The narrow streets of Knockturn Alley were as stinky, dark, and shiver-inducing as ever. With his hood pulled low and his shabby cloak dragging slightly over the cobbled ground, Draco moved forward, manoeuvring through huddles of beggars and thugs. His steps—neither too fast nor too slow—faded into the din of muttering drunks and haggling witches.
He'd been planning this trip for weeks. It was now the seventh of August, and Ruth had officially come of age. There was no room for further delays—Draco needed to learn what was happening in Wizarding Britain, gather information about his parents, and obtain introductory textbooks for Ruth, along with a guide to the Fidelius Charm for himself. But the trip was dangerous: there was no way of knowing if Yaxley had already succeeded in overtaking the Ministry. Although... Did it even matter? Draco's enemies came from all sides, and none would hesitate to kill him.
It went without saying that getting caught was not an option.
Slowly, Draco made his way toward the same second-hand bookstall his father had pointed out years ago.
"That's where the likes of Weasley get their books," he'd said.
What would his father say now, if he knew what his son was doing? Draco didn't want to know.
The witch behind the stall greeted him with a toothless smile. Draco did his best not to sneer in disgust. His Polyjuiced hand, now old and wrinkled, hovered over a pile of tattered textbooks. Their spines were stripped, the covers filthy and bent, but that was of little concern. He wasn't picking out a birthday gift—merely fulfilling his end of the bargain. Strictly speaking, there was no obligation to do even this much. However, Ruth had given him books that brightened his long, dull hours at the farmhouse. Even though they were unsolicited, Draco certainly didn't want to feel indebted to her for that.
Absentmindedly, he thumbed through the first-year textbooks, keeping an eye on his surroundings. All was clear, or so it seemed. Draco began looking for a book on protective charms.
Time was running out. He had maybe twenty minutes left before the Polyjuice wore off, and the nondescript face he wore—features that probably belonged to their muggle landlord's late father—would melt back into his own.
Draco's hands continued to sift through the mountains of books until he found what he needed. Buried at the bottom of a crumpled cardboard box was a book on protective magic. His eyes scanned the contents. There, in the advanced section, was a chapter on the Fidelius Charm.
Hoping the book was any good, Draco counted out the Knuts and tossed the coins into the witch's eager hands. Without wasting another moment, he stashed the books in his Transfigured bag and moved on to the next stall, where a bucket of newspapers caught his eye.
Draco grabbed a handful of the latest Daily Prophet editions and quickly sifted through the pile. Headlines leaped out at him:
SCRIMGEOUR STEPS DOWN.
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT FROM THE UPCOMING BIOGRAPHY OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE.
TRAGEDY STRIKES LESTRANGE AND MALFOY FAMILIES.
WANTED FOR QUESTIONING ABOUT THE DEATH OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE.
MUGGLE-BORN REGISTER.
Pictures on the pages depicted Pius Thicknesse addressing the crowd with vacant eyes, family portraits of the Dumbledores, the Lestranges, the Malfoys, and, lastly, a photo of Potter—the signature dumb look plastered on his scarred face. Draco's gaze lingered on the faces of his parents.
It appeared that a lot had happened since his disappearance. He would read it all later. Draco paid for the papers and was about to stow them into his bag when another headline drew his attention.
Hmm, that was interesting.
SEVERUS SNAPE APPOINTED HEADMASTER.
The wheels of Draco's scheming mind began to turn, but just then his thoughts were interrupted by a scream ringing across the alley. He jerked his head to the left and saw a woman in blood-stained clothes, half-running and half-limping, clearly out of breath. Two masked Death Eaters followed her lazily, not bothering to quicken their pace. One of them brandished his wand and cast a hex. With a cry, the woman fell to the ground. Her outstretched hand grabbed Draco's shoe.
"Help me." She looked up at him with pleading eyes. "Help me!"
Draco's heart raced. Panic rose in his chest as he watched the approaching black cloaks. His eyes flickered between them and the woman. This was not supposed to happen. This was not—
Gritting his teeth hard, Draco forced himself to stay calm. There was only one way to handle this situation.
With a look of contempt, he shook his foot, freeing his shoe from her hand.
"Get away from me, mudblood," he hissed.
Not chancing a look at the Death Eaters, Draco turned and walked away. Rounding the corner, he could hear the woman's agonised screams. And even after he'd Apparated away, they still echoed in his ears.
TRAGEDY STRIKES LESTRANGE AND MALFOY FAMILIES
Mere days ago, the wizarding world was shocked to learn of a brutal attack that claimed the lives of the entire noble House of Lestrange, as well as the life of the young heir to the noble House of Malfoy. Authorities believe the deadly assault was orchestrated by the notorious terrorist group, known as the Order of the Phoenix. Among the victims are Bellatrix Lestrange, her husband Rodolphus Lestrange, his brother Rabastan Lestrange, and a seventeen-year-old Draco Malfoy.
Draco hadn't expected to find anything about his parents' reaction to his supposed death, but he still looked for it. The absence of any information whatsoever made him feel relieved and disappointed all at once.
So, they blamed the explosion on the Order. How predictable. Draco had thought they would, yet he hadn't been able to quiet his paranoia-ridden mind. They know. They know. They know. But they didn't know. If they'd known, his parents would've been featured in the Daily Prophet obituary alongside him. So, really, he should've been grateful for the lack of news about them. For both that and the defamation of the Order.
Accusing the Order seemed to be the growing trend. Draco might have found it funny that they pinned Dumbledore's death on Potter—of all people—had it not spoken volumes about the Dark Lord's iron grip on Wizarding Britain.
With the Ministry effectively in the Dark Lord's pocket, the world felt much more dangerous.
The first thing Draco did after returning from his trip to Knockturn Alley—aside from reading the newspapers—was dive frantically into the book on protective enchantments and study the Fidelius Charm.
Meanwhile, Ruth was engrossed in the first-year textbooks he'd brought her, jumping from one book to another. Hogwarts: A History, understandably, had been discarded the moment she laid eyes on the title. Honestly, Draco didn't know why he'd bothered to buy it.
Only after several days of trial and error, standing behind the thick magical layers of the Fidelius Charm, reinforced by various other protective enchantments, Draco was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief and regain his fragile sense of safety.
It was then that he decided to take on the role of a tutor.
With Flint's and Bole's wands in hand, he and Ruth went outside. The first spell he wanted to teach her was the first spell taught at Hogwarts—the Levitation Charm. There were no feathers in sight, but a plucked dandelion would do just fine. Draco placed it on the bare ground and gave Ruth a nod to begin.
"Wingardium Leviosa," she said hesitantly, swishing Bole's wand.
As Draco had expected, the dandelion didn't move.
"No, no, no," he drawled. It was his turn to correct her now. "First, you need to say it with confidence. And second, you're getting the wand movement wrong."
Draco demonstrated the proper way with his own wand—a swish and flick. The dandelion lifted off the ground, hovering for a moment before gently landing again.
Ruth tried once more, copying his movement, and almost got it right. He kept correcting her until it was impeccable. Yet, the dandelion remained stubbornly in place. Draco frowned. What else was missing? Her pronunciation didn't seem to be the issue.
"Try this one," he said, tossing her Flint's wand.
Ruth caught it and tossed Bole's wand back to him.
This time, when she cast the spell, the flower moved a little to the left but remained on the ground all the same.
Ruth continued to struggle with the spell for the next hour.
It could be that the Death Eaters' wands simply refused to respond to a muggleborn witch. The obvious test would be to give her his own wand, but Draco immediately dismissed this idea. It was his wand, his most personal possession. Furthermore, he was a Death Eater himself, technically, so it couldn't make much of a difference.
Keeping these thoughts to himself, Draco watched Ruth fail over and over and over again.
... A revaluation of all values: this question mark, so black, so huge that it casts a shadow over the man who puts it down...
...This little essay is a great declaration of war; and regarding the sounding out of idols, this time they are not just idols of the age, but eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork: there are no idols that are older, more assured, more puffed-up—and none more hollow. That does not prevent them from being those in which people have the most faith...
Draco knew now what Ruth was trying to achieve by getting him to read Nietzsche. She wanted him to re-evaluate his whole belief system, to challenge everything that appeared obvious to him, to inspect the very foundations of his identity. He could do that; uncovering the truth was something he endorsed, even if Nietzsche claimed its value was ambiguous, and even if Draco himself deemed the task superfluous in his case. But why, oh Merlin, did Ruth assume that the conclusions he'd draw after the reassessment would fall in her favour?
Before Draco Malfoy could, on Nietzsche's cue, embark on a journey of demolishing his supposed idols, he first needed to determine if they were idols at all. That's why it wasn't a hammer he held as he stood at the edges of his psyche—it was a feather duster.
Questioning every single belief was a major undertaking that could take years. He chose instead to start with something practical—at least in his circumstances—something that had been on his mind a lot lately.
What were his beliefs about muggles? And what evidence supported these beliefs?
One: muggles were filthy and disgusting.
Two: muggles were weak and useless.
Three: muggles were stupid and ignorant.
There were more, for sure, but these were the main ones.
Draco could reluctantly admit he no longer believed in the universal nature of the first statement. Based on his earlier observations, it could be deduced that muggles, not unlike wizards, varied widely in terms of hygiene and neatness. The squalid conditions of poorer muggles could not be extrapolated to all of them.
With no muggles around for a comprehensive intelligence assessment, the obvious next step would be to inspect... well, the obvious. If there was one thing not even the fiercest muggle-lovers dared to dispute, it was this: muggles were magicless. When stripped of their crude weapons, they were powerless and weak at their core.
The blood that ran their veins might not have been muddy or dirty, but it was still plain. That same plain blood ran the veins of muggleborns as well.
Plain blood. Magicless blood. Weak blood.
The subject was ever-present in Draco's mind, even as he kept practicing his aim, leaving more and more holes in the wooden panels. Now that they were marked with ten concentric circles, drawn with something called a "marker", his progress could actually be measured. Ruth was never far away, attempting for the umpteenth time to cast the Levitation Charm. Every day, they trained—neither willing to be the first to head back to the house, both standing firm against the harsh winds of the approaching autumn.
Bang. A bullet tearing through the seventh circle.
Swish and flick. The dandelion rising a few millimetres.
Draco didn't understand how anyone could be in favour of mixing muggle and magical blood. If the Order had their way, half of the children born to magical families would be Squibs. Diluting magical blood simply didn't make sense!
Bang. A bullet hitting the sixth circle.
Swish and flick. The dandelion wobbling upward to hand level before plummeting back down.
The purer the blood, the more powerful the wizard. There was plenty of evidence to support this, Draco was sure.
Bang. The fourth circle.
Swish and flick. A small rock twitching on the ground.
To start, all the greatest wizards in history had been purebloods. The Dark Lord, Dumbledore, Grindelwald, the Founders...
Bang. The fifth circle.
Swish and flick. The rock rolling over twice.
Hogwarts students represented yet another pattern. From his observations, muggleborns often struggled to keep up with purebloods academically. Except Granger. Despite ridiculing her as the most obnoxious swot in Hogwarts history, Draco could hardly deny her competence. Still, that bushy-haired case was so exceptional, so glaring, so rare that he felt there had to be magical blood in her lineage somewhere. For all he knew, she could've been adopted.
Bang. The third circle.
Swish and flick. The rock shifting slightly.
Not twenty feet away stood another blazing example. After practicing for two weeks, Ruth was still struggling to lift a single rock. Her failure to master the simplest spell only proved Draco's point: muggles were weak, and so were their "magical" offsprings.
Bang. The third circle.
Swish and flick. The poor rock quivering but refusing to leave the ground.
That magical explosion must have been a one-time fluke; it didn't at all speak to her ability to defeat the Lestranges. Surely, there were other explanations for the phenomenon. Perhaps, the place itself was magical, one of those hidden ancient sites. Or maybe it happened on a special day, not unlike Beltane or Samhain.
Bang. The first circle.
Swish and flick. Nothing.
Draco met Ruth's hard look with a triumphant one. That right there was exactly why wizards were inherently superior to muggles. While wizards could learn to use any muggle invention, muggles could never, in a hundred years, learn to harness magic.
He took a final glance at his perfect shot, turned the safety on, and walked over to where Ruth was standing, muttering as she shoved her unruly hair behind her ears.
"I see you're all prepared to take on any number of dark lords," he said.
Ruth squinted, daring him to say anything else. Draco simply smiled.
"I am not giving up on my plan." There was an edge to her voice. "Even if I can't learn magic, I am still going after Death Eaters. With guns, and torches, and spikes. I'll enlist the damn Wardens if I have to."
Well, that last part was worrying.
On his post-win high, Draco felt inclined to indulge in a few magnanimous acts of kindness.
"Since you're so dead set on killing people," he said, "maybe you'll have better luck with duelling."
They moved to the barn, where Draco—with a flick of his wand—stuffed a ragged sack full of mouldy hay and fastened it to the ceiling with a rope.
"This is your enemy," he said. "On my mark, you will try to Stun it. Like that."
Draco thrust his wand forward, uttering the incantation. A ball of red light struck the sack, sending it flailing backward. With a smug grin, he watched as it swayed back and forth before settling into its original position.
"Now, I assume you've read about the Stunning Spell?"
"Of course I have." Her words dripped with acid.
"Then don't let me keep you waiting."
Her wand movement was flawless and pronunciation precise as she cast the spell. But nothing happened. From her lack of hesitation and her unsurprised expression, Draco inferred that this wasn't the first time Ruth had attempted this particular spell.
Coming to stand right behind her, Draco whispered in her ear, "I hate to break it to you, but real Death Eaters are somewhat tougher than a sack of hay."
With a snarl, Ruth threw her wand away. It disappeared between the dried-out stacks of hay.
She turned to face him, lifting her sharp chin as their gazes locked. "I can still take you."
Draco smirked. "Right."
Her eyes turned hateful. In a flash, she knocked the wand out of Draco's hand. With a quick, lateral strike, her leg connected with the side of his knee, sweeping his legs out from under him. Draco hit the ground and cursed.
"That," he spat, propping himself up, "doesn't count. I wasn't expecting that."
"And neither will Death Eaters."
Draco narrowed his eyes. "This trick can work exactly once."
"Sometimes, once is all you need. Come on," Ruth said, standing over him. "If you think you can beat me, prove it."
He glared up at her. His lips twisted into a sneer. "I do not hit girls. My parents raised me better than that."
"Of course." She tilted her head mockingly. "They didn't raise you to hit girls. Only to kill them."
Draco's jaw twitched, and his hands clenched into dusty fists. For a second, he felt an almost irresistible urge to hurt her. To beat her to a pulp. To grab her head and smash it against the wall. Then his mind cleared, and he saw her gibes for what they were. A provocation. And a desperate one at that.
With a cooler head on his shoulders, Draco scoffed and got to his feet, shaking off the dirt.
"It's such a cheap bait," he said. "Even for you."
"You supported genocide, and this is where you draw the line?!" Ruth's voice rose a few octaves. Her face grew redder, and her unbrushed hair frizzed in all directions. "You've got to be kidding me."
Draco couldn't lie—it was rather entertaining to see Ruth lose her temper for a change. She'd been sitting too long on the back of her high horse.
"If you're frustrated by your own incompetence," he said, picking up his wand, "don't take it out on me."
With a growling sound, Ruth turned to a wall and kicked a wooden pillar.
The impact sent a shudder through the old structure, rattling the beams above their heads and shaking the dust loose from the rafters.
For a brief, tense moment, there was silence. Then Draco heard the creaking. He barely had time to register what was happening before the ceiling above groaned and splintered.
The beams began to collapse, sending chunks of wood and debris tumbling toward them.
Draco brandished his wand and pointed it at the ceiling.
But before he could do anything, the wreckage froze in mid-air.
Draco blinked and backed away. Only then did he notice Ruth's outstretched hands. A moment later, she carefully lowered them, and the splintered beams and debris were gently placed on the ground.
His eyes widened as he watched her step out of the dust cloud.
"Merlin's beard! What did you do?"
Ruth gazed at the debris in awe, then slowly turned to Draco.
"I think I've just mastered the Levitation Charm."