Chapter Text
August 21, 1998
Dear Mother,
Please don’t send sugar quills. I am not eleven anymore and live on more than sugar. I shudder to think of how much the international post would cost.
My apprenticeship is progressing well. I am still observing his work and learning from his abundance of experience. The pedagogy in Japan is far different from England, but I believe I am gaining valuable insight. While Master Obuchi may not be an internationally recognized curse-breaker, I can assure you that he is well regarded in the local community. Should I play my cards right, my English teaching days will be behind me and I will be Master Obuchi’s full-time student.
Do not worry about me, Mother. I wish you stay well.
With love,
Draco
P.S. You don’t need to keep me updated on the going-ons of Harry Potter. I seriously doubt he’s missing, and he’s probably off being a savior somewhere else. Since when have you trusted anything in the Quibbler?
—
Draco was not playing his cards right. Or more precisely, he wasn’t even at the card table.
"Please repeat after me - Lumos."
Like most late afternoons, Draco stood before a classroom of wilting ten-year-olds that did not repeat after him. Most weren't even holding their training wands. Others gawked opened-mouthed at their increasingly flustered instructor.
Sweat trickled down Draco's back. With his free hand, he wiped at his forehead. Cooling charms proved next to useless in the muggy classroom and fizzled on the spot when confronted with the intense summer heat. Though Draco had optimistically thrown open the window, no breeze ventured from the side alley the window faced.
Regret tightened Draco's throat, and he wondered, for not the first time that day, why he bothered to lie to his mother. Shouldn’t she know how he spent his days as a glorified record player rather than a budding curse-breaker? Shouldn’t she know what an utter disappointment he was?
Hand tightening around his wand, the still unfamiliar grooves of the handle digging into his hand, Draco focus on the pain to ground himself. An unwanted image of the boy - no man - who took his original wand flashed in his mind, but Draco gritted his teeth and forced himself to ignore it. The kids had started to stir impatiently and he needed to continue this fruitless lesson lest he lose control of the class entirely.
Between the heat and the memory of Harry Sodding Potter, panic started to lap at Draco’s frayed nerves. Would today finally be the day he lost it? He had heard about other teachers who had stormed out of their classrooms, driven batty from homesickness and exasperation. Perhaps he would be like Monica-sensei, a timid Australian witch who had cried in the middle of her class last week and finally quit this morning.
A sudden blast of cool air that faintly smelled sweet and eerily familiar filled the classroom, startling Draco from his downward spiral. No supervisor or coworker had entered the classroom to cast such a charm (and honestly, he doubted any of them could do it). His students, enlivened by the change in the air, began to chatter amongst themselves. Cool air continued to pump into the room from the direction of the open window. Draco narrowed his eyes at the window suspiciously and strode towards it to peer in the alley. No one stood in the alley, though Draco couldn’t shake the feeling someone was watching him.
Filing away this strange incident for future contemplation, and fortified by the cool air; Draco summoned the strength to raise his voice.
"Please," Draco started again, "please repeat after me."
—
Like most evenings, Draco declined the offer of after-hour drinks from his coworkers and started the lonely trek to the residence of Hideo Obuchi.
Not the master curse-breaker Draco lauded about to his mother, Hideo was a jack-of-all-trades wizard who had spent most of his life traveling through the United Kingdom. In one city he may be a curse-breaker, in another, a Muggle birthday party magician. Now retired of his itinerant life abroad, Hideo had returned to his hometown to run the family paper store and hired foreigners in the area ostensibly for English conversation lessons to keep his skills fresh.
Or at least that’s what Hideo had told Draco when he offered him a job on the spot the day Draco bought a stationary set from his store.
In truth, Hideo hardly needed lessons in English, conversation or otherwise, and regularly mocked Draco’s poshness. But, Draco wasn’t about to deny their nearly nightly “lessons” because he figured Hideo had spent too many years outside of Japan and was desperately in need of company.
Avoiding the main shopping street, Draco ducked into a small alleyway and passed by a mix of cramped restaurants and bars. The smell of grilling meat billowed into the alley, and salarymen sat packed in small pockets of merriment.
But, Draco ignored the siren call of food and drink. He instead puzzled over the cooling charm from that afternoon. The strength of the charm along with the sugary pastry smell that reminded Draco of Amortentia made him uneasy.
This hadn’t been the first time a mysterious act of magic made his life easier. It had all started a month earlier. The ragged bug screen on Draco’s apartment window he hadn’t bothered fixing appeared as good as new one morning. After a halting conversation with his landlord, Draco gleaned it wasn't through any Muggle means his bug screen had been replaced. A few days later, the dead plants on his balcony he couldn’t keep alive suddenly sprang back to life and continued to thrive. Small miracles like these now laced Draco’s everyday, as did the paranoid sensation someone was watching him.
Then again, people were always staring at him. Peeking over his shoulder, he could spot two or three older men staring and pointing at his hair.
Maybe this is what Potter felt, Draco thought and quickly dashed the thought away. Thinking about Potter wouldn't help.
Draco quickened his pace and soon reached his destination: the front door of a small apartment on top of a stationary store. Schooling his face into what he hoped was a neutrally pleasant smile, Draco knocked on the door even though he knew the it was unlocked.
“Are you a bloody vampire?” Hideo called through the door. “Come in, already.”
Draco let himself in and walked down a short hall to a cramped combination kitchen and dining room. Hideo, sitting at a narrow table Draco always thought was too close to the stove, looked him over.
“It’s happened again,” Hideo said rather than asked, a crooked smile cracked across his face.
“Yes,” Draco replied and took the seat across from Hideo. “You don’t need to look so happy. It was only a Cooling Charm.”
Hideo perked up and reached for his wand.
“A Cooling Charm? Well then, we can work with that,” he said and wordlessly summoned what appeared to be a stack of white slips of paper with kanji written across them. “Traces of magic should have touched you then. We can certainly work with that.”
At that, Hideo began slapping the paper on Draco’s forehead and shoulders. The paper clung to him despite there being no apparent adhesive.
“Hideo, wha-“ Draco sputtered, trying to back away.
“Stop moving, you little fool. This is merely a bit of magic they won’t teach you over in that Scottish castle. We’ll finally be able to trace who’s behind it all. “Little miracles” my foot, Draco. You have a secret admirer that’s been far too secret.”
Draco flushed as Hideo pressed his palm against his forehead and murmured something in Japanese. Suddenly, the slips of paper glowed and grew hot.
“Merlin, Hideo. This is going to b-“
“Be quiet!” Hideo hissed, pressing his palm harder against Draco.
The remaining slips of paper on the table whipped into a vortex in the center of the kitchen. Amid the whirlwind of paper, Draco started to see a body form in the middle of the vortex, and as each second passed, the body grew more solid until-
“Potter?” Draco said hoarsely, hardly believing his eyes. Batting away the paper and looking as baffled as Draco felt stood the Savior of the Wizarding World. “What in the bloody hell are you doing here?”