Chapter Text
The first spell Draco casts after four months in Azkaban doesn’t work.
He’s standing in the rain at the gates of Hogwarts wearing clothes that still smell like cursefire and a cloak stained with blood. He stares blankly at the ministry-issued wand—hazel, six inches, almost as useless he is—and tries again.
Beside him, Auror Collins snorts. “S’matter, Malfoy? All that inbreeding make you impotent?”
Draco ignores him and focuses on his trunk. It’s the hastily-packed one they seized from him when they arrested his family mid-flight-attempt just hours after the battle. He doesn’t recall what’s inside.
The thestral hitched to his carriage stomps impatiently at the mud. Raindrops catch on Draco’s lashes and blur the edges of the night, dreamlike. Maybe this is another nightmare. Maybe he’ll never get his trunk into the carriage, and he’ll stand right here until the rain washes him away.
When it finally comes, his magic tastes burnt on his tongue. It roars up through him, unfamiliar, barely under his control as it surges into the spell and flings his trunk into the air. He scrabbles for control of it, just barely managing to direct the trunk to the carriage’s back before the spell halts, caught in his palm, burning against the length of the wand until it’s too much, his skin will melt away, he’ll turn to ash if he doesn’t let go. He can hear his father snapping at him to control himself, the shattered remains of accidental magic at his feet.
Collins snorts again as his wand splashes to the ground. His trunk lands with a loud thunk. At least he’s gotten it into the carriage.
“C’mon then, I need a pint and a piss.” The man hobbles into the carriage while Draco retrieves his wand from a puddle. His rotations in Azkaban—more frequent than any other Auror—were one of the few fixtures in the prison. It’s only fitting he would be here with Draco in purgatory.
Collins’ visits to Draco’s cell had also been his only access to updates about his father. He supposes he won’t know anything, now. He stares at his wand, feeling the absence of his magic in it like a hollow, and can see Lucius’s sneer of disappointment. Perhaps not knowing isn’t such a bad thing.
Draco blinks away the rain and looks up at Hogwarts. Its burning windows are a million eyes in the night. A beast waiting to swallow him down, once and for all. I could run, he thinks, irrationally. The tracking spell they put on him would no doubt sound the alarm the instant he left the Hogwarts grounds. Maybe he could live in the Forbidden Forest, a monster among monsters. Would it be so different from Azkaban? A laugh claws out of his throat, sudden and tasting of madness.
Collins’ head reappears. “Something funny?”
“It’s all funny, isn’t it?” Draco’s voice is a rasp. Has he spoken in the last four months? He’s not sure. All that wailing and muttering he could hear in his cell, was it his?
Collins’ lip twitches, but not in amusement. “Get in the damn carriage.”
He gets in.
Collins glowers at him the entire rocking ride to the castle. It is funny, Draco thinks. Sentenced to retake his corrupted seventh year at the site of his greatest shames, surrounded by people with every reason to hate him. The Forbidden Forest is safer. Azkaban is safer.
His laugh returns, bubbling in his chest. He breathes deep. He tries to breathe deep—that laugh seems caught, choking.
The carriage rocks to a halt and the door flies open. The golden light of the entry hall falls, stinging, over Draco. He stares, muscles half tensed in a bolt. Collins grumbles, dragging Draco out by the collar.
The smell hits him first—like first year and missing home and crying quietly into his pillow for three weeks. It almost makes him double over, does have him turning back towards the carriage, to go—where? Back. He has to go back. To before. To not this.
He can’t move forward, but Collins’ hold on him is iron so he’s made to, shoes scraping over the stones. He grabs feebly for his trunk, but Collins just barks at him to leave it.
It’s warm in the castle, hot, stuffy, suffocating—Draco has always been cold, he was meant to be cold, he hasn’t felt warm in—has he ever been warm?
He squirms beside Collins as they move towards the Great Hall. Of course. The Welcome Back Feast will be well underway. The fog of Draco’s panic crystallises down to a single awareness: he looks dreadful. They’d given him back the clothes he’d been wearing at his arrest, battle-dusted and torn, and the cloak is—he sniffs it—musty and moth-eaten. He eyes the blood stain on it with suspicion that was missing when he first received it.
He straightens his robes, then straightens them again. They sit on him wrong, too tight and loose all at once. The fastening at his throat is suddenly choking.
It suits you, he thinks. A rotten suit for a rotten soul.
The doors to the Great Hall are thrown open at their approach. Rather than a packed-full room glaring daggers, though, they are greeted by McGonagall leading a small group of students. Draco’s eyes dart past them, slipping over the glares and dismissive glances, to examine the empty tables beyond. He’s missed dinner, then.
“Ah, Auror Collins. Excellent timing, I was just taking the eighth years to their new dormitory.”
Draco stumbles at Collins’ shove. “Rat’s all yours, Maggie.”
“Minerva.”
“Robards said you already got the run down, so I’ll be off.” Collins glares at Draco. “One toe out of line and it’s right back to Azkaban.”
McGonagall’s frown is severe. “Good evening, Mr Collins.”
He gives a vague salute and starts to turn, but then his eyes pop wide.
“Oi, you’re Harry Potter.”
Potter is, indeed, among the cluster of students, tucked in the shadow of Longbottom—has he always been so small? His wild curls barely pass Longbottom’s shoulder. Draco stares openly at him. The last time he’d seen him, Potter had been expressing his emphatic belief that Draco had been acting under duress, that he had somehow saved Potter with his cowardice. Draco had been just as floored as the Wizengamot, but Potter was standing there before them like a pillar of justice, radiating power and surety. They couldn’t say no.
He doesn’t look like that now.
“Can I just say, thank you for putting that bastard in the ground. It will be an honour to have you on the force.” Collins steps forward with an outstretched hand. Potter looks at it with—Draco knows that look, is intimately familiar with being on the wrong end of it—disgust. He makes no move to shake the man’s hand.
After a painfully stretched silence, Collins shuffles back awkwardly and wipes his hand on his robes. “Right. Late night. I’ll just be off.”
Collins leaves with a final glare for Draco. The silence remains.
Draco dares a second look at Potter through his ragged fringe. He’s staring blankly ahead, carefully apart from the others. Granger and the Weasel are conspicuously absent. He almost looks bored, except his knuckles are white in a fist and Draco can feel a thrum of magic rolling off him, and isn’t that strange?
It has his heart rabbiting, a sudden swell of magic rising in his chest. It’s less a roar this time and more a crashing wave, rushing up his spine and across his shoulders, drawing blood to his cheeks. He tries to breathe with it and finds he can—an easy breath that feels soothing in his lungs.
“Mr Malfoy,” McGonagall says like it’s not the first time, “if you would.” She begins moving the group down the hall again, one eye on Draco.
As the group passes him, Draco watches Potter. His eyes stay on Longbottom’s back, but Draco can feel his attention, can feel his magic cool against him.
Potter darts a brief look at him. There are deep circles behind the flare of his lenses, and the green of his eyes is dark and hunted. He looks, Draco thinks, like he did kneeling in the Manor.
Unthinking, Draco falls in a few steps behind him.
The small troop walks in silence through the corridors, the occasional whisper or titter loud against the stone walls. Draco can feel his classmates’ eyes on him. He knows the whispers are about him. He fights to keep his eyes on the ground.
When they finally halt before an unremarkable tapestry of a poppy field, Draco is thoroughly lost. The castle feels alien, so many corridors closed off or caved-in with unrepaired damage. He misses the password entirely, too busy staring at a singe mark on the ceiling. The tapestry splits apart and reveals a narrow, warmly-lit passage.
The new common room is a chaotic collection of their houses; Gryffindor-red ottomans clash with Hufflepuff-yellow sofas, Ravenclaw-blue rugs layer over each other in various shades. Even Slytherin-green shows up in the curtains for the lone snake. Kaleidoscopic tapestries drip from the ceiling and cover the stone walls. It reminds Draco of the divination tower, and notably does not remind him of the Manor or Azkaban. Something tight eases in his chest.
He might relax more were it not for how close the cosy room presses him to the rest of the group. He feels their hatred, hot in the tight space. Potter’s magic is still unsettlingly soothing, and his green eyes keep drifting to Draco. Draco keeps his arms tucked tight to his sides, presses himself small against the wall.
McGonagall is saying things about unity and responsibility and role models. There are freedoms regarding curfew and Hogsmeade that won’t apply to Draco. Blessedly, they get private rooms. At last they’re dismissed, but McGonagall catches Draco with a stern look. She waits until they’re alone.
“I am sure you are aware of the terms of your probation.”
No leaving Hogwarts, no magic use on others, an Acceptable in all N.E.W.T.s and at least two Outstandings. He nods, eyes on the ground.
“I expect you to seek me out for assistance when you need it.”
Draco looks up. Her frown is deep and serious.
“If anyone causes you trouble, you will notify me immediately. Is that understood?”
Draco can only nod.
“Very well. We are not often afforded second chances, Mr Malfoy. I expect you will not waste it.”
With that, she turns and glides off into the castle, leaving Draco alone with the crackling fire and the gaudy decor and his racing thoughts.
_____
Draco can’t sleep.
His room is pale in the moonlight, far brighter than his cell had ever been. Everything is new; the desk shiny and graffiti-less, the bed hangings unfrayed, the wardrobe still smelling of fresh lacquer.
Draco had stripped down to his pants the moment he was alone and promptly vanished the clothes he’d been wearing. The spell came easy, riding on a gentle crest of magic before it withdrew and fell silent.
He still feels like the filth is clinging to his skin, so, after tossing in his bed for long enough to be certain everyone else is asleep, he sneaks into the shared bathrooms and stands under the hot water until his skin stops stinging and he’s pink all over. Still wary of his trunk, he collapses naked into the fresh sheets and tries not to think about how strange they feel against his skin.
Only, that’s all he can think about. Azkaban had a numbing effect, dragging him away from his physical senses so he was trapped in his mind, left to stand before his choices and regret. He supposes he should be glad to have a distraction now, but he feels himself too presently in space, feels the earth pulling him down into the bed, feels his unruly magic and then its absence like an unpredictable tide.
He’s still hungry.
His eyes are burning and heavy when the dawn breaks. He stands again in the shower, cold this time, letting all the heat—it feels wrong, being warm, being comfortable—leach away until his teeth chatter. By the time he makes it back to his room he’s warm again, magic hot in his blood.
The trunk is the same one he has brought to Hogwarts since first year. He still remembers Mother summoning it from the attic, explaining it had been hers when she was his age and altering the monogram—N.I.B.—to a looping D.L.M. He runs his fingers over it, imagining he can feel Mother’s magic in it still.
He digs for a set of clothes, ignoring the books and journals and the soft brush of the dragon stuffy Mother had gifted him on his fourth birthday.
Everything he pulls out is black, severe, sharp-edged. He dresses slowly, buttoning his collar high. He avoids the mirror.
Only McGonagall, Sinistra, and Vector are in the Great Hall when Draco arrives. He takes a seat at the very edge of Slytherin’s table, but McGonagall clears her throat and gestures to a small round table at the front. A place setting pops up for him, filling with food.
He sits so his back is to the professors. They eat quietly, just the whisper of their forks to suggest anyone else is there. Draco falls upon his dish. He can’t recall what he ate in Azkaban, only that he must have. The salt of bacon and the sweet of jam is almost too much to his tongue, but he swallows it down with a vigour that would put a frown on Mother’s face. He eats until his stomach hurts, and then just a bit more, until the first early risers start to trickle in.
Draco is back in his room before a single eighth year has woken.