Just a change of clothes, yet he seemed reborn, like an entirely different person.
"How do I look?" the person standing before the mirror asked.
Malfoy Manor had set up this mirror at the guest entrance. Looking at herself and Severus in the mirror, Pomona felt as if she were standing before the Mirror of Erised.
"Wonderful." Pomona smiled. The moment he turned around, she brushed the ash from his shoulder, which had gotten there when they came out of the fireplace earlier.
Though it was only a minor "flaw," he was the "star" everyone would be watching today.
"You finally came." Lucius Malfoy walked over. Though already forty, he was still remarkably handsome. His carefully groomed platinum-blond hair fell loose around him, giving him a classical beauty. "I was worried you wouldn't come again."
"You told me to come later," Snape said expressionlessly, as if the person who had stood before the mirror just now had been someone else.
Lucius did not pursue the matter. He glanced at Pomona and merely nodded, not even asking who she was before leading them into the party.
She did not know whether to call him careless or rude. In any case, since Lucius did not ask, she could not be bothered to invent an identity, though she had already thought of one on the way here.
"Come in," Georgiana said. The moment her words fell, the suite door opened.
Luigi entered first. His height could not conceal the person behind him, who had platinum-blond hair like Malfoy's.
For a moment, she thought Lucius had appeared, or perhaps a grown-up Draco. But when Luigi stepped aside, she saw Septimus Malfoy. They had dealt with each other in Normandy before.
"News travels fast." Georgiana looked at Septimus. "It reached England in only a