Maggie

Chapter 44 - Poem

 "Here it is!"

Malfoy practically threw the enormous book onto the table before me. It was bound with moulding leather and extremely thick.

I wrinkled my nose.

"This thing looks ancient."

"Oh, it is," retorted Draco, a wicked smirk on his face. "I don't think my long bloodline puts me above the half-bloods and muggleborns but I do think it makes me very interesting."

"Technically, according to your earlier words, this is not your history but your wife's."

He looked genuinely affronted.

"My family had one of these books too, long ago. It's not my fault one of my however-many great grandfathers was especially careless with his heirlooms."

"Whatever." I rolled my eyes at him before pinching the front cover of the book between my thin fingers and prising the volume open.

The first page was a list of names. I looked up at Malfoy, waiting for an explanation.

"Those are supposed to be the families who have copies of this book."

"There are more than twenty-eight names here," I said pointedly, lifting an eyebrow. It was perfectly true. I didn't need to count them to know this. I estimated there were around sixty names... which is approximately thirty-two more families than twenty-eight.

"Yes, well," began Malfoy, his jaw clenched from something that might have been frustration, "the Sacred Twenty-Eight is a directory of families that were still considered pure-blooded in the 1930s. This book is much older than that."

"I can smell that," I said, wrinkling my nose again. I turned another page and another wif of damp, decaying paper hit my nostrils.

For about a hundred pages, the information was largely useless. It contained accounts of the various families listed on the front.

"I can't be entirely sure, but I think there are personal to the owner of each copy. Diaries if you will of the times they met their fellows and what they learned of each other. I suspect these pages will be unique to each book. Look." He leaned over and traced a line with his littlest finger over a blotched letter. "That sort of imperfection would've stopped a book so soaked in self-righteousness being published. They would've started again."

"I'm starting to think you pureblood are a little conceited."

"Oh, we were. But I fight the impulse that says I'm better than everybody as well as I can. I don't wish for my son to grow up with the same prejudices I did, and nor did his mother. That kind of teaching is difficult to unteach. I have to check myself every single day because that sort of discrimination is deeply internalised."

"Would you like a round of applause?"

He started to speak, then stopped and smiled a little sadly. "You see? I nearly said yes."

Perhaps now was not the time to be a bitch. "Well, I'm sure the world is grateful for your efforts, and a little better off because of them."

He did nothing except continue to smile, then take over from my page flipping.

Eventually, we reached the beginning of a new section. Written in the centre of an elaborately decorated title page were two words.

The Founders.

My heart skipped.

After a second of extremely intense eye contact, Malfoy turned over one more page. There was a poem, written in beautifully fragile calligraphy. Malfoy took a deep breath, then read aloud.