Title: Bright as the Sun
Author: Spider Spider
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's notes: Reviews are much appreciated!
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Bright as the Sun
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There once was a toad as blue as the sky, as soft as a cloud, as bright as the sun. It slept next to Draco every night, and it kept him warm and safe.
Mother and Father thought that the toad was only a toy, but Draco knew better. He knew that the toad was true.
They would snuggle together under the covers and share secrets. Well, the toad didn't have any secrets, but Draco did, and the toad was always a good listener. It would never interrupt, like Pansy did, and it wouldn't sit there dumbly, like Vincent and Gregory.
It had pouted in sympathy when Draco told it how Mother had punished him, not letting him have any dessert at dinner. And just because he had told Mrs. Macnair that her hat looked like the puffskein that Grandmother had given him for Christmas. Which it did.
The toad's eyes had widened in wonder when Draco whispered how he had snuck into Father's study, entering without permission, and run his hands over the colorful trinkets and books lining the shelves.
As Draco got older, his secrets changed. He told the toad how he had flown all over the countryside on his broomstick, narrowly escaping the dangerous muggle helicopters. How if he went to Hogwarts, he would be in the same year as Harry Potter.
On Draco's eleventh birthday, Mother came in to his bedroom and woke him up herself, not leaving the task to the house-elves as she usually did.
"Happy Birthday, dreamlet," she said, kissing his mussed hair. She was holding a thick parchment envelope in her hand.
She gave it to him, and Draco took it sleepily. Mr. D. Malfoy was written on the front in green ink. The envelope had already been opened.
"You've been accepted into Hogwarts," Mother said, smiling at him. Draco knew that Mother had gone to Hogwarts, and that she wanted him to go there too. He smiled back at her.
Father wanted him to go to Durmstrang, but Father still gave him gift, the most beautiful eagle-owl that Draco had ever seen, as a reward for his Hogwarts letter.
Draco knew that his father was proud of him, even if Hogwarts had gone to the dogs after Dumbledore became headmaster.
Mother and Father argued a lot that summer. They always put up silencing spells, but Draco knew that they were fighting over where to send him for school. The toad was sad when Draco told him.
Eventually it was decided that Draco would attend Hogwarts, and he got his first wand and his schoolbooks, and Father used his connections to get on the Governing Board of Hogwarts. It was all very exciting, and Draco was very busy, too busy to talk to the toad at night.
Then it was September ninth, time for Draco to leave.
He walked around his room, pointing out things for the house-elves to put in his trunk. For some things, it was easy to decide whether to leave or take them. His quidditch posters had to come, his old picture books had to stay.
But it was hard to decide with the toad. Draco had never been to Hogwarts before, and he didn't want to stay in a strange castle, away from Mother and Father, all by himself. But having the other boys laugh at him would be even worse then being alone, and he was growing too old for toys.
The toad stayed.
On the train, Draco found Gregory and Vincent. They were scared about leaving their parents, but Draco sneered at them, pretending that he wasn't scared too.
"We're not babies anymore," he explained scornfully.
He also decided to start calling them by their last names. Father and his friends always referred to each other by their surnames, and it was time that Draco started acting more grown up.
Crabbe and Goyle nervously agreed.
At first, everything went well. Crabbe and Goyle followed as Draco found a compartment, then a fat witch came by with a trolley, and they were able to buy all the candy they wanted. Draco was starting to see the benefits of life without parents.
After they had finished gorging themselves, Draco remembered that Harry Potter was supposed to be starting Hogwarts too. He motioned to Crabbe and Goyle, and they left their compartment to go take a look.
But when they found him, the hero of the wizarding world was just the scraggly runt that Draco had seen when he was getting fitted for his robes. He was sitting with a rude Weasley and some nasty rat, and Draco soon left, disgusted.
Draco was sorted into Slytherin, just as he'd known he would be, and Crabbe and Goyle made Slytherin too, which Draco approved of.
That first night, Draco lay alone in his canopy bed and missed the toad. It was strange sleeping without it, and his bed was cold.
But his homesickness disappeared as he hurried through his first day of classes, trying to find his way around the castle. Then at lunch Mother sent him a care package with his favorite sweets, and he ate them all while his classmates looked on hungrily. He went bed that night exhausted, and he didn't have time to miss the toad before falling asleep.
The first day turned into the first week, the months passed, and Draco grew used to sleeping alone.
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Eventually December came, and with it, the Christmas holiday. Draco returned home to roaring fires and furs and welcome-home presents.
He smirked at the thought of Potter, stuck at Hogwarts because nobody wanted him, and told his father that school was going perfectly.
When Draco went up to his room that night, he saw the toad, nestled between two pillows on the broad expanse of his bed. He was too old for such childish things, and he picked it up, intending to banish it to the trunk in his closet, which now held all the dusty remnants of his childhood.
But as he looked at the toad, glowing like water in light of his candle, Draco decided to put it on the shelf near his window instead.
After all, he reasoned, it was a very pretty toy.
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The toad remained in Draco's bedroom, sitting on the shelf near the window.
Because the toad did not sleep with him anymore, Draco began using charms to keep his bed warm in the middle of winter.
Because Draco no longer had the toad to listen to his secrets, he told Pansy when he got into a fistfight with the Weasley.
The toad sat on the shelf, and did not know when Draco aced his potions exam, did not know how angry Father was when that mudblood had higher scores than Draco anyway, did not know when Draco made the quidditch team, when Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, when Pansy became Draco's girlfriend, or when the Dark Lord rose again.
The toad did not know when Draco struggled not to scream in front of the aurors who came to tell him that his father had been arrested, even when he felt as though he would choke on the pure icy rage that filled him at the thought of Father facing the dementors, alone, day after day . . .
Draco struggled to please the Dark Lord and fix the cabinet and he was so, so scared and everything was ripped apart, and the toad lay forgotten.
It was always dark, always cold, and Draco was never allowed to sleep. He fought without hope, and the red eyes of his master followed him everywhere.
The Order of the Phoenix was coming, and with it, death, and everyone knew, but they were too scared to run. The Dark Lord would find them if they ran, and Draco tasted despair.
His filthy black mask made it hard to see, but Draco knew that he could not take it off. He tried to strengthen the wards as Pettigrew had instructed, but he didn't know if he was casting right because he couldn't see the movements of his wand, and it wouldn't make a difference anyway.
Wards or no, the Order was coming, and Draco could never beat Potter.
The thin line of light from Pettigrew's lumos darted Draco's way, and Draco turned back to the decaying wall, trying to mimic the movements that Flitwick had shown him, so many years ago.
Apparently satisfied, the light moved on, and Draco's wand slowed.
He would die in this pit.
Draco squeezed his eyes shut, the fear rising up again.
He could hear his own ragged breathing. It echoed weirdly in the darkness.
Zabini was muttering frantically beside him, struggling to keep the wards from falling apart, his wand movements jerky and desperate.
Draco wanted to tell him that it wouldn't matter, that the war was already lost. Instead he stood there, watching.
There was screaming in the distance. The order was coming.
Suddenly Draco felt something warm and familiar piercing through the cold.
He opened his eyes, and there, stuck to the ceiling like blowing gum to the underside of a desk, was the toad.
Draco laughed.
The toad had come to save him, to keep him warm and safe. Draco reached his hand up, but the toad was too far away for him to touch. They would go home and snuggle under the covers together.
Mother would make Hot Cinnamon for them, and Father would smile proudly.
The wards broke.
Draco stood on his tiptoes, stretching his arm up as high as it would go, but he still could not reach the toad.
Pettigrew was shrieking commands, and curses light up the darkness, filling the cavern with green light.
But the toad shone still more brightly.
The press of bodies around him made it difficult to keep his balance. Draco reached upward, gasping, and Zabini knocked into him. He tumbled to the ground, away from the toad.
He tried to get back up but the toad was too bright, burning his eyes. Someone grabbed his arm and jerked him back up.
"Malfoy!" Potter shouted over the chaos.
His face was strange and relieved, but Draco didn't have time to wonder. He lunged up at the toad.
"What are you doing?! You'll get yourself killed!" Potter screamed at him, shoving him towards the back of the tunnel, away from the battle.
Draco fought him, trying to get back to the toad, back to safety. Potter was stronger, but Draco was desperate.
He managed to tear away. He ran back into the battle. He tripped over Zabini's dead body, but then—
He saw it again. The toad. Curled up to the ceiling, blinking at him invitingly.
Draco leaped, sobbing, knowing Mother and Father would be safe, he would be taken of, that if he could just reach it . .
Green light burst through him.
Mother's smiling face disappeared.
The toad was gone.