Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, settings, or worlds within this work, outside of a few OC's. Any recognizable characters are not mine; I'm just playing with them. Harry Potter and its associated works belongs to J.K. Rowling. X-men and Marvel belongs to... er... Disney, I suppose? I am not making any money off of this fan work, nor do I wish to.

AN: I specifically looked up the scene with Buckbeak so I could get one piece of dialogue right. But that's the only direct quote I intend on using from the books at this point in time. I'll put the quote in underlined italics. :P

Chapter 5

Draco

When wizards first began to gain a vague awareness of the existence
of mutants, it was initially believed by muggleborn and pureblood wizards
alike to be a problem confined to muggles. As a result, those few wizards
who did know about mutants did not consider it to be an issue that wizarding
society need concern itself with, and they never bothered to inform their
fellows about anything regarding mutations.

In fact, there were even those who believed that having magic in and
of itself suppressed the X-gene and rendered it null.
This has since been proven false, of course, but this underlying belief has
been thought to be the main reason why it was such a shock when Draco Malfoy
of all people manifested a mutation quite publicly and in such a way that
it was undeniable that his power could not be attributed to normal magic.

This lack of reliable information is, I believe, why Hogwarts at the time was
so woefully under-prepared for dealing with the situation, despite having even
such a talented and experienced wizard as Albus Dumbledore on-staff.

-excerpt from a student essay on the "Great Mutant Reveal of 1993," written for a History of Magic class in 2037.

Morning, September 2, 1993

Draco had finally managed to drift off last night, despite his mild discomfort. He had hoped that getting some sleep would help him settle a bit, but his hopes were in vain. If anything, the vague itch under his skin was more present today than it had been the day before, making everything seem far away and a bit off-kilter.

He decided to ignore it for now, and try to distract himself the same way he always did when strange things happened that bothered him: making fun of Potter where he'd be seen by as many people as possible. So breakfast, then.

And boy did he know the perfect subject to use as ammunition. Fainting because of a Dementor, honestly.

He was trying to pay attention in Arithmancy, really he was. Slytherins always made sure to pay attention in classes taught by teachers they respected, to ensure they received the most out of their education.

Unfortunately, Draco was a bit distracted by the feeling in his hands. Every now and then, it seemed as if his fingers were actually changing, growing smooth and stiff, like if he were to glance down at them they'd be surrounded by glass, or turning into sticks or something-

He discretely chanced a peek at his fingers... Just in case.

Nothing. His fingers looked fine. He relaxed, releasing tension he hadn't even noticed was building, and flexed his hands.

Dementors. It was just the Dementors. He took a deep breath, let it out, and refocused on the class. Just the Dementors.

But what if it's not?

...

One more class, Draco decided.

I'll go through one more class after lunch, and then I'll go to Madame Pomphrey with this and see if she can figure out what's happening to me.

He made sure to keep his mask in place all through lunch. Wouldn't do for the common masses to see that Draco Malfoy was worried about something.

"I bet you're not dangerous at all, are you?" he said to the Hippogriff. "Are you, you great ugly brute?"

As Buckbeak's talons lunged at Draco, he threw his arm up on reflex. Someone screamed. Time seemed to slow. In that moment, Draco felt something shift inside him as that foreign sensation that had been plaguing him for the last several days suddenly pushed up and outward like an explosion.

Draco waited, caught in a flinch, but the expected scrape of talons from an angry Hippogriff never came. Instead, he was greeted by a strange loud silence, as if the whole world was standing still.

Draco looked up.

The dreaded Hippogriff flopped awkwardly in place, its body halfway-encased in...something...from the ground up, its sharp talons blocked from reaching him by a big, lumpy, misshapen block of the same stuff.

The entire class- along with Hagrid- gaped at him, stunned.

Draco swallowed nervously, then looked to his arm. It too was stuck inside the block, but he didn't really feel like he was stuck. He just had to- pull on it a bit- there! His arm was almost free! He slid it out of the block of whatever-it-was, and checked it over-

He stopped in his tracks and stared.

The skin of his entire forearm had turned a pale, icy grey. The same color as his eyes. The same color, he now noted, as the block of whatever had... come out of him? It was beginning to fade back into his normal skin, but that didn't change the fact that the color was there.

The feeling was still there, but somehow it felt a bit more settled than before. His skin was still a bit restless, like he might change at any moment, but it wasn't pushing at him like it was before. It was almost... right, like he was always meant to be like this.

He shouldn't be like this. Should he be like this? What did "like this" mean, anyway?

What in Merlin's name is going on?

Malfoy appeared to be perfectly fine, but they carted him off to see Madam Pomphrey anyway, and the Hippogriffs were put away for the time being. Left to themselves, the class started murmuring to each other.

"Did you see that?"

"Of course I saw it, we all saw it."

"What kind of magic did he do? I've never seen anything like it-"

Harry stared at the large, crystalline silver lump of...stuff resting innocently in the middle of the clearing. Buckbeak was still trapped inside, as the substance making up the block was hard enough that they couldn't just break it down without being at risk of hurting the poor fellow, and the teachers were currently a bit preoccupied with the current situation. Thankfully, his head was uncovered, so even if it took them awhile to fix the problem, he would still be able to eat.

Draco Malfoy created that. That stuff shot out of his skin.

Is Malfoy a mutant, too?

He felt the wind pick up seemingly out of nowhere, and took a moment to check his internal "my mutant power is acting up" indicator. Sure enough, the wind was his. He closed his eyes and focused for a few moments, and gradually managed to calm it down from a lusty gale to a light breeze, though he wasn't able to stop it entirely. The back-and-forth emotions of the last ten minutes had left him reeling. This whole thing was just... incredible. Draco, a mutant, same as Harry?

Ron spoke, bringing Harry out of his thoughts. "What d'you suppose that was? Some Death Eater party trick, I reckon."

Harry glanced at Ron. "I don't think so. I-...I don't think he meant to do it exactly, you know? Besides, do Death Eaters even have parties?"

Ron blinked. "I dunno. S'pose not. At least, not proper parties where you can actually have fun."

Harry laughed.

Far away, across the Atlantic, Cerebro quietly logged another new mutant signature located somewhere in Scotland.

Author's Note:

FINALLY (not that I've really been waiting all that long lol) the chapter I've been waiting to write since I first thought up this fic! Ba-dum-tss

This is the idea that started the whole thing; it was a lot vaguer in my head, but this is the basic concept put into words:

"Draco turns out to be a mutant, and his powers emerge in a very public manner. The wizarding world as a whole (with some outliers) has been mostly oblivious to the mutant issue in the muggle world, and those who were aware of it didn't think it would ever become a wizarding issue.

Then, the discovery is made that mutants are far more prevalent in the wizarding world than anyone could have ever imagined, with several students at Hogwarts alone coming forward about strange powers they've had since some time after coming to Hogwarts. The teachers at Hogwarts are shocked, and everyone has adjustments to make as they come to terms with all the new revelations, and must learn how to accommodate for young teenagers who are dealing with the emergence of volatile, non-magical powers."

That's it. That's the internal prompt I gave myself that kick-started my decision to actually write it.

I have always wondered what Xavier's criteria for mutants coming to his school was. Like, in some versions of X-Men, there's like millions of mutants in the world; how does he decide which ones require a visit from the Professor himself?

Even in X-Men: Evolution. Sure, it starts out with only a few mutants, and they go find each mutant character as soon as they appear. But once the story gets going, there's suddenly mutants popping up all over the place, some of which are in their twenties or later. Why have these mutants never shown up before? Why has Xavier seemingly never tried to contact them? What does Xavier do once mutant-powers emerging becomes a daily or even hourly occurrence? He has a school with his current students to run; when's he gonna have the time to go flying out after every single mutant that pops up?

Also, considering I'm using a combination between X-Men Movieverse and Evolution, there's a lot more mutants in this world than in the show, definitely numbering in the thousands at least, probably in tens-to-hundreds of thousands, potentially even close to a million (haven't quite decided yet) though geographically speaking they're still relatively few and far between. Having Cerebro sound off every single time a new mutant is registered is just not practical at that point.

So for this particular story, my thought is that Cerebro will sound an alert for significantly strong mutant signatures in the nearby area- the type of person who's likely to need help as soon as they can get it and is close by enough that they can deal with it right that second- but the rest of the signatures that it picks up will be logged in files based on country, with the stronger levels marked as more urgent than the weaker ones, for Xavier to look through later.
Then, once he has the chance to go through them, he picks a country and "does his rounds" as it were, checking in on the mutants who logged a higher-level strength reading, to decide whether they're in need of something like his school or not.

This also gives me a reason to put a significant time-delay between Neville, Harry, Cedric, and Draco activating their powers, considering they all would have registered within several months of one another (Luna isn't the sort of mutant who strictly needs help with her powers considering they're mostly passive, though of course she's welcome to join the Xavier Institute if she wants to), and Xavier coming to check on the various mutant signatures that have shown up in and around Scotland. The idea is that Cerebro has picked them up, so all of the Hogwarts mutants are on his list, but he hasn't gotten around to checking in on the mutants popping up in Scotland yet, aside from Rahne.

By the way, I'm new to having a ffn account, so I don't know whether or not the site sends the people following this story a message every time I go back to my previous chapters and fix something.

If that is the case, I apologize for the accidental spam...