Chapter Text
Draco only remembers one thing from before that fateful day: the feeling of utter helplessness. He was hiding from the elves and his mother -a new game she called ‘Hide and Seek’- when he saw a lone figure standing outside the gates. His father always said he needed to be worthy of the Malfoy name, and greeting a vagrant outside their Manor seemed like the wrong course of action. That was before the man turned to him and pointed his wand at him. After that, the man was so convincing, a voice rasped to come towards him, and it sounded so easy to. Why wouldn’t he do it? He should just listen to the nice man! When he reached the man, filthy hands enveloped him and his stomach twisted in a snap, the most intense nausea he had ever felt in his young life engulfing him. Then all he felt was…
Pain.
What is pain? Is it real? Or is it what Uncle Sev says, imaginary? It feels real right now. It overtakes the feeling of the blood-slick tiles underneath my knees, and the sounds of crying children. It grasps onto my vocal cords as I scream for the Smelly Man to stop. Pain shows no mercy for me, not as I have shown these Muggles.
They cower in the same spot I left them years ago. Or was it seconds? I can’t tell, maybe the pain snatched my ability to be smart like Daddy wants me to be. He’ll be mad. Why hasn’t he come to rescue me yet? I did what Mummy would’ve done for me to these children. I told them that I would protect them. They’re just babies, surely they are not why Daddy hasn’t come?
At first I did what Daddy would’ve done, put the man in his place by telling him he cannot touch the Malfoy heir. That only made him more mad.
He grabbed a Muggle infant, just two months old and already silent in the face of the horrible man, and shoved them in my face, “Then the young Draco Malfoy,” he paused and sneered into my face, “would love to kill this filthy Muggle child for me; isn’t it his sacred duty?” His dank breath ghosted upon my petrified face, causing me to recoil.
Before I could think the better of it, I shouted horror-struck, “But that’s just a baby! How could I kill a baby?!” He rears his sweat soaked head away from me, his hold on the wailing child tightening. He stares me in my eyes and whispers, “You don’t like your sacred duty?” His bloodshot eyes swivel to the other side of the room and settle on where he dropped his wand.
He throws the child at me and stalks toward it. As I catch the child and run to the other children to check on them, I realize they are all younger than me, not even four. Since I proudly turned six last summer, they all naturally turned to me as their savior. But a Malfoy does not save, at least only themselves.
As I look into their young, terrified eyes, I know, they do not feel any less than a wixen child. They stare with the same intensity and fear I know I have in my eyes right now. That was the moment I realized Muggles are not as my parents would want me to believe.
I turn around, determined to protect them as I know my parents would disprove of, but for survival, I do not care. Surely they would understand.
What awaits me is the end of a wand and the helpless, dreaded feeling of anticipation. The Smelly Man just smiles an unnatural, yellow smile, full of what I now know was insanity. He opens his mouth and imposes a new definition of pain, with just one word.
“Crucio”
Before now, pain was a scraped knee, or a bruise from the terrible peacocks Daddy loves, but never this. This is not pain, but a million poisoned knives driving themselves into me. It is my bones splintering and the shards erupting out of my skin. It is the burning, dark pain of my brain melting in my skull.
As the pain abruptly ceases, I know of a new type. My gasping and crying fills the dark basement, with its sole window casting the ethereal light of the full moon. This pain is different, I notice as I look up at the Smelly Man, an epiphany jolting me as I squint into his manic, soulless eyes.
The pain of knowing my parents won't come for me, the pain of knowing I might never see my father again, never sit for tea with my mother again. Never study magic theory with Uncle Sev, or eat the wonderful meals the Manor’s House Elves prepare. Never be carefully watched by the portraits of my ancestors while I run through the Manor alcoves and hallways, always being barked at to stop or I’ll trip. Pain was knowing I would not make it home for a last warm hug.
Then abruptly, pain turned different as the second curse hit me. I no longer had thoughts, just agony. The only thing I was sure I needed to do was protect those children, they were counting on me.
I saw how they looked in between the curses: trembling, scared to move, and cowering. This was not the behavior of the monsters Daddy describes them as. This was… human.
I lost track of time after my vocal cords stopped working, my shouts for Mummy and Daddy and Uncle Sev going unanswered. I was slipping in and out of consciousness, only awoken by the shouts of manic glee the Smelly Man gave.
“What a bad boy Young Master, you must stay awake!”
I lost count of the amount of times the curses had gotten me, or the different types, I only felt the immense agony of them.
Something deep within me snapped and erupted in vibrant wisps of power outwards toward the man. I couldn’t tell at the time, but that was when my powers manifested for the first time. The man was thrown back and his body crumpled to the floor, but his spell was still active.
Then, in an instant, the door to the basement wrenched open, and men and women sporting garish black cut-off robes and rather peculiar hats with golden badges on them. They took in the sight of the bloodstained floors, the crying children in the corner of the room, and me crumpled on the floor. Some recoiled and covered their mouths to stop the smell of vomit and blood from attacking their senses. Some clutched their oversized wands in shock, their knuckles and faces turning white. Before the Smelly Man could react and disable the spell he had on me, a woman rushed forward with an anguished yell and cracked open his skull.
I lay there, staring into his lifeless eyes and his now-forever sneering insane smile. I lay there and thought, ‘is it finally over? Can I go home? I want to see Mummy’.
Before long, the woman crouched next to me, and started asking me questions. They were rather dumb, of course what he was holding was a stick, what else would wands be? I didn’t care about her questions, all I wanted to know was if my suffering was all for naught.
I heard my voice crack and since I found I could not speak, I ignored her increasingly distressed noises and started crawling to the children in the corner. I found them all just a bit bruised and more strangely dressed people I recognized as Muggle Aurors crowded them and started to take them away, their grim but kind faces illuminated in the dim lighting. Their grimy little hands were stained with my blood as they reached toward me, alive.
‘Good’
Realizing they were safe and would not need my protection, I let the welcoming embrace of warm darkness take me into her motherly arms.