Abraxas Malfoy sat in a wheelchair beside the tall windows of the private sitting room, a heavy plaid blanket draped over his knees. He was finally out of his isolation quarters and allowed into the rest of the manor, but while his skin no longer bore the violent, active inflammation of dragonpox, he was still visibly worse for wear. The bright afternoon sunlight pouring through the glass was entirely unforgiving. It emphasized his hollow cheeks, the papery thinness of his pale skin, and the silvered hair that hung lifelessly around his temples.
He looked far from pleased to be out. And he was certainly not alone.
Sitting directly opposite him on a plush loveseat was Esmeralda, with Sirius settled comfortably beside her. Lucius and Narcissa occupied the neighboring settee, their postures rigid, while Pandora sat in quiet isolation on a solitary chair near the door.
As if the family tension weren't suffocating enough, what truly set Abraxas's teeth on edge was the presence of Arcturus Black, sitting right by the empty stone fireplace, casually sipping tea as though he owned the bloody room.
Arcturus lowered his teacup, offering a thin, sardonic smile. "It has been a while, Abraxas. With such a long silence from your end, I thought you were dead... but you look remarkably fine."
"Shut up, Black!" Abraxas snapped, his voice rough and strained with furious frustration. He wrenched his glare away from the insufferable old patriarch and fixed it entirely on Esmeralda. "Why is he here? Why are all of you here? I thought you said I was still in the infectious stage!"
"Infectious?!" That caught Arcturus's immediate attention. He lowered his cup to its saucer with a sharp, deliberate clink. "You brought me into an infected house, Malfoy?" He turned a cold, accusing stare toward Lucius.
"Why are you looking at me?" Lucius scoffed, looking thoroughly offended as he adjusted his robes. "I wasn't the one who invited you."
"Exactly!" Abraxas barked, finding himself in rare agreement with his son. He slammed a frail, pale fist onto the armrest of his wheelchair. "Leave! All of you, get out!"
"Non." Esmeralda's voice cut through the room, quiet and absolute.
Abraxas blinked, staring at her in sheer disbelief. "What?"
"Lord Black is here at my behest," Esmeralda stated smoothly, folding her hands in her lap as she met her father's furious gaze. "And none of you are leaving until we have finished."
"What exactly is going on, and why is Father allowed to roam the manor now?" Lucius asked, his brow furrowing as he looked between Esmeralda and his father.
Abraxas knew his son had spent most of these months outside the manor, while Narcissa, Octavia, and Draco remained tucked away at Blacktide Castle to avoid the lingering threat of dragonpox. He had seen how it irked Lucius that his children were spending so much time in an estate steeped in volatile Black family magic rather than their own home, but bringing them back to Malfoy Manor had been far too risky.
"Well, if people would stop interrupting, Esme could finally explain to everyone," Sirius interjected smoothly, leaning back and casting a heavy glare at Lucius.
Lucius frowned, his lips forming a thin, bitter line, but he held his tongue. Every eye in the room turned toward Esmeralda.
Esmeralda took a deep, steadying breath, her clinical composure locking into place as she looked directly at Abraxas. "You are cured."
Abraxas stared at her, his brow knotting in sheer bewilderment. "Cured? Of the dragonpox?"
"It is gone," Esmeralda said. "The infectious phase has ended as well. I confirmed it this morning, which is why this room is safe. You are no longer suffering from it."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room.
For a fraction of a second, no one moved. Then the dam broke, and several voices collided at once.
"Wait, what?" Lucius blurted out, sitting bolt upright.
"There is no cure for dragonpox!" Abraxas demanded, his voice cracking with a mixture of disbelief and sudden, desperate hope. "How is that possible?!"
Narcissa and Pandora looked at each other, both confused and shocked. Arcturus looked at Esmeralda as if she had grown a second head. Sirius was the only one in the room who looked calm.
"It is possible. I have checked. Three times," Esmeralda said, her voice steady now. "It would seem my experimental formula has finally taken effect. I have already quietly coordinated with trial groups through Healers Beyond Frontiers, who assisted with the clinical phases. The formula has proven successful across different ages, genders, and constitutions. So, officially... there is now a cure for dragonpox."
A profound, echoing silence settled over the sitting room, the magnitude of her words hanging heavily in the air.
Then, softly breaking the spell, Pandora turned to her, a genuine smile touching her lips. "Esmeralda... congratulations."
"Yes," Narcissa added, surprising even herself by immediately agreeing with Pandora. She inclined her head, her gaze filled with quiet awe. "Congratulations, Esmeralda."
"Remarkable," Arcturus stated, his keen eyes narrowing slightly as he digested the news. "So, you are a member of Healers Beyond Frontiers?"
Esmeralda turned toward the Black patriarch and gave a crisp, formal nod. "Oui, Lord Black."
"I am cured..." Abraxas muttered under his breath, staring down at his frail hands in utter disbelief. The color seemed to return to his ghostly skin all at once. "I am not going to die?"
"Dragonpox has still taken a heavy toll on your body, especially considering your age," Esmeralda said, her voice shifting effortlessly into her sharp Healer's demeanor. "However, you no longer have an expiration date hanging over your head. You can live for many years, provided your recovery is properly managed. You must eat well and begin moving around as soon as your strength allows."
"How long have you been associated with Healers Beyond Frontiers?" Lucius asked, his eyes narrowing.
Esmeralda turned her gaze toward her brother. "A while."
"How is it that we have heard nothing about this?" Lucius pressed, a tinge of frustration slipping into his voice. "I have personally scoured every medical registry and social chronicle trying to trace where you had gone after you left France, yet I found virtually no record of your practice."
"Healers rarely operate under their full birth names," Esmeralda replied smoothly. "And I knew using my family name would only prove a handicap in the field when my intention was to be evaluated on merit."
Lucius's jaw tightened, a flash of deep offense crossing his face. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that people do not take a noble daughter seriously if they believe her position was purchased rather than earned," Esmeralda said, her voice cool and composed. "In the field, I am simply known as Healer Clarisse."
Lucius blinked, the offense on his face suddenly giving way to sheer astonishment. "What?"
Pandora sat up straighter, looking at her in utter disbelief. "Wait... Healer Clarisse? As in the Clarisse who developed the diagnostic monitoring charm now standardized across St. Mungo's? That Healer Clarisse?"
Esmeralda offered no verbal confirmation. She merely met her gaze with a faint, knowing tilt of her head, her calm silence delivering a far louder answer than words ever could.
"You used Mother's name?" Lucius turned to her, a sharp edge of surprise in his voice.
"Clarisse is my middle name," Esmeralda replied evenly. "And Esmeralda is rather long for professional use. Besides, Esme is a nickname I prefer to keep strictly for family and friends."
"My daughter... a renowned healer," Abraxas muttered, shaking his head as the staggering reality finally began to sink in.
"With a confirmed cure for dragonpox, she won't just be renowned. She will be legendary," Narcissa added softly, her eyes wide as she looked at Esmeralda with sudden, profound realization of the political and social earthquake this was about to cause.
Esmeralda folded her hands neatly over her lap, her expression turning cool and businesslike.
"And that," she said, her voice cutting cleanly through the murmur of the room, "is precisely what we need to discuss."
A sharp, expectant silence settled over the parlor as everyone waited for her to continue.
"I do not want the world to know that Healer Clarisse is also Esmeralda Malfoy, or Sirius Black's wife," Esmeralda declared.
Lucius blinked. "What? Why ever not?"
"Did you not hear me? I need to be recognized on my own merit, and there are still several papers I must publish to solidify my credibility before my true identity is made public," Esmeralda stated firmly. "This is why I called this meeting. I want everyone in this room to keep quiet. No one is to breathe a word that Healer Clarisse, the newly recognized inventor of the dragonpox cure, is your daughter, your sister, or your sister-in-law."
Abraxas slowly turned his gaze from his daughter to the man sitting beside her. "And you are fine with this, Black?"
"Of course," Sirius answered smugly, an easy grin spreading across his face. "Frankly, wouldn't it be much better if Esme's reputation as a Master Healer were entirely unassailable before the public ever connects her to the House of Black or the Malfoys? By the time they figure it out, her professional standing will be so etched in stone that no one could possibly claim she's just dabbling. Besides, I rather like the idea of being known as the trophy husband to the world's most brilliant Healer."
"Trophy husband?" Arcturus repeated, staring at his grandson as if he had spoken in Gobbledegook. The wizarding aristocracy was well acquainted with the concept of a trophy wife, a pretty ornament brought in to elevate a family's status, but applying the term to a man was completely unheard of.
Sirius merely flashed him a broad, utterly unbothered grin.
"Aren't you vastly richer than her?" Arcturus pressed, his brow knotting.
Sirius rolled his eyes playfully. "Of course, I am. But vaults full of Galleons and ancestral estates are terribly mundane, Grandfather. Being married to the pioneer who conquered dragonpox, and who knows what medical miracles next? That is a level of prestige that gold simply cannot buy. Besides, look at me. I have the hair, the jawline, and the charming smile for the role. I'll look magnificent standing two paces behind her at galas, holding her cloak while she accepts her accolades."
Across the room, Pandora pressed her fingers to her lips to muffle a giggle, and even Narcissa had to quickly lower her head to conceal a sudden, betraying smile.
Abraxas, Lucius, and Arcturus, however, could only stare at him in stunned, bewildered silence. To men raised on the sacred hierarchy of Pureblood nobility, the Black family were practically wizarding royalty. The concept of the heir, and future Head, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black willingly stepping into his wife's shadow and playing second fiddle was entirely incomprehensible to them.
"You cannot be serious, Black," Abraxas grunted, his frail chest heaving with cold disapproval. "A Lord of the House of Black acting as an ornamental escort? It is improper. It undermines the dignity of both our lineages. Once the world learns of this cure, the proper course is to publish it under the Malfoy name, with the Black seal beside it. A woman of your standing has no business playing secret scholar in the shadows like a common Muggle-born."
"I agree," Lucius chimed in, adjusting his cuffs with cold formality. "It reflects poorly on the family. You are a Malfoy by blood and a Black by marriage. Your duty is to bring honor to our houses publicly, not hide behind an alias like a fugitive."
"Credit claimed now would be called influence," Esmeralda said, her gaze moving from one man to the other, "and the cure would be discounted the moment it was known to be a Malfoy's. Credit on my terms is a story you may tell for decades. You will have it, but only when I say."
"And if we refuse?" Lucius said stiffly.
"Then let me make one thing extraordinarily clear." Her clinical composure shifted into something deadly quiet and smooth as silk, her voice dropping to a low, icy register that sent a chill through the room. "If so much as a whisper of my identity as Healer Clarisse escapes this room, whether directly or through quiet hints to your social circles, all of Wizarding Britain will learn how Abraxas Malfoy repaid his wife's years of loyalty."
Her gaze did not leave her father's face.
"Pandora and I have our husbands' names to shelter us. You, Father, and Lucius have only the Malfoy name. I would think very carefully about how much of it you wish to keep."
Across the room, Pandora looked up sharply at the word wife. Esmeralda's eyes flicked toward her, brief and deliberate, before returning to Abraxas. Pandora's fingers tightened on the arm of her chair, though she said nothing.
Narcissa had gone very still. Her hands, folded so neatly in her lap a moment ago, had tightened until her knuckles whitened. She turned her head toward her husband, and Abraxas watched her calculate the risk. Draco. Octavia, barely a month old and not yet presented to society. A name that had taken centuries to build and could be undone in a single morning's edition of the Prophet.
"Lucius," she said quietly, in the tone she used when a servant had broken something irreplaceable. It was not quite an accusation, and Lucius did not meet her eyes. He did not look surprised, which told her everything she needed to know. Her husband had known something all along.
Her gaze moved to Esmeralda, and for a moment Abraxas saw something close to betrayal in it, a woman who had just offered warm congratulations and now found her children held hostage to the same terms. Then her composure returned, pale and absolute.
"I would prefer," Narcissa said, each word precise, "to know exactly what I am being asked to protect."
"You will be told in time," Esmeralda said, not unkindly. "The fewer who carry it, the safer it is. For now, it is enough that your children's name is the thing at stake, and I have no wish to see it damaged."
Narcissa held her gaze a moment longer, then inclined her head, a single stiff nod.
The silence that followed was suffocating. Lucius sat frozen, his hand locked over his cuff. Abraxas went completely rigid, his pale face draining of what little color it had just regained, a flicker of genuine terror passing through his eyes at the lethal precision in her threat.
Beside the fireplace, Arcturus set his teacup down without a sound. His expression did not change, but the look in his eyes was the look of a man who had just been handed a thread and meant to find out what hung from it. "The House of Black," he said mildly, "will regard any leak as an insult to Lady Black, and to myself."
He asked nothing. Abraxas understood that Arcturus would ask Sirius later, in private, and that Sirius would have to decide what to say.
Abraxas understood something else as well. Esmeralda had not only threatened him. She had brought Lord Black as leverage for her.
He stared at her for a long, heavy moment, his jaw trembling before a weary breath escaped his lips. "You are definitely your mother's daughter."
"Well..." Esmeralda tilted her head, a faint, untouchable smile gracing her features. "I was raised by her."
A heavy quiet settled over the room as the Malfoys swallowed the bitter pill of her ultimatum.
"If there is nothing else, we will be leaving," Esmeralda announced smoothly. She smoothed down the front of her tailored robe with quiet elegance, brushing away an invisible speck of dust. "And I would appreciate it if you were present for the boys' sixth birthday this August eighth. Corvus keeps asking about you."
Without waiting for an answer, she turned on her heel and glided out of the room.
Sirius lingered for just a fraction of a second, casting a broad, triumphant grin at the room before swiftly following her into the hallway. Catching up to her brisk pace, he reached out and gently caught her elbow, slowing her down just enough to lean in close.
"I have to say, Esme," Sirius murmured, flashing her a wicked, crooked grin. "You are equal parts magnificent and bloody terrifying."
Esme didn't pause her step, though a tiny, knowing smile touched the corner of her lips. "Flatteur," she murmured.