Work Text:
Seen This Coming
Draco loved books. Really, really adored them.
As in, he’d sneak out past curfew to go to the Manor’s library to read. By the time he was 11, he had studiously studied his way through a fifth of the Manor’s books on spells and wards and magical history. He could proudly say that he had finished all the books on the Boy Who Lived, too, just because. Because.
Well, the Boy Who Lived killed the Dark Lord.
For all that Father said that the Dark Lord was a good lord and had a good cause, Draco was not stupid. He had read books.
The books told him that blood purity was important, because the pureblood families have inherited magics that none of the muggleborns (mudbloods) have, like the Weasley’s inherent ability to replicate indefinitely and the Longbottoms’ ability to sense other family’s magical reserves – this was a really fascinating read – but the books also told him that blood purity didn’t mean killing all the muggleborns. Because, just like there are squibs, there are really powerful muggleborns who can, through marriage into the family complete with the right rituals, produce pureblood children whose family magic would be just as strong as the real purebloods.
Also, he had common sense. From everything he could find on the Dark Lord (which wasn’t much), the Dark Lord was not a pureblood. And the Dark Lord didn’t appear to want to kill himself. Hence, he was con–tea–dic–ting himself, and was a big hypocrite.
Why were they bowing to him then? Draco didn’t understand. Therefore, there must be other reasons for them to bow to the Dark Lord. According to the books, those reasons include torturing and killing, which seemed so unnecessarily messy and horrible. He couldn’t imagine Father having liked that.
So Harry Potter was a hero, he was important, and he was a good person for killing the Dark Lord.
>>>>>>>
Harry Potter rejected his friendship.
As an 11 years old boy who had never once been rejected, it was a shock to his systems. Naturally, he was affronted and upset. Naturally, he turned to his books. The ones he brought with him.
They offered him no better answer than his common sense did (he did so wish that he could consult the library, the library would have given him the book he needed), so he settled for looking dignified about the rejection in front of Pansy and Blaise and Crabbe and Goyle.
The biggest turning point in his life from then on was the fact that he didn’t wind up in Slytherin. To his surprise, Father never said anything about him being the first Malfoy who wasn’t in Slytherin – Mother even looked proud, telling him that it’s been a while since a Black was sorted into Ravenclaw.
Of course, it might have helped that everyone’s sorting went haywire – Pansy and Crabbe wound up in Slytherin, sure, but Blaise came to Ravenclaw, too, and Goyle was sorted into Hufflepuff.
Pansy and Blaise didn’t forsake him – Crabbe came to him, upset, the next day, saying that the Hat refused to put him into Ravenclaw for him. Draco didn’t know what to say to that, so he followed the book’s advice on how to deal with distraught friends and patted Goyle gingerly on the back (he wasn’t bigger than Goyle, so he couldn’t pat Goyle on the head).
He then picked up Potter–watching skills.
Well, he didn’t exactly take notes on Potter. He only brought his quill and parchment around all the time because he was a good student. Also, he never deliberately ran into Potter, it was merely coincidental that he saw Potter more than anyone else (other than his fans and the other Gryffindors).
Alright.
He stalked Potter.
Pleased now, Blaise?
What he learnt was a little disheartening, though – Potter liked girls. He held hands with Granger (Weasel looked upset at that), and Draco saw him kissing Chang at least once. He publicly announced that he was dating Ginny, too.
Also, the few times Potter ran into him, Potter either didn’t notice him or took a while to place him as ‘the Ravenclaw who does really well in Potions’. He supposed that he should be glad that Potter could recall that at all, but he’s allowed to be upset. Was that all he was to Potter?
What sort of person didn’t even remember someone who offered to be their friend at eleven?
The point to all this was, sometime in Year 5 when it struck him that he actually had a crush on Potter (that jerk), it came with the realisation that he would have to stand out. Somehow, he would have to make himself noticeable to this blind, bespectacled, stupidly good–looking moron.
Naturally, that was when he was asked (forced) to carry out a task for the Dark Lord. Which, in turn, implied that he was too busy trying to not get caught doing illegal things, like trying to assassinate the Headmaster, to work on catching Potter’s attention.
Alright, he didn’t try as hard as he could have, since all of his plans relied on too many easily manipulated factors, so he knew that they won’t actually succeed, but really? He went to Hogwarts because of the prospect of meeting and befriending Harry Potter (which he failed miserably at) and the promise of a library bigger than the Malfoy one (which he discovered wasn’t actually bigger than the combined Black–Malfoy one though it had different collections).
He did not go to Hogwarts to learn how to assassinate people, so he really shouldn’t be blamed for not knowing the best and most efficient ways to quickly kill a really powerful wizard that the other really powerful wizard his parents were scared of was scared of.
And he did still eventually manage to wear himself out worrying about the fallouts if they managed to figure out what he was doing – both sides, the ‘light’ side figuring out he was trying to murder the Headmaster and the ‘dark’ side figuring out that he wasn’t trying hard enough in trying to murder the Headmaster – but that was a logical worry. It was logical to be worried. It lost him a lot of weight and a lot of free time.
He supposed that the only good thing that came out of that fiasco was that Potter actually would remember him now – he certainly did instantaneously become famous in the Death Eater ranks, at least. His official title was now the brat–who–failed–to–kill–Dumbledore.
He would have liked to take Seventh year to lick his wounds in peace in the healing world of the library in Hogwarts since he couldn’t do that at home. Except that the noseless bastard – sorry, his most amazing Dark Lord – had the brilliant idea of having Severus take over the school (and wasn’t that such a horrible idea, Draco wasn’t entirely incompetent, you know, he did figure out while researching on how to kill the Headmaster that Severus had something to do with the Headmaster’s Order of the Phoenix), before he put a bunch of nutjobs in charge of teaching the students.
That year was horrible.
There was no actual teaching done by any of the new staff, naturally. Meanwhile, the actual professors (Professor Sprout, for one) seemed to be too distracted trying to keep their students from being tortured to death to do any actual teaching.
The fact that everyone (Pansy, Millie, Daphne, Crabbe, Goyle, Theo…) but Blaise and he took to the new syllabus with enthusiasm was horrifying. Even when there was two of them, it was hard, trying to not be noticed. Then Blaise transferred to some small institution in the States, leaving him to keep inconspicuous alone. That traitor.
The time spent in the Manor was the most terrible, though.
He did his best to stay invisible. He learnt pretty much everything that would let him disappear (physically and mentally – he mastered Occlumency on top of a whole plethora of variations on the notice–me–not charms and the disillusionment spells). Merlin, he even went and tried to figure out his Animagus form, though that was a failed venture.
Unfortunately, while they served him well most of the time, they did nothing against Greyback and that wizard from somewhere in the Philippines who loved coming up close to him and leering at him.
Besides learning how to avoid creepies and actually avoiding the creepies, he took to feeding the prisoners. They were mostly the nice sort. At least they weren’t, you know, crazy raving hypocrites with a lunatic plan that had only a single goal – the taking down of a single boy.
As far as Draco could see, that was.
He trusted his eyes and his judgement.
While Luna appreciated his goodwill, it took the Gryffindor – Thomas – some time to warm up to him, but once he did, it made for some nice, insightful conversations in a place where sanity was, apparently, scarce. A rare commodity, one may say.
Then Potter showed up with a face full of stinging hexes. Aunt Bella, being smart for once in her life, thrust him straight into the spotlight of scrutiny, asking him to identify Potter. He didn’t appreciate it, though, since he had just been dragged out of his comfortable spot in the darkest, dampest part of the manor (metaphorically, of course, he would never willingly stay in such a place).
He did what he could – namely, lie his arse off (he could recognise those eyes anyway) and surprisingly, he managed to befuddle Aunt Bella for a bit. Unfortunately, that git screwed that chance up by not running for his life and the three were thrown into the same cell Luna and Thomas were stuffed into.
They proceeded to break out with style, Pettigrew having done something right for once (though it didn’t appear to be intentional, such a pity). Even while Draco stood there with a face full of glass, he could find it in himself to be glad that at least Potter had enough wits to get straight out of the Manor the moment he could.
Though he would appreciate it much more if the git had left him his wand. How was he meant to hide himself now?
Also, could Potter get on with it and just murder the Dark Lord? He did it at infancy, why was he taking his own sweet time now that he had the ability to walk and talk and learn ways to obliterate that slimy – Dark Lord?
Maybe he should go and figure out how to track Potter and send him all his research materials from when he was trying to figure out how to kill the Headmaster.
You know, the actual research and not the rubbish he eventually attempted to implement.
>>>>>>>
He reconsidered that idea when his mother’s wand almost exploded in the middle of his casting a basic shield. It wasn’t something he had anticipated.
Was his magic that incompatible with hers?
With that thought in mind, he went and studied wand lore. After a few tomes, he deemed himself knowledgeable enough to attempt to fashion his own wand substitute.
While that stick he ended up with was not a proper wand by any standards, it channeled his magic well enough – he still couldn’t use it to cast complicated spells, but at least it doesn’t attempt to murder him (unintentionally or otherwise). A stray thought wandered into his mind – did his mother’s wand reflect her feelings?
He dismissed it.
Essentially, that was how he spent the rest of the year – using the excuse that his mother’s wand refused to bend to his will to get out of the ‘practical’ sessions in ‘defence against dark arts’ and spending most of the other classes figuring out how to get the stick to work for him.
He hadn’t given up on sending Potter that compilation of notes.
(He didn’t manage to send it. Pity.)
>>>>>>>
In the final battle, he sought Potter out.
By this time, he had gotten his stick to work well enough that it could do a basic point me, so he found Potter without too much difficulty.
That idiot, however, seemed to believe that he was siding with the lunatic. He tried to hex him unconscious! Of course, Draco ducked, trying to persuade Potter to hear him out while doing so, but that resulted in eye contact between Crabbe and Potter.
Something he said must have gotten through, though, since Potter looked considering. At least, he looked like he was thinking about it, right up until Crabbe set the room on fire.
They got out, without Crabbe, and Goyle collapsed in the corridor, looking stupefied.
Noseless halfbreed (screw propriety, Draco was going to call him whatever he wants to, that thing is going down tonight anyways) announced that Potter should go to the Forbidden Forest to meet him alone. It was just him and Potter in that dank corridor, alone, then.
Potter looked at him.
“Malfoy… Draco, was it?”
Draco stared. “You know my name.” He regretted the words when they came out of his mouth, but really, at this point, he had more things to worry about than what he’s saying. One of those things was whether Potter was going to be a martyr and run out there to sacrifice himself or not. He was strongly supporting Potter not being that moronic, though he was suspecting it would happen otherwise, but before he could talk about that, Potter started fidgeting, a little, looking, of all things, a little guilty.
“Well…” And then they make eye contact, and for some unfathomable reason, Draco just knew what was coming out of his mouth next.
(Well, it might be wishful thinking, but he was pretty sure that in the year when he was a complete and utter mess, Potter was the stalker who left him a treacle tart when he broke down in Myrtle’s bathroom. Though he doesn’t appreciate that. Who leaves a treacle tart on a bathroom floor? It was so unhygienic!)
(Another reason he hates, no, absolutely despises that slimy creature that doesn’t deserve to be called a snake. If not for the stupid assignment, he could have allowed himself to register Potter’s interest then and maybe they could have gotten somewhere instead of him still having to try to assassinate the Headmaster and stressing himself out, no?)
Before he could stall that idiot, though, he said, “I really like you. You would have been a good chaser, you know? I mean, just…”
Draco had something he intended to say, he swore. It was just, Potter watched him fly? Potter, the Quidditch prodigy, watched him fly? When? Since when? And, ‘really like you’, how old were they, eleven? Also, just, just what?
Essentially, he hadn’t been fully prepared for what Potter might say, and for that, he was floored. Speechless.
Maybe that was the effect Potter was trying to achieve, because, while Draco was too stunned to speak or react, that wimpy coward ran away.
Hardwired into him was the tendency to chase, of course, especially since this was Potter, but that critter hexed him. With a trip jinx.
Of course, he should have anticipated that – look at what Potter had done to his reflexes, damnit – but he wasn’t prepared, and by the time he scrambled up, Potter was gone.
>>>>>>>
Naturally, that dimwit turned up dead, of all things.
His parents asked Draco to join them on the other side.
And Draco thought, bugger that. Bugger it all. Seriously, screw it all to the Halls of Hel and back. This was a rubbish development he would not put up with, because Potter was supposed to do his thing and kill His Most Annoying, Lunatic, Irritating, Hypocritical, Insane, Noseless, insert-more-unflattering-adjectives-here Lordship, not die and lie there like a puppet.
For the first time in his life, Draco stood still, effectively disobeying his parents.
(He reconsidered his decision when it looked like the crowd of Death Eaters was going to murder his parents where they stood but –)
Longbottom stepped forward.
As if the world was just waiting for that, things started happening again.
Potter revived himself, killed noseless fashion disaster and earning himself the title as the boy who lived twice.
Privately, Draco liked to call him the boy who lived to screw his life up and his heart around, because, after that crappy confession, Potter appeared to have forgotten about him.
Alright, he shouldn’t be complaining about that, since he wasn’t disinherited and his mother stayed out of Azkaban and even though his father did wind up in Azkaban, it wasn’t for life and there weren’t any Dementors. Besides, the Malfoys didn’t lose that much social standing – Potter had spoken up for him – and apparently being a Ravenclaw, with a handful of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors standing up for him, was enough to vouch for his good character, so he was just fine.
This year was better than Seventh too, at least, since the teachers actually taught. Like that was their job.
Life would have gone on as always, and he would have been just fine, except that the flowers showed up.
It was just a bundle of flowers, really – they weren’t even arranged prettily, but those were black narcissus ghostflowers. His favourite. A hybrid that was incredibly hard to breed and so rare out in the wild that there were only two mature flowering trees with these flowers in Ethiopia.
He knew who sent them the moment he saw them – he wasn’t blind, actually, and he did see Longbottom’s Herbology project. The ethereal petals perked up when he touched the flower and he noticed the card that came with the flowers.
That was how he came to be standing at the bleachers, holding a bunch of flowers and doing his best to look completely unaffected (but not completely disinterested. He is not disinterested).
Potter showed up at the time given.
“Hey,” he started with, before pausing. Draco kept quiet, watching Potter lick his lips before he continued, “Would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me?”
As, unlike Potter, Draco was not a fool, he said yes without hesitation.
It turned out to be the best decision he had ever made.
(Well, that was an exaggeration, but it was definitely up there.)
The first date, they snuck out of Hogsmeade (he didn’t realise that Potter knew the passageways – that Potter actually knew two more than he did) and it progressed so well that Draco found himself slightly taken aback.
They got sweets from Honeyduke after camouflaging themselves and then they sat at the haunted house you could get to from the Whomping Willow, and it was just the two of them in this dusty shack. It was something Draco wouldn’t have stood for when he was younger, but now, it was amazing.
Somehow, the conversation turned to transfiguration. Draco found himself demonstrating what he could do with his wand and that piece of wood that fell off the ceiling – he helped it take a few forms, before letting it settle on being a little phoenix. It thrilled at him, before flying off to Harry. Not before Draco charmed it to be able to squawk out little bursts of flames, though.
Harry looked utterly delighted and Draco didn’t even mind when he was almost caught by Filch for being out after the dark.
Even when they did bicker, it was almost… friendly. Teasing.
>>>>>>>
Their last (first) Christmas together at Hogwarts happened like this:
Draco woke up in the morning, early, remembering that it was Christmas. As excited as he was, he made sure not to appear too excited as he wandered downstairs.
There was a pile of present, as always.
“Hello,” Luna greeted as she came down the stairs from the girls’ side of the Eighth Year dormitory. “Happy Christmas.” She sat down beside the tree and picked one of the presents out, presenting it to him. “Yours, I think.”
Letting out a huff, Draco smiled as he accepted it from her and sat down, picking his gifts out from the big pile and helping the others sort theirs as he found them.
Luna had grown on him, a little, over the period of time in the Manor but mostly – when she helped him pick out Harry’s gift. She had a surprisingly good understanding of mortal fiddly machines and their electricity.
The two of them were the earliest – by the time the rest started trickling down, they were almost done, a pile of wrapping paper around each of them.
Draco was down to his last present when he realised that Harry hadn’t gotten him anything. That realisation made him pause, before he set the thought aside and continued unwrapping – his mother’s gift, a box of chocolates from his favourite chocolatier in Paris.
Harry didn’t come down, he noticed.
Gathering his gifts, he shrunk them and then carried them up, setting them on his bed. Drawing the bed-curtains, he went down for dinner.
Over the day, however, he realised that Harry still wasn’t anywhere to be found and, naturally, he got a little worried.
A check with Granger revealed that he was likely to be at the half-giant’s hut.
A little puzzled, Draco headed down to the hut, naturally a little wary as he approached the door – and heard a hiss. It sounded like a hiss of pain.
Immediately, he barged his way into the room, where he was met with four sets of eyes – gatekeeper, Harry and this little, scaly… thing with four eyes. A blink later, it was revealed that it wasn’t that the little scaly thing had four eyes, it was that there was a smaller scaly thing on top.
“’Arry, she’ll have to take,” the gatekeeper began, which was around when the smaller scaly thing launched itself off the larger one, revealing its wings. Because Harry bleeding Potter had screwed his reflexes right around, his first instinct was not to dodge, it was to reach an arm out to try to catch that thing.
“It’s a winged serpent,” Draco realised in amazement as it simply wound itself around his outstretched arm.
Harry shifted around a little nervously. “Well, do you like it?”
Draco, engaged in a staring contest with this little creature who isn’t blinking with its upper and lower eyelids, barely heard his question.
“Draco,” Harry spoke up again after a while. “Are you fine with her?”
Draco looked at him. “You didn’t get her for Christmas, did you?”
“Well,” Harry began.
“You’re not supposed to be getting pets as a gift, Harry,” Draco cut him off. “Though you got lucky and I do appreciate the sentiment.”
“You like her?”
Draco transferred his full attention to Harry then – Harry, looking hopeful and earnest.
“Yes,” he sighed. Uncharacteristically, Harry hugged him – which, as he should have predicted, turned into a kiss. He gave it as good as he got, though, even if he was mindful of their audience – Harry deserved this.
Naturally, the bigger – the mother, possibly – winged serpent glided in and broke them up, curling around her youngling and flying back to a pile of blankets – which must be their nest – and Hagrid laughed, then, declaring that it was bedtime for them.
Harry looked at Draco, who shrugged, accepting this.
“They don’t leave their parents until they’re at least five years old,” Draco told him. “Hogsmeade?” He was in a good mood, and he thought that Harry wouldn’t mind.
“We could go somewhere else,” Harry suggested as they left the hut, after reassuring Hagrid that they would come down at least weekly, if not more often, after this.
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Harry.
Draco thought about it, remembering this once his mother had told him about Hogwarts’ boundaries. There’s a cave by the lake, she told him, that faces the lake and cannot be accessed without going through the Slytherin common room. The scenery by the fireplace in the common room was a passageway, not that many knew that.
He suggested it to Harry, who thought about it and offered to sneak them in with his invisible cloak.
It involved a lot of jostling, though they did get in eventually, hearing the password – “Amortentia” – from a third year. Draco couldn’t resist a whispered, “Why.” Harry, meanwhile, snickered the whole way.
Thankfully, there was no one there; the third year went straight to his dorm.
They missed the feast that night, sitting there in the surprisingly comfortable cave, doing nothing but lying down and listening to each other’s heartbeat, occasionally starting a conversation that would last a few sentences before fading away into the stillness of the lake.
“Draco?”
“Yes?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Become a runemaker,” Draco replied immediately.
Harry frowned as he sat up at that. “A runemaker?”
“Or a general arithmetic base-maker.”
“What would you do?”
“Make runes. And bases,” Draco replied, sitting up too, smiling. “You don’t know what those are?”
“I didn’t know you could make runes.”
“You could make anything, you know.”
Their eyes met for a moment before Draco waggled his eyebrows just to try it out. Harry burst out laughing and that ended their conversation.
Night had fallen when they went back to their dormitory – a kind soul had moved Harry’s gifts onto his bed.
>>>>>>>
The next Christmas, Draco was in Paris with Blaise, meeting up with Pansy for the first time since the War. Harry, meanwhile, was entrenched in an assignment somewhere he couldn’t speak about – he joined the aurors, as expected.
New Years, they had moved into Grimmauld Place. Draco, naturally, threw a fit the first time he saw it and they spent the whole week cleaning it up and fixing it up; it retained its aura and its feel, but it felt distinctly cleaner, now. Clearer. Serapis, their winged serpent, moved in with them a few months later, simply showing up one day on their bed.
Three Christmases after, Harry had roped in Selina – Draco’s research colleague – to distract him with a shiny new project until dinner, where he proposed. They celebrated.
Very enthusiastically.
The first thing they did as a couple was to adopt Teddy’s best friend Alrik, left behind by his parents – Death Eaters – who had fled to elsewhere.
Ten years down the road, Harry asked Draco if he’d seen this happening in his future.
Draco thought about his childhood in the libraries with the books and the fantasies – much more innocent, naturally, but – truthfully, he’d always wished this would happen.
“Well?” Harry prompted.
“Of course,” Draco replied.