Rating: PG at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you.
Spoilers: Currently, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Again, this will rise.
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and . If you're interested, please let me know.
Summary: Draco is visited by an uneasy dream and prepares for his departure to Platform 9 ¾.
Disclaimer: All characters are created by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful writer whose works I greatly enjoy. I have borrowed them for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author Note: Some information double-checked through the Harry Potter Lexicon.
Part 5: The Journey Begins
A month and a day went by between Draco's trip to Diagon Alley and the day the Hogwarts Express was due to leave the station. One might wonder exactly what Draco did in the interim. The answer was simple: he perfected the art of boredom mixed with creeping paranoia.
Everything at home seemed just a bit annoying to him. If the house elves brought dinner too quickly, he complained that they were probably throwing things together slap-dash in the kitchen and the food would suffer. If it was too slow, they were lazy loafers. There was no middle ground for Draco. The same was true of the weather: too bright, too gloomy, too warm, too cold, too stiflingly close or too blusteringly windy. Nothing seemed quite right, most likely because he was perpetually swinging back and forth between frenzied anticipation and cold dread about his first year at Hogwarts.
Time seemed to crawl by, and Draco took to getting up late and going to bed early in an effort to make the time go faster, but it didn't work well. He kept having bizarre, unpleasant dreams. Every fear he managed to pretend didn't exist by daylight ran rampant through his subconscious by night. He dreamed that he failed the Sorting entirely and was chucked back onto the Hogwarts Express, which took him back to London where his parents refused to admit that he was their son. Another time, he had a nightmare that everyone at the school already knew everything there was to know about magic and he was the slowest, dumbest of the lot. Bad dreams about mudbloods throwing apple cores at him in the dining hall, that Pansy Parkinson was entirely covered in warts and had breath like a garlic-covered rotten egg, that he couldn't get his broomstick off the ground, that he would fail every class and be publicly thrown out on the front lawn and carried away in a dustbin by the gigantic caretaker, that he would be a friendless nobody with no talent—at one point he even dreamed that he was the ugliest boy in school, though he awoke from that one scoffing loudly. Regardless, when morning came, he would shove all of it to the back of his mind and try to act as nonchalant as possible.
It was, of course, an act and nothing more. Draco was an arrogant brat, but he was painfully aware that he was entering an entirely new sphere where perhaps he wouldn't be as worshipped and appreciated as he was at home, that he might even prove to be somewhat less than perfect. He knew what happened to things that were less than perfect in the Malfoy home, and realistically he couldn't expect himself to fare any better than his mother's once favorite china that had gone out of fashion or his father's highly expensive dress robes that were no longer the height of style.
As much as the days dragged along, time did move. Throughout August, Draco saw nothing of his father. It still itched at the back of his mind that he had absolutely no idea where all the money that made up the Malfoy fortune came from, and he even attempted broaching the subject with his mother at dinner one night.
"It is earned," she told him firmly. "That is all you need to know."
He didn't bring up the subject again.
The night of August 31 was almost entirely sleepless for Draco. When he did drift off, he had a particularly disturbing nightmare, one entirely unlike the others that had plagued him for a month.
He was standing in front of a mirror, and it reflected nothing but darkness behind him. His first impression was that he looked extremely handsome, as usual. As he watched, his image began to change very subtly. He grew taller, older, but it was more than that. It was hard to place exactly what was happening, but his eyes seemed to become lusterless, and the color in his face slowly drained away. His posture changed, looking somehow broken, as though the world rested on his shoulders.
"Don't be a damn fool," the image said to him. "You're a Malfoy. You know what you are. Don't take less than what you want, and don't let anyone else decide your path. She'll destroy you if you let her."
"Who?" he demanded.
"You'll know," the other Draco said.
"Oh, come off it!" he yelled, stamping his feet. "If you're really me, quit talking like one of those babbling, half-witted seers and get to the point already!"
"I've said all I can," the image, which was starting to frighten him with its drained pallor and hollow eyes, said as it turned to go.
"You haven't said anything! Who is 'she?'" Draco demanded of the retreating form which was rapidly being swallowed up by mist.
"Master…" said a tentative voice as he was gently shaken.
"Don't you dare be ambiguous!" yelled Draco, sitting up sharply. "I'll… oh. It's morning."
"Yes," said Dobby as he backed away from the bed. "Did young master have a bad dream?"
"No," Draco lied. "I'm perfectly fine."
"That is good, for your mother wishes you to meet her downstairs for breakfast in five minutes," Dobby said, backing towards the doorway.
"Five minutes!" Draco shrieked. "I can't be ready in five minutes!"
"Sir, I was trying to wake you, but you was sleeping so sound that I could not do it," Dobby said, still inching his way towards the door.
With a loud yelp, Draco grabbed his bedroom slippers from beside the bed and hurled them at Dobby's head (which the elf nimbly ducked, having become quite used to this reaction), then sprinted to his closet and dressed at top speed. He ran a comb through his hair, shoved his feet into his shoes, which were thankfully already polished, and scrambled out the door, down the stairs, and into the dining room without even a pretense at moving silently and elegantly. It's even possible that he tripped over his own feet as he entered the dining room, nearly winding up sprawling across the floor, but as his mother did not appear to notice, perhaps it never happened at all.
"Good morning," Narcissa said formally, dabbing a napkin to her lips and gesturing for a house-elf to remove her breakfast tray.
"Good morning, Mother," he replied with the customary bow before sitting opposite her at the long table and beginning on a hard boiled egg, though frankly he lacked any appetite.
"Did you sleep well?" she asked, and her tone seemed almost nervous, if that were possible in a Malfoy.
"Reasonably well," Draco said evasively, nearly drowning his egg in salt as he forgot what he was doing. He preferred not to think about the haggard version of himself in the dream-mirror or its annoyingly cryptic warning.
Narcissa nodded absently as she took a delicate sip of tea. Draco, for his part, took a bit of his over-salted egg and gagged wildly, causing his mother's eyebrows to fly nearly to her hairline and a pair of house-elves to appear and whomp the young master repeatedly on the back. After downing half a glass of water, Draco tried very hard to continue on as though everything were perfectly normal.
"Yes, well," Narcissa said, regaining composure. "I suppose you may have been wondering why you have not yet purchased a wand."
"It crossed my mind," Draco said. It was a complete understatement. The thought of why he was still wandless shot through his head several dozen times a day.
"The reason is simple: you already have a wand," Narcissa said, returning her cup to its saucer without the slightest clatter. Damn, Draco thought. I've really got to learn how to do that… then her words hit him.
"I do?" Draco asked.
"You were willed one just prior to your birth," Narcissa explained. "My father, your grandfather, Cygnus Black, was on his deathbed while I was expecting you. He insisted in his will that, rather than having his wand buried with him, it should be passed on to his grandson. Of course, this was under condition that you were a boy. If the heir had been a female, the wand would have passed to the first son of your Aunt Bellatrix, though she remains childless."
Draco's mind was reeling. It was usually considered a great moment in a young wizard's life when his wand chose him, or vice versa as there seemed little difference. At least that's what the books he'd read said. Now, he was finding out that he'd have to make do with a hand-me-down wand from a grandfather who'd had the temerity to die before ever meeting him, and who even appeared to have harbored suspicions that Draco might turn out to be girl.
"You look displeased, Draco," his mother said, her tone unreadable.
"I'm just finding it rather disturbing that most of the major decisions about my life occurred before I turned one year old," Draco said bitterly. "I've got a wand and a wife I didn't know anything about. Are there any other surprises I should know about?"
Narcissa Malfoy straightened her already perfect posture until she seemed almost supernaturally rigid, and Draco knew at once he'd overstepped considerably.
"You will be proud to carry the wand of your pureblood ancestor," she said firmly, and it had the flavor of a command from a queen.
"Yes, Mother," he said, wondering what he would do if the wand refused to work for him.
She paused significantly, then relaxed her shoulders so slightly that it was almost imperceptible. She beckoned to a house-elf who scurried forward carrying an elongated box of black satin with a green velvet band across it. The elf presented this to Draco, who took the box warily. Cautiously, he slipped the velvet from the box and opened the hinged lid to find a wand inside lying on a bed of emerald silk. If looked fairly imposing.
"Hawthorn," his mother said, and he was so startled by her voice that he nearly dropped the box. "The interior is unicorn hair."
He continued to stare at the wand as though it might explode at any moment.
"Pick it up!" she said, exasperation coloring her words.
Draco took a deep breath, then gripped the wand carefully in his right hand. At once, he felt something, a sort of charge that zinged from the tips of his fingers and up his arm, connecting to his heart or mind or something that didn't even have a name. Experimentally, he waved the wand through the air, and from its end erupted a flurry of snowflakes that landed gracefully on the table. He smiled, then looked up to find his mother returning the expression.
"I do believe my father's wand will suit you just fine, son," she said, taking another sip of tea. "You'd best see that you're entirely packed. We shall leave in a few minutes."
Draco nodded, not quite trusting himself to talk. He'd done magic before, of course, the accidental sort that all wizarding children did without really meaning to: floating his bear to him in his crib as a baby, dropping a saucepan on a house-elf's head from fifty paces during a tantrum, closing the door when his father was about to go to work for the day and trying to make him stay home. But this… this was the first time he'd done magic on purpose, and the feeling had been exhilarating. Still clutching the wand, he ran from the dining room and up the stairs, once again forgetting about predatory silence and instead laughing exuberantly, the unaccustomed sound echoing off the walls of the Malfoy Manor and making it sound far more cheerful than it had in decades.
Once back in his bedroom, Draco checked his trunk for what might have been the thousandth time. His books, robes, and sundry personal effects were all in order, along with his cauldron. He looked with longing at his Comet 260, resting on the bench at the end of his bed. First years weren't permitted brooms, so it would be a while before he'd be soaring on his old friend again. The thought presented a sharp pain he was unaccustomed to, and he found himself stroking the handle fondly before shaking himself and rolling his eyes at his sentimentality.
He looked around the room. For the previous eleven years, this house and its grounds had been his world. It was the only thing he knew.
If it were possible for a Malfoy to be terrified, Draco would have been. In fact, he may briefly have had a thought skitter through his mind that it would be wonderful to be six years old again and hide in his closet, playing with his Quidditch action figures, which he most certainly did not still have in a box under his bed along with a certain bear that had once had a penchant for floating.
But, Draco was indeed a Malfoy. As he took one steadying breath, he closed his eyes, opened them again, and grinned.
"Hogwarts, be ready. You're mine," he said arrogantly to the empty room, then shut the door, knowing the house-elves would carry his baggage down in perfect condition.