The Black mansion's salon was thick with expensive perfume, the smoke of enchanted pipes, and the delicate clink of cut-crystal goblets. The chandeliers floated lazily overhead, spilling golden light across robes of black and emerald velvet. Lucius Malfoy—impeccable, silver serpent cane in hand—had mounted the small improvised dais beside the fireplace. His voice, smooth and persuasive, filled the room as he delivered—yet again—his sermon on the virtues of blood purity and the urgent need for strong leadership to restore order.
Adrián Peverell sat at a nearby table, an untouched glass of elven wine between his fingers. His chin rested on his hand, eyes half-lidded, as though he were contemplating a mediocre painting in a second-rate gallery. When Lucius reached the crescendo of his rant about "the sacred inheritance of the true wizards," Adrián let out a long, deep, and perfectly audible yawn. The sound sliced through the speech like a knife.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Lucius turned his head slowly, wearing that tight smile that never reached his eyes. His fingers tightened around the serpent cane.
"Am I boring you, Mr. Peverell?" he asked with icy courtesy that barely masked the venom. "Because if my humble discourse on the future of our race is so tedious, perhaps you would prefer to retire… and contemplate your family relics."
Adrián blinked once, as if he had only just remembered someone was speaking. He straightened slightly in his chair, regarded Lucius with genuine surprise for a second… and then smiled. A slow, almost kind smile that promised nothing good.
"To put it politely…" he began, his voice clear and deliberate, loud enough for every ear nearby to hear, "yes, you are boring me. I don't give a damn what you're saying. It seems ridiculous that the descendant of a stable boy who shoveled horse shit would lecture me about blood purity."
A collective gasp swept the room. Someone dropped a goblet; crystal shattered against the marble floor.
Lucius froze. His normally pale, aristocratic face lost even more color. His gray eyes widened for an instant in pure disbelief, as if he could not process the words. Then, very slowly, his jaw clenched until a muscle twitched visibly in his cheek.
Adrián did not stop. He leaned forward a little, as though explaining something obvious to a slow child.
"And you're trying to rally people behind a 'Dark Lord' who champions blood purity—an ideology, by the way, that is fanatically defended by a man whose own origin is the direct result of a Squib drugging and raping a Muggle with a love potion." He paused for theatrical effect, letting the words sink in like slow poison. "Yes, Lucius: your precious Dark Lord, champion of racial purity, was conceived when his mother—Merope Gaunt, direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin—drugged and forced a handsome, wealthy Muggle to desire her. An act of magical coercion that produced a resentful half-blood who now preaches what his very existence disproves. And while we're on the subject of Slytherin… the same ideology you worship was created and spread by a filthy peasant you would call mudblood, whom Salazar Slytherin rescued and adopted when his own Muggle parents were about to murder him for being a monster. A peasant to whom Slytherin, in a fit of mercy, gave a surname, a wand, and protection… and who then spent the rest of his life preaching blood purity as if it were his own. Meanwhile, the House of Peverell has been noble and feared for five thousand years—a lineage that stretches back to the Sumerians, to the dawn of civilization and written magic—long before Slytherin ever founded his house or anyone invented this farce of blood hierarchy."
The mention of five thousand years landed like an ancient hammer: a fact carved into forgotten clay tablets and the eternal memory of primordial bloodlines. No one in that room doubted its truth—not coming from a Peverell who spoke with the authority of millennia.
The silence was now sepulchral. Some witches pressed hands to their mouths; other wizards looked back and forth between Lucius and Adrián as though expecting a duel to erupt on the spot.
Lucius drew a single deep breath, trying to compose himself. But the humiliation was palpable: the slight tremor in the hand holding the cane, the flush creeping up his neck despite his effort to remain aristocratically pale, the way his lips pressed into a bloodless line. For a second he seemed about to respond with his usual courteous venom… but the words died in his throat. What emerged was a low, almost inaudible hiss:
"Watch your tongue, Peverell. There are limits—even for someone of your… lineage."
Adrián merely shrugged, yawned again (this time with less theater), and raised his glass as if toasting to nothing.
"Limits, you say. How curious. I thought truth had none… not even for jumped-up stable boys."
Lucius did not reply. He turned on his heel with forced elegance that fooled no one, stepped down from the dais, and strode away through the crowd, which parted as if afraid of contamination by his contained fury. The murmur returned, but it was no longer the same: now it was a nervous buzz full of sidelong glances and suppressed smiles.
Adrián leaned back in his chair, satisfied. He took a slow sip of the elven wine.
At last, the evening had become interesting.