Chapter Text
A lot had changed in the summer before fifth year.
Draco had grown like a weed, for one. His limbs stretched outside the bounds of his wardrobe, which he’d then replaced entirely. He’d given up pasting his hair down to his head after Blaise Zabini had commented that it made him resemble a hard boiled egg, and his white-blond locks now fell freely over his forehead. Unlike his newfound height, which had quickly become a point of pride, Draco’s skin had been mangled by the scourge of adolescence. He’d thrown a fit of epic proportions over it before his mother swooped in to fix the issue, leaving him religiously dedicated to his regiment of skin potions – a fact not a single soul at Hogwarts could ever find out, of course.
The dynamic in the Manor had changed too. Lucius Malfoy had always been a rather busy man, but Draco had hardly seen his father at all that summer and was still feeling rather bitter that the man had missed his birthday. Sure, he’d organized a portkey for Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle to attend a Portugal vs Germany Quidditch Match and reserved them box seats as well as a suite stay in Portugal’s most luxurious wizarding hotel and bought him the yet-to-be-released Nimbus 2002 – which was faster than a Firebolt, dammit! – and about a dozen other presents on top of that, but would it have killed him to at least include a card?
Draco, of course, had some notion of what his father was so busy with, but he hadn’t dared mention it by name. Even Crabbe and Goyle, who were usually about as subtle as a rock to the face, had been careful and quiet about their fathers’ business, offering only the occasional sly smirk or wink when the topic of the Dark Lord was hinted at.
But there was a bubbling excitement beneath everything that summer. Draco spent the early half of July in Paris with his mother and was surprised to find upon his return that Pureblood society had become a coiled spring, ready to bounce back to a golden age Draco had only ever heard about. One where they were entirely on top. Draco definitely liked the sound of it. Power and glory and the return of Pureblood aristocracy.
But there were also things he felt a bit strange about. His father had been dreadfully overworked between his responsibilities at the ministry and his responsibilities in…other matters, and though Draco would never admit it, he found himself looking sideways at his father’s graying hair and rapidly wrinkling face. He’d just always assumed the rise to absolute glory would look a bit more glorious. Nonetheless, Draco did his part, smirking and sneering alongside his fellow Slytherin friends as they gallivanted through the summer’s events and soirees, bragging endlessly about his father and his fortune and his future.
There was one such reception in mid-August. The afternoon had given way to a honey-gold haze, pooling across the sun-warmed Wiltshire lawn, manicured and sprawling. Draco was draped across a chaise lounge as he and the other soon-to-be fifth year Slytherins sipped on champagne they’d nicked from a house elf’s silver tray. All day, he and Pansy had been taking great joy in waving their brand new prefect badges in their friends’ faces.
“Who do you think made Prefect for the other Houses?” Daphne Greengrass asked Pansy, her eyes squinting against the sun and lips stained strawberry pink.
“Hmm,” Pansy said, “For Ravenclaw, Patil. With Boot or maybe Goldstein.”
“Abbott for Hufflepuff,” Blaise said confidently, “with, who do you think, Finch-Fletchley?”
“The mudblood?” Draco opened one eye to ask, shaking his head. “No, it’ll be Macmillan.”
“And we all know for the dreaded lion’s den, it’ll be Granger and Potter.” Pansy sneered. They all performed the obligatory gagging ritual at the mere mention of the Gryffindors.
“Potter would be a horrible prefect,” Daphne said. “He’s always getting in trouble.”
“That hardly matters,” Draco tutted. “Not for Saint Potter. The wanker could blow up the castle, and they’d throw him a parade.”
The others laughed, but Daphne pushed on, seriously, “It’s true though, isn’t it? I mean, he’s gone barmy, and he probably killed Cedric Diggory.”
“How do you figure that?” Pansy asked with an intrigued glint in her eye.
“Well, he’s peddling that ridiculous story about the Dark Lord returning,” Daphne explained. Draco exchanged subtle glances with Theo Nott, who had been sitting quietly the whole afternoon, before returning his gaze back to Daphne. Crabbe and Goyle thankfully had the good sense to keep quiet. “ The Prophet has only said Diggory’s death was an accident, but never what kind of accident. It makes sense if Potter snapped and killed him. Dumbledore’s probably protecting him.”
“Come off it! Potter couldn’t have killed Diggory. Not with the way he was crying over his body,” Blaise laughed, turning to Crabbe with a mischievous smirk. “It was quite sweet how emotional he got, wasn’t it? Sentimental. They must have been lovers.”
Crabbe snorted, collapsing into a guffawing Goyle, as Zabini leaned back on his elbows with a devilish smile. Draco let his head fall back, staring up at the sky, where the heat had bleached it bone white. He was getting bored.
That night, Draco had a strange dream.
He was back at the Yule Ball, and it was progressing as it had in his memory. He, Crabbe and Goyle were planning to plant laxative potion in some Hufflepuffs’ punch, but Pansy kept nagging at him to ask her to dance. Eventually, the doors to the Great Hall opened, and the Triwizard Champions and their dates proceeded into the room for their formal dance. In reality, Draco had spent the whole time pointing and laughing at Potter’s awkward waltzing, but now, in the dream, he looked over to see Potter, not with Patil as he should have been, but with Diggory.
Potter looked ridiculous, bending his neck back to look up into Diggory’s eyes. Their hands gripped each other’s dress robes tightly, and every other dancer vanished into mist. As Draco watched the pair of them twirling under the snowflakes, his stomach clenched uncomfortably, but he couldn’t look away. Suddenly, something slithered up his leg and tied him in place.
Lightning struck overhead, and when Draco looked up, the enchanted ceiling of the great hall was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the night sky rumbled threateningly, lightning dancing between the dark clouds, packs of dementors roaming in droves. The castle walls turned to dust before the wind whisked them away. Draco watched the rain fall from the sky but couldn’t feel it touch his skin. It passed right through his suddenly translucent hand. A ghost’s hand.
Potter’s scream pierced the night exactly as it had when Draco heard it from the stands on the last night of the Triwizard Tournament. Still in his dress robes, Potter struggled to hold up the dead weight of Diggory’s body, which stared, pale and unforgiving, at Draco. Potter fell to his knees, cradling Diggory’s head gently in his lap. Rain and tears fell down his dirt-streaked face as Draco watched, an ache in his throat as if he’d been screaming, but he was silent.
“Draco.” His father’s voice called from behind him, but when Draco turned, he saw not his father but something else. More man than creature but not quite human. The face shifted impossibly from demonic to beautiful and back again. Draco had no idea what the Dark Lord looked like, but he knew this was him. He smiled, and it was all fangs.
Draco woke with a stuttering heart. He laid his hand on his chest; willed the traitorous thing to calm itself, feeling it slow beneath his fingertips; and he thought about Potter.
That was the other thing that changed that summer.
Without cause or reason, Draco sometimes found himself thinking vaguely about Potter. Of course, he’d thought about Potter before, in the sense of how much he hated him or how to hurt him or get under his skin. But now he just…thought about him. Just small things. His eyelashes, the way he’d looked in his dress robes. Naturally, Draco spoke of this to absolutely no one.
By morning, the ponderings had been set on fire and the ashes swept away. He sat at the dining table with his mother, and together, they quietly picked at a breakfast far too big for two people. His father’s place at the head of the table remained empty.
Afterward, Draco spent the remainder of the morning in the library. Not the grand one, which took up most of the east wing, but his father’s – the blackwood shelves filled with his intriguing books and off-limits artefacts. Draco wasn’t technically allowed in it, but Mother spent all day in her gardens, Father wasn’t around to know anyway, and the house-elves had long ago realized that tattling on Draco would not go well for them.
That morning, though, Draco paused on his way to the library when he saw Theodore Nott sitting politely in the corridor, a book open in his lap.
“Theo?” Draco approached the other boy like he would a wild deer. “What are you doing here?”
Theo didn’t look up. “My father’s meeting with your father.”
Eyebrows pulled together, Draco let his gaze wander down the corridor, toward his father’s study. “Father is home?”
“It seems,” Theo replied, turning a page.
Draco narrowed his eyes and kicked lightly at Theo’s shoe until the other boy lifted his gaze. “Why didn’t you come find me?”
“Didn’t think to,” Theo replied, lifting his book to reveal the cover of their fifth year Charms textbook. “Reading.”
“Swotty Nott-y,” Draco teased with a roll of his eyes. “You are aware school hasn’t started yet?”
When Theo just shrugged, Draco sighed, lowering himself to sit beside him. The silence stretched on, and with Theo unwilling to provide a proper distraction, Draco’s mind circled his father’s study. “Our fathers. What are they discussing?”
“Not sure,” Theo said with a wry smirk. “I’m out here in the hallway, you see.”
Draco rolled his eyes again. “You’re not funny.”
Theo grinned then cleared his throat. “I expect they’re discussing plans for the creatures.”
“Creatures?” Draco asked.
“Werewolves, vampires, and the like.”
Draco wrinkled his nose. “Why?”
“They’re on our side,” Theo answered, “or most are, I think. Father only told me that Dumbledore’s trying to sway the giants back over. They even sent the half-breed gameskeeper as some sort of ambassador. Good news for you – he won’t be at Hogwarts this term.”
“Really?” Draco brightened. “Well, good. That overgrown waste of hair has always had it out for me.”
Theo shot him a look.
“What?” Draco argued, “It was his beast that attacked me. All I did was suggest students be protected from dangerous animals. Quite reasonably, might I add. Would the world truly stop spinning if that oaf followed an approved curriculum?”
Theo made a noncommittal noise. “Well, he’s likely to be eaten for Giant Supper by Christmas. Father says most of the giants support the Dark Lord.”
Draco leaned in to mutter, “Your father told you that?”
Theo nodded, and Draco couldn’t help looking down and away from him. His father hardly told him anything at all since the Dark Lord’s return. How was he expected to be a part of the revolution when he was kept so utterly in the dark about it?
Abruptly, Draco stood. “Come on.”
Theo watched him with a brow raised.
Draco tilted his head toward his father’s study. “I’d like to know what they’re talking about.”
“You want to…what?” Theo asked, “Spy on our fathers?”
Draco shrugged lightly. “Just a simple eavesdrop.”
Theo shook his head incredulously.
“Come on, Nott,” Draco urged. “Aren’t you curious?”
“Course,” Theo said, “but I’m patient.”
“You mean boring?”
“That too, I suppose.” Theo said. When he got to his feet anyway, Draco couldn’t help but grin. Peer pressure was a beautiful thing.
Together, the pair of them crept down the hall, careful to keep their footsteps quiet, and Draco pressed his ear to the door. The conversation inside was low and muffled, but stray words slipped through. They hadn’t cast a silencing charm – Draco smirked at Theo, who leaned in beside him, curious despite himself. Draco only heard a few things, scattered and meaningless: Black. Ministry. Capture. Trelawney.
Draco pulled his brows together, mouthing to Theo, “The divination professor?”
Theo shrugged, looking just as bewildered as Draco felt. What would Father want with that old bat? He pushed closer, trying to somehow angle himself to hear better.
Instead, the door swung suddenly open, and both he and Theo collapsed onto the dark, veined marble, a group of Death Eaters hovering above them. There were five men in total – Mr. Nott, red-faced and frowning at his son; two of father’s ministry connections; an unfamiliar, roguish man with too many teeth; and of course, Lucius Malfoy, who looked like he might set fire to his son with only a blink. His face hardly changed as he said, “Out.”
Draco and Theo both scrambled to their feet, Theo disappearing like he’d been Vanished. Draco opened his mouth, but before an excuse or apology could form, his father barked, “Now!”
Theo and Draco stood silently in the corridor, unwilling to speak of the punishments they both knew awaited them. Mr. Nott appeared soon after to usher Theo through the Floo. The other boy shot Draco a final, sympathetic glance before the green flames whisked him away. Draco lingered by his father’s study, clenching and unclenching his fists nervously.
One by one, the other voices disappeared, and when the rough growl of his father’s final guest finally disappeared, Draco didn’t even have time to flinch before his father sent a stinging hex to his cheek.
“Ouch!” Draco complained, rubbing at his face, but his father dragged him unsympathetically into the study.
The fire lit Lucius’s pale complexion a warning red as he narrowed his eyes at his son. “You make a pathetic spy.”
“Father, I wasn’t–”
Lucius interrupted, “You will never pull a ridiculous stunt like that again.”
“I only wanted to know what was going on,” Draco complained. “So I can help.”
“What do you presume you could help with, Draco?” His father replied, his voice cold. “You’re a child.”
“Theo’s father tells him things!” Draco argued. “I can keep secrets. I have done. I’m not like Vince or Greg. I’m smart.”
“You’re right. You’re not like them. They follow their fathers’ orders!” Lucius snapped. He ran a hand over his face, the motion draining his fury like water down a sink, leaving only annoyed exhaustion behind. When he raised his head, his pale eyes were deadly serious. “You run your mouth incessantly. You have an inflated sense of your own importance, and you lack all sense of restraint. Among the men I confer with, if you put your foot in your mouth at the wrong moment, you may end up choking on it.”
Lucius reached for a glass decanter, pouring the amber drink into a glass for himself. Draco watched, an enraptured audience, as his father lifted the glass to his lips, the firelight turning it to liquid sunlight. Lucius exhaled softly, and when he spoke again, it was pensive. “Did you see my new…acquaintance? Mr. Greyback?”
Draco swallowed. “The one with the teeth?”
“That’s the one.” Lucius nodded, turning to the fire. “You are never to be alone with him. Understand?”
“Yes, Father,” Draco answered, not wanting to know the reason.
When Lucius dismissed him with a flippant hand, Draco rushed to his bedroom and spent the rest of the day behind his locked door. He found himself uniquely relieved when his father, once again, was not at breakfast the following morning.
***
September 1st crept up quietly then pounced.
As they climbed aboard the Hogwarts Express, Pansy clung to Draco’s side, holding his hand in her constricting, manicured grasp. She’d gotten clingier over the summer, but Draco really didn’t have the energy to care much. It was easier to let her cling and purr and fuss with his tie than to deal with the drama that would follow if he put a stop to it. He didn’t mind that much. She laughed too loudly in his ear and her perfume gave him a headache, but he supposed they looked good together. Appropriate.
After they’d completed their prefect duties, Pansy went off to find Daphne and Blaise. Draco found Crabbe and Goyle right where he expected they’d be – at the candy trolley. They planned to meet Nott after, but on the way back, Draco heard Potter’s voice, growly and frustrated, coming from a nearby compartment. Draco lit up again at the reminder that Potter hadn’t been made a prefect after all. Amazing, Draco thought. Time to ruin the prat’s day.
A group of rowdy second-years blocking the corridor withered beneath the shine of Draco’s prefect badge, and he, Crabbe, and Goyle quickly pounced on Potter’s compartment. At the sight of Potter glaring at him, irritated and unsurprised, Draco felt something in him lurch. A missed step on a staircase.
“What?” Potter barked at him impatiently. His voice was deeper, his skin tanner, and hair longer. Fuse shorter.
Draco’s mouth curled into a smirk before he could stop it. “Manners, Potter, or I'll have to give you a detention.”
On either side of Draco, Crabbe and Goyle laughed, and annoyance flickered across Potter’s face. It felt good, familiar.
“You see, I, unlike you , have been made a prefect,” Draco continued, “which means that I, unlike you , have the power to hand out punishments.”
“Yeah,” Potter replied, “but you, unlike me, are a git, so get out and leave us alone.”
The other Gryffindor nonentities laughed like they’d heard something particularly clever, and the little blonde thing in the corner behaved like she’d been hit with a nasty tickling charm. Draco wrinkled his nose at them. “Tell me, how does it feel being second-best to Weasley, Potter?”
“Shut up, Malfoy,” Granger interrupted. Draco spared her a glance before his eyes settled back on Potter, who was glowering back with pure loathing. Like he might curse Draco with nothing but his look. Draco felt it like a hand around his throat. His smirk widened.
“I seem to have touched a nerve,” he drawled. “Well, just watch yourself, Potter, because I’ll be dogging your footsteps in case you step out of line.”
Granger yelled at them to leave again, pushing forward to slam the door on them. Draco allowed himself a final look before he turned away, the heat draining from his cheeks the further down the train he went.
***
Two weeks into the term, Draco was sitting in the library, concocting elaborate schemes to fake his own death. His prefect duties had already gone dull. There was a lot of patrolling the halls and line leading younger students, and the novelty of doling out punishments had worn off after McGonagall told him off for “abusing his authority.” Apparently levitating a third year’s bag into the lake wasn’t a fit punishment for tardiness. Additionally, classes were a headache and a half. The professors had all conspired to torture the fifth years, it seemed, with a ludicrous amount of work and persistent reminders that if they didn’t take their O.W.L.s seriously, their lives would be essentially ruined forever. His mother’s letters only reinforced the sentiment. Still, somewhere between the foot he’d written on moonstones and the third chapter he’d read on the goblin wars, Draco found himself face-down on the table, dreaming about fleeing the country. Perhaps to Portugal. The beaches were nice.
The only joy Draco truly gleaned in those first weeks was from Quidditch practice or, more aptly, from crashing the Gryffindor Quidditch practice. Weasley flew with all the grace of an airbound octopus, and he only got redder and clumsier the more Draco and his cohort laughed. It had to be the best entertainment in all of Scotland. The opportunity to watch Potter also couldn’t be discounted. The git somehow got even faster on a broom after last year’s break from the sport, and his moves in the air were anything but clumsy. He was hypnotizing – and infuriating. Draco had gotten rusty, having only flown casually in the last year, but now, his concerns narrowed in on a foreseeable tragedy: Potter beating him to the snitch yet again. With an envious fire burning in his stomach, Draco heckled throughout the practice, but unlike Weasley, Potter hardly seemed to hear his taunts at all. The tosser.
Not even the common room offered relief. Pansy’s clinging was a nightly ordeal. He could be playing chess with Blaise, studying with Theo, or threatening first years with Crabbe and Goyle – and always, there she was. Clinging. Always touching him with cold hands and laughing just a little too loudly at his jokes. The other boys smirked and made their implications. He should be pleased; Pansy was a pretty girl, objectively. Her nose was a bit upturned, but she had big brown eyes, plump lips, and… other assets, if Blaise’s comments were to be believed. Draco should ask her to Hogsmeade; he should want to, but it felt like a chore.
He needed a distraction – or a target. Care of Magical Creatures with the Gryffindors was an excellent archery range. Theo had been right about Hagrid’s departure, thank Merlin, so the class had become much more bearable. Especially because it was such a prime opportunity to piss off Potter. Draco’s Granger impression had become a genuine artform. Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle were in stitches when he gave himself buck-teeth, and he had all three members of the Golden Trio turning red in record time.
When Professor Grubbly-Plank instructed one person from each group to grab a bowtruckle, Draco sprang up to follow Potter to the pile. He leaned across him, stealing the bigger bowtruckle right from under Potter’s hand. For a second, he imagined it was a snitch.
Draco lingered, pausing beside Potter. It suddenly struck him how close their faces were, close enough that Potter had to look up at him. Draco felt the insane urge to lean closer. Instead, he reached for the nearest cruel thing to justify the closeness. Hagrid’s whereabouts. “Maybe your stupid great oaf’s got himself badly injured.”
Potter’s brow furrowed, his jaw clenched. “Maybe you will if you don’t shut up.”
“Maybe…” Draco leaned closer, his body moving without his permission. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “He’s been messing with stuff that’s too big for him, if you get my drift.”
Potter’s ears turned pink, and he looked close to punching Draco in the face. But he didn’t move. And Draco–
Draco felt a strange fluttering in his chest.
Why was he whispering in Harry Potter’s ear?
Why was Potter letting him?
Still, witnessing that slow-burn fury up close was a magnificent thing, especially knowing he was the one who put it there. Draco smirked, the slow, smarmy one he knew drove Potter mad, before pulling away.
Later that night, Draco dreamt he was on his broom, flying through a mighty thunderstorm, but when the wind whipped past his ears, it was warm. When he woke, he couldn’t decide if it had been a nightmare. He was still pondering at breakfast when Artemis, his orange-eyed eagle owl, swooped down to deliver the post – package of sweets from his mother, which Draco immediately handed off to Crabbe and Goyle, and a letter. He tore open the envelope.
My darling Draco,
I trust that the beginning of your term has gone well and that you remain focused on your studies. I ran into Dolores Umbridge at a Ministry event this past weekend, and she had many complimentary words for you, which I was very pleased to hear. Do continue to stay in her good graces. She will be a very useful connection to us in the coming months.
In regards to your last letter, I have nothing to report regarding your father, but he does wish to remind you to always exercise caution, in both your life and your letters. At this time, your priority is your education. We expect no fewer than nine O.W.L.s from you, so you do not have time to be fretting over your father’s business.
Finally, I am very pleased to hear that you and Pansy have been getting closer. As such, I have invited the Parkinsons to join us for Yule this year. It will be lovely for our families to spend the holiday together. Remember, you must always be a gentleman.
All my love,
Your mother
Draco read the letter twice – once quickly, then again slowly, hunting for anything to grab onto – before folding it with clean corners and sliding it into his pocket. He looked down at his breakfast, suddenly without an appetite.
He felt, at once, like a ghost possessing the body of Draco Malfoy. He could just as easily be swapped out with some other ghost boy, and his mother wouldn’t know the difference – so long as he continued merrily down the path toward pureblood marriage and schmoozed with enough annoying toads in pink lipstick.
He couldn’t even pinpoint what exactly upset him about the letter; there was nothing really, and maybe that was the issue. A tangible sense of lack. It lodged in the back of his head and festered all day long, so by the time he was back in the common room that evening, he was twitchy and agitated. Blaise managed to beat him at chess. The introduction he wrote for his Charms essay looked like something Goyle could have written. He balled up the parchment and dropped his head back against the leather couch. When Pansy came over to talk, he pretended to be asleep.
“I’m calling it,” Blaise announced later, rising from the chessboard he and Theo had been tied to for the last two hours. He stretched with a yawn.
Theo stood too. “Coming, Draco?”
Draco hummed, turning just his eyes. “In a bit.”
Theo looked like he might say something but then thought better of it. With an uncertain nod, he followed Blaise to the boys dormitories.
Too warm by the fire, Draco moved from the leather couches he and his friends usually crowded around and settled, instead, into his favourite green armchair. It was tucked behind a bookshelf, the corner lit only by a single candle – tall, carved wax in a silver holder, enchanted to burn ice-cold. It produced no smoke yet managed to make the air around it smell of mint. Draco curled up in the armchair and picked up his quill again. But when he placed it upon the parchment, he found himself writing, not an essay about counterjinxes, but something else entirely.
His quill bled, words spilling, unbidden – straight from his skull to the page without first passing through his sense of self-preservation. His cursive grew loopier, messier. When he finished, he inhaled sharply, like crashing down in the grass after an intense broom ride. He read what he’d written – once, twice. A letter to no one in particular; a purging of all his sharp, stained thoughts.
It was cathartic. And embarrassing.
Draco held the corner of the parchment to the candle and watched as the evidence burned, smokeless. Not a single ash left behind.