On the night of June fifth, 1980, there was an irrational squall of rain. It was irrational for several reasons. For one thing, there were no clouds—it simply fell from empty air. For another thing, it was only raining directly over a certain manor house in Wiltshire. And the sky did not give forth water, but blood.

Most would find this occurrence to be, if anything, profoundly alarming. Some would deal with any unfinished business, then take shelter, convinced the apocalypse was nigh. In the Wizarding world, however, no one batted an eye. A torrent of blood pouring down upon this particular manor house could mean only one thing:

A Malfoy was being born.

When Draco Malfoy emerged from the womb, he was clean and shock-white, like sun-bleached parchment, with a small tuft of ivory hair sticking up from his disproportionately weighty head. There was not a drop of blood on him, though the exterior of the house was drenched with it. When he opened his eyes for the first time, assaulted with the utterly foreign concept of light, he did not cry, as most newborns did. He simply blinked, his little brow furrowed, as if trying to determine what this world was all about. Then his frown smoothed, he closed his eyes, and sighed.

Draco learned to walk when he was four months old, simply because he was bored. ‘He’s quite strong for his age,’ Lucius told his colleagues at the Ministry. ‘But then, of course, all Malfoys are strong.’

Draco’s first word was ‘giraffe’. He had a plush giraffe that his cousin Nymphadora has made him after he was born, and despite his parents’ distaste for the Tonks family, Narcissa had allowed him to keep the toy, simply because it was cute. When Draco began to understand the concept of names, he dubbed his giraffe Arnold, for reasons unknown to anyone but himself.