Chapter Text
The wind was harsh and bitter as King Elias Parkinson, ruler of the Kingdom of Slytherin, gazed over the remains of what was once a beautiful place he ruled. Now, it was desolate. Wherever he looked he saw remains of Riddle's army, their hands still clutching at the spears of ice. Riddle's army had taken over the Kingdom when he had been just a boy, and under the rule of his father, Slytherin's people decided who they wanted to be ruled by. For years they had lived in a tense peace, knowing that it only took one person to make a false move for them to be at war. That had been exactly what had happened - a Death Eater, as Riddle's army called themselves, had murdered three people in his Kingdom, and he had immediately taken action against them. Riddle hadn't been as strong as he thought he was, because he had perished in a matter of mere months. Parkinson had been expecting the war to last decades, maybe even centuries. He certainly hadn't envisioned victory to come so soon.
He turned to his second in command, Nott, when he suddenly heard a wail. He paused in his step, listening carefully. A few moments later it came again, thin and reedy and full of desperation. It didn't sound like someone who was injured, it sounded like a child who longed for its mother. His hand tightened on his sword as he cautiously walked towards the sound. It was coming from the sacred temple, he realised.
Gesturing at Nott to follow him, he made his way inside. The wailing increased in volume as he descended further down into the temple. When he reached the bottom of the steps, the sight that he was met with was enough to shock him into silence.
The room was made completely of ice, from the walls to the ceiling and floor. A blonde woman lay against the wall, her skin tinted blue and blood seeping from a stab wound in her chest. She had been dead for a while, but that wasn't what had shocked him so. An altar stood in the middle of the room, carved from stone, and surrounded in furs on top of it lay a baby. His skin was tinted blue like the woman's, and Elias wasn't sure if it was from the cold or if it was simply natural. The baby's sobs quietened as he approached the altar, and were silenced completely when he plucked the baby from the furs and held him to his chest. The baby snuggled into his cloak and sighed, and Elias watched in fascination as the blue tint of his skin vanished and was replaced with a sickly pale pallor. The baby's eyes opened and Elias found himself staring into serious grey eyes, before they slipped closed again.
"Is that the Malfoy son?" Nott queried from behind him. King Parkinson glanced at the body and then back on the boy in his arms and nodded.
"I believe so." He said.
In Riddle's Kingdom, he may have been the leader of the army and controlled almost everything, but they still had a King and a Queen. The Malfoy's, Lucius and Narcissa. Before Lucius Malfoy it had been Abraxas, and after Lucius it should of been the son he was cradling in his arms. But then the war came, and Lucius and his wife were killed and their son left to die. He didn't feel guilty about what he had done, the Malfoy's had been just as dangerous as Riddle, threatening to destroy other more Primitive worlds and Kingdoms. He had only been doing what was right.
He knew, from the moment he had seen the baby lying in the furs, what he was going to do. What the right thing was. A lesser ruler might have left him to starve next to his mother, but King Parkinson was not a lesser ruler.
"Not anymore." He murmured, both to the baby and Nott. "From now on, the boy is my son, and will be treated as such. He will be raised by my wife and I, sister to Pansy." Freya Parkinson had always wanted more than one child, and after Pansy had wanted her second child to be a boy.
Nott nodded curtly. "I'll Obliviate the rest of the men when we get back. It wouldn't be good to have them talk about the boy's parentage." King Parkinson waved him away, staring down at the baby for a few seconds more. He couldn't help but wonder what he would grow up to be. Would he be like him and Freya, or would he take after his biological parents?
Only time would be able to tell.
The boy, as it turned out, had a different biology to them, they found out when they took him to a trusted Healer. Healer Andromeda had informed that although he looked male, he also had the ability to carry children when he was older, even though she predicted that he would take on a more masculine form in later life. She suggested that they should raise him as they would any other boy, and tell him he was just born like it.
Healer Andromeda also informed them that the boy was not half frozen, no matter what his skin looked like. He was born for the cold temperatures. The only thing truly ailing him was the lack of malnutrition, which they started providing in steady quantities as soon as he had arrived him with him.
Elias and Freya had decided to name the boy Draco. They announced the birth of the second royal child and the first prince two weeks after he had found him in that temple. The boy was welcomed with a parade in his honour, one that he had cried at. Draco cried a lot. Certainly more than Pansy ever had when she had been his age. But, the King supposed it was justified. The boy had been left to die in a temple alone. It was natural that he was upset at times.
Pansy had been absolutely delighted when Freya had told her of her new baby brother and had demanded to see him straight away. It had been two days after he had returned with him, and the memory of his daughter cradling the frail body of his son was forever seared into his mind.
"Mama!" Pansy had exclaimed when Draco reached up and tugged at a lock of her hair. "He likes me!" She giggled.
"He certainly does." He had said as he bent down to her level and placed a kiss on her forehead. "And that means that, as a big sister, you need to protect your little brother."
"I will, Papa, I promise!" Freya ruffled her hair and shared a fond look with him. Draco fitted into their little family perfectly.
The first true difference the King was able to make out between his daughter and his son was the lack of speech. Decades after the boy had been taken from Riddle's Kingdom, he still hadn't spoken a word. In mortal years the boy was around the age of two, and he rarely made sound, except for the constant, ear-splitting crying.
Pansy had been babbling long before, but Draco just didn't. He would scream and cry until somebody held him close, but he never made any attempt to copy the words they said to him. Healer Andromeda had checked him over and said that Draco's hearing was fine and that there was nothing wrong with his vocal cords.
They had all tried, even Pansy, and nothing had worked. The King and Queen had talked it over one night. He believed it would pass quickly and it would merely be a blip, but Freya hadn't been so sure.
"There's something different about him, Elias. I can sense it. He needs help, or he'll be isolated forever."
But there was no one to help. Healer Andromeda did her best, but this wasn't a physical injury she could fix, and nor would it be fixed with kindness. They would just have to wait, and hope that he would snap out of whatever it was that was holding him in such a silence.
Another difference the King made between his children was how clingy Draco was. He was always around his mother or sister, and often wanted to be around him too. He had thought it was like Draco's silence, a blip that would pass, but like the silence, it didn't.
He was away from his family most times in the day, running a Kingdom. Whenever Freya was seen in the palace or the grounds, it was always with a tiny shadow that clung to her hand, usually sucking his thumb or the tail of the fluffy dragon toy Freya had made him. He took it everywhere with him, and seemed to be as attached to it as he was to them. Once Pansy had taken it for a light-hearted joke on her brother, and he had erupted into a crying fit that had lasted hours. Even after Pansy had given it back, he still hadn't stopped sobbing. The King often wondered if there was something wrong with Draco.
When Draco was five in mortal years, the King started introducing him to the children of other nobles. Theodore Nott, the second in commands son, was a year older than Draco but a year younger than Pansy, and Astoria Greengrass was a little younger than Draco. The other children, Daphne Greengrass, Gregory Goyle, Vincent Crabbe, Blaise Zabini and Millicent Bulstrode, were Pansy's age or a little older. Pansy made friends with every child she was introduced to, Draco however . . . Not so much.
They had left Draco with Pansy and the other children and hoped Pansy would look after her brother. It wasn't that Pansy would deliberately leave him out of a game, but Draco tended to fade into the background, intentionally or not. Draco not speaking made it even more difficult for him to make friends.
Pansy and the other children had played soldiers with wooden swords, while Draco stood slightly off from them, his dragon clutched in one hand, and the other grasped around the handle of a sword that weighed almost as much as him. He was too small to lift it properly off the ground, so he smacked it into the grass instead. Another parent might think that it was an aggressive action, except Draco had the tendency to do odd things that other children just wouldn't do.
Pansy gave him a nudge and they traded friendly blows, but the other children stayed away from him. Even after the game was won (by Theodore, having learned from his father how to be a strategist) they still didn't talk to him. Draco hadn't seemed too bothered at the time, but later, at other events with the children, the King could tell that he was bothered by his lack of friends. At royal events where the adults mingled and the children played by themselves, Draco often just vanished and was found hours later by a guard, curled up somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. It happened so often that the Queen ordered a guard to follow him if he left and make sure he didn't get lost. The guard would then, every time without fail, tell them later how Draco had left after not talking to any of the children and had wandered around the parts of the castle that he wasn't supposed to be in on his own, like the royal court. He had never walked in on a session, but the threat of Draco stumbling upon a sentencing to Azkaban prison was always there, so then Freya made Pansy keep Draco in one place, which usually ended in tears.
Pansy had grown accustomed to hearing her door creak open in the middle of the night and turning over to see Draco standing there blinking back tears. He had terrible nightmares. She liked that he came to her about it and not Mama or Papa, but she wished they would stop. She didn't like seeing her baby brother in tears, and never got used to it no matter how many times he cried. Theo had said to her once that Draco cried more than any boy should ever, and Pansy had to agree. She had never cried that much.
Pansy pulled back the covers at Draco's tear streaked face, and then wrapped her arms around him as he snuggled into her chest. She stayed like that for ages, and as she was drifting off she heard a tiny voice whisper,
"P-Pansy?"
Pansy shot up and faced her baby brother, whose face was half hidden by the dragon toy which he had with him all the time.
"Draco? D-Did you just say-?"
"Pansy." He said firmly, his voice croaky and quiet.
Pansy wanted to leap out of bed and run to Mama and Papa's room to tell them about Draco finally saying his first word, but she didn't. For a few hours, she wanted to keep it to herself, like a special secret. She liked keeping secrets. She wrapped her arms around him again and pulled the blankets around him and stroked his hair until he drifted off into sleep.