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It all started when Draco had the brilliant idea of flirting with Harry fucking Potter.
Or more accurately, when he went to a summer camp for two weeks, his parents apparently determined to make him realize that he needed to survive on his own, especially since the whispers that the Dark Lord would rise had become louder and louder.
Needless to say, his mother hadn't been very keen on Draco staying in Malfoy Manor in the - very unlikely - event that the Dark Lord would turn up in the Manor. (Though Draco knew they never would have let him go to a secluded location in Merlin-knows-where in England otherwise. His parents - Mother, especially, never wanted to let him out of her sight. Draco refused to admit how pleased that had made him, a contrast to the fact that his father never took much notice of him except to say I see that Mudblood has better grades than you again, Draco every time he summoned him to his study.)
Draco knew that his father had never loved him, not really, except to uphold the image of purebloods and the Malfoy family.
Draco knew that was bullshit.
Father would be disappointed at me using such a Muggle, plebeian word, he thought wryly to himself as he was escorted to a desk and told to wait a few minutes so he could be assigned a tent. Scratch that. He would be livid at me not insisting that Malfoys never waited.
He forced a smile as the manager, a dark-skinned woman in green robes, walked in. Her smile, unlike his, looking genuine. This camp had been going on for years - it had been a tradition to mingle different students from different cultures to form connections with each other. (Networking, his father had nodded approvingly, his face immediately replaced by a sneer as he caught sight of the cheerful proclamation that said, we pride ourselves on being inclusive by welcoming wixen of any lineage into our camp! Yet, he merely rolled his eyes before looking at Draco and saying, simply, you know what to do, Draco. Draco had nodded.)
Draco hadn't always thought what his father said was untrue; in fact, until last year, he had believed them to be true until reality -
He shook himself out of his reverie as he approached the tent where the manager was leading him, noting with satisfaction that the outside was done in green and silver.
The manager, noticing his glee, laughed. "Every time we get a Slytherin student, they have the exact same expression on their face when I show them this tent," she explained once her laughter had faded away. "You'll be sharing it with another Slytherin - Ella Dansky, I believe?
Dansky. A muggle-born.
Draco vividly remembered when she had been Sorted into Slytherin - a cheery first year who looked in awe at the Great Hall, the hat declaring her a Slytherin as soon as it hit her head. It was Draco's second year; in hindsight, Dansky, had she known about the Chamber of Secrets and the clusterfuck that was to follow, would have probably turned tail.
"Normally, we don't put boys and girls together, but Ms. Dansky wasn't keen on rooming with people she was unfamiliar with, and I trust both of you won't do anything untoward," she tried to suppress a smile. Draco had to admire her faith in them. It was more than he'd ever gotten from his father, in any case.
Not that it was going to be any problem. Dansky, as amiable as she was, was assuredly not Draco's type.
"Make yourself comfortable," the manager continued, leading him into the tent. "Your bedroom is over there," she pointed across the dining room to a door that was nearly obscured by the massive desk surrounding it.
Without much more than a goodbye, she was out of their tent.
Draco sat back and observed his surroundings. The inside of the tent was massive - there was a dining room, a living room, and a kitchen, all spaced an equal distance apart. The living room was what you would immediately see when you entered, furnished with a few comfortable bean bags and a loveseat. There was an adjoining room which Draco assumed led to Dansky's bedroom, much more strategically placed than where his room was.
Draco took a moment to reflect on how unfair it was that he had to take the second-best room before making his way across the dining room and the adjoined kitchen and going into his room.
He flopped down into his bed - white cotton sheets - and sighed, feeling like an Oscar Wilde character as he did.
There had been a time when Draco would have completely balked at the thought of sharing a room with a muggle-born, though her being a Slytherin would have earned her some points. Draco remembered how he had treated Dansky at first - patented ignorance, almost as if ignoring the fact that she was Sorted in Slytherin would make the fact that she was a muggle-born go away.
Crabbe, Goyle, and Parkinson, more than happy to take his lead, had ignored her as well. Which was the best thing that could have happened to her during those circumstances.
Anyway.
His opinion that all pure-bloods were inherently superior had come crashing down when he realized that the Dark Lord - the Dark Lord - was a half-blood. The thing was - Draco had seen the diary that his father had slipped to Ginny Weasley. He couldn't help but notice the inscription - Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Draco was a Slytherin. And he had always been too smart for his own good.
He knew his father wasn't going to breathe a word to him; as much as Lucius bragged about how he was going to take away Hogwarts from Dumbledore's clutches, Lucius never trusted his son with the important matters, like how or why. Draco had given up feeling hurt over that a long time ago. Which was why, when the entirety of Hogwarts was abuzz with talk of the Chamber of Secrets and what it meant, Draco was busy at the library, trying to figure out exactly who this elusive Tom Riddle was.
He should never have called Granger a mudblood. Or any other muggle-born, for that matter. In hindsight, he deserved Granger slapping him last year. He still hadn't been able to figure out who exactly Tom Riddle was when the news that Ginny Weasley had been taken to the Chamber of Secrets had spread like wildfire.
The thing was. The Weasleys were blood-traitors, but they were also pure-bloods. In a world where every pure-blood child was valued, it filled Draco with a cold dread to realize that even he wasn't safe from being a victim to whatever was happening.
In the end, it wasn't his research that had helped him figure out who Tom Riddle was, not really. When Potter had tricked his father into freeing Dobby, Draco had taken him aside and practically begged him to tell Draco what he knew about Tom Riddle.
Dobby, with his usual subservience, but with something like cheerfulness in his eyes, had said, "Dobby can't tell you a lot, Master Draco, but he heard Master Lucius talking about the Gau-Gaunt family," at those words, his ears drooped, and he made as if to hit himself, only stopping himself once he realized that he wasn't under any obligation to the Malfoy family any longer.
For a wild, insane moment, Draco couldn't help but wish he was Dobby; completely without any duties, free to do what he wanted. Dobby, without waiting for Draco's response, had simply left, saying, "Master Lucius treated Dobby horribly, but Master Draco didn't, so if Master Draco needs any help, Dobby's always happy to help."
It had taken him a short time to find out what he had been suspecting all along - that the Dark Lord was not all he seemed.
That no matter how hard he advocated for pureblood supremacy, he was nothing more than a half-blood, with a muggle father.
That his entire family, and once himself too, had been fighting for a hypocritical cause all along.
That he was still one of the most powerful wixen that Draco had ever heard of.
That Granger, despite being a muggle-born, always managed to get the top grade in every exam she did.
That Potter, though a half-blood, was one of the most skilled wizards that Draco had seen, always managing to get through every challenge the Dark Lord laid out for him with his instincts alone.
That, in the long run, pure-blood ideology didn't really matter.
He was interrupted from his thoughts by a soft knock on his door. As he got up to answer it, Draco realized that he hadn't unpacked his clothes; the only change in his room from when he had entered had been the suitcase that laid on the bottom of his bed and the lump in his bed indicating that he had been there for a long time.
Ella Dansky smiled at him, with more teeth than a welcoming smile truly warranted. She was tiny - four feet five inches tall, at most, with blue eyes and black hair. Nevertheless, her smile was menacing. "Draco Malfoy, what a surprise."
Draco stepped back despite himself, surprised at the pure venom in her tone, though he couldn't help but think he deserved it. Seeing his reaction, Ella did the last thing Draco had expected - she started laughing uncontrollably, crying in her mirth.
"Oh Merlin, " her laughter died down, but she kept smiling. "Your face was priceless."
Draco smiled back uncertainly, feeling - perhaps for the first time in his life since meeting Potter at the Hogwarts Express on his first year - out of his depth.
"I was hoping we could talk in the living room," she said, then hesitated. "And get to know each better. If that's alright with you."
He could hear the hidden challenge in her words: was he willing to be nice to a muggle-born?
Suddenly, he wanted to prove himself, to show her that he was better than the two years she'd distantly known him for. He found himself nodding at her, feeling a sense of satisfaction at the surprise that crossed her face. He knew that she had approached him, no matter how amiably, to make a point: she was a Slytherin and knew exactly how to project I'm not ashamed of myself and I'm not afraid of your opinion either without saying any of it out loud.
Draco was impressed.
It was, somehow, more surprising to find out that Dansky - or Ella, rather - was one of the most interesting people Draco had met.
Talking to her, Draco didn't have to be the perfect pure-blood who despised anyone who was lesser than him, and he could feel her slowly, slowly dropping her mask as she realized that he wasn't going to be the patented pure-blood for once.
Draco should have known that anyone who wasn't interesting would have gotten sorted into Slytherin - as they got to know more about each other, Draco came to realize that he had revealed more about himself - tiny, inconsequential things - than he had ever revealed to anyone else in his life, except for his mother.
And wasn't that a startling revelation.
He had always known, distantly, that Crabbe, Goyle, and Parkinson weren't really what he called friends; the former two had been ordered by their fathers to keep a watch out for the Malfoy heir while the latter fawned over him in the hopes that he would one day marry her.
And Draco had entertained it, once. When he had looked at a fifth-year boy when he was twelve and thought, oh, that's why I've never been interested in Parkinson, immediately followed by I'm never telling father about this.
He had wanted to preserve the Malfoy name, despite everything, then. Now - now - he didn't know what he wanted.
He had always felt certain of where he belonged and what he had to do - and now that he felt untethered for the first time, uncertain of what he had to do, he couldn't help but strangely revel in it, to know that he didn't have to follow a set path after all.
(But that was always overshadowed by the pure, unadulterated fear he felt at his father finding out about what he was thinking.)
Ella and Draco lapsed into a comfortable silence by that point, both lost in their own thoughts. The first day was mostly reserved for them to rest and for the roommates to get to know each other better; the true activities started the next day.
Draco truly couldn't wait.
As if reading his mind, Ella tentatively broke the silence. "I have to ask, Draco," she said, from her position on the beanbag opposite him. "Why did you decide to come here? From what I know, it's been at least 40 years since a Black or Malfoy has come to this camp."
"Networking," Draco said, without missing a beat.
"Bullshit," Ella retorted, rolling her eyes. "Something is going on, isn't there?"
"There always is, Ella," Draco said. "We have Harry Potter in our school, something is going on every year. "
She stared him down until he finally relented. It was amazing how having friends could make him spill all his secrets.
"We're having the Triwizard Tournament this year," Draco said quietly, holding out his hand as Ella opened her mouth to retort. "And Father and Mother think the Dark Lord is returning this year, as well."
She seemed, for once, lost for words. "Well, Dumbledore did always say that Voldemort was going to come back," she finally managed, smiling weakly, her use of the Dark Lord's name making Draco jump despite everything. "This is why your parents wanted you to come here, wasn't it? Just in case Voldemort decides to come to the Malfoy Manor."
Draco nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat as he finally, finally revealed what he had wanted to say to someone ever since his father, face pale, had declared that his Dark Mark was getting darker and darker by the day.
Draco wasn't ready for a war. None of them were - Potter, Weasley, Granger, and even fucking Parkinson - were.
" Fuck, " Ella whispered, slowly.
Draco could only agree.
Draco had realized that the pure-blood beliefs that everyone preached to him from the moment he was born - from his parents, his relatives, his tutors - was all a lie.
But that came later.
From the moment that Draco had figured out Tom Marvolo Riddle - I am Voldemort - was a half-blood, he had been in a state of confusion and betrayal, unable to figure out what to do next.
The fact that he discovered the Dark Lord's heritage in the library at Malfoy Manor, didn't help, either. If he had discovered it at Hogwarts; at least he would have been distracted, not forced to have only his thoughts for company and nothing else.
As a result, Draco dealt with the mix of self-loathing and confusion in his mind the only way he knew - by bottling it up and trying to ignore it in any way he could.
By the way, his third year had progressed, he was far too successful at ignoring what he was feeling, pretending that the only emotion he felt towards the Golden Trio was hatred and his only goal was to mock them whenever he could.
Somehow, ironically, he had realized exactly what he was doing, halfway into the year and a mean streak that was a mile wide, when Granger had punched him on the face.
Buckbeak. Lupin. Tom Marvolo Riddle. Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Voldemort.
Voldemort.
Voldemort.
That was when he had crept into his bed and cried himself to sleep, hoping that no-one else heard him.
If meeting Ella was more pleasant than he had imagined, the activities that the camp had organized were worse than he expected.
Draco didn't know what was worse; the fact that he had to split into groups with other people and do team-building activities, or that he had not been allowed to bring his wand to the camp, at all. As a plus point, he could see that most of the students were from Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and other European schools; in short, judging by their age, most of them were going to come to Hogwarts to witness the Triwizard Tournament.
There were only 15 wixen in total, however.
Which was how Draco found all of them divided into teams of three, him with Ella and another witch named Alana.
Ella and Alana. Huh. Draco resisted the urge to chuckle. He felt an elbow on his side, grimacing to find himself a recipient of Ella's glare, though her eyes seemed happy.
"Once you are done being amused at the expense of our names," Alana began, her French accent shining in her voice in a way that Draco couldn't help but find charming. "I really want to win whatever this is, so you better listen. "
Ella and Draco looked at each other and shrugged. They both turned to listen to a tall man who had his hair up in a ponytail, dressed in an odd combination of pink trousers and blue shirt, introduced himself as Connor Perez, and started explaining the most inane game he had ever heard.
"It's based on research by Muggle... scientists, or something, I think?" Perez commented, waving his wand and causing 5 broad necked bottles and 5 basins filled with water to appear a short distance from each other. "Now your job" he pointed at the gathered students, all of whom looked mildly apprehensive, or in the case of the muggle-borns as if they were reliving a particularly traumatic memory. "Is to gather water in your hands, pass it to your partner, who'll pass it to their partner, who will finally pour the water into the bottle. Got it?"
Everyone nodded.
By unanimous agreement, Draco was set as the one to gather the water, Ella to pass and Alana to pour the water.
Alana, despite looking confident ten minutes ago, looked doubtful at the basin and bottle before her. The reaction seemed universal.
He clapped his hands, determined to cheer her up. Some of Alana's enthusiasm from before had rubbed off on him, after all. Fuck if he was going to be in the losing team. "We're going to do this, alright?"
Alana slowly smiled at him.
It turned out that Draco was terrible at scooping up water; every time he scooped some into his hand, it ended up spilling onto the basin or out of Ella's hand, a fact that she complained about. Loudly. Alana, the only composed one out of the three of them, didn't have time for their shit and poured water into the bottle with admirable precision, which he took a second to admire.
"What are you doing? " Ella hissed. "Fucking scoop. "
Draco had scooped in fear for his life.
They ended up winning by a significant margin, the only team that had even managed to fill their bottle halfway with water.
(It had been the most fun Draco had had in years.)
After that, Perez had solemnly informed them that this was the same team that they were going to work with through the two weeks of their stay, and Draco, glancing around at the pleased faces of Alana and Ella, couldn't help the burst of warmth in his chest at realizing that he had, despite all odds, made a few friends at last.
They didn't win any games after that.
Though Draco did catch the snitch in an impromptu Quidditch match they had all decided to have one day, only missing winning by a twenty point margin.
The point was - he had fun. He made friends.
At least, he hoped he did. Sometimes, he couldn't help but think that the friends he'd made here - Ella and Alana and everyone else - were simply being nice to him out of a sense of pity, or worse, to get in the good graces of one of the wealthiest families in Great Britain.
Ella, when he had mentioned that to her, on the last day before they had to return to their families, had looked at him as if he was stupid. "Do you really think I would be friends with you if I didn't like you?" she demanded. " I know that however much I try, being a muggle-born wouldn't not be a crime in Malfoy's eyes."
Draco jerked back as if slapped, but that mix of logic and reassurance was what he had wanted to have all along.
"And as for Alana, Charles and everyone else - Alana just wants someone who she can speak French with, honestly. And everyone else is from influential families too, do you really think they give a shit about whether you are Lucius Malfoy's son or not when it doesn't mean much outside of England?"
Draco smiled, slowly. "I suppose you're right," he said. This was the reason Draco considered her one of his most trusted friends. He opened his mouth, about to say it when he abruptly stopped at the look on Ella's face.
"I just got a letter from my dad," she said, the apprehension in her voice making him look at her attentively. " Just got it, as in, yesterday. The thing is, well..."
"Just spill it out, Ella."
"My dad got a job in the USA."
"That's great! Why were you so hesitant to say it - oh. " Ella's parents weren't wizards - they couldn't move across continents with the ease of a portkey. Which meant that Ella, too, was probably going to move to the USA; her mother had left when she was barely four years old and was one of the subjects she desperately wished to never talk about unless in passing.
"My dad didn't want to move, not really, he knew I have friends here - but I couldn't not tell him about how everyone thinks Voldemort is returning..." she chewed her bottom lip. "I'm the only person he has and if anything happens to me - well."
Draco was silent for a long time.
"You know," he said, finally, surprised at how even his voice sounded when his emotions were in turmoil. "When I thought the Dark Lord returning would impact us, I didn't think it would impact us this early. " His voice almost broke at the end.
"What can I say?" Ella said a bitter smile on her face. "It's not easy being a muggle-born." Then: "Write to me, please?"
"You know I can't," Draco said, a bitter smile of his own on his face. "My father would ask too many questions, and I really don't want to get disowned this early."
"We can still write when you come to Hogwarts, yeah?" the expression on her face was hopeful. Draco knew that his father would somehow hear of the letters he was receiving but somehow found himself unable to care in the face of her smile.
"Of course," he said. She squeezed his hand.
"Tell me everything about the Triwizard Tournament," she said, trying for her usual flippant yet excited tone, and Draco let her.
"Your wish is my command."
"Dumbass," she smacked him on the arm, both of them smiling.
Then, looking at each other, at that moment after an emotional situation when you don't know if you're going to laugh or cry; they both erupted into hysterics until tears were streaming down their faces at a joke only they understood.
(They made plans to meet up during the next summer holidays, no matter what Draco's father had to say about it. Draco wasn't planning on becoming a death eater if the Dark Lord truly came back, anyway. Maybe Potter's rebellion had rubbed off on him, after all.)