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Draco was used to being cold. His parents always bought him the finest clothes, in all the most fashionable, pure-blood styles, and ordered everything specially lined with silk and wool. His robes were trimmed with the softest, warmest rabbit fur to keep out any chill winds that might cross his path, but it was still never quite enough. Of course, that was to be expected, as Draco hadn’t yet found his soulmate, separated from them by an unknown distance, but it was still uncomfortable. He thought that perhaps his soulmate lived in London, or somewhere nearby, because he always felt incrementally warmer whenever his parents took him shopping, but “somewhere near London” wasn’t enough information to narrow down who his soulmate might be. He would be matched with a pureblood, of course, and there were enough stately homes and important families closer to London to satisfy his soulbond enough to warm him up a few degrees, but he suspected that he wouldn’t truly be warm until he started at Hogwarts.
July, 1991
When the fire spit him out into Borgin and Burkes, Draco worried for a moment that it had burned him somehow. He’d never been harmed by the floo before, but he felt as though he were standing in the middle of the roaring fire, even as it died down around him and he stepped out of the grate.
“Draco? What are you doing?”
His mother had followed him through the fire, and was looking at him with an expression of the utmost concern on her face.
Draco continued twisting his body around, trying to see where the lingering sparks may have caught. “I think I’ve caught fire!”
His father didn’t appear to hear, already in conversation with Borgin, but his mother was beside him in an instant, waving her wand and fluttering her hand over his back.
“I don’t see any flames, darling, can you tell me what happened? Are you in pain?”
Draco paused for a moment, straightening up to consider – he felt strange, yes, and warmer than he had ever felt before, but he wasn’t in any real discomfort. In fact, once he took a few deep breaths, Draco realised that he actually felt quite comfortable. The only odd thing was the pricking sensation in his fingers and toes, like the sort you would get after being out in the cold for too long, yet somehow the opposite of that too.
“No, I don’t suppose I am.” He looked up at his mother, embarrassment washing over him. “I’m simply quite warm all of a sudden, and it took me by surprise.” At the sight of his mother’s sudden smile, the thought occurred to Draco for the first time; “Mother! Do you think my soulmate could be here today? Right now?”
His mother beamed at him, and smoothed her hand over his hair, setting it back to the style he’d spent so much time perfecting that morning.
“They very well may be, darling, so you best keep an eye out for any new faces.”
By the time they returned to the Manor that evening, Draco was in a strop. He had grown cold again as soon as he arrived back in Wiltshire, and it was nearly unbearable to endure after spending the entire day warmed by the proximity of his soulmate. He wanted to find his soulmate again and spell them to always stay by his side so that he’d never have to be cold for another second in his life. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that, because he hadn’t been able to figure out who his soulmate might be. He saw lots of strangers in Diagon, but most of them were too young or too old to be his soulmate, and the only person he had talked to, a scruffy boy preparing for his first year at Hogwarts as well, couldn’t possibly be his soulmate, on account of how horribly he dressed and how he knew nothing at all about quidditch. Draco’s soulmate would be lovely, he was sure of it, and so posh and well-bred that Draco’s father would be thrilled. His soulmate would like quidditch, and would talk to Draco for hours, and would love him best of all.
September, 1991
It was such a relief to board the Hogwarts Express and feel heat surge through his body, to feel proper warmth once more. The taste he had gotten a few weeks previous hadn’t been enough, and the constant chill that he had grown up with had seemed more oppressive than ever. All around him, his fellow students were in the process of peeling off their outer robes and cloaks, discarding heavy sweaters in favour of light shirts they had most likely never had cause to wear before. Draco tried to act as though even this was too pedestrian for him to react to - yes, he was warmer, but he certainly wasn’t going to strip off his finery like some sort of animal. After all, the warmth meant that his soulmate was here, and shouldn’t he look his best for them, whoever they may be?
August, 1994
Draco paced around the tent, twirling his wand between his fingers and trying not to snap it in half out of sheer frustration. This was the final of the Quidditch World Cup. Literally everyone worth knowing was here, and many of them had been here for days already. The only people who wouldn’t come to an event like this were poor, mudbloods, or both. There were only twenty-four hours left until the match began, and if Draco didn’t warm up before then he was going to seriously consider hexing himself just so he wouldn’t have to suffer like this anymore.
When Draco woke up the next morning to discover that he had kicked his blankets off in the middle of the night because his entire body had been suffused with warmth, he breathed a sigh of relief. His sudden lightness couldn’t even be dulled by the sight of Potter and the Weasleys and Granger, and he didn’t even mind that Krum had caught the snitch but lost the match – his soulmate was there seeing it all too, which meant they couldn’t be too poor, and they must like quidditch, and that was all that mattered.
June, 1995
It was during the final task of the Triwizard tournament when Draco knew, with a sinking feeling of certainty, that his soulmate was one of the four champions.
He was watching the maze, just like everyone else was, craning his neck to see whatever sparks or flashes of light filtered out of the hedges, and complaining to his friends about how stupid Dumbledore was, for setting not one, but two tasks in this tournament that couldn’t be seen by the spectators, when all of a sudden a wave of cold overtook him. He gasped, but couldn’t draw any air despite his chest aching for it. Draco thought he might choke on the cold, and was certain that his lungs were freezing over. The cold was like a physical blow, and he rocked backwards, reeling from the sensation. It was far worse than usual, worse than it was during the summers, worse than he remembered from childhood. He was colder than he had ever been before, and when he finally managed to draw in a rasping, shaky breath, he knew why.
His soulmate was in the maze, and something had gone wrong.
Draco knew that people felt cold when their soulmate died, and he’d read a novel once where a character described the moment of her soulmate’s death as pure agony, but then said the cold had settled back into only a slight chill. She had spent the rest of the book fighting on without being bothered by the change in temperature. He thought of his grandfather, who had died when Draco was young, and how his grandmother had always worn an extra shawl afterwards.Yet she had still been able to go about her life, not incapacitated by the cold. Not like Draco.
He started to shiver and tried to count the seconds, tried to breathe, tried to act as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening. His soulmate couldn’t be dead, they just couldn’t, it wouldn’t be fair. They had to have been transported somewhere, somewhere far away, maybe as a surprise part of the tournament. It would be just like Dumbledore to add a portkey to an already unwatchable challenge.
He nodded at something Pansy was saying and tried to make his face mirror hers, but couldn’t focus on her words. He was too busy running through the options of who his soulmate might be.
Krum. He’d be a good soulmate to have; he was fit, even if he wasn’t quite Draco’s type, and he was brilliant at quidditch and rich and famous too, which more than made up for anything else. But he had been at the Quidditch World Cup long before the morning of the match, and Draco had been cold up until that day.
Delacour, then. She wasn’t Draco’s type at all, but that would certainly please Draco’s father, besides which she seemed to be well brought up. She could help Draco maintain his French, and their children would undoubtedly be absolute perfection. But even if she had arrived late to the World Cup, she hadn’t been at Hogwarts with Draco for the last three years, which only left…
Diggory. Or Potter. Draco supposed that the Hufflepuff wouldn’t be the worst person to have as a soulmate. He was quite good-looking, and a decent quidditch player too. Draco didn’t think he had any great fortune to his name, but he was fairly certain that Diggory’s father had a decent position within the Ministry, and their bloodline wasn’t awful. They could even laugh over the fact that Draco had made badges in support of him before he knew that they were soulmates! It would be fine, probably quite nice. Diggory did seem to have a girlfriend, but Draco was sure it would be quick work to dispatch her. After all, they were soulmates. They had to be, because if they weren’t, then that meant that Potter was his soulmate, and there was no universe in which that could happen.
Draco kept breathing and listened to Pansy, elbowed Crabbe when he was being thick, and tried to subtly cast a warming charm over his robes. The cold still burned and no one knew that Cedric was gone, but that was alright. He would be back soon, Draco was sure, and he would win, and then Draco could brag to everyone about his boyfriend, his soulmate, for the rest of their lives. Draco realised that Diggory’s prize money would serve as fortune enough to win his father’s approval, too.
Then, some indeterminate amount of time later, Draco’s body flared with warmth, and there was a commotion at the entrance to the maze. Despite the warmth reignited in his body, Draco felt himself freeze once more.
Diggory had come back, but he was dead. Potter had been with him, and he was still alive. Draco was warm.
December, 1995
When Draco woke up shivering in the middle of the night the day before heading home for Christmas hols, he didn’t even have the energy to be surprised. Of course Potter was running around doing something absolutely mental and leaving school in the middle of the night. Maybe he was doing something to torment Umbridge, or maybe he had simply figured out that Draco was his soulmate and had learned how to apparate out of Hogwarts in the middle of the night just to torture him.
Draco didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He simply summoned another blanket, cast a warming charm, and tossed and turned until dawn, far too angry to go back to sleep.
June, 1996
The Slytherin common room was a flurry of commotion. The fifth years were all in high spirits celebrating the end of their exams, and Blaise had talked a seventh year into smuggling two bottles of firewhiskey into the castle for them. Draco was feeling loose and relaxed, lounging against Pansy and periodically flicking his wand in an act of petty mischief so that whatever sweets Vince and Greg were about to eat would fly out of their hands.
He had shed his robes and sweater hours ago, and was now down to just his shirtsleeves, which he had also rolled up sometime around his third shot of fire whiskey. He was warmer than he had been in ages, and felt so much like a contented housecat lounging in a sunbeam, that the sudden cold hit him like a sobering charm.
Pansy felt his full-body shiver, and paused in her stroking of his hair.
“Draco? What’s wrong?”
I’m cold, why am I cold, where did Potter go? He collapsed during our last exam, but he seemed fine when he walked out, he couldn’t have been taken to St. Mungo’s. Fuck him for ruining this for me, fuck him for taking away my warmth and my comfort. Fuck him for denying me one of the last opportunities I’ll have to be warm all summer.
“I think the fire whiskey is suddenly sitting with me funny,” Draco lied, trying to act as though he wasn’t furious and as though he wasn’t freezing cold.
“You know what the solution for that is, don’t you?” Blaise called out, from halfway across the room.
“Drink more!” came the resounding chorus from all the other fifth years, and Draco had another shot pressed into his hand.
Despite the truly terrible amount he drank, and the cardigan he tried to subtly put on only once he was too drunk to do so gracefully, nothing he did could dispel the cold. It wasn’t until he woke up the next morning, so hungover he thought he might be in danger of dying, that he realised he was sweating through yesterday’s clothes, even as he lay on top of his comforter.
Potter was back, and no hangover potion in the world could have prepared Draco for the maelstrom he brought with him.
September, 1996
As Draco crushed Potter’s nose under his heel, he felt a rush of sick satisfaction. Receiving the Dark Mark had hurt, but it was nowhere near the pain of looking at Potter and knowing that Draco was trapped with someone like him as his soulmate. He was Dumbledore’s little pawn, from a family of blood-traitors and mudbloods, who had sent Draco’s own father to prison and was such a self-righteous twat that it made Draco sick.
He stepped on Potter’s nose again, once more for good measure, then threw Potter’s invisibility cloak over him. He would have stolen it, but he couldn’t stand the idea of owning anything Potter had touched. He stalked out, wiping Potter’s blood off his heel onto the train’s red carpet.
May, 1997
Draco never wanted to feel warm ever again.
He had felt warm all year, agitated by Potter’s stifling presence in the castle. Even his panic and terror at not being able to complete the tasks the Dark Lord had set him had still been overwhelmed with the heat from Potter’s proximity.
Now, laying in the hospital wing with his blood trickling over his body in warm rivulets from the gashes on his chest, Draco lay still and gritted his teeth through Pomfrey’s and Snape’s healing spells. The only thought occupying his mind was how he would gladly freeze for the rest of his life if only he never had to see Harry Potter ever again. When something that Snape cast made his chest seize as though he had been struck by lightning, Draco even thought that it might be nice to die, if only to make Potter suffer through the cold for the rest of his life. None of the ghosts ever complained about being too hot or too cold, and it would serve Potter right to shiver all the way through his long and lonely life without a soulmate while Draco lived out his death in perfect comfort.
Something cold touched his chest, and for a moment, Draco thought that perhaps he was going to get his stupid wish after all, that all the healing spells had failed. But then pain lanced through him again, and the cold on his chest turned to flames, and he recognized the burning pull of dittany as his skin knit itself back together.
It was hopeless, he thought, as he gazed unseeingly out the window while Pomfrey syphoned the blood off of him and Snape cast mending spells on his clothes. He wasn’t going to succeed. He had taken the mark of a mad man who was going to kill him if he himself didn’t succeed in murdering Dumbledore. Worse, the maniac was going to torture and kill Draco’s mother in front of him first, so that Draco would have to watch her suffer before he could die too. He hated Dumbledore, and mudbloods, and blood-traitors, and muggles, and all the other moronic people who didn’t deserve to walk around so boldly and so free. He had thought that getting rid of them, enslaving them, would be easier than this. He had thought that the Dark Lord would – Draco didn’t know, he wouldn’t be kind or anything so insipid as that, but Draco had thought it would feel good to be allied with power. He had thought it would keep him safe.
Ironically, the only way he could imagine being safe now was if Potter’s side won and chose to show him mercy, but that thought revolted him to his very core. It would be a shame beyond any he had ever known, and it was that idea that finally sent shards of ice through his veins.
He took it back. He wanted to be warm, and he hated himself for it.
June, 1997
It’s going to be alright. It’s going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright.
Draco had fixed the Vanishing Cabinet and the other Death Eaters would be coming into the castle soon. He had done what he had needed to, and he would kill Dumbledore too, and he would be fine, his mother would be fine, and everything would go according to plan.
With an hour to go until the Death Eaters would arrive, Draco shivered. In the privacy of the Room of Hidden Things, his teeth began to chatter, and gooseflesh rose on his arms. He pulled his robes back on from where he had discarded them earlier, but he paused before casting a warming charm. He didn’t know why, but Potter was out of the castle. There was a very good chance that Potter still wouldn’t be here when the other Death Eaters came through. There was a chance that Draco might still have a backdoor out, should he need to take it, a chance that either side could win and Draco could find a way to go with the victor He wouldrun towards whoever would keep his family safe, should it come to that. He was going to go along with the plan he had set in motion, and he felt like he could breathe for the first time in weeks, knowing that things might be okay.
When he started sweating as he climbed the stairs to the Astronomy Tower, he wanted to cry.
When Snape killed Dumbledore on his behalf, he wanted to be sick.
When Snape pulled him across the Hogwarts boundary and apparated them both away, the cold overtaking him once more, Draco didn’t let himself feel anything at all.
Distantly, he wondered what Potter must be thinking about his own sudden chill, probably the first unexpected one of his life.
September, 1997
Draco shivered as he stepped onto the Hogwarts Express, casting a warming charm without even thinking about it. He could do them wandless and wordless now, the only spell he had mastered that way, having learned out of necessity over what had been the longest summer of his life. He couldn’t let anyone know who his soulmate was or even suspect that they might not be a pureblood, nor a Slytherin, or a future Death Eater.
He didn’t think Potter would come back to school, couldn’t imagine he’d be fool enough to risk it, but Draco would have to act like his soulmate was there anyway. He couldn’t risk shivering and giving himself away. It was a matter of survival, he told himself.
For him, and for Potter.
He still didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew that his original hopes weren’t going to pan out. He didn’t want to live in a world where innocent people were killed at the dinner table, or where he would fall asleep every night to the sounds of torture echoing through his family’s home. He still thought that Potter was a do-gooding moron who was so self-righteous it made Draco gag, but at least Potter’s version of the future didn’t involve quite so much murder and agony, as far as Draco was aware. And besides, Potter wouldn’t kill his own soulmate.
Draco didn’t want him to win, but he was a Slytherin – he still wanted to keep his options open.
March, 1998
“We’ve caught Harry Potter!”
The cry echoed through the manor, but Draco didn’t need to hear it to know what was going on. For the first time in nine months, Draco could feel heat flooding his body, pounding through his blood stream and practically burning him from the inside out with the sheer intensity of warmth after so long without it. His anxiety and fear had been cold; crawling icicles invading his body for the past year, but now the sudden heat at Potter’s appearance reminded him of the lick of anger, and a spark of hope.
He didn’t know what he wanted Potter to do, other than to rescue him. It was pathetic, and he hated himself for wanting it almost as much as he hated Potter for being the one to exist and tempt him with a second chance at all, but now he couldn’t help but think that this could be his way out. Potter was here, so he could incapacitate the people who had been threatening Draco’s family, who had been breaking into his mind and leering at him any time he walked into a room. Potter could let Draco escape, or take him away, and then he could win the war and survive, or keep fighting while Draco hid far away and tried to figure out what he wanted.
“Draco, come here,” his mother said, and Draco heard his every footstep echo with the truth he couldn’t reveal.
It’s Potter. It’s Potter. It’s Potter.
His face was swollen. His hair was long and tangled. The stubble of a nascent beard was a shadow around his jaw. His eyes were slits, but still so green.
It’s Potter. It’s Potter. It’s Potter.
“Well, Draco?”
It’s Potter. It’s Potter. It’s Potter.
“I can’t – I can’t be sure.”
It’s Potter. It’s Potter. It’s Potter.
“Look properly!”
It’s Potter. It’s Potter. It’s Potter.
“I don’t know.”
Draco had never been more certain of anything in his life. His soulmate was there, in front of him, and Draco could see the thoughts racing through his eyes. He wasn’t sure what made Potter finally reach the same conclusion Draco had come to ages ago, but he saw the moment when Potter knew.
His mouth fell open the tiniest bit, and as Draco pled his ignorance he watched Potter’s eyes narrow almost imperceptibly, then go as round as they could underneath the Stinging Jinx.
He didn’t know what Potter was thinking. He didn’t know what he was thinking himself either. And he still didn’t know when he relaxed his hand and let Potter take the wands.
May, 1998
It was dark, and had been for over an hour, but Draco couldn’t sleep. His hands kept twitching towards his bed hangings, tempted by the bottle of Dreamless Sleep that he had stowed in his bedside drawer, but he couldn’t make his hand pull the curtains back. The idea of one of the Carrows breaking into the dorm and demanding a round of midnight Crucios again left him unwilling to be drugged, yet unable to find the solace of unconsciousness any other way.
He had simply resorted to gripping his mother’s wand so tightly his knuckles were white when he felt it.
Heat.
It wasn’t a warming charm and it wasn’t from the blanket he had wrapped around himself. Potter was back. Draco knew, without question, that it was all going to be over soon.
He whispered spells to put up wards around his bed, and added a shield charm for good measure. Then he sat, his arms curled around his legs and his chin resting upon his knees, until the first noises reached him.
There was a distant sound of clanking metal, growing steadily louder, as though hundreds of mediaeval knights were running through the corridors – it must be the suits of armour, he thought, and hurled himself out of bed. He didn’t bother disengaging the wards, just let them stretch around him as he threw open his trunk and found a bottle of Pepper Up, downing it in one go. Steam was still pouring from his ears as he did up the last buttons on his robes, and his newfound energy carried him all the way to the threshold of his dormitory before he paused. Was it safe to leave the room? Would the common room be protected, or would he simply have less warning before the attacking force arrived? They were trapped no matter what, the Slytherins had always been kept in the dungeons, under dirt and submerged in the Lake, and now there was no way out other than through the castle.
A sudden rustle of bed clothes made him startle.
“Draco? What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Blaise was sitting up in his bed, regarding Draco with wary suspicion.
“I heard something, out in the corridors. I think someone’s enchanted the suits of armour.”
Had Potter done it? Was it some kind of distraction? Or had it been an attempt to capture Potter, if he had been discovered in the castle?
“Well, don’t just stand there! Either go find out what’s going on, or help me wake everyone else up.”
Blaise had been lucky this year. He was a Slytherin, but his father was dead and his mother wasn’t connected to any Death Eaters, so he’d gone largely unnoticed by almost everyone. He hadn’t been chosen to torture the younger students, but he hadn’t been watched with suspicion either. Draco could still see the fear in his eyes though, unmasked as he fought through the last vestiges of sleep to find yet another way to stay safe.
Draco ran to Greg first, and then to Vince. He shook them both roughly awake, saying, “Get up, get up, get ready,” while Blaise woke Theo. Vince protested in his sleep, mumbling about not taking orders from a Malfoy anymore, but Draco snatched his blanket away from him and hissed, “The castle may be under attack, you idiot, I’m trying to help you,” then stormed out into the common room to find the other members of his house already starting to gather.
Eventually, Slughorn appeared, and ushered his house to the Great Hall, babbling about safety and evacuations and fighting, but Draco stopped following him almost immediately. He didn’t want to go where everyone else was, and he didn’t want to evacuate. He didn’t want to be stuck in the thick of things, and he didn’t want to be taken too far away from Potter. Vince and Greg followed him when he turned down a corridor at random, and they kept following him until theirs were the only footsteps he could hear.
It was eerie, being in the castle when it was so quiet. It felt like everything was holding its breath, and Draco would have shivered had he not been still suffused with warmth. Then, the silence was broken by a high, cold voice, the same one that haunted Draco’s nightmares.
“I know you are preparing to fight.” Draco was gripped with a hopelessness so intense he wasn’t sure he would survive it. There was never going to be a world in which he could be safe or happy. No matter who won, no matter how Draco survived, some part of him was going to be killed. He would spend the rest of his life living in fear and never taking a full breath again, cold all the time and unable to let his guard drop for even a moment. Or he would be labelled a traitor, his father would disown him, and he would still be frozen because there was no universe in which his soulmate could possibly want him. No matter who won, Draco was going to lose. “Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight.”
Draco ran.
The fiendfyre was hot, but being pressed against Potter was like holding on to the sun. Draco thought he was going to choke on it, all of it, and when Potter left him in the corridor he went clammy all over. His grief over Vince was tripping around in his mind, still in too much shock to understand what it meant but settling over him like the winter’s first frost anyway. His chest, where he had been clinging tight to Potter’s back, now felt like it had been doused with ice water in his absence. Yet Potter was still there, in the castle, and Draco couldn’t escape that warmth, couldn’t freeze it out no matter what else happened.
As it turned out, Draco wouldn’t need to. The warmth of his soulmate’s presence, living and breathing and fighting so close at hand, wouldn’t be frozen out by Draco. It wouldn’t be cooled by grief, or chilled in fear. The heat of Potter’s presence, and the bond between the two of them, would be snatched away in a moment by pure evil instead, and the pain of being separated from one’s soulmate not by miles, but by death, was far worse than anything Draco could have imagined.
He fell to his knees in the corridor, his mind narrowed to one single, hopeless thought.
“Harry.”