Shout out to my amazing betas, Amber1015 and ShadowHeart175!
The characters and universe in this work are property of J.K Rowling.
When Draco opened his eyes the next morning, he was filled with a bleak resignation. He had dressed himself for the day before his friends could wake, slipping out of their dormitory to meet Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing. Meeting Draco at the door, Madam Pomfrey gave him a short smile and directed him to have a seat before whisking away. Draco, hands fidgeting, sat on the edge of a bed as he waited for Madam Pomfrey to return with his draught and kicked his feet against the floor as he gazed ahead with a blank stare. She handed the phial off to him with a sympathetic smile and a pat on the shoulder.
"This should last you through this afternoon, Mr. Malfoy. If you should start feeling anxious or panicky, come see me immediately. Do I have your word?"
Draco nodded and tipped back the phial, the effects of the potion as it slid down his throat almost instantaneous. His shoulders slumped, releasing their tension, and Draco was able to breathe more easily as the potion settled in his stomach. He gave Madam Pomfrey a vague smile as he handed the phial back to her and picked up his bag.
"Thank you. I'll see you in Apparition," Draco said softly, and made his way to the Great Hall for breakfast.
He was feeling a muted glow of pleasure to find his friends waiting at the door for him and fell into step with Gregory as they walked toward their table.
"How was it?" Gregory asked him quietly, and though Draco could tell he was only trying to be supportive, his spine still prickled with vague irritation.
"It was fine. Madam Pomfrey's doing well this morning," Draco answered and took his seat at the table, scooping some food onto his plate.
The question that lingered above the five of them weighed heavily on Draco, so he wanted to snap at his friends that, yes, he did take his draught, and what of it? But as soon as the angry thought entered his mind, something softer gently volleyed it back out. Draco soon forgot why he was so angry, the thought slipping through his fingers like water, and resumed his breakfast, quiet among them as he tried to focus on the eggs sitting in a small heap on his plate. Draco had little appetite, but he forced down a few bites of them, as well as a piece of toast, before he abruptly pushed back from the table and excused himself.
What was wrong with him? Draco felt as though he were drifting through fog, unsure of where the ground was solid and clear, or where an obstacle was waiting to trip him up in the darkness. Every feeling was coated in a sort of static, so that Draco couldn't see what was lying at its heart. Everything was too distant, too weak in his mind. Joy, anger, disgust, irritation-they were all blending together into one fuzzed out feeling that Draco couldn't decipher. It took a moment for Draco to realize the Calming Draught was to blame for this, and, try as he might to resent it, the most he could work up was a general sense of disquiet.
Pushing off his efforts to feel, Draco propelled himself down to the potions room early to inspect the new cauldron his mother sent him. He hefted it down off the shelf and sat it at his table, taking a cloth from his potions kit and wiping the inside and outside of the cauldron with thorough vigour. Once that was finished, Draco went through the rest of his kit and examined his materials carefully. Satisfied there was nothing wrong with those either, Draco put them away just in time for the first of his peers to appear. Draco tossed Nott a smile as he took his regular seat at the table across the room, and waved to Pansy when she followed behind him. He was unable to catch Zabini's eye, but this fact did not bother Draco much, as just then Harry slid into the seat next to him and asked why he'd ditched breakfast.
Though the rest of the morning went without incident, Draco still felt that waiting for something terrible to come was almost worse than experiencing it once it did. Draco thought, not for the first time, that if he could feel this much anxiety about it while under the effects of the Calming Draught, he didn't want to experience the paranoia he'd be feeling without it. Draco even made it through lunch without his ham sandwich coming to life and trying to kill him, and so entered his free block without as much as a scratch—a feat that had been nearly impossible for over a week.
Draco followed his friends out into the courtyard by the Great Hall, the cold air nipping at his nose and ears and making him shiver despite the heavy cloak pulled around his jumper. He stopped as he stumbled a bit and looked down, huffing out a little laugh as he realized his shoes were untied. Kneeling down, Draco worked the laces quickly. A strange grating sound bounced off the stone walls of the too-quiet courtyard. Hermione's scream made Draco jerk his head up just in time to see Weasley running at him, but Draco could not pull his wand out before he was bowled over entirely.
"What the hell was that for?" Draco cried as anger lashed out through the fog, but he whipped his head around as a great crash came from the place he'd once been kneeling.
A flying shard of granite grazed Draco's cheek, a thin line of blood running down his face. He laid his hand over it as he turned to Weasley, who was breathing heavily and holding his arm like it hurt. Too many things ran through Draco's mind in that moment, but at the same time it felt entirely devoid of thought. Draco pulled his hand away from his cheek to see the red staining his fingertips and became vaguely aware someone was shouting. He inhaled sharply as someone grabbed his shoulder and jerked him around to find Gregory's worried face staring back at him. His nose was only centimeters away from Draco's, and he became aware that Gregory's mouth was moving.
"What?" Draco shook his head, realizing he'd been asked a question.
"Are you okay?" Gregory asked again, looking him over before pointing his wand at Draco's cheek. "Episkey," he murmured then, and Draco felt the wound close.
Draco then turned to Weasley, who was now sitting up and breathing heavily as Hermione gripped him tightly in a hug, Harry standing at his shoulder and staring down the pile of rubble before them with a vacant expression.
When Hermione had calmed down enough to release Weasley, she took a shaking step toward the pile and pointed her wand at it.
"Reparo," she'd whispered, but stopped the figure from returning to it's perch once it had been repaired.
It was one of the larger gargoyles that stood guard around the school, and as Hermione examined it, a horrified squeak fell from her lips.
"What is it, 'Mione?" Harry asked immediately, taking a step forward to see what she'd discovered.
Draco turned to Weasley then, taking in the sight of the boy on the ground before him. A boy he had always thought would hate him until the day they died. A boy who had just saved his life, putting his own at risk. Draco's hands shook at the thought, and he realized soon after that he would have done the same. He would have risked his life to save Weasley's, a novel idea which shook Draco to his core. It made him want to run, or at the very least question everything he knew, but he did neither one of these.
Instead, he looked into Ron Weasley's eyes and said, "Thank you." Weasley nodded brusquely and looked embarrassed, both of them grateful for something else to pay attention to a moment later when Hermione called them over. What Draco saw made his stomach sink.
The gargoyle, which Draco had previously thought had just broken off after all these years, had been cleanly severed from its post on the rooftop. Someone had sent it hurtling down on purpose.
"Draco," Harry said slowly, as if afraid of how he would react. "I think someone's behind these accidents."
No way! Draco wanted to scream back at him. What led you to that conclusion? Could it be my recent series of peculiar accidents? But he simply nodded, his eyes still on the smooth edge where the stone had been sliced away from its perch.
"We should tell McGonagall," Harry added when no one responded. "Right now. 'Mione, you take Draco somewhere safe, and Greg, Ron, and I will take this up to her office."
Draco could do little more than follow when Hermione nodded and took hold of his hand, leading him down the halls and toward the library as if Draco were little more than a rag doll. Once Hermione had him seated at a table deep in the stacks, Draco was beginning to feel more like himself.
"Who could want to do this to you?" Hermione asked as the silence stretched between them.
"That's what I've been trying to figure out since August," Draco answered offhandedly, the whir of his thoughts too great for him to filter them, but immediately regretted it when Hermione rounded on him.
"Since August? Draco Malfoy, this has been happening to you since then?" She cried with no thought to the fact that they sat in the library. "Why-why have you kept this to yourself? What were you thinking?"
"I wasn't, I guess. I thought they'd get bored if I didn't react to their threats, but I was wrong. I—I have no idea who they could be."
"Then let's start there!" Hermione answered, obviously relishing having a task to focus on, pulling out a piece of parchment. "Tell me what you know about them," she nudged when Draco didn't speak.
"Well, I suppose they must be an Eighth year. They know which dorm room is mine. So maybe they're a boy too?"
Hermione nodded and scribbled down notes, but sat up as she thought more to it and shook her head.
"Maybe not," she answered after a thoughtful moment. "Girls are allowed up the boy's steps to their dorms, remember?"
"Right, then. Well, they must take potions with me! Or at least know someone who does, because they laced my cauldron with Bulbadox Powder."
"That's so terrible," Hermione whispered, but wrote it down anyway. Draco hated the way her eyebrows scrunched together as she worried over him. "Who from that class could want to hurt you? Who could be everywhere you are, and still fade into the background?"
Draco shrugged and rubbed his eyes as he thought it through.
"I don't know. Zabini, maybe? He cornered me one day in the hall and shouted at me, but he…"
Fade into the background… Draco trailed off as clarity hit him, his eyes wide, and his hands groping for his bag. There was only one person he knew of who could have terrorized him so without his knowing. Only one person who had always managed to slip to the back of Draco's mind.
"It's Nott."
"Not what?" Hermione asked, confusion scribbling across her features. "Not Blaise Zabini?"
"No," Draco answered impatiently. "Theodore Nott. Merlin, it all makes sense. He's been there this whole time under my nose. I thought he just didn't want to associate with me now that his father's in Azkaban and I'm—well, you know what I was. I thought he was avoiding me, but it matches together too well. My potions and herbology classes, the access to my dorm, that day coming out of the library!" Draco cried, dragging his hands down his face. "I ran into him, and he snuck that letter into my bag! It's been him all along, how could I have not seen it?"
Draco pushed blindly past Hermione, ignoring her calls for him to come back as he fled the library. Torn between finding Gregory and the others to tell them what he'd discovered and putting a stop to what Nott was doing, he let his feet carry him toward the Great Hall. As if fate had made the decision for him, Draco caught a glimpse of Gregory as he rounded the corner toward the dungeons.
"Gregory!" Draco called as he rushed around the corner just in time to see Gregory disappear once more. "Gregory, wait! There's something I have to tell you!"
Draco ran after him until Gregory finally stopped at a dead end, his back to Draco. Slightly out of breath from his pursuit, Draco frowned and took a step nearer to him.
"Gregory, couldn't you hear me calling you? Why didn't you stop?" Draco shook his head as if to clear it, and as Gregory turned toward him, his face obscured in shadow, Draco could not help but rush to him and throw his arms around the taller boy. "It doesn't matter, I need to talk to you. Harry was right, I just didn't want to tell you. Those accidents the last few days? They weren't accidents at all! Someone has been targeting me since even before Hogwarts, but I've figured it out now. It's Nott, Gregory—can you believe it? This whole time he's been right under my nose! How could I have been so stupid?"
"Yes," Gregory spoke with a voice that was not his own. "How could you have been so stupid?"
"What?" Draco shrank back, stung by his cruelty.
Draco's eyes widened in horror. Under his robes, Gregory seemed to be boiling. The skin of his hands was bubbling, and before Draco's eyes, Gregory's arms shrank violently, as his frame compressed impossibly. It was a grotesque sight as his skin shifted and broke and repaired itself until he stood right at Draco's height, if not a bit shorter. His hair grew lighter, mousier, and his nose more pointed, until the figure that stood before him looked nothing like Gregory at all.
"I was only agreeing with you, like you always expect me to," the high, reedy voice came again, more coldly. "And it's the truth. Despite what you'd like us all to think, Malfoy, you are quite stupid."
Theodore Nott stared back at Draco, eyes cold with a malice that seemed to root Draco's feet to their spot, but as Nott lifted his wand, Draco was faster.
"Flippendo!" Draco cried, slashing his wand through the air.
Nott ducked under the burst of light Draco sent toward him and parried with his own jinx.
Draco threw up a shield that sent the curse rebounding, taking the precious few seconds he had while Nott was distracted to duck into an alcove in the wall, breathing heavily with his back pressed against the wall.
He heard nothing for a few moments and risked a glance around the corner, only to find Nott's wand under his chin and a crazed look in his old friend's eyes.
"Got you," Nott whispered in the space between them.
"Stupefy!"
And Draco saw nothing more.