Summary: Green light harsh against the indigo sky. And then, everything changed.
He's living in a blood-soaked lie. One where he is nothing but a pawn and a servant in the aftermath of a battle his side was supposedly victorious in. But Draco sees the cracks in the wall, and they start with the girl with the stolen identity.
Chapter I
MJ
Draco Malfoy doesn't think a whole lot of good about himself, but he daresay that he's observant.
Hogwarts transfer students aren't common. In fact if memory serves right, his father had mentioned the last recorded transfer was Mrs Parkinson from Durmstrang before she was Mrs Parkinson. Draco supposes it's partly because the worldwide wizarding community isn't particularly broad, and partly because each country's institution has very different educational curricula. One would think that, at the very least, a transfer would happen in the earlier stages of magical education. But MJ McLaggen moved into the boarding school at the start of her (and Draco's) seventh year.
It starts the second she steps behind all the little first years at the Welcoming Feast. Because of her flaming red hair, everyone initially thinks she's another Weasley. But the speculation is quickly debunked, because most of the Weasleys are in hiding. Possibly dead. The Daily Prophet doesn't publish who gets caught, anymore — part of the Riddle Act passed up by the Ministry.
Draco fishes out his handkerchief and spends the whole of the Sorting twisting it in his fists. When the last first year scampers off to the Hufflepuff table, McGonagall raises her eyes from behind her flashing spectacles towards the slender, red-headed girl. "Matilda Mclaggen," she announces more than states, and the whole of the Great Hall erupts into buzzing conversation.
See, Cormac McLaggen had been killed in the Attack last year. Some rogue curse from one of the Death Eaters blasted into a wall and he got crushed beneath it. At least, that's the most accurate-sounding story Draco has heard. McLaggen's death had not been the only one from that night. Draco twists the handkerchief more vigorously over his hands.
MJ McLaggen is sorted into Ravenclaw, and everybody gives up the gossip in favour of enjoying the Feast. Draco doesn't eat anything. He doesn't tend to, nowadays. He instead spends the remainder of the Feast staring at the back of her fiery head. He finds it odd that a McLaggen would come to the school in light of their recent tragedy. When it seems everyone is finished, Snape gets up from the Headmaster's seat at the centre of the High Table, giving the usual rules and expectations and completely Glamouring over the events from last year. Then, they are dismissed.
That night, the Slytherin common room is raucous. Why wouldn't it be? We've won, Draco thinks, watching Greengrass tip a bottle of firewhiskey down her throat and stagger straight towards him. You've won. Somehow, it's a lie. It doesn't matter how many witches perch onto his lap, nibble at the skin of his throat, press their lips against his. How the Malfoy name has been restored.
Winning sounds like a lie.
Consolation comes in the form of quiet observation. He learns the most about her in Potions. Slughorn, the naturally nosy wanker that he is, has many questions about her heritage during their first lesson.
"My father is a third cousin, thrice removed, to my Uncle Tiberius, Sir," she answers in a New Yorker American accent. That's the first thing that sticks out to Draco. His father had been in business with a Pureblood wizard from New York, until he got arrested. When his father was finally freed from Azkaban, Draco noticed most of his business associates had been cut off. "I call him Uncle for simplicity's sake." Her accent doesn't sound right. He's no regional expert, not even for the UK, but Draco's heard that New Yorker brag about his growing broomstick business enough times to know her pronunciation sounds too… familiar.
"Ah!" Slughorn booms, clearly delighted at another McLaggen relation. "And what brings you to Hogwarts, Matilda?"
"Please, Sir," she responds with a smile, "call me MJ. For my middle name, Jocelyn. Everyone does."
"But of course!"
She smiles again, and that's the second thing that strikes Draco. It's large, showing all her straight teeth, reaching all the way up to her sparkling eyes. Every time. And every time, Draco swears he's seen that smile before.
"To answer your question, I'm here to console my uncles." Slughorn accepts the lie with an understanding nod and a sympathetic expression. Yes, a lie. Draco could recognise one from underneath an invisibility cloak. He tells them to himself on a daily basis, after all.
But it's only on Thursday afternoon that he really, truly decides that there's something about MJ McLaggen.
Alecto Carrow has a unique and creative perspective on teaching that under different circumstances might have been praised by the other Professors. Draco isn't sure what Snape thinks, but clearly he doesn't seem to disapprove the way McGonagall does with her flaring nostrils and her helpless stares of fury whenever a child heads over to the classroom on the sixth floor. He's certainly not sure what his godfather was thinking assigning her to Muggle Studies.
It's a compulsory subject. Many of his friends — Parkinson, Zabini, Nott, Crabbe, Goyle — had been indignant when they'd first laid eyes on their timetable. Parkinson had even gone so far as to owl her father to complain about it. But her father hadn't prepared her like Draco's father had him. Anyone working for the Dark Lord would know; as one of the board governors of the school, too, Lucius Malfoy knows exactly how this year is going to play out.
Draco takes a seat next to Parkinson at the back of the classroom, wringing his handkerchief in his sweating palms as cold dread settles in his stomach. There's a cage at the front of the classroom, covered up with a sheet. Alecto Carrow is standing beside it, knobby hands joined together as she grins at the class with her crooked teeth. The door slams shut behind Draco and his friend; they glance over their shoulder and their eyes clap onto a stone-faced Longbottom. His stare flicks to Draco, disgust burning his eyes brighter, and then he rips his focus away to move forward in the classroom.
Draco releases a deep, shuddering breath. Quiet though it might've been, Parkinson still eyes him in his peripheral vision. He knows she'll look at his handkerchief next. He stuffs it in his pocket. Then he looks up, where Carrow raises her wand and flicks it. For one heart-stopping moment he expects the sheet to come off the cage, but then parchment appears in her free hand and she starts taking the roll.
There are names he's expecting based on the Ministry's new terms, then there's names he's expecting based on six years of routine.
Corner.
Finnegan.
Macmillan.
Patil.
Anyone who's at least Half-Blood — although his father says they're working on a way to pass up a law where there'll still be enough magical folk to run an economy, but they won't be entitled to be educated in Hogwarts. In other words, Corner would not have been on the roll because he's not a Pureblood.
Then there's the names that aren't called out, because they're either Mudbloods or Blood Traitors. Or dead.
"Matilda McLaggen." Draco's eyes zero in on the back of the girl's head. She's occupying a desk near the middle of the classroom, next to Padma Patil. All he can think at this moment is how thick and long her crimson hair is, curtaining half the back of her chair.
"Everyone calls me MJ," she says, jolting him out of his fascination with her locks. Draco's eyes dart to Carrow; there's a nasty leer on the woman's face. Gulping inaudibly, he moves his stare back to MJ's head.
"How is it that you're related to Tiberius?"
"My father's his third cousin, thrice removed." If Draco had a Galleon for every time she said that, he would probably have a Gringotts vault with the same amount of riches as his current one. "How is it that you know him?"
He flicks his gaze to Carrow, who looks rather like a vulture with the way she looks at the American. "In passing during my time at the Ministry." She schools her expression and offers MJ a cool smile. "He never mentioned relatives past his brother and nephew, but I suppose one doesn't tend to talk about a third cousin, thrice removed."
"I suppose not," agrees MJ, and Draco is so caught up analysing the exchange that he doesn't register Carrow's next words towards the class until she flicks her wand and the sheet on the cage comes flying off.
The air shifts. Draco feels crackling magic desperate to erupt. But nobody misbehaves, yet.
"Now, class," simpers Carrow with relish, "I've always believed that the first lesson should be the most memorable. There is much to learn this year… but some of you may have been misguided by propaganda and a poorly structured curriculum. A Muggle—" she points to the shivering man in the cage "—is equal to a Flobberworm. It has little intelligence and without magic, it is far less superior to a wizard, of whom it physically resembles."
Draco's eyes are locked on the quaking man. He's pressing his back up against the cage, wide-eyed stare sweeping over the classroom. The young wizard wonders which Muggle street they'd plucked this poor sod out of. If his Aunt Bellatrix was involved, he suspects there was a healthy dose of torture administered. That would explain the violent shaking that everyone else has probably mistaken for fear. Draco has had first hand experience of the Cruciatus Curse one too many times.
"Today, I will show you the effective way of eliminating a Muggle."
Several things happen at once. Realization dawns on the Muggle man's face, his eyes bulging from his skull, a strangled cry ripping from his throat as he scarabbles fruitlessly against the iron-wrought bars. Longbottom, the silly git that he is, shoves himself up from his seat beside Finnegan and hollers, "We won't be misguided by your propaganda!" Carrow raises her wand towards the wayward Gryffindor before he even finishes his sentence. Something lands on Draco's desk with a sickening splat, making him jump violently while Parkinson shrieks and skids backwards with her chair.
He barely registers his friend crashing onto the ground behind him as the sounds of a splat are multiplied across the classroom. Draco stares at the creature wriggling on his desk, pale and slimy in the sunlight filtering weakly through the dusty windows. He raises his eyes to the ceiling, where they materialize in thin air, hurtling down towards the ensuing chaos.
"Flobberworms!" wheezes Zabini, as their general group make their way towards Hogsmeade to take advantage of the unexpected free period. When she'd failed to remove the Charm and wheedle out the culprit, Carrow had dismissed the class forty-five minutes early with cold fury. "Raining Flobberworms…" Parkinson whacks him around the back of his head, but that doesn't stilt his chortles.
"It's not funny, Zabini," she snaps, and Draco hides his smirk when she reaches to rub the back of her head. Hides it, because she's apparently keen on getting everyone to feel the pain in that spot too. They all step onto the platform of the second floor and wait for the staircase that'll lead them to the first.
"I beg to differ," inputs Nott, earning a filthy glare from her.
She sniffs disdainfully, straightening her shoulders. "We were about to learn some important things." Draco's faint smile vanishes. He drops his eyes to the ground, and reaches for his handkerchief in his pocket. The staircase greets the platform, and they all step onto it.
"We've learned those things before we learned to talk," Nott responds dryly. From beside him Zabini's laughter begins to subside. Draco rubs his handkerchief against his palms.
"Okay," retorts Parkinson, "we were about to watch everyone else finally learn those things."
"That's more like it," Nott snarks, just as the staircase stops moving at the platform on the first floor. They stride down, Draco's mind on the empty Entrance Hall and the emptier dormitories down in the dungeons. He might just excuse himself at the last minute so they won't get much time or effort to argue with him to come.
"What's her deal?" Parkinson's curious tone has Draco looking up. He blinks at the velvety curtain of vermillion hair brushing past him. Draco watches her disappear in a corridor of the first floor and wonders what she's going to do there. His first thought is that she's going to the library. His second thought is of a hurricane of chestnut curls and doe-eyes sparkling behind a smile never directed at him.
Draco stumbles on one of the final steps; he's vaguely aware of his friends exclaiming as he scrabbles for balance against the rails. His handkerchief slips out of his grip and sails over the outer rail, out of sight. His stomach drops like it. Raising his palms from the railing, his breathing grows shallow at what he sees.
"Draco!" Panting, he glares over his shoulder and the blessedly pure manicured hand that is resting on it. Parkinson is giving him that look. Like the time last year when she'd caught him crying in a broom cupboard. His eyes flicker to Nott, whose brows are raised, and to Zabini, whose face is completely blank.
Shrugging Parkinson off, Draco mumbles, "I don't reckon I'm coming with you lot," and then descends the final few steps briskly. He shoves his hands in his pockets so he doesn't have to see them, then races through the Entrance Hall into the staircase leading to the dungeons. The gloomy corridors are quiet, because everybody's still in class, so he makes it to the Slytherin common room in the matter of five minutes. He storms up the staircase to the dormitories, kicks the door of the bathroom open, rushes in and turns the tap on at full speed.
Finally, he takes his hands out of his pockets. Draco gives out a strangled cry. The palms shaking below his eyes are worse. They're drenched in blood. With a dry sob, he plunges them below the running water and starts rubbing them violently. Vigorously. Seconds tick into minutes. The friction is making his skin sore. But none of the blood drips onto the sink. His hands are still gleaming scarlet.
A flash of green light.
Glinting silver under the moonlight disappearing over the rails. The fading rustle of robes against gravity.
Victorious cheers.
A madwoman's laughter.
Out of place colours. Bright light slicing through the dim. Buzzing, wooshes. Explosions. Debris everywhere. Mangled bodies anywhere.
A beautifully frayed starry silk. Half a moon frowning down, next to the skull and snake poisoning the sky.
A boy's howls. "Fight back, you coward! Fight back!"
A skeletal figure emerging from shadowy wisps. Bowed heads. Another flash of green light. The thump of a body against dry grass.
Screaming. Her screaming. Granger's eyes stabbing him like daggers. They're burning with pure hatred. A raging fire that sears his skin in a way he will never forget.
Friday morning has him reaching a conclusion. During breakfast they're whispering about the escaped Muggle man. Alecto Carrow had been overheard screaming about it to her brother, the Dark Arts teacher. Some say he's a spy for the Order. Those ones didn't see the terror in his eyes from behind the bars of the cage. Draco believes the theories that someone helped him out. MJ McLaggen's eyes meet his as he leaves the Great Hall with his hands in his pockets and she's about to enter it, pinning him to the spot for a nanosecond. A drop of sweat clambers down the back of Draco's neck as his skin sears. Her face is otherwise passive, but her eyes… her eyes give her away.