Draco had taken the drastic move of dying his hair a dark brown. He let it grow but did not bother to tame it with magic as his father would have. He needed to be as different as possible. With only the experience of hiding in the halls of Hogwarts, he had tried to melt into crowds, lowered his face and attempted to stay unnoticed during his travels.
Still, there were times when someone would look too closely, ask too many questions and he had to disappear again, fleeing the guilt that twisted cruelly in his stomach. He found even though he could leave the place, the pain would follow.
On unusually warm nights like this, where he sat comfortably watching wide expanse of the night sky, he'd find himself wondering about his old life, the people he used to know. He wondered what they'd think of him now, if they could see him. What they would think of what he'd been reduced too.
A simple man, living off of a small income. He worked with farm animals for Merlin's sake. They would laugh for years if they knew.
In truth, he didn't mind the work so much. The hard labor distracted his mind from his darker thoughts. He had been, for the last few weeks, the stable man for an old grizzled wizard who lived on the southern Norwegian coast. They barely understood one another but the work was simple to deduce. Mr. Doufjorn had gotten too old to manage his small heard of sheep and needed help to keep the small cottage they shared from falling into the ground.
Draco had been many things in his life so far, but he could honestly say a farm hand was never one he'd experienced, and while Draco had never even touched a sheep before in his life, he did have something that taught him how. Something that was invaluable and priceless.
It had been a gift from his mother that last year at Hogwarts. The year that he'd been told to do so many evil things that he hadn't wanted to ever do.
She had snuck it to him, just before he left on the train that year. His father was not at the station but he'd sent two "body-guards". More like goons to ensure his wife and son were staying in line. But she had been so clever, slipping it in with his school things. It was a bag, more like a simple small knapsack but it held such wonders.
The thing was enchanted to produce a book. A text for any given situation. It was true that he'd used it for school at the time, though that year his mind and worries were on much larger things and the magic of the bag knew so too.
It had given him a number of strange and awful books. Self-help, how to leave a toxic relationship, Acceptance of others and of oneself. Some even written by muggles. For a long time, he had tossed these titles back into the sack, ignoring the curiosity that lit his mind.
But eventually, after Voldermort's end, even after his Mothers downfall and his fleeing, he began to flip through whatever the bag offered. Soon, he began to read with ferocious appetite, clinging to words written by people who had no idea that his kind existed but had somehow managed to put into words the position he'd been in as a child. The bag would give him more and more, never expanding in size no matter how many books he put back, always able to revisit titles.
Once, not so long ago, he had a fleeting thought of one bushy haired nuisance and how he'd like to rub this little item in her face, but he stopped knowing that he truly didn't feel that way. It was how he had been conditioned to think, as the Muggle Doctor had written.
He'd thought of his childhood enemies often since he'd left his life and wondered of their own. Potter, he knew, would remain annoyingly humble, though little peaks of smugness were sure to be seen, he was positive. The red-headed terror would undoubtedly be soaking up the attention.
Granger? She could be doing anything. He knew the world thought her the brightest witch, but no one knew how clever and brave that silly girl was like him. She was his one true competition at Hogwarts and he had hated the respect he felt for her smarts.
A girl like her, muggle parents, not knowing a thing about magic until she was eleven. Then throwing herself into the world, eager to learn and do. Even risking her own life that first year for the sake of knowledge. It was, quite simply, astounding.
And he hated it. He hated that he was supposed to hate her, to resent the circumstances of her birth. That he had to push down the awe he felt when she learned how to do wordless magic, or the thrill he got when they were matched in wits.
And because this very topic always seemed to bring out the worst in him, he decided to call it a night and sit under the stars with a bottle of firewhiskey, trying to ignore the demons that threatened to rise up from his memories.
Little did he know, the very bushy haired demon was tracking a very dangerous, very real nightmare in the shape of a Pooka, not too far from his drunken slumbering body.