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He ducked his head and made to slink out of the common room as soon as he saw her approaching.
A firm hand on his wrist stopped him in his tracks.
Reluctantly, he turned around to face Pansy. Her dark eyes bored into him, worry glinting prominently within its depths. She stared him down determinedly, pinning him in place with her gaze alone.
“Draco, hey. You look… tired. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He pressed his lips together. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” she snapped, self-control slipping for only a moment before she breathed out and her voice softened again. “You don’t look fine. At all. Just tell me what’s wrong, Draco. What’s going on?”
He shook his hand out of her grasp and ignored the tightness in her eyes. “Don’t ask. I said I’m fine, Pansy. Stop worrying. Just… let me have my space, okay?”
He didn’t stop to take in her reaction. He knew his words would hurt her. And seeing that would hurt him. He was hurting enough already.
“Just leave me alone,” he repeated again over his shoulder before storming out of the common room and disappearing through the portrait door.
It was roughly three months into sixth year, and everything at Hogwarts felt off, like the castle had inhaled too much dark magic and was struggling to hold it in. Students whispered in corners. The houses seemed more segregated than ever. Professors grew twitchier. Spells grew crueler. The air itself felt colder.
Draco Malfoy, meanwhile, was quietly imploding, with no one around to witness him burn and no one to care.
And why would they? Draco had never given anyone reason enough to think twice about him. Fire and acid, that was all he was—anyone who got close enough to him got branded by his acid tongue, and for those lucky few who stood immune, his lineage, his values, his bad luck and worse personality, his political and social positions, his pride, and his cowardice more than took care of them.
Draco was smoking embers and pretty flames—he burned bright and rose tall, but he was nothing more than something to admire from a distance, and everyone at the castle had long since known it. He knew it. Draco was a Malfoy, and Malfoys stood alone. Malfoys were singular, special, leagues above the rest. They bowed to no one and were second to none—none, that is, unless a powerful Dark Lord came along with visions of setting the world to rights and magic burning bright in his bone-white fists, and then exceptions were quietly written into every Malfoy rule and sixteen-year-old sons were handed over to said Dark Lord to do his bidding.
Draco wasn’t bitter. He wasn’t.
He was fucking petrified.
It had been months since that terror-soaked summer he’d spent confined within the Manor, but Draco was yet to get the image of his mother swallowed whole by the Dark Lord’s twelve-foot snake familiar to stop haunting his waking moments. The memory came to him in flashes and bursts, always in moments where he was most unguarded, most unprepared to acclimatise himself to the horror of it all. Nothing more than an imagining, but it felt so real. The screams of his mother, abruptly muffled by Nagini’s hinging jaw; the grotesque distention of the snake’s frame in the shape of her silhouette.
And so, Draco stopped letting his guard down at all.
It was a false memory, seared into Draco’s broken mind by the Dark Lord himself directly after the first time he’d been Crucioed. The threat in it was implicit, bordering on heavy-handed. There were several memories like it rattling around in his head, each imprinted in his consciousness directly after a torture session.
He didn’t have to question the consequences of his inaction should he cock up the mission assigned to him by the Dark Lord—if he failed, Narcissa Malfoy would be fed like a rat to the Dark Lord’s pet snake. She’d be sliced into even slabs of meat and hung out for the werewolves to feast on after the full moon. She’d be wrapped in chains and burned at the stake like the witches of old, and the Dark Lord would lounge in his throne and watch her burn for entertainment while he laughed and laughed and laughed.
What the Dark Lord was asking him to do, it was… impossible. Unthinkable. Undoable.
But nonetheless, they were Draco’s orders.
I task you, Draco Lucius Malfoy, to take the life of Albus Dumbledore and lead my Death Eaters into the castle where Harry Potter lies under his protection. You, young Malfoy, will herald Hogwarts’ fall and champion the rise of the Dark. You, and only you.
On most days, Draco couldn’t fathom what he was being tasked to do. He wasn’t a killer. On what planet could he consider himself one, a coward like him? Draco may be mean, but Salazar, he wasn’t sociopathic. He didn’t like pain. He didn’t like blood. He couldn’t stomach the thought of murder—couldn’t even kill a Doxy. Couldn’t even stomp a beetle. He’d always let Pansy deal with the insects and pests they'd come across during their time at the castle, too frozen with panic to really be of help. He most certainly couldn’t kill Albus Dumbledore, one of the most powerful Light wizards in Magical Britain, and Merlin, his own headmaster.
On rarer days—the truly depressing ones—his orders were all that anchored him to the real world. He’d walk, sleep and breathe them, holding onto his mantra with iron-grip fists, muttering it under his breath till he could think of nothing else.
Kill Dumbledore. Bring in the Death Eaters. Seize the castle.
And all the while, those sickening memories of his mother, cruelly implanted, spun webs of terror into the deepest recesses of his mind.
They haunted him in his dreams.
They slammed into him every breakfast spent in the Great Hall, every time he spied Albus Dumbledore placidly sipping on pumpkin juice while the students fought over access to the morning newspapers and their daily dose of grisly headlines.
They came to him in History of Magic class when he was bored out of his mind and tempted to succumb to exhaustion, all while Binns droned on in the background about suffering and revolutions.
They snuck up on him while he sequestered himself in the Restricted Section of the library with his books and his spells and his desperation.
They left him restless when he was passed out on the floor of the Room of Requirement after ten-hour all-nighters spent hunched in front of the broken Vanishing Cabinet, fruitlessly trying to bring it to life.
They caused him to stumble on the uneven flagstones while he scoured the empty hallways and abandoned sections within the castle, frantic in his search for an unguarded escape from its confining walls. A passageway. A tunnel. A secret maze. Something he could use to give passage to the storm of Death Eaters waiting to breach Hogwarts’ impenetrable defences when it came time for the beginning of battle, when it came time for the Dark Lord’s call.
He found nothing.
The nightmares kept haunting, haunting, haunting.
And Draco kept breaking and breaking.
Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
Skip food. Skip sleep. Repeat.
It was all the same to him these days.
Until it all came to a head one quiet Saturday afternoon, fresh off a two-hour detention spent in Professor McGonagall’s disapproving presence. McGonagall had never liked him on a good day, but she had always been fair to all of her students regardless of their house associations. It was something that made him quite like his professor, despite her unfortunate Gryffindor affiliations.
Today, in detention, he’d seen that sense of fairness tested—he’d seen her control slipping and hints of her disdain showing through. At him, at his choices, at the sleeve of his left arm which he’d always kept carefully buttoned down.
By now, Draco was pretty sure that the rumours of him joining the Dark Lord had flown around the school at least twice. No one could ever confirm it, of course, but the gossip was enough to satiate. It was only expected, after all. What else would the Malfoy heir do but follow in the footsteps of his father? This was what Draco had been birthed for. It was his fate. His only purpose.
If only they all knew how little he cared for the Malfoy name right now.
It was proving to be yet another monotone afternoon fit only for self-loathing. Draco didn’t mind the self-loathing. After all these months mired in it, he’d come to expect the oncoming wisps of misery that dulled his mind—had come to even welcome it. But then he glanced out the window and spied the final trickles of students escaping Hogwarts’ grounds and remembered what day it was.
It was a Hogsmeade weekend.
The Hogsmeade weekend.
The day his plan against Dumbledore was put into action.
Merlin. Merlin. Somewhere in Hogsmeade, right at this very moment, a freshly-Imperiused Madam Rosmerta could be choosing the first seventh year she set eyes on to deliver Draco’s cursed necklace to Dumbledore. A student he might know. A student he may not know. Whose life had Draco chosen to damn today? He wouldn’t even find out until the deed was done.
Draco felt very little remorse for the compulsion spell he’d put on Pettigrew at the end of the summer. It had been a spell of his own creation. The spell itself caused no harm—it would simply compel the rat to scurry down to The Three Broomsticks at a day of Draco’s choosing and place the Imperius curse on Rosmerta. And Pettigrew was truly a rat in every sense of the word—he reminded Draco of himself, in a way, minus a beating heart, a working moral compass, and every last shred of dignity. Draco had seen firsthand the things Pettigrew had willingly done to the muggles imprisoned in Malfoy Manor. One more bad deed, though unwillingly performed, couldn’t possibly mar his soul any more than it already had been.
The seventh year, though… Merlin.
Merlin.
He truly was despicable.
It hit him all at once then, how utterly and completely he’d fucked himself over. He was in too deep. He’d gone too far. He was about to kill Dumbledore.
He wanted out of this nightmare.
This was where Pansy had found him, crumpled on the dirty floor of an empty hallway not even three turns from the Transfiguration classroom. Draco didn’t even know he’d curled into a ball. He didn’t even know where he was. All he could think of was what he’d done. What was about to be done. Was there a way he could take it all back?
“Draco?” came the soft voice over his shoulder. “Merlin, Draco.”
He flinched at the raw emotion in the familiar voice of his best friend. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-best friend? He couldn’t imagine that Pansy wanted anything to do with him anymore, after how epically he’d ballsed up everything between them.
How callously he’d pushed her away.
And yet here she was, feather-light hand on his back, a glimpse of her glossy black combat boots in his peripheral vision, the shadow of her slight frame looming over him.
Draco couldn’t hold back a sob anymore.
“Oh, fucking hell, Draco,” Pansy snapped and crouched before him, and all at once, the comforting features of the face he’d avoided for months filled his vision. Pansy’s blood-red lips were pursed tightly, her forehead crinkled with worry. And though she’d snapped at him, the look on her face was undeniably soft.
“I’m fine,” he murmured automatically. He’d said those two words so often in response to that look that it was practically an ingrained habit. The way Pansy’s nose flared made it pretty clear what she thought of this habit.
“Mm hmm, yeah. Right. You know what? This has gone on long enough,” she muttered, helping him uncurl and directing him to sit more comfortably against the wall. “I’ve had it with your drama, and your delusions, and your irritating yet persistent belief that you need to battle the world alone with no support. ”
Draco blinked at her.
“Me! I’m your support!” she cried in disbelief. “I’m right here! Are you bloody joking? If you’d stopped pushing me away for even a moment to see that, you’d know this already.”
His throat felt tight all of a sudden. “I don’t want to involve you in this. It’s too dangerous. Too much. I can handle it on my own.”
“Yeah, and how’s that been going for you?” she retorted, settling down against the wall beside him. “Look at you, Draco. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You look like death. I never see you for meals, Blaise tells me you’re sneaking out after curfew almost every night, and Salazar knows you’re behind in all your classes. If you’re really handling things, you’re doing a bloody bang-up job of it on your own.”
He swallowed. “Okay. So maybe I’m in over my head. It’s still too dangerous to involve you.”
“At this point, it’s too dangerous not to involve me. You’re gonna kill yourself if you keep at it like this. Do you want that?”
Draco kept his gaze steadily on his hands, on his boots, on the specks of dirt on the floor. Anything but on Pansy. “Is that… really so bad? If it killed me?” He lets out a wry laugh. “At least then it would be over.”
A long, telling silence on his right let him know that it was the wrong thing to say.
True, but wrong nonetheless.
He didn’t want to see her flinch at his words, see the pain that must be blooming on her face. Even after all these months of keeping her arms’ length—safe from his choices, safe from him —he knew that seeing her in pain would still hurt him. He hated that, even after all this time, he could still do that to her.
Still set fire to the people he loved.
Salazar, he didn’t deserve to let her pick up his broken pieces. Why was she here , and not running far, far away from him after the way he’d broken her heart? Why did she still care? No one ever cared. Not for him. Not forever.
Their breakup earlier that year hadn’t been dramatic, just… inevitable. A few too many arguments. Too much pressure. Too much ego—mostly on his end. Too many secrets. The kind of teenage love that burned bright and then cracked under its own weight. Pansy had expected that they’d find their way back eventually, he knew, in that lazy pureblood way they were beholden to abide by, but he always knew he couldn’t give that to her. She was owed more than him —someone who, at the very least, was still whole.
He needed to push her away from him again. Keep her safe. Keep her far.
But his hands trembled at the thought, and he… he couldn’t.
He couldn’t.
They sat in that broken silence for what felt like hours, the poison of his admission still hanging between them.
Draco didn’t want to die, not really. He still had things to live for—he still wanted to grow up and explore the world, the real world and not the fabrication his father had handed to him since he was five years old and far too impressionable. He wanted to give his mother the life she deserved after all this heartache, that quiet life she longed for in a simple countryside cottage in France. He wanted to make something useful of his life in a way he’d never had the opportunity to consider when he was younger—a Healer, maybe, or a Potioneer. Something to help people, something that saved lives, where he could delude himself into believing that his good deeds could in any way undo the damage he’d done to so many lives along the way.
It was all a fantasy, of course. But he wanted it nonetheless. Wanted to live to see it all happen.
But he couldn’t find a way to tell Pansy any of that. Didn’t know if there was a way he could.
Pansy seemed to know that, if the lack of recrimination was anything to go by.
They sat in silence for the longest time while Draco’s mind whirled and fizzled, until an eternity later, Pansy spoke.
“I love you,” she said, soft yet certain. Her gaze was fixed on a point ahead of her instead of him, but something in him told her that it was because she was trying not to scare him off and not because she was scared of him. “Despite everything you may have done. Despite everything you have yet to do. Despite everything we’ve been through, and everything we’ve yet to face. I don’t care about your orders, Draco. I care about you. You realise that, right?”
Despite her admission, he couldn’t help but prod at her conviction. It was instinct, masochistic guilt—the satisfaction of prodding at a loose tooth. He hated himself even as he said it.
“Even after… everything? After us?”
He waited for her to come to her senses, to realise that she was better off leaving him and them and all their baggage in the past where he belonged, but she didn’t.
“Yes,” she said simply. “You’re a complete idiot. And don’t think I won’t give you hell later for the way you’ve treated me these past few months. But you’re my best friend, you idiot. Always were, always will be, even after… well, us. And you’re an even bigger idiot if you think that just because our relationship got complicated, I would let it die. We’re better than that and you know it.”
“I didn’t dare to,” Draco responded honestly. “I couldn’t give myself that much credit.”
Pansy snorted. “Idiot. You’re such a drama queen. I’m gonna make you apologise for that later, you wanker. But for now, let’s just… fix this. All of this.”
For the first time since their conversation had begun, Draco turned to seek out his best friend’s face. He found her smiling at him, her mascara smudged ever-so-slightly yet her eyes dry and fond. Despite himself, he smiled back. He’d missed her more than he’d let himself feel.
She nudged him gently and he nudged her back, and deep within his chest, he could feel one of the many angry, broken pieces of himself locking back into place. For the first time since that fateful summer at the Manor, living under the Dark Lord’s thumb, he felt himself experiencing some remote semblance of peace.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Pansy said, her voice gentle. “We’re going to start small. You’re going to eat dinner with me in the Great Hall tonight. You’re going to get some sleep. You’re going to stop skipping class. And every day, you’re going to let me check on you.”
“Every day?”
“Every day,” she repeated firmly.
Draco thought about it for a second. “I can do that.”
“Good,” she replied with a forceful nod. “And then, once you’re ready, you’re going to tell me what you’re working on. And you’re going to let me help.”
He shook his head at that, his stomach tightening at the thought. “I can’t tell you. It’s not… You can’t know. You’ll never look at me the same way again.”
She froze for a second as the confession escaped his lips and then whipped her head towards him forcefully, her straight black locks bobbing against her pale cheek. She looked like a tamed force of nature like this, fierce and proud and regal, even though she was hunkered down on the floor beside him. Her chin jutted out and her dark eyes blazed with something so final and certain that it made his breath catch in his throat.
“I’m only going to say this once, so listen well, Malfoy, and you better remember this for life,” she declared in a voice that sounded just as final. “ Nothing you say, do, or don’t do while under the Dark Lord’s command will ever make me look at you differently. You could kill half this school if you’d like, I don’t care. It’s not you, Draco. I know you. I know what you are and aren’t capable of, and no matter what you’re thinking right now, you’re not a monster. You’re not like him. You’re not like any of them.”
Draco felt his eyes welling up again at her fierce speech. If only she knew how close her offhand statement was to the truth. With the nature of his task, with the Death Eaters he’d be directly responsible for letting into the castle, killing students was definitely on the table. As was killing headmasters.
He didn’t think he could ever, ever confess to her that Dumbledore’s soon-to-be death was on his hands.
No matter how much she loved him, no matter how much he knew she loved him, he could never reveal to her just how far into the depths of evil the Dark Lord—fuck, no, Voldemort—had pushed him. How far he’d given in.
Even though he’d never once had a choice in the matter, the responsibility for his actions were still all his.
Pansy might refuse to believe it, but he could never let himself forget.
“I hate this,” he hissed in defeat—the first time he’d voiced his true terror aloud. To himself. To anybody. “I hate all of it. I hate that I can’t breathe without wondering if today’s the day I fuck it all up and put everyone I care about in danger. That I’m terrified of failing, but even more terrified of not failing. That I can’t sleep because I see my mother dying every time I close my eyes. I didn’t ask for this. But if I don’t do it, they’ll kill my mother. They’ll kill us. And I can’t… P-Pansy, I can’t…”
He wanted to be ashamed of the way his voice cracked. Of the way his lip wobbled. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t care, not when the terror felt so real. He’d been spinning out of control all year long, but he’d never confronted that loss of control so starkly until now.
But there was Pansy again, pulling him out of the mental hole he’d dug for himself in that subtle, casual way she was good at. She tugged him into her by his arm and burrowed her way into his side until her head rested perfectly into the crook of his neck, and her presence grounded him. It may not have been enough to fix his problems, but it was enough to be what he needed.
She always knew what he needed.
He sobbed quietly into her hair, body shaking and trembling against her slight but strong frame, and she simply let him.
“I get it,” she murmured like a secret into his collarbone, her hands forming a warm vice around his arm, “I understand, Draco. I can’t tell you that it will be okay, because it won’t. We’re not idealists. But you’re not alone anymore. You have me. Even if there’s no one else in your corner, you’ll always have me. And whatever comes, we’ll face it together. Okay?”
And with his best friend warm against his side and her sure words ringing in his ear, just for a moment, Draco let himself believe.
“Okay,” he whispered back, and felt her smile against his skin.