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"I- I don't know," he says, voice barely above a whisper, face an emotionless mask- one practiced to precision and gazing back in every mirror. He abruptly turns away from the only face he may know better. The face that he first outlined in Madam Malkin's seven years ago and has haunted him every year since. With eyes as stark green as the very killing curse he survived.
Sometimes Draco wonders if that's where the magic went. If all the Dark Lord's power, his rage high on murder, was absorbed into those eyes. It was the same face he'd once believed he could befriend…a long time ago.
Draco made all the wrong choices, he's well aware now, hindsight being 20/20 and all that, so he knows it started the day he mocked Ron Weasley- who had somehow done what Draco had wanted to accomplish for years in ten minutes.
It seems green was his color even before he was placed into Slytherin. Envy follows Draco everywhere, like a shadow, and the grass is always greener just out of his reach. His feet would never get to feel the soft, emerald grass, but rather the burnt-out, colorless death that stabbed at his skin, unforgiving. Green grass was meant for green eyes. For perfect smiles. For heroes. For Harry Potter.
For the boy sitting in front of him, whose life was in Draco's hands. Because of-fucking-course Draco knew the Golden Boy when he saw him, he's not an idiot. But he can't- he won't-
"It's not him, can't possibly be." A smirk tips at his lips and he can't help but scoff. It's derisive and outwardly pointed towards Potter, but his self-hatred aims true. "Potter's shorter, and his eyes are more of a swamp green."
"Draco, are you certain? If we are the ones to give Harry Potter to the Dark Lord-" Draco cuts his aunt off.
"If we are the ones to summon the Dark Lord over some random boy who just so happens to have a similar hair color to the Boy Who Lived, we'll be killed. I am certain," he repeats, eyes firmly avoiding the calculative gaze of Hermione Granger on the other side of the room, along with the shocked expression of Weasley.
This turns out to be an utterly fruitless endeavor, however, when bloody chaos ensues immediately after. Three things happen in rapid succession:
1. Bellatrix notices some sword held by one of the snatchers, freaks out about her vault and ends up asking Draco to take Not-Harry Potter and Not-Weasley down to their dungeon.
2. Not-Harry's stinging hex is wearing off and Not-Weasley looks like he's about to protest- violently- and probably screw over any chance they have of escaping.
3. Draco steps in, quickly dragging the two idiots down the stairs feeling very much like a mother dragging her misbehaving children by their ears.
"You're both terrible at this y'know," he drawls, leaning against the, frankly, dingy stone wall. Why they don't have anything nicer down here, Draco couldn't fathom, but he mourns the back of his newly crisp, cleaned suit.
He can feel Potter's stare burning into him. His skin crawls under its intensity and for a moment he actually wonders if Potter was somehow powerful enough to pull off nonverbal, wandless legilimency. Draco doesn't think he'd be surprised. A part of him wonders what it would be like. If Potter could read his thoughts, view his perspective of their memories where Harry got it all and Draco stood and watched. Always standing still. Always obeying the wishes and whims of his parents. Always stuck in the same body as his 11-year-old self. Never growing. Never changing. Never keeping pace with the world around him.
Maybe then Potter would understand. Maybe then he'd stay still long enough for Draco to catch up.
In the end, he doesn't think it matters. Draco was always a natural at occlumency.
Apparently, Harry agrees as he shakes off his frown and turns to Weasley, grabbing him before he flung himself at Draco, face almost as red as his hair.
"Ron, don't. If we want to get out of here-" Again, Draco shivers at the sensation of Potter's glance, but he remains stubbornly uninterested, studying his nails- "we need to have a plan. We can't give away Hermione's cover and we can't call any attention to ourselves."
Draco leaves them to it, the sound of Harry's pacing echoing down the narrow hall and following him all the way up the stairs.
Whatever Draco was expecting, he honestly shouldn't have jumped out of his skin when Weasley, in all his fiery glory, came charging out from around the corner not half an hour later. Pettigrew had just been sent down to retrieve the goblin, and in Draco’s humble opinion, had been taking too long anyways. Not that anyone else had noticed, all too busy soaking up the screams of a supposed Muggleborn.
It’s a weird feeling, but he can’t really hear it. At some point in the past couple of months, his brain decided to stop listening to any of it. Other sensations will block it out. He doesn’t hear Hermione scream or cry. But he feels it. It’s a weird feeling, but it echoes around the room and shakes his bones. He can feel the vibrations of pain’s presence in the room under his feet and in his pounding headache. It’s a weird feeling, the nausea that pushes and pulls him in the sound’s direction like waves under a boat. Simultaneously being forced to stand rooted to the floor and wanting nothing more than to never move a foot again. The end result is the same. He’s always staying still. He never moves.
Not far behind his friend, Potter emerges from the stairwell looking just as much of a knight in shining armor as always, with Pettigrew’s wand gripped under white knuckles and broad shoulders.
The room erupts into chaos like everything had simply been waiting motionless before they showed up. Still, Draco doesn’t move. It’s not from shock or fear. Harry Potter was always an inevitable he saw coming. But somehow, he’s still never ready for his arrival.
Harry Potter is all action. Reckless, daring stupidity. His eyes dart around the room that they all stand in. He disarms people left and right, catching one of the wands to throw it to Weasley as they work around each other in sync. There’s so much happening at once, spells are being thrown, yells are directed across the crowd, and yet it may as well all be happening in slow motion to Draco. Not once does he move from where he stands in the middle of it all. A handful of wands are handed to him at some point during the commotion. He couldn’t care less.
A creaking noise comes from above. With a single glance upwards, Draco can see a house elf swinging on the chandelier. A moment of confusion around the room is all that’s needed for the house elf to find the right screw and drop the chandelier from where it hung on the ceiling onto his Auntie Bella, who just so happened to be standing directly underneath it.
Weasley grabs Granger out of the way- it’s all very romantic and Draco applauds the two on finding such a thing in a war, and then Potter is right in front of him. All stark lines and impulsive bravery. Wild nature and gentle hands. Ridiculous Boy Who Lived. What’s even more ridiculous is the brief moment where Draco imagines Harry Potter was there to do just as Weasley had done for Granger. An aggressive and desperate shove out of danger’s way. A violent pull to finally set him in motion.
Instead, Potter grabs Draco’s hands. His fingers are calloused and dirty in comparison to Draco’s, perfectly manicured and recently washed. A strange observation before the touch is gone and so are the wands that had previously been held in his hands. Draco looks up, meeting those green, green, green eyes for what feels like the hundredth and the first time in the past hour. Harry Potter’s eyebrows furrow and his lips frown as if he’s sitting in Potions class again trying to figure out what Snape had written on the chalkboard despite wearing those ridiculous glasses.
Tilting his head and raising an expectant eyebrow, Draco frowns back. Finally, for a moment, Harry Potter stands still with Draco Malfoy. Perhaps, for a moment, he knows what it feels like.
A moment passes.
Draco stands still.
Potter turns away.
The fight continued like it had never stopped. Potter and Weasley make eye contact and come to a silent agreement in between spells and pointed looks. The Golden Trio meet up on the opposite side of the room along with the house elf who Draco now recognizes as Dobby, his family’s former elf, until Harry Potter, of course.
They’re all grabbing onto each other in a desperate attempt to make sure they’re all accounted for before they make their escape. Draco looks across to the other side of the room, his father is stupefied on the ground, his mother is no longer in the room, and Bellatrix stands, a gleam of reckless determination still in her eyes. In the last second before they apparate away, she throws a small dagger across the room. Their figures swirl together, the knife being pulled into the mix, and right when they’re about to be teleported through space and time, a hand reaches out.
It’s calloused and dirty and it wraps around his own which is perfectly manicured and recently washed. A strange observation that he barely has time to make before he feels the pull that sets him into motion. So sudden and sure, Draco doesn’t even fight the way the apparition turns his world on its axis.