Chapter Text
In Draco Malfoy’s opinion, the worst thing someone could be was boring. Nothing got him so quickly heated than having to put up with boring people making boring conversation. Unfortunately, to his endless annoyance, the entire student body had been exceedingly so in the weeks leading up to their final exams, talking about the whole Philosopher’s Stone incident. Which, Draco had to admit, had been really interesting when it first happened. To think that something so powerful had been locked away deep in the bowels of the school, and that Potter had somehow known enough to prevent Quirrell from stealing it— Draco still wasn’t over it. The only thing that ruined it for him was how the other students had handled the news. Not with composure, like Draco had. No, they had spent countless hours talking of little else and twisting the story to be less and less credible, losing the original details all the time. No, Potter had not bewitched a griffin to attack Quirrell; Granger and Weasley had not nearly drowned in a sea of keys; Potter had not drunk Firewhiskey to get through Professor Snape’s logic puzzle; and certainly, Quirrell had not been trying to bring back the Dark Lord— that was the most ridiculous bit. It wasn’t even creative. And that, Draco thought, had to be the most heinous crime of all.
Draco understood what it was like to fixate on something. He understood that drive to keep talking about remarkable things in the hope that you could make sense of them. But it was one thing for Draco to talk about Potter and his exploits. Draco, at least, knew how to tell a good story in a compelling, dramatic manner. He also knew how to tell when a story needed to be retired. If he heard the words, “McGonagall’s giant chess set” or “troll” or “Philosopher’s Stone,” or worst of all, “Harry, Hermione, and Ron” even one more time, he was going to curse everyone in sight. Since he didn’t actually know that many curses, the results were sure to be…enlightening.
In any case, Draco was glad to be in a compartment on his own, away from all that. Well, “on his own” was a bit of a stretch. Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle were there with him, but Draco had tuned them out from the moment they’d started talking about their plans for the summer.
Instead of checking back in with his friends, Draco remained much as he had been since they left Hogsmeade Station: eyes closed, head rocking against the back of his seat as the train chugged steadily on. Though to his friends he may have appeared asleep, Draco was instead preoccupied with thoughts about Harry Potter.
There was a lot to think about where Potter was concerned. On the surface, he seemed as plain and uninteresting as his friends. A Gryffindor in every possible way, and not worth Draco’s time. Or friendship. And yet…there was undoubtedly something compelling about Potter, aside from his famed defeat of the Dark Lord. Potter was more than that. He was more than just a boy. He was more than just a Gryffindor. He was…indescribable.
Draco couldn’t explain his fascination with Potter. And it was, he decided, a fascination, and nothing else. “Fascination” had none of the romance that “interest” or “appeal” or “obsession” did. “Fascination” simply was. As in, it was fascinating that Potter had grown attached to Weasley so fast on this very train; that Potter could be so bad at Potions when his mother’s talent had been equal to Snape’s; that he was so skilled at flying when he couldn’t have had any practice; that he had accomplished so much over last term when he was so new to the magical world. As in, it was fascinating how much time Draco could waste thinking about how fascinating Potter was.
Someone called his name.
“Hm?” He opened his eyes against the brightness of the compartment. Pansy was staring at him. “What is it, Pansy?”
“They’ve stopped the train," she said. "It’s time to go.”
So it was. After what had seemed like mere minutes to Draco, they had arrived at platform nine and three-quarters, now partially visible through the steam billowing outside the windows.
“Now, I want you to promise to visit me,” Pansy said, standing. Immediately, she bent to smooth the wrinkles of her skirt. “I don’t want us to grow apart because you grew tired of seeing me every day at school.”
Draco chuckled and pulled her in for a brief hug. “As if I could ever grow tired of you, Pansy,” he said. He broke away to reach for her trunk, where it sat high above their seats on the rack. Fingers barely able to grab the handle, he swung it down.
“Disgusting,” said Pansy. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought rubbish came out of your mouth just then.” She took her trunk from him. “Since when does Draco Malfoy get sentimental?”
“It’s not sentiment, I’m trying to get you to leave faster. I’ve seen quite enough of you lately.”
Pansy nodded, her brown eyes flashing with amusement. “I see.” She turned her head away theatrically. “Then I’ll be on my way. See you, Crabbe, Goyle,” she said to the other occupants. “May your summers be warmer than it is in here.”
They grunted in reply, and she breezed out into the corridor.
Out on the platform, the queue of students waiting to pass through the gateway was so thick that, no matter how small Draco tried to make his body, every few seconds someone would brush up against him. What was worse, the shape he had been forced into was not flattering. Annoyed, Draco took a great breath, held it for a moment, then started shoving.
“Bye, Harry!”
Draco paused.
“See you, Potter!”
Potter must have finally stepped off the train. Draco twisted to get a glimpse of him, but there was too much steam, so he continued forward into the station. There, he leapt behind a nearby column to wait, and started planning what he was going to say to Potter. Something snide, with a bit of bite. Something that would make Potter think about him all through the summer.
But Draco never got his chance to say it. Potter had barely crossed into the train station before a young girl’s voice stole through the noise: “There he is, Mum, there he is, look! Harry Potter!”
Draco, who had been standing in a somewhat crouched position, was so startled at the proximity of the girl’s voice (she was standing in front of the next column!) that he tripped over his things. Talos, his eagle owl, awoke and nipped angrily at the bars of his cage.
“Look, Mum! I can see—”
“Be quiet, Ginny, and it’s rude to point.”
Draco braced himself against the column and glared out from behind it. ‘Ginny’ was obviously a Weasley— if her bright red hair and oversized, dirt-covered boots weren’t indication enough, Ronald ‘right sort’ Weasley tugging his friends over only confirmed it.
Draco scowled. Ginny Weasley, who was now staring brazenly at Potter, had made herself an enemy. She was lucky they were in a Muggle train station, or she might have been jinxed. No one prevented a Malfoy from doing anything.
“Busy year?” Mrs Weasley asked.
“Very,” said Potter. “Thanks for the fudge and the jumper, Mrs Weasley.”
“Oh, it was nothing, dear.”
A mustachioed man, joined by a tall woman and a blonde boy, appeared next to Potter. The man was frowning so fiercely it seemed to have turned his face purple from the effort. “Ready, are you?” he said to Potter, ignoring the Weasleys entirely.
Mrs Weasley turned to him, plastering on an overly-nice expression. “You must be Harry’s family!” She made a motion as if she meant to shake his hand, but then thought better of it.
The man seemed affronted that she had addressed him. He struggled for a moment, clearly deciding whether or not he was going to respond, before saying, “In a manner of speaking.”
“I’m Molly Weasley, and this is my son, Ron.” Mrs Weasley said, patting Ron’s shoulder. “The girl hiding behind me is Ginny, and that’s Hermione Granger— not one of mine.”
“But I’m a friend of Harry’s,” Granger added.
“Pleasure,” the man said curtly.
“What are your names?” Mrs Weasley asked.
The man’s eyes grew very large, as if this was the most insulting question he had ever been asked in his life. “Vernon,” he said reluctantly, pointing to himself, “Petunia,” he pointed to his wife, “Dudley Dursley,” he said, pointing to the boy, who, like Ginny, was hiding behind his mother.
Finally giving in to frustration, the man turned to Potter and spat, “Hurry up, boy. We haven’t got all day.”
At that, Vernon spun on his heel and led the other Dursleys away to wait for Potter to be ready. The Weasleys and Granger watched them go, faces full of a confusion that Draco shared. Because surely those people couldn’t be Potter’s family? Surely Potter’s family thought higher of the boy who had saved them all from Voldemort? And surely they ought to look more like him, at the very least? Draco hadn’t necessarily expected them to be brown-skinned like Harry — after all, Lily had been white — but there was no resemblance. The closest thing that Potter shared with any of them was that he and his aunt were thin.
“See you over the summer, then,” Weasley said, awkwardly adjusting his grip on his trunk.
“Hope you have — er — a good holiday,” Granger added.
“Oh, I will,” Potter said, and then he smiled. Draco could have sworn the train station grew brighter for it— one big flash of light that hit Draco like he’d been Stunned. Trust precious Potter to learn a spell that called even more attention to himself.
“They don’t know we’re not allowed to use magic at home,” Potter continued in a low voice, gesturing at the Muggles behind him, “I’m going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer.”
Granger and Weasley’s smiles were tight as they waved him off, and once Potter’s back was to them, they dropped the pretense altogether. They were probably sad they couldn’t see him every day over the break, like they had at Hogwarts. So needy, so obvious.
No longer interested in watching them, he instead tracked Potter to the Dursleys, who refused to help Potter with his bags. Draco even thought he saw Vernon grab Potter’s arm and jerk him toward the doors, but they were too far away to really tell for sure. Either way, Draco wasn’t about to go over there and make fun of Potter now, especially since he didn’t understand Potter’s relationship with his family. Draco didn’t want to risk getting in trouble with them for what he said. At any rate, he had missed his chance. If that ginger-haired she-devil hadn’t interfered…
Something bit him.
“Ouch!” Draco cried, snatching his hand away from the bars of Talos’s cage. He scowled down at the bird, who looked back with an expression of feathery smugness. “How dare you!”
Realising he probably shouldn’t have shouted with the Weasleys that close, Draco lowered his voice. “I never wanted you, you know,” he said to the owl, and then peeked out from behind the pillar.
Thankfully, the Weasleys were dealing with their own crisis and didn’t seem to have heard him. It looked like the twins had stolen a toilet seat from somewhere and Mrs Weasley was scolding them for it.
“—said it was only a joke!” she was saying. “Do you know how filthy that is, not to mention the destruction of school property, you will start writing a letter to Dumbledore the very minute we get home—!”
Sensing that now was the perfect time to escape unnoticed, Draco crept off in the opposite direction to look for his parents. Movement caught his eye over to the right, close to the exit: it was his mother waving, standing tall in fashionable teal robes and looking very pale in a patch of sunlight. Next to her was Dobby, who, compared to her, looked very short indeed.
“Hello, dear,” she said when Draco came over. “Do you have everything?”
“Yes,” he said, giving Dobby his trunk.
Narcissa smiled and took Draco’s hand. “Okay. Let's go home.”
Draco snuck one last look at Granger and Weasley. They clearly cared for Potter a great deal, to show such concern over him. Were Draco anyone else, he might have wondered if he was missing out on Potter’s friendship. But he was Draco Malfoy, thus above such ideas. He took his mother’s hand and they left the station.
*******
“You should have seen her, Father. She couldn’t have been more obvious. Practically leaping at him the whole time he was talking with her mother. It’s absurd. I don’t know what she was thinking. She was in public!”
“Draco—”
“How embarrassing for her. And she likely thinks herself so lucky to even be seen by him.” He scoffed. “It’s not worth it. Potter isn’t what people believe him to be. He’s not special.”
Mr Malfoy sighed. “You did not answer my question. How are your friends? Blaise, Pansy?”
“Why do you think I didn’t—” Draco ripped a large piece from his breadstick and dunked it violently into his soup. A few droplets landed on the tablecloth, vanishing as soon as they touched the fabric. “You should know better than to bring Blaise up to me, Father. We are no longer friends.”
“What happened this time?” asked Narcissa. “I thought you two had made up?”
“We did,” Draco said roughly. His bread, too heavy with soup, broke off at the crust and plopped into his bowl. He jabbed at it with his spoon. “And then we didn’t. Father, why do you never ask after Crabbe and Goyle? Their parents are Death Eaters, I’d have thought that would be more important to you.”
“Not in this instance,” said Mr Malfoy in a bored voice. “I had hoped that Crabbe and Goyle might assemble some sort of…personality over the years, but they have remained largely as they did when you first met them. What purpose do they serve you?”
“They listen, Father. And they never argue with me. I can say and do as I please and they’ll always support me. Makes for a nice change.”
“Draco,” said Mr Malfoy, sounding even closer to losing his patience. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “Not every idea demands to be entertained aloud. As I have told you. If I do not listen to every minute thing you say, let that be a reflection of the topics you choose and the time you spend on them, not of your character.”
“Lucius,” Narcissa said, giving her husband a look that said, Change the subject. “Tell- tell Draco about the new items you procured from the Richtersveld.”
“Ah,” Lucius said. He blotted his mouth with a napkin— unnecessarily, as there was nothing to blot. “Yes, we received a package several days ago that might be of interest to you.”
Just like that, Draco forgot his anger. His hand loosened on his spoon. “Did you get me my aloe tree? Tell me you did.”
Lucius’s eyes creased with a tiny smile, but he said nothing.
Narcissa put a hand out on the table, palm down, in Draco’s direction. “We did, dear,” she confirmed.
Draco’s heartbeat sped. “Did you make sure you got the right kind?” he asked, trying to tamp down his excitement. He hated to get his hopes high over something that ended up being a disappointment. “Aloidendron pillansii?”
“Of course. You were very clear in the many, many letters you sent about it,” said Lucius. “Very clear indeed.”
“I had to make sure you wouldn’t get it wrong, didn’t I?” said Draco. “Whyever did it take so long to arrive? I’ve been asking for a giant shiver tree since the start of term.”
“Because they aren’t exactly…strictly…” Lucius rotated his wrist as he tried to find the right word, “legal. They’re very rare, as you know, and endangered. I had to call in several favours to find one so big and get it here in one piece.”
“How tall is it?” Draco demanded.
“You know, I don’t think we got the exact measurement,” said Narcissa, the corners of her mouth curling a little. “Perhaps you should go and have a look.”
“Perhaps I will,” said Draco. He stood, using the last reserves of his self-restraint to avoid tipping his chair backward. Beaming, he threw his napkin down and was out of the room before it touched the floor. Distantly, he heard his parents tittering behind him, but he didn’t care. He had been begging them for that tree for ages, and every time he asked he had been told not yet.
He had never waited so long for anything in his life.
The greenhouse was connected to the manor via a short hallway on the first floor. Its door was the dirtiest thing to technically be inside Malfoy Manor— it had soil caked into every groove in the painted blue wood, and had warped and grown discoloured at the bottom from water damage. Draco didn’t mind this, he didn’t even notice as he flung open the door to look for his aloe tree.
It wasn’t an easy search. The greenhouse was three times commercial size, and wound here and there, making for all sorts of hidden spaces for the many plants Draco had asked for over the years. They erupted from every possible roost: some dangled from the ceiling, some sat idly on the sills and tabletops, and others clung to the walls, raced along the floor, or spilled out through the tall, gridded windows. There was no real sense to where things had been planted, they just seemed to end up wherever they liked it best.
This could not be said for the rest of the manor, which was always kept to nearly unnatural levels of cleanliness. Dirt and dust and rumpled blankets and stray crumbs always seemed to right themselves the moment they were out of sorts. Even the gardens surrounding the manor were immaculate, not a stem or petal out of place, and the grass never grew taller than an inch. Draco didn’t know how Dobby managed it all, but he was glad the greenhouse was allowed to stay so disorganised. It felt right.
In one of the far corners of the room, by the front windows with some of the other succulents, Draco found the aloe tree. It had been placed in a huge, shiny green pot, and stood about six feet tall. Its puffy-looking branches supported long green aloe leaves that curved down like pointed tongues. Draco smiled and patted the trunk, which was about as wide as his torso. He dragged a stepstool over to pluck off one of its leaves, working it carefully back and forth. It came off with only a little resistance.
He took it to the long wooden table at the centre of the room, where he had started propagating new succulents over winter break. He’d broken off leaves from most of the adult succulents and placed them in a wide, shallow bin filled with dirt, which was shaded from the sun. Sunshine would fry the leaves up before they had a chance to sprout anything more than pink roots. Some of them would die anyway, which Draco discovered when he looked into the bin. But most had tiny succulents growing from the ends, so after depositing the new leaf there, Draco set about repotting those in a bigger, deeper bin that would get more direct light.
Something about the greenhouse relaxed him in a way nowhere else in the manor did. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the company the plants provided. Here, being on his own meant an entirely different thing than it did in his room or their library. Here, butterflies fluttered around the room and sometimes landed on Draco, the beehive ginger buzzed steadily, the Venomous Tentacula snapped at anything that moved. Amidst the tangled noise of the greenhouse, it was impossible to feel alone, or lonely.