Truth Was a Blade

The alley was terrifyingly quiet.

Lucius Malfoy leaned against the cold brick wall, his chest heaving violently. He raised a trembling hand to wipe away the cold sweat beading on his forehead. His calculating gray-blue eyes now held nothing but emptiness and lingering fear.

He stared fixedly at the sliver of gray sky at the end of the alley, his voice hoarse as a broken bellows.

"Now, do you understand?"

Draco opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Lucius suddenly turned, his bloodshot eyes locking onto his son. "That Uchiha boy will be enrolling this year too! Do you know what stands behind him? A force that can make an entire family vanish from this world overnight! A monster so terrifying that even the Ministry of Magic sealed away its files and dared not investigate further!"

He stepped forward, his finger nearly jabbing Draco in the face.

"You think those people in black robes were ordinary guards? Wrong! They were the Shadow Guards! Who in Knockturn Alley doesn't know that name now? Every one of them is a killing machine personally selected and personally 'modified' by the Uchiha Clan! That dark aura wrapped around them is the wailing of the souls that died at their hands! The blood on them is greater than that on every Auror in the Ministry of Magic combined!"

Draco's face went completely pale, and his body began trembling uncontrollably.

Lucius grabbed his son's shoulders, gripping hard enough to seem as though he might crush the bones. "So listen carefully, Draco Malfoy—once you enter Hogwarts, you have only two paths when it comes to that Uchiha!"

He raised two fingers, which shook violently in the air.

"First, avoid him!" Lucius said decisively. "Stay as far away from him as you would from the deadliest snake venom! Do not meet his eyes, do not speak to him, and do not appear within his sight! This is the safest path, and the one I most want you to choose right now!"

Faint laughter drifted in from outside the alley as several young wizards ran past with newly purchased textbooks in their arms.

Lucius took a deep breath, drawing it in heavily, as though making a difficult decision.

He lowered his voice, every word squeezed through clenched teeth.

"Second... if you cannot avoid him..."

His gaze became exceedingly complicated, filled with humiliation, calculation, and a hint of desperate madness.

"If fate makes the two of you cross paths, if he takes an interest in noticing you... then find a way to make him acknowledge you."

Draco jerked his head up, disbelief written all over his gray-blue eyes. "A-acknowledge me? Father, you mean you want me to—"

"Not make friends!" Lucius cut him off harshly. "People like him do not have friends! What I want is 'acknowledgment'! Make him think you are useful, that you have value, or at the very least... that he does not dislike you! This is a hundred times harder than avoiding him, and a thousand times more dangerous! But if you succeed..."

Lucius's voice suddenly dropped, carrying an almost bewitching rasp.

"This is the only new rope the Malfoy Family can grasp now! The only ladder that might let us climb back up!"

Draco was completely dumbfounded.

For eleven years, he had been taught how to display Malfoy superiority, how to use bloodline and wealth to crush others, and how to elegantly disdain those who were "unworthy." But now, his father was telling him—to curry favor with a boy his own age? Someone who had humiliated them just moments ago?

"But why?" Draco's voice was dry and trembling. "Why us of all people? Because our surname is Malfoy? Because of... that Flamel?"

"I don't know!" Lucius snarled irritably, his fingers digging fiercely into his sweat-dampened blond hair.

"Perhaps it is because we are too conspicuous, perhaps those idiots in the family truly got involved, or perhaps... we are simply unlucky, and happened to run into the muzzle of the gun when he needed to establish his authority!"

He abruptly seized Draco by the collar and yanked him close until their pale faces were nearly pressed together.

"Listen, Draco. Forget every bit of that pure-blood act you have learned for eleven years! At least in front of Uchiha Madara, do not reveal even the slightest trace of it! That sort of thing is useless against him! It will only make him think you are ridiculous, or even... provoke him!"

Lucius tightened his grip, pulling Draco's collar so tight that he struggled to breathe.

"I want you to observe him, learn how he judges things, figure out his preferences and his limits... then make the choice most beneficial to the Malfoy Family. This is no longer a game, Draco. This is survival—our family's survival!"

Outside the alley, the bustle of Diagon Alley gradually subsided.

The clouds in the sky thickened, and the shadows they cast slowly swallowed the narrow alley.

Lucius let go and took a step back. He stared at Draco, his gaze impossibly complicated—there was warning, fear, the resolve to stake everything on one throw, and even a trace of... guilt he himself was unwilling to acknowledge.

He took a deep breath and began straightening his disheveled robes and hair. His fingers still trembled slightly, but he forced himself to slowly smooth every crease and straighten every lock of blond hair.

A few seconds later, when Lucius Malfoy once again straightened his back and gripped the Silver Snake-Headed Cane, the proud, elegant, inviolable head of the Malfoy Family seemed to have returned.

But only Draco, standing across from him, could see—

The faint, uncontrollable trembling in his father's straightened back.

The knuckles of his father's hand gripping the cane, pale blue-white from excessive force.

The mark at his father's temple, just dampened by cold sweat and not yet fully dry.

"Remember my words." Lucius's voice regained a measure of calm, but it was cold without the slightest warmth. "Do not forget a single word. Now..."

He turned and walked toward the dim light at the mouth of the alley, obscured by clouds.

"We still need to finish buying your things."

"Come. You need time... to process all this."

Draco silently followed, turning back for one last look at the dark alley piled with refuse. Sunlight cut a boundary between light and darkness at its entrance. With that one step, he had left the carefully protected world of the Malfoy heir, filled with illusory glory, and entered a reality that was more real—and far colder.

His father's words still echoed in his ears.

"Remember this feeling."

"We need a new way out."

"Stay alive, grow stronger, and open your eyes."

Draco raised his head and looked at his father's upright yet unmistakably weary back. In his gray-blue eyes, something childish was slowly fading, replaced by a complicated light mixed with fear, resentment, and... faint determination.

Uchiha Madara...

Hogwarts...

The future of the Malfoy Family...

Draco stood where he was, looking at his father's resolute back before lowering his gaze to his own faintly trembling palm.

Four deep white marks had been dug into it by his fingernails, bringing a faint stinging pain.

The world outside the alley continued to turn. Diagon Alley's signs still flickered, and the laughter of young wizards still drifted through the air.

But for Draco Malfoy, some things had already shattered completely.

Those fantasies of pure-blood glory, those beliefs that the Malfoys were omnipotent, that gilded worldview carefully nurtured for eleven years—

In those brief ten-odd minutes, his father had personally smashed them apart, then glued them into an entirely new shape with the cruelest reality: cold and grotesque.

He took a deep breath, stepped out of the alley, and followed his father's back.

His steps were somewhat unsteady, but one after another, they landed firmly.

He left the alley's shadows behind him.

The crowd around him remained bustling, and the shop signs continued to flicker, but in his eyes, the world had taken on an entirely different color.

Ahead lay Diagon Alley's blurred lights and shadows, the unknown journey to Hogwarts, and Uchiha Madara's unfathomable eyes.

And the Malfoy Family's gamble for life or death.