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September, 1996
It was a bit of a shame that Draco saw the face of Death every time he closed his eyes. In his ideal world he wouldn’t have ever seen that face and would never see it again, but even if the world came to its senses and killed him out of sheer mercy, Draco knew he still wouldn’t be able to escape that pale face, those slitted red eyes. They would stay with him forever, branded into his skin and branded into his brain.
If nothing else, it was preventing him from getting his beauty sleep. The same couldn’t be said for his dorm mates who were lights out and snoring as soon as their brick heads hit the pillows (not that the lights were generally on when they were awake, but…). Draco had a daily debate with himself about Crabbe and Goyle. Were they too thick to realise that what they were doing with the Dark Lord was wrong, or just genuinely cruel and evil-hearted? And where did that leave him? He didn’t like what the Dark Lord asked them to do but he still accepted it, didn’t he? He did it under duress but he still did it.
“You have been chosen, Draco Malfoy, to deliver the final blow to Albus Dumbledore. This is an honour - do not let me down.”
The words ran on repeat in his mind, not even a spot of healthy Occlumency got rid of them. Every damn time he closed his eyes, or was alone for more than a minute, or was reminded in any number of ways about life outside of the castle, Draco relived those words. He thought he’d be able to deal with it had the memory not also provided him, very helpfully, with the images of his parents’ faces in minute detail. Every single pore screaming ‘panic’. They hadn’t needed to say the words ‘we’re counting on you’ for Draco to know that’s what they wanted to say. That if he didn’t succeed in this the whole family would be punished. Severely and without mercy. The image in his mind switched suddenly to show someone hovering above his dining table, mouth open in a silent scream, before dropping down and straight into Nagini’s clutches.
Draco clenched his jaw, his teeth protesting at the unceremonious way they were gnashed together, and curled up into as tight a ball as he could manage. The curtains of his four poster may as well have been the surface of a pensieve for all they seemed to replay his memories on a loop - and never the nice ones, either. What Draco wouldn’t give to be able to relive childhood days spent running around the Manor gardens or flying through endless summer blue skies.
He drifted into an uneasy sleep.
In his dreams he was flying with the patchwork fields of Wiltshire below him, the chessboard of his early life, and he was alone. No other living thing shared the sky with him. The rumble of those Muggle machines - aeroplanes, Draco recalled - never came near. But as Draco flew on, the endless blue turned into grey, into midnight blues and angry purple, until suddenly and without warning everything flashed green. The clouds, so long for Draco a source of childish imagination and glee, formed a skull. The serpent sprawled out of its mouth. Draco looked down. The chessboard fields lay before him and right underneath the serpent was his queen: the Manor.
His own panic awakened him just like it had every day for the last few weeks. The other Slytherin boys didn’t even stir. The four poster curtains were a good excuse not to notice people waking up from recurring nightmares, Draco supposed. They didn’t get nightmares. He’d plucked up the courage to ask once, in third year when his insane cousin was on the loose, and had it not been for his social standing he knew that he’d have become that week’s social pariah. And unlike what he’d been promised by his mother and by every damn book ever written, the people around him did not get less cruel as they grew up and ‘found themselves’. Instead, they just found themselves handed the tools to be cruel on an even larger scale. Gone were the days that Draco could amuse everyone with flashing badges about bloody Potter’s body odour (which was infuriatingly fine to begin with).
He’d been cruel then too, he knew. He never had any grand illusions about being a good person - would never have sorted Gryffindor or, Merlin forgive him for even thinking it, Hufflepuff - but it was like he’d used up all the cruelty he’d been gifted at birth on petty childhood drama and now had no reserves left to use when it was demanded of him. Or perhaps he really was a coward, just like Granger said, and he simply didn’t have the appetite to fight.
But was it really cowardice when not fighting was a choice you made for morality and reason?
Draco groaned and flipped onto his stomach, pressing his face into his pillows to try and drown everything out. Thinking was hard. Questioning everything he thought he knew about himself and about the world was hard.
Crabbe snored from the other side of the room. Draco envied him the ability to follow the script he’d been handed without cause for fear or autonomous thought, while Draco was always second guessing himself and falling short where it mattered.
His mind drifted again to the look of fear on Mother’s face that night. She’d stared at the Dark Mark on his arm impassively and without comment. She was surely blind to it after having seen it on Father’s arm all those years, but Draco, with his own mask in place, had wished for just a moment for his mother to show him a glimpse of how she truly felt. To look at him with emotion like she’d looked at him as a child. Her mask had broken then, as if in answer to his internal plea. What Draco had seen was far too honest: fear, panic, and worry. A mother wondering how she’d steered her child so wrong in life. A mother trying desperately to recall easier times, kinder times, when they’d been untouched by anything so cruel.
Draco tried to think of those times too. The closest he got were the memories of those chessboard fields, the sun on his skin, and no one else around but for Mother and Father, who’d be waiting for him at their home with their arms opened wide for him to fall into.
There was no going back to those times.
November, 1996
“I hate him.”
Were it not for the fact that he was surrounded by people in the Great Hall, Draco would gladly ram his head into the solid oak table. He’d long suspected that he lacked a key element of common sense and sanity, but he’d never dreamt it was this bad. How could he have been so stupid! He knew that there were spies crawling over every inch of this castle. Merlin only knew how many. And yet, he’d just gone and said it out loud where anyone could have heard him.
“I hate who they are, what they do, what they believe in. I hate that I’m part of it.”
Somehow, this was going to come back to haunt him, but Draco just didn’t know how. He pushed his breakfast around his plate forlornly. He was barely eating anything nowadays, not that anyone had noticed. Draco reached for his tea instead. At least that he could stomach.
A prickling sensation crept up the back of his neck - someone was watching him. Draco put his teacup down slowly and precisely and glanced up to scout out who it was that was staring. He was sure they weren’t looking at him for any good reason (which was preposterous with how good he looked since he stopped slicking his hair back). It did not take him long to find the culprit. Bright green eyes stared into his own for three challenging seconds before flitting away, back to Weaslette on his right. The rush of adrenaline, of sweaty palms and jumbled thoughts that followed that stare wasn’t unusual. Draco had to keep telling himself that. The nervous anticipation was because Potter was onto him again, nothing more and nothing less. And so what if he looked away and straight over to someone else? Good. Draco did not want or need to be the subject of Harry Potter’s obsessive energy. And he too had other people to turn to.
He looked to his right - Crabbe - and he looked to his left - Goyle - and he wasn’t alone. But neither of them so much as glanced up at him.
Draco chanced a look back over to the Gryffindor table and abruptly stood up. It was one thing to watch them make eyes at each other and another entirely to be subjected to them kissing. That was just inhumane.
He felt those eyes on him again as he stalked out of the hall.
He should thank Potter, really. The feeling of that stare on the back of his neck managed to distract him from his imminent doom for all of thirty minutes, which was more than could be said for any of his lessons. Honestly, had Ancient Runes always been so dull, or was it the knowledge that Hermione bloody Granger had well and truly beaten him in their unspoken competition for top spot that had stolen his enthusiasm for the subject? Either way, the sight of her hand in the air with the answer to every question ever posed was quickly moving from annoying to nausea-inducing. If she really had the answers to everything then Draco should pose his dilemma to her.
“Excuse me Hermione, I know the last time we spoke directly I called you the ‘M word’ and you almost broke my nose, but can you answer a question for me? If a Dark wizard asks you to kill someone and says that if you don’t he’ll kill you and your family, what should you do?”
Merlin, he really had gone off the deep end.
A part of him really did want to go up to her and ask just that. Yet he knew that if ever he plucked up the courage to talk to someone about his part in the Legions of Evil the questions wouldn’t end there. They’d fall out of him without a chance of him ever being able to stop, like some sort of sadistic quest for forgiveness or validation.
Maybe he should go back to his snowy haven and try to find that dog again. The thought, wry though it was meant to be, unlocked the carefully stored away panic. The result was a barrage of abuse targeted straight at his own insecurities. Maybe he did have cruelty left in him, Draco mused, as his thoughts circled obsessively around the central theme of ‘something bad is going to happen. Someone heard you this morning.’
No amount of Ancient Runes was able to clear the fog of thought.
*
“What is wrong with you Draco?” Pansy’s nasal voice reached him over the buzz of lunch in the Great Hall.
“Nothing, Pans.”
And he wasn’t lying, not really. Nothing new was bothering him since the last time she’d shot that question at him that morning. Nothing apart from the fact he could feel that hot, prickling gaze on him again. But he couldn’t tell Pansy that. She’d roll her eyes and mutter something about obsession and then make pointed comments all day. And it wasn’t like she really cared anyway.
Sure enough, she shrugged and turned back to Millie and Theo. Draco always sat in the middle of their group, thanks wholly to the fact that when he says he’s a pureblood he means it, unlike the Bulstrodes or the Crabbes who thought no one noticed their carefully edited family trees. Draco used to love it. It was a source of pride for him, one he’d happily laud over anyone who ever even looked his way. It left a sour taste in his mouth now.
Against his better judgement Draco looked up, his eyes magnetically drawn to the Gryffindor table. And there they sat: pureblood, Muggleborn, half-blood, pureblood. Smiling and talking to each other without reservation. If the whole ‘watching people be tortured and killed for their blood status’ thing hadn’t been enough to challenge his views, then Draco thought the jealousy would probably have done it too. Bloody Granger. Now he had to be jealous of her academically and personally. Draco knew he deserved penance for the things he’d done, but surely that humiliation was enough?
None of them were even looking his way. Great. Now Draco could add ‘mental instability’ to his list of problems. Right below ‘I’m so pathetic I spill all my problems to dogs’ and just above ‘if the school finds out I’m a marked Death Eater they’ll expel me and force me home into the Dark Lord’s clutches but if a spy finds out I don’t want to be a Death Eater I’ll surely be killed at the Dark Lord’s earliest convenience’. A classic lose-lose situation. A ‘catch twenty-two’ as he’d heard people say before. He’d not yet been able to get his hands on that particular book. His Muggle bookseller contact had gone mysteriously silent since the summer. Draco took another sip of his tea. He sure hoped it hadn’t been the warning note he’d sent the woman on the night the Dark Lord had started up those Muggle raids again. He wouldn’t want to get in the way of ‘justice’.
The bell to signal the end of lunch rang before Draco had eaten more than two bites of food. Watching his full plate disappear from the table probably shouldn’t have felt so satisfying. Draco mentally amended his list of problems. ‘Eating issues’ slotted nicely above ‘mental instability’, but before he could appreciate his well organised breakdown he felt that gaze on him again. Draco spun around angrily. It wasn’t funny anymore, this weird game they were playing, and there was only so fast his heart could race before he’d collapse, thanks in part to his aforementioned eating issues. Potter would no doubt jump at the chance to humiliate him in front of the whole school like that, but Draco would have no part in it.
He met those green eyes straight on and narrowed his own before shouldering his bag and sauntering out of the hall as gracefully as he knew how. It would have worked as well, had it not been for Deranged Cousin Black the Third (as nicknamed by himself and Mother) getting in his way. No - he corrected himself - he actually stopped him on purpose with a hand to his arm. Merlin, was even glaring at precious Potter not allowed anymore?
“Professor.” Draco said in his most polite voice. “May I help you with something?”
Cousin Black didn’t say anything. He just stared at him, his grey eyes so like all the other Blacks before him, so like Draco’s own, boring into him. They were full of worry.
Suddenly Draco wasn’t in the Great Hall with his teacher. He was in the rose garden at the Manor, the one Mother had so carefully planned and tended, holding out his newly branded arm. He remembered the cool summer night breeze curling around the tattoo and offering a moment’s comfort before he’d looked up and into those same grey eyes.
“Excuse me,” Draco choked out. “I must get to class. Sir.”
He didn’t wait for a response, just put his head down and bolted for his Charms class. Sitting in the back row, he let himself breathe. In out in out. It didn’t help. Something wasn’t right. Why would Cousin Sirius try and approach him now? He’d been surprisingly civil since the start of term, mostly leaving Draco to his own devices as long as he handed his work in. And even then, he didn’t seem to be marking him down without reason either.
It just didn’t make sense. All his life Sirius Black had seemed like a mythical figure and one that wasn’t spoken about much in his home, despite the family ties. Draco had asked his parents once what had happened to him. Mother had frowned, ‘he was always such a troubled boy’ she’d said, then ruffled his long hair (as a boy he’d wanted to wear it long like his father). ‘I didn’t know him,’ Father had said, laying a hand over his left forearm in that way he’d always done in those years. ‘They say he fought with us, but I never saw him. It was all so...strange.’
Those answers hadn’t meant much then. They’d not painted the picture of a traitorous rebel or an undercover hero that his childish imagination had so craved. They were answers that only made sense in context. Context nobody had until three years ago. At that point, his name wasn’t mentioned in the Manor much at all. He knew his father had gone to the trial but Draco hadn’t been allowed. He’d barely been allowed to read the Prophet articles about it.
And then he’d turned up to teach, like some kind of spectre Draco couldn’t be rid of. He’d thought it would spell the end of his Outstanding streak - he’d of course been the one tormenting the professor’s godson, and though he never wanted to, he’d surely had a part in the resignation of his husband from the very same job.
So why now? Why treat Draco without bitterness or grudge for months and then reach out for the first time with that look in his eyes?
Could he detect a kindred spirit, perhaps? Another child born into a pureblood family who wanted a different destiny for himself than the one already laid out for him.
Draco couldn’t make sense of it. Nothing had changed between them for this to happen. With a flash of fear Draco remembered something he’d said in that very first lesson, ‘I fought for the Light in the First Wizarding War and I’ll fight again this time.” Had something happened then? Had Father been caught up in a battle while Draco had been feeling sorry for himself and been hurt or, or - killed? Cousin Sirius would be one of the first to know if he was in the Resistance. But surely if there’d been a fight Draco would have known. The Dark Mark was still and cool beneath his shirtsleeve. It hadn’t burned red and hot, so that must mean that Father was okay, mustn't it?
Draco bit hard into his already chapped lips. He could only wait.
His nerves mounted steadily throughout the day until Defence. He sat in his seat at the back of the class and fidgeted all lesson long with his heart beating double, triple, quadruple time. Once this lesson was over he could rush to the owlery and send Aquila home with a letter. He just had to get through one hour of avoiding Cousin Sirius’ gaze and he could make sure that everything was fine. His heart would finally stop racing, he’d stop biting his lip for long enough for a healing charm to work, and he could go to the library for the evening and finally have a bit of peace.
But Cousin Sirius was still trying to catch his eye, had persisted in doing so since Draco had walked into his classroom, and if Draco knew one thing about Blacks it was that they were never easy to deal with. ‘A challenging mixture of stubbornness and arrogance’ his father had said one evening on the back end of a fight with Mother.
So, as the class came to its close and Draco was nearly out the door and on his merry way, he wasn’t alarmed so much as resigned when Cousin Sirius called him back.
“Professor,” Draco repeated his words from before, but this time he’d learnt his lesson about eye contact. “How can I help?”
“Draco,” and it was still weird hearing his voice in that deep, posh voice. Why couldn’t he just address them with their surnames like a normal professor? “Listen, I don’t know how to say this, but I...I heard-”
Draco’s heart stopped. Of course. How could he have been so stupid? Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban as a dog. As a big, black, shaggy dog, if the Prophet was to be believed. The same type of dog that might be seen commuting in from Hogsmeade on a weekday morning.
Draco’s pulse was racing and his mind was numb with shock. Forgetting his own rules, he looked up and into those grey eyes. If he were a lesser man he could have cried at the fear and pity in that look. As it was, he’d probably cry about it later.
“I can help you Draco, I’ve -”
“Help me?” Draco’s voice was high and as sharp as a knife. “How could you help me?”
“There is a way out. You’re smarter than me and you’ll have real help, you don’t need to make the same mistakes that I did, you don’t need to abandon -”
But whatever the end of that sentence was, Draco didn’t hear it. He’d finally reached his limit it seemed, and he ran. He had no destination in mind, but as so often happened, he found himself drawn to the quietest place in the castle: Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.
Draco heaved over a sink, but there was nothing in his stomach to bring up. He glanced upwards into the cracked mirror and his grey eyes stared back at him.
Fear, panic, worry.
He didn’t think grey eyes were built for much more.
One week later
Every day was like the one before. Draco woke, and before he’d even opened his eyes his brain was running at the speed of a Firebolt, his limbs heavy, hands and feet tingling, stomach still empty. Every day Draco woke thinking he couldn’t possibly last another day feeling so wretched, but evening always rolled around without mercy. A part of Draco, just a small part, was proud of himself for carrying on, for not writing home and crying out for help the way he’d done with all of his problems for the previous five years. He wasn’t doing well, but at least he was doing it by himself. Really, he deserved some kind of award.
It wasn’t easy either, carrying on on his own. Cousin Sirius kept on shooting him worried glances at mealtimes and Draco had had to bully Goyle out of his seat in Defence so he’d be closer to the door.
He took up reading the Prophet obsessively every morning for mention of Cousin Sirius having given an interview or an ‘anonymous’ tip-off about him. It was ridiculous, Draco was aware. If the story did break it would be right there on the front page - no need to read past the headlines and into the dangerous territory of the Celestina Warbeck reviews and frankly insidious advertisements for ‘manpower increasing’ potions. All of this wasted reading and he knew full well that the Dark Lord controlled everything the Prophet reported (Draco had long found it odd that he insisted on doing this work himself. If being a newspaper editor was what he wanted, he could have saved everyone a whole heap of trouble). The thing Draco should have been looking out for was a letter from the Manor written in the Dark Lord’s spidery hand. But, nothing came.
Nothing came his way other than those worried glances but Draco still couldn’t relax. It was like his brain was hard-wired to worry, to expect panic at every turn, so just like his mind helped him stay ahead of everyone else in class, it helped him stay on top of his impending doom by inviting the panic in early. Fantastic. Truly, one of his most inspired performances.
Oh, and on top of all that? He still couldn’t stomach a full meal. All of his favourites now had him retching over the basin in Myrtle’s bathroom. He really, really did not want to become the student to befriend Moaning Myrtle. Not after all the hard hours he’d put into crafting his elegant, above-it-all aura all these years, but it looked like it was heading that way. She addressed him by his first name now.
Draco lingered in the bathroom for just a minute longer. He’d been lucky this time, he hadn’t needed to scare any girls away from the bathroom at all (that didn’t happen much. No one came near this bathroom, not so much because of Myrtle (after all, you got used to ghosts pretty quickly in this place) but because of the nasty and lingering rumour that Potter and his gang of do-gooders had opened the Chamber of Secrets from one of the sinks. So really it was just the occasional first year that ventured near and a quick glare was always enough to get them to scarper off).
A part of him didn’t want to leave. He’d stay locked in there with no food or water (Draco would not be seen drinking from the basilisk taps, thank you very much) and just wither away until he too could become a ghost. He’d be young and charming and tragic, and in a hundred years when the War was long over and no one remembered the Malfoy name, he’d be the Slytherin ghost, too handsome by half and the envy of everyone. It would probably be a better fate than the one he was on track to live out.
But when the bell rang Draco walked out of the bathroom as if on autopilot. Too weak to even disobey a disembodied musical note. Sounded about right.
He walked into Defence. He sat in Goyle’s chair by the door. He ignored every loaded look Cousin Sirius sent his way. He packed his bag up two minutes early. He was out of his seat as soon as the bell rang.
“Draco, do you have a minute?”
Damn it all to hell. Draco couldn’t ignore him now, not in front of the whole class. Forget asking about nightmares - being rude to the teacher a la mode was the quickest way to pariah status in this cesspit of doom they called a school.
“Of course, Professor.” Draco got the words out from between gritted teeth. Listening to whatever Cousin Sirius wanted to use as a guilt trip this time would be less comfortable than falling off his broom from a great height.
When the class had filtered out it was just the two of them: Draco, standing ramrod straight with his hands behind his back, tightly clasping his wand; Cousin Sirius leaning back against his desk with a hand compulsively playing with his hair.
“How are you doing, Draco?” Was what he finally managed after a few excruciatingly quiet minutes.
“Full of the joys of adolescence, Sir. Whyever wouldn’t I be?”
Sirius’ lip quirked just a little and Draco stared at it in surprise. He’d expected him to snap back, had wanted it almost, to be sent away from this confusing situation before he did something stupid like spill all his secrets. Again.
Cousin Sirius didn’t snap. He looked away and dropped his hands to grip the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles were bone white.
“My baby brother got the Dark Mark at sixteen.”
It wasn’t remotely close to anything Draco had expected to hear. Regulus Black was known throughout the family, spoken about in revered tones in the way that Sirius Black never would be, but he’d never heard Sirius mention him at all. Regulus Black, who died on a mission for the Dark Lord so classified that no one really knew what it was for. Legend has it that the only witness was the Black family house elf.
“Regulus,” the name slipped out of his mouth before he’d registered it, and Draco winced at the flash of - something - that crossed Cousin Sirius’ features.
“He died two years later,” and now it was Draco’s turn to hide the flash of panic from his features. “I’m not telling you this to scare you into talking, or to, I don’t know, predict your future -”
“Then why are you telling me this?” Draco snapped, “do you think that just because you abandoned your family and its history that I’d do the same? I know everything there is to know about every Malfoy and Black from the past two centuries.”
“Did you know I offered him an out and he didn’t take it?” Cousin Sirius spoke in the same self-assured way that Draco remembered his mother, Aunt Walburga, using, though he doubted Sirius would cherish the comparison. Even while he thought it though, Draco knew he was being uncharitable even for him. Cousin Sirius wasn’t like any other Black Draco had ever known, for better or for worse.
“Why didn’t he?” Draco found the words, though they came out high, reedy, desperate. They gave away too much.
“He was fourteen when I left, I was sixteen. He was scared. Draco, I’ve obsessed over this for years but I think that’s all it came down to in the end: he was young and he was scared. So, he stayed. Can you blame him?” Sirius pushed up from the desk suddenly and began to pace the width of the room. “All he’d ever seen from me was someone who wasn’t like the rest of the family and was punished for it.”
“Not to mention you ran away to the Potters.” Draco tried to inject some venom into his voice, but seeing as Sirius just breathed out a shaky laugh he wasn’t sure that it worked.
“What was I thinking?” Sirius said dramatically. “I should have knocked on Grandma and Grandpa Malfoy’s door.”
What did it matter that Regulus Black hadn’t wanted to run away to the Potters? Draco wouldn’t want to. He thought that no one sane would have wanted to.
“Did he believe in it?” Draco didn’t have to say what. There was only one ‘it’ between the two of them. Well, two - if you counted Potter.
“I think so.” Sirius said, sounding more serious than Draco had ever heard him. “I don’t know when it went from childish following to actual loyalty, but it did.”
Draco didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if there were any words for this in any of the languages he spoke that would make this in any way okay. Merlin, but he wished Professor Lupin were here to deal with this. He’d even take Potter, and didn’t that say more about Draco’s social ineptitude than just about anything else could.
“It did,” Sirius repeated. “And I had to watch as he was slowly consumed by it. He used to look up to me, you know?” Sirius laughed a little, but there was no joy in it. “Before. Then afterwards he refused to look at me. If I was right in front him he’d pretend not to see me. Draco - I know how deep family goes. I know because I’ve seen it break. Had to build that back up from scratch.”
“I don’t want that,” and Draco’s words were cutting once more, in that way he got whenever he was really upset. “I’m not leaving my family to that, that thing’s every whim - he’ll torture them for fun!”
“I know,” Sirius was back to lounging against his desk, infuriatingly calm and casual for all he was insinuating that Draco should leave everyone he loved to die. “That’s what I’m trying to say - you don’t have to do it the way I did, but you can still get help. You can still leave.”
“Spare me.” Draco settled his bag on his shoulder. “You can’t really help me and you don’t care enough to.”
And with that, he walked out of the classroom and into the library. He pulled his favourite book towards him - one about advancements in potion making - and ignored the yawning chasm of his empty stomach in favour of losing himself in those well loved pages.
The Following Day
The Prophet wasn’t empty of news the following morning and it was all anyone could talk about.
There’d been another break-in, another disappearance, another fucking skull in the sky. ‘Madame Malkin’s Muggle Malady’ was what the headline read. Her whole shop, decimated. They claimed she’d brought a Muggle into the shop and broken the Statute. It was moronic. Her real crime? Serving Muggleborns.
The school population was just sitting there reading about it over their morning porridge like they weren’t all wearing her robes. Draco felt crazy. He of all people shouldn’t be finding and pointing out the moral flaws of others.
He sat at his usual table in his seat as the prince of the purebloods and picked his fork up, put it down, picked it up, cut the corner off a piece of toast, put it down. Looked over the headline for the fiftieth time that morning. Looked around him.
Draco had hoped that his own sense for the dramatics may have skewed his perceptions of others into something more extreme, more unflattering. For once in his life he hadn’t been dramatic enough. People were cheering. They were actually cheering. People he’d had lessons with for six years, who he shared a dormitory with, who he’d sat and played chess with, had flown and fought with - were cheering. Jostling each other and crowing over the murder (because Draco wasn’t stupid enough to believe ‘disappearance’) of a woman they’d all known for years.
There were a handful of students, as there always were, who weren’t saying anything. Who were sitting and staring into their breakfast and trying to be invisible. Draco knew they were, because it was what he was aiming for. Even as he watched, he saw these invisible students poked and jeered at until they too had to smile at the jokes and make their own cutting comments, but as they spoke something broke in themselves. They were quiet again, but they’d already done what they needed to. Already appeased the spies and the cruel hearted.
Draco let his gaze roam further than the green ties surrounding him and saw the news ricochet around the room. At every table Draco saw hidden smirks, students for which this was all a joke or a step in the direction they called ‘justice’, but in others he saw shock. Shock and fear. And where fear was absent lived revulsion. The dirty looks and muttered comments all aimed at the Slytherin table. Outraged eyes slid straight over the smirking students in red, yellow, and blue and landed squarely on green. It was no wonder his classmates encouraged it, Draco thought bitterly, no wonder that so many in his house thought they had no alternative when their narratives were pre-written for them by an ancient hat at eleven years old.
He was seething with it. With pain and anger and fear, and he didn’t realise that the stares were centered on him: the Slytherin prince, the heir to cruelty.
Pansy tugged at his sleeve, “Draco. Say something.”
“What is there to say.” Draco said, and with a flick of his wand he set his copy of the Prophet aflame. He didn’t want to see Madame Malkin’s smiling face looking at him for a second longer. “What’s done is done.”
What’s done is done. Draco walked out of the hall and into the snow. It was heavier now. Huge pillows of it coating every surface. What’s done is done. He could so easily fall into one and never come out. Finally become the cold hearted prince they all wanted. What’s done is done. What did that mean? His destiny so pre-written he cannot change it? His heart already screaming at him to let Cousin Sirius take his burden so loudly that his mind had been made up unconsciously? What’s done is done. Draco scoffed. There was a long bloody way to go before his problems were done.
“You think it’s funny, don’t you?” Merlin, Draco couldn’t catch a break. Harry bloody Potter was shouting at him like a madman, his wand drawn and his stupidly green eyes furious.
“I’m beside myself with glee,” Draco managed, proud of himself for not rising to the red and gold coloured bait. Potter drew breath to continue whatever rant he’d clearly been holding back. Well, Draco mused, he could be proud that he didn’t snap straight away. “If you’re quite done, I’d like to be left alone. Now.”
“Like hell, Malfoy. I know you’re up to something. I know what you’re hiding under that shirt. It was probably -”
Draco cast before he could even think. Potter knew. He’d probably been telling everyone who would listen. The whole school must have known the entire term that when Draco fiddled with his cuffs he was really making sure his sleeves were tugged down low enough to cover the curling of a serpent’s neck.
Potter stumbled back a step, hissing at the impact of his stinging hex. He raised his own wand, a look of fury on his face before -
“Harry. Put your wand down. Now!” Cousin Sirius was running out of the castle along with, Draco noted faintly, what looked like most of the school. They’d found something more interesting than a murder in he and Potter’s squabble, it seemed.
The wand lowered slowly. Draco’s breathing started to even out. He hated himself so viscerally in that moment that he wished Harry had cursed him. Hated that the person he’d been for sixteen years was bad enough to warrant this much suspicion. Hated that the suspicion was very much warranted. Hated that his mind recognised Sirius Black as an ally.
What’s done is done, he thought faintly as he zoned out of whatever drama was playing out in front of him. What’s done is done.
Draco startled when he felt a hand clap his shoulder. He looked around. He was still standing where he’d been but there wasn’t anyone around anymore. The students had filed back inside and Draco could just see Harry heading back into the castle with Ron, Hermione, and Ginny.
“Let’s walk, it’s freezing.” Cousin Sirius gave him an odd look before setting off, giving him no choice but to follow.
They walked in silence through the grounds, looping down past the orchards and across to the lake. Almost without thinking they both stopped by the bank of snow they’d spoken by the week before. Merlin, but it felt like years had passed since that day.
Cousin Sirius was quiet, which was new for him. He didn’t seem in any rush despite there only being, at most, fifteen minutes until first period. He must have thought Draco would crack before that. He wouldn’t.
Draco cast a quick Impervio on himself and sat down on the fluffy snow.
“Don’t you have lessons to teach?” Draco said, eyes never leaving the surface of the lake. It was starting to ice over, small crystals joining forces to conquer the shallows.
“Oh sure,” Cousin Sirius hadn’t sat down, was standing by the shore and cracking the ice with the toe of his boot. “But they’re seventh years, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, they practically teach themselves.”
“Good thing, with you as their teacher,” Draco muttered under his breath.
Again, Sirius didn’t rise to his jab, just huffed that annoying laugh and looked back at him over his shoulder.
“Would this be easier for you if I were a dog? Because it might be easier for me.”
“I don’t think it’s funny,” Draco said, the words falling out of his mouth without his meaning to let them go. “I think it’s awful.”
“Harry will come around.” Sirius said, “when he realises his anger isn’t actually at you.”
“What if it is?” Draco felt a rush of ice pour over him about what he was thinking of doing, attaching himself like this to Sirius Black.
“Why must everyone underestimate me so much? I am perfectly capable of helping you without tearing my family apart, thank you. It isn’t just me who wants to help.”
“You told Professor Lupin?” Draco’s heart, which had been starting to calm down, struck up its hummingbird rhythm once more.
“Duh,” Sirius said obnoxiously, holding up his left hand and wiggling his fingers so his rings caught the light. “Kind of comes with the territory. Plus, it’s no secret you prefer him.”
Draco furrowed his brow. He had never said that aloud, never even alluded to it. It couldn’t be that - but, no. How could they -
“He says thank you for the letters, by the way.”
Damn. It. All. And Draco couldn’t stress this bit enough: to. Hell. He was bright red, he just knew he was. Gaping like a particularly grotesque fish as well, he’d wager.
Cousin Sirius laughed, loud and barking. “‘I’m saddened to hear of your continued convalescence’ Draco, really? No one talks like that.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with you helping me escape the Dark Lord’s clutches, do you?” Draco snapped.
Part of him winced at addressing a teacher with so little respect, but well. He wasn’t really a teacher, was he? More like a glorified babysitter who got bored with his current charge and so thought he’d find a new one.
“It shows us that the first thing we have to work on are your skills at subterfuge.” Sirius settled down on the snowy patch next to him. Draco didn’t see him cast an Impervio but the snow stayed off his velvet cloak anyway. Must have been wandless and wordless. Draco absolutely would not lower himself to being impressed by that parlour trick. When he looked back up to meet Sirius’ gaze he winked and waggled his eyebrows. Awful.
It was worse when the playfulness dropped from his features entirely.
“How involved in it are you?”
And there was that ‘it’ again.
Draco looked away. He didn’t notice his right hand coming up to grip his left forearm until he felt the slight ache under his skin from the bruises he’d left there.
“I wasn’t involved all that much until Father didn’t get that prophecy. Then after that, I was his new favourite.” Draco picked at the snow underneath his palms, pushing it back and forth, letting the cold turn his hands red. “As punishment for Father failing him, I suppose.”
Cousin Sirius didn’t say anything, so Draco continued. It felt nice to lay it all out in the open like this. Speaking it into the world, the one place that always felt real.
“Then on the day I received the Dark Mark, he gave me my first real task.” Draco stopped there. He didn’t want the next part to become real.
“What was the task, Draco?”
“To kill Professor Dumbledore.”