Chapter Text
At midnight, the hallways of Malfoy Manor are always cold and dark. No matter what month of the year it is, Draco usually finds himself wandering aimlessly at the witching hour. It’s something he’s prone to do when he can’t sleep. Ever since he was a child. When the quiet, every day sounds of an ancient manor seem to shriek as he lies beneath his sheets, he conjures a robe and walks. And walks. And walks until the daylight bathes the windows and he has no reason to go back to bed as the day begins. Tonight, the candles on the walls do not light themselves as he walks past them, but he can find his way around every floor of the manor blind-folded. Tonight, as his sleepless consciousness kicks in while walking down the stairs, he finds himself dressed in a dark cloak with black dress robes. He eyes the silver constellations sewn into his robes and tries to remember why he’s wearing these in particular. There’s something special about them. Traditional.
When his boots tap against the wood flooring of the ground floor, he hears something. Two giggles. Two gasps. He spies a crevice of light in the darkness. The drawing room door is barely open. He makes his way towards it. As he approaches the light shines brighter and warmer. There’s another gasp.
“What are they doing to him?” A voice asks.
“We should go back to bed.” Another answers.
Draco hears a muffled scream turned moan and in the low light he sees two young boys huddled near the drawing room door. A small pale boy with platinum blonde hair and another slightly shorter boy with dark, bouncy curls. They're wearing matching blue pajamas with dragon and hippogriffs dancing on the enchanted fabric. Draco’s stomach twists.
“What are you two doing out of bed at this hour?” He whispers, not wanting his admonishment to carry into the drawing room. “Go back to bed. You shouldn’t be spying.”
They don’t hear him. He walks closer, intending to grab them himself and put them back to bed. Then the door opens wide and they all fall to the ground. Draco steadies himself with his hands behind him, his legs splayed out in front of him. The light shadows the person’s face, but he’d know those curls anywhere. Fear grips him like a tight fist over his aunt Bellatrix catching him eavesdropping.
“It’s the boys,” she calls into the room and a chorus of laughter erupts. She pouts her lips and takes on an affected accent. “Did the boggarts in the night scare the itty bitty babies?”
“Bella stop it,” his mother’s voice admonishes. She appears, her robes covered in a dark cloak that matches Draco’s and Bellatrix’s too. She kneels down and cups his cheek. “You boys will return to your beds. Immediately.”
He wants to insist he was trying to get the boys back to bed, but no words come out. He looks to his left where only a young, still pajama-clad Theo sits splayed out beside him. His younger self has disappeared.
“Oh no let them join the fun, Cissy” Bellatrix cackles and pulls Theo inside the room. Draco reaches out to grab his hand, but his mother takes it instead.
“Bellatrix, no. They’re too young. They just boys.” Narcissa pulls Theo away from Bella and he returns to Draco’s side with wide-eyed shock.
“If they think they’re old enough to spy, they’re old enough to join,” his father’s voice carries from further in the room. “Bring them in Narcissa.”
She clenches them shut then gently tugs Draco up and into the room. He clutches at both her hand and Theo’s. But as soon as they’re inside with the door closed, he loses her. Theo shivers. Draco squeezes his hand twice. He needs to protect him. His curiosity is what got them here. It's his fault the door cracked open when he lifted his hand. He needs to gather information. He takes in the room he's never been allowed in before; his eyes adjust to how light it is. There are the portraits of his grandfather and grandmother and the one of his grandparents with his father at the same age Draco is turning tomorrow. His grandparents look upon the room with barely contained glee. The younger version of his father sneers. His father told him they’d have a portrait made before he leaves for Hogwarts in less than three months. He doesn't think a sneering portrait of himself will bring comfort to his mother.
Thick emerald curtains are drawn over the one window between his grandparent’s portraits, but the candles along the dark walls flicker. Even though the fireplace is blazing there are other adults wearing cloaks. He wants to take his off; it’s so stifling with so many people and such a large fire. He recognizes his father’s long silver hair peeking out from beneath his hood by the fireplace. When his gaze falls on the table they’re all gathered around, he’s chilled to the bone.
“Severus?” He murmurs in confusion when he sees his godfather lying bound and tied up in black ropes on the table. “Mummy, why is Severus on the table?”
“Lucius, he’s too young. This is not the night for this,” his mother whispers angrily from across the room. She's the only one who hasn't replaced her hood. “Let me take them to bed.”
“There’s no time, Narcissa. The blood is already spilled. He’ll be here soon.” Lucius turns to Draco and Theo and even though his hood covers his face, Draco can imagine the cold look he gives them. “Let this be a lesson learned.”
Draco sees his godfather’s head is pillowed by a book which is strange. And the angle of his neck is stranger. There’s a deep cut in his throat and blood spilling on the pages. Someone should heal him. Someone should save him. He steps forward, but Theo grips tight. His best friend shakes his head, eyes wide, face paler than usual.
When Draco turns back there’s a man appearing out of the fire. Draco knows that’s wrong because the flames never turned green. The man couldn’t have appeared from the fireplace. He's not even sure this fireplace is connected to the Floo. He must have imagined it. The man came in from the door.
The man is taller than his father, as thin as his mother, with curls darker than Theo’s. He looks as young as his parents too. His clothes are as black as his curls. Draco notices they’re Muggle clothes, not a wizard’s. His father and his aunt say Muggles are dirty, magic stealers. But this man doesn’t look dirty. Leather boots, trousers, a waist coat, a dress shirt and the only glint of color lies above his elbows. Gold arm garters cinch close to the muscles beneath the sleeves. Those muscles are the biceps and the triceps. Severus taught him that in their last anatomy lesson before Christmas. He hasn't seen him since then. Well except for now. But Severus will teach him potions when he arrives at Hogwarts. Whenever the adults in the room unbind him.
The man eyes Severus with disappointment so Draco stares at the gold garters. Are they metal or fabric? He can’t tell from across the room. Biceps and triceps encased in gold bands. Do they restrict the blood flow in his arms? Draco thinks someone should summon some gold bands to cinch his godfather’s neck. His carotid artery is there and the blood spilling out shouldn’t be. It should be flowing to his brain that holds all the answers. Instead, it’s pooling on the table. On the book beneath his head. The man who stepped out of the fire might use his arm garters to hold his neck together. Or a wand. Maybe he’s a healer in Muggle disguise. Maybe he’s disappointed because this will be a hard wound to heal and everyone is here watching him.
Everyone bows and murmurs a welcome that breaks the eerie silence. Even Theo belatedly bows following the adults’ lead, but Draco stays standing, staring at the man. Because he’s putting his fingers on his godfather’s neck. He’s going to heal him now. Without a wand. Except he doesn’t. Draco’s entire body freezes when he sees the man dig two fingers deep into the wound. Even with the cloth in his mouth, his godfather’s scream pierces Draco’s ears. He steps forward when the man presses his tongue against his fingers and licks the blood.
His eyes flit to Draco, stopping him in his tracks. He tilts his head and eyes him from across the table. He feels Narcissa move behind him. Her hand presses against his spine. The movement does not draw the man’s attention away from him though.
“Draco Lucius Malfoy,” are the first words the man’s tongue forms after completely cleaning his godfather’s blood off of his fingers. “Come for your godfather's final lesson?”
Draco doesn’t know what the correct response to that is, doesn't know how he knows that Severus is his godfather and isn't doing anything about his wounds. So he uses every ounce of his courage and asks, “Are you going to heal him?”
There are gasps and hisses around the room and his mother’s nails dig into his back, but the man smiles. It’s all teeth and it doesn’t really reach his eyes, but he’s smiling so that must be good.
“Would you like me to heal him, Draco?”
“Yes!” He eagerly shouts. Then his manners follow. “Please. Yes, please. With that wound on his neck, I don't think he has much time.”
The man shakes his head and tsks. "I think you're right Draco. Your godfather made the wrong choice though."
That doesn't make sense to Draco either. His godfather is the smartest man he knows. He shakes his head.
The man leaves his spot near the fire and walks towards him. Each cloaked adult bows their head, soft murmurs of my lord as he passes them. And even on the hardwood floor he doesn’t make a sound. After he heals Severus, Draco would like him to teach him this skill. He's wrong about Severus. If they heal him, Severus can just explain. He's very good at explaining.
This man they call their lord has dark chocolate brown eyes with a ring of red around the pupil. He's never seen red like this in another person's eyes. They remind him of the red boxes full of chocolates his mother owls from a witch in Switzerland because she can’t stand Honeydukes sweets. Draco loves Honeydukes, but he also loves whatever his mother loves. So she hides them from Draco and if he can walk silently like this man he can sneak chocolate without getting caught. His mind continues to drift away further from his godfather and nearer to chocolate and snooping because the man stares at him with his dark chocolate eyes for a long time. His back feels damp where his mother’s palm rests.
The man finally asks, “What would you give me in order to heal your godfather? To make his wrong choice the right one.”
And even at this young age, Draco Malfoy knows not to offer up anything even though that’s exactly what he wants to say. He watches the man’s lips quirk. He swallows. “What would healing him be worth, sir?”
The man chuckles and Draco can see his extremely white teeth. His canines seem sharper than a normal wizard. All of his teeth seem sharp. Maybe he is a Muggle. Muggles must have sharp teeth. “You really are a Malfoy aren’t you?”
Another question flows smoothly into his mind like an original thought, but Draco knows it’s not a thought of his own. It feels like someone placed it there and charmed his lips to ask, “What would you like, my lord?”
“Why, your soul of course, Draco.”
Out of the corner of his eye he sees his father yank his hood down so he can catch his son’s eye. He never takes his gaze away from the man’s, but he can see his father shake his head once. “Don’t I need that, sir?”
“Some might say you do. Do you want to love someone some day?”
His reply is instant. “I already do.”
“Ah, then I cannot heal your godfather if you want to keep loving her.” He sneers.
The man turns his back on Draco and joins his father by the fire. Lucius has returned his hood to its rightful place, and Draco knows he’s made the wrong choice. He could have saved his godfather, and he panicked. When Draco has mustered up the courage to look back at the body on the table, Severus is no longer there.
Instead, Hermione Granger lies in his place. She wears pristine white lace-trimmed robes embellished with golden constellations that match his. Her normally untamed curls are captured in braids that twist into an elegant bun high on her head. She is not bound or gagged like Severus, but Draco knows she cannot leave the table. His cowardice has cursed her to remain immobile too. They shouldn't know about Hermione yet. He hasn't met her yet. He hasn't hidden his thoughts and feelings about her. He's only ten. He'll be eleven tomorrow. He'll be eleven when he meets her on the train and knows he needs to hide her.
"Oh, I always knew, Draco. I see your heart." The Dark Lord smiles. "You can hide her, but I will find her."
His fingers are on her throat, nails digging in until blood drops onto each of his fingertips. Silent tears stream down her face as he leans down to press an open-mouthed kiss on her lips. As he pulls his mouth away, his fingers continue to drag what looks like a shimmering golden thread from Hermione’s lips. It looks like he’s unraveling the stitching of her robes. Her golden constellations are untouched as he pulls the thread from inside of her, wrapping it around two fingers. Her body follows, still attached to the thread he wraps. The gold never seems to end, and he thinks Hermione will remain attached to the Dark Lord by this golden thread and he’ll just have to watch them forever. The Dark Lord smiles when the last of the ribbon is plucked and drags along her bottom lip. His sucks on his golden fingers and she falls limply on the table.
“You made the right choice, Draco.”
The man backs into the fire and disappears. He runs to the table to clutch Hermione’s corpse. Tears stream down his cheeks onto hers, but she doesn’t move. The room has emptied. No one is left to listen to Draco’s pleading, but there are arms on him trying to wrench him away from her.
“I’m right here,” a woman murmurs. “Draco, I’m right here."
The voice makes his chest clench. The loss feels so tight he can't breathe. If only he had run forward and kneeled before the man. Offered his open mouth so he could pull some thread from him instead. Would it be gold spilling from his throat? Or some tarnish metal?
"Please. Draco, you’re not awake. It’s not real.”
His eyes close to banish the image of Hermione’s corpse beneath him and when they reopen he’s sitting in a bed in a golden yellow room. Someone is wrapped around him. He looks down and sees rich, redwood arms wrapped around his birch torso. Petrichor and peppermint fill his senses. There’s an open window and rain falling on a blur of green and brown. The blur clears as his tears fall and he realizes this room is surrounded by trees. Redwoods shielding him from the open spaces. He's home. His real home. He is far from England.
“There you go,” she says. “You’re awake. Deep breaths, my love. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Breathe with me.”
He feels her chest rise against his back and he follows the breathing pattern she sets for him. It was a nightmare. An old memory. No, a nightmare. And Hermione’s terror felt just as real as everything else because it was all just a nightmare.
His godfather did not bleed out on a table while his family watched.
His godfather died in a potion-making accident the night before his eleventh birthday.
“Was it the same one?” Hermione asks for the tenth year in a row. The same nightmare that plagues him on the same night it occurred. Every year. Without fail.
“You were there this time.” He whispers when his chest doesn’t feel like it’s collapsing in on itself anymore.
“Am I not normally there?”
He turns in her arms so he can press his forehead against hers. Her honey brown eyes meet his ice blue and his dart away to the curls wrapped on top her head, the freckles of her sun-kissed skin. Her eyes are not full of terror, just concern. He shakes his head. “No.”
“Will you ever tell me about this nightmare? It might help you.”
“Never, Hermione,” he replies for the tenth year in a row. He can’t find the words even if wanted to.
She nods her head, but he can feel the way her shoulders deflate. A problem she can’t solve no matter what ways she tries. "I will always protect you, my love." She kisses his head and strokes her fingers through his hair, slightly damp from sweat. "What are five things you can see?”
He reaches for her free hand and strokes. He lets himself fall back against the pillows in her arms and takes a look around, grounding further into reality. He grins at the plush, blue armchair in the corner.
“Crookshanks on his throne.” Not his godfather bleeding out on a table.
“The sun trying and failing to break up the clouds.” Not a sweltering fire.
“Too many books on your nightstand that you can’t possibly be reading at the same time.” Not a bloody book beneath a broken neck.
“A delightfully short green slip.” Not white wedding robes.
“My beautiful witch in a delightfully short green slip.” Not an unseeing corpse on a table.
Hermione hums and tosses her leg over his to sit on his lap. He’s elated to feel that the slip is the only thing she’s wearing. “I think I need to help you stay present. What are four things you can touch?”
Draco smiles when her lips press an open-mouthed kiss just below his ear. She peppers a trail of quick pecks down to his clavicle. His heart stutters. Then she stops and looks up, waiting patiently. He laughs. “Oh right, um a beautiful witch.”
She breathes a laugh against his sternum. Her mouth moves back up to the other side of his neck, but her fingers dance across his ribs.
He shivers and clenches the loose fabric that covers her torso. “A delightfully short green slip.”
“Different ones, Draco. Something that doesn’t have to do with me?” She whispers in his ear, trying to get him back on track.
“Why would I want to touch anything that isn’t you?” He turns his head and nips at her bottom lip before she can. He wants to lose himself in her. He wants to replace the terrifying nightmare with a daydream. Then he rolls his hips up, letting the fabric of his underwear provide some friction against her skin.
She hums and rolls her hips against his again. “Fair question. What else can you touch?”
His fingers go to the silk wrap hiding her curls from him. He unties it and gently tosses it onto her side of the bed where it quickly blends in with the rumpled sage sheets. “That nuisance of a scrap of fabric.”
Her hair cascades down and he presses his nose into the curtain that covers the curve of her neck. He breathes in and out. “This beautiful mane.”
“Three things you can…smell?” She gasps when his fingers drift underneath the camisole lightly grazing her cunt, collecting the arousal that’s begun to pool against his erection.
“I don’t think that’s right, darling.” He murmurs against her skin. He shrugs and lifts his fingers to his nose. “But one thing I smell is this utterly delectable aroma that is…you.”
“Fuck, Draco.” She shakes her head and runs a hand over her chest. He lets her rock against his fingers when he returns them to their favorite place and palms her breast with his free hand. She moans when he replaces his hand with his mouth, swirling his tongue around the barely covered nipple until it pebbles. He repeats the action with the other. "This is supposed to be about you."
"How about one thing we can taste?” He runs his fingers along his tongue, getting his taste before popping them into her mouth. She sucks the combination of his saliva and her arousal off of his fingers. Her cheeks hollow before he pulls his fingers back. There’s a string of saliva that connects his fingers to her lips and in an instant his mind flashes back to a golden thread and lips that aren’t his. Fingers that aren't his. A ghost's voice.
I will find her.
He immediately shudders and his teeth clench.
Hermione notices immediately. “Draco.”
He closes his eyes. “I'm sorry.” He breathes out. The man isn’t there. The man can’t be real. Hermione is there. Hermione is real. Hermione is alive. Hermione is alive. Hermione is alive.
“Yes, I’m alive, Draco. I’m right here. There's no need to be sorry.” She kisses his hand. His nose. His cheeks. His eyelids. His forehead. Then once his breathing is under control, she scoots away from his lap to grab something from her nightstand. “There’s also something else you can taste. Birthday breakfast in bed.”
There’s a clatter near the door to the hallway. He opens his eyes just as the tray of breakfast she’s summoned from the kitchen lands on their bed. It’s laden with coffee and two full breakfasts and even with the nightmare fresh in his mind, there’s a flash of melancholy over English breakfasts at Hogwarts. Leaving England was an easy choice once the safety of spending most of the year at school was gone. School meant freedom from his father and his aunt. Hogwarts meant safety.
It was there that Theo would smile and laugh and they could forget. It was there that he could chase the snitch and evade death on a broom high in the sky. It was there that he excelled in classes that would prepare him for his career. It was there that he could stare unabashedly at the only person who excelled more than him. It was there that he could forget for months who he was taught to be and who they said she was supposed to be. He dreaded the train ride home for the summer. Summers at the manor meant weddings and the possibility of midnight terrors to bear witness to. The manor held nightmares. Not memories.
Asking Hermione if he could join her travels to America had been an easy choice. Being introduced to other magical communities, foraging for magical plants, researching and connecting with magic in such a positive way. He encouraged her difficult, but fulfilling path of researching and writing legislation with magical beings who weren't wizards or witches but wanted the same rights. She encouraged his path to Healing and was ecstatic when he pursued the Muggle medical field as well. She dreamed of the ways they could integrate the two, truly melding the opposing worlds they grew up in. He dreamed of escaping his fate.
He presses his forehead against hers. “I love you. Thank you.”
She kisses his nose and then returns to her coffee. “I love you. Happy birthday, my darling. Do you want to discuss tonight?”
He tilts his head and swallows his bite. “Well, it’s my birthday. I just have to sit and look pretty and accept the drinks people buy for me.”
“I’m so glad you already know your role.” She laughs. “I’ve already readied the guest bedroom for Luna and Rolf. They’ll floo in around 6. Neville’s coming by around then as well. And then everyone else we’ll meet-”
They both look up when a northern hawk owl flies through the open window and lands at the foot of the bed. His yellow eyes haven’t pierced Draco’s soul in over ten years. The food in his mouth loses all taste, but he swallows it anyway.
“Did your mother get a new owl?” She asks when Draco doesn’t seem capable of words. Crookshanks hisses and bats a paw from his chair but remains in place. Hermione coos sarcastically at her lifelong familiar. “Oh, you’re so brave. So furious.”
The owl watches Draco. Draco watches it. Their staring contest only stops when a snowy white owl flies in and lands on her usual perch. Draco’s nightstand. He retrieves his mother’s letter from her beak and opens the top drawer to pull out a treat. She takes it and flies back out into the rain.
The owl at the end of the bed shakes its feathers. Crookshanks hisses again.
“Ah, so not your mother then.” Hermione asks.
“No.”
“Well, there’s only one way to get him to leave.”
“Yes.”
She reaches for the letter, but the owl scoots closer to Draco. “Loyal owl. Must be an important message.”
Draco leans down and yanks the letter from its beak.
“Draco,” Hermione soothes, “don’t take it out on him.”
The owl disregards her concern and flies out the window immediately. Draco knows who the owl returns to, but his father’s handwriting on the envelope confirms it. It’s heavy in his palm until Hermione removes it and places it on her nightstand.
“Later.” She presses his fork into his hand again and grabs hers. “Now it’s time to continue birthday breakfast in bed.”
He kisses her forehead and tries to imagine the food tastes as good as it did before. They eat in comfortable silence for a while, backed by the drip dropping of leftover rain on the branches of the redwoods outside. The sun is finally out, clouds breaking apart and disappearing. The water continues to pool slowly in the treetops before falling the 200 feet down to the ground. Draco imagines he's one of those raindrops that hasn't met its fate yet. Just sliding from branch to branch, knowing he'll hit the ground at some point, but when? Is it painful for raindrops to sink into the ground from hundreds of feet above? He finishes eating before Hermione since she’s busied herself with reading poems aloud between sips and bites. He knows she's not a Legilimens so it means even more that she knows just when his mind needs a distraction.
There’s a knock at the front door. His breath hitches. I will find her. They both tilt their heads and look at each other. Then her eyes clear and she groans. Her book and breakfast get tossed aside.
“Neville must have forgotten the time.” She pulls on a pair of sweatpants from her not-dirty-but-not-clean-clothes chair that Draco will never understand and darts for the hallway.
“Wait!” He drops the letters and summons one of his faded quidditch sweatshirts to her.
“It’s Neville. He’s seen me in my pajamas. He'll be gone in a second.”
“It’s cold,” he says and gives her chest a pointed look where there are still two tiny damp spots.
She glances down and laughs. “Good looking out.” She tosses it on and her footsteps patter down the hallway.
He reaches across the bed to grab his father’s letter. He’ll save his mother’s for later when Hermione’s fallen asleep, but he wants to get this over with. There isn’t any hesitation when he tears his father’s silver wax seal off of the envelope and pulls out the piece of parchment. It’s blood-boiling, but short and concise.
Draco,
I’ve turned a blind eye to this Muggleborn infatuation for too long. Have you made your point? Your mother insists you’re in love. Now that you’re 27 I think you both need a reminder of the finer points of Abraxas’s deal with our family friend.
If you wish to truly live as a Muggle in a year’s time, by all means, keep up this life of debauchery. If you’d prefer to live as the Malfoy you were born to be, come home and choose any of the rings for any witch’s finger. You don’t have to be in love to live. You know what the right choice is.
Against Your Wishes,
Your Father
He reads it twice before trying to set it on fire with just his hand. Then his wand. His father has infuriatingly charmed it well, so he settles for crumpling it up and tossing it across the room. It rolls under the not-dirty-but-not-clean-clothes chair. Crookshanks raises his head in judgment. Draco focuses on breathing deeply. Then he focuses on the sounds around him.
The wind forces the branches outside to creak. Crookshanks makes pancakes on the blue velvet. Hermione’s still talking to Neville downstairs, so he takes a sip of coffee. It doesn’t sit on his tongue well. He fills a glass with water from his wand. He sips. He breathes. He sips. He breathes.
Hermione’s voice is getting louder, her footsteps are nearer. Strangely, Neville’s follow her. He gets out of bed, walks to the dresser to grab a pair of sweatpants. He’s just picking out a blue shirt to pull over his bare chest when Hermione opens the door a crack her face barely visible.
"And why are you bringing Neville into our bedroom?” He asks then adds, “No offense, Nev. Just have to finish dressing.”
Hermione shakes her head, eyes wide with shock, but before she can speak Theodore Nott pushes the door wider and raises an eyebrow. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Do you mind if Hermione brings me into your bedroom?”
Draco’s jaw clenches. In that moment, he realizes the shirt he’s picked out is the same color as their childhood pajamas. He sees a gold wedding band on Theo’s ring finger. He feels the ghost of Theodore’s hand in his. A gold band on an arm. The shirt slips out of his fingers. “Theo.”
“Happy birthday, Draco. Care for some tea? Preferably spiked? I think we're long overdue for a conversation.”