The Silent Order: Draco Malfoy

Chapter 1

"Lilian, it's time to go downstairs," Minerva McGonagall hooted from the bottom of a spiral staircase.

I ran downstairs as fast as I could, nearly tripping over the bottom of my overlong first-year robes.

Minerva looked down her nose at me, "You could at least attempt not to destroy your clothes the second you put them on for the first time."

We began walking downstairs to greet the newly-arrived first-years, where we stopped just before the large closed door leading to the Great Hall. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized everyone else appeared to be drowning in their robes like I was.

I looked around to size-up the rest of my future "classmates." There was a boy behind me having a conniption about a frog, and another boy with fiery red hair making fun of him. I didn't recognize anyone, which was to be expected since I rarely left this castle.

A streak of platinum blond flashed in my peripheral vision as a boy I did actually recognize moved in front of the redhead. I didn't hear what he had to say, but I remember Draco Malfoy being somewhat unfriendly when I met him over the summer at a Malfoy Manor soiree while I was staying with my adopted father, Severus Snape, at Spinner's End.

I wasn't technically a first-year, not academically. I had been living at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry my whole life and started to take private tutoring lessons from my adopted "parents" when I was eight instead of eleven.

My parents were basically the entire staff, but I tended to spend the holidays with either of my primary guardians, headmaster Dumbledore or professor Snape.

I was told very young that I was a prodigious child, so my magical studies started a few years ago. Dumbledore wanted to start me with the first-year cohort then, but Minerva successfully argued that I should be "appropriately socialized with other children my age, even if I'm taking accelerated coursework."

I don't really know if I'm actually prodigious, or if being surrounded by extremely intelligent adults with high expectations self-fulfilled some destiny they had for me. In any case, my magic did start to manifest earlier than normal. But that doesn't mean anything. Probably.

So even though I'll get to start a real Hogwarts experience instead of just private tutoring, I'll still have to take fourth-year classes with older kids. I don't know how that will go but it's the best shot I have at normal-ish schoolyears.

"...Malfoy, Draco Malfoy," I heard him explain in that pompous voice. I rolled my eyes. He introduced himself the same way to me over the summer.

~Two Months Ago~

As I entered the impressive manor house for the Malfoy Summer Solstice Ball, I was struck by many aspects of Malfoy manor - namely how a house can be so massive, but also empty. It was like no one lived there, even though an entire family had called this place home for generations. But this was no home, it was a cold place designed to display wealth and to wall it off from others.

A family lived here, but the house wasn't warm like a family lived there. Like how you can walk into a house where the people there love each other and the air is warm with a magic that even wizards couldn't conjure. That kind of house was always slightly messy and smelled like someone had just finished cooking something delicious, even if it was just last night's dinner.

It was summer, but the house was still cold. The great hall at Malfoy Manor had been fabulously decorated to welcome the summer sun. Shimmering yellow flowers clung to the walls that bloomed when someone walked by, which matched the yellow liquid in crystal glasses all the adults were drinking.