Chapter Text
Draco was not, as the muggle saying goes, “living his best life”. In fact, he rather felt that he would more aptly be described as dying his worst death.
Quite frankly, whatever shit kind of vendetta the Dark Lord had against his father was ruining his life. Possibly ending it, if Dumbledore caught wind of what was going on.
Draco wasn’t an idiot, he’d seen the rage flashing in those eyes, poorly disguised as a twinkle. He knew the sweet-guzzling, sugar-devouring habits of the old headmaster for what they truly were: mass consumption of sugar needed to provide the energy necessary to completely destroy the hopes, dreams and lives of every slytherin student all day every day.
He sniffed, buttoning up the mauve robes he had chosen for the day. A statement - bold and exciting. They brought out his eyes. (At least, they probably did - that was the kind of thing fashionable people said.)
He truly did look the part of the famed Malfoy heir, if not for his slightly hollow expression. He shuddered. The mirror did not do him justice.
Sure, he was absolutely plagued with anxiety after being assigned the deadly task. Yes, perhaps he woke up multiple times a night, soaked in a cold sweat and gasping after images of Dumbledore’s half-rotted corpse shambling behind him in a relentless pursuit, then stabbing into his ribcage with foul, decomposing fingers to rip out an oddly blackened heart…
That was probably normal. He did have a few nightmares during OWLS and maybe starting his NEWT course this year was just instilling him with perfectionist panic. Really the chances that he was suffering from the psychological impacts of pre-emptive guilt for the murder he had to carry out and would therefore never emotionally recover were reasonably low.
He was fine. Everything was fine.
He swept a hand back through his hair and spun on his heel to locate his mother. He was going to get through sixth year, and everything would be alright.
(Provided Dumbledore didn’t find out about his task and kill him. Still, Avada Kedavra was probably less painful than Bellatrix’s crucio.)
“Draco!”
He froze, eyes raking over the unexpected form of Rastaban Lestrange.
The smile carving its way across his gaunt cheeks was sharp and Draco felt it slice through him, with all the viciousness of Bellatrix’s knife.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Diagon Alley.” He mumbled in response, hoping that Rabastan wouldn’t take the same offence that his sister-in-law would’ve. “With my…my mother.”
He flushed a little, having almost slipped and let out the dreaded word. Lucius had been father for a long, long time. A figure of authority, almost an idol for most of his son’s conscious life. But his mother? Well…Narcissa had retained the title of “mummy” for quite some time. Loving, doting, supportive…smart enough to not join a cult run by a megalomaniac snake lord…she had never earned the loss of affection that Lucius had so quickly achieved.
Still, a 16 year old calling his mother mummy? In front of a Death Eater ? Never mind that Draco himself could probably consider himself one and the same, he would literally rather stand in front of Albus Dumbledore himself, confess his sins and be struck down in the rage of the light.
“That sounds nice. Have a good day.” Rabastan offered him a curt nod, which Draco returned in bewilderment, then strode off down the hallway as if Malfoy Manor was his ancestral home and not Draco’s.
He continued towards his parents' chambers, ruffled by the interaction. It was almost as if Rastaban was being nice to him. Rastaban Lestrange. The Death Eater. From Azkaban. The guy whose brother had willingly married the least sane person in the entire Wizarding World (except perhaps Voldemort), and was perhaps being cheated on by said sadistic bitch with the aforementioned Dark Lord.
His eyebrows physically refused to part from each other in his confusion. Perhaps it was a plot. Maybe Bellatrix had asked him to spy on Draco...maybe she'd wanted him to pry into his mind and check if he was practising his Occlumency at all times, so she could punish him. What was it that he'd heard so much in fourth year? CONSTANT VIGILANCE! He was not being vigilant.
He did a quick check to see if his Occlumency shields remained up, as they usually did at the manor. But they weren't very strong, he wasn't a master, and Rabastan could have pried his way in so quickly and secretly. Draco hadn't even felt anything. What if the man had detected any disloyalty to their Lord? What if he sensed the bitterness that Draco felt towards him for the treatment of his family and the setting of such an impossible task?
He shuddered. Suddenly he felt very small, hunched over in folded, purple fabric, like a child draped in his mother's old nightie. The impending trip to Diagon Alley didn't seem like a fun distraction from his shitty life, but an allotted space of time for the Dark Lord and the Lestrange to plot the most torturous consequences upon his return. Would his mother have to watch him die? Would she have to watch Draco die?
She'd already had to see Bellatrix crucio him. Her fists had curled into boxers gloves, jaw clenched shut and muscles trembling as she forced her expression to maintain passive, subservient. Only her eyes had given her away, darting wildly anywhere but him and glistening slightly, her breath puffing out in slightly panicked huffs as she pulled him back to her chamber afterwards and forced potions down his throat. She didn't intervene - couldn't - and he was glad she hadn't, really. She'd be dead if she had. He'd have had to watch. Then they'd have dumped her in some hole somewhere and made him fill it in. Or fed her to Nagini.
He shuddered again. The only Death Eater with worse table manners than the giant snake was Greyback.
(The bar was so low, it was probably buried like the bones he no doubt spent half his time digging up.)
Arriving at his destination, Draco rolled his shoulders back, straightened his spine and knocked on the door with a carefully constructed smile.
His mummy mother opened the door and smiled down at him with that old expression she used to use when he'd tell her that he was the new Slytherin seeker, or that he'd got the best score in potions. That oddly proud sort of look - she must have approved of the new robes. He reached out his arm and she grasped it, letting him lead her even further along the corridor towards the floo, so that they could leave.
The powder was running low, likely because certain guests were pinching extra to take back to their own houses since they were too stingy to buy their own. (Inflation was bring floo powder costs ridiculously high, but Draco did not like that they were parting with money that could've been used for his wardrobe. If one was going to die at the hands of a Dark Lord, one was going to do it in style. Malfoys never go down looking bad.)
He made no comment though, in case it upset his mother, and simply dropped a pinch into the fireplace, stepping into the flames and articulating his words as clearly as possible.
Father had once told him of an incident where a girl mispronounced a floo name and ended up in Wales rather than East Anglia. Despite assuring Draco that only a complete dunce could make a mistake like that, the rather impressionable 5-year-old boy had taken the lesson to heart and now, 11 years later, continued to enunciate more clearly than most rappers.
It was the kind of thing that Potter would have laughed at him for anyway. The boy-who-lived probably never experienced floo-xiety. He appeared perpetually to have just tumbled out of a fireplace, and left his hair unfixed.
Draco clung to that thought as he, too, popped out of the grate, immediately whipping his comb from his pocket and bringing himself back into an acceptable state with a few professional swipes.
He smiled into the mirror to his left as he caught a glimpse of his devastatingly handsome side profile and perfectly floppy hair. Finally, he could consider himself recovered from the first year gel disaster that his mother had eventually managed to talk him out of, the angel that she was.
Speak of the devil, she landed beside him, flicked some excess soot off her robes and nudged him on the shoulder as she began to stride out of the shop. She seemed to be in an unusually good mood, and Draco hoped it was because of something he had done. After all, he was one of the few inhabitants of the house who had managed not to steal from her hair potions, and he did it due to self restraint - the Dark Lord had no physical need for them. He could have used a nose job potion though. (Draco wasn’t entirely sure if that was an option, or if it would even work, but it was needed nonetheless.)
“Where shall we visit first, Draco?”
Draco blinked, suddenly overcome with all the euphoria that could be expected with total and consuming power. He got to choose? Draco Lucius Malfoy got to choose? Oh this was a day to be celebrated alright - but what choice could he make? There were so many options. They could visit Twilfitt and Tatting’s, to purchase the newest continental fashions - brought as speedily as possible to the tragically behind streets of London; they could go to Gringotts and acquire some goblin-made cufflinks, maybe they’d infuse them with protective charms to help him if Bellatrix had too much free time one day; or dear old Potage’s, where he could purchase a beautiful, gold cauldron to soothe him.
Yes, that was the perfect idea. There was nothing more ideal than being able to see his own, glorious visage reflected back in galleon-gold as he stirred his stress-potions. Well…there wouldn’t be much of that except when he boiled the moonwater. After all, only veritaserum was clear and Draco wasn’t exactly going out of his way to equip the Dark Lord’s arsenal with a potion that could enable him to learn exactly what Draco thought of his post-resurrection face.
So Potage’s it was. Unless of course, they went to Florean Fortescue’s, which could provide the necessary sustenance for a long and grueling shopping trip in London’s la-
“Perhaps we should visit Sugarplum’s Sweet Shop, Draco darling. We do need to stock you up on snacks for your schooling. Do try not to share them all with Vincent and Gregoy, my dear, I know that you’re a generous soul but you are looking on the spindlier side and we want to make sure you’re in the peak of health to take on a new school year!”
(And an impossible task from the Dark Lord, but that part went unsaid.)
Dragged harshly back to reality, Draco’s dangerously bruised ego was barely healed by the balm of his mother’s apparent belief that he was generous.
(In truth, Narcissa was fairly aware that Draco was probably bribing Crabbe and Goyle more than selflessly feeding them, but she was admittedly proud of his strategic tactics, and, frankly, it couldn’t hurt to feed into his self-image a little if it could win her the “favourite parent” title back from Lucius.)
So, the mother and son duo made their way along Diagon Alley until they found their senses assaulted both by the scandalously pink exterior of the establishment and the overwhelmingly fudgy smell, which the length of Diagon Alley with a determination similar even to the Dark Lord himself.
They had arrived at Sugarplum's Sweetshop, and Draco was ready to stock up.
Katriona Fawley was a respectable, studious pureblood girl. But, Merlin, was she tired of reading the same dry textbooks day after day. The phrases “wand movement diagram” and “lacewing flies” alone were enough to give her eye-twitches and shudders. The school year hadn’t even started yet and she had to take a break. Miranda Goshawk and Bathilda Bagshot could go enjoy a long walk off a short pier, for all she cared, and hopefully take their writings with her.
It was a sentiment she would soon come to regret, impressed by the majesty of the Piccadilly Waterstones. The largest bookshop in Europe, and perhaps the greatest gift to mankind - muggle or wizard. But still, relearning 5 years of content in a few weeks, due to minor differences in the Koldovstoretz and Hogwartz curriculums.
For Merlin’s sake, their History of Magic curriculum was actually laughable. Anglocentric and irrelevant, the textbooks were outdone in their ability to bore only by the practical spellbooks and their lack of theoretical textbooks.
As far as she could tell, the Hogwarts school books had a simple, 3-step process on every page:
- Say the incantation
- Do the wand movement
- Hope it works
So forgive Katriona for wanting some variety in her life. Forgive a girl tortured by incantation pronunciations and an inability to actually DO the damn spells outside of school for seeking some other form of enjoyment.
Forgive her, for choosing an array of books which would not dare to stray even close to the realities of the wizarding world and its boredoms. (For fear of the statute of secrecy.)
Yes, muggle bookshops were the best form of escapism she could fathom. Why not? She deserved a break. She was already halfway through Pride and Prejudice, and while she was rightfully excited to share her (strong) opinions on Mr Wickham with Narcissa, she needed backup for when it was done.
So she stepped into the metal muggle box of doom, stepped out again before the doors could close, and decided to take the stairs.
Sure, it was a day of muggle adventure, but she was not about to trust a tin can to take her up 5 floors with no magic.