Lucius S Malfoy

Official Request. Confidential and Private. Prompt Attention Appreciated

At approximately 10:55 A.M. today Julius Avery, late of Our Lord's Council, accosted me in my office and challenged me to right of combat.

Please send investigators at your earliest convenience to inspect our wands and retrieve Mr Avery's remains. Have had my clerk clear my diary for the day in order to provide a full statement.

Think it's high time we hosted a reception for Our Lord's newer initiates. Perhaps shortly after Tosha and Savitha finish with the CCF students and Draco and the others are home.

Will you see to the arrangements? Up to you whether it's at Kensington or the Manor.

Be sure to include Julius Avery. With any luck we can make sure of his support before anyone else - though given who witnessed his Mark, it seems unlikely.

Heard from Mafalda you have had a change in fortunes. Was it some mishap in extraction or a deliberate calculation? Or ought you to take better care of your toys?

Nonetheless, this replacement may play to your advantage even if, as I understand, your circumstances are a bit harder to bear in the short-term. Particularly if it offers you greater excuse to travel? Have heard rumblings from Level 13 and ... elsewhere. Runcorn, Maule, Fulton - it would seem we have new domestic disturbances to provide us with intrigue.

If you can see your way to the Frost Faire on any evening, let me know. Or if other occasions afford you the opportunity to meet: You will wish to keep abreast of the developments. Have a meeting with Avery and Rookwood later; should know more after that. Have instructed Weasley to make time for you, Dominic, Gaude, Mulciber or Rowle should any of you contact him with a request. Understand, however, should your present guise require a less conspicuous form of contact.

Might amuse you to know that Ned's vigilance on your behalf has grown, if possible, more ferocious in the last week or two, in the face of all the activities within the Ministry. Do yourself a favour and warn him if you intend to pop into your own office; suspect the lad will take to sleeping on your camp bed any day now. Perhaps it's a more acceptable alternative to him than attempting to wrest attention from his fiancée. (She continues to emulate Bellatrix in her dedication to the craft - a fine Auror she'll be, too, if she can manage to refrain from treating her betters with a supercilious look. And Bella, of course, has been smiling like a cat with a particularly fat pigeon in its grasp. No one wants to ask what she's about - though it is not hard to guess.)

Go careful.