Draco Malfoy had always known Leon was some sort of distant relative, but he never imagined they were this closely related.
The old photograph in his hands only featured members of the Black and Lestrange families.
It was taken ages ago.
Judging by the scribbled notes on the back, Narcissa hadn't even married Lucius Malfoy yet.
Andromeda, too, hadn't run off with that Muggle-born wizard, gotten herself disowned, and been erased from the family tree and social circles.
The boy in the photo, who looked strikingly like Leon, was almost certainly a Black.
As far back as Draco could remember, his mother, Narcissa, rarely spoke about the Black family.
He'd never met either of his aunts in the photo.
All he knew was that Bellatrix was rotting in Azkaban, and Andromeda had cut all ties, never to be seen again.
Draco's grandmother had passed away young, and his grandfather was a peculiar old man.
The few times Draco had met him left nothing but creepy memories.
His grandfather lived in a countryside villa, and Draco had never set foot in the legendary Black family manor in London.
He couldn't recall where he'd heard it—definitely not from Narcissa—but the Black family had fallen into ruin.
Not only was the main branch of the Blacks gone, but the side branches were empty too.
Draco's grandfather, the younger brother of the last family head, refused to take up the mantle.
Maybe it was his odd personality, or maybe it was because his three daughters had all married off, leaving no one to inherit.
Draco's strongest memory of the Black family was attending their endless string of funerals, one for this elder or that.
It was like the family was hell-bent on building an empire underground, with fewer and fewer living members aboveground.
Clutching his throbbing head, Draco racked his brain for anything about the Blacks.
A faint memory surfaced.
When he was four or five, he'd overheard his parents talking behind a closed door. His mother had mentioned something about adding "Black" to his surname.
Little Draco didn't understand what it meant, only that it sounded like his parents were trying to get rid of him.
Bursting into the room, he'd thrown himself at Narcissa, sobbing and begging not to be a Black.
"…"
Did he miss out on a fortune?
What happened next was a blur; he couldn't remember.
That moment was just a tiny blip in his life.
If his brain wasn't practically melting from overthinking, he wouldn't have recalled it at all.
Draco stared hard at the boy in the photo, who clearly didn't want to stand still for the family portrait.
B for Black, obviously. But what did the S stand for?
He flipped to the back of the photo, scanning the list of Lestranges and Blacks.
Oddly, everyone else had their full names written out, but this guy was just SB.
Surely it wasn't because they ran out of space.
Flipping the photo back, Draco scrutinized it inch by inch.
Finally, he spotted a clue.
It looked like SB was wearing a Gryffindor lion badge.
The photo was old, grainy, and black-and-white.
The boy stood at an angle, and if Andromeda hadn't been gripping his arm, he probably would've bolted out of the frame.
Draco lit his wand and practically pressed his face into the photo.
After close inspection, he was sure: the half-visible badge on SB's chest was definitely a lion.
SB was a Gryffindor.
No wonder his mother only used his initials.
The Malfoys, Lestranges, and Blacks were all Slytherins through and through.
A Gryffindor in the family? That must've been a once-in-a-century scandal.
This guy had to be famous… or infamous.
Smack!
Draco slapped his thigh.
No wonder Leon was dead set against Slytherin and insisted on squeezing into Gryffindor.
He was following in his ancestor's footsteps.
But why did everyone say the Black family had no heirs left?
Was SB dead?
Leon's public story was that he came from a single-parent family.
So SB must really be gone.
But Leon should have a claim to the Black inheritance, right?
Wait—by blood, Leon was Draco's cousin. If Leon had a claim, then so did Draco!
Smack!
Another thigh slap.
It hit him!
This was a battle for the Black family inheritance!
Meanwhile, countless meters below Draco's dorm, Leon sat in the Chamber of Secrets, hunched over a workbench, staring blankly at a vial of Skele-Gro.
He'd already cracked the basic principles of wand-making.
If old Grindelwald had hidden a backdoor, it'd be in the bones.
Removing the runes carved into the bone was tricky, but pulling the rug out from under it was simpler.
Leon had a backup plan.
During the November Quidditch match, when Dobby's rogue Bludger breaks Harry's arm, Leon would swoop in and take Lockhart's botched spell for him, vanishing all the bones in his arm and regrowing new ones.
That way, he could reasonably ditch any potential backdoors in his human-wand setup and refuse further modifications.
It made sense—there was precedent, and it was normal to feel uneasy about it.
The downside? He'd need a real wand.
And he'd never again feel the smooth, powerful rush of casting as a human wand.
Grindelwald was right about one thing.
Once you shake off reliance on external tools, the raw control of wielding magic purely through yourself is addictive.
Even the mightiest wand is just a fragile stick.
It can break, wear out, get lost, get stolen, or—bizarrely—form a "twin" bond with another wand.
The legendary Elder Wand, supposedly the most powerful ever, could still snap with a flick.
But a human wand? Magic flows freely through your body, cast at will. That seamless, almost divine connection to magic is intoxicating.
Grindelwald knew exactly how to hook someone.
Leon was struggling to let it go.
That's why this was just a backup plan.
Until the November match, Leon wouldn't stop trying to fix the hidden flaw in his human wand's core.
He had a rough idea.
Removing the bone and regrowing a new one took too long, cutting off most of the magic supply and ruining the runes on his skin.
The human wand would be useless.
Surgically replacing the bone might work, but it'd damage the skin's surface, requiring rune repairs.
Since modifying his arm, Leon had been careful to avoid injury.
He'd even enchanted his locket's chain with a constant Protego to protect himself 24/7.
Repairing runes wasn't easy—Grindelwald himself might not manage it.
So, Leon needed a spell to instantly swap out the bone with a clean one, keeping his skin intact.
He was combing through Voldemort's memories for anything similar.
Half an hour ago, he'd scoured the Black family's forbidden library—nothing.
Voldemort's tastes were hardcore. He was into self-modification and chasing immortality.
Swapping bones? Not his thing.
Leon searched for hours, coming up empty.
He was getting frustrated.
Kreacher was gone, Tom was off enjoying himself in the owlery, and the basilisk could only hiss incoherently. No one to bounce ideas off.
Leon pulled Tom Riddle's diary from his ring.
He uncapped an ink bottle, grabbed a quill, and let loose, venting furiously.
Censored curses and sensitive jabs flew, a mosaic of silenced chaos.
Tom Riddle's soul fumed, practically ascending to nirvana in rage, wishing he could leap from 2D to 3D just to slap Leon senseless.
By the time Leon crafted another Horcrux, he felt much better.
He repeated the process, wiping Tom Riddle's memory with even more skill this time.
The new Horcrux was an identical diary, handcrafted by Leon.
Only he could tell the real one by the weight of its soul, or Voldemort by their soul connection.
No one else could spot the difference.
The Horcruxes were piling up.
He was running out of storage.
Ten fingers weren't enough to wear rings for them all.
Should he set one free?
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