatness of a man who had been managing himself under observation for days and was tired of the effort even if he would not say so. Every morning she came. Every morning the potions, the examination, the curtains. He was Abraxas Malfoy and he was being managed like an invalid and there was nothing he could do about it that he hadn't already tried.
"Not quite." Esme said. "I thought you would like to meet your grandchildren."
A pause.
Abraxas turned.
Sirius Black stood in the doorway with a toddler settled against his shoulder and three small children arranged beside him, all of them looking at Abraxas with varying degrees of curiosity.
Sirius smiled at him. It was, Abraxas noted with some irritation, a genuinely pleasant smile.
"I am not —" Abraxas looked down at himself. His dressing gown. His bare feet. The general state of a man who had been sitting alone in a darkened room for the better part of a morning. "I am not dressed for this."
"It isn't a formal introduction," Esme said, with the directness she brought to things she had already decided. "You are their grandfather. They are your grandchildren. That does not require ceremony."
Abraxas looked at her.
He wanted to argue. There were protocols, that first impressions carried weight, that a Malfoy did not meet his grandchildren in a dressing gown in a sickroom. All of it was true and none of it, he was beginning to understand, was going to move her.
"Besides," Esme added, quiet now, the clinical precision softening just slightly at the edges, "you have time for a formal occasion later. This is simply — meeting them."
She did not say while you still can.
The toddler on Sirius's arm opened both hands toward Abraxas with the uncomplicated insistence of someone who had decided the situation called for being picked up and saw no reason why this shouldn't happen immediately.
Sirius caught him before he could make the attempt. "No, Alphie. We can't just hug your grandfather, especially this grandfather."
Alphard considered this. He did not appear convinced.
Abraxas looked at the toddler. Then, slowly, at Sirius.
Whatever warmth had briefly softened his expression closed off again. Here was the thing he had been avoiding looking at directly since the doorway. Sirius Black, standing in his sickroom, holding his grandson. His daughter's husband. The man who had taken Esmeralda, out of reach, and built a life around her that Abraxas had not been consulted about and could not have prevented even if he had been.
"Black," he said. The name came out the way it always did from that family, not as a greeting. As an acknowledgment of something unpleasant that nonetheless had to be acknowledged.
"Abraxas," Sirius said pleasantly.
"You can go. The children can stay." Abraxas said, not looking at Sirius.
"Excuse me?"
Esme sighed. It was a specific sigh — the long, carefully measured exhale of a woman who had walked into this room knowing exactly how it would go and had come anyway. She pinched the bridge of her nose briefly.
"The man may leave," Abraxas said, with perfect composure, as though he were making a reasonable administrative suggestion. "The children are Malfoys. They may stay."
"They are Blacks," Sirius said, in the pleasant tone he used when he was making a point, he found genuinely enjoyable. "Every single one of them."
"Sirius," Esme said.
"I'm just saying —"
"Sirius."
He stopped. The look she gave him was not a warning exactly. It was the look of a woman asking him, with her eyes, to please not make this harder than it already was.
"Fine," Sirius said. "I'll be in the hall." He handed Alphard to Esme with the unhurried ease of someone entirely unbothered and looked at Abraxas one final time. "He bites, by the way."
"He does not bite," Esme said to Abraxas, though clearly amused.
Alphard, as if to settle the matter, attempted to put his fist in his mouth.
Sirius left. The door did not quite close behind him, which was almost certainly deliberate.
The room settled into silence.
Alphard appeared entirely unbothered by it. The three older ones kept glancing between their mother and their grandfather with the careful attention of children reading a room they had not been given instructions for.
"Alors," Esme said. "Why don't you introduce yourselves?"
Rigel turned toward Abraxas. "Good morning, sir. I am Rigel."
Abraxas looked at him. The boy had Sirius Black's looks yet steady, composed, nothing of the Black recklessness he had braced for. At least this one had been raised properly, whatever else could be said about the circumstances.
"I am Corvus," said the fair-haired one, leaning slightly on his cane with the ease of long practice, all while holding a teddy bear with a red ribbon tied around its neck
"Lyra," said the smallest girl, in the tone of someone who considered her name sufficient.
"And this," Esme said, shifting the toddler on her hip, "is Alphard."
Alphard looked at Abraxas with his curly blonde hair and his large grey eyes and the focused expression of someone conducting his own assessment.
"Children," Esme continued, "this is your grandfather, my father. Abraxas Malfoy."
Abraxas nodded once.
The children looked at him. He looked at the children.
He had imagined this moment, in the abstract, the way men imagined things they did not expect to happen. He had not imagined it like this in a dressing gown, in a sickroom, with the curtains open against his wishes and his son-in-law's voice still faintly audible through the not-quite-closed door, doing something in the corridor that sounded suspiciously like whistling.
Alphard reached for him again.
"Non, Alphard."
The small arms stayed out, undeterred, with the patient persistence of someone who had not yet learned that persistence had limits.
Abraxas looked at them. Something moved across his face that he did not examine too closely.
"You are not yet in the infectious phase," Esme said, reading him with the accuracy that had stopped being surprising days ago, "but the wards are still in effect. I am not taking chances."
"Hmph."
He turned his attention back to the children properly, taking them in now that the initial shock had settled. Three of them fair. The girl, Lyra, had the straight blonde hair and the pale fine-boned look of the Malfoy line so clearly it was almost startling. The grey eyes were Black, unmistakably, but the rest of her —
"At least they mostly look like a Malfoy," he said.
"Well," Esme said, "not exactly."
Alphard giggled. His curly blonde hair shifted, darkened, and settled into brown between one breath and the next.
Abraxas stared at it.
Then at Alphard, who appeared enormously pleased with himself.
Then at Esme.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?" Abraxas asked.
"He is a Metamorphmagus," Esme said, in the tone she used for things that were simply facts now. "Oui."
Abraxas looked back at the toddler. Alphard's hair was still brown. He seemed to be considering his next move.
"A Metamorphmagus," Abraxas repeated.
"Oui."
A pause.
"That," Abraxas said, with great reluctance and the expression of a man conceding something he would very much have preferred not to, "is a Black gift."
"Oui," Esme said, for the third time, serenely. "It is."
Abraxas wasn't sure what to say.
"Grandpère," Corvus said.
Everyone looked at him. He had been quiet through most of it, taking things in with the unhurried attention he brought to most situations.
"Are you sick?"
A beat of silence.
"Corvus," Esme said gently.
"It's alright," Abraxas said, surprising himself slightly. He looked at the boy. "Yes. I am."
Corvus nodded, absorbing this with the seriousness of someone who knew something about being unwell and did not consider it a subject that required softening. He looked down at the worn teddy bear tucked under his arm. Then he crossed to the chair beside the bed — carefully, leaning on his cane, not hurrying — and set it down on the seat.
He stepped back.
"He helps," Corvus said simply. "When I don't feel well."
Abraxas looked at the teddy bear sitting in the chair beside him.
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
"You may want him back," Abraxas said finally, because it was the only thing he could find to say that didn't require him to look at his daughter.
"You can borrow him," Corvus said, with the generous finality of someone who had made his decision and considered the matter settled.
The room was very quiet.
Esme was looking at the window. Her jaw was set in the way it was set when she was managing something she did not intend to show.
*****
The door opened and the four children filed out, Esme behind them.
"Les rideaux," she said back through the gap. "And drink the potion. Both of them."
The door clicked shut.
"Both?" came Abraxas's voice from inside, already aggrieved.
Esme did not answer. She turned back to the corridor where Sirius was leaning against the wall with the comfortable ease of a man who had been waiting without minding it.
"How did it go?" he asked.
"Well enough." She looked at Corvus, who had returned to her side without his teddy bear and appeared entirely at peace with this. She did not say anything about it. Neither did he.
"Right," Sirius said.
Then the family returned to the sitting room.
The sitting room had been restored to full Malfoy order by the time they entered it. Narcissa stood near the window in a dress that had very clearly been changed since the staircase incident, her hair immaculate, her composure entirely reconstructed. Draco stood beside her with the focused stillness of a child who had been briefed and intended to conduct himself accordingly.
Lucius stood slightly apart with the expression of a man who had decided to be civil and was finding it required more effort than usual.
Lucius's jaw tightened when he saw Sirius walked in.
"Narcissa." Esme stepped forward. "Tu es bien?"
"Perfectly well, thank you." Narcissa's composure was flawless. Only someone who knew her would catch the slight additional precision of it — the composure of a woman who had assembled herself carefully and intended it to hold. Her eyes moved to the children with the contained warmth of someone who had been waiting for this and was not going to show how much.
"Children," Esme said, "this is your Aunt Narcissa and your Uncle Lucius." A brief pause, entirely neutral. "And your cousin, Draco. Your Aunt Narcissa and cousin will stay with us soon."
"Bonjour," said Rigel.
"Hello," said Corvus.
Alphard gave a small wave.
Lucius absorbed Uncle Lucius with the measured satisfaction of a man who had been handed back something that should never have been taken from him in the first place. A proper introduction. His name, correctly used, in his own house. It was the bare minimum of what the situation required, and it was still considerably more than he had received earlier, when Black had apparently decided that Uncle Lucy and a casual wave constituted sufficient ceremony for the head of an Ancient and Most Noble house.
Sirius, to his credit, said nothing. He was looking at the ceiling with the studied interest of someone who had decided that was the safest direction.
Draco looked at the four children with the careful assessment of a boy who had been an only child his entire life and was now being presented with four of them at once. His gaze moved from Rigel to Corvus to Alphard — whose hair had shifted back to blonde, though a slightly more vivid shade than was strictly natural — and then to Lyra.
Lyra was already looking at him.
She tilted her head. Looked at his hair, then at her own, then back at his face. Then at her own reflection, briefly, in the dark glass of the cabinet behind him.
"You look like me," she said.
Draco blinked. "I —"
"We have the same hair." She pointed at her hair. "And the same eyes." Then at her eyes.
"Oh," Draco said, slightly wrong-footed, which was not a state he was accustomed to.
Lyra looked at him for another moment with the grey eyes and the focused attention she brought to things she was finishing an opinion about.
"But uglier," she said.
The room went very still.
"Lyra!" Esme's voice held that specific, sharp quality it produced when a boundary had been crossed and must be corrected immediately. Still choosing her words with care, she crouched to her daughter's level. "Ce n'est pas gentil. We do not say things like that."
Lyra looked at her mother. Then back at Draco. She appeared to be reviewing the statement for inaccuracy and finding none.
"Compris?" Esme said.
"Oui, Maman," Lyra said, in the tone of someone who understood that she had said a wrong thing without fully understanding what the wrong part was.
"Now please apologize." Esme said.
"Sorry." Lyra said, not sounding sorry at all.
From across the room came a sound. Brief, quickly suppressed, entirely unconvincing as a cough.
Lucius turned to look at Sirius, who was studying the ceiling with the focused intensity of a man whose life depended on it, his mouth doing something that was not quite a smile and was making no real effort to be anything else.
"Something to say, Black?" Lucius said.
"Not a thing," Sirius said, to the ceiling.
Lucius looked at him. Then at Lyra. Then back at Sirius, with the expression of a man who had drawn a conclusion he found deeply irritating.
The child was four years old. She had her mother's precision and her father's complete absence of filter, and the combination had just described his son as ugly to his face in his own sitting room.
Sirius Black was finding this funny.
Lucius was going to find it considerably less so for the remainder of the afternoon.