Father of the Witch

Chapter 1: Hitched

It was just six months ago, that it all began.

Annie had been studying for her Double Masters in Transfiguration and Magical Architecture for the past semester, in Rome. I remember I was at work, walking through one of my factories, since I'd taken over as the head of Malfoy Enterprises in the stead of my father—whom lately, along with my mother, were now chronic globetrotters—manufacturing brooms for distribution all over the Wizarding World.

Anyway, I remember how preoccupied I was that day...

.......

A woman levitating a cart full of walnut-stained twigs bumped into my shoulder.

"My apologies, Mister Malfoy!" she gasped.

"My fault," I muttered. I was flipping through a finance dossier distractedly between pacing back and forth. The main floor employees had been shooting me nervous glances all afternoon; Annie had never been that far from home by herself before, and she was due back any second.

"Mister Malfoy?"

My gaze snapped up. My assistant, Olivia, was holding her wand to the base of her throat, and the Sonorus charm traveled easily through the glass window of my second level office. She was smiling.

"She landed."

I nodded shortly, but my chest unknotted in relief. I had been a tense bloody mess all day long, doing nothing for my reputation. Salazar knows why she had insisted on taking a damned airplane. I mean, we still owned one, and yes, Floo-travel was never good for long-distance—especially to Italy, where you could just as easily end up in a wood-fired pizza oven if you weren't careful. And Apparitioners were having trouble traveling lately for some reason. Something or other about the planets being lined up weird right now. But I didn't see anything wrong with taking an International Portkey except that she insisted it was 'all about the experience.'

"Is Hermione picking her up at the Muggle airport?" Olivia asked when I reached my office.

"Yes, I'm heading for home right now." Wallet, wallet...God knew they were cracking down on random Apparition license checks, lately.

Olivia knew what I was searching for and tossed it to me.

I had one foot in the Floo when she shouted after me with my wand in her hand.

"Bring her by!"

Snatching it with a grateful nod, I stepped into the grate and out into another.

Ahhhh.

Malfoy Manor—home.

For security reasons, my ancestors thought it prudent to not advertise the Manor's true location, so the narrative that we lived in Wiltshire was purposely spread. The Malfoy estate was actually in Devon, aways outside a small coastal village on the Bristol Channel. We owned the village, the beaches, and the surrounding county, not that the Muggles who lived there knew it. The British Muggle Government was aware, of course, but left us be because our economic impact was too great to contemplate evicting us in good conscience. In turn, they ensured our privacy, so little had changed in a thousand years.

Annie was the most recent in a long line of Malfoy heiresses to call the Manor home. She was twenty and was already an incredibly powerful and talented witch. We really couldn't have asked for a more perfect daughter: beautiful and charming, ambitious but easy-going, popular yet still unendingly kind. I'd been quite surprised she hadn't ended up in Hufflepuff because of her gentle tendencies, but she had taken after her mother scholastically and graduated from Hogwarts as a Head Girl from Ravenclaw, the first non-Gryffindor one in seventy years.