Chapter Text
It was over.
The Dark Lord was dead.
Everyone all around him was screaming. The whole crowd was blurred into chaos, there was someone on the other end of Draco's arm that was pulling him through it. He didn't know who it was who was pulling him through the tide of jostling bodies. He couldn’t tell if it was his Mother or Father. He didn’t really know where they were taking him. He didn't know anything anymore.
All of his thoughts were like a damned up river, it was like some impossible cataclysm had thrown a rock down into it. He could feel his mind pooling around the edges, moving nowhere.
The impossible had happened. The inevitable was coming.
And all around him the walls were literally crumbling. They were pocked marked with spell damage, windows broken, banisters shattered into a million shards. All he could smell was the fire, as strong as if he was still in the room watching as it crawled towards him. He wanted to let himself collapse to the ground, only there wasn’t time for that. Only there was still his duty propelling him onward, refusing to let him show any kind of weakness.
The crowd thinned, the magic that lit the sconces on the walls had gone out. The darkness of the hall felt disapproving, as though the castle was watching him. He wondered if it were ashamed of him, purposely casting him and his family back into the darkness that they had chosen for themselves. The reality of what was happening was beginning to sink in.
There would still be time for consequences after this.
He looked up, saw his mothers hurried steps, his fathers straight and dignified back. They went, down, down, down, past seemingly endless steps into the dungeons. Just before they had made the descent he had caught a glimpse of the lake from one of the broken windows. It was cold and black like colored glass. He wondered what his Father was thinking? If he was hoping it could cover his secrets even now.
His Father was running, they were running, Draco was running too.
Didn’t he realize that it was over?
Didn’t he know that the Dark Lord was dead?
They burst into Severus’ old office, it was so comfortably familiar even if he hadn’t used it all year. Being back here felt almost disarmingly safe. It wasn't of course. His Father lit the fireplace in a single elegant movement like a bird of prey circling over the room. Before suddenly he was right there, right in Draco’s face, his eyes full of emotions that should have never been there.
“I’ll go first, I can’t know where you go.” he said suddenly, Draco felt like he should say something only his words were still blocked. Still damned up and pooling. His Father was already stepping into the green tongues of fire, already running away. Draco hadn’t even heard where he was running too though that was probably for the best.
Then his Father was gone and everything was still and quiet. Draco stood there shivering, was he cold? Really he couldn’t tell. He turned to his Mother. She looked calm, self possessed though really that didn’t mean anything. Suddenly he realized that he wasn’t going to run.
He could feel it, the castle was still watching him, still assessing. The castle felt like it hadn’t condemned him yet. Places like Hogwarts weren’t made to condemn after all, they were made to help. It was horrible really how easy that intention could win over its better judgment. Even now it felt like it believed that there could be redemption for him.
“I’m not going.” He said finally, he hadn’t thought about the words but now that he had said them he realized that they had taken all of the bravery inside him to get out. His Mother turned, shocked though only for a moment, her eyes went liquid warm, the rest of her was completely unchanged.
“Oh course not Darling, she said as though she had known that all along. Had she? What should he do now? What would she do? He wanted to ask her, wanted to put his hand into hers like a child and be done with it, still his pride wouldn’t let him.
“Of course you understand, that I must go back home.” She said she was so full of pose and confidence, he believed that she would take his hand and tell him what must be done if he had only asked. “I rather expect we’ll be receiving guests.”
Then she was stepping back into the transparency of the green fire, off back to their defiled home to do Merlin knew what, another clever trick, another light touch to soften the fall.
Then he was alone.
It was over.
The Dark Lord was dead.
And it was over.
He didn't know what to do so he made himself a cup of tea, everything was still there waiting in the room. His hands shook wildly, but what did that matter when there was no one there to see. He cried a little, it seemed like the right sort of opportunity, not one that he was likely to have again at least for a while.
It took ages to make the tea even with magic, though eventually the room smelt warm and comforting like Darjeeling. It was only his hands still smelt like fire, like Harry Potter's sweat, like his magic. Still Draco felt nothing, still he thought nothing.
The tea cup was so warm in his ice cold hands. He watched the steam for ages, for life times. Until he finally remembered that he could drink it. Nothing changed.
It was over.
The Dark Lord was dead.
Eventually he crawled back up from the dungeons and into the chaotic stream of the crowd. There were people everywhere huddled together and crying. He crossed through the sea of it, through the drag and pull of the voices all around him. Slowly he made it out into the weak spring sunlight of the yard. It felt like a different world, cold and fresh as though everything around him had been scrubbed bitterly clean.
He sat out on the front steps and from some distance he could see Granger sleeping leaning against the castle wall. Her body was tangled around Harry Potter, he was sleeping too, his head resting against her breast. Something about it reminded him of Michelangelo’s Pieta.
The comparison was so blatant and surreal. The way that the sun was landing on them as though god himself had chosen them that Draco snorted a laugh at the thought before he could stop it. Weasley, who was stalking around them like a guard dog, snapped his head around as thought he had somehow heard the tiny noise.
His sky blue eyes looked down at Draco like he didn’t deserve to share their air. Like he didn’t even deserve to look upon the boy savior. There was real fire in them, real hatred. Draco felt the grimace of amusement slide off his face. He himself couldn't feel anything, not even for Weasley just the steady numbing cold.
“Draco Malfoy?”
Someone said behind him, he jumped enough at the voice that he spilled his tea down his sleeve. Behind him there was an Auror, looming like a maroon red shadow. The man’s face was hard, his gaze drifted over to Harry Potter and then back to him. Draco could help but feel the stirrings of outrage of how utterly unfair it was for him to compare them.
“What do you want?” he said, it might have been something if he could have said it with the outrage that he felt. Only instead it sounded so pathetically small, so incredibly weak that even the Auror changed tack.
“You're not planning to make trouble and run are you?” the man asked him, Draco snorted again at how ridiculous that suggestion was.
“Do you think I’d be sitting here if I was.” He said, there was a fragment more of his pride in that at least. Just a sliver, all he could cling on too.
The Auror sat down on the steps beside him, he had tired eyes. He was likely only a few years older than Draco himself was but for the moment it felt like an unbridgeable gap. He had a strange desire to tell this man that it was over now, that the Dark lord was dead. Only it wasn’t over, not for either of them at least. This was far, far from the end of it.
He placed a dribble of tea in his mouth to keep himself from saying anything at all.
“No, I don't mean to run.” He said after a long moment. The man beside him was viewing the carnage, he looked back at Draco almost as though he had already forgotten him.
“You wouldn’t mind giving me your wand then.” The man said, holding out a hand. Draco placed his cup down on the cold stone of the steps and fished through his robes. He placed the wand in the stranger's hand.
“It’s my Mother’s.” he said, almost at thought he was afraid that somehow the man would just immediately know. “Harry Potter has my wand.”
“And how on earth would a thing like that happen?” the man asked. Hand and wand all still hanging in the air, the desire to snatch the wand back was beating uselessly in his heart like panic.
“Well you’ll have to ask him about that won't you?” Draco said he wondered if he sounded bitter or just scared.
“Doesn’t matter if you talk to me now I suppose,” the man said, finally taking his Mother’s wand and placing it in his pocket. “It’s good of you to cooperate.”
How ridiculous, like he had another choice.
“What happens now?” he asked. The man looked back at him like he didn’t understand the question.
“What will happen to me?” he asked again, it felt like he was begging, it was humiliating, again the Auror ignored the question.
“Where are your parents?” He asked.
“You have to tell me-”
“No, I don't have to tell you anything.” The man said his voice was like a brick wall. Draco could feel the world shift, the gravity of it collapsing all around him. He froze more and more, solid all the way down to the core of himself. Collapsing, collapsing.
“Hey, hey, stay with me,” the man said, like he could see it too. Draco moved his eyes up to the man’s face. He was handsome in quite a masculine way, he noticed dangerously. Hard brown eyes and a slightly off center broken nose. “Where are your parents?”
Draco’s mouth opened, still the words were all frozen. He could feel his heart beating, feel the way his blood felt syrup thick. The Dark Lord was dead. The thought shot through him with sudden panic, the Dark Lord was dead. Him and his fucking snake and the rest of them, all of those horrible, horrible people. Why didn’t he feel relief? Why did he only feel like he was going to throw up?
“My… M-m-mother… went h-home- the manor-” he said, he could barely force the words out. He was stuttering, he had never stuttered before. He watched himself indifferent from outside his body, wondering only why he was acting so pathetic. Where was his shame as a Malfoy? shouldn’t he even now hold his head up and carry himself like he owned the world?
“Where is your father?”
“I d-don’t-” he started, so small, still collapsing, still shrinking down into the dirt. His mind was spinning, everything felt like a dream that he could not break out of. “I don’t know.”
“Fine.” The man said there was a little brown mole on his left cheek. He had nice eyebrows, thick and dark. Draco had always liked that in a man.
What the fuck was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just force himself into being present?
“You come with me alright.” the man said.
“Alright,” he repeated. It was so fucking cold even out in the sunlight, when had it become this cold?
The man got up and Draco got up to follow him. He didn’t dare to let his eyes flick off of the man's back. He didn’t dare to sneak a final look at Potter or Granger or even their little dog Weasley. Later he would consider it just another act of unforgivable cowardice.
It was a blur after that.
He remembered sitting down on one of the sofas for a long time, as strangers went dredging through his home. How it had felt more of a relief than an invasion at the time. The manor had already been soiled, tainted by the things that had happened there. So ruined that nothing could be done to fix it. Even the patterns of roses woven into the images on the wall paper had been still for months as though they had been too frightened to chase the sun.
The muddy foot prints the Aurors tracked through the manor had nothing against what the Dark Lord had done.
Time passed, nothing changed. He drank cup after cup of tea, there was nothing else that could be done. The house elves had prepared tea enough even for the Auror’s though none of them had dared to touch a cup. Almost if they could actually believe that there would be something so mundane as poisoning to take place now.
Draco didn’t feel like this was his home anymore, in truth it had been a long while since it had. The floors gleamed clean and completely unfamiliar. Even the portraits of his own family members were strangers, the magic in them felt somehow impersonal and lifeless even as they protested against the treatment of their home.
Draco served himself a slice of their house elf’s lemon drizzle cake, the elderflower syrup was tastelessly sweet. Like something that had impossibly been crafted either through magic or from memory, and nothing crafted by memory or magic could ever really be food.
“Draco darling,” his Mother said in a warning tone when he picked a piece off with his fingers. Did she still think that his manners meant anything anymore? He put the plate down on the table and the astringent taste of lemon lingered in his mouth. All he could focus on was the thirsty sweetness of it, not even his Mother who was sitting elegantly beside him, her head up, her eyes forward.
As though she was trying to remind him that fear was a weakness that neither of them had room for now.
By the end of the day he was sitting alone in a holding cell slumped against the wall listening as the other captured death eaters as they howled like dogs. It was a flood, all the filth of the magical world rushing in to clog up into the same drain. There was a smell to it, their collective sadistic madness, pungent enough to make him feel sick, enough to make him want to scrub his skin raw.
They were all lined up in tiny single man cells that gave him hardly enough room to sit down on the floor with his legs stretched out. The dirty walls were encrypted with ruins to prevent the flow of magic. He couldn’t stop himself from trying to feel for magic, it didn’t matter what he did he could feel nothing here. The room was disgustingly dead, not the slightest impression of the beating heart of the world. Dementors floating through the halls between the cells, their auras were like a suffocating weight pressing against his chest, crushing him.
He had been left to wait here for hours, though what he was waiting for he still didn’t know. His mind was running endlessly in the same circles that couldn’t protect or distract him any more. He wanted to cry, to collapse, to tell them all that he didn’t belong here. Explain to his captures that he was nothing like the rest of them. It was only the constant ignored din of the others, how they uselessly were screaming out that very thing that prevented him.
Eventually the waiting ended. The Aurors came back down the halls where they were greeted to a cacophony of animal screaming from the captives. Draco flinched away from the door, there wasn’t enough room for him to take a full step back, he was already pressed against the wall. They stopped in front of his door and peered in through the barred window in on him, the black robes of the Dementors hanging in the air over them like a warning he didn’t need.
“Draco Malfoy, out you get.” The man said, as he unlocked the door.
Draco pressed his back against the back wall of his cell, the runes made his skin tingle. This felt like a trick, like a horrible little game that they were trying to play with him. He felt a acid bolt of fear suddenly sure that these men had been sent here to torture him until he were as mad as the rest of these caged dogs.
“Come on,” the man said impatiently. He looked tired, but otherwise indifferent. There was nothing in his eyes when he looked at him, no gleam of sadistic pleasure.
‘What do you want?’ Draco snapped out angrily in his mind. It was only a weak little, “why?” that managed to mew out of his mouth. The man sighed like Draco had done something offensive yet not at all unexpected and took a step closer to seize him under the armpits and physically heave him out of the cell. Only the man then let go of him the moment that he crossed the threshold of the cell. Then he placed a spell on Draco that held his arms locked behind his back.
The prisoners cackled at him as he passed them, jeering victoriously at him from behind their bars. Their eyes were bloodthirsty and filled with twinkling pleasure. He hated all of them.
Draco let his hair fall down over his eyes, watching only his feet. It was humiliating as much as it was terrifying. What would they do to him now? Why wouldn’t they just tell him? The not knowing had to be worse didn’t it? He thought back to the Dark Lord, to the things that he had witnessed in the manor and he wondered.
But it couldn’t be like that could it? These were the good guys weren't they? Their shining knights in red, didn’t that have to count for something?
Shouldn’t it mean that they were better than that kind of cruelty?
The men forced him through the door leading out of the hall, his heart was rabbit fast. He felt sick all over, enough that it tingled from his ears to his toes. When he was thrown into the room and the spell over him was undone, he saw that both his parents were there too. They both looked bizarrely calm, his Father’s hand was sitting confidently on the small of his Mother’s back. He didn’t even spare a glance at Draco. It was like he had never run, like his Father was pretending that he had never for a single moment not been in control.
What was even stranger was that everyone around him was letting the lie go on unchallenged.
His Father was speaking to the Aurors like they all worked for him. He was acting like they were beneath him, even now. It was so jarring. Draco wasn’t stupid enough to think that his Father had somehow missed the seriousness of the situation but he couldn’t make it make sense. He looked over to the lawyers that stood around his Father, chatting and laughing as though this was nothing more than some kind of semi-formal social call.
For a moment Draco felt crazy. For a moment he almost asked one of the millions of questions that were bubbling up inside him, trying to take on a life of their own crawl out of his mouth on their own. Instead he didn’t, if only because he didn’t want to look like a child. That and he knew better than to want to do anything that might compromise his Fathers authority.
“Come along Draco,” his Father said, taking an elegant, unfrightened, unhurried step away from him and out the door. His back was straight and proud and unaffected. Draco swallowed back all the questions, all the doubts. He clenched his fist and did his best to be his Father's son.
It turned out that they were going home, that somehow it really was just that easy. The manor had been completely stripped. Perhaps that was what all the Aurors had been doing while Draco had sat on the sofa and drank his tea. The day felt a million years long, like it held the untold story of lifetimes, things that now he had no interest in being a part of.
They had taken everything out of the house that was more magic than a self-inking quill, even the portraits had been stripped off the walls. If nothing else it was a baffling show of efficiency. The three of them walked around the house, the whole while his Father was still talking. Though whatever it was that he had to say Draco couldn’t really register. It was like even the stripping of the manor was something his Father couldn’t see. It was like he thought that he could fool them into believing that he had hired the men to do this to them. That everything was going all according to a plan that he had only failed to let him and his mother in on.
The house elves had done their best to scrub everything in the house. The low fire light gleamed off all the newly naked surfaces. Every step on the hardwood floors echoed horrible. It was wrong. Too clean after all this time, as though the cleanness was only on the very surface and that unseen the dark magic had sunk deep into the skin of the house and left there a vile stain.
“If you're going to sulk Draco, then you might as well go to your room.” His Father told him like he thought he was being very childish.
Draco had done nothing other than parade around and survey the complete lack of damage in the house. He couldn't stop, his mind just kept refusing to make it make sense. He looked over at where his Father and Mother were sitting in the center of the drawing room. How, now that everything was removed they looked incredibly tiny. Almost as if they were huddling up in the light of the fire, against the ravages of a coming storm.
He realized that he didn’t want to see any of this any more and he turned away from them. Draco went up the stairs, each footfall echoing loudly behind him.
His room had been stripped too, every personal effect that he had, had been taken. Even his book shelves were completely empty, only his clothes remained. The clothes were hung up handsomely in his closet, his bed linen neatly made. As though it were clean, as though everything that had happened could be so easily cleaned up. It all made him want to scream.
He looked over at the pattern of frozen roses in the wallpaper, they looked unchanged. Still too frightened to move. There was something about the pattern, something withered. Something fragile. Some small sign of the damage that was lingering just beneath the surface. His sympathy for the pattern had the whole weight of his collective fear and heartbreak.
He could feel it too, those touches of darkness lingering in the corners. The cool clampy feeling as though the house was incredibly sick. It was all so overwhelming. He raised his hands to cover his face and smelt how the fire still lingered over his skin, unbelievably that too had also been today. He could still smell Harry Potter's horrible sweat and Vincent's burning body, it was so overstimulating like an electrical storm inside his brain.
It was over, he told himself, the Dark Lord was dead.
He was dead.
He was dead.
He was never coming back.
He took a deep breath, he saw the bright screaming demons of the fire, clawing, scrambling over each other and heard their great horrible roar. He felt Harry Potter's body, so thin in his hands. carved down to hungry muscle and a steady racing heart. Potter’s powerful green eyes focused ahead to something that Draco couldn’t see, something that would now forever remain beyond his reach.
But it was over now, the Dark Lord was dead.
Harry Potter had seen to that,
somehow,
somehow.
He saw Harry Potter's bloated textured face reaching out and taking his wand. For a moment it was so real that he gasped. But it wasn’t real, it was only a memory that couldn't touch him. His heart was racing, he felt like he might throw up. It was so stupid he didn't even have a wand to take.
‘You have to get your fucking shit together.’ he screamed at himself inside his mind. It didn’t help.
He couldn’t calm down no matter what he did, so he let it just get worse and worse instead. He let it build until he was blind and dizzy with it, until it became unbearable and the world dissolved into something uncertain and numb.
Then he peeled his clothes off and left them stinking of smoke on the floor. He crawled into his bath finally calm and determined to become clean of the grasping lingering touch of the past no matter how much scrubbing it required.
By the time the Aurors brought him in to ask him some questions, Draco was feeling quite cross about being forced through the indignity of living like a Muggle. He had planned to be nasty and unhelpful to them by way of petty vengeance.
That conviction hadn’t lasted long, it only took until they asked him if he had recognized a certain person at a certain party for him to change his mind. Draco realized that not only had he recognized the man but he had hated him.
That he had hated all of them really.
That none of this was really Draco's fault, that it wasn’t the Aurors fault either. He realized it was them, all the other Death eaters that deserved to pay. That he was being given the ability to make them suffer what they had done to him. That he didn't feel a single ounce of loyalty to any of it.
So he told them what he knew and once he started talking the words kept coming and coming there just wasn’t any end to it. He couldn’t stop. He had after all, just like any good little budding socialite, been trained to remember names, faces and little facts. He told them everything that had been carelessly told in his presence, holding back only on his own parents' secrets.
He might as well have been a spy for the enemy, only pointlessly too late.
He didn’t for a moment think it would help his case, he found that he didn't even care about that. He was already condemned, they had found the Dark Lord living in their home after all and that simply wasn’t the sort of thing that anything could undo.
He told them only to condemn the rest. Only to hurt, only to spread the suffering out as far as he could. He’d damn them all, the whole organization if he were able. The Aurors were shocked at first. They didn’t believe him, even as they wrote down every word and every secret that he told them.
They asked him the same questions again and again, it didn’t matter his story never changed, in this regard his memory was excellent.
“Draco you've done really well here.” The lead Auror on his case told him.
Draco hadn't expected that either, how pathetically he couldn’t help the Pavlovian response of pure pleasure the praise gave him. That there was still such a big part of him that was desperate for any approval from authority.
When he got back home all he could see was the filth that had been left behind. That dark disgusting stain of black magic that had soaked in everywhere. It was like there was a horrible black fungus growing just on the other side of the wall paper, unseen, growing, letting out its spores to infect the inside of his lungs. He looked at his withering roses in the wallpaper, how he could see them actively dying.
He had a sudden realization that he would have just enough time to watch as the house died before the monster of justice would get its chance to kill him too.
It was an unbearable thought.
He was overwhelmed with the need to do something about it. Anything that could clean the wound and give the house a chance to heal itself. He needed to keep one single piece of his life alive and he realized this was the only piece that he possibly could. He snuck a paring knife from the kitchen and locked the door to his room and he began to separate the wall paper from the wall, it took forever. It was a task that would have been so much easier if he had magic to assist him.
He thought if only he could get inside, if only he could get underneath then he could start to scrub the contamination out of the manor's wounds. Hours later he sat down in the shredded remains of the wall dressing exhausted and filthy down to the bone. Still so uncertain if he had managed to do anything at all.
One of his house elves teleported through his locked door and found him there. She looked at him, with wide scared eyes, like she thought he had lost his mind. Still she didn’t say anything, she only led him over to the bath so that he could clean himself up.
By the time he re-emerged the mess had been all cleared away and all the shredded paper had been stripped away from his walls. Now the walls were a fragile new born white, that could hide nothing.
There was so much surveillance magic woven into the house it felt like there was the constant presence of eyes on them at all times. Tracing their movements, their heart beats and magical signatures.
It felt like there were enemies closing in all around them but all Draco could do now was wait. It felt like he was waiting all the time for the final strike to hit, for him and the ones he loved most to be eaten up by the monster of justice.
Still the monster of justice moved slowly, the indignity of having to live like a muggle continued, the days blurred.
He found that everything took ages and there was so much work left to do. He threw himself into the work, determined, overwhelmed with the need to make at least one room in the manor clean. It was a constant battle, the stain was everywhere, he couldn’t see it but he could feel it constantly all around him, like a kind of gross itch under his skin. It was both real and unreal, both an over reaction but also something that needed his utmost urgency.
He had his bed clothes boiled daily and had his mattress deep cleaned with elf magic. Still it felt like a sponge sucking in the darkness from the air around it and trapping the poisonous magic inside. It didn’t really matter in the end, he could barely calm his mind enough to sleep, certainly not on that filthy thing. All he could feel was the crawling, squirming grossness of contamination over everything and the determination that he could somehow in some way make all of it clean again.
Magic wasn’t enough, he had begun to realize that now. There was an opportunity hidden in the cruelty of keeping him and his family away from magic.
He made solutions of sodium hypochlorite and boric acid and scrubbed on his hands and knees, finding only that the satisfaction in the work itself could make life bearable. He used his paring knife and he picked things apart, the molding along his walls, the junctions of his drawers, everything. It all had to be taken apart and scrubbed by hand.
He couldn’t stop even when the elves would find him and shriek for him not to clean. Only when one of the little creatures threw herself on the floor like a child and beat at her own face did he finally stop, if only to scream back at her and tell her what a horrible little disgusting thing she was to foul his floors.
He could see it all with a certain kind of clarity, he knew he was acting madly.
Only it didn’t matter anymore there was still so much work to be done. So much house left and his room had really seen the least of the contamination to begin with. It would only get worse. He could feel the house, its infection as though it were tied to his own body. As though it were killing him too.
Then in a fit of frustrated madness in the middle of the night, he realized how stupid he had been. He cut his nails to the quick and shaved all the hair off his own body. He gathered his nail cuttings and hair in paper envelopes wondering how he could make this place clean when he couldn’t even do the same for his own body? He scrubbed himself until he was pink and raw and ghastly, until he finally collapsed and fell asleep in a tangle on his clean floors.
Normally he would have burned his hair in his own room, only now the fireplaces felt unsafe. They felt like they were still infected with the Dark Lord's lingering magic. It felt like if he were to burn the cuttings here he would be giving over a part of himself to the dead man. So instead he went out into the garden and built a little fire like a muggle there.
Was any of this better at all? How could he ever really know that?
Of course there wasn’t any real danger, he reminded himself as he went ahead anyways. The Dark Lord was dead after all, the war was over. Only not even death felt like enough to keep him safe.
This fire felt like it was his. Safe enough at least to dispose of the cuttings and bury the ashes without interference. However his mother came into the garden before he could finish and when she saw him she screamed. He wasn’t surprised he too had seen how ghostly he looked bald headed himself. She froze, her face pulled into a look of disgust. Her dark eyes raked all over his huddled body.
“You can’t let your Father see you like this.” she hissed under her breath. He looked down at his raw hands, the skin split apart from all his frantic cleaning.
“He won't,” Draco told her, sounding every bit as childish as he felt. He wasn’t worried about his Father, They hadn’t seen each other in ages. In fact he had the feeling that maybe his father had been avoiding him. Sometimes he even wondered if it was the other way, if maybe he had been avoiding his own Father, only it was too vile of a thing for him to admit to.
“I need new bed clothes.” He told her, her face clenched harder.
“And what exactly is the problem with what you have been given, Draco.” she snapped, he tried to think of how he could tell her that no amount of washing could make them clean. “If it has somehow escaped your notice now is not the time for such trivial things, perhaps if we survive these next months then you can have your new linens.”
She had said it with such bitter coldness, he could feel his shame clawing up his neck, pulling the tendons in his face.
“I need-” he started as she cut into him fast and sure.
“You look like you’ve come straight from Bethlehem, you don’t get to come whining to me about what you need. This is serious Draco, I need you to work in the best interest of this family and it appalls me that I have to tell you that now." she said, her eyes filled with rage. Her voice went low and snakish, though it hardly mattered, she might just as well have screamed with how closely they were being watched.
“And what will the Aurors think of this I wonder? That my son has gone mad in his grief of the Dark Lord.” It was a ridiculous accusation, he stood to his feet. He towered over her like this, funny it didn’t feel like it at all.
“Get yourself cleaned up, Draco for heaven's sake we have company.”
She turned her back on him and stepped out into the green house that was fogged with condensation in the morning warmth. He looked down to his tiny fire, felt the welling of horrible shame, mixed with hateful anger. He hated her because she didn’t care if he went mad, only if he let his madness show.
He tossed down his cuttings into the flames, the sickly smell of his burning hair was terrifyingly familiar, it came with imaginary screams that felt all too real and loud. It made him vomit into his mouth, but he didn’t embarrass his Mother by spitting it out instead he swallowed the bitter acid down.
He didn’t turn away from the fire either, he couldn’t let himself be afraid of it, he owed that much at least to the dignity of his blood. He let it burn, but without magic even that took ages before it was finally rendered to ashes that could be churned inseparably into the dirt.
The shame he felt was enough that his hair grew back all on its own before sunset, fast enough that it spared his Father from having to witness the sight.
He had a dream he was back at Hogwarts. In the dream he was down in the dungeons in his potions class while Severus stalked around the room like a giant dark bird. He kept asking questions with increasing irritation but none of them made any sense. It was all just words sliding uncatchable over his mind.
Draco felt compelled, honor bound, to try and answer them anyway, even though he didn't understand what was being said. He was increasingly frustrated with the game, it was horribly embarrassing. With every wrong answer, every failed creative trick he tried to employ to try to straighten the nonsense back into order, Granger would lean over the desk, her hand raised up like she was trying to touch the ceiling.
“Well actually…” she would say.
“It's more so about the fruit that is picked before it has a chance to ripen. After all it's the sacrificial nature which is the catalyst of magic. When we sacrifice potential for immediate gains this is where we will find the least satisfactory results.-”
“Well actually…”
“It’s not the place of the parts to define the sum.-”
“Well actually…”
“As the same composite is placed into different vessels, the more it is distortion is absorbed, transformation is only equal to absorption when-”
Over and over, before another stream of nonsense would come pouring its way out of her mouth. Severus ignored her, he refused to encourage her at all or give any sign if what she had said was right or not. But of course they both knew it was right, it always was.
Even as Severus only snapped again and again calling her an insufferable know it all. Berating her over and over, she persisted. Nothing could stop her, it was like she was possessed by the spirit of knowledge.
Draco tried again, another answer though Severus ignored the attempt as well but he could tell by the tightness in the muscles around his nose that all of it was wrong anyway.
“Well actually…” she said again.
“Again Granger?" Severus said, his cloak snapping like a whip after him in his pacing. “Aren't we eager to show off?”
It was so frustrating that Draco could just slap her straight across the face. It hardly helped that right behind him Weasley and Potter snickered to each other like a pair of wild apes. Granger was already on to her next ‘well actually’ hand waving around freely in the air.
He was hot with embarrassment with rage bubbling up, he wanted to slap that stupid giggling off of both of their faces too. Somehow it felt like a better vehicle for his ire. In a way Potter always was.
“Wont the two of you morons shut up!” He screamed at them, turning around on his stool and slamming his hands down on their table. Suddenly he was drawn into Harry Potter's stupid super real laughing green eyes. He was completely hypnotized by his incredibly dark lashes. Potter laughed, his slightly crooked smile enough to drive obsessions. He was so terrifying, even just to look at directly.
Potter stood up on his seat leaning straight over the desk between them and all the potions things in the way. His hands planted hard against the wood of the table too.
“Well actually…”he said leaning in. That stupid smile so incredibly self-satisfied it made him feel sick and hot and embarrassed.
Draco woke up in sudden terror. He was in his bath, wrapped up in his inadequate linens, away from the tainted sponge on his mattress. The panic was a learned thing, something nurtured through years. Years when even thoughts of Harry Potter and his stupid jewel green eyes were of a real and tangible danger to him.
But no one was here anymore trying to stick their filthy fingers into the tender soft flesh of his mind. It was a strange thought. That despite how completely powerless and watched he was, or how many surveillance charms that coated over him right now. He was finally free, his thoughts were finally and completely his own.
He could think anything he wanted now. Even about Harry Potter. And even though he had never in his whole life been more helpless he felt a surge of something that felt… dangerous and intoxicating like self possession.