25th December, 1997
Draco sat alone in his room at the Malfoy Manor having successfully evacuated from the dinner table early. He'd never been a particularly festive person, but as he had sat lodged amongst his parents and their closest friends (all dangerous killers now), Draco felt a heavy knot in his stomach and a constant sweat to his palms as plans for the future of the wizarding world were discussed over champagne and firewhiskey. He had managed to keep mostly silent, and even offer the occasional stiff nod of agreement, but he had felt his father's unforgiving glare on him for most of the evening.
"What was that performance?" A voice hissed from behind Draco. He turned around on his bed and saw his father pacing towards him, his face set in disapproval.
"What performance?"
"Might I remind you, Draco, that you are already being watched closely – people are talking, accusing you of being spineless, a coward. And now to see you sitting there, pathetically silent for most of the meal." Luscious was pacing before Draco, making long strides back and forth as he wrung his hands manically. Draco had noticed upon his return to the Malfoy Manor for Christmas that his father, who was usually so immaculately put together, was unravelling, and it seemed now to be happening before his eyes.
"Forgive me for not being amused by your friends' dull humour," Draco offered dryly.
Luscious turned swiftly towards Draco, grabbing him clumsily and wrapping a large hand around his throat. His father's grip quivered against Draco's throat and he choked loudly as his father squeezed, forcing Draco onto his feet.
"You will begin to do your name proud, Draco, or you will get us all killed."
Draco looked into his father's eyes and saw nothing of the man he had grown up with. Eyes, so like his own, but with nothing left behind them. He wondered briefly if his eyes were as absent.
"I don't care how you may feel," Luscious continued with spitting purpose, "you will cooperate in this."
He roughly shoved Draco away from him and regained his composure. He straightened his robes and regarded Draco, who had stumbled back in a heap against the poster of his bed, rubbing at his neck and trying not to splutter.
3rd January, 1998
Draco returned to Hogwarts with less purpose or belonging than he had ever felt. He sat on the Hogwarts Express in a carriage amongst the other Slytherins as he always had and, much like Christmas, felt overwhelmed by loneliness and displacement. He was hoping that spending Christmas at his home with his family was going to rejuvenate some sense of entitlement in himself, or redevelop an affinity to the Dark Arts, but being back in that house only further cemented the horrible nightmares he'd been plagued with for so many months.
As Pansy told some insufferable tale from her New Years Eve, which involved a family friend from Durmstrang who Draco suspected might've been fabricated for the benefit of his non-existent jealousy, he saw a head of familiar chestnut coloured hair flash past the passageway by their carriage. He hadn't seen Amelia since the night in the Potions room, where he'd let emotions get the better of him, but she had rarely strayed from his mind throughout the Christmas break. In the whirlwind of nerves and doubts that he felt, the thought of Amelia Collins strangely calmed the storm in his head. He watched as she excitedly embraced Parvati and Padma Patil, her face lighting up as she beamed and began to animatedly talk with the twins. Draco watched, absorbing the details of her features he had pictured over the lonely days at the Malfoy Manor. Every night he had thought back to pressing against her, tangling his fingers through her long hair, tasting her on his mouth, the way she seemed to see him, allowing the thought to momentarily subside the horrendous war that invaded his mind.
Amelia's eyes swept towards Draco's direction, pulling him from his trance. She frowned at him and absently tucked her hair behind her ears, moving down the train towards another carriage with the twins, her smile now deflated.
The first week back at Hogwarts dragged endlessly. Draco continued to function on little sleep, fuelled instead by a constant anxiety and feeling of impending doom looming over him. It wasn't just Draco who felt this change though; many students had not returned after Christmas, with rumours that a lot more families were going into hiding as the Death Eaters gained further traction in the wizarding world. Those who had remained either put on a façade of bravery, or looked similar to how Draco felt.
He had hoped that this many months into the school years, his plight with Dumbledore on the Astronomy Tower would have been forgotten, but there were still whispers as he passed through the corridors and frightened glances from younger students. The Slytherins, however, had clearly well and truly picked up on Draco's apathy and Draco often had the sense when he walked into the Great Hall or common room that he was being discussed by the others. Even Pansy seemed to be avoiding him.
The only time that Draco now looked forward to, was Potions. It was a fact he loathed, and tried his very hardest to repress, but working alongside Amelia – even with her determined silence towards him – soothed the darkness around him, if only for a moment in the day. It was a foreign feeling, and he had put it down to his severe lack of sleep. He would just ignore it until it inevitably faded away, he told himself often.
He would still occasionally catch Amelia looking inquisitively towards him, but she would always fix her face into an expression of disgust and quickly revert back to whatever she was doing.
Friday afternoon finished with double Potions – something Draco had been shamefully looking forward to all week. As Slughorn dismissed the class and everyone hurried out for the beginning of the weekend, Draco took his time clearing the desk and putting things back into his bag.
"Was your Christmas alright?" His voice seemed to function without his permission. He immediately scolded himself.
Amelia's head snapped up as she buckled her bag. "Excuse me?"
"What? I can't make conversation?" Draco said back, cocking an eyebrow.
Amelia rolled her eyes. "Make up your mind, Draco," she said pointedly, before brushing past him and out of the dungeons.
Draco looked up and saw Professor Slughorn peering at him from his desk. He scowled at the older wizard, before leaving in a hurry. Amelia's words rung in his ears all night.
Present Day: The Resistance
Amelia had spent hours and hours poring over the first interactions she had had with Draco. Night after night, month after month when the thought of him pushed to the front of her mind, she would comb through all the details of these first moments that they crossed paths. In truth, she tore through every single moment they had spent together, but it was their time at Hogwarts that she felt she might eventually see where it all went wrong. Maybe if she hadn't pushed him all those years back when they were Potions partners, then he wouldn't have targeted her and made her believe in him. Those moments where he seemed so sincerely broken and eager to turn himself around, drawing her in to him and all the while knowing how he was deceiving her… she was an idiot to believe a Death Eater would ever change.
1998
For two weeks Amelia and Draco continued to work in determined silence, even in their extra sessions on a Wednesday night.
On a particularly bleak January evening in the Great Hall a small and dark-feathered owl swooped towards Draco and dropped a tiny rolled up piece of parchment onto his lap. He felt a few sets of curious eyes around him as he gave the owl a small pat before it flew off. He was perched where he usually was: on the very edge of the Slytherin table. The disconnect between him and his Slytherin peers continued to widen, but Draco remained unphased by this.
He opened the parchment with shaking fingers. Mail was never delivered in the evening. 'Astronomy Tower, half an hour. SS'
His first thought was that it was some sort of sick joke; he glanced over to the other Slytherins but they were now all listening intently to whatever Theodore Nott was drivelling on about. He looked up to the Headmaster's place at the head table and was unsurprised to see it empty. Snape was hardly ever visible around Hogwarts, so why did he want to see Draco? And why the Astronomy Tower?
Suddenly unable to stomach any more food, he pushed his plate away and slowly began begrudgingly making his way to the Astronomy Tower.
The hollow echo of his footsteps on the damp stone floor instantly filled Draco with the same dread he had felt as he walked this path almost a year ago. He felt the same tightening in the pit of his stomach; heard his pulse echo through his own ears. He remembered vividly walking down these corridors and up these same staircases, his wand held limply in his hand. He was so much younger before that night.
Draco had managed to avoid the Astronomy Tower since then, and it's surroundings had remained confined to his nightmares until tonight. The jagged moonlit shadows cast across the narrow winding staircase hadn't changed, nor had the sleeping portraits on the wall. The same musty, damp smell hung thick in the air and as Draco climbed the stairs with hollow legs he felt his skin prick at the sudden iciness to the air.
He stopped short at the top of the stairs. His knees threatened to buckle beneath him. He grabbed onto the cold railing of the staircase and shut his eyes, willing his hands to stop shaking and his breath to stop rattling.
Images of Dumbledore's face flashed in front of him. His kind and frustratingly understanding piercing blue eyes, ignorantly telling Draco that he had a choice. Another image struck Draco: those same eyes losing everything behind them, turning instantly to a pale misty blue as his body toppled lifelessly over the edge of the tower.
Icy sweat ran down Draco's neck and he almost turned back around with the intent never to visit this place again.
"You received my note then," a voice came out of the darkness.
Draco's eyes snapped open and he was pulled out of his trance.
"What do you want?" Draco said, his voice husky and cracked. He sounded out of breath. A dart of yellow light flew from the tip of Snape's wand and split mid-air to fly directly into three torches, illuminating the tower. Snape was standing on the edge, in the open air, right where Dumbledore had stood.
"Is that the way you address your Headmaster?" Snape asked, turning from the darkened view over the castle grounds to face Draco. "Come, Draco."
With wobbly legs, Draco strode tentatively towards Snape and came to stand beside him. He let his eyes sweep over the impenetrable darkness of the school grounds below them and made out a small flickering of light in the distance: Hagrid's small hut.
"I hope you are finding enjoyment in your Head Boy duties," Snape said cordially.
Draco shrugged. "It's fine."
Snape made a small tutting sound and peered at Draco, who stared determinedly ahead at the blackened grounds. "Interesting – because it's being reported that you have almost no presence as the student head of the school."
Draco finally glanced at his Headmaster. "Is that really what you wanted to discuss?" He spat out, "My academic shortcomings?"
"Indeed not. There are things far more important than this school, as I'm sure you have gathered."
Draco wasn't sure how to answer this, and instead took to scanning the grounds, his hands clasped tightly together and his elbows leaning on the edge of the tower to steady himself as he desperately tried to feign a casualness he knew he was incapable of achieving.
"Why here?" Draco eventually said, his voice small.
Snape did not reply immediately. The two of them stood side by side, surveying the landscape. Draco wondered if Snape felt as plagued by this place as he did, and instantly felt stupid for thinking this.
"I see how you are." His voice was cold and stiff, void of anything other than the bleak truth. "Do you sleep?" The question was blunt.
Draco shuffled his feet and frowned. "Sometimes."
"You have nightmares? Terrors that make you rethink everything you've come to believe in?"
Draco's stomach dropped. If Snape knew he had doubts then he was surely a dead man walking. Did Snape bring him to the Astronomy Tower to kill him there, in some form of poetic justice?
"No – I –
Snape held a hand up. "You forget Draco, that I made a vow to protect you," he said through gritted teeth. "And while it is not something I am particularly fond of, it is one that I cannot bow down from. If you are worried about me discussing any of this further, then you needn't be. That would quite go against the vow I made, as I'm sure you can imagine what that information may do for you and your family."
Draco gulped; his mouth was completely dry.
"I brought you here because you need to face your fears."
Draco scoffed; "Professor, I don't think that bringing me up here is suddenly going to change everything that –
Again, he was cut off. "It doesn't need to," Snape sounded impatient. "Others are talking – noticing you. Your sulking in classes, at meals, in corridors. Your pathetically skittish behaviour. The way you look. The Carrows believe that you have lost your way, that you have lost all faith in the Dark Lord."
Draco looked up at Snape.
"I have told them that I believe you are merely disillusioned with academia; that you are eager to leave Hogwarts and join ranks with the Dark Lord after the taste of responsibility you had last year."
Draco almost laughed at how wrong this was.
"They are calling upon me to get rid of you," Snape continued. Draco felt as if someone had punched him in the gut.
"Get rid…?" He turned to face Snape now, unable to hide the worry in his eyes.
"Fortunately that decision does not lie with them. That conversation won't go further, for now."
This did nothing to ease Draco's anguish.
To Draco's surprise, Snape sighed and looked almost pensive. "You must play your part more convincingly. I don't care what it is you are feeling or regretting. You have no choice. You are a Death Eater, that is the path for you. It is this – or certain death."
Draco was taken aback by the severe disappointment he felt at these words and this confirmation of his fate. So there was no way out for him.
"I'm not sure how to go back to how I was, professor," he finally said, again ashamed at how meek he sounded.
"You must make your peace. It was I who killed the old man, not you. He would've died either way. Professor Burbage too. Neither blood is on your hands."
Draco narrowed his eyes and swept the Astronomy Tower, feeling the whispering of the whipping wind taunting him with cruel memories.
"I see their faces whenever I close my eyes. Not just theirs either; when some first year's parent is announced dead in the Prophet, I see that too. It's like I feel guilty for everything – even for people I don't know. I just can't get rid of it." He sounded desperate; why was he even saying this to Snape, arguably the second most powerful Death Eater there was.
"A small sip of this will help – at least with the nightmares. Use it wisely." He slipped a long corked vial from his robes and handed it to Draco, who nodded with gratitude.
"Do what you must to keep yourself alive," Snape added with finality. Draco knew this was his cue to leave, and he nodded again to his professor. He wasn't sure what to say – thank you seemed odd coming from his tongue.
He walked back to the Slytherin common room more confused than when he had arrived on the Astronomy Tower. Why had Snape been so patient, understanding even?
