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A week after the funeral, his mother moves out. She doesn’t want the memories, she says. She only stayed because of his father, she says. She is old and tired and wants to spend the rest of her days somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Malfoy Manor has seen Draco through both the best and worst memories of his life. He can’t let it go, and he doesn't understand why Mother is so easily able to. This house, these halls. It is their legacy. The Malfoy legacy. What’s left of it, anyway.
His mother wants nothing to do with being a Malfoy, and Draco—well, Draco is an ex-Death Eater living off the remnants of his family vault. He has no real career, no real social life. People aren’t exactly lining up to befriend him, and the ones that do come knocking, they’re not the sort of people he wants to be befriended by.
Without Mother’s watchful gaze to reprimand him, Draco spends hours wandering through the manor and its many, many rooms. Now that his father is dead, the manor and its contents are his. Now that he is the last Malfoy in this house, it is his duty to take care of it.
Slowly, Draco picks his way through the rooms. He gathers up the cursed objects and the vile books. He has his house-elves drop them off at the Auror office and gets a concerned letter from Harry Potter of all people in return.
Do you need help going through it all? Potter writes. I know it can be a lot.
Draco watches the letter burn in his fireplace. As if he needs help from the great Auror Harry Potter to do a bit of spring cleaning. Though he supposes Potter may have a bit of experience in this area—everyone knows Potter’s been living in the Black residence, wherever it is, and would have gone through this same thing after his godfather died.
Still, that doesn’t mean Draco needs any help. He’s an adult wizard capable of managing his own household.
Mother comes to visit on a weekly basis. Just to check on him, she says. Just to make sure he’s doing alright.
Her cool eyes survey the increasingly empty state of the rooms with a stone-faced expression. If she disapproves of his actions, she keeps her thoughts to herself. He’d thought it might be a relief to her, to see that he’s making something of his time here. That he’s making an effort to reclaim the manor for them, to make their home somewhere worth living again.
Draco shows her the clean rooms, the boxes of dangerous objects that will make their way to the Ministry for disposal. He tells her of his plans to redecorate and cleanse the bedrooms of dark magic.
“I’ve set up a guest room for you at the new house,” his mother says, kissing his cheek in farewell, and that’s how he knows she will never live in this house again. Not even for him.
His life becomes routine after that. With nothing else to do, he focuses his limited energy on cleaning the house. There are plenty of rooms to choose from, and some of them even take days to complete. But as large as the manor is, there are not enough rooms to last forever.
Eventually, Draco is left with only the attic.
“Why don’t you write Astoria a letter?” his mother had pleaded with him yesterday. “Such a sweet, lovely girl. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Draco had responded, purely to soothe the lines of worry pressed to the sides of his mother’s eyes. Astoria is no longer a girl. And he is no longer the young, naive boy who might have liked to marry her.
He hoped that by his mother's next visit, she would have some other exciting news in her life that would help her forget about his.
His life, which has now been reduced to the attic space of his childhood home.
It takes Draco hours to even locate the opening. He has never set foot in the attic. No adolescent curiosity had ever driven him to seek it out. What was the existence of a dusty, boring attic compared to his luxurious bedroom filled with toys, the gorgeous gardens where he could fly his broom, or the dining room where his mother would spoil him with extra puddings?
The attic is forgettable. So forgettable, in fact, that Draco wonders if it was made that way on purpose.
So he questions the elves. They obey him now, as the master of the house. The elves tell him that his father gave clear instructions for the attic to remain untouched, to remain hidden from the other occupants of the house.
Draco braces himself for the worst. Magic so dark that even Mother was not allowed to know of it.
But the attic is not the unfinished, cramped space he expects it to be. It is very clean and very empty. There are a few boxes of his father’s old school things; some textbooks and an empty potions kit.
There is also a diary.
There is a name on the front that Draco doesn’t recognize. Tom Marvolo Riddle. Inside, the pages are thick and smooth, unlike any paper Draco has ever seen, but they are also empty. There is not a single word written in the diary, not even in his father’s familiar scrawl.
But that is not what catches his attention. Draco can feel something emanating from the pages, a thick, cloying feeling that makes his skin crawl.
He slams the diary shut, his heart pounding in his chest. He doesn’t know what this magic is, but—
“No,” he says aloud. Defiance spoken into the silent room.
This is not who he is. He will not be like his father. He will send this diary to the Ministry along with everything else.
Draco takes the diary downstairs. He places it on top of a box, leaves it there while he makes some tea to ease his nerves. He tells his house-elf to fuck off when it peeks its great big head in, and grits his teeth when its large eyes water in hurt. Bloody things are too easily offended.
While his tea steeps, Draco’s gaze is continually drawn back to the diary. The innocuous leather cover taunts him. It doesn’t feel safe, leaving it out there in the open. It doesn’t feel like a good idea. If this diary is as dangerous as he suspects it may be, he should secure it better.
Once the tea has been consumed and his breathing has slowed enough to resemble some form of normality, Draco picks up the diary and examines it, trying to decide the best way to lock it up. In the family safe, perhaps. Then he could write Potter to come and pick it up. That would make the heroic idiot happy.
Draco flips the diary over and glances over the backside. He tests the weight in his hands and opens it back up. The pages are blank. There’s nothing there, not even a stray hair or speck of dust.
He closes the diary again and stares at the front. The name is vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite place it. He runs his finger over the embossed letters, and feels a jolt of magic that makes his whole arm tingle.
He drops the diary like it’s burned him, and backs away. He can feel the blood rushing in his ears. What the fuck is this thing? Why does he keep touching it?
Draco calls one of his elves to bring him a pair of dragon-hide gloves. He gingerly grasps the book with both hands and brings it upstairs. He leaves it in the safe in his father’s study, triple checking the locks to make sure that they’re set correctly.
“Do not touch the safe,” he tells the elves. “Do not let Mother inside the study.”
That night, Draco’s sleep is devoid of rest. He sleeps, maybe even dreams, but he remembers nothing in the morning. He doesn’t feel as though he slept at all—he might as well have laid down and blinked, for all the good it’s done him.
It’s the diary, he’s sure of it. It’s done something to him.
Draco staggers to the bathroom and stares at his reflection in the mirror. There are purple circles under his eyes, but those are normal. His fine blonde hair has begun to thin at the top, the line of it receding with each passing year. He tears off the buttons of his sleep shirt and shoves his pyjama bottoms to pool at his ankles.
His arms and stomach, once toned by Quidditch and later thinned by fear of the Dark Lord’s wrath, have now gone soft, made weak by complacency and a general attitude of despair. After all, it did not matter what he looked like when no one was looking at him.
He looks exactly the same. There is nothing physically wrong with him. But as he continues to stare, to meet the wide, fearful eyes of the Draco in the mirror, he thinks—
“You need to write to Potter,” he says to himself. “You need to go write to him.”
Draco goes to his father’s study to retrieve parchment with the Malfoy letterhead. He opens the drawer where the ink and quills are kept and sets them on the desk. He settles in his father’s chair and smooths a hand across the blank, empty page of Tom Riddle’s diary and—
And then he’s writing, black script flowing from the tip of his quill. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear the sudden blurriness from his vision, but then there are words on the page, answering him—
Hello, Draco Malfoy. My name is Tom Riddle.
Draco gasps and drops the quill, splattering ink all over the page. The ink vanishes, swallowed up by the page, by Tom, and Draco shudders.
“No,” Draco mutters, slumping back in his chair. His hand twitches uncontrollably as he reaches for his wand, for the security of his magic. “You’re not real.”
Tom Riddle’s greeting fades away, leaving the diary as pristine as before.
Draco shakes his head to clear the disorientation. He needs to write Potter. That is what he came here to do. He uses his elbow to shove the diary away from him so he isn’t tempted.
Where is the parchment? Draco’s eyes scan the desk for the familiar Malfoy letterhead. He’ll write to Potter and send the missive off with one of the elves to make sure it gets to where it needs to go.
Parchment, parchment, parchment. Where is it?
Draco’s feverish gaze catches on the spotless cream surface of a page. He reaches for the page and sets his quill against it.
You’re very lonely, aren’t you, Draco Malfoy? You could use a friend. Or maybe even more than that. I could be that for you, if you wanted…
He has been feeling lonely. Without his mother in the house, he has no one to talk to except for the elves.
Draco rests his hand on the page. It feels warm, comforting. Like the fleeting touch of Mother’s mouth on his cheek when she comes to see him.
It’s alright to want things. You’ve been alone for so long, and you need someone to take care of you, but it’s difficult to let people in.
“It’s h-hard,” Draco whispers, his throat catching on the words. Mother won’t talk to him about the war, and his friends—they’re not his friends anymore, but even if they were, they haven’t seen the things he’s seen, or done the things he’s done. They never had the Dark Lord living in their house. They wouldn’t understand.
That’s why I’m here. I’m here to understand you, to help you. I can be whatever you need me to be. Do you want me to?
Draco does. He wants to be fifteen again, carefree and assured of his place in the world. He wants someone else to tell him everything is handled and that he’ll be okay.
Ask me, Draco. Ask me to help you.
“Help me,” Draco says obediently, a hint of desperation leaking into his voice as he adds, “Please.”
There’s a brilliant flash of white light, and suddenly Draco finds a boy sitting on his father’s desk. He’s young and handsome, dressed in Slytherin robes with a Prefect’s badge pinned to the left breast. His lips quirk into a bright, boyish smile as he takes in Draco’s shocked expression.
“Hello there,” says the boy, cheerful, sliding from the desk to straddle Draco’s thighs. “Let’s have a look at you,” he continues, settling himself more firmly on Draco’s lap. His finger trails down Draco’s nose, to his jaw, then down the column of his throat. “All undressed for me.”
Draco is too stunned to protest, his hands frozen on the armrests of his father’s chair. The warm weight of the boy on his lap is disconcerting. It doesn’t feel real. Though Tom is warm, he only feels warm where they’re touching. When Tom breathes out, there is no gentle fan of breath against Draco’s cheek, and when Tom shifts his body, the pressure on Draco’s lap remains unmoved.
“It has been a while for you, hasn’t it?” Tom asks, tone light as his head cants to one side, as though Draco will make more sense from a different angle. “This won’t take long.”
Before Draco can ask what that means, Tom descends on him, lips seeking Draco’s out in an insistent, searching kiss. Draco gasps into Tom’s mouth, finally finding the presence of mind to push at Tom’s shoulders. Tom doesn’t budge, though. Instead, hands come up to grip the back of Draco’s head, fingers tangling in his hair to keep him in place.
“There, there,” Tom admonishes him. “Just enjoy it.” That sweet, sinful mouth drags over the line of Draco’s throat, teeth scraping sharply enough that Draco whimpers, his head tipping back in an attempt to escape the sensations.
Tom’s touch is light but insistent as he presses Draco back into the chair, runs pale hands over Draco’s pectorals, following the trail of hair that leads to the waistband of his pants.
“I don’t suppose you could vanish that for me,” Tom comments, wiggling his bum against the trapped swell of Draco’s prick.
Draco shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Just as well,” Tom replies blithely, and lifts his hips up just enough to work Draco’s cock free.
It’s embarrassing, how good it feels to have someone else touching him. There’s a fucking school boy in Draco's lap, hand wrapped around the base of his prick, and he’s harder than he’s been in months.
Tom kisses him again, and it’s a good distraction. Draco grips the soft fabric of Tom’s robes, clinging to them as Tom jerks him off a little faster.
“Have you ever fucked a man?”
Draco’s eyes fly open. “N-no,” he splutters, more indignant than he would have liked.
Tom’s answering grin is positively delighted. “You’ll like this,” he promises, and suddenly the remaining barrier of Tom’s pants and trousers have vanished and Draco’s prick is sinking into the tightest heat he’s ever known.
“Oh,” Tom moans, head thrown back as he impales himself, taking Draco into his body as well as any trained Knockturn Alley whore.
Draco is shaking so badly he thinks he might die of heart failure. This boy can hardly be older than fifteen, and now he has Draco’s cock up his arse.
It should hurt, Draco thinks wildly, it should hurt to do this with no preparation. But Tom only moans louder, bouncing himself on Draco’s lap, bum slapping lewdly against Draco’s thighs, and it feels fucking incredible.
It is the best sex Draco has ever had, which is pathetic, it should upset him, but he can barely think past the pleasure. He can barely hold a thought in his head that isn’t about the delicious feeling of his prick repeatedly swallowed by Tom’s perfect hole, or the greedy bite of Tom’s teeth on his neck and shoulders.
“That’s it,” Tom pants encouragingly, grinding down on Draco’s lap, one hand pressed to Draco’s chest for balance. “Fuck me.”
Draco does. His hands move on their own. They find Tom’s hips and haul him up, guide him to rest onto the desk so that Draco looms over him. Tom’s ankles are propped on his shoulders, pale thighs spread wide to reveal the obscene stretch of his hole around Draco’s cock.
It’s filthy. It’s depraved. Tom is young enough to be his son.
But he’s so beautiful. Tom is beautiful, he is gorgeous and untouched by the ruins of the Malfoy reputation. Tom is the only beauty that Draco has touched in a long, long time.
So Draco fucks him. He pounds into Tom’s lovely, lithe body with hard, powerful strokes. Tom keeps a firm grip on his forearms. His cheeks are blotchy with red arousal, his eyes fierce and somehow angry as they bore into Draco’s.
“Yes,” Tom hisses. “Do it.” Fingers clamp down on Draco’s faded Dark Mark with a vengeance, their nails digging in hard enough to draw blood.
Draco cries out when he comes, his body curling in on itself, back hunched over Tom’s smaller form. The shackle of Tom’s hand around his mark is suddenly agonizing, but his release is so overwhelming that the pain is quickly lost to him.
It’s confusing. Draco’s vision swims with black spots. His limbs are heavy, weak, like his orgasm has drained him of all his energy. He withdraws and staggers backwards, collapsing into the chair. Tom stands and follows him. He rests a hand against Draco’s cheek, a mocking gesture of affection.
“You were mine from the start,” Tom says, satisfied, his voice distant from Draco’s ears. The tip of his index finger taps Draco’s mark, sending a fresh, familiar wave of pain through Draco’s body.
A terrible horror settles over Draco, a feeling that’s a million times worse than the pain.
“It’s almost a shame to kill you, but I think it’s better this way, isn’t it?” Tom rests a hand on Draco’s shoulder. His hand is heavier now, more solid than before. “No more pain, no more disappointment. Your poor old mother won’t have to visit this dreadful place anymore.”
Draco tries to speak, to call out for help, but he can’t. His head feels like it’s going to explode. Tom leans down, his face close enough to Draco’s that their noses almost touch.
“Don’t worry, Draco. You’ll be with your father soon. I’m sure he’ll be very happy to hear what you’ve done in his absence.”
The last thing Draco hears is a deep, guttural laugh, and then his vision goes black.