Draco loved his blanket. He had no idea that it was a gift from Lord Voldemort, charmed and hexed within an inch of its life, spelled and respelled to keep a watchful eye on the young boy. He became attached to it quickly, and the sentience that Riddle had created in the fabric spoke to Draco like an old, familiar friend as it wrapped around him, or hid him from thunderstorms or the wrath of his father's anger, the chill of his mother's indifference.
When he was four, a house elf had taken the blanket to be washed and was found dead in the kitchen the next day. The small square was returned unchanged to young Draco's bedroom, folded neatly at the foot of his bed, where it found its way rapidly back to its owner, carried tightly in a chubby fist as the blond toddler followed his daddy around the manor.
When Lucius picked him up to hold Draco in his lap at Death Eater meetings, it was the blanket that covered the boy and his father's stroking hand, fingers curling g and uncurling over Draco's tummy as he spoke about the Dark Lord and their plans to bring him back from wherever he'd gone. Draco didn't care. He curled up on his father's lap and fell asleep, the hand moving to lay heavy and still across the boy's back.
As he grew, the blanket changed in size and shape, but it never left Draco's presence, and when he went to Hogwarts, it was tucked in his trunk and displayed proudly in his dorm room, the Malfoy crest the dominating feature of the now full size spread.
It whispered darkness to him, drew secrets from the boy as he grew, and heard everything Draco couldn't or wouldn't tell his father, or the other, more useless Death Eater children. He had no confidants other than his blanket, even his godfather took second place to the thing, and it was tied around Draco's waist in the Astronomy Tower as he faced down Dumbledore.
Pushed by an Imperious spell decades old, Draco raised his arm, shaking – but before he could force the words out of his mouth, a flash of green light shot past him and struck the old man, knocking him backwards and out the window.
Snape! Had this been the plan all along? He stumbled from the tower, the blanket urging him onwards to the sounds of battle, sharp reflexes casting hexes nearly willy nilly, until he reached his goal – Dumbledore's Army members. The blanket hissed and cursed in his ears, and Draco gripped the fabric as he listened one more time.
END