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Elias always favored smaller, dignified shapes, most likely taking after Aria and Jahariel, her parent's daemons. Aria is a Green Tree Python, only large enough to wrap around Lucius’ neck elegantly, shining the bright green of her namesake. Jahariel is a small grey jay, colored beautiful greys and whites, utterly unconcerned that Narcissa’s husband’s daemon could swallow him whole if she wished.
Elias modeled himself after them, as Draco modeled himself after her parents. When they were old enough for the plumage, Elias often took the shape of a peacock, proudly ruffling gorgeous feathers to the fawning of pureblooded guests and the approval of her parents. Peacock is as large as he would dare to go, careful to not stray outside what was acceptable.
Other times he took the shape of small, sleek birds like Kingfishers and Fairy Wrens. Any mammal shapes were always small, no bigger than common house pets, like kneazles and crups. He favored Russian Blue cats for a while. Even in the privacy of their room he kept his shifts in line with what her parents expected. She always kept in line with what her parents expected.
But her parents couldn’t follow her to Hogwarts.
She kept up her facade of pureblood pride as soon as she got there, trying to entice Harry Potter's friendship only to be brushed aside. The girl's daemon glared at her as a ferret wrapped around the back of her neck, and all Draco could think about as she filed into the Great Hall was dark skin, messy red hair, and green, green eyes.
When she approached the Sorting Hat already knowing where she would go, Elias was a quivering black ferret on her shoulder.
Their years at Hogwarts were….tumultuous. Draco pleaded with Elias to keep his normal shapes; small, sleek, dignified. He played along until the beginning of their fifth year, after the worst summer of their lives. The first time Elias laid eyes on the Dark Lord, the day before they were set to return to Hogwarts, he became a sleek black panther, teeth bared at the monster and the great snake daemon draped about his shoulders.
Draco could do nothing but tremble behind her soul, wondering if he had taken all of her bravery at birth.
With fifth year came Umbridge, and the lives of all the Slytherin power-players began to shake with a sinister rumble. Crabbe and Goyle were long forgotten, as she found she had no need for lackeys any longer. Instead, she huddled in a compartment with Pansy, Blaise, and Theo, holding tight to Pansy’s hand as she recounted how it felt to look the Master of Death in the face.
Pansy’s Philomon skittered down her arm as a black widow, scurrying across Draco’s hand for a brief flash of comfort. Blaise’s Neyris was curled around Theo’s Tsartha, both of them taking some sort of dog form so they could better fit together, matching their humans curled together on the seat opposite them. Draco wanted to weep for her friends, herself, as they all returned to Hogwarts different but desperately trying to stay the same.
But now that she had tasted fear, it seemed to follow her at every corner.
Her father was starting to drop his subtlety about his expectations for her. He spoke of great things and powerful opportunities for her when she came home, and Draco dreamed of red eyes and poisonous fangs. Elias stopped taking snake shapes entirely. Potter was as righteous as ever, saying the Dark Lord’s name in class even though it made Draco and Elias, now a moth fluttering around her collarbone, still and shake with terror. When she bent down to pick up Godral in Terrier form a week later, Draco saw bright red words on the back of her hand. She couldn’t make them out, but Elias’s eagle eyes relayed them to her quietly.
I must not tell lies.
When Umbridge approached her with an offer to be the head of the Inquisitorial Squad, she turned her down.
This was to be a year of hard truths it seemed. When Granger finally beat her for first place in Potions, she had to admit that everything she previously thought about blood status was wrong. It took a shorter time than she thought to accept it. “We’ve known for a while.” Elias whispered to her, as Professor Snape begrudgingly praised Granger in his own ornery way. Her hair was frizzed to France, but the brown skin around her mouth crinkled in triumph.
Later that week, she and Elias were sitting on a large rock by the lake when she saw the Golden Trio settle themselves under a tree not far away. Elias, now a Siberian cat curled warmly at her feet, gave an encouraging lick to the skin at her ankle. She stood up, held her head high to try to fake confidence, and made her way over to the three.
They all tensed up as she arrived, Weasley’s Sovora growled at her in the shape of a bloodhound. She ignored him, turning to face Granger entirely. “A word, Granger?” A beat of silence passed, before she added on, “Alone?” Sovora snarled at her this time, leaping to her feet, as Godral gave out a low rumbling, foxtail swishing behind him threateningly. “She’s not going anywhere with you!” Weasley hissed, face beginning to turn red. Granger’s own daemon Iristiel eyed her for a moment before tilting his Osprey head, wings still and beak sharp.
“Fine.” She huffed eventually, buckling under the weight of so many daemons. Elias merely snorted beside her, grooming his fur without a care in the world. “I can say it here.” She took a fortifying breath and looked Granger straight in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Whatever they expected her to say, that definitely wasn’t it. Sovora and Godral fell silent immediately as if they ran out of breath. Their animal faces mirrored those of their human counterparts, mouths open in slack-jawed shock. Granger and Iristiel recover quicker than their friends, both of them raising a brow at her. “Sorry for what, exactly?”
Elias quit grooming and twined around her legs, giving as much comfort as she would allow being shown in front of these people she used to think of as enemies, but was finding she believed that less and less with each passing day. She squared her shoulders and remembered that now was the time for sincerity, not bravado.
“For the name-calling, first and foremost. I had no right to use that word against you, as I realized before I said it that it had no meaning. You didn’t deserve to have it flung at you. You’re a brilliant witch, and blood status has no bearing on that. I regret how I’ve acted toward you, all of you, these past years. I was wrong.”
The hot rush of shame she expected at admitting she was wrong never came. Instead, she felt a weight she didn’t even realize she had lifted from her chest. Next to her, Elias shifted into a brilliant black raven and took off, soaring as high as their bond would allow him to. She spent a second staring at their faces, which looked even more shocked than earlier, before nodding stiffly and turning on her heel, heading back to the castle without another word.
Elias landed on her shoulder, gently nuzzling her hair with his beak. “You did well.” He remarked. She let out a hard breath, before smiling at him brilliantly.
___
Word got around, because of course it did.
People heard about her apology to the Gryffindors, and the other Slytherins especially started putting the pieces together. She never partook in bullying the younger years anymore. Instead of holding court in the common room like she did when she was younger, she and Elias either went to the library to study (O.W.L’s were brutal) or to lose themselves somewhere outside with Pansy, Theo, and Blaise. She sat at the very edge of the table in the Great Hall, chatting quietly with her friends instead of sitting in the center, drawing housemates into her orbit, hissing vitriol at the Gryffindors across the hall. After she fell out of her top spot in Potions, she never really regained it. She didn’t let her grades slip (it wasn’t really possible being that her godfather was the Professor) but found her interest straying to Charms, and how incredibly useful and fascinating they were in a way she never really realized before. She realized that Potions were never her passion; they were just what her parents expected her passion to be.
And her friends, oh she cursed herself for not realizing how dear to her they were before. They stuck by her side during her fall from grace when her other housemates demoted her from ‘Slytherin Princess’ to ‘Gryffindor sympathizer’. Within a matter of days, she hit the bottom of the food chain, and they stuck to her like wax. They all gave reasons why, in their own way.
“Why should I care what the other rabble thinks of me?” Blaise said airily when she asked him, Neyris shuffling from claw to claw as a little brown bat on his shoulder. He gave Draco a wink and a surprisingly sincere squeeze to the shoulder.
“As if I wouldn’t stick with you. You’re my very best friend, and that means something to me.” Pansy said forcefully, gripping her hand tight. Philomon, perched on Pansy’s lap as a lemur, gave a soft purr in agreement.
Theo looked at her for a long moment, before answering. “We’re two of a kind.” She cocked her head in confusion, before watching his eyes jump to Blaise across the common room and linger there. He turned back to her and she understood, her mind flashing with images of curly red hair and green eyes. Tsartha rumbled from the floor, her tiger shape taking all the space in front of their feet. She stretched, pressing the side of her head against Draco’s leg, and she almost cried with how much she loved them all.
____
It all came to a head, as things usually do, with one nasty encounter.
Eliot Rosier, a horrid distant cousin Sorted a year younger than her, confronted her one day in the Great Hall. As she gave him an unimpressed glance at the end of the Slytherin table, she wondered how he was Sorted into her house, seeing as how he was anything but sly and cunning.
“Well well, cousin dear, you’ve had quite the eventful year, haven’t you?” He swaggered up to where she and her friends were seated. She held back a wince when she realized that that was how she used to walk. Merlin, but did it look ridiculous now. She didn’t answer him besides raising a brow and turning back to her bacon.
“First apologizing to a mudblood, now shaming our great House-” He wasn’t able to finish before Pansy cut him off, Philomon bristling as a Husky at her feet. “And how exactly has she shamed our great House? Earning O’s in all of her classes? Ceasing to participate in your pitiful attempts at dominance over the younger years?” Pansy scoffed and shook her head, sleek black bob swishing around her chin, before turning back to her conversation with Theo.
Eliot suddenly walked forward and slammed his hands on the table, knocking over her mug of tea. She quickly vanished it before it could burn anybody, but then Eliot was right in her face. The Great Hall fell silent; where once before only the Slytherin’s sitting nearest them were watching, now the entirety of all four tables was trained on the ensuing argument.
Eliot’s daemon Wuldoria hissed from his shoulder, a ball python as black as night with harsh yellow eyes. In seconds, Elias skittered up her robes onto her arm, baring sharp mongoose teeth in Wuldoria’s face. A thick tension permeated the air, and she could feel how rigid Blaise’s arm was pressed against her’s.
“You should be disgusted with yourself.” Eliot hissed, but his voice was somehow loud enough to be heard across the silent hall. Blaise’s arm moved slightly, and before she could contemplate her friend’s excellent use of wordless magic Eliot was talking again. “Parading around like you’re better than everyone else while buddying up to bloody Gryffindor’s,” He spit the name like it was the vilest poison. “Makes me wonder how dear old dad would react. And not just him.”
The insinuation was clear, even more so by the muted gasps coming from her housemates. She, and everyone else at the table, knew he wasn’t just talking about her father. She fought the rising panic as best she could, desperate to keep her cold indifference in front of the entirety of Hogwarts’ eyes. She wondered how to respond.
Should she confirm what he was saying, that wasn’t the bigoted prat she used to be? That she learned to be better than that? Her father and the rest of the Sacred 28, and He, would know by morning, and she would open herself up for the full hatred of the snake pit.
Should she deny it, fall behind her trusty mask of the pureblooded, arrogant snob that everyone had gotten used to over the years? Scorn the dirty mudbloods and traitors that she was finally admitting to herself that she almost respected?
She was frantically weighing decisions in her mind when she looked past Eliot, over Pansy’s shoulder, and pale grey eyes caught brilliant green. The world stopped for just that moment.
She turned back to Eliot’s sneering face and returned it with one of her own, not giving him the dignity of an answer and she stood up and grabbed her bag. Elias skittered across her shoulders to glare at Eliot and Wuldoria as they walked away.
“I’m not done talking to you, you blood-traitor whore!”
Several things happened in such quick succession it almost left her head spinning. Presumably, Eliot had reached out his arm to yank her back when Elias sprang from her shoulder, landing heavily on the ground as she turned. She only had time to catch sight of a mane of dazzling white fur before he roared.
The sound of it was so loud and vicious that it sent Eliot falling onto his arse, and all the cutlery on the nearby tables rattled so loud she thought they might fall off the table. Eliot was shaking with fear, huddling the shivering mouse form of Wuldoria close to his chest, because Elias…
Elias was a lion.
The Great Hall broke out in gasps and Draco felt something in her chest shift and click into place, a permeating warmness moving through her veins with a rightness she had never tasted. “Elias,” She breathed out in wonder, because he was glorious. Covered in bright white fur and rippling muscles, he easily reached the middle of her stomach. His mane was lustrous and immaculate, framing eyes such a bright blue she thought she was staring straight into the sky.
“Draco,” He said back, equally breathless. “This is it. This is us.”
The roar of conversation in the hall crescendoed.
“Malfoy’s daemon is a lion?”
“Thought she’d be a snake!”
“A Slytherin with a lion daemon? Who’s ever heard of that?”
She disregarded them all, dropping to her knees as Elias padded up to her. She twisted her fingers in his mane, a glowing feeling of right, right, right dancing around her heart. Tears pricked her eyes and she laughed, touching her forehead to Elias’ and her soul laughed with her in joy.
“You’re beautiful.” She told him. He huffed a breath at her, nudging their heads together again.
“We are.” He said.