POV. Draco Malfoy
The training room had been a place where, today, anything but magical arts were being practiced. Draco stood in the center of the hall, breathing heavily, and looked at his brother with a challenge in his eyes that Arcturus had never seen in him before. The last half hour had been nothing but humiliation.
He tried to hit Arcturus. Again and again. Without magic, just Muggle-style — with his fists, his feet, tried to push him. And each time, his brother dodged with such ease that Draco was left only with bewilderment and the question… HOW!? Arcturus wasn't even using magic — he just moved, tripped him, gave light cuffings when Draco flew past.
"How does he do it? Why can't I even touch him?"
Draco had long since forgotten his father's words about fistfighting being the domain of worthless Muggles. Because right now, he was only ten, meaning no magic, just arms and legs. He threw himself at his brother again and again, and each time found himself on the floor, or receiving a cuffing, or another scrape left by his brother's sole when he stepped on his foot at the most unpleasant moment. And the thing was, when he gave up and just stayed lying down, Arcturus would use Stinging Charms, forcing him to persevere.
"Try harder," Arcturus said calmly. "You can do better."
"Shut up!" Draco growled, jumping up and launching another attack.
At one point, he decided to be clever — he pretended to swing with his right, but threw his left. And missed. Arcturus just stepped aside, and Draco's fist cut through empty air.
"Good try," his brother nodded approvingly. "But not enough. You can't lean into the punch like that; you need to step into it so you don't fall."
Draco howled with helplessness. He was infuriated by his brother's calm voice, his unruffled face, his confidence that he, Draco Malfoy, the second son of an ancient house, was just a naughty puppy being taught manners.
Finally, when he flew past once more, Arcturus turned and slapped him hard across the face.
Draco froze. But worst of all, his eyes treacherously began to sting. He stood, unable to move, feeling a lump rise in his throat.
"He hit me…"
Arcturus looked at him calmly, without a trace of anger or triumph.
At that same moment, a powerful wave burst from Draco's body. It was an uncontrolled magical outburst of emotion, which shattered against a responding air strike, but one consciously created by Arcturus. The shockwaves cancelled each other out, the only traces of the incident being the ruffled hair of the two younger Malfoys.
The sound of the air strike still rang in his ears, and his cheek burned, but Draco was pleased.
"Not a bad outburst. A good sign. Well done, Draco. I could have flown back from the surprise. Don't cry; I had to teach you to take a hit," he said quietly. "I wanted to show you that you shouldn't be afraid of every blow. When you get hit, you have to continue. Because if you're not dead, you still have a chance."
Draco was silent, fighting back tears.
"Pure-blood," Arcturus continued, as if tasting the word. "That word rings with such pride. What they've instilled in you over the years develops an interesting crust when you start to understand reality."
He stepped closer.
"I'm not talking about how you should hold a spoon at the table, Draco. I'm talking about the fact that you must be confident: confident that a bastard from Knockturn Alley won't kill you when you're without a guard. You must be confident that if you're without your wand, a drunk on a Muggle street won't stab you with a rusty kitchen knife."
Draco swallowed. The approaching tears receded, replaced by attention.
"People pursue only their own interests, and that's normal. But to protect your interest, you have to be able to stand up for yourself. I can stand up for myself, and I will many more times. Others simply submit to greater force. All the vaunted nobility and blood purity are suddenly forgotten when a truly powerful wizard is on the scales. Like Voldemort."
Arcturus looked his brother straight in the eyes. Draco was surprised, because few people spoke the name of You-Know-Who out loud. Even though his father had been a close associate of the Dark Lord.
"Also, if you decide to call a person a friend, know this: friends should only tell you the truth. Because that is the most valuable thing between men. Father should have taught you to protect your interests. But since he can't, I'll try."
"Father can!" Draco shouted, but there was no confidence in his voice.
"Can he?" Arcturus smirked. "Then why don't you know how to defend yourself yet? Why couldn't you even touch me for half an hour? Why, instead of training, do you listen to talk about how, being born into a noble family, you're immediately above others? That's not true. Our noble birth can make us better than others, if we use everything we have. That is, use our family knowledge and spend resources on developing our own magical skills. Knowledge and strength make us better, and nothing else."
Draco was silent.
"I made many mistakes during my time at Hogwarts," Arcturus continued. "But that's not because I'm a bad or good heir to the family. I simply did as my mind told me. I decided to go my own way. And right now, I'm perfectly fine and can say one thing: I did everything right, Draco."
He placed his hand on his brother's shoulder.
"And you blindly follow someone else's ideals. The ideals of a generation ready to bow their heads before someone who was lower by birth but higher by strength. And I don't respect such people, and I don't want to be one. You have to be able to take a hit and move on."
Draco looked at his brother and felt everything inside him turning upside down. Arcturus's words cut into his consciousness, leaving a mark that could not be erased. Or so it seemed, because who knows, perhaps another six months in the company of Lucius Malfoy, and the son would once again absorb his father's ideals — the young mind is so malleable…
"And now," Arcturus removed his hand, "get into your stance. We'll continue. You have to learn to move and fight, because what if you lose your wand, and you haven't mastered wandless magic, due to the confidence that it's difficult and that, anyway, the guards hired for a few Galleons will save you."
Draco nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. But he had no idea that in the coming days, his brother would devote at least an hour of his time to these Muggle-style training sessions. But besides just these attempts to hit his brother, they would play tag with their feet, tag with their hands, tag with both feet and hands, and his brother would also entrust him with one of his wands during training, teaching him various movements — starting with a wand-warming stretch, ending with various stances, dueling rules, wand movements for faster spell-casting, and much more.
All this was accompanied by instructive lectures. However, when Father found out about this pastime, although he did nothing, instead of praise during meals, he would only say reproachfully that, apparently, the elder was teaching Draco how to easily get expelled from Hogwarts.
To which Arcturus would reply, no less venomously, that defending one's honor was more important than any school and any fear. And that was beyond question.
***
The week at home was wonderful. Day after day, I spent my time planning actions, training, and poring over the library. Some books I literally took notes on, because I feared my relationship with my father might not be good for a while. Meanwhile, the review of Sirius Black's case was supposed to conclude on December 23rd, exactly one day before Yule, meaning Christmas. By the court's decision, Sirius would either be freed, or Father would manage to delay it another week, leaving only two days… and in general, I believed in Father. I had given him every possible card to give him more options for action; now all that remained was to see the effect.
Regarding training, I finally perfected my honeycomb shield. A system of self-repairing cells through graph verification (of all honeycombs) for Eulerian properties. Before, I did the same thing, but I had to perform certain manipulations to start the diagnostic and subsequent repair process; now it works automatically.
Now all that remained was to study the topic of creating original spells better, and then I could create my own incantation. More precisely, a modification of Protego. Because without an incantation, by simple manipulation, I just create a magical protective shell of honeycombs, but to create a proper spell, it would be easier to take Protego as a base and create the honeycomb structure within it. Or then again, who knows. Maybe it would be easier to form the honeycombs immediately without the intermediate step of a regular Protego. I just don't clearly envision the spell creation stage yet. Ideally, you need to create a clear logical structure, a verbal and non-verbal formula, and bring the spell's creation to a level where the verbal and non-verbal formulas literally connect with the incantation on the level of the world and magic in general. That way, others could repeat it and achieve the same effect, if the memorization result is well fixed in magic itself. But I'm reasoning purely as an amateur, because I need to study the fundamentals!
Besides that, I perfected my "Pressure." I had, of course, managed to adapt the protection against external pressure spell to a wandless style, but the error that resulted in an interesting magical trick was very intriguing to me.
That's why after using it on Draco, I started thinking about how to make this thing even cooler. Because right now, the efficiency is so low that no amount of magical reserve would suffice for prolonged maintenance. And no matter how much power you pour in, there's a pressure limit wall, after which magical energy simply leaked out of the spell's structure.
That's when I had to use my head and, during experiments, also recall my school physics days, plus a whole course in theoretical mechanics and beyond from university. Then I had to resort to the family library, where I, of course, found some decent textbooks on the subject. In the end, the solution was, as always, on the surface.
Well, the solution I figured out; there might be more competent methods, but I don't know them.
Due to the lack of a clear atmospheric boundary, varying air density at different altitudes, and constant fluctuations, precise pressure can only be determined barometrically, not theoretically. Because the pressure I created wasn't telekinetic — that's impossible, or rather, excessively complex and inefficient. In fact, I used magic to create air pressure that then pressed down on the target.
The first solution was obvious — create pressure not over an area, but point-wise, individually for each target. Instead of covering a person with a heavy blanket, I just needed to place a couple of invisible hands of air on their shoulders. Magic consumption dropped, but it was harder for me to work with multiple targets simultaneously. Two or three at most, and only if they were close together. Not suitable for mass use.
I experimented further. I went over options, combined approaches, and at some point, an analogy came to mind.
The principle of an airplane wing. The pressure differential: when the airflow above is faster, the pressure is lower; below, the flow is slower, the pressure is higher. This difference creates lift for the wing. What if I did the opposite? Not lift, but press down?
I created micro-flows. I forced magic to flow through the air in a strictly defined area, forming zones of lower and higher pressure, exactly the opposite of how an airplane wing works. As a result, the body itself begins to strive downwards, because nature abhors a vacuum. The natural movement of air, combined with magical control, helped.
Now I could hold even Draco for half an hour, though only with additional telekinetic assistance; otherwise, he could get up with difficulty, let alone an adult. At least I can work with multiple targets simultaneously. I can even combine — pressing some to the ground, while throwing others upwards, creating genuine chaos.
But the greater the distance and the larger the area, the higher the complexity. But I think this trick will be useful to me not in a fight, but more to demonstrate my true nature, simply put… to show off. Jokes aside, I think it will be impressive to apply pressure on someone during a conversation. They might not even realize it's me, but I will know, and the effect will be there.
In general, sometimes the solution comes not from magic, but from understanding how the world works. That's exactly why I decided to master elemental wandless magic through understanding the underlying processes.
While I was engaged in self-development in all areas, not-so-good news arrived from France. The French wizards, more precisely several families, had started a significant conflict with the largest magical mafia family in Italy. And I couldn't even imagine that among the families who dared to offend the "non-conflict" family from Sicily would be the Milfoils.
To say Father was taken aback would be an understatement. He was furious, in a foul mood, sleepless. The Milfoils themselves hadn't informed us about any dealings with the Italian family, but when things got heated, many details became known.
Starting from the fact that our distant relatives had spent nearly six months trying to establish good relations with that family, ending with the fact that the Milfoils, or rather one more influential family from France and the Milfoils, had created an entire alliance of suppliers in the Provence region. The goal was to corner the market and, apparently, they wanted, with Italy's help, to create a genuine conglomerate of companies under a reliable roof with new logistics. That is, they decided to undercut us, partially. Perhaps if we had been informed, the matter could have been resolved without any misunderstandings, but no… they had to complicate everything.
The result was that they, of course, came to us for help. Well, this would-be conglomerate also tried to involve the French Ministry, to prevent the cheerful Italians from quietly 'resolving' them all. In short, I don't know exactly what they disagreed on and why it all turned out this way, but the situation smelled so bad that they even stopped sending me letters. Though, I hadn't received letters from Celine for a long time anyway, and all the letters had become too neutral and, well, sad. But Louis's last letter, which arrived just today, clarified many things.
Not that the situation was so dire, but it was dangerous, and a local war could break out at any moment between some of the most powerful French families and arguably the strongest mafia clan in Italy, whose power and influence extended far beyond Italy, encompassing five mafia families in Magical America, as well as non-magical America. Because, as I had long since realized, many things in Muggle society are often a reflection of the magical world.
And Louis wrote:
Dear Arcturus,
I just found out that this information has spread so widely. Honestly, I knew almost nothing. Alas, even the crumbs of information that reached me before, I couldn't share earlier – family secret, you understand? But now that everything is already known, I can say one thing: whatever happens next with the relationships between our families, I hope our plans remain the same.
Our idea with the PMC… he needs to see life.
Wait, what? What idea? I tried to read it again, because I saw something written there, but for some reason, my brain stubbornly refused to pay attention to that word. Something inside my head itched, and then I finished reading the letter.
I can't even imagine it all falling apart because of some squabbles that aren't ours. We are not our families. Even though we love them, even though we respect them, we are us. And what we have planned is more important than any political wrangling. However, you never discussed the MMC with me. It's as if you don't remember that conversation of ours at all. I hope I'm wrong?
In short, everything is calm at school right now, but I feel this is the calm before the storm. The situation at Beauxbatons has heated up, as has the situation outside of school.
I will wait for your answer until I go home; I'm afraid communication might be unstable there soon.
Your friend,
Louis
And then I re-read the text. And these gaps I perceived as some kind of typo or inkblot, but by trying a little harder, I could, of course, read what my brain was stubbornly trying not to recall. What does MMC mean? It's like an abbreviation…
Oh… ah… how unpleasant in my head. So, I think this is a trigger.
"P…M… M… C…. Sounds just like a Private Military Company… could it be a Private Military Magical Company!?"
And then it hit me like a sledgehammer. Memories of that night before the farewell, where we drank and discussed all this and much more… it was cool and pleasant. Good times…
Now I understand that there are few events left that are still under the fog of war, and I hope they too will quickly fall into place.
But what I definitely understood was that during the memory erasure, I hid the most important things so well that my brain literally tried not to perceive the triggers. But now… now I clearly began to understand all of Louis's hints about the MMC, which were not just one in his letters. Sometimes he even asked openly about the MMC, but it seems the mind is a very delicate matter for such amateur tampering to be without pitfalls.
But the main thing… the main thing is that I now understand all those moments of my illogical thoughts, which sometimes seemed illogical because I didn't remember the means to achieve those goals. But now I knew and saw my goal, and I would inform Louis about it.
I would create a PMMC. Create something that would give me so much power over wizards that some countries of the Magical World couldn't even dream of. I would create a structure that, at the decisive moment, would help me turn entire countries in the right direction, especially Britain.