Draconia walked through the stone corridors with a singular purpose. The castle was a sprawling, breathing thing, yet she knew exactly where the bones of it had been mended by her father. She did not look at the tapestries with wonder; she looked at the threads and saw the gold he had paid to weave them. Every corner of this place carried the invisible stamp of the Malfoy name. It was a heavy, pervasive presence that she carried in the set of her shoulders and the sharp line of her jaw.
The Great Hall was the first stop on her list of grievances. The long tables were polished to a high shine, and the enchanted ceiling mimicked a sky that was far too perfect to be natural. She looked up at the rafters and thought of the donation that had ensured the enchantments remained stable during the winter months. The food was rich and the silver was bright, but she knew the cost of the cutlery. It was not just gold; it was the weight of her father's influence. She moved past the prefects, who stood in rigid rows, and felt the familiar sense of superiority. They were working to earn their place, while she was simply occupying hers.
The library was a tomb of knowledge, or so the professors liked to claim. Draconia wandered through the aisles of heavy, leather-bound books. She traced a finger along the spine of a particularly old volume on ancient runes. The shelves were mahogany, dark and expensive, and she knew her father had funded the recent expansion of the section. The books were beautiful, but they were merely objects. They were things to be possessed, much like the way she possessed the attention of the boys in the room.
"You look like you are counting the pennies, Draconia," Pansy said, stepping out from behind a stack of parchment.
"I am simply observing the scale of things," Draconia replied without turning her head.
Pansy fell into step beside her, her footsteps echoing on the stone floor. "It is quite a scale. Most of it seems to have been polished recently."
"Everything is polished because someone paid for the cloth and the beeswax," Draconia said. "It is a hollow sort of brightness."
They walked through the courtyard, where the fountain bubbled with a rhythmic, artificial grace. The water was clear and the stone was carved into intricate shapes of mythical beasts. Draconia knew the fountain had been a gift, a way to ensure the headmaster kept his letters of recommendation favourable. She watched a single petal fall from a nearby bush and felt the sheer redundancy of the beauty. It was all so loud in its display of wealth.
"Do you think he actually cares about the history of the place?" Pansy asked, tilting her head toward the high towers.
"He cares about the ownership of it," Draconia said. "History is just a way to justify the present."
They moved toward the greenhouses, where the glass panes were thick and slightly green in the light. The plants inside were exotic and temperamental, requiring constant care and expensive nutrients. Draconia looked at a vine that curled around a stone pillar and saw only the invoice for the soil. The greenery was a performance, a way to make the castle feel alive when it was really just a collection of stone and magic.
"The Herbology wing is looking particularly lush this term," Pansy observed, her eyes scanning the greenery.
"It is a well-fed garden," Draconia said. "It is easy to grow things when the gold is flowing into the roots."
The air in the corridor grew cooler as they ascended toward the upper levels. The stone walls were damp and smelled of old magic and cold earth. Draconia felt the weight of the castle pressing down on her, a physical manifestation of the legacy she was expected to uphold. Every stone felt like a debt she had not yet paid. She felt the exhaustion of being the daughter of a man who built things just to prove he could.
They passed a suit of armour that stood in a darkened alcove. The metal was etched with fine patterns, and the helmet stared blindly into the hallway. Draconia wondered if the armour was as much a lie as the rest of the decor. It was a facade of strength, meant to intimidate, but she knew it was just hollow metal.
"Do you ever feel like the walls are watching us?" Pansy asked, her voice dropping a notch.
"They are not watching, Pansy. They are just standing there," Draconia said. "They have no choice in the matter."
"That is a very grim way of looking at it," Pansy said with a small, sharp laugh.
"It is a realistic way of looking at it," Draconia corrected.
They reached the staircase that led toward the classrooms. Draconia slowed her pace, her eyes tracking the way the light caught the edges of the bannisters. The wood was dark and heavy, polished by the hands of countless students over the decades. It was a long list of things, a long list of acquisitions and endowments. She could name the rug in the common room, the ink in the scribes' pots, and the very stones of the foundation.
She thought of Harry and the way he looked in the light of the afternoon. He did not look at the castle as a collection of assets. He looked at it as a place where he belonged, or perhaps as a place he had conquered. To him, the grandeur was a backdrop, but to her, it was a ledger. She felt the urge to tear the pages out, to see what remained when the money was stripped away.
"Where are we going now?" Pansy asked, looking ahead at the winding staircase.
"To the end of the list," Draconia said.
"The list of what?"
"The list of everything he has touched."
Draconia felt a strange, hollow sensation in her chest. She had spent her life categorising the world by what it cost and who owned it. She had built a fortress of certainty out of the things her father could buy. She expected the list to be endless, a sprawling map of influence that covered every inch of the school. She expected to find a world of infinite, expensive connections.
The staircase felt longer than it actually was. Every step was a reminder of the sheer volume of the wealth that underpinned her existence. She thought of the tapestries, the furniture, and the very air that seemed to be bought and sold in the high offices of the castle. She looked at the grand archway ahead and felt the weight of it.
"Are you still with me?" Pansy asked, noticing the sudden distance in Draconia's eyes.
"I am here," Draconia said, though she felt miles away.
She reached the end of the list and it was much shorter than she expected.