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Sargeras regarded the man before him with a calm, steady gaze. This was the same pure-blood aristocrat who had once strutted about in arrogance, but now he stood before him like a crumbling edifice, broken and diminished, begging for leniency.
Lucius's complete surrender had, in truth, gone far beyond what Sargeras had expected. He had assumed the man would at least make a futile attempt to argue his case, or perhaps try to keep up a façade of superiority and engage him in a lofty discussion about bloodlines.
It seemed fear was indeed a most practical instrument. And Lucius, for all his failings, was clearly a man of wit. Such men, Sargeras thought, were far easier to control than fools like Fudge, whose stupidity made them unpredictable and clumsy to handle.
Of course, even the clever ones needed the occasional reminder of their place.
"I warned you two years ago," Sargeras said, his tone even yet edged with cold weight, "but it seems my words then went in one ear and out the other."
"Sir, we never…" Lucius began, desperately trying to defend himself.
Sargeras shook his head, cutting him off. "Perhaps I was not clear enough at the time. Then allow me to make myself perfectly plain today."
His gaze swept over the two of them, pausing briefly at their throats, and when he spoke again, his voice was unhurried but carried a quiet menace that seemed to seep into the very air around them.
"In my presence, you will put away your petty cunning, your pure-blood superiority, and those little tricks you dare not show in the light of day. Hide them deep, lock them away, so tightly that not the faintest trace can reach my ears, not even the smallest whiff of suspicion. If you fail… I will have no qualms about reducing the twenty-eight sacred families to eighteen. Or perhaps even to eight."
Neither Lucius nor Narcissa dared breathe too loudly, standing as cicadas in winter.
"And I must also tell you this, Lucius," Sargeras continued, his voice lowering to something almost contemplative, though no less dangerous. "You should be grateful, truly grateful, that no one has lost their life because of you."
His eyes moved over Dobby, who stood frozen in place, then lingered on Narcissa, her face wet with restrained tears, before finally coming to rest upon Lucius's own pallid features.
"If a child had died because of your stupidity, Lucius — yes, even if that child had been Draco — then your fate would have been no different from that of Violetta Crabbe. Your name would have been reduced to a brief, cold line in a Ministry report, a death note to be quietly filed away. And Malfoy Manor would be remembered only as a name, hollow and forgotten in the pages of history."
The air collapsed into a silence so deep it felt devoid of life. The only sound that pierced it was the muffled, trembling sobs Narcissa could no longer contain.
Lucius's entire body was rigid, his back damp with cold sweat that had soaked clean through the silk of his robes. Sargeras had not shouted, had not raised his voice even once, yet Lucius did not doubt for a moment that he meant every word he said, and that he would carry them out without hesitation.
"I understand completely, sir." Lucius's voice was hoarse and dry, carrying the unsteady tremor of a man who had just stumbled back from the brink. Bending low, lowering that proud pure-blood spine of his until his head was nearly bowed to the floor, he said, "Thank you for your magnanimity. The Malfoy family will remember your words."
Sargeras did not answer. His gaze drifted away from the pale, frightened faces of the Malfoys and came to rest upon the small, motionless figure standing off to the side.
He studied Dobby in silence, his eyes narrowing slightly, as though turning over some deep and weighty thought.
Among wizards, there was an old tale that the ancestors of house-elves had once been "earth-vein elves"— a race of humanoid beings who dwelled deep underground, masters of earth magic, capable of mending the bones of the earth itself and coaxing life from the soil to make crops flourish.
In ages past, they had built cities within the endless dark of the subterranean world, their homes carved into the rock like vast, glittering hives. What little remained of these wonders was said to be locked away in the hidden vaults of the Egyptian Ministry of Magic.
However, by the time of the Metal Wars in the third century before the Common Era, this race had been driven to extinction. The few who survived were sold to wizards by goblins, treated as nothing more than debt payments to be traded away.
In the centuries that followed, during the harsh age of the medieval wizarding world, their descendants were subjected to cruel alchemical tampering. Through the cold precision of bloodline transmutation, the "loyalty" of the three-headed dog and the "shame" of the boggart were forcibly branded into their very souls. And so, the house-elves of today came to be, bound to servitude through endless generations, trapped for as long as their bloodline survived.
Time, stretching on for over a thousand years, had stripped them of all that their ancestors had been. The vast well of magic and the masterful craft of forging that once defined their race had vanished entirely, leaving behind only faint traces of their old form and their unnaturally long lifespans.
Worse still, endless centuries of enslavement and relentless indoctrination had carved obedience and submission so deeply into them that these traits no longer felt learned but innate, something carried in their very blood. For a house-elf, life was little more than a breath to fuel its work. To call them living beings seemed almost… generous, for in the eyes of most, they were tools that happened to breathe.
"This house-elf's name is Dobby…" Sargeras' low voice finally broke the stillness.
"He's yours, my lord! From this moment on, he belongs to you!" Lucius spoke without the slightest hesitation, the words leaving his lips almost as if they had been waiting there, ready to be offered. The decision was made instantly, without a flicker of doubt.
Sargeras lifted a hand and snapped his fingers in a careless motion. The sharp sound was like a pardon granted, and in that instant the invisible chains binding Dobby's body fell away. The little elf crumpled to the floor with a soft thud, as though all strength had drained from him at once.
"You may refuse," Sargeras said, glancing down at him, his tone calm and almost indifferent.
Dobby's great, tennis-ball eyes lifted timidly toward his new master, wide with fear, yet in the corner of his vision he could not help but glance toward Lucius Malfoy. The cold, unmistakable threat in that gaze was as clear as if it had been spoken aloud: Dare to refuse, and I will make you wish for death.
A violent shiver ran through Dobby's frail, trembling frame.
He lowered his head until his chin nearly touched his chest, and when he spoke, his voice was so faint it was barely more than a whisper, heavy with the resignation of one who had long since surrendered to fate. "Do… Dobby is willing…"
Sargeras gave a slight nod, and just as suddenly as he had arrived, his figure vanished instantly from the stagnant air, taking with him the elf who had either just been freed… or perhaps had merely exchanged one master for another. The stagnant air of Malfoy Manor closed in once more, the oppressive stillness broken only by the presence of a pure-blood couple who now stood utterly subdued beneath the weight of fear.
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After bringing Dobby to the safe house hidden deep within the Forbidden Forest, Sargeras paid him no further attention.
When his eyes had lingered briefly on the shivering little house-elf earlier, his thoughts had not been on pity or concern, but on the question of how best to delve deeper into the magical origins of the house-elves.
This was not his first attempt. The last time he had pursued such research, it had indeed sharpened his ability to cast spells silently and without a wand, but it had stopped short of uncovering the deeper secrets that lay beneath.
Yet in Dobby's eyes, that silence, that still and steady scrutiny from Sargeras, became something far more ominous. To the little elf, it was the gaze of a judge just moments before delivering a sentence. His heart felt as though it had climbed into his throat, and his small, thin body quivered despite his best efforts to stay still.
His mind swirled with the memory of every "sin" he had committed: the reckless things he had done to keep Harry Potter from returning to Hogwarts! Blocking the platform, intercepting letters… each act a blatant violation of what a house-elf was supposed to be.
And now this new master, this Mr. Greengrass whose name was spoken in whispers, a man said to be so cold and ruthless he had slain more than a few pure-blood wizards, had specifically asked for him from Lucius Malfoy. Could it be that all of this was simply to settle the account for those acts of defiance?
The more Dobby thought, the more fear took hold. His great, tennis-ball eyes filled with trembling tears, until he could almost see the ending in his mind: punishment so severe it would make him wish for death… or perhaps the quiet, final end of simply ceasing to exist.
Yet all Sargeras did was leave him here in the small cabin hidden deep within the Forbidden Forest, as though he had been forgotten entirely.
Dobby was dumbfounded. After standing frozen for what felt like forever, he finally summoned every scrap of courage he had and spoke in a voice no louder than the rustle of leaves, "Re… respected sir, Dobby… Dobby needs to do something?"
"For now, nothing," Sargeras replied, his tone as calm and even as still water. He didn't even turn his head. "Stay here."
The command left Dobby in utter confusion.
The safehouse was not too large, and its bare simplicity made it feel even smaller. It held only a single table, a few chairs, and an empty space that seemed to swallow sound.
There was no kitchen to busy himself in, no fireplace to clean, no garden to tend. Without tasks to occupy his hands, he felt like an old, forgotten trinket set aside in some dark corner, stripped of its purpose and left to gather dust.
A restless anxiety began gnawing at him from the inside, an ache born of being at a loss.
In the end, with nowhere else to pour his boundless "loyalty" and "diligence," Dobby devoted it all to the only things in the room.
Over and over again, he polished the wooden table and those few chairs, working until his small hands ached. The smooth grain of the wood gleamed so clearly it nearly reflected the anxious, uneasy shape of his face, as if making them shine could somehow hold back the suffocating emptiness and the silent fear that lingered at the edges of the room.
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[Chapter End's]
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