Chapter Text
When the magical marriage contract between him and Draco Malfoy manifested shortly after his fourteenth birthday—a contract arranged by their late grandfathers—Harry felt trapped.
He was angry because, once again, he had been given no choice.
His entire life had been decided by other people. The Dursleys had dictated how he lived. Dumbledore had decided what sacrifices he had to make. The Wizarding World had chosen him as its savior before he was even old enough to understand what that meant.
And now this.
A glowing silver rune wrapped itself around his wrist before fading into his skin, marking him as Draco Malfoy's magical spouse.
Harry stared at the mark with hollow eyes. It felt as though everyone had a say in his life except him. He felt exhausted.
Most importantly, He was angry because it was Draco sodding Malfoy. Rude and mean. He was Harry's and his friends bully for the past three years.
All Harry ever wanted, even just once, to make a choice that was truly his own.
---
For Draco, it was a dream realized. He had been secretly, helplessly in love with Harry since the moment he understood what love was. Every sneer, every taunt in the corridors for the last three years had been the desperate, clumsy masking of a boy who didn't know how to ask for the heart of the Boy Who Lived. With the contract revealed, Draco chased Harry openly, his silver eyes full of hope.
But Harry, fueled by the whispers of his friends, saw only a Slytherin trap. The climax came in the Theee Broomsticks. Harry sent a letter to Draco for a meet up there a day prior.
When he arrived, Harry was with his Gryffindor frieds. They were mocking him. Ginevra Weasley laughed at him. Then she kissed Harry and Harry kisses back.
Harry then publicly and brutally rejected him.
“I just wanted to make sure you understood. You mean nothing to me. I Harry James Potter, will never be your fiancee. I will never marry a deatheater in training."
Draco’s heart didn't just break; it shattered. He finally understood the cold, hard truth: Harry would never love him.
---
When news reached Malfoy Manor that the Boy Who Lived had humiliated Draco in front of everyone, Lucius and Narcissa made their decision without hesitation.
They would leave Britain.
Within the night Draco arrived home, the Malfoys had closed their Wiltshire estate, settled their remaining affairs, and departed for the ancestral Malfoy Manor in France. They had no intention of returning.
Lucius had endured far worse before.
When the First Wizarding War ended, he had remained in Britain despite the whispers, the scorn, and the accusations. People spat at his feet, mocked his family's name, and treated him like a pariah. He had borne every insult in silence for the sake of preserving the Malfoy legacy.
But this...
This was different. They could insult him. They could curse his name or drag the Malfoy reputation through the mud.
He would endure it all.
But the moment they broke his son, the moment the so-called Golden Boy publicly shattered Draco's heart, Britain ceased to be a place worthy of calling home.
Lucius Malfoy had always been a proud man.
Yet before he was a politician, before he was a pure-blood aristocrat, before he was a Malfoy...
He was a father.
And no title, no fortune, and no country would ever matter more than the happiness of his only son.
---
Draco locked himself in the deepest recesses of the Malfoy library, tearing through forbidden texts until he found what he was looking for. A magical marriage contract could only be dissolved without killing both parties under one condition: one soul had to willingly surrender their entire magical core and power, direcly transferring it to the other.
Draco didn’t hesitate. He talked to his parents. Told them he wants to go back to Hogwarts for the remaining term. He didn't told them of his plans, he knew they won't approve of it.
He was able to corner Harry a month after. Stupefied him and brought him to the Room of Requirement. The ritual was excruciating. As Draco tore his own magic from his soul, he poured it across the bond, channeling every ounce of his power into Harry. When it was over, Draco collapsed onto the cold stone floor—no longer a wizard, but a fragile, weak Muggle in a magical world.
The ritual was successful and the magical marriage contract is cancelled.
The next day, Harry received a letter from Sirius telling him of the cancelled contract. Everyone at the Gryffindor table was happy and ecstatic. But Harry had never felt more isolated.
Harry was too late to notice how Draco grew pale, how he dragged his feet and always assisted by his friends, or how he stopped carrying a wand altogether.
---
Ginevra Weasley thought it would be a brilliant way to get back to Draco to Stupefy and leave him in a secluded classroom. Enough for him to be scared and get lost. But her timing was catastrophic. She encountered Hermione and Neville as they were about to leave and join Harry and the others at the Department of Mysteries.
Right then and there, Ginny decided to bring Draco and dropped straight into the crossfire of the Death Eater ambush.
Without magic to defend himself, Draco was completely helpless. He was captured by Bellatrix Lestrange, who took sadistic pleasure in torturing her blood-traitor of a nephew. His screams echoed through the Death Chamber.
Harry watched in horror from across the room as Sirius Black engaged Bellatrix. But Sirius tripped. Bellatrix raised her wand, her face contorted in maniacal glee. *"Avada Kedavra!"*
With the last ounce of physical strength his battered body possessed, Draco lunged forward. He shoved Sirius out of the way.
The green light struck Draco square in the chest. He died before he hit the floor, his dull gray eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
---
Grief almost consumed Harry. For days he was catatonic. The conversation he had with Sirius a week after Draco's funeral left Harry so much pain.
"The contract could only be severed if one partner willingly surrendered everything that tied them to it." Sirius let out a weary sigh.
Harry frowned. "Everything?"
"His magic."
Silence.
He stared at Sirius, waiting for him to laugh, to say it was a terrible joke. Harry's heart pounded painfully against his ribs.
"He became little more than a Muggle after the ritual. His magic..." Sirius swallowed. "It didn't disappear."
Harry looked up, confused.
"It lives in you now."
Harry froze.
"...What?" Then he closed his eyes and tried to reach out to his core. He can feel Draco's silver-cold current of magic weaving perfectly alongside his own core.
Harry cried and cried.
A month after Harry's self imposed exile, he and Sirius went to Gringgots for an inheritance test. He received more destructive news. The manipulations of Albus, Molly and his best friends.
For years, Harry had believed Draco Malfoy was the greatest mistake in his life.
Now he understood the truth. The greatest mistake...
Had been his own.
When the Battle of Hogwarts arrived, Harry walked straight into the dark lord. He stood before Voldemort, closed his eyes, and willingly let the green light take him. He didn't want to save the world anymore. He just wanted to see Draco.
---
The endless, white expanse of the afterlife was dead silent, save for the rattling breath of the entity standing before Harry Potter. Death did not wear a cloak, nor did he hold a scythe; he was simply an absolute, crushing shadow that commanded the space around them.
"Because you willingly walked to your execution to purge the soul-leech within your blood, you are granted the ultimate right of the Master," Death explained, his voice echoing from nowhere and everywhere at once. "I present you with the paths of the infinite."
Three massive doors materialized out of the mist, each radiating a different, distinct hum of magical energy.
The First Door (The Present War): "You may step through here and return to the snow outside Hogwarts. Your body will breathe again. You can finish the war, watch the Weasleys rot in Azkaban, and rule Britain as the undisputed Lord of the Light."
The Second Door (The Great Beyond): "You may step into the afterlife, claim Draco Malfoy's soul, and cross into eternal rest together, leaving the mortal realm behind forever."
The Third Door (The Past): "You can go back to a life-altering moment of your past. An event where you think was the catalyst of your present pain. But it has restriction. You will wake up at least five minutes before that event. A very short time to do anything."
Harry didn't even look at the first door. The thought of returning to a world where the Weasleys had manipulated him, lied to him, and ultimately betrayed him made his stomach turn. He looked at the second door, tempted by the promise of eternal peace with Draco, but his fists clenched. Peace felt like a coward's way out when Draco had suffered so unjustly.
He turned his emerald eyes to Death.
"The third door," Harry said, his voice entirely devoid of hesitation. "Take me back to my fifth year. Five minutes before Bellatrix dumps Draco in the Ministry hall."
Death’s shadow flickered, a sound like grinding bones echoing through the void. "Five minutes, Harry Potter. A fraction of an hour to rewrite a tragedy. Are you certain?"
"Ginevra brought Draco to the Ministry out of spite leaving him vulnerable," Harry spat, the memory burning like acid in his veins. "Bellatrix dragged him away, brutally tortured him in the Department of Mysteries and brought him to the Ministry hall just to drop his dying body at our feet. I am going to save him."
"Then go," Death said.