~

Dear Mister Scorpius Malfoy,

We appreciate your letter and understand your concern. However, for more than 200 years, North Moor has been uninhabited by Beings. We also have no record of Wallygagglers existing in the magical world, though they have been featured in many wonderful children's stories.

When the Ministry determined which creatures qualified as Beings in 1811, many until-then-unknown species stepped forward to participate in the shaping of laws in magical Britain. The Wallygagglers were not one of those species, nor have they made themselves known to any reliable source since then. Because of this, if they exist at all, Wallygagglers are officially classified as Beasts, meaning they have no legal right to the land which they inhabit.

If you would like to address the issue further, please take it up with Conservation of Magical Creatures in the Beasts Division.

Thank you for contacting the Wizengamot,
Undersecretary Prosymina

~

Slowly, Draco sets down the letter and removes his reading glasses. The light of a candle flickers at the slight movement, warping Scorpius's shadow as he paces restlessly across the far end of the room.

Finally, he stops, looking at Draco expectantly. "Well?"

"Well ... it's very unfortunate. Have you contacted the head of the Conservation Department yet?"

"There is no Conservation Department! There's a couple of blokes in overpressed robes who like to argue with the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures all day — only to go out to a Quidditch match together after — but there is no Conservation Department!"

"I can hear you perfectly well without all the shouting."

"Aghhh!" Scorpius says. "Sorry. I'm going to hex the bloody Undersecretary until her teeth fall out."

"How innovative. You might want to aim a little higher than the Undersecretary, though. I highly doubt she's responsible."

"I'm less likely to be arrested if I don't curse the Chief Warlock himself."

"Of course. Carry on."

"The Wallygagglers couldn't make themselves known! They can't leave the moor! And how could there be Beings when they smoked them all out with their enchanted water?"

"Well, you've got your eyewitness accounts now. I know you didn't want to implicate them in the initial letter in case things took a turn, but I think it might be time."

"Obviously, yes, I know. You're not being helpful," Scorpius grumps.

"You'll have to forgive me, seeing as I'm not a Legilimens, and you haven't told me what you want me to say. Have you asked your mother?"

"She told me to get stuffed."

Draco holds back a snort. "Yes, that does sound like her. Just in case I decide to fact-check this later, what she actually said was...?"

"Go home until her headache potion kicks in."

"Ah."

"What do I do? I need to prove they're real, then get them transferred to Being status, then—"

"One thing at a time."

"They're dying! I don't exactly have time to waste."

Draco sighs. Scorpius is right. He hates what that means: that Potter is right too. They have to do this. They owe it to the Wallygagglers to try, even if it blows up in their faces.

"Okay, okay. We'll handle this." He taps his quill on the desk. "How do we handle this?"

Scorpius shrugs.

"Right. Right. Well, send everyone an owl. We need the statements in writing."

"Okay, I can do that."

"And we'll need to look into what it takes to get a magical creature declared a Being. I'm sure Rolf or Luna can help with that."

By midnight, Scorpius has drafted all of the letters, and Draco has sent the very last one off. Their owl, Elara, had been very testy with him, giving him a nip on the finger as he tried to bribe her with one last treat to finish the deliveries.

When he's done, he finds Scorpius is fast asleep on the sofa, looking utterly exhausted.

Draco rises, crossing to the other side of the room and Summoning a pillow, which he stuffs gracelessly under Scorpius's head, and a blanket, which he lays over him.

Then, Draco goes to bed, and his dreams are full of horrible things — his mother is hit by the Cruciatus Curse, Luna dies in Fiendfyre, and a flash of green light strikes Blaise straight in the chest. He wakes in a cold sweat each time, then he turns over and goes back to sleep.

~

The next evening, it's the people he's least expecting to visit who knock on his door.

When the elf lets them into his study, Draco stares blankly at them before he can speak.

"Patil, Scamander. What are you doing here?"

Parvati flicks her dark eyes at Rolf, who raises his eyebrows in return. She shrugs at him, and he returns the gesture with a minute tilt of his head.

Really, this kind of thing is exhausting to watch.

"Will one of you speak, please? I don't have all evening."

Parvati scoffs. "I don't know why he's here. We didn't come together, and your elf let us in before we spoke. But I'm here because we need a plan. I want to be involved in this."

"Me too," Rolf says. "I know all you wanted was for us to make statements to the Wizengamot, but I can't stop thinking about this. I mean, Wallygagglers are actually living among us, and this is how we treat them?" He shakes his head. "This is incredible."

"I keep getting stuck on the idea of treating their ailments somehow," Parvati says. She walks farther into the room, like she's perfectly at ease here. "I know it's not a perfect solution, but it'd be better than nothing, right?"

"Undoubtedly," he says.

"I was thinking the same thing." Rolf follows her, quick and nearly breathless with excitement. He's not a small man, stature broad and imposing, but between the little gold spectacles on the bridge of his nose and his fervent hand gestures, he looks like a pure swot.

"You're good with potions, aren't you, Malfoy?" Parvati asks.

"I assume at this point I'm only passable. One must lose the talent after going so many years without it."

"Wouldn't you like the opportunity to sharpen your skills?"

He considers this. "You'd have better luck with Teddy."

"You're thinking potions?" Rolf asks her. "I was imagining some kind of a ward or a spell or something, maybe one they could cast after ingesting things."

"I was hoping for some sort of draught that would counteract the effects of the spells."

"It's an interesting idea..." Draco says. "But it would be taxing on their systems to ingest cures for multiple curses at once, especially ones they don't have."

Her expression falls. "I hadn't thought of that."

"It could still work," Rolf reassures her. "We just have to keep thinking on it."

"Right," Parvati says.

Draco really does feel bad watching the disappointment swim over her features.

"Teddy may be able to help, though. If we can figure out what latent magical spells are most common in the water, I might be able to find something that could cover most of them. Ideally, we'd try to treat the most dangerous ones first, of course, but the simpler place to start would be with ones they'll all come into contact with at one point or another."

Parvati sits across from him eagerly, long black plait falling over her shoulder. "Okay. I can talk to him at our next meeting."

"Meeting?"

She and Rolf give him meaningful looks.

"We don't have meetings," Draco says. "We met once. End of story."

"But it's not," Rolf insists. "We want to help here. I'm a Magizoologist, right? This is my life's work. Everything I've done has been building up to this."

Parvati nods fervently. "And I know I can be helpful if you just let me. You've been looking at this politically, through the lens of Scorpius's campaign, but it's a creature issue. I'm one of the best Magiveterinarians in the world. I was one of the pioneers of olfactory magic usage in my treatments. I've got skills you won't find anywhere else, and I'm ready to use them."

Draco hesitates. "I understand what you're saying, but ... It's bigger than what we can handle. We can try a few things, sure, but..."

"You're not working alone anymore. It's all of us." Rolf gives him a solid look. "It's not bigger than all of us."

Parvati nods. "And I don't think I speak for myself when I say that if we have to do this without you, we will. But we'd like all the help we can get."

Draco taps his fingers on his desk. The people in front of him aren't who he would've ever chosen for something like this. They're horribly Gryffindorish, the both of them — though Draco thinks perhaps Rolf went to Beauxbatons — and as ridiculously persistent and bull-headed as Potter, but something is telling him to agree. Not to give up the fight so easily.

"Fuck it," he says. "I'm in. What's a few months of my life devoted to a helpless cause?"