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Chapter Text

One of the things they don’t tell you after you’re hired as an Unspeakable is that, when you reach a certain level within the department or start work on certain top secret projects, they actually do take away your ability to speak.

It’s a security measure, Draco’s boss had explained the day she’d cast the spell outside the halls of the Department of Mysteries. There are enemies of our government who want the information you have, and this is the best way to stop them from getting it.

Even back then, Draco knew there were ways to get information out of a man who couldn’t speak. His boss had known it, too, he was willing to bet. But he wanted the promotion, so he took the spell without complaint. That had been six years ago.

In the end, not being able to speak hadn’t been nearly as harrowing as he’d thought it would be. Draco, as it turns out, doesn’t have much worth talking about to anyone outside of work anyway.

There are even certain benefits to it.

“Morning, Malfoy,” Harry Potter says, voice guarded, as he steps onto the Ministry lift.

Draco, who won’t be able to use his voice till he’s nine stories higher, is only able to acknowledge Potter by raising his half-empty Starbucks cup. Potter eyes it suspiciously. Draco takes another sip; it had come from the Muggle shop just outside and around the corner, but Draco had spelled it to keep his London Fog warmer for longer than the flimsy paper cup would allow.

“Don’t know why I keep greeting you every morning,” Potter says, and turns forward as the lift doors slide shut. “Not like you can answer me.”

Ever since Draco had been promoted three months ago and his regular scheduled hours had changed, he and Potter had been arriving to the Ministry at the same time. And despite the fact that Draco always wore the unmistakable black-on-black uniform of an Unspeakable, and even had the visible black rune on the front of his throat indicating that he literally couldn’t speak, Potter always tried to strike up a conversation.

I think he fancies you, intones Westy from Draco’s immediate left. The tenor of the thought is so arch that it almost leaves a trace in Draco’s brain, like a trail of slime left by a slug.

Come off it, you horrid bint, Draco answers.

Wendy Westerly is, arguably, Draco’s only friend, due largely to the fact that they’d been forced into proximity for the better part of six years, and also probably because she was significantly older than Draco, and had never had the misfortune of knowing him as a terrible, bratty twelve-year-old who used racial slurs.

Draco fishes his earbuds out from where they’d been hidden beneath the tall collar of his robes and slips them into his ears. After a few moments fussing with his phone, AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill” picks up right where Draco had paused it last night, twice as loud as he intends.

Potter must hear it, because he wheels around immediately and stares. Draco thins his lips and apologetically turns it down, but Potter keeps staring.

Thankfully, as an auror, Potter only stays on till the second floor. This time, though, when the doors slide open to the chaotic, crowded DMLE floor, he’s still staring at Draco.

“Are you…?” he begins.

Draco flicks his eyes from Potter’s face to the lift door indicatively.

“Right,” Potter says, frowning. “Uh, see you, Malfoy.”

He steps out. The lift shuts again.

Yes, being unable to speak certainly has a few unexpected perks. He never has to suffer the indignity of making smalltalk with Harry Potter, for example.

You should go for it, Westy insists.

He’s married with three kids, Draco returns. Also, it’s hate you’re detecting, you vapid bitch, not intrigue.

You’re such a pessimist.

Draco turns up his music. Not because it will block out Westy’s incessant nattering, but because he likes the bridge of this song.

When the doors slide open again, they both step out at the same time and approach the single door just opposite the lift with wands out. In prefect sync, they touch their wand-tips to the runes on their throat, and then to the door. The wards palpably shiver around them, the door swings open, and they step inside.

“You do realize that he’s Harry Potter, right?” Draco asks the second he has his voice back.

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed.”

It should be sarcastic, but it’s not. Draco respects Westy’s intellect a lot, and deeply admires her as a witch and a healer, but for someone who knows as much about magical theory and neuroscience as she does, she fails to notice the obvious with alarming regularity.

“Of course you didn’t,” he sighs, and shakes his head. “Do you need my help with the brains today?”

They stride together down the main corridor of the Department of Mysteries, with its wings branching in every direction from the central rotunda.

“No,” Westy answers, “I should be all right. Besides, you’re almost done refining Needle now, aren’t you?”

“‘Done’ isn’t the word I’d use, no,” Draco says dryly.

“Well, I’ll see you for lunch.”

“Half-one,” Draco promises, and they go their separate ways, Westy straight ahead and Draco to the left, where behind a familiar doorway—

“Hello, darling.”

On the far end of the room, spanning from the high ceiling to the stone pedestal on the floor, is a beam of thin, pulsing, blue-white light: Needle, Draco’s pet project and entire life since coming to work for the Department of Mysteries. He’d proposed the theory to the Board, secured the funding, and had been involved in every step of the process of creating it.

He comes forward toward it, close as he, or anyone with any sense, dares. The energy pulses against his skin, somehow both too fast and too slow at the same time. The air around it hums, low and droning, like white noise that refuses to be unacknowledged.

“Hm,” he says, “you’re a bit peaky today.”

He heads to his desk by the wall, stacked high with books and parchments, and sets his now mostly empty London Fog on its corner. He bends over the open folio to note down the fluctuations he’d detected, the current time and intensity. They’ve been ramping up lately, he notices as his eyes scan the careful charts he’d been keeping.

Shoot to thrill, play to kill
Too many women with too many pills, I said
Shoot to thrill, play to kill
I got my gun at the ready, going to fire at will

Draco hums along as he works, foot tapping. The fluctuations appear to be rising asymptotically, though he’d need to spend a few miserable hours graphing to be sure. Still, it suggests that Needle is approaching some sort of point of no return, which raises the rather alarming question: will its power even out, or reach critical mass?

‘Cause I shoot to thrill and I’m ready to kill
I can’t get enough and I can’t get my fill
‘Cause I shoot to thrill, play to kill

Eventually, Draco stops tapping his foot. His mouth twists.

He doesn’t like the idea of having to shut it down, but if this ramp-up continues, he might not have much option. Needle is an extension of the energy that binds together space-time, and leaving it exposed like this while it gathers more and more energy, even in the relative safety of the Department of Mysteries, could eventually turn into a bigger risk than the reward of its insights will be worth.

If the numbers add up, anyway. Draco groans. He really is going to have to graph, isn’t he?

You’re giving the human brain too little credit, Draco insists the next day over lunch with Westy. All studies I’ve read indicate that a certain level of plasticity remains even after it’s finished developing.

Another unexpected benefit of not being able to speak: even in the crowded, bustling Ministry cafeteria, he could hold a conversation without having to shout. There was a time not long after the end of the War that Draco would have hated even being in a room this full; these days, though, he could drone out any remaining anxiety by blasting Aerosmith and talking to Westy about whatever it was they were working on.

Brains, in this case.

Don’t try to play neurologist with me, you little upstart, Westy answers, taking a bite of her caprese salad. Stay in your temporal physics corner where you belong.

Hey, Draco insists, I’ve been listening you carry on for half a decade now. That’s at least as good as a master’s in the field, isn’t it?

They both laugh—soundlessly, of course. The runes on their throats make sure they couldn’t produce any sound, but the physical reflexes that come with laughing never really go away.

I’m just saying, Westy continues, that there’s a big difference between recovering from a traumatic brain injury and adapting to magic on the scale I’d require it. Even with subtler enchantments—

“Malfoy?”

He’d barely heard him over Steven Tyler screaming at him to dream on, dream on, dream on—it’s mostly the sudden hand on the table, directly in Draco’s field of vision, that catches him off-guard and makes him jump.

It’s Harry Fucking Potter again.

Merlin’s pants, twice in two days?

I’m telling you, Draco, Westy insists, he fancies you.

Shut up.

Reluctantly, Draco pulls one earbud out and stares up at Potter imperiously.

“Are you,” he begins, staring down at Draco’s lunch in abject disbelief, “eating curry?”

First his choice of drink, now his lunch. Is no meal safe from Potter’s judgment?

He glares at Potter. He can’t speak, of course, but he hopes that the glare gets across the feeling of leave me alone, you officious dickhead.

“Wait, that’s Tandoori Taste,” Potter continues, picking up the detached takeaway lid and staring at it like he’s having trouble believing his eyes. “That’s a Muggle restaurant. Malfoy, since when do you eat at Muggle restaurants?”

Draco snatches the lid out of Potter’s hand before gesturing emphatically to the black rune on the front of his throat.

Potter frowns. “Right,” he says. “Right, you’re an Unspeakable. When did you become an Unspeakable, by the way? I’d always figured you for potions. Or at least, like, idle wealth.”

Draco wants to hex him so bad his fingers actually twitch toward the wand in his sleeve.

Oh, he’s quite adorable, isn’t he? is Westy’s fond insight. He just keeps asking questions.

When the silence between them continues to grow, when Potter finally seems to realize that Draco physically cannot answer him past the angry glare he’s already offering—

“Right,” Potter says again. He’s staring at Draco with furrowed brows. “Right.”

He leaves, back toward the louder corner of the cafeteria, full of maroon-robed aurors. Draco shakes his head and returns his attention Westy.

Sorry about that, he offers her.

Don’t be, she returns, smirking. This is as hilarious for me as it is uncomfortable for you.

Draco levels her with a withering look. You’re such a good friend.

Her shoulders shake in a soundless chuckle. So, Needle is still accumulating energy, huh?

When Potter interrupts Draco’s workout, though, Draco finally decides that the drawbacks of not being able to speak outweigh the benefits.

“Are you kidding? Yoga?”

There’s a little-known communal gym in one of the seventh floor of the Ministry of Magic. Though it’s primarily used by the Quidditch League officials and players, it is technically open for use by any Ministry employee. Most of its equipment is focused on strength training, but Draco has a favorite corner where he likes to put out his yoga mat after work.

But if Potter is going to be stalking him again, maybe he’ll just work out at home from now on, Merlin.

He comes out of pigeon pose and turns to glare at Potter, who’s just coming out of the weight room, streaked with sweat, his hair a disaster.

“Are you—” Potter’s face suddenly takes on a very different quality, though Draco’s too angry to try and identify it. “Malfoy, what are you wearing?”

Athletic wear, you fucking simpleton, Draco thinks at him uselessly. The telepathic abilities the Department of Mysteries allows him doesn’t extend past other employees under normal circumstances. He squeezes the sides of his phone through the pocket of his sweatshirt, and Radiohead abruptly stops blasting in his ears.

He stands up, grabs Potter’s wrist, and drags him out of the gym.

“Hey—!” Potter protests, but allows himself to be pulled along.

Draco pulls him straight down the hallway to the lift, manhandling him inside before slapping his free hand over the button for the ninth floor.

“Malfoy, if you’re going to kill me, you might not want to do it inside the Ministry,” Potter says.

Draco turns to glare at him, only to find that Potter is staring at Draco’s navy blue yoga pants.

Merlin, how is he still this insufferable?

When the lift dings, Draco tugs him through and flicks his free hand to release his wand from its sleeve holster. It falls into his palm and he casts the enchantment on the large, imposing door to let him in.

As soon as they both come inside the large, round vestibule, Potter remarks, “Wow, this place has been renovated since I was last here.”

“Potter,” Draco says, “what in Merlin’s name are you doing?”

Potter turns, startled. For a time, he doesn’t answer, only stares.

Impatiently, Draco explains, “I’m allowed to speak while I’m inside the Department.”

“Yeah, I figured out that much,” Potter says. He clears his throat. “I just… I haven’t heard… your voice. In a while.”

“Yes,” Draco hisses, “because we haven’t spoken at all in twenty years, which bring me back nicely to my original question: what in Merlin’s name are you doing?”

“I,” Potter answers, then doesn’t finish.

“If you’re stalking me again,” Draco says, folding his arms over his chest, “I’m just going to file a restraining order.”

“I’m not stalking you,” Potter answers defensively. “I just… I’m just flummoxed by you!”

“Flummoxed? What the hell about me is so flummoxing?”

“Everything!” Potter snaps. He gestures to Draco’s clothes. “You’re wearing Muggle athletic wear for a start—”

“It’s Lululemon! I can’t bloody well do yoga in my fucking Unspeakable robes, can I?”

“Since when have you done yoga?” Potter continues, as if it’s an extension of his original point. “I can’t imagine it’s particularly en vogue within pureblood circles!”

“Actually, yoga was pioneered by Indian wizards over two thousand years ago—”

“And you’re eating Muggle takeout and drinking Starbucks—”

“I didn’t have time to cook last night!” Draco cries, a little defensive. “And Ellie at the Starbucks down the street makes a better London Fog than I ever could—”

“—and listening to fucking AC/DC on your iPhone,” Potter concludes, gesturing to the little white earbud strings still dangling down his chest. “People can change, Malfoy, but generally not this much!”

“And how, precisely, the fuck does it matter to you?” Draco barks. “Why the sudden interest? So I like curry and classic rock now, in what way is that any of your business?”

Potter opens his mouth, but doesn’t seem to have an answer. His too-green eyes flicker down to Draco’s Lululemon leggings, and now that they’re facing each other, Draco realizes—

Is Potter staring at his leggings, or at his legs?

Several things in Draco’s head rearrange themselves. Is that why Potter’s been harassing him these past few days?

“I guess it’s not,” Potter answers eventually, recovering as well as he can from a silence that had gone on just a hair too long. He looks up at meets Draco’s eyes.

Draco wants to say, Aren’t you married? The question is dangling right at the edge of his tongue; he can practically taste it.

Eventually, though, he swallows it back down. He’s gotten something wrong. There’s no way that Harry Fucking Potter of all people, heteronormative savior of all the Wizarding World, has been checking out his ass in yoga pants.

“Glad we’ve gotten that settled, then,” he says airily. “Potter, please try to relax. My Starbucks-drinking, Led Zeppelin-listening ways are not part of some grand plot to destroy the world.”

“I,” Potter says, looking a little embarrassed, “I didn’t think they were.”

“Wonderful. Then feel free to stop following me around.”

“I wasn’t—” Potter gives up the sentence halfway through saying it. He shakes his head. “See you around, Malfoy.”

He turns and strides out, back toward the lift.

“I thought we just agreed I wouldn’t!” Draco shouts after him. If Potter answers, Draco doesn’t hear it.

When he hears the ding of the lift doors sliding shut, something in Draco snaps, and he sags forward slightly.

How is it that all these years later, Potter still has this kind of effect on him? Damn it, Draco went to therapy for this shit. He’s moved on. How does Potter still get under his skin so fucking easily?

He sighs and rubs his forehead with one hand. He resolves to start doing yoga at home from now on.

From his right:

Please don’t. Please don’t go.

He frowns, straightens. It sounds almost like—

“Potter?”

Come back. I can’t bear it. Please, Draco, please don’t leave me.

Potter had just gone, hadn’t he? And the direction the voice is coming from…

Draco steps through to his laboratory door and gasps before he an stop himself.

Needle is bluer now, and brighter, and wider. Less like a needle, and more like the yawning opening of a great chasm full of light. And it’s so loud, no longer so much humming as vibrating, almost deafening enough to block out the voice echoing out of it:

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go…

The voice—Potter’s? It sounds different somehow, though Draco can’t quite detect how—is coming from inside the blazing white fissure that once was Needle.

Draco feels like he should probably get out of this room. And maybe evacuate the whole floor. But he can’t move; he feels like he’s rooted to the spot, mind spinning, heart thundering against his ribs.

Needle’s humming is getting even louder now, its vibrations more intense. Draco stands paralyzed as that voice (it has to be, and yet at the same time cannot possibly be, Potter’s) gets more and more frantic.

Draco! DRACO!

Chapter Text

The first thing Draco notices is the sudden change in his center of gravity, when he topples forward and collapses onto the floor.

By the time he scrambles upright to his knees, a few things become immediately apparent:

One, Draco is no longer in the Department of Mysteries. He is, by his first few frantic glances around, in a shop somewhere. It seems familiar, though Draco can’t quite identify how, because;

Two, Draco is maybe having a panic attack.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispers, whirling around. Something is extremely wrong with Needle, clearly, if it forcibly transported him across space just by being near it. He needs to get back to London immediately and contain the worst of the damage.

He tries to stand, but topples right over again, landing hard on his palms. Merlin, why can’t he walk?

“Are you all right, dear?”

Draco screams.

When he wrenches around to the source of the voice, he is startled by the presence of two figures coming into the room. One is a squat, older witch dressed all in mauve who, after a few delirious seconds, Draco recognizes as Madam Malkin, though looking significantly younger than the last time he got fitted for some formal robes.

The other is, impossibly, is an extremely small Harry Fucking Potter.

“What the fuck,” Draco whisper-shouts. “What the fuck.”

“Language!” Madam Malkin chides. “What would your father say?”

It’s definitely Harry Potter—Draco would recognize him anywhere—even when he’s scarcely over four feet tall and a fucking child.

“Oh, Merlin, it transported me in—” A wave of fear hits him. His voice is an octave-and-a-half too high. He turns frantic eyes to the mirror on the wall opposite him.

The face staring back is one he hasn’t seen in over twenty years: his eleven-year-old face, rounder, softer, hair slicked back in the way he had convinced himself was the coolest possible style.

In time. Needle transported him, forcibly, through space and time.

Hysteria burgeons in the back of his throat. No wonder he’s having trouble standing. After so many years of adulthood, his proportions are suddenly prepubescent.

“Go on, my boy, step up on the stool, just there. I’ll get you started.”

Draco’s mind is spinning. He’s struggling to keep himself together. He doesn’t understand how this happened. Needle had been unstable, yes, but never this unstable. It shouldn’t be able to do this at all. Needle is—was, will be?—an exposure of the raw fabric of space-time, not a fucking TARDIS. His shoulders heave with panicked breathing. He starts to shake.

“Now, then, dear, what happened to you? Did you fall?”

“I have to go!” Draco says, shrill. He makes a last, concerted effort to stand and finally manages it, though he does sway precariously. “Sorry—I… I have to go. I need to…”

“You’re really pale,” Potter remarks. Draco misses his baritone; his unbroken voice brings up a host of unpleasant memories Draco thought long-buried. “Maybe you should sit down?”

“I’m fine!” Draco feels like he’s trying to convince himself more than them. “I’m fine! But I really have to go!”

“But you’re not done with your fitting,” Madam Malkin protests. Draco is already lurching toward the exit, shrugging out of the un-hemmed, un-purchased robe and dropping it over a chair before fleeing the shop.

Outside, the streets of Diagon Alley are bright and crowded, the stones baking under the warm August sun. Witches and wizards of every shape and size pass in all directions, chattering in low tones.

It is a not unfamiliar sight that somehow still feels like a fever dream.

He stands in the middle of the street for a time, panting, shaking, trying to put his thoughts in order. He needs to get back to his proper timeline as soon as possible. The longer he stays in the past, the more likely it becomes that he’ll damage his future.

Or, Merlin forbid, time itself.

He can do this, he tells himself, he can figure this out. He’s an Unspeakable, for Circe’s sake. He didn’t get the job because he was stupid.

He pushes his hand into his pocket, and is alarmed to find that his wand isn’t there.

“Where—?” he begins, when suddenly, from his right:

“Draco, are you done already?”

He spins, and the bottom drops out of his stomach before he even clearly understands why.

Lucius Malfoy, like a nightmare, tall and blond and imposing, carrying in one hand that snake-head walking stick that had broken more than a few of Draco’s bones in the past. And, he supposes, his future.

You’re dead, Draco wants to scream. You died in St. Mungo’s fourteen years ago. I went to your funeral and didn’t even cry.

“Boy,” Father says sharply, making Draco jump and realize that he hadn’t answered him.

“Yes, sir,” he replies reflexively. “I—yes.”

“Good,” he says. “Your mother’s picking up your textbooks. You and I are going to Ollivander’s.”

Merlin. This is the day he gets his first wand?

When Draco doesn’t—can’t—fall into step behind his father, a hand comes down to his shoulder and steers him forcibly along. Draco’s footsteps are unsteady, but he manages not to fall.

This feels like something he shouldn’t be doing. After the War, when Potter had returned his old unicorn hair core wand to him with guarded apologies, it hadn’t responded to him in the same way. In the end, he’d been forced to buy a new one in Paris, specifically because—

“Ah, Lucius Malfoy. Dragon heartstring and elm, eleven inches.”

—he couldn’t bear to face Ollivander again, after what had happened to him in the Malfoy Manor.

Draco’s heart starts beating in his ears. His head is suddenly full of very particular images: the sounds of people screaming under the Cruciatus Curse, the wailing and sobbing and begging for mercy, the high and hideous laughter from white lips—

Pain lances through Draco’s left arm. He grips at it hard. Psychosomatic, he tells himself, frantic, calm down, calm down, it’s not real, it’s not even there yet.

“As sharp as ever, Garrick,” his father answers. They shake hands.

Draco stands there, trembling. Despite his best efforts to keep himself calm, Draco feels like he is going to collapse into hysterical tears at any moment. He’d worked so hard, so fucking hard to move on from his painful past, to forgive himself for everything he’d done, and somehow all that work, all that effort, all those affirmations his therapist had him go through felt as insubstantial as smoke in the wind.

Draco finds himself hoping he is having a nightmare. He hopes that he will wake up in his bed, in his little London flat with his cat sleeping on his chest, that he’ll have a shower and go get his morning London Fog on the way to work, because if he doesn’t, if this is real, it is going to be the most painful thing Draco has ever had to endure.

He can’t go back. He can’t go through all this again, can’t be who he used to be. Not again.

“And this must be your son.”

“I’m sorry,” Draco says before he can stop himself.

Ollivander startles. So does his father, though where Ollivander seems primarily surprised, his father seems primarily angry.

“Draco,” he snaps, “introduce yourself properly.”

“I…” He swallows hard enough to force his heart back down his throat. “I’m Draco Malfoy, sir.”

Ollivander cants his head to one side. His big, silvery eyes are almost more than Draco can stand. He remembers what those eyes looked like when Bellatrix Lestrange raised her wand and hissed Crucio.

“I presume you’ll be starting at Hogwarts soon,” he says.

“Yes, sir,” Draco manages. It’s taking every ounce of his self-control to keep himself upright, let alone answer, when all he wants to do is run away, find a corner to curl up in, and sob till all the pain falls out.

“Well,” Ollivander continues, “let’s have a look at you, then.”

Draco remembers this part: the poking, prodding, measuring. Yes, sir, I am left-handed. Yes, sir, just a few bursts of wild magic, none recently. His voice shakes when he speaks, though, and so do his arms as Ollivander measures the length of them. The wandmaker notices right away.

“Are you all right, my boy?” he asks, gently, low enough not to be overheard by Draco’s father, currently standing in the corner.

“I’ve had kind of a weird day,” Draco answers. His voice is faint and shaking.

“It’s normal to be a little nervous when getting your first wand.”

Draco almost says, This will be my third, actually.

“I think we should start with unicorn hair cores,” Ollivander decides.

Draco remembers this part, too: Ollivander got it right in three tries. He’d blown up the lamp with the first wand, shattered the window with the second, and then had created showers of silver sparks with the third. His father had been very proud.

He’s less proud this time when the third doesn’t work.

The wand is his—or it was-slash-would-have-been—and it is familiar, yet oddly awkward in his hand. He flicks it once. A shelf across the room collapses.

Panic hums in the back of Draco’s throat. It’s not really surprising that a wand he received in his childhood doesn’t accept him as an adult, as they are two very different people with different ability. Still, he can almost hear the ghost of Edward Lorenz shouting himself hoarse. Temporal lineation is a chaotic system, and chaos theory assumes that even the smallest differences in the present can have the largest effects on the future. And who knows what the consequences could be if it’s a future that’s already happened?

“Maybe we should come back later,” Draco suggests feebly.

“Nonsense,” Ollivander says gamely, “we’ll find a match for you yet. All your failures have been very controlled. Perhaps phoenix tail feather…”

But the next six wands with phoenix feather cores backfire even more catastrophically than the others. His father, still in the corner, is starting to get impatient. And though the scorn of a dead man should not affect Draco, it does. He feels his father’s disappointment like a choking fog.

“You’ve got a bit more power than I anticipated!” Ollivander says. He’s starting to sound excited, for reasons that utterly elude Draco. “Let’s try a few dragon heartstring cores.”

Two more failures, which are, if nothing else, more interesting than the others; one sends a fireball scorching the ceiling and the other creates an eruption of violent red sparks that catches the rug on fire, though Ollivander quickly intervenes to put it out.

“I think I have it,” he says once it stops burning. He’s very excited now, almost vibrating.

“I should certainly hope so,” his father answers, voice weary and scornful.

“I never thought I’d get the opportunity to sell this particular piece,” he continues, hurrying into the back, leaving the small selection of boxes he’d initially brought out abandoned on the counter. “It’s been in this shop for near-on two hundred years!” He’s shouting to be heard from the far side of the shop.

Draco hazards a look back at his father, who meets his gaze coldly. A shiver races down Draco’s back before he can suppress the reaction. Images of his father in St. Mungo’s, weak and pale with sunken eyes, rise to his mind’s eye.

I saw you die, Draco wants to scream, I saw you die, I saw you die.

“This was the masterwork of my grandfather, Gerbold Ollivander!”

The voice startles Draco back into himself. Ollivander has in his hands an exceptionally weathered, dusty box that was, perhaps, once blue. He pulls off the lid, sending plumes of dust rising into the air, and reveals a truly magnificent wand.

It is carved elegantly, its handle a complexity of scrollwork, wood marbled in various shades of rich reddish-brown with subtle gilding that makes it glint in the light.

Oh, Draco thinks, all his choking terror suddenly subsumed by a devastating certainty.

“It’s acacia,” Ollivander says, positively abuzz with excitement. “A very rare wood among wands. Temperamental, subtle, but exacting.”

Draco feels a pull to it, much stronger than the one he’d felt to his first wand, and even to his second.

“Ten inches, unyielding, with a dragon heartstring core.”

He doesn’t even need to touch it to know: “This is it. This is the one.”

“Go on, young man,” Ollivander says, eyes twinkling. “Take it.”

He takes it.

He doesn’t even need to wave it. The air around him begins to rush in a furious vortex, creating wind so strong that the chandelier over his head begins to rattle and wail as it pulls against its medallion.

But Draco is caught up in the feeling of it in his hand: this wand is old, and powerful, and ready. It is exactly what Draco needs.

Draco has to preserve as much as he can the proper timeline, he knows: he cannot risk causing too much delineation that might damage the future. But Merlin, this is a good fucking wand. He’s had it for less than a minute and already he hates the idea of having to be parted from it. He is struck with the sudden, absurd notion that it was made, and has been waiting, specifically for Draco.

“Dragon heartstring,” says his father from behind, sounding almost fond. Almost. “Like father, like son.”

“Ah, but the dragon in your wand is quite different from the dragon in your son’s, Mr. Malfoy,” Ollivander intones. “Yours came from a Hebridean Black, as I recall—an aggressive species from Scotland. Your son’s comes from a Ukrainian Ironbelly. Woefully misunderstood, the Ironbelly. The largest species of dragon, hunted to near-extinction, but remarkably intelligent and capable of great empathy.”

The power of this wand all but vibrates in his hand, all raw, trembling potential energy with no outlet.

“You should know, Mr. Malfoy,” Ollivander continues, “that family legend tells of my grandfather making this wand after meeting a great Seer, who said it would prevent a terrible calamity.”

His father’s scrutiny is hot as a brand on Draco’s back. “Indeed?” his father replies, his voice carefully restrained.

“Acacia is rare enough in wands, even more so when coupled with dragon heartstring,” he says. “In his dotage, my grandfather used to say that it was such a peculiar and powerful combination that it could change the world with the right spell—and, of course, the right caster.”

And it’s a good thing he has such an excellent wand, because he makes extensive use of it over the next month as he begins theoretical spellwork, locked up in his childhood bedroom in the Malfoy Manor, a place he never thought he’d ever have to return to.

The mantra Draco repeats to himself is: don’t interfere, don’t delineate, you don’t know what the consequences could be for the smallest action. It’s bad enough that he’s changed his first wand; anything more significant could do real damage to his personal timeline. He just needs to design and cast the spell that will take his adult mind back to his adult body.

In practical terms, this mantra means he becomes, effectively, a shut-in. It’s probably for the best, because Draco can’t stand seeing his parents as they were when he was eleven. It’s too hard, hearing them speaking with mild contentment about whatever gossip has been circulating through the Sacred Twenty-Eight, knowing that in a few short years, their lives will be turned completely upside-down by the War.

Not that the crippling emotional agony of seeing them does anything to prevent it. Despite Draco’s best efforts, he eventually runs out of excuses to keep him away from the family dinner table.

“You haven’t been yourself lately, darling,” his mother says.

Draco stares into his plate and says nothing. They’re having lamb with a garlic-rosemary rub, which used to be his favorite dish. Now he can’t see it without thinking of what happened to Dobby. Will happen.

“I’m not hungry,” Draco says miserably.

“Don’t be ridiculous, boy,” his father says. “You’ve been shut up in your room for weeks now. The house-elves say you’re barely taking the food they leave you. You’ll eat what’s in front of you.”

His mother’s hand rests fondly in Draco’s hair. “Are you nervous about going to Hogwarts?”

“No,” Draco says, but it comes out sounding like yes, because he is nervous. Despite almost a full month of experimentation, progress on the spell to send him forward in time is slow going. On the one hand, he really shouldn’t be surprised: this is magic that is so far past theoretical that it edges right up to what should even be possible. On the other hand, if he doesn’t figure it out soon, he’s going to risk even more damage to his timeline by potentially delineating some of the most formative weeks in his young life.

“Darling,” his mother croons, “you’re going to be just fine.”

“There’s no cause to be dramatic, Draco,” his father says, taking a sip of wine so red it almost looks like blood. “What’s the worst that could possibly happen?”

Draco resists the urge to be glib (who knows, maybe someone will let a troll into the castle) and instead bites down hard on his lower lip.

He just needs to focus. He just needs to finish the spell and go back to the proper point in his timeline. He has two more weeks before he has to go to Hogwarts. He can finish it in time.

He doesn’t finish it in time.

Despite staying up all night twice; despite Apparating into Cambridge on the sly to steal a few relevant papers by Feynman, Hawking, and Heisenberg for reference; despite making more progress in his chosen field of temporal physics in one month than he’d made in the past year of his professional career, Draco doesn’t finish it in time.

And on the morning of Sunday, September 1, 1991, he is escorted to Platform 9¾ by his parents with a horrible weight in his stomach. Absurdly, the first thing he thinks when he sees the thronging crowd is: Merlin, children are so fucking small.

His father offers him the sort of impersonal, dignified parting befitting a man of his station, whose relationship with his son is more transactional than familial. His mother weeps prettily into her handkerchief and kisses him too many times on both cheeks. He remembers being eager the first time he climbed onto this train, eager to prove himself, eager to begin being exactly what his father wanted him to be.

What a fucking joke.

Draco climbs into the train car slowly, and the door barely closes behind him before the Hogwarts Express begins chugging out of the station. His trunk is trailing behind him, weighed down with a few more books than it had been the first time he’d made this journey.

Before he can even find an open compartment—

“Hey! Hey, Draco!”

He turns, and his stomach lurches with sudden, brutal nausea, several long seconds before he even understands why, before the name comes scraping up out of his throat:

“Vince?”

Oh, Merlin, he looks so young, all baby fat despite his considerable size, and his black robes are so new and clean.

Draco’s mind fills with images of Fiendfyre. No, no, no, no, no.

“Hey, Draco,” Greg says. “Did your mum send you with sweets?”

He starts to shake and hyperventilate. What remains of his conscious mind supplies him with a single, unhelpful thought: you’re having another panic attack.

He’s so young. He’s so fucking young. And Draco saw him die screaming, saw him fall and burn alive. The horrible howls of pain he’d made still wake Draco up some nights.

He scrambles backward, trunk abandoned on the floor. He can’t do this. He can’t do this. He can’t—

“Draco?” Vince says, suddenly concerned.

He grabs the door handle of the nearest compartment, throws it open and himself inside. He slams it shut behind him and immediately collapses into hoarse, desperate sobbing.

He can’t go back. He can’t do this again. It will wreck him all over again—

“Are you all right?”

—after he’d tried so hard, so fucking hard to put himself back together the first time—

“Hello?”

—and he just can’t, it’ll kill him, he can’t, he can’t—

“Hey, it’s all right. You’re all right.”

A hand on his shoulder forces Draco’s grief-wrecked mind up and out of itself. When he lifts his eyes, Harry Fucking Potter is crouched in front of him, eleven years old, glasses broken in the middle.

Hysteria threatens. Why is it always Potter?

“I’m sorry,” he gasps. It takes everything in him to control his frantic breathing enough to actually form intelligible words. “I’m sorry, I’ll go.”

“You don’t have to go,” Potter protests. “I don’t think you could stand anyway. Are you hurt?”

This is all wrong. Draco had already bungled their first meeting; he can’t delineate the timeline any further by bungling the second. Potter’s timeline is infinitely more important than his own, and he has to hate Draco, not feel sorry for him.

But what is Draco supposed to do? He can’t go back to being the horrid little monster he was; even if he were any sort of actor, every bone in his body, every drop of blood in his veins, resists the idea of even pretending, of even hollowly parroting the horrific ideas to which he used to cling so tightly, he can’t do it, he can’t—

The door slides open behind him. Draco topples backward, then spins, then scrambles away.

“Draco?” Greg says. “Are you all right? What happened?”

Draco can’t answer. He can’t look away from Vince. All he can smell is roasting flesh, all he can hear is the sound of his horrible screaming as he burned to death.

“He’s really upset,” Potter supplies as Draco presses himself flat against the compartment wall. “Do you know if he’s hurt? He seems to be having trouble breathing.”

“No,” Vince says, then amends, “I don’t think so. Draco, did your dad hit you again?”

“My mum sent me with some Calming Draught in case I got nervous,” Greg suddenly recalls. “Hang on, it’s in my pockets somewhere.”

If Draco weren’t already preoccupied with frantic sobbing and desperate hyperventilation, he’d laugh. He’s going to ruin everything. He’s going to do so much worse than just damage the timeline; he’s going to rip space-time itself apart because apparently he hasn’t healed from his fucking PTSD as much as he assumed he had.

As Greg starts fumbling through his pockets for the Calming Draught, Vince turns to Potter.

“I’m Vincent Crabbe,” he says. “Vince is fine. And he’s Draco Malfoy. I’m sure he’d tell you himself if he could. Sometimes his dad gets rough with him, but I’ve never seen it this bad.”

“Nice to meet you,” Potter says. “I’m Harry Potter.”

“Hullo,” Vince says, failing to recognize the name.

“Here, Draco, drink this,” Greg says. He’s holding out his mother’s home-brewed potion, uncorked. Draco knows that using Calming Draught on a full-blown panic attack is a bit like fighting a forest fire with a squirt bottle, but he’s so desperate that he’ll try anything. As Draco swallows it down in three desperate mountfuls, Greg stands and says, “I’m Greg Goyle, by the way.”

“Hello. Is he going to be all right?”

“I think so,” is Vince’s considered response. “He’s usually all right eventually.”

“I think I recognize you,” Potter says, sitting down on the seat nearest to where Draco is curled around himself on the floor. He seems to be making a very concerted effort to talk to him as normally as possible, a transparent effort to settle his nerves. “Madam Malkin’s, right?”

The Calming Draught has managed to take the edge off. Enough, at least, for him to form a sentence without too much difficulty, though under the circumstances, the only one he can come up with is: “I can’t believe this is fucking happening.”

Greg and Vince laugh, always pleased by any rule-breaking they’re around to witness—even, in the early days, something as prosaic as swearing.

“See?” Vince says. “He’s fine. Oh, wow! Is that a snowy owl?”

Potter brightens considerably. “Yes! Her name is Hedwig. Hagrid bought her for me. He’s the gamekeeper at Hogwarts.”

“Wicked!” Vince decides. He’d always had a soft spot for animals, a thought which makes Draco’s heart lurch painfully behind his ribs.

Hot air stinging his face, blazing Fiendfyre, the smell of burning flesh, the scream of a young man barely out of adolescence as he dies—

Draco takes a few shuddering breaths and forces himself to find his center. What was that fucking grounding exercise his therapist had him doing, back in the early days? Five things he can see, four things he can feel? Merlin, Draco isn’t sure how much more of this he can take.

In the periphery of his vision, a flash of red. Draco looks up with a start, half expecting it to be Fiendfyre, and seeing hair instead, vanishing out of sight through the window on the compartment door.

As Potter and Vince chatter happily about Hagrid and Hedwig and Greg tries to sneak the bird some sweets from his pocket, Draco rises to a wobbly stand, crossing the compartment to pull the door open.

On the far end of the narrow corridor, an eleven-year-old Ron Weasley goes through to the next train car.

Dread settles into his stomach. This is where Potter and Weasley had met, wasn’t it? Where it all began? Draco feels the absurd desire to call out after him: wait, Weasley, come back and introduce yourself to your best friend!

“Draco?”

He looks back over his shoulder, startled, at Potter, whose casual use of his first name is somehow the most bizarre thing to happen to Draco in years—and he’s counting getting forcibly transported back in time.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll be honest,” Draco mutters, “I’m not really sure.”

“Malfoy, Draco.”

He drags himself up to the front of the Great Hall on heavy feet. It had been a long train ride. The panic attack had ended at least, if only because Draco did not have the physical stamina necessary to keep it up all the way to Scotland, though he’d given it a good try.

Greg gives him a toothy grin from the Slytherin table. In the back of his mind he’s now remembering that the Sorting Hat is psychic and that ought to be concerning, maybe, but he just doesn’t have it in him to panic anymore. He’s fresh out.

He sits down on the stool. The Sorting Hat comes down on him.

For a few seconds, nothing happens.

This is highly irregular, it eventually decides.

No fucking shit, Draco answers without difficulty. He’s used to psychic communication, at least.

You’ve already completed your Hogwarts curriculum. In terms of sorting, the answer is: none of the above. You shouldn’t be here.

Draco nearly laughs. Nearly. He doesn’t have enough energy for it. Just put me in Slytherin, you glorified dishrag. Don’t destabilize the timeline any further than it already is.

It is not my job to care about the timeline, Mr. Malfoy. My job is to sort you, and apparently I’ve already done that.

Not in this timeline, you haven’t.

Behind him, McGonagall clears her throat uncomfortably. She hadn’t really expected him to be a hatstall, apparently. At the Slytherin table, Vince and Greg are starting to look nervous.

You’ve lost much of the ruthlessness of your youth, the Hat remarks, but your cunning has only grown. As you are, you might be better suited for Ravenclaw.

Draco is going to set this useless lump of wool on fire. Listen to me: I’ve already delineated the events of my childhood pretty substantially. I can’t go anywhere but Slytherin if there’s any hope of salvaging my future.

People are starting to mutter. It’s been about a minute now, and Draco finds he’s not too proud to beg: Please, just put me in Slytherin. How much more ambitious can you get than trying to save the fabric of space and time?

The Hat hums audibly. I suppose that’s true. A word of advice before we’re parted, Mr. Malfoy?

Draco tries not to groan. This sorting has gone on long enough. Must we?

Don’t let yourself be consumed with the way you assume things ought to be, the Hat advises. The forces you’re dealing with are stronger and more obdurate than any one wizard. Bend to time’s will; don’t make the mistake of trying for the other way around.

Draco is stunned. Before he can even come up with a coherent answer:

“SLYTHERIN!”

The sound makes him jump. McGonagall lifts the hat off his head. The Slytherin table applauds, though it’s more sedate and confused than he recalls from the first time. He rises on unsteady legs and makes the long walk over to the familiar table.

The others are giving him odd looks, assessing and wary. Draco tries not to pay attention to them.

Draco knows that the Sorting Hat had been, generally, correct: time isn’t something that can be bent by force of will. Still, it is important to at least try and preserve the timeline as he knows it, right? To let it take the shape it had taken the first time, which it clearly needed to?

“Potter, Harry!”

Draco had not enjoyed living through the War. He’d go so far as to say that it was the worst few years of his life. But it had ended, and it is the only timeline he knows of that assures it does. If a butterfly in Brazil can create a tornado in Texas, who’s to say that Draco Malfoy’s wand wouldn’t assure victory for Voldemort?

The only responsible thing to do is to get out, quickly, quietly, and without creating too many significant differences. He needs to finish his spell and return to where he belongs. Merlin willing, nothing else will delineate before then—

“SLYTHERIN!”

The Great Hall goes absolutely, deadly quiet.

Except for Draco, of course, who as Harry Fucking Potter stands up and heads over to his table, blinking in bewildered confusion at the rest of the room, says, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Draco resolves to talk to Snape.

He’s really the only sensible person to confide in, under the circumstances. And Draco quickly decides that he does need to confide in someone with some authority: it is absolutely insane that he should have to suffer through a first-year Hogwarts curriculum while trying to save the fabric of space and time.

But at the same time, he can’t go around making the knowledge of where he comes from and what he’s trying to achieve too public. Merlin knows he’s already fucked the timeline up enough, by the way Harry Potter is settling unsteadily into Slytherin.

The following morning, before class, before breakfast, he ducks out of his dormitory and out of the common room, where around the corner, in the back of the empty, quiet potions classroom, the office of Severus Snape sits tucked.

He knocks, but it’s perfunctory: Draco knows he’s awake. As long as Draco had known him, he’d been a chronic insomniac. Only a few heartbeats pass before he hears a cautious, “Enter.”

Draco enters.

And though he’d come with the best of intentions and the firmest of will, it is one thing to decide and another thing to do.

Because staring at Severus Snape, in the flesh—

“Fuck,” Draco whispers, and feels his heart shatter to pieces.

“Mr. Malfoy,” Snape says, looking only mildly surprised, “you’re up early.”

He looks so much younger than in Draco’s memory, even in the oppressive darkness of his office. Or maybe not younger, but less burdened. In the last few years before his death, Snape had been a constant companion but weighed down by the horror of Voldemort’s return and his role in it. And still, through it all, he’d managed to be not just a godfather to Draco, but a mentor and protector, a guiding light through the worst days of Draco’s life.

He’d died before Draco had ever gotten to thank him.

His throat gets tight.

“Mr. Malfoy?”

Draco had been one of three people who’d attended his funeral. He’d been a hero in the end, he’d died to ensure the destruction of the Dark Lord, and only three fucking people—

“Draco.”

His voice is sharpened with worry. Draco realizes that he’s been standing in silence in his office for near on a full minute, shaking, eyes burning with tears, and absolutely silent.

Snape stands up from where he’d been bent over his desk and comes forward. He takes a knee in front of Draco, dark eyes scanning his body for wounds.

“Are you injured?” he asks. Then: “Your father?”

“No,” Draco manages, though his voice is strangled. “It’s just… I…”

Suddenly, Draco is not so resolved. He’s not sure he can do this. It hurts too much.

“I’m just… it’s good to see you, sir,” he says. That, at least, is true—so true it hurts to say.

Snape narrows his eyes in confusion.

“Forgive me,” Draco says, and backs out of his office from whence he came. It’s all he can do to make it out of the potions classroom and into the hallway before burying his face in his hands.

How is he supposed to do this? How can he possibly survive seeing all these faces he’d had to watch die in another life, whose horrible fates he knows but cannot say, whose ghosts still haunt the most vulnerable parts of Draco’s soul?

“Are you all right?”

Draco takes in a sharp breath. He is both surprised and not surprised to see—

“Potter,” he rasps. The skinny little berk is standing a few feet off, looking awkward in a loosened Slytherin tie. Draco scrapes his palms across his face, though there’s no hiding the redness of his eyes. “Are you following me?” You’d be five years ahead of schedule.

Potter goes a bit red in the face. “No,” he says. “I mean, I didn’t mean to. I woke up early to take a look around the dungeons, and saw you leave. I just…”

Merlin, has Potter always been this obnoxiously earnest? Slytherin is going to eat him alive.

“I’m fine,” Draco says, and pushes off the door of the potions classroom to walk past him. Infuriatingly, Potter hurries to follow.

“Can I ask you something?”

“I don’t think I’d be able to stop you,” Draco answers, already exhausted.

“Everyone in Slytherin is acting… weird around me,” he says. “I mean, past all the Boy-Who-Lived rubbish. I can’t figure out why. I asked Vince and Greg but they just get really nervous and don’t answer.”

“Yeah, it’s a real head-scratcher,” Draco sighs. “Can’t you ask Hagrid? Someone you like?”

Potter, who’s since caught up to him and who Draco can see hurrying alongside him, stares at him in owlish confusion. “I like you,” he says. “Or, well, I don’t dislike you.”

Merlin, Draco really is fucking this all up.

“Lord Voldemort,” Draco finally concedes, “the man who killed your parents but couldn’t manage the job with you?”

Potter nods slowly.

“He was in Slytherin. That’s why they’re being weird. They can’t believe that you’re in his house.”

Slowly, Potter’s green eyes get wide. “Voldemort was in Slytherin?” Then, predictably: “Am I like Voldemort? That man in the wand shop, Ollivander, said—”

“Potter,” Draco interjects, “you can take it from me when I say that you are nothing like Voldemort.”

They both stop in the middle of the hallway. Those entirely-too-big green eyes swivel up to Draco’s face. “I’m not?”

“Definitely not. Don’t worry about it, all right? His soul was all darkness, and yours has a light that will never go out. You’ll never be anything like him.”

Potter stares at him in wide-eyed silence. He doesn’t seem to know what to say, which is good, because Draco has just about reached his limit for interacting with children for the day. He glides past Potter, back toward the Slytherin common rooms, and Potter—thank Merlin—doesn’t follow.

So, because Draco can’t be alone in a room with his godfather without bursting into tears, and because (according to his therapist) he has deep-seated trust issues that prevent him from opening up to people easily, he decides to squeeze saving the fabric of space and time in between first-year Hogwarts classes.

The only good thing about the whole infuriating situation is that the Hogwarts library has a much wider array of resources available. He’s easily able to find more than a few volumes on time travel, though of course they’re largely introductions to the field and not the kind of in-depth detailed treatises he needs. Still, it’s more than he had at the Manor.

Every available moment he spends at a corner table in the library, taking copious notes on the many disciplines that make time travel possible; some if it Draco jots down from books, but most of it is from his own memory, written down so he won’t forget it. When he’s very lucky, he’s struck with a burst of inspiration that lets him refine the spell to take him back to the correct position in his timeline.

“Draco, what are you doing out here?” Vince asks him one evening. “It’s only the third day of term.”

Draco looks up. His head is pounding in a way that tells him he probably missed dinner. Vince, Greg, and—for some fucking reason—Harry Potter are standing at the end of his table.

Briefly, Draco looks down at the mess, stacks of books and notes, a battlefield of broken quills and spilled ink.

“What can I say? I’m keen to get a jump on my homework.”

“I don’t think this we have classes on this stuff,” Potter says, picking up a volume off in the corner of the table. “General Relativity and Magical Theory: Interdisciplinary Methods? What’s general relativity?”

Draco snatches the book out of his hand. “Do you three need something?”

“We’ve hardly seen you,” Greg says, frowning. “Pansy’s worried about you. So is Blaise.”

Draco scoffs. Yes, he bets Blaise is worried about him. He’d confessed in sixth year that Draco had been the reason he’d realized he was bent at only twelve years old, and Draco, in a terribly dark place and sure he was going to die soon, had let Blaise fuck him in the astronomy tower.

“I’m fine, I’m just busy,” he says.

“With what? This can’t all possibly be homework,” Vince protests.

“It’s—” Merlin, he can’t believe he has to make up stupid lies for children as well as save the timeline. “I’m working on a special project.”

“What kind of project?” Potter asks, leaning over to look at his notebook. Draco’s instinct tells him to hug it to his chest to prevent him from seeing it—but then, what’s an eleven-year-old going to do with notes on temporal physics?

“The kind that I can’t explain in a couple sentences, all right? I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow.”

“Not that you’ll talk to us,” Greg grouses.

“I brought you some food from dinner,” Potter says, and to Draco’s absolute shock, sets down a turkey drumstick and piece of blueberry tart on the table, each wrapped in napkins. “Since you missed it.”

Draco stares at the food, then up at Potter.

“Uh,” he says, “thanks.”

Potter beams. And though it’s deeply weird for Draco to accept kindness, of all things, from Harry Fucking Potter, he still eats it once they finally leave. He did miss dinner, after all.

And apart from where he absolutely must, Draco doesn’t interfere. He keeps to himself, because that’s where it’s safest to be. He’s already delineated the timeline enough.

“Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

He’s done enough damage. He really shouldn’t interfere any further.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Tut, tut—fame clearly isn’t everything.”

Draco had really thought that, since Harry was in Slytherin now, Snape would have gone a little easier on him. Did he really have so much resentment for a dead man that he’d torture his eleven-year-old son for no good fucking reason?

“Let’s try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

He shouldn’t. He really, really shouldn’t. Edward Lorenz would never forgive him.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Thought you wouldn’t open a book before coming, eh, Potter?”

But Draco is older now. And after a very long, very bloody war, he has lost his taste for cruelty, no matter how small.

“What is the difference, Potter—”

“Professor,” Draco says loudly, closing his eyes tightly and rubbing his forehead with one hand.

The room goes quiet. He feels the eyes on him without seeing them.

When Draco had been very young—maybe seven or eight—his father had beaten him with his walking stick to the point where he’d fractured two ribs. But Draco had been a child, and didn’t know how to ask for help, and the injuries had gone untreated.

Snape had dragged the story out of Draco a few days later, healed the fractures himself, and told him, Draco Malfoy, if ever something like this happens again, if ever you need me but don’t know how to ask, all you have to say—

“Pitié.”

Finally, Draco looks up. Snape is staring at him with dark intensity, his hands clasped behind his back. His eyes scan Draco’s body, briefly, then return to his face.

“See me after class, Mr. Malfoy,” he says, but he begins the lesson proper.

Draco tries not to notice that Potter is staring at him again.

“When you came barging into my office on the first day of term,” Snape says when the last student empties out of the classroom, “I asked if you were injured and you said no. Were you lying?”

“I’m not injured,” Draco says. “I didn’t use our word on my own behalf, sir.”

His voice is cold as he says, “Excuse me?” There was a time when that voice would have scared the hell out of him.

But that time is not now. “Cruelty comes in many forms, sir.”

Snape narrows his eyes. He’s leaning forward over his desk, both hands braced on the wood. “You take issue with my teaching methods?” His voice is absolutely lethal.

“You weren’t teaching him anything, you were tormenting him because his father was an asshole,” Draco answers.

“Language, Mr. Malfoy.”

Draco almost says, I am thirty-four years old, I’m allowed to say asshole.

“Your behavior has been very strange recently,” Snape continues, when Draco only purses his lips rather than reply. “Your mother sent along an owl just before term started, remarking that you’ve been withdrawing recently, shut up in your room, avoiding your friends—”

“I’ve been busy,” Draco says.

“—and asking me to keep an eye on you. What do you think I should report to her, Mr. Malfoy? That you come into my office early in the morning, on the verge of tears but unable to tell me why, that you have a sudden interest in how I treat your peers?”

“I have an interest in intervening when I see casual cruelty,” Draco says. “It is the worst trait of our house, Professor, and unworthy of you especially.”

Snape narrows his eyes. Draco feels like he is staring down the snout of an angry dragon, but Draco has fought worse things than dragons, and he doesn’t flinch.

“Draco,” Snape says eventually, voice quiet, “when did I give you the impression that I am a good or kind man?”

Draco laughs. He can’t help it. It bursts out of him as though through a dam collapsing.

“When you healed the ribs my father broke when I was eight-years-old,” he says. “When you gave me a safe word that I could say to ensure your intervention when I needed it. When you refused to buy me birthday presents like everyone else in my life, and instead sent me letters full of wisdom and kindness, trying to teach me how to be better than my father.”

“You hate those letters,” Snape says. His voice is almost fond—or, perhaps, is layers of suspicion and concern wrapped around a core of fondness. “You used to whine about how I never gave you any proper gifts.”

“I’ve gained some perspective.” Decades of it. “Professor, you are a good man, you are a kind man. The issue lies not in your soul, but in the pain that has plagued it all your life. Harry Potter is eleven years old and innocent of the sins of his father. And he’s alone, and scared, and he needs your goodness and kindness far more than I do.”

He doesn’t even realize what he’s saying until it’s all out of his mouth already, tumbled off his lips and scattering across Snape’s desk like an untidy pile of homework in need of grading. By the time Draco finishes the thought, he realizes, with creeping dread, that he may have just broken the timeline even worse than it already had been.

It’s not supposed to go this way. It’s not supposed to go this way. Panic thrums in the back of his throat.

Slowly, Snape says, “Draco, how concerned should I be about this behavior?”

Draco swallows thickly. “There’s no reason to be concerned,” he answers. The words sound, and taste, like lies.

“Draco, four months ago, I came to the Malfoy Manor to deliver one of those birthday letters and saw you getting into a shouting match with Theodore Nott over the quality of his present.” Draco flinches. Merlin, he really had been such a little shit. “And now you come into my office on behalf of Harry Potter, a boy you barely know and who you have no reason to like, telling me to be kind to him. This is, to say the least, a major deviation in your character and the kind of thing that should be concerning.”

He should say it. He should just say it. Snape could help him. He’s a professor, the head of his house, and a singularly competent wizard on his own merits.

And Draco wouldn’t have to do this all alone.

But when he opens his mouth, the words catch. Shame and grief and pain snarl through the darker parts of his soul.

What right does he have to ask for help, from Severus Snape especially? He never valued the man like he deserved till he was already dead, never thanked him, never even tried to empathize. He wasted so much of his young life being angry and bitter and hateful and sad.

He doesn’t deserve to be anything but alone. The realization makes his stomach hurt.

“Sorry for worrying you, sir,” Draco says, very quietly, and leaves.

“Draco!” Snape calls after him, but Draco’s already out the door—

—where Harry Fucking Potter stands, blinking widely at him. Clearly, he’d been listening at the door.

Draco just sighs, and swallows, and walks past him.

He starts studying under an anti-perception charm in the restricted section of the library. He pilfers food from the kitchens instead of going to meals. He goes to great lengths to avoid even seeing his peers. He only comes back to the dormitories very late at night.

He runs himself ragged, but he finishes the spell.

Before the end of the month, he’s built out the spell framework and done proof-of-concept using a few gnomes he snatched out of the Forbidden Forest. No gnomes are harmed, but one of them does bite Draco while he wrestles it into the castle.

The key ends up being a rune.

At first he means to draw it on the floor of the Room of Requirement, but when the room gives him, among other things, a cabinet, he starts shaking and breathing hard shortly before fleeing the wing entirely.

So, instead, he draws it in a disused classroom on the fourth floor, all the tables and chairs moved to the sides of the room to allow for the large, fifteen-foot-diameter rune. He uses a spelled chalk that glimmers faintly and, when he eventually pushes some magic into it, glows a brilliant blue-white.

“All right,” he whispers, mostly to himself. “All right. You can do this. You have to do this.”

He sits down in the middle of the rune, which is now humming faintly, and presses both hands into it. He shuts his eyes and starts to chant long lines of Latin.

The rune gets brighter as he speaks. The humming gets louder.

From the corner of the room near the door, just as the spell builds to a crescendo, a faint voice trembles:

“Draco?”

But the spell has already taken hold.

Chapter Text

Light floods his vision. He lurches forward and gasps, his center of gravity once again sending him reeling. The same voice, deeper, says, again:

“Draco?”

He blinks against what he eventually identifies as blinding sunlight. His limbs feel stiff and awkward. His head is distressingly muddled.

When his vision adjusts, he finds himself sat in a wooden chair by a large picture window which is overlooking a garden and a rolling English countryside. He’s dressed all in white; the clothes are soft and comfortable but too big on him.

And, for some unfathomable reason, Harry Fucking Potter is sitting across from him.

He’s in a wooden chair of his own, a book open in his lap. His expression hovers somewhere in the middle of stunned, terrified, and hopeful.

“Draco? Are you…?”

“Why,” Draco manages, though he has to force his voice to cooperate, “is it always you?”

Potter leaps to his feet so abruptly that his book falls to the floor.

“Holy shit,” he says. Then, over his shoulder: “Can I get some help over here!”

“Where are we?” Draco asks. Merlin, it’s hard to speak. Why is it hard to speak? “Wait, you’re an adult. What year is it?”

Suddenly, Potter is on his knees in front of him, green eyes shining with—are those tears?

“Potter, are you crying?”

“I,” he says, “yes. I’m just—Draco, how are you… you’re really…”

Draco has some idea of where he should be. He’d aimed to be taken back to the exact day he’d been yanked out of—May 3, 2014, around 4:00 in the afternoon. Based on what he’s seeing outside the window, a sunny spring afternoon, it seems perfectly plausible that he got the date right.

But clearly, something has gone desperately wrong.

“Where the fuck am I?” he grinds out.

Before Potter can answer, he’s surrounded by a mediwitch and two nurses, all of them looking as stunned as Potter does, snapping off quick diagnostic spells, testing his reflexes, checking his pupils.

Draco waves them away impatiently, and perhaps a bit desperately. “Will someone please fucking answer me! Where am I? What year is it?”

The people around him exchange uneasy looks. None of them seem to know what to say, which does absolutely nothing to settle Draco’s nerves.

“It’s 2014,” the mediwitch says eventually. At least Draco got that much right. “You must forgive our shock, Mr. Malfoy. None of us were expecting you to wake up.”

Draco stares. Nausea forms a knot in his throat. “Wake up?”

“Draco,” Potter says, slowly, “you’ve been in withdrawn catatonia for twenty-three years.”

“In what.”

Eventually, Draco puts together a few vital pieces of context by interrogating his nurses and consulting his medical record:

He’d managed to get the date of the spell exactly right. He was pushed forward in his timeline to May 3, 2014, at 4:00 in the afternoon. What he’d fucked up was what, specifically, he’d pushed forward.

He hadn’t taken into account that he’d have to separate his adult mind and memories from his child mind and memories before casting the spell. From Potter’s perspective, that night in late September, 1991, Draco had suddenly gone still and silent, and stayed that way for twenty-three fucking years, alive but empty. He’d been taken to St. Mungo’s, where a slew of medical professionals ran a battery of tests and then admitted that they’d never seen anything like it, and had given a feeble diagnosis of withdrawn catatonia, despite lack of concurrent brain injury or psychological trauma.

The reason Draco’s limbs feel stiff and awkward is due to muscular atrophy. The reason it’s difficult for him to talk is because he hadn’t done so in over two decades.

“But what about Voldemort?” Draco asks Potter, who comes to pick him up when he’s released three days later from the long-term care facility he’d been living in (apparently). “He’s dead?”

Potter frowns at him. “I… yes. He’s dead.”

“At the Battle of Hogwarts?” Draco persists. “1998?”

“The Battle of—what? No. Draco, what are you talking about?”

“Here you go, Mr. Malfoy,” says the charge nurse, who hands Draco his personal effects, which had apparently been held in storage all these years: a notebook full of hastily scrawled equations, his spelled chalk, and his wand. At least he gets to keep his wand in this timeline. He slips it into the sleeve of the shirt he’d borrowed from Potter; it’s a bit long, and slouches around his shoulders, but at least it’s not the eerie, sterile white hospital scrubs he’d been wearing for the past two decades (apparently).

“Voldemort died in Yorkshire in 1999,” Potter says.

“Well, that’s fair. I’d die if I ever went to Yorkshire, too,” Draco answers. Potter barks a surprised laugh.

“God,” he says, “I remember you were brilliant, but I didn’t realize you were funny.”

“You’ll need to sign the release, too, Mr. Potter,” the charge nurse says before Draco can make sense of that particular reaction. “As his next-of-kin.”

Draco balks. “As my fucking what?”

“It’s—ah—” Potter smiles apologetically, then takes the proffered quill and scribbles a messy signature across the bottom of the parchment below Draco’s. “It’s kind of a long story. Come on, let’s take a walk off the grounds, then I can Apparate you back to Grimmauld Place.”

The long-term care facility is in Cambridgeshire (apparently), on a particularly beautiful parcel of land near the River Cam. It’s the height of spring, and the hill on which the campus is situated commands an impressive view of a rolling green valley and forest that fills the southern horizon.

As he and Potter walk a long, pleasant path toward the front gate leading off the grounds, Potter explains:

“After you went into your catatonic state—”

“I wasn’t in a catatonic state.”

“—uh, all right. After you did whatever it is you did in first year, there was a formal inquiry. I was a suspect, initially.”

Draco frowns. “A suspect?”

“You’d just gone out, Draco, like a fucking light,” Potter continues. “Dark magic was suspected at first, and I was the one who found you.”

Well, shit. “Merlin, Father must have been spitting hot coals.”

“He definitely was,” Potter says, scowling in the way that only someone who knows how truly vile Lucius Malfoy is can scowl. “Tried to pin the whole thing on me. But Narcissa believed me.”

Draco isn’t quite sure how to feel about the fact that Potter is on a first-name basis with his mother. The circumspection must be all over his face, because Potter hurries to elaborate:

“She sort of took me under her wing,” he explains. “I think… looking back, I think it helped her, to have another child to transfer some of her love onto. You were there but not there, and she was grieving, and I was scared, and it just sort of worked out. I didn’t have a mother, she didn’t have a son. She was good to me, Draco, when she didn’t have to be. I owe a lot to her.”

Affection and fear rise simultaneously in Draco’s heart.

“You’re talking about her in past tense,” he says, very quietly, as they come to a stop just outside the wrought-iron fence circling the grounds of the facility.

Potter’s expression is tragic. “She’s dead, Draco,” he answers, also quiet. “She died in the Inferno.”

The fear gets stronger, so strong that Draco finds he’s actually dizzy.

“In the what.”

In the middle of Greenwich, ten city blocks stand blackened, all buildings hollowed and scorched beyond recognition, the pavement a stretch of rough black glass. Potter had Apparated them both to the monument that stands dedicated to it, a towering obelisk, its four sides full of engraved names.

A list of those who’d died here.

“The Muggles think it was a terrorist attack,” Potter explains, sounding a little rueful. “I don’t know of any Muggle terrorist cell that could do something like this, but I guess people believe what they want to believe, especially when they’re grieving.”

Draco is aware, distantly, that his hands are shaking. His shoulders are shaking. His whole body is, maybe.

“After Voldemort discovered that Narcissa had been helping me,” he continues, “she went into hiding. But some Death Eaters found the Secret-Keeper and tortured it out of him. Of course, Voldemort couldn’t just kill her. He had to take out a whole fucking borough of London.”

Draco swallows hard.

“How,” he begins, but his voice breaks. He tries again. “How many.”

“How many what?”

“How many died.”

Potter is silent for a time. “About three thousand altogether.”

Nausea rips his stomach to ribbons. Draco doubles over, braces both hands on the side of the monument. He feels the engraved names under his fingertips, and like a brand in his soul.

No, no, no. It wasn’t supposed to get worse. How could Draco’s absence from the events of the War make it worse? He didn’t want this. He’d never wanted this.

All these people. Three thousand people. Dead because of him. His own fucking mother, dead because of him.

A hoarse sob rips its way out of his throat. His legs give out. Potter’s quick to catch him before he completely collapses.

“It’s all right,” he says. “Hey. Draco, just breathe for me.”

But Draco can’t breathe. He can’t even see. Despite Potter’s best efforts, despite the soothing hand on his back, despite the way he pulls Draco into his chest, Draco can do nothing but sit, and sob, and shatter into a thousand pieces.

Six hours later, a cup of tea appears on the window sill in front of Draco, startling him out of the abyss that is his mind. When he looks over, Potter is standing next to him, green eyes soft.

“Here,” he says.

Draco looks down at the tea.

“Chamomile,” he notices at once.

“It was her favorite,” Potter replies, making his best attempt at a smile. “I figured it might…”

Draco hates chamomile tea. He drinks it anyway.

Potter sits down next to him on the ottoman by the window. It had started to rain around sunset, and little droplets patter the walls and roof of 12 Grimmauld Place, streaking the pane of glass that Draco had been staring through for the past hour, mind churning slowly over what he’s learned.

“You have a home here,” Potter says, “if you want it. I inherited this place from Sirius, but you’re a Black by blood, so it’s yours as much as mine. And before she died, she—”

Potter hesitates. Draco takes a long sip of tea.

“—she asked me to take care of you. If something should happen to her.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Draco says. He has to force the platitude out of his mouth. It tastes hollow and meaningless.

“You’re not an imposition,” Potter answers, and somehow the platitude sounds sincere and gentle coming from him.

Draco leans his temple against the window pane, staring out at the rain-drenched London street.

“Draco,” Potter says, very slowly, and very carefully, “what happened? All those years ago. All the professors and investigators went through your notes, but no one could make any sense of them. What spell were you casting?”

Here is what Draco knows:

If the cost had been his alone to bear, Draco would gladly bear it. He’d let his mother rest in peace, knowing he had never deserved that kind of unconditional love in the first place. He’d accept that this version of events was different from the version that lived in his memory, but that Voldemort was dead, and that was what mattered.

But the cost isn’t Draco’s alone to bear. Three thousand people are dead, three thousand more than had died in the original timeline, a whole borough of London turned to black glass.

What was the point of all that therapy, all that effort to be a better version of himself, if he can’t follow through when it’s hardest? In the aftermath of the War, he’d wrestled with the philosophical angle of ethics, he’d read Kant and Epictetus studied Dharma, he’d confronted his own failings as a rational animal and had accepted that his mistakes were behind him and that future goodness was the only way to atone for past wrongs.

Except now those past wrongs are not so formless and intangible, and future goodness depends on their correction.

And Draco knows he has to go back.

“Draco?”

At the very least, he has to go back to cast a corrected version of the spell, to allow his awful little snotty self back into his correct place in his timeline. Apparently three thousand lives depend on it.

But Draco doesn’t know where to begin in correcting the spell. His specialty is temporal physics, not neuroscience.

Which is when the answer hits him:

He needs to talk to Westy.

“Potter,” Draco says, slowly peeling himself away from the window and fixing him with a stare, “I need a favor.”

Though he and Westy are—had been, could be?—very close, they very rarely saw each other outside of work, preferring to keep in contact via texting each other stupid memes and occasional outings to cafes and, and one memorable occasion, a Hollyhead Harpies game.

Draco knows that she’s married to a Muggle, and that they live somewhere in Cornwall, and that, being thirty years older than Draco, her timeline should be largely unaffected by Draco’s interference. And though Draco had made efforts to understand the Muggle world better, he was still hugely unequipped to handle a telephone book and the bus system, which is where Potter comes in.

“Draco,” Potter says as they finally make it to the end of Trevethan Road, after having had to walk the last three blocks from the bus stop, “will you please explain where we’re going now?”

“I’ll explain afterward anything you don’t pick up from context,” Draco says. Trevethan Road is only about a quarter-mile from the sunny Falmouth seaside, and Draco can hear the sounds of gulls. “You don’t have to stay, you know, if you don’t want to.”

“Draco, I just got you back. I’m not leaving.”

Draco shoots him a strange look, trying and failing to parse the meaning of the sentiment.

“As you like, Potter, but the conversation might be a bit hard for you to follow.”

He knocks on the door of Number 28, painted a cheerful bright blue, the brass numbers gleaming in the midmorning sun. It’s a Saturday, which Draco knows means Westy will be home with her wife, having a slow breakfast before they go to walk their dog together.

When Wensty opens the front door in striped pajamas, her dark hair all disheveled from recent sleep, Draco can’t quite contain the relieved smile that appears on his face. Merlin, it’s good to see her—even if her answering blank stare smarts a bit.

“Rexalvio,” Draco says at once, the universal Unspeakable safe word.

Westy startles, and it takes her a moment to pull her wand from her sleeve, fumbling to cast the enchantment that will allow her to communicate with him: a touch to the black rune on her throat, and another to Draco’s forehead.

“Westy,” he says the second the magic settles, “I need your magical expertise.”

Do I know you?

“Yes and no,” Draco answers. “My name is Draco Malfoy. In another timeline, I was your friend and coworker at the Department of Mysteries. My specialty was temporal physics. Yours was—is still, I hope—neuroscience?”

The confusion on her face settles a bit. Draco isn’t surprised. With the amount of crazy bullshit that happens in the Department of Mysteries, someone coming to your house and saying they’re you’re friend from an alternate timeline is rather anodyne.

Yes, I’m a neuroscientist and mediwitch. Did you get yourself temporally displaced?

“Extremely,” Draco answers. “I got sent backward in my personal timeline, to my eleven-year-old body.”

“What?” Potter says, behind him.

Draco ignores him. “And I managed to develop and cast the spell to take me forward again, but I didn’t do it correctly. I managed to take my child consciousness with me when I left. I need your help to reconfigure the spell.”

Westy’s mouth twists in that way it does when she’s presented with an interesting problem.

Fascinating, she eventually decides. You’d better come in. Who’s your friend?

Draco can’t help but laugh. “You still don’t recognize him, do you?”

Twenty minutes and three cups of tea later, Draco has completely filled the blackboard in Westy’s study with the spell framework. The equations start at a decent size, but get smaller and more illegible as he began to run out of room. Westy had watched him write in silence the entire time, leaning her shoulder against one of the many bookshelves dominating the western wall of the room. Potter had found a seat on the edge of her cluttered desk, and is staring at the numbers with the frown of someone who’s only just following the plot.

“So that’s about the size of it,” Draco says, tossing the nub of chalk back onto the ledge beneath the blackboard. “I need to figure out how to account for the past and present selves, but I don’t know where to start.”

Westy spends a few more moments studying the framework, her arms folded over her chest. Eventually, she lifts one hand and thoughtfully taps her chin.

I’m assuming this has already occurred to you, if your specialty is temporal physics, but I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention it: the type of time travel you’re describing is dangerous, theoretically capable of tremendous damage to space-time. I hope you have taken into account that further interference could cause temporal fraying?

“I have,” Draco confirms, “but I crossed that bridge when Needle—sorry, that was my pet project, Needle—initially sent me backward. I didn’t detect any fraying, and trust me, I was looking. And as long as I go directly back to the aftermath of the botched spell in 1991, I’m reasonably confident that it will allow for unimpeded linear flow.”

Reasonably confident? Westy doesn’t look impressed. That’s a lot of damage to hang on an adverb. What could possibly be worth that kind of risk?

Draco opens his mouth, but for a time, isn’t able to speak.

Very slowly, Draco says, “The Inferno.”

Westy frowns. Draco can’t bear to look at the expression, and so turns to stare hard into the blackboard intead.

“It didn’t happen, Westy,” he continues. “In the original timeline, it never happened. Somehow, the chaos theory following my botched spell caused three thousand people to die.”

He doesn’t need to be looking at Westy to tell that she’s startled. What? How?

Without meaning to, Draco looks over his shoulder at Potter. His expression has changed; he seems to be following the plot better, and is staring at Draco with a newly sad expression.

“I don’t know,” Draco eventually says, and turns forward again. “And it’s not worth the effort of mapping out each delineation when there’s such a clear root cause. I need to go back and cast the spell correctly, allowing for my child consciousness to continue while my adult consciousness moves to its correct position again.”

The mere act of being transported back in the way you were surely caused psychoneural entanglement, Westy theorizes. She’s still tapping her lower lip. Separating the two after the fact will get you deep in philosophy of mind work.

Despite himself, Draco smirks. “You say that like you don’t already have a few ideas.”

She chuckles soundlessly and confirms, I have a few ideas.

Time slips past Draco, in the old-fashioned way of getting lost in an interesting puzzle. He and Westy spend three long hours proposing theories and arguing them down, mapping out spellwork and revising it, invoking work from thinkers before them and paring it down to only what they need.

I can see why you were hired as an Unspeakable so young, Westy remarks after Draco sketches out some framework to accommodate for two separate consciousnesses and one body.

“Don’t let my fancy words fool you,” Draco replies. “I was hired solely to be department eye candy.”

Westy’s shoulders shake in a soundless laugh. And now I can see why we were friends.

Shortly afterward, Westy’s wife, Eun-Ji, pokes her head into the study and asks if they’re going to stay for lunch, so they do. They have a delightful spicy cold noodle dish on the back patio and Eun-Ji makes small talk about the project they’re working on. She follows along surprisingly well for a Muggle school teacher.

“Draco,” Potter says after Westy and Eun-Ji take the dishes back into the kitchen, “are you really sure this is worth the risk?”

He’d been so quiet for so much of the last few hours that Draco is taken aback by the sudden question.

“It just seems so risky,” he elaborates, when Draco doesn’t answer.

“It’s worth the risk,” Draco answers at once.

Potter doesn’t answer for a long while, but he does stare at Draco, long and lingering. Draco feels his scrutiny like pinpricks along his skin.

“I only knew you for a few months altogether,” Potter eventually says, “before the spell. But your absence still managed to affect my entire life. I only met Narcissa because of you. I only disrupted your father’s schemes because of you.”

“That’s why it’s worth it,” Draco says. “Your Lyapunov exponent is higher.”

“My—my what?”

“It’s—” (Draco struggles for a moment, wondering how to phrase it to be comprehensible to someone without a degree in temporal physics.) “—it measures sensitivity to change in a chaotic system. You know, the butterfly effect. A system, in this case a timeline, with a high Lyapunov exponent will change more dramatically than one with a lower exponent if the slightest thing changes.

“Your exponent is very, very high, and that’s bad. Whatever life you live, you need to kill Voldemort and end the War, and the slightest difference in your timeline could change that. Comparatively, I’m nobody; just a complication in your much more important system. I got myself tangled up in your timeline and killed three thousand people with my absence. I need to remove myself as much as possible from your life so you can do the job properly.”

“But I don’t,” Potter says, or starts to say, though before long his expression clouds. After a moment, he starts over. “Draco, I’d rather have you with me.”

“What?” Draco says, frowning.

Potter looks a bit awkward, shifting in his seat. “I… what I mean is…” He clears his throat. “You’re more an asset than you are a hindrance. Even though I only knew you for a few months, I could tell how brilliant you were. Why try to just remove yourself when you could… when you and I could work together?”

The idea strikes Draco as so patently absurd that he has to make sure he’s understanding him right. “You… want to work with me?”

“I wanted to be your friend the moment I first saw you,” Potter says, like a confession. “I thought you were the smartest person in Hogwarts. I suppose I still do.” He pauses. “And… I can’t imagine any timeline in which that’s not true.”

I can, Draco almost says, with a jab of pain so intense that it’s nearly physical.

“Potter,” he eventually manages, trying and failing to hide how much it hurts to say it out loud, “you’re brilliant enough all on your own. You don’t need me.”

“Maybe not,” Potter concedes, “but what if I want you?”

Something small but fundamental about the conversation changes. Draco stares at Potter, dumbfounded, as a sudden heat flares to life between them.

“Just consider it,” Potter says, “when you go back. If you’re going to change the past, this is the one thing I know for sure my eleven-year-old self would want.”

“You won’t remember—” Draco stops, shakes his head. “From a fourth-dimensional perspective, if I do as you want me to, the you as you are now will have never even participated in this conversation. There will no longer be a you as you are now.”

Potter, to Draco’s absolute shock, smiles slowly. Draco’s heart twists itself into knots at the sight.

“Then consider it a retroactive investment in my future happiness,” he says.

Draco wants to say, That doesn’t make any sense. Unfortunately, he’s too caught up in the way Potter’s eyes look when he smiles to say anything at all.

The problem, of course, is that Harry Potter doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The sentiment is one thing; the reality is another. Draco can’t realistically involve himself substantially in Potter’s timeline just because he asked and has very nice eyes. It’s too dangerous.

The framework looks good, Westy declares on the day Draco decides he’s going back. Pity you can’t gather all the reagents you’ll need and take them with you.

“That is the most inconvenient part of it all,” Draco agrees. They’re standing in front of the blackboard in Westy’s office, staring at the finalized, if very untidy, framework scribbled across it. “I have no idea how I’m going to get some of these ingredients as a fucking eleven-year-old.”

You might be able to send me an owl, is Westy’s considered answer. Merlin, where was I in 1991?

“Were you even an Unspeakable back then?”

I don’t think I was, come to it. I graduated med school in ’93, and I didn’t get the job till a few years after that.

“So letters from random children asking for dangerous potion ingredients wouldn’t be especially persuasive,” Draco deduces.

“For the record, it’s very difficult to keep up when I can only hear half the conversation,” Potter says.

He and Eun-Ji are coming into the study together. Potter has a tray with a pot of tea and some neatly stacked cups; Eun-Ji has some sandwiches.

Tell him about the policy, Draco, Westy requests, with my apologies.

“Unspeakables at a certain level aren’t allowed to communicate with anyone outside of the Department, barring special circumstances,” Draco explains.

“Special circumstances such as one of their employees getting punted back and forth in time?” Potter asks, smirking.

“Don’t be ridiculous. When would that ever happen?” Draco pours himself a cup of tea once Potter sets the tray down on the corner of Westy’s desk. Potter chuckles.

“We’re going to go ahead with the spell to send me back,” Draco says.

“It’s not dangerous, is it?” Eun-Ji asks nervously. “To the house, I mean. The last time Westy brought her work home it caught the shed on fire.”

That was just one time, Westy interjects defensively. Her wife giggles.

“This spell will include nothing more dangerous than some chalk on your floor,” Draco assures her.

“What’ll it be like from our perspective?” Potter asks. Draco glances at him over his second sip of tea. “I mean, the goal is to change this present, right? What’s that going to be like from where we’re standing?”

“It won’t be like anything,” Draco answers. “You’re asking a fourth-dimensional question from a third-dimensional perspective.”

Before Potter can ask anything further—and Draco can tell he wants to—he strides past him and out of the study to the back patio. In the intervening week, they’d moved the furniture out of the way so Draco could draw the rune on the wide slab of concrete under the colorful striped awning.

Behind him, Potter’s footsteps fumble. As Draco kneels down in the center of it, drawing his wand out of his sleeve, he looks up and sees Potter’s stricken expression. He’s several shades paler, almost ashen, and staring at the large white rune like it’s the worst thing he’s ever seen.

Eun-Ji puts her hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I,” he says, and swallows visibly. “Yes. Sorry. It’s just, the last time I saw that rune, Draco didn’t wake up for twenty-three years.”

“It will be slightly different this time,” Draco assures him, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Potter meets his eyes steadily.

Draco’s answer to Potter’s question, that the timeline changing won’t be like anything from their perspective, had been true. They wouldn’t be able to perceive it happens—no human really could. Each affected point would simply rearrange itself in their histories and memories accordingly.

But Draco would be able to perceive it, after a fashion. This version of Harry Potter—who’d comforted and been comforted by Draco’s own mother, who’d been sorted into the wrong house, who’d visited Draco’s vacant body every week for twenty-three years—Draco would never see him again.

The idea smarts more than Draco had expected it to. This particular version of Potter actually seemed to like him. He doubts he’ll ever get to experience that again.

“Well,” Potter says, “good luck, I suppose.”

Draco finds he isn’t sure what to say back. Take care? See you later? They’re all various shades of inaccurate.

Eventually, as the magic begins to coalesce around him, he decides on:

“I’ll try not to fuck up your life this time.”

Potter cants his head to one side. Just before Draco feels the spell take hold, he hears Potter answer:

“Is that what you think you did?”

Chapter Text

When Draco pitches forward and collides hard, shoulder first, with a stone floor, the first thought that occurs to him is, I really should be used to this by now.

“Draco? Draco!”

As he readjusts to his eleven-year-old proportions and drags himself upright, the first thing he sees in that darkened Hogwarts classroom is—

“Merlin, it really is always you, isn’t it?”

—Harry Potter, standing anxiously at the edge of the still-glowing rune in which Draco is kneeling, looking just nervous enough to not cross over its edge like he seems to want.

When Draco stands, though, and staggers, the nervousness evaporates enough for him to dart forward and grab Draco by the shoulder to keep him from collapsing.

“Are you all right? What is all this?”

“Magic,” Draco says by way of explanation. “And I’m fine, relatively speaking. Ha! Relatively!”

Potter stares at him blankly.

“Relatively? General relativity? Because—never mind.”

On the second try, Draco manages to stand properly. He takes a cursory glance around the classroom, which looks much the same as when he last saw it: dusty, disused, dark. His mind begins to fill with the plans he’d put together back in 2014, the order of operations which will, with any luck, result in as efficient a casting as possible of the new spell framework.

“Draco,” Potter says from his left, his once again unbroken voice concerned, “I don’t know what it is you’ve been doing these past few weeks, but everyone in Slytherin is really worried about you, including Professor Snape. Whatever magic you’ve been trying to cast—”

“What time is it?”

“What?” Sufficiently derailed, Potter checks an aging wristwatch under the sleeve of his robe. “Uh, half-seven. I just got out of dinner. I was looking for you.”

“And you found me! Well done.” He pats Potter’s shoulder. The gesture is a little awkward, because Draco still neither remembers how to be nor how to interact with children. “But as you can see, I’m perfectly fine. You don’t have to concern yourself with me, Potter. In fact, you probably shouldn’t.”

Potter’s brow furrows. “What?”

“Why don’t you go introduce yourself to Ron Weasley, in fact? He’s much worthier of your time than I am.”

“Who’s Ron Weasley?” Potter asks, baffled, but Draco is already walking past him and out of the classroom.

Step one of his return to 1991 is, of course, to talk to Professor Snape.

There’s really no way to avoid it. The spelled chalk he’d used last time to draw the rune had been off-the-shelf, which Westy had later determined as part of the original spell’s failings. He needed a formulation that was more magically tractable, and therefore would need to be homemade, which required several volatile potions ingredients and, almost certainly, the experience of a master in the field.

And Draco had only one of those readily available. So no matter how much it made his stomach hurt, he’d have to do it. He’d have to tell Snape everything and ask for his help.

But certainty is one thing and action is another, and the longer Draco stands unmoving outside Professor Snape’s office door, decidedly not knocking on it, the more time he has to lose his nerve.

It’s just Snape, he tells himself. He’s Draco’s godfather, for Merlin’s sake. It’s never been hard to talk to him. He’s known Draco since he was in swaddling.

And I knew him right up until the day he died violently, Draco’s mind reminds him viciously. Draco groans quietly to himself, presses his forehead to the office door, and tries desperately to suppress all the horrible memories of the Battle of Hogwarts.

He has to do this, he reminds himself. He would be handicapping his own efforts severely and unnecessarily if he tried to do it all on his own. He has to do this. He has to do this.

“Mr. Malfoy,” says a voice from behind, startling Draco so violently out of his own thoughts that he leaps nearly three feet in the air.

“Merlin! Professor!”

He stands with his arms folded behind his back and one unimpressed black eyebrow arched. “Is there a particular reason that you’re blocking ingress to my office?”

Draco, whose heart is still hammering against his ribs, can only say, “Quiet as a bloody cat. We need to put a bell around your neck or something.”

“Mr. Malfoy,” he says sharply.

“Yes. Yes, there’s a reason I—”

His heart is refusing to slow. He suspects it has very little to do with how quiet Professor Snape is. He swallows down a few desperate breaths.

“Professor,” he says, “I need your help.”

Snape’s impassive expression flickers, just for a moment. Then he says, “Inside,” and flicks his wand to open his office door.

Draco follows him in glumly. Snape casts a few more spells to light the hearth and a few candles, which somehow does nothing to make the office feel any less oppressively dark.

“It’s about time you got over yourself and came to me,” he says. “I swear, these past few weeks, I’ve had half a mind to send an owl to your mother recommending institutionalization. Withdrawing this much from your peers is neither healthy nor normal, Draco Malfoy.”

Carefully, Draco pulls the office door shut. His limbs feel leaden. He doesn’t turn around.

“But at least you’ve finally come to some amount of sense,” Snape continues. “So, then, Draco: what has gotten into you?”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” he mutters without humor.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Professor,” he says, and turns. His voice is tight. “Professor, I… I’m temporally displaced.”

Snape says nothing. He stares at Draco as if that owl to his mother recommending institutionalization is back on the table.

“Please, let me explain.”

And it all falls out:

“The child you know as Draco Malfoy grew up to be an Unspeakable with the Department of Mysteries. My specialty was temporal physics. My pet project, Needle, backfired somehow and sent my adult mind backward in time to my childhood body.

“I’ve spent the last two months trying to create and cast a spell that would send me forward, but it didn’t work. Or it did work, but in the wrong way, so I had to come back a second time. I guess that part doesn’t matter; it’s a timeline that no longer exists.

“And if it seems like I’m withdrawing from my peers, it’s because I am. It’s because the adult version of Draco Malfoy, who became an Unspeakable, who was sent back in time, has vivid, painful, horrible memories of a war. Near on a quarter of the people in this school died in it, Professor, do you understand? Voldemort came back and enlisted me as a child soldier and I thought I’d recovered, but I guess I haven’t after all, because seeing all the people who died at the end of his wand has been the worst agony I’ve ever had to endure.

“And all of that is tempered by the fact that I have an obligation to protect that version of events! It was a nightmare, but in the end, Voldemort was dead, and that’s an outcome that demands protection, and the longer I stay here, like this, the more I endanger that result. So I’ve been trying to send myself back without delineating the timeline too significantly, to middling results, but the new spell framework I’m working with requires a rune that can only be drawn with a specially-formulated spelled chalk, which needs dangerous ingredients and a potions mater and I… I…”

At some point, Draco had started to shake. Tears, he realizes with a foggy dread, are rolling down his face and blurring his vision.

Snape is sitting behind his desk, very still. For several reasons, Draco can’t read his expression. A sob wrenches out of his throat.

“And you’re the only one I know!” he cries, on the razor’s edge of hysteria. “And I can’t look at you without remembering how you died!

“So please,” he begs, “please believe me, please help me. I need help. I can’t… I can’t…”

“Draco.”

“I’ve tried to do it on my own, but the magic is so complicated, and just being here hurts more than I can stand, and I…”

“Draco.”

There are arms around him. Draco can count on one hand the number of times Severus Snape has even touched him, let alone hugged him, and Draco wonders what it means that his normally taciturn, standoffish godfather is moved to embrace him.

He doesn’t wonder for that long, though, mostly because Draco is so fragile that even the slightest touch sends him shattering to pieces. He collapses forward into Snape’s chest, and all the pain and grief he’d been trying so desperately to quash comes tumbling out of him all at once.

Snape, for his part, doesn’t say anything at first. He strokes Draco’s hair and shushes him with meaningless platitudes, in the way of a man who’s unaccustomed to giving comfort like this.

“Draco,” he says eventually, when the worst of Draco’s wracking sobbing stops, “we need to talk to Dumbledore.”

It’s past midnight by the time Draco sets down the nub of chalk and steps away from the blackboard in Headmaster Dumbledore’s office.

“Well, that’s the spell,” he says. He can’t muster much enthusiasm. It is the second time he’s written it all out, after all, and very late besides.

“Remarkable,” Dumbledore says after a moment. “You have a tremendous mind, young Mr. Malfoy.”

“I’m not young,” Draco protests. “I’m thirty-four years old. I have a degree in temporal physics and have been working on the bleeding edge of the field for nearly a decade.”

Dumbledore chuckles. “Thirty-four is still plenty young, I assure you,” he says, “and any mind, no matter its age, would need to be tremendous to come up with this kind of magic.”

Snape, who’s sat on the far side of the headmaster’s desk with one leg folded over the other, says, “You said you managed to go back once already.”

“The future was worse,” he says, rubbing his forehead as he approaches the desk. “I didn’t think that was even possible, given how abysmally awful the War was on the first go-round, but I managed it to the tune of three-thousand more deaths.”

“So what do you propose?” Snape asks. “For minimal interference, as you’ve implied is important.”

“Efficiency and discretion,” Draco answers at once. “I need to complete this spell soon, without delineating any major events, and then when my child consciousness takes back over, he needs to be…”

Draco flinches. A thousand unpleasant images rise to the fore of his mind.

“He needs to complete his grim destiny,” he eventually says. “It’s… it’s horrible, but it’s necessary.”

“Or,” Dumbledore says.

“Albus,” Snape answers, voice a warning.

“Or,” Dumbledore repeats, patient and insisting, “you could choose to view this as a second chance, an opportunity to right some of the mistakes you seem to so desperately regret. You represent a remarkable advantage against dark and powerful forces who seek to do great harm to our world, Mr. Malfoy. You have insight that could stymie Voldemort’s plans before he ever puts them into motion. If you stayed—”

“Headmaster,” Draco answers, tightly, “with all due respect, you don’t know what you’re suggesting. The threat of a causal loop or retrocausality is more dire than you seem to realize. It’s a small wonder I haven’t caused any temporal fraying just by coming back in time the way I did. If I cause any substantial paradoxes, it could do permanent damage to the fabric of space and time.”

“I have made some small study of temporal physics,” Dumbledore says, peering at Draco over his half-moon spectacles, blue eyes twinkling, “so I know that the likelihood of compensation is far greater than the likelihood of of paradoxical fraying.”

Draco is incensed. “Are you willing to hang the stability of time itself on a strong possibility?”

“Are you willing to condemn all of Voldemort’s future victims on a small one?”

The question is destabilizing and painful. Draco stares at him, open-mouthed, in impotent silence.

“Albus, that’s enough,” Snape says. “My godson has already lived through one war. Demanding that he live through two is tantamount to cruelty. They are not his victims to condemn. He is not beholden to them, or, for that matter, to you.”

But the question has already lodged itself in a very vulnerable place in Draco’s soul, perhaps because some part of him believes that he is beholden to all those victims. Is Draco willing to condemn them? If there’s even a chance, if there’s even the remotest possibility to undo some of the damage he did—

Will do—

“I apologize if I implied otherwise,” Dumbledore says after a lingering silence. “I suppose it’s just not in my nature to receive a windfall of information and then let it go. But if Mr. Malfoy insists on the importance of his separation from this timeline, then I will defer to what is clearly his expertise in the area.”

Draco swallows, says nothing.

“I can get started on the formulation for your spelled chalk,” Snape says, rising up out of his chair and approaching the blackboard, where in one corner Draco has scribbled out the formula he and Westy had theorized last night and twenty-three years from now. “Though I suspect it will be in need of some refinement. Still, it can be done. I should be able to get you a prototype within a week.”

Draco manages to nod.

“In the mean time,” Dumbledore says, “if the goal is to be discreet as well as efficient, you should continue your classes as normal. Withdrawing as you’ve been doing has clearly caused more problems than it’s solved. Everyone in Slytherin has been talking about it.”

Draco rubs his forehead with one hand.

“Given the hour, I’d suggest that Professor Snape escort you back to the dungeons,” the Headmaster continues, “but seeing as you are not actually an eleven-year-old boy in any meaningful way, I’m sure you can navigate yourself. Severus, may I have a word before you depart?”

“Only if I may have a word, Albus, with my godson in private.”

Snape guides him out with a hand on his shoulder, and stops as soon as the office door shuts behind them.

“Do not put too much stock in Albus’s assessment,” he says at once, looking down at Draco. “His intentions are good, but he has a single-mindedness that can cut as deep as cruelty.”

Draco swallows. When he doesn’t answer, Snape crouches down in front of him so they’re eye-to-eye.

“I don’t know what happened during the War you lived through,” he says, “and in the interest of avoiding any paradoxes, I won’t ask. But I will tell you this much, Draco: you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“I should,” Draco replies. His voice comes out hoarser than he intends. “I should, Professor. Some of the things I did…”

“You survived,” Snape says. “You did what you had to do to make it through.”

“You don’t know,” Draco says, and it gets harder to talk. “You don’t know.”

“I know you. I know your heart. You were an awful little brat, Draco, but you were never a monster. You were never the kind of incomprehensible evil that Voldemort was. Will be.”

“That’s not the metric by which any soul should be measured, least of all mine!”

Sadly, Snape says, “Draco—”

“I’ll see you in class,” Draco interjects, because if he has to keep talking about this, keep thinking about it, he’s going to hate himself more than he already does.

By the time Draco makes it back to the Slytherin dormitories, he feels like he’s been hit by the Knight Bus.

He sits down on the edge of his bed, the same one from his original timeline, and doubles over, burying his head in his hands.

He’s so tired, but can’t sleep. He’s so wracked with grief, but can’t cry. He feels like he’s trapped in a nightmare, running through frantic but meaningless motions because it’s all his terrified brain can think to do, and because there’s nothing else he can do.

“Draco?”

The name is whispered almost too quietly to be heard. When Draco lifts his eyes, Harry Fucking Potter is staring at him in the dim light, glasses off, green eyes wide.

He sighs. “Go to bed, Potter.”

“It’s so late,” Potter answers, consulting the dully illuminated, blue tempus spell hovering on the wall near his bedside table. “Are you only just getting in? Are you all right? What happened?”

Draco stares at him in silence for a time before he answers: “Why are you so concerned?” He means for it to sound combative, but it passes through his lips with unbearable sincerity.

Potter stares back at him like he doesn’t understand the premise of the question.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” is his eventual response.

The words of the Potter-who-is-no-longer come back to him, unwillingly inflicted on his tired, grieving mind: I wanted to be your friend the moment I first saw you. I can’t imagine any timeline in which that’s not true.

He also thinks of Potter’s response to his assertion that he did not need Draco: Maybe not, but what if I want you?

He thinks of the heat of that moment, which now exists only in Draco’s imagination, and tries very, very hard to write it off.

That version of Harry Potter will never exist again. Draco is going to ensure it, when his horrid little eleven-year-old brain takes back over. Whatever imagined possibilities existed as radiations of that choice are beyond his grasp, he tells himself.

And he was never worthy of them, anyway. Never worthy of Potter’s affection or admiration.

“Go to bed,” he says again.

Not that being unworthy of Harry Potter’s attention seems to exempt him from it. Over the next few days, as Draco reluctantly reinserts himself into the life of a first-year Hogwarts student, Potter is almost constantly at his elbow, as though he’s worried Draco will disappear again if he takes his eyes off him for too long.

His conversation with Snape and Dumbledore had been on a Friday, and Potter’s behavior persists all the way through the weekend despite Draco’s best efforts to shake him. On Monday morning, he’s trailing along beside Draco as they go to their first class of the day.

“Do you know much about Quidditch, Draco?”

“A bit,” he lies.

“I saw the Slytherin team practicing last week. Ever since that flying lesson, I’ve been keen to try out, but Professor Snape said that first years aren’t allowed. Is that true?”

Draco suddenly remembers the incident that had gotten him a special exemption to join the Gryffindor team in first year, and tries to tell himself that whether or not Harry Potter is the youngest Seeker in a century will not have a substantial effect on the outcome of the War. “It’s true,” he says, as they turn a corner.

“Well, I suppose there’s no helping it,” Potter replies, disappointed. “Do you think you could explain the rules to me sometime? It looks really fun.”

They come into the classroom together, and Draco stops so abruptly that Millicent Bulstrode nearly runs him down from behind. “Oy, watch it!” she says, but Draco doesn’t acknowledge her.

Quirrell.

“Draco?” Potter asks, slowing to let Draco catch up, who is rooted to the spot. “Hello?”

There he is, Quirinus Quirrell, an agent of Voldemort. Draco had been so preoccupied the past few Defense Against the Dark Arts classes trying to work on his spell and avoid notice that he hadn’t even let himself acknowledge…

His hands grip his textbook a little too tightly.

Efficiency and discretion, he’d said to Snape two nights ago. Noninterference. Avoidance of delineation. It is safer, he knows.

Or at least he knows in theory. In practice, a fragment of a mass-murdering psychopath is living on the back of Quirinus Quirrell’s head right at this moment.

A hand reaches out and touches Draco’s arm, making him jump.

“Are you all right?” Potter says, frowning.

“Yes,” he answers reflexively, even as his eyes return to Quirrell, scribbling the day’s lesson plan on the board. “Yes, I’m… yes.”

Efficiency and discretion. Noninterference and avoidance. He recites it in his head like a mantra against the dread and anger rising in his stomach. He shouldn’t get involved. He shouldn’t get involved.

As if in counterpoint, Dumbledore’s words rise in the back of his mind: Are you willing to condemn all of Voldemort’s future victims? His breathing gets shallower.

There are only two options: intervene, or don’t. Both seem impossible. Is he strong enough to act? Is he strong enough not to?

Professor Snape’s first go at the spelled chalk does, indeed, need refinement. Draco had been recalling the formulation from memory, after all, and without the specific expertise of a potion master. After dinners and in between classes, or whenever he can shake Potter, they work together on perfecting the process.

Draco’s reappearance to the land of the living becomes the cause of some discussion. Vince and Greg, never ones to think too hard about anything, accept it readily enough, but the rest of his house treats the whole thing like a mystery in need of solving. As summer winds down and autumn stains the grounds surrounding Hogwarts, he hears more and more off-the-wall theories explaining his ostensible disappearance: he’d hospitalized by a case of Dragon Pox, he’d been kidnapped by Grindylows, he’d been taken back to the Malfoy Manor to participate in an elaborate dark magic ritual on the autumnal equinox.

“I can’t believe they’re carrying on about it this much,” Potter says on the matter, who in his ongoing effort to not be away from Draco for longer than an hour at a time has taken to accompanying him to the library to do homework. Draco has since given up on trying to dodge Potter’s efforts to spend time with him, figuring that his repulsive personality will do job for him once the spell is cast. “It’s not like you were completely gone. You were at classes still.”

Draco wants to point out that the comment reveals Potter was paying more attention to Draco’s whereabouts than the rest of Slytherin, but decides against it.

“It makes me miss—” Draco almost says my iPhone, and hastily stumbles over the sentence, “—uh, grunge. There’s nothing that blocks out annoying gossip quite like it.”

Potter looks up from his book, expression puzzled. “What’s grunge?”

Draco looks back at him, eyes lifting slowly from his book on chaotic mathematics. “Are you kidding?”

The puzzled look only intensifies. “No. What is it?”

“It’s 1991,” Draco says. “Are you telling me that you were a mistreated child in the nineties—from a Muggle family, no less—and you’ve never heard of Nirvana?”

“What’s Nirvana? Isn’t that a Buddhist thing?”

Thoughts of noninterference and preserving the original timeline suddenly seem fantastically unimportant when compared to introducing Harry Potter to grunge. Assuring he has good taste in music can’t possibly effect the outcome of the War, can it? All it will do is make it more bearable for him.

Draco stands up abruptly out of his chair. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

Potter stumbles to follow, to catch up as Draco starts of at a swift pace out of the library. “We are? Where are we going?”

“To get a copy of Nevermind, apparently.”

Two hours later, Draco is grateful for a few things:

First, he’s grateful that Potter is still naive enough not to know how absurd it is that an eleven-year-old is able to Apparate with a side-along all the way into central London to make a purchase at a Muggle record shop.

Second, he’s grateful that the heavily tattooed owner of said record shop doesn’t ask why two children in black robes are purchasing a copy of Nirvana’s iconic album Nevermind.

Third, he’s grateful that it came out on vinyl, so that Hogwarts’s notorious incompatibility with electricity would not impede their ability to listen to it.

Fourth, he’s grateful for the existence of the record player in the Slytherin prefect bathroom, which he nicks and takes with him to a disused corridor on the fifth floor.

“This is the greatest music I’ve ever heard,” Potter says, very seriously.

Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend
As an old

Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria

They’re lying side-by-side on their backs on the floor in a shaft of moonlight spilling in from the window. Potter’s been almost completely silent through the first three tracks, which Draco understands. Nevermind had blown Draco’s mind when he first heard it, too.

“I suppose I can forgive you for not knowing about it,” Draco says. “I hadn’t realized it came out so recently.”

The heavily-tattooed record shop owner had pointed Draco to the new releases section when he’d asked for it; apparently it had only been released the month before. Draco finds himself oddly envious that Potter gets to live through the best years of alternative rock as an adolescent.

Draco supposes that he lived through it as an adolescent, too, strictly speaking, though of course he never appreciated it.

“I didn’t know guitar could sound like this,” Potter says. “Do they have any other albums?”

“You’d have to hunt for a copy of Bleach, but you might be able to find it. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait two more years for In Utero.”

After a pause, Potter sits up on his elbows and gives Draco a strange look. “What?”

“Uh,” Draco says, and hurries to change the subject, “so the singer, Kurt Cobain, was—is—a genius.”

Professor Snape needs another week to refine the formula for his spelled chalk. Then another.

Eventually, it becomes clear that Halloween will arrive before he’s ready to cast the spell.

Draco doesn’t remember all the details of how this year had originally proceeded—it was twenty-three years ago, after all, from his perspective—but he remembers the broad strokes. He remembers the mountain troll, remembers that it nearly killed Hermione Granger, remembers that it had let Quirrell take a shot at the Philosopher’s Stone, which is presumably still locked up somewhere in the castle.

And as time goes on, all those questions of noninterference versus negligence become more stark, more pressing. The longer he doesn’t have an answer about whether it’s more important to protect the fabric of time or human life, the more dangerous it feels.

“What’s the ethical imperative?” Draco asks Snape, very softly and a little helplessly, the night before the Halloween feast, after they’d wrapped up their weekly meeting regarding the refinement of the potion. “If I have knowledge that might save lives, don’t I have an obligation to use it?”

“Draco,” Snape says with a small frown, “my view on the subject has not changed. You’re not beholden to lives you did not take—lives that are not even yet ended.”

“But if it’s immediate,” Draco says. “If there’s an imminent threat to life that I could prevent—isn’t there a moral duty to act? Isn’t inaction in the face of evil just as bad as evil action?”

Snape opens his mouth, shuts it. His expression changes.

“Even if it risks a paradox,” Draco continues, voice drawing tighter, “isn’t it… shouldn’t I…”

“Draco,” he says slowly, “what do you know?”

Draco draws a slow, steadying breath, and takes a risk.

“Severus!” says Quirrell, startled, before he can release the mountain troll from the massive iron cage he has it in. The scene is rather damning in and of itself: he has a key in one hand, which he had been about to use to unlock the padlock keeping the troll confined. Snape already has his wand out, which draws a nervous laugh out of him. “I, ah—I can explain?”

“Disarm,” Snape snarls, “or I’ll do it for you.”

“N-n-now, Severus, there’s no need—”

“Incarceruos!” Draco cries from the shadows behind Qurirell. Thin ropes, glowing blue, launch themselves from Draco’s wind and, for just a moment, slither around his body—

—before a shudder of magic, seemingly from nowhere, dispels them.

Quirrell’s expression turns vicious as he cranes his neck to look back at Draco, and suddenly his wand slips down his sleeve and into his hand.

“I was hoping for subtlety,” Quirrell says, his stutter suddenly absent, before slashing his wand toward the padlock on the door and shattering it in half. The troll, startled, releases a bellowing groan and lurches forward, which in turn sends the door screaming open on rusty hinges.

“Take the troll, Draco!” Snape cries. “I’ve got Quirrell!”

Draco’s never been one for dueling, but he’s a veteran, and not unfamiliar with dark magic, and has no trouble against something as simple and straightforward as a troll. He hurls a bolt of sparks at it to draw its attention.

Before long, spells are flying, lighting up the darkened corner of the dungeons with bursts of red and white and green. Draco deflects the troll’s blow with its heavy club, then knocks the weapon away with a sharp “Flipendo!” which causes it to crash against the far wall and shatter apart. “Confringo!” The blast of fire sends the troll staggering. “Stupefy!”

Draco has to dart out of the way to avoid the troll’s mass as it collapses to the stone floor, unconscious. He returns his attention to Snape and Quirrell, still battling it out on the far side of the room.

He waits until Quirrell’s halfway through his next incantation to cry, “Expelliarmus!”

His wand goes careening out of his hand, clattering to the floor. He makes a wheezing gasp sound, the wind wholly knocked out of his lungs, as Severus follows up with a prompt, “Petrificus Totalus!”

Quirrell locks up and collapses, face-first, onto the floor.

Draco rakes his wand hand through his hair to get it out of his face. His heart is still thumping loudly with the frenzy of battle. “Take his turban off,” he says at once, and promptly strengthens Snape’s paralyzing charm with his own magic. “But be careful.”

“His turban?” Snape says, frowning at Draco as he catches his own breath.

“Just trust me.” He heard all the stories, same as the other students, about him after he’d died.

Snape frowns, but dutifully slices up the back of Quirrell’s turban with th tip of his wand.

And though Draco had known it existed, actually seeing it is another matter entirely. They both recoil at the same instant at the grotesque sight that greets them on the back of Quirrell’s head. Draco feels disgust and visceral fear rise in his gut, hears himself gasp.

And he hears someone else gasp, too.

Both their gazes are drawn away, to the very far end of the disused dungeon corridor, where standing half-ducked behind the corner—

“Potter,” Draco says in disbelief. “You just keep turning up, don’t you?”

“Guide him out, if you please, Mr. Malfoy,” Snape says. “And summon the Headmaster down here.”

Draco slips his wand back into his sleeve as he heads over to do just that.

“That was amazing,” Potter says the second Draco’s hand lands on his arm to steer him away. “I can’t believe you took that huge thing down all by yourself!”

Draco, who’s entirely unaccustomed to impressing anyone under any circumstance, can only stare at him in silent confusion for a moment.

“I,” he begins, but doesn’t know how to finish. He tries again. “It’s just a troll, Potter.”

“But it was awesome! Where did you learn that kind of magic? Is it because your parents are a witch and a wizard?”

“No,” Draco answers sharply. “Merlin, no. The last thing we need is the Boy-Who-Lived thinking that sort of rubbish. Potter, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it, all right?”

“But it was incredible! You’re incredible. You’re—” Something about his expression changes, something in his eyes. It makes Draco nervous, for reasons he can’t quite articulate. “You’re incredible.”

Suddenly, the reason for the discomfort occurs to him: Potter is going to think he’s a lot less incredible soon.

Draco slows to a stop. So does Potter. He spends a while staring at him, frowning.

“I’m not, though,” he says. “I’m…”

He doesn’t have a good way to explain this. He’s never been good with kids, has no head for phrasing complicated topics in understandable terms.

“I’m… flawed, Potter. There is something rotten in my soul,” he says. “There always has been been, and I…”

Potter is staring at him with a confused frown. Draco can’t bear to see it and turns his head away, taking a few breaths and pushing his hand through his hair again.

“I sort myself out eventually, I get stronger than my demons, but not for a very long time, you understand? So if in the next few weeks I start acting differently, if I seem crueler or colder or—”

Sweet fucking Merlin, he’s actually on the verge of tears. How mortifying. Draco swallows hard against the lump forming in his throat.

“Just know that it has nothing to do with you at all,” he finally manages, his voice shaking. “All right? It’s not your fault.”

“I don’t understand,” Potter says. He’s very concerned by the sudden change in tone, Draco can tell. “Draco, why are you upset? What are you talking about?”

“And maybe look me up in twenty or so years,” Draco says, laughing bitterly. “Maybe specifically on May 3, 2014. Maybe on specifically that date, I’ll have figured my shit out, and I’ll be even a fragment as good as you seem to think I am.”

“What?”

“Go enjoy the feast, Potter,” Draco says, and turns to walk away. The tears fall the second his face is out of Potter’s line of sight.

It happens less than a week later. Snape and Dumbledore are both there to see him off. They’d agreed to cast it in the Headmaster’s office this time, primarily for the privacy.

“Just knock me out after it’s cast,” Draco says, stepping into the rune and pulling his wand from his sleeve. “Tell me I tripped or something, and the reason I can’t remember the last few months is due to memory loss.”

Dumbledore smiles sadly. Snape doesn’t smile at all; his arms are crossed over his chest in obvious discomfort.

“And thank you,” Draco says, somewhat belatedly. “Both of you. Sincerely, I…”

I should have appreciated you both more while I had the chance, Draco almost says, but the words catch halfway up his throat.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Mr. Malfoy,” Dumbledore says, in that charmingly mysterious, intensely Dumbledore-esque way of his. “And that you know what it is you’re looking to find.”

Draco sighs, swallows, drops to his knees in the center of the rune.

“I hope I see you again,” Draco says, because he cannot say, I hope you make it out this time; that, perhaps, would offer some shred of redemption for all my sins.

The spell burns bright and blue, and consumes him.

Chapter Text

There’s no lurch this time—or rather, there is, but it’s held in check by two points of near-bruising pressure around his arms.

“What the fuck,” Draco gasps as his senses swim back into focus. His feet catch on the ground as it dragged beneath him, and he realizes, slowly, that he’s being marched down a dark hallway by two— “Who the hell are you?”

“Keep your fucking mouth shut, Malfoy,” says the one on his left, whose grip on his arm is significantly tighter than the other. He’s in the maroon robes of an auror, Draco notices, though he isn’t able to notice much else about him because suddenly he realizes—

“Is this Azkaban?” What in Merlin’s name is he doing in Azkaban? Even right after the War, he’d never been a prisoner, though he certainly recognizes the hallways from visiting his father in fifth year—oppressively dark, unbearably cold, echoing with near-constant screams. His heartbeat picks up. “What the fuck, what the fuck.”

“I said keep your mouth shut.”

The aurors drag him hard around a corner. His footsteps stumble, which makes him look down, which in turn makes him realize—

“What am I wearing?” It seems to be some elaborate black-and-silver dress robe, fitted at the wrists and flowing around his feet, presently crisscrossed with singe marks from what can only be a recent fight. If he’s a prisoner, why is he dressed like a runway model who just got into a barroom brawl? What is going on? None of this makes any sense.

Eventually, the aurors push him through a heavy wooden door, which opens into what appears to be an interrogation room of some kind. A single metal table dominates the center, with heavy chairs on either side, one of which Draco is promptly and securely tied to with a series of complicated magical restraints.

The room is lit only by three flickering candles in a pool of tallow on the table, and without any windows, there’s not much light to illuminate the other figure who had been waiting for him, apparently, with his back to the door. In the hazy darkness, all Draco can determine is that he’s broad-shouldered, and, based on his maroon robes, also an auror.

“We’ve risked an awful lot to get you here today, Malfoy,” the third auror says, without turning around.

Draco recognizes the voice immediately. Though he really should be used to it at this point, he finds that he’s not. “Potter, how do you keep turning up like this?”

Potter’s shoulders stiffen almost imperceptibly. He turns his head just slightly. Something metallic glints on his lower lip. “Leave us,” he says to the other aurors.

They hesitate. “Sir,” the first says, “are you sure that’s wise? You know how dangerous he is—”

“I wasn’t asking for your input, Zabini,” Potter says. Draco whirls around and, sure enough, the auror who had been gripping his arm like he was trying to snap it in half is Blaise Zabini, for some unfathomable reason. How on earth did Zabini end up as an auror in this timeline?

“Yes, sir,” Zabini says eventually, with obvious reluctance, and eventually the pair of them both leave, pulling the heavy door shut behind them.

“All right,” Draco says, “I have a couple questions.”

Potter doesn’t seem interested, though. Before Draco can even put his thoughts in a coherent order, Potter is pulling his wand out of his sleeve and striding forward.

And all of a sudden, the tip of Potter’s wand is pressed to Draco’s throat, and Potter is screaming, “What year did Nirvana release their third studio album?”

“What the fuck!” Draco screams back, pulling uselessly against the magical bindings around his wrists in an ineffectual attempt to lean away from the wand pushing into his pulse point.

“What year did they release In Utero, Malfoy? I’m not fucking playing around!”

“1993! Why are you yelling at me about grunge?”

Potter’s face is very, very close to Draco’s. Even in the darkness, his green eyes are burning. And his expression is changing, very slowly.

Unfortunately, Draco can’t tell how, because he suddenly realizes what the glint of metal had been.

“Potter, are you… is that a lip piercing?”

No, he quickly realizes: not a piercing, but piercings. Two of them, one on each side of his lower lip, small silver hoops glinting in the low light. Harry Potter has a fucking snakebite piercing, and suddenly there’s nothing else in the room.

“It’s you,” Potter says. “You’re… you’re back.”

Until, of course, Draco notices the blackwork tattoo on Potter’s fucking neck, vanishing under the collar of his auror robes. And his floppy undercut. And his—is that eyeliner?

“Fucking Meriln,” Draco says, which is probably not a logical response to whatever it is Potter had just said, though of course he can’t even remember what that was. “Potter, what is this look?”

“You’re back,” Potter says, and Draco finally recognizes the emotion that had been slowly overtaking Potter’s face: desperate, tearful joy. Potter is so happy that he’s crying.

Before Draco can fully process what that means, Potter is casting the complicated counterspell to do away with Draco’s bindings and, inexplicably, pulling him into a tight embrace.

Draco has maybe more than a couple questions at this point.

“What the fuck is happening,” is the best that he can manage.

“I’d half-convinced myself that you were gone forever,” Potter says into Draco’s hair. Potter smells, quite distinctly, like cigarettes and strong black coffee. Draco tries very hard not to be turned on by it. “Twenty-three years I waited, based on some half-remembered confession from our childhood, and you… and it…”

He draws back. Potter’s expression is wrecked as he stares at Draco, gripping his shoulders with both hands, and sweet Merlin and Circe, Potter has cartilage piercings, too. The shell of his left ear has a small silver dragon curled around and through it. Draco feels like he’s going to pass out, and can’t tell if it’s because of how stunned he is by the sight of a punk rock Harry Potter or how fucking fit he looks.

“We need to get you out of here,” Potter says eventually.

Draco’s head is spinning. “Out of… Azkaban?”

“Don’t think about it too much,” Potter says.

A few hours later, Draco is relatively certain that both of them are now technically fugitives from justice.

Potter uses a Portkey that he produces, wrapped in cloth, from the pocket of his robe: a large, dirty brass key. When they touch it, they’re warped into what appears to be a hotel lobby. It’s quite posh, and based on what limited view Draco has through the narrow windows somewhere in a city, but other than that it’s very nondescript. Potter tells him to wait here, I made this reservation ages ago, then goes off and checks in.

The room is just as posh as the lobby: white paneled walls, gold fixtures, a marble ensuite, post-impressionist paintings in gilded frames. Potter tells him to make yourself at home, mate; maybe take a shower? You may not remember it, but you were in a duel recently, then promises to be back later and Disapparates.

So: Draco takes a shower. He’s not really sure what else to do. He doesn’t know where he lives, what’s going on in this timeline, or even where this hotel is. And he does feel a bit grimy.

After peeling off the bizarrely beautiful black-and-silver robe, though, the very first thing he notices is the Dark Mark.

It brings up the usual complicated tangle of painful emotions that it always does when Draco had to look at it too long in the past. He supposes he should be grateful that it’s there at all—one thing, at the very least, that he manged to get right about this timeline—but it’s a difficult feeling to muster.

Especially since, on his other arm, he seems to have a second Dark Mark.

Or rather, another version of it. The skull is that of a snake, a wand gripped in its jaws. Still, it’s about the same size, the same style. Draco both wants to know where he got it and also very much does not.

He takes a shower and tries, unsuccessfully, not to look at it.

His hair is longer, too, he notices as he washes it. Very long, nearly halfway down his back. And his body is more wiry, like he hasn’t been eating properly for a long while.

The list of questions he has just keeps growing.

By the time he steps out of the ensuite, draped in a white robe that had been folded neatly on the bathroom counter and drying his hair with a towel since he doesn’t seem to have his wand, Potter is just stepping back into the room.

For a time, they stare at each other: Draco in nothing but a thin cotton bathrobe, Potter looking unfairly fit with his blackwork tattoos and piercings and undercut, both absolutely silent.

“Hi,” Potter says eventually, his eyes decidedly not on Draco’s face.

“I get the feeling,” Draco answers, “that you’ve worked out where I’m from.”

“When you’re from,” Potter corrects. Green eyes lift, sparkling. Draco feels the electricity of the gaze under his skin. “I’ve had twenty-three years to work it out, Malfoy.”

Draco tries to keep his hands busy, lest they get any ideas about straying to other bodies. He wrings his hair out into the towel, crosses the room on bare feet, and sits down on the very edge of the divan across from the bed.

“No other explanation made sense,” Potter says. “After the accident in first year—”

“Accident?” Draco asks, a split second before he remembers: he’d told Snape to explain the memory loss as head trauma. “Oh, right.”

“You woke up in the hospital wing and you were a completely different person,” Potter says. “It wasn’t just that you didn’t remember me, it was that you were someone else. Cruel and vicious, unrepentantly mean-spirited, and so hateful. And everyone was pretending that it was normal!”

Draco’s mouth twists. Everyone had already known him as a horrible little brat. Everyone, except for Potter.

“And I did research, and I found out that severe brain trauma could cause personality changes, but that didn’t explain everything.”

Potter starts to pace back and forth in front of the divan, talking like a man who’s been sitting on these thoughts for over two decades. Draco carefully tucks one leg under the other and sits back, trying to focus on what he’s saying, but finding his attention drawn again and again by the lip rings.

“Going back over everything you said, how competent you were with magic, how you seemed to know things that you had no way of knowing—how could you have single-handedly taken out a cave troll at only eleven? How could you have possibly known that Nirvana would release In Utero two years before the album was even written? And in third year, I figured it out!”

He finally stops pacing, turns those intense, unbearable green eyes to Draco, who feels pinned by them. Draco swallows, a reflex that comes from the same part of his brain that flinches away from fire.

“I confronted Snape, and he told me that I was right, but that it didn’t matter. That the version of you I’d met was gone now, and that I was better off forgetting about it.

“But how could I forget? How could I ever forget? Draco, I knew you—this version of you—for three months, and you made such an impression that you became the reigning obsession of my life.”

Draco opens his mouth, snaps it shut.

He has less than no idea what to do with this information.

“And I remembered,” Potter continues, but his voice has a different quality to it now, deeper, rougher, “that Halloween night, you said—”

“May 3, 2014,” Draco says, quietly. “Today, I assume.”

“I waited twenty-three years,” Potter whispers. He’s closer. His kneecap is brushing Draco’s, a single point of contact that sets Draco’s whole body on fire. “I put together a three-year task force to get you out of Montavel, to get you back here in time, just for the chance to see you again. The you I remember. The you I…”

What’s Montavel? Draco nearly asks, before one of Potter’s hands, fingers knobbly, with the head of a phoenix just barely visible beneath his sleeve, finds itself in the damp hair resting on Draco’s shoulder. His heart reacts to the touch like wild animal caught in a snare, twisting, lurching, straining so desperately for freedom that it threatens to rip itself apart.

“Through the years,” he says, “I saw glimpses of you. Flashes of that sharp mind, the humor, the goodness—all of it lingering beneath the surface, just out of reach. Just enough to remind me of the you I’d met in Madam Malkin’s, the you who introduced me to alternative rock, the you who risked his life to take down Quirrell. How could I forget you? How could I possibly forget?”

Please, what’s Montavel? Draco almost asks, before the fingertips in his hair move to his jaw, trace down to Draco’s chin. Draco feels two simultaneous impulses: to slap Potter’s hand away and flee the room, and to lean into his touch.

“I’ve waited so long,” he says. “I can’t believe I finally have you back. Draco…”

“Potter,” Draco manages, finally, his voice strangled. “What’s Montavel? Why did you break me out of Azkaban? Why do I have…”

The hand withdraws. Draco feels strangely bereft. No, no, he nearly says, you can keep touching me while you answer.

“I…” Potter sighs, pushes his hands through his hair. “Right. We should probably have some alcohol for this.”

Potter orders room service with the Muggle telephone on the bedside table.

The bellhop who delivers it, a twiggy little twink with shaggy hair, winks at Draco as he sets it all out on the little table by the window. Draco doesn’t know why at first, till he realizes what he must have inferred: Draco in a bathrobe, an exceptionally shaggable Harry Potter covered in tattoos, a high-end hotel room with one bed.

The bellhop is already gone before he can correct the assumption.

“D’you mind if I put on music?”

Draco looks over his shoulder. Potter has a mobile phone out by a little white apparatus on the desk which Draco belatedly recognizes as a small bluetooth speaker.

He has to admit, he’s curious if his plan to elevate his taste in music worked.

“Sure,” he says, and Potter spends a few more moments opening up the appropriate app.

Draco returns his attention to the food. He hadn’t really been paying attention while Potter had ordered, but finds little to complain about: Potter had ordered a bottle of red wine, a carbonara for himself, and a duck confit dish for Draco. He wonders how Potter knows he likes duck before his attention is drawn away by the song that finally fills the room:

“Really? Journey?”

Potter glances over his shoulder, smirking. “You don’t approve?”

“They have their moments,” Draco readily admits. “I just figured that with your whole—look—that you’d be blasting Sex Pistols or the Clash.”

“Over a romantic dinner for two?”

Draco startles. Is that what this is? He looks down at the meal, then at the room, then back to Potter, who’s already plugging his phone in to charge.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Potter continues, “London Calling changed my entire fucking life, but it just doesn’t seem apropos for the setting.”

Potter’s being glib, surely. Draco’s mind simply cannot accept that this is—that what’s happening right now is—

Potter sinks down into the chair across from him. At some point, he’d shed the maroon robe marking him as an auror, revealing a slightly less put-together assemblage underneath: a weathered Kilroy Was Here t-shirt with a loose collar, ripped up jeans, and two excellent sleeves of blackwork tattoos. Merlin, Draco could stare at those tattoos for days.

“I can put on Sex Pistols if you’d rather,” Potter says, with a grin that does uncomfortable thing to Draco’s stomach. He uncorks the wine with a tap of his wand.

“No,” Draco answers, a bit too quickly, “no, it’s—this is all on your dime. You can play whatever you like. As I said, Journey has their moments.”

“Moments. Are we calling Escape, arguably the greatest rock album of the eighties, a moment?”

“Listen, everyone with ears likes ‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ but it’s a bit rich to suggest it’s the best rock album of the same decade that brought us Back in Black, Born in the U.S.A., and Thriller.”

Potter smirks as he pours the wine. “Thriller? Sorry, never heard of it. I think your escapades in time somehow undid Michael Jackson’s career.”

Draco laughs before he can stop himself. “In that case, I need to leave immediately. I’m willing to martyr myself for his music.”

“I don’t know,” Potter says. “I think I’d rather have you than ‘Billie Jean.’”

“This is why I’m the temporal physicist and not you.” Draco takes a smiling sip of wine—a good Sauvignon, Draco thinks.

“I missed you,” Potter says. The words seem to fall out of his mouth almost without Potter meaning them to, and the trajectory of the conversation changes so abruptly that Draco feels dizzy. “Fuck, Draco, I really missed you.”

“Uh,” is the best Draco can manage. Behind them, “Open Arms” ends and “Faithfully” starts playing.

“I spent so much time just trying to get over you,” he says, “just trying not to think about you, and I failed every time.”

“You,” Draco says, but finds himself stumbling over the sentence, fingers gripping the stem of his wine glass a bit too tightly.

“Because how could I? You were still there, but at the same time you weren’t. I tried to bring you back to the person I knew you could be, but it only ever pushed you further away.”

The table is small, a fact which Draco had seen but not observed, until Potter leans forward across it just a few inches, and all of a sudden they’re sharing the same breath, close enough to touch.

Which is precisely what happens: Potter’s hand, somewhere in that breath between them, comes to rest gently on Draco’s cheekbone, the faintest skate of fingertips on skin.

Through space and time
Always another show
Wondering where I am
Lost without you

Draco doesn’t understand what’s happening. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that Potter was trying to seduce him.

But he does know better. Draco cannot picture any timeline, any universe, in which Potter imagines him worthy of affection like that. He can barely imagine a universe in which he thinks himself worthy of affection like that.

“I missed you,” Potter says again, but his tone is different. Softer, more intense. Draco can feel the word as a hot breath against his lips. “Draco…”

I thought we were going to talk about Montavel, Draco means to say, but can’t, because Potter’s intense green gaze has dropped to Draco’s mouth.

And being apart ain’t easy on this love affair
Two strangers learn to fall in love again
I get the joy of rediscovering you
Oh, girl, you stand by me
I’m forever yours, faithfully

Like he’s asking permission. Like he’s giving Draco the opportunity to pull away before—

“I,” Draco manages as the distance starts to collapse between them.

Until Potter’s phone rings, which abruptly cuts the song off. The moment ends in a way that reminds Draco of a bird hitting a plate glass window.

“Fuck,” Potter growls. “I really thought we would have had at least a day.”

“What?” Draco manages, finding himself still a bit breathless, head spinning, as he tries to grapple with the fact that—

Was Potter about to—? Did they almost—?

Potter surges out of his chair and toward the phone on the desk, which he yanks off its AUX cord and swipes to answer.

“What,” he barks.

A tinny, indistinct voice is all Draco can detect. Head swimming, he takes another, longer sip of red wine.

He’s imagining things, surely. There’s probably a very logical explanation for what just happened, one that Draco can’t think of because—

“No, he didn’t.”

Draco is willing to admit in the privacy of his own mind that Harry Potter is, and always has been, a chink in his armor. When he was younger, he’d convinced himself that he despised Potter—which, to a certain extent, was true. After all, it was natural to resent what you couldn’t be.

Or couldn’t have.

“Because he’s with me.”

Draco has distinct memories in fifth and sixth year, reluctantly acknowledging but never fully accepting his attraction to boys.

Potter in particular. Brilliant, bold, breathtaking Potter, who always seemed to hold the moral high ground without even trying to, who went through puberty like an exploding star, filling out his Quidditch uniform and growing dark stubble that left Draco with little choice but to confront that the hatred ran with a current of desire, and probably always had.

“Do you really think I’d be that reckless?”

But only on Draco’s end. Vitally, critically, only on Draco’s end. He had never entertained the possibility that it could ever be anything substantial. Even if Potter didn’t already hate him, even if they weren’t on opposite sides of a war, even if it weren’t expected for Draco to marry a nice pureblood girl and produce nice pureblood babies—

—even if he were worthy of happiness—

“Blaise, I was right. All my theories were right. Didn’t you realize what day it is?”

Draco forces himself up and out of his own mind, to listen. Strangely, the first thing that occurs to him is: Blaise has a Muggle phone?

“He came back, like he said he would. From ’91. So I don’t think we need to worry—”

The indistinct, tinny voice gets quite a lot louder. So loud, in fact, that Potter flinches and holds the phone out several inches from his face.

“Christ, Blaise, there’s no need to be so bitchy about it. I thought you were over your weird jealousy thing.”

There’s yet more indistinct, tinny yelling. Potter rolls his eyes and, after a few protracted moments, hangs up in the middle of it.

“Is everything all right?” Draco asks, despite the fact that something is clearly wrong.

“The bad news is that I don’t think I’ll be able to get the deposit on this hotel room back,” Potter says. “The good news is you’re about to learn first-hand what Montavel is. You’d better get dressed.”

Draco is Side-Alonged to what appears to be a warehouse a few minutes later: the walls are corrugated metal, the floor an expanse of rough gray concrete. The room into which they first appear is small, with only one notable feature: a massive metal door, heavily warded, with two aurors standing guard just outside it. They snap to attention when Potter appears.

“Captain,” the first says, saluting.

Potter nods at both of them and starts forward, his hand on Draco’s back as if to usher him through. Draco tries very hard not to feel it burning like a brand.

Before they even get close enough to reach the door, though, the second auror says, “We need your guest’s name, Captain, for documentation.”

“That’s classified, Officer,” Potter says. “You can document his arrival as such. If your superiors give you any problems about it, direct them to me.”

It’s not an answer they’d been expecting, but also, apparently, not one they can do much to protest. Potter waves his wand shortly and the huge metal doors shriek open. Potter’s hand is still (very noticeably) on Draco’s back as he guides him through into a long hallway.

“That robe looks good on you, by the way,” Potter says, conversationally. As Draco had nothing else to wear, he’d been forced to cast a few hasty spells to repair the stunning but duel-damaged dress robe. The elaborate silver embroidery had stitched itself back into place well enough, but it feels distinctly out of place here, in the long, echoing hallway where flickering globes of spell-light insufficiently illuminate rusting metal walls and cracked floors.

“Is this Montavel?” Draco asks, because it’s easier than digesting a compliment on his physical appearance from Harry Fucking Potter.

“No,” Potter answers, “this is the Ash Heap.”

“The what?”

“It’s about four miles outside Montavel, once the headquarters of the Second Order of the Phoenix, now the primary stronghold of the DMLE in the war against the Oathkeepers.”

Every answer just raises more questions. “And the Oathkeepers are…?”

Grim, Potter answers, “The purist extremist group you founded after Voldemort’s death.”

Draco opens his mouth to answer, but finds that he’s unable to form words. He is hit with a wave of nausea so abrupt and all-consuming that Draco’s steps actually stumble.

Potter doesn’t notice. They’ve reached the end of the long hallways, where Potter pushes through another set of large metal doors, opening onto a huge, bunker-like room.

BOOM, from outside, an explosion so strong that it vibrates the very ground beneath Draco’s feet. None of the four or five dozen people in the room seem to notice, though: they all continue talking quietly, rushing hurriedly across the floor, and groaning in pain on cots lining the floor.

There are a lot of walking wounded here, Draco notices with a steadily-increasing dread. Mediwitches and wizards are busily running from cot to cot, healing wounds both physical and magical.

And visible through a large, square-latticed window on the far side of the room—

“That,” Potter says, pointing to it, “is Montavel.”

—sits a dark, terrible castle on a hill. Every now and then, flashes of fire strike a round ward surrounding it, bursting and flashing before fading away.

It’s a battlefield, Draco realizes, numb with terror.

“Harry!”

Draco, subsumed with a dread so strong it’s frayed his nerves down to nothing, jumps. Potter doesn’t; he sighs and turns, staring impassively at Blaise Zabini as he comes storming across the room.

“Have you lost your mind!”

“Not here,” Potter says shortly.

“You must have! You must have lost your fucking mind if you thought for a second that brining—!”

“Not here, Blaise.”

Potter grabs Draco’s shoulder in one hand and Blaise’s wrist in the other, steering them both out of the main floor. Through another hallway, down another hallway, and eventually they find themselves in a small, spare office, with little more in it than a single metal desk, a folding chair, a barred window, and a magical map on one wall.

Blaise slams the door behind them.

“You need to get him back to Azkaban,” Blaise says without preamble.

“For crimes he did not commit?” Potter answers at once.

“You were there when he committed half of them,” Blaise snaps. “He’s a fucking war criminal, Harry!”

Draco thinks, for a few breaths, that he might actually vomit.

“Not anymore,” Harry answers, his tone riding the razor’s edge between firm and ferocious.

“I can’t believe you’re still on about this time travel horseshit, Harry, after all these fucking years! Just because you were never able to get over your weird obsession—”

“What war crimes,” Draco interjects.

His voice is quiet, but it manages to bring the conversation to a grinding halt. For a few moments, neither of them say anything. Potter’s expression is torn; Blaise is surprised at first, then angry.

“Well, let’s see,” Blaise snarls, “off the top of my head—murder? Torture? Conspiracy against a sitting Minister? Genocide?”

“Enough, Blaise,” Potter snaps at him, as Draco’s stomach lurches. He turns green eyes back to Draco. “There’s context, Draco, that you need to understand—”

“Genocide,” Draco finally scrapes out. “Potter, I’ve committed genocide?”

“Not—not personally,” Potter hedges.

“You just had your army of fucking purist cultists do it for you,” Blaise snaps. “Though I’m sure you’ve indulged, too, haven’t you, Malfoy? All those Muggles you keep locked up at Montavel, I bet you’ve killed an odd one here or there, just for fun, just to have something to do, you fucking psychopath—”

“Enough!” Potter thunders, when Draco starts to shake violently. Draco feels like a ship without mooring, tossed by a tempest; he feels like all the atoms that comprise his body are sloughing off and away from each other, like he’s scattering into dust.

Potter is still talking.

“You need to understand the context, Draco—after Voldemort come back, after the Slytherin schism, your father—”

“Are you coming to his defense?” Blaise cries, outraged. “It’s okay you turned into a mass-murdering lunatic because you were sad your father died?”

“I’m just trying to help him understand! He doesn’t remember any of this now, Blaise!”

Draco can barely hear them. He can barely hear anything over the cacophony in his own head, the pounding of his heartbeat in his ear, the frantic pulse of no, no, no, no, no, no, no in his brain.

This is so much worse. So much unfathomably, infinitely worse. Is there no possible timeline where Draco is anything but a coward, a fool, or a monster?

He leaves the room before he even realizes he’s moving, stumbling through the doorway and into the hall. There’s shouting behind him that he can’t decipher.

A hand seizes his shoulder, wheels him around.

“Draco,” Potter says, desperately.

“Let go of me,” Draco protests feebly, shrugging out of his grasp. “I can’t. I have to go back.”

“What? Draco, wait—!”

But Draco doesn’t wait. He storms back into the room full of walking wounded—his own fucking victims—back into the hallway that will take him to the Apparation zone.

Potter follows doggedly at his heels. “Don’t do this. Please, don’t leave. I just got you back!”

“No. This is—this—I can’t. This needs to be undone. I can’t—I cannot allow this—”

“Draco.”

He’s grabbed again, turned around, and held tightly by both arms.

“Draco, we can undo this. Now that you’re back, the Oathkeepers have no leader! We can use this to pull them apart from within, to end their reign of terror once and for all—”

“And the ones I’ve already killed?” Draco screams at him. He sounds hysterical. He is hysterical. His vision is swimming with unshed tears, his hands are trembling.

“You… Draco,” Potter says, expression breaking, “you know there’s no way to bring the dead to life.”

“But I can prevent them from ever having died,” Draco sobs. “I have to. How can I possibly justify letting this timeline exist?”

“Because it brought us back together!”

The hands on Draco’s arms move to his face. Potter is so close now, two inches, a single breath. Draco can feel the heat of Potter’s body leaching into his own, through the robes, lighting his frantic, fraying nerves on fire.

“Draco,” he whispers, “I have waited twenty-three years for you to come home to me. I am not like you; I can only go one direction in time, and I want to do it with you or not at all.”

Draco can’t speak. He can barely breathe. There’s too much inside him—choking grief, subsuming fear, and somewhere deep underneath it all, that familiar thread of longing he’s had since he was fifteen years old and hating himself, the one that pulses like guilt and tastes like ashes.

“I’m not worth the cost,” Draco says, like a confession.

“You’re worth everything,” Potter answers, like an oath, and kisses him.

Time dilates.

For a fraction of a second and great epochs of the cosmos, Draco is utterly still, completely overwhelmed by it all: the taste of his mouth, red wine and carbonara; the scent of him, spicy aftershave and minty shampoo; the feel of him, pressed flush against Draco’s body, calloused hands on his face, chapped lips on his own—

Draco wheels backward. Time resumes its normal rate.

He stares at Potter in silence, and Potter stares back. He touches his mouth, where the ghost of the kiss, the heat of it, still lingers on his lips.

Somehow, for reasons just out of Draco’s comprehension, that kiss had been more terrifying than anything else in this timeline.

“I,” Draco whispers. “I can’t.”

“Draco,” Potter begs.

But Draco is already backing away, like a frightened animal, out of the hall and away.

He Apparates into Diagon Alley and steals the reagents he needs.

He draws the rune on the floor of a cave somewhere in Wales and casts the spell with a tremendous storm bellowing just outside.

Lightning flashes and thunder rumbles as he kneels down and begins to chant. He has to focus; if he thinks about anything else, he’s not sure he’ll be able to hold himself together.

Chapter Text

There’s no lurch at all this time, because Draco isn’t conscious for it—a fact he only puts together once he wakes up in the Hospital Wing, presumably several hours after the time the spell had been aiming for.

He knows it’s the Hospital Wing because of the sheets specifically, the first thing he perceives as he rouses. They’re uniquely starch and scratchy, saturated with the intense, astringent scent of sterilization charms. Sunlight is streaming through a nearby window and into his eyes, and he squints reflexively against it as he slowly comes to.

“Ah, Mr. Malfoy. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

It’s Snape. Draco takes in a slow, deep breath and forces himself to open his eyes.

“You’re in the Hospital Wing, if you’re curious. You were found at the bottom of the stairs yesterday evening. Do you have any memory—?”

“Don’t bother,” Draco mutters, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes in an effort to make them focus. “It’s still me, Severus.”

A brief pause lapses. “You…?”

“The timeline was worse,” he says. “Again.”

Snape doesn’t answer. Draco sits upright, with difficulty. He feels like there’s a lead weight in the pit of his stomach, heavy and cold.

Worse, he’d said. As if the word was an adequate descriptor of that nightmarish future.

He doesn’t know what to do. If leaving his proper consciousness in its proper place in the timeline butterfly effects itself into a future where he becomes a genocidal monster, what’s the alternative?

Draco’s throat tightens.

Maybe he’s delineated events too much already. Maybe there’s nothing he can do to assure a future that’s even close to the one in Draco’s memory. Maybe all his efforts are in vain: he’s already guaranteed a future with more death, more pain, more agony. Maybe this new timeline would be better off without him in it at all.

Maybe he should just—

“Draco, is it possible that you’re overcomplicating it?” Snape says, drawing him abruptly out of his own, rapidly-darkening thoughts. “This was your second failed attempt correction via noninterference. Perhaps Albus was right. Perhaps the best way to assure a favorable timeline to the War is—”

Draco pushes off the bed, shrug on the dressing gown over the nearby chair, and leaves the Hospital Wing without another word.

He finds himself in the owlery without quite knowing why. Or rather, knowing why, but not quite able to admit it to himself, even as he climbs the endless stairs up and up and up.

Draco had been here before, of course, plenty of times—every student had, if they wanted to send or receive letters. But one instance in particular sticks out in Draco’s mind.

It was February, 1997, a particularly bleak winter. Months of work on the Vanishing Cabinet had availed him no measurable progress. Every day, Draco felt himself becoming more and more untethered. Fighting for a cause he no longer believed in, for a man who he finally understood to be a psychopath, with his own life and the lives of his parents on the line.

He’d climbed up to the owlery to send his mother the usual weekly letter, full of empty reassurances (I’m so sorry, Mother, I love you more than words can describe, I hope you can forgive me for inheriting the sins of my father), watched the owl fly south out the window, and then looked down—

—and thought, for just a moment, and then for several moments after, wouldn’t it just be easier—

“Draco?”

Draco draws a sharp breath, wrenches around. He is standing at the window, the cool wind of early fall tossing his hair and dressing gown.

Harry Potter is at the top of the stairs, eleven years old again.

Memories of lip rings and tattoos and red wine rise, unbidden, to the fore of Draco’s mind.

“It’s always you,” Draco says.

Potter frowns at him in confusion. “I just,” he falters, “I heard about the accident and came to check on you. When I saw you leaving the Hospital Wing, I…”

Draco can barely hear him. “It’s always you,” he says again. “Why is it always you? What is it about me that keeps you coming back? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

A wounded look crosses Potter’s young face. “You’re my friend,” he says.

“No, I’m not,” Draco hisses. “I shouldn’t be. I can’t be. Don’t you get it, Potter? I’m not good enough. You’re better off without me. The world is better off without me.”

The hurt on Potter’s face is suddenly shot through with fear. “Draco, what are you saying?” He is noticing, perhaps, the angry tears burning in Draco’s eyes, the way he’s standing very close to an open window at the top of a lethal drop.

His nervousness is well-founded, Draco realizes, and at the same moment realizes he came up here with intent to jump.

“Maybe just—”

Potter approaches him in a way that he might approach a spooked horse: hands first, palms out, each movement slow and deliberate. When he grabs Draco by both forearms, he pulls sharply, away from the window, and the pressure of Potter’s hands on him is enough to shatter Draco entirely, like brittle glass. He collapses in on himself, onto the ground, sobbing and shaking and falling apart.

An hour later, Draco is back in the Headmaster’s office. Potter and Snape are Dumbledore are talking just outside the door. Draco is pretending not to hear them.

“I think something’s really wrong with him,” Potter is saying. “The very first day I met him, he was having some sort of nervous fit. It was the same on the train. And I know his father beats him; everyone in Slytherin knows. And with the accident and how I found him this morning, I just don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“Your good instincts do you credit, Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore answers. “Your heart is in the right place. Fifty points to Slytherin.”

“We’ll take it from here,” Snape says.

“Is he going to be all right?”

“Mr. Malfoy is… a complicated young man,” Dumbledore replies with admirable diplomacy. “But rest assured, he is safe now. We intend to assure he stays that way.”

Draco sighs heavily, sinks backward in his chair. A few moments of silence pass before the office door opens, and Professors Snape and Dumbledore enter.

“We’re switching strategies,” Snape says, slamming the door behind him. His tone leaves no room for argument, and his stormy expression leaves no room for doubt that he is incredibly, incandescently angry. “Clearly, you’ve taken leave of your senses if you think for a second that suicide is—!”

“Severus,” Dumbledore interjects, calmly.

“You’d have the boy jump to his death, Albus? Is that your idea of a rational solution to the problem?”

“That is not what I said,” Dumbledore replies.

“I need to be removed from this timeline,” Draco says, tightly, staring down at his bare feet. He’s still in pajamas and a dressing gown, having had no opportunity to change. “And I thought… after seeing the future I’d created, I thought I…”

“Draco,” Snape says, and the fraying of his voice lays bare that beneath all his fury is a core of tremendous grief, “you are not expendable. Do you hear me, you foolish boy? No matter what you’ve done or will do, in this timeline or any other, you will never be deserving of death.”

“Severus,” Draco says. He tries to make it sound like an admonition, but it tumbles off his lips like a whimper.

“Never,” Snape says, and comes around to the front of Draco’s chair to seize him by his shoulders. “Swear to me, Draco, swear that you’ll never—”

Abruptly, Draco is crushed against his godfather’s chest. Eyes burning, Draco feebly grips at the back of his robes and tries to have believe him, to believe that he is worthy of life. After everything he’s been through, he’s not quite sure he manages it.

Dumbledore sits down slowly behind his desk. Fawkes, on the perch behind him, croons softly. By the time Snape releases Draco, the headmaster is leaning back in his chair.

“I remind you,” Dumbledore says, gently, “that you could just stay. We could devise strategies to avoid paradoxes. It’s not—”

“I need to be removed from this timeline,” Draco says, burying his face in his hands. Before Snape can protest, he adds, “Not with my death, necessarily, but I can’t—”

He pushes himself out of the chair abruptly, walks to the window. The headmaster’s office commands an excellent view of the Quidditch Pitch, and far below, he can see tiny blue dots zipping around it: Ravenclaw’s team, he suspects, conducting their tryouts. He braces both hands on the sill and leans his weight forward.

“I suspect—I hope—that it has less to do with me and more to do with Potter,” he says. “He was in Gryffindor in the original timeline, and had some separation from me. Now he’s in Slytherin, and he’s too close. I get tangled up in his life, and by the time the War rolls around, even when I’m no more coherent than a stalk of celery, I bollocks everything up.”

Draco rubs his forehead, tries to breathe. Tries not to think about the Inferno, about Montavel.

“We can’t very well re-sort him,” Snape says, slowly.

“No,” Draco agrees, “Potter’s timeline is way too important to delineate more than it already has been. But there’s still a way to get me out of it.”

“Academic leave? The year’s only just started!”

“I’m afraid that this is standard procedure in this particular situation, Mr. Malfoy,” Dumbledore says. “Madame Pomfrey is more than equipped to handle maladies both physical and magical, but psychological ailments are beyond her skill.”

Being that the best sort of lie is a version of truth, Draco had elected to follow Hogwarts policy and inform his parents that he had been one eleven-year-old boy away from throwing himself out a window. The benefits of this plan are twofold: first, it has an outward logical consistency, allowing for a cohesive explanation for those around him to latch onto, even if that explanation was a mental collapse; and second, it allows Draco an easy way to push for transfer to another school, finally and permanently extricating himself from Harry Fucking Potter’s timeline.

“I cannot believe you’d embarrass us like this, Draco,” his father hisses. He’s holding the head of his cane in a white knuckle grip, staring furiously down at his son. But after just having narrowly avoided suicide, his father’s scorn rolls off his back like beads of water.

“Lucius,” his mother admonishes, sliding a protective arm around Draco’s shoulders and pulling him into her body. “This is our son.”

“Our son the coward, as it happens,” his father answers snarlingly. “Always searching for the easy way out, even when he has nothing worth complaining about—”

“You’re a son of a bitch, Lucius Malfoy,” Snape says suddenly.

Draco looks up, not quite able to hide his surprise. The meeting had been arranged in his godfather’s office, as both his parents already had his Floo address at Hogwarts, being his long-time friends.

Although judging by the stormy expression that passes over his father’s face at Snape’s words, one might be forgiven for assuming they were bitter rivals.

“Excuse me?”

“Your son nearly killed himself yesterday, and your first thought is how embarrassing it is for you?”

“Severus,” Dumbledore says, carefully.

The silence that follows is vicious. Snape’s nostrils flare and he spins furiously, staring into the fire crackling in the hearth.

“Hogwarts policy,” Dumbledore says, tone delicate, “is for a three-month leave. He’ll be able to make up any schoolwork he missed upon his return. You’ll need to sign a few things, Mr. Malfoy.”

His father goes to sign, glaring daggers into Snape’s back, who has yet to turn around. Draco wets his lips anxiously.

Beside him, his mother says, “Draco.”

He looks up at her, seeing, for the first time since she’d arrived, the real fear in her eyes, etched into the lines of her brow and the downturn of her mouth.

Guilt lances through the center of his chest.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she whispers, stroking a thin, trembling hand through Draco’s hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t see, that I didn’t put it together…”

“Mum,” Draco whispers back, wrecked, “it’s not your fault.”

“I’m your mother,” she tells him. “It’s my job to notice when you’re in pain.”

Draco’s throat gets tight. She bends and kisses the top of his head, then hugs him for a very long time.

There’s nothing healing about the Malfoy Manor, of course.

Draco has memories—long turned foggy and indistinct—of happy moments in his childhood home: learning to fly, casting his first spell with his training wand, finding a unicorn wandering through the forests surrounding the property. They come back to him as if through a pensieve, as though he is an observer in them and not a participant.

Now all he can see is the hallway where Bellatrix Lestrange first arrived after having been freed from Azkaban; the bedroom where they’d locked Greyback up during the full moon, screaming and howling and clawing the walls; the cellars where he’d been forced to torture his classmates, hands shaking, vision blurred with tears. All the ghosts of a war that exist, for the moment, only in Draco’s mind.

“Draco?”

His mother’s voice pulls him up and out of his own head, back into sitting room where he’d watched one of his professors die.

“Mother.”

“Dobby and I were going to go out this afternoon into Diagon Alley. We need to pick up a few orders and take Theseus into Eeylop’s to have his wing looked at.”

“I… sure.”

She nods. Draco looks back into the sitting room, remembering what Professor Burbage looked like as the light faded from her eyes.

“Severus sent you an owl,” his mother says.

“I’ll read it later,” Draco answers, distracted.

“As did Harry Potter.”

Draco frowns, purses his lips.

“You might have mentioned that he was a friend of yours,” she says carefully.

“Do you imagine Father would approve?” Draco asks, despite himself.

“That his son befriended such an influential figure?” she asks, smiling, obfuscating. Draco stares at her in silence for a while, feeling a sudden need to strip away the frills of the conversation, to lay bare what they’re both really talking about.

“That his son befriended the boy who killed the Dark Lord,” Draco clarifies.

She purses her lips, pale eyes searching Draco’s.

“The son of two Order members? A beloved symbol of triumph over evil? Do you think Father would appreciate that Harry Potter has taken a shine to his son?”

His mother remains silent.

“Because I think he’d be threatened by the mere implication that his son shares views that do not align with his own. I think he’d do far worse to me than break my bones if he found out.”

“Draco,” she says slowly, “your father loves you.”

“He loves power more,” Draco answers. “He needs to believe his delusions of superiority more than he needs his son.”

It was a truth he’d confronted slowly, painfully, in the years following his death, one that had hollowed out his chest when he’d first admitted it to himself on his therapist’s couch, and which had scarred over in the years between. He thought he’d healed from the realization that his father had hated others more than he loved his son. Of course, he also thought he’d never have to see the bastard again.

“I,” his mother begins, falteringly, “don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk like this.”

“Of course you haven’t. What opportunity have I had to learn anything different?” Then Draco sighs, chides himself. The sentiment strays dangerously close to an excuse. Draco had plenty of opportunities to learn different, to be different, and he didn’t until it was far too late to do anything about it.

“Draco,” his mother begins.

“Mother, I think you should disenroll me from Hogwarts,” he says.

Dear Draco, reads the letter he’d found clutched by the snowy owl on his bedroom window sill, I heard you went back home after what happened in the owlery. I suppose I understand. I hope you feel better, and that eventually you’ll come back.

Draco offers Hedwig a biscuit Dobby had brought up that he hadn’t had the appetite for. The owl eyes it a moment, then sets to breaking it in half with her beak. Draco reads on.

Things at Hogwarts are all right. I miss you at classes. You always had a way of explaining things I didn’t understand so they make sense. Vince and Greg are great, but they understand even less about magic than I do, I think.

Draco chuckles. Though they have their virtues, book smarts was never one of them.

Blaise says he’s trying to keep a lid on the rumors going around about you. Pansy is doing exactly the opposite of that. She says she’s just worried, and I’m sure that’s part of it, but mostly I think she just wants to be in the know, and for everyone else to know she’s in the know. She says hi, by the way.

Draco sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed.

Professor Snape told me that you would be all right eventually, and I hope that’s true. I know something of what it’s like, being hurt by adults who are supposed to help you, and I know what it’s like to feel helpless. Maybe when you come back to Hogwarts, we can talk about it a little more.

For reasons Draco can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge, his throat gets a little tight. He’d heard the rumors, of course, about Potter’s Muggle upbringing, but he’d never…

Anyway, write back soon. Slytherin’s Quidditch tryouts are starting next week and I’ll let you know who makes the team.

Yours very sincerely,
Harry

A breath comes rushing out of him. Draco rubs his forehead with one hand. On his window sill, Hedwig is pulverizing the biscuit to a pile of crumbs and strawberry jelly.

“You can go once you finish that,” he tells her. She lifts her head and hoots at him. “I’m not sending a letter back, all right? I can’t. It’s…”

Draco groans. Why is he trying to justify himself to a fucking owl?

He crumples the letter up and tosses it into the waste bin by his desk. Then he produces his wand and alters the wards so that letters from Harry Potter won’t be able to make it through again.

“It’s for the best,” Draco tells himself. Harry Potter is better off without him. Very deliberately, he pushes down memories from dead futures. He does not think about the way his green eyes looked when he never said I’d rather have you with me, does not think about Journey playing through tinny speakers in the background as Potter’s gaze dropped to Draco’s lips.

He especially does not think about the kiss. He expends so much effort not thinking about it, not thinking about the heady scent of Potter’s aftershave and the intense press of his lips, that it makes Draco’s stomach hurt.

“It’s for the best,” he says again. Maybe if he repeats it enough, he’ll start to believe it in the ways that matter.

“It’s for the best,” Draco says tonelessly the next evening at dinner, as he pushes his bouillabaisse around without eating any. “I don’t think any good can come from going back to Hogwats now.”

“I suppose this would be the most effective way to avoid any embarrassing rumors about you circulating through the Sacred Twenty-Eight,” his father concedes. “Or at least any more.”

“Lucius,” his mother says, coldly.

“A fresh start is…”

Draco swallows.

With a little more honesty than he intends, he says, “A fresh start is what I need.” It’s all I’ve wanted, for so many years, he doesn’t add. He just hopes this is what finally gives it to him.

“Perhaps Ilvermorny,” his father says. “They just built that Apparation Gate, didn’t they? Between London and New York? It would be easy to go between.”

“New England, Lucius? Are you sure? It’s so far.”

“Well, what would you rather, Narcissa? The boy’s a pariah in Hogwarts now.”

His mother sighs, turns soft eyes to Draco.

“Sweetheart,” she says, “are you sure this is what you want?”

“I’m sure,” Draco answers softly. The words taste bitter on his tongue.

“Very well,” his father says, with a great sigh. “I’ll send the appropriate owls in the morning. You’ll be disenrolled by week’s end.”

This time, when he casts the spell, he alters it just slightly.

He leaves his younger self with a few memories: a deeply unpleasant few months at Hogwarts, undercut with a tremendous sadness. He leaves the details vague and painful, makes them agonizing just to recall. His eleven-year-old self, he knows, was never one to dwell on things that made him uncomfortable anyway.

And as he chants the long lines of Latin in his bedroom that night, with instructions let for Dobby to sweep the rune off the floor the next morning, in his head he is chanting something very different:

Please, please, please, just let me get it right, just this once.

Chapter Text

There’s no pitch forward this time, because Draco is lying down on his side in bed.

His eyelids are heavy and his vision adjusts slowly, as if he’d been asleep. With difficulty, he pushes himself onto one elbow and looks around.

He’s in a bedroom, but not one that he recognizes. The walls are painted a warm gray-taupe, save for an accent wall directly across from him, which has a patterned wallpaper deep green and gold. A broad picture window overlooks a charming tumble of garden, and photographs in sleek black frames line the walls. The bedspread is dark turquoise, the floors gleaming hardwood. All the furniture is distinctly art deco, clean lines and elegant shapes, with accents of brass and polished wood. Wherever Draco is, he likes it.

He examines himself next: soft, loose pajamas, thoughtfully charmed not to bunch. The dark blue complements his coloring well, although it seems strange to still be wearing them at four o’clock in the afternoon.

He carefully climbs out of bed, barefoot on the floor.

Something feels out of place, and as he looks around, he realizes it’s that he’s never been alone after casting this spell. Someone had always been waiting for him. That he’s on his own in—presumably, hopefully—his own home feels liberating and oddly transgressive.

Slowly, Draco slips out of the bedroom.

The rest of the house is much of the same: sleek, elegant art deco or art nouveau, in excellently coordinated color palettes that change from room to room. The smell of some kind of pie wafts out of bright marble kitchen, and Johnny Cash drifts from a navy blue sitting room:

What have I become,
My sweetest friend?
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end

He steps quietly inside. The room looks well-used, with throw blankets tossed over the back of the sofa, a radio on the window sill, a Muggle television on a console table, and a tall fireplace in granite and brass. One wall is dominated by a massive bookshelf, the other by a collage of photographs, their subjects all moving about happily in their frames.

Carefully, he steps toward the pictures, hoping for any clue as to where he is or what future he’s stepped into.

You could have it all,
My empire of dirt
I will let you down,
I will make you hurt

The collage appears to be a variety of shots from the same event. Most of the faces are ones he recognizes: Blaise and Pansy, Vince and Greg, his mother and Severus, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. They’re all dancing and celebrating in formal attire, beaming and waving at the camera, except for Severus, of course, who’s scowling in every shot he’s captured in (Draco wonders, with a frantic little twinge, what year these pictures were taken, and if Severus made it out of the War this time).

Draco sees himself, too, in an elegant black suit with accents of crimson: crimson vest, crimson pocket square, and—

—a golden wedding band set with crimson rubies, which he’s showing off to the camera with a dazzling smile, as Harry Fucking Potter, in a suit of gray and green, kisses his jaw adoringly.

Draco’s heart starts to pound. Without meaning to, he looks down at his left hand.

The same ring in the photograph is on his finger, a bit more worn, but still gleaming.

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar’s chair,
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Draco whispers. His hands are shaking. There’s no possible way—

There’s no possible fucking way—

He removed himself from Potter’s timeline, how could he possibly—

Behind him, the fireplace rushes as someone Floos in. Draco turns, heart leaping up into his throat, knowing that if he’s married, and if this is his home, the only other person who could reasonably be expected to Floo in during the late afternoon—

“Hi,” Draco says, because he can’t come up with anything else.

—is Harry Potter, who looks up sharply from charming the soot off his robes when he hears Draco’s voice. His wand clatters to the floor, startlingly loud against the grim sotto of the song.

He doesn’t say anything. He has neither piercings nor tattoos this time, Draco notices with an odd stab of disappointment. He does have a new scar, though, long and deep and silvered, over his left eye. Draco finds himself physically suppressing the urge to run over to his side, drag his finger down it, and demand to know who gave it to him.

“Draco,” he eventually says. His voice is hitched, broken, as though he’s on the edge of frantic tears. “Draco. What—how—?”

“I… don’t know?” Draco answers, which is true if nothing else.

Potter stumbles forward one step. Two. Draco is electrified by every inch that collapses between them.

“Is… am I dreaming?” Potter asks, tears falling down his face. “Draco, is this real?”

He reaches up, ghosts his fingertips across Draco’s face. Draco leans into the touch without meaning to, without even realizing he’s doing it. Potter sobs again.

“Draco,” he says, and kisses him.

Beneath the stains of time,
The feelings disappear
You are someone else,
I am still right here

The noise pulled out of Draco’s throat is entirely involuntary. Potter leans into him as if trying to swallow the sound, presses him backward into the wall; the pictures Draco had been staring at moments ago rattle. He reaches up with both hands and every intention to push Potter away and demand answers, but he doesn’t. Instead, his hands fist in the front of Potter’s maroon robes, gripping like a lifeline.

Potter groans brokenly into Draco’s mouth. “This could be a trap,” he says, without pulling away.

“It—it could?” Draco answers, shivering as Potter’s fingertips rake up his ribs.

“It could. It would be his cruelest yet.”

Whose? is what Draco should ask, but doesn’t, because Potter steals the breath right out of Draco’s lungs with another kiss, so fantastically deep that Draco wonders if Potter isn’t actually a Dementor, drawing his soul out through his mouth.

“I don’t care,” Potter decides a moment later, hands pressing up beneath his shirt and across the skin of Draco’s stomach. The contact sets Draco’s blood on fire. His head falls back and a ragged gasp comes tumbling off his lips. “I don’t care. God, let it break me. I’ll trade it all for one more night with you. Draco—”

(Draco should stop this, he knows, as Potter’s warm, rough fingers fumble with the buttons running down the front of his pajama shirt, but he doesn’t. He can’t.)

“—I need you. Draco, I need you.”

(Draco knows what he means, knows that this is wrong, it’s all wrong, that this is stolen affection, stolen time, but Potter is touching his bare skin in ways that Draco only ever let himself picture in his most private fantasies, and he’s so weak, he can’t make himself stop this even though he knows he should.)

“Harry,” Draco says, and surrenders.

If I could start again
A million miles away,
I would keep myself,
I would find a way

Moments later, he’s on his back on the couch. Harry is over him, straddling his hips, shucking off his Auror robes, green eyes dark with frantic desire and a desperate sadness that Draco doesn’t understand. He peels his shirt off and tosses it away, leans down and captures Draco’s mouth in a hysterical kiss.

“Mmn,” Draco manages. Harry rocks his hips without breaking the kiss, a pulse of friction and heat; Draco’s whole body answers, blood thundering through his veins and into his cock. “Harry,” he gasps into the kiss.

“I remember,” Harry whispers, hungrily, as he climbs down Draco’s body, “what you like.”

How? is what Draco should ask, but can’t, because Harry’s hands are tugging his pajama bottoms down and away. Draco is already desperately hard, cock straining against his stomach. Harry leans down at once, like he’s done this a thousand times, and licks a warm stripe up the shaft.

Draco almost falls apart under the sensation. He grabs hold of the seatback of the sofa just to have something to hold as his body arcs up. Harry rumbles a low sound of approval.

“I never,” Harry says, low, like a confession, “not with anyone, not once in all these years. I couldn’t. It was only ever you, Draco, only you.”

What the fuck are you talking about? is what Draco should ask, but doesn’t, because Harry is between Draco’s open thighs and spearing two fingers into him.

“Fuck,” Draco says, and suddenly holding onto the seatback isn’t enough; his hands find themselves tangled in Harry’s dark hair, and it’s all he can do to ground himself through the too-intense sensations surging through his body. His hips buck frantically, desperate for every inch of Harry’s fingers that he can get. He feels so good, fingers curled perfectly into the bundle of nerves; stars are bursting behind his eyes and under his skin. The twin sensation of Harry’s supernova-hot tongue on his cock threatens to send him hurtling over the edge; Draco’s not entirely sure how he holds back.

“Draco,” Harry says, low, green eyes staring with dark intensity up at him. He works his fingers harder, faster.

“I’m not,” Draco warns him, voice tight, “if you don’t—”

“I need to be inside you,” Harry tells him, voice edged with hysteria. Draco whimpers. Then, “Fuck, where’s my wand—?”

Then he’s gone, climbing off the couch to search the floor for it. Draco is left feeling empty and bereft, body shaking from riding the very cusp of climax for so long.

He swallows hard and tries to get a hold of himself. He should stop, should use this lull to tell Harry—his fucking husband, apparently—about what happened before he came home. He should get the whole story of why Harry is trying to fuck him like he’ll never get the chance again.

But he doesn’t do any of that. When Harry finally finds his wand, sits upright on his knees on the floor, Draco is in front of him, finally shrugging off his opened pajama top and straddling his legs.

“Draco,” Harry whispers, wrecked, and Draco cuts the sentence short with a kiss, tugs hard at the clasp holding his trousers shut. He pulls the fabric aside just enough to free Harry’s cock, slide one hand around its width, press his thumb hard into the slit. The sound Harry makes in response is intoxicating. He grips Draco’s ribs hard, rocks his hips into the touch. “Fuck, Draco. I love you so much. I—I need—”

“Cast the spell,” Draco says.

He casts the spell, a sudden slick heat that leaks out of Draco and down the back of one thigh. Draco pushes Harry down hard onto the floor. The firelight, low and flickering, only enough to allow for Floo and not enough to heat the room in the already-warm spring, plays on the edges of Harry’s skin, glitters in his green eyes.

He should stop. He shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not responsible. He barely knows what’s going on.

He hesitates. Underneath him, Harry grips Draco’s hips.

“Draco,” he pleads, and all that’s left of Draco’s resolve crumbles. He sinks backward, onto the thick, hot, pulsing cock.

It feels so good that Draco can’t quite believe it. He’s slept with men before—probably a few too many, during his self-destructive mid-twenties—but it’s never been like this. Physically, he is full to bursting, like Harry is reaching into places Draco didn’t even know he had and breaking him apart from the inside. Emotionally, he is overwhelmed, like some fundamental part of his soul, long since fragmented, is slotting back into place.

“You’re so beautiful,” Harry whispers, rapturous, tears in his eyes, threatening to break their banks. “Draco, I love you so much. I missed you.”

What does that mean? is what Draco should ask, but he can only beg, “Touch me,” and Harry does, a hand around his cock to match the slow, deep rhythm Draco sets with his hips.

“I,” Draco gasps, hands bracing on the plane of Harry’s chest, hips rocking, shoulders shaking, “I’m—Harry—”

“Are you going to come for me, love?” Harry asks, voice heavy with a groundswell of various, too-intense emotions. “You know I love to feel you come around my cock.”

Do I? is what Draco should ask, but instead he gasps, “I… Merlin, you feel so good, I… I can’t…”

Harry’s hand on his cock moves faster, encouraging the same from Draco, who obliges helplessly. The speed, the fullness, it’s more than Draco can bear. He’s so close, dangling on the razor’s edge of pleasure. Harry slips his free hand around the back of Draco’s neck and pulls him down without stopping the movements on his cock.

“Then don’t,” Harry mutters into is ear. “Come for me, Draco.”

And Draco does, the rhythm of his hips stuttering, body spasming, vision graying with sensation so intense that he is helpless to do anything but feel it, at the tip of his cock, behind his eyes, in the deepest parts of his body.

“Fuck,” Harry whispers brokenly, and comes moments later, cock pulsing and emptying into Draco’s body.

It takes several minutes, or perhaps years and years, for Draco’s senses to come back to him. It takes only moments for him to collapse, overexerted, on top of Harry’s body, to melt into the arms that wrap around him, to slip into a hazy delirium between waking and dreaming.

Harry has a matching wedding band in different material: silver to Draco’s gold, emeralds to Draco’s rubies.

“The mediwitch told me about… God, what did she call it?”

Draco stares at the ring as the hand that wears it strokes again and again over Draco’s wrist. They managed to migrate to the bedroom, though not before another desperate round of sex, with Harry coming frantically down Draco’s throat and Draco spasming through his own climax as Harry fucked him open with his tongue. Draco is still having trouble believing that this—the sex, the home, the marriage—is real.

“Spontaneous correction, I think it was? She said that it happened in something like one in a thousand cases, but that it only ever happened on its own, and there was no specific magical intervention to trigger it. That it was better to just accept you were gone and never coming back.”

“Coming back from what?” Draco asks quietly.

A beat of silence passes between them. Harry sits up next to him in bed, weight resting on one elbow, expression soft and concerned.

“Do you not remember?” he asks.

Draco swallows. Not remembering is certainly one way of describing it. Mutely, he shakes his head.

Harry releases a shaky breath, lifts his hand to run it through Draco’s sweat-slicked hair. “Maybe it’s for the best,” he says. “God knows I’d rip the memories out with my bare hands if I thought I could. So you don’t remember any of it? The War, the raid on the Ministry, your capture?”

“My capture?” Draco repeats. “Who captured me?”

A look of intense pain laced through with fury crosses Harry’s face. “Voldemort did,” he hisses. “I naively thought he’d just kill you, but of course that wouldn’t be nearly painful enough for me.”

A cold knot of dread is twisting itself in Draco’s throat. “What does that mean?” he asks.

“Draco,” Harry says, very quietly, “he Cruciated you. He broke you. That was over ten years ago.”

Draco’s mouth opens, but he can’t manage to come up with any words.

“When I finally got you out of his stronghold, when I saw the state you were in—”

Harry’s voice breaks off with emotion. He shudders, buries his face in Draco’s chest. Draco, bewildered and more than a little overwhelmed, puts his hand on Harry’s back. The red gems in his wedding ring glimmer in the low light of the bedroom. It’s evening now, with the last traces of sunset fading through the window, leaving angles of dim orange light on the walls and ceiling.

“I’m so sorry,” Harry whispers.

“Harry,” Draco says, “you don’t—”

“But I do,” Harry says. “It’s my fault. Voldemort knew, he knew how much you mean to me. My love put a target on your back. I should have known. I shouldn’t have let you on the front lines—”

“Would you have been able to stop me?”

Harry laughs bitterly. “I suppose I never could never talk you out of anything,” he says. “One of the many reasons I fell for you in the first place.”

Draco’s heart throbs behind his ribs. He’d said it a dozen times while they made love, but hearing it like this—warm, honest, so utterly open—feels different. Harry is in love with him? The notion seems so absurd. What about Draco is worth loving? What about him is good enough for a man like Harry Potter?

Draco traces two fingers through Harry’s hair when he lifts his eyes to meet Draco’s.

“I can’t believe I have you back,” Harry whispers, voice ruined with emotion. “I’m so scared that this is all in my head somehow, that I’ll wake up at any minute, that I’ve finally gone ’round the bend and am actually in a padded room somewhere…”

This is dangerous, Draco knows. It would be so easy—it would be so easy—to just let himself have this, to steal this life like a thief in the night. To have a home with a Harry Potter who adores him, who chose to spend his life with him, who kept making that choice every day for a decade, even after Draco was Cruciated to the point of insanity. It’s so tempting it physically hurts.

Because it would be fine, wouldn’t it? He could have this. Harry would never have to know the truth. Draco could spend the rest of their lives making up for his long absence, hiding behind the perfectly plausible excuse that he just didn’t remember the last twenty-three years very well.

It would only be one lie.

Guilt pulses in the center of his chest. A ragged breath scrapes out of his throat the longer he stares at Harry, stares at his own wedding band glittering in the last rays of sunlight.

And he knows he can’t have this. He hasn’t earned it. He can’t tell a lie so profound, not even if it would make him happier than he had ever been, could ever be.

“Harry,” Draco begins, when suddenly a voice calls out from the sitting room:

“Potter! Are you in? Potter!”

Harry wrenches around; Draco takes in a sharp breath and barely has time to pull the bedsheet over himself before the bedroom door clatters open.

Standing in the threshold is, inexplicably, Viktor Krum.

“There you are,” Krum says when he sees Harry, then startles when he sees Draco. “Vat in the—?”

“Er,” Draco says.

“Draco?” Krum says, bewildered. “How are… vat is—?”

“It’s a bit of a story, Vik,” Harry says, who apparently calls Viktor Krum by a nickname, as he flicks his wand to summon a dressing gown from the closet. “What are you doing here, mate? My leave just started, in case you forgot—”

“There’s been an attack outside Boston,” Viktor Krum says, but he’s staring at Draco. Suddenly, he is speaking German: “Bist du das wirklich?”^[1]

Draco had been taught three languages growing up: English because they lived in England; French because his father was half-French and still had family there; and German because, for the first seven years of Draco’s life, they had assumed he would be attending Durmstrang, whose classes were taught in German despite the campus being in northern Scandinavia. Still, it had been a long time since he’d used the language regularly, and it takes his mind a moment to put together a cohesive answer.

“Ja,” Draco answers in careful, deliberate German, “das bin wirklich ich.”^[2]

“Wie ist das möglich?” Krum asks. His expression is thunderstruck, with just a bit of desperate hope visible at the edges. “Draco, mein Kumpel, wie…”^[3]

Maybe Draco had forgotten more German than he realized. Or did Viktor Krum actually just refer to him as a friend?

“Vik,” Harry says, drawing the Bulgarian’s attention away. “An attack outside Boston? How many casualties?”

Draco’s attention refocuses. Casualties?

“It’s too early to say,” Krum answers. “Ve need you on the front.”

Draco barely has time to get dressed before he’s out the door.

Waiting on the road at the end of a delightful front garden overfull of wildflowers is what looks like an American Muggle school bus, painted dark blue. Its engine rumbles quietly in the late afternoon sunlight, doors standing open. The surrounding neighborhood is picturesque, open fields and forests interspersed with disparate cottages around a small downtown visible down the hill. A few dozen feet down the road on which their house is situated, a green sign indicates that the next left turn leads to I-89, Burlington, Montpelier.

“Are we—” Draco begins, then starts over: “Do we live in the U.S.?”

Harry gives him an odd look as he ushers him up the garden path leading to the road. “Exactly how bad is your memory loss, love? We’ve lived in Vermont since 2002.”

“Vermont?” Draco repeats, surprised. He supposes the area does look quite New Englandy, rural and lush and lovely in the spring. Draco had never considered living anywhere outside Europe, though is willing to admit that based on a cursory glance, this particular area is stunning. He could see himself falling in love with a place like this.

“Memory loss?” asks Viktor Krum, who is still here for some inexplicable reason, and walking with them toward the bus. “Potter, vat’s happened? This isn’t another one of your experiments, is it?”

“No,” Harry answers, still frowning in concern at Draco, “no, this is… he’s just—I came home and he was just back. I don’t know how it happened.”

As they come through the little painted gate at the edge of the road, yet another familiar but unexpected face appears from within the bus:

“Hello, Harry,” says Luna Lovegood, and Draco nearly loses his footing. Guilt and fear and nausea furl into a dreadful tangle in the pit of his stomach. Memories of the Malfoy Manor, of his own shaking hand lifting his wand as he whispers Crucio—

“Draco,” Viktor Krum says, touching his elbow in a familiar gesture with a gentle frown, which if nothing else grounds him and prevents the awful memories from swallowing him whole, “vat is the last thing you remember?”

“I…” Draco genuinely isn’t sure how to answer. His mind gropes fruitlessly for a coherent explanation.

“He doesn’t remember the raid on the Ministry,” Harry supplies. Then he adds, “Hi, Luna.”

“Oh,” Luna says, voice vague and pleasant, “is Draco back? That’s good news.”

“Do you remember Durmstrang?” Viktor asks Draco. “Your German is rusty.”

“Durmstrang?” Draco says. Slowly, he deduces, “We… went to Durmstrang together?”

“Ve did,” Viktor confirms, with a slow smile. “You and I vere good friends. Ven I graduated, you took over as Seeker on our house team. I recommended you for the position.”

Draco’s head spins. So he didn’t end up going to Ilvermorny after all? The only reason he’d gone to Hogwarts was because it was closer—perhaps, with the prospect of going to school all the way in the U.S., his mother had argued his father down to Durmstrang instead.

They all climb into the bus, and Draco startles when he sees that the inside is twice as big as it appears to be from the outside—a formidable display of transfiguration magic. The rows of seats are all upholstered in blue and gray, covered in throw pillows, and interspersed with tables of varying heights.

“You wouldn’t remember the Battle Bus,” Harry supplies after he steps on after him, smiling. “Luna only made it a few years ago.”

“The Battle Bus?” Draco can’t help repeating.

“There’s normally more weapons around,” Luna supplies, “but I try to keep it tidy. We don’t want anyone tripping on land mines.”

“Again,” Viktor adds, sinking onto a plush blue settee as Luna climbs into the driver’s seat at the front, the large steering wheel covered in a fluffy blue cover, glass baubles dangling from an enchanted rear-view mirror, which Luna dutifully adjusts before putting the vehicle in drive—

—and promptly taking off into the sky.

Draco only manages to remain upright with a quick hand on the small of his back—Harry’s—which catches him just before he topples backward.

“Right,” Draco says. “Flying bus. Okay.”

At Harry’s urging, he sits down across from him at one of the tables, which appears to be riveted to the floor to prevent it from moving.

“So you remember Durmstrang, at least,” Harry says, “or bits and pieces of it. Do you remember when we met?”

Draco frowns.

“Or, I guess met again,” Harry amends. “You did go to Hogwarts for a few months before you were transferred. But I didn’t see you again until—”

It hits Draco all at once: “The Triwizard Tournament.”

Of course. Fourth year—both Beauxbatons and Durmstrang had both spent the whole term at Hogwarts. That’s how Draco had been reinserted into Harry’s timeline.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Harry says. He’s smiling dreamily at Draco from the other side of the table, “until suddenly there you were, six inches taller, lean and gorgeous, and you spoke three languages and looked so bloody fit in that red Durmstrang uniform…”

“It vas intolerable, vatching the two of you,” Viktor intones from his seat a few feet away. He feigns a look of disgust, a flimsy veneer over a fond smile. “You nearly vent mad vaiting for Harry to ask you to the Yule Ball. I threatened to hex you mute if you kept yammering on about him.”

Draco’s head is spinning. It’s not like he’d been less of an insufferable little prick in fourth year than any other before the end of the War. Perhaps having some distance from Father had helped him to mellow out? Viktor Krum, half-blood himself, had become an outspoken blood egalitarian in the years after Voldemort’s defeat in the original timeline—perhaps being his friend had expanded Draco’s horizons past the prejudice instilled in him by his family?

None of these explanations feel adequate, somehow. Draco finds himself utterly incapable of imagining any timeline in which he could possibly be worthy of Harry Potter.

A hand grips Draco’s, drawing him out of the abyss of his thoughts. When he looks up, Harry is leaning over the table, smiling with enough warmth to melt the cold core of Draco’s fear.

“It’s all right if you don’t remember it all, love,” he says. “We can figure it out together. I’ve waited eleven years and I’d wait a thousand more if I had to.”

Draco has no explanation for why the sentiment suddenly has his eyes burning with the threat of tears.

“I’ve never heard of anyone coming back from being Cruciated,” Viktor intones with a small frown. “It’s not supposed to be possible, generally. Perhaps Neville vill have some ideas.”

“Oh!” Luna suddenly says from the front. “Oh, oh! Incoming! Everyone get—!”

She can’t finish the sentence, or if she does, Draco can’t hear it; there’s an explosion of light and sound so intense that for a moment Draco is both deaf and blind. The entire Battle Bus rocks hard to one side, and when the ringing in his ears fades and his eyes readjust, Draco finds he’s on the floor.

“Shit!” he hears Viktor cry. “Potter, Malfoy, Lovegood—you all right? Sound off!”

“I’m okay!” comes Luna’s voice, followed by a few coughs. “I’m going to have to pull in for an emergency landing at the port!”

“I’m here,” Harry says. “Draco? Draco, love, are you—?”

“What,” Draco interjects, “was that?”

“Fiendfyre bomb,” Viktor grinds out. “I didn’t realize he’d gotten them across the Atlantic already.”

Harry’s hand is on his shoulder, helping Draco up, but Draco is already lurching toward the window.

Through the black smoke billowing out from under the Battle Bus, Draco can see a sprawling coastal city run through with great lines of blackened debris, buildings flattened or burning, swaths of destruction so immense that they’re visible even from what must be over a mile in the air.

“Where… what is this?” Draco asks, as terror twists knots in his throat.

“It’s Boston,” is Harry’s grim answer.

“Vat’s left of it,” Viktor adds darkly.

“I… I don’t understand,” Draco says. “What happened to it? It looks like a war zone.”

“It is, love,” Harry says. When he puts a hand on Draco’s back, draws his gaze away from the view below, his expression is sad. “Since you were Cruciated, the War hasn’t gone well. New York fell in 2010. Boston’s barely been holding the line for the rest of New England.”

Draco’s stomach drops. “The War,” he manages, voice faint. “It hasn’t even ended?”

Luna lands the Battle Bus on what Draco suspects used to be Logan International Airport, now a barren stretch of tarmac on the edge of the ocean, a ruined pile of concrete, and a handful of slapped-together warehouses under some of the strongest perception charms Draco has ever seen, hiding them in plain sight. The bus eventually rattles to a stop, smoking and hissing, under a large metal hangar full of people in maroon robes crossing in every direction.

In the back of Draco’s mind, there is an idea, a theory, that he can’t shake loose. It sinks its claws into the very base of his skull as a point of throbbing pain, the center of a web of frantic, trembling nerves that extend down his spine and each of his limbs individually.

“So this attack,” Harry says as the three of them move together across the hangar and into the adjoining building, through a set of wide doors propped open with stacks of cinder blocks, “what do we know so far?”

“It took out a part of 95,” Viktor answers. The people who notice Harry as he passes react with circumspection and nervousness, stumbling out of his path or watching him pass as they might stare at a tornado hurtling past them. “It’s going to make it hard to get supplies to and from Providence.”

“Shit,” Harry sighs. “Providence had the last good Apparition Gate into London. We’re going to need to secure an alternate route.”

“Do you think he knows we have a Gate?” Viktor asks, like he’s worried the answer might be yes. Harry, in any case, doesn’t answer.

Eventually, they go down enough corridors and around enough corners that they come to their destination: a wide, sprawling bunker at the bottom of a set of steps. It is a riot of sounds: people talking, arguing, shouting questions across the room, spells humming through the air, and the mechanical buzz of Muggle electronics—computers and televisions and radios, scattered across desks and mounted on walls.

Most notable is the huge map dominating one wall on a screen at least twenty feet across: North America and Europe, pockmarked by glowing shapes to demarcate, presumably, different things. There are several large white skull shapes—one over London, one over Paris, one over New York City. There’s a bright green “H” over Boston, though, and another over what Draco thinks might be Washington, D.C.—

—and a massive red “V” over Berlin.

Draco’s heart starts to flutter, frantic, against his ribs.

“Draco?”

It’s Luna’s voice, but Draco can’t look at her. He can’t look away from the map. It seems to imply—

“Draco, are you all right?”

—but that’s not possible. Surely he can’t still be alive.

A small hand grips Draco’s shoulder. He jumps, and the movement releases a torrent of shivers racing in every direction across his skin. He stares at Luna, who is swimming in and out of focus.

“Luna,” Draco whispers, “please don’t tell me—is he alive? Is he still alive?”

Luna cants her head to one side, large eyes sad. “Voldemort? Yes, he’s still alive.”

All the air is punched out of Draco’s lungs at once. He reaches out with both hands and grabs at the desk in front of him, just to keep himself from collapsing. “And Europe is—?”

“Under his control, primarily,” Luna says, looking at the map. “He’s headquartered himself in Germany, though our most recent intelligence suggests that he has plans to take over Italy, too.”

Those huge white skulls—London, Paris, New York. Harry had said that New York fell in 2010—did London fall, too? Did Paris? How many people—

How many millions of people—

“How is this possible?” Draco whispers. “How could it last so long? How could he have become strong enough to take over Europe? I… I don’t…”

Luna frowns at him, and answers slowly: “It wasn’t easy for Harry in the early days. Half of the people he counted as his friends turned against him when Voldemort returned in 1994.”

Draco makes a small, pained sound and buries his face in his hands. Of course they did. All his friends were in Slytherin, most of them children of Death Eaters.

“By the time he took over the Ministry, Harry was being attacked near-daily, in and out of Hogwarts. He fled to you, to Durmstrang, and was able to cobble together a real defense with Dumbledore and Snape, but by then…”

Hysteria threatens. Draco finds his whole body shaking with it, a terrifying middle between frantic laughter and desperate weeping.

There is no happy ending to this story anymore, he realizes, as he shakes himself apart. No matter what Draco does, he will never be able to create a timeline that is anything close to the one in his memory. All his efforts have only proved increasingly catastrophic. Everything he tries fails.

Everything he touches turns to ashes.

“Draco?”

Draco takes a slow, deep breath. He turns, pocketing the spelled chalk he’d stolen from the supply room of the bunker, to face Harry.

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he says. He’s pushing his hand through his wild dark hair, looking exhausted, but smiling. “I’d have eased you back into all this, if I’d been given half a chance.”

Draco stares at Harry, tries to memorize the shape of that smile: the lopsidedness of it, the crinkling at the corners of his green eyes, the way he tilts his head just slightly. He’s so handsome it makes Draco ache.

“It must be quite a shock, seeing it all, if you can’t remember any of it.”

“You’re very…” Draco hears himself laugh, but doesn’t feel it on his face. “Impressive.”

Harry laughs, too, in the same sort of way—tired, and a bit hollow. He leans against the wall of the supply room, all shelves and crates full of dry rations and weapons and reagents and medical equipment. “Am I? I don’t feel very impressive most days.”

“It adds to the mystique,” Draco assures him. “You’re completely unselfconscious. Utterly unaware of your own charisma and presence, the effect you have on those around you. You’re… magnetic.”

“You don’t have to seduce me,” Harry says, glib, “we’re already married.”

Draco wants to laugh—he even tries to—but can’t manage it. His heart is thudding with agony, with the knowledge that he’s about to lose the only good thing he’s ever had in any of these awful timelines.

“I don’t know what you see in me,” Draco admits in a small voice. “I don’t know what about me is worth loving. Three out of four times, you’ve chosen to care about me when I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

When Draco dares another look, the smile has fallen from Harry’s face.

“Love,” he says, “what are you talking about? Of course you deserve it.”

“I don’t,” Draco answers, then reaches out and runs his thumb along Harry’s cheekbone. “But that doesn’t stop me from wanting it. If I could, I’d…”

He releases a shuddering breath, Those intense green eyes threaten to take Draco apart from the inside.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what I would do. I can’t.”

“Draco,” Harry replies, worried and confused. Draco sidles closer and kisses him slowly, his free hand sliding up Harry’s chest and onto his shoulder, and tries to commit every moment, every sensation, to memory.

“I do love you, Harry,” Draco admits once it ends, softly, because it doesn’t matter if he says it out loud. In a few minutes, none of this will have ever happened. And it will hurt like hell giving it up, giving him up, and that pain will be nothing less than what Draco deserves.

Chapter Text

Draco returns to 1991 resolved to fix the timeline once and for all—and, as it transpires, the hardest part of getting started is his father.

“You want to go back? Why? To embarrass your family even further?”

Draco is both surprised and not surprised that Lucius Malfoy is treating his son’s near-suicide like some huge social gaffe, something to be swept under the rug and not confronted. Draco has vivid memories of his therapist telling him, every time his father ever came up in conversation, that what you’re describing is abuse and not normal—you know that, right?

But he didn’t—at least not at first. It had taken him a while to really internalize the truth of it when the man was freshly dead. It takes significantly less time now that he’s seeing it up close and all over again. The instinct to be sarcastic hits surprisingly early in the conversation:

“Yes,” he says, voice flat, “that’s it precisely. I could kill myself in Ilvermorny, but none of our family friends would be around to mock you for it afterward.”

“Draco,” his mother says, aghast and distraught.

“Draco,” his father says, snarling and furious, “do you think you’re being funny? I’m already being inundated with letters from our peers in the Sacred Twenty-Eight, demanding to know the truth of the rumors circulating through Hogwarts—”

“Ah, yes, now I see the problem. How dare your friends demonstrate basic human decency by caring about the life of your son? It must be quite embarrassing, since you can’t seem to muster the same—”

Draco doesn’t quite get to finish his sentence, because suddenly his father is standing up off the settee in the drawing room and striking Draco across the face with the head of his cane. The blow lands just above Draco’s cheekbone, beneath his right eye, with enough strength to send his fragile eleven-year-old body collapsing onto the ornate Persian rug.

“Lucius! Enough!”

In the time between Draco landing and his vision swimming back into focus, his mother has fallen to her knees at his side, drawn her wand, and sealed up what feels like a substantial gash on his face—just enough to stop the bleeding, which Draco sees in dark red drops on the blue rug.

“I will not tolerate insolence from my own son, Narcissa,” his father says.

His mother doesn’t answer; all her attention is on Draco. “Sweetheart, are you all right? How’s your eye?”

A bit of blood had reached his lip before his mother had sealed the wound shut. Draco can taste it, metallic and tangy, on the tip of his tongue.

During Draco’s youth, Lucius Malfoy had always used violence sparingly, but to great effect. He had a natural talent for it that Draco had never quite inherited, despite his best efforts. When he struck Draco, it was always brutal enough to break something, precise enough to hurt tremendously, and sudden enough to keep Draco in constant fear of the next blow.

But Draco isn’t a child anymore—at least not in any meaningful way—and he no longer feels an instinct to shrink away from his father’s cruelty; he is angered by it.

“There’s an old aphorism,” Draco grinds out, lifting his vicious gaze to his father, “that says the truest judge of a man’s character is how he treats those he has power over.”

“If you have issue with my parenting methods, you wretched boy,” his father snarls back, “feel free to leave my tender mercies and live on the street.”

Draco laughs without humor. “Don’t tempt me.”

“Stop it, both of you,” his mother cries. “Draco, come with me. I’ll get you something for the pain.”

It’s the kind of request that Draco doesn’t really have the option to refuse; before he can even shake the last of the trembling rage out from his fingertips, his mother has both her hands on his shoulders and is guiding him out of the room, through the foyer and into the kitchen.

The house-elves are already busily preparing dinner, and all startle when the mistress bursts in with her injured son in tow: Dobby yelps and causes the fire in the hearth to burst briefly bright blue, Dolly squeals and hides under the sink, Dotty drops a teapot that shatters loudly on the tile floor.

“The numbing draught, Dotty, if you please,” his mother says shortly, forcing Draco into one of the barstools at the counter island in the center of the kitchen, piled high with unwashed vegetables and a half-plucked chicken.

Dotty is recovering quick enough, using her magic to reform the teapot in her hands. “Er—of course, Mistress. Ingested or topical?”

“Topical,” his mother says, then turns to Dobby. “Dobby, can your magic do anything to lessen the swelling around his eye?”

Dobby hesitates, large hands wringing near his breastbone. “Dobby… Dobby would, Mistress, but—”

“But?”

“But Master forbade the house-elves from healing any punishments given to Young Master. Master said that to remove the pain would undermine the point.”

His mother makes an aggrieved sound. Dotty returns with the numbing draught clutched in both knobbly hands, a glass tub with a screw-on lid, full of a creamy pink substance smelling of lilacs and mint. Draco knows the scent well.

“Draco,” his mother says as she begins to carefully apply it with her fingertips to the side of Draco’s face, “how’s your vision? Is there any pain to the eye itself?”

Draco sighs. The last of the anger is gone, at least. All that’s left is a sort of discontentment, forming a knot in the pit of his stomach. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’ve had worse.”

“I hate that he does this,” she says, by her tone primarily to herself, but Draco is answering before he even realizes he’s speaking:

“Never enough to stop it.”

His mother’s fingertips stop, withdraw. When Draco looks over, her expression is stricken. The flicker of guilt that ignites in Draco’s chest at the sight is one he quickly quashes—she’d done the same thing when he’d confronted her about Father’s abuse as an adult, like acknowledging her lack of interference was a cruel insult from her beloved son and not a personal failing on her part.

“Mother,” Draco says, “I love you, and I appreciate that Father’s cruelty puts you in a delicate position, but at a certain point, an ethical imperative kicks in. At a certain point, your behavior indicates that you care more about preserving your marriage to an abusive maniac than you do about ensuring your son’s safety.”

“I… Draco,” she says, “it’s not that simple.”

“I’ll try to remember that next time he breaks my ribs,” Draco answers, voice cold, as he pushes off the counter, out of the chair, and back to his room. He wasn’t even able to resolve this issue after Father had been ten years dead; he doubts very much he can make any headway while the man’s still alive.

He’ll figure out a way to return to Hogwarts on his own.

Professor,

Have you ever heard of Pascal’s wager?

As part of my postgraduate program in Seoul Magical University, I took a few courses in philosophy that combined both magical and Muggle schools of thought, which is where I first encountered it. The general premise of the argument is this: that a person should believe in God and adhere to His rules because it is rational to do so, that giving up the pleasures of the flesh in a single, finite lifetime is less of a price than eternal damnation; likewise, those hedonistic pleasures are a lesser reward compared to Heaven.

Even those who’ve never heard the argument before have little trouble poking holes in it. Why does the wager assume a binary of Christian theology versus nothing at all? Why does it present belief like a choice that one is able to switch on and off, when the reality is infinitely more complex and personal, and often not a choice at all?

But my favorite refutation to it is called Pascal’s mugging, which flips the argument in a very simple way: what if it is framed not as a theological question, but as a threat?

Mathematically, the premise is near identical: suppose that someone walks up to you on the street and tells you to give them all the money you have on you, or a million people will die tomorrow. Is it possible that this person is just insane? Yes—in fact, it’s very likely. But is it also possible that they’re telling the truth? What amount of destruction makes the cost, your wallet, worth giving up, on the mere possibility that it really does come to pass? A mathematically rational actor would see the consequences of giving up their wallet as minuscule compared to even the remote possibility of a million people dying, while any layperson would simply take their money and leave.

I bring all this up as a pretext to the real reason I’m writing you at all: I need your wallet, Professor.

As I’m sure you’ve deduced by this point in the letter, my adult consciousness is back from another abysmally bad future, this one even more catastrophically awful than both my other attempts put together. It was so terrible, in fact, that it has resolved me to do what Dumbledore was so insistent upon, what even you were beginning to believe was the best course of action: I am going to stay and re-live my entire life.

But it is absolutely vital that you and Dumbledore both understand that this is not a concession on my part, nor is it a gift that I’ve selfishly held back on till now. This is a last fucking resort. This is Pascal’s mugging, Professor. If I—and by extension, you—don’t do this exactly right, time itself may be ripped to shreds. If all my attempts at hands-off correction hadn’t failed so tremendously, I would not even be making this offer.

My father, the obdurate asshole, is proving to be the first roadblock. The ostensible embarrassment of his son’s suicide attempt is proving difficult to overcome. Perhaps we can meet for tea later this week, as your schedule permits? We need to work together to convince him to keep me enrolled in Hogwarts. Besides, we should talk more thoroughly about paradoxes and retrocausality. If we’re going to do this, we’ll need to do it right.

And when I do return to Hogwarts, we’ll need to have a long discussion, you and me and Headmaster Dumbledore, with Harry Potter.

Your devoted (and exhausted) godson,
Draco M.

Throughout Draco’s youth—the original one, anyway—his relationship with Snape had always been rather subdued. Few enough people in his life even knew that the man was his godfather at all, though Draco had always thought his blatant favoritism was a clue (Slytherins could always be relied upon for nepotism, after all). Though they corresponded regularly as Draco grew and exchanged presents on holidays, and though they would admit when prompted to caring about one another, the affection wasn’t outwardly obvious.

So to say the Malfoy household is surprised when he turns up for tea the following weekend is a bit of an understatement. Dotty, the newest house-elf, doesn’t even recognize him when he steps through the Floo.

He and Draco end up on the back patio. It’s just into November, and the forest extending off the edge of the grounds is red as fire, the sky clear and blue. The gardens are designed to be beautiful in all seasons, and the flowers in bloom—dahlias, chrysanthemums, sunflowers, roses—perfume the air delicately.

“Your stipulations sound perfectly reasonable to me,” Snape says, stirring his cup of earl gray (black) with a spoon. “I’m more worried about how Albus might react. I anticipate that he’ll push you for more information about the future than you’d be inclined to give.”

Draco shakes his head dismissively and takes a sip of English breakfast (milk). “I’m not going to divulge anything that might endanger space-time. He can accept it or he can live with the disappointment.”

“Do you have a plan for your father?” he asks.

Draco sets the cup down, leans back in his chair, folds one leg over the other. “I was hoping you might.”

Snape scoffs. “As a rule, I interact with the man as little as possible. I never liked him and have no insight to offer.”

Draco gives him an odd look. “How did you even end up as my godfather?”

“I am, and always have been, your mother’s friend, Draco,” he answers, “ever since my second year at Hogwarts, and even after she made the egregious mistake of marrying that self-obsessed toad. Though she did have to spend many months begging my forgiveness for it.”

A smirk tugs at the corner of Draco’s mouth. He hadn’t ever really thought about it, but it does make sense in context. It had always been his mother who’d kept in correspondence with him, who’d sent him Christmas presents and received them from him in kind, who’d invited him to dinner parties and social events. The idea of his mother and future godfather forming a friendship as children—and maintaining it all the way into adulthood—elicits a strange pulse of bittersweet fondness in the center of his chest.

“Perhaps she’s our way in, then,” Draco says. “If you can convince her I’m better off at Hogwarts, perhaps she can convince my father.”

“You can’t convince her yourself? You know how she dotes; I can’t imagine it would take much.”

Without meaning to, Draco lifts his hand to his face. Two fingertips trace the thin scar on his cheekbone, healed to near-invisibility, and his mind unwillingly goes back to their conversation in the immediate aftermath of his father’s violence three nights prior: Draco, it’s not that simple.

“I think,” Draco eventually says, very slowly, “that if she listened to me, if she cared about what was best for me, she’d be filing for divorce.”

A moment of silence lapses between them. Draco doesn’t need to look to know that Snape’s expression is changing, slowly and painfully.

“I’ll talk to her,” Snape says eventually. Draco nods. Then he adds, “Your mother’s not a bad person, Draco—”

“I know.”

“—and she does love you. You know how pureblood circles are—”

“Professor, I know.”

“—that divorce could very well get her exiled from House Black. It could get you exiled from House Black.”

Draco sighs. He wants to say to hell with House Black, because Draco gave up caring about blood purity a long time ago, but he knows that’s not a useful view to espouse at this particular moment, even to Snape, who’s just as powerless as Draco is to do anything about it.

The silence between them grows, then slowly deflates. Eventually, Snape rises, places a hand fondly on Draco’s shoulder, then steps inside.

A cool breeze comes past, rustling dried leaves across the garden, hissing through the branches of the trees. Draco finishes off his tea and sits back against the wrought iron of the patio chair, trying to find some enjoyment in a nice day and not quite managing it.

Three months later, in early February, Draco returns to Hogwarts. In the end, it had taken a complicated combination of persuasion and social blackmail to keep him enrolled, but between himself and Snape, they’d managed it. Draco has a pile of schoolwork to catch up on, but given that it’s a curriculum designed for an eleven-year-old—one that Draco has already completed once before—he’s not especially worried.

The Scottish highlands are blanketed with a thick layer of snow on Draco’s first day back, visible as a sprawling expanse of white dappled by pine trees from the Headmaster’s office. Draco stands by the window and stares out at it, trying to resign himself to the conversation he’s about to have.

“You’re quite tense, Mr. Malfoy,” Dumbledore remarks from behind him.

“I’m fine,” Draco answers, not turning around.

“You were the one who insisted on this meeting,” he continues. “I’d not trouble the boy with this at all, so if you’d rather—”

“He has a right to know,” Draco interjects. “He’s going to need to know in a few years.”

Dumbledore says nothing, only hums indistinctly. Draco runs his tongue along his teeth and lets silence settle back onto the room.

He tells himself, as he waits, that it’s stupid to be nervous about this. Whatever happened—or didn’t happen, as the case may be—between himself and Harry Potter is immaterial now. At present moment, the boy’s eleven.

And Draco’s going to make absolutely sure, in this timeline, that he keeps him at arm’s length. As has been thoroughly proved in three separate instances, he’s better off that way. The world is better off that way. And he’s certainly not going to foster any affection on either side.

“Draco!”

He’s barely turned around when Harry Potter, once again a skinny little berk of a child, throws himself at Draco and pulls him into a hug that threatens to snap his spine.

“Er,” Draco says, stiff, suddenly realizing that keeping him at a distance might be easier said than done.

Snape, who’d escorted him up from the Slytherin dormitory, closes the office door behind him and arches an eyebrow at the pair of them.

“I was so worried about you!” Harry says, squeezing him a bit tighter before pulling away and staring desperately into his eyes. “Why didn’t you answer any of my owls?”

“I was,” Draco begins, carefully shrugging out of Harry’s hands, still gripping at his arms, “a bit busy.”

“Are you all right? Are you feeling better? If you’re back at Hogwarts, you must be, right?”

“Potter,” Draco says, a bit overwhelmed by the intensity of his concern and doing his best not to let on, “you were brought here for a reason.”

Surprised, Harry looks from Draco to Dumbledore, then back over his shoulder to Snape.

“Have a seat, Mr. Potter,” Snape says, gesturing to one of the chairs positioned opposite the Headmaster’s desk.

He sits.

Draco does not. He straightens out his school uniform just to have something to do with his hands.

“After some discussion,” Dumbledore begins, “with your head of house and Mr. Malfoy, we’ve decided to loop you into the real reason for your classmate’s absence.”

“You mean it wasn’t because of…” Harry’s words fall off awkwardly midway through. His eyes move nervously to Draco before returning to the Headmaster. He delicately concludes the sentence with, “Er, because of the owlery?”

“It was not,” Dumbledore confirms solemnly.

“Before we go any further with this conversation,” Snape says, “I must impress upon you, Mr. Potter, that what we’re about to share with you is done out of necessity, and must be kept absolutely confidential. What is discussed here must not be known past the people in this room. The consequences of failing to obey this rule will be catastrophic—not just for you, but for the entire world. Do you understand?”

Harry’s green eyes are big and bewildered behind his glasses, but he nods slowly.

Then, both Snape and Dumbledore turn their gazes to Draco, who takes a slow, deliberate breath.

“I’m a time traveler,” he says.

Harry’s eyes, impossibly, get even wider.

“What?”

“The eleven-year-old boy you’re looking at right now has the consciousness and memories of an adult, who was forcibly transported back in time by an experiment gone wrong,” Draco explains. He’d given this explanation quite a bit of thought, the best way to explain such complicated concepts in terms a child could readily understand, but is still careful to speak clearly and slowly. “Over the past few months, I’ve been going back and forth between now and the year 2014—”

“May 3!” Harry suddenly interjects, scooting to the edge of his chair.

Draco sighs. “Yes, May 3, 2014. It was the date I was initially pulled out of, and the one I’ve been trying to back to. But I’ve delineated—”

He stops, licks his lower lip. He starts over.

“Just by being here, like this, I’ve changed too much. Have you heard of the butterfly effect?”

Harry shakes his head slowly.

“It’s a mathematical principle that says small changes in the present imply big changes in the future. Chaos theory. The few little things that are different in this timeline from the one I remember create substantial, dangerous changes in the future.”

Harry blinks owlishly at him. “Are you some kind of genius?” he asks.

“No, I’m a temporal physicist. Try to focus, Potter.”

He leans against the Headmaster’s desk just in front of Harry’s chair, which, if nothing else, succeeds in keeping his attention on Draco.

“The reason I’m telling you this is because you’re the reason those changes in the future are so dangerous,” Draco says. “Your timeline is extremely important, and for better or worse, I’m tangled up in it now. Since I can’t fix things by just going back to my proper place in the future, I have to stay here and make sure nothing goes too badly.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry suddenly intones. “Why is my—my timeline so important?”

At first, the question strikes Draco as absurd. What does he mean, why? Does Harry really not get how important he is?

But then, as Draco considers it further, all the most pivotal moments in Harry’s timeline are still in front of him, aren’t they? As far as Harry at present understands, the only interesting thing about him is that he mysteriously survived Voldemort’s killing curse as an infant.

Draco takes a slow breath.

“I… can’t tell you that,” he says.

“Why not?” Harry asks, predictably.

“Because it could create a paradox.”

“What’s a paradox?”

Merlin. “It’s… a logical contradiction. Take Quirrell. You remember? Back on Halloween?”

Harry nods.

“I only knew Quirrell was up to no good because I lived through events that hadn’t happened yet, and acted on that knowledge. It was… risky, in hindsight, to intervene like I did. Paradoxes can create a phenomenon called temporal fraying when they’re substantial enough. Temporal fraying can cause a whole host of dangerous problems for the fabric of space-time. But I… I couldn’t do nothing.”

It feels like a weak justification as it comes out of Draco’s mouth, and he flinches, realizing acutely just how dangerous his interference had been. If he intends to stay, to live out the War again, he’s going to have to be much more circumspect.

Harry doesn’t seem to share Draco’s reproach; in fact, he’s staring at Draco with an expression that betrays more awe than anything else. Seeing it, Draco feels like he’s made some kind of mistake, like he needs to explain to him just how crazy and dangerous and reckless this whole endeavor is until Harry finally agrees to hate him.

“Wow,” he says. “That’s so cool.”

“It’s…” Draco sighs, shakes his head. “The point of it is this, Potter: to ensure that the next seven years go as smoothly as possible, you need to have context for my actions, why sometimes I might behave a little strangely, and most vitally: you need to stay away from me.”

Harry spends the rest of the month practically hanging off Draco’s elbow.

“So in the future, what job do I have?”

“Potter,” Draco says, without pausing on his History of Magic essay, “as I have told you before, time is a chaotic system. If a butterfly in Brazil flaps its wings, you might end up an undertaker in Birmingham. I can only tell you what happened in a future that no longer exists, and I really shouldn’t even do that.”

“Come on,” Harry presses, leaning eagerly over his textbook, “you must be able to tell me something. Not everything can create temp—temporary…”

“Temporal fraying,” Draco supplies, then looks nervously around the (mostly) empty Slytherin common room. “And please keep your voice down.”

“Are we still friends in the future, at least?” he asks.

Draco lifts his eyes, frowning. He’d asked the question with such eager earnestness that, if it had been anything else, it nearly would have been endearing.

The longer Draco doesn’t answer, the further down his face Harry’s smile slips.

“We… we are friends, right?”

“You’re an auror,” Draco says.

“What? What’s an auror?”

“It’s… it’s like a policeman, but for dark wizards. You chase them down and arrest them.”

“Oh.” Harry leans back in his seat. “That’s not so bad, I guess.”

Draco’s glad he managed to distract him, because he’s not sure he can come up with an answer to his question. He certainly can’t offer the whole, unvarnished truth to an eleven-year-old: well, you see, in the original timeline you couldn’t stand me, and it was mostly mutual, though I did hold a bit of a candle for you despite my best efforts, and then the last time I jumped ship from this timeline into the future, you fucked me within an inch of my life and ruined me for any other man, I’m pretty sure.

Draco sighs heavily, rubs his forehead with one hand, and tries to focus on his essay, if only so he doesn’t focus on the very specific memories burgeoning in the back of his mind: hands gripping his hips, an open mouth licking stripes along the side of his cock, the insistent press of heat into his body—

“Fuck,” Draco whispers, abruptly realizing that he’s going to have to live through puberty twice. The first time was bad enough.

“What?”

“Nothing. Do your homework, for Merlin’s sake, or at least let me do mine in peace.”

“I can’t believe they’re still making you do schoolwork,” Harry persists, maddeningly. “I mean, you’ve already done it once before, haven’t you?”

“Sure, but I have no proof of it. My degree is in a future timeline that no longer exists, right along with my graduate dissertation on temporal physics.”

“Couldn’t you just—I don’t know—test out of Hogwarts’s curriculum?”

“That eager to get rid of me already?”

“What? No! No-no! I just mean that—you’re clearly brilliant, and it must be frustrating, doing all this work all over again.”

“Unfortunately, Potter, I have a vested interest in staying at Hogwarts.”

“Which is…?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

He sighs heavily. “Right.”

“So, Malfoy.”

Draco looks up reluctantly. Pansy Parkinson, eleven-years-old, round-cheeked, flanked by Daphne Greengrass and Millicent Bulstrode, is standing at the end of the table, her arms folded over her chest. Several memories of her batter the walls of Draco’s mind all at once—the fluffy pink dress she wore to the Yule Ball in fourth year and her disappointment when he didn’t kiss her, her sobbing down the front of his robes when he’d told her two years later he was bent (“But our mums wanted us to get married!”), the haunted look on her face after the Battle of Hogwarts.

“What’s it like,” she says, “to be so much of a failure that you can’t even kill yourself correctly?”

“I don’t know, Parkinson,” he answers at once, “what’s it like having a mother who’s a whore?”

For a time, they stare at each other evenly. Between them, Harry looks frantically back and forth, like he’s not quite sure what to do.

Eventually, Pansy snorts loudly, then socks Draco in the shoulder.

“Missed you! Welcome back!” She bends and kisses his cheek, then flounces off with Millie and Daphne in tow, talking excitedly about the upcoming Slytherin-Ravenclaw Quidditch game.

“What just happened?” Harry says, bewildered. Draco looks back at him, raises an eyebrow.

“It’s just how Slytherins interact, Potter. You’ve been here nearly six months; haven’t you figured it out yet?

“Is that why no one seems to like me?” he muses, a frown tugging down one corner of his mouth. “Do I need to be meaner?”

For a moment, Draco regards Harry in silence. He is thinking about the last timeline he was in, where half his friends in Slytherin—a house that prides itself on loyalty to their own—abandoned him the second Voldemort was back. He’s weighing in his mind which of them would have stayed if Harry had known how Slytherins tick and really befriended them, and which would turn coat regardless.

He chooses his next words carefully:

“No, not mean, just rude. There’s a difference.”

“There is?”

“Mean is cruelty. If you say something mean, your intent is to hurt. Rude is just impolite. Rude can be funny, or insightful, or even profound.”

Harry frowns. “But what if you try to be rude and end up being mean?”

“Then you sort it out with whoever you hurt. Slytherin has a lot of flaws, Potter, but we’ll kill and die for our real friends. You just have to know how to play the game. Watch.”

He crumples up a spare sheet of parchment and throws it at the back of Blaise Zabini’s head, sitting at an armchair by the fireplace a few feet away. He startles when it hits him and turns around.

“Hey,” he calls, “what was that for?”

“I’m practicing my Quaffle pitch,” Draco answers. “I needed a nice, big target, and your head is the biggest thing in the room.”

Blaise snorts. “Pillock,” he says, then returns to the book he’d been reading.

“See?” Draco says to Harry.

Harry’s green eyes are sparkling as he stares at Blaise, like something has finally clicked into place.

“I think I get it,” he says.

Ms. Gwendolyn Truss, Unspeakable-in-Chief
Department of Mysteries, 9th Floor, Ministry of Magic
London, England

ATTN: REXALVIO

Dear Ms. Truss:

My name is Draco Malfoy. At present, I am a first year Hogwarts student. But six months ago (or twenty-three years from now, depending on your perspective), I was employed as a temporal physicist at the Department of Mysteries, and had been for nearly a decade. An experiment gone wrong forced my adult consciousness back into my eleven-year-old body in the year 1991.

Per department policy, I will not go into any further detail about the nature of the magic itself. I presume that, upon receipt of my owl, you will be searching me out in person; we can discuss it then. In order to facilitate the necessary security protocols: I wore the Black Brand, and my clearance level was six.

“Oy! Potter, come get your goons!”

“Oh, for—Vince, what have you gotten into?”

Draco lifts his eyes from his letter. On the other side of the greenhouse, Vince and Greg are covered in pollen which is an alarming shade of pink. In one hand, Vince is holding a large flower, its stem and roots wriggling as if trying to extricate themselves from his grasp. It’s spring, and even through the warped, weathered glass of the Herbology greenhouse, the season asserts itself as great swaths of green and blue.

“Ow,” Vince says, a bit pathetically.

“Tell me you didn’t pull it out,” Harry despairs, and pulls his wand out to charm some, but not all, of the bright pink pollen off their robes. “Were you not listening to Sprout, or could you not hear her through all the fat in your head?”

Greg guffaws. Vince even smiles, a bit sheepishly. Draco smirks to himself, then returns to writing.

I have made a few good faith efforts to correct the timeline, but I have delineated too much already, and certain circumstances have persuaded me to re-live my timeline again.

I am aware of the danger this presents to space-time, and have judged that it is eclipsed by the danger posed to the Wizarding World by doing anything else. Again, per department policy, I’ll not get into specifics in this letter, but will be willing to share my efforts with you in person.

“You need to keep them on a shorter leash,” Blaise says, tugging off his dragonhide gloves.

“Sometimes it’s tempting,” Harry sighs. He seems to have charmed most of the pollen off them. “Vince, put the flower back in the pot before it blasts you again.”

“I thought we were supposed to—”

“Vince, even odds you didn’t think at all.”

All the Slytherins within earshot—Vince included—laugh. Draco bites down hard on his smirk. It takes more effort than he cares to admit to focus on writing.

The Hogwarts term will be over in about a month. We can arrange a meeting as soon as it ends. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Sincerely,
Draco Malfoy

PS: One Ms. Wendy Westerly will be graduating from Leicester Medical in two years; I highly recommend hiring her on as an Unspeakable when she does. She will prove invaluable to both me and the Department with her work in neuroscience.

“I need to send an owl,” Draco announces as soon as class ends, folding the letter up as he stands.

“Try not to throw yourself out a window this time,” Harry calls, which elicits yet further laughter from the other Slytherins. Even Draco laughs, despite himself. Had Harry always been this funny? Had Draco just never noticed? Perhaps it just took the right group to bring it out.

“I’ve created a monster,” Draco says, but can’t quite manage to keep the smile off his face.

Chapter Text

“So you’ve no objection?”

“You’re always welcome in my home, Draco,” Snape says, “though I feel an impetus to remind you that it’s not an ideal place for hosting. Where are we going?”

Draco carries on with the conversation as if he hadn’t heard his question. “It has a table and the capacity to make a cup of tea; Truss isn’t going to demand much more than that. She’s not especially discerning.”

“This is your future boss? Future-past?”

Draco hums his confirmation. Together, they round yet another corner into yet another hallway in the Malfoy Manor. It’s summer, and all the windows are lit up brilliant gold, but these are the innermost areas of the building, where not even sunlight can penetrate—dark, narrow corridors, heavy wooden doors, portraits of long-dead Malfoys snoring in their frames. Draco knows it’s no mistake that this is where his father’s study is.

“Gwendolyn Truss. By the time I was hired on as an Unspeakable, she’d been serving as head of the department for longer than I’d been alive. She’s as brilliant as she is bewildering. You should meet her.”

“If she’s to be hosted in my home, I imagine I’ll have little choice. Draco, where are we going?”

Draco stops walking. They’re standing just outside the large, imposing door leading into his father’s private study.

“I thought we could talk here,” Draco says.

“In a hallway?” Snape answers. “I thought I was here for brunch.”

“Why can’t we have brunch in a hallway? I’m sure Dolly will accommodate.”

“Draco.”

“I merely want to spend time with my beloved godfather; is that so strange?”

“Draco.”

“We could talk more about causality and temporal fraying. Did I ever explain how a causal loop works?”

“Draco, what in Merlin’s name—”

“They’re quite fascinating, actually,” Draco says. “The classic example is with billiard balls—or, to be more accurate, one billiard ball, which is traveling in a straight line before it’s hit by itself at an angle and then travels back in time, thus changing its own velocity.”

From inside the study, nearly inaudible through the heavy wood of the door, his father begins talking in low tones. Draco makes sure to pause just long enough for Snape to hear it.

Sure enough, Snape’s attention is drawn. He turns toward the door and frowns at it.

“In matters more complex,” Draco continues, folding his arms across his chest, “it can cause serious damage to space-time. Say, for instance, I take a copy of The Communist Manifesto and drop it off in the bedroom of a teenage Karl Marx. He reads it and finds, unsurprisingly, that he likes the ideas contained within—from where, in that case, did Marxism originate? The movement he started had massive impacts on millions of people. If the origin of all that change is a causal loop, it could generate enough flux to rip space-time.”

Snape’s eyes are moving rapidly back and forth between Draco and the door. The muttering voice is getting louder now, and is suddenly joined by another—higher, clearer. Familiar.

Snape’s already white face pales significantly.

“So if, for example,” Draco says, speaking very slowly, “someone from the future wanted to change the trajectory of history, he would be best served to do so by avoiding retrocausality. He would need to find an organic way to get the right person in the right place at the right time, and let events take a natural shape.”

“Draco,” Snape says, voice low, “does that second voice belong to who I think it does?”

“If it did,” Draco replies, “I wouldn’t be able to say so without risking a paradox.”

“What can you tell me?” he asks urgently.

“You’ve got ten minutes,” Draco says. “Before brunch, I mean. It’s in the parlor, when you’re done.”

Draco strides off, leaving Snape alone in the hallway. His heart is beating in his throat. He desperately hopes that he’s doing enough, and doing it right.

Dear Draco,

Thank you so much for the birthday present! I’ve never had a CD player before, and the music you sent along with it is all amazing! In particular, I really like the Jane’s Addiction album. I think I’ve listened to “Mountain Song” a thousand times already. Back in Black was great, too! If the Dursleys knew I was listening to this stuff, they’d have a fit. Thank goodness the player came with headphones!

A bunch of other Slytherins got me presents, too! I couldn’t believe it when I saw the pile that arrived. Blaise got me a pair of self-adjusting glasses (you can change the prescription yourself, and even the shape of the frames!), Vince got me a stuffed dragon that flaps its wings on its own, Greg sent along a box of cookies his mum made, and even Pansy got me a really nice wristwatch to replace the one she accidentally broke during Charms last year. I think even Professor Snape sent one, though I can’t be sure since he didn’t sign the note.

You were right about Slytherins, I guess. They really are great, once you figure them out. I’m glad you were around to teach me how.

I’m miserable in Surrey, and missing Hogwarts, and you. Especially you. I can’t wait to see you again.

How are things in Wiltshire? It was your mother’s birthday recently, wasn’t it? How did you celebrate? Please give her my best.

Looking forward to September,
Harry

Number 14 Spinner’s End is a dreary little house in the equally dreary industrial town of Cokeworth. The first time Draco had ever come here was the summer of 1996, shortly after his father had been thrown in Azkaban. He’d come seeking comfort from his godfather, but hadn’t found much—and not just because Snape was notoriously bad at warmth and affection.

Fortunately, Gwendolyn Truss, Draco’s once and future employer, doesn’t say anything about it; as ever, she is practical to a fault. The second Draco answers the door, she is producing her wand from her sleeve, tapping it to the black rune on her throat and Draco’s forehead before promptly offering a brusque greeting:

Mr. Malfoy, I presume.

“Ms. Truss,” Draco replies, and steps aside. “Punctual as ever.”

The home itself isn’t much better than the neighborhood. Snape never had much of an eye for aesthetic; the furniture is serviceable, but worn, and out of fashion by between forty to eighty years at minimum. The dirty windows struggle to allow in what little light the Midlands has in midsummer, and the scent of dust and potions reagents saturates the air.

I hope you don’t mind if I cast a few wards, Gwendolyn remarks as soon as she’s past the threshold. It’s standard procedure, as I’m sure you’re aware.

“All I ask is that they not entangle the wards already extant,” Draco says, closing the door. “They’re very particularly designed.”

They come together to the sitting room, such as it is: places to sit are few and far between. Snape is already inside, setting a dingy porcelain teapot on the small table.

Who’s this? Gwendolyn asks. Draco can detect suspicion in the question; he’d have been more worried if he couldn’t.

“Gwendolyn Truss, this is Severus Snape—potions master, Hogwarts professor, and—more relevantly—my godfather.”

“Charmed,” Snape says, looking whatever the opposite of charmed is. In general, he’s even worse with new people than he is with everyone else.

Ah. He’s your legal guardian?

“‘Legal guardian’ isn’t the term I’d use, no,” Draco says. “Both of my parents are very much alive. Unfortunately, one of them is a Death Eater, and the other is sympathetic to the cause.”

Gwendolyn stares at Draco for a moment in bewildered silence. Draco heads over to the table and starts sedately pouring the tea into three chipped cups. Truly, Snape’s capacity to entertain is abysmally bad.

I think I begin to understand why temporal delineation is such a problem for you, Gwendolyn remarks.

“I thought it better for us to meet here rather than my home, since in a few years it will likely be a headquarters for Lord Voldemort.” Draco regards his future-former boss mildly, knowing that he doesn’t ned to worry much about retrocausality with her: “You’re familiar with the prophecy, after all.”

I am, is her grim response. She sits down at one of the three seats at the table.

“I’m sure you can understand why I’ll insist on being present for this meeting,” Snape says, sitting across from her. “Though my godson has the mind of an adult, he has all the physical and legal vulnerabilities of a child. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t help him as best I’m able.”

Gwendolyn stares consideringly at Snape for a while, as if working through several questions in her head at the same time. Eventually, she turns her attention back to Draco.

Clearance level six, you said?

Draco nods shortly.

That’s quite high. National security interest sort of stuff. Still, short of giving you the Black Brand again—

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Draco interjects. “That would make the rest of my tenure at Hogwarts quite annoying.”

I don’t think the spell is legal to cast on minors, anyway, Gwendolyn continues, frowning and taking a sip of tea. Very well. Please tell your godfather he can stay. I just request that you exercise your best discretion, if anything classified comes up.

Draco smiles thinly, looks to Snape.

“She says you can stay,” he says, and Snape frowns, taking a long, slow sip of tea.

I’d like to begin, Gwendolyn intones, with the experiment that sent you back in time.

Draco remembers the 1992-93 school year quite well.

He remembers the Chamber of Secrets opened, remembers that multiple students were petrified by the basilisk therewithin. He remembers that Ginny Weasley has been possessed by one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes—a diary, given surreptitiously to her by his own father—to do the heavy lifting to accomplish it all.

Draco also remembers telling himself he was happy that it was all happening, that it was what Mudbloods deserved. He tries not to dwell on those memories, knowing that they’re not useful, but does anyway.

But past those broad strokes, there’s not much for Draco to work with. He knows Harry had been the one to kill the basilisk, but never found out how. He knows Granger had been the one to determine what the basilisk was, but so far as Draco can tell, she and Harry don’t even know each other yet in this timeline. And since he can’t just tell Snape and Dumbledore all of this, which risks a catastrophic paradox, he is forced to think laterally.

He does his best to disrupt the earliest stages of the process. After ensuring Snape overhears his father talking with the fragment of Voldemort’s soul, he buys him yet further time: he begs off their initial trip to Diagon Alley to buy his books, then asks his mother to go with him alone to buy them, a week later. Once returned, he takes a careful accounting of his father’s disposition and whereabouts, and interrupts any outings that might even be tangentially related to inflicting the diary on an unsuspecting Hogwarts student.

He tries to stay out of whatever plans Dumbledore and Snape come up with, for fear of further paradoxes—he does notice, however, that Snape invites himself over to the Malfoy Manor twice more before the start of term. Draco always makes sure he has access to whatever areas he needs and gives him plenty of time alone.

He’s not kept apprised of whatever progress he makes, by his own request. Draco knows it’s for it’s for the best, even if it means that, by the time term begins, he’s not sure whether or not any of his efforts have availed him anything at all.

“Draco!” is the first thing Harry says, very loudly, the second he catches sight of him on the Hogwarts Express. Before he’s even taken his next breath, he’s crushing Draco in a hug tight enough to leave bruises.

“Yes,” Draco says, a bit strangled, as he tries desperately to extricate himself, “hello.”

“I missed you!”

“Did you? I couldn’t tell.”

Draco really should be keeping Harry at a greater distance. He told himself that he would when he initially resolved to stay in this timeline, but hasn’t been following through. There is, Draco supposes, some primal little part of his brain that is happy this version of Harry Potter seems to like him—which is, he readily acknowledges, a notion he should have disabused himself of ages ago.

He promises himself, as he sits down in the compartment full of Slytherins, that he’ll try harder this year to keep Harry at arm’s length.

This resolution is undermined somewhat when Harry sits directly next to him, budging Blaise a few feet away with a disgruntled Hey!

“How was your summer?” Harry asks him, heedless of Blaise’s indignation.

“It was fine,” Draco answers, circumspect. Across from him, Vince and Greg collapse into their own seats.

“Mine was pretty miserable,” Harry volunteers readily. “At least until Blaise and I went to Diagon Alley together!”

“I regret it immensely,” Blaise readily intones. “I had to take a bus to get to you, you know. A Muggle bus. That whole neighborhood was absolutely ghastly. And those Muggles you live with? Dreadful. Are they all like that?”

“Not all of them,” Harry supplies. “Not even most of them. But the Dursleys specifically are rather awful.”

“Can we see your broom?” Vince asks eagerly.

“Oh! Yes.”

Draco sighs and sits back in his seat, staring out the window as the train starts to chug out of the station. He can see the sea of parents tearfully waving goodbye, his own mother among them, daubing her eyes with her kerchief. Behind him, Harry eagerly slides his trunk out from beneath the seat where he’d stashed it and produces from within a magically-shrunk Nimbus 2000.

“Wicked,” Vince and Greg chorus. Beaming, Harry hands it off to them for inspection.

“So you’re still intending to try out for the Slytherin team?” Blaise asks.

“For sure,” Harry answers. “I think I’d make a pretty good Seeker.”

“You’ll have competition,” Blaise says. “Draco’s the best Seeker I’ve ever seen.”

“I didn’t know you played Quidditch, Draco!” Harry says, delighted.

“I’m not trying out for the team,” Draco replies, which seems to stun all parties in the compartment.

“What, after all that caterwauling in the run-up to our first year?” Blaise says. “I thought your father said—”

“My father will become accustomed to disappointment,” Draco snaps before he can stop himself. He realizes, somewhat belatedly, that he’d said it with twice the venom he’d intended.

The declaration does nothing for Blaise, Vince, and Greg’s stunned disbelief. Draco supposes he can’t begrudge them their shock. From their perspective, Draco had worshiped the ground his father walked on less than two years ago.

Harry, though, seems perfectly happy about it: “Good on you!” he says. “Your father’s a prick.”

The three others are exchanging uneasy looks amongst each other. Draco tries not to pay them much attention. He stares out the window as, gradually, the cityscape fades into countryside.

“So,” Blaise eventually says, slowly, “you’re really not going to try out? You love Quidditch.”

Draco sighs. That, if nothing else, is true. He’d gotten into Quidditch to appease his father, but he’d kept at it for love of the game. Still, the Slytherin team doesn’t need two Seekers, and Harry was always better at the position than him. Besides—

“I have a…” (Draco pauses, frowns) “… project that will be dominating my attention for most of the year.”

“What kind of project?” Greg asks.

“This will be suitable for your purposes, I hope?” Snape says.

Gwendolyn Truss heads further into the Room of Requirement, doing a full 360 spin as she goes.

Magically stable, she assesses, if mutable. Large enough to accommodate any physical flux. And you can guarantee that the Department of Mysteries will be able to have access?

Neither Snape nor Dumbledore say anything. It takes Draco a moment to remember they can’t hear her.

“You’re still willing to assure access for others in the Department?” Draco asks on her behalf.

“Within reason, of course,” Dumbledore says. “This room only, and not without Mr. Malfoy or a member of Hogwarts staff present.”

Suitable, is her judgment.

It had taken the shape of a large, empty room with walls and floors of white stone. The ceilings are vaulted, making it look rather like a cathedral, and the room is illuminated by several large cast iron chandeliers hanging overhead, each lit with a dozen flickering candles. Cavernous as it is, even the softest sounds echo tremendously.

“She agrees to your terms,” Draco informs them.

“I’ll draw up the paperwork to approve the Apparation Gate between Hogwarts and the Ministry,” Dumbledore says.

Draco purses his lips, says nothing. He knows that in a few short years, such a point of access could be catastrophically dangerous. Still, he can destroy it if he needs to. And for now, it’s more important to work with the Ministry—or at least this specific department.

I’m pleased that you’re willing to rebuild your project, Gwendolyn tells him as Dumbledore and Snape speak in low tones off on the side of the room. It can’t be easy, starting from scratch on something that took so long to build.

“This whole situation leaves a lot to be desired,” Draco answers dismissively. “And it’s vital to try to understand the circumstances that led to it. Though a true correction to the timeline seems unlikely at this point, at the very least we can prevent anything similar from happening in the future.”

Relatively speaking, she intones with a grin. Draco manages a small smile.

“Ms. Truss,” Dumbledore suddenly interjects, “I’ll need to borrow you in my office to sign a few things.”

She nods, and the two of them depart, leaving Draco alone with Snape, who—Draco notices at once—is staring at him with a concerned frown.

Draco is just about to ask him what’s on his mind, before he volunteers the information on his own: “Are you sure this is wise?”

Draco laughs softly. “It’s for the best,” he says.

“This—this Needle you intend to create—did create—whatever—it’s what did all this damage in the first place, isn’t it?”

“Needle didn’t do anything,” Draco insists. “It reacted. I’m just not sure how, or to what. Needle is—will be—nothing more than exposure of the magical binding of space-time. Whatever happened to it to send me back in time is worth understanding.”

Snape shakes his head, unconvinced.

“Besides,” Draco continues, “she is my boss. I’m obligated to do what she says.”

“You’re twelve,” Snape answers flatly.

“There’s actually a clause in my employment contract that states I’m still an employee of the Department of Mysteries even in the event of temporal displacement,” Draco remarks. “And I’m not twelve. Not meaningfully.”

“You’re telling me that enough employees have been sent back in time that they felt the need to write it into the contract?”

“It’s a weird job,” Draco says by way of explanation.

Snape sighs. He’s displeased, clearly, but also doesn’t seem willing to argue the point any further. Together, they head back toward the exit of the Room of Requirement.

“You are meaningfully twelve, by the way,” he adds as they go. “Being physically twelve is a very meaningful way to be twelve.”

Draco doesn’t agree, but is willing to acknowledge that it doesn’t really matter. “Honestly, I’m just hoping to make it through puberty with some dignity this time.”

“No one makes it through puberty with dignity,” is Snape’s answer.

“By the way,” Draco says, and stops just before they reach the door, “how fared your endeavors in the Malfoy Manor over the summer? Did you…”

Snape raises an eyebrow at him.

Draco licks his lips apprehensively, finally managing: “… find anything?”

“I thought you wanted to be left in the dark regarding any progress myself and Albus did or did not make,” he says.

“I did,” Draco assures him. “I do. It’s just…”

It’s just that you have two months before the Chamber of Secrets opens, Draco doesn’t say, unless you’ve managed to intervene.

Snape sighs, slowly. “We found a few items of interest, along with a few dark artifacts,” he eventually says, ambiguously. “We’re hoping to determine their significance.”

Draco knows that his father has a substantial collection of dark artifacts in the Manor, and he is excruciatingly close to asking if any of the ones Snape recovered are a diary.

But he doesn’t. He just nods and pushes through the door leading out of the Room of Requirement.

For now, he supposes, there’s little enough to do but wait and hope for the best.

According to the owl Draco receives from Ms. Truss the following week, it will take at least till mid-November to complete the Apparation Gate that will allow access between the Room of Requirement and Department of Mysteries. It’s just as well, since the bulk of the early work to recreate Needle is wholly theoretical, and Draco has none of his notes to speed the process along. He is forced to recreate his life’s work from scratch, based on half-remembered formulae from six years ago and spellwork he developed over drunken all-nighters with Westy at the office.

He does most of his work in the Slytherin common room or library, trying to stay out of the goings-on of his classmates while monitoring the castle at large for any indication of basilisk infestations or students showings signs of possession.

“I made the team!” Harry announces one evening in early October when he arrives in the common room and sees Draco.

Draco doesn’t look up from his work. “Mhm,” he says.

Harry socks him in the shoulder. Draco makes a sound of protest and looks up with a frown.

“Be more supportive, asshole,” Harry protests.

“Sorry,” Draco mumbles, rubbing his shoulder. “But this is the second time you’ve done it, from my perspective.”

Green eyes sparkle. “Was I Slytherin Seeker in your timeline, too?”

Draco opens his mouth, then snaps it shut. Harry seems to notice his hesitance and cants his head to one side.

He supposes there’s no harm in saying it. They’re alone in the common room, and Harry’s long since been sorted.

Besides, it might bring the boy to his senses about Draco.

“You weren’t even in Slytherin in my timeline,” he says.

“Really? What house was I in?”

“Gryffindor.”

Draco isn’t quite sure how to feel about Harry’s reaction: the wrinkled nose and downturned mouth of disgust. “Gryffindor? That bunch of numbskulls?”

“You were Gryffindor Seeker, I was Slytherin Seeker. We were rivals.”

Harry’s expression falls, disappointment visible on his young face.

“Rivals? That can’t be right. I don’t…”

“We couldn’t stand one another. We were constantly at each other’s throats. You were the golden boy, and I was the son of a Death Eater. It was only natural, I suppose.”

Harry’s silent for a long time. Draco returns his attention to his notebook full of equations, scribbling out next few numbers. Across from him, he hears Harry sit down slowly in the armchair opposite the couch that Draco’s sprawled out on.

When Harry does speak again, it’s with surprising abruptness:

“And you were keen to get back to that timeline?” Harry says. “It sounds like rubbish. I don’t want to live in a timeline where we’re not friends.”

Draco nearly snaps his quill in half with how hard he grips it. He lifts his eyes and stares hard at Harry, who’s dwarfed by the massive green armchair across from Draco, staring resolutely out at him, so certain of himself.

As if he understands the full context of what it means to be the son of a Death Eater. As if he knows the threat that looms just two-and-a-half years from now. As if Draco has in any way earned this kind of devotion.

Draco hates the way his chest aches.

“Do your homework, Potter,” he says, a bit strangled, because he can’t come up with anything else.

And Harry does, slowly pulling a few books from the messenger bag he’d set on the nearby coffee table. Draco keeps his eyes on his own work, with difficulty. When next he looks up through golden lashes, Harry has his knobbly legs drawn up to his chest and is frantically scribbling, quill bobbing.

When Harry notices Draco watching him, he goes beet red, sinks lower behind his own knees, and goes back to scribbling.

Draco sighs, and resolves to come up with a way to nip what is clearly becoming a crush in the bud. No good will come of it.

“Oy, Potter, you look knackered,” Blaise volunteers a few weeks later. He practically shouts it, forcing Harry—half-slumped over his breakfast—to jolt upright and knock his orange juice over. Blaise cackles. “Flint already got you running drills, eh?”

“Yeah,” Harry answers, yawning.

“Transfiguration is first up, mate. Better not doze off or McGonagall will tan your hide.”

“Transfiguration!” Harry suddenly says, jolting up out of his seat. “Oh, no, I forgot to finish my transfiguration homework! I have to go!”

Draco watches in silence as he frantically snatches his things up. “Bye, Blaise! Bye, Vince! Bye, Greg!”

They all offer variations on see you back at him. Only after they’re done does Harry look specifically at Draco.

“Bye, Draco.” His tone is different. Draco’s mouth twists into a frown. “Will I see you at the Halloween feast tonight?”

“Do you want McGonagall to break your fingers?” he answers. It seems to offer sufficient reminder of the consequences of not finishing his homework, and Harry takes off in a sprint for the library.

“If I didn’t know any better,” Blaise says as Harry vanishes through the doors of the Great Hall, “I’d think Potter fancies you, Malfoy.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing you do know better, isn’t it?”

Mercifully, the conversation shifts. By the time the end of breakfast rolls around, they make their way upstairs, Blaise and Draco leading, Vince and Greg at the flank.

“You seem nervous,” Blaise remarks as they walk.

Draco frowns. In truth, he is nervous. It’s Halloween, which means if Snape and Dumbledore didn’t manage to get the diary out of the Malfoy Manor, he’s going to find out about it today. The dread of what might be coming had been growing steadily in the pit of Draco’s stomach all week.

“I’m fine,” is what Draco ends up saying. He tries to convince himself it’s true. He made sure that Snape knew his father was up to something. He made sure they never ran into the Weasleys at Diagon Alley. Time is a chaotic system, he reminds himself. Small changes in the past create big changes in the future. He’s worrying himself over nothing, he tells himself.

He startles when his footsteps splash through a puddle. He looks down, seeing an expanse of water on the floor.

His stomach lurches with fear before he even remembers, before he even puts together why—

“Whoa,” Blaise says.

“Oh, no!” Vince cries from behind. “That’s Fang!”

Nauseous with fear, Draco looks up. Huge and hulking and covered in coarse black fur, the massive hound is stiff and strung upside-down from a light fixture on the wall.

“No.” The word passes through Draco’s lips, riding a horrified, exhaled breath. “No, no, no, no.”

On the wall, daubed in paint:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED.
ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

Chapter Text

“This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen!” Draco cries, louder than he intends. “Were you not able to find the diary?”

“Diary?” Dumbledore repeats. Draco makes a helpless sound, buries his face in his hands. “In fairness, Mr. Malfoy, you didn’t give us much to work with.”

“I couldn’t just tell you! It would have risked a paradox if you’d acted based on events that hadn’t happened! And now I—”

Merlin, Draco doesn’t know what to do. He was barely involved with whatever nonsense had happened in the Chamber of Secrets the first time. And if he changes any major events based on the memories he does have, it could rip a hole in time.

“Surely there’s something you can tell us without risking any temporal fraying,” Snape intones. “The attack—Hagrid’s dog—it’s happened now, so you must be able to speak of this event, at least?”

“It’s different,” Draco despairs. “It didn’t happen like this the first time.”

“How so?” Dumbledore asks, sitting forward at his desk. “The ways in which it differs may tell us something.”

“It was—” Merlin, what was that wretched animal’s name? “—Filch’s cat. The scraggly one. In the original timeline, the cat was the first victim.”

“Mrs. Norris,” Snape prompts.

“The first victim?” Dumbledore echoes.

Draco grinds his teeth. He’s saying too much.

“I don’t know how to handle this,” he says instead. “I don’t know what to do. If I say anything, do anything, based on foreknowledge that I only have from being from the future, I could cause a catastrophic paradox. It could rip time in half. But if I don’t, people could die. And how can I possibly live with more blood on my hands? I can’t stand by and do nothing! Not again! I don’t—I can’t—!”

“Draco,” Snape says, gently.

“What’s the point of it?” Draco demands. He feels his eyes burn with tears, feels his limbs start to shake. “Why make every possible form of nonintervention worse, why get sent back at all, if I can’t even change anything without risking the fabric of space-time? Am I just a punchline in some great cosmic joke the universe is telling?”

“Draco,” Snape says again, more urgently.

“Or is this just what I deserve?” Draco can barely speak through the tightness of his throat. He has to force out every word. “Am I trapped in a personal hell, forced to relive every nightmare in which I or my family was complicit while being completely unable to stop it?”

“Draco!”

There are hands on his shoulders. Draco’s breath comes in wheezing gasps.

“You’re having a panic attack,” Snape tells him.

“Fuck,” is Draco’s reaction, even as he starts to shudder. He tries desperately to focus on his breathing, to remember that fucking grounding exercise his therapist taught him. Snape steers him to one of the chairs opposite the Headmaster’s desk, forces him to a sit.

“Draco, as your godfather, I am begging you to hear me: you do not deserve pain. You will never deserve pain.”

Draco would laugh, if he could breathe properly.

“Let us focus on what we can do,” Dumbledore suggests, his voice not unkind. “Clearly, this particular part of the timeline is not completely incapable of compensation. Last year, you and Severus intervened to stop Quirrell based on knowledge of the future, and time has managed to continue its flow unimpeded.”

“Quirrell was nothing,” Draco protests. “Some forgettable lackey with more ambition than skill. He would have been dead by year’s end anyway. That diary, on the other and, is a—”

He physically bites his tongue to stop himself from finishing the sentence. He watches as Snape and Dumbledore exchange an uneasy glance.

“Do you know, Mr. Malfoy,” Dumbledore begins, slowly, “where the specific threat is?”

Draco opens his mouth, shuts it. It’s hard to think through all the adrenaline still thundering through his body from the panic attack.

Does he know where the specific threat is? Snape and Dumbledore don’t have the diary, clearly—so who does? Ginny Weasley? He’d been keeping distant tabs on her most of the year, and she seemed fine, though Draco didn’t have much of a point of comparison; he barely knew her, least of all when she was a child. Perhaps it had ended up in someone else’s hands? Whose?

“I… no,” he says. “I don’t think I do.”

“Then investigate,” Dumbledore says. “You can do that, at least, even if you cannot act on what you find. And when you do know where the specific threat is, we can go from there.”

“Perhaps acting on newly discovered information will avoid a paradox,” Snape suggests. “And of course—Draco, the second you learn something, come to me. I will help you with anything, no questions asked. I guarantee you, Draco, that I would do this even if you weren’t temporally displaced. I would, and will, always help you when you need me to.”

Draco stares at Snape for a long time, heart lodged in his throat. Affection flares briefly before it is drowned out by a groundswell of guilt.

Merlin, what did he ever do to deserve Severus Snape? And why, why, why didn’t he appreciate him properly the first time?

The fact of the matter is that Draco is simply not equipped to go through every student in Hogwarts to determine which of them are showing signs of possession. There are just too many, and doing so would doubtlessly draw undue attention.

So Draco does the next best thing: he outsources it to the biggest busybody he knows.

“Malfoy,” Pansy Parkinson says by way of greeting. She’d agreed to meet him in a disused sitting room on the third floor, a little corner of the castle that overlooked the Forbidden Forest, two sofas and a few armchairs arranged in a circle, illuminated by a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. She’s flanked by Millie and Daphne, who are both eying Draco suspiciously as he arrives.

“Parkinson,” Draco answers, and sits down on the armchair across from her. “I need a favor.”

“Yes,” she replies, “I was able to tell that much. How can I be of service?”

Draco leans forward, elbows balanced on his knees. “I need to know who, among all students at Hogwarts, is having the roughest go of it.”

Pansy arches one eyebrow. Millie frowns and Daphne folds her arms skeptically across her chest.

“Losing sleep, anxious, paranoid, that kind of thing. The ones who are absolute wrecks. The more obvious, the better. And I need to know soon.”

“Hmm.” Pansy leans backward, steepling her fingers under her chin. “I can see why you’ve come to me with this. What is it you intend to do with this information?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Draco says. “But rest assured, it’s nothing untoward.”

“Pity. I’d be more interested if it were. How soon do you need it?”

“The sooner, the better.”

“Mhm. And how do you intend to pay me for my not inconsiderable services?”

Draco sighs. Merlin, Slytherins are so bloody precocious.

“What, in your judgment, would be suitable recompense?” he replies mildly.

Pansy pauses, then abruptly wheels around in her seat. Millie and Daphne follow, ducking their heads together and whispering to each other urgently for several long moments. Draco tries not to roll his eyes.

When they turn back around, Pansy’s eyes are glimmering.

“Next year,” she says, “when we’re all permitted to go to Hogsmeade, you have to take me out on a date there.”

“A double date,” Daphne adds boldly. “You have to get Potter to agree to take me.” Then she blushes and averts her gaze.

“Are you f—”

Draco rubs his forehead, shuts his eyes wearily. Merlin preserve him from the audacity of children.

“Pans,” he says, “you know I’m gay, right?”

When he next looks at Pansy, he eyes are widened as though she’s surprised. A moment later, though, they narrow again, as if she’s not that surprised. Then her expression turns considering. She taps a finger on her chin.

“I don’t think that matters,” she answers after a moment. “It’s nothing personal, Draco, it’s just social currency. You’re the cutest boy in our year. If I’m seen on a date with you, it makes me more desirable by association.”

“You’re twelve years old,” Draco says. Then, falteringly: “By—by which I mean we’re twelve years old, of course—”

“Those are my terms, Malfoy,” Pansy replies, folding her arms over her chest and leveling him with a stare which Draco is sure she thinks is intense and imperious. “Take it or leave it.”

He is going to regret this.

“Fine,” he says, rubbing his nose between two fingers.

Pansy beams, springs to her feet. Her dark eyes are bright as Draco has ever seen them.

“Give me two weeks,” she says.

“Just be gentle,” Harry tells him as they cross the grounds of Hogwarts three days after, once classes let out. “Since Fang was… well, he’s just been a bit of a mess.”

“I appreciate the introduction,” Draco says. “I’ll try to avoid upsetting him. But I need to get to the bottom of this.”

“But I mean, you—” Harry bites his lower lip, glances over his shoulder before starting over: “You lived through this all once before, didn’t you? You know what the Chamber is? Who the Heir is?”

“Potter, you know I can’t say,” Draco answers, brusque.

“Come on,” he persists. “I’m just as worried as anyone!”

Draco looks at him askance. It was a long time ago, from his perspective, but he thinks he recalls hearing rumors about Potter when the Chamber opened.

“Have you been experiencing anything odd?” Draco asks him, very carefully.

Harry stares at him owlishly, gripping the strap on his bag a little harder. “Er,” he says, “odd how?”

“Just anything out of the ordinary,” Draco says. “Seeing things… hearing things?”

Harry frowns like that wasn’t what he’d expected Draco to say.

“No,” he answers slowly. “No, nothing like that.”

Draco frowns. If the basilisk is attacking, surely Harry, who should certainly still be a Parselmouth, is hearing it. Something isn’t adding up.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the time to consider it further, because Harry is climbing up the rickety wooden steps leading up to the door of Hagrid’s hut and knocking.

“He’s been keen to meet you, you know,” Harry says as they wait. “Or he was, before…”

“Meet me?” Draco returns, baffled. “Why would he want to meet me?”

Harry goes a bit red. “Well, er…”

He doesn’t have time to answer. The door swings open, and they both have to look up to meet the eyes of the towering figure of Rubeus Hagrid.

“Oh,” he says. Draco notices at once that his dark eyes are bloodshot. “Hullo, Harry. And, er…”

“Draco Malfoy,” he supplies.

“Oh!” Hagrid straightens his shoulders, making him seem even more impossibly big. “O’course! ’Bout time I met ye. Harry goes on about ye all the time.”

Harry clears his throat. Draco stifles a sigh. So that’s why Hagrid wanted to meet him. He really is going to have to do something about this crush sooner rather than later.

“May we come in?” Draco asks. “I just want to ask you a few questions about Fang.”

Hagrid frowns, but steps out of the way. Draco comes through the threshold first.

The hut is entirely too small for a man of Hagrid’s stature, by Draco’s judgment, but certainly homey. It has a table, a bed, a large fireplace—and, notably, a dog bed, distinctly unoccupied.

“Have a seat,” Hagrid says. “I’ll put the kettle on, eh?”

Draco sits. The aging wood sighs beneath his weight. Hagrid putters across to the fireplace, and metal clanks as he sets the kettle in a metal hook to boil.

“Don’t know what use I’ll be to ye,” Hagrid says as he comes back over to the table to sit across from them—and if Draco’s chair had sighed, Hagrid’s positively wails. “I already told Dumbledore everythin’ when he came askin’. I didn’t even notice Fang were gone till they found him… till they…”

Hagrid sniffs wetly.

“Can you tell me anything about the night it happened?” Draco asks, leaning forward across the table. “Was there anything unusual about it?”

“No, no,” Hagrid says, “it were a perfectly ordinary day. I did my usual round of the grounds, tended to me crops. Harry came over fer his usual weekly visit. He brought Vince with him, who wanted ter see the livestock I keep.”

For one delirious moment, Draco pictures Vincent Crabbe, twelve years old and still round with baby fat, possessed by a fragment of the Dark Lord’s soul. He can’t tell if the mental image is hilarious or horrifying.

“When I woke up the next mornin’, all my chickens were dead! I was so upset that I didn’t even notice Fang were gone till word came down from the castle that… that he’d…”

Hagrid bursts into wailing sobs. Harry scoots off his chair and hurries to his side, patting his arm consolingly.

“It’s all right, Hagrid,” Harry assures him. “Professor Sprout says once her crop of mandrakes are ready, they’ll be able to bring him back, good as new.”

Draco supposes it could theoretically be Vince who wound up with the diary, though so far as Draco’s been able to tell, he hasn’t been acting unusually. The visit could have been motivated by the Dark Lord’s soul trying to remove the basilisk’s natural enemy, the rooster, while also announcing his return to the school—but then, it also could have just been a perfectly innocent visit. Vince had always liked animals. It’s not surprising in the least that he’d get along with Hagrid when given half a chance.

Draco drums his fingers on the table for a moment in thought.

Then he says, “D’you mind if I take a look around?”

Draco is reasonably confident, by the time the week is out, that Vincent Crabbe is not possessed by Lord Voldemort. He reaches this conclusion relatively early into his investigation, when, upon being asked how he’s been feeling recently, Vince spends a deeply uncomfortable ten minutes talking to Draco about the newly growing hair under his arms and how his voice keeps breaking at embarrassing times.

If puberty is the worst thing happening to him, Draco feels like he can safely discount him as Voldemort’s unwilling stooge.

“Oy, Malfoy!”

He doesn’t have time to turn around all the way before he’s hit in the head with a stack of parchments.

“Got your list!”

It’s Pansy, Draco finally realizes, beaming with pride. Draco glances down at the topmost parchment, the full pile of which had landed in his lap, and sees that it’s a list of names. At the top: Hannah Abbott, 2nd year, has been crying a lot because her parents just got divorced. A few names down: Astoria Greengrass, 1st year, upset because her big sister is more popular than her.

“Merlin’s pants, Pans, this has got to be twenty pages long,” Draco says, flipping through the stack.

“Well, I assume that you wanted the work to be thorough,” Pansy snips.

“No, no, it’s very… assiduous,” Draco quickly assures her. He’s having trouble believing just how assiduous it is, in fact. “Did you stay up all night finishing this?”

“It was worth it to get the dirt on Parvati Patil, that hag. She tripped me in potions last month. Are you sure you don’t want to do anything untoward with this information?”

“Why is Harry Potter on this list?” Draco asks. Harry Potter, 2nd year, tired all the time because of early Quidditch practice.

“You asked for everyone,” Pansy answers, shrugging. “And he does fit the description you gave. He’s jumpy and tired all the time. And when he’s not at Quidditch practice or scribbling in that diary of his, he’s almost assuredly—”

Draco looks up sharply. “What? What diary?”

“The one he’s always hiding from you, obviously,” she sniggers. “Because he fancies you, and writes about you in it. Which isn’t to say I’m letting you out of the deal, mind you, you still have to get him to come to Hogsmeade with Daphne—”

“Pansy.”

Draco drops the list, loose sheets of parchment scattering on the floor, and seizes her by both shoulders.

“When did he get the diary?”

She stares at Draco in confused silence for a time, mouth pursed, gaze searching.

“I don’t know,” she eventually answers, slowly. “I think he said it was a birthday present from Professor Snape.”

“Professor Snape wouldn’t give—”

Draco is hit with sudden clarity, so abrupt and devastating that it feels like a punch to the stomach.

In his letter, Harry said he’d been sent a present with an unsigned note. Snape would never give a student a birthday present, he barely gives Draco birthday presents, but if—

“Oh, no,” Draco says in a small, terrified voice. He takes off in a sprint.

“You better make good on our deal next year, Malfoy!” Pansy calls after him. Draco can barely hear her.

He bursts through the door at the end of the end of the hallway leading into the boys’ dormitory, startling Blaise awake with a shout. Draco races up to Harry’s bed and throws the curtains back.

It’s empty.

Dread clutches Draco’s heart, tight as a vise.

“Malfoy?” Blaise says, sleepily, into the darkness.

“Tempus,” he says, flicking his wand. A pale blue clock appears, hovering in the air. It’s past ten, and Harry’s not in bed, and he—

“No,” Draco whispers. “No, no, no.”

“Draco? All right, mate?”

Draco is not a brave man. He’s never been brave. It has always been the preeminent flaw in his soul: he was too much of a coward to confront the uncomfortable, obvious flaws in the purist dogma he was fed as a child, too afraid to stand up for what was right when it mattered most, too fucking weak to act on his conscience until it was way too fucking late—

—and somehow, when he realizes that Harry Fucking Potter is, right at this moment, possessed by the man who killed his parents, all that fear goes out the window.

Draco crashes through the dormitory door again.

“Severus! Severus!”

It takes less than ten seconds of knocking before Draco’s godfather opens the door, in a fraying gingham dressing gown in green and black.

Severus, never one to waste time, sees the harried look on his godson’s face and cuts to the chase: “What’s happened?”

“Get your wand and a mirror,” Draco says, “and follow me. We’re going to kill a basilisk.”

It’s a testament to the truth of Snape’s assertion that he would help Draco whenever he needed it, no questions asked, that he merely vanishes into his bedroom again, reappearing with his wand and a small, tarnished silver hand mirror.

“Do we have time to get Albus?” he asks.

“We don’t.”

“Then I’m bringing—” He hurries over to the corner of his office, where he tugs a particular book half-off its shelf, which triggers the entire bookcase to slide aside, wood groaning against stone. Draco stares, bewildered, as he produces—

“What the fuck is that?” Draco asks before he can stop himself.

“It’s the halberd of Salazar Slytherin,” Snape says.

If Draco had been asked to make a list of all the things his head of house and godfather might be hiding behind his office bookshelf, the halberd of Salazar Slytherin would not have even cracked the top one hundred. It is, if nothing else, a magnificent weapon—a shaft of blackened steel, topped by a pike and ornately carved blade set with emeralds.

“Somehow, that doesn’t answer my question.”

“It’s been passed down to each head of Slytherin House since Hogwarts was founded,” Snape continues, as he pushes the book back into place, which in turn slides the bookcase back into its original spot.

“Can it kill a basilisk?” Draco asks.

“It can kill anything,” is Snape’s grim, ambiguous answer.

“Good enough for me,” Draco says. “Let’s go.”

Draco takes off into the darkened hallway. Snape is at his heels.

“What can you tell me?” Snape asks as they go. “Without risking a paradox, of course.”

A laugh bubbles up in the back of Draco’s throat before he even understands why, although it’s not long at all before he does:

Draco doesn’t care about paradoxes anymore. He doesn’t care about the timeline, the fabric of space-time. Harry is in danger, and Draco’s ready to tear the world apart.

“The creature inside the Chamber of Secrets is a basilisk. The one commanding it is the same one as the first time it was opened. Tom Riddle’s diary, and the fragment of his soul within, is possessing Harry, and it’s going to force him to attack and potentially kill Colin Creevey unless we stop him.”

“That’s,” Snape says, “an awful lot of information.”

Fortunately, Draco is pushing through the door into Myrtle’s bathroom a moment later. The sink in the center of the room has dropped away, revealing a round tunnel that vanishes into darkness.

“Blind it as soon as you see movement,” Draco advises him. “And try to use the mirror so you don’t take the full brunt of its gaze.”

“Perhaps you should be the one to take the mirror,” Snape says, but Draco is already ducking into the tunnel.

The slipperiness of it catches Draco by surprise. He ends up slipping, stumbling, and ultimately sliding at least two stories down before landing in a heap of limbs in the middle of a massive, echoing chasm. With difficulty, Draco pulls himself to his feet.

Snape arrives a few moments later with a bit more grace, riding a stabilizing charm. When he comes to stand beside Draco, his expression is steeled as he takes in the sight of it.

“You said once, Draco,” Snape begins, “that casual cruelty was the worst trait of our house.”

Draco presses his lips to a firm line. He does not need to ask what Snape means. He’s right: there is one trait of their house that is worse, and he feels it rise in the back of his throat as he takes in his surroundings.

The Chamber of Secrets. All this enterprise, all this ingenuity, all this beauty—and all in the service of hatred. Draco’s stomach turns.

“Look,” Snape says, and suddenly takes off in a sprint. Draco is at his heels.

It doesn’t take Draco long to see what drew Snape’s attention—through a massive set of open doors, a small figure, shrouded in shadow. Draco’s heart leaps into his throat.

“Harry,” he breathes. Then, louder, “Harry!”

He tries to sprint over to him, but Snape grabs his shoulder so tightly that it hurts, that it makes Draco buckle slightly and wrench around to look back at him. But Snape’s gaze is fixed on Harry.

“Hello again, Draco Malfoy.”

The voice comes from Harry’s direction, but it’s not Harry’s voice. Draco’s skin crawls.

He remembers that voice—a high, clear tenor. Images of red eyes and white skin batter at the walls of Draco’s mind. He feels a sudden instinct to flee that tingles in his nerves and thuds against his ribs.

“It’s been a while.”

Harry—or his body, at least—turns around. Even in the low light, Draco can tell that the green of his eyes is subsumed by abyssal black.

Draco feels himself shaking and tries not to let on.

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” he says, voice quavering.

“You don’t remember me? I’m hurt, Draco. I certainly remember you.”

There’s no way—Draco had been initially displaced nearly twenty years after Voldemort died. There’s no way he could remember—that he could know—

“I advise you,” Snape says, voice dangerous, his hand hefting Slytherin’s halberd into a defensive position, “to remove yourself from my student.”

Harry-not-Harry’s dark eyes move to Snape’s face, then to the blade.

“You must be Harry’s head of house,” he remarks. “Severus Snape, I believe it is? He talked about you quite a lot. But not as much as he talked about you, Draco.”

Draco swallows, flexes his fingers around his wand.

“I’d have found it unbearably dull,” he continues, sauntering forward with a deadly grace and maturity that sits awkwardly on such a young body, “hearing him carry on and on about how confused you make him feel, how he doesn’t understand why he can’t get you out of his head—”

“Stop,” Draco grinds out.

“—but fortunately, it’s a shared predilection. I also have quite an interest in you, Draco Malfoy.”

“Get out of him,” Draco growls, and raises his wand. “Get out of him! Leave him alone!”

“Both of you are Slytherins,” Harry-not-Harry says, like he’s disappointed. “You should be rallying behind these efforts, not standing in my way.”

“House Slytherin is better than you,” Snape says, stalwart. “More than you. I refuse to let it be limited by your nightmarish legacy.”

Harry-not-Harry’s expression darkens. In the shadows of the Chamber, something huge hisses and slithers through the shadows.

“Don’t talk to me,” he growls, magic rippling and warping the air around him, “about legacy!”

Deftly, Snape steps around so he and Draco are back to back.

“I’ll handle the basilisk,” he whispers. “Draco—”

Whatever the rest of that sentence was going to be, Draco will never know: from behind, the massive shape of the basilisk lunges, and directly in front of Draco, Harry-not-Harry raises his wand and screams, “Stupefy!”

“Protego!” Draco counters, and the spell rebounds, firing of into a nearby wall. “Expelliarmus!”

“Defendare!” The red burst of Draco’s magic dissolves against the shield. “There’s no need to be combative, Draco Malfoy; I assure you, I have no intent to hurt you.”

“If you think I’m stupid enough to trust you twice, you fucking sociopath—”

A binding charm blazes toward Draco; he’s only barely able to catch it before it hits him, his dispel dissolving it in midair.

“Get out of Harry Potter,” Draco snarls, then doesn’t give him time to answer. “Animintacto!”

He’d looked up the spell specifically when he resolved to stay in this timeline, the anti-possession spell. Normally used to force overly ambitious ghosts out from the bodies of those they possessed, the principle carried over to other facets and forms of spirits. And the best part is there’s no counterspell.

The jet of silver-white light sails into the center of Harry’s chest, through the ephemeral shield that had been brought up to defend against it, and Harry staggers backward—but sent even further back is the slightly ghostly, slightly transparent figure of Tom Riddle, sailing backward through the air as though it’s water.

Harry drops to the ground. Draco races forward, places himself between him and the ghost of Tom Riddle, who’s still struggling to stand upright.

“Clever,” Riddle says, shoulders shaking with some soundless combination of laughter and breathlessness, “very clever. But I should have expected as much from you.”

“I’m going to enjoy ripping your fucking diary apart,” Draco spits.

“And I’m going to enjoy watching your head of house become snake food.”

Fear lurches in Draco’s heart. He’s barely turned his head before, suddenly, Snape goes hurtling through the air in front of him and hits the wall of the chamber, the halberd hitting the ground with a clatter and his back making a terrifying crack sound as it collides with stone.

He turns, and finds himself staring down the long body of a massive basilisk. Terror trembles down his spine and out through each nerve individually, humming and vibrating.

Snape had managed to blind it, at least—Draco can see two long lines of blood running down the poison green scales of its face. But based on the way it flicks its tongue and keeps its head level with Draco, it must also have a finely developed sense of smell.

Draco confronts the very real possibility that he’s going to die imminently.

If he can just get Harry out. If he can just keep Snape alive. Maybe this is why he was sent back. His life for theirs. He’s not sure he can defeat a basilisk, but he can sure as hell take it down with him.

“Sectumsempra!” Draco cries, which bursts a line of blood out from beneath its scales. “Confringo! Deprimo!”

He does his best to keep the massive beast at bay, to draw it away from Harry and his godfather, and he even manages to leap out of the way of exactly one of its attacks—

—before, promptly afterward, it uses its own momentum on the miss to wrench around and sink its fangs into Draco’s shoulder.

The pain is so intense that it defies all description. Draco’s scream rips from his throat; his body convulses and collapses to one knee, then to two. He feel it, can feel the venom pounding through his veins with each heartbeat, burning him up from the inside out. When the basilisk rips its fangs free, Draco capitulates under his own weight, onto his back on the unyielding stone floor. His wand rolls away from his fingertips.

He can do nothing but stare, body shaking with pain and venom, as the basilisk slowly looms over him, long tongue tasting the air, the blood from its wounds oozing down its scales.

“No! Draco!”

And then, all at once, there he is: Harry Fucking Potter, gripping Slytherin’s halberd in both hands and running it through the basilisk’s jaw.

Even through the unimaginable pain, even half-conscious, Draco can tell that the wound is magical. As it splits the basilisk’s scaly hide, iridescent gray smoke bursts out of it. The basilisk shrieks, rears its massive head back, but Harry continues advancing—he lunges forward, the halberd’s pike driving into the roof of its mouth. More smoke billows out, snarling out and around the halberd before it seems to absorb into the metal.

“No! No!” It’s Riddle’s voice, high and hysterical with anger. “How could you!”

Draco watches, shaking and delirious, as Harry races forward and makes to slash Riddle’s ghost with the halberd—

—and, incredibly, finds purchase. With one long slash, the spirit shrieks and dissolves into the same ethereal mist.

Draco wonders for a few pain-hazed moments what kind of halberd Salazar Slytherin had.

Not for very long, though. The edges of his vision are starting to gray, the ends of his limbs going distressingly cold and numb.

The halberd clatters to the ground again a moment later, and suddenly, Harry is kneeling over him. His eyes are back to green.

“Oh, God,” he says, staring at the wound on Draco’s shoulder, face white with horror. “Oh, no, no, no. Draco, hang on, I—I—”

Draco tries to say Not bad, Potter, but all that comes out of his mouth is blood. He chokes on it, body spasming.

There are more words, but Draco can’t hear them. There’s more movement, but Draco can’t see it. He feels like he’s falling down a well, with a single point of light above him that fades rapidly as Draco plummets, and plummets, and plummets—

—and wakes up reluctantly to sunlight on his face, hot and bright and uncomfortable. There’s a dull, throbbing pain in his shoulder and his throat feels dry. He gets the feeling that some significant amount of time has passed, though he can’t rightly tell how much.

“Ow, fuck,” Draco says as he makes his first attempt to sit up and his shoulder sears its protest. He grips it hard with his opposite hand, feeling the soft yield of his pajama top covering a layer of bandages, which in turn cover two still-healing wounds where, he recalls with sudden, devastating clarity—

“Draco!”

Draco wheels around toward the source of the voice, sees nothing, then looks frantically around the rest of the room. He’s in the Hospital Wing, but it appears to be empty. This early in the morning, even Madame Pomfrey isn’t awake yet.

A moment later, Draco hears the rustle of fabric. He turns toward it in time to see Harry, throwing off his invisibility cloak, under which he’d been sleeping on the bed beside Draco’s.

An exasperated sigh falls from Draco’s mouth before he can stop it.

“Merlin,” he says, “I might have known you—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence, because Harry has thrown himself at Draco, arms squeezing so hard around the barrel of Draco’s chest that all his breath evacuates in a rush.

“You’re awake,” he says, young voice ruined with emotion. “You were asleep for so long—Madame Pomfrey said that for how long the basilisk venom was in your system, you might never—”

Draco should push him away. He knows this, intellectually: that all evidence he’s found suggests that far away from Draco Malfoy is objectively the safest place for Harry Potter to be.

But despite this knowing, despite the physical desire to put some distance between them, he doesn’t. Draco finds himself swallowing a knot of emotion in his throat.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” Draco admits, voice small. Harry pulls back, stares down at him with those unbearably green eyes of his.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” Harry answers. “Professor Snape would have had me drawn and quartered if anything happened to you.”

With difficulty, Draco sits upright properly, favoring his uninjured arm. “He’s fine?”

“He broke a few ribs and his skull, at least according to Madame Pomfrey,” Harry answers, “but she healed them up easily enough. And I know he’s back to normal because he’s sniping at everyone in class again.”

“What about the diary?”

Harry pauses, then reaches into his robe pocket, pulling it out—it’s in two pieces, slashed through the middle, just like Riddle’s ghost had been, by the halberd.

“Merlin,” Draco says. He really should find out what, precisely, that halberd does.

“I found it like that after all the dust settled,” Harry says. “Dumbledore said it’s useless now, it’s fine.”

“And what about you?” Draco asks. “Are you fine?”

“I wasn’t hurt,” Harry answers.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Harry snaps his mouth shut. Draco can see the muscles in his jaw flex, see him grip the ruined diary a little tighter in both hands.

“I,” he says, then doesn’t finish.

“Harry.”

“I’m sorry, Draco. I… I should have known better than to trust a mysterious talking diary, but I…”

“Harry.”

Draco’s hand finds itself on the back of Harry’s neck.

“You’re twelve years old,” Draco says, finding his voice thick with emotion. “You’re allowed to make mistakes. Merlin knows I made plenty of them when I was your age.”

Harry sniffs, rubs one eye with his palm. “I can’t imagine you making any mistakes,” he says.

“Imagine, then, the worst little brat in the world, and then imagine him with blond hair and a pathological fear of displeasing his absolute bastard of a father,” Draco replies. “The difference is that your mistakes aren’t malicious. That’s what counts, Harry. I told you before, there’s a light in your soul that will never go out. There is a goodness in you that is fundamental. Trust in that, even if you trust nothing else.”

“Why are you so sure of me?” Harry asks. He asks the question like it hurts just to say out loud, like he’s terrified of the answer.

“Because—”

There’s only so much Draco can safely say. He licks his lower lip, hunts for the right words.

“Because… in the original timeline, even when the world was at its darkest, even when I didn’t believe in myself, I believed in you. I’d seen you go through hell and come out stronger for it. I believed back then, and I still do, that you can do absolutely anything.”

Harry’s expression breaks; he swallows, grips Draco’s wrists tight enough to bruise. Draco releases a breath that exists at the middle point between a sigh, a laugh, and a sob. He pulls Harry forward into a hug, and feels it, physically, as all those ideas of keeping Harry away slowly disintegrate, falling through his fingers like so much sand.

It’s no longer a matter of choice, Draco knows that now. Thrown into the crucible, Draco chose to save Harry before the timeline. And even now, with the understanding that he could have caused a catastrophic paradox with his actions, he knows he’d do it again if he had to.

Chapter Text

Draco does not go home for either Christmas or Easter, because he’s sure the second he sees his father again he’s going to start a fight. He tells himself that, by summer, he’ll have enough separation from the events in the Chamber of Secrets that he should be able to speak civilly with the man, if not amiably.

This turns out not to be the case.

“He’s a child, you fucking psychopath!”

Draco doesn’t even make it a week into August before he ends up in a shouting match with him. The argument had begun after his father, upon Draco’s receipt of an owl from Harry thanking him for his birthday present (Guns N’ Roses’s Appetite for Destruction and Alice in Chains’s Dirt), had made a disparaging remark about the blood status of Harry’s mother and Draco’s questionable choice in friends.

It had rapidly and dramatically devolved from there.

“You will watch your tongue. I raised you respect your betters!”

“Respect is earned,” Draco snarls, “not demanded. And I would never count a man so cowardly as to pick his battles with a twelve-year-old as my better.”

“Please,” his mother says from her usual spot at the dinner table, voice feeble and shaking, “please, both of you—”

“My duty was to a greater cause than your puerile notions of right and wrong could possibly hope to grasp,” his father answers, tone dangerous.

“I think I have a pretty good grasp of your cause, actually,” Draco answers. He’s gripping the edge of the dinner table with both hands, tight as he can, just to keep himself from going for his wand. “In fact, I have a thorough understanding of the ideas by which you define yourself. Notions of supremacy and purity so paper thin that a stiff breeze could tear a hole right through them—”

“You dare speak to your father this way—!”

“But it’s not even about the theory of blood purity, is it? It doesn’t matter if your backwards, dogmatic bullshit holds up to scrutiny. It’s about you, and all Voldemort’s followers just like you, so desperate to cling on to power and the illusion of superiority that you’d endanger a child—”

His father’s expression shatters and he reaches for his cane. Draco reacts, hand moving toward the wand in his sleeve, suddenly extremely ready to do to Lucius Malfoy what he spent so much of Draco’s childhood doing to him, when abruptly, from the side of the room—

“Relashio!”

A burst of magic hits his father in the middle of his chest, sending him staggering backward a few feet. All eyes in the room turn to the source of the magic, where stepping out from the fireplace still covered from the knees down in soot—

“Severus,” his mother breathes.

“Lucius Malfoy,” Snape says, voice lethal, “if you raise your hand to my godson in my presence again, expect to lose it.”

“I am surrounded by insolence,” his father growls. “Who in Merlin’s name are you to tell me how to parent my child?”

“I’m not telling you how to do anything. I offer nothing but frank warning: keep your hands off my godson.”

“Severus, don’t,” his mother begs him.

“I need to talk to you,” Snape says, to Draco.

Draco’s eyes move uncertainly around the room—from Snape, grim and still, to his father, furious to the point of trembling, to his mother, on the verge of tears.

Draco sucks in a steadying breath and storms out of the dining room. Snape closes rank behind him, shooting a last, stormy look at Draco’s father before they vanish into the drawing room together.

“Are you all right?” is the first thing Snape asks when the door closes.

“I’m livid,” Draco answers, “but I’m physically fine. I don’t know how much longer I can stand living under his roof, Severus. He is intolerable.”

Snape sighs heavily. “I had a feeling this was going to come to a head eventually.”

“Especially after—”

Draco shuts his mouth tightly, flexes his hands.

Especially after the Triwizard Tournament, is what he doesn’t say. Unless Draco finds a way to intervene and stop Voldemort’s return—which is direct violation of a known prophecy and going to be near-on impossible—he’s going to have to live through the same nightmare all over again—the Dark Lord in his house, his family rotting away from the inside—

Draco sinks into the nearest armchair and folds forward over himself, rubbing his face with both hands.

“I need to get away from him,” Draco mutters into his palms. “D’you reckon I could petition to be an emancipated minor at thirteen?”

“Fifteen is the youngest you’ll be able to manage it legally,” Snape answers. “Draco, start smaller. If you can’t get away from him forever, then find a way to get away from him for now. As it happens, I have a suggestion.”

Draco lifts his head, weary. His godfather’s expression has turned rather pinched.

“Harry Potter,” Snape says, “turned up at my house this evening.”

It had not been what Draco had expected him to say. “What?”

“He told me something about accidentally blowing up his aunt and summoning the Knight Bus—”

And that had not been the way he’d expected him to continue. “What?”

“—and asked to be brought to my house because it was the first place he could think of. He’s still there.”

Draco has no idea whether this whole Harry-blowing-up-his-aunt thing is delineation, but he supposes it doesn’t matter. “I swear, that boy is a magnet for trouble,” Draco says.

“Take him somewhere,” Snape says. “On vacation, maybe. I don’t care, as long as it’s out of my house.”

Draco rolls his eyes. “Merlin, Severus.”

“I want him out of my house, Draco. I have begrudgingly tolerated him at your behest—”

“Yes, yes, we can’t have children liking or trusting you. What would happen to your reputation of being a cantankerous old bastard?” Snape raises an eyebrow at Draco, dry and unamused, but offers nothing further. “I suppose I could dip into my Gringott’s vault,” Draco continues, sighing, “take him to… I don’t know, where do teenagers like to go?”

“You’re a teenager,” Snape reminds him.

“Oh, hardly.”

“Who’s going where?”

They both look over. Draco’s mother had arrived so quietly through the door leading into the dining room that neither of them had noticed till she’d announced her presence.

She seems to have composed herself somewhat after the fight, the only sign of her distress in the redness of her eyes, which can be easily ignored in favor of her careful poise. Still, Draco’s heart lurches; there’s a very primal part of his soul that hates to see his mother in pain.

Which is what ignites the sudden idea.

“Mother,” he says, “why don’t you come with me? Being away from Father might do us both some good.”

“I—” She swallows, but otherwise keeps her face carefully neutral. “I do not need to be away from my own family, Draco, and neither do you—”

“Mum,” Draco interjects, springing to his feet and grabbing both her hands, “I know how much family means to you, and I know you’ve convinced yourself of the importance of the ideals of blood purity with which you were raised, but you can’t keep justifying cruelty and violence.”

“Draco, it’s more complicated than that,” she protests.

“But it isn’t, Narcissa,” Snape says. She and Draco both turn to see his sad expression. “Do you think it’s meaningfully different, the kind of hatred that raises its hand to a child, from the kind that brings the Dark Lord to power? They’re both based in fear and the need for control, and they are both indefensible.”

“I’ve never—” She swallows again. Little shards of her impassiveness crumble away one by one, slowly revealing the pain hiding beneath the veneer. “I’ve never heard either of you talk like this before.”

Draco sighs and exchanges a brief, meaningful look with Snape. He doesn’t expect to disabuse her of such deeply-set prejudices today—Merlin knows it took years for Draco to manage it in himself—but nor will he allow himself to give up. He knows his mother, he knows her heart, and he knows that she has more love in her than she’s ever had darkness.

He’s going to save her from the War, and from herself.

“Look,” Draco says, “my friend—Harry—has gotten himself into some trouble with the wretched Muggles he lives with. It sounds like they’ve kicked him out of the house.”

His mother frowns delicately. Draco knows that whatever distaste she has for the Boy-Who-Lived is overwhelmed by a mother’s empathy for a child in distress.

“He can’t go back, and I can’t leave him on his own. Why don’t we spend the rest of August somewhere nice? A few weeks away. Then we can go back to London together at the start of term.”

Draco watches as her mouth twists and eyes dip.

“I suppose your Aunt Fiona never does use her summer home in Calais,” she says carefully, then looks up at Snape. “Severus, could I persuade you to come with us?”

Snape’s expression of horror is intense but brief, shuttering quickly to reticence. “I—Narcissa, I’m not really a family vacation sort of man—”

“Sev, please,” she says, reaching out to grip his wrist. “I need… after everything that’s happened, I just need you.”

Snape’s shoulders slump in defeat.

“Fine,” he says, and his mother pulls him into a grateful hug, leaving Draco to look between the two of them and wonder if he’s imagining things.

“So anyway, after she implied my parents died because my dad was driving drunk, she just sort of blew up and popped like a balloon,” Harry says. “Your hair’s gotten longer.”

Draco had been waiting with a remark about how wild magic surges like that aren’t common at Harry’s age, but finds himself destabilized by his follow-up comment. Indeed, his hair had been getting longer, now reaching nearly an inch past his shoulders, less a deliberate choice and more a consequence of being too busy to bother cutting it.

“It,” Draco says, then stats over. “Yes, it tends to do that.”

“I like it,” Harry answers, staring as Draco fusses a lock of it behind his ear. Then, “Wait, where are we going?”

“France.”

“France?”

Technically, the summer home Draco’s Aunt Fiona owns is not in Calais, but in Escalles, a much more rural hamlet a few miles outside its more famous neighbor. Though the town has charms all its own, it is extremely small, and the only way to get in or out is to go through Calais.

“My father’s French,” Draco says. “Well, half-French. His father’s French; most of his side of the family still lives there. His sister, Fiona, owns a summer home in Picardy that she lets us use. That’s where we’re going.”

“I don’t know any French,” Harry says.

“Neither does Mother,” Draco answers, grinning to himself. “Don’t worry, I can translate if necessary.”

Draco had picked Harry up at Spinner’s End and Apparated them both straight into Dover, where in the heart of the city’s magical quarter is an Apparation Gate linking it to Calais. It’s safer to take a Gate across international borders, especially when one party isn’t a French citizen and the other doesn’t have his license yet. Draco had already been pressing his luck, Apparating as much as he had been.

The Gate itself is a great, stone thing, about twenty feet tall, a massive archway carved with runes, surrounding a hazy, indistinct image of Calais, on the far side of the English Channel. A small customs booth sits just outside it, at which Draco can see his mother and Snape already waiting under the warm August sun.

“Draco,” his mother says when she sees him. “I was expecting to have to open the Floo for you. Did you Portkey in?”

“Uh,” Draco answers, “yes.”

Her eyes move from Draco to Harry. The expression on her face is a bit withdrawn as she takes in the sight of him, like she’s not quite sure how to handle being faced with the Boy-Who-Lived.

Harry’s expression has no such reticence. His eyes are wide.

“Wow,” he says. Then, “Er, I mean, hello, Mrs. Malfoy.”

“Mr. Potter,” she answers carefully, folding her hands together at her stomach. “My son’s mentioned you.”

“He’s mentioned you, too,” he says. “I can see where he gets his good looks.”

Draco can’t quite choke down a strangled laugh. Truly an absurd display of burgeoning bisexuality. Draco cannot believe he had ever convinced himself that Harry Potter was straight.

“Don’t get fresh with my mother,” Draco says, through laughter, as some of the tension drains visibly from her shoulders.

“What a charmer,” is his mother’s smiling, diplomatic answer, a reaction which finally seems to alert Harry to what he’d said. He averts his eyes, clears his throat, and goes a bit red. “I understand the Muggles you live with kicked you out.”

“Er, yes, ma’am,” he answers. “Well, I mean, I was happy for an excuse to leave. I haven’t even been able to do half my homework thanks to them locking up my textbooks in the cupboard.”

His mother frowns delicately. “They… locked up your textbooks?”

“They hate magic,” Harry says. “And me. But at least it was the textbooks in there and not my bed.”

His mother’s frown tempers with wide-eyed alarm. “They make you sleep in the cupboard?”

“Oh! No, not anymore! They let me use the second bedroom last summer.”

“I see,” his mother says, voice tight. Draco knows the look in her eye; it’s the same one she’d gotten over Christmas, 1993, when Blaise had arrived unannounced and later admitted it was because his father was drunk and screaming at his mother. She’d let him stay till term resumed, and given him extra helpings at breakfast. “Well, I promise you’ll have your own room while you stay with us, and you’ll have plenty of opportunity to do your schoolwork.”

“We’ve been cleared to go through,” Snape says, appearing behind his mother and promptly finding, and scowling at, Harry. “Mr. Potter.”

“Hi, Professor Snape!” Harry answers with an enthusiastic affection that Snape has utterly failed to earn. That Harry had been so determined to like him had been an unending source of frustration for the man. “Are you coming with us?”

“Narcissa managed to talk me into it,” Snape answers despairingly. “I steadfastly refuse to participate in any beach-related activities, however.”

“Beach-related—?” Harry begins, with a puzzled frown, then looks to Draco. “Where in France is this summer home?”

Harry spends the next three weeks having the time of his life.

Aunt Fiona’s home is situated on a low cliff overlooking the English Channel, a luxurious villa full of large windows, a quick jot down to an expanse of beautiful beach. Harry is able to fill his mornings with racing his Nimbus 2000 along the water (“Just to see how fast I can go!” Harry had explained the first time, and promptly proved that the answer was pretty fucking fast; Draco had forgotten how truly excellent Harry is on a broom), afternoons going into town with Draco to spend probably too much money at the local record shop (Harry had adored the Alice in Chains album Draco had gotten him, and on Draco’s recommendation he buys Nine Inch Nails’s Pretty Hate Machine and the Cure’s Disintegration, which they listen to together over the next few days), and evenings with homework and home-cooked meals (with no house-elves, Snape begrudgingly takes up the role of chef, a skill of his that’s only surprising until one remembers the overlap between cooking and potions; Harry remarks on the excellent quality of his bouillabaisse on the first night, and Snape tells him to shut up and eat).

The month flies by. Draco finds that he’s happy—not because the trip itself is particularly remarkable, but because Harry is happy. After learning what he did about the Dursleys, he feels an uncomplicated joy in giving an abused kid a good summer.

On the last Sunday before they’ll need to head back to London to catch the Hogwarts Express, Draco sleeps in. When he finally wanders downstairs around nine, he finds Snape on the back patio, leaning on the stone balustrade, watching his mother reclined on a beach chair in a pale summer dress, who in turn is watching Harry make his usual circuit up and down the beach. It’s a nice morning, clear and sunny and warm, and a flock of seagulls is soaring away from shore when Draco first emerges.

“Have you had a chance to read the Prophet recently?” Snape asks him.

“Good morning to you, too, most beloved godfather,” Draco replies.

Snape doesn’t rise to the bait. “Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban.”

Draco only hums, leans forward on the railing, and takes a long, slow sip of the tea he’d made himself. In the distance, his mother yells at Harry to be careful when he does an elaborate double loop in the air.

“I know you’re concerned about paradoxes,” Snape says, “but if Sirius Black is out of Azkaban, there are only so many things he could be after.”

“I reckon I might fuck around and become an Animagus this year,” Draco replies.

It’s not the answer Snape had been expecting, clearly, and it takes him a moment to reorient himself to the conversation. “You… could certainly manage it, I suppose. Do you really have nothing to say about—?”

“I’m a little worried, though,” Draco interjects. “What if I do all that work, spend all that time, and it turns out my Animagus form is a slug or something?”

“Draco,” Snape says.

“Severus,” Draco answers, “I have no comment on the matter.”

“Because you’re concerned about paradoxes? Last year, with the Chamber, the timeline proved itself relatively tractable; surely we could take measures—”

“I have no comment on the matter, Severus. Now are you going to help me become an Animagus this year or not?”

“You’re going to become an Animagus?” Harry says, who has appeared rather abruptly in front of them both, hovering a few feet above their heads on his broom. “I want to be an Animagus!”

“I love a group project,” Draco answers. Snape sighs deeply and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Do you reckon we can go back to Calais next summer?” Harry asks when they settle into their compartment on the Hogwarts Express.

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” Draco answers, pushing his trunk under the seat. “It’s my father’s sister’s home, after all, and I don’t expect my parents’ marriage will last much longer.”

It’s not the answer Harry had been expecting, clearly. “Is that how—?”

He stops abruptly mid-sentence, eyes moving to Professor Lupin, borderline unconscious in the corner of the compartment, fresh off a full moon.

Not that Harry knows that, or even who he is. All Harry knows is he’s a stranger, and he lowers his voice accordingly to finish his sentence:

“—it happened in your timeline? Your parents got divorced?”

“No,” Draco answers musingly, tossing himself into his seat. “No, they were married right up till he died two years after the War ended.”

“Then…” Harry frowns. “Then how do you know…?”

“I don’t know,” Draco replies, “I’m just going to try my absolute best.”

Harry releases a surprised laugh. “Y’know, it says something when the child is pro-divorce,” he remarks.

“We should talk a bit about the process of becoming Animagi,” Draco says.

“Oh, right!”

The conversation lasts for a good chunk of the ride. Draco had toyed with the idea of becoming an Animagus after getting his degree in temporal physics, if only to pad his CV, but in the end he’d never managed to find the time to do it. The process is long and annoying and difficult, and he explains it in broad strokes to Harry, who listens attentively, nods, and asks insightful questions.

By the time Harry seems to understand the process, he asks, “So which animal forms will we get?”

“There’s no way to know,” Draco answers. “It’s based on your personality. It could be any creature, magical or mundane.”

Harry tilts his head up and stares at the ceiling consideringly for a time, then eventually decides, “I want to be a snake.”

“Really?” Draco asks, amused. “Even after that whole misadventure last year?”

“A proper snake,” Harry clarifies. “Maybe an anaconda or a boa constrictor. Or maybe a venomous one! What’s the biggest venomous snake?”

“I don’t know,” Draco laughs. “The King Cobra, I think?”

“That would be cool. They’re from India, right?”

“Among other places,” Draco confirms.

“Brilliant, so just like my dad! I hope I’m a King Cobra, or at least a reptile. I like reptiles. What about you?”

Dismissively, Draco answers, “Oh, knowing me, I’ll probably end up being something small and useless. A mouse, maybe, or a ferret.” Draco’s Animagus form would be a ferret.

“What? No!” Harry protests. “I bet you’ll be a bird.”

“A bird,” Draco repeats.

“A hawk or a falcon, maybe an eagle. Something big and graceful and—”

Harry clears his throat, suddenly looking awkward. Draco feels a smile rise unbidden to his mouth.

He really can’t encourage this crush any further—all evidence thus far has proved any romantic entanglement between them to be a catastrophically bad idea—but it’s very sweet to watch, if a little painful. But then, Draco had developed a high tolerance for pain during the War.

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” he answers.

“So, you never did say,” Harry continues, looking very grateful for the opportunity to change the subject, “why the sudden interest in becoming an Animagus?”

Draco’s smile flags somewhat.

The answer to Harry’s question is: Next year, your life is going to get considerably more dangerous. I want to give you every possible avenue to protect yourself from what’s to come.

The answer to Harry’s question is: The thought of watching you go through some of the things in my memory makes me physically sick with fear. I want to have every tool available to me to defend you from all that threatens you.

The answer to Harry’s question is: I will do absolutely anything to keep you safe.

What Draco actually says is: “Just thought it might be useful.”

The train rattles to a grinding stop. Harry looks up, startled, and out the window.

“What’s happening?” he asks.

“Nothing.” Neatly, Draco rises to a stand. “Stay here.”

Before Harry can offer protest, Draco slips out of the compartment, closing the door quickly behind him. At the end of the hallway running the length of the train car, a Dementor appears, rippling inside like black ink through water.

It had taken Draco a long time to conjure a Patronus; he’d tried it unsuccessfully throughout the War, whenever one of Voldemort’s Dementors had gotten too close for comfort, but never managed it. Only after years of therapy and creating a few good memories after all the horror he’d lived through did he finally master the spell.

“Expecto patronum,” Draco says, calmly, and thinks of 2004: the first summer he’d spent in Seoul, the tail end of six years of self-destructive sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. He’d gone to the city to get lost, to run away from his mother’s attempts to set him up with a wife, and had found himself instead, in the bustle of the city and the Hangang River, at the top of Namsam Tower and the mountain trails. He’d found Seoul Magical University, the most prestigious institution in the world for higher magical education, and had resolved to make something of himself, to do something worthwhile with his life.

The dragon that bursts from the end of his wand is large and silver-white, its jaws open as it launches toward its target. The Dementor shrieks and hisses and slithers out the door from whence it came.

Draco smiles as the Patronus makes a broad arc and returns to his side. Fondly, Draco rubs the underside of the dragon’s chin; the beast nuzzles back down against him, its hazy, semi-corporeal form strange and shifting under Draco’s touch.

Then it slowly dissipates when Draco dispels it. He takes a breath and returns to the compartment. Harry is frowning at him in concern; Lupin, it seems, is still asleep.

“What was that sound?” Harry asks.

“Dementor. Don’t worry, I took care of it.” Draco sits back down.

“Is this about Sirius Black?” Harry asks. In the corner of the compartment, Lupin twitches. “Professor Snape told me that he’d broken out of Azkaban, and that Hogwarts was—”

“Harry,” Draco says, very sincerely, “you don’t need to worry about Sirius Black.”

“But Professor Snape said he—”

“Harry,” Draco repeats, and puts his hand on Harry’s shoulder, “you don’t need to worry about Sirius Black.”

Harry stares at Draco’s hand, then at his face.

“Okay,” he says, looking a little dazed at the contact.

“Now,” Draco continues, settling back into his original position, “why a bird?”

Chapter Text

“Hello, beautiful,” Draco says.

“For the record,” Snape intones, “it’s very weird that you refer to this thing with terms of endearment.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Draco continues. “You look stunning, darling.”

Needle had, blessedly, remained stable the whole summer through. He’d managed to finish recreating it around May, which had only left him a few months before leaving Hogwarts. He had left his fellow Unspeakables with explicit instructions to check on it daily, note any fluctuations in energy levels, and report to him if they got above a certain threshold. Draco had not been contacted, and is relieved to discover that it was not because it had been neglected, but because its energy had not fluctuated substantially: in a book by the table, one of his colleagues had kept a careful record. He flips through the last few pages and scans the numbers.

“What is it you were hoping to accomplish when you made this this thing?” Snape asks, eying it.

“The original purpose was to study the raw magical structure of space-time,” Draco replies, “and specifically to observe how it interacts with various forms of energy. Heat, electricity, radiation, the kinds that don’t typically react directly with the temporal field.”

“Sounds exhausting,” is Snape’s reaction. “If you’re intent to re-live your entire life, it’s not too late to get into potions, you know.”

“Sev,” Draco answers, with a fond look over his shoulder, “you know I admire you, but I could never spend my life bent over cauldron. My posture is one of the only good things about me.”

“Your self-deprecation certainly isn’t,” Snape says.

“It’s a load-bearing sense of humor, Professor. It’s not going anywhere.”

Draco returns his attention to the book. The energy levels had stayed quite static in Draco’s absence, he notes with some interest. They’d been stable for the first few months after he’d built it the first time, too, though.

“So about Sirius Black,” Snape begins.

“Merlin,” Draco sighs, “this again?”

“Last year, you were beside yourself over all you couldn’t tell me about the Chamber of Secrets,” Snape says. “You had a panic attack over it. And now that a known fugitive has escaped from Azkaban—”

“You know, when I told Harry not to worry about it, he just agreed not to worry.”

“—with intent, with clear intent to come to Hogwarts, you have nothing to say?”

“Yes! Yes, Severus, that is it precisely. I have nothing to say about it. So I beg you to stop asking.”

“The man is dangerous and almost certainly deranged from a decade in Azkaban—”

Draco briefly considers killing himself just to get out of this conversation. He rubs his forehead. “Severus.”

“I just can’t understand this behavior!” Snape says. “It’s inconsistent.”

“Is it?”

Draco straightens, turns away from the book laid out on the desk by the wall to face his godfather.

“Severus,” he says, “Occam’s razor. What is the explanation for my lack of concern that makes the fewest assumptions?”

Snape narrows his eyes, suspicious. Draco snaps the book shut and tugs it up against his chest.

“Think about it,” Draco tells him. “Or don’t. Mostly, just stop asking. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go on a date.”

“You—what?” Snape asks, but Draco is already heading past him and out.

Harry had confessed to Draco in Calais that he hadn’t been able to convince the Dursleys to sign his permission slip to go to Hogsmeade. Draco, who knew that enchantment on the slip detected the signer’s age via their mind and not their body, had gone ahead and signed it for him, with an indecipherable scribble. Harry had been very grateful at the time.

Draco suspects he’s less grateful about it now.

“At least pretend to have a good time,” Pansy chides him. In her defense, Harry is very visibly having a terrible time.

“I can’t believe you set me up on a date behind my back,” Harry says to Draco, not for the first time that afternoon.

“I thought you wanted to go to Hogsmeade,” Draco answers, all false innocence, as he leans back in his seat and takes a sip of his butterbeer. Harry answers only with a glare, and Draco continues, “Look, I needed information and Pansy was the only one who could get it for me.”

“Traitor,” Harry grumbles.

“Well, I’m having a great time,” Daphne Greengrass says, leaning across the table toward Harry and fluttering her eyelashes, as a few fifth years pass and watch the exchange with interest. She continues, loudly, “I’m so glad you asked me, Harry!”

Harry takes a despairing pull from his butterbeer as the fifth years all mutter to each other and, eventually, pass out of earshot.

“You’re not much better than he is, you know,” Pansy says to Draco. “I know you’re gay and all, but you could at least pretend to be interested in my company.”

Harry looks up sharply, and Draco sighs. In the clarity of hindsight, he should have asked Pansy not to tell anyone that he’s gay, but from Draco’s perspective, he’d been out of the closet for over a decade, and had lost all instinct to keep it under wraps. Though even if he had asked, he doubts it would have made a difference. Pansy had never been able to keep her mouth shut about anything.

“You’re gay?” Harry asks, startled.

Draco drops his head backward and groans. “Yes,” he says. “Shocking, I know. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Draco Malfoy is queer. I hope we can all move past this stunning news together.”

“I always knew,” Pansy says, smiling smugly.

“You absolutely did not know, you lying bint,” Draco snaps, remembering with great clarity when he came out to her in sixth year and she got snot all over his robes.

“Harry, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Daphne says suddenly, leaning forward again, this time with apparently sincere interest, “are you nervous about Sirius Black? Rumors say that you’re the reason he broke out!”

But Harry isn’t looking at Daphne. He’s still staring at Draco, like he’s having trouble processing the news that Draco’s gay, and like it’s changed something fundamental in his brain.

Draco sighs and stares out the window, letting his gaze unfocus. Never mind being out of the closet in 1993, this is the real reason Draco should have kept his sexuality to himself. He doesn’t need to give Harry any reason to think Draco is a viable romantic pursuit.

Maybe he should try setting Harry up with someone. When had he and Weasley gotten together? Fifth year? Sixth?

“Hellooo? Harry?”

“Don’t bother,” Pansy tells her. “He’s the last one to figure out he fancies Malfoy, apparently. What about you, Draco? Do you reckon Sirius Black is about to bust into the Slytherin common room and hit Potter with a killing curse?”

“Not only am I not worried about that,” Draco answers, “I will bet you ten galleons that he won’t even set foot in the dungeons at all.”

“Draco,” Pansy croons, “if you wanted me to take your money that badly, you could just hand it over.”

Daphne waves her hand in front of Harry’s face, who abruptly startles out of the stupor he’d been in over the past two minutes. “I… sorry, what?”

“We’re taking odds on whether or not Sirius Black kills you,” Daphne cheerfully informs him.

Mandrake leaf tastes a bit like oregano and a bit like dirt. Over the month of October, Draco becomes intimately familiar with the nuances of its flavor.

“Ugh, I can still taste it,” Harry says as they come together into the potions classroom the night before Halloween.

“Just be glad it’s a clear night,” Draco tells him. “If it had been cloudy, we’d have to start the whole thing over.”

Harry shudders at the idea. Draco calls out into the darkened classroom, “Professor!”

It doesn’t take long for Snape to appear, stalking out from his office just as Draco and Harry make it to the door.

“Hullo, Professor,” Harry says.

“We’re ready to start brewing the potion,” Draco says, lifting up the vial he’d brought in—a small flask containing the mandrake leaf he’d had in his mouth for the past month. “Do you mind if we use the classroom? We shouldn’t be long.”

Snape only sighs, wordlessly gesturing to the nearby cauldron. Draco beams and heads over to it.

“Hey, Professor, you’re Draco’s godfather, right?” Harry asks.

Draco doesn’t need to look to know Snape is raising an eyebrow at him. “I am,” he answers.

“So you’ve known him a long time?”

Snape’s voice gets more circumspect: “All his life, relatively speaking. Where is this going?”

“Did you know he was gay?”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Draco says, turning around sharply.

Snape says, “Yes,” at the same moment Draco says, “Of course he doesn’t!”

A moment of bewildered silence passes; Draco stares at Snape in confusion, while Snape stares back with faint amusement.

“I don’t believe you,” Draco tells him after a moment. “Straight people always say they knew the whole time. They never actually do.”

“Draco,” Snape says, “less than two months ago, in Calais, while you were reading a copy of the Prophet which had a picture of Viktor Krum catching the snitch for Bulgaria, you told me that you would like to—what were your exact words?—wronski his feint?”

“I,” Draco says, then snaps his mouth shut. “All right, so maybe that… I can see how that might be… indicative.”

“Who’s Viktor Krum?” Harry asks, outraged.

“Mr. Potter,” Snape says, “if you don’t complete your potion before moonset, you’ll have to start the process over.”

“How did you know,” Pansy says, shrill, the next night. “Malfoy, you absolute tosser, how did you know?”

“Pay up, Parkinson,” Draco snaps, and Pansy stomps and whines and huffs, but shoves ten galleons at him. Draco pockets them, then says, “Pans, in future, if you want me to take your money, you can just hand it over—”

“Shut up!”

On the far side of the Great Hall, Dumbledore waves his wand and conjures a large stack of squashy purple sleeping bags, which the students shuffle over to collect, one by one. Just as Draco had recalled, Sirius Black had broken into the castle and attacked the Fat Lady in an attempt to get into Gryffindor Tower.

“I guess you were right,” Harry says as they lay out their sleeping bags. “He really isn’t after me. So then what is he after?”

“You know I can’t say,” Draco replies. “But if it makes you feel better, you’ll find out before the year’s over.”

“When’s sunup?” Harry asks, yawning. “I’ll set my watch so we don’t miss the incantation. We really have to do it every day till the next storm?”

“Unless you want another mandrake leaf in your mouth for a month, we do,” Draco says. “Set your watch for five, and be sure to wake me up, too.”

“I’d better be a really cool snake,” Harry grumbles as he fusses with his watch. If Draco’s not mistaken, it’s the fancy one Pansy had given him for his birthday.

“Mr. Malfoy.”

Draco looks up from where he’d just wriggled into his sleeping bag. Dumbledore is standing over him, his hands clasped behind his back, his blue eyes studying Draco intensely over his half-moon spectacles.

“You’ve been remarkably blasé about all this,” he remarks.

Draco groans before he can stop himself. “Merlin, Headmaster. You as well? You’re just as bad as Severus.”

“An escaped convict is terrorizing a school full of children, has attacked the Fat Lady, and you’re not concerned in the least?” he asks.

“I have no comment on the matter!” Draco says, and collapses backward onto his sleeping bag. “I will continue to have no comment on the matter, regardless of how many times the question is asked!”

“It’s all right, Headmaster,” Harry tells him. “I trust Draco. If he’s not worried, I’m not, either.”

Dumbledore says nothing, but Draco can feel his gaze—and his scrutiny—prickling along his skin like nettle. Draco keeps his eyes on the ceiling, enchanted to look like the night sky, and remembers how scared he was the first time this happened. He’d tried to save face, of course, and had spent the whole night making jokes with Blaise and Vince, even as they all jumped at every shadow till the sun rose through the windows.

Eventually, Dumbledore departs, footsteps whispering on stone. The whole room settles down to sleep; bags are rustled, silencing charms are cast, pillows are fluffed. Draco turns, tucks his arm under his head, and closes his eyes.

“Draco,” Harry whispers after a few moments of silence.

“Hm.”

“How did you know you were gay?”

Merlin’s fucking balls. “Go to sleep, Potter.”

Over the rest of autumn, as fears of Sirius Black fade into the background, Draco falls into a routine.

At dawn, he’ll shake Harry awake or vise versa, and together, they recite the Animagus incantation (“Amato, Animo, Animato, Animagus”), wands to their hearts. Harry heads off for Quidditch practice or to finish some homework, depending on the day of the week, and Draco does his yoga before breakfast.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed yoga. Without Quidditch, he certainly needs yoga; Draco’s never really happy unless he has some sort of physical outlet, and since Slytherin doesn’t need two Seekers, yoga had been his only option.

Unfortunately, within a few weeks, his fellow Slytherins had somehow found out about the habit, despite Draco’s best efforts to do it alone.

“Doesn’t it hurt, bending like that?” Pansy asks from the door, tilting her head to one side.

“I once again remind you,” Draco grinds out from where he’s folded against his legs, “that you can just leave.”

“But this is way more fun,” Blaise answers. “What did you call this, Malfoy? Yoda?”

“Yoga, Merlin. It’s an Indian exercise, for fitness and mental focus. Can you please go do anything else?”

“I will give you three galleons if you do the splits,” Blaise says.

Draco groans on his exhale, slipping into half-plank. He’s going to have to find a new place to do this in future. Though the little study nook off the Slytherin common room is usually empty in the mornings, he does not trust his nosy, officious housemates not to make sport of watching him.

As Draco moves forward and up into cobra pose, a new voice joins: “Hey, is my transfiguration textbook inoh, my God, Draco, what are you doing?”

“It’s called yoda,” Pansy says.

“It’s called yoga,” Draco snaps, and turns his head to glare at the new intruder.

It’s Harry. Of course it is. He’s staring at the arch of Draco’s back as though something profound and terrifying has awakened in his soul.

“Do you three mind? I’m trying to do my fucking sun salutation.”

“I,” Harry says, or starts to say, before Draco goes into downward dog, and the sentence turns into, “oh, my God.”

“All right, Potter?” Pansy asks, arch and unbearably smug. “You’re all flushed.”

“I have to go,” Harry says, and flees the room.

“Well,” Blaise remarks as Harry’s footsteps fade out of earshot, “I can think of at least one Indian who’s going to get some exercise tonight.”

Pansy bursts into peals of high, hysterical laughter. The comment forces Draco to confront the the fact that he may have just given Harry Potter his first wank fantasy. He finds he’s not quite sure how to feel about it.

Bad, right? He should feel bad.

Draco groans and gives up on yoga for the morning, collapsing out of downward dog and onto his knees. He usually likes to go through it three or four times, but will settle for two-and-a-half today.

“Well,” he says, “congratulations on ruining my morning workout, assholes.”

“Anytime,” Blaise says as Draco glides imperiously past him. Pansy is still laughing too hard to say anything.

The months roll on.

With Harry’s help, Slytherin flattens Ravenclaw in a game that Draco recalls as being very close in the original timeline. Snape spends an inordinate amount of time sniping at Lupin, prompting everyone in Slytherin to wonder why; theories vary wildly, from Lupin getting the job Snape had been angling for, to a woman they’d both been in love with. No one has the courage to ask.

It’s not until January, though, that it finally happens:

“Harry,” Draco says, shaking him awake just before midnight.

He makes a soft noise of protest, pries open green eyes.

“It’s time,” Draco tells him. As he does, from high above their heads, a rumble of thunder shakes the castle.

It takes Harry a moment to put it together—but only a moment. Suddenly, he’s sitting upright in bed and grinning wildly.

“You’ve got the potions?” he asks.

Draco holds up the vials, blood red and crackling throughout with blue light, like lightning. Harry’s grin widens, and he grabs his glasses off the bedside table.

“I’ll get my cloak,” he says, and hurries to do just that.

Before the top of the hour, they’re bundled up in their fur-lined robes and are ducked under Harry’s invisibility cloak, sneaking silently through the castle.

“I can’t believe it’s finally happening,” Harry says as they go. He’s buzzing with an infectious excitement. “I feel like it’s been ages.”

“We’ve been lucky. It can take much longer—years, sometimes.”

“I can’t wait to be a snake,” Harry says, which makes Draco laugh, which in turn makes Harry shush him frantically as, down the hall, Mrs. Norris trots around a corner without hearing them.

They make it out to the front courtyard just after the bell tower tolls midnight. It’s a ferocious storm outside, howling wind, blinding snow, and bright flashes of lightning through the darkness: thundersnow. Draco’s never seen it in person before.

“The key,” Draco reminds him, shouting to be heard over the cacophony as he hands off one of the vials to Harry (marked with a little paper tag around its neck labeled “H”), “is to remain calm. The first transformation can be frightening and disorienting. Don’t forget who you are. Keep a clear image of yourself in your mind’s eye, and focus on it to transform back.”

“Be careful,” Harry tells him.

“You be careful,” Draco replies. “Do you want to go first? I can stand by and make sure it goes all right.”

Harry shakes his head. “No. No, together. Together or not at all.”

Something lurches in Draco’s chest. He decidedly does not analyze it.

“All right,” he says, gripping his bottle and uncorking it with his thumb. “On three?”

“One, two…”

They both down the potion in a quick mouthful. It tastes like ash and burns like fire all the way down.

For a moment, Draco doesn’t feel anything.

“Is it supposed—” Harry begins, then doesn’t finish.

Because suddenly, Draco feels it. He takes a few staggering steps backward and grips his chest.

He can feel it there, pounding under his ribs. A second heartbeat, thudding with such intensity that it almost hurts.

And then, suddenly, it doesn’t almost hurt, it does hurt—he feels it on his back first, at his shoulder blades and down his spine, like something is ripping its way out of him. Draco staggers a few steps backward, and his vision goes worryingly gray.

“It’s starting,” Harry croaks out. Draco can’t see him.

“Don’t panic,” Draco manages. “Don’t panic. Remember who you are. Remember—”

Draco screams as something tears out of his back. Then another something, on the other side. He can feel his bones crack and bend and hollow out, feel his internal organs rearrange themselves. He collapses onto his knees, until suddenly his knees snap backward, and he’s flailing in the snow and darkness, writhing in agony—

—and then, an instinct hits him, clear and calm and crystallizing: fly.

Draco spreads his wings and flaps them once. Twice. The air around him moves, and he lifts off the snow-drenched ground.

And though he can barely see, he can fly, wobbling at first, but with more surety as instinct takes over. He’s flying.

Fucking hell, he’s flying.

His vision comes back to him slowly, just in time for him to dive out of the way of the covered colonnade he’d been hurtling toward, surrounding the courtyard. He makes a broad arc downward and around. The feeling of air beneath his wings is exhilarating, a rush that a broom could never match. Draco makes another arc, then does a loop, his heart thudding in delirious joy.

He lands unsteadily on a window sill, trying to get a look at himself in the reflection in the glass. In the darkness, it’s difficult to see much, but when a flash of lightning illuminates the sky—

His feathers are sort of yellow-gold, his beak sharp and black. Draco’s first thought is that he’s some kind of a parrot, but he discounts the possibility quickly: he’s way too big to be a parrot, at least three feet tall. What, then? A fwooper? Some species of eagle?

His thoughts are distracted by a loud, bellowing roar from below.

Draco wrenches around. Down in the courtyard, a massive, dark shape sits hunched.

Harry. The thought pulses fear through his chest. He opens his wings and soars back down toward the courtyard, and as he does, focuses on a mental image of himself, or at least his thirteen-year-old self: not quite done with his first growth spurt, lanky, bony, blond hair that he should probably cut—

When he hits the snow, he’s back to his human shape. He rolls a few feet through the snow in an inelegant, slightly painful landing. With difficulty, he picks himself up and dusts the snow of his robes.

The shape in front of him—

“Fuck. Harry, you…”

—even in the darkness, is unmistakable. Silver scales, a long neck, and two massive wings folded tight against the barrel of its chest—

“Harry,” he breathes, “you’re a dragon.”

And then, that dragon lifts its massive, silver head. And oh, Merlin, he’s a dragon.

“Harry,” he says, carefully, “can you… you’re still in there, right? I…”

Draco desperately hopes he is, because if he isn’t, there’s a fucking dragon three feet in front of him and Draco is about to be deep fried.

Clearly, the dragon is still a juvenile—like Harry, Draco supposes—but even a juvenile dragon is terrifyingly enormous. As Harry slowly straightens out his long, scaly body, as another flash of lightning illuminates the courtyard—

“Oh,” Draco says, and recognizes the specific species.

Harry’s not just a dragon, he’s a Ukrainian Ironbelly.

Like Draco’s wand.

Like his Patronus.

A blast of hot air hits Draco as Harry releases a huff of breath through his nose. Draco stares, shoulders shaking with sudden emotion.

“You,” Draco says, and reaches out with one shaking hand to touch the end of Harry’s snout. “You’re…”

Harry’s massive head leans forward against Draco’s hand, then into his shoulder. Draco chokes on the breath that catches in his throat.

“You’re a dragon,” Draco says, and feels himself trembling, feels his eyes burn. “You unbelievable show-off, your Animagus form is a fucking dragon.”

His voice breaks. Harry turns his head slightly; Draco knows that the Ukrainian Ironbelly typically has dark red eyes, but Harry’s are startlingly, beautifully green, so green that even in the darkness they look like jade.

“You,” Draco says, and swallows down a painful knot of emotion. “Harry, I know you’re still in there. Can you transform back? It’s important. Remember what the books said: keep your self-concept in mind, focus hard on your own body…”

It doesn’t happen immediately. In fact, it doesn’t happen for so long that Draco starts to panic. Moments before Draco resolves to run and wake up Professor Snape, there’s a great rush of air and magic, and suddenly, Harry Potter, a thirteen-year-old boy once again, is collapsing against him.

“Shit,” Draco says, catching his weight and lowering them both gently into the snow. “Thank Merlin. You’re all right. I’ve got you. I…”

“I wanted to be a snake,” Harry croaks.

A delirious laugh bubbles up from the back of Draco’s throat. “Harry,” he says, “you absolutely do not have the right to bitch after transforming into a fucking dragon.”

“I guess it’s kind of cool,” Harry admits, slowly straightening. “A snake would have been cooler, though.”

“I can’t believe your Animagus form is a dragon,” Draco says, sitting back on his haunches. “I can’t believe…”

The sentence trips off Draco’s lips and tumbles into the snow. For a time, they both sit in silence, catching their breaths, as cold wind howls around them and through the courtyard.

“I didn’t see yours,” Harry says suddenly. “Draco, what’s your Animagus form?”

Draco knows all the romantic stories from magical legend. Merlin, it was said, who had always been in love with his sworn enemy, Morgan le Fay, had a Patronus in the same shape as her Animagus form, a raven. Their torrid affair, fraught with love and hate, had lead to the discovery that soulmates—

“Draco?”

—that soulmates would always echo each other in such ways, that they would always—

“Draco, you’re…”

Harry reaches out one hand, fingertips smearing in the tears running down Draco’s face. Draco sniffs helplessly, drops his chin to his chest.

And he knows Harry’s Patronus, of course. He’d seen it more than once in the original timeline. It’s not any kind of bird.

It is irrefutable proof of a truth that Draco already knows: that whatever exists between them is, and must be, and will only ever be, one-sided.

“Well done, Harry,” Draco rasps, and smiles bleakly up at him. “You’re a dragon.”

Fortunately, Draco has grown accustomed to heartache. As ever, his affection for Harry Potter is a bruise on his heart: painful and tender, but only when touched. The rest of the time, he can function. He’s fine.

It’s all fine.

“Then you should have died! Died rather than betray your friends, as we would have done for you!”

Beside him, Snape says, “If I cast stupefy right now, he’d be out cold.”

“Stop,” Draco tells him.

“You should have realized,” Lupin growls, “if Voldemort didn’t kill you, we would. Goodbye, Peter.”

“No!” Harry dashes forward, placing himself between Black and Pettigrew. “You can’t kill him! You can’t!”

Pettigrew is tied up, of course—Draco had made sure to cast the spell himself, absolutely determined not to let the little rat scurry back to Voldemort a second time—and Harry is quite literally the only thing keeping him alive. Where he learned mercy and kindness like this, strong enough to spare the man responsible for his parents’ death, Draco will never know, but it presses hard on that bruise on Draco’s heart.

“We’ll take him up to the castle. We’ll hand him over to the Dementors. He can go to Azkaban, but don’t kill him. I don’t reckon—” He flinches. “My dad wouldn’t want you to become killers just for him.”

Draco releases a painful breath. Saint Potter, he thinks, with equal parts affection and misery.

“This is sickening,” Snape snarls.

Draco rolls his eyes. “Merlin, Sev, I get it. You don’t like them. You’re not being asked to. Just let Harry have this, won’t you?”

“They’re dangerous,” Snape tells him, fiercely.

“So are you,” Draco answers, meeting his eyes with resolve. “So am I. So are puffskeins, launched at sufficient speed. But this is the only family Harry has left. I know you’ve been hurt, but what will be accomplished if you let your pain take away his happiness?”

Snape gives him a long, cold, assessing look. It takes a while for the hard edges of his expression to begin to fall away. Eventually, he releases a very long breath.

“Fine,” he mutters, unhappy.

“I’ll understand, of course, if you want to stay with your aunt and uncle,” Black says, “but, well… think about it. Once my name’s cleared, if you wanted a—a different home…”

“What?” Harry replies, breathless. “Live with you?”

“Of course, I thought you wouldn’t want to. I understand. I just thought I’d—”

“Are you insane? Of course I want to leave the Dursleys! Have you got a house? When can I move in?”

“You want to?” Black asks, bewildered. “You mean it?”

“Yeah, I mean it!”

His gaunt, haggard face spread into a slow smile—but it’s brief. “I… it will take a while, to get through the trial, to clear my name. I don’t know how long—”

“Severus can help with that!” Draco suddenly intones, and all eyes turn to him—including Snape’s.

“Excuse me?” Snape growls at him.

“If a licensed potions master,” Draco says, fixing him with a pointed stare, “makes a veritaserum and seals it with his mark, it can be used in any legal proceeding. They can’t refuse if Black asks to use it, can they?”

Snape makes an agonized sound. “Draco—”

Draco cuts short his protestation by shoving at his arm. “Can they, Professor?”

Breathlessly, eyes shining, Harry echoes, “Can they, Professor? If—if you make him a veritaserum—”

Snape rubs the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, as if to fight off an oncoming headache.

“Fine,” he says again, more loudly. “Fine, Merlin preserve me. I’ll make your damned potion, Black.”

Black’s expression is thunderstruck. “I… I admit, Severus, I hadn’t really expected this kind of beneficence from you, of all people, given our history.”

“Trust me, neither did I,” he answers, voice vicious. “Let’s both just agree it’s for the mutual benefit of our godsons and leave it at that.”

Finally, Black’s eyes turn to Draco. Draco had tried to stay out of the conversation, largely, only intervening at the very beginning when Black had chased Pettigrew out of the castle, and otherwise letting things play out as naturally as possible. Black’s gaze is assessing.

“You’re Narcissa’s boy, aren’t you?” he asks.

“I am,” Draco confirms. “Which makes us—what, second cousins?”

“First cousins, once removed,” Black says. “I get the feeling that you’re another misfit in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.”

“Well, I never had the misfortune of being sorted into Gryffindor,” Draco answers loftily, folding his arms over his chest, “but I suppose it’s fair to say that I’m not quite the perfect little purist soldier my father wants me to be.” Not anymore, at least.

Black smirks, but there’s a lot of sadness behind it. “You remind me of Regulus,” he says, with a gravity that Draco doesn’t quite understand. “I’m glad Harry has a friend like you, Draco. And I’m grateful for your help, too—and yours, Severus, even if it’s at your godson’s behest.”

Snape makes an angry sound, but otherwise says nothing.

“Having a veritaserum made and sealed by a potions master will go a long way, Harry,” Lupin tells him. “It will speed up the trial significantly.”

“Speaking of potions,” Snape suddenly interjects, producing a vial full of Wolfsbane Potion from his robe and tossing it at him, “drink this before the moon comes out from behind the clouds—unless you want to kill us all?”

Lupin laughs softly. “Thank you, Severus,” he says. “I do appreciate all you’ve done—tonight, and throughout the year. Perhaps we can finally call a détente, us three?”

“Don’t push it,” Snape answers.

They agree to the plan: take Pettigrew to the Dementors, let the Aurors question him while Snape brews the veritaserum and Sirius stays in hiding. Then, once it’s brewed, he’ll pass it off to Sirius, who will turn himself in and invoke his legal right to be questioned while under its effects.

As they all head back to the castle, Harry sidles up to Draco and says, with a wrecked voice, “Thank you, Draco.”

And it’s all Draco can do to smile miserably back at him. That bruise on his heart throbs and throbs.

What he says is: “Not a problem.”

What he doesn’t say is: I would do anything for you, Harry Potter. Absolutely anything.

Chapter Text

It’s not until after term lets out that he and Harry finally have the chance to register as Animagi. They send a few owls back and forth over the first weeks of summer, coordinating when to meet at the Ministry of Magic. It’s tough to schedule, as Harry is busy moving out of his aunt and uncle’s house and into Grimmauld Place.

“That awful, dreary, ghoul-infested hovel?” is his mother’s frowning reaction when Harry excitedly tells her all about it as soon as they find each other in the Ministry foyer.

“We’re working on the ghouls,” Black says, which makes his mother look up sharply. He’d arrived a few minutes late (Harry had said he’d be right in, he was just picking up some coffee from the shop outside to have while they wait, and had said he’d pick Harry up a muffin, too; he’s so nice that Harry can’t believe it!), and his dark eyes gravitate right to Draco’s mother.

Both of their expressions are very complicated as they regard each other, full of history and the kind of pain that can only exist in a dysfunctional family.

“Cissy,” Black eventually says, a careful greeting.

“Sirius,” she answers, tense but diplomatic. “It’s quite… a surprise, seeing you again.”

His voice gets guarded: “Didn’t expect me to ever get out of Azkaban, eh?”

Draco’s mother hesitates. She licks her lips and averts her eyes. “I’m not here to pick a fight, Sirius.”

After a moment, Black’s shoulders slump. “I’m not, either,” he admits, and hands her one of the two cups he’s carrying.

She takes it with some trepidation before she turns her eyes back to Harry, at which point her expression warms significantly. “How was your school year, darling?” she asks.

“It was great,” Harry answers at once. Black hands him a bag with, presumably, a muffin inside. “Thank you so much for all the care packages you sent!”

“You sent him care packages?” Black asks, amused.

“He’s Draco’s friend,” his mother answers, sounding only a little defensive, as she pets Harry’s hair affectionately. “Merlin knows he needs a little mothering, since those wretched Muggles he lived with couldn’t manage it. Though I’m a bit wary of the idea of you moving into Grimmauld Place, darling, I can’t say I’m upset to see you moving out.”

“I’m happy, too, trust me,” Harry says emphatically. “Grimmauld Place is a bit… odd, but Sirius says it shouldn’t be too hard to make it livable. Draco, you should come visit soon!”

Draco, who up till that point had been content to stand back and let it all play out, is a bit caught off-guard by being suddenly roped into the conversation.

“I… all right,” he says, and Harry beams.

His mother consults the delicate silver watch on her wrist. “The appointment is in a few minutes,” she says. “Shall we?”

They head through the foyer and toward the lifts. It’s odd to see it like this—Draco had become so familiar with the Ministry of Magic during his tenure as an Unspeakable, but that hadn’t been till many years after the War. He finds himself categorizing all the differences without meaning to. The cloak closet is manned by an unfamiliar witch. The light fixtures are different on the ground floor.

“I’m still having trouble believing that you two managed to successfully become Animagi all on your own at thirteen,” his mother says as she delicately presses the button for the second floor.

“You managed it two years earlier than your old man, you know,” Black tells Harry, which makes him look up in surprise.

“My dad was an Animagus, too?”

“Not if anyone in the Ministry asks,” Black answers, winking.

“You know, you could take this opportunity to finally register yourself,” his mother remarks idly.

“I’m already on parole, Cissy,” Black says dismissively. “I’m not keen to complicate the trial.” His mother sighs and shakes her head, but offers nothing further.

The second floor of the Ministry is a large, sprawling level, home to the many divisions of the DMLE—the Improper Use of Magic Office among them. Draco had never gotten especially familiar with the floor, being largely contained to the Department of Mysteries on the ninth, and but for the ample signage all over the walls, he doubts he could navigate it.

Still, it doesn’t take them long to find their destination. A few hallways down from the lift and through a rotunda, a young witch sits behind a desk, scribbling on a huge pile of parchments.

“Morning,” Black says. “We’re here for the ten o’clock.”

She doesn’t look up till she hears ten o’clock, at which point her whole body jolts.

“Ten o’clock?” she says. “So you’re—?”

Her eyes find Harry immediately. Harry, who’d had three long years to become accustomed to such reactions, only smiles tiredly.

“Of course!” she leaps out of her chair, sending it rolling several feet away and clattering into the wall behind her desk. “Mr. Potter, welcome! I’ll get Ms. Chastain right away!”

“Amazing how much faster the wheels of bureaucracy turn when celebrity is involved,” Black remarks as the secretary scampers through a large, heavy wooden door.

“I’m not sure I like that they’re making a fuss,” his mother says, frowning. “There’s no need for fanfare, surely.”

“Hey,” Harry says, quietly, suddenly at Draco’s elbow.

“Hi,” Draco answers.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he continues. “Are you all right?”

Draco can’t answer his question, of course.

Harry and Black and his mother don’t know what next year holds, and it’s probably better that they don’t. But Draco does. It’s been growing like a shadow in the back of his mind since he first resolved to stay in this timeline: Voldemort is coming back.

And of course, Draco will try to stop it. He’ll do everything in his power, everything that he can be reasonably sure won’t risk a paradox. But his return is part of a prophecy that existed long before Draco was temporally displaced. He knows the odds of him being able to stop it are next to nil.

But that knowing is not going to stop him from risking everything to try. Everything.

“Draco?” Harry prompts, which makes Draco realize that he hadn’t answered his question.

“I’m fine,” Draco lies, and forces a smile.

“Mr. Potter!”

The woman who comes bustling out—Ms. Chastain, Draco can only assume—is a squat, plump witch, dressed in a neatly pressed skirt and blazer, dark hair in perfectly arranged curls.

“Can I just say it’s an honor, and not at all surprising that you managed to master such complicated and difficult magic at such a young age!”

“Actually,” Harry says, guileless, “it was Draco who did most of the work.”

“And modest, too!” Ms. Chastain says, and ushers them all through the heavy wooden door from which she’d appeared.

It leads them directly into a very large room made of all stone. There are no windows and only two doors, both of which are heavily reinforced with protective charms so strong Draco can practically taste them. The whole room is clearly designed to contain magic from the inside.

“A quick explanation for what’s about to happen,” Ms. Chastain says, “before we get started. I’ll ask a few preliminary questions, and then ask you to transform. We’ll take a few measurements and photographs, then issue your official license and enter you into the Animagus registry!”

Harry nods. Black leans against the nearby wall and takes a sip of coffee; his mother settles next to him, prying off the plastic lid of her own cup to sniff the contents.

“Chamomile,” she says. “You remember.”

“Of course I remember,” Black answers, and they exchange a long, strange look.

As Ms. Chastain batters Harry with a barrage of questions (“What was the date of your first transformation?” “How many times have you transformed since then?” “How long were you working on the ritual?”), the assistant who’d been manning the desk comes shuffling inside and up to Draco.

“I’ll be processing you,” she says with a small smile.

Draco just nods and answers the same questions Harry does (“January 18.” “Six.” “About four months all told.”).

When Harry transforms, when suddenly there’s a massive silver dragon taking up approximately a fourth of the room, it very naturally draws everyone’s attention.

“That’s my boy!” Black says, voice rich with approval.

“Oh, my!” Ms. Chastain says. “I don’t believe there’s ever been a recorded case of a dragon Animagus! How remarkable! But I suppose it’s to be expected for the likes of Harry Potter.”

Harry huffs and shakes out his wings as if to stretch them; one smacks into the ceiling and knocks a light fixture off its chain.

Ms. Chastain, at least, doesn’t seem to mind. She turns her attention to Black: “You should know, Mr. Black, as Mr. Potter’s legal guardian—typically, an Animagus will take on a few traits of the animal to which they’re able to transform.”

“You don’t say,” Black returns flatly.

“So that’s why you always smell like wet dog,” Draco’s mother says, quietly enough to be easily ignored. Black elbows her in the ribs, but is clearly biting back on a laugh.

“It’s hard to say what those traits will be, given the, ah…” (She glances back at Harry, who’s trying to wrangle his long tail up against his body so it doesn’t knock over the chairs lined up on the far wall.) “… unique nature of your godson’s form.”

“I’ll be sure to stop him if he tries kidnapping any princesses,” Black says.

“Oh, I doubt it will be anything like that!” Ms. Chastain replies, scandalized, and apparently incapable of detecting sarcasm. “Though he might feel a hoarding instinct, perhaps, or may experience feelings of possessiveness or jealousy. There’s no point of comparison, unfortunately. As I said, there’s never been a known dragon Animagus before!”

Ms. Chastain continues chattering happily and begins the exhaustive process of taking the measurements of a juvenile Ukrainian Ironbelly, and the assistant returns her attention to Draco.

“My Animagus form is much less terrifying,” Draco assures her. “Though I will need to land on you. It’s some kind of bird.”

“You’re not sure of the species?” she asks.

“Hopefully you can tell me,” Draco says, and transforms.

The assistant makes a soft “oh!” of surprise as Draco flaps his wings a few times and settles on the arm she hurries to outstretch.

“Oh, wow,” she says, quietly.

Draco’s mother approaches, smiling fondly. She reaches out and rubs her thumb across the top of Draco’s head.

“I haven’t been able to quite tell what he is, either,” she says. “He’s about the size of an eagle, but the proportions aren’t quite right.”

“No, Mrs. Malfoy, your son’s not an eagle,” the assistant confirms. “He’s a phoenix.”

Draco feels himself startle. His wings flutter involuntarily.

“A phoenix!” his mother echoes, surprised. “Aren’t phoenixes red?”

“Typically, though there have been documented color variations,” the assistant says, “but every Animagus form will carry over some physical trait of the witch or wizard. I suspect your son’s plumage is gold to echo his hair.”

“A phoenix?”

It’s Harry, no longer a dragon, hurrying over. His green eyes are bright with excitement.

“Draco, that’s amazing! I can’t believe you’re a phoenix! Actually, I can—you’re definitely the kind to rise from the ashes.”

Draco is suddenly very glad that he’s not in his human shape. He’s not quite sure what expression his face would be taking right now if he were.

A phoenix. Draco would not have suspected he’d ever take the form of such a lofty, noble animal. He feels entirely unworthy of the shape.

“Do you mind holding him while I take some measurements?” the assistant asks Harry, who eagerly holds his arm out. Cautiously, Draco steps off onto him.

He’s quite close to Harry’s face. Behind him, the assistant pulls a small measuring tape down the length of Draco’s back.

“Draco,” Harry tells him, voice soft, gaze admiring, “you’re really beautiful.”

Draco holds himself very deliberately still (so the measurements will be accurate). His heartbeat thuds and flutters in his chest (because birds have a naturally higher heart rate).

“I… I mean, your Animagus form,” Harry continues, faltering, heat rising visibly up his neck. “It’s gorgeous. Not that you aren’t… er…”

“Could you extend your wings, please, Mr. Malfoy?” the assistant asks. “I need a measurement of your wingspan.”

Draco extends his wings and tries, frantically, not to let himself react.

Draco and his mother return home that evening with Draco’s shiny new silver token identifying him as a registered Animagus. His mother is bursting with pride the whole night, and is quick to recount the story to his father over dinner.

Predictably, his father makes a vicious remark about the dirty blood of Draco’s choice of friends.

Less predictably, this sets his mother off. She snaps at him not to use that kind of language; he snarls that he’ll use whatever language he cares to in his own home; she defends Harry’s character; he calls her traitorous to her own blood.

By the time it devolves to shouting, Draco quietly slips out and Floo calls Snape from the drawing room. At Draco’s request, he comes through to keep him company.

“As your godfather,” Snape says, as Dotty serves them both a tray of tea and biscuits, “I feel like I should say something reassuring.”

“Like what?” Draco asks. In the other room, his father bellows Our son should not be consorting with half-bloods!

“I’m not really sure,” Snape confesses, frowning. “This isn’t your fault? That seems apropos.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Draco says, “but this is definitely my fault.”

“Draco—”

“Severus, it’s empirically my fault. My parents were never screaming at each other like this the first time I lived through my childhood. The only variable is me. It’s definitely, unquestionably my fault.”

How could you be so senselessly cruel to a child, Lucius? He’s just a boy!

Snape’s mouth twists. His dark eyes are moving between the door leading into the dining room and Draco.

“I suppose I’m happy about it,” Draco says. “At least rationally, I am. Lucius Malfoy is a terrible person and my mother deserves better. It’s just… surprisingly difficult to sit through the dissolution of my parents’ marriage as it happens directly in front of my eyes.”

“That’s understandable,” Snape tells him, with all the empathy he can muster. He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then frowns, then takes another crack at whatever he hadn’t quite managed: “My father was a lot like yours.”

Draco tries to keep a rein on his reaction. Snape never speaks about his family. “Was he?”

“Violent,” Snape explains. “Cruel, sometimes just because he could be. I told myself once that I would be a better man than him. I’m not sure if I ever managed to live up to that ideal.”

“Severus, I don’t say this lightly,” Draco says, “but you’re one of the finest men I’ve ever met.”

“I have many of his flaws,” Snape points out.

“We both live with the scars our fathers inflicted on us,” Draco answers, quietly. “You made mistakes, no worse than the ones I made. But you worked to earn your redemption. I can’t say the same.”

That son of a mudblood is the only reason the Dark Lord’s first campaign failed!

“What do you call this whole endeavor, then?” Snape asks. “Re-living your whole nightmarish childhood just because it is the right thing to do?”

Draco stares at Snape for a long time. Something painful is twisting in the center of his chest, something Draco has trouble naming.

“Not enough?” Draco says, voice weak and small. “Everything I did during the War, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough.”

Snape is silent for a moment. Eventually, he stands, crosses the drawing room, and sits back down beside him on the settee.

“I’ll let you in on a secret about redemption, Draco,” he says. “It will never feel like enough.”

Draco’s breath comes out ragged and raw. He hunches forward over his knees, buries his face in his hands. In one of those rare acts of affection, Snape kisses the side of Draco’s head and pulls him against his chest in a hug.

“And this is my bedroom! I’ve never had a space this big that’s all mine!”

Draco had received an owl two days ago inviting him over to tour the newly renovated Grimmauld Place. He’d arrived with low expectations—though he’d never been himself, his mother had always described it as a wretched, haunted place full of pain and memory—but finds he’s both surprised and impressed. The whole building smells of just-cast cleaning charms, and at the tail end of July, London is managing an uncharacteristically sunny day, streaming in through the windows and illuminating the once-dark corners.

Harry’s bedroom in particular is on the third floor, a spacious room with a large bed, an ensuite, and two big windows draped with green curtains. There are a few Quidditch posters already stuck to the walls, and in the corner of the room, the CD player Draco gave Harry last year is playing Pearl Jam:

Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies
Oh, he don’t know, so he chases them away
Oh, someday yet he’ll begin his life again
Life again, life again

“It’s great, Harry,” Draco says, and means it. He shouldn’t be pleased with all this, by rights—this is, after all, a fairly substantial delineation, so far as Draco can tell—but he can’t force himself to care. Harry’s happy, and safe, and watched over by a man who’s completely devoted to him.

And Draco is prepared to do just about anything, risk a thousand paradoxes, to make sure it stays that way.

Draco sits down carefully on the foot of his bed and looks around again, this time focusing on the details. Harry’s Nimbus 2000 is leaning against the corner, and Hedwig is preening her feathers on a perch near an armoire. The walls are freshly painted, a bright, pleasant gray.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Draco hears himself say, quietly.

Harry doesn’t appear to hear him. “And Sirius says he’ll take me out to dinner for my birthday tonight! I’ve never done anything like that for my birthday before. And he says that he’ll try—he’s not sure if he can, but he’ll try—to get tickets to the Quidditch World Cup next month! I’ve never been to a—!”

“No,” Draco says, much more loudly than he intends. It catches Harry’s attention, at least, who stares at him in puzzled silence.

Kneeling
Looking through the paper though he doesn’t know to read
Oh, praying
Now to something that has never showed him anything

Draco swallows. He can’t just say—after all, delineation based on foreknowledge can come from inaction just as easily as action—and his mind scrambles.

“I… want to go with you to, er,” Draco says, slowly to buy himself time, “Diagon Alley. On that day. Together.”

Harry stares at him. His expression is shifting, very slowly.

“Together,” Harry says.

“Yes,” Draco answers, a split second before he realizes that it sounds an awful lot like he just asked Harry on a date. “I… I mean, j-just as… we—”

“I’d love to!” Harry says. “Yeah, definitely! That sounds brilliant. I can’t wait.”

“Okay,” Draco says, realizing that he may have just made a mistake. He’s going to have to do this carefully. He absolutely cannot risk even the pretense of a romantic relationship with Harry Potter.

Unfortunately, “You look really nice in that color,” is one of the first things Harry says when they meet at the Leaky Cauldron a few weeks later and step out into the bright summer sun filling every corner of Diagon Alley. It’s not a great start to what Draco is absolutely determined to not let become a date.

“Gray?” he asks wearily. It’s an oversized jumper, thin enough to breathe in the August heat and big enough to hide how much weight Draco’s lost recently, between shooting up three inches in six months and losing his appetite nearly every night while his parents scream at each other over dinner.

“It brings out your eyes.”

Please stop noticing my eyes, Draco almost says. He doesn’t think he can bear it.

“So we need our books and things, of course,” Draco says, in his best go at diplomatically ignoring the way Harry is staring at him, “but I wanted to stop at one place in particular.”

Draco had steered them both right for it the second they left the Leaky Cauldron. Quality Quidditch Supplies is just a few shops down, and hovering in its front window is a sleek black broom with silver bristles.

“The Dragonfire,” Harry says, recognizing it at once. “I heard that the Firebolt was better.”

In fact, it isn’t—Draco recalls, in the summer of 1999, even through the darkest and most self-destructive year of his postbellum implosion, that there had been a drawn-out legal battle between the manufacturers of the Firebolt and Dragonfire. The latter had sued the former for theft of intellectual property, corporate espionage, and false advertising, and had won. As it turned out, the Dragonfire had always been the statistically superior broom, and the manufacturer of the Firebolt had done everything to cover that up from the masses.

Not that Draco tells Harry any of this. As much as Draco wants Slytherin to win the Quidditch Cup in fifth year, he’s not going to convince Harry to do anything, even something as anodyne as buying a broom, based on foreknowledge of the future.

He will, however, convince Harry to buy a broom for completely stupid reasons, because he is nevertheless absolutely determined for Slytherin to win the Quidditch Cup in fifth year.

“But this one’s called dragon,” Draco says, leaning in and smiling at him. “It’s practically made for you.”

There’s a heat in Harry’s eyes as he meets Draco’s gaze that does terrible things to his stomach the longer he has to look at it—and, frustratingly, Draco finds that he can’t make himself look anywhere else.

“Was it?” he asks, his voice low. A flutter rises in the pit of Draco’s gut. “Made for me?”

The double entendre occurs to him a breath too late. Draco swallows, straightens, and opens his mouth to speak—but finds no words waiting on his tongue. The expression on Harry’s face is disarming in its intensity.

"I…” Draco begins, faltering. “I only mean that…”

“What did you mean?” Harry asks, still low.

Draco clears his throat. At fourteen, Harry has absolutely no business pulling off a line that smooth. And at thirty-four (thirty-seven?), Draco should know better than to let it affect him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells himself, and Harry. “It’s just a broom.”

Harry doesn’t seem satisfied with the answer.

“It’s an excellent broom,” Harry protests. “I’d be lucky to have it.”

“Harry,” Draco sighs, feeling the impulse to strip away the metaphor—Draco’s not a broom, and he’s not good for Harry—but Harry keeps talking.

“And Sirius did give me some spending money,” he says. “But it’s so expensive…”

Draco really should sit down with him at some point and disabuse him of this crush formally and finally. It’s long overdue, in all honesty, and he shouldn’t have allowed it to get to this point.

He sighs, shakes his head.

“You live with a Black now, you know,” he finally says. “Between your father’s fortune and your godfather’s, you could afford twenty without breaking the bank.”

Harry laughs once. “Sure, but I only have so much on me,” he says. “Besides, I was keen to head down to Death & Glory.”

Draco wheels around so fast he smacks his head on the Quality Quidditch Supplies sign with a loud crack. “Ow, fuck!”

“Draco! You all right? That looked like it hurt—”

“Death & Glory?” Draco interrupts, because the pain will pass, but he may only have one shot at this conversation. “The tattoo parlor near Knockturn?”

“I… yes?” Harry says, seeming a bit perplexed by Draco’s reaction. “I was just thinking, I’d really like a Ukrainian Ironbelly tattoo, maybe on my arm. Sirius says that magical tattoos are painless, and since it’s my Animagus form and all—”

“That’s a great idea,” Draco says, perhaps a bit too loudly, as very particular images from a very particular dead timeline batter the walls of Draco’s mind, and as a passing group of witches give him an odd look for shouting. “That would look amazing. D’you want to go now?”

“I… what about the Dragonfire?” Harry asks, befuddled.

“It’ll be there later!” Draco says, and grabs Harry by the arm, dragging him further down the street.

“So will Death & Glory,” Harry answers, but follows along.

In the end, Harry opts for a half-sleeve in blackwork. The dragon takes up the majority of his upper arm, and he springs the extra twenty galleons to make it move—every now and then, it flaps its wings and breathes a cone of fire down toward his elbow. The art itself is stunning, of course—Death & Glory has a reputation for doing excellent work, and the artist spends an extra hour perfecting it when she learns who her client is—and Draco finds himself staring at it the rest of the day, whenever he catches sight of it under the cuff of Harry’s sleeve.

It’s appropriate, in a way: a dragon perched on his shoulder like a watchful guardian. It’s Harry’s Animagus form, but it’s Draco’s namesake, and Merlin knows, if he thought he could get away with it, he’d be perched on Harry’s shoulder right along with it.

Harry is Draco’s soulmate, but Draco is not Harry’s. It’s a wrenching truth, but a truth nonetheless: Draco will do anything, risk everything to ensure his safety and happiness. It doesn’t matter if Draco ever has the same.

Almost certainly, Draco never will.

Though word had been spreading about the Triwizard Tournament for months, even before the start of term, Harry still manages to be taken off-guard by the arrival of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang the day before Halloween.

“So I know you can’t say anything because of retrocausality and all that,” Harry says as he watches a group of Beauxbatons boys chatter happily with a few Hufflepuffs across the Great Hall, “but can you at least give me a hint on how this is going to go?”

Draco is sat across from Harry, his Ancient Runes homework in an untidy pile in front of him, but his attention is on Professor Moody, who’s chatting up Madame Maxine at the teachers’ table at the front of the room.

“Eventfully,” Draco says, and takes a long, slow sip of his tea. All summer long, he’s been theorizing ways to out Moody as Crouch without violating causality, and has come to the conclusion that, if it’s possible at all, it will be highly situational. He certainly won’t be able to do it before the Goblet selects its champions, which is now only mere days away.

Which leaves only one unpalatable option for Draco.

“You know, I’ve been wondering,” Harry says, “if you can travel in—” (he stops abruptly, coughs) “—you know, if you can do that, why not go back to before you ever got pulled out?”

“Because that’s part of a future that no longer exists,” Draco answers, distracted. Moody-Crouch laughs at something Maxime says, and pours her a cup of wine.

“Then why not go back even further in time, to—I don’t know—push Voldemort off a cliff during the seventies?”

A surprised laugh falls from Draco’s mouth. “Push him off a cliff?”

Harry shrugs gamely. “Or something like that. I mean, he’s obviously the reason you decided to stay, right? So why not just cut it off at the pass?”

Draco stares at Harry for a long moment, trying to phrase two years of postgraduate education on temporal physics into a concise explanation a fourteen-year-old can easily understand.

“Time,” Draco says, carefully, “is not linear. Think of it like a fabric. Like a big, flat plane. You can travel backwards or forwards or sideways if you pinch the fabric in the right way and jump the gap.”

Harry nods slowly.

“But the more fabric you have to pinch, the more damage it does to the fabric itself,” Draco continues. “Time isn’t meant to be manipulated like that. And if you change something that affects something else, that can create yet further pinches, like ripples. But that’s not a natural shape for time to take. It has some ability to compensate, if the amount of pinched fabric is small—if all the variables that might change exist within the same lifetime, for example, and if none of the changes come from a paradox—but if you go much bigger than that, it can get dangerous quickly.

“If a person who wasn’t even alive in the seventies goes back to push Voldemort off a cliff, not only is that a huge pinch, that’s a paradox. And everything he did, all the action he can no longer take, causes more and more pinches, and the fabric has no way to compensate, because there’s no natural way to fix a paradox. Eventually, it’ll tear.”

“Temporal fraying,” Harry says, and Draco starts. He hadn’t expected him to keep up this easily.

“Yes,” he answers. “The specific amount of flux that space-time can handle and compensate for is complicated, and we’re really only just beginning to understand the math behind it. Staying within my own timeline is the safest way to go. It generates the least flux, and allows for more compensation. There won’t be much use in pushing Voldemort off a cliff, will there, if in the process space-time rips in half?”

“Am I interrupting something?”

Draco nearly leaps out of his own skin. When he looks over—

“Viktor Krum.” The name arrives at Draco’s lips before his mind. Memories from yet another dead future rise in Draco’s mind, which he violently pushes down.

“Viktor Krum?” Harry says, with a very different tone.

“I apologize,” he says, with a lopsided smile in Draco’s direction, “it vas not my intention to barge into the conversation. I am here merely to introduce myself. According to Karkaroff, House Slytherin has the finest Quidditch team in the school.”

Harry, normally so eager to talk about Quidditch, only narrows his eyes as Krum sits down next to Draco.

“Er,” Draco says, “well, you won’t hear either of us say otherwise.”

“But you have me at a disadvantage. May I ask your name?”

Draco glances back at Harry, who doesn’t offer anything. In fact, he’s looking steadily angrier as Krum settles closer to Draco on the bench.

Finally, Draco says, “Draco Malfoy. Nice to, er, meet you, Herr Krum.”

“Please, call me Viktor,” he says, and offers a hand. After the briefest hesitation, Draco takes it; his grip is firm and warm and lasts just a hair longer than it probably should.

“And this is Harry Potter,” Draco begins, but Krum doesn’t look at him; all his attention is on Draco.

“I must admit, your discussion vas quite intriguing. Do they teach temporal physics at Hogvarts as part of the curriculum?”

“Oh, no,” Draco says. “No, that’s—er, it’s just a hobby.” He takes a sip of tea.

Draco remembers the first time this happened: Krum had sat down at the Slytherin table that first evening after Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had arrived and chatted with Draco about Quidditch tactics for the better part of an hour—they were both Seekers, after all. Draco had been bursting with pride at being the first person the famous Viktor Krum had deigned to speak to upon arriving at Hogwarts—and, in retrospect, had developed a bit of a crush on him that he’d refused to acknowledge till many years later, with the clarity of queer hindsight (“Oh, that was attraction, wasn’t it?”).

This time, though, it seems to be going the other way. Draco knows what that initial spark of interest looks like—for all his numerous flaws, Draco knows he’s physically attractive, and had the body count to prove it—and he can see it in the dark glimmer of Krum’s eyes and the playful cant of his head.

“A hobby?” he repeats. “You must have quite a mind, Draco Malfoy.”

Draco recalls him taking Hermione Granger to the Yule Ball the first time. Perhaps he has a type. The bisexuality is a bit of a surprise, though.

“I,” Draco says, and then doesn’t know how to finish.

“Can we help you with something,” Harry suddenly snaps, which draws Krum’s attention but no visible anger to match.

“Harry Potter, vas it?”

“The very same,” is his tight reply.

“At least I vill not be the only one dodging reporters here!” Krum says, either not noticing the furious glare or choosing to ignore it. He claps Harry on the shoulder, which only seems to make him angrier.

Draco sighs. Eventful, indeed.

When Draco makes his second trip since the start of term to check on Needle, he’s met with a familiar figure standing by the Apparation Gate, back to the door.

“Westy bestie!”

He recognizes her even from behind, of course; she, on the other hand, jolts in surprise and whirls around. Wendy Westerly, a decade younger than when Draco met her the first time, with her dark hair in an untidy knot on the back of her head, wand stuck through it. Beside her, Gwendolyn Truss sees Draco and chuckles.

Ah, she intones, right, I forgot to warn you, Dr. Westerly.

“Look at you!” Draco can’t help but say, hurrying across the room and to her side to sock her in the shoulder. Being made of bird bones and gristle alone, Westy predictably stumbles a step back at the impact. “Little baby-face, little fresh out of med school baby gay, haven’t even got the Black Brand, bet you haven’t even started your neurology fellowship, eh? Have you even met Eun-Ji?”

Westy is staring at Draco, bewildered. “I… you know my girlfriend?”

“So she’s still your girlfriend, is she?” Draco asks, her confusion only making him grin wider. “Oh, that means I get to go to the wedding!” Finally: an upside to being temporally displaced.

Mr. Malfoy is our temporal physicist en residence, Truss explains. He was forcibly sent back in time by one of his experiments. In his original timeline, I’m told, the two of you were quite close.

“The two office queers, the living embodiment of gay-lesbian solidarity,” Draco says, and socks her arm again. The grin is starting to make his face ache, but he can hardly help it—fuck, he’d missed Westy. “Words cannot describe how great it is to have you back, you little rascal!”

“So—so, wait,” Westy says, falteringly. “You know who I am because… in an alternate timeline, we were best friends?”

“Got it in one!” Draco confirms, beaming and putting his hands on his hips.

“This is such a weird job,” Westy mutters.

“You don’t even know the half of it! Is this your first day?”

Westy nods deliriously.

“By the time the month’s out, I guarantee you’ll have encountered crazier bullshit than your best friend from an alternate timeline,” Draco says. “Hey, we can start having lunch together again!”

Just as Draco leaves the Great Hall, he runs into Viktor Krum.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Draco says, as he’d quite literally run into him—though in the darkened Hogwarts corridor, lit only by moonlight, it’s to be expected. He doesn’t even identify who it is till a few seconds after the fact, as his eyes strain in the darkness.

“Draco Malfoy,” Krum says, voice a deep, approving rumble. “It is—how do you Brits say—fancy seeing you here?”

“That’s near enough,” Draco answers with a small laugh. “I’m sorry, I won’t keep you.”

He tries to walk away; Krum grabs his arm. “There’s no need to be sorry. I’m happy to run into you.”

Draco’s eyes flicker from the hand on his arm and up to Krum’s face, caught in a slice of moonlight streaming in from a nearby window.

Krum is certainly just as striking as he is in Draco’s memory: curly dark hair, chocolate brown eyes, an aquiline nose and broad shoulders. His olive skin has a natural glow to it, even in darkness—or perhaps it’s just Draco’s imagination, tempered by fond nostalgia. He really did have it bad for Krum the first time he went through his fourth year. If only he’d known it at the time.

“I’m… happy to run into you, too,” is what Draco eventually says, after a protracted pause, thick with tension. A smile spreads slowly across Krum’s face.

“Vhat brings you out here so late?” he asks.

“I could ask the same of you,” Draco answers.

“I vanted a bit of privacy to put my name into the Goblet of Fire,” he says, and nods past Draco. Draco turns his head in the direction indicated, though he needn’t have. He knows what’s there: a golden beacon in the darkened Great Hall, the Goblet of Fire, burning quietly.

Draco nearly laughs, nearly says, What a coincidence.

“No reporters to take pictures vhile I do it,” Krum continues, by way of explanation.

“Not one for the spotlight?”

“Not generally,” Krum demurs. “I vouldn’t even be putting my name in but for Karkaroff’s insistence.” He sighs, looks down. So does Draco, and as a consequence, they both see the same thing at the same time: that Krum is still gripping Draco’s wrist.

“I…” Draco says, then gently extricates himself. “I should be going.”

“I hear there’s a quaint little vizarding village not far from the castle,” Krum says before Draco can move. “Hogsmeade, I believe it’s called?”

“Yes,” Draco replies slowly.

“Perhaps I can persuade you to show me around sometime?” he asks.

Draco spends a moment—and only a moment—wondering how his original fourteen-year-old self would have reacted to Viktor Krum asking him on a date. It’s not an easy thing for him to picture.

And in any case, he doesn’t have much time to consider it, because a split second later, there’s a familiar voice from a few feet away: “Oh, my God.”

When Draco turns, his heart sinks.

“Pansy,” he says. Of course it would be Pansy, the biggest gossip in the school.

Her expression leaves little doubt that she’d heard everything: her face-splitting grin is all teeth, and her eyes are glinting even in the darkness.

“Good evening, Draco,” she croons. Perhaps it’s Draco’s imagination, but he can swear she’s vibrating with excitement.

“I should really go,” Draco says to Krum. “It was good seeing you.”

“I bet it was,” Pansy says, shortly before Draco grabs her elbow and yanks her away. As soon as their backs are turned, she whispers, “Draco Malfoy, you absolute slut.”

“Would asking you to keep this exchange between the two of us be wasted breath?” he asks, voice tight.

“Harry’s going to be devastated,” Pansy says as though she hadn’t even heard the question.

Draco groans.

The consequences of Pansy’s treachery are swift.

“But you didn’t agree, right?” Harry asks the very next day.

“Harry,” Draco sighs, rubbing his forehead. Your life is about to change, he wants to say, please pay attention.

“Draco, he is not good enough for you.”

“The world-famous Bulgarian Seeker built like a brick house isn’t good enough for him?”

“Blaise,” Draco snaps at him, “you’re not helping.”

“The champion for Durmstrang will be Viktor Krum.”

“Check that,” Blaise adds, as the screaming applause finally starts to settle, “the world-famous Bulgarian Seeker slash Triwizard champion built like a brick house—”

“Blaise,” Draco says again, louder.

“He’s not that great,” Harry insists. “So what if he’s a Seeker? I’m a Seeker. Anyone can be a Seeker.”

“I didn’t figure Viktor Krum was bent,” Greg says, unhelpfully, as he watches him head up to the front of the Great Hall to be congratulated by Karkaroff.

“Still,” Vince adds, “if you are bent, I can see why Draco might be a good choice. If I were bent, Draco, I’d definitely ask you on a date.”

Harry wheels around in his seat. “Wait, what?”

“The champion for Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour!”

“What?” is Vince’s guileless echo of a reaction. “I would.”

“I am begging all of you to talk about anything else,” Draco says.

“Well, you’re not bent,” Harry tells Vince firmly.

“Speaking as someone who actually has been on a date with him,” Pansy says, “I can confirm that Draco’s a mediocre experience at best.”

Draco buries his face in his hands and silently prays for death.

“The champion for Hogwarts is…”

“Draco, just—just don’t go out with him, all right?” Harry says, voice right at the edge of frantic. “You can do better.”

“Anyone specific in mind, Potter? Some other famous Seeker, perhaps?” Pansy sings, which makes Blaise cackle.

“… Draco Malfoy.”

If nothing else, it makes them all shut up. One by one, they turn to face the head of the room, as if to confirm that they heard what they thought they heard, then look back at Draco—along with everyone else in the Great Hall, which has gone absolutely silent.

Draco sighs and stands, not meeting their eyes, and strides to the front of the room. As he draws closer, he can see Snape, staring at him in wide-eyed horror, and Dumbledore, coolly restrained.

“What did you do,” Snape hisses at him as soon as Draco’s close enough to hear.

“What I had to,” Draco hisses back, and goes to stand beside Fleur.

“I do not understand,” Madame Maxine says. “Zis boy is underage, non? Ze rules—”

Draco looks toward the Goblet, waiting for it to send out its fourth name. Around him, the silence slowly transforms into frantic, scattered whispers.

“We’ll look into the matter,” Dumbledore assures Madame Maxine, but he’s staring at Draco. “I’m sure there’s a very reasonable explanation.”

Draco keeps staring at the Goblet. It has yet to send out Harry’s name.

“If you expect us to tolerate a boy as a champion, Dumbledore—!” Karkaroff begins.

“Watch your tongue when it speaks of my godson, Karkaroff,” Snape barks at him, which cows him into silence.

Draco is still staring at the Goblet, dread growing slowly in his stomach. Why isn’t it…?

“Let’s discuss this in my office,” Dumbledore says. “Headmaster Karkaroff, Madame Maxine, Professor Snape… and Mr. Malfoy. If you’d all come with me.”

He’s marched out of the room, Snape’s hand gripping hard on his shoulder. Draco stares at the Goblet of Fire until it’s out of sight.

Harry’s name never appears.

Chapter Text

“Draco,” Dumbledore says calmly when they all situate themselves in his office, “did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire?”

“Yes,” Draco answers, which is true.

“Why,” Snape despairs.

“Because I wanted to participate in the Tournament,” Draco says, which is also true, and has the added benefit of being vague. He hopes Snape won’t be foolish enough to ask why—at least not in front of Madame Maxine and Karkaroff.

And he doesn’t. But based on the furious look Snape gives him, he’s certainly going to ask later.

“He’s underage!” Karkaroff says, not for the first time that evening. “He’s a liability!”

“On the contrary,” Dumbledore says to Karkaroff, though his eyes are on Draco, “Mr. Malfoy is an exceptional young man and one of the most talented wizards to be enrolled in Hogwarts for years. He is a registered Animagus and works on contract with the Department of Mysteries. He’s received top marks in his class every year since first.”

There’s one big piece of context, of course, that Dumbledore leaves out of the endorsement, which makes it ring a bit hollow to Draco’s ears. Still, it takes the angry edge off Karkaroff and Maxine’s gazes as they regard him.

“Draco,” Snape says, unable to keep the fear entirely out of his voice, “this tournament is dangerous. People have died.”

“I know,” Draco replies, giving him a very significant look. Snape’s nostrils flare as he straightens and folds his arms behind his back. Every individual muscle in his body is screaming with tension, his face a towering obelisk of dread.

“But in the end, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter,” Dumbledore continues. “The Goblet of Fire’s choice is a magically binding contract. Draco Malfoy is the chosen champion of Hogwarts, whether or not anyone approves of the decision.”

“I assure you, I do not approve,” Maxine says, frowning. “Zis tournament is no place for a child.”

Draco spends a moment wondering how old Madame Maxine is. By her face, she can’t be past forty. There’s a better than good chance that Draco is actually older than her.

The conversation doesn’t last much longer, because Dumbledore is right: their protests don’t matter. Draco is the champion and that cannot change. When Karkaroff and Maxine eventually leave the headmaster’s office, the very second the door closes—

“Explain,” Snape says.

“It was an effort to protect Harry,” Draco answers. He had, of course, been anticipating the question.

“Is he in danger?” Dumbledore asks, perplexed.

“Apparently the fuck not,” Draco says. He sighs and sits back in his chair. He supposes it doesn’t matter if he says it now. “When I lived through this year the first time, there were four champions. Viktor Krum, Fleur Delacour, Cedric Diggory, and Harry Potter.”

“It is called the Triwizard Tournament,” Dumbledore reminds him, which makes Draco grind his teeth.

“I know. It was pretty confusing the last time, too, but as you said, the choice was magically binding. Harry was chosen as the fourth champion, and he—”

He cuts himself off, frustrated. There’s only so much he can say.

“I thought if I got myself picked as the Hogwarts champion, I would be in a better position to protect him. I don’t know why his name wasn’t selected. This is a pretty big delineation, and I don’t know what it means for…”

For Voldemort’s return. He’d heard the stories, but of course he hadn’t been there. He knows it was some kind of magical ritual involving Harry that had brought Voldemort back into a corporeal form, but he doesn’t know the details. The longer he thinks about it, the more nauseous Draco gets. He’d been prepared to do anything to save Harry and prevent the world from seeing Voldemort’s second coming, prepared to take Diggory’s place and die if that was what he had to do, but now?

Now, he’s not sure of anything.

“I don’t like this, Draco,” Snape says.

“I know it’s easy to forget, since I’m in the body of a fourteen-year-old boy,” Draco answers, “but I’ll thank you both to remember that I’m actually a very competent adult. Past that, I’ve lived through it before. I’ll…”

The half-formed sentence falls from his mouth and tumbles haphazardly into his lap. I’ll be all right, he means to say, but can’t force the words out. He’s not sure if he will be all right. He’s not sure of anything anymore.

Everything’s changed.

“Sanctus,” Draco says wearily to statue of the snake curled around the hidden entrance to the Slytherin common room. It soundlessly uncoils, and Draco steps through, around a dark corner, and into the main room, lit with familiar green light, the windows looking out on the lake dark like obsidian.

It’s silent as a grave when Draco arrives, but not empty. In fact, as he comes around the last corner and into the main area, what looks like every Slytherin student is waiting for him, eyes wide.

So much for subtlety. Draco slows to a stop in the center of the room, feeling dozens of eyes tacking stock of him, measuring him.

It’s Graham Montague who speaks first, surprisingly: “So how’d you do it, Malfoy?”

Draco purses his lips. The truth is he’d just walked past the age line and dropped his name in. The magic was psychically attuned, not corporeally. The Goblet of Fire had readily accepted that he was over seventeen, no trickery needed.

Not that Draco can say that. Instead, he answers, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” which is probably true.

“Can’t imagine Snape’s happy,” Cassius Warrington says, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back against the nearby wall.

Draco shrugs. “He doesn’t have to be. The Goblet’s choice is magically binding. I couldn’t get out now even if I wanted to.”

“Forget Snape, I bet Dumbledore has absolutely lost the plot,” says an older girl that Draco doesn’t recognize, but who he thinks might be named Viola. “Can you imagine? A Slytherin champion, and one who broke the rules to get it? As if he needed any more reason to hate us.”

Suddenly, Harry stands up: “Oh, come off it, you lot!”

Draco starts. He hadn’t even seen him in the crowd, but now that he’s asserted himself, Draco finds he can look nowhere else.

“We’re Slytherins, for Christ’s sake. What do we care about being liked? What do we care about following the rules?”

“Easy for you to say, Potter,” Pansy chimes in viciously. “You’re the only Slytherin anybody actually gives a toss about.”

“Well, I don’t give a toss about them,” Harry answers at once, which elicits a few scattered laughs. Encouraged, Harry continues: “Look at it this way—out of all the students in Hogwarts, the Goblet picked one of ours as the best of the bunch. Draco’s our champion and he’s a bloody Slytherin. That’s awesome.

“And it’s about time Slytherin got recognized. We’ve got a lot to fucking offer, haven’t we? We’re more than a spotty history, we’re more than hatred. We’re cunning and ambitious and determined and resourceful, and it’s about time that was appreciated!”

“Hell yeah,” Blaise chimes in from the back.

Something in Draco’s chest throbs. He belatedly realizes that it’s his heart, straining against his ribs.

Merlin, Draco is never going to get over Harry Potter, is he?

“So let’s stop looking at this like a setback and see it as an opportunity! Because if there’s one thing a Slytherin is good at, it’s making the most of an opportunity!”

“I guess it is pretty cool, having a Slytherin champion,” Greg volunteers. “That’ll show ’em, right?”

“Fucking right, mate,” Harry readily agrees.

“What do you say, Malfoy?” Graham Montague asks, standing up and wandering over to Draco, hands in his robe pockets. “Think you can win this thing?”

Draco doesn’t answer immediately. Without meaning to, he scans the room; once again, every pair of eyes is on him. There’s an electric feeling in the air, and it takes Draco a moment to identify what it is: pride.

Not the hateful kind of pride many of his housemates were brought up with, not the kind of pride that relies upon the subservience of others, but real pride. Pride in themselves, in their house, in their own potential. Pride without conditions. Draco doesn’t think they’ve ever had that before.

It’s the kind of thing that just might inspire them to be better than their parents. Trust Harry Fucking Potter to bring it out in them.

Draco’s heart is lodged in his throat. He swallows it down, and manages a smile.

“I fucking well know I can,” Draco says, and the room erupts in violent cheers.

Someone drags down the record player normally kept in the Slytherin prefect bathroom, and Harry yells at them to play the Fleetwood Mac album already loaded on it. One of the seventh years produces three bottles of firewhiskey from somewhere, which promptly get passed around, and before Draco even realizes it’s happening, there’s a party:

Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night
Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies
Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light

Draco is overwhelmed by thumps on the shoulders, tousles of his hair—someone starts the chant Malfoy reigns!, which catches on in time with the beat of the song.

“To the champion!” Harry says eventually, a glass of firewhiskey in each hand as he ambles over to Draco.

But Draco’s not looking at the firewhiskey. Every cell in his body is completely focused on Harry. On a certain level, Draco has known for a while the full extent of his affections, but it’s never been so stark.

His hands are on Harry’s face before he even notices they’re moving.

And if you don’t love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain

“Hi,” Harry whispers, a little breathless, smiling in that gorgeous, lopsided way he does.

“You are,” Draco whispers back, wrecked. “You are…”

Draco cannot believe Harry is jealous of Viktor Krum. As if that oversized Bulgarian git can hold a candle to the blazing sun that is Harry Potter. As if Draco could ever love anyone else in the way he loves Harry, with his whole soul and every drop of blood in his veins.

“What am I?” Harry asks, voice low, his forehead on Draco’s.

Draco is a weak man, but he loves Harry Potter. He loves him so much that he knows better than to let himself believe a love as strong as this could ever be mutual.

Harry Potter is Draco’s soulmate. Draco is not Harry’s.

“You’re holding my drink,” Draco says, and draws away, and blinks back his tears, and forces a bitter smile.

Chain, keep us together (running in the shadow)
Chain, keep us together (running in the shadow)
Chain, keep us together (running in the shadow)

Draco had really expected more pushback, having been chosen as the Hogwarts champion—after all, he’d obviously cheated to earn the slot, hadn’t he? Typical Malfoy, typical Slytherin. But he finds himself surprised by a groundswell of support from the other students, which (he realizes with a painful twinge) is more than Harry got on the first go round.

Hufflepuffs beam at him, and Ravenclaws express their admiration for having figured out how to circumvent the preventative charms. Even Gryffindors slap him on the back as they pass, impressed by his nerve (“Good on you, Malfoy! Stick it to them!” one of the Weasley twins says in the Great Hall the next day, and Draco can only stare, wondering if he’s the one who dies). The reporters with whom he’s roped into interviews mention his age only briefly, before they dive into what Draco assumes are more newsworthy questions like his relationship with his godfather-slash-head-of-house, his status as an Animagus, and his checkered family history.

And as for Slytherins, their support edges right up to unhinged.

“I tried to talk to the Hungarian Horntail in Animagus form,” Harry says as, about a hundred feet away, Fleur Delacour fights the Welsh Green. He is one of five who snuck into the tent where Draco is waiting to go out, despite the fact that the area’s restricted to all students. “She got really angry when I suggested that she should just let you have her egg.”

Pansy squeals with laughter. “Potter!” she shrieks. “You’re absolutely barmy! You tried to talk a dragon into giving up its egg?”

“Well, I don’t know! It was worth a shot!” Harry answers defensively. “I also thought I might just take the place of whichever one you ended up with, Draco, but none of them are Ukrainian Ironbellies so they’d probably notice.”

“D’you reckon?” Blaise snorts.

Draco had been close with his housemates the first time, of course, if only because of forced proximity, but he doesn’t remember camaraderie like this. By the time the War had begun in earnest, Slytherin as a house was too fractured—along political lines, and within themselves. After all the dust had settled, what Slytherins remained drifted apart, shellshocked and desperate just to recover.

But this is something else. And he knows what makes it different.

“Hey,” Harry says, a hand appearing on Draco’s shoulder. He looks away from the mirror he’d been staring at, studying the shape of the padded leathers he’d been given, in shades of black and green. “Are you all right? Nervous?”

“I’ve fought worse things than dragons,” Draco answers, which is true. He knows he can do this. He’s not looking forward to it, but he knows he can do it.

It’s more the portent of things to come that makes him nervous.

“You can totally do this,” Harry assures him.

“Yeah!” Vince chimes in. “You’re brilliant, Draco. You’re going to kick this dragon’s ass.”

The comment makes everyone laugh—including, to his own surprise, Draco.

“Your faith in me is appreciated,” he says.

From the tent-flap: “Draco?”

Draco turns, heart leaping up into his throat at the mere sound of her voice. “Mum?”

There she is, dressed all in pale blue, a feather fascinator pinned to her long hair. She’s smiling warmly, and when she sees him, opens her arms for an embrace. Draco’s quick to dash across the tent to do just that.

“I’m sorry I’m late, darling,” she says into his hair. “I wanted to come over as soon as I got your letter, but…”

Draco has a feeling he knows. He draws back with a frown. “Where’s Father?” he asks, not quite able to keep the cold edge out of his voice.

“He… won’t be joining us,” she answers, carefully.

“Of course he fucking won’t,” Draco mutters.

“Hi, Mrs. Malfoy,” Harry says, and the others all echo the same.

“Boys,” she greets. “And Ms. Parkinson. How’s your mother?”

“Very well, Mrs. Malfoy, thank you.”

“You’ll give her my best?”

“Of course.”

“Splendid. If you don’t mind,” she continues, eyes scanning the tent, “I’d like a moment alone with my son before the Task begins.”

They all shuffle out—through the hole Harry had initially cut open to sneak through, which he dutifully seals up behind him when he leaves. The sudden absence of his fellow Slytherins makes the silence of the tent feel closer.

“I wish you hadn’t done this,” she says, with a small sigh. “You’re too young to be doing this sort of thing.”

Draco really isn’t, but the motherly concern feels like sinking into a warm bath, and he smiles fondly at her, gripping her elbows.

“I’ll be all right,” he promises her. “I’m very capable for my age.”

“Well, that was never in doubt,” she says. “Considering the stock you come from, you could never be anything less. Which reminds me—I have something for you, a token for good luck.”

Draco is about to protest, about to insist that there’s not much on either side of his family tree worth boasting about, but before he can, his mother is reaching into the pocket of her robe and pulling out a silver ring.

“This,” she says, pressing it into his palm, “belonged to your Great Uncle Alphard. It was his Black family signet ring.”

“Alphard,” Draco mutters, frowning. He doesn’t recognize the name, until suddenly he does—Alphard had been blasted off the Black family tree for aiding and abetting Sirius when he’d been kicked out. “Where did you get this?”

“Your Aunt Andromeda gave it to me.” Draco looks up sharply. “Can you believe she’s had it all these years?”

“You’re back in contact with Andromeda?” he asks, hardly daring to believe it. “Does Father know?”

She opens her mouth, shuts it. Her expression is complicated and full of pain. That’s the moment Draco looks back down and notices—

“You’re not wearing your wedding ring.”

Her hands vanish into her cloak pockets. When Draco looks back up, the smile on her face is thin and desperate, as if held there by sheer force of will.

“We don’t have to talk about that now,” she says, voice thready. “In fact, we probably shouldn’t. You need to focus, darling, on the task at hand.”

“Mum,” Draco says, heart lurching.

“I want you to have this ring,” she says, “because Alphard was very brave for what he did. So is Andromeda, for choosing love over hatred. That’s the stock I’m referring to, Draco, the blood that makes you strong. I’m only sorry it took me so long to understand.”

Draco feels himself shatter to pieces. He drags his mother forward into a fierce, desperate embrace, buries his face in her shoulder, and sobs.

“I love you so much, darling,” she says into his hair, weeping, embracing him just as tightly. “And though I’m terrified of what’s to come this year, I believe, with every ounce of my soul, that you can do it.”

And if his mother came come around—can leave his father, can reconnect with her estranged sister, can confront the flaws in the ideologies with which she was raised—perhaps Draco can believe it, too.

“The final champion up is Draco Malfoy, representing Hogwarts, up against the Hungarian Horntail. This is one that’ll be very keenly watched! The lad’s only fourteen, and though he’s admitted to underhanded tactics to get himself considered as Hogwarts champion, there’s no denying that he’s worthy of the title.

“For those who don’t know, Malfoy became an Animagus at only thirteen, and does top secret work on contract for the Department of Mysteries. Though not an especially popular student, he is known for his close relationship with Harry Potter, a fellow Slytherin, who’s told every newspaper that’ll listen of his brilliance and skill.

“There he is on the field now, blond hair striking against his dark leathers. That Hungarian Horntail is vicious, and you can tell she sees him! What will be Malfoy’s opening move?

“Oh! Brilliant strategy! Malfoy has gone for a mirroring charm, sending half a dozen illusory images of himself dashing in all directions! Complicated magic, but effective—a dragon’s senses are only about as good as a wizard’s, after all.

“And indeed, he’s got her confounded. She’s swiping at every image she can reach, and they dissipate like smoke under her claws. But surely he can’t keep this up indefinitely; sooner or later he’ll run out of doubles—

“Oh—oh!

“Remarkable! Absolutely extraordinary! She catches him in a cone of fire, and then, out from the inferno rises the phoenix! Malfoy’s Animagus form, wreathed in dragonfire, soaring up and back down—

“Oh! Crack shot! In life as in legend, fire can only strengthen a phoenix, and one good dive sends the beast’s head crashing down on the rocky outcropping—she recovers, twists, tries for a bite—

“But the phoenix is faster! Golden wings shining in the light, Malfoy takes one more dive and—Merlin!—that’s got to hurt! You almost feel bad for the dragon!

“And she’s down! The dragon is down! Malfoy drops out of his Animagus form and the whole stadium is on its feet! Superlative display!”

“Malfoy reigns! Malfoy reigns! Malfoy reigns!”

The phoenix becomes a bit of a symbol around Hogwarts.

It gets put on buttons, crocheted on scarves, and even (to Filch’s constant aggravation) painted on walls both interior and exterior. When the Beauxbatons carriage gets vandalized with a giant phoenix mural and the words “MALFOY REIGNS,” however, the Hogwarts faculty starts cracking down on offenders.

Draco is overwhelmed by the support. He tries to be gracious and demure, but finds all of it swallowed up, slowly but steadily, by guilt.

Because really, he’s done nothing to deserve the accolades. All his ostensibly remarkable talent is just experience, not the prodigal genius everyone seems to believe it is—and it’s supplemented enormously by the fact that Draco has lived through it all before.

As the month rolls on, Draco spends more and more time alone. He lets his housemates fuss with the egg, since he knows perfectly fucking well what the Second Task is, and slowly sinks back into the all-too-familiar black cloud of depression.

And, as is his way, Draco tries to drown it out with work, with finally outing Moody as Crouch—but he apparently can’t even do that correctly.

“What the fuck,” Draco hears himself whisper.

Draco recalls getting an O in his Potions N.E.W.T. that had absolutely nothing to do with nepotism. He hadn’t even gotten to take the damn thing till nearly a year after Snape had died, after all. He’d worked hard for it, and had earned it, because it was his best subject and always had been.

Or at least it was. Because as he watches from the other side of the Great Hall as Moody-Crouch drinks his spiked pumpkin juice, nothing happens.

“What the fuck,” Draco whispers again. He was so sure he’d gotten the formulation right. The effects of the Polyjuice should be failing right before his eyes—and the eyes of everyone else in the Great Hall, to boot—but, infuriatingly, undeniably, nothing is happening.

Did Draco get something wrong? Did he grind the lacewing flies instead of mincing them? Or maybe Moody-Crouch is using a resilient formula of Polyjuice? Would he be that paranoid?

Hysteria bubbles up in the back of Draco’s throat like bile. He doesn’t know what to do. Anything more obvious than this could risk a serious paradox. But if he doesn’t out Moody as Crouch soon, his only shot at preventing Voldemort’s return could be completely dashed.

“Ah, Draco Malfoy!”

He looks up with a jerk and finds, to his dismay—

“Viktor.”

“How are you? I’ve been looking for you.”

Draco makes a small, agonized sound. Grief and guilt and desperation have been eating away at Draco’s soul for weeks now. He doesn’t have the energy to be Viktor Krum’s bisexual awakening on top of it all.

But he’s already sitting down across from Draco, all roguish smiles and tousled hair, broad hands splaying on the table as he leans across it toward him.

“You did vell at the First Task,” he says. “I vatched you from the sidelines, of course. Your Animagus form vas breathtaking.”

“Thanks,” Draco manages, forcing all the books he’d been pretending to read back into his bag.

“And I vas vondering,” Krum continues, heedless of the fact that Draco is clearly desperate to leave, “the Yule Ball is coming up—”

(The agonized sound Draco makes the second time around is not quite so small.)

“—and I vould very much be honored if you vould accompany me.”

“I…” Draco spends a moment staring helplessly at Viktor. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

His expression falls. “Vhy not?”

“Because—”

Merlin, what a question. The answer is too long. It starts with a detailed list of reasons why Draco is too terrible, too broken, too unlovable, too unworthy, and ends with an explanation about why Draco is incapable of any serious romantic entanglements because he has a unrequited soulmate.

“—I don’t think we’re permitted,” Draco says, and rises up out of his chair, swinging his bag over his shoulder. He’s not sure if that’s true and doesn’t especially care. It’s the first excuse that comes to mind. “I don’t think same-sex couples are even permitted—”

Viktor springs to his feet before Draco can escape, seizes one of Draco’s hands in both of his.

“I am villing to flout the rules for you,” he says, with a sincerity that Draco would find very flattering if he weren’t silently praying for the sweet release of death. “Draco, you are the most intriguing person at this school. I vant merely the honor of your company. Come vith me to the Yule Ball.”

“What?”

Draco says, “Fuck,” before he even looks over. Harry is there (because of course he is), holding a textbook in a white-knuckle grip, green eyes furious.

He can’t believe this is happening. He can’t believe he’s caught in the middle of the world’s stupidest and most agonizing love triangle, between an international Quidditch star he doesn’t want and the savior of the Wizarding World he can’t have. It’s an overwrought teenage comedy of errors that would be hysterically funny if it weren’t pure fucking torture.

“Harry,” Draco begins, but can’t finish, because Harry is already talking over him:

“He’s not going to the Yule Ball with you, Krum,” Harry says, voice dangerous.

“Stop,” Draco says, but of course they don’t:

“This should be his decision and not yours, no?” is Krum’s circumspect response. He’s still holding Draco’s hand, and Harry can’t seem to tear his eyes away from it.

“Both of you—” Draco says, before being interrupted yet again:

“Get your hands off him.”

Draco is going to throw himself into the lake. “Can you not—”

“Do you have some umbrage vith me, Harry Potter?” Krum asks, with a definite edge of anger to his voice. “Vhat have I done to offend you?”

Harry growls, “If you think for a second—”

“Stop!” Draco cries, three times louder than he intended, so loud that it startles everyone in earshot, which is most of the Great Hall.

At the very least, it shuts both of them up and draws their focus away from each another.

“You’re both fucking delusional,” Draco says. “There is nothing about me worth fighting over. I’m not—!”

He is aware, distantly, of the fact that a large percentage of the student body is staring.

“Both of you,” he continues, through his teeth and the hysterical tears burning behind his eyes, “could do a thousand times better than me.”

He takes the opportunity presented by their stunned silence to storm from the Great Hall and away.

Draco withdraws even more, going far—occasionally ludicrously far—out of his way to be alone. He pilfers food from the kitchens and eats in abandoned classrooms and disused towers. He skips his weekly teas with Snape. He studies alone. In class, he arrives last and leaves first and talks only if absolutely necessary.

He tells himself it’s because he needs to focus on finding a new way to oust Moody-Crouch, but his efforts quickly stagnate. He can’t think. He can’t focus. He doesn’t know why the Purging Potion didn’t work and he can’t force himself to work out why because he can barely force himself to do anything.

“Skipping dinner again?”

Draco doesn’t bother looking toward the source of the question. Even if he didn’t recognize the voice, there’s only one person who’d know to look for Draco here, in his favorite corner of the library, at the table by the window that overlooks the Forbidden Forest. Not that Draco’s admiring the view—he’s turning Great Uncle Alphard’s signet ring over and over in his fingers, because he doesn’t feel worthy to actually put it on.

“I’m not hungry,” Draco tells Harry, not looking up. After a few moments, Draco hears the scrape of the nearby chair as it’s pulled out, the sigh of the wood as Harry settles down next to him.

“Something’s obviously wrong,” Harry says.

“I’m fine,” Draco lies.

“Draco.”

Harry touches Draco’s arm, and it sears like a brand. Draco recoils, takes in a sharp breath, and is on his feet before he even realizes he’s moving.

“I have to go,” Draco says.

“No. Draco.”

That white-hot hand is on Draco’s arm again, keeping him in place. Draco finds himself physically suppressing his desire to shake himself to pieces at the contact.

“I know you can’t tell me much because of retrocausality,” Harry says, “but something’s obviously wrong, something’s obviously coming. Just tell me how I can help.”

“You can’t help,” Draco says. Then, pleading, he adds, “Let me go.”

“Draco, seeing you like this is destroying me,” Harry confesses.

“Well, it shouldn’t,” Draco hisses, furious and tearful, before he can reign the words in. “You shouldn’t be this concerned over me. You definitely shouldn’t be fighting over me.”

Their eyes meet, for a few heartstopping seconds: Draco has a perfect view as Harry’s desperation turns, steadily, into anger.

“And why the fuck is that? Why shouldn’t I care that you’re in pain?” he asks. “Why are you so convinced that you’re not worth fighting for?”

“Let me go, Harry.”

“Draco,” Harry says, wrecked, “surely you know, surely you’ve seen how crazy I am about you.”

Desperately: “Harry.”

“I am, and I’m pretty sure I have been since the second I met you!”

“You’re fourteen,” Draco says, barely. He has to fight for every word. “It’s a crush. It’ll pass.”

The anger on Harry’s face intensifies with outrage. “Don’t fucking tell me how I feel! If you just don’t want me in the way I want you, then say so. If you’d rather Viktor Krum—”

“Viktor Krum? Merlin, you really don’t get it, do you?”

Finally, Draco manages to wrench himself away.

“It has nothing to do with Viktor Krum! It’s about you, and this delusional idea you have of me! You have this image in your head,” he says through his teeth, as frantic trembling creeps up his arms and down his spine, “this notion of a Draco Malfoy who’s brilliant and kind and good, and it’s a fantasy. I told you in first year, Harry, there’s something rotten in my soul! Did you never stop to wonder what I meant?”

“There is nothing in you that is rotten,” Harry says, and he’s so frustratingly sure of himself, and of Draco, and it makes Draco want to scream and scream and burn and sob and fucking die. “There is nothing in you that is anything less than wonderful.”

I was a Death Eater. He should just say it. He wants to. It’s on the tip of his tongue, burning his lips like acid. He should say it, and disabuse Harry of this stupid, naive fantasy of a Draco Malfoy who in any way deserves this kind of beautiful devotion, who has in any way earned any shred of affection from Harry Potter.

He tries to force the words out. The breath snags in his throat, like a hangnail on the sleeve of a sweater.

“Draco, I…” Harry says, and he’s so close, two inches and a single breath, and his hands are on the sides of Draco’s neck, a dangerous and proprietary touch. “I…”

It takes every ounce of his willpower to draw back, but he does: Draco loves him too much to inflict himself on Harry Potter—even as he stares at Draco with eyes full of heartbreak, the only person in the world Draco will ever love.

This needs to stop, once and for all. Draco should have intervened a long time ago.

Wordlessly, Draco flees the library.

He finds Krum less than an hour later, on the Quidditch Pitch with some friends, fresh off a few drills. All their laughing and chattering comes to an abrupt stop when Draco appears, but Krum is the last to look over.

“Draco Malfoy,” he says.

“Take me to the Yule Ball,” Draco says, voice flat.

Chapter Text

“You look stunning,” Krum tells him.

“Sure,” Draco answers.

Draco doesn’t care about the Yule Ball. He barely cares about the Triwizard Tournament. Unfortunately, that apathy doesn’t extend to anyone around him who, in the run-up to the ball, have done everything but start a religion around it all. When he went to Gladrags, intent on getting something off-the-rack for the dance, the eager proprietor of the shop had insisted on making something custom for our esteemed Hogwarts champion, and don’t you think of giving me a knut!

Which is how he’d ended up in his current outfit: a black horseshoe waistcoat over a black dress shirt, black straight-leg trousers, and shiny black shoes, all of it under an open floor length dress robe in Slytherin green, its hems loose and billowing and embroidered with silver.

“Truly,” Krum continues, voice low, eyes moving hungrily down Draco’s body, “a vision. I cannot believe I never noticed I vas attracted to men before.”

“You don’t have to keep flattering me,” Draco replies. “You’re already my date.”

Krum chuckles and offers Draco his arm, who sighs and slips his own around Krum’s elbow. Together, they glide through the open double doors leading into the Great Hall, done up for the dance with magical snowfall and glittering silver fairy lights.

“How long, do you think,” Krum says to him, dropping his voice now that they’re surrounded by onlookers, many of them straining to get a look at the pair of them, “before someone remarks on the fact that ve are the only same-sex couple here?”

“Less than a minute, by the way your Headmaster is coming toward us,” Draco says, which makes Krum turn his gaze back forward; and, indeed, there’s Karkaroff, carving his way through the crowds with nothing but the sheer repulsive power of his sneer.

“Krum,” he says by way of greeting when he reaches them.

“Headmaster,” Krum answers, gamely.

“And Malfoy,” he continues.

“Karkaroff,” Draco replies neutrally. “You’re looking particularly sallow this evening.”

Either Karkaroff’s English isn’t good enough for him to know what sallow means or he doesn’t deign to answer the jibe: “Your choice of date is questionable, Krum.”

“Is not the spirit of this tournament inter-school cooperation?” is Krum’s admirably diplomatic answer.

“Don’t be daft, boy,” Karkaroff snarls. “You know perfectly well that my objection is not that he comes from a different school.”

From the side: “Then what is your objection, precisely, Karkaroff?”

It’s Dumbledore, all in lavender, striding over with a predatory glint in his eye. Draco finds himself recalling certain rumors about him and Gellert Grindelwald, and surely so is Karkaroff, if his sudden change in expression is anything to go by.

“I—” Karkaroff clears his throat, folds his arms behind his back. “It just seems in contrary to the spirit of competition.”

“Competition,” Krum repeats skeptically.

“For what it’s worth, gentlemen,” Dumbledore says, turning his attention to Draco and Krum, “Hogwarts stands fully behind you. If anyone at all gives you any problems about your choice of date, please do let me know and the matter will be handled expeditiously.”

Draco allows himself to wonder, for a moment, how differently his young life would have gone if he’d known Dumbledore had been gay, if he’d had an older queer mentor like this. The nineties were not a time of overwhelming support for closeted kids like him, and Draco can’t help but think, with a painful twinge, if he’d had someone like him, to talk him out of hating himself for not being what his father wanted him to be, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have—

Draco draws a sharp, unsteady breath and banishes the thought lest he make the mistake of feeling sorry for himself. He has no right to blame his father’s homophobia for his own crimes.

“The Champion’s Dance is stating,” Krum says. “Shall we?”

Wordlessly, Draco heads further into the Great Hall, its center already clearing out for Fleur and her date, a Ravenclaw whose name Draco doesn’t recall.

“How are you at dancing?” Krum asks him, voice a low rumble. One of his hands situates on Draco’s hip, and Draco is surprised by what a truly colossal amount of nothing he feels about it. His original fourteen-year-old self would be in a gay panic over such an intimate gesture, but now he can barely muster anything past a desire to just get this over with already.

Draco takes Krum’s free hand in his own, lifts them. “I was raised in the world of the idle rich,” he answers. “I’ll be fine.”

Krum grins at him. The music starts up. They dance.

Objectively, Krum is a very good dancer—a byproduct, Draco’s sure, of his skill and experience in Quidditch. He’s fluid and graceful in his movements, and twirls Draco across the dance floor with effortless poise. He even dips Draco at the climax of the song, a gesture which sets off a group of girls on the far side of the room, all of them giggling and sighing.

It ends, eventually, and the room applauds. Draco removes himself from Krum’s arms, steps back, and they bow politely to each other. Draco turns around and sees Harry.

And though the feeling of Krum’s hand on his hip had done absolutely nothing to him, seeing Harry Potter with Daphne Greengrass on his arm makes Draco want to jump out a window (again).

Draco tries, frantically, not to notice how good he looks in his formal dress robes, how he’s growing into the the angularity of his jaw and width of his shoulders. He tries not to acknowledge the fact that, even though Harry going to the Yule Ball with someone else was precisely what he wanted, actually seeing it makes him nauseous with jealousy.

Harry, of course, is meeting his eyes unhesitatingly. His gaze is intense and smoldering. It takes either thirty seconds or a thousand years for him to force his eyes away, to stride out of the Great Hall.

Two sets of double doors, normally left closed, have been opened for the Ball, letting out onto two small verandas. The one on the north side of the room onto which Draco flees overlooks the lake, its waters black with nighttime and sparkling with just-forming ice. It’s snowing, and as soon as Draco steps outside, a cold flake lands on Draco’s face and melts.

Draco doubles over the balustrade, elbows on the stone, buries his face in his hands, and tries not to fall apart.

“Draco.”

The voice makes his treacherous heart lodge in his throat.

“Go away, Harry.”

He doesn’t go away, of course. His footsteps crunch through the snow behind Draco, closer and closer, till Harry’s standing right next to him.

For a long time, neither of them say anything.

Then, eventually:

“You look incredible,” Harry says, helplessly.

“Don’t,” Draco begs him. He can barely get his voice above a whisper.

“You’re always incredible, but…”

“Stop. Please stop.” Draco can’t bear this.

“Draco—”

“Just stop,” Draco says, and finally stands back up. A cold wind howls against the castle. “Harry, please. This is hard enough for me, please don’t make it any worse.”

“Hard for you?” Harry repeats incredulously. “I’m the one who keeps getting pushed away for no good goddamn reason, Draco!”

“I promise you, I have very good reasons—”

“Then name them! And I swear, if you say it’s because you have a rotten soul or whatever self-loathing bullshit you’ve convinced yourself is true—”

I was a Death Eater. He should just say it. He needs to say it. He tries to, and physically chokes on the words before they leave his throat.

“—I swear I’ll set us both on fire. You’re not rotten. You’re not a monster. I don’t know where you got these ideas that you’re broken—”

I was a Death Eater. I took the Dark Mark at sixteen years old. I willingly, knowingly fought for the very genocidal monster who made you an orphan.

“—but I’m standing here and begging you to see yourself the way I see you. You’re beautiful and brilliant and brave and you’ve been my lodestar since I was eleven years old. Draco.”

I was a Death Eater. I was a Death Eater. I was a Death Eater. He has to say it. He has to say it.

But he can’t. He can’t form the words, can’t drive that final nail into the coffin, because a part of him knows, deep in the darkest corner of his ugly soul, that it will be the lynchpin. It will be the thing that finally corrects the timeline into its proper shape and makes Harry hate him again.

And the only thing worse than being near Harry Potter when he can’t have him is losing him completely.

Harry is still talking. Draco can’t hear him. He pushes off the balustrade and turns to leave.

“Draco.”

He is grabbed by the wrist, wrenched around.

“Harry, stop—”

He can’t finish the sentence, because all at once, Harry is kissing him.

Draco’s first thought is: You are fourteen years old, how did you get this good at kissing?

His second thought is: Oh, no.

Because he’s electrified by it, he’s consumed by it; it swallows him up from the inside like a black hole and rips him to pieces.

“Harry,” Draco whispers against his mouth. Harry drives him backward, hard, into the wall.

“I thought I was going to lose my mind,” Harry says, pressing his forehead to Draco’s, “watching you dance with Krum. Watching him put his hands on you.”

Now is not a good time for Draco to be finding out he has a thing for possessiveness.

“The thought of you with anyone else,” Harry says, and kisses him again, and it rips a helpless little moan from Draco’s throat. Draco supposes he’ll never know how that sentence was going to end. Harry’s hands are on Draco’s ribs, and Draco’s, despite his best efforts, are on Harry’s face, then sliding up to tangle in his hair, and his body is arching forward off the wall and into him, and it’s not until Harry’s mouth finds the curve of Draco’s jaw—

“No,” he finally gasps. “No. No, Harry, no.”

It gets him to stop, at least. He withdraws, lips kiss-bruised, expression hovering between concerned and alarmed and hurt.

Draco takes a few desperate and extremely necessary breaths to steady himself. His mind may be an adult’s, but his body has never felt quite so fourteen. Fucking puberty.

“I,” Draco says, and swallows, and tries again after one more gulp of air, “Harry, I’m sorry, but I can’t. We can’t. There’s—”

“Draco,” Harry says, voice wrecked.

“—things you don’t understand, that I can’t explain, but you just have to trust me, Harry, we can’t. It won’t work. If you knew what I know—”

“There is nothing in the world,” Harry tells him, with all the reckless certainty and blind trust of a teenager in the midst of his first crush, “that will make me not want you.”

“I’m sorry,” Draco says, and flees the Great Hall, chased by all his ghosts.

Draco tells himself that it just needs time to pass.

Harry is young, and Draco is his first crush, which are always the most intense. He tells himself that, in time, with space, Harry will move on to other romantic pursuits, and it will be better that way. He tells this to Harry, too, on each of the numerous occasions when he hunts Draco down and tries to talk to him about it, though Harry’s never receptive to the message.

Draco’s point is undercut pretty substantially when the Second Task finally arrives.

When Draco crashes up through the surface of the lake, Harry slung over his back, his dark hair streaming water over the front of Draco’s shoulder, the first thing he screams is, “Healer! I need a healer!”

The grindylows had followed him all the way to the shallows, and though Draco had managed to shatter the trident before it reached them, but a piece had shot off in exactly the wrong direction; he’d seen the red cloud of blood bloom near Harry’s side.

Pomfrey is running over before he even finishes screaming; so is Snape, from the other direction. Draco collapses on the edge of the lake and lays Harry out on his back. Draco’s shoulders are heaving and shaking, his whole body trembling with fear. He’s still not moving. No no no no no no please no. He can’t be dead. He can’t be.

“Harry,” he sobs, both hands on his face. “Harry, come on, open your eyes.”

But Harry doesn’t open his eyes. He’s so still, so pale. If Draco can just see that familiar green—if he can just see some color return to that lovely brown skin—

“Please,” he cries, “Harry, come on, wake up, please wake up!”

“One side,” Pomfrey orders through panting breaths. Desperately, Draco scrabbles to his left side as Pomfrey takes his right.

“Draco!” comes Snape’s familiar voice, strung with something like hysteria, a quality that Draco’s never heard in his godfather take before. A hand comes down on his shoulder, wrenches him around. When Draco’s eyes refocus, he’s staring up at Snape, whose face is tense with dread.

“Grindylows caught us before I could get to the shallows,” Draco sobs at him. “I tried to block the blow, but it—the trident, it fractured, and—”

“Mr. Malfoy,” Pomfrey says.

“—it splintered off, and part of it went for Harry—”

“Mr. Malfoy,” Pomfrey says again, louder, “he’s uninjured.”

Draco wrenches back around, throat tight. “But I… he’s not moving—”

“It’s just a bewitched sleep. All of them were put under that spell.” She raises her wand and starts to murmur an incantation, presumably to remove the spell in question.

“There was blood,” Draco insists.

“That was your blood, Draco,” Snape says.

“My—?”

Draco looks down at himself. The broken-off prong of the grindylow’s trident, Draco finally notices, is still sticking out of his side.

He stares at in delirious silence. With all the adrenaline, he must not have felt it.

Beside him, Pomfrey finishes casting her spell and Harry comes awake with a wheeze, his whole body convulsing forward. Draco feels a relief so intense that he almost shatters apart.

“Harry!”

He dives forward, throws his arms around him, crushes him against his chest.

“You’re alright,” Draco sobs, more to reassure himself than Harry. “Merlin, you’re alright. Thank God—Harry—”

Harry, still coughing and shuddering as the spell falls off him piece by piece, scrapes out, “I’m kind of getting mixed signals here, Draco.”

“Shut up,” Draco says into his hair, gripping him all the tighter. “Shut your fucking mouth. You almost died. I don’t—I’ve never—”

“Draco, let Poppy get the damn spear-tip out of your chest!” Snape cries, still with that unfamiliar edge of hysteria.

“The what out of his where?” Harry wheezes, fighting to extricate himself from the vise grip of Draco’s embrace.

“Draco!”

Draco lifts his eyes, vision still blurred by tears, and sees the indistinct shape of Viktor Krum staggering out of the lake, the body of one of his classmates thrown in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder.

“Are you vell?” he asks. “I saw the grindylow throw that trident—!”

“Where’s Fleur?” Draco asks him as Pomfrey bends to carefully inspect Draco’s wound. “I didn’t see her. Where is she? Where’s Gabrielle?”

Viktor’s mouth forms a firm line. He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I lost her nearly ten minutes ago.”

Shit. Draco staggers to a stand.

“Draco!” Snape protests.

“Draco,” Harry echoes, “stop! You’re hurt!”

“I can’t—I can’t just—”

He doesn’t have the time or breath to justify himself. He’s running back toward the lake before he even realizes his legs are moving.

From behind him, Harry cries, “Draco!”

But Draco is already diving back into the frigid February waters.

Draco’s recovery is slow.

(Snape doesn’t let him forget why.

“If you hadn’t exacerbated the wound,” he’d said when, after Draco had finally dragged Gabrielle out of the lake and sat still long enough to be healed, “this would have taken moments.”

“Stop yelling at me,” Draco had whined as Madame Pomfrey carefully extracted the trident prong with a spell, “can’t you see I’m injured?”

Harry had said nothing, only stared, expression inscrutable, as he hugged the towel Pomfrey had given him tightly around his shoulders.)

Still, he’s up and walking by day two, and only feels the pain when he bends too quickly by the end of the week. He’s fine, he insists to anyone who asks.

(And lots of people ask—three different Weasleys, Ernie MacMillan, Professor McGonagall, and even Fleur, who thanks him effusively for saving Gabrielle, and who is endlessly charmed when Draco switches to French after she struggles to find the English word for grateful. They spend the next ten minutes trying to work out if, since they both have family in the north of France, they have any relatives in common.

Harry tries to ask him, too. He is the only one Draco never answers. He can’t. It hurts, staying so far away from him, especially after nearly losing him, but not nearly as much as it would hurt to indulge him and be forced, inevitably, to later let him go.)

Draco has more important things to worry about, in any case.

Despite being literally capable of traveling through time, Draco has never been so aware of its inexorable march. On his calendar, he’s circled the date of the Third Task: June 24. The day that Voldemort is going to come back, unless Draco finds a way to stop it.

And despite his best efforts—his exhausting, frequent, and desperate efforts—nothing had worked.

He’d tried to remove the effects of the Polyjuice from Moody-Crouch twice more in the intervening months, once with a subtle antimagical ward and again with a carefully-timed “potions mishap” that exploded all over him. Just like the first attempt, neither had worked. Just like the first attempt, he doesn’t know why.

And he’s running out of time.

(“You’re losing grip,” Snape had told him one evening in late March, when he came to find Draco after he’d missed yet another weekly tea. “Whatever it is you’re dealing with, surely there’s some way you can ask for help without risking a paradox.”

Draco had stared helplessly up at him, tongue heavy with all the things he couldn’t tell him, with all the nightmares just beyond the horizon. It had taken everything in him not to just burst into tears.)

Which is why, in May, he finds himself in a darkened classroom after dinner.

“Mr. Malfoy,” says Moody-Crouch when he comes shambling through the doorway, sounding surprised. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Draco’s wand is in his hand, unbearably heavy. He’s tried to talk himself out of this—for the many, many flaws in his soul, he’s never crossed this threshold, but surely, if he was going to commit murder—

“Mr. Malfoy?”

—if he was going to kill a man, it would be Crouch. It would be before the Third Task. It would be in defense of the entire Wizarding World. It would be to save hundreds of lives and the entire magical government from tyranny and despotism.

Nothing else has worked, and there’s nothing left to try that doesn’t risk a paradox. If he’s going to cross that line, it would be as a last resort.

Moody-Crouch’s steps shamble all the way across the classroom, through the aisle formed by the two rows of seats. Draco is standing at his desk, feeling every single inch of space that collapses between them.

But Draco can’t raise his wand. He shakes with the desire to, with a theoretical understanding of necessary evils that he just can’t bring to bear. A murder in concept to save a thousand lives is still a murder in practice. And Draco’s never—he’s never—

“Lad,” Moody-Crouch says, “want to tell me why you’ve got your wand out?”

Ten minutes later, he’s in Dumbledore’s office. Moody-Crouch is just where Draco left him, likely confused, but very much alive.

Draco should have known he’d be too much of a coward to strike the blow himself.

“Mr. Malfoy,” Dumbledore says, quietly.

“The Third Task,” Draco whispers.

“What about it?”

Draco swallows.

“Don’t let Harry out of the castle.”

Dumbledore is silent for a very long moment before answering, steadily, “I don’t imagine he’ll be happy to comply.”

“Make him comply,” Draco snaps. “And Severus. Have Severus watch him. And no matter what happens—”

Draco’s voice breaks off. He shuts his eyes, sucks in a few ragged breaths.

“No matter what happens,” Draco says, fighting for every word, “he’s not to leave Harry’s side. Am I understood? Neither of them are to leave Hogwarts for any reason.”

“I suppose, were I to ask you why—”

“You must know I can’t say.”

Dumbledore releases a long sigh. On the perch behind his desk, Fawkes is giving Draco a long, steady look.

“Headmaster,” Draco says, after a dreadful, lengthy silence, “the things I lived through… the things I watched them live through… I can’t do it again.”

Dumbledore says nothing. Fawkes sings a low, sad note, which Draco now hears as an expression of sympathy.

“And with the clarity of hindsight, I can say with confidence that a lot of their suffering came first from you.”

“Mr. Malfoy—”

“Don’t you dare deny it. Not to me. I was there, Albus Dumbledore. I saw it all.”

His expression is guarded as he says, “I am determined to protect the world from Voldemort’s evil.”

“As am I,” Draco assures him. “But you ask too much of them. Too much of Harry, and far too much of Severus Snape.”

“Sacrifices must be made for the greater good,” Dumbledore says, measured.

“It’s not sacrifice if it’s forced upon them,” Draco answers.

“Severus knows the risks. He’s always known the risks.”

“Severus is looking for a reason to martyr himself. And I think you know that, and use it, and play on his guilt and the ghosts of his past.”

“Mr. Malfoy.”

“And Harry is a boy. I’ve taken measures to ease the next few years for him, but I don’t know if it will be enough. And if I make it out of the Third Task alive—”

Draco’s words crumble like brittle glass. Is this the first time he’s said it out loud, acknowledged with words what he’s long understood in the privacy of his own mind?

He swallows.

“This war is going to be hard enough on them,” is what Draco eventually says. “Do not make it harder, Albus Dumbledore.

“They will not leave the castle. No matter what happens, until the Third Task is over, Harry Potter and Severus Snape stay in Hogwarts.”

Fawkes trills; they both look back in his direction. As an Animagus, Draco finds he can now understand the bird’s meaning: he’s encouraging Dumbledore to do the right thing.

Dumbledore understands, too, Draco thinks, by the way his expression shutters slightly.

“I will do all that is within my power to assure it,” he says, after a time.

Draco supposes it’s the best he can hope for.

“Happy birthday,” Draco says.

Harry looks away from the window, startled by Draco’s presence. Draco supposes he should be neither surprised nor offended—he’s avoiding Harry almost completely for the past few months, even going so far as to kip on the ratty couch in Snape’s office most nights. One of the few perks, Draco’s found, of being physically fourteen—or fifteen, as of a few weeks ago—is his body’s ability to sleep anywhere without issue.

On the other side of the glass, the water of the lake churns clear and blue. In the distance, the Giant Squid zips into a patch of kelp and out of sight. Harry has arranged himself as a loose assemblage of limbs on the window sill, atop a pile of green pillows, his homework an ignored stack on his lap.

“My birthday isn’t for over a month,” Harry says. “Are we finally talking again?”

Draco sits down on what little space is left on the sill, tucking one leg beneath the other. The window itself is narrow, forcing a proximity that Draco couldn’t ignore even if he cared to.

“I wanted to give you your present early,” is Draco’s answer to both parts of Harry’s response. He pulls it out from where it’s tucked into the inner breast pocket of his school uniform. “Here.”

“Not an album this time?” The little silver-wrapped present is too small.

“Not this time,” Draco confirms.

“Draco,” Harry begins, but Draco cuts him off.

“Just open it.”

Harry sighs, mouth twisting to a conflicted frown. He wants answers, Draco knows—wants a real reason for all the months Draco’s spent avoiding his company—but he also knows that Draco can’t realistically give him that. Reluctantly, Harry pulls the lid off the box.

“It’s a family piece,” Draco tells him. “One of a few things Mother got in the divorce.”

Harry stares down at the little silver brooch for a time without saying anything. It depicts a dragon—specifically the constellation of Draco’s namesake—with little black gems inset to mark the locations of the stars.

“So your mum and dad finally split up?” is Harry’s first question. He doesn’t touch it, so Draco does: he takes it out of the box and opens the pin on the back, sliding it through his Slytherin tie where a clip would go.

“A few months ago,” Draco says as he fusses the pin closed.

“Months,” Harry repeats. His voice is wounded, which twists a painful jab of guilt into Draco’s heart. “Well, glad to know you didn’t feel the need to tell me.”

Draco suppresses a sigh. “Harry—”

“If you’re going to treat me like a stranger, I’d at least ask for consistency,” Harry says. “This constant hot and cold is really starting to do me in, Draco.”

He tries again, a little desperately: “Harry.”

“You kiss me back at the ball, then avoid me for months. I’m kidnapped at the Second Task, then you stop sleeping in the Slytherin dorms altogether—”

“Harry.”

It’s not until Draco has secured the pin in place and pressed both hands to Harry’s chest that he finally stops talking.

And he is aware of the electricity the touch creates, of course—it’s inevitable. It spreads under Harry’s skin, jumps straight through his robes and down the nerves of Draco’s arms. Harry’s big green eyes dilate, and suddenly they are the only two people in the whole castle.

And because Draco can’t ignore it, but also can’t acknowledge it, he just talks:

“Did you know,” Draco begins slowly, though his voice shakes, “that a few thousand years ago, the constellation Draco had the north star?”

Harry doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move, doesn’t look away.

“The earth’s axis wobbles,” he explains, “very slowly, and so the specific star that’s closest to the zenith has changed a handful of times since the planet formed.”

He should remove his hands from Harry Potter. But Draco is weak, and in love with him, and will probably die tomorrow, and he tells himself: I can have this. Just this, just for today.

“Draco,” Harry whispers, voice shattered by emotion.

“You called me your lodestar,” Draco says. “Back at the Yule Ball. That’s what got me thinking about it, what reminded me of this pin. And what made me want to give it to you.

“Because I’m not a lodestar, Harry. Everything I’m doing, all this goodness you perceive in me, it’s just a reflection. If there is anything in me that is good, it is only because I saw it first in you. Harry, you are my lodestar.”

At some point, Draco’s throat had gotten tight. He feels his fingers curl into the soft, yielding fabric of Harry’s robes, feels his shoulders shake. He can have this, he repeats to himself; just this, just for today.

“And no matter what happens tomorrow,” Draco begins.

“Draco,” Harry says, alarm and grief creeping up into his voice.

“No matter what happens tomorrow, you should know that,” Draco says, and his hands are moving from Harry’s chest to his face. “You should know that my avoidance of you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. If it were only about what I wanted, I’d never be away from you—”

Harry dives forward across what distance remains between them and kisses Draco. It is friction and heat and aching, desperate wanting, and Draco lets himself sink into it. Just this. Just for today.

He makes it to the center of the labyrinth and finds the Cup on its pedestal. The area around it is wide open: the home stretch. Draco has only a few dozen feet between himself and victory.

But of course, it’s not about victory.

The footsteps that carry him forward are unsteady. He heard the story of what happened the first time through the grapevine, through rumor, through whispered accounts from his father, from Severus. In the original timeline, it had been this cup that had taken Potter straight to Voldemort.

But Harry isn’t here.

Draco casts a quick diagnostic spell and feels the magic humming its answer. The Cup is definitely a Portkey. But to where? The victory podium the champions had so conspicuously passed on their way into the labyrinth? Or to Voldemort? The most crucial part of the plan—Harry Potter’s presence—is absent. The timeline has delineated substantially, and without having been able to oust Moody-Crouch, he doesn’t know how it’s compensated.

Maybe he should just destroy the fucking Cup. Maybe he should just melt it down to scrap. Draco doesn’t need to win this competition; the only thing he needs is to make sure Voldemort doesn’t come back.

As he begins running through a list of spells he knows strong enough to destroy a Portkey, movement flashes in the periphery of Draco’s vision. When he turns his head—

“Viktor,” he breathes, followed by a reflexive, desperate, “no.”

He’s got a cut on his temple, a split of skin over a dark bruise. His shoulders are heaving as if he’d been running. His eyes go from Draco, to the Cup, then back to Draco.

“No,” Draco says again louder. “Viktor, don’t. You don’t understand.”

Krum narrows his eyes uncertainly. His hand flexes around his wand.

“There’s—there’s more going on. You can’t—”

A rustle of leaves, then, and pounding footsteps on flagstone. Draco whirls around, and from the other direction, Fleur Delacour goes sprinting toward the Cup.

Fear grips Draco’s heart like a vise. “No!” he says, and races up toward the Cup. “No! Fleur, arretez! Ce n’est pas comme vous pensez—!”^[1]

But she’s still running, and so is Draco, and Viktor does as well, because they are, and at the same time, all three of their hands reach for the Cup—

—Draco lands hard on dead, brittle grass and dry dirt.

He can hear two other sets of breath on either side of him, one tempered by a high, feminine whine of fear. With difficulty, he lifts his head and looks around.

Viktor is on his left, Fleur on his right. And all around them, gravestones—some weathered to illegibility, others snarled with climbing ivy, and one, directly in front of him reading: TOM RIDDLE.

“Draco.”

Draco looks up. Behind the headstone, robed in black, white face drawn in lines of grim determination:

“Father.” The word is punched out of him.

Absurdly, the first thing that rises to his mind is frantic, childish denial. Surely not, it whispers, not Father. Father was a flawed man, but he’d never—he’d never—

“Crouch,” his father says, “kill the spare.”

“Avada Kedavra,” says Viktor Krum, and with a shriek and a flash of green light, Fleur Delacour’s lifeless body collapses face-down on the ground mere seconds after she’d made a futile attempt to flee.

The only reason Draco does not scream is because he has no breath to do it. All the air has been stolen from his lungs, the twin betrayals stronger than any physical blow could hope to manage.

“Draco,” his father says, voice dark and sharp like a shard of obsidian, “you should have known better.”

“No,” Draco wheezes, and tries to scrabble backward. He raises his wand—

“Expelliarmus,” Krum-Crouch says, and Draco’s wand flies from his hand, skittering across the dirt and away. “Incarcerous.”

Thick ropes lash from the end of his wand and snarl around Draco, who struggles on nothing but reflex and frantic terror. “No,” he says, “no, let me go—Father, you don’t have to do this, you’re better than this—!”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I am, you treacherous boy,” his father snarls. “Vile boy. Blood traitor.”

“Father!”

Krum-Crouch grabs Draco by the ropes binding him and hauls him up to his knees. He leans down and smiles viciously at Draco, all of Krum’s handsome features distorted by malice and Schadenfreude.

“I’m so glad I get to be here for this,” he says, voice manic and almost singsong. “My only job was to ensure you got to the Cup, of course—but I’d hoped to watch it happen.”

He licks a wet stripe up the side of Draco’s neck, which sends a shudder of revulsion running down his body.

“To watch him come back,” Krum-Crouch whispers, hot breath on Draco’s throat, “to watch him kill you.”

“Crouch,” his father barks. “If you’re going to be here, be useful.”

Krum-Crouch growls, but releases Draco. He crashes down onto his side in the dead grass and finds himself staring into the dead, white face of Fleur Delacour.

He has no time to process the sight. A hand closes around Draco’s throat and drags him back up in short order, slams him backward into the headstone of Tom Riddle. His father’s face fills Draco’s vision and his hand chokes him.

“You cost me everything,” his father snarls.

Draco tries to speak, but can’t. The hand is too tight. All he can do is choke and try to breathe.

“My reputation, my marriage, my legacy,” he says.

“Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son.”

The dirt of the grave shifts beneath Draco’s bound feet. Draco’s vision is going worryingly gray from lack of air.

“My own son, my Iago! Traitor!”

Draco is thrown, hard, back against the gravestone, but even with the pain of the impact, Draco is able to suck in a few desperately needed breaths.

His father’s footsteps pace away, hard and angry.

“Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master.”

Draco hears the gruesome sound of slicing flesh and snapping bone, the sickening plop of a severed hand falling from an elbow and into a cauldron, which Draco only just barely identifies as his vision returns to him.

Only after the fact does he hear his father’s ragged, pained snarl. The stump of his arm streams dark, arterial blood into the dry soil, and Draco shakes.

He knows Dark Magic when he sees it. He knows what this is. It could be nothing else.

And he can do nothing—

“Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe.”

Draco screams as Krum-Crouch jabs the point—just the point—of a long, silver knife into his jugular vein. Hot blood fountains into a waiting phial, and as Draco twists away, or tries to, the blood is swiftly poured into the waiting cauldron.

“Father,” Draco hears himself begging, “please. You don’t have to do this.”

“You left me with no choice!” he bellows back.

“There’s always a choice!” Draco sobs. “Father, you can still stop this! It’s not too late!”

From behind him, a white shape rises from the cauldron. Draco’s breath gets unsteady. His vision tunnels. He feels disconnected from himself, like he is an observer and not a participant.

And in his head, the only thought on loop: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

“But it is too late, Draco Malfoy,” says the high, clear voice that has appeared in Draco’s every nightmare for twenty years. “You should know, better than most, that this was always going to happen.”

Lord Voldemort steps languidly from the cauldron.

“My lord,” Krum-Crouch whispers, worshipful, and hands him a robe like it is a crown. Voldemort shrugs into it thoughtlessly. His red eyes are on Draco.

“Lucius,” he says, “unbind your son. I want to see something.”

There’s no time to make use of his temporary reprieve; the second the ropes disappear, a large, thin white hand is gripping Draco’s wrist and dragging him upright.

Voldemort stares, red gaze intense, at Draco’s forearm.

“Where,” he whispers, “is my brand, Draco Malfoy?”

“No,” is all Draco can sob.

“Where,” he snarls, “is my mark?”

“Never!” Draco doesn’t quite know where the scream comes from. His soul, perhaps. “I’ll never—never again! Never again!”

“Your arm is bare without it, Draco Malfoy. I have waited fifty years for you—”

“I’ll die first!”

Voldemort leans in to whisper, “You’ll die regardless. You’ll die screaming. And all your moralizing, all your lofty ideals, all your righteousness will die along with you. It will all be for nothing.”

“Not if I take you down with me!”

And then, Draco transforms.

The fire comes first, before the wings, a burst of yellow-gold so intense that even Draco can’t see through it. Somebody screams—it sounds like his father—and Draco opens his wings and soars, flame streaming from every feather, directly into Voldemort.

Spells fly; each one rebounds off his sheathe of fire. Voldemort dodges just before Draco collides with him; Draco soars up, then back down. Streaming fire, he dives, aiming his talons for red eyes—

“Crucio!”

The spell catches him mid-dive, and even a phoenix’s fire can’t stop the strength of an Unforgivable Curse from the wand of the deadliest wizard alive.

Draco screams; it comes out as a high, terrible trill. Pain pounds through the hollows of his bones and he is no longer diving, he is falling—he crashes hard into the ground, wrenching his wing, a pain that is a drop in the vast ocean that is the Cruciatus Curse.

He has been Cruciated before, but never by Voldemort. There’s a power to it, a darkness in it, that feels like acid in his veins, like shards of dry ice stabbing through his nerves. He screams and screams and trills and writhes.

“Fifty years of anticipation,” Voldemort says, stepping over him, a towering white obelisk over Draco. “I’d expected more of a fight.”

And Draco realizes: I am going to die.

It is inevitable, just like the spell that brought Voldemort back. He is going to die here, alone, having failed so completely at the only thing that could have redeemed his wretched soul.

And then, from high above, a dragon roars.

“What in the—!”

Three tons of silver come careening down from the sky and—CRASH—onto the ground, and suddenly the graveyard is consumed by fire. Shields go up, but he can still hear the screaming.

Draco is not screaming. In fact, the heat of it melts away the pain of the curse.

Fire can only strengthen a phoenix, after all.

From the flank, a familiar voice that sends Draco’s heart leaping into his mouth: “Draco!”

It’s Snape. Even through the inferno that consumes him and everything around him, Draco can see his godfather—and Dumbledore, and Moody, and Sirius, and Lupin, and McGonagall—racing into the graveyard, wands out.

Harry, in his dragon form, is moving forward slowly, advancing his wall of fire on Voldemort. Soon he is standing over Draco, turning himself into a barrier.

(For one moment, Draco is dazzled. In all the chaos and screaming and bloodshed, the thought occurs to him: I am going to love him for the rest of my life.)

But allies are not the only ones arriving. Around the edges of the graveyard, one by one, Death Eaters appear with the crack of Apparation, answering their master’s call.

Harry’s fire breath finally runs out. His massive head turns, and green eyes stare down at him. He roars again, and Draco understands: Get up, Draco!

He drops his Animagus form, scrambles for his wand. More and more Death Eaters are appearing, and Draco knows that, even with a dragon, they’re soon going to be outnumbered.

As soon as he has his wand, he’s slinging spells. “Harry! Get Fleur!”

Harry roars his acknowledgment, shortly before swiping his claw into Krum-Crouch, who shrieks and goes flying into a nearby tree.

Draco is carefully retreating back toward his allies. Dumbledore is moving forward to cover his flank as he goes, and as soon as Draco is close enough to be in earshot in all the chaos:

“I told you to keep them in the castle!”

“They made a rather persuasive counterargument,” Dumbledore answers, with surprising serenity, as he sends a hex at Avery that knocks him off his feet.

“There are too many!” McGonagall calls, hitting Yaxley with a stunner. “Albus, there are too many! We need to retreat!”

“Draco!”

It’s Snape, suddenly at his arm, bleeding from a hex but still standing, gripping Draco’s shoulder like a vise.

“You’re injured,” he says.

“So are you!”

“I might have known,” says Lucius Malfoy, and they both look over.

His father is bloodied and singed, but Draco knows better than to assume injury implies weakness. His father has always been a wolf: most dangerous when cornered. His wand is gripped tight in his one remaining hand, the other apparently cauterized, perhaps by dragonfire.

“Was it you, Severus? You who turned my own son against me?”

Snape inserts himself in front of Draco.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Lucius,” Snape answers, eyes narrowed. “You were perfectly capable of driving him away all on your own.”

“The Dark Lord will hunt you like a dog,” his father snarls.

Then Harry wrenches out of the melee behind him, grabs Lucius Malfoy in his jaws, and flings him fifty yards away into a wrought-iron fence.

Draco understands his ensuing roar as: We need to go!

“We need to go,” Draco says, half-translation, half-agreement. “We need to go!”

More and more and more of them appear with cracks of magic and the smell of ozone. They’re closing in around them, wands out, masks flashing.

“Take Harry,” Snape says to him. “Apparate him to Grimmauld Place. We’ll meet you there.”

“Out!” Sirius is screaming in the background. “Out, out, out, out!”

Draco throws up a shield just in time to catch Nott’s stunner spell. “Harry! I can’t Apparate you when you’re as big as a bus!”

Magic crackles and swirls, and when Harry is back in his human form, the corpse of Fleur Delacour is in his arms.

Draco is hit with an image from a lifetime ago: the first time he’d lived through the Triwizard Tournament, when Harry had appeared, ragged and bloody, clutching the corpse of Cedric Diggory.

Fixed points, Draco’s delirious mind supplies: prophecy. Things that were always going to happen. If the best he could have managed was one life for another, it should have been Draco. Draco should be dead, not Cedric, not Fleur.

“Draco,” Harry says urgently. Behind, someone casts another stunner.

Draco grits his teeth, grabs Harry by the arm. He barely Disapparates in time to avoid it.

Chapter Text

The next few hours—three, four?—are a blur.

People ask him questions, which Draco answers, though he forgets it all nearly before it’s said. Someone heals his wounds, though he doesn’t know who, or which wounds. All around him, frantic conversations carry on, which Draco catches in snippets and flashes and individual words: Threat. Return. Warning. Prophecy.

At some point, Draco falls into a sleep that feels like unconsciousness.

When he wakes, he is in an unfamiliar bedroom, all done up in blues and grays. The bed is soft, the mountainous pile of blankets under which Draco is tucked stiflingly hot, the sunlight streaming through the nearby window bright enough to be painful. On the bedside table, visible the moment Draco opens his eyes, is a tray of breakfast—sausages and fried eggs and a small pot of tea—under a glimmering blue stasis charm to keep it warm.

Draco sits up. Everything hurts.

He presses his palm to his forehead. There’s a headache throbbing between his temples and down through to the base of his skull. His shoulder hurts from where he’d wrenched his wing. And on the side of his throat, healed quickly and left to scar, rough white flesh under Draco’s fingertips—

“Good morning.”

Draco looks over. Harry is coming awake slowly, curled up in the armchair in the corner of the room. Draco watches, thoughts hazy with pain and trauma, as Harry rubs one knuckle into his eye, knocking his glasses askew.

Draco tries to answer, opens his mouth, but finds he can’t speak. Memories of dragonfire and red eyes and the bloodied stump his father’s arm all come back to him in a jumble.

“You might want to milk this morning for all it’s worth,” Harry advises him when, after a long, protracted silence, Draco cannot make himself form an answer. “The second you open that door, it’s all going to catch up with you. Dumbledore reformed the Order of the Phoenix last night.”

Carefully, Draco forces his body to move—he twists around in his spot and pushes his legs over the edge of the bed, turning his back to Harry. He looks down at himself, finding he’s in soft, transfigured pajamas. Snape’s doing, he suspects.

Everything hurts. Everything hurts.

“Hey.”

Harry’s hand is on Draco’s shoulder. It forces his attention up and out of the swallowing abyss of his own thoughts. He looks over and sees Harry’s face, drawn in soft lines of worry and anticipation. In the sunlight streaming in through the window, he is lit so brightly that he’s hard to look at.

“How are you feeling?”

It’s a perfectly innocent question, of course, but hearing it out loud makes Draco feel like there’s a violin string running down the middle of his chest that is being pulled tighter, tighter, tighter, right on the precipice of snapping and slashing him open from the inside.

How is he feeling? How the fuck does Harry think he feels?

Draco stands, swaying. Harry’s steadying grip on his shoulder tightens.

“Draco,” he begins.

“Where’s my wand?” Draco asks. He has to force the question out.

“I…”

Draco looks around the room, then finds it, placed carefully on the corner of the vanity, parallel to the edge of the tabletop. He staggers across the room, grabs it, and untransfigures the pajamas.

The spell unravels, and Draco finds himself in the padded leathers he’d put on for the Third Task: Hogwarts black, Slytherin green—all of it splattered with drying blood.

Draco’s vision tunnels.

He frantically vanishes the blood. It takes several tries. His magic responds in fits and starts, taking out the stains in uneven stripes.

“Draco,” Harry says again, voice tense, as Draco finally manages to get the last of it out. But there are singes on it, too—remnants of spells cast at him during the chaos of the graveyard. Those will not be so easy to vanish.

Draco hurries for the armoire and pulls it open. He just needs different clothes, he tells himself: then it will be fine. Then this itch under his skin will go away. Then, maybe, everything will stop hurting.

“Draco, please,” Harry begs, as Draco frantically tugs the leather top off, arms shaking, and pulls on a blue jumper, the first thing he finds in the armoire. It’s too big, falling all the way to his fingertips and slouching off one shoulder, but there’s no blood on it. He swaps the leather trousers for a pair of plain black jeans. He foregoes shoes entirely.

“Draco.”

Harry’s hand again, this time on his wrist. Draco looks back at him. He’s too bright. It hurts to look. Everything hurts.

“You’re scaring the hell out of me,” Harry says. “Please tell me how you’re feeling. Tell me you’re okay.”

But Draco can’t do either of those things. He can barely talk at all.

He pulls himself out of Harry’s grasp and leaves the bedroom.

He sits in on the first official strategy meeting of the Order of the Phoenix, held in the dining room of Grimmauld Place. It is interminably long. He answers questions put to him, details of the resurrection that hadn’t been asked last night. He listens to the plans they put together, strategies they suggest, and wishes he could do more, wishes he didn’t have to care about causality and paradoxes and temporal flux. Most of all, he wishes he hadn’t failed so catastrophically.

Afterward, when he steps out into the drawing room, he finds his mother, hovering anxiously by the window. When the door opens, she turns, and her expression shatters.

“Draco,” she says, and hurries to embrace him. It’s the kind of too-tight hug that is more about her than him. She buries her face in his hair and trembles.

“Draco,” she says again, voice a frantic whisper, “oh, Draco, my love, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

Draco doesn’t answer. He can’t even make his arms move to return her embrace, though there is a part of his brain that wants to, that tells him he should.

Did you know Father was conspiring with Crouch? he wants to ask. Is that why you left him, or were you kept out of the loop? He doesn’t know which answer would hurt worse: that she knew and didn’t tell him, or that she’d been just as blind about him as Draco was.

“Tell me what you need,” she says into his hair. “Draco, darling, tell me what you need from me. Tell me how to make this better.”

How to make it better? How could anything make it better? Even after four years, even knowing what was coming, Draco had failed to do the only thing that could have made this misery worthwhile. Nothing could make that better.

He withdraws. His mother’s pale eyes stare at him in heartbreak.

“I should,” he begins, and doesn’t know how to finish. “I need,” he attempts, but doesn’t know what he needs.

Eventually, he swallows, and turns, and leaves.

And then, that evening, Snape finds him.

He’d been hovering at the periphery of Draco’s awareness since he first came to, a dark shadow in the corner of every room, his gaze assessing and penetrating and bottomless—and silent. At least until that evening.

It’s the back patio of Grimmauld Place where Snape corners him at long last, heralded by the soft closing of a door. Draco looks over his shoulder, away from the dusk-washed garden full of rose bushes enclosed by tall stone walls and to his godfather, striding slowly out across the concrete.

Snape sits down in the patio chair beside Draco, and for a moment, neither of them speak.

“Professor,” Draco begins, meaning to come up with an excuse to end the conversation before it starts. Snape doesn’t give him the chance.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says.

Draco’s throat constricts. He doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want to talk about it. So even though it is his fault, he says, “I know,” in a quiet voice, because he just wants to end this conversation and hide somewhere his failures and all his ghosts can’t find him.

Snape says again, with more gravity, “Draco, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” Draco says again. It’s a lie. It sounds like a lie. It tastes like a lie. He says it anyway. “I know that.”

“I don’t think you do,” Snape says. Then: “Draco, it wasn’t your fault.”

That violin string in the center of his chest draws tighter, tighter, tighter.

“Severus,” he manages, though his vision starts to swim.

“Draco, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Stop,” Draco begs him.

But still he persists: “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Stop it. Severus, stop. I can’t.”

“You did everything you could. Everything that was within your power. It’s not a stain on your soul that a prophecy came to pass. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Then what was the point?”

Draco is springing to his feet and shouting.

“What was the point of it, Severus? Why be sent back at all? Why have all this knowledge of the future if I can’t even use it to do the one thing that might offer me some shred of redemption for all my sins?”

“Pain doesn’t always have a point, Draco,” Snape tells him. “Sometimes it’s just pain. Sometimes you can do the right thing and the wrong thing will still happen. It wasn’t your fault.”

Draco is hysterical. “Don’t lie to me! Not you!”

Snape stands, grabbing Draco’s shoulders tight enough to bruise. “When have I ever lied to you, Draco? It wasn’t your fault. Nothing that happened in that graveyard was your fault.”

He can barely see, barely breathe. “Stop it! Stop!”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Snape whispers, and drags Draco against his body, and Draco shatters apart, falls to a thousand pieces, screams and sobs and shakes as all the pain he’d been so desperate to avoid catches up to him. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says, and Draco wishes he could believe him, “it wasn’t your fault.”

When Draco crumples onto his knees, Snape goes down with him, as though he is determined to hold Draco together, even if he has to do it with his bare hands. When the screaming agony finally dies down into broken, fractured weeping, Snape whispers the sentiment again and again, like a prayer.

And it’s not healing, but it’s something close to it—firm pressure on the open wound, burning cauterization to seal the artery. It hurts almost more than Draco can bear, but there is a part of him that knows that the pain is crucial: he had, after all, been bleeding to death.

After the first, Draco decides to stay out of any further tactical meetings of the Order of the Phoenix. Even if he had any head for wartime strategy, he wouldn’t dare risk it for fear of creating a paradox.

So, as soon as Madame Pomfrey—the one who’d healed Draco, apparently, when he’d first Apparated out of the graveyard—deems Draco fit enough, he leaves Grimmauld Place and goes back with his mother to Startmantle Court, her childhood home built on the edge of the River Dart in Devon.

Draco had been to Starmantle Court a few times in his youth, usually to visit his maternal grandparents, but after Granny Dru died when Draco was six—still too young to really understand that she was gone, let alone why—all the visits stopped. Draco was told, many years later, that Grandpa Cygnus had withered away after the loss of his wife, refusing all visitors until he died in Draco’s second year at Hogwarts. The story, combined with hazy, indistinct childhood memories, had left Draco with the impression that Starmantle Court was a haunted old ruin on a riverfront.

But the building they Floo into defies those expectations. Draco steps from the hearth and into a charming, sunny sitting room, all gleaming oak floors and rococo furnishings, with a snoring portrait of Granny Dru on the wall and a grandfather clock ticking quietly by the door.

“I’ve arranged for it to be unplottable,” his mother says when she steps inside behind him, pulling off her long gray shawl and draping it over the nearby armchair in a familiar way. “Now that the Dark Lord is…”

She trails off. The silence screams.

Eventually, she clears her throat. “It’s not impossible that your Aunt Bellatrix will soon be out of Azkaban. We don’t want her coming here.”

From the far side of the room, a new voice appears: “Are we not looking forward to another sisterly reunion?”

Draco’s mother is the first to react: “Andy.”

From the perfect plait of a braid running down one shoulder to the neatly pressed summer dress, Andromeda Tonks has the look of a witch who is fastidious to the point of obsession. She stands in the archway between the foyer and sitting room with both hands gripping her purse and both her soft ballet flats pressed together.

“Cissy,” she says, and slowly steps through.

“I wasn’t expecting,” his mother says, then trails off.

“Dora told me that you and your son would be coming here,” she says by way of explanation. “And I still have that old emergency Portkey Father gave us.”

“Do you?” his mother asks, somewhere in the middle between surprised and maudlin.

“Sentiment, I suppose,” she says. Then she looks to Draco.

Draco looks back, a strange pressure in his throat. In his original timeline, he hadn’t met Andromeda till many years after the end of the War, a veteran fresh off five years of self-destruction, trying to find some semblance of meaning in a life that refused to end, despite Draco’s best efforts. Andromeda, a widow raising her grandson all alone, had been far kinder than Draco deserved, letting him into her and Teddy’s life with open arms.

Seeing her like this, younger and warmer, all self-possession and dignity, untouched by all those tremendous losses, does horrible things to Draco’s stomach.

“You must be Draco,” she says. “Six months ago, I didn’t imagine that I’d ever get the chance to meet you.”

“Hello, Aunt Andromeda,” Draco manages, voice small.

She comes forward, heels clicking on the hardwood, and eventually stops in front of Draco. Her gaze traces the lines of his shoulders, up to his hair, then finally his face.

“You have the Black nose,” she says.

Draco manages a small laugh. She’d said much the same when they’d met in the original timeline, too.

“And by the stories going around about you, that’s about all you inherited from your mother’s side.”

Draco opens his mouth, shuts it. She deserves the truth, but of course Draco can’t say it, can’t tell her that he actually inherited all the worst traits of his mother’s side, that acknowledging and overcoming those ugly parts of him was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

“I have a daughter who’s not much older than you,” she says. “Did you get to meet her?”

“Briefly,” Draco answers. “I was… I…”

In truth, he’d only seen Nymphadora across rooms and hallways in the short time he’d been at Grimmauld Place. In hindsight, he should have introduced himself, but the last few days had passed like a horrible dream, dark and indistinct. Even now, he’s not sure he could pick Nymphadora Tonks out in a lineup.

“Right,” Andromeda says with a flinch. “I heard about the graveyard. I’m so sorry that happened to you, dear.”

His mother’s hand comes to rest on Draco’s head, stroking his hair slowly. Draco takes a few steadying breaths.

“Some part of me always expected this,” his mother admits in a quiet, vulnerable voice. “I just didn’t think I’d be on the other side when it did.”

“I imagine both our names will be blasted off the Black family tree soon enough,” Draco says.

“Don’t be so sure,” Andromeda answers. “There are only two male heirs left in the Black line, after all, and both of them seem to have better ideas about what makes a family than their predecessors.”

A moment of silence passes, full to bursting.

Then his mother says, “It’s good to have you back, Andy,” a little helplessly. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Andromeda admits, teary, and embraces her sister.

Draco watches, heart in his throat. He doesn’t understand what he’s feeling at first—this complicated combination of love and grief and happiness and heartache—but as he watches his mother sniff into her big sister’s shoulder, he realizes—

For the first time in a long time, Draco feels like something is being built, and not just ripped down.

Summer passes very slowly in Devon.

Starmantle Court is too big by half for just Draco and his mother: six bedrooms, a ballroom, a solarium, and a massive greenhouse that his mother turns into her pet project. Though it’s beautiful in a classical, patrician, pureblood sort of way, it’s very big and very quiet, and far enough away from everything that the only thing Draco ever hears outside is rumbling thunder, pattering rain, and distant bush crickets.

People visit, but not very frequently. Severus comes over twice to check up on them, to get a gauge on Draco’s mental state and his mother’s recovery from a painful divorce. Andromeda visits once a month for dinner, which Draco always insists on cooking. Even Sirius drops by, and when he does—

“Your hair just keeps getting longer,” Harry says by way of greeting.

He’s not wrong. It’s gotten so long that, when Draco needs to do anything that requires any amount of physical exertion, he’s forced to tie it back. Even when it’s up and off his neck, it reaches his shoulders.

At a table in the garden, Sirius and Remus and his mother are bent toward each other over a pot of tea, deep in conversation. Draco had only gotten the briefest glimpse as he was coming out of the greenhouse with a basket full of summer berries before Harry had found him.

“Do you object?” Draco asks.

“I do whatever the opposite of object is,” Harry answers.

Draco blows a lock out of his face that had slipped free from the ponytail and heads past Harry, carrying the bounty inside through the open French doors leading into the kitchen. Harry follows.

“You don’t have any house-elves here to do this sort of thing?” he asks.

“Dotty was here till Mother got married,” Draco answers, setting the basket down on the granite countertop, “but, frustratingly, Father got to keep everything that came in her dowry.”

“That sucks in a couple different ways,” Harry says.

Draco hums his agreement and sets to moving the berries from the basket and into a waiting colander to wash.

Silence passes. Draco tries to continue working as if he can’t feel Harry’s eyes on him, or the sudden heat that flares to life in the quiet of the kitchen.

Eventually, Harry says, “Word just came down that I’m to be the Slytherin Quidditch captain next year.”

Draco hums, unsurprised, and turns on the sink to rinse the berries clean.

“We’ll be down three,” Harry says. “Two Chasers and a Beater. I’d like for you to try out.”

Draco looks back at Harry, frowning. His arms are folded over his chest, his hip cocked and leaning on the counter. “I’ve never played Chaser or Beater,” Draco reminds him.

“I’m told you’re a fast learner,” Harry says, smirking. “And a natural on a broom.”

It’s been a while since Draco saw him last, and he is forced to confront the reality that it’s getting harder for him to ignore the way Harry is growing into his body. Right on schedule, he’s shot up three inches, finally taller than Draco (which, the first time it happened, had been an unending source of agony), and broader across the shoulders. The ghost of dark stubble is growing along Harry’s jaw, and in the pale, fitted t-shirt he’s wearing—

“You have a new tattoo,” Draco notices.

“I had it done a few weeks ago,” Harry answers, and crosses the kitchen, extending his arm for Draco to inspect.

When he sees it up close, something lurches in Draco’s gut.

“A phoenix,” he says.

It’s encircling his forearm, below the dragon, soaring into its cone of fire. Just like the dragon, Harry had paid extra to make it move—it flaps its wings regally as fire streams off its feathers.

Draco finds his wet fingertips tracing its neck.

“Like the Order?” he asks, very quietly.

“No,” Harry answers, also quiet.

Draco looks up, and Harry’s green eyes are right there waiting, meeting his gaze and drawing him down like quicksand.

“I wanted to visit you before,” Harry says. His voice is still quiet, almost too quiet to be heard over the water still hissing out from the faucet. “Sirius had to talk me out of it a thousand times. You’d just been through hell, he said, and needed time to recover.

“But it didn’t stop me wanting to go. It didn’t stop me from thinking about you every waking moment. The not-so-waking moments, too.”

Carefully, Draco withdraws his fingertips from Harry’s arm and turns the tap off. Silence hits the room with such force that Draco’s surprised the walls don’t come down.

“We’ve already had this discussion,” Draco mutters.

“No, you’ve had a discussion at me,” Harry says. “You haven’t been very interested in my thoughts.”

“Harry, there’s—”

“Something rotten in your soul? Things you can’t tell me? I’ve heard all your justifications already, Draco, and they’re getting old. Why not just tell me the thing you’re so scared to say, this thing that will forever change the way I feel about you?”

(I was a Death Eater. I was a Death Eater.)

“Because from my perspective,” Harry continues, and brings his own fingertips to Draco’s forearm, “you could tell me you sucked Voldemort’s cock in your original timeline and I’d still probably want to kiss you.”

Draco laughs. He can’t help it. It’s so derailing, so absurd, that it catches him like a Beater bat to the face. He drops his head forward, shoulders shaking with breathless, frantic laughter.

“Although I really hope you didn’t,” Harry adds, which just makes Draco laugh harder.

“I did not suck Voldemort’s cock,” Draco assures him, “in this or any timeline. He’s not my type.”

Even Harry’s biting back laughter, that gorgeous, lopsided grin of his flashing teeth. “Not into cadaverous, snake-faced war criminals?”

“No, my tastes skew—”

Draco stops himself just before he says: athletic, courageous, tattooed, dark-haired, green-eyed, half-Indian wizards with facial scars.

“No, no,” Harry insists. “Go on. What’s your type? I’m dying to know.”

Draco takes a very slow, very deep breath, and the joy slips out of him like water through cupped hands. What the hell is he doing, flirting with Harry like this? He should know better.

“If I promise to play Chaser next year,” he finally says, voice small, “will you please leave it alone?”

“I got Truss to agree,” Westy says on the first day of term, when Draco comes in to do his usual post-summer-break-absence inspection of Needle, “although she was a little confused by the sudden interest in refresher training for hostile takeover situations.”

“That’s fine,” Draco says, eyes running down the lines of notes documenting the energy fluctuations. “Her understanding is not required. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this ramp-up?”

“It didn’t meet the threshold you set,” she answers, pushing off the far wall and coming to Draco’s side at the desk. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

Draco frowns. “It wasn’t that bad the last time, either, at first,” he says. “I don’t get it. It took twice as long to start fluctuating in my original timeline. What changed? What’s different?”

“Well,” Westy answers slowly, “maybe it’s you? You’re a walking, talking temporal anomaly now, right? Maybe that’s affecting it.”

“If it were just that, it would have started fluctuating three years ago, when I first recreated it,” Draco says. “It’s something else.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s your problem and not mine.”

Westy takes a long sip of her coffee, leaning against the wall and staring thoughtfully at Needle as it hums and pulses on the far end of the room. Draco goes through the ledger line by line, even as he feels Westy’s gaze eventually return to him.

“I read an article,” Westy begins, and Draco takes the opportunity to cut her off at he pass:

“Yes, I was there.”

She’s silent for a long while. Draco tries not to look back at her. In the original timeline, they’d never talked much about the War—there was never any need to. She had recognized Draco’s surname, and Draco had passed the first and only test she’d given him when she pointedly told him My wife’s a Muggle and Draco had launched into a long, lurid story about how, in Draco’s extensive and annotated experience, Muggle men were better at sex than wizards and his working theory about how it related to a lack of reliance on magic, and she’d laughed and that had been that.

The context is a little different this time.

As the comma in the conversation gradually turns into an ellipsis, Draco feels the familiar fingers of tension rise along his back, the kind he got after returning to the Wizarding World after getting his degree, when a shop clerk would call out an order for “Malfoy, Draco” or he would forget to roll his sleeves down after doing lab work and passing Ministry employees would get a look at his bare arm as he went by—

“You all right?” Westy asks, abruptly drawing Draco up out of his own thoughts.

“No,” Draco answers, with perhaps too much honesty. “No, not really.”

Draco’s unfocused gaze moves from the ledger to his own forearm. The Hogwarts Express had left on a Friday this year, and term didn’t begin till the following Monday, so he hadn’t bothered with his uniform yet. Unthinking, he’d rolled up the sleeves of his blue linen shirt to the elbows.

His arm’s bare, of course. But he can still feel it there, somehow, like an itch under his skin.

Where is my brand, Draco Malfoy?

Red eyes, white skin, a grip on his wrist tight enough to bruise. The drip-drip-drip of his father’s blood on dry grass.

Where is my mark?

He takes a few slow, deep breaths. He’d tried so hard not to think about the encounter all summer long, but now, with some distance—

“How did he…”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” Westy assures him, but Draco can barely hear her.

How could Voldemort have known Draco had taken the Mark? It had only happened once, in a future that no longer exists.

And now that Draco thinks of it—

Fifty years of anticipation…

It seems impossible, but Draco can’t conjure another explanation for the facts.

Is it possible that Draco isn’t the only one who’d been temporally displaced?

Dread spreads slowly through the pit of his stomach, like frost. If Voldemort had been temporally displaced, what does he know that Draco doesn’t?

And if he hadn’t, then why has he been waiting fifty years?

Theories and speculation rule Draco’s mind for the next several days, almost without interruption. Even if he needed to, even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to focus on anything else. His whole mind becomes obsessed with a single question: why had Voldemort been waiting fifty years for him?

At least until their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class.

“That probably could have gone better,” Draco says as the Slytherin fifth-years all shuffle into the hallway after it’s over.

“Whatever,” Harry growls, still incandescent with fury. “I wouldn’t do a thing different even if I could. Where does she get the nerve—?”

“Harry,” Draco interjects sharply, grabbing his elbow and pulling them both to a stop. “You really need to learn how to pick your battles.”

“She’s a fucking liar, Draco!” Harry says. “She got up in front of a room full of students and fucking lied.”

“Yes, and well done expressing all your righteous indignation,” Draco replies, flat. “What did it earn you besides detention?”

Harry’s about to answer, when suddenly: “Potter.”

They both turn. It’s Vince, flanked by Greg and Theodore Nott, gripping his textbook hard against his chest, his face set in grim lines.

“You were there?” he asks. “You fought him?”

“Of course I did,” Harry answers at once. “So did Draco. I carried Fleur Delacour’s dead body out of the graveyard where he—!”

Draco grabs Harry’s shoulder hard enough to derail his rant. When Harry’s attention returns to Draco, he redirects it sharply back to Vince.

It forces Harry to actually look at him, to see the expression on his face and the tension in his shoulders: Vincent Crabbe is terrified.

It takes the wind out of Harry’s sails almost immediately.

“Vince,” Draco says, “did you talk to your dad at all?”

“Shit,” Harry whispers, voice suddenly heavy with the realization of what his anger had brought up in his classmates.

“I… no,” Vince answers after a long, thick silence. “He didn’t… he was wounded, when I came home at the end of term, but he didn’t say…”

“My father was there, too,” Draco tells him. “He was the one who cast the spell that brought Voldemort back.”

Vince’s face crumples further. Behind him, Greg and Theo exchange a horrified look.

Slowly, Draco scans the hallway. All the other Slytherins in their year are forming a wide circle around them, wearing expressions that are, by turns, frightened, sad, conflicted, and angry.

“I know this is scary,” Draco tells them. “I know it’s not easy to confront the reality that your parents are complicit in murder.”

“Fleur Delacour was a half-breed,” Theo suddenly snaps. He’s trying for fury, but there’s a tremble in his voice that betrays his terror.

“And so, what,” Harry snaps back, “that means it’s okay to murder her?”

“I—my father—”

“Your father nearly killed your Transfiguration professor in that graveyard!” Harry says. “She went in, wand blazing, to defend Draco’s life, and he tried to kill her!”

“It’s what they deserve!” Theo says, frantic.

“Is it what I deserve, Nott?” Harry says, getting very, very close. “Or do you forget my mother was a Muggle-born witch? Voldemort certainly didn’t! He’s the one that fucking killed her!”

“I,” Theo says, as he starts to tremble.

“If you’re going to take the side of a murderer, then at least have the courage of your conviction,” Harry growls. “I’m a half-blood, Theo. Do I deserve the same fate as Fleur Delacour? Does Snape? He’s half-blood, too!”

“Theo,” Draco says, “do you actually believe what you’re saying?”

Theo doesn’t answer. He’s breathing hard, shoulders heaving, but he doesn’t say a word.

“Do any of you actually believe the rubbish your parents force-fed you?” Draco asks, turning his eyes out to the crowd that’s formed around them. “Or have you just never been allowed the opportunity to believe anything else?

“This isn’t some abstract concept we’re talking about. When your parents carry on about purity of blood, this is what they mean. They believe that people deserve to die because of something they can’t change, that they didn’t choose, and some of them are willing to act on it.”

Draco looks around, frantic, at the faces of his classmates, his heart thundering in his throat. They’re all so young. So young and so scared. No one’s ever talked like this to them, Draco knows. No one ever talked to Draco like this.

“You’re better than that, aren’t you?” Draco asks, not quite sure if the question is hypothetical. “Aren’t you?”

The silence that follows feels like it lasts a thousand years.

“Yeah,” Blaise says suddenly, dark eyes brighter than Draco has ever seen them. “Yeah, we fucking are.”

He breaks away from the edge of the circle and claps Harry hard on one shoulder. The relieved smile that appears on Harry’s face lights up the whole hallway. He claps Blaise’s shoulder back.

“We are better than that,” Blaise says. “We’re Slytherins, for Christ’s sake! What do we care about following the rules?”

Suddenly, Pansy lurches out of the crowd and throws her arms around Draco, who staggers as the wind, and a delirious laugh, is knocked out of him. Eyes suddenly burning, he hugs her back, buries his face in her dark hair.

“I’m with you, Harry,” Greg says, a little shyly, and a little nervously. “I… I’m scared, but I’m with you.”

“It’s okay to be scared, mate,” Harry assures him. “It’s scary, what’s going on. You’d have to be mad to not be scared.”

“But,” Vince suddenly intones, “but what do we do? It’s one thing to say it, but how do we really… how can we actually…”

Harry’s green eyes sweep the hallway, taking stock. Draco watches as the shadow of an idea forms, and as a delineated timeline slowly begins to compensate:

“First things first,” he eventually says. “We need to get some actual Defense Against the Dark Arts education.”

“I don’t think Snape wants an army,” Draco says.

“Well, he can die mad about it,” Harry answers.

When Harry had explained to Snape a week after their first class with Umbridge that he wanted to teach his fellow classmates actual defensive magic, Snape had called him a big-headed idiot, told him that he was courting danger, and then agreed to let him use a disused dungeon classroom to host the meetings. It was Snape’s way, in Draco’s experience, to do the right thing as snarlingly as possible.

“Congratulations on making the Quidditch team, by the way,” Harry continues after a moment of silence in which they both watch the small handful of Slytherins practice curses and countercurses at each other.

“You won’t be so happy to have me when you find out what a rubbish Chaser I am,” Draco returns.

“Be as self-deprecating as you like, Draco, but I was actually paying attention at the tryouts,” Harry says. “You’ve got a good arm.”

Draco almost says, It wasn’t my arm you were staring at.

“Oy, Greengrass!” Blaise barks. “Stop making cow eyes at Potter and actually try to hit me!”

On the other side of the room, Daphne goes red as a beet and spins on a heel so her back is to Harry, and so she can hiss something indistinct back at Blaise.

“I think she really does fancy you,” Draco remarks.

“Well, then, she’s in for disappointment.”

Draco gives Harry a sidelong look. “Don’t tell me you’re not into girls at all,” Draco says. “My gaydar has never been that bad.”

“Girls are great,” Harry replies evenly. “But as long as I’ve been at Hogwarts, I’ve only been keen on one person, and it’s not Daphne Greengrass.”

Draco takes a long, slow, deep breath.

Then he pushes off the wall he’d been leaning against and heads out of the classroom.

Harry follows, of course, though not before barking a quick “Keep going, you lot!” at the others. Draco makes it all the way to the stairs leading out of the dungeon before Harry catches up with him.

“Are we just going to pretend I don’t, then?” Harry calls after him, voice edged with anger.

“I can’t keep doing this with you,” Draco says, almost too quietly to be heard.

But Harry hears, of course. “There’s an easy way to stop it! There always has been!”

Draco keeps walking. Harry keeps pace.

“Just tell me you don’t want me,” he says, voice ruined. “Just tell me that the way I feel about you is one-sided. It’ll hurt like hell, but at least I’ll be able to pick up the pieces and move on.”

Harry darts in front of him, blocking his path, and meets Draco’s eyes, a direct challenge: say it.

And Draco would say it, if he thought he could lie well enough. It would certainly make this whole situation less agonizing for both of them.

But, of course—

“You can’t,” Harry says. “Because that last day before the Third Task—”

Draco pushes past him, frantic tears threatening behind his eyes.

“—you told me that if it were only about what you wanted, you’d never be parted from me, and I’ve been fucking ruined ever since!”

“You don’t know,” Draco hisses as he moves.

“Because you refuse to tell me!”

Up and up and through and around all corners of the castle. In the distance, Peeves cackles and sends something clattering to the floor. Draco doesn’t even know where he’s going. I was a Death Eater. I was a Death Eater.

“Because you keep repeating the same ominous bullshit about how you’re secretly a monster, when time after time I’ve watched you be the best, most courageous, most selfless person in this entire fucking castle. You fight so hard, every time, you risk your life to do the right thing, and then you expect me to believe there’s something rotten in your soul?”

“You don’t know,” Draco snarls, “you don’t know. How do you still not know? How have you not worked it out?”

Suddenly, Draco realizes where he’s going: the Room of Requirement. It’s as good a place as any. He needs to hear Needle’s familiar hum, needs to do some math to distract himself from how much this conversation is going to destroy them both. I was a Death Eater. I was a Death Eater.

“Just tell me,” Harry cries, and he sounds like he’s begging. “Because there’s nothing—”

I was a Death Eater. I was a Death Eater. I was a Death Eater.

“—in this world or the next that could make me stop loving—”

“I was a Death Eater!”

He doesn’t even realize he’s said it out loud till he hears it echo physically off the walls and not just inside his own head.

Harry’s expression changes. It is the worst thing Draco’s ever had to witness.

“How is this a surprise? How have you not worked it out through sheer fucking context?” Draco is screaming, voice thready and hysterical. “We weren’t rivals in the original timeline, Harry, we were enemies!”

Harry opens his mouth, says nothing.

“I took the Dark Mark at sixteen, I fought for the monster who killed your parents, and it took me nearly two fucking years to even realize I’d made a mistake, never mind that I—!”

It’s getting harder for him to talk, to breathe, to stand, to even see. Everything hurts. Everything hurts.

“And now you know!” Draco cries. “Now you finally see the rot in my soul! Now you understand why I refuse your advances—because I will never deserve you, no matter how courageous or selfless I am, how hard I fight or how often I risk my life, because there’s too much red in my fucking ledger, Harry! It’ll never be enough!

“So please,” he sobs, “just—just pick someone else. Anyone else. Someone who’s not too old and too broken and too fucking rotten for you. You deserve the world and I can’t give you that!”

Draco turns and storms through the door to the Room of Requirement, finally appeared, and a few things happen, very quickly, one after the other:

First, Draco sees Needle. It is big and blue and screaming with energy, so loud that he can hear nothing else, so bright that it blinds him.

Second, Harry says, “Draco,” from behind him, in a soft, aching voice. His hand reached out to grasp Draco’s arm.

And third, Draco feels the all-too-familiar tug, and lurch, and swallowing brightness of Needle forcibly dragging him through space and time.

Chapter Text

Draco lands hard on his hands and knees. Before he even knows where he is, when he is, he is aware of a single truth: something is wrong.

In fact, everything is wrong. The colors are all muted, the sounds all deadened—the air itself feels somehow too heavy, too thick, settling on his skin like a quilt. Draco can barely breathe.

What’s happening? It’s Harry’s voice, but it’s not. It echoes unnaturally, and there’s no breath behind it. The words are not so much spoken as they just are.

“Harry,” Draco says, very carefully, “whatever you do, do not let go of me.”

His hand is still there, or at least he thinks it is—he can feel the heat and the pressure on his right forearm, but can’t see it.

I can’t see you, Harry’s frantic words echo. I can’t see anything.

“I think—” Nausea lurches up through Draco’s chest. “I think you’re quantum locked.”

What does that mean? Then, agonized: Fuck, my head hurts.

Draco cannot remember a time, despite having lived through a war, when he has been more scared than he is now. This is infinitely worse than the last time Needle had displaced him. Harry must have been just far enough out of the field that would fully pull him through, and—

“I can fix this,” Draco says, unsure if he’s trying to convince Harry or himself. “I just need—I need—”

“Abraxas?”

The only reason Draco reacts is because the voice is so stark, the only sound in a dark hallway.

And it is the same hallway Draco had been in—displaced in time, perhaps, but not in space, not this time—just outside the hidden door to the Room of Requirement. Save for a few superficial changes in the decor and the suddenly daylit windows (and also the terrifying, unignorable wrongness that bleeds into every sense brought on by a partially botched temporal displacement), it is remarkably similar.

It takes Draco a moment to recognize the name—

“Abraxas, is that you?”

Abraxas Malfoy, Draco’s insufferably French, mercifully dead paternal grandfather, who had attended Hogwarts pour me retrouver mes racines anglaises,^[1] he’d wheezily told an eight-year-old Draco, before launching into an unbearably boring explanation about how the first Malfoy to leave France had done so with William the Conqueror and the family had been going back and forth ever since, but it had been several generations on the continent when he’d made the decision to open up that old Wiltshire estate of theirs again, and ah, mon petit dragon fier, tu me ressembles tellement quand j’avais ton âge—^[2]

“What are you doing on the floor?”

Abraxas Malfoy, close personal confidante to Lord Voldemort and one of the first to take the Dark Mark—

Draco has to force himself to look up, because he knows exactly who’s waiting for him.

His first thought is: He is twice as handsome as a maniac has any right to be.

Because truly, a sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle is stunning. Dark hair and eyes that create a perfect contrast to his pale, cool-toned skin, an aristocratic nose, long limbs in perfect proportion. Even with all the muted colors and muffled sounds, he is somehow crystal clear, like an aurora against a dark sky.

“You’re not Abraxas,” Riddle says slowly. His hands are clasped behind his back

Who is that? Harry asks. Riddle gives no indication that he can hear him.

“You look so much like him… a brother, perhaps? What is…”

Riddle crouches down in front of Draco, who feels like he can barely breathe. He bends forward and studies Draco intensely—

No, not Draco, the magic around him. Draco hears himself start to wheeze, feels his shoulders start to tremble. Memories of that horrible graveyard come back to him as though echoing out of an abyss—where is my brand, Draco Malfoy?

“Well, well, well,” Riddle says, “what have we here?”

Fuck, Draco, my… I feel like my head is going to split apart.

Riddle reaches out. Draco scrambles backward. Harry’s invisible grip on his arm goes with him, and Draco hears him release a shout of pain—

—which forces Draco to once again go careening, this time flat onto his back.

Everything is still muffled and muted, but all of Draco’s senses hone in on the grip, now vise-like, on his right arm. His vision swims back into focus—he’s in a great, dark library that he doesn’t recognize. Huge bookshelves loom over him like trees.

“Harry,” he wheezes, “Harry, are you—?”

Fuck, is Harry’s desperate, agonized answer. Draco, my headaches have never been this bad, I feel—ah!—like I’m dying, like—

“You.”

Draco can’t quite contain the desperate whine of fear.

When he forces his eyes to open, Riddle is once again standing over him. He’s older, perhaps in his early twenties, leaner and paler and sharper, with a book tucked under one arm.

Fifty years of anticipation…

“We simply must stop meeting like this.”

“No,” Draco grinds out. It’s linked to Harry’s scar, clearly—but how? If Draco can just trace the magic backwards and force a countercurse, he might be able to—

“The night after I first saw you, I spoke with Abraxas. He has one sister, but no brothers.”

Riddle leans down. Draco’s hand fumbles for his wand, still tucked in his sleeve.

“But I am intimately familiar with the details of his body,” Riddle continues, and wow, does Draco not want to confront whatever that implies, “and I know a Malfoy when I see one. Who are you?”

“Don’t let go,” Draco hisses, hoping Harry hears him, and pulls—

—and then lands again, on his side. The floor under him is wood, which Draco can barely perceive. Everything around him further out than a few feet is muddled and gray, a howling staticky void. Time and space, he realizes with numb terror, are starting to break down.

From a distance Draco cannot see, voices carry: “The seventh month? July?”

“Or the beginning of August.”

“Harry,” Draco wheezes, barely, “are you still with me?”

Harry doesn’t answer—not with words, at least. Draco can detect a horrible moan of pain.

It will have to be enough. Draco keeps talking.

“It’s your scar, Harry,” he says. “And—and Needle, somehow, and maybe something else. It’s locked you partially outside of reality. I’m the only thing anchoring you back to it, and I keep getting displaced in time—”

"Two of those Muggle-loving harlots from the Order recently went into hiding. I suspect it’s because they fell pregnant. If Dumbledore knows, surely so do they.”

Draco, Harry says, frantic with pain, I can’t… it hurts so much, I…

“I’m going to get you out,” Draco says. “Okay? I just need—”

Draco grabs for the hand still gripping his arm, which he can’t see. But he can feel it there, an invisible resistance against Draco’s touch, pulsing and fluttering unnaturally against his skin.

“Can you feel me? Can you feel that?”

I… yes. I can…

“Good. That means I should be able to trace your magic backward to get to you. From there, I might be able to get us back to our timeline together.”

Draco’s assurances are right on the edge of lies. Doing even one of the things he’d mentioned would be theoretically possible at best, but both of them? Draco can only console himself with the fact that he must do this, because if he doesn’t, Harry is going to die.

“Just hold my hand,” Draco whispers. “I’ll get us back.” He has to. He has to.

As he feels without seeing Harry’s fingers intertwine with his own, as he produces his wand from his sleeve and muttering long lines of Latin. In another situation, he’d have days, weeks, years to come up with the specific structure of the spell, but now he has only the time and resources for instinct and an innate understanding of physics.

Then: “No.”

From the horrible, staticky nothingness that surrounds him, an arm emerges, long and lean and white. It reaches out for Draco and grabs him, hard, by the left forearm.

The pain comes even before the pressure, a searing heat—but no, not heat, cold, the kind of cold that’s so intense and abrupt that it feels like fire. In a split second, it saps all the heat from Draco’s shoulder to his fingertips.

Draco screams.

He tries to wrench around, to scramble away, but that horrible icy grip tightens even further. The pain is unbearable, so intense that Draco can barely see, can barely think—it destroys every thought, ten Cruciatus Curses all at once, centralized and concentrated as a riming frostbite on his arm.

Draco!

“Not again. Not again.”

He doesn’t know where in Riddle’s timeline they’ve landed in this displacement, but he has not aged well. He’s gained his infamous white pallor, and those eyes, once dark and beautiful, have taken on a blood red tinge.

“I’m not letting you go again,” he snarls.

Draco scampers backward. Voldemort advances.

“I know what you are,” he hisses at Draco. “I know where you come from. Tell me what you know. Tell me!”

His whole body is shaking from the pain. Scattered thoughts of temporal fraying tumble through his mind, disconnected. He’s so badly displaced that even interacting on a physical level with the world around him is causing fraying. Time, space, even matter is breaking down.

When Draco doesn’t answer his question, Voldemort raises his wand. Draco, whose wand is already in his hands, knocks him back a few steps with a sharp, “Relashio!”

It’s just enough to send him back through the oppressive wall of nothingness. Draco stares down at his arm.

A hideous, hand-shaped scar of rough white skin encircles his left forearm. It hurts so much that Draco can barely focus on anything else. His whole body is shaking with agony.

Draco! Draco!

And for Harry, he bites down on it, draws on reserves of strength he did not know he had, and turns back toward him.

“Hang on,” Draco rasps, voice ruined with pain, “don’t let go.”

He pulls on his magic and with a tremendous rip—

—he is swallowed by darkness. By silence.

He can still feel the pain, thudding through his brachial artery and radiating down his spine. Not that he has either of those things anymore, in the strictest sense. They’re phantom pains, echoes of matter clinging together on the threads of his magic. He barely has a body at all. He is quantum locked.

And in front of him, a familiar voice-not-voice echoes.

Draco…

Draco swallows. I’m here. In some sort of sense, anyway.

Hands, grasping through darkness. They find Draco’s effortlessly, grasp tightly. Even outside space and time, untethered to reality, as though pulled by gravity, Draco finds Harry.

My head doesn’t hurt anymore. By the feeling that tremors through the thought, Harry’s not sure if it’s a good thing.

I don’t know if I can get us out of here, Draco confesses.

A beat of silence. The hands in Draco’s grip tighter, a firm and insistent pressure in an otherwise black abyss.

The magic alone is so complicated, but the power it would require to break a temporal quantum lock… I just don’t have that kind of strength.

A new pressure against Draco’s forehead. Something like a breath ghosts against something like Draco’s mouth.

Then it will have been a privilege to die at your side.

Draco grabs hard at him, finding something like a shoulder, a neck, the thick purchase of his hair. He wishes desperately he could see him, just for a moment—the green eyes, the dark hair, the strong line of his jaw.

[ by @itsphantasmagoria on tumblr ]

If this is my last chance to say it, Harry begins, Draco, I—I’m in love with you. You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted, and I think the only one I can.

Draco would laugh if he could.

And if this is my last chance to say it, Draco answers, I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen.

You’re fifteen.

I’m not, Draco replies, and kisses him as best as he can with only the barest definition of a physical form.

And it’s not a kiss, not really. There’s just not enough matter between them, outside of reality like they are. Their bodies are only semicorporeal, and it feels less like a physical interaction and more like a melding, like the atoms that comprise them shrug off the fundamental rules of the physics and slide through and between each other. Like their very souls are joining.

There is so much love there waiting for Draco. He can feel it in Harry as an extension of his own being. Love, and light, and strength.

The wheels in Draco’s head begin to turn.

Draco doesn’t have the strength necessary to cast this spell. Harry might.

And if the laws of physics don’t apply as strictly as they used to, Draco might just be able to cast it with Harry’s magic.

Do you trust me? Draco asks him.

With my whole soul, Harry answers, unhesitating, all helpless honesty. With every drop of blood in my body.

Draco’s heart twists. He grips whatever part of Harry his semiphysical hands can reach.

Don’t let go, he says, and casts a spell.

Chapter Text

Quite to Draco’s surprise, he wakes up.

The familiar sights and smells of the Hospital Wing come to him piecemeal, one after the other. By the time he has enough to understand where he is, the first thing that rises to his mind—

“Harry?”

His voice is rough and dry. He sits up, with difficulty, forces down the pain screaming through his head and down his spine enough to look around, where, laid out on the bed beside him—

“Harry.”

He’s asleep or unconscious. Or maybe dead. Please don’t let him be dead.

Draco lurches toward him, an ill-advised instinct: his legs cannot support his weight, and he collapses onto his knees on the floor at his bedside.

Before he even realizes what he’s doing, his hand is in Harry’s. He grips hard, the pad of his thumb moving across his wrist till he finds the radial pulse, where flickering under his skin…

“Thank Merlin,” he whispers. He’s alive. Harry’s alive.

Draco collapses forward, his forehead pressing into the sleeve covering Harry’s bicep. He keeps his thumb just there, over the steady rhythm that proves he is alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

“Mr. Malfoy, you just keep getting yourself into trouble.”

He looks back, despite the aching protest in his back. Madame Pomfrey is striding over, wand in hand.

“Is he—” Draco swallows. “Is he all right? Will he—?”

“He’ll recover. So far as I can tell, there’s nothing physically wrong with either of you, save for severe depletion of your magical reserves. What sort of spell did Mr. Potter cast, if I may ask? It took nearly everything out of him.”

He stares up at her, dazed. The answer to her question would take ages to get through, and maybe violate causality.

“When… how long were we out?” he asks instead.

“A few days,” she returns. “You’ll have some homework to make up. And one of Mr. Potter’s detentions with Professor Umbridge.”

Relief shivers, a rush so powerful it nearly makes Draco dizzy. Somehow, despite everything, the improvised spell had done exactly as intended: they’re back in 1995.

“I should talk to Professor Snape,” he says. “He needs to know… I need to explain…”

“I’ll summon him,” Pomfrey answers. “He gave me instructions to notify him, anyway, when either of you woke.”

Draco nods. He doesn’t even know where to begin in explaining what happened, but supposes he’ll have to figure it out.

“Before I go, Mr. Malfoy, one more question.”

He looks up. Madame Pomfrey has crouched down at his side and gently taken his left hand in hers. When she rolls down the pajama sleeve—

(Draco’s shocked breath in is so sharp that it feels like a knife down his throat.)

—she reveals a hideous hand-shaped mark, rough white scar tissue completely circling his forearm.

“What is this?” she asks.

Where is my brand, Draco Malfoy?

Frantic horror creeps through his bones. Is there no possible timeline in which Draco can escape Voldemort’s mark?

“I…” Draco begins, then falters, then starts over. “I need to talk to Professor Snape.”

Draco has a shower and changes. By the time he’s in the Headmaster’s office, he feels something resembling human again.

Harry is still unconscious, which he tries to remind himself is to be expected. Draco had to use a nuclear bomb’s worth of magical energy to break out of that quantum lock. Even for Harry, who apparently has a nuclear bomb of magic in him—a reality that Draco has neither the time nor energy to confront—it needs time to replenish.

“So this is the ‘brand’ he was referring to,” Dumbledore says the second Draco shows him his arm.

“It’s called a retrocausal puncture,” Draco says. “I’ve experienced the effects of this mark before I even got it.”

“I dislike that he’s managed to brand you twice in two timelines,” Snape says.

“It’s marginally better than the Dark Mark,” is Draco’s grim assessment.

Professor Snape says nothing, but his expression is complicated and significant in a way that Draco can’t quite place.

Draco rolls his shirt sleeve back down. “I don’t think I can overstate,” he says, “just how significant this is.”

“In what way?” Dumbledore asks.

“All this time, I’ve been acting on the presumption that I’m the only one with foreknowledge of the future,” Draco says, “and all this time, Voldemort has had it, too. Not to the same degree, perhaps, but he’s been acting based on the fact that I’ve lived through the War once before.

“It makes everything else make sense. Key events changed just enough to keep me off-balance. My father gave the diary to Harry, not Weasley. Crouch was posing as Krum, not Moody. I was the Triwizard Champion, not Diggory. It’s the kind of plan someone would come up with if they knew their enemy would be able to anticipate their first instinct.”

“So,” Snape interjects from where he leans against Dumbledore’s desk, arms folded over his chest, “in practical terms, what does this mean?”

Draco leans forward, arms resting on his knees. For the first time in such a long time, he is resolved by hope instead of bleak duty. It vibrates just under his skin and sings in his blood.

“It means,” Draco says, “that he and I are on equal footing now. It means I can act against him with all the knowledge I’ve kept to myself.”

“You’re willing to strategize with the Order?” Dumbledore asks, eyebrows raised.

Draco shakes his head. “No, nothing that significant. A paradox is still a real threat for anyone who doesn’t have knowledge of the future. All I’ve discovered is that Voldemort is no longer on that list.”

Draco is thinking, quite significantly, of the Department of Mysteries—his father’s failure, which landed him in Azkaban, forced Draco to take the Mark, and killed Sirius Black.

And he’s also thinking about Horcruxes.

“I can’t say much,” Draco says, “but you can believe me when I tell you this: I’ve just become a much more valuable weapon in your arsenal.”

That night, Draco writes a list with the same invisible ink the Department of Mysteries required him to use whenever working on any project above clearance level five, visible only to the hand that writes it:

• Diary: follow up with Severus about halberd
• Ring: Dumbledore had it—when?
• Locket: stolen by Regulus Black(?)—where? (ask Sirius, search Grimmauld?)
• Cup: Bella’s vault—this one is going to be a nightmare
• Diadem: Room of Requirement—snake face might have moved this one if he’s smart
• Nagini: ugh
• Others(?): the Golden Trio were on the run for a long time
• Harry

Draco’s frustrated, both by the limits of his memory and his knowledge. He’d never been part of the real inner circle of Death Eaters, and doubts even his most loyal knew about his Horcruxes. Everything Draco recalls is from context, from watching other, more important people do other, more important things—some of them, even from rumors whispered in those first few horrible months after the Battle of Hogwarts.

“You’re still up?”

Draco looks over, then starts when he sees who it is that’s just entered the otherwise empty Slytherin common room. He hadn’t recognized the roughened voice at first.

“Harry,” Draco says, and rises up off the divan in front of the fire.

He looks terrible—paler than he should be, his hair even more of a disaster than usual—but something resembling a smile lights his face up when Draco crosses the room to get to him.

Draco’s instinct is to touch him. An embrace, a grip of the hand, something. He resists, stopping awkwardly a few feet away and wringing his hands together.

Their conversation in the quantum lock is replaying in Draco’s head.

“Hi,” Harry says.

“Hi,” Draco answers.

An unbearable silence stretches.

“You, er,” Draco begins after a lapse, “how are you feeling?”

“Pretty shit, if I’m honest,” Harry replies. “Pomfrey says that’s normal. Apparently I cast some big magic?”

“Technically, I cast some big magic. I just used your energy to do it. I didn’t have the strength to do it on my own.”

“Right,” Harry says slowly, in that way he does when Draco goes on about temporal physics, where he just smiles and nods and doesn’t really follow. “Well, she called it severe magical depletion, said I was lucky it wasn’t traumatic magical depletion, and told me not to cast any sort of spell for another week.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Draco agrees. “It took a lot to break the quantum lock. I’m still working through the fact that it was possible at all.”

Silence stretches once again. It’s worse this time, somehow.

“I, er,” Draco falters, staring down at his feet.

“I don’t care,” Harry interjects. It makes Draco look up sharply.

“What?”

“I don’t care,” Harry continues. “That you were a Death Eater. I don’t care.”

Draco opens his mouth, shuts it.

“In fact, I’m… honestly, I’m kind of grateful, if you can believe that. Not that you took the Mark, or that you willingly conspired with Voldemort, or that you feel so guilty about it, I… I’m glad that all of that bad made you into the person that you are now.”

“Harry,” Draco says, very quietly.

“Because that person, the person you are now, is incredible. Draco, you’re incredible. You’re brilliant and brave and I meant every word of what I said in that—what did you call it? Quantum lock?”

“Harry,” Draco says again, a little less quietly. His eyes are starting to burn.

“I’m in love with you, Draco Malfoy,” he says, and it hurts, hurts to hear, hurts to acknowledge, like a little shard of glass burying in Draco’s heart. “I don’t know how not to love you.”

Absurdly, Draco is angry. Why can’t Harry just agree to hate him, like Draco hates himself, like he deserves? Why does it hurt so much to be confronted with the contrary?

“The future you lived through,” Harry says, and oh, his hands are on Draco’s face, and the tears in his eyes break their banks and spill down across Harry’s fingers, “it only exists in your mind, and based on what I know of it, that’s probably for the best. All that red in your ledger, Draco, you’re literally erasing it.”

“That’s not how it works,” Draco finally says in a broken, wrecked voice. “A second chance doesn’t remove culpability. I hated. I conspired. I tortured. I don’t get a free pass because I tripped and fell backwards into a temporal rift.”

“Who said anything about a free pass? I’ve watched you work for your redemption for five years now, Draco. If you can’t believe in yourself, believe me. Do you trust me to know good from bad?”

Draco shudders out a breath as Harry swipes his thumb across Draco’s cheeks, smearing the track of his tears. He wants to say something sarcastic—Far be it from me to preach to the Savior about the nature of goodness—but he can’t manage it. He feels like he’s hurtling toward the edge of something, and it’s all he can do to hold on lest he lose himself to it. He reaches up, grips Harry’s wrists. Under Draco’s hand, the phoenix flaps its wings, dragonfire streaming from its feathers.

“Then trust me when I tell you,” Harry continues, “that in this timeline, in this universe, you are good. Perfect. And I loved you before I had the words to say it, before I even knew what love was.”

Draco sobs, once, and surrenders. Harry finally closes the gap between him and presses his mouth against Draco’s, warmth and surety with an edge of desperation.

Harry is his soulmate, even if he is not Harry’s. This will break him one day, he’s sure—when Harry comes to his senses, or Draco fucks it up somehow, or Harry finds someone better—but he’s resisted so hard for so long, and he is so in love with Harry that it hurts.

And this kiss is certainly the balm for all that pain. His hands come to rest on Harry’s chest as Harry’s tangle in Draco’s hair. He is still mystifyingly good at kissing—all soft, slow, deliberate movements, like he means to commit every instant to memory. Draco is left breathless by it, by the sweet, shy intrusion of Harry’s tongue, by the way, when Draco melts forward against him, Harry is encouraged enough to slide his arms around Draco’s waist, draw him in, and bite hungrily at his lower lip.

Merlin, how did he get so good at kissing? It beggars belief. Has Harry had practice, or is it good because it’s Harry, his soulmate, and Draco is literally incapable of preferring any kiss over his?

“Fucking Merlin, finally.”

Draco springs three feet backward. Coming out from the door leading into the boys’ dormitories is Blaise, in a dressing gown and slippers, obviously on his way to the loo.

“Christ, Zabini,” Harry groans, “could you not have waited another minute? I’ve been trying to snog Draco properly for ages now.”

“If a minute was all you needed, he’s better off with someone else, mate,” Blaise says, and strides imperiously past. “If either of you see Pansy before I do, tell that bitch she owes me ten galleons.”

“So, what, you’re official now?” Westy asks the next day, outside Truss’s office.

“I guess?” Draco answers. “I mean—is this weird? It feels weird. He’s fifteen.”

“So are you,” Westy returns, perplexed.

“I’m not though, am I? I’m physically fifteen, but I have the memories of a thirty-four-year-old. I’ve—you know—paid taxes and rented a flat and had a job and woken up with back pain—”

“Back pain?” Westy repeats with a laugh.

“Adult shit, Westy. There’s a huge experiential gap between us!”

“There’s a huge experiential gap between all partners in every relationship,” Westy replies mildly. “Every person contains multitudes. He doesn’t know what it’s like to wake up with back pain, but you don’t know what it’s like to be an orphan destined to kill the Dark Lord, do you?”

Draco frowns.

“Look,” she continues after the visible hesitation, “what makes relationships with an age gap dubious isn’t chronology, it’s power. Usually, when someone much older gets involved with someone much younger, the older one has authority over the younger one, whether it’s social or monetary or emotional. But that’s not the case with you two, is it? For how big that experiential gap is, in the end, you’re both still in school, both underage in the legal sense—which is the only way it matters in the real world—and neither one of you has authority over the other. You’re on equal footing.”

Draco sighs. He can’t find fault in her argument, which is frustrating, because Draco can’t shake the feeling that something about this fledgling relationship is still bad somehow.

Before he can think on it much longer, Truss comes around the corner, stormy.

“That’s my cue,” Westy says, peeling herself off the wall. “Good luck with her, mate.”

She’s out of sight before Truss makes it to Draco. His boss’s expression would make—and has made—weaker men quake.

“Inside,” Truss says at once. Draco frowns and follows her into her office.

The Unspeakable-in-Chief is the head of the Department of Mysteries, and fourth in line to take over the duties of the Minister of Magic, should something happen to them and the other three after them. Though the role is in no way public-facing—due primarily to the fact that so much of the work the Department does is shrouded in secrecy—the political power of Truss’s position cannot be understated. She is one of the most powerful figures in the Ministry.

Which is why it had always surprised Draco that her office was so inauspicious. It could barely even qualify as an office at all—by size, it was closer to a rather roomy broom closet. It had no windows and a single light hanging from the ceiling, the tiny space dominated by a huge mahogany desk that was incongruous against the plain plaster walls and concrete floor.

“So that’s twice now your little pet project has backfired,” Truss says.

“In my defense,” Draco answers, “the displacement was much less destabilizing this time.”

“Mr. Malfoy, I had to shut down the Apparation Gate at three o’clock in the morning because one of the house-elves coming through to clean nearly got tossed through to the late Jurassic period!”

Draco opens his mouth, shuts it. Then, slowly: “How… did the house-elf know it—?”

“She was nearly killed by a dinosaur, Mr. Malfoy. A pterodactyl saw her and tried to dive through Needle to eat her.”

That is, objectively, very bad, but Draco can’t help but find the idea of a house-elf being divebombed by a dinosaur to be extremely funny. He bites hard on his tongue to keep himself from laughing.

“We need to talk about shutting Needle down,” Truss says.

“Ms. Truss, I know this volatility is unsettling—”

“Unsettling isn’t the word I’d use, Mr. Malfoy!”

“—but I’m so close to understanding what caused the initial displacement! If I can just isolate the variable energy source that caused it to destabilize, imagine what we could learn about the structure of time!”

“Physicists,” Truss sighs, with the inflection of a curse.

“Keep the Apparation Gate shut down,” Draco says. “I’ll send my reports by owl till I’m able to bring it back under control. I’ll arrange to have the whole wing cordoned off, so no wayward students stumble into it. I can do this, Ms. Truss, I know I can—I just need time!”

“I’ll remind you that you’ve had, arguably, half a lifetime of extra time than you’re owed, Mr. Malfoy.”

“Yes, yes, very droll,” Draco says, then braces both hands on the edge of her desk and leans toward her. “Brass tax, Ms. Truss. If you didn’t think I was capable of doing this, you wouldn’t have hired me on.”

Truss stares at Draco, hard and long and searching, until eventually she deflates, sinking back into her desk chair.

“Fine,” she says. “Fine. But I want those reports thorough, Mr. Malfoy. And I’m having Wilkes audit them, and the second she judges it too dangerous—”

“On my honor,” Draco assures her.

“And Merlin help you if it hurts someone,” she adds, pointing an accusatory finger at him, “because it’ll be on your head.”

Darling,

I admit, the subject of your letter took me a little off-guard. My mother’s instinct insists that you’re far too young to be romantically entangled with anyone—but with Harry Potter specifically? My qualms are not so much that he’s a boy (Severus was not the only one who noticed, my love), but rather that he is Harry Potter. The target on our backs as the Dark Lord fights his way to power will be big enough, dear. If you must date, surely you could choose someone slightly less conspicuous?

Oh, but perhaps I am too hard on you. You certainly seem hard enough on yourself, judging by your last correspondence. Were you in earnest when you said that you don’t think you’re enough for him? If I didn’t know any better, my dear, I’d say that you were looking for me to talk you out of your affections for him. Is that the case?

I grant that I haven’t much experience in matters of the heart, but I do know some things: the only reason you need to end a relationship is because you want to. It was a lesson I had to learn the hard way, with the dissolution of my marriage to your father. I tried to give myself every reason to stay, but in the end, I could no longer ignore the simple truth that I did not want to be with him anymore.

Is that what you want, my dear? To not be with him? If it is, I recommend a quick, clean break.

But I don’t think that is what you want. As much as I’m tempted to warn you off a relationship that is sure to be so fraught, I’ve seen how you are with him. The way you looked at him sometimes over that summer in Calais, so full of affection and admiration—you’re smitten, darling. It would take more effort not to notice.

I think you’re frightened—by the depth of your feelings, by the strength of them. I understand, dear, better than you think. Love can be like that sometimes: endless and powerful and uncompromising as the sea. My best advice to you is not to fight it so hard that you drown. If you relax, you’ll find you can easily float.

With love and worry,
Your doting mother

PS: Good luck with your Quidditch match, darling. And give your godfather my regards. I truly hope he’ll owl me soon.

When Draco appears in Severus’s office and immediately starts pacing back and forth in front of his desk, neither of them speak for quite some time.

But, eventually, Snape breaks the silence: “Can I help you with something, or are you just intent on wearing treads into my floor?”

“Everyone is fine with it,” Draco answers, irritated.

“With what?” Snape’s voice is circumspect, like he’s worried he might not want to hear the answer.

“With me and Harry! Blaise and Pansy and Vince and Greg, my own fucking mother, even Westy!”

Snape sighs heavily, flips his grading folio shut, and mutters something under his breath that sounds like Merlin preserve me.

So Draco keeps on talking: “They’re all acting like it’s fine and normal that the son of a Death Eater is romantically involved with the Boy-Who-Lived! Like they expected it!”

“Draco, everyone in this castle has been waiting for the two of you to get it over with for near on three years now,” Snape answers impatiently.

“But why? There’s nothing about this relationship—about his affection for me—that makes any sense! I’m over twice his age, for a start—”

“Draco, you were sent back in time. If you hold fast to that rule, you’ll never be involved with anyone.”

“—and that’s to say nothing of the fact that I’m nowhere near good enough for him—I’ve barely got a hold on my PTSD, I’m constantly grappling with my guilt and how much I fucking hate myself—”

“Yes, believe it or not, I’d noticed your psychological issues on my own. So has Potter, and yet he is not deterred.”

“—and he’s my—my—”

“Your what, Draco? I have quite a lot of grading to do before the Quidditch game tomorrow, and you should know better than most that I’m not the best person to turn to for romantic advice—”

“Expecto patronum!”

The dragon bursts from his wand in a blaze of silvery light. Behind him, Snape startles, stares as it makes a huge, broad arc around the perimeter of the room before eventually coming to rest on his desk.

Snape stares at it with a strange, wrecked expression.

“A Ukrainian Ironbelly,” he says quietly, after a very long pause.

“He’s my soulmate, Severus. I fell in love with him when he saved my life at seventeen and it’s never gone away, despite my best efforts. There will never be anyone else. And I saw his patronus in the original timeline, and it’s not a fucking phoenix. He is my soulmate, and I am not his.

“And he’s fifteen. He’s so sure that he’s going to love me forever, but when does that ever happen, realistically? If I let myself have this—if I love him, and then lose him, I… I don’t think I could ever…”

“So,” Snape says, “that’s what this is about.”

It’s cathartic to say it out loud—and painful, too, like severing a gangrenous limb. It’s agony, but at least it’s done. Perhaps Draco can finally heal—or, more likely, bleed to death here on the floor of his godfather’s office.

For a while, Draco stands in trembling silence, staring through tear-blurred vision at his patronus as it stretches its wings regally and blows a cone of silver fire into the air.

A hand appears on Draco’s shoulder. At some point, Snape had stood up and come around to the front of his desk.

“Draco,” he says, carefully, “the pain you fear—the agony of rejection and loss—it is the price of love. If it doesn’t have the power to hurt you, it’s not real.”

“How could I possibly go on?” Draco asks him, voice ruined with tears. “If I ever lost him, I—I—”

“You would find a way to carry on,” Snape says. Then: “Expecto patronum.”

Draco stares in thunderstruck silence as the silver doe lopes out from the end of his godfather’s wand and across the classroom. It comes to a stop, still and serene, and stares back at them with bottomless white eyes.

“I have some experience,” he says eventually, “with being on the unhappy end of an unrequited soulmate.”

Draco feels a faint quiver under his skin. He never realized—he’d never even considered—

“When I lost Lily,” Snape eventually continues, making great efforts to force out every word, “I thought I would die from the grief. Her rejection—my mistakes—had nearly done the job the first time, but finding her laid out on that floor, dead at the end of his wand—”

“Severus,” Draco whispers.

“I carried on,” Snape says, and dispels the patronus. “Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. It would have been a disservice to her memory to do anything less.

“And of course it ruined me, Draco. It was just as bad as you fear. But a Slytherin’s greatest virtue is tenacity. And though I was sure my heart had frozen solid, it didn’t. There was room for you, after all, wasn’t there?”

Draco swallows a lump in his throat when Severus rests a long-fingered hand in his hair.

“There’s room to heal after losing a soulmate,” Severus tells him. Then he stops talking for a moment and looks past Draco, like he’s realizing something profound. “There’s… room. For love. You can…”

The expression on Snape’s face is suddenly subsumed by a huge, inscrutable emotion.

“Severus,” Draco says again, cautiously.

“I,” he says, his dark eyes looking at something very far away. “I… I need to send an owl.”

Draco watches him leave through his office door. He cannot shake the feeling that something small but important has changed. This little knot of something, all tangled up in the fear and the guilt and the love—is it hope?

Is it hope? Is it hope?

“Another score for Slytherin! For those of you just joining us, that puts the tally at an incredible 180-30! The dynamic trio of Chasers—Adrian Pucey, Graham Montague, and newcomer Draco Malfoy—have been making short work of the Quaffle, folks! Gryffindor’s new Keeper, Ron Weasley, can’t keep up!”

“Malfoy reigns! Malfoy reigns! Malfoy reigns!”

When one of the Weasley twins sends a Bludger flying at Draco’s head, he barely dives out of the way in time to avoid it. Harry’s old Nimbus 2000 is great, but was designed for a Seeker—high speed, low traction. It’s been a struggle to accommodate.

Especially when that accommodation means—

“Fuck!” Draco cries. “Spinnet got the Quaffle!”

“Form up!” Greg bellows, and Vince falls in to pursue her.

“Gryffindor finally gets the Quaffle back,” Jordan intones, “but—what’s this? Slytherin captain and Seeker Harry Potter just went into a dive! Has he got the Snitch in his sights?”

“Dragonfire!” (Three stomps shake the pitch.) “Dragonfire!” (Three more, even louder.) “Whoa-oh-oh, Potter’s got dragonfire!”

Heart thudding in his throat, Draco’s gaze peels away from Spinnet. Harry is a streak of green and black hurtling toward the ground, one arm outstretched, dazzling, breathtaking, extraordinary.

Is it hope Draco’s feeling? Is it hope?

“Now’s not the time to get cow-eyed over your boyfriend, Malfoy!” Graham barks. “Eyes on the Quaffle!”

He forces himself to refocus. Vince hits the second Bludger to Greg, who catches it and sends it flying at Spinnet, who overcorrects in her evasion and flips—the Quaffle falls, Draco dives for it—

“Oh!” Jordan’s voice bellows. “A sneak attack by either Fred or George Weasley—Potter’s knocked off-course by a Bludger, and the Gryffindor Seeker is racing for the Snitch now, too! If she’s able to catch it, that would land it as a tie, and force a sudden death overtime!”

Draco’s blood is pounding in his ears. Quaffle under his arm, he wheels around and spurs the Nimbus as fast as it will go, wind whipping through his hair and robes—if he can come from below, force a knuckle ball up through the center post—

“Weasley—the Seeker, not the Beater—has the Snitch in sight, but—”

Draco pulls up hard on his broom, hurls the Quaffle—

(Is it hope? Is it hope?)

“—but—wait, Malfoy’s coming up from below, he—!”

—it sails just under Ron Weasley’s outstretched hand, and—

“He scores! 190-30 Slytherin! And—incredible! Weasley catches the Snitch not a second later, which—!”

“190-180 Slytherin!” someone screams.

The pitch detonates with sound.

Draco is near-on tackled off his broom by the force of Greg’s midair embrace—then again, when Adrian and Vince pile on. Draco laughs, breath heaving, as three hands all ruffle at his hair and thump at his back. In the background, a constant chorus of “Malfoy reigns!” thunders through the stands.

“Hey, Draco!”

He turns in time to see Harry, windswept and wild-eyed, racing up through the air toward him.

“D’you remember that time you told me you were a shit Chaser?” He has to shout to be heard. The grin on his face is so perfectly irresistible that Draco wants to taste it.

So he does.

Draco frees himself from his teammates and races over to meet him midair. As soon as he’s close enough, he hauls Harry forward by the front of his green Quidditch uniform into a kiss.

“Oh!” Jordan’s voice continues. “Well, I suppose the rumors going ’round the castle are true after all! Neither of them could ever do anything by halves, could they?”

Suddenly, Draco is spun around and dipped, absurdly, backward over his broom with Harry’s hand on the small of his back for leverage—it draws a startled laugh out of him, which Harry is quick to swallow up with a second kiss.

Draco doesn’t know how it will go between them. Maybe Harry and he will eventually part ways—statistically, they almost certainly will. Maybe it’ll wreck Draco for the rest of his life.

But maybe it won’t.

It’s hope, he knows, thrumming in the center of his chest. It’s tangled up with all his fear and guilt and love, but it’s real. And it’s more than he had before.

“God,” Harry says, helpless, as the kiss finally breaks, “I’ve got it so bad for you, Draco Malfoy. I can’t believe I finally have you.”

Still dipped backward, Draco can only stare up at Harry, dazzled by the sight of him, effervescent with joy, and so desperately, hopelessly in love.

“You always had me,” he says, a breathless but solemn oath, and kisses him again.

Chapter Text

“So, how did it go?”

“Not like I’d pictured a raid on the Ministry to go, to be perfectly honest.”

With Needle still on the fritz, Draco hadn’t been able to get to the Department of Mysteries till after term was out. He hadn’t found much reason for concern—and he had been looking. While Draco hadn’t been privy to the specifics of his father’s plans to recover the Prophecy, either the first time or the second, he does remember that it had ended with drawing Harry into the Department of Mysteries and his father’s subsequent arrest and imprisonment.

But the year had come and gone and there had been no attempt to lure Harry anywhere. Snape’s fledging army—a name he continues to despise—had never been tested, and Sirius Black was still very much alive.

Draco supposes he should count it as a victory, but it’s hard not to wonder, or worry, about what specific events delineated to cause such a fortuitous outcome. Time, after all, is a chaotic system.

“It was quite a stroke of luck that you thought to re-up the wards over the weekend,” Truss continues as they walk, “and that I just happened to be woken up by your owl right before they went off.”

Time is a chaotic system, but Draco is not above being a strange attractor.

“Yes,” he says, “lucky, lucky, lucky.”

Together, they pass into the Hall of Prophecy. In the chaos, three massive shelves had been overturned and several light fixtures blasted apart by misfired spells. The crime scene is still so new that the aurors are still circling, casting careful diagnostic spells and gathering evidence.

“Have all the prophecies been accounted for?” Draco asks, watching as a few house-elves, under auror supervision, carefully levitate one of the toppled shelves back to its proper position.

“Many were destroyed,” Truss says with a frown. “We’re doing what we can with the wreckage. It’ll take a while to know for sure.”

“Any prisoners taken?”

“Just one. The mastermind behind the operation. I think you might know him.”

“I know him,” Draco assures her, voice flat.

She eyes him briefly. “Are you going to visit him? He’s in holding downstairs awaiting transfer to Azkaban following his plea.”

Draco feels a prickling along the back of his neck. “I have nothing to say to him.”

“Sounds personal,” she answers, “but fine. You can read all about it in the auror’s report, I imagine.”

“Whenever they’re done with it,” Draco sighs. The DMLE is notoriously slow with paperwork, especially on big cases.

Draco bends down and picks up two halves of a fractured prophecy, the light inside extinguished. It feels, oddly, like an almost personal attack—this is Draco’s place now, and how dare Voldemort sully it with his presence—but he shakes the feeling off. It’s not productive.

“We should put new security protocols in place,” Truss says.

“We should,” Draco agrees. “And if you don’t mind, Ms. Truss, I’d like to pick your brain a bit on your chain of command.”

Truss raises an eyebrow at him. “My chain of command?”

“Say, as a random for-instance, that the next Minister of Magic is the puppet of a war criminal,” Draco continues, making Truss’s eyebrows arch all the higher. “To what extent would you be able to resist his authority?”

As much as Draco had been coming to like Starmantle Court—huge and empty as it is, Draco loves the large windows and beautiful environs—he finds himself going back to Grimmauld Place again and again over the summer. At first it’s strictly business, interrogating Kreacher and making a careful search of all the forgotten nooks and crannies of the ancient London rowhouse for signs of the hidden Horcrux, but eventually he is forced to admit that there are some other things drawing him over, too.

“Hey,” Harry says, collapsing beside Draco without preamble on the couch. “What are you reading?”

Draco glances up, biting back on a grin that threatens to swallow his entire face and burn through his soul. “Inheritance law,” he says.

“Sounds boring,” Harry answers; with one hand he plucks the thick tome out of Draco’s hands and tosses it onto the nearby coffee table, while with the other he grabs both of Draco’s legs and swings them across his lap. Draco laughs, briefly, before Harry dives forward and claims his mouth in a kiss. Draco’s hands, moving on their own, find themselves on the plains of Harry’s chest, fingertips curling into the soft fabric of his shirt as Harry’s tangle in Draco’s hair.

“Christ,” Harry eventually says into Draco’s mouth, “I love that I can just do that whenever I want now.”

Draco feels something melt in the center of his chest. On a certain level, Draco can’t believe that things have worked out this way—that this is real, that Harry Fucking Potter is so completely besotted with him that he relishes the ability to kiss Draco at will—and he finds he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. It can’t possibly continue like this, can it? It can’t be as simple as falling in love and being happy forever.

From behind: “Ah, young love.”

“Fuck off, Sirius,” Harry says without looking around. “I’m busy.”

“I can see that,” Sirius answers archly. He’s standing in the doorway between the sitting room and the dining room, a towel slung over one shoulder and a pot of tea levitating along at the end of his wand. “Busy corrupting your way through the Black family tree—first swaying Narcissa to blood egalitarianism, and now defiling her son? I’m impressed, honestly—”

“Sirius!” Harry laughs, finally turning around.

“—the best I ever did was Tonks, and she was halfway gone by the time I met her. All I managed was to get her interested in tattoos and booze.”

“Can you not see,” Harry says, with feigned outrage, “that I’m trying to snog my boyfriend?”

“Just remember to use protection.”

“Sirius!”

“I did teach you those charms for a reason—just because you’re both boys doesn’t mean accidents can’t happen, you know—old pureblood lines are rife with weird fertility curses—”

Harry throws a pillow at him, which Sirius deftly avoids with a step to one side.

“That’s what’s wrong with this new generation,” Sirius says with a chuckle, “no respect for their elders.” And then he passes through, levitating teapot in tow, into the kitchen where another Order member is waiting for him.

“Sorry about him,” Harry murmurs, glaring daggers into his back all the way out.

Draco laughs. “Don’t be. He’s right. Weird fertility curses are a thing, and we should use protection, if it comes to that point.”

“If?” Harry’s attention returns to Draco’s face. His smirk is delicious and dangerous. “You’re talking as if I haven’t been dying to get you into bed for the better part of a year.”

Draco frowns. Desire flares familiarly in the pit of his stomach, but he keeps his face impassive. “Aren’t you a little young to be having sex?”

“Fuck off,” Harry laughs. “We’re two months apart!”

“But we’re not,” Draco answers, sitting upright, “not really. I mean, sure, I’m physically sixteen, but I have memories of being twenty-three, drunk in a gay night club in Muggle London while a stranger fucks me over a loo sink—”

Before he’s even aware that Harry’s moving, Draco is once again on his back and his wrists are pinned, suddenly and firmly, over his head and against the arm of the couch. Harry’s expression, his every movement, makes Draco think of magma—slow-moving, deliberate, and blazing hot.

“Are you trying to make me jealous?” he asks in a low voice. Draco can feel the words against the curve of his jaw.

“No,” Draco manages to answer, which is true, “I’m just… pointing out the difference in experience.”

“I don’t,” Harry mutters into the skin of Draco’s throat, “like thinking about you with other men.”

Draco has been fucked by strangers over loo sinks and somehow, Harry Potter kissing the side of his neck lights his whole body up with pleasure like he’s a virgin again. Draco supposes it has been a while. The last time—

(A breathy laugh tumbles off his lips before he can stop it.)

—had been several years ago now, in a future that no longer exists, when Draco had come, shuddering and frantic, on Harry Potter’s cock.

Draco is becoming more aware of the positions of their bodies, of the heat of Harry’s mouth as it kisses up the columns of his throat and back toward his mouth.

“I don’t,” Harry continues, “like sharing.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Draco answers. “You’re it for me, Harry. There will never be anyone else.” It had hardly been a wonder Draco had failed so catastrophically at romance in his original timeline: none of the men he’d found had been Harry. How could anyone compare?

“Good,” Harry mutters. His hands leave Draco’s wrists, haunt lower across his body, down his ribs, gripping his hips. He kisses Draco again, and it’s all Draco can do to wind his arms around Harry’s shoulders and hold on for dear life.

“Your dragon is showing,” Draco says against Harry’s mouth.

“Are you complaining?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Harry goes back to kissing him. Draco has more work yet to do, following the trail left by Regulus Black, breaking into Gringott’s to get the cup, but he supposes an hour more on the couch with Harry Potter snogging him senseless can’t hurt.

One big difference between this and the timeline Draco remembers is the way Slytherins treat each other.

“Harry!” is the first thing Greg says when he sees him on the Hogwarts Express, before promptly wrapping him up in a big bear hug and lifting him two feet clear off the ground. “Missed you, mate!”

Draco watches from a distance, grinning to himself. He can’t help but feel like Harry’s been a good influence on them, teaching by example the value of sincerity and warmth. Though his house as Draco remembered it preferred to express their affections with great sarcasm or not at all, it’s refreshing to see them be so open with each other.

“Hey, Greg,” Harry laughs, a little strained and breathless, till he’s sat back down on the compartment floor. “How was your summer?”

“About as good as it could have been, trying to come up with reasons not to join my shitty dad’s shitty club.”

Harry frowns, sits down across from him on the other side of the train compartment. “He’s been pressuring you to take the Mark?”

“No, just to come see the family business,” Greg says, then sighs heavily. “I know what he means. He knows I know what he means. I didn’t think I’d be able to make it through the whole summer avoiding him, to be honest.”

“That sucks,” Blaise says, frowning. “Greg, you should have sent an owl. Mum and I spent the whole summer in Venice; we’d have made space for you.”

“Have you heard about the shit that’s been going on in the Ministry?” Pansy asks, conspiratorially leaning forward toward the center of the compartment. “Fudge resigned, Scrimgeour in charge, and all these attacks—”

“I’ve heard,” Harry says darkly. “The Order’s been doing their best, so far as I can tell. They’ve been keeping me out of the loop, generally.”

“Where’s Vince?” Greg asks, twisting around to look through the window on the compartment door. Just as he stands up to pull it open, it clatters open on its own, and standing in the threshold—

“Ah, there they are!”

—is none other than Horace Slughorn, just as rotund as in Draco’s memory. Granted, most of Draco’s memories from sixth year are overshadowed by darkness—by the grim duty assigned to him by the Dark Lord and the cost of failure—but he remembers feeling like he should care about winning the man’s favor, and not quite managing to care.

“Rumor is that these are the ones to know,” Slughorn says, eyes bright. “The core members of this mysterious S.A.—that is the name, isn’t it?”

“Despite our explicit intent to keep its existence under wraps,” Blaise answers, with a pointed glare in Pansy’s direction.

“Your explicit intent,” Pansy sniffs. “We have a mystique now, you know, thanks to me. We’re dangerous and enticing. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“The rumors about you certainly do abound,” Slughorn confirms. “Is it true, Mr. Potter, that you’re a dragon Animagus?”

Harry gives him a frowning, appraising look, like he’s not quite sure what to make of the man. “It’s true,” he says eventually.

“Extraordinary! You know, they’re saying there’s never been one before—though perhaps it’s to be expected from the likes of you, eh, Potter?”

Harry rolls his eyes, who as his teenage years have progressed has become increasingly less tolerant of flattery. Unthinking, he slings one arm around Draco’s shoulder, who tries not to startle at the casual intimacy.

Unfortunately, the gesture redirects Slughorn’s attention to Draco.

“And you must be Draco Malfoy. I heard a rumor that you’re working on contract with the Department of Mysteries! Impressive for a boy so young.”

Draco doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so decides not to say anything.

Slughorn doesn’t seem put-off. “Remarkable, remarkable,” he says. “If you’re amenable, I’d very much like for the two of you to come to a little shindig I’m keen to start up since I’m back in the castle—have you heard of the Slug Club?”

A few days after term begins, Draco lets himself into Snape’s office after dinner.

His new office, now that he’s switched from Potions to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Draco has seen this office change hands nearly a dozen times now, and yet has never seen it quite so gloomy—the curtains, of course, had been the first things to go up, thick and black and blocking out all that pesky sunlight. The furniture is heavy and dark, all the pink frills of Umbridge’s presence scrubbed away to a grim bleakness that is entirely Snape’s.

He’s nearly convinced himself to charm all the candles to burn pink when voices carry from the classroom beyond the open door:

“—strongly object. It’s dangerous, Albus; probably the most dangerous thing in this castle now that the basilisk is dead.”

“I am aware,” comes the measured voice of Albus Dumbledore. “I would not ask this if I thought there was an alternative.”

“It eats, Albus, that which is destroys. The nature of its magic is as dark as it gets.”

“If your theories are correct—if that diary, if this ring, are what you suspect they are—”

Draco takes in a sharp breath, dashes out of the office. The door clatters open so loudly that it startles them both; they turn sharply and find Draco, bright-eyed.

“You’re talking about the Horcruxes, aren’t you?” he asks them without preamble.

They both seem quite surprised at first, then very quickly not surprised in the least.

“You’ve known this whole time?” Snape asks first.

“I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out own your own,” Draco says by way of explanation. “I couldn’t just tell you that he’d made them; it would have risked a paradox. But now that you do know—”

Draco ducks back into Snape’s office, and when he comes back out, he has a huge, heavy box carved with protective, warding runes. He sets it down on the desk nearest his godfather with a heavy, echoing THUMP.

“I have two more for you to destroy,” Draco says.

“You—” Snape begins, then flips the lid on the box open, revealing the cup and the diadem inside. His expression turns, briefly, to pure horror. “Draco, Horcruxes are dangerous. How long have you had these?”

“Relax, I’ve done my diligence. The crate is very secure.”

“Merlin preserve me,” Snape despairs.

“Technically,” Dumbledore says, “we hadn’t figured it out, Mr. Malfoy. Although I suppose we can assume this behavior indicates that our suspicions are correct?”

Draco pauses, frowns. He’s not quite sure if this is a causal violation.

“Oops?”

“All the more reason, Severus,” the headmaster continues, “for us to use the halberd. We cannot allow these Horcruxes to linger.”

“The halberd! That’s why I’m here, too,” Draco says. “It made quick work of the diary—”

“Neither of you know what you’re asking,” Snape interjects impatiently. “Salazar Slytherin was the most powerful dark wizard of the last millennium, and nothing he touched was immune to that darkness. He named his halberd—” (Here Snape stops, frowns, shakes his head.) “—it’s a long, unpronounceable Scandinavian name, but it means that which consumes all things.”

“I don’t know,” Draco reasons, “that sounds like precisely what we’re after.”

“What it did to the diary isn’t a party trick,” Snape says. “It’s the same thing it does to everything its blade cuts: it ate that fragment of Riddle’s soul, and all the magic in the Horcrux itself, and became stronger for it. The basilisk suffered the same fate. Anyone who gets so much as a nick from its blade is killed, their essence consumed. It eats and eats and eats, adding to its own magic by stealing that of its victims. And it’s been doing so for a thousand years.”

Draco frowns.

“I don’t think I need to explain to either of you how dangerous and corrupting that kind of power is,” Snape says. “I only thought to use it because a student’s life was in immediate danger. If it’s ever used for anything less altruistic, it will exploit that darkness for its own ends. It’s made monsters of greater men than me.”

“Surely,” Dumbledore says slowly, “destroying the Horcuxes of an evil man would count as a selfless act.”

“It measures intent, Albus,” Snape warns. “Can you honestly say that your desire to rid the world of Riddle’s evil is entirely selfless? That he doesn’t make you think of other would-be tyrants of your past?”

Dumbledore sighs as if in deference to the point.

“That’s the kind of thing it plays on,” Snape says. “Regret and desire and ambition and jealousy. To safely use it with intent to destroy, the wielder would have to be nothing short of a saint.”

“I have an idea,” Draco suddenly says.

“Is it too late to restate my objections?” Snape says as, ten minutes later, Harry Potter stands in his office, Slytherin’s halberd in both hands. He stares at appraisingly, testing his grip, giving it an experimental arcing swing; the blade sings as it cuts through the air.

“It feels heavier than last time,” he says to himself.

“Remember,” Draco tells him urgently, “when you use it, you have to do so with clear, compassionate, altruistic intent, or it will try to twist its darkness into you. Don’t think of destroying pieces of Voldemort, think of protecting the world from evil or something.”

“Or something,” Harry repeats with a laugh.

“I wouldn’t trust this with anyone else,” Draco says. “If there’s anybody in the world with a heart good enough to resist the siren song of such powerful Dark Magic, it’s you. Just please don’t prove my faith misplaced, all right?”

Harry turns bright eyes to Draco, his gaze long and lingering. Draco, despite it all, feels something soften in the center of his chest. All these years, and Harry Potter is still the best, brightest thing in the world.

“You,” Harry says suddenly.

“What about me?” Draco says back.

“I don’t know if I could do it to save the whole world, but I could do it for you,” Harry says, and swings the halberd toward the cup.

The blade comes down hard, metal shrieking against metal, louder than it should be, so loud that it fills the whole room. It’s followed immediately by the sound of wood splintering apart as the entire desk in the front row on which it had been placed is split in two.

“Merlin,” Snape says, as the sound fades. “Next time, Potter, you can stop your righteous smiting with the Horcrux and spare my classroom!”

“Severus,” Draco interjects, finding himself a little bit breathless, “it worked.”

And, indeed, amid the wreckage of the desk, Helga Hufflepuff’s cup lies shattered, its gleaming gold wrenched and twisted and dulled. In Harry’s hands, Slytherin’s halberd hums in a way that makes Draco think of a purring cat.

“How do you feel, Harry?” Dumbledore asks him, blue eyes assessing. “Any surge of ambition lancing through you? Any grim satisfaction?”

“No? Not really.”

“Self-awareness is important in measuring the impact of Dark Magic,” Draco intones. “If you’re feeling anything unusual at all, you really should tell us.”

“I’m kind of hungry, I guess,” Harry says. “And feeling a bit bad about the desk. And wondering what you’d look like, Draco, spread out on one.”

Startled, Draco clears his throat. “Er.”

“I don’t think that’s diagnostically relevant,” Dumbledore chuckles.

“If you insist on defiling my godson, Potter,” Snape remarks, “you will do so on your own time, and not in my classroom. Eyes front! There’s two more Horcruxes to destroy!”

In the end, there are things that Draco can control and things that he can’t.

He can’t control the fact that Voldemort’s murderous rise to power is proceeding more or less the same as he recalls from the original timeline. He can’t control that Hannah Abbott’s mother dies, or that Scrimgeour is useless, or that—according to Truss, who has only suspicions and no proof—at least two high-level Ministry officials have been placed under the Imperius Curse. He nudges the Order when he can, as best he can without running the risk of a paradox, but without anyone on the inside (Snape had made his allegiances clear before the Dark Lord himself in that graveyard), it’s a slow and inefficient process.

So Draco focuses on the things he can affect. When Harry’s nightmares get particularly bad and Dumbledore suggests Occlumency lessons with Snape, Draco encourages him and even offers tips. When his fellow Slytherins come to him during S.A. meetings, nervous about something their parents said or did, he offers advice on how to keep themselves safe while relaying any useful intel to the Order.

Mostly, though, he focuses on Needle—that, at least, feels actionable. It is something Draco can completely control and understand. Unfortunately, it’s also extremely frustrating.

“Was thinking I might actually show up to Slughorn’s thing next month,” Harry says, and Draco hums without really hearing him, twirling his quill around his thumb and forefinger.

Draco has spent the last several months running extensive tests, measuring Needle’s reactivity to various forms of energy, and he’s been stymied every time. It barely flickered when exposed to various forms of radiation, magnetism, heat, electricity, sound—he’d even tried kinetic energy by way of firing a cannonball at it, which may have accidentally killed a mastodon, but had left Needle entirely unaffected.

“He’s kind of a prig, but according to Dumbledore, he threw good parties back in the day. And, I don’t know, after all the shit that’s happened, I could use a night off.”

Draco hums again as he scribbles through some equations on the stack of parchments on his lap. Not that all the math is getting him anywhere: his attempts to elicit reactivity with increased gravity had been just as useless as the cannonball.

“You’re not listening, are you? You’re deep in math land.”

There are only so many types of energy, of course, and Draco’s running out. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He hates the idea of shutting Needle down, especially before he even understands what it is that’s happening to it. It’s been his life’s work for over a decade now, relatively speaking.

“You’re lucky you’re cute when you’re thinking.”

A thumb on Draco’s lower lip draws him up and out of his own head, and suddenly, he’s back in the Slytherin common room, on the couch in front of the fire, his legs tangled up with Harry’s.

“Sorry,” Draco says, “what?”

Harry chuckles, leans in, and kisses him; briefly, Draco forgets all his frustrations, how to do all that complicated math, and his own name. He drops his quill, fingertips finding their way to Harry’s Slytherin tie, where they twist and tug.

“I was asking,” Harry continues as he pulls back, “if you wanted to go with me to Slughorn’s thing next month. He invited both of us.”

Draco raises an eyebrow at him in surprise. “You want to go to Slughorn’s thing?”

“I could use an excuse to relax for an evening,” Harry says. “You heard about what happened to Moody?”

Draco frowns, nods. In an undercover sting operation, the Order had attempted to infiltrate the Ministry and find proof of Truss’s suspicions that some higher ups were under Imperius. It hadn’t gone well; somehow, Voldemort had gotten wind and intercepted, and Moody had barely made it out alive.

Harry sighs, visibly frustrated, as he rubs circles into Draco’s knee with his thumb. “I hate that they’re keeping me out of the fight,” he says. “I could be useful. If I’d been there—”

“You’re still underage,” Draco reminds him. He almost adds, And the idea of you reprising your role as child soldier makes my stomach turn.

“That doesn’t matter to Voldemort,” Harry replies darkly, “and it shouldn’t matter to the Order.”

“The tricky thing about fighting for the side of goodness is that you have to care about morality,” Draco says, and brushes a loose strand of hair out of Harry’s face.

“I want to fight,” Harry insists. “And it’s meant to be me, isn’t it? Dumbledore told me about the prophecy.”

“Harry, you don’t need to hurry it along. I’ve gone through it once before, and I promise it’s coming. And some of the things I had to see you go through…”

Images of Harry, limp in Hagrid’s massive arms, flash through his mind like a horrible nightmare. Draco swallows down the knot of emotion that suddenly constricts his throat.

“Hey,” Harry says, voice suddenly swelling with concern.

“I just—it was hard enough the first time is all.”

“Hey,” Harry says again, and slides one arm around the small of Draco’s back to haul him into his lap. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Draco wants to say, Promise? But he can’t, because once situated in Harry’s lap, he’s being kissed, deeply, thoroughly, arms around his waist and drawing him in. Draco rests his hands on Harry’s chest and returns it.

Harry’s kisses are always heady—and, lately, full of heat. Draco’s not stupid, and he’s not a virgin; he knows how to read signs of arousal in the dilation of Harry’s eyes and the stutter of his breath. He knows what’s on Harry’s mind lately when he kisses Draco.

Unfortunately, it’s on Draco’s mind, too. He is, after all, in his sixteen-year-old body. Despite his best efforts to keep things going slow, his mind is constantly filling with distinctly unsavory thoughts.

I remember what you like, Harry had said to him once in a future that no longer exists. Well, now Draco remembers what Harry likes, too. He likes it when Draco takes him down his throat, when he comes around his cock. Draco would love to show him.

“I’ve been wondering,” Harry says into Draco’s mouth, in a voice that is so strained with arousal that it makes his casual opener comical enough to draw a laugh from him.

“Have you?” Draco answers. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“You can’t blame me for thinking about it, can you? Have you seen yourself?” he asks, which makes Draco laugh again. “Worse, have you seen yourself in downward dog? Because I have, and I’m pretty sure it permanently altered the chemistry in my brain. You should get back into yoga, by the way.”

“Oh, I should, should I?”

“Why’d you stop? Is it because you’re on the Quidditch team now? I’ll kick you off if I have to.”

“Harry,” Draco laughs. “I’ve been thinking about it, too, but…”

“But?” Harry echoes.

Draco sneaks a quick look around the common room—empty. It is getting late, so perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised.

“But,” Draco continues, dropping his eyes back to Harry, “I’m not in any type of hurry, and I’m not keen to rush you into anything.”

“Whereas I, on the other hand,” Harry says, “am in a hurry and keen to rush. Did you know that Quidditch captains get access to those private prefect bathrooms?”

Draco raises both eyebrows. He’s pretty sure he had a few wet dreams featuring Harry set in those bathrooms the first time he was sixteen.

“Not that I’m pressuring you or anything,” Harry is quick to add, his hands roving up Draco’s back, “but if you’re keen on the idea, I can think of about a thousand things I’d like to do to you—”

“Merlin, you two,” Blaise suddenly bellows from the entrance to common room, “get a fucking room!”

“I was trying, mate, till your loud ass barged in—” Harry begins, before Pansy cuts off the bickering before it can really start.

“Stuff a puffskien in it, you two,” she barks. Then, quickly: “Draco, did you hear what happened?”

Clearing his throat, Draco slides off Harry’s lap. “Hear what?”

“Alicia Spinnet is in the hospital wing,” she says, coming to a stop between them and the fireplace, her face set in a frown. “She was found outside Dumbledore’s office bleeding to death with some sort of cursed necklace.”

Chapter Text

“I knew it,” Pansy says as, together, they all hurry out of the dungeon and toward the hospital wing. “I knew it was fishy. This is Order-related, isn’t it? Do you think You-Know-Who had a hand in this somehow, Draco?”

Draco doesn’t answer. His head is spinning like a top. He needs to see it for himself, of course, but the whole situation sounds an awful lot like—

“Why would You-Know-Who want to kill Gryffindor’s worst chaser?” Blaise asks.

“He wouldn’t,” Harry answers, voice grim. “But he would want to kill Dumbledore. That’s where she was found, Pans, wasn’t it? Right outside his office?”

Pansy doesn’t answer, and Draco doesn’t look, but he can feel the way the conversation shifts and strains. Draco, for his part, tries his best to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. There’s no sense in speculating till he sees for himself.

And, sure enough, there’s a cloud of Gryffindors around one particular bed when they all come into the Hospital Wing. Dull, gray November sunlight fills the room reluctantly, and laid out on the bed—

Draco’s stomach lurches. It had been Katie Bell last time, and she hadn’t made it so far into the castle, but he would recognize those wounds anywhere: they were certainly given to her by the cursed opal necklace sold in Hogsmeade.

This development raises a few rather urgent and alarming questions.

“Get the fuck out,” Ron Weasley hisses at them when they’re close enough to talk. His eyes are bloodshot, his face furious. “The last thing we need is a bunch of smug Slytherins crowing about this.”

“Ron, take it easy,” his younger sister says, not that he appears to listen.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you lot had a hand in it,” Ron continues. “Maybe that’s what this S.A. is all about, huh? Snape’s Army, killing its way through the non-Slytherin population—?”

“Hey,” Harry says, voice sharp and hard, “I get that you’re upset, but you’re being an asshole. We’re here to help.”

“We don’t want your help,” Ron growls.

Draco watches the fight, delirious. It’s surreal to see such a vicious, violent animosity between them. He supposes that he’d expected, on some level, for them to still fall in as best mates eventually, despite being in different houses. Seeing them like this is disorienting.

The backdrop of a severely injured Alicia Spinnet doesn’t help, of course.

“The necklace she was found with,” Draco prompts Ginny, apparently more reasonable than her brother, who’s glaring at Harry as if trying to set him on fire through sheer force of will.

“Madam Pomfrey says it was cursed something awful,” Ginny supplies. “And she thinks… she thinks Alicia was put under the Imperius Curse to deliver it to Dumbledore. Says she found traces of Dark Magic.”

Draco’s heart sinks straight into his stomach. A note-for-note recreation of Draco’s first failed assassination attempt. And if it wasn’t Draco who executed it, then who did?

“Draco,” Harry says, low, pulling him aside with one hand on his upper arm. “Have you seen this before?”

“I’ve seen it before,” he confirms. He’s still staring at Spinnet, who under a lattice of blue-white magic is breathing slowly as Pomfrey’s healing field struggles to seal up all those horrible wounds criss-crossing her body.

“And? Do you know where to look?”

Draco swallows. As much as he doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t even want to consider it, the truth is that Ron is right about one thing, at least:

This is the work of a Slytherin.

Unfortunately, over the rest of the month, as Draco tries to answer the question Who among my house-mates is showing the same signs of anxiety and terror that I was, he quickly finds that the answer is Near on all of them.

In the original timeline, his house-mates had been nervous, of course, about the upcoming war, but it hadn’t been anything close to this. Now, with so many of them having joined the S.A., more aware of the flaws in purist ideology and willing to take a stand against them, all of them are scared: scared of what their parents are doing, of what it means for their families, of what holding to their enlightened beliefs will mean.

All of them are anxious and terrified. Greg is jumpy and losing sleep, Theo is scatterbrained and snapping at even his closest friends, Vince is almost nowhere to be seen. Even those whose parents aren’t wearing the Dark Mark are nervous: Blaise is skipping meals, Pansy is withdrawn and quiet, Graham is constantly on edge.

Draco wants to help them but doesn’t know how. He suspects that he can’t help them in any meaningful way, regardless—that the fear is going to be a fact of their existences for the foreseeable future, till Voldemort is dead and gone.

“I just don’t know,” Pansy says when, two weeks later, they review their list of suspects and come up blank. “I’m sorry, Draco, I…”

“Hey,” Draco says, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. “It’s all right.”

“I’m supposed to be good at this,” she says helplessly. “I’m supposed to know everything about everyone all the time. But somehow I can’t even tell which student is an attempted murderer!”

He shifts closer to her on the bed to pull her into a hug. Draco, who by now is out of the closet to more or less the entire school, has been allowed into the Slytherin girls’ dormitory on the presumption that he wouldn’t enter for anything nefarious. He really only makes use of the exemption for Pansy, anyway.

She hugs him back tightly, face buried in his shoulder.

“Pansy Parkinson,” he says, “you are a terrifying hurricane of a young woman. A spider who sits at the center of a web with a thousand radiations, reading meaning into every vibration.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” she says quietly into his robes.

“I would never,” Draco swears. “I speak only the truth. You are an all-seeing, vengeful goddess whose wrath cannot be escaped.”

Pansy sniffs, withdraws, and rubs her face with her sleeve. Draco’s hand rests fondly in her hair. In the original timeline, their relationship had been more transactional than anything—affable, but only because they both knew they could make use of the other. He’s surprised to find that she has somehow butterfly effected herself directly into Draco’s heart in this timeline.

“He’s cunning, Pans,” Draco tells her. “It’s not your fault that you can’t suss out his plans from the other side of a war. We’ll keep working at it, all right? Whoever’s doing this has failed on their first go, and we’ll be there when they try again.”

“But what if we don’t?” she asks, still teary. “What if they beat us to it? Dumbledore’s the only thing keeping You-Know-Who out of Hogwarts. If anything happens to him…”

Draco sighs, swallows. Snape isn’t a spy this time, isn’t going to be backing up whoever’s been tasked with killing Dumbledore. Maybe this time, he could save his life instead of end it.

Maybe. There’s just so much Draco doesn’t know, and can’t predict.

“Come on,” he says. “My mum sent Harry a care package last night. I bet he won’t mind if we nip into it.”

“This is the real reason I wanted to go to this, you know.”

He and Harry are coming out of the Slug Club Christmas thing together, along with the rest of the crowd. Harry’s arm is slung around Draco’s waist.

“Hm?”

“To see you all dressed up.”

Draco looks down at himself. He’d intended to wear the same dress robe he’d worn to the Yule Ball, but, of course, he’d grown out of it. He probably should have anticipated as much. He’d gone to Gladrags and, with a goodwill discount, had picked up a nice semiformal robe in dark blue with a high collar and fitted sleeves, loose and flowing around his legs. It’s enchanted to shine in a very subtle, opalescent way with each movement.

At least he’ll be able to keep this one, as Draco has finally reached his full height of five-foot-ten.

“Well, I hope I’ve lived up to expectations,” Draco answers.

“Oh, you have,” Harry assures him. The hand on Draco’s hip grips a bit tighter. “It’s a gorgeous robe. I bet it’d look even better on the floor.”

Draco barks a laugh. “Smooth.”

“Thanks, I was working on it all night. War looms, one of our house-mates is guilty of attempted murder, but at least my boyfriend looks fit in formal wear. Hey—”

That grip on Draco’s waist tugs, and suddenly they’re both around a corner in a darkened hallway. Draco finds himself pressed into the wall and kissed extensively, hands moving up his sides as Draco’s, almost on their own accord, settle on Harry’s shoulders.

“—the Hogwarts Express doesn’t leave till midmorning,” Harry continues, once he comes up for air.

“Meaning,” Draco deduces, a smirk tugging on his lips, “you and I could stay up late tonight if we wanted, doing all sorts of things?”

“This is why we work as a couple,” Harry says, grinning down at Draco helplessly. “We’re so in sync.”

Draco laughs. Harry takes advantage of the way his head falls back to kiss up the columns of Draco’s throat, which turns the laughter into something else entirely.

“The Slytherin prefect bathroom isn’t far from here,” Harry mutters into the side of his neck. “And—again—not pressuring you, but if you’re keen…”

Gently, Draco uses his hands on Harry’s shoulders to push him away—just slightly, just enough for Draco to get a better read of Harry’s expression. Eager as he is, Draco knows that this would be Harry’s first time, and he wants to be absolutely certain that there’s no hesitance.

“You’re sure?” he asks, staring seriously up at Harry, who has also reached his full height, just a hair over six feet. “You’re really sure?”

“Draco,” is his warm, soft-voiced answer, “I’ve been sure about you since I was eleven.”

Draco tries very, very hard not to let on just how profound the effect of Harry’s words are.

He manages a small smile despite the way his heart melts in the center of his chest. “All right,” he says.

Harry grins and takes off, pulling Draco by the wrist. Within moments, they’re slipping behind a portrait of a judgmental knight on a white horse and into the dimly-lit bathroom.

Draco knows the room well—he had, after all, been a prefect in sixth and seventh year the first time around. It’s a small room, but extravagant, with a white marble floor, a large soaking tub, and a vanity sink by the door to a water closet. There’s a single window with frosted glass, which lets in no light at all this time of night, and a brass chandelier overhead, whose candles flicker low.

As soon as the door is shut, Draco says, “All right, Potter, here’s how this is going to work.”

Harry turns, looking surprised and intrigued. “Oh?”

Draco steers him backward into the wall, which Harry hits with a soft, muffled thump.

“I,” Draco says, “am going to suck your cock.”

“Oh,” Harry says again, his grin wider.

“It likely won’t last terribly long, because you’re sixteen and it’s your first time, and also because—” (Draco leans in, drops his voice to a whisper) “—I am very, very good at sucking cock.”

“Oh,” Harry says a third time, voice huskier, his hands tracing up Draco’s ribs.

“All I ask is that you give me some warning before you finish,” Draco continues, and trails his fingers down to undo the buttons on the waistcoat under Harry’s black dress robe, “so I know when to take a breath. I have this sneaking suspicion that you’re going to want to come down my throat, and I intend to be very accommodating.”

“Fucking Christ,” Harry says, as Draco sinks to his knees in front of him.

“And feel free to pull my hair,” Draco tells him as he undoes the buttons to free Harry’s cock.

Harry takes him up on the offer before Draco even begins; long, rough, fingers snake through Draco’s hair and grip hard, and Draco’s sure to look up, meeting Harry’s glittering green eyes, before swallowing his cock down in one long movement.

“Oh, my fucking God,” is Harry’s first reaction, along with a huge heaving breath and a shiver. Draco watches, pleased and thrumming with arousal, as Harry’s head falls back and hits the wall. “Holy shit, Draco, you—aah!”

Draco, who sees no reason not to make Harry’s first time as memorable as possible, had readily taken the tip of his cock straight into his throat. It makes an obscene, wet sound as Draco swallows around it, then starts to bob his head, fingers curling into the fabric of his formal robes.

“I am,” Harry gasps, the heaviness of his breath making his whole body shudder, “the luckiest man on the planet. Oh, my God, Draco, you—”

Within moments, he’s inarticulate. His hips start bucking forward off the wall, and his other hand joins the first in Draco’s hair. Without, Draco suspects, even realizing he’s doing it, Harry takes control, using his grip to fuck into Draco’s mouth, setting the rhythm and the depth. Desire furls in Draco’s belly. He always has been hot for men who take charge, and their pleasure, exactly how they want to.

Draco feels himself go loose and pliant, hands smoothing up under the soft fabric of Harry’s dress shirt, as Harry fuck firmly in and out, in and out of his throat. He’s white hot with pleasure; he aches to touch himself, but doesn’t: this is about Harry. There is a primal part of his brain that wants to stake a claim, to ruin Harry for anyone else, like Harry has ruined him. Later, perhaps, he’ll go slowly, take his time, pull Harry apart piece by piece with his lips and tongue and fingertips, but for right now, he wants Harry Potter to have the most intense orgasm of his life directly down his throat.

“I’m,” Harry gasps out. Draco makes a soft sound of encouragement, as best he’s able with a cock fucking his mouth, and grips Harry’s sides reassuringly. “I… I’m—”

His movements stutter, then still. Draco feels the climax as a pulsing in his throat, the blood pounding through the shaft of Harry’s cock as it comes to release, wave after wave. Draco obligingly holds himself still, swallows through it, till Harry finally pulls off.

“Holy shit,” is the first thing Harry says. His voice is ruined. Draco watches, deeply pleased even as his whole body shakes with desperate arousal, as Harry sinks onto the marble floor by way of sliding down the wall, like he’s unable to hold himself up.

His throat feels rough and abraded and perfect. Draco licks a stripe of come off his lower lip and swallows. Harry stares, mystified, with a delirious smile.

“You’re perfect,” Harry tells him helplessly.

“As I said,” Draco says, with some difficulty, “I’m very good at sucking cock.”

Though Draco hadn’t expected him to want to, considering the recent activities, Harry leans and kisses him—lightly, perhaps, and chastely, but not without sincerity.

“You want me to return the favor?” Harry asks against his mouth.

Draco chuckles, settling neatly in Harry’s lap. “You don’t need to worry about me,” he says. He learned his lesson the hard way about letting someone inexperienced suck his cock, once upon a drunken night club misadventure circa 2002.

“I want to,” Harry insists, sliding his arms around Draco’s waist. “I want to get you off. After that performance, you certainly deserve it. Fuck, that was good.”

Draco graduates from chuckling to full-throated laughter. He’s not sure if he trusts a sixteen-year-old to suck his cock, even one so eager and wonderful as Harry Potter, but— “There are other ways to get me off.”

“You sound like you have something specific in mind.”

He smirks, pulling at the small silver buttons running up the front of his chest one by one, till the robe falls apart and off his shoulders. The soft silk shirt underneath he pulls off over his head and tosses aside, the dress trousers he unfastens and makes a show of wriggling out of.

Harry watches with rapt attention. By the time Draco’s naked and straddling his lap again, his hands are roving up his sides, then back down to settle on his hips.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers. “God, how did I get so lucky?”

Draco pulls one of Harry’s hands off his skin and sucks two fingers into his mouth. Harry watches, gaze smoldering, as Draco wets them thoroughly, then guides the hand around his body.

“Fuck,” Harry says. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“It won’t hurt?”

“Not if you do it right,” Draco insists. “Start slow and shallow, then curl them forward toward the front of my body.”

Harry’s touch is careful and hesitant, which is probably for the best. Draco reaches for his wand, half-fallen out of the sleeve of his shirt on the floor, and casts a few careful spells to ease the way, which Harry notices, clearly: he takes in a sharp breath, then slowly breaches both fingers into Draco’s body.

Draco whispers, “Fuck.” His head falls forward to Harry’s shoulder. It has been a while, Draco is remembering.

His fingers are warm—rough. Calloused from Quidditch. And Draco has been hard since he swallowed down Harry’s cock, so the first experimental curl of those fingers—

“Fuck,” Draco says again, strained. His thighs start to tremble from the exertion of holding his own weight.

“Feel good?” Harry whispers into Draco’s hair.

“Mmn,” is the best Draco can manage. Bright bursts of pleasure fog his vision, in time with the careful stroke in and out, in and out. Draco’s arms wind around Harry’s neck, not so much for the intimacy, but just for leverage to hold himself up. Because the way Harry’s moving faster—

“Could I get you off just like this, love?” He’s still talking into the side of Draco’s head, hot breath in his hair. “Could I have you coming from nothing but my fingers?”

Draco tries to answer, he really does, but his body is drawing tighter and tighter. His hips are starting to rock down against Harry’s hand on their own, desperate for more—deeper, harder, faster, anything. His cock, as of yet untouched, is aching against the soft skin of Harry’s stomach, leaking.

“I,” Draco begins, but can’t finish, because Harry’s free hand hauls him closer, pressing their bodies together firmly, as his fingers dive with greater force directly into the bundle of nerves at the base of Draco’s cock. “Hhhhhaaaa—” Draco thinks he might shake himself to pieces.

“Go on,” Harry says. His tone is hungry, almost feral, and his movements are getting jagged and uneven. “Go on, love. Come for me. Let me feel you.”

Harry’s free hand is in his hair, his mouth on the side of Draco’s throat. Draco is helplessly moving down against the fingers inside him, blood thundering, every muscle in his body drawing tighter and tighter and tighter, heartbeat pounding in his ears and behind his eyes, each nerve electric with white-hot pleasure—

—until, finally, it’s too much. Draco howls into Harry’s shoulder, bucks, and comes, so intensely that he can’t even see, his whole body shaking with the force of it.

“Fuck. Fuck, Draco. Oh, my God.”

Draco is still dizzy with the intensity of the orgasm, still breathless, when he collapses backward onto the floor in a boneless sprawl, striped in sweat and spend.

“That was—holy shit,” Harry says. He’s shrugging out of what’s left of his clothes. As Draco’s vision clears, he sees Harry coming forward and down, naked but for an open dress shirt and undone tie around his neck, hair disheveled and green eyes bright with desire. “Draco, that was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Of course it was. Of course Harry would get off on watching Draco get off. He is meant to be Draco’s soulmate, after all, perfect for him in every way, so naturally he would be a service top.

Harry is crawling up his body, prowling like a jungle cat. Or a dragon, his mind supplies, still hazy with orgasm.

“Draco,” he mutters, kissing lines up his chest, “d’you reckon I could manage to do that again? Make you come from the inside?”

Draco means to ask, After all that, how are you even conscious, let alone hot for another go? But Draco can feel the evidence of his desire sliding, hot and slick, against the front of his thigh, and suddenly he remembers: Harry is sixteen. Draco is sixteen. They both have the sex drive of a rabbit and the refractory period of a mayfly.

“Yeah, probably,” Draco answers, strained, as he feels blood pound back into his cock.

“Draco,” Harry continues, “if I were to fuck you right now—”

“Fucking Merlin,” Draco whimpers, as Harry insinuates himself between Draco’s open thighs.

“—could you come from just that? Just my cock inside you?”

“Spell,” Draco says, barely. “Harry, cast the spell, we need—”

“Protegus intractus,” Harry interjects, which (thank you, cousin Sirius) is just the right charm for the occasion. His wand clatters to the floor immediately afterward, and he kisses Draco frantically, before pressing himself forward and—

“Merlin fuck—Harry—!”

It has been a while, Draco recalls yet again, as Harry’s cock splits him open.

His legs are around Harry’s waist, and his arms—(fuck)—are pinned to the marble floor over his head. Harry is moving hard and deep, but with absolute precision. His eyes, once bright with his arousal, have darkened to a primal, possessive stare as he holds Draco down and fucks into him with the kind of strength that, Draco knows from experience, he’ll be feeling tomorrow morning.

“Harry,” he sobs, head thrown back, cock straining against his stomach.

Harry says something, almost too quietly to be perceived, against Draco’s throat. It sounds like mine. Draco starts to shake.

The rhythm is punishing and perfect. Draco can only put it down to Harry being his soulmate that he knows, on apparent instinct, just how Draco likes it—hard and rough and deep and unforgiving.

“Fuck. Harry, fuck. I—I’m—”

“Yes,” is Harry’s growling answer, Draco’s words spurring him harder. “Yes, love. Let me feel you. I want you to come around my cock.”

I remember what you like.

Harry is forced to brace his arms on the floor to maintain—and, incredibly, hasten—his rhythm, and Draco’s hands, now freed, scrabble for purchase on the planes of his back. He can feel the muscles move under his skin, and when Draco arcs his body just so—

“Fuck,” Draco sobs, bursting pleasure at the base of his cock as Harry fucks brutally, perfectly past his prostate. He’s so close. He’s so close. It’s so good.

“Come on,” Harry whispers, pressing his body hard into Draco’s. “Come on, love. I want to feel you. Come for me.”

Draco is forced over the edge into the kind of leg-shaking, head-spinning, thought-destroying orgasm that shouldn’t even be possible to achieve, let alone on the end of a sixteen-year-old’s cock. Whereas his first climax has been in his chest, this one is decidedly in his pelvis, deeper, more intense—his cock, trapped between their bodies, spasms helplessly.

“God, Draco—you are—you—I can’t, I—”

Draco wants to say, God, come inside me, Merlin, please, I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you right now, but he’s too breathless, too winded from his own recent climax. The best he’s able to accomplish is tangling his fingers in Harry’s hair to whisper encouragements in the direction of his ear, half-formed words that give shape to his desire: “In—inside—Harry, please—”

And when Harry does come, moments later, he’s buried in Draco to the hilt, his whole body shaking. Draco can feel the pulsing, can feel the heat pooling in the deepest parts of his body, and the first cogent thought that comes back into his pleasure-fogged mind is: Yours.

Because he is. Helplessly, unconditionally, irrevocably, he is Harry’s. No matter what happens, Draco will never, could never, love anyone in the way he loves Harry. The claim has been struck, under his skin and pooled inside him. Yours, yours, yours.

“Fuck,” Harry gasps, the exertion catching up to him at long last as he slowly pulls himself from Draco’s body. “I… is it always like that?”

“No,” Draco answers. “No, that was…”

Harry collapses on the floor next to him, and for a while, they both lie in silence, staring into the ceiling, breathless.

When one of Harry’s hands finds itself back in Draco’s hair, he looks over and sees Harry staring at him, expression wrecked.

“I’ve,” Harry begins, then swallows, like he’s nervous, and is forced to start over. “Draco, I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I…”

Draco feels himself smile, small and bittersweet. He rolls over, nestles against Harry’s body, sweat cooling on his flushed skin.

He knows that the first love is always the most intense. He knows that’s why the feeling is so strong for Harry. He knows, he knows.

But just for a moment, Draco lets himself believe—a silly, desperate, painful fantasy—that it’s mutual. That Draco is just as perfect for Harry as Harry is for him. Even though he’s not. He can’t be. Who could ever be good enough for Harry Potter, the most wonderful man on the planet? Certainly not Draco, and all the scars and sins he’s carried over from another life.

“I love you,” Draco whispers into the sex-warmed skin of his chest.

“I love you,” Harry answers, and wraps him up in his arms. “God, Draco. I love you so much. I feel like I can barely hold it all.”

He can’t be. He knows he isn’t.

(But still he wants, he wants, he wants.)

By the way the first few months proceed, 1997 will be a year of contradiction.

On the one hand, Draco feels almost incandescently happy. Christmas is full of warmth and love and light and friendly familial bickering over the dinner table (Harry gets Draco a Nimbus 2001, a chaser model; Draco gets Harry The Who’s Who’s Next and Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti), and the new year rings in with a spectacular kiss under bursting fireworks.

On the other hand, there is a growing sense of dread that Draco just can’t shake. The Prophet starts disavowing Harry’s claims that Voldemort has returned, and slowly, more and more people die or go missing. Truss sends letters with lines like I think the head of the DMLE might be under his control and Maybe it’s best if you don’t come back to the Department of Mysteries for a while, Draco, and though the Order does what they can, the claws Voldemort sinks into the Ministry feel deeper every day.

On the one hand, Harry has never been so besotted, and Draco never so helplessly in love. They get more than a few house points deducted for snogging in hallways, and Harry dedicates himself with surprising diligence to getting Draco off with as much intensity as he can physically handle. It’s I love you every time they part and Good night, love every evening before bed.

On the other hand, Ginny Weasley joins the S.A. in March and Draco comes into the meeting and sees her laughing with Harry and it makes him sick to his stomach.

He tells himself that it’s fine, that even if this is the first domino in a chain that ends with the two of them parting ways, that Draco knew from the outset it was never going to last anyway. Harry is Draco’s soulmate. Draco is not Harry’s.

The knowing doesn’t make watching them any easier.

“That’s a surprise,” Draco says when, eventually, she heads into the classroom to start casting countercurses. “Didn’t picture a Gryffindor wanting to join Snape’s Army.”

“She’s actually one of a few,” Harry answers, and points toward the back of the room. Neville Longbottom is working with Blaise on the disarming spell. Slightly behind him, Draco can pick out Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan discussing wand posture with Greg. “Pansy’s done good work. The S.A.’s reputation precedes itself.”

“She’s quite pretty,” Draco says.

“Who?”

“Weasley.”

Harry gives him an odd look. “Since when are you into girls?”

Draco forces a small laugh. “I’m not into girls,” he assures him. “I’m just… she’s…”

Your wife and the mother of your children, in another timeline, he almost says. He wonders, selfishly, if saying it would assure that it never comes to pass. More likely, it would plant a seed that would germinate over the course of years, letting a delineated timeline self-correct into the shape it was always meant to take: Harry with Ginny, with children, with everything he could possibly want.

And Draco without anyone.

“You all right?” Harry asks him, when the silence stretches a bit too long. “You seem a little…”

Draco smiles like shards of broken glass.

“I’m all right,” he lies, and can’t help but feel like it’s a portent, like Ginny Weasley is the herald of some great change that Draco can neither predict nor stop.

Winter turns sluggishly into spring.

Draco is frustrated by everything he does not accomplish. He makes no progress on stabilizing Needle, on discovering who attacked Dumbledore by way of Alicia Spinnet, on tracking down the last of the Horcruxes

Even worse, the newly-corrupted DMLE finally releases their report about what happened last year at the Department of Mysteries, and—

“This is absolutely fucking useless,” Draco says.

“Well, we expected that, didn’t we?” Harry asks, without looking up from his essay. “The aurors have been rather useless lately.”

“The aurors have always been useless,” Blaise adds unhelpfully from the other side of the Slytherin common room, his mouth full of candy.

“Listen to this,” Draco says, then begins to read aloud: “‘At approximately 7:30 p.m., seven agents from an unknown extremist faction made entry into the Department of Mysteries.’ An unknown extremist faction? Were the bloody silver masks and tattoos not clue enough?”

“Pigs,” Pansy decrees. Then, “Budge up.”

Draco shifts over so Pansy can collapse next to him on the couch in front of the fire. She takes a long sip of the tea clasped firmly in both hands.

“There’s nothing in this fucking report,” Draco says, outraged, even though perhaps he shouldn’t be. “They claim no knowledge of anything—they don’t say why they came, what spells were cast, what they took…”

“Like you said,” Harry intones. “Useless.”

“Potter,” Blaise asks, “what’d you get on question twenty of Slughorn’s homework?”

Draco keeps reading, despite himself. He’d needed the insight this report gave him, and can’t believe he’d waited so long for so little. He flips forward past a few useless pages of what equipment was destroyed in the fray.

Six of the seven assailants fled the scene after being beaten back by a few Unspeakables who’d been tipped off to their presence by triggered wards. The last, and apparent ringleader of the operation, was taken into custody—

Someone is asking Draco a question, but Draco doesn’t hear it. The bottom has dropped out of his stomach.

“Oh,” he whispers. The paper shakes in front of his eyes. His hands, he belatedly realizes, are trembling.

—plead the Imperius Curse, and pending his trial, Mr. Luther Crabbe is being held at Azkaban—

“Where’s Vince,” Draco says.

“Hm?” Pansy answers, distracted.

“Where’s Vince,” Draco repeats, louder—more loudly than he’d intended, loud enough to draw the attention of most of the room.

“I don’t know,” Harry says slowly. “I’ve barely seen him all year. Draco, what’s wrong?”

It wasn’t Lucius Malfoy who’d masterminded the operation—no wonder it had been so shoddy. It wasn’t Draco’s father who’d gone to Azkaban, who’d failed the Dark Lord, whose son now had to pay for the price of his mistake—

Draco takes off in a sprint out of the common room. Voices shout behind him, but Draco can’t hear them.

He has to get to Dumbledore. It is the only thing he can think about. He has to warn him, has to find Vince and talk him down—if he’s not too late—

Merlin, please let him not be too late—

But as he makes it to the corridor outside the Headmaster’s office, the spiral staircase is already open, and echoing from below, the sound of fighting, of slinging spells, of screaming.

“What the—” It’s Harry, behind him. He’d followed Draco, along with Blaise and Pansy, a fact which Draco is only dimly able to register. “What’s happening?”

“No,” Draco says, and takes off up the stairs.

The scene that greets them is chaos and carnage, the office wrecked, overturned bookshelves and blasted out windows. Draco counts—three, four, six?—Death Eaters in total, two of them on the ground, McGonagall unconscious against the wall, Fawkes in a pool of blood by the desk, and Albus Dumbledore staring down the outstretched wand of Vincent Crabbe.

“Do it,” hisses the all-too-familiar voice of Bellatrix Lestrange. “Do it, you useless boy! If the Dark Lord finds out you hesitated—!”

“Vince!” Draco screams, and what brief lull there had been in the battle is abruptly over.

Harry reacts first, swiftly—he catches the stunner Bellatrix fires at Draco’s head with a shield, then answers with a disarm. Pansy slings a curse at Avery, and Blaise rebounds Dolohov’s Cruciatus Curse into a mirror, which shatters apart.

Draco, for his part, feels like he can look at nothing but Vince. Vince stares back, eyes bloodshot, hand shaking, wand pointed at Draco—but silent.

“Vince,” Draco says, voice ruined with the brutal clarity of hindsight, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Shut up,” he hisses back. “Shut up! I have to do this, Draco!”

“No! No, no, no, Vince, you don’t!”

“He’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill my parents!”

“I know. I know that’s what he said. But Vince, we can protect you. The Order can protect you.”

“Nothing can protect me!” he sobs. “No one can save me!”

He yanks up his left sleeve. Draco’s breath shudders as he sees the Dark Mark, writhing on his skin.

“No,” he whispers. “Merlin, Vince, no.”

“I have to do this,” Vince repeats, his frantic tears breaking their banks and rolling down his face. Behind Draco, Pansy blasts Avery out a window and Blaise sends Dolohov careening head-first into a glass cabinet.

“Vince,” Draco says, stepping forward with hands outstretched, “please believe me when I say that this is a line you don’t want to cross. If you do this, you will never be the same. Murder changes you, it twists you. And I know you, Vince, you’re not a killer. You’re just scared and backed into a corner and you think you have to do this but you don’t.

“So please,” he continues, and finds that he’s begging, “just put down your wand. Come with me back to the Order. Let us help you. I can’t lose you to this.” Not again.

“Mr. Crabbe,” Dumbledore says, as gently as he dares.

It’s a mistake. Vince whirls, wand outstretched. “Shut up!”

Harry finally manages to throw Bellatrix off with a great cataclysm of magic, sending her crashing to the floor in a strong binding spell. He calls, “Vince!”

But Vince doesn’t hear Harry. Everything, it feels like, is moving in slow motion. Draco watches helplessly as Vince readies his wand—

“No!” Pansy cries.

—and before he can raise his own, the words are falling from Vince’s mouth—

“Avada kedavra!”

Green bursts, fills the room. And when it fades, Albus Dumbledore is on the ground, dead.

The room gets very, very quiet.

“Vince,” Blaise whispers, “how could you—?”

“Traitor,” Harry hisses. “Fucking traitor!”

Draco feels like he can’t breathe.

His eyes lift to Vince’s face, who is staring down at the corpse of Albus Dumbledore like he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.

It doesn’t take long for the horror to creep into the edges of his expression.

“You were my friend,” Harry continues, furious and distraught. “I trusted you!”

“I,” Vince says, and starts to shake.

“You took his mark, you do his bidding, the monster that killed my family, how could you!”

Harry raises his wand. Unthinking, Draco darts forward, puts himself between him.

“No! Harry, no!”

“You’re defending him?” Harry cries, outraged, right on the edge of hysterical.

“Harry, more bloodshed isn’t going to give back what’s been taken—!”

“He just killed Albus Dumbledore!” Harry bellows. “You saw him do it!”

“He’s a victim, Harry! He was threatened with his life, with his parents’ lives!”

“And that justifies murder?”

“Nothing justifies murder!” Draco grabs Harry by the wrist with both hands; Harry does not drop his wand, and its tip presses hard into Draco’s throat. “I’m not trying to justify it, I’m just begging you to realize that he was under duress, that he felt like he didn’t have a choice, and that he was your friend—”

“Get out of the way, Draco!”

“Are you going to kill me to get to him?”

“Are you telling me I have to?”

Draco shudders, pants, and doesn’t answer. But he also doesn’t move.

Harry’s green eyes are shining with furious tears. “Are you telling me,” he continues, “that you’re willing to shield a coward, a traitor, a murderer, just because you feel sorry for him?”

It’s not just that, of course—but how could Draco possibly explain the truth in a way that’s comprehensible with Harry Potter’s wand pressed to his throat? How could he explain that it’s more than just sympathy, but a primal, horrible, bone-deep empathy? That Draco had been one panicked breath away from the same crime, and that he knew why Vince felt like it was necessary?

The answer is, of course, that he can’t. So he doesn’t. He just stands, and shakes.

“You’re unbelievable,” Harry hisses, teeth bared. He wrenches his hand from Draco’s grasp, recoiling from him in disgust. “You’re just as bad as him.”

And that is true, isn’t it? It hurts so much, so tremendously, that it can only be truth.

Harry turns, storms from the office. Blaise and Pansy, both horrified, look to each other, and then to Draco.

Draco swallows a knot of nauseous fear.

“He needs you,” he tells them. “Go after him.”

“Draco—” Blaise begins.

“Now, Blaise.”

They hesitate, then go.

And then, slowly, Draco turns back to Vince.

For a long, agonizing moment, neither of them speak—they stare at one another, a symphony of suffering and sympathy and solicitude and sin echoing in the silence.

Eventually, Draco says, “You need to leave.”

Vince swallows. “Draco,” he says.

“You need to leave before he comes back with the rest of the Order.”

“I had to,” Vince says.

“Shut the hell up,” Draco snarls. “I saved your life, Vincent Crabbe, but I cannot save your soul. You just killed a man.”

Vince quakes.

“And you’re going to live with that for the rest of your life,” Draco continues, as furious tears fall down his face, “which will be very short if you don’t go.”

“Draco,” Vince says.

“GO!”

He goes, stumbling at first, out of the office and away.

Draco is not sure how long he stands alone in that room, silently trembling, tears pouring down his face.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. It was always going to end this way, wasn’t it? Fixed points: moments that were always going to happen. Voldemort was always going to return. Dumbledore was always going to die.

And Harry was always going to hate him.

Chapter Text

Harry is gone.

“I’ve been named interim Headmaster,” Snape says, “until such a time as the Ministry finds a suitable replacement. The Order will do what it can, of course, to slow the process and keep me in charge as long as possible.”

Draco says nothing. He feels like he hasn’t said a word in months, though he’s sure he must have done—it had, after all, been nearly three since Harry had gone.

Two months, three weeks, four days. Summer break is halfway done already. And Harry is gone.

“They’ve already appointed a new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, overruling what should be my prerogative,” Snape continues, when Draco stays silent. “Amycus Carrow. I’m sure you’re familiar. It’s going to be treacherous, navigating the school year with him on staff, especially since he’ll have the full force of the corrupt Ministry behind his decisions. I’ll do what I can, but…”

Still, Draco says nothing. He is staring into the untouched cup of tea Snape had set out for him as the last tongues of steam rising from its surface start to fade. Harry is gone.

“We haven’t heard word from him,” Snape says after a very long, very heavy pause. “I suppose that’s for the best. The less the Order knows about his whereabouts, the safer he is. But Parkinson and Zabini are with him. That’s good, surely?”

Harry is gone. Harry is gone.

“If tea isn’t strong enough, I have some firewhiskey.”

Draco manages a nod. Snape stands, vanishes briefly into his kitchen, and returns with two small glasses and an aging, dusty bottle. The cap pops dully, and the liquid gurgles as it fills Draco’s tumbler.

“Don’t tell your mother I gave you this.”

“When does it stop hurting?” Draco croaks. (Harry is gone.)

Snape hesitates mid-pour. But only for a moment, before he continues.

“It doesn’t,” he answers, voice careful.

Draco makes a hoarse, broken sound, doubles over the table, and buries his face in his hands.

“But you become inured to it, in time,” Snape continues, “for whatever that’s worth. The pain becomes a backdrop—always there, but ignorable.”

“I don’t know if I can bear it much longer,” Draco confesses, his words fracturing under the weight of his grief.

“You can,” Snape assures him, then sits down. “You are stronger, and wiser, and better than you let yourself believe, Draco Malfoy. You can endure. You will endure. Your mother needs you to. As do I.”

Draco lifts tear-blurred eyes to Snape, who is staring back at him with a steady, resolute kind of sadness. A shared suffering, tempered by love, and by experience.

(Harry is gone. Harry is gone.)

“I’m just…” Draco swallows. “I’m just meant to carry on? Like this?”

“One foot in front of the other, Draco,” he says. “It will be the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but you can do hard things.”

Snape slides the firewhiskey toward Draco’s hands, once again resting on the table. Feebly, Draco takes it, swallows it in a single mouthful. It burns the whole way down his throat.

“You can do it,” Snape says again, and grips Draco’s wrist. “It doesn’t feel like it right now, I know, but you can.”

Harry is gone. Harry is gone. Harry is gone.

Harry is gone, but life insists on continuing. The days just keep going, one after the other, despite the sucking chest wound of emotional agony that feels like it is killing him, that should have killed him ages ago.

How had Snape survived being rejected by his soulmate? How is Draco surviving it?

Even worse, all of Draco’s usual tactics for handling pain are failing him.

“Aren’t you a little young to be in a place like this, darling?”

The shot Draco throws back is called Apocalypse Now—tequila, Irish cream, and vermouth, a layered drink that hits like a steel-toed boot to the face. When he slams the emptied glass back down onto the bar, he says, without looking at whoever it was that had addressed him, “Are you here to interrogate me or to fuck me?”

A pause. Then, “Guilty as charged. I’m definitely here to fuck you.”

“Then feel free to shut up and follow.”

Draco turns and strides imperiously across the dance floor. He can just barely detect a breathy well, fuck from behind and the hurried footsteps that follow.

Razor’s Edge had been one of the first places Draco had discovered during his spiral of postbellum self-destruction, being that it was a quick jot away from one of the lesser-known entrances to Diagon Alley, near Soho. The interior is all shiny black lacquer and purple lights that pulse in time with the pounding EDM, which is loud enough to drown out all of Draco’s second thoughts about what it means that he came back.

The hallway leading off the back of the main floor is shadowy and quiet, and when Draco first passes into it, empty.

“I really do have no self-control when it comes to pretty blond twinks,” says the man who’d followed him, once it’s quiet enough to be heard.

“Shut up,” Draco instructs him, then drives him into the wall and kisses him. He’s near on six inches taller than Draco, and his hands are thick-fingered and rough with calluses. At once, they settle to a hard grip on Draco’s ribcage.

The sense memory hits immediately: the Yule Ball, glittering white snow falling, the distant music from inside the Great Hall as Harry kissed him into the wall, hands on his ribs.

The thought of you with anyone else—

Draco withdraws as though struck. The man, who Draco can now see as a heavyset bear in a leather vest, peers down at him in confusion.

He tries, desperately, to shove the memory back down. Deliberately, Draco moves the stranger’s hands from his ribs to his hips. The stranger takes it as an invitation and dares even lower, grabbing his ass in two handfuls.

“There we are, love,” he says, “go on.”

Go on, love. Let me feel you.

Draco wholly recoils, several steps backward till he hits the opposite wall. Despite his best efforts, he’s shaking.

It had been like this last week, too. He’d tried to lose himself in the same rough, anonymous, meaningless sex that had comprised so much of his early twenties, and every single thing—every single thing—had just been a reminder of Harry. It’s always something.

His hair is dark, like Harry’s. Or he wears glasses, like Harry. Or his smirk is lopsided, like Harry’s. He touches like Harry. He laughs like Harry. Each man Draco finds, every man he finds, no matter how dissimilar, can only ever be a poor substitute for Harry, Harry, Harry. Even after he’d turned Draco away, broken his heart, and fled the country, Draco was still haunted by him. Shackled to him.

“Gunshy?” the man asks, advancing. “Bet I could work you open.”

“I’m not interested,” Draco says.

“Don’t be a tease.”

“If you touch me, I’ll cut your cock off.”

His face turns grotesque. “Fucking slut,” he growls, and storms out of the hallway, back into the pulsing purple lights and deafening music.

Draco’s head hits the wall behind him, his eyes sting with tears. It’s a worse agony than the Cruciatus Curse, that Harry gets to carry on, save the world, and find someone else to spend his long, happy life with, while Draco is forced to pick up all the shattered pieces his departure left behind.

Perhaps it’s the long-overdue punishment for all his sins. It certainly has the feeling of a great, cosmic, poetic irony.

He takes a few steadying breaths.

There are more useful ways to kill himself than this.

Harry is gone, but the war doesn’t stop.

“Dobby? Dobby, are you…?”

The Malfoy Manor is quiet—it is, after all, nearly two o’clock in the morning. But the wards had let him in all the same, one of many oversights he intends to exploit.

Dobby, on the pile of rags in the corner of the larder that serve as his bed, lifts his large head, blinking owlishly. On either side, Dotty and Dolly do the same, but it’s Dolly who reacts first:

“Young Master!” she squeals, and scrambles off the pile.

“Ssh, Dolly, quiet, no one knows I’m here—!”

But she races over toward him anyway, and Draco barely has time to crouch down and catch her in his arms. The second her face is buried in his shoulder, she breaks down into wailing tears.

“Dolly, please—please, you have to be quiet, it’s okay, I’m here now—”

“It’s been so horrible here, Young Master!” she squalls, tiny frame shuddering against him. “The Death Eaters are awful and cruel and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is wicked, wicked—!”

“Dolly,” he begs her, but before he can finish the sentence, Dobby’s magic shimmers, and the muffled closeness of a silencing charm settles in a bubble around them.

“Young Master Draco is forbidden from being here,” Dobby says, circumspect but not afraid. “Master says he is a blood traitor and has forsaken his name.”

“Yes, I’m sure my father is saying all sorts of things about me,” he answers, patting Dolly’s back gently as she continues to sob into his robes. “Are you all right? Are any of you wounded?”

“We is able to heal each other,” Dotty answers. She’s older than the other two by several decades, though Draco had never seen her so feeble before, even in the original timeline—though in the original timeline, Draco was able to let her and Dolly hide in his room when they needed it. “But that is not stopping the Death Eaters from doing great cruelties to us.”

Draco flinches, and guilt lances through the middle of his chest. He should have done this a while ago, but no one in the Order had given him leave—too dangerous, Snape had said, with a grim shake of his head, that house has become his stronghold, Draco; it isn’t safe to just walk into it.

Fortunately, Draco has lately stopped caring about his safety.

“I can imagine,” he says, as Dolly finally collects herself and wipes her tears with the ragged hem of her pillow case. “But that’s why I’m here. I can help you.”

“Help us?” Dobby replies, guarded.

“My absolute bastard of a father has been refusing to sign the divorce papers my mother’s solicitor has served him,” he explains, “which keeps her from accessing much of the Black estate she originally inherited, but—it also means I’m still legally his heir.”

“Dobby is not understanding.”

Draco reaches into the inner pocket of his cloak and produces three sets of socks rolled into balls—one blue, one black, and one gray.

“It means that I can free you,” he tells them. “It means I can get you out of here.”

Dobby’s already enormous eyes widen further, shot through with sudden hope. Dotty and Dolly exchange a bewildered look.

“I’m seventeen now,” Draco continues. “I’m of age, and still the legal heir to the Malfoy estate. The magic binding you will honor my decision, won’t it?”

“It… it will,” Dotty says slowly, “but Young Master Draco—”

“Dolly is not wanting to leave you!” Dolly cries, big eyes once again shining with tears. “Please do not be sending Dolly away!”

“Oh, Dolly—Dolly, please don’t cry,” he begs her. “You don’t have to leave me. You can come back with me to Starmantle Court. Do you remember? Mother’s childhood home? That’s where the two of us live now, and you can stay there as long as you like.”

“But—but if Dolly is free—”

“We’ll pay you,” he says. “If you stay on with us, we’ll give you all salary. Or if you prefer, you can go somewhere else, whatever you want. Just please let me do this. Let me free you. It’s the only way to get you out of the Malfoy Manor, and the very least you deserve, after all the suffering you’ve endured.”

He holds out the three sets of socks. Dobby reaches out first with both hands, hugging them to his chest. Dotty is a little slower, thin hands gripping the wool carefully.

Dolly sniffs, watery eyes moving between Draco and the final pair of socks in his outstretched hand.

“Young Master promises not to send Dolly away?” she squeaks.

“On my honor,” Draco answers at once. “You can stay on Mother’s service if you like, just so long as you accept a salary. Please, Dolly, you’ve been so good to me all my life; I know freedom is scary, but everything worth having is.”

Still sniffling, Dolly reaches out and, with trembling hands, takes the final pair of socks.

“Dobby is free,” the elf whispers, eyes shining. “Dobby is free.”

Draco smiles, heart lodged painfully in his throat. Harry is gone, but this is good. Even if Draco will never be whole again, at least he can scrape together little pieces of goodness, rays of sunlight on an ocean of grief.

“Dolly,” Draco says, “can you get us out of here?”

Harry is gone, but Sirius is not. He is sitting in the night-dark drawing room of Starmantle Court after Draco finally talks his newly freed house-elves into sleeping in guest rooms and not on the floor of the pantry.

“That was a fucking dangerous stunt you pulled,” Sirius says when he hears the floorboards under the archway creak beneath Draco’s feet.

Draco pauses, then eventually says, “I couldn’t just leave them.”

“You walked right into his headquarters,” Sirius continues. “He could have killed you. He could have done worse than kill you—you know he has some weird fascination with you.”

“They were being tortured, Sirius.”

“And that’s horrible, but was it worth risking your life?”

Draco almost says, What isn’t? Draco feels ready to risk his life for anything. Harry is gone. What does Draco’s life matter?

“There are people here that need you,” Sirius says. “People that would be devastated if anything happened to you.”

“I’m going to bed,” Draco answers. “You can send me your inspirational speech in an owl if you must.”

Draco starts through the sitting room toward the foyer, when Sirius says, “Harry sent word.”

His steps stumble. He has to brace one hand on the grandfather clock to keep himself from falling.

“Just a letter,” Sirius elaborates, “just an assurance that he’s safe. Blaise and Pansy, too.”

Draco shuts his eyes tightly.

“He talked about you,” Sirius continues.

“Good night, Sirius.”

“Draco—”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Draco, he—”

“I’m not interested. I don’t—I don’t want to know what he said about me, all right? I can imagine well enough on my own. If he’s safe, if—”

His throat constricts, his eyes burn. Harry is gone. Harry is gone.

“If he’s safe, that’s enough. I don’t care to know any more.” He couldn’t bear it.

He doesn’t give Sirius time to say anything else. He hurries out of the drawing room, up the stairs, and to bed, chased by all his heartache.

Harry is gone, and he took Draco’s heart with him when he went. And now Draco is forced to watch others have what he doesn’t.

Sirius and Remus tie the knot in a small, private ceremony in August. People who should be here aren’t here, Lupin says in his vows, but I’ve gone without you for so long now that I’m not willing to wait another second. Whatever time I have left is yours, my love.

Draco applauds when they kiss, then drinks himself into a stupor that night, thinking about Nymphadora Tonks and her maudlin expression at the wedding, little Teddy Lupin who will never exist now, and Harry, Harry, Harry.

Then, less than a week later, Snape and his mother sit him down in the back patio of Starmantle Court.

“There’s something you should probably know, darling,” his mother begins.

Draco, who’s fighting off a bit of a hangover and fiercely hating the late summer sun, says, “I’ve worked it out on my own, actually.”

Snape’s expression flickers. “Have you?”

“The first clue was when you came home three weekends in a row smelling like valerian root, Mother,” Draco says. “I can’t think of a single other person who owns enough valerian to smell like it.”

His mother clears her throat daintily, a pink flush rising on her pale cheeks. Snape’s mouth twists, but he says nothing.

“I hope you haven’t come asking for my consent to court her,” Draco says. “Even if I had the patience for those outdated pureblood customs—”

“No,” he interjects. “No, Draco, it’s not your consent I’m seeking. The better word, I think, is blessing.”

“My blessing,” Draco repeats, wishing desperately he had a drink. As if summoned by the desire—and restrained by propriety—Dolly appears through the open French doors with a tray of tea, which she serves to Draco first.

“I care about your mother a great deal,” Snape elaborates, “but I also care about you. Your family has suffered enough, and I don’t care to add to that suffering.”

Draco stares at him for a time in silence. He doesn’t quite know why Snape’s choice of words bothers him, until, eventually, he does.

“Severus,” Draco says slowly, “you’re talking as if you’re not already a part of this family.”

His mother’s expression warms, to the point where her eyes shine with tears. Snape, by contrast, seems startled.

“Have I surprised you? I can’t imagine why.”

“I,” Snape begins, then doesn’t finish.

“Lucius Malfoy is my father in only the most superficial sense,” Draco continues. “It’s his blood in my veins, his name attached to mine, but all the hard parts of fatherhood? The parts that matter? The guidance, the patience, the protection? That was you, Severus. That’s always been you.”

Snape’s face has, somehow, both slackened and tensed at the same time. His dark eyes are inscrutable, like something small but fundamental has shifted in his soul.

His mother reaches out to take his hand in hers. “I told you,” she whispers.

“Draco,” Snape says, voice oddly weak.

“So if it’s my blessing you’re after, I suppose you have it, for whatever it’s worth,” Draco says. “Both of you deserve happiness. It’s rare enough these days, and if you find it in each other, that’s all that matters.”

Draco manages to keep up his smile, his veneer of calm patience, through the rest of the conversation, through tight, drawn-out hugs from each of them, and even through Snape’s whispered confession into Draco’s hair—how absurd of me to have never noticed I’ve had a son all this time—before he politely excuses himself to his room and crumbles to pieces.

He tells himself that he is happy for them, that they deserve all the joy in the world, that it is good that they have found love.

He tells himself these things over and over, to drown out the chorus of Harry is gone, Harry is gone, Harry is gone, pulsing through his head, and to talk himself out of the bitter aftertaste their happiness leaves in his mouth.

Harry is gone, and Draco wants to scrub all sign of him from his life. He wants to leave him behind as easily as Harry had left him, even though he knows that will never be possible.

It starts with his hair, which Dobby finds him shearing over the bathroom sink a few days before the start of term.

“Dobby can, er, do this properly for Master Draco,” he says.

Draco, tear-blind and delirious, looks from the house-elf half hidden by the ajar bathroom door to his own reflection and the jaggedly-cut blond hair falling at a slant over his shoulders.

“I don’t want it long anymore,” Draco tells him. He tries for a tone of airy dismissal, but lands somewhere in shattered grief. “It’s a bloody pain to take care of this much hair, anyway. Why should I keep it?”

(Because Harry likes it long, but Harry is gone.)

Dobby climbs up onto the bathroom counter, and with a series of careful spells that sizzle and pop around Draco’s skull, begins to cut his hair.

“Perhaps long on top,” Dobby suggests carefully as he works, “and short on the sides? It will give Master Draco many options to style it.”

Draco takes a few sharp, shuddering breaths. He nods, shallowly, to avoid disturbing Dobby’s magic as it makes a rose garden of a rat’s nest.

“Dobby is noticing that Master Draco is upset,” the house-elf says carefully.

“I suppose it’s rather obvious,” Draco answers, miserably staring into the pile of blond hair lying in the sink.

“It is not being Dobby’s business, but Dobby hopes that Master Draco feels better soon. Dobby owes Master Draco a great deal.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Draco assures him.

“Master Draco has freed Dobby.”

“Freedom is a right, Dobby, not a privilege or a gift,” Draco says. “I don’t need to be thanked for doing the bare minimum.”

“Master Draco broke into the stronghold of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, risking his life to free Dobby and Dolly and Dotty. If Master Draco is thinking of this as the bare minimum, Dobby cannot imagine what Master Draco’s idea of great effort is.”

“I didn’t—”

“Master Draco should just say you’re welcome.”

A single laugh, painful and hoarse, is punched out of him.

“I was happy to do it,” Draco says. It’s not quite true—he’s not happy about anything these days (Harry is gone)—but it’s close enough to the truth that it doesn’t feel like a lie.

Dobby steps forward on the counter and blows the shorn hair from Draco’s shoulders with a few more spells. When Draco looks back up at the mirror, he almost doesn’t recognize himself. Just as Dobby had suggested, it’s short on the sides and long on top, a swoop of blond hair that falls in a fringe across his brow and over one eye. He pushes two fingers through it and tells himself he’s happy it’s gone.

“Thank you,” Draco eventually says. “It’s just what I wanted.”

Dobby wrings his large hands together. “Master Draco is welcome. Dobby is hoping that Master Draco has a safe year at Hogwarts. Dobby knows that… that…”

“I’ll be all right,” Draco says, for Dobby’s sake, even though he can’t imagine it will be true.

“Dobby has heard things at the Malfoy Manor. Dobby knows that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is trying very hard to gain control of Hogwarts. Dobby worries—”

“Dobby, I’ll be all right,” Draco repeats, putting one hand on his shoulder. “I can’t just not go. People I care about will be there, and I can’t abandon them.”

Dobby says nothing for a while, wringing his hands together. When he does speak, it’s very quietly: “Master Draco has grown into a kind young man,” he mutters. “Much better than his father.”

“That’s not saying much,” Draco reminds him. “There are flobberworms with more moral integrity than Lucius Malfoy. You should talk to Severus, Dobby, about what you know about the Dark Lord’s designs for Hogwarts.”

Harry is gone, and Needle knows it.

Draco is back in the Room of Requirement nearly as soon as he’s off the train, skipping the grim welcome feast entirely to go check on his pet project.

He arrives expecting the usual snapping, snarling, crackling volatility, but instead, he finds nothing. Needle is back to its original state, a thin beam of blue-white light extending from arched ceiling to heavy stone pedestal, humming and placid.

The sight of it stops Draco dead in his tracks.

“What?” The word falls out of his mouth before he can snatch it back. “What? How—? How has—?”

Draco hurries to the ledger on the table by the wall, enchanted to mark down Needle’s energy fluctuations every hour on the hour.

They’re all normal.

Frantic, Draco flips backward in the ledger. Normal, normal, normal—barely a flicker, all summer long.

Until he hits mid-May, the end of last term, where he finally sees some of the volatility return. Draco stares down at the numbers, bewildered. What had happened in mid-May? He hadn’t checked up on Needle in person through the last few months of the school year, granted, because—

The sudden realization nearly knocks Draco flat.

And then it starts to hurt.

“That’s why—that’s why it—”

Mid-May. When Harry left. When Needle’s volatility mysteriously vanished.

Draco doesn’t realize he’s shaking until his grip on the ledger nearly rips the page.

He turns furious, teary eyes to Needle, humming on the far side of the room.

It was Harry. It was true fucking love. Draco’s hopeless, doomed, but magically volatile love for Harry Fucking Potter had caused Needle to destabilize. The love of a soulmate, the most powerful magical force in the world, was what had caused all that dangerous temporal fluctuation.

And now Harry’s gone—

(Harry’s gone Harry’s gone Harry’s gone.)

—and so Needle’s back to normal.

A horrible, hysterical laugh bubbles up out of Draco’s throat. Mystery fucking solved! Needle’s perfectly fine now! Draco’s whole soul has been ripped to shreds by Harry’s rejection, but at least Needle is alright!

It takes Draco a few more moments of unhinged laughter to realize that it’s not laughter at all, that he’s sobbing so violently that it almost feels like dry heaving. His legs give out. His chest hurts, in that seriously concerning I-should-probably-get-to-a-hospital kind of way, but of course he can’t move. He slides down the wall and his crying turns into screaming and then into silence.

Harry’s gone. Harry’s gone. Harry’s gone.

Needle is fine, and Draco feels like he’s dying.

Harry is gone, and the Dementors are back.

“This is fucking crazy,” Daphne says when, on the first day of classes, they pass two of them rippling down the hallway, black shadows swirling through the air around them like ink in water. A pair of second years shriek and scuttle backward out of their path. “It was one thing in third year, when there was an escaped convict on the loose, but what possible justification could the Ministry have for sending them now?”

“Something about rooting out antigovernment instigators,” Adrian answers, sour.

“What, like the S.A.?” Daphne scoffs. “Didn’t realize we’d been upgraded to political dissidents.”

Draco shushes her as a third Dementor rounds a corner and glides past them, chased by a gust of frigid air and the horrible feeling of spiders crawling across bare skin.

“They’re his spies,” Draco says, once it passes. “And don’t forget it. Everything they hear, they report straight to the Dark Lord.”

“Great,” Adrian sighs. “I wasn’t planning on doing anything this year anyway.”

They come to the room formerly known as the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, though according to their class roster, the course has been renamed to, simply, Dark Arts. Draco had very seriously considered dropping the course this year, but had been stopped by memories of some of Amycus Carrow’s more sadistic punishments. Draco doesn’t think he can prevent all of it, but he feels an obligation to intervene where he can.

All three of them are stopped short outside the door by a familiar face.

Adrian snarls a furious, “How’s it going, traitor?”

Vince flinches, averts his eyes. He’s shifting from foot to foot and wringing his hands around his textbook.

“What’s it like getting away with murder, turncoat?” Daphne adds, and shoves past him with a hard shoulder check that sends Vince staggering a half-step back as she storms into the classroom.

Draco, for his part, doesn’t say anything. He tries to feel the same anger, but it’s just not there. Anger isn’t what he feels when he looks at Vincent Crabbe, it’s grief—grief for a friend who picked the worse of two terrible options and bound himself irrevocably to a tyrant and a psychopath.

“I,” Vince says, then swallows. “Draco, can I talk to you? Alone?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Vince,” Draco answers. The grief bleeds into his voice.

“Please,” Vince says, a little desperately, daring a few steps closer. “Please, Draco, I—I want to help. I want to fix this, or at least try.”

Draco sighs. Too little, too late—and unbearably, achingly familiar. “You expect me to take you at your word, Vince? After what you did?”

Vince says nothing, but the wounded expression on his face speaks volumes.

“He means fuck off, backstabber,” Adrian growls, then grabs Draco by the elbow and drags them both inside.

The classroom is as Draco remembers it, decorated with chains and whips and thumbscrews and other instruments of torture. The first time Draco had seen Amycus Carrow’s classroom, he’d been naive enough to assume that it was all for show, and that he wouldn’t actually hurt anyone.

“The fucking nerve of him,” Adrian hisses as they both sit down on either side of Daphne. “Can you believe that shit? Trying to play the victim, when he murdered Albus Dumbledore and got away with it?”

“No point in dwelling on it,” Draco says unhappily, and unpacks his books.

“Ah, my fellow Slytherins!”

Amycus Carrow is a small, lumpy man with beady eyes and a deranged smile. He comes shuffling into the classroom via the adjoining office with a staggering, wobbling gait that makes Draco think of Dr. Frankenstein’s malformed assistant, Igor.

If Carrow had been expecting camaraderie or solidarity from his N.E.W.T.-level Slytherin class, he doesn’t find it. Of the six that took the course, five are S.A. members who enrolled specifically because they recognized his name and were keen to keep an eye on him, and one was Vincent Crabbe, who sat slouched in the back of the classroom, unresponsive.

His eyes scan the students assembled, waiting for a reaction that doesn’t come. Beside Draco, Daphne grips her quill so hard that it snaps in half.

“Welcome to the Dark Arts,” Carrow continues eventually, breath wheezy. “I understand that your education has, up till this point, been focused mainly on defense. That is all going to change this year.

“As my most advanced class, I’ll hold you to very high standards. You’ll be expected to master some of the more complicated and powerful dark spells that there are. They will be measured by efficacy, and by enthusiasm.

“Mr. Malfoy!”

Draco is, perhaps, the only student who doesn’t startle at his name.

“Front and center, if you please!”

Draco pushes his chair out and heads toward the front of the room. Six pairs of eyes bore holes into his skin all the way up.

Carrow’s smile is horrible as he says, “Your father sends his regards.”

Draco’s face is impassive. “I bet he does,” he answers neutrally. “I stole his house-elves right out from under his nose last month. Did Voldemort find out about that? Must have been embarrassing.”

Carrow strikes him, hard, across the face with the back of his hand. Draco staggers, but does not fall. He flexes his jaw a few times, working out the initial bright burst of pain before righting himself.

“You will not speak his name,” Carrow shrills. “You are not worthy.”

“You can’t just fucking hit students!” Daphne cries, outraged. “Headmaster Snape—”

“—Headmaster Snape is subject to the same rules as you all, come down straight from the Minister of Magic, himself! The curriculum and disciplinary practices of this institution are being completely overhauled—and it’s about time!”

Carrow points his wand to the far side of the room. A closet door bangs open, and from inside, a few voices yelp in fear.

Draco has lived through this lesson once before, so he’s not surprised like the others when two Gryffindor first-years and a Hufflepuff second-year come out from the closet they’d been locked in, white-faced and trembling. Adrian, and Theo behind him, both take in sharp breaths of alarm, and Daphne hisses a furious what the hell—but Draco only stares impassively.

Draco is not surprised. He’s angry.

“This first class will be a measure of your aptitude in my subject, to get an idea of how thorough and exacting my teaching methods will have to be to bring you to a satisfactory level,” Carrow says. The students—terrified, trembling children—are corralled up to the front of the classroom by Carrow’s beckoning gestures, but they can’t force themselves to get closer than about a dozen feet.

“These students were caught breaking the rules last night,” Carrow explains, voice dark and gleeful. “Contacting their Muggle parents! Can you imagine? Blessed with the gift of magic, and still insisting on consorting with worthless Muggles? So, we will combine their punishment with your lesson.”

Carrow looms down over Draco, yellow teeth bared in a manic smile.

“Cast the Cruciatus Curse, Mr. Malfoy,” he says. “Let me see if there’s any strength left in that pure blood of yours.”

“No,” Draco answers evenly.

Carrow’s expression flickers dangerously. “No?”

“No,” Draco repeats. “I decline. I have no interest in torturing children.”

“I should clarify,” Carrow snarls, “that those who refuse to participate in my lessons will be subject to them.”

Draco laughs, hoarse and dry, which seems to anger Carrow further.

“You think I’m afraid of pain?” Draco says. “You think a Cruciatus Curse is the worst thing I’ve had to endure? Your threats don’t scare me, and neither does your feeble magic, Carrow.”

“Draco,” Daphne says. There’s real fear in her voice.

“I’ll be fine,” Draco says, to Daphne, and to his fellow students. “Cast whatever spell you want on me. I will not torture children and I will not play your sadistic games.”

Carrow’s face breaks into a snarling, furious frown. When he casts the first Cruciatus, Draco is able to stand upright through it.

When he casts the third, Draco blacks out.

Harry is gone, and the agony of it is finally physical as well as emotional.

“Draco, you must stop playing the hero.”

In two short years, Snape had gone from potions master to Defense Against the Dark Arts professor to Headmaster, but there was no prying him, it seemed, from his original specialty. The Headmaster’s office, in addition to receiving a makeover of dark brown leather and heavy hardwood, is now riddled with potions ingredients and Severus’s famously high-end and expensive goblin steel cauldron—which, at present, is full of regenerating salve, one of the few things that can undo the nerve damage caused by the Cruciatus Curse.

“What would you rather? Acquiescence? Was I meant to raise my wand against children?”

“For Merlin’s sake, Draco,” Snape hisses, “you’re a Slytherin, not a bloody Gryffindor. I’d rather you’d have worked out a way to defuse the situation entirely.”

“How does one defuse torture?”

“You’re very capable,” his godfather says acidly, a contrast to his gentle touch, which carefully spreads the salve across the spiderweb of thin white scars across Draco’s hand. “I’m sure you could have come up with something. I don’t want you risking your life like this, am I understood?”

The scars, colloquially called Dark Sign, are near invisible to the eye, but feel like shards of dry ice under Draco’s skin. They only appear on those repeatedly exposed to the Cruciatus Curse. Draco had earned it in his original timeline, too, though not this severely, and certainly not this extensively, up his hand and arm and shoulder, crawling halfway across his chest. Draco supposes he should be grateful it’s on his non-dominant arm.

“What, are you going to tell my mother on me?”

Snape levels him with a ferocious stare, which makes Draco realize—

“Please don’t tell my mother,” he adds, a little pathetically. She’d probably cry if she knew, and Draco can’t stand it when she cries.

“You only have to survive this for a few more months,” Snape says. There’s an edge of desperation to his voice as he withdraws his hands from Draco, now that the salve has been spread across all visible scarring. “Please, just keep your head down, do your schoolwork, and try not to martyr yourself. If I have to see you dragged into my office again, unconscious and humming with Dark Magic, I—”

His words break off, and Draco sees, more clearly than he’s ever seen it before, real and unvarnished fear on hid godfather’s face. Guilt twinges in the center of Draco’s chest.

“Family goes both ways,” Snape says eventually. “You and your mother are at the center of my world now. If anything happened to either of you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Draco swallows, shrugs his arm back into his shirt. The salve-slick skin pulls at the fabric, and every movement is a new surge of agony that Draco has to fight to conceal.

“I can’t do nothing, Sev,” Draco confesses. “Not again. It’ll kill me as well as any spell.”

“Then don’t do nothing,” Snape says. “I’m not asking you to stand by while horrible things happen, I’m just asking that you remember the value of your own life. Protecting those who cannot protect themselves is important. But so are you.”

It’s a sentiment that he’d expressed before, along with others. Draco wonders, dismally, if he’ll ever really believe it.

Harry is gone, but he’s left his handprints everywhere. Draco sees his lack prominently in the little window nook in the common room where he used to read, on the Quidditch Pitch, in his favorite spot in the Great Hall. His absence is a great, howling void, a negative space that eats everything around it.

He is most notably not present at S.A. meetings, which have become a more subdued affair. Only the younger members practice defensive magic, and only because they know they have to; the rest just talk grimly about how best to navigate the new, existential threats to students’ lives.

“We should come up with a rotating schedule of where to meet,” Graham suggests, three months into term. “Snape’s been doing what he can to keep these meetings quiet, but his power isn’t unlimited, and the Carrows are starting to notice that the same students disappear at the same time every week.”

“I’ll make a roster,” Daphne says with a sigh. “I have a few ideas.”

“How’s Creevey the younger?” Theo asks Neville, who shakes his head grimly.

“Still in the hospital wing,” he says. “Alecto got him pretty bad.”

“I can brew him a few potions,” Theo volunteers. “Snape’s been sneaking me healing reagents on the sly.”

“Whatever you can do,” Neville says. “They’re keeping Pomfrey deliberately undersupplied.”

“Professor Sprout has a hidden spot in her greenhouse that she can put up any students who’ve been kicked out of the common rooms,” Ernie MacMillan volunteers. “It might also work as a secondary sick bay, if we need it. She gave me permission to use it for S.A. purposes, so long as we keep it quiet.”

“I can think of a few uses for it,” Daphne says at once.

“Hey.”

Draco turns and sees Greg, looking thinner and sicker than Draco’s ever seen him. In one hand, he’s clutching a rolled up parchment.

“These just started going up.”

He unrolls the parchment. Staring back at him is Harry Potter, who is gone.

“Undesirable Number One,” Neville reads, face contorting.

“I don’t remember him looking that grouchy,” Theo muses.

Draco has the poster in his hands before he even realizes he’s moved to take it. Harry’s eyes stare belligerently out at him, chin shifting up with a proud defiance. He looks like a war hero.

Draco feels sick to his stomach.

“They also have posters for Blaise and Pansy, numbers two and three, respectively,” Greg continues.

“I guess, if nothing else, it’s assurance that they’re alive,” Daphne says in a small voice. “They wouldn’t be wanted if they were in custody, would they?”

Why does it still hurt so much? It’s been months since Harry left, and yet Draco can still see the way his face looked when he said You’re just as bad as him as if it had happened yesterday. Snape had told him that he’d become inured to it, in time, but so far it’s just as agonizing at it had been on day one.

Harry is gone. Harry is gone.

“Draco?”

Greg’s large hand is on his shoulder. Draco takes in a sharp breath, crumples the parchment in his hands, tosses it onto the floor.

“I have to,” Draco says, but can’t conjure an excuse, so he just leaves. No one protests; they all know what his and Harry’s relationship is.

Had been.

But though no one protests, one does follow. As soon as he’s back in the hallway, Greg grabs Draco by the wrist and pulls him around.

“Draco,” he says.

“I have shit to do, Greg,” Draco says, but Greg yanks him forward into a hug before he can get away.

Something thin and fragile in Draco’s heart threatens to shatter apart at the contact.

“I don’t know if anyone’s said this to you yet,” Greg says, “but I’m so sorry you lost him, mate.”

“Greg,” he croaks.

“And I’m sorry it had to happen the way it did,” Greg continues. “You were only defending your friend. I’d have done the same, I think, in your shoes. Vince is an absolute knob, and I don’t know if I can ever trust him again, but you were right to protect his life. Whatever he’s done wrong, more death wouldn’t have made it right.”

A little helplessly, Draco returns Greg’s embrace, buries his face in his shoulder.

“I bet that doesn’t make you feel better, though, huh? And why should it? You cared about Harry a lot and now he’s gone and that sucks and I’m sorry, Draco.”

In all seven years Draco had spent enrolled at Hogwarts the first time, he’d never gotten this close to Greg Goyle. He hadn’t realized what he’d been missing. And amid all that anguish (Harry is gone), there’s a spark of gratitude that, this time, he gets to do a proper job of being his friend, and appreciating all he is.

“And, hey,” Greg continues, cavalier, “if ever I think I might be into blokes, I’ll let you know. You’re a catch.”

Draco laughs, because he genuinely can’t tell if he’s serious. Greg laughs because Draco’s laughing.

And he’s still hurting (Harry is gone), but Draco scrapes another little shards of goodness up between his fingers and holds onto it.

Harry is gone, but those little fragments of happiness add up slowly over time.

All the children of Death Eaters spend their Christmas break at Starmantle Court that year, being doted on by Draco’s mother and affectionately sneered at by Snape. The Order hosts a small winter gala at Grimmauld Place, a far cry from the decadent parties the ancient London rowhouse used to host, but lively and bright all the same.

Sirius spends the evening drunkenly boasting about how his husband’s wolfier traits are good, actually, especially in the bedroom, while Remus buries his face in his hands and shakes with laughter. Draco’s mother and aunt Andromeda reminisce about their Hogwarts years over a bottle of wine, while Snape and McGonagall go three agonizingly long rounds of chess in front of the fireplace. Dobby, Dolly, and Dotty get the night off, and Draco even buys them presents—a cute floral dress for Dotty, a smart overcoat for Dolly, and a feathered cap for Dobby, who puts it on and then refuses to take it off for the rest of the break. Tonks, apparently a chaser during her days in Hogwarts, organizes a pick-up game which ends up being two players short and bitterly cold but enjoyable all the same.

It had been a bad year (Harry is gone). Progress against Voldemort had been slow, and people had died making it. But when Draco rings in the new year and watches fondly as his mother throws her arms around Snape and kisses him, the pain of it (Harry is gone) is manageable.

These little pieces of goodness and light he’s struggled to gather hurt to hold, like shards of glass gripped in bare hands, but the pain of it only makes him hold on all the tighter. Harry is gone, but Draco is trying to take the advice of a wise man and remember the value in his life.

Harry is gone, and Draco tries very hard to carry on despite that, but some things he simply cannot abide. There are some things that, self-loathing or not, are worth risking his life for. When, in the coldest days of early spring, Draco finds Amycus Carrow literally flaying the skin off an eleven-year-old Ravenclaw, there’s not a second of hesitation.

“Relashio!” Draco screams, and sends him staggering backward, away from the little girl bawling against the wall to which she’s shackled, already bleeding profusely from the open, weeping wound on her neck.

“You dare—” Carrow begins, but Draco does not let him finish.

“Sectumsempra!”

Blood explodes from the front of Carrow’s chest, and with a shriek, he goes toppling onto the floor. Draco hurries to the girl’s side—she’s still sobbing, wailing, thrashing in her shackles. Draco breaks the iron manacles around her wrists with fast, wordless spells, then presses a hand to the ragged strip of bloody flesh on the side of her throat.

“Can you stand?” he asks her urgently.

She manages to nod, though can’t force any words out through her tears.

“Go now. Go to the Headmaster’s office, tell him what’s happened—”

“Crucio!”

The curse hits Draco in the back, catching him off-guard. He screams, doubles over, but shields the girl with his own body long enough to let her scamper through the nearby door, at which point Draco capitulates onto the floor, writhing in that familiar, white-hot agony.

“Treachery,” Carrow spits through bloody teeth. “Treason. You’ve crossed a line, Malfoy, and there’s a long list of people eager to see you pay!”

By the time the worst of the pain has faded, by the time some of Draco’s senses come back to him, there are two Dementors hovering nearby, leaching the heat from his body and the very air. Draco’s ragged breath comes out as snarls of mist, and frigid fingers grab him by each arm, hauling him upright.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Carrow slurs. Draco’s magic had hit him hard, and his fist is pressed feebly to the gash running up the front of his chest, half-sealed with a hasty spell. “I’ve been waiting for a reason to escalate your punishments. Do you know what the Ministry has given me leave to do, when standard disciplines prove ineffective?”

Draco grits his teeth, says nothing. Carrow leans in, stinking of bile and blood, and whispers the answer:

“Remedial custody. You’re to be handed directly over to the Ministry. I have it on good authority that a mutual friend of ours has been eager to see you.”

Draco pulls hard on his self-control to keep the surge of fear from showing. Carrow draws back, addressing the Dementors gripping him by either arm.

“Take his wand and lock him up,” he instructs them. “A retinue will be along in the morning to handle him.”

Harry is gone, and over the next eighteen hours, Draco confronts the reality that he’ll never see him again.

In the small, windowless room, behind a heavy iron door that (to Draco’s frustration) even phoenix fire can’t melt, he feels all those shards of happiness slip away one by one, swallowed up by grim certainty.

Draco will be taken to Voldemort, interrogated under torture, and then likely killed. He tries to make peace with it, and isn’t quite able to manage it. At the very least, he wanted to live long enough to see that bastard die.

When the door finally opens and the mad, smiling faces of Amycus and Alecto Carrow greet him in the blinding light from behind, he blinks hard.

“All the arrangements are in place,” Alecto says. “Are you ready for your punishment, blood traitor?”

“Incarcerous,” Amycus says. The bindings snake around his wrists, lashing them together behind his back, and also between his teeth like a gag. Alecto hauls him up to a stand with a bruising grip on one shoulder.

The march out of the dungeons is impossibly long—and, as it ascends, increasingly witnessed. The first few students who see him pass stop and stare—and, with hushed whispers, summon more and more.

“You can’t do this,” Daphne hisses as they make it to the central hall, which is full of what must be half the student body. “You can’t just take him!”

“Unless you want to go with him, traitorous bitch,” Amycus snarls, “you’ll step back.”

Daphne lunges, or starts to—Greg grabs her by one elbow and urgently shakes his head. A whole, unspoken conversation goes on between them, while all the other students mutter. Draco’s not around to witness any of it. He’s hauled forward on stumbling feet to the Headmaster’s office.

It’s half-full when Draco makes it in. Snape is standing in front of the desk, hands behind his face, shoulders shaking with a barely-contained fury. McGonagall is at his side, one hand wringing around her wand. Sprout and Flitwick stand off to the side, along with Slughorn, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

“Minister’s orders, Snape,” Amycus croons. “Your Mudblood-loving godson is coming with us. Step out of the way of the Floo.”

“You expect me to just let you take him?” Snape growls.

“That’s exactly what I expect you to do,” Amycus answers, and saunters toward him with sneering bravado. “Or have you forgotten that this castle is swarming with Dementors? That if you so much as set a toe out of line, the hallowed halls of Hogwarts will run red with your students’ blood?”

Draco make a plaintive sound, muffled by the binding between his teeth. Snape’s furious eyes move to Draco, who stares back desperately. Let him take me, Draco wants to say. It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it.

“Severus,” Slughorn hedges.

“No,” Snape says. “No. This far and no further.”

“One word from me, and everyone in this castle dies!” Amycus cries.

From behind: “Then we ought to shut you up, eh?”

“Stupefy!”

Draco wheels around in time to see Alecto collapse onto the ground, hit in the back of the head with a brutal stunner. He doesn’t have time to process who cast it before it’s cast again—“Stupefy!”—on Amycus, who’s barely had time to raise his wand before he hits the floor.

Standing at the top of the steps leading into the Headmaster’s office—

“Draco!”

—is Pansy Parkinson, who slams into Draco full-force in a hug that knocks the wind out of him.

At once, Draco’s eyes are burning with tears.

“Finite incantatem,” says Blaise Zabini, causing the binding around his hands and in his mouth to dissolve away like smoke.

Suddenly, Draco is not so much crying as shuddering. His newly-freed arms reach up and grip Pansy back as tight as he can manage. When Blaise barrels into the hug, Draco laughs deliriously and squeezes him into it, burying his face in his shoulder.

“As always, Potter,” Snape says, “your timing leaves something to be desired.”

A thread of—what; fear, nausea?—trembles through Draco. When he lifts his eyes back to the door—

“Hi,” Harry says.

(Harry’s back.)

He’s staring right at Draco, who would very much like to look anywhere else but, of course, can’t. As ever, Harry is the blazing sun at the center of Draco’s universe. There is nothing else so long as Harry is here.

Draco doesn’t say anything. He couldn’t if he wanted to.

He looks disheveled. Dirty clothes, disastrous hair, stubble that’s just shy of being long enough to qualify as a beard. He’s lost weight, too—his frame is more wiry, accentuating the sharpness of his jaw and the prominence of his collarbones, just visible over the loose collar of his shirt.

His expression is—

Draco doesn’t let himself consider Harry’s expression. The magnetism holding Draco’s gaze finally shatters and he drops his eyes, steps backward and away.

“You cut your hair,” Harry says with a strange voice.

“Are you hurt?” Flitwick asks. “You look terrible.”

“Hey,” Pansy answers imperiously, “you’d look bad, too, if you’d been living out of a tent for the past year.”

“Nevermind that, we’ve found and destroyed the locket,” Blaise says, hurrying over to Snape, holding up the shattered pendant still attached to its chain. “There’s only one more Horcrux left, and we think it’s his snake.”

Snape huffs a sharp breath. “Nagini? She never leaves his side.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Pansy says. “To draw him out. Well, that and—”

“Draco,” Harry says.

Draco swallows, doesn’t look up. He probably should have anticipated that seeing him again would hurt nearly as much as his lack.

“I was going to say the mysterious something Dumbledore hid for you somewhere in Hogwarts,” Pansy continues, “but yeah, I guess that, too.”

“Draco.” Harry’s voice is starting to get desperate. “Please, can I—can we talk?”

“No,” Draco says. He barely manages to get it louder than a whisper.

“What? Draco, I—”

“Mr. Malfoy’s presence was expected in the Ministry,” McGonagall interjects. She hurries over to the fireplace and pulls the lever on its side to shut the Floo down. “It won’t be long before his lack is noticed. We need to shut down every point of entry into Hogwarts now.”

“And the Dementors still roaming the halls?” Sprout asks nervously.

“Standard procedure for getting rid of them,” Snape answers, producing his wand from his sleeve. “Isolate, eliminate. A patronus charm can drive one away if it’s outside; for those inside, it’s safer to kill them with a strong disincorporation spell. Split up. Shut down every Floo in the castle, barricade every door. If Voldemort means to take Draco, to destroy Hogwarts, he’ll have to work for it.”

Draco is the first out the door, shoving past Harry and down the stairs.

He’s not sure why he’s surprised by the fact that Harry follows him.

“Draco!”

“No,” Draco says, barely louder than the last time.

“Please, Draco, just—I only—!”

Harry grabs his arm, turns him around. Draco rips his hand free before Harry even manages to get a word out.

“I’m not interested!” Draco snaps, and despite himself, his eyes are burning. He doesn’t want to know what Harry has to say. He’s not going to take Draco back—why would he?—and enduring any other conversation with him would be torture.

Because the truth is it’s so good to see him. Draco wants to dive into Harry’s arms, to kiss him breathless, to win him back with hands and lips and tongue and any combination of desperate words and promises Draco can come up with, but he can’t do that. Harry is not his and never really had been, and Draco has no right to him, no right to even ask.

“Draco, please, I’m trying to—”

“I don’t care what you’re trying to do! You have a destiny to fulfill, Harry Potter, and you made yourself quite clear last year that you don’t need me to do it!”

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Harry says.

Draco stares, angry and trembling.

“In your original timeline,” Harry continues. “You were the one who killed Dumbledore.”

“Fuck,” Draco says, and his chest aches. Of course Harry had figured it out. Tears break their banks, roll down his face; it’s all Draco can do to wipe them away. He’s tired and hungry and frayed from eighteen hours locked in a windowless room, and he’s in no shape to handle the reappearance of Harry Potter, his soulmate, who broke his heart.

“That’s why you defended Vince,” Harry says, and comes forward slowly, the gap between them collapsing. “That’s why you wanted to spare his life. Because you’d been in his shoes. You were the one who—”

“I tried,” Draco croaks. “I was ordered to. But I choked at the last second and couldn’t do it. Luckily, I had Snape watching my back. He was a spy, and when I couldn’t… when I…”

“Shit.” The word rides an agonized breath. Harry pushes his hand through his hair. “I… fuck, I should have seen it right away. Draco, I—”

“Don’t. Harry, don’t. You owe me neither apology nor explanation.” Draco doesn’t think he could survive hearing them, in any case. “You left me, and it—” Destroyed me? Nearly killed me? “—is what it is. I accept your decision. I expect nothing from you. All I ask—I beg—is that you do me the courtesy of letting me recover with dignity.”

“Draco,” Harry says, wrecked, “what do you think I’m trying to do?”

“I don’t care what you’re trying to do,” Draco repeats, his voice harder and harsher than he intends. “Go fulfill your destiny.”

He doesn’t stay to see the look on Harry’s face. He turns and leaves, back toward the dungeons, to prepare for siege.

The Battle of Hogwarts doesn’t quite line up, this time around, with the one in Draco’s memory.

The remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix are brought in through the last open Floo with all the supplies they can carry before the castle is locked down. As Snape had ordered, so had it proceeded: the doors are barricaded; the Dementors inside are killed, the ones outside chased away with patronus charms. The seventh-years are given the option to fight, if they want it, and many do. The others are kept within the castle till the staff is able to coordinate a safe way to get them all home.

Things move very quickly. There’s no time for anything else (Harry is back), which is what Draco tells himself as, over the next twelve hours, Hogwarts prepares for siege.

BOOM, from the enormous front doors. The blow is deafeningly loud and rattles the very stone, but the doors hold shut—for now. Draco’s not confident they could take another blow as strong.

“Right,” McGonagall says. “We were expecting this. We’re ready.”

“Are we?” is Flitwick’s nervous answer.

“You all know your roles,” Snape says. “Heads of house, to your common rooms to fortify. The rest, take up your specified positions. The Dark Lord is not known for mercy and the Death Eaters will offer you no quarter. Fight to survive.”

The room—Order members, Hogwarts staff, and seventh-years who’d agreed to fight—empties, all occupants bound in separate directions. Draco spins on his heel and strides toward the dungeon, Slughorn at his side.

“I must admit,” he says to Draco as they walk, the forced conversational tone incongruous to the grim inevitability of the moment, “this is not quite what I pictured I’d be doing when Dumbledore asked me to reprise my role as potions master two years ago.”

“Needs must,” Draco says. “I’ll go and secure the alternate entrance near the potions classroom.”

“Be careful, Mr. Malfoy,” Slughorn says, and they each go different directions when they reach the end of the hallway leading into the dungeons.

As he walks, Draco is able to detect sounds of battle. They echo down the long hallways—slung spells, sizzling fire, screams cut abruptly short.

His heart starts thudding against his ribs. It takes a tremendous amount of wherewithal to keep his head clear. Now would be an excruciatingly bad time to have another PTSD-induced panic attack.

“It’s not here! I can’t find it!”

“I know it’s here somewhere—keep looking!”

Draco stops and peers through the open door into the potions classroom. A group of six Slytherins—second-years, third?—have pressed themselves to the eastern wall, hands groping along the stone frantically.

“What are you doing out here?” Draco barks. “You were told to head back to the common room at sundown!”

They all spin, terrified at first, but relaxing when they recognize him.

“Draco Malfoy!” one says, a squirrelly looking girl with buck teeth and watery blue eyes. She scampers over to him. “We had to stop in the kitchens—Ellie’s diabetic, and she needs a snack before bed—and we didn’t want to get in trouble so we thought we’d sneak back in through the hidden entrance but we can’t find it—”

“Fucking—” Draco huffs an irritated breath. How like Slytherins to flout the rules, even when their lives are at stake. “It’s not in the classroom, it’s near the classroom. All of you, with me!”

They fall in around him at once and Draco guides them out. As soon as they make it back into the hallway, from somewhere that is entirely too close, a Dementor shrieks, and they all jump.

“It’s okay,” one reassures another, who’s shaking and whimpering. “It’s okay, Ellie! Draco Malfoy was the Triwizard Champion, remember? He’ll protect us!”

Draco has no time to process the comment, because as soon as they round the corner, Ellie screams.

At the end of the hall, rapidly advancing, a swarm of Dementors. Fear clutches Draco’s chest. There are at least eight—way too many to take on alone. Unthinking, Draco inserts himself in front of the third-years.

“Back,” he says. “Back toward the primary entrance! Go now! Expecto patronum!”

The silver dragon soars out from his wand and breathes a cone of semiphysical fire onto one, which makes it shriek and sizzle and fall back—the others, however, continue their advance.

Draco hurries them into a sprint back toward the familiar entrance, heart drumming against his ribs. Unfortunately, as soon as it’s in sight—

“No,” Ellie wheezes. A second group of Dementors is already passing it on their way toward them, shrieking and howling and rippling with every movement.

“Up into the castle!” Draco cries, and they scramble down the hall leading to the ground floor.

The battle is in full force around them the moment they’re out of the dungeon. Dementors and Death Eaters, professors and Order members, slinging hexes and screaming and bleeding and falling around them. It’s all Draco can do to throw up a shield that catches a stunner before it hits one of the third-years and scream at them to, “Go! Now!”

Draco doesn’t even realize where he’s taking them until he’s already there—the Room of Requirement, its door already manifested, as if the castle itself is trying to aid its students.

It should be safe, shouldn’t it? Harry rejected him—the magic causing Needle to destabilize should be over—

“In! In-in-in!” Draco bellows, and they all race toward it. Draco spares a look back, and his heart drops.

A massive swarm of Dementors has followed them, clawed hands outstretched, shadows snapping and flickering unnaturally in the air around them. If he can just get them inside and seal the door—

“What is that!”

Draco looks back. The door is open, and inside, Needle is blazing as bright as the sun, humming so loud that the stone vibrates in time with it.

His breath stutters. He doesn’t understand. Harry had turned him away. The soulmate magic shouldn’t still be affecting it.

“Draco!”

Harry’s voice echoes from down an adjacent hallway, and when Draco turns, he sees him, wand out, racing toward him.

“Harry,” he breathes, throat tight.

As if on instinct, the third-years run toward him. Draco feels the same instinct, but is paralyzed. Needle’s humming is echoing directly in Draco’s blood, resonating under his skin and through every nerve.

Draco doesn’t know why the volatility has returned, but he knows he loves Harry more than his own life and couldn’t stop it even if he cared to; he loves him so much, so madly, and it is terrifying, and it is inevitable, and it is the most powerful force in the universe, so strong that it eats him up from the inside and crackles out of Needle with so much energy that before Draco even realizes it, it’s swallowing him up in the light and sound and—

Chapter Text

“You know, when you left, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

An image arises:

The Great Hall, done up with silver fairy lights and magical snow—the Yule Ball. Everything is more or less the same as Draco’s memory, save Draco himself. He is dancing, and instead of the Slytherin green dress robe, or even the sharp black piece he’d worn the first time, Draco is in red: fitted and fur-lined, with glittering fastenings all down the front, loose from the waist down to swirl with every turn.

“I’ll be honest,” Draco hears his fourteen-year-old voice say, “I don’t even really remember meeting you the first time.”

Draco is both, somehow, an observer and participant of the moment at the same time. He is seeing through his eyes, speaking through his mouth, and yet he is not. It is his voice, but not his words; his hands, but not his movements. He feels strangely disassociated from himself, and yet wholly certain that this body is his, the moment is real.

“Don’t you?”

The other voice is Harry’s, Draco finally realizes; he’s who Draco is dancing with.

“It wasn’t a… it wasn’t a good time,” Draco hears himself confess. When he lifts his eyes, Harry is staring sadly at him, and the grip he has on Draco’s waist tightens fractionally. “I sort of—I guess I just blocked most of it out.”

“I understand,” Harry says. “It couldn’t have been easy, going through all that so young.”

Draco feels a shy smile rise to his lips. His heart knocks at his ribs.

Memories of slung spells and Dementors and temporal fluctuation rise in the back of Draco’s brain. He has the uncanny feeling that there’s something important he’s forgetting, like there’s somewhere he needs to be, but he can’t remember what, or where.

But the fourteen-year-old Other Draco at the Yule Ball doesn’t feel it. He’s spellbound by Harry—Harry and his green eyes, and his lopsided smile, and his warm hand on Draco’s hip. Other Draco is fourteen years old and falling in love for the first time.

“I didn’t realize you spoke German,” Harry continues after a moment.

Draco laughs. “I speak French, too. My father’s half-French.”

“But you went to Durmstrang and not Beauxbatons?”

“Would you rather I was in blue?” Draco asks, an attempt at coquettishness undercut by a warm flush rising on his cheeks. By Harry’s dreamy expression, it only endears him further.

“Or silver,” he says, a little helplessly, “to bring out your eyes.”

The image shifts:

Other Draco is running down a dark stone hallway, lined with heavy tapestries. He’s older, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, and desperate to make it to his Headmistress’s office.

But a student is waiting for him just outside the door, a stern-looking young woman with thick, dark hair and a deep-set frown.

“Draco,” she says, “du kannst nicht—”^[1]

“Geh mir aus dem Weg,”^[2] Draco interjects, and doesn’t stop walking.

“Sie sagte—”^[3] the girl begins, but Draco is already pushing past her and through the door.

Inside is a sight that he can tell is familiar to sixteen-year-old Other Draco, but unfamiliar to the self that’s observing. The dissonance forces more awareness:

Draco wasn’t here a moment ago. Wasn’t he in the middle of a battle? How did he get here? Where is here? What’s causing this disassociation? It’s frustratingly difficult to think, especially while Other Draco is so focused and determined to get to—

“Harry!”

He leaps up out of the chair across from the desk of Headmistress Olga Oberleitner when Other Draco enters, and though he’s dirty and disheveled and even physically wounded, his expression breaks when his green eyes find Draco’s face.

“Draco,” he breathes, voice broken, and moves forward, unthinking, to embrace Other Draco, who returns it just as bruisingly tight.

“You’re hurt,” Other Draco says, and withdraws to brush his dark hair away from his face, revealing a half-healed gash over his temple, surrounded by a dark purple bruise. “Merlin, what happened?”

“Herr Potter just arrived as an exile from Britain,” the woman Draco somehow knows as Olga Oberleitner says, with a near-impenetrable Austrian accent. “You should not be here, Herr Malfoy.”

“I have no intention of being anywhere else,” Other Draco snaps at her.

“He’s taken over the Ministry,” Harry says, and Other Draco’s eyes return to his desperate, distraught expression. “And half of my house has been conspiring against me. Dumbledore told me that I might be safe at Durmstrang, now that Karkaroff’s dead, and you’re…”

That is the moment it crystallizes, and suddenly Draco knows where he is. Memories of a timeline Draco thought long dead come back to him through the voice of Luna Lovegood, echoing in his head: By the time he took over the Ministry, Harry was being attacked near-daily, in and out of Hogwarts. He fled to you, to Durmstrang, and was able to cobble together a real defense with Dumbledore and Snape, but by then…

Needle did this. It had destabilized again. Draco has been somehow displaced into a timeline that shouldn’t exist anymore. As his mind clears—and then races, trying to explain how something like this is even possible—Other Draco’s heart constricts with fear. Other Draco knows that his own father has likely had a hand in that conspiracy against Harry, and it’s terrifying, but—

“You’re safe now,” Other Draco assures Harry. “We’ll protect you here.”

“Herr Malfoy—” Headmistress Oberleitner begins.

“We’ll protect him,” Other Draco says, voice sharp, eyes narrowed. “Or do you intend to follow in your predecessor’s footsteps, Headmistress? Ein Feigling und ein Verräter?”^[4]

“Das ist nicht unser Kampf,”^[5] she protests.

“It is now! Whether or not we acknowledge it, Harry Potter is here, the only one who can kill the Dark Lord, and you have to pick a side! We all do! I know I certainly have.”

When Other Draco looks back at Harry, his expression is wrecked by love and longing and desperate gratitude. And both versions of Draco, the one within and the one without, can feel something shift in that moment, solidify. No longer is Harry just a penpal, sending sweet letters across a sea, affection tempered by distance and desire reigned in by hesitance. It’s real now: the war, and this thing between them, whatever it is.

The image shifts:

In a chancel in a cathedral in a rural part of Ireland, Other Draco stands with his hands clasped in Harry’s, who is halfway through his wedding vows. His breath is a knot in this throat.

“As absurd and corny as it sounds,” Harry is saying, “I think I knew—from the very moment I first met you, I knew. Even at eleven years old, even knowing nothing about the world, magical or mundane, I knew you were it for me.”

“Harry.” The name is whispered, aching sweetly in the center of his chest. Draco’s not really in control of himself, but the tears burning in Other Draco’s eyes may as well be his own.

“And you’ve proved me right over and over. Helping me when it would have been easier to hurt me, loving me when your family wanted you to hate me. I fell in love with you and I’ve never once regretted it.

“More than a few people have told us not to marry in the middle of a war.”

A low chuckle rumbles through the assembled guests. Other Draco laughs, too, even as his eyes burn with tears.

“But it’s because of the imminent threat of death that I don’t want to wait another second. I love you with my whole soul, Draco Malfoy, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, whether that’s two weeks or a hundred years. It’s you, Draco. It was always you.”

The image dissolves into blackness. Draco is formless, incorporeal and without senses. He can see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing—

Until there is a voice.

“You committed the cardinal sin of a scientist, Draco.”

It’s Harry’s voice—baritone, and with the roughness that only comes with age.

“You made an assumption.”

Draco tries to talk, but has no mouth. He tries to search for him, but has no eyes. All he has is the voice, echoing through and around him, less like a physical system of air through vocal cords and more like thoughts, intangible but unignorable.

“You assumed that Needle’s volatility ended because I’d rejected you. It was the only explanation you could come up with that comported with your self-loathing. It never occurred to you that there might be another reason.”

Where am I, Draco wants to ask, but can’t. What is this place? Is it even a place? Is Draco still capable of being at all? He feels completely untethered from reality. And though he should be nervous—panicked, even—he’s not. Draco wonders if it’s because he has no nervous system to facilitate the sensation of panic, or if it’s because of Harry.

“I was hiding out in France, after all, farther away from Needle than I’d ever been. Couldn’t that have been what ended the volatility? Hundreds of miles of distance?

“But then if that’s the case, you’d have to acknowledge that I never stopped loving you.”

An image:

Smoke rising off a flame-scorched battlefield. Hogwarts, Draco belatedly realizes, fresh off its eponymous battle. He can tell because Other Draco is standing over the corpse of Lord Voldemort.

Other Draco is dressed all in black, long hair unbound and twisting across his face. Draco is once again dissociated within this alternate version of himself, his gaze moving from Voldemort’s broken corpse and up, inevitably, to Harry.

“You don’t have to do this,” Harry says, and he sounds like he’s begging. In the low, angled light of sundown, the two snakebite piercings on his lower lip glint. “Draco, I can testify on your behalf, keep you out of Azkaban.”

Other Draco is humming with anger. It’s in his veins, under his skin, rising like bile in his throat. “Why,” he asks, “would you do that?”

“You know why.”

“Because I’m better than this?”

“You are better than this.”

Other Draco steps around the body of Lord Voldemort. He’s angry—he tells himself it’s because the Dark Lord was the only thing in his life that mattered, and he almost makes himself believe it. “Because I can be more than this?”

“You can be more than this.”

He seizes Harry by the front of his fraying, ripped Nirvana t-shirt. He snarls, “Because you love me?”

The expression on Harry’s face is resigned, the look of a man who is used to having his heart thrown back in his face.

“I do love you,” he says.

Draco can’t understand. Neither can Other Draco. Two flavors of the same self-hatred, one based in anger, the other in grief.

Draco remembers this timeline, too. Red wine and carbonara, Journey playing through a flimsy plastic speaker in a high-end hotel room. It was as incomprehensible then as it is now. Harry had loved Draco despite being constantly subjected to the worst parts of him, all his hatred, all his malice, all his pettiness. Why, why, why? he wants to ask.

“Merlin,” Other Draco says, through his teeth, “it’s like we’re both still children. You’re delusional, Potter.”

“I don’t think I am,” Harry answers. “I’ve seen a version of you that’s brilliant and brave and kind—”

“You’re fucking delusional, Potter.”

“—and I see echoes of him in you even still, even now. You can be better, be more, because I’ve seen you do it, and I’ve seen that goodness in fits and starts—”

“I’m not a kitten in a tree!” Other Draco cries, and draws his wand. “You can’t save me!”

Harry draws his own wand. They duel. It’s not their first, and Other Draco doesn’t anticipate that it’ll be the last.

The image shifts:

“Draco, please! Please, don’t do this; I can’t protect you if you cross this line!”

A dusty cellar, thick with the smell of offal and brimstone. Draco does not need to rely on his strange, disassociated understanding to recognize his surroundings: this is the lowest level of the Malfoy Manor.

Behind Other Draco, rows of Oathkeepers, in hooded cloaks of black and silver, his new followers, the lost and dispossessed Death Eaters who made it out of the War, hungry for a new master.

Beneath Other Draco, whimpering and pleading incomprehensibly, a Muggle-Born witch with Other Draco’s knife to her throat.

Draco knows without knowing what is happening, that Other Draco is about to make himself a Horcrux.

“I really would have thought,” Other Draco croons, his iron grip in the Muggle-Born’s hair keeping her from thrashing, “that you’d have figured it out by now, Potter.”

“Put the knife down!” Blaise Zabini yells, his wand out. He’s one of a half-dozen Aurors backing Harry up, but they’re outnumbered. “Malfoy, put it down!”

“Draco, you don’t have to do this.” Harry is genuinely panicked, as if the thought of Draco ruining his soul with a Horcrux would ruin Harry’s. “If you just surrender, I’ll move heaven and earth to protect you—I’ll testify, I’ll lie under fucking oath if it’ll keep you from the Kiss, just please—!”

“There’s nothing to save!” Other Draco bellows, and draws his knife across her neck with a horrible sound. Resolve has steeled Other Draco’s nerves, but his disassociated self feels a quaver that can only be directly through his soul. Harry screams, and Blaise lunges, and the Muggle-Born witch chokes on blood and—

The image shifts:

Grim and hollow, dark and dank, the overpowering stench of rot and refuse. Azkaban.

The same cell his father had been in, Draco thinks. Other Draco’s father never made it that far.

Harry is standing on the other side of the barred cell door, and somehow—unbelievably, incomprehensibly—there’s love, still visible in those unbearably green eyes, all tangled up with the heartache and disappointment.

Why, why, why, Draco wants to say. How could he still love him? After everything Harry saw him do? The disassociation has never felt more stark; whereas Other Draco seethes with fury, Draco the observer aches and aches and loves Harry back with every drop of blood in his veins.

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow how delusional I am,” Harry says.

“May 3, 2014,” Other Draco answers. His voice is dry and cracked, but still jeering. He sits slumped against the back wall of his cell, in that gorgeous but battle-singed dress robe, forearms resting on his knees. “Will it be over then, Potter? If the sun rises and sets on the third of May, and I’m still not this righteous champion of goodness and light you seem to think I will be? If time doesn’t unravel, will you still chase me? Will you still love me?”

The Adam’s apple on Harry’s throat bobs as he swallows. With hopeless honesty, he answers, “You must know that I will. There’s no one else, Draco. It was only ever you.”

Back into the blackness, then.

But now Draco can feel some level of physicality. He can feel himself breathing, and a burning in his eyes.

And he can see Harry now, too, though nothing but darkness past him. He’s younger—fifteen or sixteen, perhaps, and just growing into the width of his shoulders. His Hogwarts uniform is disheveled, green Slytherin tie undone.

“Is it really so incomprehensible to you that I could love you like you love me?”

“I need to get back,” Draco says. Now that he feels more like himself, it’s easier to remember—and to panic. “To Hogwarts. To the timeline I was last pulled out of. They need me. You—he needs me.”

“This is how you get back,” Harry answers, and comes toward him, hands buried in his robe pockets. “The only way out is through.”

“Please,” Draco begs, but Harry keeps talking.

“There is an obvious truth right in front of your face that you’re refusing to acknowledge,” Harry says. “You’ve seen the evidence, but failed to observe it.”

“Harry.”

“How many versions of us have you seen now? Four? Five? All wildly different, a jumble of delineated pathways to different futures—in how many of them did I love you?”

An image:

On a backdrop of humming healing magic, muttering nurses, and sterile white light, Other Draco, eleven years old, lies supine and unnaturally still on a bed in St. Mungo’s.

“You’re really not mad?” Harry asks. He wears a ratty, oversized jumper; his round glasses are still broken in the middle. And sitting across from him, on the other side of Draco’s bed, is Narcissa Malfoy.

“No,” is her quiet, quavering answer. She’s stroking her fingers through Other Draco’s hair; Draco can feel them without feeling them; the disassociation that’s keeping him separate from himself is straining. “No, I’m not mad. I’m—I am distraught, and terrified, but I’m not upset at you.”

“Your husband was mad,” Harry offers quietly.

“My husband,” his mother answers, cold, “is angry he’s lost an heir. He seems not to care much for the son.”

A lapse of silence. Carefully, Harry goes around to the other side of the bed, his hands wringing together anxiously near his stomach.

“I didn’t know him for very long,” he confesses, “but I liked him a lot.”

His mother sniffs, wipes delicately at her eyes with a silk kerchief pulled from her sleeve. There is something approximating a smile on her face. “Did you?”

“He’s really smart,” Harry continues, and sits down next to her on the nearby chair. “And funny, when he’s not scared.”

She smiles fondly down at Other Draco, hands repeating the same path through his hair again and again, almost meditatively.

When she doesn’t say anything for a time, Harry continues, in a small voice, “I am sorry. I didn’t hurt him—or at least I don’t think I did—but I’m still sorry this happened.”

His mother turns sad eyes to Harry and, after another brief lapse of silence, asks, “What did you say your name was, dear?”

The image shifts:

Rain patters against glass; outside, a flash of lightning, followed quickly by a deafening rumble of thunder.

But Other Draco is inside, sitting upright but unmoving in a chair by the window as the storm rages. And at his feet, kneeling almost as if in prayer, is Harry, gripping his hand.

“She,” he says, and his voice breaks. “She’s dead. Draco, your mother’s dead. Can you—do you even—?”

Other Draco doesn’t react, of course. He’s alive only in the most rudimentary sense: a beating heart, a capacity for sensation, and not much else. By the way Harry stares up at him, green eyes bloodshot and shining with the threat of tears, Other Draco’s absence has never hurt quite so much.

“God, I wish I could talk to you,” he says, voice ruined by grief. “No one else—no one knew her, or the ones who did are already gone, too. She was—she was a mother to me, and now she’s gone, and I can’t—”

Other Draco doesn’t react, but Draco the observer feels so much and so madly that it’s almost physical, an intense humming ache.

“I miss her so much,” Harry sobs, and bends forward, his head over Other Draco’s knee. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I don’t know how I’m supposed to carry on, when everyone I love just keeps dying, Draco. I wish I could talk to you. I wish I… I wish…”

Harry collapses into incoherent weeping, shoulders shaking, fingers gripping Draco’s hand so tightly that they leave marks. Draco would weep with him, he thinks, if he could.

The image shifts:

A sunny day in early summer. A light breeze ruffles Other Draco’s hair, and Draco can feel the faintest ghost of it. The disassociation is getting stronger with each shift.

Harry is sitting next to Draco on a picnic blanket made of blue gingham under a willow tree. Draco recognizes the grounds, with some effort—it’s the little facility in Cambridgeshire. They’re both older, perhaps in their mid-twenties, and Draco cannot believe that Harry is spending such a beautiful day in the prime of his life reading to him:

“‘If you will thank me,’ he replied, ‘let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I only thought of you.’”

Draco feels unsteady. He cannot believe Harry is spending a beautiful day in the prime of his life reading Pride & Prejudice to an empty shell in the shape of Draco Malfoy, as if—as if he—

“‘You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.’”

Harry pauses his reading, smiles down at the page. Another breeze comes through, rustling the paper.

“One word from you,” Harry repeats ruminatively, and as the clause ends, he looks up at Other Draco, silent and still. He reaches out toward him, tucks a stray lock of hair behind his ear. The contact, which Draco can feel only slightly through the fraying dissociative state, still surges.

And it lingers.

Harry’s fingertips stay as warm points of contact on the side of Other Draco’s face, like he can’t quite bring himself to draw them away. His expression is soft and unguarded, green eyes unhurriedly drinking in Other Draco’s features—from the silver-blonde hair fluttering in the breeze, to the line of his nose, the arch of his lips, the cords of his throat—

—before, abruptly, Harry withdraws, and frowns, and stares down at his lap with the look of a man chiding himself.

He turns the page in the book, sighs, and says, “Only you, Draco. Always you.”

Back in the blackness, Harry’s figure is starting to distort.

He is very young now, perhaps twelve or thirteen, and the colors of his Hogwarts uniform flicker erratically back and forth between red and green, Gryffindor and Slytherin.

“Love isn’t an independent force,” he says.

Draco feels like he’s out of breath. The constant jumping in and out of timelines is having some kind of effect, though he can’t quite tell what—he feels stretched thin, almost physically exhausted, and though he knows that there is a very real urgency to get back to the timeline out of which he was pulled—

“Harry, please,” he whispers. His voice is unbroken again. He must also be twelve or thirteen.

“It’s not a thing that is, it’s a thing that becomes. Even between soulmates, when it is more magically potent than any other force in the universe, it still doesn’t exist unless it is created, unless it has the opportunity to grow.”

“I can’t,” Draco says, which is true. He sees now where all this is leading, and he can’t make himself believe that it is true. How could it be?

“And it always finds that opportunity, Draco,” he says, “even when it takes thirty-four years.”

An image:

The Ministry of Magic, a chaotic crush of bodies through the grand foyer, making for the exit at the end of the day. Other Draco is among them, in the unmistakable black-on-black Unspeakable uniform, the Black Brand tingling forgettably on the front of his throat. He’s fumbling with a paper bag as he walks, green Starbucks logo crinkling as he fights to extricate his croissant.

At once, Draco knows which timeline this is: the original. The dissociation strains and frays with the thunderous force of Draco’s shock.

It’s not possible. It’s not possible.

“—because they’re you’re children!” comes Harry’s despairing voice from the side of the room, drawing Other Draco’s attention away. “Because I’m your husband!”

“I’m not playing this game with you, Harry, not again,” Ginny Weasley snaps. “You knew when we got married that I was going to dedicate myself to my career, just like you—”

“Not at the cost of my family!”

“—and now that I have a chance, a real chance, to take the next step, to get a contract with the Harpies, suddenly you’re upset—”

“That you’re going to be gone four months out of every year? That Lily and James won’t get to see their mother on their birthdays? Of course I’m upset—!”

“I can’t do this with you,” she says. “Not here, not like this. I’ll see you at home.”

“Gin—!” he calls, but she’s already striding away.

Other Draco hadn’t even realized that he’d slowed to a stop until someone knocks into his shoulder from behind as they pass. He looks backward, frowns, then steps out of the flow of people.

Harry is slumped against a column, rubbing his forehead with one hand as if hoping to physically hold back a headache. His expression, when Other Draco finally gets close enough to see its nuances, is shattered and exhausted. This is not the first time he’s had this fight, Draco can tell.

When he steps into Harry’s line of sight, he jumps.

“Fuck!” he says. “Christ, Malfoy, are you—what are you doing here? How—how much of that did you hear?”

Other Draco raises an eyebrow as he waits for him to remember—

“Right, fuck, Unspeakable. Sorry. I just—it’s been kind of a rough day. Not that it’s your problem at all, and you’re probably still justifiably pissed off that I was being so weird about you again, God…”

Other Draco silences him by holding out the pastry bag. Harry startles, looks down at it, then back up at his face, drawn with an apologetic olive branch of a smile.

Harry swallows, smiles back a little hesitantly, then takes it. “Thanks,” he says.

The image shifts:

Rumbling chatter, forgettable folk music over tinny speakers, and the intense scent of coffee beans as they’re ground up in a humming machine on the far side of the cafe. At a table in the corner, Harry stirs his drink with a flimsy plastic stick, watching morosely as the liquid swirls.

“I think the two of us just got married too early,” Harry says. “I mean, nineteen? Even now, at thirty-four, I feel like I’ve barely got a hold of all the scars the War left on me, you know?”

I know, Other Draco confirms. He had, Draco can only assume, given in and reluctantly classified Harry as a friend, registering him on the list of approved persons he’s able to communicate with telepathically. I spent years in therapy.

Harry frowns, looks up, leans forward over the cafe table. “Did you?”

Not before trying to kill myself with drugs, sex, and rock’n’roll, mind you, Other Draco offers with a wry smile. I must have haunted every Muggle gay bar in London between 1998 and 2004.

Harry is nodding sympathetically right up until the end of the thought, at which point he visibly startles. “You’re gay? I had no idea.”

You’d be one of the first, Other Draco returns good-naturedly. I’ve been told that children, the deaf-blind, and stray dogs can tell I’m gay.

Harry’s laugh seems to take him by surprise, but as it ends and the conversation comes to a natural comma, something in his expression changes slowly.

“I,” he says, then stops short and tries again. “If it’s not too personal to ask, how do you… that is, how did you figure out you were gay?”

Why, Potter, Other Draco answers archly, I had no idea you were bi-curious.

He means it to be a joke, but by the way Harry’s face tenses around the eyes and the corners of the mouth, Harry hadn’t taken it as such. Other Draco realizes, slowly and with more than a bit of surprise, that Harry Fucking Potter really is bi-curious.

Other Draco tries desperately not to put a name to the fluttering sensation in the center of his chest.

The Draco observing feels something very similar.

The image shifts:

Draco’s old London flat, a cramped little two bedroom with what the realtor had insisted was character when she was trying to sell him on it: aging hardwood floors that creak underfoot, ancient brass fixtures, and huge windows from the turn of the century. It’s evening, and the fading sunlight comes in at a sharp angle. Draco’s cat, Sherlock, sits curled up in what remains of it on the leather couch against the wall.

Before Draco even has time to process everything he feels, seeing it again—Merlin, he misses that cat—a knock at the door draws him up and out of the journal article Other Draco had been reading. He frowns, sets the book aside, and climbs off the couch, which makes Sherlock rumble a protest.

When he pulls open the front door—

“Can we talk?” Harry asks, then doesn’t wait for an answer. He pushes inside, leaving Other Draco reeling for a moment, before he quickly becomes angry.

Harry, you shouldn’t be here, he tells him firmly. I told you, I’m not an experiment, I’m not going to do this with a married man—

“I left Ginny,” Harry says.

A blow to the head would have been less staggering.

You… what?

“I left her,” Harry says. He runs his hands through his hair like even Harry’s having trouble believing it. “I really did it. I… I need to hire a solicitor, still, to get everything in order, but she took it well. She seemed to expect it. Said we could work out a custody arrangement. I—it’s over. It’s really over.”

Both versions of Draco are thunderstruck, utterly incapable of believing that he would actually—that Harry Potter would really—

Why? Why would you do that, you absolute fucking lunatic?

“Why? Why? Draco, you know fucking well why!”

There is something thin and frantic vibrating at the very center of Other Draco’s chest, and it runs all the way through the strange, thready disassociation into the Draco observing. A tightly-wound ball of vehement denial constricting a core of desperate, fragile hope.

“Because from the instant I kissed you that night in June—” (Images of a small dinner party in Draco’s flat batter his mind’s eye; Harry and Westy and Mother and Sherlock climbing on the table to steal scraps of salmon, Harry lingering long after the desserts were gone, a slow kiss at the door that built and built till it was desperate and soul-consuming) “—something changed. And don’t you dare try to play it off as my newly recognized bisexuality latching onto the first bloke it likes, Draco, you know it’s more than that.”

Harry.

“Because it’s been six months,” Harry says, and his hands are on Other Draco’s face, a sensation that sets him on fire from the inside. “Six months of falling in love with you even when I tried my best not to, six months of wanting you even when I knew I couldn’t have you. Six months of discovering the incredible person you’ve become, the irredeemable music snob who loves yoga and curry and is maybe the biggest nerd I’ve ever met, you’re perfect, Draco, despite all the shit you’ve gone through and I love you so completely—”

Harry, I— Other Draco is shaking. So is the Draco observing, maybe.

“—that it’s made me reevaluate everything I thought I knew about love in the first place, made me realize—”

Draco grips back at him, hands in dark hair, breath on his lips.

“—that it’s you, Draco. Only you. And I think it always has been.”

In the blackness, Harry is eleven years old, knobby knees and broken glasses and a ratty jumper three sizes too big.

“In every timeline,” he says, and Draco quakes. “In every circumstance. In every universe—I choose you.”

Chapter Text

“Please don’t. Please don’t go.”

Draco comes awake in stages, mind rising up through the levels of consciousness one by one: self-awareness first (I’m awake?), followed by self-perception (Fuck, that hurts).

“Come back. I can’t bear it. Please, Draco, please don’t leave me.”

Then comes memory, or memories to be more accurate, all the disparate recollections of his latest displacement coming back in fits and starts. A wedding in an Irish countryside cathedral, a dismal Azkaban cell, a sunny picnic, a cramped London cafe—

“Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go…”

In every timeline. In every circumstance. In every universe.

Draco takes a breath, wheezing down his throat.

“Draco!”

Then he coughs, gropes blindly forward—his senses letting him perceive the world around him are only just starting to come back, but the first thing of which he becomes aware—his voice, his warmth, his scent, the pressure of his arms around Draco’s body—is Harry, Harry, Harry.

“Draco!”

Slowly, he comes into focus, green eyes rimmed red with tears, the famous lightning bolt scar just barely visible behind the fall of his hair. Draco feels delirious, the sudden clarity making him reel, all his self-loathing and fear and reticence swallowed up by bone-deep certainty.

“Hello, lover,” Draco croaks.

Harry laughs once, though he’s still weeping. He bends down—Draco is, he finally perceives, sprawled on the floor of the hallway, with Harry kneeling over him—and kisses him. It is right on the edge of too much: the kiss is all heat, searing like a brand, and Draco’s hand, which had at some point came to rest on the center of Harry’s chest, grips feebly at the fabric of his shirt.

When he withdraws, Harry whispers, “I thought you—I thought I’d lost you, Draco, I—” His sentence breaks off, and he presses his forehead to Draco’s.

“You haven’t lost me,” Draco assures him. Then, helplessly, he adds, “Harry—”

“I don’t know what I’d have done,” Harry confesses. His expression, his voice, are ruined with emotion. His hands shake, even as they grip tight enough at Draco’s arms to leave marks. “Driving you away was bad enough, but watching you die—”

With difficulty, Draco sits upright. “Harry,” he says again, but he keeps talking.

“A year on the run, on the road, the constant threat of death and discovery—it was nothing, nothing compared to your absence. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t worry for your safety or desperately wish to see you again.” His hands lift to Draco’s face; he leans in so close that they’re sharing the same breath. Draco feels like he might melt. “It took losing you to make me realize what I had. Draco, I love you so much. You’ve become a part of my soul. I never… I never—”

“Look out! Look out, Harry!”

The little Slytherin girl, Ellie, reasserts herself with a shriek. At the same time, Harry and Draco both wheel around, where coming down the hallway is a massive black Dementor. Draco’s delirious mind struggles to respond, but Harry already has his wand in his hand:

“Expecto patronum!”

The silver phoenix that bursts from the end of Harry’s wand is massive and streaming white fire from its wings. It hits the Dementor with such force that it tears a hole through it, shreds of black seared away in its fiery wake. The Dementor shrieks, staggers backward, and dissipates into mist, and then into nothing.

Draco is left staring at the empty space where it used to be. Harry is saying something in urgent tones, but Draco can’t hear it. The phoenix makes a huge loop in the air and soars back toward Harry before disincorporating into pure magic.

He turns his eyes to Harry, who’s still speaking. Draco feels dazzled, consumed, burning from the inside like he’s staring into the sun. His heart is so full that it must take up his whole chest.

Draco cuts off whatever it is Harry had been saying with a kiss, hands in his hair and teeth on his lips. Apparently Harry finds his words less important than Draco’s kiss, and he answers with such intensity that Draco is nearly bowled over back onto the floor.

“I love you,” Draco whispers against his mouth. “And when you come back to me triumphant, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it to you.”

“Only you, Draco,” is Harry’s answer, solemn and soft. “Always you.”

The war does not wait for love.

Draco is forced to separate from Harry when they acknowledge that they need to get to different places. Harry has to chase down the mysterious something that Dumbledore hid for him in Hogwarts, which Harry assures him is very necessary and which Pansy is sure she’s nearly found, and Draco needs to finally get the gaggle of third-year Slytherins somewhere safe.

He ends up dropping them off in the Ravenclaw commons, if only because they’re close and accessible. Flitwick gives him a significant look and asks if he wants to shelter with them; Draco shakes his head grimly.

“I’m needed on the front,” he says.

He looks unhappy, but not surprised. “Be careful, Mr. Malfoy.”

As Draco fights his way back into the lower levels of the castle, occasionally through Dementors and Death Eaters, he knows his goal: save lives. He knows with his whole soul that Harry can kill Voldemort—he’s seen him do it before—and all that’s left is to make sure as many people as possible make it out alive.

Some, perhaps, more than others.

When he makes it to the ground floor, the scene is chaos. Spells are flying, crashing, clattering across the central hall—people scream, wail, and shriek with fury. Draco’s hand wrings around his wand as he scans the crowd, looking for any sort of tactical advantage, before his attention is suddenly drawn:

“I had a feeling it would come to this.”

Something cold furls in the center of Draco’s chest. When he turns—

“Father.”

The intervening years have not been kind to Lucius Malfoy. He’s gaunt and sallow, eyes ringed and sunken, long hair limp and tangled. But every line is drawn tight and furious, trembling with a barely-contained rage. The way he stares at Draco brings to mind an injured wolf—bloodied but not broken, and more dangerous than ever.

“I’d thank you not to use that name for me,” he says. “It rings hollow coming from you.”

“It’s not too late,” Draco answers. “Put down your wand and surrender. I’ll testify on your behalf. You can serve out your sentence under house arrest—”

The hex catches Draco off-guard; he barely manages to deflect it in time, forcing it to rebound into a wall. When he’s finally able to turn his eyes forward again, the expression on his father’s face has broken into a ferocious, teeth-baring scowl.

“I will die,” he hisses, “before I accept the mercies of a blood traitor.”

“Is that what it’s going to come to?” Draco asks, and despite himself, his voice is shaking. “Are you going to force me to kill you?”

“There’s nothing else left for you to take from me!”

He grips his wand all the tighter. Draco has never crossed that line, not once in all the timelines he’s experienced. He’s not sure if he could do it now, even after everything, if only because—

“You’re my father,” Draco says, voice breaking. “Please, don’t make me do this.”

But he’s raising his wand before Draco has even finished the sentence.

The battle is blindingly fast, precise and brutal. Draco has never really seen his father fight, to his detriment—he hadn’t been prepared for him to be so good at it. Draco is not so much fighting back as he is fighting to survive. He’s never been good at dueling.

“Traitor,” his father snarls as he slashes his wand through the air in the curse that Draco only barely counterspells. “Worthless. I should have killed you in the cradle! Better off dead than a traitor to the bloodline—!”

His father casts again; Draco is a fraction of a second too slow on the shield and it hits him with an explosion of force and heat and blood. Draco flies backward from the impact and hits a wall hard, so hard that all the wind is knocked out of him and stars burst at the edges of his vision.

As he struggles to regain himself, as his senses come back to him, Lucius Malfoy approaches. Draco can only stare, gasping through what he suspects is a broken rib and paralyzed by delirious denial, wondering if he’d really—if his own father is really going to—

“Relashio!”

He staggers backward just as he raises his wand to Draco’s head. From behind—

“I warned you, Lucius Malfoy,” he snarls, “to keep your hands off my godson.”

—Severus Snape emerges, dark eyes gleaming, his wand already moving.

Draco realizes, as he struggles to reach for his own wand that had rolled a few feet away and to climb back to his feet, that he’d also never seen Severus fight. As he watches, it becomes rapidly apparent that while Lucius Malfoy is an excellent duelist, Severus Snape is better.

Much, much better. It’s almost comical, how quickly Snape has him disarmed, bloodied, and lashed. As if to add insult to injury, he repositions from his knees and onto his back with a levitating spell that slams him hard onto the ground, and then keeps him down with a foot on his throat.

“Your son may be reluctant to kill you,” Snape growls, “but I assure you that I have no such compunctions. If you intend to make it to the end of this battle, I’d advise staying still.”

“Two worthless traitors,” his father snarls, flecking blood and spittle with each word. He struggles uselessly against the magical bindings shimmering and straining against his movements. “You deserve each other. When the Dark Lord reduces this castle to rubble—”

Draco’s attention is drawn up. Behind Snape, a flash of movement, sleek black against stone. His heart thuds before even realizing why, before recognizing the shape moving forward as—

“—he’ll flay you, he’ll break you from the inside out, and you’ll beg for his mercy—”

—Nagini.

“Severus!” Draco screams, but it’s too late. Before he can even raise his wand, two bright white fangs have sunk into the side of Severus’s chest— “No!”

The sound he makes is horrible, an agonized scream made wet with blood. Draco casts a hard “Flipendo!” which sends her flying, and barely dives in time to break Severus’s fall.

“No, no, no, no, no—”

He’s convulsing, choking on his own blood, and it’s all Draco can do to feebly apply pressure to the punctures on his side. Draco is a physicist, not a physician. He knows how to mend bones and seal wounds, basic emergency medicine, but he has no earthly idea how to draw out venom. And he doesn’t have time—perhaps if he puts him under a strong enough stasis charm, his frantic mind supplies, and gets him straight to Pomfrey—

A low, dangerous hiss catches his attention. Nagini has righted herself and is winding forward across the floor toward them. Draco’s hand, wet with blood, grips at his wand. He knows from experience that Nagini is twice as strong as an ordinary serpent, and magically resistant to boot. He can’t reasonably stabilize Severus and fight her off at the same time—

“Look out!”

Draco’s head jerks around. Vincent Crabbe appears from the flank, Slytherin’s halberd in both hands, swinging in a huge arc.

Draco can only stare as, just before Nagini reaches him, the halberd’s blade catches on her scales, bursting gray mist and blood. Her long body writhes, snaps like a lash, rolls. Vince follows up the shallow blow with another, a clean, heavy stab directly through her neck. More mist, more blood—then nothing.

The ensuing quiet is deafening. The fight around them has ended, too, it seems. Draco is distantly aware of the fact that, all around him, Order members are Hogwarts staff are muttering to each other, and phrases like secure the castle and spread out are exchanged. It seems they’ve won the Battle of Hogwarts—for now.

“You all right?” Vince asks, shoulders heaving.

“Where… where did you get—?”

“Harry gave it to me,” he says. “He said I could do something good with it if I… oh, Merlin, Professor…”

The fist of pressure Draco keeps on Severus’s side tightens as he looks back down. He’s gone distressingly still and ashen gray, his breath faint, and his eyes fixed on Draco, who realizes, with a lurch of dread, that he’s dying. Again.

“Draco,” he chokes.

“No,” Draco whispers.

“Draco,” he says again, more urgently, “tell your mother—”

“No.”

“Draco—tell her—tell her I—”

“I can’t do this,” Draco says, barely, voice ruined with tears. “I can’t lose you again.”

“Give her all my love, and you—”

“Severus, please,” he sobs.

His godfather’s grip is hard on Draco’s wrist until it’s not, until all the strength in him seems to seep away as if through a sieve, as he dies in agonizing pain right in front of Draco’s eyes, and he can do nothing, he can’t—

“I am so,” he says, but even his voice is fading now, “so proud of you, I…”

He stops moving, and Draco screams.

He can’t do this. He can’t. He can’t let it happen again. Severus’s death nearly destroyed him the first time; how can he possibly—how can he ever—

Draco screams and screams and screams until it crumbles into desperate sobbing, until his chest hollows out and his body feels like it’ll shake to pieces, and as the only father he’s ever had to earn the title dies in his arms.

A shaking hand rests on his shoulder; Draco can barely perceive it. He’s doubled over Severus’s chest, sobbing into the wet stain of blood soaking his robes.

“Draco,” Vince says, voice shaking.

He can’t. He can’t. He can’t do this. He can’t lose him again.

“Draco,” Vince says again, with a different voice. No longer shaky with grief, he instead sounds marveled. “What’s—what is that? What are you doing?”

When Draco forces open his eyes, he’s met with light—not from himself, but from the wound into which he’d been sobbing. He reels backward, and the light slowly grows, beams of gold bursting from Severus’s chest like rays of sunlight through clouds. His godfather’s body arches off the ground, his head falls back, and his wound—

—his wound seals up.

Draco’s mouth is open, but no words come to his lips. He can barely manage to breathe.

“Oh,” Vince says, softly. “Phoenix tears.”

And then, incredibly, Severus coughs, convulsing forward to a sit, hands groping forward and finding Draco’s shoulder, who reflexively dives forward to catch him.

“Severus,” he says, hardly daring to believe his eyes. “Severus, you’re—”

“Alive,” Severus croaks, “somehow. What—what just—?”

Draco doesn’t know and, at this particular moment, can’t force himself to care. He is gripping at Severus as tight as he can manage before he even realizes he’s moved to embrace him, face buried in his shoulder.

Slowly, Severus returns the embrace.

“To call you son,” he says into Draco’s hair, too softly to be overheard. “That’s what I was going to say. I’m proud to call you son.”

Being that Draco isn’t actually a phoenix, and his tears aren’t a true panacea, Severus is not completely healed. Remus and Moody end up having to shoulder his weight back to the Hospital Wing, where Poppy has set up a trauma bay.

“It’s still fascinating, mind you,” McGonagall tells him as Draco fretfully watches his godfather stagger away, relying more on Remus’s strength than Draco can bear to see. “Animagi so rarely take the form of magical creatures that there’s never been a true study of it. Some of your fellows at the Department of Mysteries would have a field day studying the precise magical properties of your tears.”

“Bold of you to assume they haven’t already tried,” Draco answers, trying not to think about how Miriam in theoretical transfiguration had spent the better part of a week nagging him for a feather sample to compare against a true phoenix’s. Plucking feathers hurt, damn it, and she’d just have to wait for him to moult or something.

“About your friend,” McGonagall continues, in inelegant segue.

Vince is sitting against the wall of the central hall, Slytherin’s halberd on the ground in front of him, as he stares blankly up at the dome of stained glass in the ceiling, backlit by the dreary gray sunlight of an early Highlands spring.

“Do you think he’s in earnest when he says he’s no longer loyal to the Death Eaters?”

Draco takes a slow, steady breath.

“If he hadn’t intervened against Nagini, both Severus and I would be dead,” he answers after a time. “After what he did to Dumbledore, we’d be stupid to completely trust him—but he’s earned a chance.”

So have you, intones a little voice in Draco’s head. It sounds like Severus’s. Draco’s throat rolls as he swallows, watching as Vince rubs at his left forearm.

The parallels of it are almost more than Draco can bear, the empathy sharp as a knife. Vince’s crimes were worse than Draco’s ever were, but so too was his turn more decisive. And if Draco can let himself believe that Vince deserves a chance—

If Draco can be loved by his soulmate in every circumstance, even the worst ones—

“This is all assuming we even make it to the end of the War alive, of course,” Draco says, both to himself and to McGonagall, who nods grimly.

“Do you know where Mr. Potter is?” she asks.

“I was hoping you might,” Draco answers. “He said he, Blaise, and Pansy were looking for something Dumbledore left him.”

Her mouth forms a thin line. By her expression, she doesn’t know what it is any more than Draco. “We’ll search for him while we secure the castle,” she says. “I hope we find him, because if we don’t, I cannot in good conscience let him or anyone back inside till the Dark Lord lies dead.”

Draco supposes he cannot begrudge her the paranoia, especially with the safety of a few hundred children to consider. Still, if he’s not in Hogwarts, Draco can’t help but think—

He remembers the story his mother told him about the Forbidden Forest, his inexplicable and miraculous survival of Voldemort’s killing curse—and time, Draco knows, is a chaotic system.

He’s sure Harry can do this. He’s seen him do it before. But this timeline has been badly delineated, and it’s impossible to account for every variable.

“I’ll go to secure the dungeon,” Draco says, because there’s little else he can do.

The castle is secured, the last of the Death Eaters taken prisoner and the Dementors killed. Harry is not found. Neither are Blaise or Pansy.

In a thoroughly British, keep calm and carry on sort of way, most of the students, still confined to their common rooms and dormitories, have started doing their homework in what Draco thinks is a touch of excessive optimism. He spends as much time as he can stand watching over his fellow Slytherins as they struggle to focus after everything that’s happened, then eventually gives up and heads for the Hospital Wing to find Severus.

But it’s not just Severus there, of course—lots of people had been injured, including more than a few Death Eaters, magically restrained to their beds. And Severus specifically has a lot of company, a cloud of Order members are huddled at his bedside and muttering in low tones:

“—can’t just ignore it, can we?”

“He might be bluffing.”

“He might not be.”

“Are we really going to risk his safety to confirm?”

Draco asks, “Whose safety?” and the conversation grinds to a halt.

All eyes swivel to him, but no one says anything, which makes Draco realize—

“Oh, mine?”

“Draco,” Sirius begins, but Severus, still reclined on the hospital bed, cuts him off.

“Black,” he says in warning.

“Do you honestly think it’s wiser to keep it from him?” Sirius bites back, indignant. “You care about your godson. Let me care for mine.”

Draco works very hard to keep his face impassive. “What news of Harry?” he asks.

Severus and Sirius spend a long, tense moment glaring at one another. No one dares to interrupt the silence, and the battle of wills continues until, eventually, Severus flinches away, frowning. Sirius returns his attention to Draco.

“What remains of the Death Eaters have amassed outside the front gates of Hogwarts,” he says, “along with the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement and yet more Dementors. The Dark Lord is among them, and he’s asking for you.”

Draco folds his arms across his chest in what he hopes is a veneer of cool defiance—in reality, it’s to fight off the whole-body shiver that arises at the news. “For me?”

“He says,” Remus intones, “that if you want to see Harry again, you’ll come out and meet him. That you two have a score to settle.”

Draco swallows reflexively, but says nothing.

“Draco, you don’t have to do anything,” Severus says after those first few moments of tense silence. “You’re not beholden to a madman.”

“No,” Draco agrees, “but I am beholden to Harry.”

Sirius’s expression breaks with gratitude as Severus’s freezes over with dread.

“Thank you,” Sirius says. “I don’t know—if I lost him, after everything—”

“Draco, this is almost certainly a trap,” Severus protests. “Potter may not be there. He may not even be—”

He cuts himself off, but he doesn’t need to for Draco to know how that sentence was going to end: he may not even be alive. They hadn’t found him while securing the castle, after all.

“All the more reason for me to go,” Draco says softly. “If he’s gone, then none of this will have mattered, will it?”

“Draco,” Severus says, voice wrecked, but Draco is already leaving from whence he came.

Being unwilling to open the front doors of the castle around which the Death Eaters are assembled, Draco instead goes out through a fifth-story window on the far side of the building and flies down as a phoenix.

As he approaches the front courtyard, he takes measure of the situation. As Sirius had indicated, a huge black cloud of Dementors hovers above a group of silver-masked Death Eaters and maroon-robed Aurors, all standing in loose formation. In the center of it all, a single figure, white as bone, red eyes trained on Draco as he makes a broad arc through the air.

When Draco drops his Animagus form, every other pair of eyes has found him, too. He rises carefully from the crouch he’d landed in; a cold spring wind howls through the courtyard, catching his hair and long gray cloak.

Voldemort comes forward. Draco keeps his gaze set, defiant even as terror trembles through his nerves. He refuses to show his fear.

“I’m told my presence was requested,” he says.

“You came alone,” Voldemort answers, almost crooning, like Draco’s made an endearing, elementary mistake.

“I’ve learned better than to make others fight my battles for me,” Draco replies.

The comment draws a ferocious scowl to the pale, taught lines of Voldemort’s face. He lunges, then, and before Draco can fully pull away, one skeletal hand had closed around his wrist and pulled it up; the other yanks down the sleeve of his cloak, revealing beneath—

“You have a great deal of righteous indignation,” Voldemort says through his teeth, “for someone who wears my brand.”

The white hand seared into Draco’s flesh has toughened over the years since he got it, roughened in the way scar tissue does as the wound beneath heals. Draco had studied it for sheer academic curiosity, but he knew even before his first analysis that it was never coming off. It was a part of him now—like the Dark Mark had been. A stark reminder of past mistakes that he could no longer affect. Only this time—

“And you have a great deal of bravado,” Draco counters, “for a man who’s about to lose everything he’s gained.”

—Draco’s no longer tethered by his guilt.

“I killed the Potter boy,” Voldemort hisses, close enough for Draco to feel his breath in his hair.

“He survived your curse before,” Draco takes great pleasure in reminding him. “What makes you so sure it took this time around?”

“He’s dead,” Voldemort growls. His grip on Draco’s wrist tightens painfully. “I saw him fall. I dragged his body back just to make sure there was no mistake about who between us is truly capable of defying death.”

“You’ve been so keen for my insight,” Draco says, “so desperate to know what I know about the future. All you had to do was ask. I’m happy to share.”

Voldemort’s white lips are curled back from his teeth. Draco leans in.

“You fail,” Draco says. “He kills you, and you die unmourned and unloved, every last shred of your black little soul stamped out.”

“Silence,” he hisses.

“You become a footnote. An unpleasant memory. No more substantial than a bad dream, shaken with the dawn. You die and you fade and you are consigned to the ash heap of history!”

“SILENCE!” Voldemort screams, and raises his wand—

“Expelliarmus!”

The red magic bursts against white skin; Voldemort’s wand goes flying, his iron grip on Draco’s wrist finally slackened. They both whirl.

“How!” Voldemort thunders.

Standing, silvery cloak flying high in the wind, is Harry, green eyes flashing, the Elder Wand held out and crackling with magical energy.

Draco feels his heart try to leap directly through his ribcage to get to Harry’s side.

“You’re late,” he says instead, and the grin Harry flashes him melts Draco from the inside out.

“You’re outnumbered,” Voldemort snarls. “Or did you not notice that I have the every Auror in the Ministry here with me, wands out?”

“Hey!” a distant voice calls. “Hey, that’s my cue!”

From a nearby rooftop, Wendy Westerly clambers upright from where she’d been hiding behind a turret. She waves at Draco like an excited mother spotting her teenage child on a date.

“Who in Salazar’s name is that?” Voldemort demands.

“I’m Wendy Westerly!” she calls. She’s still on the roof and has to shout to be heard. “I’m an Unspeakable with the Department of Mysteries! My specialty is magical neurology, and ever since you started taking over the Ministry, I’ve been working on the world’s first countercurse for the Imperius, which I’ve finally perfected—!”

“Westy!” Draco bellows. “Stop explaining the plan and just cast the spell!”

“Oh, right! Sorry!”

“The Imperius Curse can’t be countered—” Voldemort snarls, a split second before Westy raises her wand and does precisely that.

With a huge sweep of her arm and a burst of blue light that fills the entire courtyard, the spell is cast: Head Auror Robards cries out first, then the others, crying out and collapsing onto their knees and wail in pain.

“Sorry!” she shouts down at them. “The next version of the spell hopefully won’t hurt this much!”

But, one by one, the magic fractures in bursts of blue and the sound of a whip crack, and one by one, the Aurors under Voldemort’s control crumple forward to their hands and knees.

“You were saying something about being outnumbered?” Harry asks, glib.

Voldemort turns furious red eyes forward.

“I don’t care how many attempts it takes,” he snarls. “I’ll kill you all the same.”

“Third time’s the charm?” Harry laughs once, dark and humorless, as his magic begins to swell and warp the air around him. “All right, then. Let’s get this over with.”

And then he transforms.

The massive silver dragon appears in his place, rears back, and breathes a burst of fire that swallows the Dark Lord whole.

The other Unspeakables, laying in wait, come bolting into the courtyard on brooms to join the fray. Draco transforms as well, flying straight through Harry’s cone of fire and into a nearby Death Eater at full force, talons first.

The battle is short and brutal. The Aurors who recover from the pain of Westy’s spell are quick to join in against the Death Eaters; many surrender, but some insist on going down fighting.

In the center of it all, Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, a silver dragon swiping and biting and bellowing as the skeletal figure over which he looms fight back with a wand stolen off a fallen Death Eater. Spells clash and clatter and burst, the unstoppable force of Voldemort’s magic against the immovable object of Harry’s terrible and tremendous Animagus form.

Draco knocks who he thinks might be Macnair unconscious with a hard dive bomb to the head when he hears it—the deafening boom and ensuing quake of magical energy that shakes the whole courtyard. Draco tumbles, startled out of his phoenix shape, and when he rights himself again, the courtyard has gone still and silent.

And there he is: Harry, no longer a dragon, standing breathless and trembling over the charred corpse of Lord Voldemort, delirious but triumphant—

“Harry!”

Draco is running before he even feels his legs move. Harry turns, and he exhales a dazed laugh, arms outstretching to catch him.

“It’s over,” an Auror gasps. “Merlin, it’s finally over.”

Draco hits him with all the force of a hurricane, his heart thudding in the side of his throat, his face buried in Harry’s shoulder.

“It’s over!” echoes another voice from the great front doors of Hogwarts castle. “It’s over!”

The cheer rises around them. Draco can barely hear it. He can barely perceive anything outside Harry’s arms, Harry’s scent, Harry’s heat, Harry’s grip around his back and his face in his hair.

“It’s over,” Harry whispers.

It’s over. It’s over.

They’ve won.

Chapter Text

“I am sorry, you know.”

“Hm?”