Chapter 1

                                    

                                          
November 1981...
                          
It was some of the final and the saddest business in settling the end of the war, the redistribution of the children. The previous evening, Albus Dumbledore had gone into Muggle Surrey, to leave Lily and James Potter's newly orphaned son in the care of the boy's Aunt Petunia. It had been a grave visit with poor Petunia in heavy mourning for her sister, whether she understood it as that or not. In the end, Dumbledore was successful, and left the Boy Who Lived with her, assuring the little one's safety at least until -- well, it didn't bear worrying over it too much for now.
                          
Tonight, Dumbledore was on an errand of a different kind, with a child of a different kind, in a place of a different kind. He was not in the city but the countryside, walking up the lane to a sprawling old house. Like little Potter, the boy sleeping in Dumbledore's arms was not yet two years old. He slumped against his shoulder, his breath a little noisy but warm and sweet.
                          
The dark iron gates of the manor house grated and groaned, shifting, turning their bars out of the way, unlocking so Dumbledore and the child could pass through. Inside the house, fires were lit in hearths and lanterns, leading them down a corridor to a warm but not at all cozy drawing room.
                          
The little boy yawned and blinked in the orange light, sleepy but eagerly accepting the shortbread he was offered.
                          
A woman stepped out of the shadows and onto the carpet beneath the chandelier. In the fire's glow, her hair looked as orange as the child's, but Dumbledore was her old headmaster, and he knew it to be gleaming blond.
                          
"This is him?" she said, her voice low, almost reverent.
                          
"It is," Dumbledore said. "They call him Ronald. He will be two years old early this spring."
                          
She had come close enough to burrow her hands into the hand-knitted blanket in which he'd been wrapped. She pulled him free of it and brought him to the settee before the fireplace, cradling him in her lap, smoothing his fine ginger hair, tracing the line of his long nose, caressing his silky cheeks with her knuckles, clearing the cookie crumbs away. She uttered a soft laugh as he smiled up at her, his eyes sparkling with the flickering firelight.
                          
"Aren't you a darling little one? Lucius, come and see him. He's precious."
                          
Lucius Malfoy obeyed, stepping further into the room, the angles of his face dark with shadows.
                          
"Blue eyes?" Naricssa asked.
                          
Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, like his father." He raised his head to nod at Lucius. "Both of you know Arthur and Molly?"
                          
Narcissa shook her head. "Only by reputation. They were in Lucius's year in school, well above me."
                          
"Of course," Dumbledore nodded. "Lucius, perhaps you will find, as most of us do, that this boy is more like his mother than his father."
                          
This was no idle observation. That the boy did not look quite so much like his father would make all of this easier.
                          
Lucius sneered all the same. "What is he, the Weasleys' ninth-born son? Or a nice round tenth-born?"
                          
"Sixth," Dumbledore said. "Not that their surplus was much of a comfort to poor Molly tonight. She was quite beside herself when she finally let me bring him to you."
                          
Narcissa tutted. "Good thing she has her noble do-gooder senses to comfort her. And it's not as if she's dead to him. She can visit with him from time to time, and he'll be told his background, eventually, mostly." She lifted the boy slightly off her lap. "He's a few months older than our Draco, and I'm sure they'll be a matched set before long, but he's a fair bit larger right now -- "