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It didn’t take long for the weight of Draco’s mission to hit.
Standing before the Dark Lord, there was a part of Draco that had felt a stir of excitement at receiving a task. His father had been on the receiving end of the Dark Lord’s fury after an incident at the end of Draco’s fifth year that he knew very little about. But if the Malfoys were being entrusted with a task once again, they must have been forgiven.
But as he looked over at his parents, standing to the side with the circle of other members, but neither of them would meet his eyes, and Draco got the sinking feeling that his assessment had been entirely inaccurate.
When the meeting ended, Draco retreated to his parents’ room and knocked quietly.
His mother was crying.
“Mother,” breathed Draco, stepping forward. He glanced at his father, who was staring silently out the window of their bedroom, motionless. “Mother, what - “
“Draco!” said his mother, wiping her eyes quickly and drawing up a shaky smile. Draco let her embrace him, clinging to his robes in a gesture that seemed more desperate than affectionate. “It’s going to be alright, darling.”
“I don’t understand.” said Draco.
She clasped the sides of his face with both hands, stroking back his hair, and took in large, stuttering breaths. Shaken, Draco took a step back. He had never seen his mother like this.
“Draco,” said his father. He still had not turned around from the window. “Tell me you have a way to bring the Death Eaters into Hogwarts.”
“I -” Draco hesitated. “I will, Father. I won’t fail.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Draco.
His father turned abruptly, and seized him by the shoulders. “Are you positive?”
“Yes,” said Draco, again, a little more confidently. “I can do it, Father.”
“Good,” said Lucius Malfoy. “Because if you do not, we will all die.”
“ Lucius! ” hissed Draco’s mother, scrambling to her feet and taking Draco by the arm. “Come, darling, I’ll have the house elves make some tea. Ignore your father, he’s just - he’s worried, that’s all.”
But over the course of that week, Draco came to realize just what his father had meant. That his task had not been given in an act of faith, but rather in the fierce confidence of failure. And that this was Lucius Malfoy’s true punishment - to watch his family struggle to complete an impossible task, only to come to terms with the end of the Malfoy line. The spark of pride Draco had felt was replaced by the sickening feeling that the Dark Lord had tied a slow-tightening noose around his neck. When he kneeled to take the Dark Mark a few days later, Bellatrix’s laughter ringing in his ears, the pain did not erase the numbness he felt in his chest.
His father no longer spoke to him unless it was about the task. And when he did, it was with a fury at Draco’s slow progress to completing it, driven by undertones of pure fear. For the first time, Draco felt the Cruciatus Curse.
His mother had retreated to simple housewife duties, taking to making tea and watching the house elves work in the garden. Every time she looked at Draco, he got the distinct impression that she was teetering on the edge of a meltdown.
At night, Draco stared up at the ceiling, fingering his wand. He is in my house, he thought. If he dwelled on it long enough, he could feel himself getting hysterical. The Dark Lord is living with me.
It took all he had to pull on the mask of indifferent confidence he had, and when September came, Draco could not leave fast enough. He locked himself in an empty compartment and drew in three big breaths, rubbing his left arm and wishing to Merlin he could peel off the brand that had been scorched into his skin.
“Didn’t see you on the train,” said Pansy when he sat down at the Great Hall. Crabbe and Goyle looked up briefly before returning to their potatoes.
“Busy,” said Draco tonelessly, watching Dumbledore give his speech. When the old man stepped back to let the Sorting begin, he seemed to look straight at Draco.
I have to kill you , thought Draco. By the end of this year, I have to kill you.
Dumbledore smiled at him and turned to sit down.
Bile rose up from the back of his throat. Setting down the bread roll in his hand, Draco muttered an excuse under his breath and strode to the toilet as quickly as he could without appearing as though he was sprinting.
He barely made it inside before he vomited, dropping to his knees. I can’t do it, he thought wildly. How the hell am I going to do any of this?
Wiping the corner of his mouth, Draco got to his feet and flushed the toilet.
When he opened the stall door, Harry Potter was standing there. His wand was out, but it had been lowered, and Potter looked uncertain, undoubtedly having heard Draco.
Unable to come up with a response other than don’t mind me, I’ve just been vomiting at the idea of murdering Dumbledore and letting Death Eaters invade the school, Draco snarled and pushed past the Gryffindor.
“Er -” Potter seemed to be unsure how to proceed. “You alright, Malfoy?”
No. I have never be less alright. “Perfect,” snapped Draco, wrenching the sink faucet in frustration as it refused to open.
“Really? Because it looks as though you’re about to take the faucet off.” Potter stepped forward, and Draco started as he reached behind him to turn the faucet the other way. Water spurted out immediately.
Jerkily, Draco stared at the steady stream of water. He began to draw up his sleeves, and was halfway there when the black of his Dark Mark began to peek through. Startled, Draco turned and shoved Potter roughly.
Potter hit the side of the stall, lost his footing, and crashed to the ground. “Oi!” Scrambling to his feet, he raised his wand the same time Draco found his. “The hell was that for?”
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Potter,” hissed Draco, jabbing his wand in the air. “But you stay away from me this year, you hear me?”
“I’m not playing at anything!” shouted Potter, furious now. “You’re the one who shoved me!”
“And why’d you follow me into the bathroom in the first place?” accused Draco.
“Why were you throwing your guts up?” countered Potter.
Taking three large steps forward, Draco let the tip of his wand sink into Potter’s neck. Potter did the same, poking his wand into Draco’s chest in an effort to keep him at bay.
“Give me a reason,” murmured Draco, feeling more unhinged by the second. “And I’ll do it. Just give me a reason.”
But still, despite his usual fury and hatred, Potter was staring at Draco with something almost like confused concern. “Malfoy, what - “
“Petrificus Totalus!”
As Potter crashed to the ground, Draco ran.
Potter left him alone after that. But Draco, shaken by what had happened in the bathroom, grew hyper-aware of his enemy’s every movement.
Had Potter caught a glimpse of his Mark? Did Weasel and the mudblood know? Did Dumbledore?
And even worse, the headmaster seemed to be watching Draco at every turn. It took a week of eating in the Great Hall and looking up to see Dumbledore’s kind looks before Draco took to eating in the kitchens.
Why was he looking at him like that? What was the headmaster playing at, smiling at him?
Maybe he knew, though Draco hysterically, chewing on his toast on the floor of the kitchen. Maybe he knew Draco’s task. Was he waiting for Draco to fail, too? So that he could throw him into Azkaban?
Other than that, eating alone seemed to have another effect. Pansy, who was already irked that he hadn’t returned any of her letters, seemed to take his decision to eat alone as a personal attack. She’d taken to clinging to the arm of Blaise Zabini. Neither Crabbe nor Goyle had looked for him. The latter stung a bit more.
Draco tried to tell himself that even if they had, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them about his task anyway. As far as he knew, the three of them hadn’t received the mark yet. And they had never been particularly close. Not in the way Potter and his friends were.
But still, there was something lonelier in this - not having anyone to complain about an essay length to. Not being able to pick a fight with Potter and know that Crabbe and Goyle would be baring their teeth behind him. Not being able to tuck his head into Pansy’s neck under the pretense of exhaustion from taking a test.
And it was pathetic - incredibly so - and Draco would deny this to his last dying breath, but he found himself watching the Gryffindor trio more and more. It felt fairly masochistic, staring at Granger in Transfiguration as she reached to smack the arms of Weasel and Potter, who were snickering at something the other had said. All it did was remind him of the empty seat beside him, and the responsibilities that weighed him down, and yet - Draco could not look away.
On the other hand, his empty schedule had opened him up to a lot of thinking, mostly about his task. Montague, who had been pushed into a Vanishing Cabinet by the Weasley Twins, had given Draco significant progress on his plan for getting the Death Eaters in. All Draco had to do now was find it.
It was an accident, really. Draco had been pacing on the seventh floor, circling it over and over again, when the door had appeared right before his eyes. It took several days for him to find it once again, but once Draco figured out how to operate the Room of Hidden Things, it became something of a home. Privacy came as simply as Draco simply requiring the room to open only to him.
He spent the majority of his time there, testing out the Cabinet and failing each time. In an act of desperation, he owled his father asking for assistance, noting his failed attempts. His father sent a stinging hex, a book on runes, and a short note. I will not accept failure, Draco.
Draco did not owl him after that.
The book was written entirely in Latin, and many of the instructions for the runes were unclear even after Draco began to translate them. But it was a start.
The cabinet was wedged between two piles of old, battered books fairly close to the entrance of the room; if Draco had to guess, the Room had probably noted his struggles to find it the first time he’d been there.
Draco found himself sleeping near the Cabinet often - sometimes, the runes he set required constant care, and he found it easier to simply stay for hours at a time. There might have been a time where things such as eating on the kitchen floor and sleeping in a pile of dirty books would have been beneath him, but as it turned out, fear could do a lot.
It didn’t take long for Draco to catch on that Potter was following him. The thought was both terrifying and relieving: terrifying, for if Potter realized what Draco was doing, he’d surely tell Dumbedore. And relieving, because as pathetic as it was, Potter’s interactions with Draco became the only time people really ever spoke to him. And on days where Draco spent the entire weekend clawing desperately through the roughly-translated book of runes, Potter was the only thing that reminded Draco where he was.
On a said weekend like so, Draco wandered to the library to look for a more advanced book on applying runes after working on the Cabinet for fifteen hours straight. He rubbed his eyes and fingered the books on the shelf, blinking away the exhaustion, when Potter’s voice cut through the thick of his thoughts.
“You look like shit, Malfoy.”
It was not the normal snarky exchange that they usually had. Once again, Potter’s voice was laced with slight concern.
Draco knew what he looked like. But with the amount of magic it took to keep up the runes that were fixing the Cabinet little by little, he’d learned very quickly that it was impossible to keep on concealing glamours for longer than twenty minutes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Draco haughtily. He pulled a book off the shelf and flipped through the table of contents, aware that he wasn’t even reading the words.
“I’m not dense, Malfoy,” said Potter, ignoring Draco’s muttered could’ve fooled me . “You’ve got bags worse than Hermione’s on exams week, you’re as thin as a stick, and you look exhausted. I know you’re up to something.”
He motioned to Draco’s hands, which were trembling involuntarily. Draco snapped the book shut and shoved it at Potter, using the force of it to move Potter to the side.
“It’s none of your business.” Draco shouldered past Potter without glancing back. He could feel Potter’s eyes on him as he strode away.
Once he was outside the library, Draco put both hands on his knees and bent over, dipping his head to take a breather. A part of him waited for Potter to come out.
He did not.
Briefly, Draco wondered if Azkaban would be a favorable alternative to the slow death he would inevitably face at the hands of the Dark Lord.
“Please,” hissed Draco under his breath as he supported the weight of the cabinet door with his hand, weaving through the runes with his other. “Come on. Come on.”
With a yank, the door creaked open.
The button Draco had placed was still there. It sat, spinning slightly from the magic, mocking him.
With a shout of frustration, Draco kicked the cabinet forcefully. The button fell out and rolled away to the back of the room, and he swore, bringing a hand up to steady the teetering cabinet.
After the haze of anger had faded away, Draco shut the cabinet door and went to look for the button.
It was sitting at the bottom of a pile of what seemed to be golden objects - trophies, doorknobs, and screws. Draco picked up the button and stood up.
Before him was a mirror, with an ornate gold frame. There was an inscription carved around the top that Draco struggled to see, but as he stepped back he could clearly see the gibberish that it spelled out: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
Well, it certainly wasn’t latin. The dead language had become nearly as familiar to him as English was, after translating nearly the entire book his father had given him. Draco glanced at the reflection in the mirror, and nearly yelled.
He whirled around, then looked back at the mirror.
“ What the fuck - “
Dropping the button, Draco drew his wand and ran.
The door to the room slammed loudly behind him, but Draco didn’t stop to watch the door disappear as he usually did. He turned the corner, sprinting for his life, and crashed straight into the person he least wanted to see.
Shooting to his feet, Draco brought his wand up. Potter, groaning at having been trampled to the ground, rolled over on his side.
“The hell, Malfoy - “ Potter sat up, raising his hands slowly as Draco brought his wand closer.
“ What are you playing at?” Draco shouted. “How did you do that?”
“What are you talking about?” Potter got to his feet, only to take a step back as Draco advanced.
His heart hammering, Draco turned and ran in the other direction, ignoring Potter’s shout of “Malfoy, wait!”
He didn’t stop until he reached the Astronomy Tower, gasping for air and letting the cold wind whip into his eyes.
He realized he wasn’t even wearing his robes; they’d been strewn to the side near the cabinet and he’d forgotten entirely about it. But as the air sliced through him, Draco welcomed its bitter sting, fighting the panic that rose in his chest.
“Malfoy!” He didn’t have to turn around to know it was Potter. “It’s bloody freezing, what are you doing?”
“You know, don’t you?” exclaimed Draco, looking over at Potter.
“Malfoy,” said Potter, loudly and slowly over the sound of the wind. “I have never known less about what’s going on with you.”
“Stop lying! ” cried Draco. “You know, and Weasel knows, and Granger! And Dumbledore!”
It was the only explanation. He could still barely understand it, and couldn’t understand why they had chosen to reveal it to him in such a strange way, but in the thick of his panic Draco was certain.
“Breathe,” Potter implored, and then his hands were grasping Draco’s arms, steadying his trembling. “What are you talking about?”
“The mirror,” shouted Draco. “I don’t - was it a message? If you know, just send me to Azkaban already, Potter! I don’t need this shit from you!”
At the mention of Azkaban, Potter’s expression darkened. “Why would you go to Azkaban?”
His panic receding slightly, Draco shook his head to clear his thoughts. The slow doubt that Potter truly had no idea what he was talking about - and that he had just given himself away - was quickly becoming a reality. But it still didn’t explain what Draco had seen in the mirror.
He tried to wrench himself away from Potter, but it seemed the Gryffindor had had enough of Draco running or pushing away from him; he grasped Draco’s left arm with one hand and forcefully pulled his sleeve up.
Both of them stared down at Draco’s Mark for several seconds, before Potter breathed, “ I knew it.”
Suddenly, everything was funny. Draco felt the laughter bubble up in his throat as he tried to swallow it down. A month ago, this had been his worst fear. But now, face to face with Potter, who looked as though he was about to run to Dumbledore, he felt only hysteria.
“Is it what you thought?” Potter sounded angry.
Draco didn’t understand why Potter was talking so much and hadn’t hexed him already. “Why would you ask me that,” he said, dully.
“Because,” said Potter, fierce now. “You look like shit .”
“You don’t understand,” breathed Draco. The words were coming out faster now, a million things that he had wanted to tell someone, anyone , for months now. “He’s going to kill my family. And he’s going to anyway, he knows , he knows I can’t do it, he’s punishing Father, they’re going to die - “
“Go to Dumbledore,” said Potter. His expression had changed from wariness to a look of determination. “Malfoy - “
“ No,” hissed Draco. “I won’t be - you’re manipulating me - with the mirror - “
“What mirror?”
“In the room,” said Draco. “The big golden mirror.”
It took several seconds, but a look of recognition crossed Potter’s face, and it was all Draco needed.
“No - wait - “ Potter seized Draco’s arm as the Slytherin turned to run once more. “I know what mirror you’re talking about, but I swear - I thought Dumbledore moved it my first year - I haven’t seen it since!”
Draco stared at him, the confusion clear, and Potter asked, after a beat: “What did you see? ”
For a moment, it occurred to Draco that he shouldn’t say anything more to Potter, that perhaps there was a way he could weasel out of this, but the small voice in his head that whispered there’s no point in going back now pushed him to speak. “It was you,” he said hoarsely, and Potter jerked back as though he’d been struck. “It was you, and we were just...playing chess. And I didn’t have a - I didn’t - I wasn’t - “
“You didn’t have a Mark,” finished Potter.
Throat dry, Draco nodded.
Suddenly, without warning, Potter’s face broke out into an enormous smile. Draco faltered, taken aback by the way Potter was looking at him: his dark hair whipping in the wind, Potter’s eyes seemed to sparkle as he grinned.
“What?” snapped Draco. “Potter, I swear - “
“You don’t want to be a Death Eater at all, do you?”
Draco drew back. How had Potter come to that conclusion? He opened his mouth to respond, and found the words stuck in his mouth.
Because, despite the sense of duty and excitement he tried to muster up at completing the task, Draco knew that he had only felt fear. And, sitting alone in the room, taking a break from the runes by trying desperately to cast a successful killing curse at a mouse he had conjured, Draco had only felt disgust.
This had never been the mission his parents had preached. The superiority of purebloods had never equated the murder of all impure witches and wizards. They were still magical. And the joining together of those of pure ancestry, which had once seemed legendary to Draco, had fizzled down into what it truly was: a single Dark Lord ruling over dozens of pure families. The truth, fighting Draco at every turn, at last: His father, writhing on the ground from another bout of the Cruciatus as Death Eaters jeered and his mother pleaded.
“No,” said Draco, trembling. He looked up at Potter, whose eyes were shining. “I don’t.”
The gargoyle guarding the entrance to Dumbledore’s office said that the headmaster would be back at the office shortly, and so Draco found himself sitting in the hallway with Potter, nervously picking at his fingers.
“How did you know?” asked Draco, tense. “About...that I didn’t…”
Potter seemed to understand what Draco couldn’t articulate. “I saw the mirror in my first year,” he said, turning his head to meet Draco’s eyes. “I looked into it and saw my parents. And my grandparents. My cousins. The whole Potter family, smiling at me. It’s called the Mirror of Erised. And it shows you your greatest desire.”
Draco thought back to the image he had seen, at the well-rested Draco that had sat in the grass, smiling contently. At the way he had thrown his arms up to reveal the milky white arm, unbranded. And at the way Potter, sitting across him and laughing at the chess pieces moving on the board, had been looking at him.
“Oh,” said Draco, his voice very small. His ears burned, and he looked away to stare at the hands on his lap. He remembered all the times Potter had glared at him in the hallway this year, left a snarky comment, called him out, and the small part of him that had yearned for more than that each time. He became very aware of the proximity of his and Potter’s knees, and suddenly felt both vulnerable and self-conscious.
“It’s going to be alright, Draco.” said Potter, and Draco looked up at him in surprise at the use of his first name. Potter’s lips curved into a soft smile, and the Boy-Who-Lived reached forward and took ahold of Draco’s left hand. “I promise.”
His heart thudding, Draco felt Potter’s hand squeeze his. He was still tense, terrified at the events that had unraveled in the span of a few hours, but a part of him felt breathed a sigh of relief. And looking at Potter, who was looking at him with more faith than Draco had felt for a long time, he couldn’t help but believe him.