AN: My thanks to my wonderful betas, Raistlin and Cali. You guys are awesome. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

Written for Round 6 of the Dramione Couples Remix (2015). The original couple was Maleficent and Diaval, from the movie Maleficent.


It doesn't take much for Draco Malfoy to turn from Death Eater to spy to traitor. Maybe a glorious future awaits the pure-blood wizards and witches who follow Lord Voldemort, but Draco is less than impressed with their less than glorious present. His father might be happy to play lackey to a half-blood with delusions of grandeur, but there's at least one Malfoy alive who remembers that the Malfoy line goes back hundreds of years — to a time before William the Bastard started dreaming of conquests; to a time before the Founders laid eyes on the Black Lake.

Those are dangerous thoughts, but there's little Draco can do to stop them. They fill his head at night, crowding out the terror and the panic that have been his constant companions for longer than he cares to admit. He can barely pinpoint the moment when everything changed, but he suspects — he knows — it was on that night, on top of the Astronomy Tower. And he doesn't known why, at first. It takes him a while to realise that it is the wand — Dumbledore's wand, the Dark Lord's wand — which calls to him, talks to him, fills his head with thoughts of pride and honour and treason.

He stops thinking of it as the Dark Lord's wand and starts thinking of it as his own. He can feel its pull; he can hear it calling. It belongs to him and he wants it back. He doesn't do anything foolish, however — his is an ambition tempered by patience and cunning. He makes his plans and bids his time, and it would have been the perfect heist, masterfully executed, had it not been for Narcissa's death. Draco has forgiven his father much — even dying — but he will never forgive him this.

He will never forgive Voldemort either.

That night Draco goes into his room — even power-crazed villains need sleep — and walks out again, the Elder Wand held firmly between his fingers. It is impulsive and mad, and it shouldn't have worked, but Draco does not question his good luck.

The Order of the Phoenix welcomes him suspiciously at first, and then with open arms. Draco has secrets to tell and they are only too eager to listen. He may be a Death Eater and a Malfoy to boot, but they put much store by the sort of redemption bought and paid for in the field of battle.

But even if he sides with the angels, no Malfoy has ever turned his back on a bit of black magic should it prove useful. The Malfoy collection is old and vast, and holds more dark secrets than even Voldemort could dream up. There's a spell — old, and dark, and dangerous — that allows the fusion of a wand core with the soul of its master, and who better to try it than the master of the Elder Wand? Draco knows Harry would not approve — Harry who against all odds has become someone precious to him — but Draco has always preferred to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

The spell is difficult and costly and dangerous, and it almost kills him, but in the end it's worth it. The Elder Wand is now part of him, and he holds more power than any other living wizard. He's more powerful than Grindelwald before him, more powerful than Dumbledore was; he could almost bet that he's more powerful than Voldemort himself. And he never need fear that someone could take the Elder Wand from him.

Harry is not amused. Shouting is involved, and recriminations, and horrified looks filled with Gryffindor self-righteousness. Draco veers the conversation in more pleasant directions, and Harry lets himself be distracted from the fact that his once nemesis (his now what? Boyfriend? Lover? Guy he invariably ends up sleeping with despite the fact that they spent the better part of their formative years butting heads?) now has the potential to become a worse tyrant than their currant annoyance of an evil wizard.

The other members of the Order of the Phoenix take the news better than Harry. It's been a bloody, costly war, and they've lost too many people to be overly fussy with morality, or unduly concerned with the dangers of another wizard too powerful for his or anyone else's good. Outnumbered and overruled, Harry keeps his opinions to himself, though Draco still catches him staring at him every now and then, his expression haunted and worried.

Draco wishes he could prove to him that he has nothing to worry about. He wants the same things Harry does. Peace for one, and to be able to go home, and for someone to come up with a better way to remove blood stains from white fabric, or failing that, for there to be fewer blood stains in need of removal. Draco is the spoilt only child of one of the richest families in Britain; war does not agree with him. And when peace comes, he promises to be good and to use his extraordinarily enhanced powers to do nothing more nefarious than float a cup of tea from the kitchen to his desk. Scout's honour.

He doesn't explain that to Harry in so many words, but the other wizard seems far less concerned with Draco's new-found powers when they're both behind closed doors, clothes left haphazardly on the bedroom floor. As it turns out, not all of Draco's powers derive from the Elder Wand.

Harry finds and destroys the remaining Horcruxes. The final battle is fought in the Ministry, the last Death Eater stronghold, deemed so impregnable with its tapestry of defencive spells that the fools thought it a safe place for their families and loved ones — for even monsters, as it turns out, have families and loved ones to worry about.

It's a blood bath. There's a fine line between good guys and bad guys, and never so fine as in the middle of battle. Voldemort dies early — a death so anti-climatic as to be meaningless — but the killing doesn't stop there. They've all lost too much, suffered for too long and watched too many of their own die, and that rage becomes an entity unto itself, unleashed in all directions until everything around them is smoke and screams, and the metallic taste of blood. Harry and some of the others - Kingsley, Moody, some of the Weasleys — try to put a stop to it, but to no avail. Draco leads and the mob follows. It is a day of retribution, and they will have their revenge.

There are prisoners too. Filthy, starved, locked away in the dark corners of the lower levels. They all find renewed energy when handed a wand, all too eager to get even with their former captors.

Draco finds her in the Department of Mysteries, chained to a wall in a room just off the Hall of Prophecies. Hermione Granger is a shadow of her former self, pale and gaunt, dressed in tattered robes that don't cover the large bruises and cuts in her legs and arms. She scurries to the corner when he enters, as far as the clicking chains will allow her, never turning her back to him. Her crouching posture puts him in mind of a cornered animal, ready to pounce. There's no recognition in her eyes, and she doesn't respond to his soothing entreaties, her body tensing even more as he slowly moves towards her.

Her wide eyes fix a point behind him, and it's all the warning Draco needs before all hell breaks lose. The four Death Eaters have the element of surprise — barely — but Draco has the Elder Wand and the unshakable belief that having killed the Dark Lord, he won't be brought down by underlings. That surety serves him almost as well as the wand, and before long the walls are splattered with the blood and entrails of idiots who would've done better to turn and run when they had the chance.

Granger is no longer shaking in the corner. She's standing a few feet from the wall, as far as the chains will allow her, gazing calmly at the macabre scene in front of her. Draco vanishes the chains, but she doesn't move until he's right in front of her, and then just to thank him in the same detached tone he's seen in shell-shocked victims before. She doesn't know who he is, but he killed the ones who hurt her, and that's as much as she needs to know.

He's about to ask a question when a commotion outside startles Granger out of her trance. The terrified witch turns into a raven, flapping her wings frantically for a few seconds before perching herself on Draco's shoulder. It's the wrong animal. Her Animagus form had been a cat before, but it does not surprise him that after having spent so long in captivity, it should've changed into something with wings.

Harry bursts in, stopping in his tracks at the sight of the room around him, which is filled with pools of blood, and brain matter, and body parts. A different man might have cowed under the disgusted look Harry gave him, but Draco can feel nothing but indignation that he should have to explain himself. What has he done to them that they haven't done to others ten times over? They were no innocent bystanders and he won't apologise for the manner of their passing, for he did nothing to them that they would not have done to him, given half the chance.

Gryffindors can seldom be reasoned with when caught in the middle of some moral crusade, however, and the argument quickly escalates into a shouting match. Draco can almost feel the pull of the wand, tempting him to do something incredibly stupid and that he'll no doubt regret, so he just opts for a strategic exit instead, Apparating himself at Malfoy Manor.

There was still a battle going on and a better man would no doubt have stayed and help clean up, but he's done enough for the day. He gave them their victory; they can finish up.

House-elves gather around him, fussing over his robe and bringing him a goblet of wine, and only then does he realise Granger is still with him, when she starts fidgeting on his shoulder, quickly transferring her weight from leg to leg and back again, croaking nervously at the elves.

He dismisses the house-elves and spends the best part of an hour trying to coax her into turning back, but the witch doesn't so much as blink. Granger the woman was always stubborn, and it surprises him not a bit that Granger the bird should be too. He has the house-elves draw her a bath and put out some of his mother's old clothes for her, and he leaves her on the master bedroom, perched on the old bust of some famous wizard or other.

Harry shows up later that night and Draco expects a fight, but the other wizard is either too tired or too demoralised for one. Harry helps himself to the bottles in the study and pours himself and Draco a drink. They drink in silence, avoiding each other's gaze. Draco recognises the calm before the storm, and knows that the fight will be ugly. He crossed some lines that day, but he's not sure that he was wrong in crossing them. War is an ugly business, much as Harry would like to think differently.

The fight never comes, however. Harry puts down his glass and reaches for Draco's, before kissing him. One thing leads to another, and soon they are both too busy and distracted to even remember what happened during the day. Draco thinks, just before falling asleep entangled in the other wizard, that if he's lucky they'll just put everything behind them as they've done before.

He's not sure at first what woke him up. The fire has died and the study is still mostly dark in the half-light of dawn. He closes his eyes again when a sharp pain in his chest brings tears to his eyes. Draco gasps, trying to sit up, but the pain spreads across his body until there's no space in his brain for anything else. He claws instinctively at his chest, and his fingers find the raised edges of the seal, etched on the left side of his chest, over his heart. By sheer force of will, Draco manages to get up and drag himself over to the mirror in the corner. He forces his eyes to focus on the red welts on his skin, just visible in the faint light of the early morning.

Panic grips him as he recognises the spell, as he realises what it's meant to do. A renewed wave of pain brings him to his knees and he can't help the scream that escapes his lips. It's like fire burning underneath the skin and daggers ripping apart his muscles, and screaming provides little relief from the excruciating, all-encompassing pain of his magic being torn out of him.

There's movement in the corner of his eyes and he's vaguely aware of the house-elves, who are too terrified to come any closer.

His voice is starting to break, but he can't stop screaming. The Cruciatus curse pales in comparison to this. Hands — human hands — reach tentatively to him, and he can faintly hear Granger's scared voice, asking him what to do. What can she do? How can she help?

There's nothing she can do. It's old magic, older than any half-blood should have known what to do with, and he was a fool to have let Potter close enough to use it. Voldemort had made many mistakes, but that was one he would never have made.

Draco holds on tightly to what little magic he has left, knowing he can't hold on for long. But he's a Malfoy, and this is his home, and the magic running through this walls — older even than Potter's little trick — answers to him still. There's a moment of perfect clarity as the magic of the manor engulfs him, and then everything is dark.