Everything belongs to Rowling, I own nothing. Just an obsessed fan living in an alternate world.
Chapter One
The Calm Before the Storm
The storm raged on in the early morning of the castle grounds. Draco sat still, back upright and shoulders tense as he listened to the drops of water hit the floor with full force. His face, although gaunt and sallow, showed no inkling of the very anxiety that shook him to the core. He was always good at that, he thought, as he remembered his father's words.
Lucius Malfoy had summoned him to his study on the night after the battle at the Ministry. The very battle that had hushed speculation and revealed the disgusting truth, that the world was once again, in peril. He had known that before anyone else had, had almost been amused by the sight of headlines embedded into the Prophet the year before. 'Fools,' he had thought, 'With all the divination in the world, there is wonder in how people could be so blindsided as to what was happening before their very eyes.'
The amusement that accompanied him lost its spark soon after. 'Kill your headmaster' his father had ordered, 'Kill him and we will be spared.' Draco had listened and said nothing. He exited his father's study with a solid composure, betraying the acid that had suddenly begin to line his stomach walls, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth and making him want very much to retch onto the carpet beneath him. 'Yes,' acknowledged the voice in his head, 'you are very good at that. You would've been long gone if you weren't.'
He spent the rest of the summer in silence, and begun carefully constructing plans to get himself out of this mess. Deep down, he knew this day would come eventually. He had first realised it during the summer of third year, where his father had hosted a handful of disdainful men at the manor more often than courteous necessity. He had been around guests hosted by his parents his entire life. He was forced to sit with them, eat with them, engage them; and these people were certainly not the 'guests' he was told they were. He caught snippets of hushed conversations during that very summer, enough to know that something very bad was about to happen that year. He found himself withdrawn, spending most of his time encased in his room down in the dungeons, fervently anticipating what was about to happen. When Harry had appeared on the grounds clutching Cedric Diggory's body, he knew it had started. This was the beginning of war. His mind flickered back to the memory of Harry. Draco let out a long sigh. He closed his eyes, listening to the drops of the rain hit the ground with full force, albeit lighter now, he noticed. His chest filled with hope for the briefest of moments, but was soon expunged as fast as it came with the question that loomed before him. 'What am I going to do?'