Competition/Challenge Block:
Written for/Stacked with: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Term 12); Monthly Challenges for All (Year 3)
House/Role: Ravenclaw; Prefect (Hogwarts)
Term (Assignment): Term 12 - Assignment 9
Subject (Task): Games & Sports Task 8 (Write about trying to spell/curse/etc an item).
Word Count: 675 words (per Google Docs)
Summary: Draco wanted to save Astoria, but not with dark magic.
Rated: K+
Genre: General
Warning Tag: Mentions of Blood Curses
Word Count: 675
Originally Written: May 2020
Anything For You
Draco didn't know anything about family curses, much less bloodborne ones, but Astoria's words wouldn't stop racing through his head.
"I love you, Draco. So much so that I cannot keep something about me from you any longer." She bit her lip and her gaze had darted everywhere before meeting his. "My family is plagued with an ancient blood curse. What that means to you could change things, and if it does, I'll understand."
It was a surprise, that was certain. She worked so hard to pull him out of his self-loathing and got him to stop pushing her away only to turn around and say that. It wasn't something he ever expected from anyone, and the lack of knowing what it meant scared him. So, he did what any resourceful person would do in this situation, he researched it.
The Malfoys documented everything the family was involved in throughout the centuries and preserved it all in the endless shelves of the library, so naturally it was the first place Draco looked in order to dig up information his ancestors were bound to write about. Ancient curses sounded exactly like the type of dark magic his family would meddle in, and when he pulled some of the oldest books with yellowed pages from their resting place, Draco wasn't prepared for what he was going to find. His rusty French wasn't enough to deter him from scouring the ancient words or phrases he didn't quite grasp but translated enough of it to move onto the next page.
Dark magic left its mark even in modern times, and countering it was difficult, but as the old language revealed the purpose of these curses (and there were a handful of them that did different things), the more he hoped that what Astoria said was true. Her lineage had a botched curse placed on them, only surfacing sporadically in her family since its inception. But eight generations had passed since the last recording of it, and that alone gave Draco a sense of dread that it meant it was overdue to resurface again.
One of the only promising sources he found was an old ritual spell that bound a person to an object to preserve their life. The instructions on it weren't very clear, and Draco chalked it up to the fatigue and countless hours he spent reading and translating ancient French. He did a copy spell of what he found to a loose piece of parchment and returned the books, satisfied that he found something to help reverse this otherwise impending tragedy.
"Dauthus refinucto," he muttered the words he was certain was a spell under his breath. It was a reoccurring phrase, and what was written after it held promise.
Draco held the decorative hair comb in his hand. He gifted it to Astoria on her birthday and she wore nearly every day since. He had taken it to the jewelers to have it cleaned and repaired when one of the peridots had come loose not too long before Astoria revealed her family secret. He had it back in his possession now but didn't have the nerve to give it back just yet, but it gave him a chance to spell it and to protect her from her family's long overdue tragedy.
"Dauthus refinucto," Draco repeated the words and mimicked the graphs showing the wand movements several times to no avail.
Giving up, he reread the pages in case he missed something only to catch a paragraph he must have overlooked in his tiredness. The ritual spell he found was much darker than a family curse, it was to become immortal.
Draco dropped the pages of text like it burned him, immediately setting them on fire without a second thought. His eyes landed on the hair comb he tried to imbue with dark magic and felt himself grow sick to his stomach. There was no way he could give this back to Astoria now, not after he tainted it.
He thought he found a way...