Chapter Text
The world was ending—and it was quieter than Draco Malfoy had imagined.
There were no battle cries, no clash of spellfire lighting up the heavens, no final words echoing off the stones. Just the whisper of wind, dry and slow, as it traced the curve of broken walls and stirred ash where roses used to bloom. There was the creaking groan of fractured marble and timber, the soft flutter of something scorched beyond recognition settling in the ruins of Malfoy Manor. And, farther off, the low, haunted sound of magic unraveling—like distant thunder rolling over the bones of a dying world.
Above the ruins, the sky bled in impossible colors, as though the heavens themselves had been torn open. Veins of poisonous green and blood-red laced the clouds, threading through bruised purples and sickly yellows. They didn’t drift—they churned, boiling like oil on fire, moving in great spirals that bent the shape of the horizon. Lightning split the sky sideways, jagged and silent, scarring the firmament in strokes of fire that never quite faded. Every few seconds, the clouds pulsed, as if the sky was drawing a last, gasping breath.
Draco Malfoy stood at the center of what had once been the grand courtyard. His boots—one scorched, the other slashed to the sole—stood among shattered cobblestones, bloodied peacock feathers, and scorched remnants of what might have once been fine tapestries or velvet robes. His black robes hung in tatters, silver trim smudged with soot and ash. One sleeve was entirely gone, exposing a long burn that ran from shoulder to wrist, crusted with blood. His platinum-blonde hair was tangled and darkened with dirt, stuck to his face and neck in damp clumps. The cut across his cheekbone had stopped bleeding hours ago, but the dried trail glistened faintly in the uncanny light.
In his right hand, he clutched the Elder Wand.
It pulsed against his palm—a rhythmic, insistent thrum, like a second heartbeat that wasn’t his. It vibrated in the silence, not with hunger, but with resistance. With warning.
The air tasted of magic gone wrong—charcoal, ozone, and something like rusted metal, bitter and dry. Heavy with the weight of spells that should never have been cast.
Everything had gone wrong.
The Dark Lord.
Dumbledore.
Potter.
Each name cracked like glass inside his skull, fragments of a future that had never been his to choose.
The Dark Lord.
Draco had only been sixteen when he pressed the brand into his own arm.
Sixteen, and already unraveling.
He told himself he wasn’t trembling. That the chill slicking his palms was just the draught in the stone corridor, not the terror pooling in his gut like lead. But the lie tasted thin. Bitter. It curdled on his tongue as he passed through the iron-banded doors and into the hollow dark.
Because he was there.
Voldemort. The Dark Lord.
The name alone throbbed in Draco’s head like a curse. His magic recoiled from it, like a candle guttering beneath a gust. And still—he stepped forward.
The chamber stretched wide and cold beneath the earth, lit only by flickering green-blue torches that cast shadows like claws across the walls. Hooded figures lined the edges, silent and watching—Death Eaters, all of them faceless behind silver masks. Their eyes glittered through the slits, judging.
Waiting.
But Draco didn’t look at them.
His gaze locked on the figure at the center of it all.
Him.
He stood utterly still, draped in robes that moved with a life of their own, oil-slick and liquid black, as though stitched from void. His form was tall but wrong, too fluid in its stillness, too precise—like something pretending to be human and nearly succeeding. The air warped around him. Magic bled from his pores like perfume and poison.
Draco’s breath hitched. He forced it steady.
And then Voldemort turned.
His eyes—red as fresh blood, slit like a serpent’s—met Draco’s and did not blink. There was no warmth in them, not even cruelty. Just endless calculation. Power without anchor. A void that saw everything and forgave nothing.
And yet—beneath the monstrous face, beneath the bone-white skin stretched too tight over a skull too sharp, Draco caught a glimmer of something else. A flicker. A ghost of the man he might have once been.
Not kind.
Not good.
But charming, maybe. Terribly clever. The sort of beauty that could talk you into drinking poison.
But that man was gone now. Devoured by what remained.
A god.
A monster.
A myth that walked and breathed and demanded everything.
Draco couldn’t look away.
“Your arm,” Voldemort said at last, and the words slithered through the silence—not spoken, but felt. They vibrated in Draco’s teeth, curled inside his spine, thin and sharp like threads drawn through bone.
He obeyed.
Hands shaking, he unfastened his cuff. The skin of his forearm looked pale in the torchlight, almost translucent.
Vulnerable.
Then the magic stirred.
It rose slowly—an unseen tide, ancient and suffocating. The chamber thickened with it. The torches flared. Somewhere deep inside him, Draco felt a pressure build, like something enormous pressing against the membrane of the world. Waiting to be let in.
The Dark Lord lifted a single hand.
No wand. No incantation.
Just will.
The moment it touched him, the world shattered.
Magic surged into his skin like wildfire and frost, like jagged lightning drawn inward. It wasn’t just pain—it was invasion, crashing through his blood, setting his bones alight, a cold fire scouring every inch of who he was. It felt like drowning in stars. Like being hollowed out and rewritten.
He wanted to scream.
He would have screamed.
But he bit down hard—teeth grinding against the inside of his cheek, tasting blood, tasting copper. He locked his jaw, shoulders spasming as the pain reached its crescendo. His knees trembled. Tears blurred his vision, but he held himself upright, if only barely.
The Mark unfurled in his flesh like a living thing—black ink etched by divine hands, shaped by sin and ancient pacts. Snake. Skull. Submission.
By the time it was over, he could no longer feel his fingers. He collapsed to one knee, gasping, barely aware of the smoke rising from his skin.
Voldemort watched him with something like interest. His mouth curled into a thin, bloodless smile that didn’t even pretend to be kind.
“So young,” he said softly. “And yet, you understand what it means to obey.”
Draco didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
His chest heaved. His teeth were stained red. His arm pulsed with the brand, the pain burrowed deep, like the magic had taken up residence somewhere beneath his heart.
He could feel it breathing there.
The silence returned, heavier than before.
Something in him had been carved out—scraped hollow—and in its place was this. A seal. A bond. A vow laced with poison and power.
As he stared at the Mark, still trembling, still tasting his own blood, a truth bloomed behind his ribs:
He would never be free again.
Not from this.
Not from him.
Not even from himself.
The corridor outside the chamber was colder than it should have been—airless, silent, as though the walls themselves had been bled dry of warmth. Draco leaned against the stone, one palm flat against it to steady himself. His arm still pulsed with the aftershock of the Mark, as if the magic had teeth and was gnawing its way down to bone.
He wanted to scream. Or vomit. Or vanish.
But instead, he swallowed it all down, like every Malfoy was taught to do.
Footsteps echoed—unsteady, too quick. Draco lifted his head just as a familiar figure rounded the corner.
Lucius.
For a heartbeat, Draco didn’t recognize him.
He was thinner—alarmingly so. His once-immaculate robes hung loose on his frame, the cuffs frayed, the fabric dulled. His long blond hair, always groomed with surgical precision, now clung to his temples in greasy strands, limp and matted. His eyes—once sharp, calculating—burned too brightly, pupils pinprick-small and ringed with feverish shadows.
There was a wildness in him now. A crack running straight through.
“Draco,” Lucius breathed, stopping short. His gaze flicked to the Mark, still raw and smoking on Draco’s arm, then up to his son’s face. And then—he smiled.
It was not a comforting smile.
It was the smile of a man who had lost everything but his delusions.
“Yes. Draco.” He reached forward, long fingers trembling slightly. “You have done well. A Malfoy does not scream.”
Draco stared at him.
His father’s hand hovered over his shoulder, but Draco didn’t lean in. Didn’t move.
Something inside him was unraveling—quietly, softly. No panic. No rage.
Just… realization.
This was what he’d bled himself for.
This man. This name.
Lucius looked so proud. But his pride was a hollow thing now, chipped and pitiful, like a polished mirror cracked down the center. He was supposed to be regal. Powerful. A pureblood prince.
Instead, he looked like a ghost of someone who used to matter.
Draco’s mouth was dry. His voice, when it came, was quiet. Almost gentle.
“I’d like to rest now.”
Lucius blinked, as if he hadn’t quite heard.
Draco stepped past him. He didn’t touch his father—just moved around him like he might a column of smoke. His legs felt like they didn’t belong to him. Every nerve still hummed with pain.
At the end of the corridor, he reached the door to the guest chambers—cold, impersonal, draped in dark velvet. He opened it. Paused.
Lucius had followed. His eyes were wide, lips parted, as though he wanted to speak. To share something. Pride, maybe. Or approval. Or madness.
Draco didn’t let him.
He turned, met his father’s gaze one last time, and then—shut the door in his face.
The latch clicked.
And the silence that followed was louder than anything.
Inside the room, Draco sank onto the edge of the bed, hands braced on his knees. The Mark still burned beneath his skin. His heart thudded like something trapped.
The curtains whispered as the wind moved behind them. Somewhere above, the manor groaned in its bones.
Draco lowered his head into his hands.
He had thought the Mark would make things clearer. Simpler.
But all it had done was show him how far he’d fallen into someone else’s dream.
Someone else’s ruin.
And no one—not Voldemort, not the Death Eaters, not even Lucius—had ever warned him that becoming powerful might mean becoming hollow.
He wasn’t sure if he’d ever sleep again.
But he was very, very tired.
The door shut out the world, but it couldn’t shut out the truth.
Draco sat in the dark.
No candles. No wandlight. Just the heavy velvet of shadow wrapped around him like mourning cloth. The faint moonlight leaking through the curtains touched the floor like spilled milk, ghostly and cold. His chest rose and fell—shallow, measured. He was still breathing. He hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t cried.
He had done what was expected.
His fingers curled into the mattress, knuckles pale. The Mark on his arm still throbbed—an ember beneath his skin, pulsing in time with something ancient and cruel. The room smelled of old velvet, iron, and the magic residue clinging to his flesh like a curse.
And then—
He laughed.
It started small. A sharp exhale through his nose, like the kind he gave in class when someone said something stupid.
But it didn’t stop.
The sound bubbled up, bitter and bright, echoing strangely in the silence. It built into something breathless, something unhinged. A laugh not of joy, but of disbelief. Hysterical. Hollow. Ugly.
His hands came up to his face as he doubled forward, laughter shaking his shoulders.
Superior.
That’s what they’d told him. What he’d been groomed to believe.
He was a Malfoy. He was better.
Not just above the Muggle-borns, but above the others, too. The Greengrasses. The Notts. Even the Blacks. The Malfoys were pure. Immaculate. Untouchable.
But how could a master be branded like cattle?
How could someone superior be reduced to this?
This.
A slave in silk.
A puppet carved from silver and shame.
His laughter broke—fractured in the middle—and became breath. Just breath. Harsh and hot. And then the tears came.
They didn’t wrench from his throat in sobs. They slid silently down his face, clean tracks over skin too pale, too perfect. Another lesson.
Malfoys do not cry.
Not when he was little, and his father’s hand struck out faster than thought because Draco couldn’t sit still. Because he had asked—just once—if he could go play with the other children at the party instead of memorizing ancestral bloodlines.
Not when he’d been given his first spellbook at five and told he’d read it or he’d regret it.
Not when he’d sat in silence while his mother applied healing salves and told him gently, “You must be strong, my dragon. You must learn to endure.”
So the tears came without a sound. As if even they had been taught to obey.
They streaked his beautiful face—too beautiful, too fragile. Built for display, not for choice.
And Draco finally saw it.
The lie.
Blood purity was a lie.
A story to control boys like him. Wrap them in silk and marble and tell them they were gods—while the leash was already tightening.
He wasn’t better.
He was malleable.
Obedient.
Crafted not to think, but to perform.
Potter was a half-blood. Raised without wealth, without prestige. He didn’t even know the rules, let alone follow them. But he had stood—fought—survived. Again and again. And the Dark Lord, the shadow that haunted their world, had failed because of him.
And Draco?
Draco had folded.
He looked down at the Mark on his arm. It glowed faintly in the dark, like something alive. A brand. A vow. A sentence.
It pulsed once.
And he knew.
There was no going back.
No more pretending.
No more childhood.
No more freedom.
He had made a choice—but it hadn’t really been his, had it?
And now—
He would become what they always wanted.
A puppet with pretty manners and perfect lineage.
And a string tied tight to a monster’s hand.
That should have been the end.
But things had only gotten worse.
There was a moment—a narrow, flickering sliver of calm—just days after the Mark had seared itself into his skin, when the burn stopped blistering and his arm no longer trembled from phantom pain. A moment when Draco allowed himself the lie that the worst was over. That the silence meant mercy.
He was wrong.
The summons came not as parchment nor owl, not even as a whisper in the dark—but as a pressure behind the eyes. A coiling heat that made his vision pulse. The echo of a snake’s hiss unfurling like a lullaby cracked by rust and rot. It slithered into his dreams, coiled around his ribs, tugged.
And he went.
He was led—dragged, really—through a manor that had become unfamiliar as though he had never been inside, but somehow already feared. The walls breathed cold. The stones underfoot were damp and uneven, slick with moss and something thicker. The air stank of mildew, rotting paper, and blood long since dried into the wood grain of the floors.
Portraits on the walls watched him pass. Silent. Blank-eyed. Disapproving.
He walked past cloaked figures, all familiar and unfamiliar. Men who now wore their masks even in daylight, as if their faces had rotted away. Past Crabbe’s father, who barely glanced at him. Past Nott’s father, who did. Past the gaunt, still forms of men whose eyes had seen death and wished it welcome.
And then—Bellatrix.
She was waiting in the corridor like a vulture in velvet, her eyes fever-bright and wide with something between joy and madness.
“You’ll be a man soon, nephew ,” she breathed, leaning too close, her voice a caress of knives. “A real one.”
Draco swallowed, but it stuck in his throat. He kept walking.
Then the doors opened, and he stood before him.
The Dark Lord.
Voldemort didn’t pace. Didn’t sit. He stood in the center of the chamber, impossibly still, as though even gravity had learned not to touch him. His presence swallowed light. Even the candles on the walls flickered as if uncertain they should burn.
His eyes—those inhuman slits—glinted like polished glass, reflecting nothing and everything all at once.
“You will do something for me, Draco,” he said.
Soft. Almost indulgent. Like he was bestowing a gift. A privilege.
Draco didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.
“You will find a way to let my faithful into Hogwarts,” Voldemort continued. “The school has stood untouched for too long.”
The words slithered across the cold floor like blades—gentle, deliberate, meant to bleed.
Draco’s blood turned to ice. His spine stiffened.
Hogwarts.
His home away from home.
His sanctuary. His prison.
He said nothing.
But Voldemort was not done.
His voice dipped—silk unraveling into steel.
“And you must kill Albus Dumbledore.”
Draco’s lungs collapsed inward. His heart stuttered like a bird slamming into glass.
Kill Dumbledore.
He was sixteen. He still had ink-stained knuckles and half-finished Transfiguration notes in his trunk. He still dreamed of winning the Cup. Still woke with a start from nightmares of the Ministry. Still wore a sweater his mother had pressed to her cheek before packing it, smelling of perfume and cedarwood.
He hadn’t even kissed someone he loved.
But none of that mattered now.
Voldemort stared at him—impassive, calculating. Not watching for signs of courage or resolve. No, he was watching for the fracture. For the crack.
Because Draco was never meant to succeed.
This was not an honor. This was punishment.
Retribution.
Lucius had failed at the Department of Mysteries. Had botched the prophecy. Had grovelled and begged for mercy like a dog at his master’s feet.
This was the cost.
Draco could feel it—cold and invisible—as though a noose had been conjured out of air and slipped over his neck. Tighter with every heartbeat.
He wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t even a weapon.
He was an example.
Let the boy burn.
Let the world see what happens when a Malfoy disappoints their lord.
His fingers curled into fists at his side, nails biting skin. He stared at the stones beneath his shoes—patterned with cracks and rust-colored stains—and tried to still the shaking in his chest.
It wasn’t fear for himself that hollowed him out.
It was her.
His mother.
Narcissa. With her ice-glass voice and fierce, quiet love. With her hands that were always cold but always steady. The way she’d hum when she brushed his hair. The soft, urgent lullabies she sang when he was sick. The silence she kept when he cried as a child and didn’t want his father to know.
What would happen to her if he refused?
If he faltered?
If he failed?
He bowed his head. Slowly. Like kneeling at an altar. Like surrender.
His voice scraped from his throat, dry and wrong.
“It will be done.”
The lie sat heavy in his mouth. Iron and ash.
Voldemort smiled.
That terrible thing he did with his mouth, that wasn’t quite human.
All teeth. No warmth. No soul.
“Good boy.”
Amused.
That was what he was.
Not proud. Not impressed.
Amused.
As though it was a game. As though the task was nothing more than watching a moth drown in wax.
The laughter came next.
Not from Draco.
From the others.
Low, dry laughter. Cracked and brittle like dead leaves underfoot. Laughter that did not echo but lingered, crawling along the stone like smoke.
Even Bellatrix tilted her head, delighted. Her eyes glittered. She licked her teeth.
Draco stood still.
And said nothing.
Because he was already disappearing.
One string tighter.
One step closer to the edge.
Dumbledore.
Dumbledore stood framed by moonlight, pale and solemn, caught within the ruined grandeur of the Astronomy Tower like the final piece in a broken stained-glass window. The stone arches behind him yawned open to the sky, shattered by time and battle, their jagged edges biting into the night.
Above, clouds like torn silk whispered across the moon, casting flickering light over everything—too cold, too white, too unreal. Wind surged through the high spires and narrow slits in the stone, shrieking like ghosts denied rest, pulling at the hem of Draco’s robes with invisible fingers. Don’t, the wind seemed to hiss, over and over, in a chorus of a thousand forgotten voices.
Draco’s wand was slick in his palm.
Not from rain.
From sweat.
His pulse beat out a frantic rhythm in his ears, so loud he almost didn’t hear the creak of the floorboard beneath his shifting foot, or the quiet breath Dumbledore drew as he regarded him—still, calm, terribly mortal.
The headmaster didn’t raise his wand.
Didn’t reach for it.
Didn’t flinch.
He simply stood there, weathered and worn and bleeding slowly from the edges, as if he had long ago accepted what Draco had come here to do. His eyes, impossibly, were kind.
“Draco,” he said softly, each syllable dusted with grief. “I see you’ve been busy.”
Draco’s throat constricted around the words. He had rehearsed this moment again and again in his head—how he would say it, how he would own it. But now, all that resolve had curdled into something raw and panicked.
“I fixed it,” he rasped, barely louder than the wind. “The Vanishing Cabinet. The one in the Room of Requirement. I—I figured out how to link it to the one at Borgin and Burkes. I let them in.”
His voice trembled like a broken wire. So did his wand.
Dumbledore nodded slowly. His expression didn’t change, though there was something ancient behind his eyes, something infinitely tired.
“Ingenious work,” he murmured, as if they were in a classroom and this was a lesson. “I knew another boy, once—brilliant, like you. Terrified, like you. He made all the wrong choices.”
“Stop it,” Draco snapped. The words cracked like glass in the cold. “You don’t know me.”
“I do,” Dumbledore said, his voice gentler than ever. “You are not a killer.”
“You don’t understand.” The words exploded from him, high and sharp and desperate. “I have to. He’s going to kill me if I don’t. He’s going to kill her.”
His mother.
Her eyes the last soft place in his world.
Dumbledore took a single step forward. The movement was slow, deliberate, as if approaching a wounded animal. Draco flinched.
“Let me help you,” the old man whispered, and the offer hung in the air like a final spell.
But Draco’s head was already shaking, fast, frantic. “I have to do this,” he choked out.
Still, Dumbledore’s voice was maddeningly calm. “There are other ways, Draco.”
“I don’t have time for other ways,” Draco hissed, like a creature in a trap, bleeding at the edges. “They’re coming. Bellatrix. Greyback. If I don’t—if I don’t do it now—”
He didn’t finish.
Because the sound came then.
Boots. Laughter.
A cruel, cackling song echoing up the stairwell.
Shadows spilled into the tower like poison smoke.
Bellatrix Lestrange led the charge, her eyes feverish with delight, her grin feral. Her wand was already out, fingers twitching in anticipation.
“Well?” she purred, slinking behind him like a cat about to play with its prey. “Go on, nephew. Show us you’re not your father’s son.”
Draco didn’t turn. Didn’t breathe.
The smell of blood and wet fur filled the air—Greyback.
He slunk in beside her, taller, more monstrous, his grin full of teeth.
“Do it, boy,” he growled, voice rough and wet. “Let’s see if you’ve got any bite.”
Draco’s hand shook harder. His wand—still pointed at Dumbledore—felt heavier than it ever had before, as though something ancient had shifted inside it.
Draco screamed, “ Expelliarmus.” Dumbledore’s wand had soared through the air—so slow in that moment, tumbling end over end before landing, clattering on the cold stone.
The tower had gone still. Even the wind had seemed to hold its breath.
Draco picked the wand up.
It pulsed in time with his heartbeat. No… not his heartbeat. Something deeper. Older.
He had disarmed Dumbledore.
And the wand had chosen him.
It knew him.
But still—he couldn’t move.
His mother’s face flickered in his mind like a candle in a storm—her fingers brushing hair from his forehead, her voice humming lullabies he pretended not to remember. If he didn’t do this, she would die.
Bellatrix leaned in closer, breath hot and sickly against his ear.
“Do it,” she whispered, voice like broken silk. “Or I will.”
Draco’s jaw locked. Sweat slid down his neck in rivulets. Every muscle screamed for him to do something—anything.
But his wand hand was frozen.
He wanted to scream. To run. To undo everything.
Then—
A movement. Subtle. Soundless.
Like the air itself had turned inward.
A dark shape emerged from the stairwell, gliding into the scene like a shadow that had grown tired of hiding.
Severus Snape.
His black robes billowed in the wind. His face was a mask carved from stone.
His eyes—dark, fathomless—found Draco first. Then Dumbledore.
Something passed between the two men. Silent. Final.
Dumbledore’s voice broke the stillness.
“Severus,” he said, softer than breath. “Please.”
Draco blinked.
Snape didn’t speak.
Didn’t hesitate.
He raised his wand.
“No,” Draco whispered. “No—don’t—”
The green light ignited the tower like lightning.
Avada Kedavra.
The words rang like a bell struck by doom.
Dumbledore was lifted into the air—his body weightless, robes flaring like wings—and then he fell.
Over the edge.
Into the dark.
Gone.
The silence afterward was worse than the killing curse.
It pressed against Draco’s skull, against his ribs, thick and choking.
Bellatrix laughed—wild and manic and unhinged.
Greyback howled into the wind like a beast announcing blood.
But Draco?
Draco stood very still.
The wand in his hand was warm.
And cold.
And alive.
And dead.
He hadn’t done it.
But he hadn’t stopped it either.
Something in him had shattered. Irreparably. Quietly.
A part of him had gone over that edge too.
Potter
After Dumbledore died, potter ran away. Potter went on a chase for horcrux, hunting them down one by one. Until he showed up at the manor, the wards torn down and then madness.
The walls had fallen.
What once was carved of ancestral pride—marble veined with old magic, serpents etched into obsidian banisters, ancestral portraits that whispered of power and dominion—was now ash and rubble beneath Draco’s boots. The chandelier that had hung like a constellation of cruelty over the grand hall now lay shattered, glass scattered like frost across the blood-dark floor. Smoke curled upward from what remained of the east wing, sky bleeding red through the splintered roof. Somewhere under the weight of stone and spellfire, the Black family tapestry burned.
Draco stood in the heart of it all. Not untouched, but unbroken. Not victorious, but left behind.
Ash clung to the hem of his robes. His wand hung loosely at his side, its tip scorched and pulsing faintly with the last of some unspoken spell. His hands trembled, not from fear—but from the enormity of silence.
The silence of after.
He had seen Potter fall.
Not in a blaze of glory, not with some grand speech or final defiant curse—but in blood and mud, the light gone from his eyes before his body hit the ground. One moment he was there, burning with something greater than life. The next—
Extinguished.
And the Boy Who Lived… didn’t.
It had taken Draco a long time to move. Long enough to be certain it wasn’t some trick. Long enough to understand what it meant to see hope die.
Now, he stood alone in the ruins of Malfoy Manor, the last son of a fallen line, surrounded by the bones of gods and ghosts.
Bellatrix had told him once, in a moment of mad pride, of the Dark Lord’s greatest achievement.
“He conquered death, Draco,” she whispered, eyes wide with reverence and horror alike, cupping his chin with fingers that smelled of ash and blood. “Split his soul like a knife through silk. Seven shards. Seven anchors. Seven shadows.”
Draco had laughed. Laughed.
Until she kept speaking.
Until he understood.
And the laughter curdled in his throat.
He couldn’t forget the glint in her eyes. The way her voice trembled, not with awe—but with devotion. As if what the Dark Lord had done wasn’t an abomination, but a miracle. As if soul-mutilation were an act of divinity.
“No wonder,” Draco had muttered days later, sick to his stomach, pressing his forehead against the cold porcelain of his sink. “No wonder he looks like that. There’s nothing left of him.”
No wonder he couldn’t love. Couldn’t feel. No wonder he was nothing but smoke and screams and red eyes in the dark. He had carved himself into pieces and called it immortality.
Draco had thought it couldn’t get worse.
But then the war had come to his doorstep. Potter—mud-smeared, wild-eyed, cloaked in ruin and rage—had stormed the manor with the remnants of the Order. Weasley. Granger. Longbottom. Lupin. Tonks.
So many faces. Too many names.
The battle was a storm that split the world in two.
Wards shattered like glass under dragonfire. Curses howled through corridors that had once echoed with ballroom waltzes. Death Eaters fell screaming. So did the innocent.
And then Potter—
Potter, always at the center of the storm—
—fell.
No horcrux left to tether him to the world. No phoenix song. No mother’s love to shield him. Only blood, and the flicker of a green spell, and silence.
Now Draco stood over the place where Potter had died.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t kneel.
He just stared.
A wind stirred the smoke, tugged at his hair, lifted the corner of his cloak. Somewhere beneath the rubble, something sizzled. A slow, final exhale of magic dying.
He felt sick.
Not just because Potter was dead.
But because Draco had wanted him dead once.
And now, looking down at the cracked stone and burned earth where a boy had laid down his life for a world that had never loved him enough—
He didn’t feel victory.
He felt hollow.
Because in the end, it wasn’t the Dark Lord who had become immortal.
It was Potter.
Not in the way the Dark Lord had carved himself into horcruxes and horror, but in the way he had given himself away—over and over—until there was nothing left but legend.
And Draco? Draco was the one still breathing.
The irony tasted like ash on his tongue.
All of it lead to now.
He drew in a shallow breath, and it scorched down his throat like fire. Still, he stood motionless. Silent.
He remembered this courtyard as it once was—glittering with fairy lights on the summer air, the sound of violins floating over the hedges, fireflies flickering in the rose vines. He remembered his mother’s voice calling him to stand straighter, his father’s cool praise when he did. He had once danced here, light-footed and proud, in polished shoes and pressed robes. Now, every step was pain, and the ghosts of those memories danced where the dead now lay.
Draco exhaled shakily. The silence wasn’t empty. It was waiting.
Somewhere, far above the shattered skyline, the last ward cracked. Not like glass, but like bone. A final, echoing shatter that signaled the death of the last protection woven by wizards long dead.
The end wasn’t coming.
It was here.
And yet, somehow, Draco still stood.
Behind him, Malfoy Manor rose like a corpse. The grand facade was collapsed in places, its elegant symmetry fractured by fire and spell damage. Ivy-choked statues lay broken, their white faces shattered into marble fragments. The gilded windows were gaping, jagged holes—many of them stained with blood. Some dried and rusted, others still fresh, gleaming like rubies.
He could still hear the last voice that had called his name.
“Draco!”
His spine stiffened.
But it wasn’t real.
It was memory.
“Run, Draco. Now!”
Lucius. Not barking an order. Not cold or calculating. Just urgent. Human.
Draco had seen the green light coming. Had seen it gather in the air like a storm. He remembered the blur of movement—his father shoving him aside with both hands, wand raised, eyes fierce with something Draco had never seen before.
Love.
The spell struck Lucius cleanly in the chest. He hadn’t even flinched.
There hadn’t been time for goodbye.
No time to scream.
Draco had fallen to his knees beside him, the Elder Wand burning cold in one hand, his own wand slack in the other. He remembered gripping his father’s shoulder, shaking him, willing his eyes to open. Willing him to be angry, to sneer, to lecture him—anything but this stillness.
Lucius had not died a hero.
But he had died a father.
And now, everything he had tried to protect was gone.
Draco took a step forward. The courtyard stones trembled beneath him. The silence deepened. Magic, raw and wounded, shimmered in the air like heat haze.
He limped toward the Manor. Each step was effort. The muscles in his legs screamed, and his ribs ached with every breath. His boots scraped over scorched debris. A shattered goblet, fused to stone. A piece of a tapestry, still smoldering. A child’s toy—a carved wooden dragon—its wings broken.
The Elder Wand pulsed again.
Not just a warning this time.
A call.
He passed beneath the once-grand archway, where the Malfoy crest had been carved in solemn stone. Now, the sword that wound through the serpent was split in two. The serpent’s head had been blasted away.
He moved through the ruined foyer. Smoke drifted through the cracked ceiling. Paintings lay in heaps, frames shattered. Portraits wept or raged in silence, trapped in a crumbling world they couldn’t escape.
Then came the tremor.
It rolled up through the floor, vibrating through the soles of his feet, rising into his bones.
And then, without warning, the earth cracked.
A fissure ripped through the central hall. Green fire erupted from below, molten and cold all at once. It wasn’t flame. It was something older. Deeper.
Draco turned, heart pounding.
No. Not here. Not again.
He knew where it was coming from.
The ritual chamber.
His father’s secret sanctum.
The place forbidden to everyone.
But now, its doors were open.
And something was waking.
Draco didn’t hesitate.
He moved.
Through the broken halls. Down staircases warped by heat and spellfire. Past collapsed walls and doorways where shadows still clung like cobwebs. He reached the old study—its shelves blackened, its books ashes—and found the concealed door.
It stood ajar.
Beyond, a staircase spiraled down into green light.
He descended, each step echoing.
The air changed. Denser. Thicker.
Runes glowed on the walls. Old ones. Older than Hogwarts. Older than Rome. Carved in blood and sealed in bone. Gaelic, Aramaic, languages he couldn’t name.
Some blinked.
Some bled.
He reached the bottom.
And stopped.
The ritual chamber was no longer a room.
It was a wound in the world.
The granite floor had cracked open. In its place hovered a disc of black stone—obsidian, etched with a seven-pointed star that bled molten silver. The disc floated above a chasm that hadn’t been there yesterday. It stretched endlessly downward. Draco could not see the bottom.
And at the center of the star, bound by chains of pure light, suspended like a crucified idol—was Voldemort.
Or what was left of him.
His body was barely human. Gaunt. Stretched. His robes writhed with a life of their own. His skin was waxy and nearly translucent, stretched over bones that looked too sharp, too long. His eyes were no longer eyes, but pits of white fire. Empty. Endless.
When he spoke, it was like metal dragged across stone.
“Draco.”
Draco froze.
The voice echoed everywhere. Inside his skull. In his bones.
“You survived,” Voldemort whispered.
Draco raised the Elder Wand.
Not to cast.
To steady his hand.
“You should have died,” the voice hissed. “And yet—here you are. A mistake. An echo that refused to fade.”
Draco stepped forward. “You always said I was weak.”
Voldemort’s head tilted. Bones cracked with the movement.
“You were,” he rasped. “Still are. Clinging to a power you do not understand.”
The Elder Wand pulsed.
Not with obedience. Not with fear. But with a low, seething resistance that seemed to reverberate through the marrow of Draco’s bones. It throbbed against his skin, vibrating with a will that did not belong to him, yet answered his defiance all the same.
Draco’s knuckles tightened around the wand. The chamber felt smaller, heavier—as though the air itself recoiled.
Then he saw it.
Something flickered in Voldemort’s face. Not rage. Not hatred.
Fear.
Just a flash—but real.
“Then why didn’t it choose you?” Draco asked, his voice hoarse, brittle.
Voldemort’s burning eyes narrowed, their light coiling inward like venomous serpents.
“I did choose it,” he hissed. “Through blood. Through death. Through destiny. I seized it.”
“No.” Draco took another step, his boots grinding against the silver-etched stone. “It never chose you. That’s why it betrayed you. That’s why it failed you at the end. It saw what you really were.”
“And what do you see, boy?”
The air chilled. The runes pulsing along the walls dimmed, waiting.
Draco stared at the being that had once been the terror of his childhood—the shadow that had haunted his family for generations, now reduced to a flickering remnant.
“I see a relic,” he said, voice steady. “A withered echo of a war that should never have been fought. Of a world you destroyed to prove a point no one cared about.”
The chains of light holding Voldemort did not tremble. But the star beneath him began to turn.
Slowly at first. Then faster.
The silver in the runes flared. The floating orbs blazed white.
And Draco felt it—a pulse in the magic. A deep, bone-hollow sound that wasn’t heard, but felt.
“What are you doing?” he whispered, throat dry.
Voldemort’s mouth curled into a grin that was all teeth and no joy.
“Rewriting fate,” he said.
The ceiling above them cracked open—not with stone, but with space. Gaping tears split the air, revealing a sky beyond sky, constellations long buried in myth bleeding through the fractures.
Reality buckled.
“I’ve unmade history,” Voldemort said, voice rising in exaltation. “The gods that shaped magic have fallen. The stones forget the old names. There will be no Potter. No prophecy. No me—as you know me.”
Draco staggered back a step. “What does that mean?”
“This form dies,” Voldemort said, his arms spreading, light splitting from his fingertips. “But I do not. I will be born again. In time. In magic. In divinity.”
“No,” Draco said.
“Yes,” Voldemort whispered, eyes blazing. “As a god.”
The ritual accelerated. The orbs spun faster, screaming in tongues no living thing should speak. The runes bled light. The air cracked like breaking ice, jagged fissures racing across the chamber.
Time itself groaned, stretching.
The past was collapsing—consumed, digested, unmade.
Draco looked down at the Elder Wand.
It wasn’t glowing.
It was burning.
Not with power.
With defiance.
It thrummed with fury. With rejection. With the will of every wizard it had ever known.
Draco raised it, his arm trembling from more than pain.
He didn’t cast.
He pleaded.
“Non sequitur aeternum!”
The words weren’t a spell. They were a surrender. A last, desperate invocation to the deepest roots of magic, to every law that still held the universe together.
Golden light burst from the wand.
Not in a beam—but in a wave. A shuddering, living wave that crashed into the ritual with the force of memory itself.
The ritual screamed.
The orbs shattered.
The silver lines melted.
Voldemort roared—not in pain, but in rage—as the chain-light binding him split apart.
The star cracked.
The chamber exploded with brilliance.
Reality fractured.
Draco was ripped from the world—not teleported, not moved. Unmade. Unraveled and thrown through the void.
He fell—not through space, but through moments.
Flashes.
A girl with a diary, weeping ink and shadows.
A locket in a forest, burning with dark echoes.
A boy in a mirror, reaching for a family he would never know.
Then darkness.
Then cold.
Then stone.
Rain.
Rain fell in a steady drizzle, soaking the cobblestone alleyway where Draco Malfoy lay sprawled. The world was eerily quiet, the chaos of the magical apocalypse replaced by the mundane sounds of a city morning. The Elder Wand, still clutched in his hand, pulsed faintly, as if acknowledging the change.
He sat up slowly, his body protesting every movement. His ribs ached. His robes were tattered and damp, clinging to his skin, and his breath came in shallow, uncertain gasps. The air smelled of wet stone and coal smoke, a stark contrast to the acrid scent of burning magic he had left behind.
A gust of wind sent a newspaper skittering across the ground. Draco reached out and caught it, his fingers trembling with cold and disbelief. He smoothed it flat against his knee. The headline, printed in bold black ink, read: Daily Prophet – September 1, 1942.
His breath caught in his throat.
“Merlin,” he whispered.
The past. Somehow, he had been cast back in time—a time when Gellert Grindelwald still loomed as a shadow over Europe. Before Voldemort. Before the war he had just lost. His hand tightened around the wand.
He stood slowly, testing his balance, then took a faltering step forward. His legs were unsteady. He leaned against the alley wall, slick with moisture, and surveyed the street beyond. Men in long coats bustled past. Women in tall hats. The sounds of Muggle vehicles—motorcars—grumbled in the distance. Yet the occasional pop of Apparition and swish of robes betrayed the undercurrent of magic hidden just beneath.
Draco’s thoughts swirled with urgent clarity, racing to piece together a plan. He couldn’t go by Malfoy—not here, not now. The name was a weighty mantle, heavy with power and expectation, and it would be recognized.
Not kindly.
His great-grandfather would not tolerate rumors of an illegitimate child tarnishing the family legacy. The whispers would spread like wildfire, poisoning everything. He couldn’t use his mother’s maiden name either. The Blacks were a storm all their own—unyielding, unforgiving.
The wand pulsed in his hand, alive with an almost sentient rhythm, as if granting him silent permission. Then the name came to him—Peverell. Unbidden, like a ghost drifting through his thoughts. Cloaked in ancient history and old magic, wrapped in the legend of the Deathly Hallows. Obscure enough to pass, with no living relatives to claim it, yet distinct enough to stand out.
Exactly what he needed.
A name sharp enough to catch the Dark Lord’s eye—whoever he was as a student, whoever he had been before.
Peverell.
A new identity forged in shadow and power. A gamble to carve his place in the dangerous game ahead.
“Draco Peverell,” he murmured to himself. It tasted strange on his tongue.
He moved slowly, slipping out of the alleyway and into the flow of foot traffic. A few witches glanced at him, eyeing his torn robes and disheveled hair, but he avoided eye contact and kept walking.
Shops lined the road, some familiar, others foreign in design. Owls hooted from behind a shop window. A silver cauldron gleamed in another. He passed an apothecary that smelled of thyme and dragon’s blood.
He stopped at a newsstand. The man behind the counter, an older wizard with thinning hair and horn-rimmed spectacles, was arranging a stack of Prophet copies.
“Excuse me,” Draco said, adjusting his posture. “Where might I find the Leaky Cauldron?”
The vendor looked up, frowning. “You’re not from around here.”
Draco forced a smile. “Visiting family.”
“It’s just down that way, past the apothecary. Big sign. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” Draco said with a nod, and turned in the direction indicated.
As he walked, he tried to piece together a plan. He needed to find his bearings, get to Hogwarts, figure out who he could trust—if anyone. Most importantly, he had to find the boy who would become the Dark Lord.
He entered the Leaky Cauldron, the bell above the door jingling softly. The pub smelled of old wood, damp robes, and roasted meat. A fire crackled in the hearth. Conversations halted for a brief moment as patrons turned to examine the newcomer.
Draco stepped to the bar, keeping his shoulders square, chin slightly lifted in the posture of someone who had always known his place in the world—even if that world had just collapsed. The Leaky Cauldron was dimly lit, with shadows clinging to the warped beams of the ceiling and the corners where soot and silence collected. The scent of damp stone, roasted onions, and stale beer clung to the air like a second skin.
The barkeep eyed him—a stout man with a heavy brow and sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms dusted with flour and ash. His wand poked out from behind one ear like a tucked-in pen. A smear of grease stained his apron.
“Room or drink?” he asked, voice gravelly from years of smoke and shouting over rowdy patrons.
“A room, please,” Draco replied, keeping his tone polite, clipped. He had learned from both Lucius and Snape that power didn’t always require volume—only precision.
“Name?”
Draco hesitated only briefly. A flicker of doubt crossed his pale features. “Draco Peverell.”
The barkeep paused, one thick brow twitching upward ever so slightly. The name meant something—it always did—but he said nothing, merely grunted. He ducked beneath the counter and returned with a rusted brass key, the number “3” etched into the metal in a shaky hand.
“Second floor, third door on the left. Seven Sickles a night.”
Draco reached instinctively for his inner pocket—and froze.
His fingers brushed nothing but frayed lining.
Money.
He had no money.
The realization hit him with a sickening weight. Draco Malfoy—whose family vault had once been deep enough to echo—was now penniless in a world not yet his. His ears flushed pink, the humiliation sharp and acidic.
“I… my apologies,” he began, straightening as if sheer posture might salvage the moment. “In my tiredness, I seem to have forgotten to stop by Gringotts.”
The barkeep’s eyes narrowed, suspicion blooming like mold.
“I’ll go first thing in the morning. Is it all right if I pay my tab after I visit the bank?”
The silence that followed stretched long and taut. A few nearby patrons glanced over from their drinks, sensing tension. Draco forced himself not to shift beneath the weight of the man’s scrutiny.
The barkeep leaned forward, hands braced on the counter. “You don’t look like someone who forgets to carry gold.”
Draco reached for the only thing of value left on him—one of the rings he always wore, a family heirloom he had never once removed, not even in battle. It slid from his finger with a reluctant twist. The silver band was coiled in the shape of a serpent, two small rubies for eyes gleaming like embers in the dim light. Diamond scales shimmered faintly along its length.
“For assurance,” Draco said quietly, placing it on the counter.
The barkeep looked at the ring, then at Draco, then back at the ring. He picked it up, tested the weight between his fingers, and held it up to the lantern light.
“Snake, eh?” he muttered. “Fitting.”
With a grunt, he turned, walked to a heavy iron box mounted to the wall behind him, and dropped the ring inside. The lock clicked with finality.
“Don’t disappear on me, Peverell,” the man said, returning to the bar.
“I won’t,” Draco said, with more gravity than the barkeep could have guessed. “Thank you.”
He took the key and nodded, then turned away, weaving through the pub’s clutter of chairs and quiet conversations. Each step toward the staircase felt heavier than the last.
The stairwell creaked with age, wood groaning under his boots like a weary sigh. He climbed slowly, one hand grazing the banister. He reached the second floor and found his door—third on the left, the number barely visible beneath a peeling layer of varnish.
Draco slipped inside, shut the door behind him, and leaned against it as if the world itself were pressing in from the other side.
He had made it.
He was alive.
But nothing was right.
The room was small and spare. A single bed with a thin wool blanket stood against one wall. A narrow writing desk, battered and ink-stained, stood by the rain-streaked window. Outside, Diagon Alley was dark, but lamplight shimmered faintly on the wet cobblestones below. Somewhere, a distant owl hooted.
Draco crossed the room and dropped the Elder Wand onto the bed. It rolled once, then lay still, humming faintly with a magic far older than the boards beneath it.
He peeled off his soaked robes. Underneath, his shirt was torn, and his skin bore the aftermath of war—faint burns traced across his ribs, pale scars winding along his collarbone and forearms like ghost-written names. Every ache whispered a memory he didn’t want to recall.
He exhaled shakily, running a hand through his hair. It was damp, tangled, and streaked with ash. A piece of his fringe stuck stubbornly to his temple.
He moved to the desk, pulled the chair out, and sat.
Then stood again.
Paced the room in slow circles, then leaned against the window, fogging the glass with his breath. The weight of exhaustion pressed against him, but his mind refused to quiet.
He needed to get to Hogwarts.
He needed answers.
Who was the Dark Lord in this time?Was there still time to change him—contain him—before the slaughter began?
“I have to stop it,” Draco whispered to the rain. “I have to.”
But what did he know of changing the past? Magic this deep came with rules—dangerous ones. Time itself felt like a stretched violin string: tense, fragile, and liable to snap at the wrong touch.
He sat on the bed’s edge, head in his hands.
“You’re not ready,” a voice said in his head. It sounded like Snape. Or maybe Dumbledore.
But who ever is? he thought bitterly.
He pulled off his boots slowly, one at a time, setting them by the door. The bed creaked beneath him as he stretched out on the lumpy mattress. He reached over, dragging the Elder Wand close, letting his fingers rest on the smooth wood like a child clinging to a familiar toy in the dark.
A flicker of warmth stirred at his touch, but the wand—like the night—offered no comfort.
The ceiling above him was cracked plaster. The silence wrapped around him like a winding sheet.
He stared upward.
“I’ll stop him,” he whispered, voice hoarse and low. “I swear it.”
But sleep crept in like a thief, and eventually, even his guilt couldn’t keep him upright.
His eyes slipped shut, and darkness took him—not the screaming kind he’d grown used to in battle, but the quiet sort, lined with rain and dust.
Tomorrow, he would go to Gringotts.
Tomorrow, he would go to Hogwarts.
Tomorrow, he would meet the boy who would become Voldemort.
But tonight, even Draco Malfoy could do nothing but dream.