A/N
Seventh Season, Round Two
Team: Wigtown Wanderers
Position: Chaser 3
Prompt: Write about someone who's always been a leader (explicitly or otherwise) having to learn to follow someone else OR write about a character(s) who's always been fawned on finding themselves having to work for recognition and acceptance.
Additional Prompts: (word) blazing, (colour) crimson [Scorpio], (word) zodiac
Betas: Aya
Learning the Hard Way
His earliest memories were of his fourth Yule celebration. His mother and father had gifted him with a beautiful crup puppy. His godfather, or Uncle Severus, had given him an illustrated book of potions ingredients. Draco's face was a picture of joy playing with his crup. The book, he read— technically, he just looked at the pictures—every night before bed for almost a month.
The subsequent years were always filled with happiness and love, even if it was behind the wards of their home and never in the public eye. The year he turned fourteen, however, everything came crashing down around him.
Of course, his parents and godfather still loved him. They tried to protect him from the horrors that the Dark Lord brought into their home. His mother tried so hard to keep him from having to take the Dark Mark. She didn't want to have to worry about losing everything and everyone she loved, but there was nothing she could do except beg her son's godfather to protect him using an Unbreakable Vow.
The following two years were full of atrocities against everyone, human and creature, magical and mundane. Draco still had his mother, but his father and godfather were constantly being given new missions. Draco was now always on high alert in his home, asking the elves to keep healing potions and salves on standby and waiting with his mother in their private wing. Voldemort had taken over nearly the entire manor, but he left their personal rooms and the portion of the manor they were located in alone. Draco and his mother had ordered the elves to remain invisible at all times and to avoid anyone not of the Malfoy main family.
Draco closed his eyes as another scream of agony was let loose in the ballroom where Voldemort had set up his court. "Please, Harry. Find a way. Don't let him win."
Draco was terrified. Fiendfyre was blazing around him, the air thick with smoke and the creatures created by the spell. He screamed as the fire came ever closer to him. His eyes went wide with shock when he was suddenly hefted onto the broom in front of Harry Potter.
The two flew through the door that slammed shut behind them. Draco clenched his eyes shut as he heard Crabbe's scream abruptly cut off as he was consumed by the blazing fire that he had cast. Draco roughly dragged his sleeve across his eyes, trying to displace the tears pouring from them.
"Potter—" Draco coughed.
"Save it, Malfoy. I couldn't just let you die like that, but my broom couldn't hold more than two people. I'm sorry about Crabbe." With that, Harry left to rejoin the battle.
Draco's face was stony as he stared down at his mother and godfather. His mother looked like she was just sleeping, if he didn't look past her hips. Her legs had been brutally severed and no one had been able to cast a stoppering spell to keep her from bleeding out. The resulting damage had stained her robes crimson with blood. It made his stomach turn to see his loving mother had been treated so callously. His godfather had his throat ripped out. If Hermione Granger hadn't told him it was Nagini, he would have thought Greyback got to him.
His mother had been killed by the Death Eaters for her betrayal when they found out she asked Harry if Draco was still alive then lied about Harry's own survival to Voldemort's face. His godfather had been murdered by Nagini on Voldemort's orders.
Even his father hadn't escaped completely unscathed. He was missing his left arm and was sentenced to Azkaban for life. Draco had no one left to help him. No one to guide him. He was seventeen and completely alone in the world.
Two years later, Draco was cursing under his breath as he made his way to his desk in the Ministry.
Without access to the Malfoy fortunes, and after having nearly everything taken, including the manor (not that he considered that a big loss considering the horror house it became the last years he lived there were a nightmare), he had nearly nothing. He sold off what little he had left, that he could bear to part with. He rented a small one-bedroom flat and survived on what food he could afford at the local market using what he had earned from those sales.
He had also lost his betrothal contract with the Greengrass family when they found out about all of the fines levied against him.
Draco sighed heavily as he started going through the near mountainous pile of parchment in his inbox. He had worked his way up from errand boy to desk jockey in the Auror Department, hoping that he could eventually be seen as an Auror candidate. His eyes flicked enviously over to where Harry Potter stood giving basic instructions to new recruits before they entered the training simulation room. Draco frowned and turned back to his work. "I will finish this today. I refuse to have even more work tomorrow for not completing it today."
He got busy sorting through the parchments, marking each as 'Standard Complaint', 'Needs Attention', and 'Immediate Action Required'. It took nearly four hours to go through all the paperwork and determine where and to whom each one needed to go. For the standard complaints, he sorted them by location and severity of the issue, then sent each one flying to the Aurors in charge of those divisions. The needs attention stack was much shorter and were all given to one Auror in charge of the Diagon Alley squad. Apparently, there had been a rash of petty thefts that seemed to be the work of the Zodiac Crew needed to be looked into. It was the fifth time that month that the Zodiac Crew had struck. They hit Hogsmeade just four days ago, and a small Wizarding village outside of Liverpool three days before that. Something needed to be done about the Zodiac Crew before they escalated into violence as well as theft.
There were two parchments that were under the immediate action heading and he stood to take those directly to the Head Auror. They were each for sightings of escaped Death Eaters. Draco knew that they would probably be handed off to Potter after he left the Head Auror's office, but he wanted to make sure the boss had eyes on the information first.
It was tedious as most sightings turned out to be false or cold trails with no new information, but that was his job now.
Draco sighed again. Tedious and annoying. Everything he didn't want out of life.
Three more years had passed and Draco was feeling like he finally accomplished something worthwhile.
He had left the Ministry after the Head Auror told him he would never be approved for Auror Candidate Training and pursued a career in Mediwizardry using everything his mother and godfather had taught him before their untimely demises. He passed the bar faster than anyone else had ever done it and for once, he was happy.
He was a certified Mediwizard with a specialty in Pediatric Care. His main focus was Muggle-born children and making sure they were developing their cores at a good rate. His secondary focus was Squib children. Too many were being born without access to their magic. Many were allowed to stay within their families, however, some families still embraced the old ways. Luckily, it had become illegal to kill off Squib children, but it wasn't illegal to dump them in the Muggle world with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Draco had adopted two Squibs that were going to be cast out of their families. Helen, aged five, and Rory, aged three, were the light in his life, and he was hoping that with his studies and research, he might find a way to release their cores and allow them full range of their magic.
It was a long time coming but when Helen turned ten and Rory was eight, Draco made a breakthrough in his research and managed to unlock some of their powers. It wasn't enough to allow them to go to Hogwarts, but now they had enough inherent magic to be able to brew potions and use latent Herbology skills.
Draco threw the biggest party for his girls when Helen brewed her first potion and Rory was able to coax a flower to bloom out of season. He may not have his name to rely on because of who he used to be, but he was proud of what he had become when he no longer had a solid support system. He would always be thankful for the love his family had showered him with when he was young, and he would never forget the hardships he had gone through to get to where he is today: a father of two beautiful children, a stable career, and no one looking down on him for his last name and associations in the War.
