Chapter Text
Defeat had a familiar taste for Draco Malfoy. It wasn’t the sharp bitterness of the potions his godfather used to give him, nor the sourness of fear. It was a stale taste, of ash and dampness, like the cheap firewhiskey he’d been drinking straight from the bottle for the past hour.
From the worn wooden seat in the stadium’s highest, cheapest stands, he watched the game without any real interest; these things no longer interested him.
he green and scarlet uniforms of the Falmouth Falcons and Appleby Arrows players blended together under the day’s gray, cloudy sky; it was a somber scene, as if mirroring how the Malfoy heir felt.
The crowd’s cheers reached him muffled, as if a glass bell jar were isolating him from the world.
Because he felt isolated.
He was alone. Completely alone.
The realization hit him with the same weight as the filthy, disgusting blanket that had been his only companion during the months following the war. The Savior of the Wizarding World, Harry Potter, had testified on his behalf, claiming that Draco had been coerced, that he had hesitated at the last moment, that he had been unable to identify him and his friends at Malfoy Manor.
Those words, spoken by the hero, had spared him a life sentence in Azkaban
But public forgiveness had not come. Legal acquittal did not erase the mark on his forearm, which made him want to cut off his arm entirely—he had tried a few times, as the razor scars proved.
Nor did it erase the suspicious glances from the wizards and witches in Diagon Alley, or the whispers that died away as he passed.
“That's Malfoy”
“A Death Eater”
“His father...”
“His mother...”
“His aunt...”
His father, Lucius, had been sentenced to life imprisonment. His mother, Narcissa, consumed by grief and shame, had been confined for life to the dungeons of her own sister, Andromeda Tonks—a bloodtraidor—under a sort of benevolent house arrest that, for her, was worse than Azkaban.
Old friends—the Parkinsons, the Nott family, and others—had vanished like cockroaches in the light, cutting off all contact to save their own fragile reputations.
Much of the Malfoy fortune had been confiscated as war reparations. What remained, managed by the Ministry’s strict and bureaucratic goblins, barely covered a meager rent in a boarding house in a slum district of Hogsmeade and tickets like that one.
In the worst section of the stadium.
Draco ate when he could, which was only every few weeks. He knew full well he had that Muggle disease called anorexia; he didn’t care. He was going to die soon—he could see it in his protruding bones beneath his skin—but it didn’t matter. Death would be the most merciful fate for someone like him.
Life, Draco thought, pouring the rest of the bottle down his throat, had a very ironic way of getting the better of him.
The boy who had it all was now clinging to a Quidditch match as a last resort to calm his tormented and shattered mind. A moment of relaxation. A couple of hours to stop thinking about the future, which stretched out before him as gray and bleak as the sky that afternoon.
The game was slow, defensive. The Seekers from both teams circled round and round like idiots. Draco followed the Falcons’ Seeker with his eyes, a certain Whitby, a vulgar-looking guy with a bushy mustache. How low he had fallen. Before, he’d only cheered for pure-blood players, international stars. Now… now he was just there.
A tiny, golden, flickering light suddenly appeared next to the Seeker’s ear. The Snitch. Draco sat up slightly in his seat, an old habit he needed to break.
The crowd roared in unison, just like the fools they were.
Whitby lunged, his body stretched out like an arrow toward the tiny speck of light. His opponent, a few meters away, reacted a split second too late, launching himself in a desperate maneuver as well.
Draco followed the Snitch’s trajectory. It was fast, elusive. It ascended in an impossible dive, pulling away from Whitby, who cursed, visibly frustrated. The little winged ball then, as if possessed of a will of its own, traced a perfect, direct arc… straight toward the stands.
Toward his stands.
Draco watched her approach at a staggering speed, a blinding speck that grew and grew. For a moment, his mind—slowed by alcohol and boredom—failed to register the danger.
He just thought, “How ironic—even the Snitch avoids me.”
And then, the world became an explosion of golden light and a blinding pain right in his temple. There was no time for fear, nor for one last grand thought. Just a brutal impact, and then, absolute nothingness.
The End
¨Wait, no, it wasn't supposed to end like this. Are you stupid, Kytt''
''B-but it had to end somehow, didn't it?''
''Yeah, but not like this, you idiot. They're going to kill us—we're already on the verge of being fired as it is.''
Darkness.
A deep, dense silence, like the bottom of a lake.
Then, sounds. Two high-pitched little voices, like the tinkling of silver bells, but with a tone of heated argument that made them terribly human.
“...a cosmic disaster, that’s what it is. The flow of the main line is completely distorted. He wasn’t supposed to die like this, Kytt!”
“I KNOW, Aphra. Do you think I don’t see it? It’s a glitch in the fabric of destiny. He died from a Quidditch ball. How vulgar! How unbecoming of a Seeker! Look at the records… the 1997 timeline… here… look, a discrepancy. His death was supposed to happen in the Battle of Hogwarts. By a spell, probably cast by some follower of the Dark Lord.
''Exactly! And since he didn’t die then, some poor soul took his place by accident. Do you see? The balance is broken. We’ve unwittingly created a parallel timeline where he shouldn’t exist. And now, with this absurd death, the temporal knot has tightened so much it’s going to snap! The consequence is irreversible unless...-
''Unless he went back in time and did things the way they were supposed to be? Or the way they almost were? You’re always so extreme, Aphra.-
Draco felt an immense lightness. The weight he had carried for years—the guilt, the sadness, the anger—had vanished. He opened his eyes.
He was floating in a bright white mist, with no floor and no ceiling. And in front of him, two tiny beings fluttered about, arguing. They were small, no bigger than his hand, with iridescent wings as delicate as a dragonfly’s. One, with honey-colored hair and violet wings, gestured energetically. The other, petite and with platinum-blonde hair that painfully reminded him of his own, seemed more thoughtful. Fairies. He had always considered them mere decorative insects, frivolous creatures meant to liven up gardens. There, in that limbo, they seemed like the exact opposite.
The fairies noticed his gaze and stopped short. Both stared at him intently with their large eyes.
“Where…?” Draco asked, his voice sounding strangely clear in that emptiness.
The blonde-haired fairy, Kytt, stepped a little closer, her expression one of almost maternal regret.
“We’re so sorry, Draco Malfoy. You’re dead.”
“Dead?” he repeated, stunned. Suddenly, the memory of the impact hit him with clarity. “Because of a damn Snitch?”
“That’s right,” confirmed the other fairy, Aphra, the one with honey-colored hair, with a tone of resignation. Draco felt a hysterical laugh struggling to escape his throat. Of all the ways to die he’d imagined as a child—from heroic duels to powerful curses—this was, without a doubt, the most pathetic. Damn it. What a stupid, typical way to die.
“But…” Kytt continued, “it’s not your time. Well, not exactly. You see, there’s a problem.” Aphra crossed her arms, her tiny face furrowed in a frown.
“Technically, Draco Malfoy was supposed to die in the Battle of Hogwarts. Your fate was sealed there. But, for some reason we’re still trying to understand, that didn’t happen. Someone else took the place that was meant for you, causing a temporal butterfly effect. That small change has created an entire timeline where you simply don’t fit in , the timeless universe hadn’t foreseen this, and the alternate timelines—yours, in an attempt to correct themselves—are breaking apart. The modern-day Draco ended up disintegrating in front of his wife, and the others fared even worse.
“So everything I’ve experienced these past months … wasn’t supposed to happen?” Draco asked, a strange emptiness in his chest, wondering if his existence wasn’t even as necessary as he’d believed.
“Exactly,” Aphra agreed. “It was a mistake. A beautiful mistake, perhaps, if you look at it differently, but a mistake nonetheless.”
“And how do we fix it?” Draco’s voice sounded firm for the first time in a long while. If there was a chance, however small, to change that future of loneliness and misery into the one he was in—and somehow ensure that mark didn’t end up on his forearm...
“With time travel,” Kytt said matter-of-factly.
“But you have to die,” Aphra added, just as calmly.
Draco looked from one to the other, his fleeting calm replaced by a wave of confusion and frustration.
“I just died! And now you’re telling me I have to die again? What kind of solution is that?”
“Not necessarily that,” Kytt hastened to correct him, shooting a disapproving glance at her companion. “What Aphra means is that, in your original timeline—the correct one—you were destined to die. If we go back and let everything happen as it should, you die. Period.”
“But,” Aphra interjected, as if she found it hard to admit, “if you manage to change certain things in the past… maybe you could survive the battle, Another timeline would be created, a new one, where you would exist. It happens sometimes, Small changes, like a centaur choosing a different path, generate alternate realities. But they’re very, very difficult to achieve. Destiny is a powerful current. Only immense forces can divert it. A mother’s love, as in your case with Mrs. Potter, is a classic example. Or true love.
Or perhaps...”she paused” sizing him up an overwhelming amount of rage, sadness, or frustration. But that’s almost impossible. No one changes enough to alter what is meant to be.
They stared at him, waiting for his answer. Draco felt a flame—one he’d thought extinguished forever—begin to burn inside him. Go back? To his childhood? With the knowledge of what was to come? With the chance to save his mother from that gilded cage, his father from a living grave, his friends (or what remained of them) from misfortune? And to save himself from the crushing loneliness that had been his post-war life?
“I accept,” he said, without hesitation.
Both fairies looked him up and down, surprised by the speed of his decision. They exchanged a knowing glance.
“All right,” said Aphra, nodding. “But to make sure you don’t create another cosmic disaster with changes that are too drastic, we’ll go with you.”
“How?” asked Draco, frowning.
“We’ll protect you,” explained Kytt with a kind smile. “And we’ll guide you. No one else will be able to see us, only you. I am Kytt.”
“And I’m Aphra,” said the other fairy. “From now on, we’ll be your time helpers. But, Draco Malfoy, you should know that the journey won’t be pleasant. We’ll send you back to your eleven-year-old body. You’ll feel every year, every memory, every emotional scar you’ve accumulated readjusting. It’ll hurt. A lot.”
Before Draco could process the warning, Aphra raised her tiny hands, and a beam of bright, pure white light began to emanate from them. The light grew blinding, flooding the entire limbo. The mist swirled, and Draco felt his very being, his essence, being sucked into a powerful vortex.
He heard a deafening roar, like a thousand express trains passing at once. He felt his body stretching and compressing, his mind invaded by an avalanche of images: the dining room at Malfoy Manor, his father’s proud gaze, his mother’s protective arms, his first day on the Hogwarts Express, the fear in the eyes of a boy named Harry Potter at Madam Malkin’s, the sensation of his first refused handshake, the growing hatred, the Dark Mark burning his arm, the fear in the Triwizard Tournament, the panic in the Astronomy Tower, the horror in the Battle, Harry Potter’s gaze in the Room of Requirement… and then, the loneliness, the cheap whiskey, and the metallic impact of the Snitch. All at once. An unbearable pain, as if every bone in his body were breaking and fusing back together in a different position. He wanted to scream, but he had no mouth. He wanted to resist, but he had no body.
And then, the pain ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
He felt a cold, hard surface beneath his cheeks.
He opened his eyes.
The world was blurry, but he could make out dark wood grain. His desk. In his room.
At Malfoy Manor.
He looked at his hands.
They were small.
White.
No calluses.
Without the marks of war’s servitude.
He sat up slowly, dizzy. The mirror on his dresser reflected the image of an eleven-year-old boy, pale, with straight, blond hair falling over his forehead. His gray eyes, the same as always, looked at the scene with a mixture of shock and a fierce determination that an eleven-year-old should never possess.
A familiar tinkling caught his attention. Above his pillow, two small points of light fluttered. Aphra, with honey-colored hair, and Kytt, with platinum hair, watched him curiously.
“Welcome back, Draco Malfoy, we’re going to have some fun,” said Aphra, with a mischievous smile.
Draco looked at his hands, clenched his fists, and felt the blood pulsing strongly through his veins. Loneliness, despair, cheap whiskey… all of that was the future he had known. A future that no longer existed. Before him lay a blank canvas. Eleven years. Everything was yet to be written. A slow, dangerous smile curved his childish lips.
“Fun,” he repeated, savoring the word. “We’re going to have a lot of fun.”
Once upon a time in a place far away from here...