Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So? What is your formal diagnosis?”

“Well, the curse is broken. Just in the worst way possible.”

Headmaster Tom Riddle, in jade green robes light enough for the bright summer morning, hummed. Black Lake looked very much the same as it had only a few weeks ago, but even he, who’d never been formally trained in cursebreaking, could sense a difference in how it felt. Where once the magic rippled smoothly with the surface, it now snapped and snarled, almost boiling. It felt dangerous in the same way a heap of shrapnel left behind after an explosion felt dangerous, all jagged metal and broken glass. On balance, it didn’t seem like an improvement.

“It used to melt flesh and boil blood but now it’s…shall we say, less predictable.”

“Have you done any experimentation?”

“A bit. Not with anything alive, of course. But the house-elves donated a few raw chickens and let it suffice to say that melting flesh and boiling blood would have been an improvement.”

Riddle tried briefly to imagine what could be worse than the original curse on the Lake, then stopped when he decided it was not a productive use of time.

“What’s your professional recommendation, then?”

When he looked over, Bill Weasley was ruffling a hand through his hair and frowning.

“I don’t know. Build a dam, drain the bloody thing? But even then…”

Riddle hummed.

“Listen, Headmaster, I know the Lake was cursed before my time, but it wasn’t long before my time. I met people who were there when…when he…”

“Yes. He made quite an impression.”

“If he had a way he intended for the curse to be lifted,” Weasley continued, “then I really think the only way to fix the Lake permanently is to work backwards from that. With the magic fractured this badly, even the intended route may not work correctly, but it’s the only safe place to start. If you have a way to contact him…”

“I don’t.”

“Really? Not even you?” Weasley shifted nervously from foot to foot. “I guess I sort of assumed that, since he was Smokevigil…”

Riddle shook his head. “To be honest, Weasley, I can’t even confirm if he’s alive or dead.”

They both fell silent for a moment, staring out across the Lake. Perhaps it was Riddle’s imagination, but he thought he saw, just for a moment, a long tentacle briefly break the surface of the water before vanishing again into the depths. He’d seen the Giant Squid before, only once, when the man who would later become his husband insisted they feed it toast together. He wondered if it was still in good health.

“Well,” Weasley eventually continued, “Abigail altered the protective ward around it. They go all the way to the ground this time.”

Riddle almost smirked.

“And they’re also heftier. It’s not a permanent solution, but it’ll stop students from getting too close.”

“I appreciate it.”

“There are a few specialist cursebreakers I can recommend who might be able to help with the curse as it is now, but they’ll cost an arm and a leg, and honestly, when it’s this badly fractured, they don’t even guarantee successful removal.”

“Well, owl me their contact information regardless, when you have the time,” Riddle said. “Putting this sort of thing under a bubble will only keep for so long.”

“Of course. And do let me know if anything changes. I imagine I’ll be back in Egypt soon and unable to do much, but Hogwarts was my home for seven years. I’d like to know how it is.”

Riddle nodded. In general, he’d never been able to entirely shake the sense of confusion when people talked about things they loved, but with Hogwarts specifically, he understood. This castle, these grounds, the institution itself, was one of two things in Tom Riddle’s world that he loved completely.

And as it happened, the other approached him just as Bill Weasley departed.

“Still no luck?” he guessed.

Riddle sighed heavily. “Draining the Lake would be bad, right? Unethical?”

Hagrid paused. When Riddle looked over at him, his brow was furrowed in confusion.

“Drainin’ the…?”

“To remove the curse,” Riddle explained. “Building a dam to drain the Lake would be…bad.”

“Yeah,” Hagrid said slowly, “that’d be bad. Yeh’d be killin’ all the merfolk, fer a start, the grindylows, the Giant Squid…”

“Right, yes. Unethical.” Riddle was better, these days, at knowing right from wrong, but he was still glad he had Hagrid around to keep him in check. “Murder is bad.”

“We’ll see it fixed one day,” Hagrid assured him, laying one large hand on Riddle’s back. Unthinking, Riddle leaned into the warmth of it, and they stood together for a while in silence, watching the sunlight shimmer on the water’s surface.

After a time, Hagrid asked, “So, do I finally get ter know where we’re goin’ this year?”

They’d made a game, in the years since they’d married, of choosing where to celebrate their anniversary. In theory, they swapped the duty every year, picking the destination and arranging all the itinerary in secret to surprise the other—but in practice, Hagrid was terrible at secrets, and Riddle was a little too good at them, so how surprised the other actually ended up being always varied.

“Yes. Well, Headmistress Nishida Hideki invited me to Mahoutokoro this summer for a cultural exchange—comparing courses, student work loads, that kind of thing—and so I thought I’d do that for a few days, then head north with you to spend the rest of the month in Hokkaido.”

“Ooh, Hokkaido.” Hagrid’s eyes all but glimmered with excitement. “Yeh know, ice dragons live ‘round Mount Asahi, or that’s what I’ve heard, at least…”

Riddle chuckled. “Of course that’s what you’d be excited about.”

“An’ now that I think about it,” Hagrid continued, “there’s lots of hot springs also, aren’t there?”

Riddle’s amusement faded to warm fondness—the kind he never felt for anyone but Hagrid, and his constant reminder that love was worth all the vulnerability it required. “Quite a few, yes.”

“There are worse ways ter while away an evenin’, I bet.”

“There certainly are,” Riddle said, and leaned up when Hagrid leaned down, meeting him in a sweet, lingering kiss.

“Lookin’ forward ter it,” Hagrid rumbled, and when he started away from the Lake and back toward the castle, Riddle followed. The improved wards around the Lake would be fine for now, at least.

Besides, Draco Malfoy couldn’t possibly break the curse on Black Lake twice, right?

Chapter Text

“Er, I think we’re in the wrong place.”

“We’re not.”

Draco was ready to argue the point further. After all, the place the Portkey had taken them looked nothing like the dilapidated little rowhouse in which Draco had grown up. There was fresh paint on the walls, curtains on all the windows, clean rugs laid out over what looked like real hardwood floors, and Draco didn’t see a single mouse or cockroach. Surely this couldn’t be 4 Rue d’Avranches.

But Aunt Marie shrugged off her coat like she always did when she came home, and hung it up in a closet in the same place it always was. And slowly, Draco realized that for how utterly unrecognizable it was, it had the same layout. Stairs to the right of the door, front hallway leading down to the kitchen, sitting room off to the left. It seemed impossible, but…

“What…happened?” Draco asked, bewildered.

Aunt Marie made an unhappy sound as she closed the closet door. “Renovations.”

“You renovated?” There was no way she could have afforded that. Some nights, they’d gone without dinner, so how—?

Aunt Marie’s answer was terse and clipped. “After your godfather’s gentle persuasion last summer, I finally went and used some of the stipend your bloody father set up for your care.”

Draco stared. He recalled the argument she’d had with Severus Snape, despite the fact that it had been over a year ago now, if only because it had all been so memorable. He did remember some mention of a monthly stipend, but Draco had assumed she’d been misusing it, not failing to use it at all.

“You’d never even been taking the money?” Draco asked, bewildered.

“Of course I wasn’t!” Aunt Marie snapped, turning furious eyes to Draco. “It was in Galleons. British magical currency? To make use of it, I’d have to—to—!”

And then it clicked: “You’d have to have it changed.” And only a witch or a wizard could have done that.

Aunt Marie’s face was scarlet with fury, and, Draco suspected, no small amount of shame. Draco sighed as she stormed off down the hallway and into the kitchen. Since learning that she was a Squib—and learning what a Squib was, and how the magical world treated them—a lot of her behavior had begun to make more sense. The complete avoidance of, and even disdain for, magic; the refusal to tell Draco anything about his family or history; the resentment she’d had for Draco all his life…

It didn’t excuse any of it, but it did give some rather important context to it, which made Draco just a tiny bit sympathetic.

“Everything in here smells new,” Jack, Draco’s cat, said from his carrier. He was pawing at the bars. “Can I come out? I want to look around.”

Draco hesitated. “Er… Not yet. Not here.”

He followed Aunt Marie into the kitchen. She was banging through the cupboards—a brand new set, Draco noticed, from the ones he’d accidentally thrown her into last summer—grabbing cookware and some spices for dinner. Draco went straight past her toward the sliding door leading into the back garden, which had also been cleaned up in Draco’s absence, when she suddenly barked, “Where are you going?”

Draco’s hand stilled with the back door still half-open. “Er,” he said, “to my shed?”

“You don’t sleep in the shed anymore.” She didn’t sound especially happy about it. “Since I’d rather not have your godfather set me on fire, we had the attic done up. It’s your room now.”

“This place has an attic?”

“Yes, you little brat. Upstairs, turn right. The door on the ceiling pulls down to a ladder.”

Draco had never really spent much time upstairs. He’d never had much cause to—there was only one bedroom up there, which Aunt Marie and Uncle Marc shared, and Draco had always used the bathroom on the ground floor.

So when he climbed the creaky stairs to the upper landing, he felt oddly nervous, like he was breaking a rule, even though he knew he wasn’t. This level had been renovated, too, if the lack of peeling wallpaper and new carpet were anything to go by, and when Draco turned right and looked up—

“Oh.” There was, indeed, a door on the ceiling, right at the end of the hallway, with a little black pull-cord dangling just above his head. Nervously, he reached up and tugged it down.

Wood groaned and steel hissed against steel as the door swung open and a large ladder descended. He couldn’t see much from the vantage, save for hazy golden light across a vaulted ceiling.

He left his trunk in the hall to take up later, as he doubted he could navigate with both his hands full, and instead hauled Jack in his carrier carefully up, step by wary step, until—

“Oh.”

The light he’d seen was streaming in from a large, south-facing window that overlooked the back garden, and also downtown Nantes from a distance. The view was so nice that, for a moment, Draco couldn’t quite make himself believe that it was visible from Rue d’Avranches.

The room itself was huge, taking up the majority of the footprint of the house, large enough for a desk and bookshelf and double bed and armoire and even a cast-iron pellet stove for cold weather. The walls were freshly painted an earthy green, the wood floor covered by a plush brown rug—the window even had a little seat built into it, lined with cushions and stacked with blankets and pillows.

For a long time, Draco couldn’t move. He couldn’t believe that this room, that all this space, was his.

“Let me out!” Jack urged. “I want to smell!”

Draco swallowed against the emotion welling in his throat—he steadfastly refused to let himself cry over this—and then bent down to let Jack out. The little silver tabby immediately darted for the window, leaping up onto the seat and kneading eagerly at the cushions.

“This place is great!” was Jack’s immediate assessment.

“Yeah,” Draco agreed, his voice coming out a little faint. “It… It really is.”

Draco unpacked slowly as Jack set to sniffing every inch of the room. When he’d stepped off the Hogwarts Express, he’d been bracing himself for another few months of sweating through threadbare sheets in the shed out back, of missing meals in the last few days before Uncle Marc got his paycheck, of dreaming desperately of the Slytherin common room till he finally returned to it in September. The one thing he hadn’t been ready for was…comfort.

Once his books and things were arranged as he liked them, he sat down on the foot of his bed—a real bed, with a metal frame and a quilt and everything—and stared at his surroundings, trying to wrap his head around it all.

Draco would miss Hogwarts. He’d miss his friends, the castle, magic, the Slytherin dormitory under the Lake, Quidditch. But perhaps this summer wouldn’t have to be consumed by everything he didn’t have. Perhaps things in Nantes would be different from now on.

Hello from Crete!

How’s your summer going so far, Draco? It’s Nantes you live in, isn’t it? I don’t know much about France—or about your life there, come to think of it, despite the fact that I specifically recall asking about it more than once; were you being intentionally cagey?—but I’m mostly sure that Nantes is in the Loire Valley, which is a nice area, isn’t it? What’s the city like? And your aunt and uncle? And don’t you dare dodge the question this time.

My summer is going wonderfully, of course. Mummy promised me an excellent vacation, and she’s certainly delivered. The Mediterranean is so blue that it almost doesn’t seem real, and Greek is a lovely language. I’m tempted to see if I can’t beg another few weeks here!

Please give Jack a big kiss on the forehead for me. I’m sure he’d gotten used to them at Hogwarts, and doubtlessly is already missing them in my absence.

Have a fabulous summer,
Blaise

P.S.: Enclosed are a few pictures of the resort and island. Apologies in advance if they make you seethe with jealousy.

Draco loved his new bedroom, but it was an attic, and in the middle of July, it got intolerably hot in the afternoon. The environment was not conducive to schoolwork, of which he had a large pile to get through before term began again in September, so he was eventually forced to bring it downstairs to the kitchen, within reach of the air con rattling in the window.

He was halfway through his History of Magic essay on Tervingi spellcraft and how it contributed to the sack of Rome when the front door swung open with a groan and Uncle Marc arrived home from his shift at the fish canning factory.

Though Draco had, by then, been home for nearly two weeks, they had managed to avoid one another entirely. Draco hadn’t thought much of it—his shifts usually got longer in the warmer months, so his absence wasn’t too unusual—but when they finally saw each other across the kitchen, they both seemed to realize at the same time that they hadn’t spoken since…before.

Uncle Marc’s expression was wide-eyed and almost frightened for a moment, staring openly at Draco with his eagle feather quill and spellbooks and parchments strewn across the kitchen table, before he deliberately cleared his throat and made his way to the fridge.

Uncle Marc said nothing, so neither did Draco. He slowly returned his attention to his essay, and even managed to scratch out a few more words before, suddenly, the silence broke:

“Welcome home,” Uncle Marc said.

Draco’s writing fell off mid-word. He glanced up in time to see his uncle grab the makings of a sandwich out of the fridge.

“Er,” Draco answered, “thank you.”

The silence came back, even more uncomfortable than before. Uncle Marc began concentrating very hard on assembling his sandwich. And right as Draco began to wonder if perhaps he’d done enough for the night and should go to bed, Uncle Marc spoke again:

“So, you’re a, er, wizard.”

Draco didn’t really know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

Uncle Marc continued, haltingly, “Marie told me everything. Or, well, not everything. The basics. She seems, er…uncomfortable with it all.”

Draco fidgeted nervously with his quill. “Well, yes. That makes sense.”

“Does it? Why?”

All of a sudden, the sandwich on which he’d been so focused was abandoned, and Uncle Marc had situated himself across from Draco at the table.

“Why does she hate magic so much? If I came from this sort of world, I’d never leave it! But she hates it, she can’t get through a single explanation without language foul enough to strip paint.”

“Er…” Draco wasn’t really sure where to begin. He supposed the first step was giving up on his essay for the night. He set his quill down in his textbook to mark the page. “Well, it’s because she’s a Squib.”

“And what’s that?”

“It means she came from a magical family—my, er, father, her brother, her sisters, her parents, they were all magical, but she’s not. And Squibs aren’t… They’re not treated very well. She got kicked out of her family for it.”

“That’s why she never talks about her family,” Uncle Marc said, leaning back in his chair.

“She never told you anything?”

“Nothing, not till you got swept off to England last year and she had to tell me something so I didn’t call the police. At first I thought she was going crazy, but then she came back with money! All this money, pulled right out of nowhere! She spent nearly a quarter of a million francs like it was nothing to renovate this place! Was her family really this rich?”

“Er, well, yes. Apparently the Malfoy family was one of the richest in Britain.”

“And this school you went to!” Uncle Marc scooted his chair forward. “What’s it called?”

She really hadn’t told him anything. “Hogwarts. It’s in Scotland.”

“And they teach you how to do magic there? With your hands?”

They’d been married for nearly twenty years. “No, with a wand.”

“You have a wand?”

“Maybe we should start at the beginning,” Draco said.

Dear Draco,

While it’s not as extravagant as a trip to the white sand beaches of Crete, my parents and I are having a lovely time in Berlin. My father is trying very hard to make it educational, and has dragged me to every museum in the city, it feels like. But my mother is making sure we also go to nice restaurants and see pretty cathedrals and take lovely boat rides down the canals as well. She sends her love, by the way, and wants to know if you’d also like a copy of the Rosier family tree. Apparently that’s your maternal grandmother’s side.

I suppose this is the point where I should ask about how you’re doing in Nantes, but I have a feeling I know the answer. Going back to the home of a Squib so resentful of magic that she refused to tell you it existed at all? I bet it is, at best, awkward.

I’ve sent along a present, by the way. Not for you, for Jack. He’s a good, sweet boy and he deserves it. And the Muggle who sold it to me insisted that the catnip inside it is artisanal, which I didn’t know catnip could be. Perhaps he just didn’t speak English very well? Anyway, I hope Jack loves it!

Write me back soon. I’ll see you in September!

Hugs and kisses,
Pansy

“I hadn’t realized that you spent my entire first year at Hogwarts charming every single person you met,” Draco said as Jack chased the little green mouse toy Pansy had sent him back and forth across the attic floor. “Why do all my friends seem to like you more than me?”

Jack didn’t answer, of course; he was entirely focused on the toy, which was very small and light and rolled easily across wood. Draco laughed when it tumbled under the bookcase, which Jack subsequently plowed face-first into. Then he laughed harder when Jack sat to groom himself aggressively as though he could wash away the embarrassment of running into furniture.

“Keep it down!” Aunt Marie bellowed from the floor below, which drained the joy out of Draco in an instant and made him flinch.

A moment later, Jack jumped up next to him on the bed. “I don’t think I like her very much, this aunt of yours.”

Draco sighed. More quietly, he said, “I’m trying to understand where she’s coming from. Her family was very cruel to her.”

“She’s been cruel to you, too, but you’ve never taken it out on anybody else,” Jack pointed out.

Draco opened his mouth to answer, only to discover that he didn’t know what to say. So he pet Jack instead, which they both seemed to prefer to conversation anyway.

The truth was that a part of Draco was hoping he could get through to Aunt Marie somehow. Whatever else she’d done, she was his father’s sister—and according to Professor Snape, he’d died still wanting her in his life. There must have been something there worth fighting for.

He hoped there was, anyhow. It would be nice to have family—blood family—that wanted him like he wanted them.

“Chin next,” Jack instructed, and Draco smiled and scratched under his chin obediently.

Chapter Text

Draco,

You can expect a visit from me this coming Sunday, probably around noon. Please do not inform your aunt; it would defeat the primary purpose of the trip.

I’ll be bringing a surprise with me.

With love,
Your godfather

P.S.: I hope you’ve at least started on your Potions homework for the summer.

“This whole neighborhood smells very interesting,” Jack informed him. “I think one of your neighbors also has a cat.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” Draco answered. He was mostly sure the little calico he’d seen slinking between the back gardens of Rue d’Avranches every now and then belonged to the Roqueforts next door. But, “I’ve never managed to pet her.”

Jack sniffed along the foot of the front garden fence, striped tail twitching with excitement. It was a bright, beautiful July morning, still early enough to not be oppressively hot, and all the flowers that had gone in during the renovation were blooming and fragrant.

“I bet I could find her,” Jack said.

“I don’t think you should be out alone.”

“Why not? I’ll be very careful. I’ll stay away from the big wheelie things like you said.”

“I’m just… It would have to involve letting you in and out,” Draco said, “through the ground floor. I don’t know if Aunt Marie would like you having free reign of the whole house.”

Jack didn’t say anything, but Draco could tell by the way his ears twitched that he was annoyed. He vanished into a large azalea bush, and Draco returned his attention to the street.

He was anxious to see Professor Snape and had been since the end of his first year only a few weeks ago, when they’d gone their separate ways for the summer. Snape was, Draco supposed, the closest thing he had to family—there was no blood relation, but he’d been good friends with both his parents, and had kept an eye on him all through his early years. And that was all aside from the fact that the man was also his Potions professor and head of house.

Draco was less anxious to make Aunt Marie aware of his presence. The last time they’d been in the same room, they’d had a dreadful argument, which was why Draco was awaiting his arrival in the front garden, where hopefully they could go straight away to somewhere else.

Just as he was wondering where that somewhere else might be—maybe he could convince him to go to the ice cream shop a few blocks away, or even the fancy pâtisserie in the center of town—there was a loud, distinctive crack!

Draco spun, and immediately saw, emerging from between two houses across the street—

“Professor!”

He was unmistakable, even from a distance: Severus Snape was, almost without exception, the tallest, palest, and grimmest-looking man everywhere he went. But after only a month and a half back in Nantes, he was a breath of fresh air.

Draco pushed through the garden gate and raced across the street, but before he could reach him—

“Draco, guess what!”

He did not have the time to guess, or even to say anything. Eileen Snape emerged from behind her father and launched herself into Draco too quickly for him to even notice she’d appeared. Draco barely caught himself before he tumbled onto the pavement.

“I remember who you are!”

It took him a moment to put it all together. “Wait, you do?” He withdrew from her death grip of a hug to look her over. She looked very much the same as the day he’d met her: wild, dark hair; mischievous hazel eyes; dirty shoes and jeans ripped at the knees. She was, however, now a few inches taller than Draco, which felt oddly upsetting. Still, he tried not to focus on that. “You remember me? You remember everything?”

“Absolutely everything! Apparently I missed quite a lot. Is it true that James Potter was arrested?”

Draco laughed. She really had missed a lot. “It’s true. I saw it happen.”

“I can’t believe I wasn’t there for that! Dad, is he still in Azkaban?”

Professor Snape finally stepped forward, smiling. “Alas, last I heard he was out on bond awaiting trial. But let’s be heartened by the fact that a trial is happening at all. Men with half his money and connections have gotten away with worse.”

Draco’s whole chest felt like it was full of sunlight. His godfather was here, and his first friend was finally out of the hospital after that horrible potions mishap. “It’s so good to see you both,” he said, which made Eileen hug him again.

“It’s good to see you, too,” Snape said, laying an affectionate hand in Draco’s hair.

“You know, I’ve never been to France before!” Eileen said, when she finally withdrew from the second hug. “Dad says we can’t stay long, but that we could probably have lunch somewhere. D’you know of any spots that might be good?”

Draco opened his mouth eagerly to mention the pâtisserie, but Snape interjected:

“We’ll get to that,” he said. “First, Draco, I need to talk to your aunt.”

Draco’s stomach sank. “You…do?”

“Alas, I do. I gave her an ultimatum last year, and I need to make sure she’s followed up on it.”

“Er… All right. I…I guess, if you have to…”

But Professor Snape clearly hadn’t been waiting for Draco’s go-ahead. He strode straight past him and back through the garden gate, eying the freshly-planted flowers with a critical eye and then knocking loudly on the door.

“Hey!” Jack said suddenly. Draco turned toward where he was perched on the wooden crossbeam of the garden fence. Eileen didn’t notice him until he meowed loudly.

“Jack!” She swept toward him and immediately stroked her hand down his back. “Oh, who’s a good kitty? You’re a good kitty! You’ve grown so much!”

Draco watched nervously from the pavement as the front door opened. Uncle Marc stood in the threshold, looking perplexed, and the two men spoke for a while in low tones before eventually going inside. Draco waited for the sound of shouting, but it never came.

“How’s your summer going so far, Draco?” Eileen asked, looking away from Jack (though still continuing to pet him, to the cat’s satisfaction).

“Er, not so bad, I suppose,” Draco said, which was true. “I’ve certainly had worse summers. What about you?”

“Well, we had to cancel our planned holiday on account of my exams,” Eileen began, then hastened to explain: “I had to take them delayed because of the amnesia. By the time that was all done, we’d already lost our reservations so we called it a wash.”

“Oh,” Draco said with a frown. “That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it.”

Eileen shrugged gamely. She kept her strokes mild, even as Jack’s purring and nudging into her hand became more insistent. “It’s all right. There’s always next year.”

“How’s your mother doing?”

“Much better now! Dad got her a belated Mother’s Day present, a full day at the spa. She loved it. And considering she spent the actual day at my side in St. Mungo’s, she definitely earned it.”

Draco smiled. Petunia Snape was a little high-strung, but she clearly loved her family to the moon and back. He was glad she finally got to relax after everything her daughter had been through.

They kept talking for a while, mostly about Eileen’s toad, Lollihop, and his new fear of heights, and also about how wretched Harry Potter was for traumatizing an innocent toad like he’d done during that first flying class. Draco kept looking back at Number 4. A part of him was still waiting for shouting, or bursts of magic through the windows, or maybe just the whole building going up in flames…but nothing happened.

And when, eventually, the door opened again and Professor Snape strode out, Draco nearly leapt over the garden fence to his side.

“Is everything all right?” he asked at once. “I didn’t hear any yelling. Was she very cross? What is it you were looking for?”

Professor Snape smiled mildly. “Relax, Draco. I was just making sure everything was in order. Now, how about some lunch?”

“Lunch!” Eileen said, presumably by way of agreement.

Before Draco could even suggest the pâtisserie, Snape said, “I know of an excellent little café in the magical quarter of Nantes,” which startled the thought right out of Draco’s head.

“Nantes has a magical quarter?” he asked, stunned.

“Of course it does. Most large cities do. And I think it’s about time you saw it. After all, it’ll be much more convenient for you to buy your school supplies locally. What do you say?”

Apparently, the magical quarter was down a curved alleyway on Île de Nantes that Muggles couldn’t see. It was called Le Virage, and it was no Diagon Alley, but it was lively and bright and had an impressive Quidditch supply store. It was much too far for Draco to walk to on his own, and he very much doubted that Aunt Marie would be willing to take him, but perhaps if he played his cards right and pulled him through the enchantment, Uncle Marc could serve as escort.

He, Snape, and Eileen had a delicious lunch there under a café’s awning with an enchanted teapot that sang as it filled their cups, and Eileen made Draco teach her how to thank their waitress in French, and in all, Draco had an excellent time. He was quite sad to see them disappear later that afternoon, Disapparating with a crack after having dropped Draco back off at Rue d’Avranches.

“You’re back!” Jack said just before Draco’s hand touched the doorknob. “Hello!”

Draco smiled down at his cat. “Hello. Did you have a good afternoon in the garden?”

“Yes. I made new friends!”

“Oh. That’s good.” Draco paused. “Human friends or cat friends?”

“Cat friends,” Jack clarified. “They want to meet you. I told them they could. Can you meet them?”

Draco could not imagine why cats would be interested in meeting him, but had to admit to a good amount of curiosity. “Er, sure.”

“Good! They’re waiting for you in the garden.”

Jack trotted off down the narrow cobblestone path between Number 4 and Number 6. Draco glanced nervously through the window on the front door, just to make sure Aunt Marie wasn’t waiting for him inside, then followed Jack into the back garden.

It was just about five o’clock in the evening, the whole city golden with sundown. In the garden specifically, steep angles of light sliced through the trees on neighboring properties and cast long shadows on the new flagstone patio. It was the first time Draco had really looked at it since the place had been renovated. Bright flowers lined the walls, perfuming the air, and he wanted to call it pleasant now.

But he couldn’t. Because his shed was still there.

Tall and blue and rickety with corrugated plastic walls which, Draco knew from experience, made anything but the mildest weather absolutely intolerable. A floor of stone pavers that was always a little too cold, a roof of thin sheet metal that made rain unbearably loud.

Draco hesitated, then moved toward it and opened the door. It was full of gardening supplies now, rakes and shovels and spades and potting soil. No sign of the mattress Draco had slept on for as long as he could remember or the corner full of textbooks where he’d done his homework.

The sight made Draco’s heart hurt for reasons he didn’t quite understand.

“Here he is!”

Draco closed the shed door a little too quickly and spun.

Jack was trotting across the patio toward Draco, tail high and happy, eyes bright. Behind him, emerging from the bushes lining the fence—

“Oh!”

The meowing began all at once, loudly and from several different directions. Four—six—ten cats at least came stumbling over each other, tails twitching with excitement, immediately swarming around Draco’s legs.

“Oh, wow, this is—this is so many cats. This is maybe too many cats.”

Draco recognized a few of them from the colony that lived near his old primary school. They certainly looked feral—all scars and rough fur and lean, wiry bodies—but they were behaving like house cats who just heard a can of food open. Draco tried to take a step back and nearly tripped over one of them who’d curled around his leg.

“I told them that you feed me and they asked if they could have some of my food and I told them yes,” Jack explained.

“You told a dozen feral cats that I’d feed them?”

“Yes!” Jack confirmed cheerfully. One of the feral cats meowed especially loud and stretched its whole body up, forepaws on Draco’s thigh and eyes fixed earnestly on his face.

“Er, hello,” he said to the cat, a little nervously. “What’s your name?”

The cat stared at him but didn’t answer, and all of a sudden, Draco felt a bit silly. Of course it didn’t answer. Draco had encountered plenty of cats in his life, and the only one who’d ever talked to him was Jack, presumably because Jack was magical.

“They don’t have names,” Jack informed him. “Names are a human thing, and these cats don’t have humans.”

Draco slowly sat down, carefully avoiding crushing any cats on the way. The movement seemed to invite a few of them to climb onto his lap. The meowing was getting louder and more urgent.

“Could you maybe tell them that I do have a little bit of food, but that there are quite a lot of them and they’ll have to share?”

Right at that moment, the back door slid open and Aunt Marie’s familiar bark echoed across the garden: “What in the hell are all these cats doing on my property?”

Draco looked up, helpless to move due to being covered in yowling cats. “Er, Jack made some friends.”

She did not seem charmed. “If there’s any cat droppings left behind, you’re cleaning it up!” And the back door slammed shut again. Draco sighed and absently stroked his hand down one of the more persistent cats, a large black tom with a notch in his ear.

“I’ll tell them not to mark the garden,” Jack said. “But they really are insisting on the food.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t see it. I thought you said it was right off Boulevard des Martyrs?”

“It is.” Draco could see it, and kept heading toward it. “Muggles can’t see the entrance. But I think if I just pull you past the enchantment, it should be fine.”

“Enchantment…? What’s a Muggle?”

Uncle Marc had been a near-endless source of questions since their conversation the week before. As his wife was uninterested in entertaining his curiosity, he’d turned it all on Draco, which was the only reason, Draco suspected, that he’d agreed to drive him to Île de Nantes to get school supplies for his next year at Hogwarts, now only a few short weeks away.

Boulevard des Martyrs was the main drag connecting Île de Nantes to the rest of the city. The island itself sat in the middle of the Loire river, and was a rather touristy area, as Draco understood it, with lots of parks and shops and restaurants. Le Virage fit right in, with strings of fairy lights to draw the eye, distant music, and the enticing scent of fresh pastries. But for all the people going up and down the boulevard, no one seemed to notice it at all.

“Here,” Draco said. “Right here.”

“There’s… I don’t see anything.” It was so strange, seeing Uncle Marc standing right at the entrance, facing down the little cobblestone path, and still looking around as if there was nothing there at all. “It’s just an empty alley.”

Draco grabbed Uncle Marc’s wrist and pulled him forward several steps. He stumbled as though he’d tripped, despite there being nothing but flat pavement under him, and pressed one hand to his forehead as though hit with a wave of dizziness.

“What was… What is…?”

He blinked a few times and slowly looked around. Draco watched the shapes of his face change, from confusion to surprise to alarm and then straight through to awe.

“How…?”

“Magic,” Draco said with a shrug. “I don’t know the specific spell, but Professor Snape called it a perception filter.”

“Perception filter,” Uncle Marc repeated vaguely.

“I have all the money I should need,” Draco said. He’d written a letter to Gringotts, sent along with his family’s vault key, requesting 200 Galleons to be withdrawn, and then asked Professor Snape to owl it for him. They’d gotten back to him two days later, and had even changed them to Bezants for him, which was apparently the magical currency used in the rest of Europe. “I should be all right on my own, unless you’d like to come with me?”

“I’d like to come with you,” Uncle Marc said at once.

Uncle Marc followed Draco to every single shop, and asked a thousand questions at each. Draco did his best to answer, even though he didn’t always know. Questions about cauldrons and owls and broomsticks were easy enough, but Draco had no idea how, specifically, magic was able to defy the laws of physics like that.

Draco hadn’t grown enough to need new robes (which was good, because Le Virage didn’t seem to have a tailor) and had to buy French translations of all his textbooks (they didn’t have them in English, but surely that wasn’t against the rules) but the rest was simple. Quills and ink and parchment and potions supplies were the same in Nantes as in London.

The whole process only took a little over an hour. Afterward, Draco asked Uncle Marc if he’d maybe like to have lunch here, since he looked a little overwhelmed, and he’d agreed. They ate at the same café Professor Snape had taken him to the week before, and Uncle Marc didn’t seem to know what to make of the singing teapot.

“This is…” he began, and trailed off.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Draco answered, “it was a lot for me, too, for a while.”

“I don’t understand how she could leave this all behind,” Uncle Marc continued. “I don’t understand how she could hate it.”

Draco frowned. “I don’t, either,” he admitted. “But maybe it’s different for us because we didn’t grow up in it?”

“I guess it’s easier to be disillusioned by things when you see them all the time. But this… I cannot imagine leaving all this behind forever, no matter what my family had done to me.”

Draco scraped his fingernails nervously on the edge of his plate. His croque madame was nothing but crumbs and smeared bechamel, and Uncle Marc was nearly done with his coffee, and everything had already been paid for, but Draco couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. Not yet.

“Professor Snape said that…that my father had reached out to her. That he wanted her in his life. Did you ever…?”

Uncle Marc frowned. “Actually, yes. I think so.”

Draco stared at him desperately. Uncle Marc clearly saw the question in Draco’s expression.

“I didn’t realize who he was or what he was trying to do at first,” he eventually said. “It was a while ago. I think ’78 or ’79. Marie and I had only been married for a few years at that point, and she’d told me before that she didn’t have any family, so when he turned up one evening claiming to be her estranged brother, I was skeptical, but let him in.

“But the second she saw him, she went berserk. Screamed, cursed, threw things at him. They were speaking English for the most part, so I didn’t understand much of it, but I picked out a few phrases. He said their father was dead. She said she didn’t care. He said his wife was pregnant. She said to get out.

“Then…I don’t know. It was a while ago and I still don’t speak the language very well. Something about a war, and something that was maybe an apology? Whatever he was saying, though, she wasn’t interested. He left a letter. She burned it the second he was gone.

“Afterward, I asked if he was her brother, and she denied it. She said she didn’t have a family. That was the first and last time I ever saw him.”

Draco found that he wasn’t really sure what to make of the story. He wished she hadn’t burned the letter. He wished she’d heard him out. He wished he had more of his father to know. He wished a lot of things, but wishing only made him sad.

“I remember he looked very rich,” Uncle Marc eventually continued, “but also very tired. He greeted me—and apologized to me before he left—in perfect French. He seemed…gentlemanly.”

Draco kept his eyes on his empty plate.

“Whatever happened between them, however painful, it… She’s done things to you that can’t be justified by anything, let alone by pain. And looking back on it, I…regret not stepping in. I’m sorry, Draco. I was so concerned about not damaging my marriage that I let her hurt you. I’ll try to do better from now on, and I’ll try to make sure she does better, too.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do that will make her like me,” Draco said quietly.

“I’m not so sure. She was angry after your father turned up, but she also cried more than I’d ever seen her cry. That kind of pain doesn’t come from indifference. It only grows from love, and from betrayal.

“I know you probably don’t care for her very much, but I fell in love with Marie for a reason. She’s a passionate person, and so determined. When we met, she was sure she was going to take this city by storm. I loved her ambition.”

She sounded like a Slytherin, Draco thought without meaning to.

“I think that woman is still in there somewhere. It just might take a lot to find her.”

Draco sighed. He hoped so, despite everything.

Uncle Marc eventually flagged down a waiter, who dazzled him with a spell to clear their table. Then they made their way together back toward Boulevard des Martyrs where his car was parked, each carrying bags full of school supplies.

“So what kind of spells do you learn as a first-year student?” Uncle Marc asked, with a kind of forced cheerfulness that Draco appreciated after such a heavy conversation.

“Just simple stuff,” Draco answered. “Levitation, basic transfiguration and potions, that kind of thing.”

“Simple,” Uncle Marc chuckled. “Anything you can show me?”

Draco blinked. “Show you?”

“Yeah. Come on, I want to see some magic.”

“There’s magic all over Le Virage,” Draco said, gesturing broadly to the alley, which was now darkening with nearing sunset.

“Sure, but I want to see your magic.”

Draco hesitated. “I’m not supposed to cast anything outside of school…” But hadn’t Headmaster Riddle said something about the French magical government not being strict about it?

“I promise not to tell,” Uncle Marc promised with a grin.

Draco wasn’t sure if his enthusiasm and applause to Draco’s simple spells were exaggerated to cheer him up, but Draco appreciated it all the same. Uncle Marc said he’d clearly studied hard, and Draco felt an unfamiliar pulse of something in the middle of his chest, which he later determined was pride.

August churned on. Draco’s trunk was fully packed the day after he and Uncle Marc came back from Le Virage, but he kept changing things around in it through the last few weeks before term began, adding things, taking other things out, moving things around to be better organized. He was anxious to get back to Hogwarts, to see his friends, to play Quidditch again. He even sort of missed Harry Potter, who’d spent the entire year making Draco’s life miserable.

But no one else in the house seemed to pick up on Draco’s agitation. His aunt and uncle were angry at each other, he noticed, but not in the usual way. There were no screaming matches about money anymore—Draco’s father’s Will had taken care of all their financial problems in one fell swoop, it seemed—but now there were long, furious, silent stares across the kitchen table and harsh, whispered arguments at night that Draco couldn’t make out. He suspected the new tension was about him, but was too nervous to ask. He wasn’t really sure he even wanted to know.

On the night before he was set to return to Hogwarts, an unbearably hot evening even long after the sun had gone down, Jack suddenly said, “Look! My friends are back!”

Draco had been trying to sleep, but it was just too hot, even with his sheets stripped away and the ceiling fan spinning like a propeller. So when Jack spoke, he gave up on the pretense and sat upright. “What?”

“My friends! Or a few of them.”

He stood and made his way across the attic, toward the large window, where Jack was perched on his favorite pillow on the seat beneath it. The window overlooked the back garden, and in what little light remained so late at night, several pairs of eyes were visible, eerie and bright and hovering in the blackness.

“I hope you told them that I’m leaving tomorrow,” Draco said. He’d bought a little extra cat food at the supermarket down the street, and had been scattering it on the patio for them every night, and he was worried what the cats might do when that stopped.

“I did. I don’t know that they listened.”

Draco sighed, leaned against the cool glass of the window. It was slightly ajar, letting in a nice breeze that ruffled the fabric of Draco’s pajama top.

“I miss Hogwarts,” he said. “I’m so desperate to get back to it.”

“Even after everything that happened there last year?”

“Even so,” Draco confirmed. “With the way the Headmaster threatened him, I don’t think James Potter will be much of a problem again.”

Remembering the way Headmaster Riddle had handled the whole situation filled Draco with illicit joy. It had been so satisfying, seeing James Potter get knocked down a peg and justly arrested. All year long, Professor Snape had been telling Draco to have faith in the headmaster, to trust that he had things in hand, and he’d been right. Headmaster Riddle had handled everything with grace and precision. He was an impressive man, and also very handsome.

“Well, then,” Jack said, stretching, “perhaps this year will be nice and boring.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Jack said nothing further, just curled up on Draco’s chest, and though he’d spent the better part of three hours failing to fall asleep, something about the combination of the cool breeze, the purring cat, and the plush cushions of the window seat was just what Draco needed to nod off.

Chapter Text

Draco had been quite surprised when Uncle Marc had been the one to shake him awake the following morning, saying that breakfast was ready and they would have to leave soon for London. He was not used to being woken up like that, or to having breakfast waiting. And he certainly wasn’t used to whatever weird, jittery energy had possessed his uncle.

“Got it all set up,” he said as he tipped Draco’s tartine off the skillet and onto his plate. “The, uh… What’s it called? Key-port?”

“Portkey.”

“Right, yes. It should take us, uh, right into London. Somehow.”

“Yes. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” he said, but the skillet clanked rather loudly when Uncle Marc returned it to the stovetop. “Go on and eat.”

Draco ate. Uncle Marc busied himself with grabbing butter and pouring coffee.

“Why are you taking me and not Aunt Marie?” Draco asked after his first bite.

There was another loud clank as the French press was set down a little too aggressively on the new quartz countertop. The shapes of Uncle Marc’s face changed too quickly for Draco to pick out any particular emotion.

“She’s…feeling poorly,” he lied, rather obviously Draco thought, then took his mug of coffee to the table. “Besides, I’ve never been to England. And I’d like to see this magical train.”

He was trying very hard to act like this was all fine and normal, even though Uncle Marc had only learned about the Hogwarts Express less than a week ago, based on the argument Draco had overheard. But Draco didn’t think pushing the matter would have been a good idea, so he took another bite of his tartine and said nothing further on it.

But although he had a general understanding of what a Portkey did, Uncle Marc was clearly not prepared for what it felt like. As soon as the swirling, stretching yank of it settled down, Uncle Marc doubled over, shoulders heaving like he was desperately trying not to vomit.

Draco, who’d become accustomed to Portkeys and Apparition both, only needed a few steadying breaths before he looked around his surroundings and smiled.

Platform 9¾ looked just the same: crowded with students and their parents, loud with shouts and laughs and hooting owls, bright with sunlight, and warm with the steam billowing out from beneath the long, scarlet train. The Hogwarts Express.

Even though it would be several hours before he’d even see the castle, Draco could not shake the bright, warm feeling that swelled in his chest, the one that felt like he had come home.

“Oh, I was not ready for that,” Uncle Marc slurred. “I feel like all my organs are upside-down…”

“Draco!”

A familiar head of dark hair came bobbing through the crowd. Draco’s face split into a wide grin.

“Pansy!”

He dropped his trunk and Jack’s carrier (perhaps a bit too abruptly, based on the sharp meow of protest) just in time to catch her in a hug. Just like Eileen, she’d also grown a few inches taller than Draco over the summer, and Draco tried not to be jealous. It was easy enough, at least, to focus on the hug. He’d missed her so much.

“Hello, hello, hello! Oh, it’s so good to see you again. I know it’s only been a few months, but it feels like it’s been a thousand years!”

Draco laughed in agreement. When Pansy drew away rather abruptly, it was only to crouch down at Jack’s crate.

“And how’s my favorite kitty?” she crooned.

“Hello, I love you!” Jack said, pawing eagerly at the door. “Let me out! Draco, let me out!”

Draco laughed and figured it was safe enough. Jack barely made it out of the crate, in any case, before Pansy scooped him up into her arms and began peppering his face with kisses.

“I missed you, too!” Pansy said, once she’d kissed him a sufficient amount. “Maybe even more than Draco!”

“I’m standing right here,” Draco reminded her, but he was grinning.

“Pansy, is this one of your friends?”

She spun, but kept Jack cradled to her chest. “Yes, Mum! This is Draco!”

There was no doubt in Draco’s mind that the woman who approached was Pansy’s mother—they were nearly identical, same slightly upturned nose, same dark hair, same long legs. She was dressed very nicely, in robes that were such a deep shade of blue that they were nearly black, with pretty golden fastenings up the sleeves. But her expression was the first thing he noticed—she was smiling with such a genuine kindness that Draco found himself a little startled.

“Hello, Draco,” she said. “Pansy has told me a lot about you.”

“Er, good things, I hope.”

She laughed. “Good things. Is this your uncle?”

Draco looked over his shoulder. Uncle Marc had finally managed to stand upright, though he seemed a little disoriented still, and stood blinking at Mrs. Parkinson in bewildered silence.

“Yes, although he doesn’t speak a lot of English,” Draco cautioned.

Mrs. Parkinson nodded, still smiling, and stuck her hand out to him all the same. “Marigold Parkinson.”

Uncle Marc took it with only a little caution. “Marc Mercier.”

“Have you seen Blaise?” Draco asked Pansy, as their adult escorts continued to speak, in very slow and careful English.

“Mm, not yet,” Pansy said. Jack had, at some point, climbed onto her shoulders and was now rubbing himself eagerly against her head. “But his mother’s easy enough to pick out.”

“Is she? Why?”

Pansy spent a few brief seconds scanning the platform before she pointed her out.

When Draco saw her, he understood immediately. Even from twenty feet away, she stood out as the tallest and most beautiful woman in the station, perhaps in the whole city. Truly, she was stunning—long black hair that fell loose to her waist, pale skin that was as smooth and perfect as marble, and an hourglass figure hugged by a fitted black robe that looked expensive. Draco wondered, briefly, if she was a model.

He didn’t have time to ask, though, because nearly a breath later, Blaise, at her side, saw them seeing her and quickly bounded over.

“There you are!”

Blaise’s hug was tighter, but briefer. Draco was no less eager to return it, though.

“It’s good to see you,” Draco said. “I’m so sorry this whole school thing pulled you away from your vacation.”

Pansy cackled. Blaise rolled his eyes, but he was grinning.

“I’ll manage, I’m sure. Mummy says it’s Portugal next summer—right, Mummy?”

Mrs. Zabini’s heels click-click-clicked on the reddish tile of the platform floor. Though she and her son looked quite different at first glance—milky white skin to her son’s loamy brown, willowy limbs to her son’s angular frame—on a closer inspection, Draco could see the resemblance. They had the same large, brown eyes and pouty lips.

“Wherever you’d like, my dear,” she said with an adoring smile. She had an accent that Draco couldn’t quite place. “Are these your little friends?”

“Yes. This is Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy.”

Mrs. Zabini’s eyes lingered on Draco just long enough to make him nervous. Draco had never really met anyone as striking as Mrs. Zabini, except for perhaps Headmaster Riddle—and somehow, Mrs. Zabini was much more intimidating.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you fell into my son’s orbit, Mr. Malfoy,” she eventually said, with an inscrutable smile. “He’s like me in that way. Fame and glamor just seem to follow him.”

“Er,” Draco said, and was very glad when Eileen’s familiar voice interrupted:

“Hello! Hi, Draco! Hi, Blaise! Hi, Pansy!”

Then it was her turn to hug Draco, and Draco happily returned it even though he’d seen her only a few weeks ago.

“And hello, Jack!” Eileen added, and then suddenly both she and Blaise were fawning over his cat, still perched on Pansy’s shoulder and purring so loudly that Draco could hear it over the rumble of the train’s engine.

Draco looked back over his shoulder. All the parents—Mrs. Parkinson and Mrs. Zabini, Mrs. Snape and even Uncle Marc—were talking together in low tones. Mrs. Snape appeared to be translating something Mrs. Parkinson said into French for Uncle Marc, which made him look thoughtful.

“Where’s Professor Snape?” Draco asked Eileen, when he realized he wasn’t here. He had been last year.

“At Hogwarts already, I expect,” Eileen answered. She was still scratching Jack’s cheek. “He said something about the Headmaster calling all the professors to the castle early for some kind of problem. He didn’t specify.”

Draco frowned.

“Well, whatever it is,” Pansy said, “it can’t possibly be worse than last year’s problem.”

“I heard Potter’s trial got delayed,” Blaise added.

“Really?” Draco couldn’t quite hide his alarm. “Why?”

Before he could answer, a loud, familiar whistle sounded through the platform. The Hogwarts Express would be departing soon, and the group broke apart to go hug their respective parents.

Except Draco, of course. When Pansy handed Jack back to him and went to her mother, he was left looking awkwardly at Uncle Marc, who was looking back at him just as awkwardly.

“Well,” he said, “have a good school year.”

“Thanks,” Draco replied.

“Maybe you could…owl? That’s the word your friend’s mother used. Are letters actually sent with owls?”

“They’re actually sent with owls,” Draco confirmed. Then, a little hesitantly, he asked, “Would you…want to hear from me?”

“Yes, of course.” Uncle Marc frowned. “But only if you’d want to reach out.”

Draco wasn’t sure what to say, so instead he just nodded, and when Eileen tugged on his arm, he grabbed his things and followed his friends onto the train.

It took them a while to find a compartment that was still empty enough to accommodate all four of them, which was their own fault for waiting so long. But they did eventually find one toward the back of the train, and Blaise collapsed on the seat as though pulling his trunk had been some tremendous strain. Draco tucked his own away more sedately.

“So why was Potter’s trial delayed?” Pansy asked.

“Something procedural, I think,” Blaise answered. “He has a whole team of solicitors trying their best to keep him out of Azkaban. Merlin knows he’s facing the Kiss, so…”

“The Kiss?” Draco asked.

Eileen shuddered.

“The Dementor’s Kiss,” Pansy explained, expression dour. “Dementors are the prison guards of Azkaban. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard they’re horrible.”

“The Kiss is a death sentence in all the ways that matter,” Blaise elaborated. “They suck your soul right out of your body. Your heart is still beating, but that’s about it.”

It sounded nightmarish and Draco decided he did not want to think about it a second longer. He set Jack on the seat and tucked his carrier under the seat next to his trunk, just as the train pulled slowly out of the station.

Behind him, the compartment door slid open. “Um, excuse me?” The voice belonged to a girl, but that was about all Draco could verify while he was still fighting to tuck Jack’s carrier away. The corner had caught on his trunk somehow and it was refusing to budge.

“Hello,” Eileen said.

“Is there any room left? I’d rather not sit with my brother and his obnoxious friends.”

“I know all about annoying brothers,” Pansy answered, conciliatory. “Come on in.”

Finally, the carrier dislodged and slid fully under the seat. Draco stood up and said, “Pansy, you have a brother?”

“Hm? Oh, yes. He’ll be starting next year, unfortunately. He’s so—”

Then somebody screamed, and something clattered, and Draco jolted around.

The girl—the one who’d just entered—had dropped her trunk, which had sprung open and sent robes and books all over the compartment floor. But it didn’t seem like she’d even noticed; both her hands were clapped over her mouth and she was staring at Draco with huge, bright brown eyes.

On instinct, Draco looked over his shoulder to make sure there wasn’t something scream-worthy behind him. Of course, there was nothing but the window.

“Yes, can you believe it?” Blaise said, voice heavy with sarcasm. “It’s really him! Draco Malfoy! The Boy Who Lived! He personally blew up the Ashbringer with his brain at only a year old. Do you want his autograph?”

The girl said nothing, didn’t even look at Blaise. She was still staring at Draco like he was the only thing in the room.

Draco had become accustomed to this reaction over his first year at Hogwarts—but over the summer, he’d finally gotten unaccustomed to it again. And no matter how used to it he was or wasn’t, his fame had never been something entirely comfortable. It always created expectations Draco couldn’t meet and raised questions Draco couldn’t answer.

“Er,” he said nervously.

“Relax,” Eileen told her, and it sounded less like a platitude and more like an order. She seized the girl by both shoulders and pulled her down onto the seat beside her. “He’s just a normal person.”

Pansy threw the new girl’s things back into her trunk. “I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she said, “Draco’s perfectly nice, but let’s not pretend he’s normal.”

“Hey,” Draco protested. He picked Jack up and sat down, where the tabby happily curled up in his lap.

“No, she’s got a point,” Blaise agreed. “If your first year was anything to go by, you’re the farthest thing from normal.”

“I’m very normal!” Draco insisted.

“You had a stalker,” Pansy pointed out.

“I—” Draco opened his mouth, snapped it shut. “That’s…”

“Weird,” Pansy continued. “It’s weird. You had a fully grown man following you around the castle because a murderer living in his glasses told him to. And then he tried to kill you and you got him arrested.”

“All right, fine, but surely that’s more an indictment of him than it is me.”

“You also made it onto the Slytherin Quidditch team in your first year,” Blaise added, “which isn’t even permitted under normal circumstances, due to your ridiculous toad-saving heroics.”

This was starting to feel like a personal attack. “Listen, that was… I just didn’t want to…”

“You dueled your rival at midnight,” Pansy intoned. “Oh, also, you have a rival.”

“I don’t know that I’d call him my rival, necessarily,” Draco said, floundering.

“And also you helped solve a murder and Headmaster Riddle personally gave you a magical map of the school.”

“Wait,” Eileen suddenly interjected, “what magical map?”

Draco sighed and rubbed his forehead with his hand. Pansy, apparently unconcerned with Draco’s dawning realization that he was, in fact, a lot less normal than he thought he was, said, “Oh, you were already in St. Mungo’s by then, weren’t you? Yes, it’s called the Marauder’s Map, and it shows where everyone is in the school.”

“That’s so cool! Draco, why didn’t you tell me? I want to see the magical map!”

“I think he keeps it in his trunk,” Blaise said, and Draco just sighed and let them pull it out.

“What’s your name, by the way?” Pansy asked the girl, who still had not said anything. When Draco looked up at her, her face went red—nearly as red as her hair.

“I’m… I’m…” She swallowed visibly, looked at Draco again, and then promptly dropped her gaze to her lap. “I’m Ginny Weasley.”

“Another Weasley, huh?” Pansy eyed her up and down. “Well, let’s hope you’re more tolerable than some of your brothers.”

Ginny squeaked, then turned even redder and buried her face in her hands. At Draco’s feet, Blaise finally found and pulled the Marauder’s Map out from where Draco had tucked it between two textbooks.

“Here it is. Watch—I solemnly swear I’m up to no good.”

Eileen looked dazzled. “Wow!”

Draco sighed and watched Blaise unfold it across the lid of his trunk as the map slowly spread out across the worn vellum.

“Looks pretty empty right now,” Blaise said. “I suppose that’s to be expected, since all the students are here. But look, there’s the Headmaster and all the teachers.”

He tapped the little room that Draco knew was the Headmaster’s office on the third floor. It was crowded with several familiar names—Severus Snape and Aurora Sinistra and Rubeus Hagrid and Pomona Sprout, among others.

But Draco’s eye was drawn to the edge of the map by movement—two sets of footsteps, nearly right on top of each other, racing toward the Forbidden Forest.

“Wait,” Draco said, “what’s…?”

He leaned forward. The names were so close together that it was difficult to read either. But as one briefly outstripped the other, Draco could have sworn he saw the surname—

—Black—

—and then, abruptly, both names vanished off the edge of the map. Draco stared at the newly empty space, stunned.

Black? Black was his mother’s maiden name.

“What’s what?” Blaise asked.

Draco couldn’t quite manage to speak. It had happened so quickly, and the names hadn’t even really been legible—maybe he’d misread? Or maybe it was some other Black?

“I… Nothing. Never mind.”

There weren’t very many Blacks left, Draco knew. Assuming it was the same family as his mother’s, and assuming he’d read what he thought he’d read—

It could be very good, or very, very bad.

Chapter Text

When the train finally churned to a stop at Hogsmeade station, Draco watched Ginny Weasley scamper off toward Professor Hagrid as he called for first years and wondered how all the other students got to the castle.

He didn’t have to wonder long, though.

“This way, Malfoy.”

Draco turned away from the group of first-years following Professor Hagrid down toward the Lake just in time to see—

“Flint!”

Marcus Flint had grown quite a bit over the summer, Draco noticed at once, though not quite so much vertically as across the shoulders. He’d also grown a bit of stubble across his chin, which Draco acknowledged was probably normal for a sixteen-year-old, but which still threw him for a loop when he saw it.

“We take carriages across,” he said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, and calling Draco’s attention to the row of black, open-top carriages lined up on the gravel path leading around the Lake to the castle. Students were already filtering toward them, chatting amiably. “How was your summer?”

“Surprisingly good,” Draco admitted.

“Ready to win another Quidditch Cup?”

Draco grinned. “Oh, yes. Very ready.” He’d missed Quidditch desperately, almost more than his friends. Almost.

“That’s the kind of attitude I like to see,” Flint answered, before noticing Jack pop up out of Draco’s hood and onto his shoulder. “Hey, little guy.”

While Flint busied himself petting Jack (had Draco’s cat managed to charm the entire Slytherin Quidditch team, too?), Pansy and Eileen finally stumbled off the train, having waited till the very last minute to change into their Hogwarts robes.

Pansy, looking frazzled, said, “Sorry, sorry. Are we late?”

The students were still filing quite slowly onto the carriages, and the line still reached most of the way back to the train. “We’ve got time yet,” Draco said.

“Good. Eileen, is my hair all right?”

Eileen looked puzzled. “Yes? It looks the same to me.”

“But does it look good?”

“Er…”

“Eileen’s a bit of a tomboy,” Draco said by way of explanation. “But I think your hair’s fine.”

From the back of the queue to get onto the carriages, Blaise called, “Are you coming or what? I won’t hold your place forever!”

Before long, Draco, Eileen, Blaise, and Pansy had made it to their carriage, the second-to-last in the line. Most of the others had already pulled away, which was why Draco saw, kicking the ground right in front of theirs—

“Whoa. What is that?”

“What’s what?” Pansy asked, craning her head.

Draco supposed that they had the same general shape of a horse—four legs, barrel chest, long head attached to a longer neck—but the resemblance stopped at their skin, which was black and leathery and pulled so tight over their bones that Draco could have counted their ribs and the knobs on their spines, if he cared to. They also had wings, huge and batlike, although presently tucked tight against their bodies. The one Draco saw stared back with white eyes and kicked the ground with its foreleg placidly.

“Those…horse things, pulling the carriage,” Draco said.

“What horse things?” It was Eileen this time, standing at Draco’s other side. “I don’t see anything.”

“What do you mean, you don’t see anything? They’re huge and…” Sort of creepy, Draco wanted to say, but couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t come out while one of them was staring like that, with its dead white eyes and protruding bones.

“There’s nothing there,” Pansy said. “Draco, are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine! You really don’t see them?”

“Those are Thestrals, Malfoy,” said Flint suddenly. Draco spun.

“You can see them, too?”

“Er, no,” he answered, “but Professor Hagrid talked about them last year in Care of Magical Creatures. They’re invisible to everyone except, er…those who’ve seen death.”

Draco shivered and looked nervously back at the creature. The Thestral. It met his gaze eerily.

“Creepy,” Eileen said. “When have you seen death, Draco? D’you think it’s…that it was…”

My parents, Draco wanted to say, but couldn’t.

“They’re harmless,” Flint assured him. “Or, well, they’re tame, at least.”

“If you don’t get on the carriage,” Blaise called, “I’m going to leave you behind!”

Draco had to tear his eyes away and force his feet to move. He climbed into the carriage and sat down heavily, unable to appreciate the plush velvet seats. His mind was swimming.

“Room for one more?” Flint asked as Pansy and Eileen shoved in together. “You lot are better company than Weasleys.”

A few of the older Weasley boys were piling into the final carriage; Draco barely noticed.

“Budge up,” Pansy said, and scooted Eileen over to make room.

Draco was glad he was facing backwards in the carriage. He didn’t want to look at the Thestrals. He didn’t want to think about why he could see them. He especially didn’t want to think about that one fateful conversation he’d had with the Ashbringer in the final month of his first year.

I killed your mother first. She didn’t have time to do much but scream.

Draco breathed very slowly. His friends were still talking in his periphery as he stared across the Scottish Highlands, darkening with sunset. If his mother had been killed while Draco was still in her arms…

And if Draco’s father had grabbed him and ran just before…

I followed him to the den. He was trying to escape. So I threw a small mote of fire to discourage him, which melted part of his arm and face.

It had been months, but Draco recalled the Ashbringer’s words with perfect clarity.

Do you know what an eye looks like when it liquefies in its socket?

And that was despite all Draco’s efforts to put it behind him. It had been a happy ending, after all—James Potter had been arrested, the Ashbringer’s plot stymied, the school made safe.

Like a runny egg yolk down a charred black cheek.

And yet the memories persisted.

The Sorting Ceremony felt different from the other side, but at least it served as a good distraction. The Hat sang a particularly operatic number this year, which garnered a good deal of applause, and when Professor Warren began calling names, Draco sat back and tried to focus on it, with some difficulty.

Slytherin certainly got its fair share of new faces. Draco smiled and introduced himself to the first, a Lawrence Harper, who recognized Draco almost immediately and started stammering. After that, Draco stopped introducing himself.

The final name of the night was Ginevra Weasley, and everyone in the Great Hall was getting anxious. After all, every other Weasley sibling had gone straight to Gryffindor, and it had been a long train ride and Sorting, and everyone was starving and eager to get the foregone conclusion out of the way.

Which was why it was so surprising when the Hat bellowed, “SLYTHERIN!”

“Interesting,” Pansy said beside Draco, one of many whispers to break out across the room. “A Weasley in Slytherin?”

“That’s trouble,” Blaise decided at once.

“For who, though?” Theo Nott, one of the other Slytherin boys in Draco’s year, wondered aloud.

The Slytherin table applauded politely, if a bit slowly, as tiny little Ginny Weasley stumbled her way over, head down, red hair curtaining either side of her face.

“You don’t suppose she just begged the Hat to be in the same house as the great Draco Malfoy?” Pansy asked.

And as soon as the question left her mouth, Ginny Weasley slid into the final available seat at the table and stole a look at Draco—then promptly went scarlet when she saw Draco looking back and turned her gaze down to her lap.

“Somebody fancies you,” Blaise sang under his breath.

Draco frowned. He wasn’t really sure how to feel about the idea or even how to respond, which was why he was so relieved when the food appeared on the tables in a shimmer of magic.

Although Draco firmly believed that French food was, on balance, better than English food, over his first year he’d become accustomed to the dishes served at Hogwarts. Lamb chops, boiled potatoes, shepherd’s pie, sausages—it was, perhaps, slightly overcooked and underseasoned, but it was hearty food and very filling, and certainly in an abundance that Draco had never really experienced before arriving at the castle. He found himself eating with enthusiasm.

Pansy spent the meal talking eagerly about how she was going to be trying out for the Slytherin Quidditch team, which Draco happily encouraged, as one of their Beaters had graduated and Draco had a sneaking suspicion that Pansy was the perfect combination of calculating and violent to do the role justice. Blaise sighed and called them both obsessed, which Draco had a hard time disagreeing with. Throughout the conversation, Jack strolled up and down the table and stole food from the plates of various Slytherins, none of whom seemed too upset.

Then, at the end of the meal, Headmaster Riddle cast his familiar muffling charm across the whole room, and every eye turned forward.

Draco’s heart gave a tremendous leap forward against his ribs. Tom Riddle was handsome even from halfway across the Great Hall, dark hair and sharp eyes and perfectly tailored green robes that flattered his slim frame. He tucked his wand into his fitted sleeve and clasped his hands together at his breastbone, scanning the magically silenced student body.

“Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts,” he began, and Draco released a silent sigh and leaned his chin on one hand. Even his voice was nice—a high, clear, commanding tenor.

“As ever, before you make your way to your dormitories, there are a few start-of-term announcements to get through.

“New students are reminded that the Forbidden Forest is forbidden, in case the name did not make it obvious. Black Lake is also forbidden, perhaps now more than ever. The curse upon it has fractured in a dangerous way, and the wards around it have been reinforced. Keep well away. The magic in the dungeons, which are under the Lake, has also been altered for safety. Slytherins, please wait in the common room after dinner to speak with Professor Snape for the details of how this has affected your common room and dormitories specifically.”

Draco frowned. He had a feeling he knew why the curse had fractured, though he hadn’t realized his exploits the year prior had actually made it worse. He stole a glance at Professor Snape, who was slumped in his chair with a dark, worried expression.

“Magic remains forbidden in the corridors, common rooms, and dormitories. Quidditch tryouts are next Monday; speak to Madam Hooch if you’re interested.

“It may not feel like it, students, but your presence here is a tremendous gift. Knowledge is the greatest weapon in any arsenal, as well as the perfect complement and necessary counterpart to compassion. Give your experience here the respect it is due.”

Then with a wave of his wand, the magic muffling the crowd lifted. The students muttered to each other as they stood and began to slowly file out of the Great Hall.

“What do you think he meant,” Pansy asked at once, “the Slytherin common room and dormitories are altered?”

“Only one way to find out,” Draco answered.

The students all went their separate ways once out of the Great Hall; the Slytherin students trailed for the dungeons in an unbroken chain, all apparently eager to see what had become of their space.

But when Draco finally made it inside (the first password of the year was apparently determination, as delivered by the new prefect), nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The chairs were all in the same spots around the fireplace, the candles flickering in the same places… Apart from all the students milling around in the middle and muttering to each other, it appeared perfectly normal.

“Slytherins,” came Professor Snape’s familiar voice, the last to enter. All the Slytherins turned at the same time, some of them muttering variations of greetings. “You don’t need to sit. This won’t take long.”

Draco watched as Snape went around the crowd and toward the large windows on the far side of the room, which looked out onto the Lake. At night, they were little more than flat sheets of black, and they also looked just the same as last year—

—until Professor Snape knocked on one, and bright silver magic shimmered and rippled across the entire wall. Draco startled, along with several others.

“A few days ago,” Professor Snape began, “part of the dungeons collapsed and, due to their position under the Lake, flooded. No one was hurt, but a large section remains closed off and is clearly marked.

“The specific trigger for the damage isn’t known. The Headmaster hypothesized that it’s part of a slow, dangerous degradation of the curse which was fractured so catastrophically last year.”

A few students glanced knowingly at Draco, who did his best to hide behind Pansy.

“And although the damage was well away from the Slytherin common room and dormitories, we’re not taking any chances. All Lake-facing windows, walls, and ceilings—including the ones in your dormitories—have been magically reinforced. You will not be able to physically contact the walls, nor will anything on the other side be able to physically contact you, should something happen. If you notice any water, or any part of the magic that is not behaving as it should, please notify a professor immediately.”

“Might be hard to warn anyone if we’re all actively drowning,” said Cassius Warrington, a fifth year, which made some of the other Slytherins laugh nervously.

“Yes, Mr. Warrington, very droll,” Professor Snape answered without humor. “Let me be clear: the magic reinforcing the dungeons is very strong, and we do not anticipate any problems. But, as ever, it’s better to be vigilant. If you have any questions, feel free to stay behind and I’ll answer what I can. The rest of you are free to go. Classes begin tomorrow.”

Draco glanced at Blaise, then at Pansy. They both seemed varying levels of concerned, but neither made their way toward Professor Snape. Draco followed them toward the dormitories, trailing his hand over the magic as he went, sending silvery shimmers in every direction.

“Weird,” Draco muttered.

“I can’t believe you made the curse on Black Lake worse,” Pansy said.

“Hey, I didn’t know it would break like this.”

“The argument being that it was all right because you didn’t understand the magic you were messing about with?”

Blaise snorted. Draco sighed. It had really seemed like a good idea at the time. And it had worked…just with some unintended side-effects.

“Here’s to another normal year at Hogwarts,” Blaise said, “with my normal friend, the Boy Who Lived.”

“See you in the morning, Pans,” Draco called, and they split off to their separate dormitories.

Chapter Text

After the rather startling realization on the Hogwarts Express that Draco was not quite as normal as he thought he was, he resolved to make this year, at least, as absolutely ordinary as possible. After all, James Potter wasn’t going to be a problem, and there weren’t any of the Ashbringer’s followers left milling around the castle—at least so far as Draco knew—so in theory, a nice, boring school year should be an easy thing to achieve.

He got right to work being normal and uninteresting the very next day, a Wednesday, and the first day of classes. It began with double Transfiguration with Ravenclaw, and now that Draco didn’t have to worry about a weird man staring over his shoulder all the time, he found the subject quite interesting, and certainly easier to grasp.

After that was Herbology with the cheerful Professor Sprout, a subject that was becoming more intensive and scientific than the year previous, which Draco found rather exciting. Even History of Magic delivered by the droning ghost, Professor Binns, wasn’t so bad. It felt reassuring, in a way: surely nothing interesting could possibly happen to Draco whilst he was actively being bored to death.

But the next afternoon was double Potions with Gryffindor, and though Draco was initially quite excited to see Eileen, who arrived in the classroom waving eagerly at Draco and hurrying toward the seat he’d saved her, his excitement was cut short with a sharp and all-too-familiar voice:

“Did you see that huge section of hallway blocked off? I heard half the dungeons were flooded. This whole castle is going to the dogs.”

Draco’s head swiveled, his attention drawn to Harry Potter as bugs were drawn to light. He was storming down the center aisle between the rows of desks, flanked on one side by a Weasley and on the other side by a nervous-looking boy with blond hair, whose name Draco was mostly sure was Longbottom.

He’d grown over the summer, Draco noticed, a few inches of height that somehow made him even more insufferable. His dark hair, however, remained perfectly slicked back, and his rectangular glasses remained a perfect mirror to his father’s—the same man who’d made Draco’s first year such a nightmare.

“Don’t,” Eileen said, seeing Draco’s souring expression. “It’s not worth it. He’s been in a foul mood for months, apparently.”

“Yeah, I bet he has,” Blaise answered, physically biting on his lip to keep from smiling.

“I’d be upset, too,” Draco said, at twice the necessary volume, “if my father had been arrested for murder.”

The comment drew Potter’s sharp green gaze, and turned his already sneering expression to a look of pure fury. He stopped right at Draco’s desk, glaring.

“If you have something to say, Malfoy,” he snapped, “say it to my face.”

Draco couldn’t resist. “All right. Potter, your father is a murderer and I’m glad he was arrested.”

Potter’s hand went for his wand, or at least it started to, before a burst of magic from the side forced both hands to his sides. All eyes—Draco’s, Potter’s, and everyone’s around them—turned toward the source: Professor Snape, sweeping out from his office door at the back of the classroom with a glower.

“Sit down, Mr. Potter,” he said, “and keep your wand out of your hand until I tell you otherwise.”

Potter shot one last, furious look at Draco, who flipped a bras d’honneur back at him—a gesture which, based on his reaction, Potter finally understood as an insult. The Weasley at his side had to forcibly steer him toward an unoccupied desk.

“Welcome back, students,” Professor Snape said, and waved his wand again, this time to write a few words across the board—Fire Protection Potion, open books to page 174. “If you haven’t already, please pass up your summer work or leave it on my desk.”

Draco sneaked another look at Potter, who was still so angry that Draco could practically hear his teeth grinding.

“That might not have been the best move,” Eileen whispered to Draco, once she’d finally unpacked her book and quills.

“Don’t tell me you feel bad for him,” Pansy said.

“Why shouldn’t I? It wasn’t Harry who did all those horrible things. And it can’t be easy, seeing your father locked up like that.”

“I think I’ll reserve my kindness for those who don’t treat people as horribly as Potter does,” Draco muttered, thinking very specifically of their midnight duel last year, where Potter had parroted all his father’s backwards beliefs about Muggles, and about the Ashbringer’s return.

Eileen just shook her head and her father began the lesson.

“This year, the curriculum will focus on expanding upon the fundamental principles you learned last year—or at least I hope you learned them,” Professor Snape said. “The Fire Protection Potion will involve precisely and rapidly changing the temperature of your potion as it’s brewed, and even slight variations can ruin the effect of the magic. The first attempt will be done as a class. Please begin by mincing your salamander tails. Mincing, not chopping.”

The salamander tails were already bottled and waiting on every desk. Draco reached for the little glass jar and unscrewed it.

“Er,” Eileen said, “what’s the difference between mincing and chopping again?”

“And you call yourself a potions master’s daughter,” Blaise chided good-naturedly.

“Mincing is finer,” Draco explained. “D’you want to practice?”

Professor Snape was a bit ornery sometimes, but Draco had never taken issue with his teaching. He explained everything clearly, and pointed out any mistakes he saw quickly—usually, he even managed to be nice about it.

“I did just say mincing, did I not, Ms. Bulstrode? If it’s not fine enough, the solvent will not be able to penetrate it.”

Usually.

Between the two of them—mostly Draco, though he wouldn’t put Eileen on the spot by saying so—they managed to get through the precise increase and reduction of the potion’s temperature as they added ingredients one by one. According to the textbook, it was just the right color and consistency, which was a promising sign; other pairs weren’t quite as lucky.

Midway through the final temperature increase, fluttering white shapes in the periphery of Draco’s vision drew his attention. When he looked up, an intricately folded paper griffin, wings extended, was soaring toward him.

“What…?”

Then, resolutely, it landed right by Draco’s wand on the table before it pranced around in circles a few times and promptly melted into a twice-folded scrap of parchment in a neat little square.

“Who’s sending you notes?” Eileen asked, craning her neck in all directions.

Draco frowned and picked it up. When he unfolded it, a drawing revealed itself, jagged stick figures and a crude rendition of what Draco belatedly realized was the Slytherin common room. Draco’s stick figure self was floating, bobbing back and forth in a flooded room, with two X’s for eyes to indicate that he’d died—Draco knew it was him because it was helpfully labeled as Boy Who Lived (and then drowned).

Snickering erupted from the other side of the classroom. Draco’s eyes followed the sound to Potter and his Weasley friend, reacting with great mirth to Draco’s bewildered expression.

Draco rolled his eyes and crumpled it up—an action which caused the note to burst into flames. Alarmed, Draco shook it out of his hand, which dropped it directly into his nearly-finished potion.

“No! Merde!” Draco frantically tried to levitate it out with a quick charm, but the damage was done. The potion was very sensitive to temperature, and even the brief contact with fire had ruined it. By the sudden peals of laughter, Potter and his cadre had noticed.

“It’s all right,” Eileen said as the potion turned a distinctly bad grayish-green, “this one isn’t graded or anything.”

That wasn’t the point, of course. Draco shot another glare at Potter, and vowed to make him regret his entire existence at the first Quidditch match of the year.

“Draco. Draco. Wake up.”

The strange pressure on Draco’s left eye, he realized as he reluctantly awoke, was a cat’s paw. He grunted and brushed it away, at which point it pressed to his mouth instead.

“Jack,” he grumbled, “it’s late. What are you doing?”

“My friend needs help.”

“What?”

Finally, Draco forced himself to sit up on his elbows. In the close darkness of Draco’s four-poster bed, green curtains drawn, Jack’s huge eyes stared intently at him.

“My friend,” Jack repeated, sitting nervously on Draco’s stomach. “He’s been hurt. He was chased by a dog and got bit. Can you help him?”

Draco dragged open the curtain with one hand to grab his wristwatch off the bedside table.

“It’s after midnight,” he said. “It’s way past curfew.”

“Please,” Jack whined. There was real distress in his voice. “It’s a bad bite and I’m worried about him.”

“Who is this friend?” Draco asked. “Is this one of the castle mousers?”

“Yes. He’s new, I think. And he needs help.”

Draco sighed heavily. If Filch, the caretaker, found him, he’d be in huge trouble, and this did not seem like something somebody making concerted efforts to be normal would do—especially not less than two weeks into term.

But…

“Where is he?”

“He’s just inside the entrance nearest the Lake. The dog chased him there.”

Draco pushed himself off the bed and grabbed his wand, trying to be quiet enough not to wake any fellow Slytherins, then went to fetch the Marauder’s Map from the trunk at the foot of his bed.

It was pitch black in the dormitory, of course, but Draco had no trouble seeing. Once the Map was in hand, he said, “I solemnly swear I’m up to no good.”

The map of the castle spread out across the parchment, and Draco scanned it. The hallways seemed mostly empty, with groups of unmoving footprints in all the dormitories. He traced the path from the dungeons to the western entrance, seeing no sign of Filch or Mrs. Norris—though he knew the Map couldn’t detect cats.

“It looks like the coast is clear,” he said slowly. “I guess let’s…”

And then, he saw another set of unmoving footsteps, just inside the western doors: Regulus Black.

He thought, for a moment, that his heart stopped beating in his chest.

Regulus Black. He knew the name, of course. Since Pansy’s mother had been kind enough to give him copies of his family tree on both sides last year, he’d memorized nearly every name on each. Regulus Black was his mother’s cousin, about the same age as Professor Snape. He’d disappeared at the end of the Second War.

“What…” Draco said. The word tumbled off his lips, and he did not know what the rest of the question was. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the name. Regulus Black. Regulus Black. Draco’s—what, second cousin? First cousin, once removed?

“Draco,” Jack urged, which snapped Draco out of it.

“I… Yes. Sorry. Let’s…”

He tucked the Marauder’s Map into the pocket of his pajamas and followed Jack out into the dark hallway.

His mind spun. He thought back to the Hogwarts Express, and that little flash of a name he’d convinced himself was nothing. Perhaps it hadn’t been nothing after all.

He asked himself: Am I about to meet my family? And also: Why is he here? What would I say to him? He did not know any of the answers.

But the hallways were empty, at least, though it did little to slow Draco’s racing heart as he crossed the dark castle. Up, and through, and around, until—

“He’s right through here,” Jack said as he rounded a corner that, Draco knew, ended in a set of doors that let out not far from the Lake. Draco nearly tripped over his own feet and rounded the corner to see—

Nothing. An empty hallway. A single, flickering torch. And a cat, which Jack ran right up to.

Disappointment surged. He reached for the Map again—he was sure he’d seen the name right here, and if he wasn’t here, where had he gone?—but before he could, Jack meowed loudly.

“Draco!”

Draco forced his attention back to the cat—or cats now, he supposed. Jack’s tail was parallel to the ground, twitching nervously. The other cat, huge and black and with long fur, sat very still, its breathing labored.

He sighed and crouched down in front of the cat. “Hello. Are you all right?”

Startled, the cat looked up. Two huge, golden eyes gleamed at him, reflecting the low torchlight. The cat didn’t answer.

“Jack said you were hurt,” Draco said slowly. Was this cat not magical either? Why was Jack the only cat Draco could talk to?

“It’s his foreleg,” Jack said.

Draco bent down a bit further. Sure enough, the fur on his front left leg was slick and shiny with what could only be blood, and Draco could make out several large puncture wounds.

As part of the curriculum in last year’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Professor Warren had taught them all basic first aid. Nothing complicated, and nothing especially powerful, just simple spells for patch and fix work if a healer wasn’t readily accessible. Draco had been rather good at them, and drew his wand slowly.

The cat barely even moved as he waved it and said, “Episkey.” The wounds sealed up, though the blood remained. “Is that better?”

Still, the cat didn’t move. Its expression was strange—not really scared, but also not angry. If Draco had to put a name to it, he’d call it sad. Did cats even get sad?

“Can he not understand me?” Draco asked Jack.

Jack wordlessly stood up and bumped his whole body into the cat, which seemed to jolt it out of whatever trance it had been in. Jack started purring.

“He feels better,” Jack said.

“That’s good,” Draco said. “Er, could you ask him, Jack, if he saw anybody around? Any humans, I mean. It would have been very recently.”

Jack canted his head at Draco. “Humans?”

He felt a little silly, interrogating a cat, but Draco had to know. “Yes. Anyone at all.”

Jack looked at the black cat again, but the black cat, to Draco’s surprise, was backing away. His eyes were still huge and sad, ears flattened back almost as if in shame. Before Draco could even ask why, the cat was darting away, down the hallway and out of sight.

Perplexed, Draco asked, “Did I offend him?”

“No,” Jack answered, ear twitching. “I think you made him sad.”

“How did I do that?”

“I don’t know,” Jack confessed. “But next time I see him, I’ll ask. And convey your apologies, too, I guess. What human were you expecting to be here?”

“On the Marauder’s Map, I saw… There was…”

Draco’s hand had gotten halfway to the Map still in the pocket of his pajamas when, from somewhere down the hall, a door opened.

“Go!” Draco hissed, and took off in a run, Jack at his heels.

They both made it back to the dungeons without being caught, and Draco released a long sigh of relief. Jack jumped right up onto the foot of his bed, kneading happily at the quilt, and Draco sat down heavily beside him.

When he finally reopened the Map, despite scouring it from top to bottom, he couldn’t find Regulus Black’s name again.

Chapter Text

Draco became slightly obsessed with the Marauder’s Map.

His friends noticed right away, of course. Pansy asked him about it after their third class in a row in which Draco snuck a glance at it under his desk, and Draco only muttered that he’d tell her later. After dinner that same day, while scouring it again, Blaise told him in the common room that Draco was “being weird about that map” and demanded answers, but Draco didn’t know what to say, so he went to bed.

He should have known that they would have cornered him eventually—he just hadn’t expected it to be so dramatic.

“All right,” Pansy said, “talk.”

Draco grunted. It was just about all he could do with the magical gag in his mouth. And with the invisible restraints around his wrists that had dragged him into the disused classroom on the second floor, he couldn’t even gesture to his mouth.

“Blaise,” Pansy said, annoyed, “you weren’t supposed to gag him.”

“What if he screamed?” Blaise, beside her, said defensively.

“Why would he scream? We’re not going to torture him!”

Blaise shook his head and muttered about contingencies, then waved his wand to dispel the binding magic.

“You two are ridiculous,” Draco said at once, rubbing the unpleasant tingling sensation out of his wrists.

“Well, you’re being evasive,” Pansy said.

“So your solution is to kidnap me in a dark hallway?”

“I told Blaise to grab you. He’s the one who decided to make it weird.” She shot him a glare.

“Just tell us what’s going on,” Blaise said. “You’re being extra cagey lately.”

Draco sighed. Blaise and Pansy were his best friends, but this felt awkward to talk about. It was family.

But Slytherins were persistent, and so Draco sat down on one of the dusty chairs at the desk Pansy had perched on.

“A few days ago,” Draco began, “Jack woke me up in the middle of the night and said one of the castle mousers had gotten hurt and he wanted me to heal him.”

“All right, pause,” Blaise interjected. “Jack did what?”

“He has a habit of making friends with all the other cats in ten square miles, it feels like,” Draco explained. “He did the same thing back in Nantes, with this big feral colony—”

“That’s not why Blaise is confused,” Pansy said. “Draco, does Jack…talk to you?”

Draco frowned. “What? Of course he does. Does… Does he not talk to you?”

“Mate,” Blaise replied slowly, “Jack is a cat. Cats can’t talk.”

“Well, yes, I know that,” Draco said. “I—I mean, most cats can’t talk. It’s just Jack. Can you really not hear him?”

Pansy leaned over to Blaise. “I think we might have bigger problems than the Map,” she muttered conspiratorially.

“I’m not crazy,” Draco said. Or at least he dearly hoped he wasn’t. “He’s been talking since I got him last year. I thought it was normal here, that all magical cats talk.”

“There’s no such thing as magical cats,” Blaise answered. “I mean, there’s Kneazles, but Jack’s definitely not a Kneazle.”

“And Kneazles can’t talk either,” Pansy added.

Draco stared between them, bewildered. He had been very new to the concept of magic when he first got Jack, Draco supposed, and now that he thought about it, no one had ever acknowledged Jack when he spoke, even if they were in earshot at the time…

“I… All right, I suppose I never really gave it too much thought…”

“No kidding,” Blaise snorted.

“But I wasn’t raised in this world. I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not.”

Pansy hummed, drummed her fingers on the table, poison green fingernails making sharp, rhythmic sounds. “Well, it could be some strange magical phenomenon, I guess…or maybe you’re just crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!” Draco repeated.

“This isn’t why we’re here,” Blaise said. “Go on with your crazy story, crazy boy.”

Draco made an exasperated sound. “So… So Jack woke me up and told me his friend had been injured…” (It sounded very crazy all of a sudden.) “…and I checked the Marauder’s Map, you know, to make sure the coast was clear, and there was a name. Regulus Black.”

There was a brief pause. Draco looked nervously between his friends; Pansy’s eyebrows formed a high arch on her face, while Blaise seemed to be once again considering Draco’s sanity.

“Regulus Black,” Pansy eventually said.

“Yes.”

“The one who disappeared under mysterious circumstances over a decade ago?”

“Er… Yes, that one.”

“I don’t know,” Pansy said to Blaise, “maybe he really is crazy.”

“Look, I know what I saw,” Draco insisted. “It was right there, in plain ink. And he was right where Jack said his friend was, so I followed him there, but there was just the cat. No people. When I next looked at the Map, he was gone.”

“I mean, I suppose that does explain why you’ve been obsessed with the Map recently,” Blaise said. “Have you seen his name again since?”

Draco sighed, shook his head. “No, and I’ve been looking. I’m sure it was his name I saw, but I’m not sure of a single other thing. Why is he here? What does he want? And…”

Does he know I’m here, desperate to meet him? Draco couldn’t force the words out. He stared at the dusty classroom floor, silent.

“All right, well,” Blaise said eventually, “there are three options: Draco’s crazy, the Map is wrong, or the Map is right. And I’m at least pretty confident the Map isn’t wrong.”

“I’m not crazy,” Draco said, but felt crazier every time he had to insist upon it.

“If it really is Regulus Black, Professor Snape’s going to lose it,” Pansy said.

“Will he?” Draco frowned. “Why?”

“They were really close during the Second War. Or that’s what my mum said. Practically brothers. Snape was devastated when he went missing, and refused to give up the search for him for years.”

Draco wondered if bringing him up to his godfather now would do more harm than good. He didn’t want to upset Professor Snape, but if he knew anything…

“Hey, there you are. I’m hungry.”

Draco looked over his shoulder toward the door. Jack, tail high and curled at the end, came slinking through the slightly ajar classroom door, casting a long shadow across the floor that both Blaise and Pansy noticed at once.

“Well, well, well, Jacky-boy,” Blaise said. “Were your cute, fluffy little ears burning?”

Jack didn’t answer, only jumped up onto the desk at which Draco was sitting and meowed. “I want dinner.”

Draco sighed. “He’s hungry,” he said by way of explanation, and reached into his robe pocket, where he’d taken to storing handfuls of Jack’s favorite treats. He dropped a few on the table, which Jack happily snatched up. “When we get back to the common room, I’ll give you a proper dinner, all right?”

“So assuming I believe you about this whole talking cat thing,” Pansy said, “then it does raise the question if he can understand everyone or just you.”

Draco frowned as he watched Jack crunch through a few more treats. It was a good question, actually. Draco had assumed Jack understood everyone just like he understood Draco, but if Draco was the only one who could understand Jack…

“Jack,” Draco asked, “do you understand all humans or just me?”

Jack waited to answer, of course, until the last treat was gone. He sat upright, pink tongue chasing a few crumbs across his whiskers. “I understand you better than other humans. Although I don’t really pay attention to humans most of the time.”

“What do you mean, you don’t pay attention?”

“All right,” Pansy said, while Blaise laughed, “that is very catlike behavior.”

“Humans never talk about anything interesting,” Jack explained.

“Does he only speak English?” Blaise asked.

Another excellent question. “Jack, tu comprends le français?”

“I don’t think so,” Jack answered.

Draco didn’t quite know what to do with that answer. If he didn’t speak French, then how—? “Er, well, unclear. He speaks English to me. Or at least I think he does. I’m not sure anymore.”

“This is so weird,” Pansy said. “I always thought you just talked to him like anyone talks to cats. I didn’t realize he was talking back.”

“Just our normal friend with his normal talking cat,” Blaise said as he scratched Jack’s head, which made Draco sigh and Jack purr. He really was doing a terrible job of being normal this year.

“Make sure you tell us if you see Regulus Black’s name again,” Pansy said, “if only so we can tell you once and for all if you’re crazy.”

But Draco didn’t see Regulus Black’s name again, despite checking the Map several times a day all through the rest of September and a good part of October. It was a bit of a struggle to focus on classes, though Draco refused to let himself fall behind. James Potter had done enough damage to his grades last year.

He considered on more than one occasion asking Professor Snape for advice. If he and Regulus Black were as close as Pansy had said, perhaps he’d have some idea of why he’d be at Hogwarts. But every Potions class passed without Draco working up the nerve. Some little voice in the back of his head wanted to be absolutely sure that Regulus Black really was here before he told his godfather. He didn’t mind his friends thinking he was a little crazy, but could not survive if Severus Snape suspected the same.

Draco took to studying in the dormitory, on his bed, with the curtains drawn, so he could have the Map spread out beneath all his books as he worked. That way, he could keep one eye on it without anyone who happened to pass by seeing it. Most of the time, it did little more than take up space, and as the weeks went on, he paid less and less attention to it.

And then, one evening in mid-October like all the rest, he flipped his Charms textbook closed, stretched, and then, as he went to fold up the Map—

Regulus Black. Pacing back and forth in a dungeon hallway.

Draco’s heart jumped straight into his throat. He nearly tripped over his own feet as he dashed into the common room.

It was after dinner, late enough in the evening that curfew was a real worry, but Pansy and Blaise were still out. They were playing chess, and by the look of it, Pansy was demolishing him.

“Map,” he stammered out, and then ruined the game by spreading it out over the board.

“Hey!” Blaise cried.

Pansy tsked. “It would have been checkmate in four, anyway.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Map!” Draco said, and pointed fervently. “He’s there. He’s here.”

They both turned their eyes down.

“Well, would you look at that,” Blaise said. “Looks like you’re not crazy, Draco. Or at least not about this.”

“That’s the section of the dungeons that was closed off after the collapse,” Pansy muttered, turning the map to face her. “Or at least very close to it. What’s he doing there?”

“We have to—” Draco stammered. He had to, he had to. “Please, we need to—”

“All right, all right,” Blaise said. “You in, Pans?”

Pansy was still staring at the Map as she picked it up. “As if you could shake me.”

Together, they left the common room. Draco hadn’t seen the section of the dungeons that had collapsed in person, but he had a rough idea of where they were, near a lesser-used stairwell that went straight up to the western wing, near the greenhouses.

They were nearly there when Pansy said, “Wait, what’s—?”

Draco looked over when she turned the map. Regulus Black’s name was warping and twisting—until, eventually, it vanished entirely.

“No,” Draco hissed, and took off in a sprint.

He should have been right around the corner, but when Draco rounded it, once again, there was nothing. Just like last time.

“Putain!” he cried, and released a long, loud groan of aggravation.

The hallway had certainly collapsed—Draco could see where the stone of the ceiling had piled in untidy heaps on the ground. He could even see the floodwaters, held back by a glowing lattice of white magic. Through the gaps between the strands, he could see it churning, obscuring anything past a few feet. A bright yellow sign hung from a chain that stretched from one wall to the other: CAUTION - NO ENTRY.

“Where did he go?” Blaise said, bewildered.

“You don’t think…” Pansy frowned. “He couldn’t have possibly gone into the water, right? The horribly cursed water that’s so dangerous it needs twenty layers of wards?”

“I don’t know,” Draco said, and hated that he didn’t know. Not knowing was driving him crazy.

“I guess the curse could be so badly broken that the Map couldn’t track him in it,” Pansy said. “But how would he, you know, survive?”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Blaise said, leaning over the sign to squint into the dark water. “Dying would also wipe him off the Map, presumably.”

“What, he just sashayed through the ward to his knowing death? Don’t be stupid.”

“I suppose we’d see the blood at least, wouldn’t we?”

“Who are you looking for?”

Draco, Blaise, and Pansy all spun at the same time. Standing just a few feet behind them was a ghost, but not one they’d ever seen before. Over the last term, they’d gotten used to, and even oddly fond of, the Bloody Baron, the terrifying ghost of Slytherin, but this ghost was very different.

For a start, it was a girl about their age, in a Hogwarts uniform much like theirs, albeit soaked through and hanging heavily off her frame. Her dark hair was held back in a low ponytail, also drenched, and water ran off her fingertips and from the hems of her clothes in a constant, eerie stream that never pooled.

Most alarmingly, Draco recognized her. “Wait… You’re Angelina Johnson.”

The ghost turned her eyes to Draco. They bulged slightly in their sockets, he noticed, and some sort of aquatic plant had tangled around her throat.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “You know me?”

“I… I know about you,” Draco said. “You—er—died, two years ago. You fell into the Lake.”

“Has it already been two years?” The news seemed to make the ghost of Angelina Johnson very sad. Her shoulders slumped, her eyes dropped.

“I can’t believe Hogwarts has had a new ghost for two years and we haven’t heard about it,” Blaise said.

“I stay close to the Lake,” Angelina said. “Going too far away from the water is difficult. And… Well, some of my friends are still here, and I’m not sure if they’d want to see me.”

Draco’s mind turned slowly. “You can go into the water?”

“Yes. It doesn’t hurt me. Well, not anymore.”

Draco stepped toward her, fidgeting with the sleeves of his robes. “Could you do me a favor? We think—er, someone—passed through the wards just now. Could you check to see if he’s nearby? I… I need to talk to him.”

The ghost of Angelina Johnson fixed Draco with a long, eerie, unblinking stare. Her expression was unreadable in the way that, Draco had come to understand, most ghosts’ were.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said after a long lapse of silence.

“A deal?” Pansy asked skeptically.

“I want to send a message to someone. He should still be here—in Hogwarts, I mean. If you give him the message, I’ll find Regulus Black and give him your message, too.”

Draco startled. “You— You know who—?”

“He’s been here for a while now,” Angelina said. “He says he’s trying to fix the curse on the Lake. Says it’s his responsibility.”

Draco’s heart hammered, his mind spun. He had so many questions. Anticipation shivered in his blood, trembled in the tips of his fingers.

“It’s Fred Weasley, right? The one you want to send a message to?”

Angelina Johnson looked sadly down at the ground. “Yes.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Draco said. “I’ll find him and I’ll bring him here so you can talk to him in person. And in return, I want you to bring Regulus Black to meet me.”

The ghost paused for a long time, considering. She twisted the frond of some aquatic plant around her finger a few times.

“All right,” she eventually said. “Deal. I’d shake your hand if I could.”

“Just a normal day with my normal friend,” Blaise said, “making deals with ghosts and solving decade-old missing persons cases.”

Chapter Text

In the end, it had been harder than Draco thought it would be to convince Fred Weasley to meet the ghost of Angelina Johnson. He seemed scared—not of ghosts, or even her ghost specifically—but rather of why she wanted to see him, and what she wanted to say.

Draco ended up chasing him down the hallway in which he’d finally found him, after a while of searching. “So, wait, that’s it? Just no?”

“Look, I appreciate what you did to bring her justice last year, Malfoy, but this…” His voice wobbled. He couldn’t meet Draco’s eyes. “I just— What if she’s upset with me? What if she blames me for what happened to her?”

“What if she wants to say goodbye, and this is your only chance to hear it?” Draco answered.

It got his attention, at least. His footsteps stilled, and he looked miserably over his shoulder at Draco as he caught up. It was the last class of the day, and they weren’t far from where Eileen had told Draco the Gryffindor common room was, so he knew he had to speak quickly.

“Look, I get being scared, I do,” Draco said. “But the curse on Black Lake may never be truly broken—the dungeons, on the other hand, are definitely not always going to be flooded. And she’s tethered to the water. This might be her only chance to say what she wants to say to you. And it may be your only chance to hear it.”

Fred’s expression wavered. His eyes dropped.

“And which sounds worse to you—being sadder than you already are, or going through the rest of your life without ever hearing out her last chance to reconcile?”

For a long time, he didn’t say anything—so long that Draco started to get nervous and wonder if he wasn’t going to be able to hold up his end of the bargain after all.

But then, finally, Fred sighed and pushed a hand through his hair.

“After dinner tomorrow, you said?”

Shaky with relief, Draco nodded. “Near that stairwell that leads up to the greenhouses. That’s where the collapse is. You know it?”

“I know it. I’ll… I’ll meet you there.”

And then Fred hurried away, vanishing around a corner. Draco’s shoulders sagged, and he drew a few deep breaths.

Confronted with the mere possibility of not being able to meet Regulus…

“Are you all right?”

When Draco turned around, he saw Pansy hovering nervously a few feet away, frowning.

“You seem a little…shaky.”

“I’m all right,” Draco told her. “I just… This whole thing is so…”

“You’re really eager to meet him,” Pansy deduced.

It felt a little awkward to admit, but he found he couldn’t quite hold it back. “I’ve… I’ve never had a family. Or at least not one that treats me like family.”

For a moment, Pansy looked very sad—so sad that Draco actually felt a little guilty for bringing it up. Then she sniffed and straightened and put on a wry smile.

“Really? Playing the orphan card?” she said, which instantly broke the mood. Draco laughed gratefully.

“Sorry. So inconsiderate of me.”

Pansy came forward, slipped her arm around Draco’s, and guided them both back toward the dungeons.

“You know, my mum was also friends with your parents,” she said as they walked.

“Was she?”

“Not, like, closest ever. But they all were part of the Smokevigil, and Mum still laughs about being invited to the baby shower of the Boy Who Lived in the middle of a war.”

Draco laughed again. It was hard to imagine something like that.

“She has all these old mementos and pictures in the attic. Maybe this summer, you could come over, and she could show you?”

Draco smiled, feeling warm. “I’d really like that.”

“I’ll owl her first thing tomorrow, then. If I tell her how sad you looked talking about not having a family, she’ll have no choice but to say yes.”

“Weaponizing the orphan card, smart,” Draco said, which elicited one of Pansy’s high-pitched, squealing laughs.

“Will you write to my mum and dad for me? In all the pandemonium after my death, I realized…I don’t think they know I’m a ghost.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

It was inching up on curfew. Draco had been prepared for their conversation to be emotional—he hadn’t expected it to be quite so long, however. Beside him, Blaise checked his wristwatch again.

“I’d like to see them again. At least once. Maybe the Headmaster can arrange it so it’s safe?”

“Riddle can do pretty much everything else, so…”

“And if you’d like to come with them, that would… I wouldn’t mind that.”

Blaise sighed loudly. Draco elbowed him in the ribs, which made him frown.

“What?” he whispered. “I was expecting drama. Trust Gryffindors to make drama boring.”

“Be nice,” Draco whispered back.

“And maybe tell Katie and Alicia I’m here, too. It… It might be nice to see them, if they’re willing.”

“Of course they’d be willing, Angie,” Fred said, and on instinct, reached out to take her hand. She reached back, as well—but of course, their hands passed right through each other, which made them both flinch and shrink away.

An uncomfortable silence lapsed.

Finally, Angelina spoke again, slowly and carefully: “And I meant what I said, Fred. I don’t blame you for what happened at all. I’m grateful you fought to bring some sort of justice.”

“And for what it’s worth,” Fred said, “when you asked me to meet you at the Lake, I had every intention of asking you out.”

“Your timing probably could have been better,” Angelina answered, and they both laughed, though there wasn’t a lot of humor in it.

Eventually—and with a muttered “ugh, finally” from Blaise—they parted ways. Draco felt happy that they both got some resolution, that Angelina would get to see her parents and friends again—but mostly, he was eager to ask about Regulus Black.

It took everything in him not to bring it up immediately, while the ghost of Angelina Johnson hovered near the ceiling, watching as Fred Weasley disappeared around a corner.

After a long moment of silence, she finally turned her eyes to Draco.

“I told him you wanted to meet,” she said.

Draco straightened. “Regulus?”

She nodded. “He seemed reluctant, but eventually agreed. Midnight on Halloween, the northern greenhouse.”

He opened his mouth, but couldn’t force any words out—which was just as well, because Angelina’s ghost sunk backward, through the ward holding back the waters of Black Lake, and vanished. Draco stared at the space from which she disappeared, mouth still open.

That was it? Midnight on Halloween? And he was going to—?

He was really going to meet—?

“Well, there goes my beauty sleep,” Blaise said, pushing himself off the wall against which he’d been leaning. “I’ll tell Pansy to meet us in the common room on Halloween around—shall we say half-eleven?”

“You don’t have to come,” Draco said at once.

“Of course we have to come,” Blaise answered. “You didn’t honestly think we’d let you do this alone, did you?” When Draco remained silent, so oddly touched that he didn’t quite know what to say, Blaise continued, cavalier: “Besides, after this disappointingly anticlimactic meeting, I could use some juicy family drama. Can’t wait to find out why he’s been missing for a decade!”

Then he thumped Draco on the shoulder and strode off, and Draco was left wondering if he should keep feeling touched or not.

They were forced to wait in the common room for an unbearable thirteen minutes after meeting there at half-eleven on Halloween, because Filch, according to the Marauder’s Map, was patrolling the dungeons. Draco was tempted to just make a break for it and try his luck with a Leg-Locker Curse or something if he noticed them, but Pansy talked him into just waiting. Eventually, Filch moved on, and together, they stole out into the castle.

The three of them made it to the northern greenhouse, full of Professor Sprout’s more anodyne plants that perfumed the night air with a curious combination of scents, with ten minutes to spare before midnight. Of course, it was empty, and the Map showed no one at all nearby, least of all Regulus Black, and that should have been fine.

But it wasn’t fine and Draco couldn’t make himself sit still. He could barely even tear his eyes away from the Map, so frantically was he scanning the hallways and nearby grounds.

“You really need to relax,” Blaise told him shortly before midnight.

“I’m fine!” Draco snapped. Then, when Blaise raised both eyebrows, he added, contrite, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”

“Deep breaths, Draco,” Pansy said. “Panicking won’t make time go faster. In fact, it tends to have the opposite effect.”

“I know, I know.” Draco forced himself away from the Map, which he left open near a newly-potted Mandrake, and spent a while pacing up and down the length of the greenhouse. “It’s just… Angelina said he was reluctant to see me. Why’s he reluctant? Why’s he here in the first place? What did he mean when he said the curse on the Lake was his responsibility?”

“Where’s he been the last thirteen years?” Blaise added.

“That, too, I suppose.” Draco wrung his wand in both hands. There were other questions, as well, ones that he didn’t want to say aloud, lest they tempt fate: Why had Regulus never looked for Draco? Did he not know about him, or…?

“Well, you won’t have to wait too much longer,” Pansy said, and Draco darted over to where she was standing by the Map.

Sure enough, a set of footsteps labeled Regulus Black was approaching their greenhouse at a brisk pace. Draco’s heart started thudding against his ribs. He looked up through the hazy glass, where he should have seen his silhouette, but there was nothing. He looked back at the Map. The footsteps were now skirting the castle wall—moving toward the narrow path connecting all the greenhouses—turning the corner—

Draco looked up toward the door where he should have been, but there was no one.

There was, however, a cat. Large and with long, glossy black fur, tail high and twitching.

It took Draco a moment. He looked back down at the Map, back up at the cat, which was unmistakably labeled—

“Regulus Black?” Draco said. Then: “You were the cat. You— You’re—”

“An Animagus,” Blaise realized. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

And then, the cat transformed.

He was shorter than Draco expected him to be, perhaps a few inches shy of six feet. His hair hung long and limp halfway down his back, the same deep blue-black as the cat’s fur, tied at the back of his neck. His clothes were threadbare and worn, but in good repair, as though they’d been fixed again and again over many years but never replaced.

His eyes, even in the darkness, were bright honey-gold. Draco could see familiar shapes in his face—the same slope of his nose and point of his chin.

“Hello, Draco,” he said. He had a quiet, raspy tenor which, Draco realized only after a few moments of stunned silence, was heavy with emotion.

“Hello,” Draco finally managed to say back.

Another pause. Then, slowly, Regulus crossed the greenhouse toward them, casting one brief, nervous look over his shoulder before crouching down in front of Draco.

He smelled wild, like pine and loam. He stared hard at Draco, hands slowly forming fists on his knees.

“Merlin, you look just like Narcissa,” he rasped.

Draco swallowed. “With my father’s eyes, I’m told.”

Regulus laughed, a hoarse and breathy sound. “Yes. Stormy gray. She told me all about them, in nauseating detail. I’d have listened more if I’d known it would have been among the last things she ever said to me. We wrote, of course, after she graduated, but by then the War was so bad, it wasn’t safe to visit—and then she was in hiding, and then…”

Draco became slowly aware of the fact that he was trembling. He did his best not to let on.

“Where have you been all this time?” Blaise asked. Then, “Oh, sorry—Blaise Zabini. Charmed.”

“Pansy Parkinson,” Pansy added, before Regulus even had time to react. Honey-colored eyes bounced between them nervously, an expression that inspired Pansy to add, “We’re his friends.”

“Right,” Regulus said. “Good to meet you.”

Then he cleared his throat nervously and stood.

“I’ve been… I guess you could say I’ve been running.”

“From what?” Draco asked at once.

Regulus flinched. “I… It’s probably safer if you don’t know, Draco.”

“But—” Draco began, but Regulus held up one hand.

“I’m afraid this really isn’t up for discussion. I probably shouldn’t even be meeting you at all. Just being here is putting you in some amount of danger. But I…”

His expression fell, wrecked by a slow groundswell of grief and regret and longing.

“I was already on the run by the time your parents died,” he said, already raspy voice fraying further with emotion, “but I still heard about it. It killed me, being so far from home when there were so many in my family who still needed to be buried, but…well, suffice it to say that I had my reasons. If I had to do it again, nothing would change—including my reluctance at leaving you behind.”

Draco had so many questions. He wanted to ask about his mother, about the War, about the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, but all the questions tangled in his throat and stuck there.

“All right,” Blaise said, “well, if you can’t tell us why you were gone, can you at least tell us why you’re here now?”

“Er, no. I can’t really tell you that, either.”

“So we trekked out here in the middle of the night, risking detention, so you could tell Draco that you can’t tell him anything?” Blaise sounded a bit outraged. “You could have just written a letter.”

“I haven’t had access to an owl in months,” Regulus answered, “but your point is well-taken. I know this is frustrating.”

“Angelina—the ghost in the Lake—said that you were trying to fix the curse,” Pansy said. “That it was your responsibility.”

Regulus flinched. “Yes, it is. I’m the one who put it there in the first place. I felt it when it fractured.”

All three of them startled at the news, but Draco was the first to speak: “Wait, really? You cursed the Lake?”

“I didn’t have much choice,” Regulus answered. “I needed to—”

His words fell off abruptly, and he licked his lips. Draco had a feeling that the conversation was about to hit another brick wall, and sure enough:

“—I really shouldn’t say.”

“Man, here I was, all excited for the drama,” Blaise said, “and we don’t get to hear any of the juicy details? What a letdown.”

“Please,” Draco said. “There’s got to be something—something you can tell me, some way I can help you. I can tell the Headmaster you’re here.”

“Riddle?” he asked. Draco nodded. “I’d rather avoid getting him involved. He’s an excellent wizard and a fine man, but he has to maintain some very delicate ties within the Ministry that might be jeopardized if…”

Regulus drifted off, and before he could offer some other variation of but I really can’t tell you that, Draco continued:

“Well, what about Snape?”

The name took Regulus by surprise, clearly; gold eyes widened, narrow shoulders squared. “Severus is here?”

“He’s the Potions Master,” Pansy said. “And Head of Slytherin.”

Regulus laughed again, though it sounded bitter. “Of course he is. He was always a prodigy with potions.”

“He looked for you for years,” Draco said. “He’d be happy to see you, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure he would be, too,” Regulus answered, “though he’d be less happy to—”

He cut himself off again with an aggravated sigh, pushing a hand through his thick, dark hair.

“So, what,” Draco persisted, voice tremulous, “you’re just going to disappear again?”

Regulus’s expression fell. “Draco… My life is exceptionally dangerous. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you because you got tangled up in it.”

“I don’t care! I’ll risk it! Just tell me what I can do, how I can help you—I want—I—I—”

But Draco didn’t know how to put what he wanted in words—not in English, and not, he suspected, even in his mother tongue. It was too much to fit into a single meeting.

“I’m…touched, Draco, really, by the sentiment, but there’s nothing you could—”

Regulus stopped himself again, but this time, his expression was different. Draco stared, heart in his throat, as gears turned visibly behind golden eyes.

“Actually,” he said, very slowly, “there…might be something…”

“Name it,” Draco said at once.

But right as he opened his mouth to answer, in the distance, a single, warbling howl cut through the night. Regulus reacted as though it was a physical blow, staggering, spinning toward its source, eyes huge posture primed to bolt.

“Whoa, take it easy,” Blaise said.

“I… I have to go,” Regulus stammered out. “Draco—in exactly a week, can you meet me at the edge of the Lake? Midnight?”

He didn’t even need to consider it. “Yes, of course.”

“It’s probably best if you go alone. Draws less attention. I—”

Another howl. His whole body reacted.

“I have to go,” he said, and took off in a sprint for the greenhouse doors, transforming back into a cat mid-stride.

Chapter Text

It was the longest week of Draco’s life.

“Oy, Malfoy! Are you even listening?”

Draco looked down (and down, and down) from where he was hovering about fifty feet in the air. It was the fourth Quidditch practice since the school year began, and though there were still three weeks left before Slytherin’s first game, Flint had made a big show of not getting comfortable after their victory the previous term.

“He’s not!” Pansy cried from a few yards off.

Pansy was the newest addition to the Slytherin Quidditch team, taking over for their Beater who had graduated the year previous. Draco hadn’t been present at the tryouts—Flint had insisted on being the only one who was, to mitigate bias—but she’d already made quite an impression.

“Traitor,” he grumbled at her.

“Huddle!” Flint bellowed.

Draco steered his Polaris down in a broad arc toward the tall grass growing along the bottom of the Pitch. As he did, Pansy fell in beside him.

“I mean, you weren’t listening,” she said.

“I’ve got some stuff on my mind,” he answered, which Pansy knew very well.

“Sure, the whole meeting-your-lost-cousin thing is important, but this is Quidditch. Get your priorities straight.”

Draco rolled his eyes. They landed near Flint, along with the rest of the team, in a wide semicircle.

“We’re a little sloppy today,” was the first thing Flint said, and he was looking rather pointedly at Draco, who just sighed. “First match of the year is Ravenclaw, on the 21st. They were no slouches last year, and I don’t expect they will be this year, either. Let’s try to focus.”

“They have a new Seeker, you know,” Adrian Pucey, a year above Draco and a fellow Chaser, remarked. “That Chang girl, third year. She seems good.”

“You’ve got intel to share?” Flint asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well, you didn’t hear it from me,” Adrian continued, swinging off his broom, “but apparently she really wowed the Captain at tryouts. Pulled off a successful Death Drop.”

Flint whistled low, clearly impressed. Terence, the Slytherin Seeker, looked particularly scandalized—Draco recalled him attempting a Death Drop of his own against Hufflepuff last term and failing catastrophically. The repairs to his broom had been substantial.

“Well,” Pansy said, “at least I know who to aim for.”

“We’ll talk strategy at the last practice before the match,” Flint said. “They’re up before us, against Gryffindor. Let’s see how they perform first.”

“Pardon me! S’cuse me!”

The whole team turned toward the sound, in time to see Professor Hagrid lumbering across the Pitch, looking a little out of breath.

“Could use a hand!”

“Everything all right, Professor?” Flint asked.

“Well, yes an’ no,” he said. “There’s been an attack.”

Draco startled. “An attack?”

“Y’know Luna Lovegood? Ravenclaw? She’s in the Hospital Wing with a nasty bite, says it was a wild dog out on the grounds.”

“A wild dog?” Pansy repeated, clearly skeptical. “Do the Highlands even have wild dogs?”

“Not as such, though there have been packs of werewolves in th’ Forest before, an’ well—it can get nasty when a domestic dog gets bit,” Professor Hagrid said. “The attack wasn’t that long ago, and if yeh don’t mind, I could use a bunch of people with brooms who can spread out an’ see if they can find any signs of where it might’ve gone…”

The members of the team all looked amongst each other, then to Flint.

Flint only shrugged. “I mean, sure. Practice is over anyway.”

“Appreciate it! Now, she said it happened on th’ hill overlooking th’ Lake. If we split off from there…”

After a few moments of logistics, they came up with a plan—Draco and Pansy to the north, around the Lake itself; Flint and Adrian to the west, back toward the castle; Terence, Miles, and Graham to the south, toward Hogsmeade. Professor Hagrid would wait on the hill itself, which wasn’t far from the Pitch, for them to report back.

“If yeh do see it,” Professor Hagrid was quick to say before they went their separate ways, “of course, don’t approach! Send up red sparks, an’ stay well up in th’ air. I’ll try an’ find yeh.”

As soon as they all went their separate ways, the first thing Pansy said was, “Is Luna Lovegood the blonde? Spacey?”

“I think so,” Draco said. He vaguely remembered her from this year’s Sorting, but hadn’t actually ever spoken to her. “Although I can’t speak to her spaciness. Is spaciness a word?”

“It’s a word.”

It was nearing sundown, and though this far into November there wasn’t much color left on the trees, the Highlands were still drenched in all the right colors from the light, oranges and golds and reds. From their vantage high over it all, the Lake looked dark purple, the glittering dome of wards around it just barely visible in the steep angle of sunlight.

“I’m not even sure what a wild dog would look like,” Pansy confessed as she scanned the ground, “let alone one that lives in bloody Scotland.”

Draco hummed. He didn’t really know either, but, “How many can there be so close to Hogwarts? They’re not allowed as pets.”

Pansy only hummed.

The ward over the Lake resisted them as they soared over it, shifting their paths slightly away. Draco trailed his fingers across it, which sent ripples of magic out in all directions.

In the end, no one on the Quidditch team found a dog nor any sign of one, though Draco was sure he heard a distant howl from the Forest.

Two nights after that Quidditch practice marked exactly one week after Halloween. It was also a Saturday, with no classes and not nearly enough homework to keep Draco’s mind occupied before midnight.

Pansy and Blaise offered to accompany Draco, and though Draco was grateful, he ultimately declined. He got the feeling that Regulus’s request for Draco to come alone was less a matter of his own safety as it was Draco’s.

Besides, a part of him ached for a moment, if only a brief one, where they could be alone.

Marauder’s Map in hand, Draco navigated his way out of the Slytherin common room, avoiding the slow footsteps of Minerva McGonagall on the ground floor, who Draco supposed was up with insomnia. He made it to the edge of the Lake slightly before midnight, and watched the Map in eager silence as a pair of footsteps labeled Regulus Black crossed the grounds toward his own. Draco turned and spotted the cat just before it transformed.

“Hello,” Draco said, hurriedly folding the Map shut.

But Regulus had already spotted it. “I know that map.”

Draco startled. “You do?”

“I do… May I?”

After a pause, Draco handed it out to him. Regulus took it gingerly in both hands. Still folded as it was, all that was visible was the greeting from Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. It was dark out, of course, but Draco had no trouble seeing Regulus’s fingertips smooth with great gentleness over the name Prongs. His expression was strange, and Draco felt an odd impulse not to interrupt whatever the moment was for him.

“Where did you get this?” he asked after a long moment.

“Er, well, it’s sort of a long story,” Draco said. “Not to say that I don’t want to tell it—of course I do—but…”

“Maybe not specifically right now.” Regulus smiled crookedly at Draco and handed the Map back. Draco took it, fussed with it, then tucked it into his robe pocket. “Right. Let’s talk about the Lake.”

Standing right at its edge, the ward around it was visible even in the darkness, a fine spiderweb of magic that seemed to shine with the moonlight.

“You said you cursed it yourself,” Draco recalled.

“I did. That was just before I…disappeared myself,” Regulus replied. “Right at the end of my final year here. It was the only solution to a very complicated problem.”

“What problem? And please don’t tell me you can’t say. I want to know. I want to help.”

Regulus laughed. “You sound like Narcissa,” he said, and although it had the tone of an admonition, Draco couldn’t help but feel a little warm at the idea that he got his temperament from his mother.

Silence lapsed briefly. They both stared out at the Lake for a time.

“I should preface this explanation by saying that my final year at Hogwarts was at the height of the Second Wizarding War,” Regulus eventually said. “It was not a normal term. Nothing about life was normal back then, especially not Hogwarts, when so many who were loyal to the Ashbringer were enrolled alongside me. Sworn members of the Order of the Phoenix.”

“Order of the Phoenix,” Draco repeated, just to feel the shape of the words. “That’s…?”

“The name they gave themselves,” Regulus said. “The Ashbringer was a great fan of phoenixes. He admired their power, and poured tremendous meaning into the metaphor of rebuilding from the ashes of a world that needed a good burning.”

“Rather…grisly,” Draco said.

“Oh, yes. But it suited them.”

Regulus took in, and then slowly released, a long breath. The treetops of the Forbidden Forest hissed, and shortly after, a wind came whipping past, catching his long hair.

“Among the Ashbringer’s most ardent believers was my brother.”

“Sirius,” Draco said at once, which earned him an odd look. “I… I managed to get my hands on a family tree.”

“Well. Yes, Sirius. My older brother. He’d graduated the year prior, ending his and his friends’ long tyranny over the school. Then, over that Easter break, I came into possession of…a very particular, very powerful magical artifact. One that the Ashbringer coveted.”

Draco frowned. “What artifact?” he asked, but the question had barely left his mouth before he recognized the look on Regulus’s face. “You can’t tell me.”

“For now, let it suffice to say that it was powerful, and dangerous, and if it had ended up in the Ashbringer’s hands, it could have caused a great deal of damage. So, I took it with me back to Hogwarts, thinking that with Riddle in the castle, it would be safe.

“But I underestimated how badly the Ashbringer wanted it. He sent two of his Order members after me, with instructions to get the artifact by any means necessary. One was Sirius.

“I didn’t want to fight him. He was my brother, and there was a time when I loved and admired him a great deal. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left of the brother I remembered. The Ashbringer had twisted him into something I didn’t recognize. Over the final months of term, he sprung a series of attacks on me, ransacked my dormitory… Riddle did his best to protect me, but his resources were already stretched thin.

“I tried to destroy the artifact, but it was too powerful. So I did the next best thing and hid it.”

“In the Lake,” Draco said, as the pieces clicked together.

“I gave it to the merfolk who live there, told them the whole story. They agreed to protect it, but only if I did something to protect them. So I cast a very powerful, very nasty curse to keep out absolutely everyone. And I sealed it with the strongest magical force I had access to: blood.”

“Blood?”

Regulus didn’t answer immediately. He scanned the dark horizon carefully, as if making sure they were alone. Then he stepped closer and dropped his voice.

“Black blood. By which I mean—blood of the Black line, given willingly and with good intent, which I knew Sirius would never be able to summon, even if he managed to suss out the exact nature of the curse.

“When he found out it was beyond his reach, he was quite angry. He attacked me. I ran. He pursued. And I just kept running, because despite the fact that Sirius had proved again and again that he’d kill me as soon as look at me, I still found the idea of raising my wand against him to be unthinkable. I’ve spent all this time running, keeping him away from England, because I knew if he was ever caught, he would receive no mercy from the Smokevigil.”

Despite trying his best, Draco found he couldn’t quite summon a reaction to the story, apart from being grateful he’d never had to be in Regulus’s shoes.

“And then,” he sighed, “last year, from hundreds of miles away, I felt the curse break and panicked.”

Draco cleared his throat. “Er, yeah.” He decided he’d add that to the list of things to tell him some other time.

“I came back as quickly as I could, fearing that someone from the Order had finally gotten access to it somehow. They haven’t, or at least I don’t think they have, but I still felt terrible when I learned that a girl had died because of my magic. I tried to remove the curse as it was intended to be removed a few weeks ago, but the magic is too badly fractured. My blood, willingly given with good intent, is no longer enough.”

“But I’m a Black by blood, too!” Draco said, excitement bubbling hot and abrupt through his middle. “If we both give some blood, do you think—?”

“You catch on quick,” Regulus laughed. “Yes, that was my thought as well. When a curse is shattered this badly, the only safe recourse is to use the intended countercurse with as much force as possible. In this case, that means more blood, from more Blacks.”

“So what should I do?” Draco asked.

“Let me open the ward.”

Draco watched as Regulus drew his wand, long and ebony with very intricate carvings along its length, and cast a few careful, elegant spells. The magic of the ward shifted just slightly, and Regulus pushed through. Draco followed carefully up to the Lake’s edge.

The last time Draco had been this close to the water, there had been an explosion so powerful that it had knocked him out for several hours. He did his best not to dwell on the memory, and when Regulus sank down to his knees at the edge of the water, Draco did as well.

“The spell to draw your blood should be painless,” Regulus said, “but make sure to heal yourself up as soon as it’s drawn. Even magical wounds can get infected.”

Draco nodded, then fell silent as Regulus shut his eyes and held his wand up like a conductor of an orchestra. He watched, spellbound, through several long moments of incredibly precise movements and softly muttered incantations. Then he drew his wand across his opposite palm, which split the skin—drops of blood went splattering onto the surface of the water, which in turn boiled and bubbled nastily, though not as badly as Draco had seen in the past.

Then Regulus drew Draco’s blood as well, painlessly as promised, and Draco cast a quick spell on himself to seal it back up, though he kept his eyes on the water. The blood churned just under the surface, forming sheets that twisted around each other and seemed to worsen the boiling.

“Come on,” Regulus whispered through his teeth. “Come on.”

He made another precise gesture with his wand, and something CRACKED so loud that the sound echoed across the grounds. Draco barely had time to throw up a quick “Protego!” which rebounded an explosion of water away from them.

Regulus made a loud, anguished sound. “Dammit! So close!”

“Perhaps if we give more blood?” Draco hazarded.

“The nature of the magic isn’t…” Regulus sighed. “I don’t know. I have this horrible feeling that it’s a lost cause, and that I’ve put everyone in this castle in danger for no good reason.”

Draco frowned. “What do you mean by that? You mentioned it last week, too. Why are we in danger?”

Regulus sighed again, ran his tongue along his teeth, and looked at Draco with a defeated expression.

“Because, as he has for the last thirteen years,” he said, “my brother has followed me here.”

Chapter Text

“Er, Professor? Do you have a moment?”

Professor Snape barely looked up from the pile of homework he was sorting through. Behind Draco, the rest of the students—it was double Potions today, Slytherin and Gryffindor—were emptying out into the hallway.

“Certainly,” he answered mildly. He spent a few more moments flipping through the homework, then asked, “Did you turn in your essay?”

“Yes?”

He nodded as he made his way toward the end of the stack. “Ah, there it is.” He paused again, then: “Did Eileen?”

“That I’m not sure about.”

“My hopes of alchemical acumen being inherited continue to dwindle,” he sighed. “What can I do for you?”

“Er,” Draco said, not really sure how to say what he needed to say tactfully, and instead deciding to just say it. “Sirius Black is in England, and probably hiding in the Forbidden Forest right now.”

His motions stilled. It was a small change, really—a minor movement suddenly absent—but somehow, it shifted his entire demeanor. Professor Snape’s dark eyes were larger than Draco had ever seen them, shoulders rigid and expression brittle.

“Sirius—?” he began, then stopped abruptly. “How do you know this?”

Draco shifted his weight nervously to the other foot. “Because Regulus told me.”

“Regulus—?” Professor Snape’s entire body lurched forward. Like an afterthought, he snatched his wand off his desk and used it to slam shut the classroom door. Between the time Draco looked back at it, then forward again to Professor Snape, he’d stood up and gotten close enough to seize Draco by both shoulders.

“Tell me everything,” he said, and so Draco did, as Regulus had said he should: he told him about the Marauder’s Map, the ghost of the Lake, the meeting in the greenhouse, the unsuccessful attempt to lift the curse. It was a long story, but Snape remained absolutely still through the whole thing, save for a shuddering in his shoulders.

And when it was finally over, Professor Snape’s hands dropped and his weight collapsed onto the edge of his desk. He stared with unfocused eyes at the far side of the room.

“I’m going to kill him,” he eventually said.

Draco frowned. “Er…which?”

“Honestly,” Professor Snape answered, “I think both.”

“But I thought you and Regulus were friends,” Draco protested.

“Friends? Regulus was a brother to me. Losing him was bad enough, but giving up the search for him was even worse. The idea that he deliberately chose not to be found? I—” Professor Snape laughed, though it was a very worrying sort of laugh. “I’m going to kill him. But not before I kill his duplicitous blackguard of a brother.”

Regulus had warned him that Professor Snape would threaten something like that. “Er, yes. Well, Regulus would like to kindly ask you to, er—not kill him. Sirius, I mean. I’m not sure where he stands on his own murder.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still trying to protect that wretch,” Professor Snape said, expression stormy. “Sirius Black has done nothing to deserve Regulus’s loyalty. And he has some temerity to beg mercy for his brother’s life from me.”

Regulus had warned Draco that Professor Snape would probably say something like this, too. “Yes, he thought you’d be upset. And he told me to tell you that he’s not asking for Sirius’s sake, but for his own.”

Draco had some trouble identifying exactly what emotion was behind the sound he made. Professor Snape seemed halfway between furious, despondent, and winded.

Then, eventually, Snape shook his head. “I’m not going to play telephone through a twelve-year-old. Where is he? I want to see him. I want— I need to see him.”

“He has a hiding place of his own. He wouldn’t tell me where. But he said he’s willing to meet you ‘at the old spot, at the usual time.’ He said you’d know where that is.”

By his expression, Professor Snape did know what that meant.

“I need to talk to Riddle,” he said, and made for the door. Before he could reach it, though, Draco said:

“Professor? What did Sirius Black do to you?”

He stilled just as his hand contacted the handle of the classroom door. For a few breaths, he stayed silent.

“I’d not inflict the gruesome details on a child,” he eventually said.

“Did he hurt you?” Draco asked, frowning.

“I know you think you want the answer, Draco, but you’re a little young to know the finer details of war crimes.”

Professor Snape attempted something approximating a smile at Draco. It didn’t reach his eyes, and made nervousness knot in the pit of Draco’s stomach.

“I’ll talk to you later, all right?” he said, then didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled open the door and turned swiftly into the hallway, black robes fanning behind him.

Of course, Draco caught Blaise and Pansy up on it all that evening after dinner, huddled together in the corner of the common room.

“Torture,” Blaise said at once. “It was definitely torture.”

“But there’s all kinds of torture,” Pansy answered. “I don’t think Professor Snape would threaten death like that over a simple Cruciatus.”

“What’s a—?” Draco began.

“Another one of the Unforgivable curses,” Blaise answered before he could even finish the question. “And I think you’re right, Pans. The Cruciatus is bad, but it’s also impersonal.”

“I don’t know much about Sirius Black,” Pansy said, leaning back in the plush green armchair in which she’d perched herself. “Past the broad strokes, anyway. I’d ask Mum, but if he was as war crime-y as Snape implied, I kind of doubt she’d tell me much.”

“So why is Regulus all of a sudden fine with revealing himself?” Blaise asked, leaning back on his hands, which were curled around the edge of the ottoman for Pansy’s chair. “After all this secrecy, suddenly he wants Snape and Riddle knowing he’s here?”

“I wouldn’t say he wanted it,” Draco said, slumping against the wall. With Pansy on the chair and Blaise on the ottoman, he’d taken the floor, which wasn’t so bad with the plush rug. “After we failed to remove the curse on the Lake, he just sort of accepted that he needed help. I suggested Professor Snape and the Headmaster.”

Pansy hummed. “I guess if anyone could figure it out…”

A tiny gasp a few feet away drew Draco’s gaze.

Ginny Weasley, face as red as her hair, needed only a split second of Draco’s attention to send her sprinting for the stairs leading down to the dormitories. Draco sighed.

“I’m used to Slytherins being subtler than her,” Pansy remarked. “Must be all the Gryffindors she lives with.”

“As long as she keeps her distance,” Draco said. “I’ve got enough problems with Gryffindors already. I don’t need to give her brothers any more reason to make me miserable.”

“Woe is he who must endure the romantic attention of half the girls in the school,” Blaise crooned, with false sympathy that made Pansy cackle.

But Draco wasn’t laughing. “Wait, what? What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, you haven’t noticed?” Blaise laughed.

“No,” Draco said, because he genuinely hadn’t.

“Blond hair, French accent, brainy, good at Quidditch—and that’s to say nothing of the big, sad eyes,” Pansy said, once she’d stopped laughing. “I can’t tell you how many girls have asked me about you.”

“I don’t want girls to ask about me,” Draco replied without thinking, which was true. He didn’t know how to handle girls who fancied him, and didn’t want to know.

“Is the naivety part of the charm, do you think?” Blaise asked Pansy.

“For some girls, probably,” Pansy answered, and they both laughed, and Draco sank backward into the wall as he noticed a pair of third-year girls staring at him, as well.

Draco,

If this letter is late, it’s only because it took a month or more to talk your aunt into telling me how to get access to an owl—and then another month to convince her to give me some of that magical currency to send it.

I just wanted to check if you were coming back to Nantes for Christmas. You didn’t last year, which I understand. This place has never really been a home to you, I’ve been discovering. If you want to spend Christmas at Hogwarts again this year, of course that’s fine. But if you do want to spend it with your aunt and I, I’ll try to keep her from being too nasty to you. I can’t promise I’ll succeed, but I promise I’ll try. Either way, let me know. I got you a Christmas present. Do owls do packages as well as letters?

How is your term going so far? I notice you haven’t written, despite implying that you would. Which is fine, of course. I’m not saying you have to, but I’d like to hear from you.

I hope your cat’s doing well. And you also.

Uncle Marc

Slytherin ended up losing their first game of the year against Ravenclaw. Their new seeker, Cho Chang, lived up to the hype and caught the Snitch so fast that Slytherin’s early lead didn’t even matter.

“I swear,” Pansy growled as the team stomped and slouched and shuffled their way out of the Pitch after the stands had emptied, “if she dodges my Bludger one more time I’m just going after her with the bat.”

“That’s probably a foul,” Draco said.

“I never said it would be during a game.”

“Right. Well, that’s a crime.”

“Only if I get caught.”

“It’s still a crime if you get away with it, Pans.”

“Whatever! The point is, I want to beat her unconscious!”

Draco patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. The truth was, Pansy had done a great job—it hadn’t been a matter of her aim, which had been excellent, so much as it had been their speed—but he doubted telling her so would make her feel better. Losing her first game couldn’t have been easy.

The sight of the Ravenclaw team a few hundred feet ahead, jubilant and high-fiving each other the whole, slow way back to the castle, probably didn’t help.

“We’ll get them next time,” Flint said. “One loss doesn’t ruin the season. Besides, it’s Gryffindor up next, and if history is any indication, we’ll clean shop with them.”

Draco could hardly wait. Last year’s Quidditch Cup victory over Gryffindor remained, months later, one of Draco’s fondest memories. Stupid smug Harry Potter getting that stupid lopsided smirk wiped off his stupid face had been—

“Whoa,” Adrian said, from just ahead. “What’s going on?”

Draco returned his attention to the scene in front of him. Professor Flitwick, who taught Charms, was speaking in low, urgent tones to the Ravenclaw captain, who was already nodding and gesturing for her teammates to go. Half of them had already started jogging down the gravel path, looking around nervously as they went.

“Professor?” Flint said, as Flitwick approached them next.

“Back to the castle, please,” he said at once. He was flushed and slightly out of breath. “All of you, with a quickness.”

“Is something wrong?” Graham asked with a frown.

“The school is going into lockdown,” Flitwick said, “or it will as soon as all students are back inside—so, if you please?”

“Lockdown?” Pansy asked, bewildered, but Flitwick was clearly done talking; he urged the group forward with the assistance of some sort of spell that physically forced them along.

It was a brisk, brief jog back into the castle. Students funneled their way into the corridor that let out closest to the Pitch, all of them just having left the Quidditch match. Once inside, the group was then directed, by several grim-faced professors, into the Great Hall—where it seemed like everyone in the school had been corralled.

“What is going on?” Draco asked.

It was easy enough to find the other Slytherins, all of whom had naturally gravitated around their table. Across the room, Blaise saw the Quidditch team, caught Draco’s eye, and waved him over.

Pansy wasted no time. The second she sat down, “What fresh nonsense is happening now?”

Blaise opened his mouth, but Theo jumped in before he could say anything: “A student has gone missing.”

“Neville Longbottom,” Blaise supplied before Pansy could even ask. “Know him? Gryffindor, blond, bit heavy and a little useless?”

“He’s one of Potter’s hangers-on, isn’t he?” Draco asked, and cast a glance across the room toward the Gryffindor table. He picked Potter out at once, of course—even from a dozen yards away, his dark, slicked back hair was unmistakable. He seemed distressed, and was muttering to his Weasley friend in low tones. Longbottom was nowhere to be seen.

“That’s the one,” Blaise said. “The professors haven’t confirmed anything yet, of course, but the word I’m hearing is that he was dragged off by a dog.”

Draco and Pansy both reacted at the same time, spinning sharply toward him.

“A dog?” Pansy said. “Like—?”

“The one from a few weeks ago, that bit that Ravenclaw girl,” Draco said. Then, “Wait… Do you remember, when we first met—” (Draco spared a brief glance at Theo, still present and listening a bit too closely, and stammered a bit, unsure on how specific he should be in public.) “—in—in the greenhouse?”

“Yeah,” Blaise said.

“He got spooked by the sound of a dog howling and had to run off. And he said his brother followed him here… Do you think—?”

“Oh, shit,” Pansy said, putting it together a split second before Blaise, who blanched.

“But…” Blaise began, stumbling over his words, “why Longbottom? He’s got nothing to do with it.”

“No, but he is blond,” Pansy said, nervous gaze turning to Draco. “Just like Lovegood, and just like—”

Nausea heaved in the pit of Draco’s stomach. “Like me.” It couldn’t be, could it? But Sirius Black had never seen him in person, and if all he had to go on was a hair color and approximate age—from a hunting distance, perhaps—

“Yeah,” Theo said slowly, “what the hell are you all on about?”

Chapter Text

The whole student body spent the rest of that night in the Great Hall, sleeping with conjured sleeping bags and pillows. The professors took shifts outside the door, making sure no one went in or out. Draco felt sorry for the few students who had to get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, only to be escorted by their Herbology professor.

Classes resumed as normal the next day, but not before the Headmaster made an announcement, just before all the students filed out after breakfast, that there would be no access permitted outside the castle until further notice.

Though he urged them all to remain calm, he did not mention Neville Longbottom—and based on the tense silence that followed the announcement, everyone was too nervous to ask.

Draco, though, wasn’t nervous. He’d had plenty of time to think that night, staring at the vaulted ceiling of the Great Hall while failing to fall asleep: he was going to do whatever he could to make Hogwarts safe again. He was going to help Regulus, prove his worth, and earn a permanent place in his cousin’s life. He had to.

The next day, as curfew neared, Professor Snape paced back and forth in his office.

Draco knew because he’d been watching the pacing from his dormitory, the Marauder’s Map spread out on his pillow, gnawing slowly on a Sugar Quill Pansy had shared from her mother’s latest care package. Every now and then, Snape would stop in the middle of the room, where Draco knew his desk was, then go back to pacing.

He’d been watching the Map every night for the past few, ever since relaying Regulus’s message to him to meet at the old spot, at the usual time, whatever that meant. It wasn’t that Draco wanted to eavesdrop, it was just that he wanted more answers than the adults in his life were willing to give him, and if getting those answers included eavesdropping—well, that was a rule Draco was willing to break.

A wall of silvery-gray fur abruptly blocked Draco’s view of Professor Snape’s pacing.

“Jack! Get off!”

He pushed the cat to the foot of the bed; Jack went willingly, but did not seem the least bit bothered by Draco’s agitation.

“Why do you always stare at that thing?” he asked, and collapsed into a luxuriant sprawl, tail thumping the bedspread lightly.

“I’m trying to figure out where Professor Snape is going to meet Regulus. I think it might be tonight.” Based on the nervous pacing, anyway.

“Who’s Regulus?” Jack asked, curling his front paw toward his mouth to lick between his claws.

“The big black cat who got bit a few weeks ago.”

“Oh.” Jack apparently had no further questions, and turned his attention to grooming.

Draco watched him for a while in silence. In the chaos of the last few days—meeting Regulus, the failed attempt to remove the curse, the Quidditch game, the lockdown—Draco hadn’t had much time to think about Jack, and the strange revelation he’d had that Draco was the only one who could hear him when he talked. As Professor Snape’s footsteps continued to pace, and as Jack kept licking at his paw, Draco eventually asked, “Why am I the only one who can hear you talk?”

“You’re not the only one. Other cats can hear me.”

“The only human,” Draco clarified.

“Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe you’re just better at listening.”

Somehow, Draco didn’t think that was it. “Do you have any magical abilities I don’t know about?”

“What kind of magical abilities?”

“I don’t know. Anything that might explain why you can talk. Can you also read minds? Make objects float? Fly?”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Jack replied, then stopped grooming himself to stretch out across the bed, paws splayed and back arching. “I run very fast. Is that magical?”

Draco, who’d seen Jack run before and knew he was only about as fast as a normal cat and significantly less coordinated, said, “I don’t think so.”

“Well, I’ll try reading minds and making things float and let you know.”

Draco smirked, then looked back down at the Map. To his surprise, Professor Snape was no longer in his office.

After a quick scan, Draco caught sight of his footsteps pacing down a dungeon hallway, toward the eastern wing of the castle. He shoved the rest of the Sugar Quill in his mouth and sat upright, scanning the rest of the area for any sign of Filch or any other staff—but the castle seemed mostly empty.

“I’ll be back,” Draco told Jack, then didn’t wait for an answer before slipping quietly out of the dormitory.

He kept his wand out and the Map in front of him as he went, tracking Professor Snape’s movements carefully. The hallways were dark, but Draco navigated them without issue. Over the last few years, Draco’s vision had improved significantly—or at least that’s what he assumed gave him the ability to see so well in darkness.

Following Snape proved quite easy. He made his way up and through the castle, Draco staying several hallways behind, until Snape exited the castle entirely through the Entrance Courtyard and straight onto the viaduct that crossed a large crevasse between the castle and Hogsmeade. Draco’s footsteps slowed to a stop.

Strictly speaking, the castle was still on lockdown. As a member of staff, perhaps Professor Snape had access in and out, but Draco certainly didn’t. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to follow—and he’d certainly get in a lot of trouble if he did.

It wasn’t until he saw a pair of footsteps labeled Regulus Black making its way across the viaduct itself toward the courtyard that he was reminded of the promise he made himself: he’d do whatever he had to if it meant staying in his cousin’s life. He picked up his pace and hurried toward the vestibule.

Fortunately, Professor Snape left the door ajar behind him, and Draco snuck through, folding the Map back up with a whispered, “Mischief managed.” By the time he’d tucked it into his pocket, he could see Professor Snape—and Regulus—on the viaduct itself, moving slowly toward each other.

There really wasn’t anywhere to hide, of course. The viaduct was very long, uncovered, and quite narrow. But Draco hadn’t come all this way just to give up, and with a resolving breath (he was willing to play the godson card to avoid trouble if he had to), he followed.

By the time he was close enough to hear them, they were already mid-conversation:

“—not happy to see me, Sev?” Regulus asked. Draco couldn’t see him, directly behind Professor Snape as he was, but his voice was strained under the weight of what sounded like several different emotions at the same time.

“Happy? I don’t know if that’s the word I’d choose.” Professor Snape’s shoulders shook. “I… I just can’t believe…”

“I know.”

“Thirteen years, Reg.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I looked for you, you bastard. Even when everyone told me it wasn’t worth the effort, I kept looking. Because it was you. My best friend was gone and you—all this time, you—”

Regulus launched himself forward, threw his arms around Professor Snape’s back. He was nearly a head shorter, so Draco could barely make out the top of his head and upper half of his face, which he buried in Snape’s shoulder.

Snape, for his part, didn’t react immediately. When he did, it was very slowly—lifting his own arms to return the embrace, turning his face into Regulus’s hair, and surrendering to a slow shuddering that climbed up his spine.

“I’m sorry,” Regulus whispered. Draco could just barely make it out. “I’m sorry, Sev. Surely you know it wasn’t to hurt you.”

They stayed like that for a while. Wind howled through the crevasse, turning into a high whistle as it broke against the viaduct. Draco watched them, seeing his godfather through a new set of eyes. It was strange to think of him like this, not as a professor or even a father, but as a man who’d survived a war and had lived with the loss of his best friend for over a decade.

It wasn’t until they withdrew that Regulus said, “We’re not alone, by the way.”

Draco had really been hoping to give them at least a few more moments, but when Professor Snape turned around, dark eyes still glassy with emotion, Draco was relieved to see that his first reaction wasn’t anger so much as it was exasperation.

“I told Riddle he was making a mistake when he decided to give you that Map,” Snape said.

“Sorry for breaking curfew,” Draco replied. “And, er, lockdown. But you did it first.”

“I hope you weren’t planning to rely on nepotism to avoid trouble,” Snape said, and Draco did his best to feign innocence, even though that had been his exact plan.

“Go easy on him, Sev,” Regulus said. “You can’t blame him for wanting to see his family, surely. And it’s not like I’ve exactly made myself accessible.”

Professor Snape sighed, sniffed back what remained of the emotion from earlier in the conversation, then checked the door in the courtyard before saying, “All right. But if anyone asks, you were never here.”

Draco smiled and finally hurried forward, closing the remaining gap between them.

“I’d know if Sirius was nearby, in any case,” Regulus said. “I’ve dedicated the last decade to being very good at knowing where he is.”

“Reg, about Sirius,” Professor Snape began.

But Regulus seemed to anticipate his question. “Yes. I think he’s the one who took the boy.”

Snape frowned. “You’ve heard?”

“Heard and seen,” Regulus answered, casting golden eyes toward the Forbidden Forest, which from the viaduct was little more than a long shadow on the horizon. “The search parties have not been subtle.”

“A student is missing, snatched right from Hogwarts grounds,” Snape said. “If we don’t find him by tomorrow, we’re going to have to call officials.”

Regulus spun, suddenly panicked. “No. Sev—no, you can’t.”

“No?”

“Sev, I know my brother,” Regulus said. “By now, he’s surely realized that he’s got the wrong kid. If he’s swarmed by a sudden influx of Ministry wonks, he’s going to panic, kill the boy, and run.”

“Wrong kid?” Draco asked. He’d had his suspicions, of course, though he wasn’t sure, even as the question left his mouth, if he really wanted them confirmed.

But Regulus’s expression said it all. Nervous eyes stayed on Draco for a time before returning to Snape.

“He…knows about Draco,” Regulus eventually said into the tense silence. “He didn’t see him—I made sure he didn’t see him—but he knows that he’s at Hogwarts. He’s been going after any young blond kid he can find.”

“And let me guess,” Snape said, folding his arms across his chest, “you’re still going to insist that we try to bring him in peacefully.”

“Call it a special favor?” Regulus asked, an attempt at humor that was as valiant as it was ineffective.

“He’s hunting a child! Your own cousin!”

“Only because he wants to get to me,” Regulus said. “It has nothing to do with Draco! He knows good and well that the Ashbringer isn’t around to impress.”

“Well,” Draco said doubtfully.

“‘Well?’” Regulus repeated, frowning.

“He came back before, Reg,” Snape said. “To be more accurate, he was never really gone. Not the first time, not the second time.”

“I saw him last year,” Draco said. “Or, well, sort of. He caused some havoc through one of his toadies, James Potter.”

The name landed like a physical blow in the middle of Regulus’s chest. His mouth moved, but no words came. His eyes, huge and horrified, swung between Snape and Draco.

“Surely you’re not that surprised,” Snape said, but there was a new gentleness in his voice.

But clearly, Regulus was that surprised. “I… Still? After everything?”

“After what?” Draco couldn’t help but ask. “It’s James Potter. Didn’t his whole family fight for the Ashbringer?”

“Well, yes,” Regulus stammered out, “but he… I thought…”

“That’s always been your biggest failing, Reg,” Snape said, voice riding the line between admonishing and apologetic. “When you care about someone, you’re too willing to see their goodness, and too reluctant to see their flaws.”

Draco frowned. Was Professor Snape implying that Regulus Black and James Potter—?

Regulus cleared his throat. Whatever he’d been feeling, he made efforts to hide it. “So,” he rasped, “the Ashbringer is…”

“Still a threat. And for all we know, your damned brother is taking orders from him. Again.”

“I… I don’t disagree that Sirius needs to be stopped,” Regulus said. “And of course, I’m willing to help you stop him.”

“And if, once we’ve stopped him, Riddle is not inclined to mercy?” Snape asked. “My affection for you might stay my hand against him, but Tom Riddle is not the sentimental sort.”

“The Smokevigil didn’t have many who were,” Regulus muttered, rubbing his forehead. “I… Look, what do you want me to say? That I don’t want my brother to come to harm? I don’t! Despite everything, he’s my brother. The War took nearly my entire family, Sev. I’m keen to hold onto what I have left.”

“Perhaps you should focus on the family that would honor that loyalty,” Snape said, and suddenly they both looked at Draco.

Draco stared between them, not quite sure what to say.

“Come with me to talk to Riddle,” Snape said. “We’ll discuss some strategies. Now that the castle is on lockdown, there’s no reason for you to be hiding in the woods.”

“Right,” Regulus sighed.

“And Draco, go back to bed. If you’re caught by Filch, I’m not going to vouch for you.”

Chapter Text

The days crept on. Autumn ended slowly, all the leaves going from orange to rusty red to brown and finally vanishing entirely—and still Neville Longbottom was not found.

Draco thought about it constantly. Sometimes, from the top of the tower during Astronomy class, he could see the search parties fanning out through the Forbidden Forest, tiny points of wandlight bobbing through the dark trees. He wanted to help. Not just because Draco knew that Neville Longbottom wasn’t the intended target, but because he wanted to settle this business with Sirius Black once and for all. He wanted to prove himself worthy of a permanent spot in Regulus’s life. Not that Draco had any way to contact him.

Besides, Hogwarts remained on lockdown, no students in or out for any reason, so there wasn’t much Draco could do about his desire to help. Staying inside was stifling. Draco was used to weekly Quidditch practice, walks around the grounds, and occasionally taking his books and parchments to study outside. Now there was no Quidditch, no walks, and all his studying happened in the common room, dormitory, or library.

Of the options, the library was actually Draco’s least favorite. It was quiet, generally, but had the added distraction of people always coming and going, and Madam Pince made him nervous. He’d already resolved to hunt down an empty classroom with a nice window somewhere for future studying when he was approached.

“Draco Malfoy?”

When Draco looked up, a girl was standing on the opposite side of his table: dark skin, coily hair barely held back with a blue headband, and a serious expression.

“Er, yes,” Draco said. “Who…?

“My name is Hermione Granger,” Hermione Granger said, and then sat down across from Draco without asking. In short order, she began unpacking her textbooks. “I’m going to be your study partner.”

Draco didn’t really know what to say to that, so he watched in bewildered silence for a while as she set out a stack of parchments, a few inkwells, and a full set of eagle feather quills.

“Er,” Draco said again.

“What are you working on?” Hermione Granger asked.

“My, er, Potions essay,” he said.

“The one on the pillars of alchemical transmutation?”

“Yes…?”

“Good. I actually haven’t started on that one yet, though I’ve made a few outlines.”

“Er, sorry,” Draco said, “but do I… Have we met?”

“No,” Hermione Granger answered at once. “But in the exam rankings last year, you were right behind me, so I figure you take your studies seriously as well. Disappointingly, I’ve found that most of my fellow Ravenclaws either can’t or don’t want to keep up with my pace.”

Draco had not known that the exams were ranked until that specific moment. He almost asked Hermione Granger where he could find the rankings, but then decided knowing that information would make him too nervous.

“It’s not because you’re famous,” Hermione Granger informed him.

“Okay,” Draco answered.

“It’s because you’re the best shot I have at a study partner who can keep up with me,” she continued.

“Er,” Draco said.

“I would have approached you before, but I was never able to find you.”

“I usually study alone,” Draco said.

“So do I, and at first I did consider declaring you my academic rival instead. You know, for motivation. But I’ve done some reading, and research suggests that studying in groups improves outcomes in situations where all parties are invested in the material. You were raised with Muggles, right? Didn’t know about magic till you got your letter? That’s what the rumors say.”

Draco was having a hard time holding on with all the twists and turns in this conversation. “Er… Yes. Well, sort of. My uncle’s a Muggle, my aunt’s a Squib.”

“So culturally Muggle. It’s the same with me. It’s interesting, don’t you think, that the two of us are at the top of the class, considering neither of us were even aware magic existed till a few months before we came to Hogwarts? You’d think that students raised in this world would have the advantage, but that’s clearly not always the case.”

Despite himself, Draco was becoming engrossed. “I noticed that, too, actually. My friends, Blaise and Pansy, were both raised with magical parents, and while they sometimes fill in cultural gaps, in terms of academics, they’re about on par with everyone else.”

“I wonder if the Hogwarts curriculum was set up to be accessible to everyone, or if maybe an outsider perspective can be beneficial, when properly applied,” Hermione said.

“I guess it must be a little of both,” Draco answered thoughtfully.

Hermione Granger sat up a little straighter in her seat. All her books and papers were out and arranged neatly, and she looked quite proud of herself. “I look forward to a successful academic year with you, study partner.”

“Er… Yes. I mean, thanks? You, too?”

“So, about the essay,” Hermione said, flipping open her Potions textbook, “I thought it would be best to mention specific formulations that help to exemplify each of the pillars…”

Uncle Marc,

If you can convince the owl who brings you this letter to wait around (try bribing it with bread or fruit), you can use it to send back a response without having to beg Aunt Marie for money.

I was a little surprised to hear from you, and a little sorry to admit that I sort of thought your promise that you wanted to hear from me was just to make me feel better in the moment. If you’re genuine—and apparently you are—I suppose I’ll try to keep in correspondence. I don’t know that I’ll be any good at it. I haven’t written very many letters.

Term has been eventful. Term usually is here. So far this year, I made a deal with a ghost so I could meet my long-lost cousin, Regulus Black; then, once I did, I tried to help him remove the curse on the lake here (it didn’t work); and slightly after that, a student got kidnapped by Regulus’s brother, and they still haven’t found him.

Writing it all out like that, it seems a little crazy, but I promise this is normal for Hogwarts. Or at least it’s normal for me at Hogwarts. Last year, a member of the Hogwarts Board of Governors stalked me, tried to kill me, and sent my friend to the hospital. Maybe my circumstances are just a little unusual. Did Aunt Marie tell you about the Boy Who Lived thing?

I appreciate the invitation for Christmas, but I think I’ll have to decline. That long-lost cousin I mentioned, Regulus Black, is here at Hogwarts still, and it’s been so nice getting to know him. He’s smart and very kind, and he can turn into a cat which is a nice bonus (again, this is normal for Hogwarts). But maybe next year, we can try to do Christmas together? Assuming Aunt Marie is all right with it, which I can’t imagine she would be.

Jack is fine. I’m fine. I hope you’re fine, as well, and that you have a happy Christmas.

Draco

In Draco’s first year, when his friendships were still new and tenuous, discovering that all three of them—Pansy, Blaise, and himself—had birthdays during term had been not much more than a surprise. They certainly had no way to buy presents for one another, nor enough time to plan anything, and so the birthdays had passed with awkward good wishes and little else.

This year, though, Blaise had vowed to change that. Pansy’s birthday was up first, right at the beginning of December.

“Ta-da! Courtesy of a house-elf willing to keep a secret.”

It still wasn’t what Draco would call a party, but the cake, small and pale pink and with Happy Birthday, Pansy! written across it in blue frosting, made for a nice centerpiece to the little study nook off the Slytherin common room, which was done up with a few streamers.

“Oh, this is so cute!” Pansy gushed at once, and promptly threw her arms around Blaise’s shoulders. “You’re a peach!”

“We got all the other Slytherins in our year to sign a card for you,” Draco said, eagerly holding it out to her (the envelope was pink as well—the theme was vital, given pink was Pansy’s favorite color). “And Blaise and I got you presents!”

“Cake first!” Blaise insisted, and as soon as Pansy was done hugging Draco, as well, steered her toward the little desk with the little cake on top.

The cake was barely big enough for the three of them, but it was delicious—strawberry with buttercream frosting and little roses on each slice. Based on the sounds she made, Pansy liked it.

She also liked her presents. Blaise had gotten her a bow for her hair that changed color with a simple tap of a wand, and Draco had, while out at Le Virage over the summer, bought her a journal (pink, of course) that could only be read by the one who’d written in it.

“You two are so sweet,” she said. To Draco’s surprise, she was a bit misty-eyed. “To be honest, my last birthday was sort of terrible. I’m used to celebrating with Mum and Dad and Basil, you know? And that was the first year I’d gone without it. They owled presents, of course, but it wasn’t the same.”

“I get it,” Blaise said. “Mum used to throw me the most lavish parties every year. February is bleak without them.”

Then they both looked at Draco, who felt a sudden wave of panic.

Because Draco didn’t have any experiences like that. He could count the number of birthday presents he’d ever received on one hand, and he’d certainly never had a party. And after all his friends’ fond reminiscing, talking about it felt absolutely mortifying.

“Er,” Draco said, “well…hopefully now birthdays will be a little better.”

Pansy gave him an appraising look. Blaise only sighed and shook his head.

“Well,” Blaise continued, “you two better pull out the stops for me, as well. February 25th! Don’t forget!”

“Oh, of course you’re a Pisces,” Pansy said.

Blaise sniffed imperiously. “I’ll ignore that, on account of it being your birthday,” he said. “So what’s your wish this year?”

The weeks ticked on. Lockdown continued. When the first Quidditch game was canceled due to safety concerns, everyone in the castle seemed to begrudgingly accept that it was the new normal. Draco’s restlessness intensified.

Christmas break came up quickly, and Draco urged Pansy and Blaise, both of whom had gotten a little maudlin and homesick after Pansy’s birthday party, to go home for the holiday and see their families. Draco assured them he’d be fine.

The castle was emptier this year than last year, though more of the professors had stayed behind, he noticed. He supposed that made sense—with everything that had happened so far, you’d have to be crazy to stay behind. Draco supposed he could count himself in that number, though he had very specific motivations.

He hadn’t seen Regulus since that night on the viaduct, which drove Draco mad. He knew Regulus was busy helping Headmaster Riddle with Sirius and Neville Longbottom, and that was good, but Draco wanted to help, and he couldn’t do that if he wasn’t around.

He had the Marauder’s Map out nearly constantly. And on Christmas Day, eating breakfast in a mostly empty Great Hall with a blanket of fluffy snow outside the windows, finally, he saw the name he’d been waiting for.

Draco spun toward the doors just as a large black cat came slinking through them. In his excitement, he nearly knocked his goblet over.

“Hi! Happy Christmas!” he said, when the cat jumped up onto the bench just opposite Draco.

The cat, Regulus, looked over his shoulder and, judging that the few people who remained weren’t paying much attention, transformed.

Regulus smiled at Draco, though he seemed tired. “Happy Christmas, Draco.”

“Are you hungry?”

He looked down at the spread as if eating hadn’t even occurred to him as an option. After a moment, though, he took a piece of toast.

“How’s the search going? Have you made any progress finding Sirius and Neville?”

“Keep your voice down,” Regulus said gently. “It is, officially, still a secret.”

“So you haven’t notified any officials or anything still?” Draco asked, though he dutifully dropped his voice.

Regulus took a bite of toast before he answered. “Riddle ended up leaving that particular decision to the boy’s parents. I think they only agreed to keep the Ministry uninvolved because they allied with the Ashbringer during the Second War. They know specifically how dangerous Sirius is and the kind of hair trigger he has.”

Draco nodded slowly. “I guess that makes sense.” If Draco was a parent, he’d back whatever plan had the best odds of getting his child back.

“But that said, we have been making progress—though never enough for worried parents. I’ve been helping to track him by scent.”

“Scent?”

“As a cat, of course.”

Draco hadn’t really thought about it before, but being physically a cat must come with all the physical benefits. “Being an Animagus must be so interesting.”

“It’s gotten rather prosaic to me, after a decade of it, but I’ll say cold weather is much nicer with a permanent fur coat.”

Draco grinned and watched in silence as Regulus finished off his toast.

“I was actually surprised by how…fine Riddle was with my presence,” Regulus eventually continued, and at the same time, they both looked toward the High Table, where the Headmaster was eating and speaking in low tones to Professor Snape. “I suppose I should have guessed that he’d be practical about it all.”

“Where are you staying?” It certainly wasn’t in the castle.

“In Hogsmeade, for now. Given that I don’t have access to the Black pile at the moment, Sev was kind enough to buy out a room at the Three Broomsticks for a few months while the search continues.”

“So how can I help?” Draco asked.

Regulus frowned. “Help?”

“With the search. There must be something I can do. I want to help.”

His expression was strange, almost sad, and his answer was slow: “Draco, that’s… You don’t have to help.”

“Yes, I do,” Draco insisted. “This is my problem as much as yours. He was looking for me, wasn’t he, when he grabbed Neville?”

“All the more reason for you to not be involved, surely.”

“But I—!”

BANG!

Draco jumped; Regulus spun. The doors to the Great Hall had slammed open, and staggering in, with a bloodied blond boy in his arms—

“Rubeus!” Headmaster Riddle screamed. Draco had never heard him so frantic, and could only watch as he rose so fast he knocked over his chair and went darting around the table and across the room.

“Merlin,” Regulus muttered, and hurried over himself.

“I found—” Professor Hagrid panted, every word followed by a pained, wheezing breath, “—in that grotto—Black was there—”

The boy wasn’t the only one bleeding, Draco noticed. Professor Hagrid was trailing blood from his left leg, which had a nasty bite wound below the knee, visible through a huge tear in the fabric of his trousers.

Headmaster Riddle was quick to instruct: “Severus, take the boy to Poppy.”

“Mobilicorpus,” Professor Snape said with a precise flick of his wand, and Neville Longbottom’s shuddering form lifted gently into the air. The pair made a quick exit from the Great Hall.

“Rubeus,” the Headmaster said, hands gripping Hagrid’s, “are you all right?”

“Got away,” Hagrid wheezed, “Fang jumped in, but… Sirius ran…”

“Sit down, Hagrid,” Regulus said, guiding him toward the nearest bench, where Hagrid sank down heavily with a grunt of pain.

“Rubeus, please.” The Headmaster’s hands moved to Hagrid’s face. “You’re bleeding from your leg. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“’M alright,” he managed. “’M alright, Tom.”

“Are you sure?” the Headmaster asked, still wide-eyed and frantic. “You’re still surging with adrenaline. You might not be feeling other injuries yet. Did he—?”

Professor Hagrid reached up to grip the Headmaster’s hands, cutting him off. “Tom,” he said, “I promise, I’m alright.”

That was the moment Draco realized that the Headmaster’s wedding band matched Professor Hagrid’s, and somehow, after all that chaos, the most bewildering thing of all—

“Really?” Draco heard himself say.

Chapter Text

“Did you know that Headmaster Riddle and Professor Hagrid were married?” Draco asked the moment the spectacle in the Great Hall was over.

Once he’d finished spelling away the blood that had accumulated on the floor, Regulus turned to him with an odd look. “Of course I did. Did you not?”

“I mean, I knew the Headmaster had a husband, but…” They just seemed like such an odd pair, and not just because one was nearly double the other’s size. The Headmaster was so reserved and brilliant and classically handsome, and Professor Hagrid was so…

“You should ask your godfather about it,” Regulus said with a sudden, devious grin. “He helped get them together. He loves to tell the story.”

Based on Draco’s extant understanding of Professor Snape, and also on how much effort Regulus was putting into not laughing, Draco somehow doubted the assertion. That wouldn’t stop him from asking, of course—Draco was desperately curious about how it happened.

The Great Hall had been nearly empty before the whole thing had begun—just some professors and the handful of students who’d stayed behind at Hogwarts over Christmas—but afterward, it was all but abandoned. Draco watched as an older Hufflepuff, looking slightly green after all the blood, gave up on breakfast and hurried out.

Draco looked back to Regulus, who was taking a long pull from a hastily-poured cup of tea. He hadn’t yet bothered to sit back down.

“I should probably go after Riddle,” Regulus said. “He’ll want to debrief.”

“I was serious, you know,” Draco told him quickly. “About wanting to help.”

Regulus paused, the now-empty cup stilling halfway to the table. He looked conflicted.

“I appreciate the offer, Draco, I do, but this… My brother is dangerous, and you’re just a kid.”

Outrage panged at the words. Just a kid? Draco had spent the first decade of his life sleeping in a shed and dodging his aunt’s abuse. Even Hogwarts hadn’t proved to be a perfect refuge: his first year had been little more than running from the machinations of an insane murderer and his yes-man. Draco wasn’t a kid. He’d never had the chance to be.

“I can handle it,” Draco said firmly. “Let me help. Sirius isn’t going to capture himself.”

Regulus glanced briefly back at the doors to the Great Hall, still ajar, then sat down across from Draco again, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s not a question of what you can handle,” Regulus said. “It’s a question of how much danger I, as your family, am willing to see you subject to. Stay away from Sirius. I’m not asking.”

“But—!” Draco protested.

“I’m not asking, Draco,” Regulus repeated. “Look, I’m staying in room number 7 at the Three Broomsticks. You should be able to send me an owl. I’ve had a few more ideas on how to fix the curse on the Lake. Maybe I can sneak you in some sweets from Honeydukes sometime.”

Before Draco could even reply, Regulus transformed into a cat, meowed apologetically, then jumped off the bench and padded silently out of the Great Hall.

Draco ground his teeth. Perhaps Regulus was content to pretend that this wasn’t Draco’s problem, but Draco was not.

On the second-to-last day of Christmas break, a week and a day after the incident in the Great Hall, Draco went to the Hospital Wing to visit Neville Longbottom, a boy with whom he hadn’t exchanged two words.

“Just be gentle,” Madam Pomfrey instructed. “He’s physically fine at this point, but as you can imagine, the whole situation has left him shaken up. He’s still nervous to leave his bed.”

Draco only nodded, and when Pomfrey went to her desk to focus on a large pile of paperwork, Draco turned his attention to the only other student in the room.

Neville Longbottom seemed thinner in a bad way, like he’d been hollowed out by the incident. He sat cross-legged on his bed with his Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook open on his lap, though by the way his eyes moved, he wasn’t doing much more than reading the same line over and over. Draco took a breath and approached.

He looked up quickly, huge brown eyes dilating with a surge of fear that quickly deflated when he recognized Draco.

“Oh,” he said. “Er, hello.”

“Hi,” Draco replied. “Neville, right? I don’t think we’ve ever been introduced.”

“I know of you, of course,” Neville said, shifting nervously.

“Well, that doesn’t really count. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Draco.”

He smiled. Neville seemed too nervous to return it.

“Most of my friends don’t like you much,” Neville told him.

“Yeah, I know. Potter especially has been very…vocal about it, more than once to my face.”

Deciding that it was a little too familiar to sit down on the foot of Neville’s bed, Draco instead perched himself on the bed next to him, leaving a respectable, five-foot gap between them.

“Trying to catch up on homework?” Draco guessed, looking at his book.

“Yeah,” Neville answered miserably. “It’s been…a while. I’ve missed a lot.”

“If you ever want to borrow notes or anything, let me know,” Draco said. “Pansy says I’m good at explaining, too.”

Neville eyed Draco mistrustfully and didn’t say anything. Draco tried not to sigh. So much for the charm offensive. It wasn’t going to stop Draco from what he came to do.

“Look, I’m sure the Headmaster has already grilled you about everything that happened,” Draco said, “and I hate to make you say it all twice, but I have a vested interest in figuring out where Sirius Black is.”

“You do?” Neville asked.

“He’s family. My mother’s cousin. And I’m trying to help his brother, Regulus, track him down.” No matter what Regulus said about it.

Neville seemed surprised. “I never thought about it, but yeah, I guess the Blacks and Malfoys are related, aren’t they? What’s his brother got to do with it?”

“It’s a long story. Apparently Sirius has been chasing him for a while. Are you… Is it all right if I ask what happened?”

The answer wasn’t immediate. Neville slowly shut his textbook, pulled it up against his chest, turned his eyes down.

“He… It wasn’t me he was after,” Neville said.

“I know,” Draco answered. “It’s me.”

“You know?”

“I had a hunch.”

Neville frowned. “You don’t seem as alarmed as you probably should be.”

“After last year, I kind of got used to having criminals obsessing over me,” Draco answered, which made Neville bark a single, loud laugh—then promptly clap his hand over his mouth. Then he fell silent again, staring at his lap.

The silence stretched for a time before Draco pressed, as gently as he dared:

“How soon did he realize?”

Neville swallowed. “Almost immediately. In the initial scuffle, he grabbed me by my shoulder to drag me away, which tore my shirt.”

“And you don’t have a scar,” Draco deduced. Neville nodded.

“But Harry and Ron and a passing Prefect were there when he first attacked, shouting my name and running after me, so he couldn’t stop to notice. He took me to… It was a sort of cave, but small, just a gap between two large rocks on a hillside in the middle of the Forest. Then he transformed from a dog to a person and saw the lack of scar. He started pacing, talking to himself, freaking out that I was the wrong one and that he couldn’t ‘take the wrong kid back…’”

“Back where?” Draco asked.

Neville shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say, and I was too scared to ask.”

Draco frowned. Had it been done on orders? It felt like a bad portent. Draco could only think of one person who’d be giving Sirius Black orders.

“A few days in, I worked up the nerve to try to negotiate with him. Promised I wouldn’t say, offered to let him magically wipe my memory… But he wouldn’t believe my promises and was paranoid about the Headmaster somehow getting to my memories even if they were wiped. I asked more than once if he—if he was going to kill me. He never answered.”

“That sounds terrifying.”

“It was. I kept thinking about my mum and dad, you know? How frantic they probably were, and how they—how they and Sirius Black had both…”

Neville trailed off, which was fine, because Draco knew how the sentence was meant to end: had both fought on the same side of the War.

“I even brought that up,” Neville eventually continued. “I told him my parents’ names. He just told me to shut up.”

Draco nodded slowly. “You can’t rely on the conscience of a person willing to kill for ideals like his.”

Neville stared at him like he was realizing, for the first time, that his own parents fell into the same category. Draco didn’t envy him.

“Did you ever see him trying to contact anyone?” Draco asked.

“No,” Neville muttered. “He’d disappear sometimes. I thought to run, but I had no idea where I was or how to get back. Not to mention that the Forest is full of monsters.”

“Did he ever say anything about what he wanted me for, or who wanted me?”

“No.”

Draco sighed thoughtfully and chewed at his lower lip. It wasn’t that he blamed Neville for not knowing anything useful, it’s just that it frustrated his plan of figuring out a way to get to Sirius.

“I’m just so glad Professor Hagrid found me when he did. And Headmaster Riddle took all my memories of the whole thing, so hopefully that will be useful.”

Draco recalled when the Headmaster had done the same to him the year before, and how it had, eventually, resulted in James Potter’s arrest. He had no reason to doubt Riddle’s ability, but plenty to doubt he’d allow Draco to involve himself. And Draco was going to involve himself.

So Draco stood up instead and said, sincerely, “Well, you’re safe now. And on the mend.”

Neville nodded wearily.

“I was serious about the offer to borrow my notes, you know. Just say the word.”

After a pause, Neville smiled hesitantly.

Then, before Draco could stop himself: “Did you know that Headmaster Riddle and Professor Hagrid were married?”

Neville’s smile fell to a puzzled frown. “Yes? Why, didn’t you?”

“Did everyone know that the Headmaster and Professor Hagrid were married but me?”

Hermione gave Draco a flat look as she set her bag down on the table. “Yes, Draco, my Christmas holiday was wonderful, thank you for asking. How was yours?”

Over the past month, Sundays had become Study Day with Hermione in the Library, and Draco had (correctly) assumed that just because this particular Sunday was the first day back after the break and there were no major tests in the foreseeable future did not mean there was no studying.

“Hello,” Draco said, a bit annoyed. “Seriously, was I the only one who didn’t know?”

“Well, I knew,” Hermione answered as she unpacked her books, “though only because I saw Professor Hagrid trap the Headmaster with one of those enchanted mistletoe things last year, just before Christmas break. I thought they looked quite cute together. Riddle was very flustered.”

“But they’re so different,” Draco said.

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean they’re not compatible. Why do you care?”

Draco felt himself flush. “I don’t.”

“Then why did you ask?”

The flush felt like it was getting worse. “Shut up.”

“Oh, do you fancy the Headmaster? That makes sense. He’s quite handsome, and very accomplished.”

“I don’t!” Draco said, outraged.

“If you say so,” Hermione answered, smug.

“I thought we were here to study!”

“You’re the one who came out of the gate asking about the Headmaster’s love life.”

From the other side of the library came Madam Pince’s harsh, “Ssh!”

Draco made an aggrieved sound and flipped open his Potions textbook. Hermione, looking very self-satisfied, did the same, and they spent a few seconds finding the chapter they’d been working on before the break. Draco tried very hard not to think about whether or not he did, actually, fancy Headmaster Riddle.

“For the record,” Hermione said, though her voice was lower, “from what I’ve been able to tell, the magical world is much more accepting of same-sex attraction than the Muggle world.”

“Shut up,” Draco hissed, regretting that he even brought it up, especially once Hermione started giggling.

They worked for a while on the upcoming Potions chapters. Then they reviewed the last few Charms lessons, since Flitwick was notorious for giving pop quizzes after breaks.

“By the way,” Draco said, casually as he could manage, as they both packed up their books, “I was trying to come up with a way to send a message to friends while we’re on opposite sides of the castle. Do you know of any magic like that? Communication over long distance?”

Hermione hummed thoughtfully as she packed up her books. “There are certain magical devices that do that. Have you ever seen a Looking Glass?”

“Yes, actually,” Draco said, and decided not to mention that it had been in the Headmaster’s office, lest it incur another round of mocking, “but I doubt I could afford one.” And it also wouldn’t suit his purposes. “What about specifically spells? To call out to someone?”

Hermione hummed again, eyes trailing up to the ceiling as she searched her memory. And surely, Draco thought, if there was anyone in the castle who would know this kind of spell, it would be Hermione Granger. He’d spent the last month learning to respect—and fear—her near-supernatural ability to recall information.

“There was that spell—oh, what was it called? I think I saw it in Grade 4 or 5 of The Standard Book of Spells, called the Hailing Spell? You could use it to telepathically send a message across a great distance. They can’t answer unless they also know the spell, but they could hear you regardless.”

That sounded perfect. “Does it work on anyone? Or only people you’ve met personally?”

“I think it works on anyone whose name you know, though I’d have to double check,” Hermione answered. Then, “I thought you said this was for contacting your friend.”

Draco felt like a terrible Slytherin for forgetting the pretense of his own lie. “Uh… Right. Well, I’ll see you next week, same time?”

Chapter Text

Fortunately, Flint let Draco borrow his old copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4 without asking too many questions. Less fortunately, the Hailing Spell was quite complicated, and his friends were being very unsupportive of the whole endeavor.

“Did it work that time?” Draco asked.

“No,” Pansy replied. Then, “Draco, don’t you think this is a bit mad?”

“It’s not mad,” Draco insisted, then tried to cast the spell again. “Teleloquor.” How about now?

But Pansy’s face showed no sign that she’d heard him. She was still shifting uncomfortably in her chair a few feet away. “I mean, let’s assume this plan of yours work.”

“It’s going to work,” Draco said.

“Sure. It works. And you achieve your goal of drawing Sirius Black—known murderer, torturer, and war criminal, who has been actively searching for you—directly to where you are.”

“Well, when you put it that way, anything would sound mad,” Draco conceded.

“There is no way to phrase your plan that doesn’t sound mad,” Blaise insisted. “Draco, come on. Maybe we should leave this one to Riddle and Snape and the rest. They clearly know what they’re doing.”

Draco frowned and dropped his wand posture so he could glare at them both properly. “I’m sure they can, but that’s not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about?” Pansy pressed.

“It’s about…”

Draco sighed. Behind him, Ginny Weasley and Astoria Greengrass entered the common room and passed him, whispering to each other. The word cute was definitely said, and Draco flinched. Ever since being told that a fair number of the girls in the school fancied him, he’d become hyper aware of how they treated him. He almost wanted to go back to ignorance.

He sat down on the ottoman in front of Pansy’s chair, conveniently equidistant between her and Blaise, who was leaning against the nearby wall.

“Look,” Draco said, “Regulus is clearly at least a little reluctant to be around me. I think he only agreed to meet me at all so I could help him remove the curse on Black Lake. If I want to keep him in my life, I have to prove to him that I’m worth keeping.”

Pansy and Blaise exchanged a significant look that, frustratingly, Draco couldn’t quite determine the meaning of.

“I mean, it’s not like he has any other reason, right?” Draco continued. “In real terms, who am I to him apart from his dead cousin’s son? I need to be worth something to him or he’ll just leave.”

“Or maybe he’s just kind of busy and fully intends to be in your life forever once this whole thing with his brother settles down,” Blaise said.

Draco shook his head. Maybe that was the expectation in normal families, but in Draco’s life, family either only barely put up with him or died. And Draco would do whatever it took to make sure that Regulus didn’t die, and had good reason to keep Draco around.

“Are you going to help with the spell or not?” he asked instead. “I need to master it first before I can do anything.”

“I’ll help,” Pansy reluctantly answered, “but I still maintain that this plan is crazy and you’re crazy for even coming up with it.”

“Noted,” Draco said. “Does my wand posture still look off?”

Draco,

Listen, I don’t want to stick my nose into places it shouldn’t be, but I’m a little alarmed by the contents of your last letter. Someone tried to kill you last year? Your friend was in the hospital? A student was kidnapped? Are you sure this Hogwarts place is safe? As your uncle and legal guardian, I feel some kind of impetus to intervene here. Does France have a magical school? Maybe you should be going there instead.

This long-lost cousin of yours, Regulus—how old is he? Could I maybe “owl” him? (Also, did I use that term correctly?) Does he speak French? I sent a letter to your godfather asking about all this, but he wasn’t especially communicative—what is the Smokevigil, and why does it have secret missions?

I tried to ask your aunt what Boy Who Lived means, but she refused to say—or maybe she didn’t know and wasn’t willing to let on. I think she’s upset we’re in correspondence. I am willing to live with her discomfort, however.

I’m just worried about you is all. I’ve spent enough of your life overlooking obvious threats to your safety, and I’m trying to make good on my promise to do better. It would be an easier thing to do with your cooperation.

Christmas here was fine. Maybe don’t come back for Easter. It’s not that I don’t want to see you, it’s just that your aunt has been especially difficult lately, and apparently you’ve got enough to worry about.

Uncle Marc

PS: I didn’t read your note about bribing the owl with food till after it had already flown off, which is why this letter is so late. I’ll try to be quicker on the draw next time.

Professors at Hogwarts didn’t have office hours per se, but it was never especially difficult to set up meetings with them, so long as you gave them some notice.

With Professor Snape specifically, it was even easier: Draco just kind of wandered into his office whenever he felt like it, and Professor Snape would be annoyed but never threw him out.

“Uncle Marc sent you a letter?”

Snape looked up from the pile of essays on his desk with a sigh. “No, please, come in.”

But Draco was already sinking into one of the chairs opposite. “Was he being weird to you, too?”

“He was being protective and worried, which is a refreshing change of pace,” Professor Snape answered, marking somebody’s paper with a barely-passing grade. “I wasn’t really in a position to give him the answers he wanted.”

“Yeah, he mentioned. I thought the Smokevigil wasn’t a thing anymore.”

“Officially, it’s not. Just like officially, the Ashbringer is gone.”

Draco frowned, but supposed that was fair. He tapped his foot nervously against the stone floor of his office. Even with the fire roaring in the hearth less than six feet away, the whole room was still freezing cold. The dungeons never really got warm, and Draco had noticed that, since the collapse, they’d actually gotten a bit colder—presumably from the massive wall of water looming closer than ever against every window and wall.

“You know, I don’t even really know what it is,” Draco said. “I mean, I’ve heard it mentioned a lot, but…”

Professor Snape shrugged. “It is as the name implies. A vigil held for smoke—because where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“So it only exists because of the Ashbringer?”

“As a direct response to him and his Order, yes.” Professor Snape marked down the grade he’d just given in his ledger, then moved onto the next essay in the pile. “Riddle formed it to stop him by any means necessary. The story goes—and I’m not sure if it’s apocryphal—that your grandfather was the one to come up with the name, all the way back during the First War.”

“This is the grandfather that disinherited my Aunt Marie?”

Professor Snape frowned. “The very same. I didn’t know him well, but according to your father, he had ‘vice and virtue in equal measure.’”

Draco fell silent for a while, not quite sure what to think of the assessment. After all, fifty percent was a failing grade.

Another silence stretched. Professor Snape’s quill scratched out a note in the margin of the essay he was reading. Draco watched, foot tapping nervously on the floor again.

“So Regulus said that you’re the one who got the Headmaster and Professor Hagrid together.”

Professor Snape looked up, annoyed. “Did he tell you to ask?”

“Apparently you love telling the story.”

“I don’t. The story is stupid and Regulus knows that perfectly well.”

“I want to hear it,” Draco pressed, and Professor Snape sighed heavily. Then he leaned back in his chair as if trying to figure out how to phrase it.

Eventually, he said, “In my sixth year, as part of my Potions N.E.W.T. class, I brewed—”

“N.E.W.T.?” Draco interjected.

“Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests—don’t worry, they won’t be your problem till your last two years. I brewed a Felix Felicis potion. Are you familiar?”

Draco recalled seeing it in the index of his potions textbook, though only just. “Isn’t that the one for good luck?”

“Yes. Good to see you’ve been reading ahead. I brewed it, and had the intent to use it to…talk to someone.”

Draco raised both eyebrows. “Talk?”

“A friend. I wanted to talk her out of…making a very bad mistake,” Professor Snape said slowly. “But—circumstances conspired that proved to me that there was no dissuading her, even with the aid of the strongest luck magic in the world, so instead, I gave the potion to Professor Hagrid.”

“And how did that…end up with them married?”

Professor Snape sighed heavily. “Apparently, Hagrid had been in love with Riddle for many years, but had never dared to act on it for fear of rejection. But the effects of Liquid Luck pushed him to confess his feelings, and to phrase it in just the right way. Hagrid was so grateful for my part that he made me his best man at the wedding.”

Oh, no wonder Regulus had told him to ask. The image was hilarious. “You were Professor Hagrid’s best man?”

“Their marriage has been happy, so I suppose it was worth it in the end,” Professor Snape said waspishly, “even if Hagrid makes me retell the bloody story at every formal function.”

“That’s rather sweet,” Draco said despite himself. He’d been so aghast at the idea of Headmaster Riddle and Professor Hagrid being married at first, but hearing the context—he found himself rather charmed by their love story.

“Headmaster Riddle is an exceptional wizard, but he has a tendency to be…quite ruthless,” Snape said. “And I’ll give Hagrid this: he keeps his husband grounded. They’re good for each other.”

There was, Draco could not help but notice, a little twist of emotion left over. Without the outrage and shock and confusion to hide behind, Draco was forced to confront the uncomfortable reality of all that emotion’s root: a tiny twinge of jealousy.

Perhaps Draco did fancy the Headmaster.

The idea filled him with dread in a way he couldn’t quite articulate.

So Draco did what he always did when confronted with something uncomfortable: he distracted himself. Fortunately, he had one big distraction ready and waiting for him: that Hailing Spell wasn’t going to master itself.

“Okay, I think I actually heard something that time,” Pansy said. She was a good twenty feet away from Draco, on the opposite side of the crowded Entrance Hall. Draco had managed to communicate quite clearly over short distances and in quiet rooms, so the fact that Pansy could hear him here was great progress.

“Good,” Draco said, grinning. “Excellent.” It wouldn’t be long now.

“However,” Blaise interjected, “I do feel the need to restate all my previous objections. The ones about how this idea is crazy and dangerous and unnecessary?”

“Yes, and as I said the last few times, your concerns have been noted,” Draco said, then pointed his wand at Blaise. “Teleloquor,” he said, and followed it up with his message: Noted, considered, and disregarded.

Blaise shot Draco an annoyed look. “Draco, come on, this is mad. You can’t seriously be—”

“Malfoy!”

Draco jumped and spun. Storming down the large stairwell connecting the Entrance Hall to the main corridor on the second floor was none other than—

“Harry Potter,” Draco said. The name passed his lips with the same inflection as a curse.

“Oh, boy,” Blaise sighed.

Potter wasn’t alone, of course—he rarely was. He had his Weasley friend on one side, and a sandy-haired boy on the other, both looking particularly irate. Potter himself wore an expression that was nothing short of murderous.

“So, what, now you’re sending your problems after Gryffindors?”

“What is he on about now,” Pansy groused, making her way back to Draco’s side.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Draco asked, standing from the bench by the wall that he and Blaise had perched on.

“It seems like you can’t go a single bloody year without causing problems, Malfoy,” Potter snapped, and all of a sudden he was right in Draco’s face, practically nose to nose, green-eyed fury and stupid sandalwood-smelling hair gel. “And it’s one thing when you get traitors like Eileen Snape caught in your crossfire, but it’s another thing entirely when you start putting my friends in danger!”

Potter shoved him—not especially hard, but enough to send Draco stumbling back a step and glaring.

“I haven’t done anything to your stupid friends!” Draco snapped.

But he saw what he meant—or who he meant—before Potter could answer. Coming down the steps several paces behind was Neville Longbottom, looking mortified and apologetic.

“Come on,” Neville said, “Harry, you don’t have to—”

“Apparently I do, Nev,” Potter snapped, giving Neville only a cursory glance of acknowledgment before turning his furious glare back to Draco. “Apparently I have to remind certain slimy Slytherins that there’s a cost to hurting my friends!”

Draco scoffed. “I didn’t hurt anyone!”

“It hardly seems like you need to.” It was hard to ignore the genuine, trembling rage in Harry Potter. He was so angry that he was incandescent, that even his cronies on either side were looking nervous. “It seems like just by being here, you’re a danger to the entire school, and Gryffindors always seem to end up taking your blows for you.”

“Hey,” Blaise said, “Potter, lay off, this isn’t—”

“Keep your mouth shut, Zabini!” Potter barked, but he wasn’t even looking at Blaise. He was back in Draco’s face, breathing his air. “It should have been you, Malfoy. With any luck, it will be next time. The whole school will be better off, the whole wizarding world.”

Draco leaned right back into Potter’s space. “I bet it would be convenient for the Ashbringer if I were out of the way. But I’m not going anywhere. I’ll handle Sirius Black just like I handled your father, Potter.”

Potter bared his teeth and drew his wand, and so did Draco, but before either of them could cast a single spell—

“Enough!” came Professor Warren’s sharp voice, and a burst of magic dragged Draco and Potter backwards in opposite directions. “I swear, you two will be the death of me! Five points from both your houses!”

Draco turned and stormed away. Potter’s rage had infected him, trembling down his arms and twitching in his fingertips.

“What an absolute drama queen,” Blaise said as he fell in step behind Draco, though there was a slight quavering in his voice. “You all right, Draco?”

Draco wasn’t all right. He was angry, of course, and outraged at the accusation—and, worst of all, worried that there was a kernel of truth in it. Because people had been hurt in Draco’s crossfire. Eileen first, now Neville.

“We’re doing this tonight,” Draco whispered.

Chapter Text

Of course, the Hailing Spell wasn’t the only thing Draco had done to prepare—it was, however, the most critical. After all, everything else about his perfectly laid trap hinged on Sirius Black being able to hear his message.

“This is crazy,” Pansy said, for what must have been the fiftieth time that evening.

“You don’t have to stay,” Draco reminded her, also for the fiftieth time.

But she didn’t move, past the visibly uncomfortable shifting from foot to foot. Blaise, beside her, didn’t look uncomfortable so much as he seemed annoyed—but at least he did it silently.

There was a small gap on the lockdown ward shrouding Hogwarts, at either end of the narrow pathway between the greenhouses and the castle proper. Draco had discovered it while watching Professor Sprout take a few specimens through it to be planted outside before the ground froze over—it was surely left there for her benefit, and was in any case so small and inconsequential that most people likely didn’t even know it was there.

But it was big enough for Draco’s purposes.

After his second double-check of the complicated net of spells set up just inside the gap, Draco straightened. It was midway through February, still bitterly cold, but no longer actively becoming colder. Still, the little pathway in front of the greenhouses was a bad spot: it created a wind tunnel of near-constant, frigid, battering wind, whistling continuously against the castle wall and rattling the glass of the greenhouses.

“I think that should do it.”

“Not too late to change your mind,” Pansy said. She was bundled up in several layers of cloaks, two scarves, and the largest and fluffiest pink earmuffs Draco had ever seen. “Come on, Draco, the weather’s dreadful and also your plan is insane and dangerous. Let’s just go inside—”

“You can go inside,” Draco interjected sharply, spinning on the snow-slick flagstone to glare at her. “Go on. If you’re so desperate to be somewhere else, then just leave.”

But she didn’t move. She did, however, frown, and shoot a nervous look at Blaise, who didn’t look back. He was still staring at Draco, cloak drawn tight around his shoulders, looking annoyed.

“Right, then,” Draco said. “I’m going to cast the spell. This constitutes your final opportunity to leave.”

He turned toward the gap in the ward and took a steadying breath. His father’s wand hummed in his hand, warm from all the magic it had performed at his behest.

Draco reminded himself: He had to do this. He had to prove to Regulus that he was worth keeping.

He raised his wand and closed his eyes and said, “Teleloquor.”

The magic answered in kind, rippling out through the gap in the ward and toward the Forbidden Forest, which so late in the evening looked like little more than a shadow looming low on a dark horizon. Draco followed up the spell with the message, which rode the ripples outward and away:

Stop terrorizing my classmates, Sirius Black, and face me yourself. I’m waiting for you at the greenhouses.

Then—nothing. There was no way to verify whether or not Sirius had heard the message, but Draco had been practicing this spell relentlessly. It must have worked.

Draco needed it to work.

Behind him, Pansy made a strangled noise, at the midpoint between fear and agitation. She paced for a while back and forth through the thin layer of snow. Draco lowered his wand.

“It shouldn’t be long,” he said. “He wouldn’t be too far from the castle.”

Blaise finally broke his silence with, “Yes, let’s patiently wait for the crazy murderer. Pans, do you ever wonder what it would be like to have normal friends with normal goals?”

“Please, Draco, let’s just go back inside,” Pansy said. “This is so dangerous. I appreciate that you want to—to prove something to Regulus, but Sirius Black is genuinely evil and we’re second-year students!”

“Pansy, just go back inside.” Draco wasn’t sure if he was asking or telling, and his voice gave no clues. “If you don’t want to be here—”

“I don’t want to be here, but I do want to stop you, the dumbest blond in history, from being murdered horrendously!”

“I’m not going to be murdered.”

Blaise snorted. “Hear that, Pans? He’s not going to be murdered. So that’s sorted.”

“I’ve taken precautions!” Draco said. “You saw me cast the spells!”

“This is someone who was in the Ashbringer’s inner circle,” Pansy said, “his most competent and powerful and loyal. And you think you can successfully outsmart him with—what even are these spells you’ve set up? How can you be sure they’re—?”

A distant howl pierced the night. Draco spun, stared out into the darkness where he should have seen nothing—but Draco saw well in the dark. Still, there wasn’t much worth seeing: the impenetrable wall of trees comprising the edge of the Forest, the sloping hill obscuring the view of the Lake from their vantage, the rolling clouds cloaking the moon.

Pansy began to hyperventilate behind Draco.

“Pans,” Blaise said, “it’s all right. Remember what we talked about?”

“We’re all going to die,” Pansy wheezed.

Another howl, closer this time. Draco’s hand tightened around his father’s wand. A shadow was loping over the crest of the hill toward them.

“He’s coming,” Draco said. Pansy made another one of those strangled, angry-scared sounds. He heard her shuffling footsteps as she backed into the exterior wall of the castle, breathing hard.

It didn’t take long. Apparently, Sirius Black could run fast—or at least he could as—

“A dog.” Draco had almost talked himself into the idea that his Animagus form was a wolf.

But no, it was definitely a dog that had skidded to a hard stop just a few yards off. A large dog, to be sure, and shaggy and feral-looking, but still just a dog, Draco told himself. He could handle a dog.

His heart still pounded, though. “Always a pleasure to meet new family members,” Draco said.

The dog—Sirius—didn’t answer, of course, nor did he move. He growled, though, a low and dangerous sound, and the dark, wiry hair along his back stood on end.

Draco just needed him to come closer.

“I suppose Regulus got the good manners in the family,” Draco continued.

At the mention of his brother, Sirius lunged, barked once—a sharp, vicious sound. Draco took a half-step back, but refused to let the sudden flood of fear show on his face.

“Look,” Draco said, summoning every drop of wherewithal to keep his voice steady, “you’ve done enough damage in your mad quest to get to me. You’ve traumatized two students and forced the whole school into lockdown. So let’s just skip to the chase. You’re after me, right?”

Sirius Black took one step forward, paws silent on the snow. Closer, closer, closer, Draco chanted, though only in his head.

“Are you following the Ashbringer’s orders, then? Directly? Or do you just figure that if you bring me to him, it’ll make up for your decade of abandonment?”

Another low growl. It sounded angrier this time.

“Did I hit a sore spot? Because from where I’m sitting, you definitely abandoned his side. Ran, just like all the rest of the Order, back to the holes you crawled out of, the second he disappeared.”

Another bark. Louder. A clear warning. Draco’s heart hammered. He lifted his wand.

“Come and get me, then.”

A lot of things happened then, very quickly and one after the other:

First, Sirius Black leapt through the gap in the ward and directly into Draco’s waiting Trigger Trap Jinx. The magic exploded in a burst of red light and black threads that snapped up around the dog like the jaws on a bear trap. Sirius Black howled and thrashed, but the magic held.

Second, the door about five yards behind them leading into the castle flew open and clattered against the wall. The sound of it hadn’t even faded before the familiar voice of Severus Snape echoed down the path: “Draco!”

Third, the Trigger Trap shattered. Exploded, really, in a shower of magic. Sirius Black wrenched his body forward, leapt for Draco, and—

Fourth, tangled immediately in the Invisible Web just past it. Sirius Black went back to thrashing. Draco drew his wand, but—

Fifth, Professor Snape beat him to it. “Stupefy!” he cried, and the spell hit him, but also hit the magic of the Invisible Web, which partially fractured, just enough for Sirius Black to lunge toward Draco again—

Sixth; “Protego!” Draco cried, and Black rebounded off the shield.

“Stop it! Draco, all of you, get behind me!”

Seventh—eighth?—Blaise and Pansy scrambled toward Professor Snape, but Draco did not; he had the Petrifying Potion in his pocket, and if Black got within throwing distance—

But through the darkness, with that frigid wind screaming around them, teeth flashed, and Sirius Black launched himself again, and Draco couldn’t grab the potion in time—

“Get away from my godson!”

Magic flew; blood arced through the night in a glittering spray. Something hit Draco; he fell. Somebody screamed; he could not tell if the sound of it was human or canine. There was a horrible CRUNCH that sounded like bone breaking. Another scream. More magic. A single, horrible howl of agony.

By the time Draco had caught up with it all—by the time he’d picked himself up off the freezing cold stone—Sirius Black was racing into the darkness, limping and trailing blood.

And Professor Snape was on the ground, bleeding from the throat.

Things continued to happen very quickly. Even in the clarity of hindsight, Draco would only be able to recall them in fragments.

Pansy, frantic: “We have to wake up Madam Pomfrey!”

Blaise, terrified: “Get him inside— Draco, come on—”

Draco didn’t answer, only held shut the gash in his godfather’s throat. He tried and failed and tried and failed to cast Episkey. His hands were shaking too badly to cast it right.

A thousand years passed before Madam Pomfrey eventually arrived, whereupon she immediately began to shout instructions. Draco’s hands were hot and slick with blood, still putting pressure on the wound—he couldn’t look away from the erratic rise and fall of Professor Snape’s chest, horrible and labored breathing that told Draco he was alive, at least he was alive, he was still alive—

Madam Pomfrey’s spells were fast and efficient, sealing the worst of the wounds within a few breaths, but Professor Snape still wasn’t moving. Draco heard her say something that ended with the word spine. More professors appeared at some point.

There was shouting, some of it at Draco, some of it not. Everything sounded muted and distant, like he was underwater. He kept staring at his hands, still wet with cooling blood.

Then, at some point—and Draco could not tell which—he was pushed down into a chair in what he belatedly realized was the Headmaster’s office.

“Mr. Malfoy? Can you hear me?”

Draco wanted to answer. He tried to. No words came out.

“Poor boy’s prob’ly in shock.”

“Could you put on some tea, please, love?”

Something was draped over his shoulders—a blanket, thick red tartan, tattered at the hems. Orange light burst to life in the fireplace.

“You are safe now.” It was the Headmaster, his face finally swimming into focus. He was in a dressing gown that was such a deep shade of green it was nearly black. His expression was controlled, eyes searching. “The threat is gone. You are safe.”

“Snape,” Draco managed to say, “was—”

“Hurt, yes. Madam Pomfrey is with him now.”

“She weren’t immediately openin’ the Floo to St. Mungo’s, which I s’pose is a good sign.” Professor Hagrid. Draco forced his eyes over. He was in a dressing gown, too, dark brown and hanging open over striped pajamas.

“What happened, Mr. Malfoy?” the Headmaster asked. He was, Draco finally noticed, sitting down in a chair pulled just in front of Draco’s.

“Is he going to be okay?” Draco asked. It was all he could think about, Professor Snape’s open throat, gushing blood—

A cup of tea was pressed into his hands. They were no longer slick and wet and red. The Headmaster must have cleaned him up with a spell. Professor Hagrid smiled down at him gently.

“Professor Snape is receiving the care he needs,” the Headmaster said. “Mr. Malfoy, I fear I must repeat my question: how did Sirius Black end up attacking you in the middle of the night?”

Draco took a slow, shuddering breath, and explained.

Chapter Text

The first place Draco went was the Hospital Wing. By then, it was quite late, and Draco was equal parts exhausted and jittery with nerves—but he couldn’t sleep yet. Not before he knew.

The door was illuminated with dim gold, and soft voices echoed out from within:

“Damn fool of a man, jumping in front of a mad dog. An inch to the right and your jugular would be in two pieces. And the poor Headmaster is under enough stress without having to replace his idiot potions master.”

“Poppy, you must stop flirting with me. I’m a married man.” Thwap. “Ow.”

Draco crept quietly up to the door and peeked around it. Professor Snape was upright, at least, a sight Draco drank in with a shudder of relief, and leaning against Madam Pomfrey’s desk as she drew her wand up and down across his throat and chest.

His neck looked fine, to Draco’s admittedly limited medical expertise, though with the way the light hit it, he could see thin, silvery scars in the shape of a bite lingering on his sallow skin. Guilt swelled at the sight, swallowing up the short-lived relief.

“There.” Madam Pomfrey withdrew, examining her handiwork. “If I’d been a second later…”

“Let’s just both be grateful that you weren’t.”

Madam Pomfrey stepped away, taking several flasks and poultices that had been on the desk with her. Draco’s view of Professor Snape was now unobstructed: the top half of his starched black robe lay open, discolored in places with dried blood. And all across his chest—

Draco gasped without meaning to. The sound drew Snape’s attention.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

But for those first few seconds, Draco couldn’t make himself look away from Professor Snape’s chest: it was a battlefield of very old, very gnarled scars crossing in every direction, but most notably right through the middle of his ribcage, where the word TRAITOR was carved in hard, jagged lines.

“Don’t stare, Draco.”

Draco forced his eyes away, up to Professor Snape’s face. “I— I’m sorry, I just— I know it’s late, I only wanted to—”

“Yes, I figured. Come in.”

Draco shuffled in slowly, nervously.

Madam Pomfrey, who Draco finally noticed was wearing a pastel blue dressing gown and bunny slippers, gave him an exasperated look as he approached, then turned it to Professor Snape.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. “Again.”

“Sleep well, Poppy. Thank you, by the way, for saving my life.”

“If anything like this happens again, I may be less inclined.”

She stormed off, ears of her bunny slippers flapping, straight past Draco and into the hallway. Draco watched her leave, then turned back to Professor Snape—and, without meaning to, looked back down at the terrible scars across his chest, and at the word TRAITOR.

“Magic traitor,” Professor Snape said when he noticed where Draco’s eyes landed. “That’s the name the Order came up with for those of us who dare to fall in love with Muggles. As if my love for Petunia was a deliberate act of betrayal against all magical kind. As if it was a crime and an aberration, and not the masterpiece of my flawed soul.”

Draco felt himself shaking.

“I received these scars as a young man, one of many prisoners of the Ashbringer’s Second War. My imprisonment lasted many weeks, and the scars were, to be honest, one of the gentler things inflicted upon me. The real torture was psychological. I was force-fed Wakefulness Draughts for days on end till I was hallucinating. My mind was magically read for information I didn’t even have, yet still raided again and again, my memories ripped through and weaponized against me. I was beaten, starved, and—yes—carved up.

“And you invited the perpetrator of all that cruelty directly to Hogwarts.”

“I had a plan,” Draco managed to say, though the words came out small and brittle.

“A plan,” Professor Snape echoed, with a derisive laugh. “Draco, Sirius Black is cruel, sadistic, and worst of all, eminently competent. You put everyone in this castle in a tremendous amount of danger, and for what? What, in your mind, could have possibly justified all that risk?”

The words caught in his throat. In the face of what had happened, it felt so stupid and petty and small to say that Draco had been desperate to prove himself worthy, that he wanted to keep Regulus in his life in any way he possibly could and if that included facing Sirius himself—

“I had a plan,” he whispered again. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

“And here we see the consequences of it.” Professor Snape’s voice was colder than Draco had ever heard it. “The Headmaster offered appropriate punishment, I hope?”

He had, of course. Two weeks of detention with Professor Sinistra—polishing every telescope in the castle, Draco supposed. It felt somehow like both a reasonable consequence and an absolute outrage. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. He had a plan. He had a plan.

Fabric rustled as Professor Snape fastened the buttons running up the front of his robe, one by one. The TRAITOR across his chest vanished slowly behind black, bloodstained fabric.

“You’re young. If you were anyone else, your big mistakes would be limited to embarrassing social gaffes and schoolroom brawls.

“But you’re not anyone else, Draco. You’re the Boy Who Lived, and you have a target on your back. It isn’t fair, but it is your reality. When you make mistakes, you—and everyone around you—gets put in danger.”

What Draco wanted to ask was, Are you no longer my godfather? Have I driven you away?

What Draco actually said was, “I only wanted to help. Est-ce que vous me détestez pour ça?”

“I do not hate you, Draco. I’m just disappointed.”

For one hysterical moment, Draco wished that Professor Snape did hate him. He knew how to deal with hate. Disappointment, though, was a new and horrible beast that felt like the first crack in a painful division, one that would end with his godfather abandoning him forever.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s good that you are. But I also want you to know better next time.”

Professor Snape left then, in a swirl of black robes and the soft rush of air. Draco was left behind, unsure of what he was feeling, but knowing that he felt it far too much.

When Draco made it back to the Slytherin common room, it was nearly midnight—and, to his surprise and no small amount of frustration, Blaise and Pansy were still up, still waiting for him.

“Draco,” Pansy began, but Draco continued straight past her.

“Draco, come on,” Blaise said, then grabbed his wrist.

But Draco wrenched himself right out of Blaise’s grip and whirled. “You told him, didn’t you?”

Blaise and Pansy exchanged a brief, nervous look, then seemed to silently, mutually decide on an answer—though it was Blaise who said it out loud.

“Yes. We talked about it, and I left a note on his desk to find.”

Draco couldn’t quite keep himself from shouting: “Why!”

“Because your plan was crazy!” Blaise answered, also shouting. Hopefully no one could hear them down in the dormitories. “And because you weren’t listening to us when we told you how crazy it was!”

“It wasn’t crazy!” Draco cried, and all the rage and guilt and frustration and pain came pouring out all at once. He couldn’t direct it at Professor Snape, but he could sure as hell direct it at his friends. “It’s not like I drew him to the castle without forethought! I had a plan, I laid traps!”

“Draco, two of those traps failed within the first ten seconds,” Pansy said, visibly struggling to remain calm.

“I had back-ups to back-ups and so many contingencies—and you did the one thing that could have wrecked it, which was get other people involved! Professor Snape nearly had his throat torn out because—”

“Don’t blame this on us!” Blaise snapped. “And don’t act like this whole thing was some foolproof mastermind scheme, either! If Professor Snape hadn’t intervened when he did, it could have been even worse. Black could have killed you!”

“Et alors? Better me than Snape! At least I knew what I was getting into; you drew Professor Snape into unknown, unnecessary danger!”

“What were we supposed to do?” Pansy shrilled. “Just sit by and watch when we were sure you were going to die?”

“Well, I’m glad you followed your conscience!” Draco was shouting, almost blind with furious tears. “I did this whole thing to make sure the only family I have left didn’t leave me, and now I’ll probably lose Regulus and my godfather in one fell swoop. Je vous remercie!”

“Draco,” Blaise began, and though his voice sounded different, Draco didn’t care to stick around and find out how. He strode past him down into the dormitory and into his bed, where he drew the curtains shut and threw up a silencing charm before falling apart.

Jack, bless him, did not ask; he did little more than nose his way into Draco’s chest and purr, even when Draco hugged him too tightly and soaked his fur.

Uncle Marc,

The Boy Who Lived is the name the magical world gave me the day my parents were murdered. Their deaths were at the hand of a man called the Ashbringer, a would-be tyrant and sadistic maniac who believes wizardkind superior to Muggles, and who also believes that the logical conclusion of that superiority is to murder them, take over governments, and wage civil war against those who disagreed. They say he’s gone now, that he died the same night he failed to kill me. They’re wrong. He’s weaker now, maybe, but still alive. I’ve seen him.

I didn’t know any of this until Professor Snape told me just before my first year at Hogwarts began. It hasn’t been what you’d call an easy adjustment. I’m famous here in magical Britain, and those who still follow the Ashbringer have made, and continue to make, efforts to kill me, or expel me, or kidnap me, or whatever it is they’re trying to do. They’ve so far been unsuccessful, but very recently, they came incredibly close to achieving their goals and getting me out of the way.

Or maybe the whole thing was my fault. That’s what everyone around me says, friends as much as enemies. They say I’m a danger to everyone around me, and even though I thought I was doing the right thing, now I’m not sure. Professor Snape was hurt really badly. He’s all right now, but only because I held the wound on his throat shut with my bare hands.

I only did what I did because I didn’t want that long-lost cousin, Regulus Black, to leave me. I wanted to prove to him that I was worth keeping around. He’s the only blood family I have left and if he leaves me like everyone else

I’m so scared that he’s going to hate me for this

There is a magical school in France, as it happens. I don’t know much about it, but it’s called Beauxbatons. Maybe I should transfer there. Maybe it’s safer. I don’t think there will be much left for me in England soon. If you petitioned for it, could you enroll me there? Please?

Draco

So, Draco avoided Blaise and Pansy. In turn, Blaise and Pansy avoided him. Maybe they weren’t friends at all anymore. Draco didn’t know, and didn’t want to think about it too hard.

Draco did everything in his power to make sure they didn’t interact. He arrived at class early, and left only after they did. He ate all his meals as soon as they started, and more than once took his food with him out of the Great Hall when they turned up. Sometimes, he even skipped meals entirely. He was used to going hungry, after all.

On the third dinner Draco avoided—this time, in a cushioned window seat on the third floor, with a nice view of the blasted Black Lake that had started this whole mess—Draco was approached, but not by someone he was expecting.

“Er… Mr. Draco?”

Draco looked over his shoulder, but didn’t see anyone until he looked down.

There was an elf—a house-elf, Draco supposed, though he’d never seen one in person—standing a few feet away, about three feet tall with large eyes and larger ears, wearing what appeared to be a tunic made of carefully stitched-together tea cozies and oven mitts.

Draco stared. He knew that Hogwarts had house-elves, responsible for the majority of the cooking and cleaning, but only because Blaise had mentioned it. He didn’t know much about them, and seeing one in person was rather disorienting.

“Yes? I mean, hello.”

“Hello,” the house-elf said. “Mr. Draco has been skipping meals. Is Mr. Draco feeling sick?”

“No. It’s not— I’m not sick, I’m just…avoiding. People.”

The house-elf stared at him. Truly, its—his?—eyes were enormous, about the size of tennis balls, and fixed on Draco with such intensity that it sort of made him nervous.

“Dobby is not stalking Mr. Draco,” said the house-elf, whose name was apparently Dobby.

“All right,” Draco replied.

“Dobby is just…concerned. Dobby has more reason than most to be concerned for Mr. Draco.”

“All…right,” Draco said again.

Dobby the house-elf wrung his hands together and looked nervously over his shoulder, down the empty hallway. Then he climbed up onto the window seat just across from Draco, which put them at about the same eye-level.

“Dobby has wanted to talk to Mr. Draco since he first enrolled, but Dobby has always been too nervous.”

Draco didn’t want to say “all right” again, so he decided not to say anything.

“Dobby once served the Malfoy family.”

Draco frowned. That wasn’t the direction he’d expected this to go. “What do you mean, served?”

“House-elves is bound to great houses,” Dobby said. “Drawn by powerful magic of the building and families. The house-elves serve the house, and the families. Dobby was serving the Malfoy Manor.”

His mouth fell open, but he couldn’t manage to say anything at first. Then, eventually, he managed to stammer out, “You knew my parents?”

Dobby nodded emphatically. “Dobby did. Dobby served them till their deaths. Dobby was very upset about it. Mr. Abraxas was cruel and nasty, but Mr. Lucius was always kind. Mr. Lucius honored Dobby and Dobby’s pact. When they was killed, Dobby came to Hogwarts. Mr. Lucius arranged for it so Dobby would be safe. Dobby was very grateful.”

Draco fell silent again. He had so many questions that he didn’t know where to start.

“Dobby watched Mr. Draco all through his first year, but never worked up the nerve to talk to him. But Dobby has noticed lately that Mr. Draco is very…lonely. And sad. And Dobby wanted to make sure he is all right. Is Mr. Draco all right?”

His throat got tight. It was the first time anyone had asked him that in almost a month, and certainly the first time Draco had wondered about the answer.

“I… I don’t think I am all right,” Draco realized. His eyes stung and his chest constricted.

“Oh. Dobby is sorry to hear that.” Dobby inched a little closer. “Is there anything Dobby can do to help?”

Draco shook his head because his throat was too tight to speak. He swiped one hand across his face.

“Well… Perhaps Dobby could start by getting Mr. Draco a nice meal,” Dobby said. “And then maybe Mr. Draco will feel a little better.”

Chapter Text

Draco had detention every night after dinner for the last two weeks of February, seven to nine o’clock, in the Astronomy classroom. It wasn’t even the interesting part of the classroom, up several stories of circular stairs to the observation deck; it was down at the base of the tower, with the desks and blackboard and books just like any other classroom in the castle.

Professor Sinistra was gracious enough about Draco’s presence, and even cracked a joke on the first night about being glad that someone finally got detention so she didn’t have to polish them all herself. Draco might have forced something resembling a laugh if he hadn’t seen the closet where all the telescopes were kept at that same moment—all two hundred of them, in various shapes and sizes, and all needing to be polished from top to bottom.

So, Draco got to work. He couldn’t come up with a more charitable description of the experience than absolutely mind-numbingly boring. He had no idea how these telescopes had gotten so scuffed and dirty, but without the use of magic, all he had to clean them was rags, a bottle of brass polish, and so much effort that his fingers went numb by the end of every night.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, on day five of the drudgery, Draco was joined in detention by none other than Harry Potter.

He’d glanced over when he heard the door squeak, hoping that perhaps it was Jack, here to distract him from his drudgery, but instead, glasses flashed and robes swirled, and Harry Potter met his eyes, looking just as bewildered as Draco felt.

Then, after a moment, Potter’s expression broke. “Really? You?”

“What are you doing here?” Draco asked.

Potter made an exasperated, agonized sound, storming into the classroom and slamming the door behind him.

Professor Sinistra, poised neatly behind her desk, answered for him: “Mr. Potter will be serving detention with you tonight, Mr. Malfoy.”

Before Draco could stop himself, he said, “I’m amazed Daddy Dearest let his precious baby boy get in trouble.”

Potter snapped, “Shut up, Malfoy!” at the same moment Professor Sinistra said, “No fighting, boys.”

But Draco had no intention of shutting up and had never been able to resist fighting with Harry Potter. “What did you do?”

“I had a disagreement with Longbottom,” Potter said curtly, and shoved himself into the chair on the other side of the desk at which Draco had situated himself, conveniently close to the roaring fireplace (the Astronomy Tower was notoriously cold, especially in winter). Draco had already gathered up all his supplies and enough telescopes to last the night.

“Longbottom? Isn’t he one of your friends?” Draco recalled Potter going far out of his way to defend the boy’s honor not that long ago.

“I thought he was,” Potter snipped, rolling the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows and grabbing a cloth and telescope of his own, “till he started showing his true colors.”

“What does that mean?” Draco asked.

“It means that whatever you said to him in the Hospital Wing after he was attacked has gotten to his head,” Potter snapped. “It means that suddenly he’s questioning fundamental—!”

Potter stopped himself mid-sentence, and instead glared at Draco with such intensity that Draco was sure he was trying to set him on fire with rage alone.

“Boys,” Professor Sinistra said again, “keep it civil. Or, better yet, say nothing at all.”

“I don’t need to justify myself to you, anyway,” Potter sniffed, and began to polish his first telescope, with fierce determination and little effect, because—

“It’ll be easier with the brass polish,” Draco said.

Potter glared at him again, then snatched the bottle to wet his rag.

Draco watched him for a while, wondering if the anger made the polishing easier or more difficult. Eventually, Draco returned to his own telescope.

They worked in silence for a while. Every now and then, Draco would glance up to grab a new telescope from the pile against the wall or apply more polish to his rag and catch a glimpse of Potter. His anger faded gradually as the time ticked by, which wasn’t much of a surprise—Draco knew that it was a hard thing to keep up, especially with searingly boring busywork like this. The firelight caught the edges of his skin in orange-gold and played on the startling green of his eyes.

When Professor Sinistra stepped out of the room toward her office, presumably to grab something, Draco finally broke the silence between them:

“So, what? You hit him, or…?”

Potter summoned more of the anger that had faded over the past hour to glare at Draco.

“And what if I did? Got something to say about it, Malfoy?”

“Just seems like a stupid reason to hit someone is all,” Draco answered.

“He’s spitting in his parents’ faces! Everything they fought for—!”

“Everything they fought for is stupid.” Draco kept his tone even. He wasn’t interested in fighting with Potter, per se, but he needed something to pass the time to keep him from going insane—and Potter was his only option. “The ideals of the Ashbringer are stupid. Killing Muggles because their lack of magic makes them inferior to wizardkind? Tell that to the nuclear bombs they dropped to end World War II.”

“What the hell are—?”

“As if they need to be superior in order to have a right to exist, anyway. Monkeys haven’t even managed to invent the wheel yet, and I don’t see your father banging on about eradicating them.”

Potter’s voice got dangerous. “Don’t talk about my father.”

“Your father, who tried to kill me several times last year? That father?”

“He didn’t try to kill you!”

“You might be able to bully your friends into believing lies, Potter, but I’m not interested in your approval and I know what I saw. I lived through it, despite your father’s best efforts.”

“The charges are false,” Potter said, voice unsteady. “He told me.”

“Right, your father is above wishing death on anyone.”

Potter didn’t say anything to that, and the silence stretched for so long that Draco had no choice but to look up, if only to grab the next telescope in the pile. Potter’s expression was still hateful, but there was something like doubt there, too—though it only lasted for a moment after Draco’s eyes found it.

“The lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep,” Potter said loftily, which made Draco bark out a laugh.

“Tu n’es pas un lion, Potter, loin de là.”

“Stop speaking—!” His face went a pleasing shade of scarlet, hands clenched to fists around the telescope in his lap. “Why do you insist on constantly speaking French?”

Historically, Draco spoke French reflexively, when high emotion forced him back to his mother tongue. Around Potter, though?

“Surtout parce que ça te fait chier.”

“Stop that! Speak English!”

Draco grinned. “Non.”

“Boys,” Professor Sinistra said, who had at some point reemerged from her office, “you are in detention. Act like it.”

Fortunately, Potter only occupied one of Draco’s evenings polishing telescopes.

Less fortunately, that meant that all the others were done alone, and Draco had nothing else to think about except telescopes, constantly, for two entire hours at the end of every single day. There was only so much wandering one mind could do before it started to tear itself apart. Especially since Draco still had not spoken to Blaise or Pansy. Or anyone, really. It felt like the whole school was avoiding him these days.

Somewhere around the halfway mark of day eight, though, he was granted another reprieve.

“Mr. Draco?”

Draco looked up, though for a while his eyes, long trained on a particularly stubborn scuff on telescope twenty-six, refused to focus. But once they did—

“Dobby!”

He looked quickly toward Professor Sinistra’s desk, which was miraculously unoccupied. Draco hadn’t even heard her leave.

“Hi! What are you doing here?”

Dobby shuffled over from where he’d appeared, somehow, on the far side of the classroom. He had a wicker basket in his hands, its contents hidden by a little blue tea towel.

“Dobby wanted to bring Mr. Draco some food. Dobby is noticing that Mr. Draco skipped dinner again.”

“It’s all right, I’m used to being hungry,” Draco said, though he couldn’t quite hide his curiosity about whatever was in the basket.

“Dobby is not sure that’s being a good thing,” Dobby said, but set the basket down anyway. Draco left the telescope in his lap just long enough to pull back the tea towel, revealing—

“Macarons!” They were perfect, rich dark brown with what looked like a jam filling. His stomach rumbled, and Draco looked nervously toward Professor Sinistra’s office door. “I don’t know that I’ll be alone long enough to eat them…”

“Professor Sinistra will be a while,” Dobby said. “She is answering an important letter. Mr. Draco can be eating.”

It was all the encouragement Draco needed to set his telescope down and dig in.

“Dobby used cocoa powder and strawberry jam,” Dobby said. “Dobby knows many French recipes from his days serving the Malfoy family, of course.”

“They’re delicious,” Draco said, through a mouthful of macaron. Despite being a staple of French cuisine, Draco had never had them much. They were a little too expensive for the Merciers, generally—or at least they had been. Maybe he could convince his Aunt Marie to buy some from the pâtisserie downtown now that they had Malfoy money available. “Thank you so much.”

Dobby smiled placidly, though there was a touch of nervousness to his expression. Draco felt an impetus to ask if he was all right, but it was hard to tear his attention away from the macarons.

Fortunately, Dobby volunteered the nervousness on his own: “Dobby is wondering why Mr. Draco has so much detention.”

Draco paused mid-chew. “You didn’t hear?” The whole school had, by then, and Dobby seemed to know so much about what happened in the castle.

But Dobby shook his head. “The house-elves do not be talking much to students. We is preferring to stay out of the way, mostly.”

Draco lowered the half-eaten macaron, frowning. “I… It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Mr. Draco could try?”

Dobby climbed up onto the desk next to Draco, with some difficulty, and situated himself at eye level as he straightened his odd little patchwork tunic.

“Do you know about Sirius Black?”

“The Headmaster was giving the house-elves warnings about him, yes.”

Draco nodded slowly. “I drew him to the school. Deliberately.”

Silence stretched. Dobby stared. It hadn’t been the answer he’d been expecting, clearly.

“That was a very stupid thing for Mr. Draco to do,” Dobby eventually said.

At least Draco couldn’t accuse Dobby of not speaking his mind. “I… I had my reasons.”

“Dobby is having trouble imagining what reasons could be good enough.”

“His brother, Regulus Black, is also here. He’s helping the Headmaster to capture him. And he’s…the only family I have left, or at least the only family worth having. And I just… I wanted to help him.”

“Dobby met Regulus Black.”

“Did you?” Draco supposed that made sense, if Dobby served his mother.

Dobby nodded. “Mr. Regulus is good and very kind to his own house-elf, Kreacher. They was being very close during the War, before he disappeared.”

It was a nice image. Draco wondered if Kreacher was still around. He wondered if Regulus would introduce him. He wondered if either of them would want anything to do with him anymore. Regulus, after all, still hadn’t reached out, over a week later…

“Mr. Regulus is not the sort of man who would want anyone, least of all his own family, to be putting themselves in danger on his account,” Dobby said.

Draco flinched and turned his head away. “I… I just wanted to help.”

“Intention is mattering, but consequence is also mattering,” Dobby said. “When the stakes are being very high, the method is being very important. Mr. Draco knows how dangerous Sirius Black is.”

Draco muttered, “Yes,” a little reluctantly.

“Then why did Mr. Draco risk so much?”

Because if Regulus doesn’t have a reason to keep me around, I’ll lose him. It felt stupid to say out loud.

So he didn’t say anything. And after a few further seconds of nothing, Dobby sighed.

“You know, Mr. Lucius broke a lot of rules, too.”

Draco looked up. “He did?”

“Oh, yes. Mostly fights. Defending honor, he was saying. Helping friends, he was saying. Mr. Abraxas was never being happy about it, but eventually gave up trying to stop him.”

He allowed himself a small, private smile. Perhaps Draco got his fight from him, then.

“But Dobby was always being worried about him, especially as the War got worse,” Dobby continued. “And Dobby was right to be afraid. Mr. Lucius fought so hard that eventually, he died.”

The silence physically hurt, a knife right in the middle of Draco’s throat.

“So please do not be giving Dobby more reason to be scared,” Dobby said. “Dobby does not want to live to see another dead Malfoy. Mr. Draco has so many people who would be devastated if Mr. Draco was getting himself killed.”

“I’m sorry,” Draco whispered, and realized that although it wasn’t the first time he’d apologized for what he’d done, it was the first time he’d meant it. He wasn’t used to people caring about him. He hadn’t even factored it into his decision making.

Dobby scooted forward across the table, smiled, and put a hand on top of Draco’s head affectionately. Then he stole a macaron, and Draco swallowed the surge of emotion and managed to smile.

Day twelve of detention made Draco think that, perhaps, he was losing his mind.

He had polished so many telescopes, cleaned so many lenses, fixed so many tripod legs. He was dreaming about glass and brass and his fingers ached all the time from the effort.

Two more days, he told himself, over and over (and over and over) as he cleaned telescopes, and cleaned telescopes, and cleaned telescopes.

When he left that night (still chanting two more days, two more days, two more days in his head over and over and over, telescopes, telescopes, telescopes), he was met with a familiar face just outside the classroom door.

“Blaise,” Draco said.

“Draco,” Blaise said.

They spent a while staring at each other. Draco was too delirious (telescopes, telescopes, telescopes) to remember why he was upset with him, or that he was upset at all.

“I got your birthday present,” Blaise said. His expression was strange.

Draco shifted uncomfortably, finally remembering. “I bought it before…”

“Yeah.”

“It seemed a waste to not give it to you.” The cufflinks had been quite expensive, after all. The proprietor of the shop on Le Virage had demonstrated how the little green gems fastened themselves.

“The color suits my complexion perfectly. A detail I’m sure you selected them for.”

“Er, yeah.” (Draco had definitely just picked them because they looked fancy enough to be something Blaise might like.) “Of course.”

“Pansy was going to throw me a birthday party like we’d done for her, but her heart wasn’t in it without…”

“Yeah,” Draco said.

They spent another while staring at each other. Draco felt like he was waiting for something, though he wasn’t sure what.

“Listen, Draco,” Blaise began, and it sounded like he was going to apologize, and Draco realized that he absolutely could not stomach hearing it.

“Happy birthday, Blaise,” Draco said, and walked past him.

Blaise should not be the first one to apologize, Draco realized, and Draco didn’t deserve to hear one until he could manage to find the right words for one of his own.

Chapter Text

The final day of February was the first of Draco’s freedom. He arrived at his usual study session with Hermione feeling like his head was full of marbles.

“If I never see another telescope ever again, it’ll be too soon,” Draco said as soon as he sat down.

“Not to be a killjoy, but we do have the Astronomy exam coming up,” Hermione said.

“Yeah,” Draco sighed.

“And the final in June. That one’s practical, too.”

“Look, I just need to live in denial for as long as I’m able.”

Hermione smirked as she unpacked her things. Draco watched her as she did, wondering if perhaps they were friends, and finding he was too nervous to ask. After all, Hermione had stormed into his life rather abruptly all those months ago and declared Draco her study partner, a choice that won out by a narrow margin over academic rival. She certainly didn’t treat Draco much like a friend—they barely spoke outside of their weekly study sessions—though he supposed she also didn’t treat him like an enemy.

“I’d sort of expected you to have voiced your opinion on how I ended up in detention by now,” Draco admitted.

Hermione shrugged gamely. “I think it was stupid and reckless and could have ended much worse than it did. But I also don’t think it has any bearing on our study sessions.”

Perhaps not exactly a friend, then. “Right.”

“Well, it’s probably best to start with History of Magic. Binns’s exam is coming up fast.”

“Yes. And I’d like to review the Warlock Revolt of 475 and how it intersected with the fall of the Roman Empire.”

“I made some flash cards,” Hermione said as she rummaged through her bag.

Draco wouldn’t have said that he enjoyed these sessions, necessarily, but he certainly found them extremely useful. He never understood a subject matter so well as when he was able to break it down and argue it out with Hermione Granger. If they weren’t friends, Draco was at least glad that they were study partners. He hoped she got as much out of it as he did. Presumably she would have stopped if she didn’t.

Halfway through the study session, and ten minutes into a very intense debate about whether or not the specific role of Archwarlock Vestavius II influenced the Gothic invasion of Rome in 455, Jack jumped up onto their table and knocked two books and a half-finished parchment full of notes onto the floor.

“I’m hungry,” Jack announced before Draco could even react.

“Mince alors! Jack, get off the table!”

“But I’m hungry,” Jack repeated.

“I’m sorry about him,” Draco said, but was surprised, when he reached out to grab Jack and deposit him back on the library floor, to find Hermione’s eyes were huge and her expression hopelessly charmed.

“Oh, he’s so cute!” she gushed. “You said his name is Jack?”

“Er…” His movements slowed to a stop. “Yes.”

“Can I pet him? I love cats.”

“Er, sure. He’s very friendly.”

Hermione offered her hand for Jack to sniff, which he did perfunctorily, though Draco could tell he was still mostly thinking about food—at least until she started scratching behind his ears. Within moments, he was purring and arching into her touch.

Draco watched her thoughtfully. Hermione had been so helpful with the Hailing Spell, and if anyone in the castle was clever enough…

“I have a sort of odd question,” Draco said.

It wasn’t clear if Hermione was listening, as she was now petting Jack more aggressively and with both hands, which he soaked right up. She didn’t even complain when he rolled onto his back directly on top of her textbook.

“Do you know of any reason animals might be able to talk? Magical reasons, I mean.”

Hermione gave him a perplexed look, though she did not stop her petting. “How d’you mean?”

“I mean animals that shouldn’t be able to talk, being able to talk. But, er, only to one person.”

“So one person hearing an animal talk that no one else can hear?”

“Er…yes.”

“Has this hypothetical person considered that they might be crazy?”

Draco tried not to let the flash of annoyance show. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that I—that this hypothetical person is not crazy. Are there any magical explanations for a witch or wizard being able to communicate with an animal when no one else can?”

“Well, maybe,” Hermione conceded. Jack had rolled onto his back, and Hermione turned her attention to his spotted belly. “Generally speaking, magical communication with animals is possible. Animagi can communicate with animals to a certain extent, though only while in their animal forms. And there are certain charms that can do what you’ve described as well. Also there’s a famous ability called Parseltongue that’s inherited, which allows the witch or wizard to talk to snakes. The Headmaster is one, you know. It’s been in his family since Salazar Slytherin, one of the Hogwarts Founders. I read all about it in Hogwarts: A History, which talked at great length—”

“Let’s say, hypothetically,” Draco interjected, “that the animal in question is not a snake.”

Hermione paused, raised both eyebrows. “And what animal shall we hypothetically say it is?” When Draco visibly hesitated, Hermione persisted: “Obviously, the species might be germane.”

“It’s…a cat,” Draco said.

“It’s Jack, isn’t it?”

“It’s Jack,” Draco sighed. What was the English idiom—in for a penny, in for a pound?

“Jack can talk?” Hermione asked skeptically.

“Well, he can to me, at least. I got him just before I started my first year, when the concept of magic was still very new to me and I didn’t realize that it was strange even in the magical world for cats to be able to talk.” He glanced at Jack, who was still on his back, eyes closed, purring loudly as Hermione continued to pet his stomach.

Hermione paused, then asked, “What does he talk about?”

“Cat stuff, mostly. Birds he saw, interesting smells. A lot about food.”

“I can’t decide if I’m more jealous or concerned,” Hermione said.

“I’m not crazy,” Draco insisted. At least he dearly hoped he wasn’t. “And I figure, if anyone can solve a weird magical mystery like this, it’d be you, right?”

“Trying to play to my ego, hm?” But Draco was pleased to hear that Hermione didn’t seem reproachful so much as amused. “Well, I have a few thoughts on where we could start looking at least. And I suppose we have covered the Warlock Revolt pretty thoroughly.”

Draco smiled, relieved to have her insight, and together they went to the reference section to grab a few books. Jack was contented by some treats from Draco’s pocket and eventually fell asleep on his bookbag.

They didn’t find much that explained Jack, however, and since Draco still was not ready to accept Hermione’s cheerful insistence that you may just be crazy! she agreed to keep looking through one of the more promising bestiaries. Draco checked out an almanac on magical creatures, hoping it would give him some kind of lead.

Because it couldn’t just be that he was crazy, right?

Draco,

I asked your aunt about transfers, and unsurprisingly she wasn’t very helpful. I “owled” your godfather as well, and hopefully he’ll have more information. Put a pin in that question. If you feel the same when you come back to Nantes for the summer, we’ll talk.

I don’t know the specifics of what happened (please do elaborate when you reply), but you’re a good kid, and your intentions were probably good as well. Unfortunately, good intentions alone aren’t always enough.

Here’s what I do know: as soon as you become aware of the fact that you made a mistake, there are only two things you can do, both equally important. First, you can learn from what you did so you can do better next time. Second, you can apologize to those you hurt. And the second thing doesn’t matter at all without the first thing.

I hope your school year gets better.

Uncle Marc

It wasn’t until the day after he received Uncle Marc’s letter that Draco finally worked up the nerve—and put together the words—to talk to Blaise and Pansy.

He had, by early March, accepted that he’d messed up, that all the good intentions in the world didn’t negate the damage he’d done and might have done, and that his friends had been doing the only thing they thought they could do by telling Professor Snape about Draco’s plans.

He finally found the two of them alone in the common room at the end of a Tuesday. They looked up at him. Draco took a deep breath.

“I—” Draco began.

“We accept your apology!” Pansy shrieked.

“Pans,” Blaise snapped. “What happened to making him grovel?”

Pansy pouted at him. “But I miss him. You miss him, too! Why does he need to grovel?”

“Can I at least get the apology out?” Draco asked, a little nervously.

“We should make him grovel,” Blaise said, folding his arms over his chest and settling backward into the armchair in which he was seated, giving Draco a pointed look. “After trying to blame us for what happened to Professor Snape—”

“I’m sorry,” Draco interjected. “I… Look, I get it now, all right? I didn’t at first, but…”

Draco glanced over his shoulder. After Pansy’s screech, what few students remained in the common room were all staring. He shuffled closer and sat down on the ottoman in front of Blaise’s chair so he could face both of them—and drop his voice.

“I just wanted to be useful to Regulus,” he explained. “He’s the only family I’ve got left, and I was so scared of losing him that I didn’t realize what I was risking to keep him. In the clarity of hindsight…”

Draco sniffed, swallowed a lump in his throat. The image of Professor Snape’s supine body, gushing blood from the open wound on his neck, was still vivid in his mind.

“I… I understand why you did what you did. I don’t blame you for what happened to Snape. That… That was my fault, not yours. I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.”

“We accept your apology!” Pansy said again, not quite as loudly this time, and then threw herself forward to hug Draco tightly around the middle. Draco laughed, a welcome expulsion of the tension that had been growing up his spine all week, and returned the embrace.

“I mean, as groveling goes, that was middling at best,” Blaise said, “but I suppose I have missed you.”

“I can do it again in French,” Draco answered. “I’m willing to be much more embarrassing in French.” Especially since neither of them spoke it.

“Well, I’ll let you off easy for good behavior. Your birthday present was rather fetching, after all.”

Then it was Blaise’s turn to hug him, and Draco felt himself relax after so many weeks of miserable solitude.

“But Draco,” Pansy said, after Blaise drew away (and showed off the cufflinks, which he pointed out matched perfectly with his Slytherin tie), “I’m still confused as to why you did it. You say it was to keep Regulus around—but surely all that wasn’t necessary?”

“Wasn’t it?” Draco sighed. “It’s been weeks now, and he hasn’t reached out.”

“His brother just attacked a Hogwarts professor,” Blaise pointed out. “He’s probably a little busy helping Riddle and the rest of the Smokevigil track him down.”

Draco wanted that to be true, but he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. In his heart, Draco knew that Regulus just didn’t have a reason to contact Draco now that he wasn’t useful. And after putting his best friend in danger, however indirectly, he sort of doubted that Regulus would even want anything to do with him ever again.

But the idea of explaining all that to his friends felt like torture, so instead he just said, “Yeah, maybe.”

“If it’s that important,” Pansy said, “I’m sure there are some other ways we could help. You’ve been keeping one eye on the Map, haven’t you?”

“I have, but of course Sirius has been sticking mostly to the Forbidden Forest, which it doesn’t cover.”

“Maybe there are other, safer ways we could help.”

“Or maybe we should leave this to the Smokevigil, as they’re doubtlessly better qualified and already probably closing in on the bastard,” Blaise said.

“I hope so,” Draco sighed. He dearly hoped that, if nothing else, his intervention hadn’t made their efforts harder. He’d done enough damage already.

Draco had his friends back, at least: he would have to suffice with that, as he was sure he’d lost Regulus forever.

Draco’s History of Magic exam went well. He was confident in his answers to the multiple choice section, and managed to go nearly double the required length for the essay. As he’d discovered two Sundays ago, he had a lot to say about Vestavius II.

“I totally failed,” Pansy sighed.

“You can always come study with Hermione and me,” Draco offered, which made her snort.

“You and Granger? No, thanks. Listening to two nerds of your caliber talking sounds nightmarish.”

“I’m not a nerd,” Draco protested feebly.

“I’d say I hope Binns grades on a curve,” Blaise said, “but we all know that you’d blow it. Nerd.”

“I’m just very good at studying,” Draco insisted.

“If Binns wanted more students to pass his class,” Pansy added, “he wouldn’t be putting us all to sleep with his voice.”

“Draco! Draco!”

Pansy actually turned before Draco did, which was surprising since it hadn’t been her name that Hermione Granger had been calling as she raced down the hallway behind them, a large book clutched tightly to her chest.

“Granger,” Pansy said, “were your ears burning?”

But Hermione wasn’t even looking at her. “I think I figured it out!” she said as soon as she was in earshot. By the time she stopped, Draco was able to make out the cover of the book, ancient brown leather with chipped gold lettering: FAMILIARIS, by someone named M. Ambrosius.

“Figured what out?” Blaise asked.

“What Jack is!”

Pansy looked at Draco, surprised. “You told Hermione about Jack?”

“Er…yes?”

“Huh. I sort of thought you wouldn’t want to let anyone else know how crazy you were.”

“But that’s the thing,” Hermione interjected excitedly. “I don’t think Draco is crazy. I think Jack is his familiar.”

“Wait,” Blaise said, “I’ve heard of those, I think… Didn’t Merlin have one?”

“He did. Come, look!”

Hermione hurried over to the nearby window just so she could lay the book open on its narrow sill. The hazy, gray light of not-quite-winter, not-quite-spring illuminated a full-page illustration of a man with a long beard and hooded cloak. The man had one arm extended, where a large, stately raven sat perched, preening its feathers.

“This book talks all about them,” Hermione said. “Mostly, it spends a great deal of time theorizing about the specific magical reason that familiars exist, and what differentiates witches and wizards who have one from those who don’t. The author himself had one, and—look, this passage right here.”

She pointed, and Draco read:

I had known Wyse for so long and from such an early age that it took me well into my adulthood to realize his peculiarities: that my ability to fly existed only because of him and not as a natural extension of my own magic, that he showed great intelligence comparable to other humans rather than other birds, and that he spoke in a voice that only I could hear.

Draco stared. The description sounded so eerily similar to his own experience with Jack.

“They’re very rare,” Hermione said. “Maybe one in ten thousand wizardkind will have a familiar, and because of that rarity, very little is known about them.”

“I always heard that familiars were a bad omen,” Blaise intoned, sounding nervous, “that they only came to witches and wizards with strange destinies ahead of them…or grim deaths.”

“But…it’s just Jack,” Draco said. “This morning, he coughed up a hairball on my bed.”

“Well, he is still physically a cat,” Hermione intoned. “But if he’s a familiar, you should be able to tell. He talks only to you, right? Does he have humanlike intelligence, would you say?”

Humanlike? His intelligence had always seemed very catlike to Draco. Jack would chatter endlessly about new smells he encountered or castle mousers or the treats Professor Flitwick would sneak him when he followed Draco to Charms.

But then again—Jack also had a knack for insight. He had moments of wisdom that had startled Draco in the past. Perhaps his intelligence was rather humanlike.

Eagerly, Hermione inched closer. “And the ability—familiars always confer upon their witch or wizard a specific ability unique to the species of their familiar. Do you have anything like that?”

“How’s your sense of smell?” Pansy asked dryly.

“Er, normal?” Though Draco didn’t have much to compare it to.

“There are ways to know for sure,” Hermione said. “The author talks about how, in close proximity, a witch or wizard and their familiar will be able to protect one another from acute danger with a sort of shield. It happens involuntarily, and he was able to repeat it so he knew it could have only been his familiar.”

“Right,” Blaise said. “So let’s drag Sirius Black to the greenhouses again and bring Jack. If he can’t rip out your throat, we’ll know for sure.”

Pansy cackled, but Hermione huffed. “It’s rather in poor taste to make jokes about that.”

“We’re Slytherins, Granger,” Blaise said. “If we can’t joke about it, it’s because it already killed us.”

Chapter Text

“Jack, are you a familiar?”

Jack yawned and stretched before bothering to answer. “Am I familiar with what?”

“No, a familiar. Are you a familiar?”

Jack blinked sleepily at Draco. “I’m a cat.”

Draco sighed. He probably should have anticipated this answer. He sat down on the couch beside him—the large one right in front of the fireplace, which was usually one of the first places to fill up. But that evening, the good majority of the Slytherin common room was abandoned. It was, he supposed, fairly late, though it wasn’t quite curfew yet.

As soon as Draco sat down, of course, Jack curled up on his lap. Thoughtlessly, Draco stroked a hand down his back. Draco didn’t know how to feel about Jack maybe being his familiar. Apart from Merlin having one (they hadn’t gotten to the medieval period yet in History of Magic, so Draco didn’t know much about Merlin past what reading ahead he’d done and one of his Chocolate Frog cards), he had very little context about them—and their rarity meant that there wasn’t much he could look up, either.

He supposed it was enough that he had a friendly cat who liked laps and a good cuddle. Anything else Jack had to offer was just a pleasant bonus.

Not long after the grandfather clock in the corner of the common room chimed nine o’clock, Professor Snape came sweeping in through the main entrance, just in the corner of Draco’s vision. He looked over in time to see Professor Snape looking back—and coming directly over.

“Good evening, Draco.”

Despite himself, a thin thread of nervousness tingled all the way down to his fingertips. Draco wasn’t sure if Professor Snape was approaching him as his Head of House or his godfather, an uncertainty that always made him a little nervous.

“Hello, Professor.”

“Do you have a moment?”

Draco also hadn’t apologized to him, he realized, and stared nervously at the thin, silvery, near-invisible scars on his neck.

“Er… Yes.”

Professor Snape folded himself neatly into the armchair just beside the fireplace, positioned to face the couch. He always looked a little too tall for every piece of furniture he put himself in, and the armchair was no exception. With both feet on the floor, his knees were higher than his hips.

“Your uncle is continuing to send me letters,” Professor Snape said by way of introduction.

“Er,” Draco replied gracefully.

“In his last,” he continued, “he mentioned that you had asked him about possibly transferring to Beauxbatons.”

“I,” Draco began, then didn’t know how to proceed.

Professor Snape did wait, to his credit, until it eventually became clear that Draco wasn’t going to continue. He sighed, folded one too-long leg over the other.

“Draco, I know what happened was traumatizing—” he began, and Draco cut him off with:

“I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

Snape seemed momentarily derailed from whatever point he was trying to make. “That—er—well, I suppose that’s—”

“For what it’s worth, I really didn’t mean for you to get involved at all,” Draco said. “Though now that I’m saying it out loud, that might not be very comforting to you.”

“Draco,” Professor Snape said.

“I just… It wasn’t malicious. If that makes any difference.”

“I know. Your intentions were good. Intentions usually are.”

“But good intentions aren’t always enough,” Draco muttered, and didn’t realize until after he’d said it that he was quoting Uncle Marc.

Silence lapsed between them. Draco stared down at Jack as he petted him, finding he was a little to nervous to study the nuances of Snape’s expression.

“You want to transfer to Beauxbatons?” he eventually asked, with a surprising gentleness.

Draco didn’t answer. In all honesty, Draco wasn’t really sure anymore of what he wanted. Blaise and Pansy weren’t furious at him anymore, which made everything feel much less horrible, but sometimes it felt like the school itself wanted him out. Twice in two years, things had gone catastrophically wrong, putting Draco and everyone around him in so much danger just because of who Draco was. And apparently Draco had a habit of making it all worse.

“It would be quite the battle, getting you to transfer,” Snape eventually said. “Your attendance at Hogwarts was part of your father’s Will, and changing a magical contract while it’s still in effect is no mean feat. Theoretically, with consent from your guardian and a properly organized magical petition…”

Draco kept concentrating very hard on petting Jack as Snape trailed off, then stayed quiet for a while.

When Professor Snape spoke next, it was very carefully, “And I suppose Hogwarts has failed you not insignificantly.”

Draco looked up sharply. “Failed me?”

“Despite the best efforts of myself, the Headmaster, and the multiple members of the Smokevigil still on staff, Hogwarts has put you in no small amount of danger—now twice. Perhaps you would be safer at Beauxbatons.”

“Professor, I… Hogwarts didn’t fail me. I failed Hogwarts.”

“Draco,” Professor Snape said gently.

“I always put people around me in danger and do the wrong thing and drive everyone away,” Draco said. His throat was getting tight, so tight he had to fight to get out every word. “I nearly did it to Blaise and Pansy, and now Regulus, too.”

“Regulus?” He sounded surprised. “Regulus has no intention of being driven away, Draco.”

“He hasn’t reached out since the attack,” Draco whispered, vision swimming with tears he refused to let fall. “And I suppose I don’t blame him. I nearly got his best friend killed.”

“He’s busy, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Draco said, and did not say: You don’t have to lie on my account.

Professor Snape was silent for a while. Draco did not dare look up at him.

Eventually, he sighed, and stood, and stopped beside the couch Draco was on to lay a hand in his hair.

“If you want to transfer,” Professor Snape said, “and only if you want to, I’ll do what I can to help you. But don’t do it because you imagine yourself to be a burden. You are not and you will never be.”

Draco tried very hard to believe him, but couldn’t quite pull it off. He watched as Professor Snape vanished from whence he came in silence. Then he sniffed and carried Jack down to the dormitory.

Two days later, while eating breakfast, Draco received a letter—a note, really—from Regulus. It was doubtlessly Professor Snape’s doing, which made Draco feel guilty by proxy, though the guilt was swallowed up by the alarm the contents of the note caused:

Draco,

I’ll come and find you tomorrow evening in the greenhouse, the same one where we met. Let’s say seven o’clock this time, since I no longer need to sneak around.

Apparently you and I have a few things to straighten out.

Regulus

He’d enclosed a Cheering Cherry Tart, which Draco supposed was from Honeydukes—the long awaited sweets he’d promised to send. Draco was too queasy to eat it.

“He’s going to yell at me,” Draco said as they made their way to the first class of the day.

“He’s not going to yell at you,” Pansy said.

“He’s going to yell at me, tell me he hates me, and then leave and I’ll never see him again.”

“Well, what’s important is that you’re not freaking out,” Blaise said.

Draco was so upset that he couldn’t even rise to the bait of Blaise teasing him. “I’d rather just not know, you know? I’d rather just live in limbo than hear him tell me how awful I am and how disappointed he is.”

“Draco, come on. He’s not going to do that,” Pansy assured him. “If Blaise and I were willing to forgive you with an apology, what makes you think your own cousin wouldn’t?”

“Hey! Malfoy!”

Draco knew the voice at once, of course, and groaned reflexively. He didn’t have the time or energy to deal with Harry Potter.

But when he turned, Harry Potter was storming down the hallway toward him, apparently intent on dealing with Draco.

“My father didn’t try to kill you,” Potter said.

“Sure,” Draco answered, mostly hoping that it would end the conversation.

“I asked him. I wrote him a letter and he said he didn’t.”

“Great,” Draco said.

“I mean,” Pansy said, “I was there, I heard him scream Avada Kedavra—but sure, if that’s what you need to sleep at night, he didn’t try to kill Draco. Perhaps he was trying to murder the potted ficus nearby?”

“Shut up, Parkinson!”

There was a faint quavering in Potter’s voice, which Draco didn’t notice until midway through the conversation. That was the same moment Draco noticed, with a jolt of surprise, that Potter was alone. No cronies backing him up.

“My father’s not a murderer. He was just— He was following orders!”

“Right. Orders to murder,” Blaise said. “Murder orders.”

“Potter, I don’t have time for your moral panic right now,” Draco said. “Believe me or don’t. Just do it somewhere else. I’m late to Charms and I have more important things to worry about than whether or not your father tried to kill me.”

“Which he definitely did, to clarify,” Pansy said, as Draco turned again and stormed back toward the Charms classroom.

Draco very seriously considered not meeting Regulus the next night. He reached for every and any excuse available to him. The weather was bad (it was mid-April, and finally starting to warm up), he had homework (he’d finished it all already), he felt sick (he did, but only because of his nerves). In the end, he went, telling himself that it would be like ripping off a bandage. One terrible conversation and then maybe Draco could convince himself he’d never even met Regulus at all.

He arrived early and waited, listening to the sound of the wind rattling the glass walls. Professor Sprout’s Amortense Bloom, which they’d recently learned was named for the potion it was meant to smell like, filled the darkening greenhouse with the scent of fresh-baked bread, broom polish, and something vaguely sandalwoody.

Not long before Regulus was meant to arrive, a little pop! drew Draco’s attention. Dobby had appeared a few feet in front of him, and Draco smiled.

“Hey, Dobby.” Somehow, the house-elf’s arrival had defused some of the nervous tension coiled in Draco’s spine.

“Hello, Mr. Draco.” Draco watched as he shuffled across the dirty tile floor and up onto a stack of overturned pots, which he used to climb onto the table against which Draco was leaning. “Dobby is hearing that Mr. Draco is waiting for Regulus Black?”

Draco stared. “Where did you hear that?”

“Er…” The house-elf stared guiltily at his feet. “Dobby follows Mr. Draco sometimes. Only sometimes!”

Draco laughed, surprised. “You follow me?”

“Sometimes. It is not for bad reasons! Dobby is just very worried about Mr. Draco. Dobby is wanting to make sure that Mr. Draco is eating.”

“Of course,” Draco said with a grin. “You know, you don’t have to be sneaky about it. You could just say hello.”

“But Mr. Draco is usually with his friends now. Dobby is not wishing to interrupt.”

Dobby sat down on the table just next to Draco, and they fell into companionable silence. Another gust of wind rattled the glass.

“It will be good to see Mr. Regulus again,” Dobby said. “Dobby has worried about him. Dobby has also been in contact with Kreacher.”

“Kreacher… That’s the house-elf at the Black estate, right?”

“In London, yes. Kreacher is still there, though the building is in poor repair. House-elves have trouble with their magic when there is not being anyone to do it for.”

Draco hummed thoughtfully. “Are house-elves paid?” he asked.

“Oh, no! To be paid would be an insult to the house-elf!”

“Wages are an insult?” Draco couldn’t quite hide his skepticism.

“House-elf magic is being very ancient and very strong,” Dobby explained. “And it is also being very transactional. The pact between elf and house and family must be honored. Those who is disrespecting any part of the pact will bring ill fortune on all. Mr. Abraxas was nearly breaking Dobby’s pact with his cruelty. He did not respect Dobby, and the pact began to fracture and cause terrible problems. Dobby was nearly destroying himself trying to keep the pact from destroying everything else. Fortunately, when Mr. Draco’s father inherited the estate, he made sure to be mending all of it.”

How fascinating. Draco made a mental note to do some reading on the specific nature of house-elves and their pact-based magic. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Dobby was very glad, too. If Mr. Lucius had been as cruel as his father, Dobby’s not sure what would have happened to himself, to the family… Terrible things would have conspired.”

In the distance, the Hogwarts clock tower struck seven. Draco took a breath.

“Well,” Draco said, “when Regulus arrives, perhaps you can give him news of Kreacher.” Perhaps that would keep him from being too mean when he left Draco forever.

“Dobby is hoping so. Neglecting a pact is nearly as dangerous as disrespecting it. Mr. Regulus should be returning home soon.”

Draco reached into his pocket and pulled out the Marauder’s Map, scanning it for Regulus’s name. There was no sign of it, and Draco frowned.

“Perhaps he’s running late,” Draco mumbled.

But the hour ticked on, and on, and on—and Regulus never appeared.

Chapter Text

“Regulus didn’t show up last night,” Draco said the moment he sat down for breakfast the next day.

Blaise and Pansy exchanged a perplexed look, but Blaise was the first to speak: “He didn’t?”

Draco shook his head. “And maybe—maybe it’s just because he’s mad at me. That’s possible. But Dobby said that he wouldn’t do something like that—”

“Who’s Dobby?” Pansy interjected.

“He’s a house-elf here. He used to have a pact with my family, but I guess my father transferred it to Hogwarts.”

“I think that’s the one who made your birthday cake, Pans,” Blaise said. “No wonder he was so eager to help.”

“Dobby knew Regulus—before he went missing, I mean. He said Regulus wouldn’t just abandon me and I…” Draco swallowed. “I’m a little concerned he might be right. What if something happened to him?”

“I guess it’s a little odd,” Pansy admitted. “But maybe just try owling him first before jumping to any crazy conclusions.”

“I did send him a letter last night, right before curfew,” Draco said. “No answer so far.”

“Well, give it some time,” Blaise said, though he sounded doubtful. “There’s no sense in causing a fuss over something that might be a misunderstanding, right?”

Draco opened his mouth to reply but couldn’t, because suddenly, Eileen was sitting across from him, looking frazzled but excited, dark hair wilder than usual. “Gryffindor is going to break into civil war,” she said at once.

“Good morning to you, too, Snape The Younger,” Blaise said.

“You know, Gryffindors aren’t allowed at the Slytherin table,” Pansy pointed out.

“Whatever, I have nepotism rights,” Eileen answered dismissively. “Did none of you hear me? Gryffindor’s about to tear itself apart.”

“All right, fine,” Blaise said, “I’ll bite: why?”

“I saw it happen. After whatever you said to Potter the day before yesterday, Draco, it sent him into a tailspin. He came storming into the common room in a pique. Ron asked him what was wrong, Potter yelled something about how you were a magic traitor, then Neville piped up and defended you, Draco—”

“Wait,” Pansy said, suddenly invested now that it felt like gossip, “Neville Longbottom did?”

“I talked to him a bit while he was recovering in the Hospital Wing,” Draco explained.

“And you made an impression,” Eileen said. “He really went to bat for you, said you were nice and just trying to help. I thought Potter was going to hit him again, but then Fred Weasley stepped in and defended you, too! Then—”

“Weasley family schism,” Pansy gasped. “And with the youngest in Slytherin, too?”

“I know! Ron said the same thing! He and his brother were really going at it; George separated them, then Fred told his twin to pick a side, and then Seamus Finnegan piped up, saying he didn’t like how Potter always talked about Muggles, on account of his dad being one, and Dean backed him up—”

“I can’t keep all these Gryffindors straight,” Blaise said, but Eileen didn’t stop talking.

“—and then Parvati and Lavender were on Potter’s side, and so was Percy Weasley, which got Fred really mad, and I thought they were going to draw wands until McGonagall stepped in and broke it up!”

Pansy, who by now was completely engrossed, leaned fully across the table toward Eileen. “Has anything happened since?”

“Glares, mostly,” Eileen answered, “and someone tried to set Lavender’s hair on fire in Charms but no one’s owning up to it. It’s getting brutal.”

Draco finally gave up on trying to listen. He couldn’t even really make himself care. So what if Gryffindor was ripping apart at the seams? It could do with a good reckoning.

As Pansy and Eileen carried on, Draco looked nervously out the window and thought of Regulus. He would do his very best to take his friends’ advice to heart. There was no sense freaking out over nothing. He’d give him a few days to reply to his letter.

But in the end, Draco couldn’t even make it to the end of the first day.

“Er, Professor?”

“Mr. Malfoy.”

Potions was the last class of the day on Thursdays, and so the Slytherins took their time on their way out the door, chatting about afternoon plans and the final exam coming up in a few weeks. Professor Snape sat poised and rigid behind his desk, marking scores down in his large ledger.

“Have you talked to Regulus recently?”

“A few days ago.” Professor Snape didn’t look up, didn’t stop writing.

“More recently? As in, today or yesterday?”

“He’s staying in Hogsmeade, Draco. It’s not far, but it’s still rather out of the way. Why do you ask?”

Draco checked over his shoulder. Blaise and Pansy were already gone, the last of the Slytherins in his year just vanishing into the hallway outside. Still, he crowded a bit closer to Professor Snape’s desk and dropped his voice, nervous about being overheard.

“He…wrote me a letter and asked to meet him last night.”

“Good.”

“And he didn’t show.”

His raven feather quill finally stilled, the only sign of something amiss. Draco started babbling to fill the sudden silence.

“If he’s upset at me, that’s fine. He surely is upset at me and he has good reason to be. But it just— I don’t know, is it out of character? It seems like something he wouldn’t do, right? Promise to be somewhere and then not show? If he doesn’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, but then why did he ask to talk to me? And with everything else going on, maybe there’s also the possibility that something—?”

“I’ll check on him,” Professor Snape interrupted.

Draco’s mouth kept moving for a while, but the words had been startled away until he finally managed to say, “You will?”

“Yes. Why not? The weather’s lovely. I’ll go by Hogsmeade this evening, check up on him at the Three Broomsticks. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Oh,” Draco said. He was surprised, though he couldn’t quite put a finger on why. “Good.”

Professor Snape stood, flipping his folio full of grades shut. He smiled at Draco, but there was something strained about it. “I’ll get back to you. Or, ideally, he will.”

Draco nodded and Snape left. He walked back to the Slytherin common room slowly, head in a fog. As he did, he passed two Gryffindors—a boy he was mostly sure was Seamus Finnegan and a girl he was not so sure was Parvati Patil—screaming at each other in the hallway. Then he saw Mr. Filch the caretaker pry them away from each other. Draco tried to summon some way to feel about the Gryffindor schism, but couldn’t. He was too preoccupied. He continued down toward the common room, and missed dinner to all his worrying and staring at the Marauder’s Map—which, of course, continued to show no sign of Regulus.

Friday passed at glacial pace. Draco continued to receive no word from Regulus. Nor indeed did he hear from Snape at all—until the very end of dinner.

“Draco,” he said, drawing his attention away from Harry Potter and Fred Weasley, who were scream-arguing on the far side of the room. “Follow me, please.”

“Er,” Draco said, “are they—?”

“Professor McGonagall is handling it,” Snape said, right as her shrill voice cut through the shouting, “albeit somewhat reluctantly. Follow me.”

Draco glanced at Blaise and Pansy, who were both still watching the fight with varying degrees of excitement, and hadn’t even noticed Snape’s presence. So Draco stood up and followed him, but couldn’t help but look over his shoulder as he went. Fred Weasley shouted something about Angelina Johnson, Potter shouted back about her filthy Muggle mother, and then Professor McGonagall silenced them both with a spell.

“Eileen mentioned something about the Gryffindor civil war,” Draco muttered as he walked, “but I think this is starting to get out of hand.”

“It’s not easy for children to unshackle themselves from the sins of their parents,” Professor Snape said mildly, and Draco could tell by tone alone that there was more to the sentiment than he let on, but couldn’t tell how.

They walked up a flight of stairs and then another before Draco realized where they were going. “Did Headmaster Riddle ask to see me?”

“He did, over my objections.” Before Draco could ask what Professor Snape objected to, they were at the gargoyle statue on the third floor. “Sibilant.” The gargoyle moved aside, revealing the narrow, curling stair beyond.

Draco had ended up in the Headmaster’s office a fair few times in his almost-two years at Hogwarts, and climbing the final curving staircase up toward it never failed to make him nervous. The first few times, the nervousness came from the looming possibility of being in trouble—these days, it was something else entirely. He had a terrible feeling, as he neared the heavy wooden door at the top of the spiral stair, that Hermione had been right about Draco fancying the Headmaster.

Tom Riddle’s well-appointed office was dimly lit, the man himself bent over his desk and writing with great focus as though he hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten. But when Professor Snape announced himself with a short, “Tom,” the Headmaster looked up, and every candle in the room lit all at once.

“Severus,” he answered, before his dark eyes swiveled to Draco. “Mr. Malfoy. Did I miss dinner again?”

“You missed another fight among Gryffindors and chicken pot pie,” Snape confirmed, and sank easily down into one of the two chairs set up across from his desk. Draco took the other, not quite as easily.

“Another fight,” Riddle repeated mildly. It almost sounded like a question.

“Minerva’s handling it. Or at least she’s trying.”

“Hm.”

Riddle looked at Draco again, this time lingeringly. Headmaster Riddle’s gaze was always nerve-wracking to be under, intense and focused and dissecting. His hands, long-fingered and pale, spun the quill he’d been holding thoughtfully. Draco tried very, very hard not to think about how handsome he was.

“Regulus Black was not in his room at the Three Broomsticks,” the Headmaster eventually said.

Draco startled. “He wasn’t?”

“From what Professor Snape was able to gather from Madam Rosmerta, he left after dinner on Wednesday and didn’t come back. So far as we’ve been able to tell, he’s been gone ever since.”

“His bed was made,” Snape added, drumming his fingers anxiously on the arm of his chair. “Untouched before and after last night. The letter you wrote him was unopened on his desk.”

Nervousness bloomed in the middle of Draco’s chest. “Does anyone know where he is?”

“No,” Riddle said. “Severus reports there were no signs of struggle in his room, nor any along the path between Hogsmeade and the castle, though that doesn’t necessarily rule out foul play.”

“Foul play?” Draco repeated. “Do we— Are you suggesting that—?”

“Considering the circumstances,” Riddle said, “we’re erring on the side of caution and are going to proceed as if the worst has happened while hoping that it is something less sinister. Which brings me to you, Mr. Malfoy.”

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Snape muttered.

“Despite your poor judgment in calling Sirius Black to the castle a few months ago,” Riddle continued as if he hadn’t heard, “your method for drawing his attention was a good one. A few key members of staff and I have talked over our options, and we’d like for you to do it again.”

“You’d like for him to do it again,” Snape corrected, voice frosty.

“With supervision,” Riddle added, “of course.”

“You…” Draco stared, trying to wrap his head around what he was hearing. “You want me to call Sirius Black again?”

“It’s you he’s after, clearly,” Riddle said, leaning back in his chair, “and it worked before to draw him out, even though it was dangerous for him to be so close to the castle. If Regulus is still alive—”

“If,” Draco repeated, heart knocking hard on his ribs. “Are we not sure?”

“Like the Headmaster said,” Snape intoned, “we’re going to assume the worst while hoping for the best. Regulus is a very powerful and competent wizard—but so is his brother.”

“If you’re amenable to help,” Riddle began, and Draco couldn’t interject quickly enough:

“I’ll help! I’ll— I want to help! I want to make sure Regulus is safe.”

Riddle paused, nodded. “Good. Then meet myself and a few other professors at the eastern door at nine o’clock precisely. And Mr. Malfoy, I hope I don’t need to tell you that discretion is paramount. Tell absolutely no one what is going to happen tonight.”

Chapter Text

“So, anyway, that’s why I’ll be gone tonight,” Draco told Blaise the second they were alone in the dormitory. “I’m nervous, but also so glad that I’m finally doing something to help.”

Blaise frowned. “I can’t believe they’re making you help catch this lunatic.”

“They’re not making me do anything,” Draco said. “Headmaster Riddle asked for my help and I agreed. I want to help. Regulus is missing.”

But Blaise didn’t seem convinced. He clucked his tongue disapprovingly and folded his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t sit right with me. Sirius Black has proved exactly how dangerous he is and how far he’s willing to go—when something goes wrong, and it will, you’re the one who’s going to be in the line of fire.”

Draco had neither the time nor the inclination to explain to Blaise why he was willing, even eager, to risk it all. If Blaise didn’t understand why Draco wanted the only family he had left alive and well and in his life at this point, that was on Blaise.

“You can tell Pansy, I guess, but no one else, all right? Technically, I shouldn’t even be telling you. The Headmaster specifically said I shouldn’t tell anyone,” a fact which Draco had not recalled until right as he said it. He just wasn’t used to counting Blaise and Pansy as other people.

“If you die,” Blaise said, “I’ll take care of Jack.”

Draco didn’t even notice that the cat had appeared till Blaise had mentioned him, and by then he was already stroking a hand affectionately down Jack’s back.

“I want to come with you,” Jack told Draco.

“It’s too dangerous,” Draco said.

“Good, so we agree,” Blaise replied.

“I was talking to Jack.”

“Oh, of course you bloody were.”

“If it’s dangerous, then I definitely want to come,” Jack insisted. “Sirius Black—he’s the dog that bit Regulus, right?”

Draco hesitated, but nodded. Jack’s tail flicked once in annoyance.

“I don’t want him to hurt anyone else,” Jack said. “I’m coming.”

“Jack,” Draco sighed.

“I hate that I can only hear half of this conversation,” Blaise said.

“If you can risk it, then I can, too.” Jack didn’t wait for Draco’s acquiescence; he leapt right off Blaise’s bed and onto Draco’s, at which point he began climbing up the sleeve of his robe and into his hood. The sharp claws only made it through the thick fabric a few times, thankfully.

“Well, I suppose I can’t fault you for stubbornness,” Draco said.

“You know, Draco, that if Jack is your familiar…”

As Jack situated himself as a tight little ball in Draco’s hood, Draco turned his attention back to Blaise, who was frowning even deeper.

“I was serious about what I said,” Blaise continued. “Familiars don’t come to just anyone. History and legend are rife with stories about familiars coming into the lives of witches and wizards who die tragically. For the longest time, they were considered an omen of a short, painful life.”

“Didn’t Merlin live to be hundreds of years old?”

“Merlin was the greatest wizard who ever lived! And you were made an orphan at barely a year old by a crazy immortal bigot, and now you’re seriously tempting fate by willingly offering yourself up as the honey in the trap for one of his worst followers. I’m just…”

Draco brushed the fur off his sleeve as Blaise stood, frowning, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot.

“I’m just worried about you. I’m always worried about you. Your life is mental.”

Draco managed to grin. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “What’s the worst that could possibly happen?”

“Oh, don’t say that. Now something’s definitely going to go wrong!”

Draco only grinned wider. “I’ll see you later, Blaise,” he said, and turned to make his way out of the dormitory and into the dungeons.

As the Headmaster had instructed, Draco made his way to the entrance on the east side of the building, which let out onto the path to the Quidditch Pitch and, eventually, Hogsmeade. The antechamber just inside the doors was small, with a statue of a unicorn surrounded by several stone benches and three long hallways going off to different parts of the castle. This time of night, as with most of the corridors, all the candles were spelled to burn low—but it was packed with professors.

It took Draco a while to realize why the assemblage of them seemed so random—McGonagall, Snape, Hagrid, Warren, and of course the Headmaster, and yet there was no sign of the other Heads of House or even Filch, who in Draco’s experience was always sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

“—set up a few traps of our own?”

“No. Nothing not of his own magic outside the doors. Black will be able to tell.”

“Hm.”

“Ah, Mr. Malfoy.”

And as all the heads turned to Draco, he realized: “Are you all the members of the Smokevigil?”

For a beat, no one answered. The Headmaster spoke first: “No, not all.”

“But we are all the members of the Smokevigil currently on Hogwarts payroll,” Professor Warren added.

“Not that the Smokevigil officially exists anymore,” Snape said. “Are you sure about this, Draco? It’s not too late to back out.”

Draco shook his head. “No. I want to help. I want to find Regulus. He’s family.”

“Of course yeh do,” Professor Hagrid said with a smile. “Good egg, this one.”

Headmaster Riddle approached, which Draco was not ready for—nor was he ready for the woody, cedary scent that chased him, which was suddenly the only thing Draco could smell. He said, “All of us are going to be on the opposite side of this door the entire time, watching,” which Draco could barely hear because he was standing so close and speaking in low tones that did terrible things to Draco’s gut. It hit him like a blow to the stomach. Oh, no, he thought, as blood pounded in his ears, Hermione was right. He must never let her know or she’d be crowing about it till they both graduated.

“Set up the same traps you did before,” Professor Snape continued, “in whatever configuration you would do if you were acting alone. That is the key, after all: he needs to think you’re alone.”

“Just be sure to stay within reach of the doors,” Professor Warren said, and waved her wand in their direction. The doors shimmered, and then seemed to turn to glass, leaving behind only the seams between the wood planks and iron struts, and vague distortions in the shape of handles. “It’s a one-way window spell. If you can see the doors, we can see you.”

“Offer him an exchange: your life for Regulus’s. After your actions last time you contacted him, he’ll be inclined to believe your offer is serious. He won’t bring Regulus, of course—he’d be a fool to. But he may offer to take you to him.

“We just need him close enough to spring our trap,” the Headmaster said, and it took every drop of Draco’s wherewithal to focus enough to parse the meaning of his words (his eyes were such a very dark shade of brown, but with little flecks of gold as well), “at which point, he’ll be captured.”

“If you feel like something’s about to go wrong,” Professor Snape said, “if you get scared, if you want to stop, all you have to do is back up toward the door. We’ll take that as a signal to intervene and get you back inside, to safety.”

Draco nodded slowly, but Professor Snape’s expression stayed twisted by worry.

He turned around and said, to Riddle, “I would like to reiterate my objections.”

“Noted,” Riddle answered, and finally stepped away, pushing open one of the doors. Draco would deal with this particular crisis later. One per night was enough. “Go ahead, Draco. We’ll all be right here.”

Draco took a breath, relieved to no longer be close enough to detect the scent of cedar, and stepped through the door. When it closed behind him, Draco turned, half-expecting to see candlelight shining through glass doors—but there was no light save the moon, and no glass save the nearby windows, glittering with reflected starlight.

It was pitch black outside, but Draco turned again, forward toward the path and, as ever, found his surroundings to be perfectly visible. He drew his wand from his sleeve.

“Why are we outside?” Jack asked, yawning.

“Maybe you’d know the answer if you hadn’t fallen asleep.” Honestly, it had only been a few minutes’ walk from the dungeons.

Jack said nothing further, just tucked himself back into Draco’s hood and (Draco suspected) fell asleep again. Draco began casting several spells one after the other, all the same ones he’d used the last time he’d done this—when Professor Snape had his throat ripped out and had nearly died. He did his best not to think about the memory too hard.

Then, after double checking them all, he cast the most important spell of all: “Teleloquor.”

The magic formed carefully, and Draco breathed in.

Give me back my cousin, Sirius. Take me if you want, but let Regulus go. I’m waiting for you at the eastern entrance.

There followed a long pause—and then an all-too-familiar howl. Draco lowered his wand, wrung his hand around it, and stared hard into the night. There was nothing left to do but wait.

He spared a nervous glance over his shoulder again. The doors were still closed, no sign of the half-dozen Hogwarts professors which Draco knew were still there. Or at least he hoped they were. It would be rather embarrassing if this whole thing had been some elaborate double-crossing.

As with before, the wait felt both too long and too short at the same time. When Draco first detected movement, just a dark blur on a dark hillside, he steeled his nerves. And when that dark blur slowed to a leisurely walk, bones shifting under dark fur, Draco took a steadying breath.

But when the shape transformed—

“You know,” said Sirius Black, “I’m your cousin, too.”

He was taller than Regulus by several inches, though Draco saw similarities right away; they had the same shade of blue-black hair and the same high cheekbones. His clothes were frayed and dirty at the hems, torn in places. Though he was quite handsome in a patrician sort of way, there was a feral madness in his gray eyes that Draco picked up on immediately, and Draco did not make the mistake of relaxing.

“Where’s Regulus?”

“Safe. For now.” Sirius stalked closer, though apparently not close enough for Riddle to intervene. “I still need him. As ever, my little brother is refusing to be sensible. It’s been…a bit of a process, getting the information I need out of him.”

Cold dread met hot rage in the middle of Draco’s chest. “You’ve been torturing him? Your own brother?”

“What, like I tortured your precious godfather? I wouldn’t say it’s quite that severe, no. And I’d be careful about mounting too high a horse, Draco. It was a war. It wasn’t just the Ashbringer who took prisoners.”

Draco didn’t know what to say to that, or even what to think, so instead he moved on. “I’m not going anywhere until I know Regulus is safe.”

“Well, I certainly can’t prove that here, can I?” Closer, closer, step by agonizing step. Draco was starting to get nervous. “And it’s not like I can just drag him onto Hogwarts grounds, bloody and beaten. If you want to see him, you’ll have to come with me.”

Draco took a half step backward. Sirius stepped, stepped, stepped forward—and then stopped, right at the edge of Draco’s Trigger Trap Jinx, and looked down with a smirk.

“I’m not falling for the same bloody spell a second time,” Sirius said. “Or did you think—?”

The door burst open. Light exploded out of the castle, and Professor Snape’s voice was the first thing to cut through the night: “Stupefy!”

But Sirius reacted quickly—so quickly that, before Draco even knew what was happening, he was back in his dog form.

“Back inside, Mr. Malfoy!” Professor Warren barked. “Double-time! Protego!”

Sirius rebounded off Professor Warren’s shield, which she’d cast just in front of Professor Snape, and Draco ducked behind him—

“Give it up, Black!” came Riddle’s imposing voice from within the castle. “If you intend to live till dawn, surrender!”

—but Snape cast a spell that sent blood bursting through the air and drew a horrible wail of pain from Sirius, and also sent him falling, twisting, landing on Draco at such an angle that sharp teeth dug into his leg—hard, so hard that Draco thought he felt the bone crunch—he screamed and thrashed, but Sirius thrashed harder, and pulled—

“Draco!”

Spells were flying, rebounding—

“Relashio!”

—sailing entirely past their intended target, and Draco felt the terrible sensation of being pulled—

“Dammit, Black, don’t make this worse than it already is!”

—dragged through dew-slick grass, leg screaming in pain, blood soaking through his trousers and thick fabric of his Hogwarts robe, and spells were flying and he couldn’t see through all the fear and flashes—

“Draco!”

“Stupefy! Minerva, are you all right?”

—and the pulling got faster and faster, and the pain got worse and worse, his leg twisted to an unbearable angle, and Draco was dragged, screaming, toward the Forbidden Forest.

“DRACO!”

Chapter Text

The shouting eventually faded into silence. The spells stopped as the distance grew. And still Draco was dragged.

His leg screamed in pain, from the bloody gash in his mid-shin to the unnatural angle of his knee, and the pain only intensified the further Sirius dragged him. Draco occasionally tried, mostly on instinct, to grab at something, anything, that might stopper his progress—roots, stones, saplings—but it only ever made Sirius growl and jerk his head harder, sending searing pain down Draco’s thigh.

And so, eventually, he stopped fighting. He breathed hard and ragged, curled what limbs he still had control of against his chest, and tried to find a position that minimized both the agony in his leg and the pain of being dragged through rough, wild countryside.

Sirius must have dragged him over a mile by the time he finally stopped, panting hard. Draco could barely see by that point, so intense was the pain in his leg, but he forced himself to look up, slowly, and peer around what must have been a small clearing somewhere very deep in the Forbidden Forest.

The trees were tall and, this far into spring, dense with leaves that blotted out the moonlight. Draco’s vision swam from pain as he tried to focus it, but at least the darkness did not impede him at all.

Then, a small, shaky voice from his hood said, “What happened? Where are we?”

Draco almost said, Jack! He bit down on the word when he saw Sirius transform back into his human shape and begin to pace.

Then, from just past him, another familiar voice said, “Merlin’s mercy! Draco!”

“Regulus,” Draco croaked, and tried to sit up—though he was promptly discouraged by a wave of blinding, nauseating pain radiating toward his thigh.

There suddenly came a strange, ringing, almost metallic hum. When Draco’s vision came back to him, he saw Regulus, both wrists and ankles bound with glowing magical restraints tethering him to a large hollow log. He was straining towards Draco, making the magic of his bindings strain and flicker.

“This is your fucking fault, Reg,” Sirius snapped. “You don’t want to tell me how to break the Blackwater Curse? Fine. Then I’ll work with my best guess. I’ll slit his throat right into the Lake!”

Horrified, Regulus cried, “Sirius!”

“It’s something like that, it must be! And I can’t go back to him empty-handed!”

“So, what, you’ll kill a child? You’ll make yourself a kinslayer all over again? You already killed Narcissa’s sister, and now you’ll kill her son?”

“Narcissa was a bitch!”

“Why, because she stood up to you when Bella encouraged every deranged idea you ever had? Narcissa had integrity, and she never turned her back on her family!”

“Shut up!”

Flesh cracked on flesh with such force that Regulus staggered and fell, and Sirius surely must have broken his wrist. They stayed that way for a while, Sirius panting and shaking, Regulus picking himself slowly up off the forest floor.

Heart hammering, head spinning, Draco turned his head and whispered, as softly as he could manage, “Jack… Can you get back to the castle from here?”

Jack was dirty, Draco could see, with blades of grass sticking to his fur and a shallow scrape across his nose. Draco couldn’t have looked much better. But Jack seemed mobile, at least, and had managed to extricate himself from Draco’s hood, and he nodded slowly.

“Then go,” he whispered. “Get Professor Snape or the Headmaster. Do whatever you have to do to get them to follow you back to me.”

“But…”

Jack looked nervously back at Sirius, clearly wary about leaving Draco alone with him.

“I’ll stall him,” Draco whispered, frantic. “Go. Just go. Hurry.”

Jack hesitated only a second longer before darting, silently, through the brush and away.

“You can never make anything easy,” Sirius eventually said. “Ever since we were kids.”

“Sirius, for Merlin’s sake—”

“The way our parents favored you from jump, is it any wonder I turned my back on them? What did I owe them? And you have the audacity to call me a traitor to my bloodline?”

“Sirius,” Regulus ground out, still picking himself up off the forest floor, “the normal response to parents treating you badly is cutting contact and moving to another country or something. Joining a cult, on the other hand—”

“Shut up! You know nothing about it!”

“You want to know how to break the Blackwater Curse? You want to know the key you and James both failed to work out? It’s pure intent, Sirius. You can only break the curse if you have no desire to take the Vitrostium Temporalis.”

The answer enraged Sirius, clearly. The shaking in his shoulders got worse, rapid breath getting harder and faster as though he was struggling to control himself.

Draco, meanwhile, could only stare at Regulus in confusion and think: Vitros-what?

“Of course,” Sirius spat. “Of course that’s the key.”

“So just give up on this farce! Or at least let me heal my cousin’s leg.”

Sirius made an aggravated sound and grabbed Draco’s arm to haul him up, which made his bad leg pulse with agony. Sirius then grabbed Draco’s wand out of his sleeve and, with the same grip, shoved him toward Regulus, who stumbled to catch him.

As Regulus lowered Draco gingerly back to the ground, he asked, “How bad is it?”

Draco ground his teeth, swallowed. “It’s pretty bad. Feels broken.”

Regulus moved slowly down Draco’s body. He carefully tore the fabric of Draco’s trouser leg up to the knee, revealing the nasty bite wound in its grim enormity, smeared with dirt and saliva, already purpling and jutting bone.

Regulus swore under his breath. “Sirius, he needs medical attention. This is too severe for patch and fix magic.”

“Well, he’s going to have to wait,” Sirius barked. He was pacing back and forth, pushing his hands through his wild, dark hair. “Pure intent. Right. Fine. Then you break the curse.”

“Sirius—”

“You break the curse,” Sirius repeated, loudly, before Regulus could get out the rest of his protest, “with your blood, my blood, and his blood, and if you don’t, I’ll kill the brat myself!”

Sirius drew his wand, pointed it toward them both. Draco breathed through the pain, but kept his eyes on Sirius Black.

Regulus seemed paralyzed. His hands were gripping Draco hard, one on his shoulder and the other on his wrist.

“Get him up,” Sirius snapped.

“Sirius—”

“Up! Now!”

Sirius flicked his wand and the restraints around Regulus’s wrists vanished, dissolving away like ice on a hot skillet. Regulus swallowed hard and carefully helped Draco to his feet.

“I sent my cat for help,” Draco whispered to Regulus.

It earned him a frantic, bewildered look. “You— You sent your cat—?”

“I can talk to him,” Draco whispered. “It’s a long story. I told him to go find Snape or Riddle and bring them back. We just need to stall him a little longer.”

“Come on! I’ve waited thirteen years for this, and I’m not waiting a single second longer!”

Regulus moved Draco’s arm around his shoulders, taking the weight off Draco’s bad leg as they walked slowly back toward the edge of the Forest. In truth, Draco probably could have gone faster, but made a show of flinching with pain and struggling every time Sirius snapped at them to move, move!

“Do you think three Blacks will be enough to do the job?” Draco whispered to Regulus, an agonizing quarter-mile later, skirting along the Forest’s edge toward the Lake, which was glittering in the moonlight.

“I don’t know,” Regulus confessed, looking nervous. “But I do know one thing for sure: Sirius absolutely cannot get his hands on the Vitrostium Temporalis. He’ll take it straight back to the Ashbringer.”

“What is it?” Draco couldn’t help but ask.

That was the moment Sirius barked, “Shut up! Keep moving!”

Draco swallowed, shut up, and kept moving.

The Lake came into view slowly, a great black expanse that widened as they came over the crest of the low hill. It was painful and difficult, managing the slope down, and Regulus’s whispered apologies and reassurances only did so much.

Soon, though, they were at the Lake’s edge. Draco’s heart, already rabbiting against his ribs, picked up speed with growing dread. Would Jack still be able to find him? Could he follow his scent?

“There,” Sirius said as he opened the ward surrounding it with a shimmer of magic and a precise swish of his wand. “Go. Do it.”

Regulus helped Draco through, but once Draco had been settled (carefully) down at the water’s edge, Regulus said, “I’ll need my wand back, brother.”

Draco looked up in time to see them exchanging dark, stormy expressions. A whole conversation was happening with two sets of eyes and no words.

Until, eventually, Regulus continued, “The magic is too complicated to be wandless. You know that. You have to trust me.”

“I don’t trust you,” Sirius snapped, and moved behind Draco. He pressed the tip of his own wand hard under Draco’s chin before yanking Regulus’s out from within the tattered remnants of his robe and handing it over. “And if you do a single thing I don’t like, I’ll slash his throat open. Don’t think I won’t.”

For Regulus’s sake, Draco kept his expression controlled. It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid—Draco was, in fact, terrified—it was just that he knew from experience that fear would do him no good.

Regulus swallowed visibly, lines of his long throat rolling, and took the wand. He sank to his knees right at the edge of the lake, and for a moment, the whole world got quiet, as if holding its breath.

His movements were precise and elegant as ever, sweeping and arcing and twisting with inscrutable movements. Draco watched and, when the time came for blood to be drawn, complied with Sirius’s aggressive grab at his wrist.

Three splashes of Black blood sunk through the glassy surface of the water and vanished. Regulus’s wand stilled.

And nothing happened.

“Why,” Sirius growled, “didn’t it work?”

“You know why!” Regulus snapped, spinning toward him. “Because only two of the three of us have pure intent! I know this magic, Sirius—even when it’s this fractured, it’s not going to yield to malice!”

Sirius made a furious sound. His grip on Draco’s wrist tightened in frustration, but his wand stayed pressed to his jaw.

“Sirius,” Regulus continued, voice changing, “brother, please. Do you think I’ve been leading you on a decade-long merry chase out of spite? I did it to protect you!”

“Protect me!”

“Because I knew if you ever came back to England, Riddle and everyone else in the Smokevigil would hunt you like a dog! I’d already lost you once to the Ashbringer, and I couldn’t do it again. You’re my brother and I love you!”

Draco could feel Sirius’s hands shaking around his wrist. “Shut up.”

“I always loved you! I’m sorry I didn’t show it better. I’m sorry Mother and Father failed you. I’m sorry you felt like your only option was allying with the Ashbringer. But Sirius, look at yourself. Look at what you’re doing. You’ve terrorized a school full of children for months. You have your wand to your own cousin’s throat! Is this the kind of man you want to be?”

Sirius didn’t answer. When Draco stole a glance up at him, he saw, to his surprise, bloodshot eyes and a clenched jaw. Sirius Black’s conviction was wavering.

“You are better than this,” Regulus said. “I know you are. You have to be. Please, Sirius, just…just let him go.”

“I can’t go back,” Sirius hissed. “I can’t let them take me. You’re right, Reg, they’ll kill me. Snape even has good reason.”

“I can talk Sev down,” Regulus laughed, but his eyes were glassy, too. “Please, at least let me try. I want you to come home with me.”

“The Ashbringer will come for me if he finds out I turned coat.”

“Then we’ll face him together.”

Seconds passed glacially. Then, slowly, Sirius’s grip on Draco’s wrist loosened, and the tip of his wand dropped away from his throat.

Draco scrambled toward Regulus, leg screaming in pain. Regulus was quick to catch him, grip him tight in a hug. Draco gripped him back, physically shaking with relief.

When Draco next looked back at Sirius, he was staring out at the surface of the Lake, expression sad and twisted with an old, deep kind of pain.

And then, as Sirius Black let go, something happened.

The air shifted, a sudden updraft that caught the tattered hem of Draco’s robes and his hair. Then lights began to flash: irregular pops of blue-white and bright gold under the surface, spiderwebbing out from where they stood at the water’s edge. Brighter and brighter, windier and windier; and then—

BOOM!

—back to silence.

Draco blinked the spots away from his vision.

“Did that just…?” Draco began, but drifted off.

“I… I don’t know,” Regulus said.

But the silence after the cataclysm was short lived. The light and the sound had drawn attention, and several things happened in quick succession:

First, the familiar voice of Severus Snape, booming across the grounds: “DRACO!”

Then, a breath later, an unfamiliar voice from the sky high above their heads: “Sirius!”

Draco looked left. Snape, Riddle, Warren, Hagrid, racing toward them, wands out.

Draco looked right. A stranger in a dark cloak on a broom, soaring toward them. Or at least, he was a stranger to Draco—Sirius recognized him right away, by the breathless expression that came over his face.

“Remus!”

“Severus, hang on!” Regulus cried, holding out one hand as if to stop their approach. “Riddle, I— Just—!”

“Stupefy!” Warren cried, and Sirius barely deflected in time.

“Get on, Sirius!” the stranger, Remus, called, soaring low across the water toward them.

The brothers Black had barely enough time to exchange a single glance and a few words. Regulus looked desperate, but Sirius—whatever resolve he’d had before visibly crumbled away.

“I’m sorry about this,” Sirius said, then pointed his wand at Draco. “Avada Kedavra!”

A burst of white light flashed outward around Draco and rebounded the green of the spell in the same instant it was cast. Jack, a bolt of silver fur and claws, attached himself teeth-first onto Sirius’s wand arm, which elicited a yelp of pain and sent him staggering backward.

“Jack!” Draco cried, stunned.

“Run! Draco, go!” Regulus shouted.

“No! I’m not leaving you!”

“Sirius!” Remus cried again. “Get on!”

“Damn bloody cat!” Jack went flying several yards away into the grass when Sirius was able to shake him free. Then Sirius spun—

—and shoved Draco backward into the Lake—

“DRACO!”

—and as the freezing cold water crashed around him, Draco wondered—

“No! No!”

—if there would soon be two ghosts haunting Black Lake.

Chapter Text

Draco sank fast through the frigid water, his breath leaving him in long ribbons of bubbles spiraling up toward the rippling black surface. He remembered with dread that sank with him, further and further down, that he did not know how to swim.

“Draco? Is that you?”

The voice was muted, but surprisingly clear. He turned toward its source right as his chest began to scream with pain from lack of air, doubly so from his desperate attempts to fight the reflex to breathe in the water.

It was Angelina Johnson, floating on the current toward him, eyes huge.

“Merchieftainess!” she called, past Draco’s shoulder. “Over here! He’s drowning!”

Draco did not have the energy necessary to figure out what she was talking about. His chest spasmed with pain, and in his panic the last traces of his breath were fountaining out of his mouth, precious air floating up and away, and his vision began to turn worryingly gray—

—until, abruptly, a hand gripped him by one shoulder and wrenched him around. Before he could even tell who it was, something wet and slimy was shoved into his mouth.

He had no time or clarity to do much about it, and there was a split second in which he recoiled at the unpleasant, salty taste and lumpy texture. But his disgust vanished with all his fear when he realized that it was filling his mouth with air. He breathed it in eagerly, then looked, startled, up at his savior.

She was not human, that much Draco knew at once: her skin was gray, her hair long and dark green like seaweed. Her eyes and teeth, though, were yellow, and behind her, a long, powerful, silvery fish tail flapped against the current.

“It’s Sailor’s Balm,” the woman—mermaid?—explained shortly. “Don’t open your mouth. It will feed you air, but it won’t keep water out.”

Draco nodded deliriously.

“You’re lucky,” Angelina Johnson said, spiraling around Draco till she was in front of him again. “If Murcus hadn’t felt the curse break, she might not have known to come looking for anyone.”

“Are you here for the cup?” the mermaid (probably) named Murcus (almost certainly) asked, looking Draco over. “Based on your entrance, I’m going to guess you weren’t expecting to be down here at all.”

Draco couldn’t do much more than nod without opening his mouth.

“Well,” the probably-mermaid said, with a sour look, “take it anyway. It’s been nothing but trouble since my predecessor agreed to watch over it. I want it gone.”

Murcus reached for something tied to a belt made of braided rope and shiny pearl beads. Before Draco could even rightly tell what it was, she shoved it into his hand, slippery fabric sealed with rough sisal twine.

“And make sure those who search for it know the Selkies of Black Lake don’t have it anymore,” Murcus continued. “We want no truck with the troubles of the surfacers.”

There was a low, loud, peculiar sound from somewhere high overhead, which Draco only belatedly realized was someone crashing through the surface. Angelina looked up toward it; Murcus did not.

“Oh!” Angelina said. “I think he’s coming for you, Draco.”

“Remember,” Murcus said, as her tail swiped through the water and sent her moving backwards and away from Draco, “take it away and keep it away.”

“Over here, Regulus!” Angelina called, voice warbling strangely through the water. “He’s right here!”

As the mermaid vanished into the darkness, Draco felt an arm grab him around the waist, and with a force that nearly knocked what little wind he had left right out of him, pulled.

“I think we can charitably call the results of tonight’s endeavors mixed,” Headmaster Riddle said.

“I told you this would end badly,” Professor Snape ground out. Draco had never seen him so furious. “I told you it would put Draco in danger.”

“Yes, you did,” Headmaster Riddle answered, and did not seem in the least affected by Snape’s rage. In fact, he met his dark, stormy gaze fearlessly. “And I took your warning seriously, weighed it against all other alternatives, and made the call. It was the least bad of worse options, Severus.”

Professor Snape held the Headmaster’s gaze for several long, tense seconds, then finally turned away and began to pace.

Draco watched from his place on the Hospital Wing bed. Madam Pomfrey, by the way her magic had slowed over the past few minutes, was nearly done healing his leg. His robes had been dried with a spell to keep him from freezing to death, but as a consequence they were stiff with dirt and shredded from being dragged through a mile of forest. And that was to say nothing of the state of his hair. Jack, at least, curled up on his lap and purring loudly, didn’t seen to mind.

“What matters is you’re safe now,” Regulus said. He was perched nervously at Draco’s bedside with wounds of his own, but had insisted that Pomfrey see to Draco first. “And my brother is no longer a threat.”

“Your brother will always be a threat so long as he breathes free,” Snape said.

“Fine. Then he’s no threat for the foreseeable future, at least,” Regulus answered, looking over his shoulder at Snape as he continued to pace.

Snape met his eyes, anger turning on Regulus instead. “I’m sure you’re delighted he escaped justice yet again.”

“That’s not the word I’d use,” Regulus said. “Sev, come on. You’re upset, I get it. You have every right to be. But surely we should be counting our blessings?”

“Yer godson’s safe,” Hagrid intoned soothingly, patting Snape on the back with one enormous hand, “an’ so’s Reg.” Snape sighed and deflated.

“And,” Riddle added, “we have this.”

He drew it from the inseam pocket of his robes, which surely must have been enchanted to be larger on the inside, because it seemed much too large to fit.

“What is it?” Draco asked.

“The Vitrostium Temporalis,” McGonagall said, voice somewhere between reverent and fearful.

He hadn’t gotten much of a chance to look at it properly since the Merchieftainess shoved it into his hand halfway down to the bottom of the Lake. To Draco’s eyes, it seemed little more than a crystal goblet or wine glass. It was a bit larger, perhaps, than what might be practical to drink from, and the bowl was covered in intricate carvings that seemed too precise to be purely decorative, but otherwise it seemed perfectly ordinary. Riddle held it by the foot and turned it carefully, studying it with great intensity.

“What does it do?” Draco asked, when the silence grew longer.

“A great many things,” Riddle replied thoughtfully, and as he kept turning it, the carvings on it flashed and sparkled strangely, “some perfectly benign, others tremendously dangerous. Fortunately, it has little use for those who do not live in their regrets.”

Draco frowned. “Regrets?”

Then, just as abruptly as it had appeared, it vanished back into the Headmaster’s robe pocket.

“What matters is that it is safe at Hogwarts,” Riddle said to the others, “and well out of reach of the Ashbringer, or what remains of him.”

“Tom,” McGonagall said, “we need to destroy it.”

“I agree. That may not be possible, however.”

“I certainly tried on my own,” Regulus added, “though I left a few avenues unexplored because they were out of reach at the time. Can I find you later, Riddle, to talk about it?”

“Later?” Riddle asked.

“I’d… If it’s all right, I’d like to talk to my cousin for a moment.”

Regulus looked at Draco, who felt a sudden surge of something that was either excitement or dread.

“I imagine yeh might not mind sleepin’ a bit as well,” Hagrid chuckled.

“I’ll transfigure the couch in my office for you,” Snape said.

Regulus frowned, looking resistant to the idea of burdening his friend. “The room at the Three Broomsticks—”

“Is several miles away, and it’s past midnight,” Snape interjected. “I’ll transfigure the couch. You know where the office is.”

One by one, the other professors filed out. Even Madam Pomfrey, satisfied with the state of Draco’s leg, went over to her desk to jot down a few notes.

The Headmaster was the last to leave. “By the way,” he said, “in case it wasn’t clear, I am immensely proud of the bravery you displayed tonight, Mr. Malfoy, and your quick thinking in sending your familiar to get me.”

Draco looked down at Jack, still purring in his lap. If he was aware he was being discussed, he certainly didn’t appear to care.

“Familiar,” Draco said. “You think so?”

“I don’t need to think anything. I saw his magic defend you from Sirius Black’s Killing Curse,” Riddle answered. “Besides, I had one myself, once upon a time. They possess a unique intelligence that is rarely found in other animals.”

Draco’s heart gave a treacherous little leap. “You had a familiar, too, Headmaster?”

“A story for another time,” Riddle said. Then he added, “Fifty points to Slytherin,” nodded to Regulus, and swept out of the Hospital Wing.

Draco sank back against the bed and watched him leave, heart thudding wildly against his ribs. There was a strange, illicit thrill in the knowledge that he and Tom Riddle shared so unique a thing as a familiar.

“I fancied him, too, when I was your age,” Regulus said when the door clicked shut.

Draco whirled. “I— I don’t!”

“Right,” Regulus grinned.

“I don’t. It’s just— He’s— I’m only—”

Regulus chuckled. “Whatever you say.”

Draco averted his eyes down to his lap and tried to focus on petting Jack, which he seemed to appreciate, if the crescendo of his purring was anything to go by.

“I managed to get your wand back, by the way.”

Regulus withdrew it from his robe pocket. It was a bit worse for wear, streaked with dirt, and some of the gilding had been chipped off.

“It fell out of Sirius’s sleeve when he swung onto the broom. I had to fish it out of the Lake.” He handed it back to Draco.

“Thank you.” Draco turned it over in his hands, vowing to clean it, and maybe to take it to Ollivander after term ended to see if he could fix the filigree. “And I’m… I’m sorry about your brother. At the end there, I really thought…”

“So did I,” Regulus sighed. “But Sirius has disappointed me before and I’m sure he will again. I’ve grown rather used to it. Honestly, his betrayal of me didn’t hurt nearly so much as his attempt to kill you.” Regulus smiled. “Thank goodness you had Jack looking out for you.”

Jack continued to purr and say nothing. Draco was starting to think the cat was asleep.

After a time, Regulus looked back to Draco’s wand, still in his lap and gripped loosely in one hand. “That was your father’s, wasn’t it?” he asked, and Draco nodded. “I thought I recognized it. It’s a good wand. Inherited wands usually are.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not very well. He was several years ahead of me in school, and much closer to Severus, who he sort of took under his wing. And of course, Narcissa never shut up about him. But he was always very kind to me.”

Draco smiled, mostly to himself.

“I like the wand,” Draco said. “I don’t have much of him left, and having his wand feels like a connection.”

Silence lapsed then, and it felt heavier than Draco expected.

Then, slowly, Regulus said, “Severus told me what you said.”

Draco stole a brief, nervous look up. “What did I say?”

“About how you thought you’d driven me away.”

“I’d say I’m glad it was just that you’d been kidnapped, but that seems like an odd thing to be glad for,” Draco said.

Regulus didn’t laugh. “Draco, I really need you to hear me when I say this. More importantly, I need you to believe it. I have absolutely no intention of ever leaving you.”

Draco frowned. Something small and painful cracked open in the middle of his chest. He didn’t know what to say, and doubted he could force the words out even if he did, so he stayed silent, fingers buried in Jack’s fur.

“I know I’ve been absent from your life,” Regulus continued, “and after what Severus has told me about the home in which you were raised, I regret that absence bitterly. I wish I could have been there for you. But wishing isn’t useful.

“So instead, I’ll make my intentions from this point forward clear: we’re family, you and I. We share blood, and I do not take that lightly. So long as the choice is mine to make, so long as you’ll have me, I intend to be a part of your life.”

“I really hurt Professor Snape,” Draco said, and his voice broke halfway through the sentence, taking him by surprise. “And last year, I— Eileen was—”

It took Draco a while to suck down the necessary breaths to force out more words.

“I seem to hurt the people who get too close to me,” he eventually managed. “And I don’t want to hurt you, too.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Regulus said at once. “Hey. Hey.”

He pulled Draco forward into a tight hug, and it was a good thing, too, because it felt, in that moment, like the only thing keeping Draco from shaking himself to pieces.

“You’re worth the risk,” Regulus said. “All right? You got dealt a bad hand early on, and it’s not your fault, and it doesn’t mean you’re not worth loving.”

The words felt as though they didn’t quite fit in Draco’s heart, like they were a key to some other lock. When Regulus withdrew and looked down at him, Draco rubbed his wrist against his face, trying to breathe.

“Look, I… What day is it? Friday?”

“Saturday, if it’s past midnight,” Draco muttered.

“So no classes. Tomorrow after lunch, I want you to meet me at the Headmaster’s office, all right? There’s something I want to show you.”

Chapter Text

Blaise and Pansy were already asleep, of course, by the time Draco made it back to the Slytherin common room around two o’clock in the morning, and because Draco ended up sleeping through breakfast, they didn’t get the opportunity to sit down and talk till afterward. Dobby, ever thoughtful, showed up midway through Draco’s rambling explanation of the previous night’s events with a small tray of breakfast—toast with jam, tea, and a fried egg. Draco wolfed it down in between sentences.

“Nothing that happens to you is ever normal,” Pansy said after Draco got to the part where Regulus dragged him out of the Lake. She and Blaise were sat together on the loveseat adjacent to Draco’s armchair, where he was eagerly swallowing the last of his tea.

“It’s not too late,” Blaise said to her. “We can find new friends. I bet no one in Hufflepuff gets up to this sort of nonsense.”

“Dobby thinks Mr. Draco was very brave,” Dobby said, and snapped his fingers as Draco finished up his last bite of toast, which made the whole tray and everything on it disappear, “although he wishes that Headmaster Riddle had not involved him at all.”

“It was the only way to get Sirius to show himself,” Draco insisted. “We might not have been able to save Regulus otherwise.”

“And there’s been no sign of Sirius since?” Pansy asked.

Draco shook his head. “Not a trace. I think he gave up on getting the goblet-thing—that’s why his blood suddenly worked to lift the curse.”

“You’re right,” Pansy said to Blaise, “no Hufflepuff would have ever said that kind of sentence.”

Draco wasn’t scared. If they hadn’t wanted to be in his life, they would have fled before now.

“About that goblet-thing,” Blaise said.

Draco shrugged. “No idea. Vitros-something Temporalis. Looked like a fancy wine glass to me, but everyone seemed very upset that it existed.”

Blaise glanced at Pansy, who shrugged and said, “Don’t look at me.”

“I’m going to see Regulus after lunch today,” Draco said. “It seems like…” Like he wants to stay. He wanted to hope so, yet at the same time did not dare—because what if he didn’t? “Dobby, did you want to come?”

“Dobby has already said hello, actually. Mr. Regulus was the one who suggested bringing some breakfast to Mr. Draco.”

Draco grinned. “He’s…nice.”

Dobby smiled indulgently at Draco and patted his knee. “Dobby also told Mr. Regulus to get back to London to check on the Black estate, now that he’s free to do so. Kreacher is eagerly expecting him tomorrow.”

It all seemed almost too good to be true. For the first time in a long time, Draco had family—blood family, who wanted him, and who could be a connection to the parts of him he’d assumed long lost. He felt like he was waiting for some kind of catch.

“Now that the curse is gone, we should actually, properly enjoy the Lake,” Pansy said. “Hey, Draco, isn’t your birthday coming up next week?”

Draco managed to do a little studying before lunch, at which point he hurried to the Great Hall to eat ravenously and quickly, giving himself lots of time to head to Riddle’s office.

But, to his surprise, Regulus was already waiting for him just outside, leaning against the wall. He smiled when he saw Draco.

“You’re late,” he said.

“I’m not!” Draco answered.

Regulus laughed. “You’re not.” He ruffled Draco’s hair when he got close enough. “I realized when I got here that I don’t know the password this year.”

“Sibilant,” Draco said, and the gargoyle statue sprung aside. Regulus was the first up the steps, two at a time with his too-long legs. Draco followed eagerly at his heels.

When Regulus pushed through the door, the Headmaster’s office was empty, which took Draco a bit off-guard. He wasn’t used to seeing it unoccupied. The desk looked bereft without Headmaster Riddle behind it, stiff-backed and answering correspondence.

“Should we be here?”

“I already asked,” Regulus assured him. “He gave full permission to make use of his Pensieve.”

“His what?”

But Regulus was already stooped over a stone pedestal that, to Draco’s eye, looked rather like a birdbath—save the basin, which was large and round and made of metal. Draco approached and watched with fascination as Regulus put his wand-tip to his temple and withdrew a long, silvery thread—

“Oh! That’s a memory!” The Headmaster had taken one from Draco the year before.

“A very particular memory,” Regulus said, and with a few careful movements of his wand more, let the silvery liquid fill the bottom of the basin, where it rippled strangely. “And this Pensieve will let us go into it.”

“Go into it?”

Regulus offered a hand for Draco to take, smiling. Draco took it at once, and before he could ask for any details, there was a sudden shift in the center of his gravity and a great yank—

—that nearly sent Draco toppling forward into the pedestal but for Regulus’s grip and the fact that the pedestal was no longer there, and neither was the Headmaster’s office.

“Cissa? You in there?”

It was Regulus’s voice, except no it wasn’t—Regulus was right next to him, still gripping his hand, and the voice was coming from a few feet down the hallway Draco was now, inexplicably, standing in. It was a nice hallway to be sure, with a gleaming marble floor and big picture windows looking out on a snow-drenched garden, glittering in the sunlight.

“Where are we?” Draco asked, bewildered.

“In a church,” Regulus answered. “That’s me. I had just turned eighteen.”

Draco looked where Regulus indicated to another version of Regulus, scrawnier and shorter, but dressed very nicely in robes of dark blue. His hair was shorter, just past his shoulders, falling in waves around his face. He was knocking at a door, one of many in the hallway, heavy carved wood with a brass handle, shut tight but with a line of light underneath.

“Cissa? It’s Reg. Are you decent?”

It was so strange, hearing the younger Regulus talk while the proper Regulus was still at his side. The whole experience was strange—the edges of Draco’s vision were blurred, as though the entire world was just slightly out of focus no matter how hard he blinked.

“I’m decent. Just crying my face off. Come in.”

It was a woman’s voice, muffled by the door. That was the moment Draco realized—

“Wait,” he said, “Cissa?”

Regulus smiled. “Narcissa. Your mother.”

“Where—?”

The younger version of Regulus pushed open the doorway and stepped through. Draco moved after him, unthinking, and the first thing he saw was his mother.

Though Draco had never seen her before, not even in pictures, he was sure it must have been her. She looked just like him, the same shade of golden blond hair, the same upturned nose, the same high cheekbones.

She was in a wedding dress, silvery-white and glittering with tiny, twinkling diamonds. She was also crying her mascara off—but she was smiling, too, like she was so happy she couldn’t bear it.

“I can’t believe I’m the woman who cries on her wedding day,” she said with a wobbly laugh. “I haven’t even made it to the aisle yet. How’s Lucius?”

“Don’t worry,” the younger Regulus said, “Sev has got him tied to a chair in the back. He’s not going anywhere.”

Narcissa laughed loudly and shoved at the younger Regulus’s shoulder as he sat down next to her on the little red divan, which was just about the only place to do so in what Draco belatedly realized was a dressing room. It had a small vanity and stool, but little else apart from racks for clothes and a large mirror.

“Do you want me to get Andy? I know her glamor charms are first class.”

“I’ll fix it. I have time.” Narcissa sniffed, wiped her nose with a small handkerchief. “I just… I wish my father was here. I wish your father was here.”

The younger Regulus flinched, but nodded. “There are going to be a lot of empty spots in the pews today. But I guess that comes with the territory of marrying during a war.”

Something heavy was lodged in Draco’s throat. He’d have been happy for a photograph of his parents’ wedding day, but this?

“I know you wanted me to wait,” Narcissa, his mother, his own mother right before his eyes, all but back from the dead, said. “Everyone wanted me to wait. And to a certain extent, I understand. Who marries in the midst of so much death?

“But Reggie, that’s precisely why I want it to be now. I don’t know how many days either of us have left, and it’s important to me that they’re all spent at his side.”

The younger Regulus sighed, but smiled. He reached out and gripped her hand where it rested on her knee, and she leaned her head on his shoulder for a time in companionable silence. Draco’s throat hurt.

“Besides,” she continued, “Mummy would kill me if I had a child out of wedlock.”

Younger Regulus spun so abruptly that the legs of the divan shrieked across the tile. “Cissa!” he cried, which made her laugh. “You’re not!”

“The healer confirmed it just last week,” she said. “It’s still very early.”

“Does he know?”

“Of course he knows! He’s already picked Severus to be the godfather and the colors for the nursery.”

Younger Regulus hugged her so tightly and so abruptly that her mascara smudged on his shoulder. They sat like that for a while, and Draco felt like he couldn’t breathe. He watched the way his mother’s long hair cascaded down her back, the way her shiny silver nail polish caught the light. He couldn’t have looked away even if he’d wanted to.

When his mother drew back, her makeup looked worse, but her smile was brighter. “You must know that I’d have picked you as godfather, if I could have done. But you know how Lucius is about Severus.”

“Oh, Cissa, I don’t care about that. Sev is wonderful and he’ll be a wonderful godfather and I’m going to spoil this baby rotten as soon as I get the chance.” His mother laughed again, more loudly. “I love them already!”

“I wish I’d known what was coming,” the older Regulus sighed. “This was Christmas, 1979. By Easter, I’d find the Vitrostium Temporalis. By the end of term, I’d be on the run. This wedding was the last time I saw her.”

“Get out of here before you ruin my face even more,” his mother laughed.

“Could we watch the ceremony?” Draco asked, voice unsteady. “Please? I… I want to…”

“Of course we can,” Regulus said at once.

They followed Regulus’s younger self out of the dressing room and down the hallway, to the nave of a small but beautifully appointed cathedral, done up with fairy lights and garlands of white flowers. A quartet of string instruments were playing themselves in the transept just as the younger version of Regulus arranged himself on a pew next to an older woman who Draco supposed was his mother.

The ceremony was beautiful like the sun was beautiful: vital, but painful to behold. Draco doubted even the threat of blindness could tear his eyes away.

When it was over, when they were back in the Headmaster’s office, Draco finally crumpled. He wanted to go back. He wanted to never think about it again. He wanted to live in the dressing room where his mother put on her wedding gown. He never wanted to hear a string quartet ever again.

Regulus seemed to understand. He wrapped Draco up in both arms and held him for a while, letting him cry.

“I loved you before you even had a heartbeat,” he said, when the worst of Draco’s shaking stopped. “I wish I could have been there when it mattered, but now that I’m here, I swear I’ll do right by that promise I made your mother, and the one I made to you. So long as the choice is mine, so long as you’ll have me, I’m here. I swear.”

And perhaps it was foolish—adults had let him down before—but Draco believed him.

Chapter Text

“Can we review for the Transfiguration exam? Ravenclaw’s is on Monday and I feel like I’ve been losing my mind about it. Do you think partial transformation will be brought up? Ugh, don’t answer, I know it’s different for each house.”

The moment Hermione paused for breath, Draco asked, “Are you doing anything next Saturday?”

“What? Next Saturday?”

“Next Saturday is my birthday, and Pansy and Blaise are throwing me a party.”

Hermione didn’t seem to know what to say to that. It managed to get her to stop the frantic unpacking of all her textbooks (all their study sessions had gotten rather frantic in the run-up to exams).

When the silence grew too long, Draco continued: “I’ve never had a birthday party before. I— I know of them, of course, it’s just—well, my aunt and uncle never really threw one for me, or ever gave me any presents or even remembered it much at all. So this is all new to me. But Pansy wanted to do it at the Lake, and since the Headmaster just had cursebreakers confirm it’s safe again, it looks like it might be doable. And… Well, do you want to come?”

“Er,” Hermione answered awkwardly.

“It’s all right if you don’t. You can say no. I just… I know we’re supposed to be study partners first, but you’ve been so helpful, and quite kind, and you don’t have to get me a present or anything since I know it’s last-minute. But I’d like you there.”

Hermione fiddled with her eagle feather quill. “I’ve never been to a birthday party before,” she admitted.

“Really?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t actually, er, make friends very easily.”

Draco tried very hard to keep his face neutral. “Really?”

“And I don’t know if I’d really fit in with Slytherins. They’re all so…funny and unflappable. And a little cliquey.”

“It’s all bravado,” Draco assured her. “And sarcasm. We’re not nearly as cool as we pretend to be. You don’t have to come, but I’d like it if you did.”

“Well… I suppose it would be a rather nice break between exams,” Hermione said, and Draco grinned. “All right. At the Lake next Saturday, you said? What time?”

Fred and George Weasley were fighting in the hall. They weren’t even using wands. It was just fists, feet, and occasionally teeth.

“D’you think it’s maybe the stress of exams?” Theo asked Draco. They were two of a small crowd who had gathered to watch. “It seems a bit early for the Gryffindors to start hitting each other. That usually doesn’t happen till week two.”

“No,” said a new voice from the side, “it’s the civil war.”

When Draco looked over and saw Eileen, he smiled. “Hi.”

“Hi, Draco. How’ve you been? I heard about what happened.”

“All patched up. What specifically did you hear?”

One of the Weasley twins slammed the other into a wall, which knocked a bronze bust of Merlin onto the floor with a clatter. Theo jumped aside just before it hit him.

“Not nearly half of it, I expect,” Eileen answered without missing a beat. “Is it true you dueled Sirius Black in single combat and won?”

“Am I the only person in this crowd who’s concerned about the rapidly escalating physical fight happening right in front of us?” Theo asked.

“I told you, Nott, it’s the civil war,” Eileen said. “Honestly, everyone’s been waiting for the two of them to have it out for months now. I’m only surprised it took this long.”

That was the moment something occurred to Draco: “Hey, Eileen— Don’t we share a birthday?”

“June 5,” she said, as George screamed something like Traitor! before being socked in the mouth.

“Why don’t we make it a double birthday party, then?”

Eileen frowned, looking puzzled. “Birthday party?”

“Shouldn’t we get a teacher or something?” Theo asked, and had to jump out of the way yet again as one twin tackled the other to the floor.

“Pansy and Blaise are throwing me a party at the edge of the Lake,” Draco explained. Then he hastened to add: “The curse is gone now. The Headmaster confirmed it. And I bet if I asked Dobby nicely, he’d make a cake for you, too.”

“That sounds rather fun, actually. The weather’s shaping up to be really nice this weekend, and it’d be good to spend time away from all this nonsense.”

She and Draco both looked back to the fight. One twin was on top of the other, punching his face over and over.

“Well, come to the party, then,” Draco said. “I’ll tell you what happened with Sirius Black, and you can tell me which side of the Gryffindor civil war is winning.”

“That would take some explaining,” Eileen conceded, just as Professor Warren came scrambling over in a pique, shouting at the Weasleys to stop.

About half of Draco’s exams had happened that week, and he left most of them feeling reasonably confident. It all felt remarkably easy after narrowly avoiding death—if he could survive Sirius Black attempting to murder him, surely he could survive two weeks of exams.

On the afternoon after his Charms final, where Professor Flitwick had complimented his form on the practical portion, he was surprised by a large, familiar, black cat winding between the other Slytherins who’d finished early.

“Regulus!” Draco said, beaming.

The cat checked over its shoulder, ensuring they were alone, then transformed back into Draco’s cousin.

“You got your hair cut!” Draco said before he could stop himself.

“I hardly had a choice,” Regulus said. It looked very nice, still long, a bit past his shoulders, but not so long that the natural waves were pulled straight by gravity. “I just got back from London, and poor Kreacher nearly had a fit when he saw the state of me. How are exams going?”

“Pretty well, so far,” Draco said. “How was the house?”

“An absolute wreck,” Regulus sighed. “It’ll be some time before it’s fit for human habitation, I fear. But at least I’m around to fix it, and the pact with Kreacher is stable again. I got an owl from Severus, by the way.”

Draco fell in step beside him as they headed down the large, arterial hallway leading to the dungeons, which at this time of day was mostly abandoned. “An owl?”

“He’s escorting a guest into Hogwarts,” Regulus said, which made Draco frown in confusion. He clarified: “A guest for you.”

“A guest for me? Why does my guest need to be escorted?”

“Because he’s a Muggle, and they can’t get onto Hogwarts grounds without special escort. I’ve been wanting to meet him for a while. He should be here by now, actually…”

Draco could not imagine who on earth Regulus was talking about. But, fortunately, he didn’t have to wonder long, because Snape’s office wasn’t far, and he heard a familiar voice through the ajar door:

“…et sa jambe? Elle est guérie, j’espère?”

It was Professor Snape’s voice that answered, in his stiff, English-slanted French: “Bien sûr qu’elle est guérie. Je te l’aurais dis sinon.”

But Draco couldn’t make himself believe it until he saw him there: “Uncle Marc?”

There he was, so out of place that it should have been impossible, but it could not have been anyone else.

“Draco!” Uncle Marc said, and hurried toward him to grip both his shoulders. He’d lost a bit of the fat, but none of the muscle, and still towered over Draco. “Dieu merci, tu es en bonne santé! Tu vas bien?”

“Que fais-tu ici?” Draco asked, bewildered.

“Apparently, your uncle got very nervous when you failed to answer his last owl,” Professor Snape said, gratefully switching back to English, “and when your injury necessitated notifying your legal guardian, he insisted on visiting. Given the rather…unusual circumstances, the Headmaster gave the go-ahead to bring him here, so as to ease his mind.”

“Bienvenue à Hogwarts, Monsieur Mercier,” Regulus said, and Draco looked up at him in surprise.

“You speak French?”

Regulus grinned down at him. “I had a few future in-laws I was trying to impress,” he said, and winked at Draco, which drew a smile.

“Tu n'étais pas obligé de venir,” Draco said to his uncle, but his uncle wasn’t looking at Draco anymore; he was looking at Regulus. His eyes were fixed, his mouth just slightly open. It was the expression of a man staring at a fireworks display or an aurora.

Regulus, for his part, smiled a little awkwardly. “Bonjour, je suis Regulus. Nous nous sommes écrits…?”

“Ah…oui. Yes, I… Hello.”

“Hello,” Regulus answered with a slightly nervous smile.

“Oh, no,” Professor Snape sighed.

“I wanted to…er,” Uncle Marc said, and he cleared his throat before forcing his eyes back to Draco. “I wanted to see you. I was so nervous. The letter of your Headmaster, it said you were attacked?”

“Your English is getting really good,” Draco said.

“I’ve been practicing. Are you all right, Draco?”

The sudden awareness that Uncle Marc had been worried about him hit Draco like a physical blow. And though Draco knew, in logical terms, that an uncle was supposed to care about the safety of their nephew, it still caught him off-guard. Before this term began, Uncle Marc had promised Draco that he’d do better, and all at once, Draco realized that he’d been doing that all the school year long, writing regularly and checking on him, offering advice and reassurance, and even going so far as to go to a whole new country to make sure Draco was safe.

“I… I’m all right,” Draco reassured him, despite feeling like he was about to be swallowed up in the huge flood of emotion that hit him all at once. “I appreciate that you came here.”

“Draco’s situation is…unique,” Regulus said. “Like I said in my last letter, there are powerful people who have reason to do him harm. But Hogwarts is one of the safest places he can be.”

Uncle Marc nodded slowly at Regulus, like he was trying very hard to listen and failing. Draco had never seen Uncle Marc look so nervous.

“Professor Snape,” Draco said suddenly, “could Uncle Marc stay for my birthday party tomorrow?”

“Birthday party?” Regulus asked, surprised.

“Blaise and Pansy are throwing me one by the newly safe Lake,” Draco explained. “I guess technically, it’s a double birthday party with Eileen. And I’d like for Uncle Marc to be there, too. Maybe he could stay with Regulus at his room in Hogsmeade?”

“Separate rooms,” Professor Snape said, a little too quickly. “I will— I’ll arrange for a separate room, if you—” He sighed heavily. “Yes, fine. I’ll confirm with Riddle, but I doubt he’ll care.”

“Hogsmeade isn’t far,” Regulus assured Uncle Marc. “I’ll show you around the village, if you like.”

“Reg,” Snape said like a warning. Uncle Marc wasn’t listening. His expression had gone back to being soft and wonderstruck.

“I’d like that very much,” he said.

Regulus smiled. “Good. I’ve been meaning to talk to you, anyway. Properly, I mean. I’d like to know a little bit more about Draco’s living situation.”

The next day was Draco’s birthday, which dawned bright and clear and warm, and when he went out to the Lake a little after breakfast, the area was swarmed.

It took him most of the walk across the grounds to realize that maybe not all of the four or five dozen students spread out along the edge of the Lake were there for his birthday party, which Draco supposed made sense. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and the long week of exams that had passed—and the further week of them yet to come—made for a good reason to seek out some respite by a beautiful, newly-safe Lake.

Still, there was a section off to the side with a table and a small pile of presents, and Draco headed toward it at a brisk pace, eager for his very first birthday party. Everyone was there: Eileen, opening a present from her father; Pansy and Blaise, discussing cake recipes with Dobby; Hermione, smiling awkwardly but genuinely as she talked to Theo about exams; Professor Snape and Uncle Marc and Regulus; even Vince and Greg were there, laughing about something with Daphne.

Eileen was the first to approach. “Happy birthday, Draco!”

Draco laughed. “Happy birthday, yourself.”

“Dad got you a present!” she said at once. “Whatever it is, it must be good, because he got me a whole new terrarium for Lollihop! Regulus got you a present, too. His looks heavier.”

Everyone there was eager to wish him well, ask him about what had happened with Sirius and the Lake, and give him small gifts. Dobby had obliged to Draco’s request and baked two cakes, one with green frosting and the other with red, both delicious.

Pansy got Draco a maintenance kit for his Polaris, and said, “Hopefully we’ll actually be able to use it next year!” Blaise got him a stately signet ring specially carved with the Malfoy family crest, which nearly made Draco cry, which in turn made Blaise look very smug. Even Uncle Marc got him a present, a CD player that “all the kids back home seem to like” as well as a few albums. When Draco explained that it likely wouldn’t function properly on Hogwarts grounds, it turned into a long conversation about magic. Uncle Marc asked a thousand questions about the school itself, and also more than a few about Regulus, which Draco did his best to answer.

Toward the end of the party, Regulus and Professor Snape pulled him aside to give their gifts in relative privacy:

“You’ll have to wait till you get home to use it,” Regulus explained, and pulled it out from the gift bag in which he’d been keeping it with some difficulty. “Once you set it up, it’s not going anywhere.”

Draco stared at the box—though, really, it was more of a crate, heavy and wooden and painted with blues and golds and deep black. Across the top: PEVERINE’S PERFECT PENSIEVES.

“You got me a Pensieve?” he asked. “Like the one in the Headmaster’s office?”

“Just so,” Regulus confirmed with a smile.

“Because I,” Professor Snape added, reaching into the pocket of his robes, “got you these.”

Draco recognized the rack at once, because there were dozens of others just like it in the Potions classroom. They were meant to hold the cylindrical flasks used to portion reagents. This rack had flasks, too, and each was full of a thin, silvery fluid.

“Memories?” Draco asked.

“Regulus suggested you might appreciate them,” Snape explained. “They’re selected from my years at Hogwarts and during the Second War—specifically, ones involving your mother and father.”

Draco opened his mouth. Shut it. Took the rack, reverently, with both hands. There were seven of them, all laid out in a row, shiny in the sunlight.

“Regulus said, and I agree,” Professor Snape continued, crouching down to Draco’s level, “that it’s important for you to have memories of them to hold onto, since you were robbed of their presence so young. No one can give them back, but those of us who knew them in life can do our best to give you something.”

The flimsy wooden rack creaked under the grip of Draco’s hands.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and Regulus laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

Draco wanted to rip open the crate with his bare hands and experience all of them immediately, but knew that wasn’t feasible. So instead he gripped the little wooden rack hard for for a while and tried to relax.

Eileen worked up the nerve to swim in the Lake, which inspired several others to do the same. Draco had another slice of cake. It was the best birthday party Draco ever had.

Chapter Text

Uncle Marc went back to Nantes the next day, and Regulus went back to London a few days after that. Both promised to be there at Platform 9¾ to pick him up at the end of term.

“Together?” Pansy asked archly when Draco told her so, toward the end of the train ride back.

“Yes? I assume so, anyway. Only one of them can Apparate.”

“Sure,” Pansy said. “That’s why.”

Draco frowned. “What are you implying?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Mummy confirmed our itinerary to Porto for most of July,” Blaise said, with a poor attempt to keep his tone conversational. “It’s so hot in Portugal that time of year, but I admit I’m quite excited about seeing the wine country.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Well, my mother has invited both of you over for a weekend, if you’re interested.”

Draco leaned forward. “Where do you live? I’d love to see more of England.”

“We’re up near Norwich, right on the sea,” Pansy said. “Mum said to just have your uncle send her an owl, and she can arrange it. She said any time in August would be fine.”

“I… I suppose that might be alright,” Draco said, the words surprising him even as they left his mouth. It was, after all, very strange to imagine that he could visit a friend in another country, inhibited neither by travel expenses nor by lack of permission. He couldn’t imagine Uncle Marc forbidding it. Aunt Marie, on the other hand…

“By the way,” Blaise said, “have either of you given any thought to which electives you’re going to be taking next year?”

Draco had, and discussed it eagerly for the rest of the train ride, which passed quickly. When he next looked up and through the window of their train compartment, the sun had set and London was in sight on the horizon.

Stepping off the train and picking out Regulus in the crowd immediately, Draco felt a surge of something like nostalgia: everything was so different now compared to how it had been the year before. Draco finally felt the sense of coming home, instead of being torn away from it.

Draco barreled straight into Regulus and hugged him tight around the middle, which made him laugh in surprise and return the embrace.

“Good to see you again,” he said.

“How did the rest of your exams go?” Uncle Marc, off to Regulus’s side, asked.

Draco drew back and smiled eagerly. “Really well! I was ranked second.” Hermione had shown him where to find the rankings after they were posted in the final week of term.

Uncle Marc looked gobsmacked. “What, second in the whole school?”

“Well, second in my year, at least,” Draco said. “Of course, Hermione ranked first, but that’s not too much of a surprise. It’s not really a big deal—”

But Uncle Marc didn’t seem to agree. “That’s incredible!” he said. “Bon travail! I had no idea you were such a little genius!”

“I don’t know that I’d say I’m a genius,” Draco said, a little taken aback and wholly unaccustomed to affection and praise like this. “I’m just rather good at studying is all.”

“His mother was also quite a brainiac,” Regulus explained. “Top of her class all seven years. Draco, I was thinking some time in August, you and I could go back to London. I’m having the Black estate renovated, and it’s so close to Diagon Alley, it’ll also be the perfect time to get your books and things for next term.”

Draco thought his heart would burst straight out of his chest with excitement. “That would be— It sounds amazing! I’d love to! And, er, Pansy said if I wanted, I could come visit her in Norwich some time in August as well?”

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” Uncle Marc said.

“You don’t think Aunt Marie—?”

“I’ll handle your aunt,” Uncle Marc said flatly.

Draco smiled so hard his face hurt, and he found himself thinking, once again, about what this had felt like last year. He felt a strange, nonsensical desire to go back to that version of himself and urge him to hold on just a little while longer for this moment, to promise that it was worth it.

When he looked back at the Hogwarts Express and caught sight of Pansy and her father, he grinned and waved, and she waved back.

“Till next year,” Draco said, mostly to himself. He couldn’t wait.