At Malfoy Manor, Lucius Malfoy sat in his study with a wineglass in hand, staring out the window. He didn't move for a long time.
He'd been thinking about everything: himself, his son, his wife, the Malfoy family. He was trying to see what his future was going to look like.
When he'd spread the news that Voldemort had returned, Lucius Malfoy had done it fully prepared to die. His original plan was for the Malfoy family to drag every last one of Voldemort's Death Eaters down with them.
Other Death Eater families might still have bloodlines that could carry on, still have a way to cling to life. But the Malfoys, having lost their only heir, were destined to be swallowed by history, reduced to a trivial line in a wizarding history book.
And Lucius had never regretted that decision. Even now, after learning his family wouldn't need to be buried alongside the Death Eaters, he still didn't regret what he'd chosen back then.
The difference was that now he had a better option. A better opportunity.
The goblin Ranrok…
That powerful, dangerous goblin had actually taken the initiative to seek him out.
Why?
Lucius hadn't trusted him blindly. Even if Ranrok looked like he could kill Lucius with a flick of his little finger and had no real need to lie, Lucius didn't believe anyone offered help to a stranger for no reason.
Ranrok had quietly helped him get rid of a group of pureblood wizards. There had to be something Ranrok wanted in return.
The problem was, Lucius had no idea what that was.
Why kill Death Eaters? Was it really, as Ranrok claimed, because he couldn't stand Voldemort?
Lucius took a sip of wine, letting the burn of alcohol jolt his mind into focus.
He'd been preparing for this day for a long time. He'd barely slept the night before. Now all he could do was force himself to stay alert and wait for the outcome.
To keep from dozing off, he made himself think, turning it into a deliberate exercise.
Thinking had always been one of Lucius's strengths. It was how he'd escaped prison when others couldn't, how he'd kept the Malfoy family afloat and thriving.
Now he needed to think through Ranrok's motives. He needed to understand what this "future master" intended to do, and how.
"Ranrok nearly overturned wizard rule," Lucius murmured, eyes lowered. "That was his ambition. So where does wiping out the Death Eaters fit into it?"
A goblin over two hundred years old, perhaps even older. Lucius refused to believe someone like that had come this far without a careful plan.
"He once allied with an ancestor of the Rookwood family," Lucius said, setting down his glass as he worked through it. "That man was the leader of the Dark Wizards at the time, the equivalent of You-Know-Who today. But there's no question about one thing: that Rookwood couldn't possibly compare to the current You-Know-Who."
"So if Ranrok chose to ally with Rookwood back then, but wants to kill Death Eaters now, it must be because he isn't completely confident he can suppress the Dark Lord."
"Ranrok was [defeated] in the mid-nineteenth century. Nearly a hundred years have passed… has his magic weakened?"
"Then what does he need?"
"To restore his strength. To reclaim magic that stands above ordinary wizards."
"So… he needs the Philosopher's Stone. And You-Know-Who was pursuing the Philosopher's Stone."
As Lucius sorted through what he knew, his eyes brightened, as though something had finally clicked into place.
He hurried to fetch the Daily Prophet and found the report about the incident involving Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
"Quirrell is dead. You-Know-Who is missing. Did he get the Philosopher's Stone?" Lucius tapped the paper lightly with a fingertip, then slowly began to smile.
"He failed."
It was as if fire flared in Lucius's eyes.
"He didn't obtain the Philosopher's Stone. If he had, he wouldn't have let me off the hook. He's injured. He must be in terrible shape."
"Quirrell's death was strange. His face was stripped away… You-Know-Who was possessing Quirrell, and his face was on the back of Quirrell's head."
As one of the more capable Death Eaters, Lucius had been taught that vile, bloody brand of magic. He'd simply never used it. Lucius valued his life too much to ever corner himself into desperation, and in any case, sacrificing anything never struck him as… dignified.
But he recognized the spell. He understood it.
"It's Sacrificial Magic. Sacrificial Magic offered up Quirrell's soul, and because of You-Know-Who's face, it stripped Quirrell's face away as well. You-Know-Who ran into danger. What kind of danger could force him to use Sacrificial Magic and burn his only useful subordinate?"
Even as a disembodied soul, Voldemort should have been terrifyingly powerful. For Voldemort to resort to Sacrificial Magic to handle a threat, and still fail…
"Who else could it be but Ranrok?" Lucius whispered, voice tightening. "That bastard… his target was the Philosopher's Stone too. He struck after You-Know-Who got his hands on it."
"The one who ended up with the Philosopher's Stone was Ranrok. He's been hiding in the shadows all along. Even Dumbledore probably never noticed a monster like him."
Once the pieces fit together, Lucius realized his hands were shaking.
If that was true, then Ranrok was far more terrifying than Lucius had imagined.
He lifted his wineglass, but his trembling arm sent wine sloshing across the desk.
If Leonard had been here to hear Lucius's conclusion, he probably would have been left both amused and speechless.
Calling it blind luck would be unfair to Lucius's reasoning, but the "evidence" behind his chain of logic was completely fabricated.
There was no Ranrok at all.
And yet, absurdly enough, Lucius had still stumbled onto the truth.
The Philosopher's Stone really was in Leonard's hands, and Quirrell really had been killed by him.
It just had nothing whatsoever to do with the so-called Ranrok.
Even so, Lucius's reasoning was airtight. If you weren't directly involved, you'd never suspect the conclusion was wrong.
And in a way, the nonsense Lucius had pieced together on his own was actually patching the holes in Leonard's alias, "Ranrok."
Now the "Ranrok" persona had weight to it, both in temperament and in power. Let even the tiniest hint leak out, and people would believe he truly existed.
"The Philosopher's Stone," Lucius breathed, eyes glittering. "A legendary creation… something that can produce the Elixir of Life."
He was practically vibrating with excitement.
The Philosopher's Stone wasn't in his hands, but he was following Ranrok now. If he performed well, he might not be without a chance to earn a dose of the Elixir of Life as a reward.
Of course, that depended on what kind of leader Ranrok was.
Lucius could only hope he wasn't too solitary or stingy, and that he might occasionally toss his subordinates a benefit or two.
...
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