Chapter Text
It’s summertime and Draco Malfoy is nearly fourteen. He clambers up the garden wall with bare feet that are already covered in little cuts and scratches, wincing at the sting and the sharp metallic scent in the air. He’s not afraid of heights in a serious way but when he makes it to the top, his head spins and his stomach drops and the soles of his feet itch.
He looks out over the woods behind the Manor. It was the first thing that Draco ever loved with any kind of intention. Not the house- it was too big, too quiet, too cold- but the grounds that surrounded it. He grew up hiding away here, running through these woods, discovering its secrets.
Like the enchanted clearing deep inside, where the weather is always exactly how you want it, and the way stars are brighter when you gaze at them through heavy green canopies. When he is lonely, he retreats into the thick foliage and treads the well-worn paths. When he wants to lash out, he goes to the clearing and he screams. His first manifestations of accidental magic were flowers growing behind him as he walked aimlessly through the trees.
He doesn’t make sense anywhere else.
His father is away, leaving him to wander while his mother sleeps. He eats his meals in the kitchens, where the house elves fuss over him and load his plate with extra sweets. Twila is the oldest elf at the Manor, and the oldest person Draco has ever met.
“Just look at the state of you,” Twila says, clucking at Draco’s dirtied and bloodied feet.
Twila told him once, years ago, that he would grow calluses on his feet and it would stop hurting so much but he never really did. His skin is still soft. She cleans the wounds with gentle hands and heals them with gentle magic. It feels wilder than the spells he’s taught at school, unruly but undoubtedly good . It doesn’t obey the same rules.
“Thank you,” he hugs her small, bony frame.
She’s mostly bald, like all house elves, but her head is covered in soft peach fuzz that tickles Draco’s neck when they embrace.
“Wear some shoes next time,” she scolds, but they both know he won’t obey. He likes the feeling of earth beneath his feet, of being surrounded so wholly by a world that bursts with life. A little pain, a little blood, is worth it.
Her daughter, Odie, works in the kitchens at Hogwarts. Together, the two of them make sure that Draco never feels too alone when he’s at school. Twila sends him hand made chocolates every month and Odie never turns him away, even though students aren’t allowed. It’s like a piece of home when he’s away, though never enough to completely ease the tension between his shoulder blades. He still ends up snapping at people, saying awful things, throwing fits over every inconvenience. He still ends up by himself, at the end of each day, staring up at the canopy of his bed, wishing that he was back in his woods.
He turns fourteen at the beginning of June, on a sunny day that seems endless. His birthday always falls just before or just after the term ends. He’s been home for three days, and his father has not been home and his mother has not spoken a single word.
Twila makes a cake, dusted in sugar and topped with blazing red strawberries and cream. He eats a piece in the kitchens and another outside in the furious sun. It’s meant to rain soon. The day passes quietly. It’s his best birthday so far, and it will remain his best birthday for a long time.
His father returns home, but he’s still absent, far-away. He doesn’t speak more than a few words at a time to Draco, and he has people coming in and out of the house at all hours. Draco would never say it out loud, but they all scare him a little. The men who slip into his father’s study are tall, and imposing, and sometimes they have this look in their eyes, like nothing in the world matters to them.
His father doesn’t acknowledge his birthday until the summer is winding down, and then he presents Draco with tickets to the World Cup. In all truthfulness, Draco doesn’t care that much about Quidditch when he’s not playing it. He doesn’t understand why the competition matters if you’re not the one working for it. He likes flying. He likes being outside and he likes the way the broom becomes an extension of his own body. He likes winning, being lifted up on the shoulders of his teammates. He likes feeling like he’s done something right.
He doesn’t like his father’s posturing. He doesn’t like looking up to see a row of people who hate him, feeling unsteady boards beneath his feet. He doesn’t like sitting in the Minister’s box, too far up to see the interesting parts clearly. He doesn’t like the noise of the crowd just below. He doesn’t like the anticipation that has no use, the adrenaline that goes nowhere. He doesn’t like that all he can think about right now is Harry’s dark, wild hair and even wilder eyes, the ones that have always made him remember the bright, endless green of the forest.
Afterwards, when the game has ended and Ireland has won, Lucius guides Draco down the steps on the stadium and looks over his shoulder at something. Some of the cheers have already shifted in screams. Lucius has that look, focused and determined, that Draco has seen enough to be wary of.
“Father,” he breathes, “What’s going on?”
Lucius won’t meet his eyes, “Stay here.”
Normally, Draco wouldn’t dare argue with him, but he reaches out and grabs Lucius’s wrist.
“Please,” his voice shakes.
Lucius doesn’t look annoyed or angry. Instead, he bends down slightly to stroke Draco’s hair, a gesture he assumes is supposed to be comforting but only really feels patronizing.
“It’s alright. Nothing bad will happen to you, I swear it. Find somewhere quiet to stand. I’ll find you after.”
Draco knows that his father has been working on something . All those meetings shut up in his study, the long days spent away from the Manor, have been in service of some larger plan. He knows this is it, or at least part of it. He knew this was going to happen, and he brought Draco here without arranging a way for him to leave.
Later, when Draco looks back on this moment, he remembers the last flash of hesitation and guilt on Lucius’s face. He remembers Lucius squeezing his hand and then letting it drop.
“I love you, Draco.”
He remembers Lucius walking away, leaving him standing alone in the field. He remembers thinking, not enough . You don’t love me enough.
The Dark Mark stains the black, overcast sky. Draco looks up at it and feels something change in him. He has spent his whole life alone, but this night is different, this night is a deeper, hungrier kind of loneliness.
He can already feel it eating at the edges of him.
The chaos lasts for hours. His father never does find him again, and Draco is taken home by a frazzled, overworked Auror who is unduly suspicious of him, given that he is only fourteen. The sun hasn’t risen yet, hasn’t even started to edge over the woods, but he can see it coming in the color of the horizon.
Twila makes him tea. He shakes in the kitchen, and then he shakes as he climbs the stairs, and then he shakes in his bed.
Draco looks in the mirror the next morning, and he no longer looks like a child. He’s not sure when that happened. He doesn’t grieve it, not quite yet, but he will. He will grieve it desperately, fruitlessly. For now, he only understands. He understands why the Auror had turned her narrowed, accusatory eyes on him.
He looks more like his father than he ever has before.
Pansy finds him on the platform and drags him onto the train without saying a single word. He’s relieved and frightened in equal measure.
“Talk,” she demands as soon as they’re seated across from each other in their usual compartment.
He squirms under her gaze, “What do you want to know?”
Pansy’s got a way of making you feel like you’re a bug pinned behind glass. It’s a useful skill when she’s on your side. Right now, Draco does not feel particularly grateful.
“I know something happened at the World Cup. Something big. I hate when things happen over summer hols.”
Pansy’s dad doesn’t get the Prophet delivered. It’s a frequent topic.
“I don’t even know what happened, and I was there,” Draco says dejectedly. He hadn’t thought about that part of it, about the fact that people were going to be gossiping about it and telling outrageously hyperbolic stories about some cousin that was there or a thing their parents know.
He can’t exactly brag about getting abandoned in a field.
Pansy sighs, “Useless. I don’t know why I even bothered.”
Draco takes this as a sign that she’s going to drop it, and leans his forehead against the glass, staring out the window. They haven’t left the station yet, so all he sees are other students saying goodbye to their families. He feels like crying, which is humiliating. He can’t cry here, especially not in front of Pansy. She would never forget it, and she’d never let him forget it either.
“You must have seen something ,” she needles.
“Not really. Everyone was screaming and running, and I was just standing around. A fucking Auror took me home.”
Pansy frowns at him, “Weren’t you with your parents?”
Draco looks at her incredulously. Pansy may be allergic to sentiment or serious conversations, but they’ve been friends long enough that she knows his mother hasn’t left the house in years, even if they’ve never spoken about it directly.
“I mean, your dad was there, right?”
“We got separated,” Draco shrugs, and hopes that he’s pulling off unbothered, “Like I said, it was madness. Couldn’t see anything.”
She purses her lips. It makes her look about forty, which is something he is never going to say to her out loud. There are a lot of things he doesn’t tell her, beginning with anything about what his father is up to. He’s fairly certain it’s mostly illegal, and probably not the kind that’s cool in any way.
“Someone put up the Dark Mark,” he says, because she’s going to find out eventually if everyone is talking about it, “That’s the only thing I saw.”
She reaches over to slap him upside the head, “And why didn’t you lead with that? I swear to Merlin, you are the worst friend ever. You’re going to tank my social standing if you keep going on like this.”
“I don’t think your social standing can be tanked, to be fair. Everyone’s too scared of you.”
She tilts her chin up in pride, “I suppose.”
The train begins to pull out of King’s Cross. The window is cold against his temple. Pansy begins to recount her entire summer- neither of them are very good at keeping up correspondence- in excruciating detail. Her half-brother, Aster, is ten years old and apparently very annoying. Draco doesn’t really understand the mixture of venom and honey in Pansy’s voice when she talks about him, the devotion and the disdain.
Maybe it’s because he’s an only child. Maybe it’s because his mess of feelings towards his mother and father seem infinitely more complicated, and more shallow.
“I honestly don’t know how I’ll cope next year when he’s at Hogwarts,” Pansy says, examining her fingernails, “I suspect it’ll be the worst time of my life to date.”
He shrugs, “Maybe he won’t be in Slytherin and you’ll hardly see each other.”
She looks horrified at that proposition, “Oh no. He could be in Hufflepuff !”
Draco bursts into laughter.
“This is serious,” Pansy hisses, “I’m going to have to take him under my wing, Draco. He needs to toughen up before that stupid hat gets a whiff of him.”
“Pans, he’s survived ten years being related to you. He’ll have to be the toughest first year the sorting hat’s ever seen.”
Like always, the appeal to Pansy’s pride is successful. She calms a bit. They’re discussing the costs and benefits of having a Ravenclaw for a younger sibling when Blaise slips into the compartment.
“Where have you been?” Pansy asks, narrowing her eyes. She may be angry at him, but it seems more like apprehension and curiosity. If he’s got a good story out of the last twenty minutes, he’ll be forgiven instantly.
Blaise folds himself onto the bench wordlessly.
“Pansy’s afraid Aster will be a Hufflepuff,” Draco supplies.
Blaise scoffs, “Please. He’s a halfblood, not an idiot.”
Pansy can’t decide how to take it. Blaise has never been particularly adamant about blood purity, one way or the other, but as a relatively new addition to her inner circle, she’s still a little wary of him. She’s never said any of this to Draco, of course, but he knows. Just like she knows that Draco tends to use whatever word will sting, regardless of how he really feels about it.
She knows he doesn’t think Aster is less of a wizard than she is. Unfortunately, this also means she knows he doesn’t think Hermione Granger is less of a wizard either. It’s quite embarrassing sometimes, to have someone see through his blustering. Mostly, it’s another thing that keeps him sane at school.
“Oh, stop looking at me like that,” Blaise complains, wrinkling his nose, “My mother’s last husband was part yeti. I’m not exactly in a position to judge.”
“I thought that was her current husband?”
He grins, “Oh, she disposed of him before I made it to Florence for the summer. This one’s a government official of some kind.”
Pansy leans forward, “How’d she do it this time?”
This is what had drawn Pansy in, really. She overheard Blaise attempting to terrify a couple first years into leaving him alone, and she was hooked. She likes nothing more than a good story, defined by the amount of blood and scandal, and Blaise’s are the best. As he tells it, in the same dry, almost reluctant tone his voice always seems to carry, Draco zones out.
He drinks in the faint warmth of the sun through the window and tries to relax. In the short few hours he’s been away from home, he’s already collected a store of tension in his shoulders and down his spine. His jaw is the worst of all, permanently clenched.
“This isn’t even the most exciting thing we could be talking about,” Blaise says slowly.
Pansy brightens, “Did you hear about the World Cup?”
He waves a hand dismissively, “Yes, but that’s not what I meant. Mum’s husband, the government official, let something slip when he was drunk a few weeks ago. There’s supposed to be a tournament at Hogwarts.”
“A tournament?”
Blaise tries to suppress his smile and remain aloof, but he’s still a fourteen year old boy.
“Yes,” he pauses, “The TriWizard Tournament.”
Pansy gasps audibly. Draco, for reasons he can’t fully articulate, feels dread pooling in his stomach.
“Oh, this is going to be the best year ever .”
Blaise glances at him, noting his silence but not calling attention to it. Draco decides then that Blaise can stay, not that it was ever up to him. Pansy’s always set the rules and parameters of their friendship and he’s not about to upset the balance.
When they arrive at the castle and Pansy is temporarily distracted by a group of fifth-year girls exclaiming over her manicure, Blaise tugs on his elbow.
“You think it’s a bad idea,” he says seriously.
Draco is suddenly aware that Blaise witnessed all the gory details that Pansy delights over. He may put on a good show, cool and detached, but he’s not ignorant to the gravity of it all.
“We’ve all been going to the same school, right?” he replies quietly.
Blaise frowns, but it’s not directed towards Draco. It’s like he’s agreeing. There was a mass murderer wandering the halls just last year, and now they’re resurrecting a tradition that’s infamous for its fatalities.
“It’s like Dumbledore is inviting this shit in,” Draco shakes his head, “There’s no amount of money or glory that would make me participate.”
“Well, last time it was a simple lottery I think. You may not have a choice.”
He’s on edge when they settle at their table in the Great Hall. It’s a small miracle that Crabbe and Goyle have been partially absorbed into a group of third-year Slytherins. Pansy hates both of them, probably because they can barely string a sentence together, and Draco isn’t exactly clamoring for more time with them. He’d hung around with them because their fathers hung around Lucius. Both of them had been among the people circulating through the Manor this summer, which only makes Draco want to be friends with them less now.
Pansy taps a steady rhythm on the table with her nails, glossy and pitch black. Blaise picks at his food. The first years get sorted and Dumbledore stands up for his usual speech. Canceling quidditch for the year is an unwelcome surprise, but the three of them remain cool and disinterested when the tournament is announced. It’s a relief that the rules have been amended- one must volunteer, and anyone under seventeen is ineligible.
“Aren’t you excited?” an older girl asks Pansy.
She sniffs, “Honestly.”
The other girl deflates a little. It’s almost funny. Draco knows that Pansy has probably never looked forward to anything more. A front row to a potentially lethal competition? A slew of foreign students? She’s ecstatic.
She’d never tell anyone, of course. There are only two things she cares about more than drama: Aster and social capital. Draco suspects that the two are connected.
“Well,” Blaise drawls, “At least the year won’t be terribly boring.”
That’s when it happens. Draco glances up from the table, surveying the room before him. He isn’t looking for anyone in particular, which is strange in itself. He hasn’t so much as thought about Potter since the World Cup, too much else on his mind, but he sees Harry at just the right moment, head thrown back in careless laughter.
He sees it and he feels a pins-and-needles sensation on the soles of his feet, the same one he feels when he stands on the garden wall or climbs the trees that line his clearing, the beckoning of a dead drop. It’s a promise, he knows, of pain.
There is something burning in him. He already knows what it means to love, and to hurt, and to make his hope into something so quiet it can barely survive. He doesn’t know that this will be worse. How can he? He is only just fourteen.
Pansy takes two and a half days to comment on it.
“You better not be scheming without me,” she says with a withering glare, “You know you’re no good at it.”
“No scheming.”
“I don’t believe you. You’ve been staring at Potter again. I mean, you look even more deranged than last year, and that’s not exactly a low bar to clear.”
Blaise clears his throat. They’re sat around a table in the library, tucked away in a musty, forgotten corner. Still, someone could easily overhear their conversation.
Pansy lowers her voice to a whisper, “Just tell me what you’re planning. It’s likely awful.”
“I’m not planning anything.”
His traitorous face heats. Pansy’s eyebrows shoot up. Blaise notices the unusually long silence and looks up from his Charms essay.
“Holy shit,” he says brightly, “Seriously?”
Pansy reaches over to poke at his ribs, but they’re on opposite sides of the table so she doesn’t quite manage it, “You little disaster. Is that what this was the whole time?”
“You’re both dead to me,” Draco announces.
“Don’t avoid the question.”
“No,” he mutters, “It’s a recent development.”
Blaise leans into Pansy’s side with a sly smile, “It’s more interesting, isn’t it? Complex.”
Pansy gets this hungry look in her eyes, one that Draco is in constant fear of. He sends Blaise a scathing glare.
“I already have ideas,” she says, “So many.”
Draco’s face must reflect the mounting horror he feels.
Pansy cackles, “Oh, this is going to be the best year ever!”
The students from Durmstrang and Beauxbaton arrive the day before Halloween. Everyone makes a big fuss about it, with classes ending early and the dramatic entrances and Viktor Krum among the Durmstrang students.
For some reason, Dumbledore has made the unilateral decision that the girls and boys from Durmstrang, who all look pale and slightly underfed, will be folded into Slytherin for the remainder of the school year. It’s baffling, to say the least. They’d fit in better with the brash arrogance of Gryffindor, or the studied discipline of Ravenclaw. Slytherin house is lazier, indulgent, and entirely too underhanded.
Pansy makes a few passing attempts to befriend some of the prettier girls in the group, but they don’t seem to respond to sarcasm or sly jokes. By the end of that first night, she’s given up entirely. The three of them take refuge in the library between their afternoon classes and dinner the next day, when they’d usually be capitalizing on the relatively empty dorms.
“They’re sort of… scary,” Pansy says, and Draco can’t help but gape at her.
It’s an impossible feat to get Pansy to admit she’s afraid or intimidated in any way, or at least Draco had thought it was impossible.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snaps, flicking her hair over her shoulder.
It’s grown just long enough for her to do that, and he knows it’s bothering her, but the last time she’d used a spell on her hair, it had been a traumatizing experience. She doesn’t trust anyone with her hair besides the French hairdresser she goes to in London now.
Blaise shrugs, “It’s a bit of a shock to the system, hearing you say that.”
“You think they’re scary too,” she insists.
“Sure,” Draco says carefully, “But you’re not scared of anything.”
Pansy rolls her eyes at the both of them, “I didn’t say I was scared of them. I said they’re scary. There’s a difference.”
“If you say so,” Blaise replies, amused.
“I guess what I mean is… there’s something unsettling about them. Unpleasant. Not because they’re awful or annoying or anything, just. You don’t like looking at them for too long, do you?”
Draco suddenly understands exactly what she means, “No. No, you don’t.”
Blaise looks like he wants to throw them off the astronomy tower, “That makes no fucking sense.”
“Like, it’s uncomfortable.”
Draco feels something, a twinge or a tide, in his chest, “It’s sad. It’s sad to look at them. They’re miserable and you can see it so clearly that you can’t help but want to look away.”
Pansy doesn’t voice her agreement, but he can see it on her face.
Draco fiddles with the enchantment and then presents it for Pansy’s judgment.
She giggles, “Merlin. You can’t be serious.”
The photo of Harry has morphed into an illustration, in the style of the Japanese comics that Pansy and her brother are obsessed with. His startling green eyes are huge and watery, his black curls somehow even thicker and messier, scar striking out dramatically across his forehead. He, of course, looks like an action hero, even with the cartoon blush on his cheeks.
Draco adds bright red bubble letters, spelling out THE CHAMPION OF OUR HEARTS in an arc above the illustration.
“Are you really going to wear that?” Blaise asks, appalled.
Draco scowls at him, “Of course not. It’s a joke.”
Pansy and Blaise exchange a skeptical glance. He’s definitely not going to wear it, or anything like it. He’d probably spontaneously combust the second someone saw him. For Merlin’s sake, he has a reputation to uphold, no matter how warm and floaty he feels when Harry smiles or rolls his eyes or does anything, really.
Pansy takes a crack at it. He has to explain the combination of charms to her a few times, pointing out where they overlap and intersect, and how to alter the different facets of the pin. It makes her ill-tempered for fifteen minutes or so, but once she gets it, she gleefully sets about making the buttons more and more atrocious.
First, she adds little hearts to Harry’s eyes and a large pink bow to his hair. The letters turn pink, too, and form the words GRYFFINDOR’S SWEETHEART. Another says HARRY POTTER PROTECTION COMMITTEE. Another is a clumsy rendering of Cedric and NOT MY CHAMPION. After half an hour, they’ve amassed quite the collection and have collapsed on the floor, laughing.
It’s possibly the most fun Draco’s had all year, and it’s the first time he hasn’t really worried about whether Pansy and Blaise are going to think he’s lame or too emotional. For one bright, sparkling moment, he imagines having this for the rest of school and he feels that, maybe, he isn’t going to be missing the Manor quite so much.
“What are you doing?” Crabbe’s flat, sullen voice says from behind them.
They don’t hesitate or even exchange a look before jumping into action. Blaise moves so that the buttons are obscured from vision, Pansy asks Crabbe some inane question that he surely doesn’t know the answer to, and Draco closes his eyes and concentrates. With a subtle wave of his wand, he changes all of the buttons to a uniform image of Harry’s face and the text to read ‘Potter Stinks’.
It’s hardly his most original or groundbreaking work, but he’s running on adrenaline and a tight deadline. It’ll do.
Crabbe shrugs Pansy off and peers over Blaise’s shoulder, “Oh, those are brilliant!”
They’re so distracted trying to get rid of him that they don’t realize he’d swiped a few buttons until the next day, when they’ve begun to spread through the school.
Pansy laughs in his face the first time a Hufflepuff comes up to him and asks if he has any more.
“You do realize these things don’t happen to other people?” she tries to catch her breath, “Only you, Draco. This could only happen to you.”
Shockingly, this doesn’t make him feel better.
“Yeah, thanks for pointing that out.”
“You’re welcome,” she says cheerfully and her giggles eventually taper off.
He pouts.
“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now.”
Pansy, ever the pragmatist, uses it as an opportunity to amass power. She hands out the pins to everyone who asks with the attitude of a gracious deity, too far above petty human squabbles to fully understand or care, but providing aid all the same. There’s nothing Slytherins like quite so much as a distant overlord, and with the three of them refraining from participating directly in inter-house warfare, they’ve never been so revered.
“I think,” she says, with a satisfied smile, “This leaf you’ve turned over is going to work out just fine.”
They’re lounging in the common room, under a muffling charm. It’s become commonplace for them to cast it as soon as they settle anywhere, in the Great Hall or the library or even in the dorms.
“And what leaf would that be?”
“The only person you’ve bullied since the beginning of term is Potter, and really, no one could expect you to give up that particular pastime.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he says lazily.
She pats his head, “I’m saying good job!”
He pushes her off, almost toppling her from the couch. She attacks him with a shriek, digging her nails into his forearms until he surrenders.
“Okay, okay, stop,” he gasps, “You win.”
She smiles imperiously, “As always. But really, it’s much better to just act like everyone is beneath your notice. Much more dignified.”
“Well I’m glad to hear I’m not embarrassing you anymore,” he replies sarcastically.
“Yes,” she nods, “It’s been such a relief.”
Draco finds that he does not particularly like blood sport, especially not when it means Harry Potter facing down a dragon. He’s in the stands, Blaise and Pansy on either side of him, crushing both of their hands in his tight, unyielding grip.
Pansy glares at him a few times when he squeezes especially hard, but she doesn’t say anything or tug her hand away. Blaise doesn’t even acknowledge it.
When Harry makes it out alive, wins, Draco has to force himself to stay seated.
The Yule Ball is possibly the worst thing that could have happened to him. He plans to ask one of the girls in the year below them, because they won’t reject him and it’ll give them something to gossip about with their friends, but when he asks Pansy for suggestions, she just tilts her head.
“You know, you could ask…” she doesn’t bother finishing the sentence. They all know who she’s talking about.
Blaise hides a smile. Draco gapes at her.
“Absolutely not.”
Pansy shrugs, “Fine. I’ll go with you.”
Draco thinks that might be even worse, but in the interest of self-preservation, he keeps his mouth shut. Pansy gets that dangerously hard look in her eyes, the look that means she’s made up her mind. He is, as always, terrified of it.
“It’s up to you,” Pansy says with a grin, “Ask him, or take me.”
He chooses the lesser of two evils. Pansy is a terror on a good day, and he has no doubt that she has some sort of plan to make his night truly miserable, but there is no way he’s asking Harry to the Yule Ball. Not only would he get instantly rejected, he’d be a laughingstock in Slytherin. Even his friendship with Pansy wouldn’t save him.
In the end, it’s not the worst thing he’s ever done. Pansy is in a merciful sort of mood, and she doesn’t step on his toes too much while they dance. She even distracts him with an argument about the Potions final while the champions enter.
He’s desperate to get home, to have two blessed weeks of quiet, but he finds that he will really miss Pansy and Blaise, in a way he’s never missed anything but home before.
Draco makes summer rain, falling light and warm on his face. He’ll spend all afternoon here, in his clearing, calling the sun when he’s ready and taking a nap while he finishes drying. He goes back to the Manor when the sun outside of the clearing starts to set, barely making it back in time for dinner. His father is absent. His mother makes her singular appearance of the day.
She’s distant. He tries to be gentle with her, ask her how she’s feeling, be a good son. He kisses her forehead when he’s dismissed. Her fingers twitch on the table.
This is the only kind of love that Draco has ever known, the kind he keeps choosing, the kind that keeps aching. For the first time, it’s like he can see outside of it. He can see Pansy and Blaise, all that warmth and lightness and the unshakeable, unwavering support.
He can see Harry, as he was in the Great Hall on the first night of fall term, laughing.
Harry Potter comes out of the maze with a dead body and a look on his face that will haunt Draco for the rest of his life. He screams and clutches at Cedric. Draco sees death, real death, for the very first time and he cannot make a sound. They are fourteen years old.