February
tick
Draco paced, relentlessly so, the morning Hermione Granger was meant to arrive at the manor and begin sifting through centuries of cursed, jinxed, and generally unsafe collectibles. He woke early: nervous. He failed to eat breakfast: nervous. And he hovered near the Floo: nervous.
For as much as he insisted on wanting nothing to do with her, as much as he reminded Theo and Blaise on a daily basis how disinterested he was in whatever gutting she'd be doing to his family home, as much as he tried to convey—patiently, oh so patiently—to Astoria why Granger's imminent insertion into his life had him so agitated, he couldn't seem to explain away his morbid curiosity on the day of.
He'd started having nightmares again, too. Not every night, and not always bad enough that he couldn't fall back to sleep, but disruptive nevertheless. Brewing potions became his relief from exhaustion, or rather, something to focus on instead of it. He brewed in nearly all his free time, often in the middle of the night to order to escape the lure of sleep that would not come. He'd hobbled together something only tacitly resembling a potions lab in one of the manor's many spare spaces. His brewing once again became an obsessive hobby, one he used to distract himself from constantly questioning why he'd bothered to return to Wiltshire at all.
There had been something revelatory, transcendent, about realizing he'd left more than his history behind in England; he'd left his nightmares, too. After a year without them, he'd grown accustomed to something that looked suspiciously like quality sleep. Miraculously, he'd finally managed to rid his face of the dark circles under his eyes, haunting him since sixth year.
But the nightmares and the dark circles had returned. And so, in addition to his rampant nervous energy, exhaustion weighed Draco down as well.
Would Granger hex him on sight? Would she hex his father on sight? That wouldn't be the worst thing, honestly, and might very well be worth the opportunity to witness.
But Lucius had ordered Draco to steer clear of the main Floo parlor where he planned to receive her. Draco would have no part in the decommissioning process; his father would oversee, observe, and ensure that no Ministry overreach took place. And if Draco had been agitated over the past month, Lucius had been outright nasty.
"Remove yourself," Lucius snapped, entering the parlor where Draco had given up his pacing in favor of sitting on an antique velvet sofa near the Floo, pretending to read a book on rare potions ingredients. Draco glanced up at his father, eyes straining to refocus. He hesitated for a moment too long. Lucius turned away from the Floo with a sharp pivot, black robes moving with him. His cane clicked as it came down on the stone floors with an irritated, familiar force. "Now, Draco. I will not have you interfering."
Draco closed his book, slamming his will to retort between the pages: as if either of their faces would be a welcome sight to Hermione Granger. He held his tongue. It wasn't worth the fight, nor the effort. Not right now.
He rose, noting how the features on his father's face relaxed, pleased—always pleased—at Draco's compliance.
He left the parlor, closing the heavy wooden door behind him, and proceeded to run directly into Theo. He stumbled, startled and thrown off kilter by Theo's unexpected and uninvited presence in his home.
"Is she here yet?" Theo asked, eyes wandering around Draco's shoulder as if he might be able to see through the door.
"No, not yet—Theo, how did you get through the wards if you didn't Floo?"
Theo laughed, reaching a hand in his pocket and withdrawing a familiar golden metal object.
"I've spent almost four years trying to break into my family's most paranoid wards." Theo's eyes landed back on Draco, a brow raised, assessing. "I keyed myself into your family wards while you were gone—for practice."
"Practice?"
"Also for fun."
Draco snorted, that seemed much more likely. "I don't understand how I got more NEWTs than you."
"Because you actually tried," Theo said. "And potions is a pain in the arse. I don't know how you can stand it."
Draco gave Theo a light shove, eyes stuck on the time turner dangling from Theo's hand. Theo caught the direction of his gaze, lifting the glinting object.
"So. It's done," Theo said, allowing the tiny hourglass to hang between them. His statement sounded more like a question, like he didn't quite know.
"Done?"
"As done as it can be without trying it out." Theo hesitated and cleared his throat. "I should also probably mention that your father might have been the one to ask me to make this."
Draco stiffened, hands curling into fists at his sides.
"Might have, Theo?"
"He owled last year, asking if it was possible. He knew I'd been rejected by the DoM—not sure if you'd mentioned my tinkering. Anyway—" Theo broke off, swinging the time turner between them, staring at it. "It got me thinking, then I started messing around. I told him it would take years, but—you know. It didn't." Theo shrugged.
"Don't give it to him," Draco said, amusement and curiosity dampened by the power dangling from a chain between them. Lucius Malfoy did not need that kind of power.
"I wasn't going to. I'm not—totally sure why I even finished it. Probably just to see if I could."
They both stared at it. Too long. Curiosity cracked like felled timber between them, bad decisions sparking on the kindling.
"But we could try it?" Draco asked: quietly, carefully. "Just to see if it works?"
Theo slackened, "Thank gods. I knew you were my best friend for a reason."
"I thought Blaise was your best friend?"
"Only when you're being disagreeable. Which is usually. But right now, you're definitely my best friend."
"We shouldn't go far," Draco said, trying to force something reasonable and mature into what was already shaping up to be an extremely irresponsible decision. But he couldn't stop looking at the time turner, curiosity eating away at the edges of his control. He just—he wanted to know. "And we shouldn't change much."
Theo's shoulders fell, just a fraction, but he nodded. "As fun as it sounds, traveling years back in time, you're probably right. If it brings us back after five minutes I'll know my modifications worked. I even did some work with paradox avoidance, but I don't much fancy testing that out. More of a fail safe."
The sound of the Floo roaring to life on the other side of the door drew Draco's attention. Muffled voices floated through the paneled wood, tension practically lashing in waves.
Draco startled at the sudden shout. More muffled voices, his father's laugh—far from joyful—toxic as it seeped through the border between rooms, a crack of magic, a woman's shout—had to be Granger—followed finally by the sound of the Floo again.
Theo shoved the time turner into his pocket a breath before Lucius appeared at the door, swinging it open, a rush of air from the force of it billowed his robes. Draco blinked, waiting for the implication that they'd been eavesdropping, waiting for ire and chastisement.
His father only sneered, a curl in his lip, nostrils flaring.
"Theodore," he said.
"Mr. Malfoy."
With only a brief look between the two of them, frustration palpable, Lucius left them standing there and stalked down the hall. Draco watched until Lucius rounded a corner, the tap of his cane against the stone floors fading as he disappeared from sight and sound. Turning, Draco glanced into the parlor, ominously empty of any Ministry representatives, by the name of Granger or otherwise.
"We could fuck with your father?" came Theo's voice behind him.
Draco laughed, an inelegant, surprised sound, as he turned back around. "Yes, let's."
—
Forced into close proximity with Theo, gold chain strung around both their necks, Draco tried not to let his nervousness show, simmering just beneath his skin.
"This is a bad idea," he said.
"It is."
"Why are we doing it again?"
Theo's shoulders rose and fell, a noncommittal kind of response that quite literally brushed up against Draco's side.
"Lost youth? Tendencies towards self destruction? Poorly managed impulse control?"
Draco stared. All three were probably accurate, and then some.
"We won't change much," Draco said. "Something stupid, inconsequential."
Theo smiled, youthful and mischievous. For a moment, Draco didn't feel like a twenty-one year old wizard on the other side of a war, financially bound to an estate and a family failing to modernize, and saddled with a fiancé with whom conversation floundered and died like rotted fish.
Instead, he felt a bit like an idiot. It was wonderful.
"We're stealing his cane," Theo said, not waiting for confirmation or agreement. He held the time turner at eye level between them. Carefully, he rotated a small gear on one side. "It has two orientations," he said. "Years and hours. We—definitely don't want to accidentally turn back years, not this time, at least." He winked, and the flippancy felt forced.
Draco drew a deep breath as he watched Theo flip the turner a single time, a single hour.
The world shifted, blurred, buzzed. Pressure like cotton in Draco's ears, dulling, and then suddenly removed, bringing sound back into focus. Draco blinked against the gossamer quality in the air around him, a film he couldn't shake. Then it dissipated, and everything looked and sounded perfectly normal.
"Where are you right now?" Theo asked and Draco's brain flipped, calculating the meaning of that question.
He glanced at the door behind him, now closed again.
"In there, pretending I'm not nervous about seeing Granger again."
Theo made a tiny noise of triumph.
"I knew that's why you've been extra agitated lately. We have five minutes until it pulls us back and we see what's changed."
Draco tugged the chain from his neck and grabbed Theo by the elbow, pulling him into another room.
"Right, okay—" he started, not knowing what to do now that he'd landed in the past.
Where Draco felt like he might panic, Theo looked downright elated, an enormous grin splitting his face and more animation behind his eyes than Draco had seen in quite some time. Theo laughed, then immediately covered his mouth, stifling the sound.
"We should call for an elf," Theo said, barely containing his joy as it teetered towards mania. He bounced on the balls of his feet, pacing circles in the small sitting room, regarding their surroundings with a kind of wonder, as if their hiding spot looked any different an hour in the past.
Draco shook his head but called for the elf anyway.
Crack
"Yes, Master Draco?"
Theo stepped forward, extending an overdramatic hand as he bowed to the elf.
"Topsy, lovely to see you. Mopsy sends her regards from the Nott Estate."
Topsy's eyes, already impossibly huge, widened. Draco merely sighed.
"Could you do us a favor and bring us Master Lucius's cane?" Theo asked.
Topsy trained her enormous eyes on Draco, awaiting confirmation that this was his wish. Try as Theo might to endear himself to the Malfoy elves, family magic prevented them from following his orders without approval from a Malfoy.
"Yes, Topsy—"
"If you'd be so kind," Theo interrupted.
Draco gave him an elbow to the ribs as the elf disappeared.
"You can't override elf magic with charm," he said.
Theo sighed, "You know, the Department of Mysteries said I couldn't make a portkey precise enough to travel inside buildings, too."
"Yes, you're very impressive."
Theo laughed, feigning humility with a half shrug.
"Mostly I just have a lot of time."
Crack.
Topsy returned with Lucius's cane in her hands, comically huge compared to her tiny frame.
"Thank you, Topsy," Draco said, taking it from her. "You may go."
The elf vanished, leaving Draco holding his father's cane, staring at Theo.
"Three minutes," Theo said, holding the turner up to examine.
"Well, now what?"
They looked at each other; a nearby grandfather clock ticked away the remaining seconds of their time in this experiment. Draco burst out laughing.
"We're idiots. This is the stupidest thing we've ever done."
Theo doubled over, clutching the time turner to his chest, laughing just as hard.
"He can walk without it, can't he?" he asked, gasping through his laughter, gesturing blindly towards the cane.
Draco tapped it on the floor, feeling ridiculous. He had to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. His skin felt stretched, something like pinpricks beneath the surface, surging with each gulp of air, smile cracking his face wide open.
"Yes—he can." It felt like a dam breaking, flood waters rushing in; he hadn't laughed like this in years. Not while he studied for his potions mastery, relegated to Europe's far edges to find someone—anyone—willing to mentor him. Not while he avoided his parents during his second year under house arrest, or while studying for his NEWTs during his first. Not during the three months he spent in Azkaban awaiting his trial. Certainly not anytime in 1998, broadly speaking. How long ago was that now? Years. And not a moment of laughter, not like this, that he could find inside them.
He held the cane up, examining it and all the absurdity it represented.
"It's just for show," he said. "It used to hold his wand but since he can't use magic during his probation it's just—a prop, I suppose. A habit."
Draco's ears piqued at the sound of footsteps in the adjacent corridor.
Theo clutched his side, laughter dimming. His eyes went wide, chest still shaking from tiny bouts of suppressed glee as they silently decided what they might do next.
"I supposed I'll just—give it back?"
Theo rolled his eyes, "You'd think between the two of us—actual Death Eater, son of a Death Eater—we'd be better at causing trouble."
"Well, we were always the reluctant sort, weren't we?"
The footsteps in the corridor grew closer.
"Think he's wondering where it went?" Theo asked. "Perhaps he'll appreciate you returning it?"
Draco nearly scoffed. He couldn't remember the last time Lucius expressed genuine appreciation for anything. False appreciation, a pureblooded aristocratic version laced with a sense of expectation nullifying any actual gratitude: that, Lucius had in droves. Did relief that Draco hadn't died in a battle they'd been on the losing side of count as appreciation?
With a sigh and a shrug and a one minute warning from Theo, Draco stepped into the corridor.
His stomach dropped; he realized they'd already changed something. Before, Lucius hadn't arrived at the parlor until nearly the time Granger was meant to arrive. But now, they'd somehow spurred him into action, into arriving early.
"Father," he said, greeting Lucius from several feet away, nearly at the door to the parlor already. Draco held up the cane and immediately froze, brain grappling for a lie to explain away why he had it. Lucius stalked forward and took it in a single swipe, eyes narrowed at Draco. "Thought you may want this," Draco finally said. Not exactly a lie, technically the truth, and the best he could come up with on such short notice as the dying remnants of euphoria sizzled through his brain. Lucius watched him, eyes still narrowed, and then his shoulders dropped.
"Come, Draco."
He thought he'd imagined it at first, the nod Lucius made towards the door behind them, and the heavy implication that Draco should follow. Suddenly, he'd been invited to the very thing he'd been formerly banished from.
Then the panic gripped him.
What would happen when his father opened the door and found another version of Draco sitting and failing to read?
He launched himself forward, but not fast enough; the door to the parlor swung open. Draco closed his eyes, opened them again, and found he was the only version of himself in sight. Paradox avoidance barreled through his brain.
Then time lurched, that feeling of cotton over his ears, a film over his eyes, the world blurring and spinning. Five minutes had passed in what felt like a blink, a breath.
—
Draco wasn't standing in the same place anymore. He now stood near the sofa, by the Floo, slightly behind a mass of brown curls practically alight with furious magic. He knew that bush of brown hair. He'd been subject to it for years at school; it was all the confirmation he needed that Hermione Granger was indeed the Ministry representative handling his family estate.
From the looks of it—opposite whatever span of time he'd just skipped forward to—it wasn't going well. He shook his head, trying to dislodge his disorientation.
Draco took a small step forward so that he could see Granger in profile, his father, too, towering across from her at his full height, posture so forced that Draco nearly cringed.
"I will summon an auror if I must, Mr. Malfoy."
Granger spoke quietly, voice barely wavering, but everything about her posture—from her wide stance, to her lifted chin, to her fingers flexing around her wand—screamed of fury, of barely contained rage battling against her bones. Draco had almost forgotten the amount of authority the bossy little witch could force into such a small package.
His father merely blinked, unfazed.
"I will not allow unsupervised access to my home," Lucius said, voice dripping with a venom Draco knew well. That tone still made Draco tense, holding his breath in his chest, just for a beat, while he waited to see what came next.
"And I will not allow interference in a Ministry-mandated process being executed per the terms of your family's probation. This manor is unsafe—infested with dark magic and dark artifacts. It's being addressed regardless of your wishes."
Draco suppressed a smirk. She might be an obnoxious swot, but he could appreciate anyone who went toe to toe with his father. His smirk sank, though, when he realized she'd spoken to his father in the same way Draco wished he could. Careless, indifferent to the response. Not bound by familial duty or a near literal yolk of financial dependence.
"You will not be granted access to a single room of this home without my presence," Lucius seethed, hand flexing on the head of his cane where a wand once lived.
Granger released a strangled sort of noise, halfway between a frustrated groan and a growl. Draco failed to hold back a laugh.
She spun on him. Her right hand jerked, one quick motion away from raising her wand at him. He hadn't seen Hermione Granger in the flesh since his trial, when she'd testified on a stand in front of the Wizengamot and he, bound in chains behind bars, had been only partly lucid from months spent in Azkaban.
She looked the same as he remembered from Hogwarts, enormous hair overtaking everything else one might notice about her. It looked alive, spirals flying away from her face at the momentum in her movement. He wondered, in a dim, snide corner of his mind, if she'd even notice if pixies moved in and made a nest. He might have said something equally as sneering, too, if her furious gaze hadn't so thoroughly pinned him in place.
"I don't want to hear a word out of you, Malfoy," she said, right hand still flexing, wand ready for a fight.
Draco wanted to say something clever, or at least modestly so, about there being two Malfoys in the room: surely the ambiguousness would annoy her precise, detail-obsessed brain, but Lucius cut in, forcing her attention away again.
"You will not speak to any member of this household in that way. Being raised by animals does not excuse your lack of proper manners—"
It happened before Draco even realized it.
His heart flipped, or sank, or otherwise made its machinations known in a way wholly unusual to its normal operation. Then the heat flooded him, from the center of his chest to the tips of his fingers and the balls of his feet. It crawled up his neck and face, likely painting visible streaks of red across his skin.
As if by imperio, he spoke two little syllables, expelled from his lungs before he could even consider taking them back.
"Father—"
"Don't interrupt me."
Lucius snapped his attention to Draco, and Granger did the same; both watching him. It was a sharp, short order, and it cut straight to the child inside Draco who'd heard that tone more times than he could count. Don't interrupt your father. Your father knows best. You must respect your father. Your father has your best interests in mind. You must take this Dark Mark for your father.
Granger's fury seemed to melt under the heat of curiosity, while his father's only grew.
Draco folded under the pressure. He wanted to say more, say something. But his throat closed up, panic creeping in, guilt washing him out.
"I was raised by muggles, Mr. Malfoy, not animals," Granger said, looking away from Draco with only a flicker of distaste.
Lucius laughed, that same toxic-laden laugh Draco had heard in another version of these events, in another timeline altogether. Was it overlap, coincidence, or convergence? Draco resisted the urge to shiver, to acknowledge the discomfort that enveloped him, whispering of paradox avoidance, broken timelines, and the power of a single change.
Lucius brought the tip of his cane to the floor, less of a click on stone than a stake in the ground, a crack in a facade.
Draco winced, watching the cane, intimately knowing the force it could wield.
"I suppose you are correct. The current Ministry leadership does seem quite concerned about terminology these days. For example, the term I'd use to describe you has fallen out of favor. Pity."
Lucius didn't say it outright, but he'd thrown the word at her, hurled in the space between them. Mudblood. Draco's ears rang with the echo of something that hadn't even been spoken out loud.
He hated that word. Truly hated it. His entire life had once centered around it, around hating those to whom it applied. It had been a disease introduced to his system at a young age and given every opportunity to grow and spread until it nearly killed him. Even now, his life still revolved around it, constantly fighting off the after-effects of infection, never knowing how he should react to hearing it, to saying it, to thinking it.
Granger had gone pale, breathing heavily, wand pointed at Lucius. And while the threat to his father should have offended Draco, it didn't. Nevermind that she could have avoided this confrontation altogether if she didn't insist on such self-righteousness.
"I will not work with you, Mr. Malfoy. You'll be hearing from the Ministry."
She sounded shaken. Draco felt something of the same. The air in the room suddenly stifled, brimming with anger and magic and disappointment in three distinct flavors, all of them stale and sour in his mouth.
Granger turned to him, nostrils flaring, lips pursed, eyes flashing. She lowered her wand, infinitesimally, but enough. She looked like she might say something. He felt like he should. Neither of them did.
She just looked at him, and he at her, until she spun around, helping herself to a handful of Floo powder and disappearing in a green flash.
Draco knew what came next. He sighed, sitting on the nearby sofa and prepared for a lengthy lecture on family loyalty, on speaking out of turn, on respect, and his duty to his name: whatever transgressions he'd flaunted by interrupting his father in front of a Ministry employee, even if that employee had been Hermione Granger.
All the while, he couldn't help thinking how much he preferred the original version of the future—present, past, whatever it was now—before he'd stumbled into disrespecting his father, his name, his legacy.
—
A Ministry owl arrived later that evening, delivering a strongly-worded letter from the head of the Dark Artifact Decommissioning Task Force, undersigned by the Minister of Magic himself: Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy were to have no part or presence in the decommissioning of the Malfoy Estate. If—and the if was heavily emphasized—the family required a representative for the process, Draco would be the only one permitted in the same room as Granger.
And thus went any hopes Draco had of avoiding her altogether. He'd been toying with the idea of finding employment as a means to escape the manor and Lucius's financial will. Instead, he'd been tethered more closely to it. His father would insist Draco observe Granger every second she worked in their home.
That night, Draco fell asleep cursing Granger's hot headedness. If she hadn't been so difficult, so contrarian—as if Lucius wanting to supervise the gutting of his home could possibly be a surprise—then Draco wouldn't be stuck babysitting her swotty arse for the foreseeable future.
Draco went through the motions the next morning: taking breakfast with his parents, finding he had nothing to say to them, listening as his father listed the things the Ministry was under no circumstances allowed access to, and finding he had nothing to say to that, either.
He left breakfast already exhausted, apprehension weighing him down by the time he closed the parlor door behind him, only marginally confident his father had retired to another wing. His mother, he knew, had decided to spend the day in the gardens, well out of sight and out of mind.
Draco stood in front of the Floo, felt out of place, and opted to sit instead. He leaned against the back of the sofa. Crossed his arms. Uncrossed them. Tapped his foot. Forced himself to stop.
The Floo flared green and Granger stepped through. She held her wand in her hand as he watched her survey the room with a cautious efficiency. When her eyes finally landed on him, he stood. Draco didn't know what to do with his arms, troublesome things: hands that kept flexing, limbs he didn't know whether to swing or cross or pretend didn't exist at all.
He opted to pretend they didn't exist. Instead, he inclined his head, a small nod, mouth tight as he forced a simple nicety through.
"Granger."
"Malfoy."
He opened his mouth to say something else, but she cut him off.
"Don't, Malfoy. I know you hate this—hate me." A pause, a sigh, a scowl. "The feeling is mutual. But we're stuck here so just—don't."
He was almost grateful. He didn't know what he would have said, if she'd let him. She waited a moment, perhaps to see if he intended to fight her assessment. When he didn't, she pocketed her wand and pushed up her sleeves, preparing to dig into her work.
He froze when he saw it, focus latched onto eight letters carved into her arm: no glamour, no attempt to hide it, nothing.
Draco went from pretending his arms didn't exist to feeling like his entire body had dropped out of existence: unwilling disillusionment as if someone had cast a spell on him without his consent. In a faraway corner of his mind, he heard her screaming, begging, crying.
He isolated the panic seizing his veins and lungs, freezing it out, slamming down his Occlumency, shattering shard after shard of unbidden memory forcing its way to the forefront of his mind.
He blinked, flaking away every last fleck of rising panic that struck him. What the fuck was she thinking? Anger joined the panic, a fresh flush of heat beneath his skin. He cooled that too, forced it down, flaked it away. Fuck.
He generally made a point not to think about the consequences of the cursed blade Bellatrix liked to play with, what it meant for the skin of someone subjected to it. His jaw ached from the force he used to grind it shut: tooth to tooth, tongue smashed against his palate.
Finally, as a sense of calm numbed the horror, numbed the memory darkening the edges of his vision, Draco tore his eyes from the letters on her arm. He met her gaze and found nothing but confusion and suspicion reflected at him. She looked like she might say something, fight him on his reaction, or question him on it. Surely it hadn't gone unnoticed. He might have stopped breathing for a full minute, now that he thought about it.
He drew in air, a tingle of relief emanating from his chest.
She kept watching him, brows pulled together, hair wild around her face, sleeves still pushed up. Without a word, she pulled out her wand again and cast a spell. Several runes appeared in front of her, glowing in varying shades of orange, red, and yellow, with a few purple symbols hovering at the edges.
Draco had never seen a spell like it; even through the cloud of Occlumency forcibly holding his nerves together, a type of spell-o tape for his broken pieces, he found the novel magic mesmerizing.
Granger sighed and cancelled the spell, looking at him again.
"We'll start in this room, then," she said, gesturing to the velvet sofa behind him. "That green monstrosity is drowning in residual dark magic."
Draco stepped away from it, confusion crystalizing from behind his shields. He opted to stand near the fireplace, observing with his arms limp and heavy at his sides.
"I sat on this sofa today; it did me no harm." His voice came out even, if a little lifeless.
Granger approached the sofa and cast another charm, working with enviable ease and precision as she consulted the various diagnostic runes around the piece of furniture.
"It's not offensive dark magic." Her tone lacked the level serenity his Occlumency provided. She sounded irritated, on edge, riled. "Most of what I'll be dealing with here won't be. It's leeching magic, darkness that takes up residence and doesn't let go."
She didn't look at him when she spoke; she merely kept working, delivering her facts with an annoyance coating her academic tone. That might have upset him, irritated him, if not for the forced calm freezing his blood.
She worked for hours. He watched for just as long, standing by the fireplace, back aching and stiff, but somehow unable to move. He had to unclench his fists on several occasions, remind himself to breathe, keep from passing out under the force of so much sustained magic managing his mind.
Slowly, the runes from her diagnostic spell turned purple with more frequency, one by one, as she moved from the sofa, to several books, to a clock, to a desk drawer that kept stinging her, until Granger declared her work done for the day, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from her brow, hair fluffed even bigger than it had been when she arrived.
Draco looked to the clock in the room; it neared seven in the evening. She'd worked through lunch and the end of a normal workday. And he'd occluded straight through all of it, barely moving in hours. His knees ached at the realization.
She looked at him, brows drawn together. She opened her mouth, paused, and then barred her teeth around words she ultimately swallowed back. Draco tensed, prepared to employ however much Occlumency it took to survive this encounter. She pocketed her wand and left through the Floo without a word.
The moment the green light faded, Draco crossed the room in several purposeful strides, throwing open the doors that had remained closed the entire day. They hadn't even made it out of the room she'd been received in.
He strode down the Manor halls, still heavily occluding and only tangentially aware that his father probably expected him to report on what the Ministry had touched. Dimmer still, in a deeper part of his mind and struggling through his occlusion, Draco wondered why removing residual dark magic from furniture was such a problem? Why did his father resist it so much?
He stopped in front of a set of double doors, belatedly realizing where his feet had carried him.
He lifted his hand against the wood, crackling wards stinging at his skin, warning him to keep out, to stay away, shouting that this room was off limits and always would be. But if Draco closed his eyes, he could see through the magic, through the ebb and flow of it, the push and the pull. He could slip between the charms and sidestep the hexes, wedging himself between the wards and into the drawing room he hadn't seen in years. He could imagine it, perfectly, just as it had been that day.
Heavy drapes, deep purple walls. A shattered chandelier and carpets drenched in blood. Where everything changed, the first time he'd almost said no.
A surge of fear seared his lungs. With a deep breath through his nose, Draco forced it away, forced it down, froze it out.
"Draco?" his mother's voice pulled him from the door. He let his hand, prickling and stinging, drop from the wood. Narcissa stood next to him. She reached out, a brief touch of her hand against his own before she retracted. "How was it?" she asked.
Draco respected his mother too much to laugh at her; he just looked at the door next to them. They both knew what lived on the other side.
"Fine, Mother."
His mother's eyes were blue, disbelieving. Her eyes surprised Draco sometimes, so used to his own shade of gray, almost identical to his father's. Why couldn't he have inherited hers instead? She watched him, a touch of a frown curling at her lip. He knew she saw his occlusion.
"And you?" she asked. "How are you?"
"Fine, Mother," he repeated, voice sounding flat even to his own ears.
"Your father wishes to speak with you." She reached her hand out again, not making contact, merely an attempt at a gesture. "Are you available now?"
No.
"Yes, Mother."
He let her steer him away, through the halls of his childhood home, clinging to his Occlumency with every shred of mental energy he had left.
—
Thank you for reading! I live mostly on AO3 and tumblr under the name 'mightbewriting' (no 'i'). Find me in either of those places for earlier updates or to chat!