Chapter Text
Chapter One: The Death of Draco Malfoy
Draco Malfoy's day had started out poorly, as his days so often did, and it did not show any signs of improving. The cold, stale air in the little office at the very bottom of the Ministry where he unofficially worked pricked at his skin.
It had been an unseasonably cold and grey September in London. Cold enough that he'd heard his co-workers complain about the Ministry's refusal to turn the heating on. It was scheduled to be turned on by the fifteenth of October. But considering that it was over a month away and the weather showed no inclination in improving, it was going to be a long cold month in the office.
Draco had worked for this department for the past six months. It wasn't a fun or glamorous job; mostly, it was hideously boring, but he was good at it. Even if his boss wouldn't admit it, he was considered by and large one of the only people in the office- other than his office mate Ardeen- who knew what was going on, at least most of the time.
The pay was abysmal, but Draco couldn't complain, too grateful he'd found somewhere that would pay him at all.
He arrived at the office at a quarter to eight, giving him just enough time to get a large mug of the perpetually lukewarm coffee from the small kitchen at the end of the hall before going to his desk. Where he found a tall crooked pile of files, threatening to tip over and slide to the floor.
He groaned.
It was that time again. Draco sat down, thumbing open the folder and looking at the piles of parchment in dismay. Entering the time off requests was by far Draco's least favorite part of his job and by far the most time consuming. It required the use of the ancient magical filing system that quietly ran the Ministry.
The system worked something akin to a muggle computer. When he'd first started, its existence had been a bit of a shock. Ardeen had patiently explained that it had been part of the Ministry for at least three hundred years, "A bureaucracy of this size," she'd said, "needs some kind of automation to keep it running smoothly. Can you imagine how much parchment we'd have to keep otherwise?"
She was right. Draco couldn't imagine how much space a regular filing system would consume with the amount of data he entered every day. If they had to keep every sheet of parchment that came from upstairs, they would have a mountain reaching the moon by the end of the week.
Draco didn't know much about the system other than that it was important and that it had problems. He pressed the big button to turn on his workstation. The motor whirred to life as it sluggishly started to turn on.
Ardeen arrived without ceremony, wrapped in a chunky knit coat to keep out the chilly late September wind. Her long thick greying hair piled on top of her head in two large braids. She set her large carpet bag on her desk, "I see it's that time again," she said, eyeing the folders on Draco's desk.
She tutted softly, reaching out one of her long-fingered hands. "You better give me half then."
Draco looked at her, towering over him, in surprise. "Are you sure?"
He couldn't imagine volunteering to help with one of the most miserable tasks he'd ever had to complete more than once.
She nodded, "Yes, now hand them over. I haven't got all day."
He scooped up the top half of the piles, handing her the messy lopsided stack.
"Now," she said, setting the pile on her desk, already starting to straighten out the messy papers. "How long do you think until we start getting complaints from upstairs?"
"Oh, it'll be any minute," said Draco, leaning back in his old creaky chair. "I'm sure we'll have at least twenty-five by the end of the day."
"Well," she said dryly, smiling her thin crooked smile, "best get cracking then."
She smoothed her long skirt before sitting at the desk across from Draco. He liked Ardeen, and for some reason, she liked him. She was a statuesque woman with high cheekbones and eyes that saw everything.
The men down the hall liked to call her a faded beauty. Draco thought they must be blind because there was nothing faded about Ardeen's beauty.
They sat in companionable silence, drinking their coffee while they waited for their workstations to turn on. Draco watched the screen come to life in increments. When he had started here, it took a few minutes to turn on. Now on a good day, it took about twenty.
Once he'd reached the bottom of his now cold coffee, he opened the folder on top of the intimidatingly large pile of folders on his desk. He pulled up his data sheets and started typing—their small shared office filled with the sound of clicking mechanical keys and shifting parchment.
Around noon, Ardeen stopped for lunch, eating a thick homemade sandwich and sliced apples at her desk before returning to her pile of folders. Draco worked through his "official" lunch. He didn't want to stay until midnight every night for a week like the last time he'd done this report. Although last time he hadn't had Ardeen's help.
Still, he wanted to get as much done as fast as possible. It was like ripping a bandaid off; maybe if he worked quickly, it wouldn't be as terrible. By two thirty, his hands had started to shake. He felt a bit like something in his chest had been pulled too tight and might snap at any moment.
He walked the length of the hall to the small staff room; one light halfway down the hall flicked ominous, as it had for the past month. There had been attempts to fix it, but after Westley had fallen off a stack of office chairs, breaking his leg in three places, there had been a silent agreement that they would just live with it. After all, it wasn't that big of a deal. They could still see.
Draco set his container of yogurt and granola on the counter while he waited for the kettle to boil. He leaned against the old linoleum counter. His favorite thick mug with the chip in the handle stood next to the large silver electric kettle.
The kettle made a rumbling chugging noise while it heated up. It at least made the water properly hot, unlike the old coffee maker in the corner that produced mediocre tepid coffee. Draco shifted impatiently while he waited. He'd done it again, waited too long to eat, and he could feel a headache coming on.
It didn't help that he didn't even like yogurt, but it had been on special the last time he'd gone to the shops. Meaning that if he ate it every day for the next two weeks, he would have enough extra cash to go to the coffee shop three blocks away from the Ministry's side entrance on Friday to get a latte and scone.
A trade that, by Wednesday, he started to consider probably hadn't been worth it. The kettle shut off with a click while he reached absently into one of the narrow drawers for a spoon, pricking his finger on something shoved in the back of the drawer.
"Fuck," he muttered, sucking on the tip of his pointer finger. That's precisely what he needed, a finger injury right before he spent the next seven and a half hours typing. He gathered his lunch and his tea making his way slowly back to his desk. The closer he got, the more he started to feel off. The edges of his vision began to swim. "Bloody hell," he thought, trying to quicken his pace without spilling his tea.
Draco hoped that after he ate, he'd feel better, promising himself that tomorrow he wouldn't wait so long to have lunch.
"Alright?" asked Ardeen, looking up from her keyboard, "you look a bit ill."
"I'm fine," said Draco dropping gracelessly into his chair, the back squeaking in protest, "just a bit dizzy. Lunch should help."
She looked skeptical but didn't comment, returning to her typing.
He tucked into the large Tupperware of yogurt, sprinkling the granola over the top. After a few bites, his head started to pound behind his eyes. He ignored it. It wasn't pleasant, but this wasn't the first time it had happened when he'd waited too long to eat lunch. He'd be alright.
His vision started to tunnel, blacking out at the edges. That's when he began to panic because he could not get a migraine today. Not today, on paid time off request day. Draco couldn't afford to miss today, he'd be behind for the rest of the month- at least, and if he missed more than one day, he worried he'd be without a job.
He gripped the edge of his desk, trying to force himself to take deep breaths, but his vision kept getting blacker. It felt as though he was being squeezed through a tube. The sounds of the office faded. Ardeen's worried voice sounded faint, as though she was far away.
The world tunneled into tiny pinpoints of light until even that had been snuffed out. Draco sat in total darkness, holding on tightly to the arm of his chair.
He felt weird. This was weird.
He blinked in the darkness, once, twice. When he opened his eyes the third time, the darkness was gone, replaced with bright, intense honey color light. It surrounded him, pressing in on him from all sides with an indescribable weight. He couldn't breathe. The pressure on his chest was too much. He started to choke, and then he couldn't feel anything.
He tried wiggling his fingers. He had no idea if he was successful or not. He felt numb, with a cold floating feeling. In the waves of nothingness, he felt something hard pressing against his back. Like he was lying on the floor.
Sound came back first. Soft and indistinct, growing louder in stages until he was sure that he could hear the rain lashing at the windows. Only that didn't make sense because his office didn't have windows.
Then the light came, faded and blurry. It started at the edges of Draco's eyes. Slowly ever so slowly, the world came back into focus.
He blinked, rapidly trying to dispel the last of the fuzziness lingering around the corners of his vision. He was indeed lying on the floor. He could feel it now, the scratched, dirty tiles under the palms of his hands. He looked up at a plain white ceiling with what looked like three large splotches of tomato sauce near the light fixture.
He sat up slowly. He still felt distinctly weird, off, but in a way he couldn't put into words. Something about him just wasn't right.
His head still hurt, and he had a deep throbbing behind his eyes. It made him want to lie down in the dark and not move for at least several hours. He got up from where he sat in the middle of a dirty tile floor in a small, badly painted kitchen. Swaying on his feet, he walked into an equally small living room. It was messy but in a lived-in, almost homey way. Three mugs half full of tea sat on the small, crooked table next to the old, overstuffed sofa piled with mismatched blankets.
The door was on the far wall. Draco stood listening, eyes fixed on the door. His heart sat in his throat, making it hard to swallow. After what had happened last spring, he'd always wondered if something like this would happen. He wanted to leave.
He reached for the doorknob, but he couldn't feel it. It was a strange sensation, a phantom feeling like when you get that horrible itching sensation on the roof of your mouth.
He panicked. Just a small panic, nothing he hadn't dealt with before. It was the kind of panic he could swallow if he had to. Ignoring the rapid beating of his heart, he tried again. Watching with horror as his hand passed right through the door knob while that terrible phantom sensation crawled all the way up his arm.
He sat down hard, stuck his head between his knees, and tried to make sense of what had happened while the rain lashed the windows, the room steadily darkening around him.
When he no longer felt like he was going to choke on his own lungs, he got up. He tried to steady his shaking hands and walked slowly around the small flat. He had a sinking suspicion of what had happened and decided to test his theory by sitting on the sofa.
It was a grave mistake; that horrible phantom feeling took over his whole body as he fell to the floor. Bouncing once on his bum when he landed on the cold hard tile.
It felt like he'd been caught in a thick gooey toffee. The feeling enveloped his entire body, creeping up his neck towards his head, which stuck out of the top of the cushions.
Getting out proved harder than he'd imagined. He thrashed and wriggled to try and pull himself free. He finally got loose, he lay on his back, panting. Touching the furniture was something to be avoided at all costs.
Draco looked up at the ceiling, his hands in front of his face. They had a silvery metallic tinge, and he could see the light fixture through his left palm.
"Shit."
He closed his eyes, banging his head against the floor.
He had sort of been expecting something like this as a punishment for being a terrible person- at least the dying part. He rubbed his forehead. His head still hurt, but he supposed being dead explained with weird numbness, the feeling of being somehow wrong.
Draco was sure of a few things:
1: He was definitely a ghost.
2: Judging from what he could see out the window, he was somewhere in London.
3: Being a ghost was annoying.
The most frustrating part was only being able to touch the floor. With everything else, no matter how hard he concentrated, his hand would sink through, sending that horrible feeling up to his shoulder. It was maddening.
Draco glared at the blanket he'd been trying to move through sheer force of will. He sniffed once and eyed up the door again. In theory, he should be able to walk through it. He'd seen Ghosts at Hogwarts do it all the time. It was one of their favorite pastimes.
If he managed it, then he could go home. It might take him a very long time to walk back to the manor from wherever he was in London, but he supposed it would be better than being stuck in someone's flat. Besides, it didn't matter how long it took him to get there since all he had left was time.
Draco gave it a good go. He walked resolutely at the door, but instead of passing smoothly through like he expected, he bounced off, falling back onto the floor.
He landed on his bum for the second time today and glared murderously at the door. He tried again and again, and every time, it was the same. He'd bounce off the door, landing hard on the floor.
It didn't make any sense. He didn't understand why it wasn't working. Near tears, he took a long shaky breath. He'd never imagined being a ghost would be so frustrating or uncomfortable.
He just didn't understand how he could feel the floor, the coolness of the tiles, half of a crushed noodle under his palm, but he just went right through everything else he tried to touch- except the bloody door.
He didn't know what to do, so he sat in the dark on the floor, looking at the door. The sun had set, inky darkness lay over the flat, and Draco wished he could see better in the dark.
Feeling very sorry for himself, he wrapped his arms around his knees. He was cold, not in a numb way that he was sure that all Ghosts felt, but in the normal way when you'd been sitting on something cold and hard for a very long time, and he still had a bloody headache.
He didn't remember the Bloody Baron being this helpless, but then again, he'd had much longer to practice being a Ghost than Draco had. Surely this had to get easier; he couldn't be stuck like this forever. He'd go mad.
The footsteps in the hall startled him. He jumped, watching with wide-eyed anticipation as the lock turned. The door swung open, and the light flicked on, revealing a spectacularly drunk Ron Weasley swaying dangerously on his feet.
"No, not Weasley ," whined Draco. His luck couldn't get any worse. He was sure of it.
He spent the next twenty minutes following Ron around the flat, shouting at him, but Ron had no idea he was there, almost walking through him twice while he puttered around the kitchen sloppily making a cup of tea.
Draco had reached his wit's ends. So far, he thought he'd dealt rather gracefully with the truth of his passing, but the prospect of being trapped in Ron Weasley's flat for the rest of eternity was simply too much. The thought of him and that Granger girl together- he grimaced, trying very hard to put that image as far away from his brain as possible.
He had followed Ron into the kitchen, lurking behind his shoulder while he ate cold takeout over the sink. The kettle finally started to boil, shutting off with a click. After Ron filled his chipped mug, he turned suddenly. Draco jumped backward, tripping over his feet, so they didn't crash into each other. Still, Ron almost grazed Draco's arm on his way to the sofa; Ron shuddered, "it's bloody freezing in here," he muttered, rubbing at his arm.
Draco sat cross-legged on the floor next to the sofa, watching Ron watch the tv. Jealousy bubbled up, consuming him. It wasn't fair that Ron could hold a warm cup of tea in his hand or sit comfortably on the sofa, wrapped in a very ugly blanket propped up with an old thread-bare pillow, while Draco sat on the cold hard floor. He was trapped alone in a bubble where he could hear everything, and no one could hear him, and he hated it. If he was doomed to exist in Weasley's flat, then he was going to make it Weasley's problem. Draco was going to haunt the ever-living fuck out of Ron Weasley. First, he just had to figure out how.