Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sound of rain drummed against the leaves overhead, a steady, relentless rhythm that drowned out everything else or at least, Harry wished it did.

Beneath the rain, he could still hear them: the distant shouts, the sharp casting of spells, the crunch of boots on wet earth. They were closing in.

Harry crouched behind a gnarled oak tree, his chest heaving as he tried to steady his breathing. His dark hair clung to his forehead, rainwater streaming down his face and into his eyes. He blinked them away, his green eyes scanning the shadows between the trees. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight, ready to spring into action at the slightest movement.

Run, Harry! Don’t stop!

Sirius’s voice echoed in his mind, desperate and raw. Harry could still see his godfather’s face, pale and drawn, as he shoved Harry out the back door of their cottage. Go! We’ll hold them off!

Harry had hesitated, he’d wanted to stay, to fight alongside Sirius and Remus, the two people who had raised him, who had given him everything including his freedom.

But freedom was a fragile thing, and it was slipping through his fingers now.

Harry’s hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms. The acrid smell of smoke still clung to him, the memory of flames devouring the cottage still vivid in his mind. He could still hear the crackle of fire, the shouts of the Alpha Force Unit as they stormed the property.

Sirius had fought like a demon, his Omega instincts sharp and feral as he protected his pack while Remus had been restrained, his Alpha strength used to shield Harry rather than attack but it hadn’t been enough.

A twig snapped somewhere to his left, and Harry froze. His heart pounded in his chest, each beat echoing in his ears like a drum. He pressed himself closer to the tree, his breath coming in shallow gasps. The rain was a blessing and a curse — it masked his scent, but it also made it harder to hear his pursuers.

“Spread out!” a voice barked, too close for comfort. “He can’t have gone far!”

Harry’s stomach churned, he knew that voice. It belonged to the man who had led the raid on the cottage, the one who had looked at Harry with cold, calculating eyes as he barked orders. The one who had called him a feral Alpha like it was a curse.

Harry’s jaw tightened, he remembered Sirius telling him the fact that he could read and write alone classified him as feral.

He risked a glance around the tree, his eyes scanning the forest. The agents were closer now, their black uniforms blending into the shadows. Harry counted four of them, maybe five, moving in a loose formation. They were methodical, relentless, like wolves circling their prey.

Harry’s mind raced, squeezing his eyes shut. He needed a plan, but his thoughts were a jumbled mess of fear and anger. He couldn’t go back; the cottage was gone, consumed by flames. He couldn’t stay here — they would find him eventually. His only option was to run, to keep moving until he could lose them in the dense undergrowth.

But his legs felt like lead, his body heavy with exhaustion. He’d been running for what felt like hours, his clothes soaked through and his muscles screaming in protest. Every step was a struggle, every breath a battle.

Yet, he couldn't let Sirius and Remus' sacrifice be in vain.

The thought of his godfathers gave him a burst of strength as he pushed off the tree and darted deeper into the forest, his feet slipping on the wet leaves. The rain was coming down harder now, the sound of it drowning out his footsteps. He could hear the agents shouting behind him, their voices growing fainter as he put distance between them.

He was so close, so close to the edge. Maybe, he could head to an Alpha refuge to regroup or —

Then, something slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the ground. Harry hit the mud with a grunt, the air driven from his lungs. He tried to roll over, to fight back, but a heavy weight settled on his back, pinning him down.

“Got him!” a voice crowed, triumphant.

“Fuck,” one of them panted, keeling over. “Only fifteen and he’s that fast?”

Harry growled, thrashing against the hold, and he almost managed to buck the agent off when he felt a cold metal clamp around his wrists — suppression cuffs, designed to neutralize an Alpha’s strength.

The cold metal of the cuffs bit into his wrists, their enchanment glowing faintly as panic surged through him, sharp and suffocating. He sagged forward.

“Let me go!” Harry roared, his voice raw with desperation.

The agent laughed, a harsh, mocking sound. “Hang tight.”

Harry’s vision blurred as they dragged him to his feet. He caught a glimpse of the cottage in the distance, its roof caved in and flames licking at the walls. Sirius and Remus were gone, he didn’t even know if they were alive or dead.

All he knew was that he was alone.

Five years.

It had been five years since Harry had seen the sky without bars, five years since he’d felt the warmth of the sun on his skin or the crisp bite of winter air. Five years since he’d heard Sirius’s laugh or tasted Remus’s cooking— even Sirius’s burnt attempts at breakfast would have been a luxury now.

Harry lay on the cold, hard floor of his cell, staring up at the cracked ceiling. The room was small, barely large enough for him to stretch out, and the walls were stained with years of grime, piss and neglect. A single, flickering bulb casted a dim light over the space, doing little to chase away the shadows.

He shifted, the chains around his wrists clinking softly. They were always chained, the Alphas here; too dangerous to be left unrestrained, or so the guards said. Harry’s lips curled into a sneer beneath the muzzle strapped tightly to his face. It was a cruel, dehumanizing thing, made of leather and metal, designed to keep him silent.

But Harry had been silent long before they’d muzzled him.

He hadn’t spoken a word since the day they’d dragged him into this hellhole. Not when they’d beaten him, not when they’d shocked him, not even when they’d tried to break him.

He’d learned early on that his silence infuriated them, and that small act of defiance had become his armor. Let them think he was mute, let them think he was broken. They didn’t need to know the storm that raged inside him.

The door to his cell slammed open, and Harry didn’t bother to turn his head.

“Get up, you filthy mongrel,” a guard barked, his wand pointed at Harry.

Harry didn’t move. He stared at the ceiling, his jaw clenched beneath the muzzle.

The guard’s lip curled in disgust, and he flicked his wand. A sharp, electric shock jolted through Harry’s body, forcing a low growl from his throat. His muscles spasmed, but he refused to cry out.

“I said get up,” the guard shouted, stepping closer.

Harry slowly pushed himself to his feet, purposely slow just to piss off the guard. He towered over the guard, his impressive height and broad shoulders a stark contrast to the man’s wiry frame. The guard took a step back, his wand trembling slightly, and Harry’s lips twitched into a grin beneath the muzzle.

“Today’s your lucky day, mutt,” the guard said, recovering his composure. “You’ve been assigned.”

Harry’s stomach dropped. Assigned. The word sent a cold wave of dread through him. He’d seen what happened to the Alphas who were assigned.

The guard grabbed Harry’s arm and yanked him forward, the chains rattling as he was led out of the cell. The hallway was lined with similar doors, each one hiding an Alpha in various states of submission. Some were silent and vacant-eyed, their spirits long since crushed while others whimpered or cowered at the sight of the guards.

Harry’s Alpha instincts recoiled at the sight, these were supposed to be his kind, his pack, but they were shadows of what Alphas should be. The trainers had turned them into puppets, their strings pulled by the whims of Omegas and the cruelty of the system.

The guard shoved Harry into a larger room, where a group of trainers stood waiting. One of them stepped forward, a clipboard in hand.

“Harry Potter,” the man said, his tone bored. “You’ve been assigned to the Malfoy family. Consider yourself lucky, most Omegas wouldn’t touch a feral Alpha like you, but young Omega Malfoy has a… unique taste.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed, a low growl rumbling in his chest. The trainer smirked and flicked his wand, sending another shock through Harry’s body.

“None of that,” the trainer said. “You’ll behave for your new Omega, or you’ll regret it.”

Harry clenched his fists, the chains biting into his wrists. He wouldn’t behave, he’d spent five years in this hellhole, and he wasn’t about to let some Omega break him now.

The guard grabbed Harry’s arm again and dragged him toward the door. As they stepped outside, Harry caught a glimpse of the sky, gray and overcast, but still beautiful. He inhaled deeply, the cold air filling his lungs as he felt the lurch of Apparition.

Wherever they were taking him, it couldn’t be worse than this.

The room was warm, a stark contrast to the cold, grimy cells Harry had grown accustomed to. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, the light reflecting off polished marble floors. The air smelt faintly of lavender and something sweet, a far cry from the stale, metallic scent of the Alpha Unit.

Harry stood in the center of the room, his chains clinking softly as the guard shoved him forward. His eyes swept the space, taking in the figures before him. A platinum-blonde Omega stood near the center, his bright gray eyes wide with curiosity and excitement.

Behind him, an Omega man lounged on a velvet chaise, his sharp features twisted into a sneer as his gaze landed on Harry. At his feet sat a tall, blond Alpha woman, her posture unnaturally submissive with her head bowed low.

"It's an honor to be of service to the Malfoy family,” The guard bowed to both the Omegas and intentionally ignored the Alpha on the floor, “Here is the beast you requested.”

He looked away, his jaw tightening beneath the muzzle. He didn’t need to see either Omega's expression to know what they thought of him. He’d seen it a hundred times before; disdain, disgust, the kind of look one might give a stray dog.

Yet, even now, after years of suffering at their hands, he couldn’t bring himself to hate them — not completely. Sirius had been the best Omega Harry had ever known, and that was the image of omegas he wanted to cling to. It was the one thing that kept him from losing himself entirely.

The boy stepped forward, his eyes lighting up as he took in Harry’s appearance. “Alpha,” he breathed out, his voice soft and almost reverent but then he paused, his brows furrowing as his gaze landed on the muzzle.

“Why is he muzzled?” He demanded, whirling around to face the guard. His tone was sharp and nothing like the soft voice he used to speak to Harry just a moment ago.

The guard stammered, clearly caught off guard. “W-Well, you see, it’s protocol to muzzle them, sir. For safety.”

The omega's scowl deepened, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “He will be the father of my children,” he snapped, gesturing to Harry. “He isn’t some animal, take it off, immediately.”

“Now, now, Draco,” The man chided from his seat.

Harry’s eyes narrowed, he tried to tamper his surprise at the display; he knew better than to trust the Omega, they usually had an ulterior motive for anything they do.

The guard hesitated, glancing nervously at the man on the chaise. He waved a hand dismissively, his expression bored. “Do as he says.”

With trembling hands, the guard stepped forward and began to unbuckle the muzzle. Harry stood perfectly still, his muscles tense, his eyes locked on the guard’s face. The moment the muzzle was off, Harry lunged, his teeth bared, his chains rattling as he strained against them.

The guard stumbled back with a yelp, his face pale. “See? He’s feral!”

“He’s perfect,” Draco sighed, his voice dreamy. He stepped closer to Harry, completely unfazed by the display of aggression. His gray eyes sparkled with something Harry couldn’t quite place — admiration, maybe, or fascination.

Harry glared at him, his chest heaving. He wanted to snarl, to shout, to tell this spoiled Omega exactly what he thought of him.

But he couldn’t. The Ministry’s laws were clear: Alphas who spoke were punished with a Dementor's kiss and Harry had seen what the kiss did to people. He’d seen the vacant eyes, the broken spirits, no, he wouldn’t risk it.

No one even knew he understood them and he rather it stayed that way.

So, he stayed silent, his lips pressed into a thin line, his eyes burning with defiance.

Draco tilted his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “You’re strong,” he said softly. “There’s life in your eyes, you're everything an Alpha should be.”

Harry turned his head away, his chains clinking as he shifted his weight.

The man on the chaise finally spoke, his voice cold and cutting. “It's feral, Draco. Untrained. Dangerous. Are you sure this is the beast you want?”

Draco didn’t even glance at him. “He’s exactly who I want,” he said firmly. 

Harry’s eyes flicked back to Draco, his surprise returning.

The guard stepped forward again, his wand pointed at Harry. “Shall I…?”

Draco waved a hand dismissively. “No, leave him be.”

As the guard retreated, Draco stepped closer, his gray eyes locking with Harry’s. “Shall we get going, then?” he asked with a grin. 

Harry just stared at the blond man, his expression impassive. What an odd Omega.

The moment they stepped out of the Ministry’s oppressive halls and into the open air, Harry felt a flicker of something he hadn’t felt in years — freedom. It was fleeting, of course, as the chains around his wrists and the Omega at his side reminded him, but it was there all the same. The sky was a pale gray, the air crisp and cool, and for a moment, Harry allowed himself to breathe.

That moment didn’t last long.

Draco reached for Harry’s hand, his fingers brushing against the Alpha’s calloused palm. Harry reacted instantly, a low, warning snarl rumbling in his chest as he jerked his hand away.

Lucius, who had been walking a few steps ahead, jumped at the sound, his grip tightening on his cane.

“My word,” he said, his voice sharp with disapproval. “Perhaps, we should muzzle the beast, Draco, he’s clearly unstable.”

Draco, however, didn’t seem the least bit fazed. He smiled, a self-assured expression on his face that got on Harry's nerve immediately. “Relax, Father,” he said, his tone dripping with casual confidence. “He’s just adjusting, aren’t you, Alpha?”

Harry didn’t respond. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Instead, he glared down at Draco, his lips curling into a silent snarl in warning.

"I'm going to apparate with you, now," Draco informed him, Harry stepped back again.

Draco, undeterred, looped his arm through Harry’s, resting his head against the Alpha’s bicep. Harry stiffened, his muscles tensing as he fought the urge to shake the Omega off. He tolerated it, barely, his teeth gritted and his jaw clenched so tightly it ached.

“Hold on tight,” Draco said, his voice light as if Harry had a choice in the matter.

Before Harry could react, the world twisted around him, the familiar yet disorienting sensation of Apparition pulling at his stomach. It had been years since he’d last Apparated, and the experience was just as jarring as he remembered. When they landed, Harry stumbled slightly, his chains clinking as he caught his balance.

Draco chuckled, his grip on Harry’s arm tightening. “You’ll get used to it,” he said, his tone teasing but not unkind.

Harry shot him a glare, but Draco either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

They arrived at the Malfoy estate, a sprawling manor that loomed over the grounds like a castle. The sight of it made Harry’s stomach churn; it was a symbol of everything he despised — wealth, power, and the oppressive system that had ruined his life.

Lucius gave Harry one long, appraising look before turning on his heel and striding up the steps without a word. The Alpha who had escorted them from the facility lingered nearby, and Harry’s eyes lingered on the woman for a moment, his curiosity piqued.

Draco huffed, rolling his eyes. “He’s always in a mood,” he said, his tone dismissive. “Don’t take it personally.”

He tugged on Harry’s arm, pulling him gently but insistently toward where Narcissa stood. “Come on,” Draco said, his voice eager. “I want to introduce you to my mother. Her name’s Narcissa.”

Harry resisted at first, his feet dragging against the polished floor, but Draco was surprisingly persistent. Reluctantly, Harry allowed himself to be led, his chains rattling with every step.

Narcissa watched them approach, her silver-blonde hair gleamed like polished metal. Her piercing eyes settled on Harry, sharp and calculating, and a faint snarl tugged at the corner of her lips — subtle but unmistakable.

Harry didn’t need more than a moment to decide: he didn’t like her, not one bit.

Draco released Harry’s arm and bounded over to his mother, quick and eager. He wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace, his voice bright and brimming with pride as he said, “My own Alpha just like the fairy tales you used to read to me."

Narcissa’s stern expression softened for a fleeting moment as she returned the hug, but her voice was low and firm when she murmured, “Dragon, you know that’s a secret.”

Harry blinked rapidly, his head snapping toward her in surprise. For a split second, he glanced around, half-expecting to see someone else — perhaps the older Omega reappearing but no, it was unmistakably Narcissa who had spoken. The realization hit him like a jolt, leaving him momentarily stunned.

Narcissa released a low, calming rumble, the sound vibrating softly in the air as she pressed a kiss to Draco’s crown. Harry watched the interaction with a mix of confusion and intrigue. He’d never seen an Alpha behave so… gently. Even Remus, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, had a certain roughness to him. This was different—soothing, almost maternal.

It was strange, unsettling in a way he couldn’t quite place, but it also sparked a flicker of curiosity. Was there more to the Malfoys than he’d initially thought?

“Sorry,” Draco said, pulling away with a sheepish grin. He glanced around as if checking for eavesdroppers, then added, “But Father wasn’t nearby, so it’s fine, right?”

Narcissa’s gaze shifted to Harry, her silver eyes sharp and calculating. She didn’t speak, but the weight of her stare was enough to make Harry’s skin crawl. It was as if she were dissecting him, piece by piece.

Harry met her gaze head-on, his own eyes blazing with defiance. He didn’t care what Narcissa thought of him. He wasn’t here to impress anyone.

Draco, seemingly oblivious to the tension, clapped his hands together in glee. “Well, come on, Alpha, let’s get you settled.”

Harry allowed himself to be led away, his mind racing. This place was a gilded cage, and Draco was its charming jailer but as much as Harry hated to admit it, there was something… interesting about the Omega.

The hallway seemed to stretch on forever, it was overwhelming. The walls were lined with portraits of stern-faced Omegas, their gazes cold and judgmental as they followed him.

Harry’s chains clinked with every step, the sound echoing in the silence like a grim reminder of his place in this world. He kept his eyes forward, his jaw clenched tight, but his mind was racing.

The opulence of the Malfoy estate was a stark reminder of everything he’d lost, and Draco’s kindness felt like a trap waiting to spring.

When they reached a set of double doors, Draco pushed them open with a flourish, the heavy wood swinging inward to reveal a room that took Harry’s breath away.

The room carried the faint scent of lavender and something sweet and uniquely Draco. The room was large and luxurious, with a massive four-poster bed draped in silken sheets that shimmered in the light.

A plush rug covered the floor, its softness a stark contrast to the cold, barren cell Harry had called home for the past five years. 

Draco stepped inside, graceful and sedate as he turned to face Harry with a bright smile.

“Here we are” he said, as he bounced onto the bed, sinking into the soft mattress with a contented sigh, and propped himself up on his elbows. His gray eyes sparkled as he looked at Harry, waiting expectantly.

Harry hesitated at the threshold, his eyes scanning the room. It was too much; too soft, too warm, too everything.

He felt out of place, his chains rattled as he stepped inside, the sound harsh and discordant in the serene atmosphere. He glanced at the floor near the side table, noting how hard and cold it looked. It was a far cry from a bed, but it would do, he lowered himself to the floor, his back against the wall, and stared straight ahead, his expression unreadable.

Draco frowned, sitting up fully. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice tinged with confusion. He tilted his head, his hair falling into his eyes. “You’re sleeping on the bed, Harry.”

Harry jolted at the sound of his name, looking at Draco, it had been five years since anyone had called him that.

To the guards and trainers, he was just “mutt” or “beast.” Hearing his name now, spoken so softly by Draco, sent a wave of emotion crashing over him. His chest tightened, and he swallowed hard, trying to push back the lump rising in his throat.

Draco slid off the bed and knelt in front of Harry, approaching him slowly. He reached for Harry’s hands, his fingers brushing against the cold metal of the chains. Harry tensed but didn’t pull away, his green eyes flicking down to watch Draco’s delicate hands at work. The Omega’s touch was light, almost reverent, and Harry couldn’t help but notice how small and fragile Draco’s hands were compared to his own. He was sure he could crush them if he held on tight enough.

“You don’t need these anymore,” Draco murmured, his voice gentle as he unlocked the cuffs.

The chains fell to the floor with a loud rattle, and Harry flexed his wrists, the skin raw and red from years of restraint. The absence of the chains felt strange, almost leaving him feeling naked, like a part of him had been stripped away.

Draco’s hands lingered for a moment, his touch warm against Harry’s calloused palms. He looked up at Harry, his gray eyes filled with something Harry couldn’t quite place.

“There,” Draco said, his voice breaking the silence. “Better?”

His throat felt tight, his chest heavy with emotions he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in years. He simply moved his gaze away from the Omega.

Draco stood and reached out a hand, his palm upturned in invitation. “Let’s go to sleep.”

Harry hesitated, his eyes flicking between Draco’s hand and the bed but Draco’s expression was open and sincere, and for the first time in years, Harry felt a flicker of trust.

Slowly, he stood to his full height and slipped his hand into Draco's.

“You’ll sleep here,” Draco said, patting the space beside him. “I won’t have my Alpha sleeping on the floor like some common servant.”

Harry’s lips twitched, almost forming a smile, but he quickly suppressed it. He climbed onto the bed, the mattress sinking under his weight, and lay down stiffly, his body tense. Draco settled beside him, pulling the covers over them both.

For a moment, they lay in silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire and the soft rustle of fabric. Harry stared at the ceiling, his mind racing. 

Draco shifted closer, his body heat radiating against Harry’s side. “You’re safe here,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. 

Harry’s breath hitched, and he turned his head to look at Draco. The Omega’s eyes were half-closed, his expression peaceful. He looked so young, so innocent, and yet there was a strength in him that Harry couldn’t ignore.

“Sleep, Alpha,” Draco said, his voice soft as he turned his back on Harry, “You’re home now.”

Harry closed his eyes, the words echoing in his mind. Home.

As the sun rose, its pale light filtered through the sheer curtains, and the first thing Harry noticed was the warmth.

It was gentle, enveloping, and so unlike the cold, hard floor of his cell or the scratchy, threadbare blankets of the Alpha Unit. His body was curled around something — no, someone — and his arm was draped possessively over a slender waist.

His nose was pressed into the curve of a neck, where a scent, rich, sweet, and intoxicating, filled his senses. Honey, vanilla, and Omega. It was a scent that made his chest rumble with a low, involuntary growl, a sound he hadn’t made in years.

His lips moved instinctively, brushing against the scent gland, his breath hot against the delicate skin. His body reacted before his mind could catch up, his hips shifting lazily, seeking friction, seeking more. A haze of sleep and instinct clouded his thoughts, and for a moment, there was nothing but the warmth, the scent, and the softness of the body pressed against his.

The body beneath him let out a soft, breathy moan, the sound vibrating against Harry’s lips. It was a sound of pleasure, of contentment, and it sent a jolt of heat through Harry’s veins. His grip tightened around the Omega, his fingers digging into the silk fabric of pajamas. His hips moved again, this time with more purpose, chasing the heat that felt so good, so right.

But then a voice broke through the haze, soft and sleepy but unmistakably pleased. “Harry…”

The sound of his name, spoken so intimately, so sweetly, was like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.

Harry’s eyes flew open, and he froze, his body going rigid. For a split second, he didn’t understand what was happening. The warmth, the scent, the body in his arms, it all felt so natural but then reality came crashing down.

He was in bed with Draco. He was rutting against Draco.

Harry jerked away as if burned, scrambling backward until he tumbled off the bed and landed hard on the floor. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs, but he barely noticed, his heart was pounding, his chest heaving as he stared up at the bed in horror. His mind raced, trying to make sense of what had just happened, but all he could think was, What have I done?

Draco propped himself up on his elbows, his hair disheveled and his gray eyes half-lidded with sleep. He looked down at Harry, a faint pout forming on his lips. “Why did you stop?” he whined, his voice tinged with disappointment. He shifted on the bed, the silk sheets rustling softly.

Panic and shame swirled inside Harry as he spat on the floor, trying to rid his mouth of the lingering taste of Draco’s scent— honey and something sweet, something that made his stomach churn. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his breathing ragged.

“That’s just rude,” Draco said softly, pouting as he rested his chin on his palm. “Do you not like my scent, Harry?”

Harry glared at him, making a show of spitting out more.

Draco tilted his head, his pout deepening. “Harry,” he said, his tone equal parts sweet and demanding, like the brat he was, “Come back to bed, you were fine a moment ago.”

Harry shook his head, his movements jerky as he pushed himself to his feet. He took a step back, putting more distance between himself and the bed. His instincts were screaming at him, torn between the urge to flee and the lingering pull of Draco’s scent.

Draco sighed, sitting up fully and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. His hair was a mess of golden strands, and he looked every bit the spoiled, pampered Omega he was but there was a glint in his eyes, playful, teasing, and a little dangerous, that made Harry’s stomach twist.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Draco said, his voice light but with an edge of impatience. “It’s natural, you know, Alphas and Omegas… it’s what we’re meant to do.”

Harry’s jaw tightened, and he shook his head again, more forcefully this time. He couldn’t speak, but his expression said everything.

Draco stood and took a step toward him, his palms stretched out in front of him. “Okay,” he said softly, “You don’t have to be upset. I’m your Omega, I’m not mad.”

Harry took another step back, and held up a hand, a silent warning for Draco to stay away. 

Draco stopped, his lips curving into a small smile. “Fine,” he said with a sigh, “But just so you know, I loved it.”

Harry just glared at him, gritting his teeth. 

Draco’s smile widened, and he turned away, heading toward the door. “I’ll have breakfast brought up,” he said over his shoulder. “You must be starving.”

As the door closed behind Draco, Harry slumped against the wall, his legs giving out beneath him. He sat on the floor, his head in his hands, and let out a shaky breath.

This was going to be harder than he thought.

The door creaked open as Draco swept back into the room, balancing a large silver platter in his hands. The scent of freshly cooked meat, ripe fruit, and warm bread filled the air, mingling with the faint traces of Draco’s honey-sweet Omega scent.

Harry’s stomach growled audibly, betraying his hunger despite his best efforts to remain stoic. Draco set the platter down on the bed with a flourish, the array of food almost too lavish for a simple breakfast. There were slices of roasted ham, wheels of creamy cheese, clusters of grapes, and golden pastries dusted with sugar. A small pot of tea steamed beside a delicate porcelain cup, and Harry couldn’t help but notice how out of place it all felt in his world of deprivation and survival.

Interestingly enough, Draco didn’t join him on the bed. Instead, he lowered himself gracefully to the floor, sitting cross-legged on the plush rug. Harry blinked, his brows furrowing in confusion. He’d never seen an Omega sit beneath an Alpha before. It was… unnatural. Unheard of. Yet here Draco was, sitting on the floor as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Harry watched him silently, his food forgotten for a moment. Draco seemed entirely at ease, picking up a slice of toast and cutting it into precise, bite-sized pieces with a knife and fork. The poshness of it made Harry’s nose scrunch in mild disgust. Who cut toast with a knife and fork? But Draco didn’t seem to notice Harry’s reaction, his movements deliberate and practiced, as if he’d been taught to eat this way since childhood.

The silence between them was strangely comfortable, broken only by the soft clink of Draco’s fork against his plate.

Harry nibbled on a piece of cheese, his eyes never leaving the Omega. Draco’s behavior confused him. He didn’t understand what Draco’s angle was, nor what his endgame could be. Why was he being so… kind? So accommodating? It didn’t make sense.

“I’m so glad I chose you,” Draco said suddenly, his voice soft but sincere. He didn’t look up from his plate, his fingers delicately holding the fork as he speared a piece of fruit. “Mother told me everything about Alphas since I was young. Not how they are now,” he added quickly, almost as if he were afraid of offending Harry. “But how they used to be.”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up, he watched Draco intently, waiting for the Omega to continue.

Draco set his fork down and glanced up at Harry, his gray eyes bright. “She told me stories,” Draco went on, his voice growing warmer as he spoke. “About Alphas who stood equal with Omegas and Betas, leaders who provided for their packs, who protected their Omegas and made them feel safe,” He smiled faintly, his cheeks tinged with pink. “I always thought it sounded like something out of a romantic tale”

Harry’s chest tightened, a strange mix of emotions swirling inside him. He didn’t know what to make of Draco’s words, they were so far removed from the reality he’d known — the reality where Alphas were broken, subjugated, and stripped of their dignity. Yet here Draco was, speaking of Alphas as if they were noble.

Draco picked up his fork again, twirling it absently between his fingers. “She even showed me old books,” he admitted, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “Books about how to present, how to provide, how to… please an Alpha.” He glanced at Harry, his expression suddenly shy. “I know it’s not what Omegas are supposed to want but Mother said it was important. She said it was how things were meant to be.”

Harry’s breath caught in his throat. The pieces were falling into place, and the realization hit him like a punch to the gut.

Draco hadn’t been raised like other Omegas. He hadn’t been taught to dominate or control. He’d been raised by an Alpha — by Narcissa and not just any Alpha, but one who had defied the Ministry’s laws, who had secretly passed down knowledge that could get them both executed if it were ever discovered.

Harry’s mind raced as he stared at Draco, his food forgotten. No wonder Draco wasn’t unsettled by his aggression, his defiance. To Draco, it wasn’t something to fear or suppress. It was probably the kind of behavior Narcissa had romanticized in her stories and old books.

Draco seemed oblivious to the weight of his words, his attention now focused on slicing another piece of toast. “I know it’s probably strange to you,” he said, his tone light but tinged with uncertainty. “But I like it. I like the idea of an Alpha who’s strong and protective. Someone I can trust,” He glanced up at Harry again, his gaze soft but searching. “Someone like you.”

Harry’s chest tightened further, a lump forming in his throat. 

After breakfast, servants came in to collect the trays while Draco said he would have to summon the seamstress so he could get new cloths.

So, as the door clicked shut behind Draco, Harry was left alone for the first time since he left the Alpha facility.

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the faint crackling of the fire in the hearth. Harry let out a harsh breath, the tension in his shoulders easing only slightly as he collapsed back onto the bed. The plush mattress sank under his weight, but the comfort did little to soothe his racing mind. He stared up at the canopy above, his thoughts a tangled mess.

“What the fuck?” he whispered, his voice a rasp from disuse. It felt strange to hear his own voice after so long, rough and unfamiliar, like a forgotten instrument pulled from the dust.

He ran a hand over his face, trying to make sense of everything that had happened since he’d arrived at the Malfoy estate. Draco’s strange behavior, the way he spoke of Alphas as if they were something noble, it was all so overwhelming and then there was Narcissa, with her sharp eyes and quiet authority, who seemed to know far more than she let on.

What was her angle?

Harry’s head jerked up when he heard the doorknob turn, the sound sharp in the otherwise silent room. His body tensed instinctively, his green eyes narrowing as the door swung open to reveal Narcissa as if he had summoned her with his thoughts.

She stepped inside with the grace of a predator, her hair in a bun and her piercing gaze sweeping over him, calculating and unreadable, before she closed the door behind her with a soft click.

“Draco’s gone to get the seamstress,” she informed him, her voice cool and measured. He already knew that, and he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. He kept his face blank, his expression carefully neutral, but his body remained taut, ready for whatever came next.

Narcissa sighed, a sound that was both weary and impatient, and moved closer. Harry’s instincts screamed at him to back away as she stepped into his space, almost within scenting distance. It was unnerving, having another Alpha so close, especially one as formidable as Narcissa. His jaw clenched, his muscles coiling like a spring, but he forced himself to stay still, to not show weakness.

“Relax,” Narcissa said, her tone firm but not unkind. She looked him over critically, her gaze lingering on the scars that marred his skin, the callouses on his hands, the defiance in his eyes. “Fit,” she remarked, almost to herself. “My Omega may take an interest in you.”

Harry’s brows furrowed in confusion. Her Omega? Did she mean Lucius? What could an Omega like Lucius possibly want with him? The thought sent a flicker of unease through him, but he kept his expression carefully blank, refusing to give Narcissa anything that could be used against him.

Narcissa’s lips curved into a faint, knowing smile, as if she could read his thoughts. “I know you can talk,” she said, her voice low and steady. “Feel free to speak. I am an Alpha too, after all. I would be given the kiss just as quickly as you if I were shown to have intelligence and who would protect Draco if we are both gone?”

Harry’s eyes narrowed, his mind racing. He hadn’t expected this, hadn’t expected her to see through his silence so easily. He studied her carefully, searching for any hint of deception, but her expression was unreadable, her silver eyes sharp and unwavering.

Finally, he sighed, the sound rough and reluctant. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice deep and hoarse from disuse. It felt strange to speak to another, the words foreign on his tongue.

Narcissa’s smile widened, though there was no warmth in it. “Straight to the point, good,” she said, her tone almost approving. 

She took a step closer, her gaze boring into his. “I know you and Draco have just meant but I would like you to take on the mantle of protecting him.”

Harry blinked, caught off guard by the directness of her request. “Protect him?” he repeated, his voice tinged with disbelief. “From what?”

“From everything,” Narcissa said simply. “From the Ministry, from his father, from himself. Draco is different. He doesn’t see the world the way others do and that makes him vulnerable.” Her expression softened slightly, a flicker of something almost maternal crossing her features. “I’ve done what I can to shield him, but I can’t be everywhere and if something were to happen to me…”

She trailed off, leaving the unspoken words hanging in the air. Harry’s chest tightened as the weight of her words settled over him. He didn’t know what to say, how to respond to the raw honesty in her voice but before he could gather his thoughts, Narcissa stepped back, her cool composure slipping back into place.

“Think about it,” she said, her tone brisk now, as if the moment of vulnerability had never happened. “But don’t take too long, the world isn’t kind to those who hesitate.”

She turned to leave, her hand resting on the doorknob, but Harry’s voice stopped her.

"How have you managed to not get caught by the Ministry?" It had been bothering him since he first heard her speak.

"I spent years perfecting the art of silence, Mr. Potter, my words reserved only for Draco and the rare moments when the Ministry’s watchful eyes weren't on me," She replied, softly.

“Why did you put those ideas of Alphas in his head?” he asked, after a beat of silence. “Why teach him to see us as equals?”

Narcissa paused, the room was silent except for the faint crackling of the fire. Then, she turned her head slightly, her profile illuminated by the soft light.

“Because Alphas and Omegas were always meant to be,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “One can't survive without the other so if we are to advance into a world where that could be true, I must start with my own offspring.”

Harry frowned, his mind racing. “How were you even able to raise Draco like that?” he asked, his voice low. “Didn’t Lucius object? Omegas are supposed to be protective of their young, everyone knows that.”

Narcissa chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. “Lucius had no interest in raising a child,” she said, her tone laced with disdain. “To him, Draco is nothing more than a legacy; a continuation of the Malfoy line of ruling Omegas. While he was busy climbing the political ladder, I made subtle changes to Draco’s education, careful to keep my lessons hidden behind closed doors.”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up in shock. It was brilliant, a level of cunning he hadn’t thought possible.

“Unlike most Omegas,” Narcissa continued, her voice steady, “Lucius lacks any semblance of maternal instinct so I took advantage of that.”

She turned fully to face Harry now, her gray eyes locking onto his with an intensity that made him straighten. “I raised Draco the way I saw fit and now, he sees the world as it should be — not as it is.”

Harry stared at her, his chest tight with a mix of admiration and unease. He didn’t know what to say, how to process the enormity of what she was telling him but before he could respond, Narcissa opened the door and stepped out, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

The door clicked shut behind her, and Harry let out a long, shaky breath, his mind reeling. Protect Draco? From the Ministry? From Lucius? It was a dangerous request, one that could get him killed if he wasn’t careful.

But as he lay back on the bed, staring up at the canopy above, he couldn’t help but think of Draco’s smile, his laughter, the way he looked at Harry as if he were something precious and wondered if the Omega was worth protecting.

The door burst open with a loud creak, startling Harry out of his thoughts as Draco swept into the room, dragging a petite Beta woman behind him. She stumbled slightly, her dark hair falling into her face as she tried to keep up with Draco’s brisk pace. Harry’s body tensed instinctively, his green eyes narrowing as he took in the newcomer. She was dressed in simple but well-tailored robes, a measuring tape draped around her neck and a small bag of sewing tools clutched in her hand.

“This is Pansy,” Draco stated, his voice bright and cheerful as he sat down on the bed, he moved with such careless energy.

He gestured toward the Beta with a flourish, as if presenting her like a prized possession. “She’s the best seamstress in the country. She’ll get you fitted for a proper wardrobe in no time.”

Harry’s jaw tightened, his instincts flaring as the Beta stepped closer. Her scent was mild, unobtrusive, but it was enough to set him on edge.

Betas were the backbone of society, neither revered like Omegas nor oppressed like Alphas. They served as mediators, enforcers, and, in some cases, reluctant accomplices to the Ministry’s cruelty.

Memories of the guards and trainers from the Alpha Unit rose unbidden in his mind; their cold, clinical hands, their mocking laughter, the way they’d treated him like an animal to be broken. His chest rumbled with a low, warning growl, his body coiling like a spring as he glared at her.

Pansy froze, her dark eyes widening as she took a cautious step back. “Draco,” she said, her voice tinged with unease, “are you sure he doesn’t need to be muzzled? He looks like he’s about to rip my throat out.”

Draco shot her a scathing glare, his gray eyes flashing with an intensity. “Suggest that again,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, “and you’ll be out of a job. Permanently.”

Pansy’s lips thinned into a tight line, but she said nothing more. Instead, she raised her hands in a gesture of surrender and approached Harry slowly, her movements deliberate and cautious. Harry watched her like a hawk, his body tense and ready to bolt or fight at the slightest provocation but Draco’s presence kept him grounded, if only barely.

Pansy worked quickly and efficiently, her hands steady despite the tension in the room. She measured Harry’s shoulders, his chest, his arms, her touch light and impersonal. Harry’s growl never fully subsided, but he allowed her to do her job, his eyes never leaving her face. He didn’t trust her, didn’t trust anyone in this place, but he wasn’t about to give Draco a reason to doubt him.

Draco, for his part, seemed entirely unbothered by the tension. He lounged on the bed, his legs crossed at the ankles, as he watched the proceedings with a faint smile. “You’ll look stunning in proper clothes,” he stated. “I can’t wait to see you in something that isn’t… well, disgusting rags.” He gestured vaguely at Harry’s tattered, ill-fitting garments, his nose wrinkling in distaste.

Harry barely heard him, his attention still focused on Pansy. She finished her measurements quickly, jotting down notes in a small notebook before stepping back with a relieved sigh. “All done,” she said, her voice brisk. “I’ll have the first set of clothes ready in two days.”

Draco nodded, his smile widening. “Excellent, you’re dismissed.”

Pansy gave a small bow, her expression carefully neutral, before turning and leaving the room. The door clicked shut behind her, and Harry let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His shoulders relaxed slightly, but the tension in the room didn’t fully dissipate.

Draco stretched lazily on the bed. “See? That wasn’t so bad,” he said, his tone teasing.

Before he could gather his thoughts, a soft knock sounded at the door. Draco perked up immediately, his smile returning. “Ah, that’ll be lunch,” he said, hopping off the bed with a bounce in his step. “Come on, Harry, let’s eat.”

Harry hesitated for a moment, his instincts still on edge, but he forced himself to follow Draco out of the room. Draco led the way, his steps light and unhurried, but Harry couldn’t shake the feeling that he was walking into something far more complicated than he’d bargained for.

The dining room was a grand, imposing space, its high ceilings adorned with intricate moldings and the long, polished table shimmered under the light of a chandelier, its surface set with fine china and silverware that sparkled in the soft glow.

The air was filled with the rich aromas of roasted meat, fresh bread, and spiced vegetables, but the atmosphere was anything but welcoming. Harry hesitated at the threshold, his instincts prickling as he took in the scene before him.

Lucius sat at the head of the table, his posture regal and his expression cold. He was already eating with precise and deliberate motions as if the act of dining were a performance meant to showcase his superiority.

His long hair was impeccably styled, and his sharp features were set in a mask of disdain. Beside him, Narcissa knelt, her head bowed and her hands resting in her lap. There was no plate in front of her, no indication that she would be joining the meal.

Her blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her expression was serene, but Harry could see the tension in her posture, the way her fingers twitched ever so slightly. It was a stark contrast to the elegant, commanding Alpha he’d seen earlier. She was never meant to kneel at anyone’s feet, and the sight of it made Harry’s blood boil.

Draco was deliberately ignoring the tension as he grabbed Harry’s hand and tugged him toward the table. “Come on, you must be starving.”

Harry allowed himself to be led, though his eyes never left Narcissa. He sat stiffly in the chair Draco indicated, his body tense and his senses on high alert. The chair was ornate and uncomfortable, its high back and rigid frame pressing into his back.

 Draco, meanwhile, was already piling food onto his plate, he pointed to various dishes, his voice animated as he described each one. “Try the roast beef, it’s delicious and the potatoes, they’re my favorite. Oh, and you have to try the bread. It’s fresh from the oven.”

Harry glanced at Draco, his confusion growing as more and more food was pointed out to. Though, Draco was right, the roast beef was tender and rich, but Harry barely tasted it.

Lucius was less than pleased as he set his fork down with a sharp clink, the sound echoing in the otherwise silent room. His icy gaze narrowed as it landed on Harry. “Draco,” he said, his voice cold and clipped, “must you put that beast at the dining table? It’s unsightly.”

Harry’s growl was low and immediate, his green eyes flashing with anger as he met Lucius’s gaze. The feeling of disgust was mutual, and Harry made no effort to hide it. His fingers tightened around the edge of the table, his knuckles whitening as he fought the urge to lunge across the room.

Draco, however, didn’t seem fazed, he frowned at his father, his tone firm but polite. “He’s my Alpha, of course, he’s sitting with me.” He glanced at Narcissa, his expression softening. “Mama should be on a chair, too, you know? Has she even eaten?”

Narcissa’s lips curved into a faint, almost imperceptible smile at Draco’s words, though she didn’t look up. 

Lucius’s eyes narrowed, his voice sharp with warning. “Watch your tone, Draco, the beast shall stay where she is, as should all lessers. Now, order your Alpha to the ground.”

Draco’s jaw tightened, his hands clenching into fists beneath the table. For a moment, the room was silent, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife. Then, Draco released a slow breath, his expression calm.

“No,” he said, his voice firm and unwavering. “My Alpha will do as he pleases. So, leave him alone and don’t talk to him, as a matter of fact, don’t even look at him.”

Harry’s head bowed slightly, his lips twitching as he fought to hide the smile forming on his face. The Omega had so much spunk, it was unexpected, but not unwelcome.

Lucius’s expression darkened, but he said nothing more. Instead, he returned to his meal, the way he was cutting his roast showing his anger as his less than graceful movement stuttered.

Draco turned back to Harry, his smile returning as he gestured to the food. “Eat,” he urged.

Harry hesitated for a moment, his eyes flicking to Narcissa once more. Harry could see the faintest glimmer of pride in her eyes as she watched Draco. It was a small thing, but it spoke volumes.

Finally, Harry picked up a piece of bread and began to eat, the food was delicious, but he barely tasted it. His mind was too busy processing everything he’d just witnessed.

The tension in the dining room was palpable, the clinking of silverware against fine china the only sound breaking the heavy silence. 

It was Lucius who finally broke the silence. 

“The Alpha fights are this Saturday,” he said, his tone casual, as if he were discussing the weather rather than a brutal, life-or-death spectacle. “You’re required to attend, Draco.”

Harry’s breath caught in his throat. Alpha fights. The words sent a jolt of recognition through him, and suddenly, it all made sense now.

The fights were a brutal spectacle, designed to humiliate and break the Alphas who dared to resist the Ministry’s control versus Alphas that were thrown in there willingly by their owners.

Winners brought their Omegas wealth and prestige; losers were buried in unmarked graves.

He remembered Sirius and Remus arguing about it years ago, when they were low on cash and desperate. Remus had been confident he could win first place, but Sirius had been vehemently against it, his voice trembling with fear as he begged Remus not to risk his life. Harry had been too young to understand the full implications at the time, but now, the memory sent a chill down his spine.

Draco’s head snapped up, his gray eyes wide with disbelief. “I don’t like going to those dreadful things,” he said, his voice firm but tinged with unease. “Nor do I enjoy watching my mother fight to the death.”

Lucius waved a hand dismissively, his expression one of bored indifference. “Nonsense,” he drawled. “She loves it, and she wins every time, doesn’t she?”

Draco’s jaw tightened, his hands clenched into fists beneath the table. “She doesn’t love it,” he snapped, his voice rising slightly. “She —”

He stopped abruptly, his mouth snapping shut as if he’d caught himself just in time. Harry’s eyes flicked to Narcissa, he was sure Draco had been about to say something incriminating, something about Narcissa’s intelligence, her ability to speak, probably.

Draco swallowed hard as he forced himself to continue. “I don’t want to go, its barbaric,” he said, his voice steadier now. 

Lucius’s fork clinked sharply against his plate as he set it down, his icy gaze narrowing. “Draco,” he sighed, his voice low and dangerous, “You need to toughen up, you’re an Omega, and a Malfoy Omega, at that. You're too soft to those beasts, they don’t need our sympathy.”

He shook his head, his expression one of bitter disappointment. “I blame myself for not rearing you myself,” he said, his tone dripping with disdain. “No matter how tedious it would have been, it would have been far better than seeing how pathetic you are for Alphas.”

Harry’s hands clenched into fists beneath the table, his nails digging into his palms.

It was clear that Lucius’ hatred for Alphas wasn’t just born out of prejudice; it was a calculated move to maintain his own position in a society that valued Omegas above all else.

Harry wanted to lunge across the table, to wipe that smug, condescending look off Lucius’s face but he forced himself to stay still, his jaw clenched so tightly it ached.

Draco looked down at his hands, his bottom lip trembling ever so slightly. For a moment, it seemed as though he might argue, might defend himself and Narcissa with the same fiery defiance he’d shown earlier but then he stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor, and left the room without a word.

The silence that followed was deafening. Narcissa's body trembled with barely suppressed rage, her hands, still folded in her lap, were clenched so tightly that her knuckles were white. Harry could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw was clenched, and he knew she was fighting to keep her composure.

Lucius, seemingly oblivious, or perhaps indifferent, to the turmoil he’d caused, took a sip of his wine, his expression one of mild annoyance. “See?” he said, his tone almost conversational. “Soft.”

He kicked at Narcissa’s side, the movement casual and dismissive, as if she were nothing more than a piece of furniture. She jostled slightly but didn’t move from her position, her expression still carefully blank.

“I blame you, beast,” Lucius said, his voice cold and cutting. “This is your doing, you’ve made him weak.”

The meal continued in tense silence, the air thick with unspoken words and simmering resentment.

Harry’s chest tightened, his anger simmering just beneath the surface. He wanted to say something, to defend Narcissa and Draco, but he knew that wouldn't end well. Instead, he sat in silence, his mind racing as he processed everything he’d just witnessed.

His appetite was gone, his stomach churning with a mix of anger and helplessness as he stood to go look for Draco.

Harry followed the winding path through the courtyard, the scent of blooming flowers doing little to calm the rage in his chest

The courtyard was quiet, the air cool and crisp as the late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the manicured grounds. The old oak tree stood at the center, its gnarled branches stretching toward the sky like twisted fingers.

Beneath it, Draco sat huddled, his knees drawn to his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around them. His platinum-blonde hair caught the fading light, but his usual sparkle was dimmed, his gray eyes clouded with sadness.

Harry found him there, his footsteps soft against the cobblestone path. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of how to approach. Draco was always so vibrant—either cheerful and playful or bratty and demanding. Seeing him like this, so small and despondent, was disorienting. It felt wrong, like the world had tilted off its axis.

“I’m sorry for leaving you, Harry,” Draco mumbled, his voice barely above a whisper. He didn’t look up, his gaze fixed on the ground as he picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. “My father isn’t exactly the kindest.”

Harry almost snorted, that was an understatement. Lucius was cruel, cold, and entirely self-serving. Instead, he sat down slowly beside Draco, his movements careful and deliberate so as not to startle him. The grass beneath them was soft, the scent of earth and leaves filling the air. For a moment, neither of them spoke, the silence stretching between them like a thread.

Draco sighed, his shoulders slumping as he leaned back against the tree.

“I hate those Alpha fights,” he said after a long pause, his voice trembling with emotion. “They’re barbaric and inhumane, my father only cares about how much money she can rake in, but he doesn’t see what it does to her. He doesn’t see the broken bones, the bruises, the way she limps for days afterward.”

His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard, his hands clenching into fists. “And I’m the one who has to tend to her wounds because the infirmary refuses to treat Alphas. They have high pain tolerance, they have thicker skin — all bollocks. It’s just an excuse to treat them like they’re not even people.”

Harry listened quietly, his green eyes fixed on Draco’s face. He could see the pain in the Omega’s expression, the way his lips trembled and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. 

Harry wanted to trust Draco, but years of betrayal and pain left him wary. Still, there was something about the Omega’s sincerity that made it hard to stay guarded.

Draco’s voice grew louder as he continued, his words tumbling out in a rush of frustration and anger. “She doesn’t deserve this, none of them do," He paused, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. “I just… I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop the fights, and I can’t make my father see reason. All I can do is try to help her, but it’s never enough.”

By the time Draco finished, he was sagging against the tree, his energy spent. His cheeks were flushed, his hair disheveled, and his hands trembled slightly as he wiped at his eyes.

Harry watched him, his chest tight with a mix of emotions he couldn’t quite name. He wanted to say something, to offer some kind of comfort, but words had never been his strength. Instead, he reached out slowly, his hand hovering over Draco’s for a moment before he gently placed it on top of the Omega’s.

Draco looked up, his gray eyes wide with surprise. They just stared at each other, the silence between them heavy but not uncomfortable. Then Draco’s lips curved into a small, shaky smile, and he leaned into Harry’s touch, his head resting against the Alpha’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Draco whispered, his voice soft and sincere. “For listening.”

They sat there together under the old oak tree, the world around them fading away as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink.

For the first time in a long time, Harry felt a flicker of something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in years: hope.

Chapter Text

The last amber light of day bled across the gardens, staining the gravel walkways the color of a fresh wound.

Draco’s warmth pressed against Harry’s side, a quiet contrast to the evening’s creeping chill. The Omega had gone still after his outburst, fingers plucking absently at his sleeve, unraveling a single silver thread. When he finally turned, his eyes gleamed like liquid metal in the fading light.

"You don’t have to come," Draco murmured, so softly the words nearly dissolved in the breeze. "I won’t make you watch."

Harry’s jaw locked, he shouldn’t go, the fights were a grotesque spectacle; Alphas broken into submission, their mouths muzzled and their defiance carved out of them blow by blow but the image of Draco sitting alone in that gilded hell, his mother’s blood flecking the sand like rust —

A growl tore from Harry’s throat before he could choke it back. Draco’s lips curled, not in triumph, but in something quieter, like relief. "That’s a yes, then."

Silence settled between them, thick as the dusk pooling around their feet. Harry remained statue-still, his Alpha senses tracking the shift in the air before Draco even tensed.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Lucius’s cane struck the gravel like a metronome counting down to ruin, moonlight slithered along the silver serpent’s head, glinting in its hollow eyes as he halted before them.

"Will you not go inside, Draco?" The question was polished smooth by generations of Malfoy disdain. Draco turned his face away with a noise caught between a scoff and a hiss.

Lucius’s sigh carried the weight of centuries, his grip on the cane tightened until the veins stood out like roots against his parchment-pale skin. "You’re being childish," The words lacked their usual venom and that, more than anything, made Draco pause.

"I’m not the one forcing people to fight for sport," Draco shot back, shoulders rigid.

Harry watched Lucius’s jaw twitch, saw the way his gaze flickered over Harry’s proximity to his son before flinching away as if the sight scalded him. "It’s tradition," Lucius said, each syllable iced over.

Draco whirled on him. "Why can’t we start new traditions?"

"Draco." His name was a blade between ribs.

"What?" Draco’s voice cracked like thin ice. "You don’t care that she gets hurt, that I have to watch. You only care about the gold and the prestige and—"

"I care."

The words landed like a guillotine’s drop.

Silence.

Draco’s breath hitched even Harry straightened, his instincts pricking at the raw thing beneath Lucius’s marble exterior.

"You think I enjoy seeing you upset?" Lucius’s voice was softer now, frayed at the edges.

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it.

Lucius’s lip curled, though his eyes remained strangely hollow. "You are my son, that will never change, no matter how many foolish notions you entertain about..." His gaze cut to Harry, nostrils flaring. "Them."

"Harry’s not —"

"I’m not here to argue about your beast," The word dripped with acid. "You will attend the fights, this family has expectations."

Draco huffed, turning his back on him.

Lucius paused, then added gruffly, "Bring the beast, if it...eases you."

It was the closest thing to an offering Lucius could make; this reluctant acknowledgment of Harry’s presence, this tiny fracture in the Malfoy façade.

Draco stared at his father, his anger dissolving into something more complicated.

"...Fine," he whispered.

Lucius turned sharply, his robes swirling like a storm cloud retreating. "Don’t linger," he tossed over his shoulder. "It’s getting cold."

When his silhouette had dissolved into the shadows, Draco exhaled shakily, his shoulders slumping. Harry studied him—the way the moonlight caught on his lashes, the pulse fluttering in his throat.

"...That was the worst apology I’ve ever heard," Draco declared and Harry huffed, a sound almost too rough to be a laugh.

“My father, the emotionally constipated Omega," Draco muttered under his breath, shaking his head.

He glanced at Harry, voice dropping lower. "You know, Omegas always carry their offspring, but my father refused to. He forced my mother to take potions and endure insemination instead," His fingers twisted in his sleeve. "Mother always says all his motherly instinct was ripped out of him early on."

Harry stiffened, he had wondered about that; how Narcissa, an Alpha, had carried Draco when tradition dictated otherwise but the way Draco said it ripped out suggested something darker than mere preference.

Draco turned to him completely, but before he could speak, Harry moved. In one fluid motion, he hauled Draco in his arms like a prize as he stood.

"Harry!" Draco yelped, scrambling for purchase.

Harry adjusted his grip, making sure he wouldn't slip. Not gentle, not careful, just certain. The watching servants froze, their eyes wide and a maid even fumbled her linens with a gasp in horror.

Harry bared his teeth in a silent snarl, scattering them like startled birds.

His legs dangled precariously as Draco laughed, a bright, startled sound that seemed to surprise even him. "You’re ainsufferable," he gasped, looping his arms around Harry’s neck. "They look like you’re about to spirit me away to some dark corner."

Harry grunted, shifting Draco higher. The Omega’s scent — honey and treacle tart and something indefinably Draco — clung to him, intoxicating.

A butler stepped into their path, wringing his hands. "Master Draco, shall I summon the Alpha wranglers to deal with the beast?"

Harry’s growl sent the man stumbling back.

"Oh, for Merlin’s sake," Draco sighed, exasperated but delighted .

"He’s not going to eat me, " A beat. "Probably," He patted Harry’s shoulder, fingers lingering. "Carry on, Alpha."

Harry’s grip tightened, just enough to make Draco preen, before he stalked down the hall towards their room, leaving a trail of shocked whispers in their wake.

The late afternoon sun slanted through the pear tree’s branches, painting the checkered blanket beneath them in ever-shifting mosaics of light and shadow.

A warm breeze carried the heady perfume of jasmine from the nearby trellises, mingling with the earthy scent of bergamot tea and the sugary tang of ripe fruit arranged on a porcelain platter between them.

Draco lounged against a nest of embroidered cushions, one knee drawn up as he plucked a raspberry from the bowl with deliberate grace. He held it aloft, tilting it so the sunlight transformed the fruit into a translucent garnet between his fingers.

"Romance," he declared, voice laced with theatrical gravity, "is in the details."

Harry, sprawled on his side with his weight braced on one elbow, arched an eyebrow at the berry before flicking his gaze back to Draco’s expectant face. The breeze had tousled his hair into wilder disarray, dark strands curling against the sun-warmed skin of his neck.

"Sharing food is intimate," Draco continued, undaunted by Harry’s silence, "It’s about trust," He leaned forward, the raspberry suspended like an offering between his fingertips. 

Harry exhaled sharply through his nose but didn’t recoil as Draco pressed the fruit to his lips. The berry’s cool surface gave way beneath his teeth, releasing a burst of tart-sweet juice that flooded his tongue. He swallowed, then fixed Draco with a flat stare.

The Omega’s eyes sparkled with victory. "See? Not the ordeal you’re making it out to be."

Harry swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, though the ghost of the flavor clung stubbornly to his tongue.

Draco shifted closer, the fine linen of his shirt whispering against the blanket. He tilted his chin up, lips parting in exaggerated anticipation, lashes fluttering like a parody of some storybook maiden.

Harry didn’t blink.

"Your turn," Draco murmured, the words honeyed with amusement.

A muscle jumped in Harry’s jaw, he’d witnessed decade and a half of an Omega-Alpha relationship; Remus wordlessly stealing the charred crusts from Sirius’s plate, the way they’d orbit each other in silent understanding, speaking through touches and shared glances but this? The deliberate choreography of tenderness? It felt absurd. Unnecessary.

Yet, with a put-upon sigh, Harry snagged a grape from the bowl. He rolled it between his fingers for a beat before dropping it unceremoniously into Draco’s waiting mouth.

Draco’s lips closed around it with a soft, indecent sound. He chewed slowly, savoring, gaze locked on Harry’s face. "You’re getting the hang of it," he pronounced, grinning.

Harry scoffed, but when Draco selected another raspberry and extended it toward him, he didn’t turn away.

The breeze stirred the leaves above them, scattering light across Draco’s throat, his fingers, the self-satisfied curve of his smile as he leaned in again.

The late afternoon sun slanted through the leaded glass windows of the east parlor, painting the room in liquid amber. Specks of dust drifted lazily through the beams of light, swirling in the warm currents that carried the scent of beeswax polish and the faintest hint of Draco's preferred tea.

Harry stood motionless by the window seat, his shoulder pressed against the cool stone of the frame, watching as afternoon bled slowly into evening.

It's been three days since the Ministry's cold iron had given way to the Malfoys' gilded cage. Three days of learning the rhythms of this strange new world - the way sunlight moved across the marble floors, the particular creak of the third stair on the grand staircase, the quiet times when the servants' footsteps faded and the house held its breath.

Harry's fingers flexed against the windowsill, the callouses catching slightly on the smooth stone. The view outside was all manicured hedges and rose gardens, so different from the wild array of trees behind the cottage where he'd grown up. Where Sirius would whistle off-key as he hung laundry, where Remus would sit on the back steps mending fishing nets, where Harry had learned to track rabbits by scent and climb oak trees until he could see all the way to the river.

A rustle of parchments snapped him back to the present.

Draco sprawled across an absurdly large velvet divan, his stockinged feet tucked beneath him, surrounded by a sea of open books and half-unrolled scrolls. The fading light caught in his hair, turning the pale strands to molten gold. He chewed absently on the end of a quill, leaving tiny teeth marks in the feather's shaft, utterly absorbed in whatever he was reading.

Harry watched the way Draco's brow furrowed in concentration, the way his lips moved silently when he came across a particularly interesting passage. The Omega had an entire library at his disposal, yet he seemed determined to drag every volume into this sunlit room, as if he wanted Harry to see them, too.

"Look at this," Draco murmured suddenly, holding up an illustrated page without glancing away from it. "They used to believe Alphas could smell storms coming three days off, can you?"

Harry remained silent, though his fingers twitched against the sill.

The truth was, he could.

He'd known the summer storm would hit hours before the first clouds appeared that day the Ministry came to the cottage, had smelled the raindrops in the air as Sirius shoved him out the back door.

Draco finally looked up when no answer came, his gray eyes catching the light like polished silver. "You're not even trying to humor me today," he pouted, marking his place with a silk ribbon. "Come sit with me, Alpha."

A log shifted in the fireplace with a soft crack, sending up a shower of sparks. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed the hour, its tones deep and resonant.

Harry pushed away from the window and crossed the room with silent steps, his bare feet soundless on the thick Persian rug. He folded himself onto the floor beside the divan, close enough to see the pages but not so near as to intrude.

Draco made a pleased sound and immediately draped an arm over the divan's edge, his fingers brushing Harry's shoulder. "This one's about pre-Ministry Alpha traditions," he said, tilting the book to reveal illuminated letters and whimsical footnotes. "Banned for centuries, I had to bribe a curator to get it.”

Harry studied the page, the illustration showed an Alpha and Omega standing side by side at what appeared to be a harvest festival, their hands clasped around a shared cup. The colors were still vibrant after centuries - the Alpha's green tunic, the Omega's golden sash, the rich brown of the ale they were drinking together.

"See?" Draco's voice dropped to a whisper, as if sharing a secret. "They used to do everything together. Not like now." His fingers tapped a restless rhythm against Harry's shoulder which made Harry's eye twitch. "They had this ceremony where they'd share food from the same plate, to show trust."

Harry exhaled sharply through his nose, the memory of this morning's breakfast rose unbidden - Draco pushing his half-eaten toast toward Harry when Lucius wasn't looking, the warm butter and honey scent of it, the way Draco's eyes had sparkled when Harry took it.

“It’s called courting,” Draco sighed laying on his back, clutching the book to his chest with stars in his eyes, “The Alpha would give significant gifts to the Omega before they mated. Romantic, isn't it?”

Draco turned back on his stomach, turning another page, revealing an illustration of an Alpha teaching a young child to track. "And they raised their children together, not sent away to Ministry schools at six," He glanced at Harry sidelong. "Did…your parents teach you such things?”

Harry's shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly, memories running through his mind of the way Sirius had shown him how to find the sweetest blackberries in the hedgerows, how Remus had patiently taught him to read using old fishing manuals, the scent of Knockturn Alley when they had bought an untraceable wand so he could learn magic — how he missed that wand.

But Draco was watching him with those earnest gray eyes, waiting. After a long moment, Harry gave the barest nod.

Draco's face lit up as if Harry had gifted him the moon. He opened his mouth to ask another question when a knock at the door froze them both.

"Master Draco?" A maid's timid voice called through the oak. "Your father requests your presence in the solar."

Draco's fingers tightened briefly on the furniture before withdrawing. "Tell him I'll be along shortly," he called back, his voice taking on that polished Malfoy tone Harry was beginning to recognize as armor.

When the maid's footsteps faded, Draco sighed and closed the book with deliberate care. "We'll continue this later," he murmured, more to himself than Harry. He stood in a rustle of fine wool and silk, then hesitated, looking down at where Harry still sat.

Almost without thinking, Draco reached out and brushed a lock of hair from Harry's forehead, his fingers lingering just a second too long. "Try to rest, Harry," he said softly. "You always look so tired."

Then he was gone, leaving behind the scent of him.

Harry remained motionless long after the door clicked shut. The fire popped again, casting flickering shadows across the abandoned books. Slowly, almost against his will, Harry reached out and traced the illustration's edge with one calloused finger.

The parchment felt fragile beneath his touch, the colors still bright after all these centuries. A record of a world that no longer existed.

Or perhaps, Harry thought as he carefully closed the cover, a blueprint for one that might yet be.

Harry's fingers lingered on the embossed leather cover. For a fleeting moment, the illustrations had stirred something dangerous in him.

He exhaled sharply through his nose, shaking his head as if to physically dislodge the thoughts. Fantasies were a luxury he couldn't afford.

Draco's naive idealism was a luxury Harry couldn't afford, not when survival demanded cold pragmatism. The Omega might paint pretty pictures of some imagined utopia, but Harry knew better than to mistake dreams for reality.

His jaw tightened as he set the book aside with deliberate care. There would be time for philosophy later - if he survived. Right now, he needed to focus on the tangible: escape routes, guard rotations, food stores. The Ministry hadn't broken him by letting him indulge in fantasies, he wouldn't make that mistake now.

He lifted his head up and waited—five breaths, ten—until the last echo of the Omega's presence had vanished into the depths of the manor, only then did he move.

The book slipped from his lap as he stood, its pages whispering against the rug, Harry didn't spare it a glance.

The fire crackled in the hearth, casting flickering shadows across the abandoned tome. Harry turned his back on it, his bare feet silent against the Persian rug as he moved to the window. The glass was cool against his palm as he looked out at the darkening grounds, his mind already calculating distances, obstacles, opportunities.

Naive Omega.

The thought curled through him like smoke. Draco kept leaving him alone, kept trusting him alone, with all his foolish assumptions. That Harry wouldn't dare, that Harry didn't think.

The glass was cool against his palms as he pressed close, scanning the grounds below with sharp, assessing eyes.

The Malfoy estate sprawled beneath him in all its gilded perfection—manicured hedges forming intricate patterns, gravel paths raked to military precision, fountains glinting in the fading light. Beautiful. Useless. Beyond the gardens, the high iron gates stood sentinel, their spikes gleaming like teeth and past them a forest.

Thick, ancient, alive, the sight of it sent something primal thrumming through Harry's veins. His fingers twitched against the windowpane.

Escape wouldn't be simple, he needed a well- thought out plan for this to work.

Food first. Draco's careless habit of pushing his plate toward Harry could be useful. A crust of bread here, a slice of fruit there—hidden away until he had enough to last.

Routes next. His gaze tracked the patrolling guards—their predictable paths, the gaps in their vigilance. The eastern wall went unwatched for nearly twenty minutes between rotations. Once he's in the forest, it would be easy to lose track of him and he could find a way to get to an Alpha refuge camp.

The refuge was a whispered legend among Alphas, numerous hidden sanctuaries under Fidelus Charms where they could live free from the Ministry’s chains. Harry had never seen it, but he’d dreamed of it often.

Timing. A storm would be best. Rain to mask his scent, thunder to cover any noise.

Harry exhaled, watching his breath fog the glass. It would take weeks. Maybe months. But time was the one thing this gilded prison offered in abundance.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway.

Harry was back by the divan before the sound had fully registered, his body slack, his face carefully blank. The book lay where he'd left it, its pages still open to that damned illustration—Alpha and Omega standing together side by side.

The door opened.

"Harry?"

Draco's voice was soft, uncertain. Harry didn't turn, didn't react, even as the Omega crossed the room with light steps.

"You're still here." The relief in Draco's tone was palpable, as if Harry had anywhere else to be.

A warm hand brushed his shoulder and Draco murmured. "It's nearly supper."

Harry rose and followed the Omega out. Draco's world of illuminated manuscripts and shared cups was a beautiful lie. The forest beyond the gates - that was truth and Harry meant to reach it.

Soon.

The morning air clung thick and damp to Harry’s skin as they approached the Ministry owned black stone arena. The sky hung low and heavy, the kind of oppressive heat that made every breath feel like swallowing wet wool. Harry rolled his shoulders, the fine fabric of his new robes—charcoal gray with silver fastenings, tailored to match Draco’s own—itching like a second skin.

Draco's grip on his arm bordered on painful, his fingers trembling against Harry's sleeve. Ahead, Lucius' cane struck the stone steps with metronomic precision, each click ratcheting Harry's tension higher.

Harry paused when a sudden commotion near the gates caught his attention.

Draco tilted his head to the side when he stopped, “Alpha?”

Four Omegas stood beyond the Ministry cordon, their protest signs cutting through the dispersing crowd like blades:

"End the blood sport!"

"Alphas are not property!"

"Dismantle the oppression laws!"

Harry's pulse stuttered.

He had never seen anything like it.

Omegas, protected by the very laws they were protesting stood defiantly in the open, their faces flushed with passion rather than fear.

Two Ministry officials hovered nearby, not restraining them, not silencing them, but guarding them, as the law demanded: no Omega could be harmed, no matter how rebellious their words.

One of them, a young Omega with fiery red hair and freckles dusted across her nose, locked eyes with Harry. Their sign — "Chains Are Not Love" — wavered slightly as they took in his unchained wrists, his unmuzzled face. Then their gaze flicked to Draco beside him, and something like hope flashed across her expression.

Draco’s fingers tightened around Harry’s arm.

"Ignore them," Lucius drawled, his voice dripping with disdain. "Foolish idealists, they’ve been making noise for months."

For the first time since he’d been dragged into this world of cruelty, he realized Draco wasn’t the only one who saw the fractures in their world.

The moment they stepped inside the arena, the stench hit Harry like a physical blow — sweat, blood, and the sour tang of fear, so thick he could taste it.

The stands teemed with Omegas in iridescent silks and Betas in stiff uniforms, their laughter bouncing off vaulted ceilings.

And then there were the other Alphas.

Muzzled, collared and led on chains like prized hunting hounds. Harry’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
A hush fell over the crowd as Harry finally lifted his head and realized everyone was staring at him.

The Betas gaped, Omegas clutched their pearls, their eyes darting between him and the pit, as if they couldn’t reconcile the sight of an Alpha standing unmuzzled, unchained, beside an Omega of all things.

Draco's voice turned razor-sharp. "Is there a problem?" His glare swept the staring crowd. "Speak now or hold your tongues.”

Harry bared his teeth.

A Beta in Ministry robes recoiled, nearby Omega gasped like they'd been scandalized. Yet, no one moved to restrain him.

Because he wasn't just any Alpha.

Draco’s fingers dug into his arm. “Come, Alpha,” he murmured, voice soft again. “Just stay close.” Lucius led them to the Malfoy box, a private balcony draped in silver and green.

Below, the fighting pit stretched wide, its sand already dark with old bloodstains. Two Alphas circled each other, their movements sluggish, their faces swollen and misshapen from previous matches.

The gong sounded.

The crowd roared as the larger Alpha lunged, his fist connecting with a sickening crack. The other went down hard, spitting blood into the sand.

Draco made a small, wounded noise in the back of his throat.

Harry kept his eyes forward.

The victor didn’t stop when his opponent hit the ground. He kept going: knees driving into ribs, fists slamming into flesh until the loser stopped moving altogether.

The gong struck again.

Draco’s breath hitched as the corpse was drug away to the back, and Narcissa stepped into the ring.

Harry’s pulse stuttered.

She was barefoot, dressed in simple black fighting leathers, her silver-blonde hair pulled back in a brutal knot. No collar, no chains. Just quiet, terrifying competence.

The crowd’s murmurs swelled as her opponent entered; a mountain of muscle and scar tissue, his knuckles wrapped in bloodstained cloth. He grinned at her, teeth bared in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

The gong sounded.

The Alpha charged with a roar.

Narcissa moved like water.

Harry had seen fights before — desperate, animalistic brawls in the Ministry yards but this was something else entirely. Every motion was precise, every strike deliberate. She didn’t waste energy. She didn’t hesitate.

When the Alpha swung, she flowed under his arm, her elbow jamming into his throat. As he staggered, her leg swept his feet out from under him. The crowd gasped as she pivoted, her knee slamming into his ribs with a crack that echoed off stone.

Draco made another noise, this one strangled, and suddenly, his face was buried in Harry’s shoulder, his fingers clutching at the fabric of his robes.

“I can’t watch,” he whispered, voice trembling.

Harry didn’t push him away.

Below, Narcissa twisted the Alpha's wrist until cartilage popped. His howl cut off as she wrenched his other arm—

The Alpha hit the sand face-first, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps.

Silence.

Narcissa stood over him, barely winded. One sharp kick to the temple would end it.

The gong sounded.

The arena erupted.

Narcissa didn’t look at them, didn’t glance up at Lucius’s box. She simply turned and walked away, her head held high, her breathing barely quickened.

Draco exhaled shakily, still pressed against Harry’s shoulder. “She held back,” he murmured, as if he couldn’t believe it.

Harry said nothing because what chilled him to the bone wasn’t Narcissa’s skill. It was the way her opponent still breathed as they dragged him from the pit.

She could have killed him and she chose not to.

The moment Narcissa stepped out of the pit, Draco stood, his grip on Harry’s arm tightening briefly before he let go.

“Stay here,” he murmured, he didn’t wait for a response before slipping away through the crowd, his silver-blonde hair catching the dim torchlight as he disappeared down the corridor leading to the fighters’ quarters.

Harry watched him go, then turned his attention back to the arena. The next match had already begun—two more Alphas tearing into each other with brutal efficiency—but his mind wasn’t on the bloodshed.

He waited.

Counted the seconds.

Then, when no one was looking, he followed.

The roar of the arena faded to a dull murmur as Harry slipped through the shadowed archway leading to the fighters' quarters. The stone corridor swallowed sound greedily, the torches sputtering in their iron brackets casting erratic shadows that danced across damp walls. His footsteps echoed too loudly in the sudden hush, the scent of blood and sweat thickening with each step deeper into the underbelly of the Ministry's brutal spectacle.

Harry followed Draco at a distance, his movements silent as a specter. The air here was cooler, carrying the metallic tang of recently cleaned weapons and the underlying stench of fear soaked into stone. His fingers brushed against the rough wall as he navigated the winding passage, the texture grounding him against the rising tide of memories—different corridors, different cells, but always the same despair.

Draco stopped before an unmarked door, his hand hovering over the latch. Through the narrow gap beneath the wood, a sliver of golden light spilled onto the worn stone floor. Harry watched as the Omega took a steadying breath, his shoulders squaring before he pushed inside.

The room beyond was a study in stark contrasts. What little light filtered through the high, barred window painted the space in stripes of fading afternoon sun and deep shadow. A single wooden chair stood against one wall, its legs uneven on the uneven stones. The narrow cot's thin mattress bore the faint impression of recent occupation, its rough wool blanket folded with military precision at the foot.

Narcissa sat on the edge of the cot, her spine straight despite the obvious weariness in the slope of her shoulders. She had shed her fighting leathers, leaving her in a thin linen undershirt that clung to her damp skin. The knuckles of her right hand were split, the blood already drying in rust-colored streaks across her pale skin.

Draco crossed the space in three quick strides, his polished boots silent on the stone. He didn't speak as he dropped to his knees before her, his hands coming up to cradle her injured one with surprising gentleness.

Harry closed the door with a soft click, the lock engaging with a decisive snick. He pressed his palm flat against the weathered wood for a moment, listening for any indication they'd been followed. The distant roar of the crowd was muffled here, the stone swallowing sound like a living thing.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Draco murmured, his voice cracking on the last word. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against their joined hands. The scent of honey and nervous sweat clung to him, so different from the metallic sharpness of the arena.

Narcissa exhaled through her nose, a slow, controlled release of breath. Her free hand came up to cradle the back of Draco's head, her fingers tangling in his hair with a possessiveness that made Harry's throat tighten. She bent slightly at the waist, pressing her nose to the crown of Draco's head and inhaling deeply, her shoulders losing some of their tension as she did so.

The sunlight through the bars shifted as clouds passed outside, the stripes of gold sliding across the floor like living things. Dust motes danced in the beams, swirling in the currents created by their breathing.

"You didn't have to hold back," Draco said, pulling back just enough to meet her eyes. His fingers tightened around hers. "You could have ended it in the first minute."

Narcissa's thumb stroked along his hairline, a gesture so tender it seemed out of place in this brutal setting. "I know," she said simply.

"Then, why?"

"Because," she interrupted, her voice barely above a whisper, "I'm tired of killing for their entertainment." Her gaze flicked to Harry, then back to Draco. "We've lost enough to their games."

The silence that followed was thick with unspoken history. Harry found himself studying the play of light across the stone floor, the way it illuminated the grooves worn into the rock by countless footsteps. The room smelled of old magic and older sorrow, the scent clinging to the stones like the residual heat from a long-dead fire.

“I will only kill when I must.”

Draco's breath hitched audibly. He leaned forward again, this time pressing his face against Narcissa's shoulder. Her arms came around him automatically, one hand still cradling his head while the other pressed between his shoulder blades, holding him close.

Harry turned his attention to the window, giving them what privacy he could in the confined space. The bars cast long shadows across the floor, the pattern shifting as the sun continued its slow descent. Somewhere beyond these walls, another fight was ending, another Alpha falling. But here, in this moment, there was only the quiet sound of breathing and the occasional rustle of fabric as Draco shifted in his mother's embrace.

The light through the window had turned the color of aged whiskey when Narcissa finally spoke again. "You should go," she murmured, her fingers combing through Draco's hair. "The final match will be starting soon."

Draco shook his head, the motion barely perceptible. "I don't care about the finals."

"Draco shook his head minutely. "Let them wait."

"Your father—"

"Can choke on his pride."

A ghost of a smile touched Narcissa's lips before she straightened, the fighter's mask sliding back into place. She rose with Draco, her movements still fluid despite the fatigue lining her face. Her palm lingered against his cheek before she turned to Harry.

Her assessing gaze held questions Harry couldn't decipher—something between gratitude and warning. The moment stretched, fragile as the last sunlight clinging to the window bars.

The moment stretched, thin and fragile as the last rays of sunlight clinging to the bars of the window. Then the sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor beyond the door shattered the quiet like glass.

Narcissa's posture shifted instantly, her shoulders squaring, her chin lifting. The vulnerable mother vanished, replaced once more by the composed fighter. "Go," she said, her voice low but firm.

Harry reached for the door, his fingers brushing the cool metal of the latch as he listened to the approaching steps.

Three sets, he noted—two heavy, one light. Guards, and someone else.

Draco hesitated, his hand outstretched toward his mother before he let it fall to his side. The look they exchanged spoke volumes, a silent conversation conveyed through the set of a jaw, the slight narrowing of eyes.

Then the moment passed, and Harry was opening the door, ushering Draco out into the corridor just as the guards rounded the corner. Their eyes widened slightly at the sight of the unmuzzled Alpha, but they said nothing, stepping aside to let the Malfoy heir pass.

The last image burned into Harry's mind as the door closed: Narcissa standing alone in that striped light, her bloodied hands hanging loose at her sides, watching them leave with an expression that could've been pride or profound sorrow.

The air in the arena was thick—stagnant with sweat and the metallic tang of blood. The crowd’s murmurs had dulled to a low, anticipatory hum, the kind of quiet that came before something terrible.

Draco’s fingers were a vice around Harry’s forearm, his nails biting through the fabric of his sleeve. He hadn’t let go since Narcissa stepped into the pit for the final round.

This Alpha was different. Bigger. Desperate.

The gong struck.

The Alpha lunged with no hesitation, no testing blows. He barreled into Narcissa like a battering ram, his fist connecting with her ribs hard enough that Harry heard the impact from the stands.

Draco flinched.

Narcissa staggered back, her breath hissing between her teeth. A thin trail of blood smeared across her lips when she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

The crowd roared.

Harry’s muscles locked, could see the shift in her—the moment survival overrode restraint. Her stance changed, her shoulders dropping, her weight settling low. The Alpha charged again, swinging wildly.

She moved.

A pivot. A sidestep. Another dodge.

The Alpha roared in frustration, his massive arms swinging in wide, reckless arcs.

Narcissa feinted left.

The Alpha took the bait.

She twisted, her body a fluid line of motion as she leaped, using his own momentum to vault onto his back. Her legs locked around his torso, her arms snaking around his throat—

A sharp crack echoed through the arena as she broke his neck.

Silence.

The Alpha crumpled.

Narcissa landed lightly beside him, her chest rising and falling in steady, controlled breaths. The blood on her lips stood out stark against her pale skin.

The gong sounded.

The ccrowd roared like a feral beast.

Draco’s grip on Harry’s arm was trembling now, his fingers icy despite the stifling heat. He didn’t cheer. Didn’t move. Just stared at the pit, at his mother standing over the fallen Alpha, her expression unreadable.

Harry didn’t look away either because for the first time, he understood.

This wasn’t just a fight.

It was a message.

The roar of the crowd still echoed in Harry's ears as they made their way through the dimly lit underbelly of the arena. The air here was thick with the stench of sweat, blood, and something sour - fear, perhaps, or the metallic tang of desperation. Torches flickered along the rough stone walls, casting long shadows that seemed to reach for them as they passed.

Lucius strode ahead, his silver-tipped cane clicking a precise rhythm against the worn stone floor. The sound set Harry's teeth on edge, each tap like the ticking of a clock counting down to something inevitable. Behind them, the distant screams of the crowd still rose and fell in waves, a relentless tide of bloodlust that made Harry's skin crawl.

The betting master's booth loomed ahead, an ostentatious cage tucked against the far wall. Its occupant - a heavyset Beta with greasy brown hair slicked back from a mousy face - was already counting out stacks of galleons when they approached. The coins clinked together with a sound like bones rattling in a hollow chest.

"Ah, Lord Malfoy!" The man's voice oozed across the stones like spilled oil. His sausage fingers never paused their counting. "Another magnificent showing from your beast today, five hundred thousand galleons, as promised."

Harry watched, his hands curling into fists at his sides, as Lucius accepted the heavy purse with a nod. The leather bulged obscenely with its contents, the weight of it making Lucius' arm dip slightly before he tucked it away in his robes. Each of those coins represented a blow Narcissa had taken, a drop of blood spilled for the entertainment of these vultures.

The Beta's beady eyes, small and dark like a rat's, slid over to Harry. They lingered on his unchained wrists, his unmuzzled face, the way he stood next to Draco rather than groveling at his feet. A slow, greasy smile spread across his face, revealing yellowed teeth.

"When's this fine beast going in the ring, Lucius?" he asked, leaning forward with sudden interest. His breath smelled of stale tobacco and cheaper firewhisky than the Malfoys would ever serve.

"Big, strong thing like him? With that feral look about him?" He licked his lips. "We could make you a fortune, the crowds would go wild for an unmuzzled Alpha fight."

A cold pit opened in Harry's stomach, spreading icy tendrils through his veins.

His vision narrowed to the Beta's grinning face, the way his tongue darted out to wet his lips again in anticipation. Every muscle in Harry's body tensed, his Alpha instincts screaming at him to lunge, to tear out this man's throat for daring to suggest —

Draco moved before Harry could react, stepping forward so sharply his silver-tipped boots struck sparks against the stone.

"Harry isn't going to participate in this madness," he snapped, his voice like the crack of a whip. The usual polished cadence of the Malfoy heir was gone, replaced by something raw and furious.

The sudden silence that followed was deafening, even the distant roar of the crowd seemed to hush. Several nearby Betas turned to stare, their eyes wide with shock at an Omega speaking so boldly.

Lucius sighed, the sound long-suffering, as if dealing with a child's tantrum. "You heard him, Pettigrew," he said to the Beta, though his cold gray eyes remained fixed on Harry.

There was something calculating in that gaze, something that made the hairs on the back of Harry's neck stand up. "It's his beast, after all."

Pettigrew's mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. His jowls quivered with indignation. "But, my Lord, an untamed Alpha like that - the profits alone…"

"Are none of your concern," Draco cut in, his voice dropping to a dangerous purr. He took another step forward, forcing the Beta to crane his neck back to maintain eye contact.

"Unless you'd like to explain to my father why you're so intent on risking his heir's Alpha?"

Pettigrew paled, his thick fingers twitching toward the ledger book as if seeking protection. "N-no, of course not, Master Malfoy, I didn't think —"

"Clearly,” Draco's tone could have frozen hell. "I don't expect a simpleton such as you to even be able to form a thought.”

Harry watched the exchange with narrowed eyes; the Beta's quick capitulation, the way Lucius had watched the entire interaction with that same calculating gaze - none of it sat right with him. This wasn't over. It couldn't be that easy.

As they turned to leave, Harry caught the Beta's muttered words to his assistant: "Spoiled brat. Wasting a perfectly good fighter like that."

Draco's grip on Harry's arm tightened painfully, his fingers digging into the muscle as he steered them toward the exit. "Ignore him," he muttered, though his voice lacked its usual conviction. "He's just a greedy fool who doesn't know his place."

But Harry had seen the hunger in Lucius' gaze as it traced his shoulders, his unbroken posture. Five hundred thousand galleons weighed heavy in those robes and every coin whispered of how much more an Alpha like Harry might earn.

The torches flickered as they passed, their shadows stretching long and thin against the stone walls.

Somewhere behind them, another fight was beginning, the crowd's roar swelling to new heights. Harry didn't need to turn back to know what was happening in that pit - the blood, the pain, the desperate struggle for survival.

And now he knew - with cold, certain clarity - that it was only a matter of time before Lucius decided Harry's place was in that ring, too.

Harry let himself be led, but his mind was already racing—weighing risks, planning contingencies.

The Beta’s words hung in the air like a blade waiting to fall.

When’s this beast going in the ring?

Not if.

When.

The corridor leading out of the arena was a study in contrasts—the gilded opulence of the spectator areas gave way to rough-hewn stone, the air thick with the mingled scents of sweat, blood, and the cloying perfumes favored by high-born Omegas. Harry kept close to Draco, his body a living barricade between the Omega and the milling crowd that lingered to gossip about the day's brutal entertainment.

Every instinct in him screamed to bare his teeth at the laughing nobles who discussed the fights like they were reviewing a theater performance.

The torches flickered along the walls, their uneven light casting grotesque shadows that seemed to leer at them as they passed. Harry's new robes—fine charcoal wool with silver fastenings that matched Draco's—itched against his skin, the tailored fit still foreign after years of rough-spun prison garb. He rolled his shoulders, the movement barely perceptible, but Draco's fingers immediately tightened on his arm in silent warning.

They were nearly to the exit when the crowd ahead of them abruptly stilled, parting like frightened fish before a shark.

"Lucius."

The voice was smooth as aged whiskey, cultured and precise with a hint of a hiss at the end of every word, it cut through the murmur of the crowd with effortless authority.

Harry's head snapped up.

The man blocking their path defied every expectation — a Beta draped in ministerial robes so black they seemed to swallow light. Raven-wing hair framed a porcelain face that might have been aristocratic if not for the glacial detachment in his obsidian eyes. His smile was a masterclass in artifice, never touching those fathomless pupils.

Lucius's grip on his cane shifted almost imperceptibly. "Minister Riddle." The name left his lips carefully neutral, though his knuckles bleached white around the serpent's head.

Harry's nostrils flared.

Musky, raw and something else — something sharp and electric, like the air before a lightning strike.

A Beta's scent yet crackling with an unnatural energy, rotten to its core.

Harry's gaze sharpened as he reassessed the man before him. A Beta in a position of power —  Minister, Lucius had called him — in a world where Betas were meant to be silent functionaries, never leaders.

The irony was almost laughable. Here stood a man enforcing and upkeeping a system that kept his own kind subordinate, all while wearing the trappings of authority.

What game was he playing?

Riddle's attention slid past Lucius to Draco, who had gone rigid at Harry's side. The Omega pressed closer, his fingers curling into the fabric of Harry's sleeve like he wanted to disappear into the Alpha's shadow. His usual haughty demeanor had evaporated, replaced by something far more vulnerable.

"Young Draco," Riddle purred, his voice like silk over steel. "How... mature you've become." His dark eyes lingered on Draco's grip on Harry's arm before shifting to Harry himself. "And this?"

A slow, deliberate sneer curled Riddle's lips as he took in Harry's unchained wrists, his unmuzzled face.

"Ah. Your new acquisition, I presume."

Harry's jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth ache.

Lucius's smile was thin as parchment. "My son's beast, yes."

Riddle’s smile was a blade wrapped in velvet. "How interesting," he murmured, his gaze trailing over Harry’s unchained wrists like a man reading a noose. When he turned away, his shadow stretched unnaturally long across the stones—twisting, for a heartbeat, into something serpentine. Draco’s breath hitching confirmed neither of them imagined it.

"I wasn't aware you'd procured one already. And unmuzzled, no less.” Riddle's tongue flicked over his teeth. “That's bold."

Draco's grip on Harry's arm tightened to the point of pain. "Harry doesn't need a muzzle," he snapped, his voice sharp enough to make several nearby nobles turn their heads.

Riddle's eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. "Such passion," he purred. His gaze flicked back to Lucius. "You're allowing this?"

Lucius's expression didn't waver, though Harry saw the minute tightening around his eyes. "As I said, he's my son's beast. Draco's... eccentricities are his own to manage."

Riddle hummed, the sound thoughtful. "Eccentricities," he repeated, as if tasting the word. Then, softer, "Or treasonous ideas."

The air crystallized with tension. Even the torch flames seemed to still, the crowd around them had gone still, their conversations dying mid-sentence as they strained to catch every word.

Harry's fingers twitched at his sides, his instincts screaming at him to put himself between Draco and this predator in human skin.

Riddle noticed, of course he did. His smile sharpened, revealing perfectly white teeth.

"Well," he said, his voice dripping with false congeniality. "I suppose we'll see how long that lasts," He inclined his head in a mockery of politeness. "Do give my regards to Narcissa. Her performance today was... enlightening."

With that, he stepped aside, the crowd parting before him like water before a ship's prow.

But as they passed, Harry didn't miss the way Riddle's gaze followed them—lingering on him with a focus that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The Minister's dark eyes burned into Harry's back until they turned the corner and disappeared into the night.

Draco's grip eased marginally, though tremors still raced through his fingers. "Pompous viper," he muttered, his bravado returning with distance. "As if he has any right to comment."

As they stepped out into the cool night air, Harry couldn't shake the feeling that they'd just been marked and that Riddle's interest in them was far from casual.

Harry's shoulders was rigid beneath his robes, fingers twitching at his sides as he scanned the darkened gardens for threats.

Draco's hand found his elbow. "Stop that," he murmured, though his own gaze darted toward the manor's lit windows. "You're making the guards nervous," When Harry didn't relax, Draco exhaled sharply and tightened his grip. "Come with me.”

The evening air clung thick with honeysuckle as Draco hauled Harry toward the meadow, the Alpha's wrist captive in his grip.

"Today's the first of July," Draco announced, as if this explained everything when Harry only arched a brow, he huffed. "Fireflies, you impossible man. They're magical."

Harry let himself be dragged, muscles coiled like he expected an ambush in the tall grass. The sun bled into twilight, and then, lights.

Tiny, floating, impossible lights.

Harry moved before thought—a hunter's lunge, fingers snapping shut around a flickering gold speck.

Draco's shriek pierced the night. "Harry!"

Uncurling his fist revealed only iridescent smears on his calloused palm. Draco looked between the carnage and Harry's bewildered frown with dawning horror. "You, you squished it!"

Harry wiped his hand on his trousers, nose wrinkling at the glowing residue. His gaze darted across the field, tracking the lights like potential threats.

A soft snort escaped Draco. "Merlin's sake, they're just bugs," Catching Harry's wrist again, he pressed their palms together, his own smooth and unmarked against Harry's stained one. "Look, harmless."

One firefly alighted on Draco's fingertip, its glow painting his smile gold.

Harry exhaled sharply through his nose. He'd spent dozens ofsummers outside, killed wolves with his bare hands and never once noticed these fragile, glowing things.

Draco groaned, grabbing Harry’s wrist again when he tried to reach for another but this time, instead of dragging him, he just held his hand, lacing their fingers together. "They’re fireflies, you silly Alpha, they just light up, they don’t hurt anyone.”

“Just watch them," he murmured.

Harry didn't care about the lights.

But Draco's thumb tracing his knuckles? The way his laughter bubbled up when a firefly got tangled in his hair?

That, Harry would endure the glowing creatures for.

The weeks had carved themselves into a predictable pattern, as measured as the grandfather clock's steady ticks in the east wing. Harry moved through each day with deliberate purpose—the rhythmic scrape of butter knife against windowsill when summer rains masked the sound, every meal an exercise in covert preservation as he tucked crusts and dried meat into the burlap pouch concealed beneath his wardrobe.

The map had required the most patience.

Night after night, while Draco slept with silver lashes fluttering against pale cheeks, Harry had reconstructed the estate's weaknesses from memory—the eastern wall's crumbling mortar, the twenty minute gap in patrols between midnight and one, the ancient forest beyond that would erase his trail like morning dew. The approaching storm's low rumble promised ideal cover.

Tonight.

It must be tonight.

Harry was crouched before the wardrobe when the door groaned open.

He barely managed to shove the half-filled sack deeper into shadow before Draco's voice cut through the stillness.

"Harry?"

Turning slowly, Harry schooled his features into practiced neutrality.

Draco hovered in the doorway, backlit by corridor sconces that painted his silhouette in flickering gold. A small object rested on the silver tray in his hands, casting elongated shadows across his sharp cheekbones. The rich aroma of chocolate and vanilla unfurled through the room, mingling with the ozone-scented breeze from the cracked window.

"I saw it in your file," Draco murmured, nudging the door shut with his hip. The latch clicked like a vault sealing.

Harry's lungs constricted as Draco crossed the room, candlelight revealing the perfect circle of chocolate cake crowned by a single trembling flame. The mattress dipped as Draco settled beside him, close enough that Harry could count the pale freckles dusting his nose.

"It's your birthday today."

The words struck like a physical blow. Birthdays had faded into irrelevance years ago—no more midnight treacle tart smuggled by Sirius, no more of Remus' poorly feigned ignorance about crumbs on the sheets. The memory surfaced unbidden, sharp as broken glass.

Draco's lips curved as he extended the tray. "Happy birthday, Alpha."

Then, before Harry could react, warm lips brushed his cheekbone. The contact lasted less than a heartbeat, yet burned hotter than the candle between them.

"Make a wish," Draco whispered, leaning back just enough for their gazes to meet.

Outside, wind howled around the manor walls, nature's perfect accomplice. The hidden sack called to him, its promises of freedom woven into every coarse fiber.

And yet—

"Thank you."

The words clawed their way free, rough from disuse.

Draco went statue-still.

For three thunderous heartbeats, only rain pattered against the panes. Then, Draco's breath caught. Moonlight caught the tear tracking down his cheek before he swiped at it impatiently, a wet laugh escaping. "I knew you and Mother shared more than stubbornness," he rasped.

Harry didn't resist when Draco surged forward, arms encircling his neck. The forgotten cake listed precariously as Draco pressed close, his honey scent drowning Harry's senses.

Instinct overrode reason.

Harry turned his head just enough for his lips to graze the pulse point beneath Draco's jaw. The Omega melted against him with a shudder, fingers twisting in dark curls.

"Thank you," Draco breathed into the hollow of Harry's throat, "for trusting me."

The storm screamed its encouragement beyond the walls, nature's perfect alibi.

Yet as Harry tightened his arms around Draco's slender frame, the candlelight gilding their tangled forms, the map's whispered promises grew faint.

The bathroom was obscenely large like everything else in Draco’s world.

All veined Calacatta marble and gilded fixtures with a sunken tub large enough to qualify as a small pond. Harry had sneered at it the first time, this obscene monument to Malfoy wealth.

Now, the rising steam carried the faintest hint of bergamot, the temperature just shy of scalding — the way he liked it. Draco had learned that within a week, deciphering Harry’s preferences from the barest twitch of his shoulders, the way his breath hitched when the water was right.

Draco fussed with the taps, chasing perfection for an Alpha who would be gone before dawn. His slender fingers adjusting the flow with practiced ease The same boy who'd reduced a maid to tears over improperly folded napkins not an hour ago now bit his lip in concentration, adjusting the flow until it was just right. Harry watched the flush creep up the back of his neck, the way his silk robe slipped off one shoulder, how the steam curled around his collarbones.

Two sides of the same coin, Harry thought. The haughty Malfoy heir and this, this boy who blushed when Harry's eyes lingered too long on him.

The bath filled in silence. Draco turned, his cheeks still pink, gesturing impatiently when Harry stared at him. “Well? Get in.”

Harry noddedd, stripping down to his underwear and sinking into the water with a low groan. The heat seeped into his bones, loosening muscles he hadn’t realized were clenched.

Draco perched on the closed toilet lid, already chattering about some absurd drama with the head chef and a missing truffle shipment—his hands dancing through the air like the words might escape if he didn't release them fast enough.

Harry barely heard him.

The prattle had annoyed him at first, this endless stream of consciousness from a boy who'd never known silence.

Now, the words blurred into white noise, familiar as the creak of the manor’s floorboards. The sound of his voice was as much a part of the ritual as the steam curling off the water.

But tonight—

Tonight was different.

Harry’s chest ached. The cake sat heavy in his stomach, the memory of Draco’s smile as he’d whispered happy birthday like it was a secret between them. The burlap sack of stolen supplies was already hidden beneath the floorboards. The map memorized. The storm coming.

One last time, his Alpha instincts growled. One last moment.

Draco had turned away, reaching for a towel, when Harry’s hand shot out, fingers wrapping around a slender wrist.

Draco froze. “Alpha?”

Harry didn’t answer, just tugged, gentle but insistent, until Draco stumbled forward, his breath hitching. The water sloshed as Harry guided him, Draco ttumbling into the tub, silk robe dissolving into transparency, clinging to his ribs like a second skin, his back pressing against Harry’s chest.

For a heartbeat, Draco stiffened. Then, with a shuddering exhale, he melted.

Harry buried his nose in the damp curve of Draco’s neck, inhaling deeply. Honeysuckle. Treacle tart. Sun-warmed linen.

He licked a stripe over Draco’s pulse point, feeling the frantic flutter beneath his lips. The scent of him was intoxicating, sweet and warm and alive under his tongue.

He dragged his lips along Draco's pulse point, as he tipped Draco's chin to face him, before Harry closed the distance between their lips, hands spanning the fragile cage of his ribs. Draco arched against him, fingers twisting in Harry's hair.

The water turned their skin fever-hot, the steam thick with the scent of Draco's unraveling as the Omega clung to him. He licked into the Omega's mouth like a dying man taking communion, memorizing the gasp that wasn't laughter, the tremble that wasn't cold.

Draco made a sound — half gasp, half whimper —his fingers gripping the edge of the tub as they pulled apart, “H-Harry...”

Harry’s arms tightened around him. He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. The water cradled them both, the steam clinging to their skin like a second embrace.

Draco went pliant, his head lolling back against Harry's shoulder. The water cradled them both, the steam painting their skin damp and gleaming. Somewhere beyond the frosted windows, thunder rumbled its warning.

“You’re… different tonight,” he murmured, caressing the stubble at his chin.

Harry closed his eyes, memorized the weight of him, the way their heartbeats aligned.

Remember this, he told himself. Remember him.

Outside, thunder cracked the sky open. The water cooled around them, but neither moved. Harry counted each of Draco's breaths against his palm, the slowing cadence of his heart.

He let the water turn them both to relics, frozen in the last moment before the flood.

And when the storm broke at midnight, Harry would leave but for now, there was only this: the rise and fall of Draco's chest, the quiet symphony of their breathing, and the terrible, beautiful knowledge that some things could not be undone.

Midnight.

The grandfather clock in the east wing chimed its hollow song as Harry stood motionless in the shadows of Draco's bedroom. The storm outside had reached its crescendo—rain lashed against the leaded glass windows in relentless sheets, thunder shaking the very stones of the manor like some great beast rattling its cage. Perfect cover.

Harry's fingers tightened around the rough burlap sack slung over his shoulder. The contents—dried meat wrapped in waxed parchment, stolen apples, the sharpened butter knife tucked carefully between folds of cloth—felt heavier than they had any right to be.

A flash of lightning illuminated the room in stark relief.

Draco lay curled on his side, one hand tucked beneath his cheek, the other clutching at the empty space where Harry should have been sleeping. His silver-blonde lashes cast delicate shadows across his cheeks, his lips slightly parted with each slow, even breath. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, revealing the pale slope of his shoulder, the vulnerable curve of his throat.

Harry's chest ached.

He hadn't realized, hadn't allowed himself to realize, how deeply the Omega had burrowed under his skin. Not until this moment, when leaving felt less like escape and more like amputation.

The scent of honeysuckle and treacle tart clung to the air, sweet and warm and so utterly Draco that Harry found himself leaning down without conscious thought.

His lips brushed against Draco's forehead—a whisper of contact, there and gone.

Draco sighed in his sleep, his fingers twitching against the sheets as if searching for something lost.

Take him with you.

The thought was madness, the world beyond these walls was a brutal, unforgiving place. Harry had no home to offer, no safety beyond what his own two hands could provide.

And Draco — sweet Draco who cut his toast into perfect squares and giggled when Harry growled at nosy servants deserved better than a life spent running.

Thunder rolled across the sky as Harry straightened.

The burlap sack's rough fibers bit into his palm as he adjusted his grip. His escape route was clear—through the servant's passages, past the east garden wall where the mortar had crumbled, into the welcoming darkness of the forest beyond.

One last look.

Lightning flashed again, catching the tear tracks Harry hadn't realized had slipped free. They glittered like liquid silver against his cheeks before vanishing into the storm's embrace.

The door clicked shut behind him with finality.

And Harry —

Harry let the rain wash him away.

The forest swallowed Harry whole.

Ancient oaks groaned like wounded beasts, their branches clawing at the storm-swollen sky. Rain lashed at his face, sharp as knife points, and the earth sucked at his boots with every step, as if the land itself fought to keep him there. His lungs burned, his ribs a cage for a heart hammering too fast, too loud. Behind him, the manor’s lights flickered like dying stars. Ahead, only darkness and freedom.

The scent of wet earth and rotting leaves filled his nose, so different from the perfumed halls of Malfoy Manor, raw and real and alive in a way nothing had been for five long years.

His chest burned with each gasping breath, the burlap sack bouncing against his shoulder blades like a guilty conscience. The distant wail of alarms still pierced through the thunder's roar, their shrill cries sending phantom fingers of panic crawling up his spine.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

The mantra beat in time with his pounding heart. How many forests had he fled through? How many nights had he spent curled beneath roots like a wounded animal? The memories rose unbidden—the scent of smoke from the cottage, Sirius's desperate shouts, the way the summer storm had tasted like ozone and endings that night five years ago.

A particularly vicious gust of wind sent a curtain of rain lashing across his face. Harry blinked against the sting, his boots sliding in the mud as he —

The air before him rippled.

Harry's body locked mid-stride, his muscles screaming in protest as he skidded to a halt. Mud sprayed up his calves as the space before him warped and folded, the storm itself seeming to hold its breath.

Then —

Draco.

Materializing from the storm like some watercolor painting bleeding to life, his fine silk sleeping robes plastered to his slender frame, silver hair darkened to pewter by the rain. He looked like a ghost—pale and trembling and utterly, devastatingly real.

Draco's feet were already muddied, his toes curling against the cold earth, his ankles streaked with dirt and rainwater. The sight of it — this reckless Omega standing in the middle of a storm without so much as shoes — sent something protective roaring through Harry's veins.

For one suspended heartbeat, they simply stared at each other. The world narrowed to the space between them, to the raindrops caught in Draco's lashes, to the way his chest heaved as though he'd been running for miles rather than apparating.

His wand trembled in his grip, but his voice rang steady. "Did you really think," he shouted against the howling wind, "I wouldn't follow you?"

Harry had never seen Draco's fury turned on him like this - lips pressed into a bloodless line, storm-gray eyes blazing with a fire that made his breath catch. Then came the sound that shattered him - a raw, broken noise that vibrated through Harry's ribs like a physical blow - before Draco launched himself forward.

Harry caught him by instinct, his arms closing around the Omega's slender frame as Draco collided with him. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, but Harry barely noticed, too stunned by the way Draco's fingers clutched at his back, by the frantic press of his heartbeat against Harry's chest.

"You idiot," Draco gasped, his voice breaking. "You absolute idiot." His fingers dug into Harry’s shoulders, not in anger but in something worse —relief. "Did you really think I wouldn’t burn this place down looking for you?”

Harry stood frozen, his hands hovering awkwardly over Draco's back. The warmth of him was overwhelming after the cold rain, like stepping into sunlight after years in the dark. His scent—honeysuckle and treacle tart and something uniquely Draco — filled Harry's nose, making his head spin.

"You followed me," Harry rasped, the words scraped his throat raw.

Draco pulled back just far enough to look at him, his gray eyes luminous in the storm's gloom. Rainwater traced the sharp planes of his face, catching on his parted lips.

"You left," he accused, but the words held no fire —just a bone-deep hurt that made Harry’s chest crack open.

The alarms still screamed in the distance, closer now. Harry's muscles tensed, his body screaming at him to run, run, run but Draco's hands came up to frame his face, his thumbs brushing away rain and something too warm to be stormwater.

"Take me with you."

The words hung between them, fragile as spun glass. Draco's eyes searched Harry's face, his fingers trembling where they cupped Harry's jaw.

"If you don't want to stay here, if you want to leave," Draco continued, softer now, "then take me too," His voice broke on the last word, the sound more devastating than any alarm. "I can't—I won't stay behind. Not without you."

Something in Harry's chest cracked open.

Harry shook his head, loosening Draco's grip, “No, you'll die.”

Draco’s fingers dug into Harry’s wrist. "You don’t get to decide what I survive," he said, mud streaking his cheeks like war paint. "Besides, you will be less likely to be captured if your Omega is with you. It won't be considered an escape.”

The storm howled, feet thudded against the earth, nearing close when Draco saw his hesitation, he pulled him closer.

"If you leave me behind, they’ll lock me up for letting you go," Draco’s voice dropped to a whisper, pressing their noses together, green clashing with gray, "Or worse, do you know what they do to Omegas who lose their Alphas?”

Harry couldnt help it as a growl crawled out from his throat.

The forest seemed to hold its breath around them. Even the rain gentled, falling now in quiet sheets rather than punishing lashes.

Harry’s body was still tense, poised to run but Draco’s scent, his warmth, the way his fingers trembled against Harry’s wrist—it rooted him to the earth.

Five years.

Five years of chains, of silence, of dreaming of this moment and now… this.

“Damn you,” Harry snarled, dragging Draco against him so hard their ribs bruised. “What have you done to me?”

Then, without warning, he bent and scooped Draco into his arms, one arm beneath his knees, the other supporting his back. Draco let out a startled noise, his hands flying to Harry's shoulders for balance.

"You're not running through a forest barefoot," Harry stated, his voice rough but firm.

Draco stared at him, his lips parted in surprise. Then, slowly, a smile cut across his face brighter than lightning, more triumphant than any chandelier’s glow.

Harry adjusted his grip, shifting Draco higher against his chest. The Omega's body fit against Harry's as if he belonged there.

Draco's fingers tangled with Harry's, their palms fitting together like they'd been made for this. He raised his wand with his free hand, the wood gleaming in the storm's dim light.

"Hold on," Draco gasped, his voice fraying. 

The forest exhaled around them as the world dissolved into the swirling darkness of Apparition.

Harry felt Draco's fingers tighten around his wrist like a vice, the Omega's other hand gripping his shoulder as the storm-wet fabric of his robes pressed against Harry's chest.

For one endless moment, there was nothing but the crushing pressure of magic and the too-fast rhythm of Draco's breathing against his neck.

The Apparition tore through them like a blade.

Draco’s magic — panicked, desperate — wrenched them through the void, and for one sickening second, Harry feared they’d be ripped apart. His vision whited out, his bones screaming in protest, then —

Impact, stone against his back and Draco’s gasp, sharp with pain.

"Sorry," Draco groaned, rolling off of him. "Barely made it, my emotions are a mess."

The taste of iron filled Harry’s mouth; blood or magic, he couldn’t tell. His head turned to look at his surroundings, a silent, vacant street.

No screaming alarms. No pounding rain. Just the distant drip of water on stone and their own ragged breathing echoing back at them.

The second thing he noticed was the cold.

A damp, creeping chill that seeped through his stolen robes and settled deep in his bones. The kind of cold that spoke of ancient places, long forgotten.

Draco's wand tip flared to life with a whispered spell, casting a white light over rough-hewn walls covered in peeling murals. The paintings might have been beautiful once — depictions of Alphas and Omegas standing side by side beneath towering trees but time had worn them down to ghosts of color and shape.

"Where...?" Harry started, looking around.

Draco turned, his face pale in the wandlight. A slow, reckless smile curved his lips, the same one he wore when he'd pushed his breakfast toward Harry that first morning, when he'd kissed him in the bath.

"Somewhere they'll never think to look," he murmured, reaching up to brush damp hair from Harry's forehead. His fingers lingered, “You're not the only one with contingency plans.”

Somewhere in the darkness, stone groaned.

Harry's arms tightened around Draco and in the darkness beyond, a low, rattling breath answered theirs.

Chapter Text

Harry pulled Draco tighter against him without thinking, the Omega's silk robes whispering against his torn sleeves. Draco's breath came fast against his collarbone, each exhale warmer than the last as the scent of wet limestone and something older, like the inside of a long-sealed tomb, wrapped around them.

Then, unmistakable this time, the crunch of a boot heel pivoting on loose stone.

Harry moved before conscious thought, placing the Omega on the ground and spinning Draco behind him as his own body tensed into a living shield. His muscles screamed from the earlier running, but the adrenaline coursing through him tasted like the moment before a lightning strike.

Light exploded from the darkness.

He recoiled, arm flying up against the sudden glare. Purple afterimages danced across his vision, slowly resolving into a wand's glow and the silhouette behind it.

"Don't move."

The woman's voice carried the crisp enunciation of someone used to being obeyed, but beneath it ran a current of something raw. Not quite fear. Not quite anger.

Behind him, Draco made a sound Harry had never heard from him before, small and wounded. The fabric at Harry's back twisted where Draco fisted it.

As the wand light shifted, details emerged: wild corkscrew curls escaping a practical braid, a smudge of soot across one sharp cheekbone, boots planted in perfect dueling stance. Her eyes - dark and assessing - flicked from Harry's protective stance to the way Draco peeked over his shoulder.

"Who are you?" The question hung between them, underlined by the distant plink of water dripping somewhere in the dark.

Draco's pulse thrummed against Harry's wrist where their skin touched.

"My mother sent us," Draco's voice was steadier than his trembling hands suggested. "Narcissa Black, she said... she said this was a safe house if I ever needed one."

The wand didn't waver. The woman's gaze swept over Draco's disheveled appearance - the torn embroidery at his cuffs, the way his usually impeccable hair clung to his damp forehead - before settling on Harry. He stood perfectly still, letting her take in the dirt ground into his skin, the fresh cuts across his knuckles.

Silence stretched, broken only by that relentless dripping. The air smelled of damp wool and yellowed parchment, with none of the aggressive pheromones Harry had come to associate with Alphas. Just Beta-neutral space and wariness thick enough to choke on.

"Come with me."

No please. No explanation. Just an order delivered with a jerk of her chin toward a shadowed archway, her wand never lowering.

Draco exhaled sharply. "Thank Merlin."

Harry didn't move.

His eyes tracked the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers threatened to cramp around her wand. Every instinct he'd honed screamed trap.

"Alpha?" Draco's whisper ghosted across his wrist.

Harry's jaw ached from how hard he was clenching it.

The woman took a single deliberate step backward. Waiting.

He had no choice, there was nowhere else to go.

The corridor swallowed them, its rough stone walls pressing closer with each step. Harry's shoulder scraped against uneven rock as he maneuvered Draco slightly ahead of him—close enough to protect, not enough to trap. The air thickened with each breath, tasting of damp mortar and something older, something that clung to the back of Harry's throat like powdered bone.

Draco's fingers found his wrist in the dark, a question.

Harry didn't answer. His magic stirred beneath his skin like a second pulse. The passage yawned open into a large space, and every instinct in Harry's body went taut.

The cottage wasn't just empty.

It was hollowed out.

Moonlight bled through broken slats in the roof, painting skeletal stripes across a floor littered with debris. A rusted cauldron lay overturned near the hearth, its bottom eaten through by time. The smell here was different, charred wood undercut by the sour tang of abandoned magic.

Draco shifted against him. "Alpha, what's wrong?"

A whisper of fabric.

Not theirs.

Harry's magic surged before conscious thought; the few remaining candles along the walls flared violently, their flames stretching tall and thin as spears. Shadows leapt across the walls in grotesque parodies of human shapes.

From the rafters. From behind the crumbling chimney. From the very corners where the darkness seemed to congeal into substance.

Harry barely had time to shove Draco behind him before the spell hit.

The spell struck like a physical blow and in that fractured second before impact, the nearest window exploded inward. Not from the spell's force, but from the shockwave of Harry's magic recoiling. Glass rained down in jagged shards as the world went white with pain.

Darkness.

He regained conscious, his eye blinking against the stars as he sat up.

Sound first. The scuff of boots on stone. A choked gasp.

"— you barbarians, do know who you're dealing with!" Draco's voice, sharp with outrage but undercut by something raw. Fear. Not for himself.

Harry's vision swam into focus.

The Beta woman had Draco pinned against the far wall, her wand digging into the hollow of his throat. Her other hand twisted in his hair, forcing his head back at an angle that made Harry's vision pulse red at the edges. Around them, half a dozen figures emerged from the shadows, wands drawn.

The candles guttered wildly.

"Last chance," the woman hissed. "What did you do to that Alpha?"

Draco spat at her feet.

"Let. Him. Go."

The words tore from his throat like something physical, each syllable cracking through the room like Apparition shockwaves. Every wand in the room swung toward him. The Beta woman froze, her grip slackening just enough for Draco to wrench free.

A plump, red-haired woman by the crumbling hearth dropped her wooden spoon. It clattered against stone, the sound absurdly loud. "He speaks," she breathed, flour-dusted hands rising to cover her mouth. "But how...?”

The candles exploded.

In the chaos of flying wax and sudden darkness, Harry was moving. He caught Draco by the waist, spinning them both behind the overturned cauldron as the first curses began to fly. Shouts erupted through the cottage, spells lighting the dark in staccato bursts of red and gold.

Draco's breath came in sharp bursts against Harry's collarbone. "You, you spoke, the Ministry—"

Harry didn't answer, his fingers found Draco's wrist in the dark, pressing their joined hands against the floor where the stone trembled with the force of his magic.

The whole house seemed to hold its breath.

Before anyone could react, thunderous footsteps pounded down the hidden staircase. A flash of coppery red hair.

"Ginny!" The bushy-haired woman whirled, wand still raised. "We told you to stay with the refugees!"

A wiry teenager with scraped knees and fury in her eyes skidded to a halt. "I know," she snapped, "and they're fine!"

Her chest heaved as she took in the wrecked living room: shattered candles, overturned furniture, Harry's protective crouch over Draco.

"Wait..." Ginny squinted. "I think I know you."

Harry frowned, panting. The girl's voice tugged at something, shouting over a crowd, the scent of crushed grass.

"You were protesting," He said, his eyes widening jn realization, "Outside the Alpha ring."

“You were the unmuzzled Alpha, I saw!” Ginny's entire face lit up. "See? This was the pair I told you about, Hermione! The unmuzzled Alpha and his Omega!" She gestured wildly at Harry's unmarked face, then to where Draco still clutched Harry's sleeve.

Hermione's wand arm lowered a fraction, her eyes darted between Ginny's earnest face and Harry's defensive stance. "You're certain?"

"Positive!" Ginny bounced on the balls of her feet, freckled nose scrunched.

The plump woman made a soft, wounded noise. "Oh sweet Circe," Her flour-dusted hands trembled. "You mean he's not…?"

"Not Ministry-broken," Ginny confirmed, grinning. "Not even a little."

Harry felt Draco shift behind him, his breath warm against Harry's spine. "Oh, thank Merlin," Draco muttered, voice thick with relief as he pressed his forehead against Harry's chest.

Hermione's wand tip finally — barely — dipped, the candles flickered as she exhaled through her nose. "That changes nothing."

The kitchen smelled of burnt porridge as Harry counted exits automatically; two doors, a shuttered window, the stairwell they'd come from. His shoulder brushed Draco's as Hermione herded them toward a scarred oak table where three redheaded men sat frozen.

"Move," Hermione ordered, and the twins slid down the bench with identical raised eyebrows.

Molly fluttered between stove and table, her wand hand trembling as she stirred a pot. "Charlie, love, fetch the —"

"I know, Mum," The burly man with burns up his arms stood slowly, eyes never leaving Harry.

Ginny flopped into a chair with theatrical grace. "Relax, if he wanted to kill us, he'd have done it when Hermione had her wand to Draco's throat."

"Ginevra," Molly's ladle clanged against the pot.

Hermione ignored them, turning to Draco with icy precision. "Your full name."

Draco's chin lifted. "Draco Lucius Malfoy."

A collective inhale.

Fred's spoon slipped into his porridge, George's grin went sharp, Charlie's hand drifted toward his belt knife. Only Ginny rolled her eyes so hard it looked painful.

"The Malfoy heir and his Alpha?" She stole a sausage from her brother's plate. "Everyone was talking about you two," She pointed the half-eaten sausage at Draco. "This one nearly cursed a guard for stepping on his robes."

Draco's nails bit into Harry's forearm. "I merely —"

"You made that auror piss himself," Ginny corrected through a mouthful of food.

Hermione's quill scratched across parchment. "And you?" She didn't look up at Harry. "You have a name too, I assume."

The twins leaned forward in unison.

Harry met their gaze. "Harry."

Ginny snorted. "See? Not all Alphas are Ministry-broken drones."

"Not all," Hermione agreed softly, her quill hovered over the parchment. "Just most."

The silence stretched. Somewhere, a pipe dripped into a bucket. Harry felt Draco's knee press against his under the table, equal parts reassurance and comfort.

“Now, it's my turn, who are you people? “Draco demanded, narrowing his eyes.

The dripping pipe marked time in the silence, Harry watched as a bead of water swelled at the rusted faucet, catching the flickering lamplight for a suspended moment before falling with a soft plink into the overflowing bucket below. The sound seemed absurdly loud in the stillness.

Draco’s fingers twitched against the scarred oak table. "Well?" His voice was too sharp, the polished Malfoy cadence cracking at the edges. "Are you thieves? Smugglers? Some pathetic splinter group of —"

"Christ, give it a rest," Charlie’s chair groaned as he leaned forward, the burns on his arms stretching like living maps across his skin. The firelight caught the silvered edges of old scars as he moved. "We’re the Resistance against Tom Riddle’s regime."

A log shifted in the hearth. Embers spat. Draco didn’t blink.

"The Minister?" The word came out hollow, Draco’s polished nails dug into the wood grain. "Don’t be absurd. What could that decrepit have to do with anything? "

Molly’s ladle slipped from nerveless fingers, sinking into the porridge pot with a glutinous thlop. The sound seemed to hang in the air.

Fred and George moved in perfect unison as they both sat back from the table. Their usual mirth had bled away, leaving something sharper beneath. George’s fingers tapped a silent rhythm against his thigh, while Fred’s thumb worried at a fresh burn on the table’s edge.

Hermione’s quill snapped between her fingers.

The sound seemed to startle Draco, his eyes flickered to the broken pieces rolling across the table, then to Harry, just for a heartbeat, before settling on Ginny.

Ginny, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t breathed, her sausage forgotten halfway to her mouth.

“No way,” Harry said, looking at each of them.

Draco’s voice dropped to a whisper. "You can’t possibly mean—"

"How old do you think the Minister is, Malfoy?" Charlie’s voice was deceptively light, but his knuckles had gone white around his tankard.

"Thirty? Forty?" Draco waved a hand, the motion too quick, too fluid. "He’s been in office since —"

"1900," Hermione brushed quill fragments from the parchment with precise, measured strokes. The scratching of her nails against the paper was unbearably loud. "And have you ever seen him age a day?"

The fire popped. The pipe dripped. Somewhere in the walls, mice scuttled through the insulation.

Harry felt the exact moment Draco stopped breathing beside him. Felt the minute tremor that ran through the knee still pressed against his own. Not fear, not yet but the first fissure in the foundation of everything he’d been raised to believe.

Ginny finally moved, leaning forward until her coppery braid slipped over her shoulder. The firelight caught in her eyes as she held Draco’s gaze.

"Welcome to the war, Malfoy," she said softly. "Your mum just enlisted you."

The silence stretched like taffy, thick and suffocating.

Draco's fingers twitched against the rough oak tabletop, his polished nails catching on a deep groove in the wood. "This is absurd," he declared, but his voice lacked its usual aristocratic certainty. The firelight painted his sharp features in flickering gold and shadow, revealing the tension in his jaw.

"So you're telling me," Harry started, his voice holding a bit of uncertainty, "That the Minister is what? Immortal?" The word hung heavy in the air, tasting of ash.

All movement ceased. The twins' silent communication broke as both turned to stare. Even the constant drip-drip from the pipe seemed to pause in reverence to the question.

Draco turned to Harry, his gray eyes wide and searching. After a beat, he nodded emphatically, their knees pressing tighter together beneath the table in silent solidarity.

Hermione set down the pieces of her broken quill with deliberate care. The fragments clicked against the worn wood like bones. “We don't know how but yes. He's been Minister for a century now.”

Draco's fingers trembled against the parchment. "A century?" His voice came out strangled. "That's impossible, someone would have noticed!"

"Would they?" Hermione's throat worked as she swallowed. "We've found records, banned texts from 1905 showing the same face giving the same speeches," She tapped the yellowed photograph where Riddle's smirk hadn't aged a day. "There's magic at work here. Mass Confundus, targeted Obliviates...we just can't prove which and how."

The fire popped, sending embers skittering across the hearthstones. Draco's breath hitched as he traced Riddle's unchanging features. "And no one's ever...?"

"Those who did," Charlie interrupted quietly, "ended up in the pits."

The fire popped violently, sending up a shower of sparks that illuminated the haunted hollows under Charlie's eyes. He rubbed absently at the burn scarring his left wrist.

"How is that even possible?" Draco's voice climbed half an octave. He reached for his teacup but aborted the motion when his fingers trembled against the chipped porcelain. "Even for a wizard, that's... that's beyond normal lifespan. Are you certain there isn't some Tom Riddle Jr.? Or Sr.?"

A draft snaked through the kitchen, making the fire gutter. Shadows leapt across the walls like grasping hands. Molly abandoned her stirring to wrap her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

"We've checked," she said softly, her voice barely carrying over the wind's whisper. "Every archive, every genealogy record. There are no descendants. Just... him. Always him."

Hermione's fingers traced the scar on her arm absentmindedly. "I suspect some type of soul magic," she murmured, her eyes gone distant. "The rituals required..." She trailed off, then seemed to shake herself. "Or perhaps... unicorn blood."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. Harry felt the chill seep into his bones, remembering the stories Sirius had told him; how unicorn blood could sustain life, but at the cost of one's very soul. How the act of drinking it left a permanent mark, visible to those who knew how to look.

Ginny broke the silence by stabbing her sausage violently. "Would explain why he's such a soulless bastard," she muttered, but her usual bravado was undercut by the way her free hand clutched at her own forearm, mirroring Hermione's unconscious gesture.

Fred opened his mouth, no doubt to lighten the mood, but George caught his eye and gave a minute shake of his head. The jest died unspoken, leaving only the crackle of the fire and the relentless dripping of the pipe.

Harry studied Hermione's face, the tightness around her mouth, the shadows under her eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights spent poring over forbidden texts. "You've seen proof," he stated, his voice low, it wasn't a question.

Hermione met his gaze steadily. In the flickering light, her brown eyes looked almost black. "Enough to know we're fighting something... unnatural," She hesitated, then added, "Something that should not be."

The fire chose that moment to let out a sound like a muffled scream as a pocket of sap exploded. Several people jumped, Draco's hand found Harry's forearm under the table, his grip surprisingly strong. Harry could feel the rapid flutter of Draco's pulse where their skin touched, could see the bob of his throat as he swallowed hard.

Charlie leaned forward, the firelight catching the silvery web of old burns that mapped his arms like some strange constellation.

"Your mother knew what she was sending you into, Malfoy," he said quietly, his voice rough with some unspoken history. "Question is: now that you know..." He let the words hang in the air like smoke. "What are you going to do about it?"

Outside, the wind howled through the cracks in the cottage walls, carrying with it the faint scent of damp earth and something metallic. The pipe dripped once, twice, three times into the overflowing bucket before anyone dared to breathe.

The firelight guttered as Draco's fingers slid between Harry's, their palms pressing together like pages of a long-sealed book finally allowed to touch.

The contact sent a shockwave up Harry's arm; not magic, but something more primal, more terrifying in its simplicity. Devotion without chains. Choice without compulsion.

The kitchen seemed to shrink around them. The ancient oak beams overhead creaked like old bones settling. A draft snaked through the cracks in the mortar, making the candle flames bow and shiver, their reflections fracturing in the copper pots hanging above the hearth.

"I am going where my Alpha goes," Draco's voice was softer now, but each word fell with the weight of a Galleon dropped on stone.

The firelight caught the delicate veins of silver in his irises, turning them liquid. "If he wants to stay here..." His thumb brushed Harry's pulse point. "Then, so be it."

Harry's breath hitched. He could feel the softness of Draco's fingers, every ridge of his knuckles. This wasn't the desperate clinging of shared survival anymore. 

The silence stretched. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked three arrhythmic times before stopping altogether, Molly's knitting needles lay abandoned in her lap, half-formed stitches unraveling slowly in the damp air.

Harry swallowed against the thickness in his throat. "I want—" The words stuck, brittle as old parchment.

He tried again, watching their joined hands in the flickering light. "I want to walk down the street..." His thumb traced the blue veins visible beneath Draco's translucent skin. "Free. I want to be able to talk and have a wand, and be with Draco without being stared at.

A log collapsed in the hearth with a sound like distant thunder. Embers spiraled upward, casting fleeting shadows that looked for a moment like wings.

Ginny's sausage slipped from her fork, landing with a soft plop in her gravy.

Harry exhaled slowly, "We've got nowhere else to go," he admitted, the truth of it settling in his bones like winter. "So, our options are about as slim as a house-elf's chance at the Wizengamot,” He glanced at the boarded-up window where a single shaft of moonlight pierced through a knothole.

The pipe under the sink groaned, then began dripping faster — plink-plink-plink — like a racing heartbeat.

Hermione leaned forward, the firelight carving hollows beneath her cheekbones. The quill she'd broken earlier lay between them like a spent wand.

"Understand this," Hermione said, her fingers drumming an uneven rhythm against the wood—three taps, a pause, two more. Harry couldn't tell if it was a code or just nerves.

"Staying here isn't just about shelter," She leaned forward, the firelight catching the shadows under her eyes. "We're under Fidelius which means if you betray us, you'll be murdering everyone you've met here."

Outside, an owl screamed. The sound skittered down Harry's spine.

Draco's fingers tightened around his. "We shouldbsay the same about you lot," he drawled, but his voice lacked its usual edge. 

Charlie shifted, the dragonhide patches on his knees creaking like old parchment. The movement sent shadows dancing across his scarred arms.

"There's a price," he said, his voice rough as the stone walls around them. "Dawn drills in the back meadow, patrol rotations, and when the time comes," His calloused hand closed around his tankard, the pewter denting slightly under his grip. "You fight, no hesitation."

The wind chose that moment to rattle the shutters violently. Somewhere in the walls, the house's ancient magic moaned, a sound almost like recognition.

Harry met Draco's gaze. Saw the reflection of their intertwined hands in his widened pupils. Felt the impossible rightness of it thrumming in his veins.

"We fight," Harry said, and the words tasted like the first clean breath after years underwater.

Draco's lips curved, just slightly, and the fire roared back to life as if applauding, sending golden light cascading over their joined hands.

The kitchen door opened with the slow, mournful creak of a tomb unsealing.

“Can I come out now?”

The scent hit Harry first; it wasn’t the expected Alpha scent but something far more disarming: vanilla bean and frost, the crisp sweetness undercut by a wintry, metallic edge ike a first snowfall over a forgotten battlefield.

The Alpha stood frozen, his features slack with disbelief. A half-peeled apple hung forgotten in his left hand, its skin curling onto the floor in one long, spiraled ribbon.

"Draco?"

The name left the Alpha’s lips like a prayer — soft, reverent, and painfully intimate.

"Theo?!" Draco exclaimed in disbelief next to his ear.

Harry watched, something hot and clawing twisting behind his ribs, as Draco jumped to his feet and crossed the room in three strides. The firelight gilded the tear tracks no one was meant to see streaking down his cheeks.

The Alpha caught him with the practiced ease of someone who’d done this a hundred times before. His arms — too familiar, too comfortable — wrapped around Draco’s waist as Draco buried his face against his neck. The half-eaten apple tumbled to the floor, rolling until it hit Harry’s boot with a soft, accusing thump.

"Theo?" Draco gasped, the name raw at the edges. His fingers twisted in Theo’s threadbare sweater, the fabric straining under his grip. "You’re alive."

Harry’s magic stirred restlessly. The hearth flames darkened from gold to bruised violet, casting long, wavering shadows that licked up the walls like living things.

Theo’s hands came up to frame Draco’s face, his thumbs brushing away tears with a tenderness that made Harry’s teeth ache. "Its been years," Theo murmured, his voice cracking. "I thought when the Ministry raided the estate —"

Harry stood abruptly, his chair screeching against stone. Every eye in the room snapped to him, every eye except Theo’s, which remained fixed on Draco with a devotion that bordered on worship.

Ginny’s fingers closed around Harry’s wrist under the table, her nails biting just shy of pain. "Breathe," she hissed, low enough that only he could hear. "You’ll set the wards off."

Too late.

The ancient copper pots above the hearth began to rattle on their hooks. The pipe under the sink groaned, then burst into a frantic drip-drip-drip like a racing pulse.

Theo finally looked up, his amber eyes meeting Harry’s over Draco’s shoulder. Something unspoken passed between them in that moment, as sharp and clear as a blade being drawn.

Draco pulled back just far enough to speak, his hands still fisted in Theo’s sweater. "Mother sent us," he said, voice steadier now. “This was her contigency plan if I ever needed to run"

"Your mother always did have plans up her sleeve," Theo’s fingers lingered at Draco’s jawline, tracing the fading bruise there with a quiet fury. His gaze never left Harry’s. "Whose this?"

The temperature in the room plummeted. Frost spiderwebbed across the nearest windowpane with an audible crack. Harry exhaled slowly, watching his breath fog in the suddenly frigid air. The possessive snarl building in his chest tasted like blood and burnt sugar.

Harry could see his own reflection in the glass; eyes dark, jaw clenched tight enough to splinter bone.

Ginny’s grip on his wrist tightened. "Harry," she warned under her breath.

But it was Draco who moved first.

He stepped back from Theo, just half a pace, not nearly enough, and turned toward Harry. The firelight caught the tear tracks silvering his cheeks, the raw vulnerability in his expression that made something primal in Harry’s chest snarl and snap its teeth.

"Alpha," Draco murmured, the title softer than Harry had ever heard it. A plea.

Theo’s hands lingered in the air where Draco had been, fingers flexing once before dropping to his sides. His gaze flickered between them, calculating.

"Ah," he said, voice dripping with false lightness. "So, it’s like that."

"Theo," Draco hissed, shooting him a glare that could flay flesh from bone.

Harry forced air into his lungs. The scent of Draco’s distress clung to the back of his throat. He took a deliberate step forward, boots crunching over porcelain shards.

The room held its breath.

A warm hand clapped down on Harry’s shoulder. "Alright there, mate?"

Harry startled, turning to find one of the twins — Fred? George? — grinning at him with unsettling cheer. The twin’s fingers dug in just above Harry’s collarbone, a warning masquerading as camaraderie.

"Bit tense for a reunion, innit?" the other twin chimed in, materializing at Harry’s other side with a tray of steaming mugs.

The scent of spiced cider did little to mask the acrid tang of Veritaserum wafting from one particular cup. "Here," He thrust a nondrugged mug at Harry. "Drink, you look like you’re about to curse Nott into next week."

Across the room, Theo arched a brow. "He could try."

Draco made a sound halfway between a groan and a whine. "Merlin’s balls, must you both—"

The twins burst into identical grins. "Oh-ho!" the first one crowed, giving Harry’s shoulder a shake. "Someone’s jealous!"

"Jealous?" Harry echoed, voice incredulous.

The second twin waggled his eyebrows. "Jealous and defensive. Classic Alpha posturing," He leaned in conspiratorially. "Relax, big guy, Nott’s about as threatening as a flobberworm in lace knickers."

Theo’s smirk vanished. "Excuse me?"

Harry’s grip tightened around his mug. The ceramic groaned in protest. He could feel Draco’s gaze on him, warm as a brand between his shoulder blades.

Ginny snorted into her own drink. "Oh, this is rich," She kicked her feet up on the table, grinning. "An Alpha growling over his Omega like some medieval warlord."

“Isn't he so romantic?” Draco said with glee.

Harry’s cheeks burned. "I’m not—"

"Oh yes you are," the twins chorused, gleeful.

Draco’s scent shifted, the burnt edges softening into something warmer, sweeter. Amused. Amused. Harry risked a glance at him and immediately regretted it.

Draco was beaming, the brat, his eyes bright with something that looked suspiciously like fondness.

Theo leaned against the hearth, his fingers tracing the rim of his untouched teacup. The silence stretched like a noose. Draco fidgeted beside Harry, his knee bouncing under the table — nervous, always so nervous now — until Theo finally spoke.

“They took me straight from the Nott estate to the Ministry training facilities,” His voice was too calm, too measured, like he was reciting a textbook rather than recounting his own near-destruction. “Twelve hours a day. Every day. Conditioning, obedience drills, trying to break me.”

Draco’s breath hitched. “Theo...”

“They had this room,” Theo continued, staring into the middle distance. His thumb rubbed absently over his wrist, where a faint ring of teeth marks scarred the skin. “White walls. No windows. Telling me what I was, constant beatings, conditioning,” His gray eyes flicked up, sharp as shattered glass.

Harry’s fingers curled into fists under the table. He knew that room, knew the way the scent of fear baked into the tiles after enough screams.

Theo’s gaze slid to Draco, softening at the edges. “I held onto one thought,” He reached across the table, brushing his knuckles against Draco’s wrist before Harry could snarl a warning. “You.”

Draco flinched.

Theo’s smile turned bitter. “Funny, isn’t it? They tried to carve the Alpha out of me, and all I could think about was the spoiled little Omega who used to steal my sweets,” His fingers trailed down his own arm, lingering near his elbow. “You kept me human.”

Harry was on his feet before he realized he’d moved. The table shuddered as his magic spiked, sending cutlery clattering to the floor.

Theo didn’t even blink.

“Harry,” Draco stood, pressing a hand to Harry’s chest. His palm was warm through the thin fabric of Harry’s shirt.

Theo’s eyes darkened. “Oh, this is rich," He leaned back, spreading his arms in mock surrender. “What will you do to me, huh?”

Harry’s vision tunneled, the air crackled, the candles flaring white-hot as his magic surged.

“Enough!” Hermione’s voice cracked like a whip. She stood, her chair screeching against the stone. “We are in the middle of a war, or have you forgotten? And you’re” She gestured wildly at them, “posturing like a bunch of territorial children!”

Harry breathed out his nose, slowly sinking back into his chair.

“Alright, I say we call it a night,” Molly's voice brooked no argument. “Fred, George…help Charlie reinforce the perimeter wards. Ginny, Hermione — check on the refugees in the cellar,” She pointed her ladle at Harry and Draco like a general commanding troops. “You two. Upstairs. Now.”

Theo opened his mouth to speak.

“Theo,” Molly said, softer now. “Go check on the potions stores, we might be running low.”

A beat of defiance. Then, Theo exhaled sharply through his nose and pushed away from the table, his shoulder deliberately brushing Harry’s as he passed.

Harry growled.

Draco’s fingers tangled in his sleeve. “Harry,” he murmured, low and urgent as he lead him to the stairs.

The attic room was small, drafty, and smelled faintly of mothballs and dried lavender. A single narrow bed was shoved against the slanted eaves, its quilt patched with clumsy stitching, it was a far cry from the luxury Harry had gotten used to.

Draco made a sound of profound disgust. "Merlin's balls, it's like sleeping in a tomb," He dragged a finger along the windowsill, coming away with a thick coating of grime. "With substandard housekeeping."

Harry stood rigid by the door, his pulse still hammering in his throat. Behind him, the bed ropes shrieked in protest as Draco threw himself down. "Honestly," he grumbled, picking at a loose thread. "No blankets either!"

Harry turned slowly. Moonlight caught the elegant lines of Draco's throat as he tilted his head, the way his lashes cast spiderweb shadows across his cheekbones. Beautiful, even in petulance.

Draco sat up slowly, his fingers plucking at Harry’s sleeve again. “Harry.”

The name — his name, not ‘Alpha’’, just Harry —unlocked something in his chest. He let Draco tug him forward, let himself be maneuvered onto the edge of the bed like a sullen child.

Draco’s hands framed his face, forcing Harry to meet his gaze. “Listen to me,” he said, his voice softer now. “What Theo and I had was a childhood crush. A fleeting thing,” His thumbs brushed Harry’s cheekbones, his scent sweetening with truth-certainty-need. “I chose you, I want you.”

Harry exhaled sharply, his forehead dropping against Draco’s.

Draco hummed, shifting closer until their legs tangled beneath the quilt. "Besides," he whispered, lips brushing Harry's earlobe, "the man peels apples like a barbarian. Who spirals the skin off?"

A startled laugh punched out of Harry’s chest.

Draco grinned, triumphant, and pounced, toppling them both onto the quilt. He tucked himself against Harry’s side, his head pillowed on Harry’s shoulder, one leg thrown possessively over Harry’s thighs.

Harry hesitated, then wrapped his arm around Draco’s waist, holding him close-close-safe.

Outside, the wind howled through the cracks in the eaves. Somewhere below, a floorboard creaked,Theo pacing, probably.

Draco sighed, his breath warm against Harry’s neck. “What world have we stepped into?”

Harry stared up at the water-stained ceiling, watching the shadows from the lone candle flicker and dance.

“I don't know,” he said at last.

The attic clung to the last whispers of night, its slanted ceiling stained indigo in the predawn hush. Harry woke to the weight of Draco's hand curled against his chest, fingers slack with sleep, the silver of his signet ring gone dull in the weak light.

Carefully, Harry extracted himself, pausing when Draco made a small, wounded noise into the pillow. For a heartbeat, he watched the way Draco's eyelashes fluttered against his cheekbones, the way his parted lips left a damp spot on the linen. Something primal and tender twisted behind Harry's ribs.

He brushed a thumb over the vulnerable nape of Draco's neck – where an Omega's scent glands would have been, had this been a kinder world – before pressing his lips there in a kiss so soft it barely disturbed the fine hairs. Draco sighed into the touch but didn't wake.

The kitchen smelled of over-steeped dandelion root tea and the acrid tang of charred toast. Hermione sat hunched over a sprawl of parchment, her wand lit with a bluebell flame that cast eerie shadows across the hollows of her cheeks. She didn't look up when Harry entered, but her quill hesitated over a half-finished sentence.

"Good morning," Harry murmured, his voice still rough with sleep. "What are you doing?"

Hermione's gaze flicked to the empty space behind him – checking for Draco – before meeting his eyes. Something unreadable passed over her face. She shook her head slightly, as if dispelling a thought. "Making plans," she said instead, nudging a chipped mug of tea toward him.

Harry slid into the chair opposite her, the wood was icy against his bare forearms. "What kind of plans require bluebell flames at dawn?"

Her teeth worried at her bottom lip, leaving it chapped and bitten. "We have multiple Alphas in Ministry custody," The flame flickered as she leaned forward, illuminating a hand-drawn map of what Harry recognized as the Ministry's lower levels.

"Not just random prisoners. Strategic captures. Alphas with combat training or..." Her eyes flicked to his unmuzzled face. "Potential."

Harry's fingers tightened around the mug. The heat nearly scalded his palm, but he didn't pull away. "What are our options?"

Hermione exhaled through her nose. The flame between them wavered, stretching their shadows long across the wall.

"Option one: Infiltrate the Ministry during the quarterly inventory," She tapped a narrow service entrance on the map. "Disguised as Beta clerks but the security charms—"

"— would flag any Alpha pheromones," Harry finished. The tea tasted bitter as regret.

"Option two," Her quick fingers unfolded another parchment; a fight roster, the dates marked in what looked like dried blood. "They transport captive Alphas to the rings every third day. Fewer guards in the tunnels, but..."

Harry studied the route. "They'll be muzzled. Half-mad from the pits."

"Precisely," Hermione's fingers trembled slightly as she smoothed the parchment. "We'd need to escape with them before their matches —"

A floorboard creaked overhead, both their heads snapped up toward the sound, Draco stirring.

Hermione's voice dropped to a whisper. "We don't have the luxury of time."

The teakettle chose that moment to shriek, sending a plume of steam curling around them like ghostly fingers. Hermione silenced it with a sharp gesture, but the damage was done, the moment of quiet conspiracy shattered.

Harry turned the map toward the weak dawn light filtering through the boarded window. "Tell me about the tunnel exits."

As Hermione leaned in to trace the route, her sleeve caught on the edge of the table, revealing a fresh cut along her forearm – three parallel lines, still scabbed over. Harry's nostrils flared at the faint iron scent, but before he could ask, a sleep-warm hand landed on his shoulder.

Draco stood behind them, his hair mussed from sleep, his collar slipping to reveal the fading bruise on his collarbone. "Are we plotting a suicide mission," he murmured, voice thick with sleep, "or just enjoying the ambiance of desperation?"

The shadow of his presence fell across their papers, an accidental eclipse.

The kitchen fell silent, Hermione's spine straightened like a bowstring, her fingers curling white-knuckled around her teacup. Harry watched her nostrils flare as Draco's scent  cut through the stale air. She didn't speak, but her eyes tracked him like crosshairs as he slid into the chair beside Harry.

Breakfast passed in tense quiet, Draco picked at his toast with uncharacteristic restraint, the usual barbed commentary absent. Harry noticed the minute tremors in his hands, the way his throat worked each time Hermione unrolled another section of the Ministry blueprints.

When Draco finally spoke, his voice cleaved the silence like an axe.

"I can help get the Alphas out."

A teacup clattered against saucer, Hermione's quill snapped again with an audible crack.

Draco didn't flinch, he sat straighter, his signet ring catching the light as he gestured to the fight roster. "I'm the least likely to be captured, I'm not just any Omega. I'm a Sacred Twenty-Eight Omega," His lip curled around the title like it tasted foul. "No one questions us when we demand...entertainment."

Harry's chest tightened. He could see the conflict playing out beneath Draco's porcelain skin - the way his jaw clenched after speaking, the tremor in his fingers where they pressed against the table.

This was the same boy who'd vomited after witnessing his an Alpha fight, who still woke gasping from nightmares about the scent of burning fur and blood.

"The fights are barbaric," Draco spat suddenly, as if the words were being ripped from him. His pupils dilated, scent spiking with remembered copper and fear-sweat. "But if any Alpha is willing to..." He swallowed hard. "We could disrupt the whole system. Maybe even..."

The sentence died unfinished. Harry watched Draco's hands fist in his lap, the knuckles bleaching white.

Hermione's voice cut through like a blade. "The alternative is walking blind into Ministry custody."

Draco's head snapped up. For a heartbeat, Harry saw something raw and terrified in his eyes before the mask slid back into place.

"Exactly," Draco whispered, his fingers found Harry's wrist under the table, clinging like an anchor. "We don't even know if the captive Alphas are still in the Ministry. They could be halfway to Azkaban by now."

The fire popped violently, sending embers skittering across the hearthstones. Harry turned his hand to intertwine their fingers, feeling the rapid flutter of Draco's pulse against his palm. This wasn't the spoiled heir making demands - this was Draco Malfoy volunteering to walk back into a life he willingly thew away, despite every instinct screaming at him to flee.

And as Harry watched Draco's throat work around unsaid fears, he realized with startling clarity: this was what courage looked like when stripped of bravado. Not the absence of fear, but the terrible, trembling decision to act despite it.

“Okay.”

The safehouse's kitchen smelt of over-steeped tea as Molly polished her ring absently against her apron.

Mid-August sunlight filtered through the warped windowpanes, casting liquid gold patterns across the scarred oak table where Harry sat honing his knife. The rhythmic scrape of blade against whetstone filled the quiet space between them.

"They're late," Molly murmured, her gaze fixed on the lane beyond the window where dust devils danced in the afternoon heat. Her thumb kept rubbing that ring - round and round - wearing the gold thin with grief.

Harry followed her line of sight, the twins had promised to have Draco back by three. His fingers tightened around the knife handle. "They'll be here any minute."

"Percy was always punctual," Molly's sudden revelation came soft as a bruise. She turned the ring so the sunlight caught the inscription Harry couldn't read. "Even after... everything. He'd arrive at precisely six fifteen every third Sunday for tea, like clockwork."

The whetstone slipped in Harry's suddenly damp palm. He'd heard whispers from the other refugees about the Weasley who'd turned - the Alpha son who'd reported his own family - but never the full story.

Molly's voice took on the distant quality of someone reciting a particularly awful fairy tale. "He came home from his Ministry apprenticeship one summer with his hair parted differently, started correcting our grammar at supper," A humorless chuckle escaped her. "We thought it was just Percy being Percy. Then, one morning he stopped eating the eggs Ginny made, said Omegas shouldn't be allowed near open flames."

Harry's knife stilled, the implications settled like ice in his gut.

"It happened in stages," Molly continued, her eyes gone glassy. "First, he refused to let me hug him. Then, he reported Fred and George for running an unlicensed potions stall. Then..." Her breathing hitched. "Then, he came to Sunday dinner with Ministry officials and watched as they dragged his father and his brothers away for 'corrupting young Omega's minds.'"

Outside, a crow cawed three times - their agreed warning signal. Harry was on his feet before the echo faded, his chair screeching against the flagstones. But Molly's hand shot out, gripping his wrist with surprising strength.

"Wait," Her voice was steel wrapped in velvet. "Look first."

Through the warped glass, Harry saw the twins' cart rattling up the lane, Draco perched atop the supplies like some disdainful prince. Even from this distance, Harry could see the tension in his shoulders, how his fingers clutched at the wooden slats beneath him just a fraction too tight.

Molly released Harry's arm. "They broke something fundamental in my boy," she whispered as the cart drew nearer. "Took the love a child should have for his mother and turned it into... something disgusting,"

Her wedding ring clicked against the windowsill as she leaned forward. "That's what they do best, you see. They don't just capture Alphas, they hollow them out and fill them with their own hate."

The kitchen door burst open, bringing with it the scent of sun-warmed apples and Draco's irritated voice complaining about "substandard market vendors."

But Harry couldn't look away from Molly's face, from the way her smile didn't reach her eyes as she called for tea, how her hands trembled just slightly as she reached for the fresh loaf.

Draco tossed a perfect Honeydukes chocolate bar onto the table in front of Harry with a haughty, "See, Harry? I told you I could go to the market on my own.”

“We were there too, you brat,” the twins said in unison, grabbing Draco around his neck and ruffling his hair, playfully.

Harry felt that cold pit in his stomach open wider as he watched them, Molly's words distracting him from the light hearted scene playing out in front of him.

Dried herbs filled the air as the the oil lamp flickered, Hermione stood with her back pressed against a shelf of preserves, the glass jars casting fractured reflections across her face as she extended the wand toward Harry.

"Holly and phoenix feather," she said quietly. "Eleven inches. Nice and supple."

Harry's breath caught, his fingers closed around the familiar wood, and warmth spread through his palm like the first sip of tea on a winter morning. The connection was instant, effortless. A faint golden glow pulsed at the tip before settling into a soft hum.

He exhaled, rolling it between his fingers. "Feels like mine."

Hermione nodded. "It is yours or close enough. Wandlore isn’t an exact science."

Harry nodded, the wand Sirius and Remus had given him, the one he’d lost in the chaos of getting away—had been more than just a tool. It had been a promise. A reminder that he wasn’t just some feral thing to be collared.

But this one? It fit.

"Sentiment doesn’t make a wand work better," Hermione added, watching his expression. "You've used one before?" 

Harry nodded, watching the wand's residual glow fade from blue to gold. "Enough to know this needs calibrating," The Holly vibrated slightly in his grip, attuning to his magic's frequency.

Hermione's lips pressed into a thin line. In the flickering light, Harry noticed the healing blisters on her wand hand—recent, angry marks from overuse. "I can teach you standard spells before the September fight —"

The pantry door swung open with unnecessary force. Draco stood framed in the doorway, his oversized sweater slipping off one shoulder.

"Are you two hiding?" His nose wrinkled at the stale air before zeroing in on the wand.

Hermione's shoulders stiffened, but she didn't respond. Harry saw the way her fingers curled into her palms, not fear, but the rigid control of someone biting back a lifetime's worth of insults.

Harry rotated the wand deliberately, drawing Draco's gaze. "I thought you were sleeping."

"Your side of the bed went cold," Draco flicked nonexistent dust from his sleeve. "And Granger's been pacing since dawn. It's annoying."

The oil lamp's flame stretched thin as the silence thickened. Hermione exhaled sharply through her nose and turned back to Harry. "The Disillusionment Charm, it's essential for —"

"I'll teach him," Draco plucked an apricot from the nearest shelf, inspecting it for imperfections. He took a delicate bite, juice glistening on his lower lip. "Besides, I know the spells Ministry-trained Betas use and how to counteract them."

The pantry's ancient floorboards groaned as Harry moved between them, the hawthorn wand vibrating in his grasp like a plucked bowstring.

His Alpha command rolled through the cramped space: "Teach me, both of you."

Draco's smirk dissolved into something softer as he swayed into Harry's space, his body curving instinctively toward the Alpha's heat. The scent of submission curled over him as he purred when Harry wrapped an arm around him.

For one suspended breath, the world narrowed to just this: a Beta with bleeding palms, a spoiled Omega with something to prove, and an Alpha learning to wield more than just his teeth.

The moment stretched, taut as a tripwire, before Hermione gave a tight nod.

Draco's hands trembled as he fastened the silver cuff around Theo's wrist - not enough for anyone else to notice, but Harry saw it. Saw how his Omega's usually deft fingers stumbled on the clasp, how his breath hitched when the charmed metal clicked shut.

"Remember," Draco said, voice too tight, "you're supposed to be Ministry-conditioned. No sudden movements. No-"

"- eye contact, yes, I know." Theo's smile was soft. In the grey predawn light filtering through the cracked window, he looked almost fragile. "Head down. Shoulders slumped. The perfect broken Alpha."

Harry leaned against the splintered door frame, grinding his molars. The wand in his pocket felt suddenly foreign - too light, too wrong. He should be the one walking into that arena.

Yet, Draco's fingers had dug into his arm that morning, hard enough to bruise. "I can't watch you fight in that ring, Harry," The words had been raw, stripped of all pretense and Theo had simply stepped forward, the only Alpha in the safehouse still sane enough to play the part yet broken enough to be convincing but survive.

A floorboard creaked as Draco stepped back. "If they scan you…"

"I'll put up no resistance and smell perfectly docile," Theo adjusted the roughspun tunic they'd stolen off a dead guard, his nose wrinkling at the stench of rot embedded in the fibers. "Relax, sweetheart. I've been playing obedient longer than you've been spoiled."

Draco huffed, “Liar and don't call me that.”

Outside, an owl hooted twice - the twins' signal. Time was up.

Draco's hand shot out, gripping Theo's forearm. For a heartbeat, they just stared at each other, the air between them thick with everything unspoken. Then Draco shoved him toward the door. "Don't get heroic."

Theo's laugh was a dry rasp. "Wouldn't dream of it."

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Harry alone with Draco in the sudden silence. Draco let out a low breath, his bottom lip trembled as he turned to Harry.

"Let's go."

The underbelly of the Alpha fighting pits stank of despair.

Damp straw clung to Draco's boots as he swept through the torchlit corridors, his signet ring glinting with every calculated sway of his hips. Harry kept two paces behind, head bowed like a proper attendant, but his senses screamed at every muffled whimper behind the rusted cell bars.

"I have authority to be here, my fighting Alpha is back there," Draco announced to a hulking Beta guard, his voice dripping with bored aristocracy. He flicked his fingers in a lazy shooing motion. "Run along."

The guard hesitated, his piggish eyes darting to Harry's unmuzzled face.

Draco sighed, long-suffering. "Must I fetch Minister Riddle to remind you of an Omega's authority?"

The name worked like a curse, the guard scurried away.

Deeper they went, past cells where hollow-eyed Alphas slumped against walls. Some were muzzled. Others bore fresh scars that spoke of "training" Harry knew too well. His pulse hammered in his throat.

Then, he saw it, a flash of red in the third cell from the end.

An Alpha sat chained to a post, his once-bright hair matted with filth. New scars laddered his arms, the skin around his wrists rubbed raw from shackles but his eyes - when they lifted at Harry's approach - were painfully alert.

Draco checked the corridor. "Sixty seconds, Harry."

Harry dropped to a crouch, “Are you Ron?” The Alpha looked at him wary but nodded as he pulled out his wand and muttered the spell, “Alohomora”

Click.

Ron gasped as the shackles fell away. "Who…?"

"Hermione sent us," Harry whispered, hauling him up. Ron's bones felt too light under his hands, like a bird's hollow ones. "We're getting you out."

Ron's cracked lips parted but then his eyes widened over Harry's shoulder.

A floorboard creaked.

The scent hit Harry first, then he turned just as Tom Riddle's polished boots came into view.

Time slowed.

Riddle stood framed in the corridor's archway, Draco's arm twisted behind his back in a brutal grip. Three Beta enforcers flanked him, their wands already drawn.

"Well," Riddle purred, his free hand stroking Draco's cheek in mock affection. "What a delightful surprise."

Draco thrashed, his usually pristine hair coming undone. "Harry, run!"

Riddle's fingers tightened in Draco's hair, yanking his head back. "Ah-ah. None of that," His smile widened as he looked at Harry. "We have a special match today."

Harry threw out a spell before he could think, hitting one of the Betas square in the chest. It was enough for Draco to slip out of their grasp and run past Riddle.

Riddle snapped his fingers.

The stunner hit Harry between the shoulder blades like a falling star.

Darkness swallowed him whole.

The world returned to him in a nauseating swirl of sensation.

Sound first.

A thousand voices pounded against Harry's skull like war drums, their chant syncopated with the throbbing behind his eyes, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" each syllable vibrating through the blood-soaked sand beneath his cheek. The arena's wooden framework groaned under the stomping of boots, the very air trembling with collective bloodlust.

Then, taste.

Something warm and metallic slicked his tongue. He spat, a crimson arc staining the sand, only for grit to immediately coat his teeth again. The ghost of last night's cheap whiskey rose bitter in his throat, mixing with the iron tang of fresh blood.

Sight came in fractured glimpses.

Blurred torchlight, a pair of polished boots stepping back beyond the iron gate. His own fingers, dirt-crusted and trembling, sinking into sand that still held the warmth of some previous combatant's spilled life.

Then, movement.

Harry's head snapped up.

Through the sweat stinging his eyes, he saw him, first:

Lucius Malfoy's silver-blond hair catching the torchlight like a twisted halo as he leaned over the observation grate, one gloved hand clamped on Draco's shoulder in a grip that left a indent.

Draco strained against it, his mouth forming words Harry couldn't hear over the crowd as he tried to pull away.

The Omega's eyes wide with devastation and panic, as he struggled against the grips that held him in place, two Betas and his father, his free hand outstretched —

— reaching toward the pit —

— reaching toward Harry —

The smell hit last.

Wet. Charred flesh. The acrid sting of antiseptic so potent it made Harry's eyes water.

Slowly, painfully, Harry turned his head.

Twenty feet away, a shadow detached itself from the arena wall.

Harry forgot to breathe.

Remus Lupin's once-kind eyes burned amber in the half-light, his muzzle hanging in tatters around his throat. Saliva dripped from exposed fangs as he sniffed the air — seeking weakness — before locking onto Harry with terrifying focus.

The crowd's roar reached a fever pitch.

Remus's lips peeled back in a silent snarl.

And then, he charged.

Chapter Text

The arena floor wasn’t sand, Harry realized.

The way it crunched under his weight, brittle and sharp was his first clue.

Not grit, not dirt, but pulverized bone.

White fragments glittered under the torchlight like shattered porcelain, the stench of old blood and rust clinging to the air. Years of violence soaked into every grain and across the pit, he stood.

Not Remus Lupin. Not the man who’d stayed up with him after nightmares, handing him tea in a chipped mug. Not the patient voice that had guided him through wandwork in the dim light of the cottage.

This thing was a shadow of him; ribs protruding under scarred skin, amber eyes clouded with whatever poison the Ministry had pumped into him. The muzzle around his throat hung in tatters, the leather straps frayed from years of strain, not defiance. Spit dripped from his bared teeth as he paced, his breath ragged.

The crowd roared.

“FINISH HIM!”

Remus moved before the echo faded.

A blur of muscle as he lunged low, teeth aimed for the back of Harry’s knees. Harry twisted, too slow. The bite raked his calf, hot pain flaring as blood welled.

The scent of it, his blood, made Remus freeze.

Just for a heartbeat.

His nostrils flared, his head tilted, animal and uncertain.

"Remus?" Harry asked tentatively.

Then, the moment shattered as Remus lunged at him again.

Harry feinted left. Remus anticipated it, his calloused palm cracking against Harry’s jaw with enough force to send him sprawling. Bone-dust coated his tongue, gritty and sour. The stands erupted in cheers.

“Remus,” Harry hissed, low enough that only he could hear. “It’s me.”

A tremor. A twitch beneath Remus’ right eye. His fingers spasmed at his sides.

Then, he was on Harry again, all snapping jaws and brutal precision. A kick landed square in Harry’s ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. Copper flooded his mouth.

This time, Harry didn’t dodge.

He stood, swaying, and met Remus’ gaze.

“I know you’re in there.”

Remus’ next strike faltered.

His canines stopped just shy of Harry’s throat.

For three agonizing heartbeats, the arena held its breath.

“Lupin.”

Riddle’s voice cut through the silence like a blade.

Remus screamed.

The Minister's private balcony loomed over the fighting pit like a vulture's perch, its velvet ropes straining against the roar of the bloodthirsty crowd below. Draco's silk robes clung to his skin like a second layer of sweat.

The scent of blood and sweat rose from the pit like a visible haze. Draco clenched the velvet railing, his knuckles bleaching white as Harry staggered under Remus' latest blow. The crowd's roar vibrated through his bones.

Riddle's fingers materialized on his shoulder, cold as grave soil. "Your Alpha fights like a cornered rat," the Minister murmured. "Pity."

Draco shrugged off the touch with a sneer. "Shut your mouth."

A lemon drop appeared between Riddle's fingers, offered like a sacrament. "For your nerves, little Omega."

Draco's nose scrunched in instinctive disgust. "I'll pass, who knows where your hands been.”

Riddle's fingers dug into his shoulder, those perfectly manicured nails pressing just above his scent gland. The Minister's signature belladonna scent wrapped around Draco's throat like a noose.

Draco's nose scrunched in instinctive disgust. "I don't take sweets from commoners."

Below them, Harry and Remus circled each other in the bone dust, both bleeding, both breathing hard.

Riddle's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Watch your tongue, Omega," His thumb brushed Draco's lower lip, the threat implicit. "Or you might lose it.”

Draco wretched his face away from his grasp, “Keep your filthy hands off me.”

Riddle merely smiled, coming even closer to him.

"Observe, little omega," Riddle murmured, his breath hot against Draco's ear, "how quickly order decays when animals forget their place."

Draco jerked away so violently his chair screeched. "I said, don't touch me." His palm connected with Riddle's wrist hard enough to leave a red mark. The two Beta guards flanking him seized his arms instantly, their grip like iron manacles.

He thrashed, driving his elbow into one guard's ribs. "Get your filthy—!"

A sharp yank on his hair forced his head back, Riddle's laughter curled around him, rich and amused. "Such fire for a gilded bird. Lucius, you've been negligent with your heir's manners."

To Draco's left, his father's signet ring pressed so hard into his own thigh the lion crest would leave bruises. The wool of his trousers strained against whitened knuckles.

"I will never forgive you for this," Draco spat, not caring who heard.

Lucius didn't flinch, didn't speak but his breathing hitched before his mask of indifference slid back into place.

Movement near the stairwell caught Draco's attention, a guard stood slightly apart from the others, his armor sitting awkwardly on his frame. When he turned, sunlight glinted off the Ministry insignia and the familiar smirk beneath the helmet's visor.

Theo.

Their eyes met, Theo's lips formed silent words: "Play along."

"KILL THE BEAST!"

A beta's shriek ripped through the balcony, Draco's gaze snapped downward to where Harry stood in the pit, blood dripping from a split lip, his chest heaving.

Riddle's hand returned to Draco's shoulder, heavier this time. "Shall we see how long your Alpha lasts against a real predator?"

Draco lunged forward, only to be hauled back by the guards. "He's twice the man you'll ever be!"

Theo's chuckle carried just enough to reach Draco's ears as the crowd's roar swallowed Riddle's reply.

And in that moment, with his father's silence at his back and his Alpha's blood in the sand, Draco made a decision.

The world reduced itself to the space between their bodies, the gap where canines hovered over Harry's throat, where Remus' ragged breaths burned against his skin.

Peppermint and old parchment.

The scent punched through Harry's senses like a memory. Remus had smelled like this brewing tea, sleeves rolled up as he healed Harry's scraped knuckles after failed spellwork. Now that same warmth came in wet, labored bursts, tainted by the metallic sting of blood and sweat.

"Finish it." Harry choked out.

Harry didn't resist as teeth pressed into his shoulders, close enough to bruise but not yet break skin. The arena's noise dimmed to a muffled roar, distant as ocean waves.

Remus shuddered.

A full-body convulsion that sent drool splattering onto Harry's collarbone. His left eye rolled back before snapping forward, pupils swallowing the amber until only a sliver of gold remained.

"Lupin!"

Riddle's voice slithered down from the balcony.

Teeth clacked together as Remus fought his own muscles, his right hand spasmed toward his torn pocket, fingers scrambling. Something cold and jagged pressed into Harry's palm.

The mirror shard.

Sirius' mirror.

Harry would know those uneven edges blind, the way they'd caught the moonlight during hushed conversations under bedcovers. The way it had shattered when—

Remus' spine arched violently, his mouth moved against Harry's ear, no sound emerging but the shape unmistakable:

Run.

Black veins erupted across Remus' neck, spreading like spilled ink. His body lifted clean off Harry's, suspended midair by invisible strings before slamming into the bloodied sand. The crowd's cheers turned shrill.

Harry's fingers closed around the shard. It bit into his flesh, sharp where Remus' touch had been gentle.

For one impossible moment, Remus knelt gasping, his shoulders heaving. The black tendrils pulsed beneath his skin like living things. The arena held its breath.

Then, a snarl ripped from Remus' throat.

He launched not at Harry, but toward the balcony, a streak of matted hair, teeth bared at Riddle's smirking face.

Harry's scream tore through the chaos. "NO!"

Riddle didn't rise from his seat.

A single, lazy flick of his wand.

Flames darker than midnight engulfed Remus mid-leap. For a heartbeat, Harry saw through the fire —bones illuminated like a grotesque puppet show —

Then, nothing but ash.

It sifted through Harry's fingers as he collapsed to his knees, the mirror's edge slicing deeper as he clutched it. His scream silenced the crowd better than any spell, a sound so visceral even the Betas flinched.

Warmth trickled down his wrist. Blood or tears, he couldn't tell.

Theo melted into the chaos like ink in water.

Around him, the crowd's screams and the enforcers' barked orders wove together into a single dissonant roar. No one noticed the too-loose fit of his stolen armor as he moved against the tide, his steps measured where others scrambled. His fingers brushed the hidden pocket inside his breastplate, the one holding his prize.

The ward key.

Stolen from the head enforcer's belt during the initial panic, its silver teeth bit into his palm as he palmed it.

A quick twist, a murmured "Finite," and the air itself seemed to exhale. The oppressive magic that had weighed on them all since entering the arena lifted like a stifling blanket pulled away.

No alarms sounded. No Ministry lackey came running.

Just another advantage of pandemonium, no one noticed the quietest thefts.

Theo's lips curved as he slipped the key back into hiding. One obstacle down. Now, for the real challenge.

He turned toward the stairwell leading underground, where the real prisoners were kept.

Draco held his breath between parted lips, his silk sleeves pooled around clenched fists.

Riddle leaned against the balcony, attention fixed on the arena below. On Harry, kneeling in the ashes of his latest kill. The Minister's wand rested inches from Draco's reach, fingers still draped over the velvet railing. Warmth radiated from the elderwood where Riddle's hand had curled moments before.

Now.

Draco let his shoulder graze Riddle's arm, a calculated stumble. "How wasteful," he whispered, pitching his voice high and thready. "That Alpha could've served you for years."

Riddle's thumb stroked the wand's handle. "You mistake endurance for loyalty, little Omega. All strays bite their masters eventually."

Draco's pinky skimmed the Minister's sleeve.

The wrist snapped away before contact.

"Tsk," Riddle didn't turn from the balcony. "Did you think me blind to a thief's twitchy fingers?"

Draco lunged.

Teeth sank into the meat of Riddle's hand, not the delicate nip of an Omega, but the feral snap of a creature cornered. Blood bloomed copper across his tongue.

The elderwood wand clattered to the floor.

Riddle hissed, whirling. Draco scrambled for the weapon, silk robes tangling around his knees. His fingertips graved wood just as a second wand pressed cold against his temple.

"Predictable," Riddle's breath stirred the hair above Draco's ear. The bleeding hand gripped his collar, yanking him upright. "But I'll admit, your teeth surprise me."

He wrenched himself backward, raising the wand and Apparating with a crack that echoed like gunfire—

The killing curse shattered marble where he'd knelt.

— and landed knee-deep in a cluster of screaming merchants.

The stolen helmet sagged over Theo’s brow, the visor smearing his vision each time he turned. It reeked of the previous owner’s desperation, cloying jasmine pomade thick enough to choke a peacock.

Appropriate, he thought, adjusting the strap. We’re all overcompensating tonight.

He lounged against a pillar near the Alpha pens, the image of disinterested duty, while the world tore itself apart in the most exquisite ways.

Above, in the Minister’s opulent box, Draco had just executed a swoon so dramatic it could’ve been taught in Nott Manor’s How to Be Insufferable curriculum. Theo gnawed his cheek to stifle a laugh. Subtlety, thy name is not Malfoy.

But the real spectacle was in the pit.

Harry knelt in Lupin’s ashes, magic crackling off him like a live current. The arena lights pulsed in time with his heaving breaths. Theo didn’t need to see his face, he knew that tremor in the air. That quiet before the storm.

Time to tip the scales.

He rolled the stolen keyring across his knuckles, eighteen silver deceits, each more tempting than the last. The smallest key burned against his palm, its magic whispering of shattered oaths.

Master Ward Key. It practically itched to be used.

A glance confirmed the guards were distracted: half gawking at the fight, the other half sharing a pilfered bottle of Firewhiskey. Theo crouched, pressed the key to the flagstones, and murmured, “Finite Totalis.”

Then, the ground trembled.

A deep, subsonic shudder that rattled molars. The runes along the walls — those jagged, hateful scars that bounded the Dementors and sealed the wards — flared once, twice, then snuffed out like candlewicks between fingers.

Somewhere below, an alarm shrieked.

Theo’s grin split his face.

Phase one: complete.

He turned to the nearest Alpha cage, a hulking tomb of black iron and flaking blood-runes. Inside, a mass of scarred muscle and snarled hair paced like caged lightning. The Alpha’s head jerked up as Theo approached, eyes glinting through filth.

“Evening, handsome,” Theo purred, sliding the key home. The lock groaned, then surrendered with a click. “Care to make some poor life choices?”

The door hadn’t fully swung open before the Alpha was on the nearest enforcers; four men down in as many seconds.

A whip-thin witch with mangled fingers bolted for the crowed, her laughter like shattered crystal. To the left, a berserker the size of a troll plowed through the crowd, sending champagne flutes and nobles flying.

Theo faded into the shadows, flipping the keys into a brazier. Flames devoured the metal, warping wards beyond recognition.

“Watch for Dementors,” he called over the rising chaos, though no one was listening. “They’ve always had a taste for runners.”

There was no moment of decision.

No grand epiphany where Harry chose to let the storm loose.

One heartbeat, he knelt in the ashes of the last man who’d called him son, Sirius’ mirror shard biting into his palm. The next the world shattered with him.

The arena’s foundations heaved. Stone split with a sound like snapping ribs, fractures spiderwebbing up the walls faster than curses. Balconies, those gilded perches where the elite had clinked glasses over his suffering, slid sideways, their struts shrieking as they tore free. High above, a slab of the ceiling broke away, crushing a knot of spectators into a wet smear of marble and screams.

Harry erupted.

Magic tore out of him in visible shockwaves, ripping the ground open beneath his knees. Dementors scattered like kicked dogs, their cloaks singeing where his rage licked at them. The air twisted, thick with heat-haze and the charged sting of lightning about to strike.

In his grip, the mirror shard pulsed—once, twice—then blazed with a light too fierce, too knowing, to be mere glass.

It smelled of broom polish and Firewhiskey, of leather and the sharp, secret grin Sirius wore when trouble was coming.

Through the cracks in his mind, a voice that wasn’t a voice seared into him:

"Get up."

Harry’s head jerked up.

Across the collapsing arena, through smoke and falling stone and the panicked scramble of bodies, Riddle’s eyes met his.

The Minister smiled.

Harry’s scream tore the sky apart.

The world was coming apart at the seams.

Draco barely kept his footing as another detonation shook the arena, marble shards raining down like jagged hail. The stolen wand trembled in his sweat-slick grgrip.

Shapes in the smoke emerged, three figures materializing from the haze.

A gaunt redhead with raw, shackle-gouged wrists,  along with a a scarred giant of a man beside him—Bill, if the claw marks across his face matched the twins’ drunken stories and between them, a wizard with graying temples and a blood-soaked sleeve, his stance steady despite the wound.

Their eyes locked onto Draco. The silence lasted half a breath.

Bill's wand snapped up, his voice gravel-rough. "You're a Malfoy, aren't you?"

Draco arched a brow. "Astounding observational skills."

Ron's gaze caught on the tattered Malfoy crest at Draco’s cuff. "Since when do Omegas run into collapsing death traps?"

"Since they became interesting."

The standoff fractured as Hermione shouldered between them, her hair crackling with stray magic. She shoved a tarnished snitch into Draco’s palm without preamble. "Portkey. Sixty seconds. Find Harry and go."

"They’re frightened."

The voice floated through the chaos like a stray note in a symphony of destruction.

Draco turned.

A girl stood at the edge of the wreckage, her pale hair glowing in the firelight. She wasn’t watching the carnage, her dreamy stare was fixed on the Dementors writhing above, their shadowy forms recoiling from the flames.

"Dementors hate fire," she mused, tilting her head as if listening to a secret. "It reminds them they can’t consume everything."

Draco opened his mouth, then shut it.

She blinked at him, serene. "You might want to pinch your nose when the Portkey activates. The vortex smells like rotten plums."

Hermione didn’t look up from adjusting the snitch. "Luna, you're not helping."

"I am helping," Luna said, plucking a falling shard of masonry from the air like catching a dandelion seed. "It’s not my fault reality’s being loud today."

Draco decided philosophical debates could wait.

The snitch flared hot in his hand.

"Go, now!" Hermione pushed him towards the pit. "I'll get as much Alphas out as I can."

Draco nodded as he ran.

Somewhere in the inferno, his Alpha was burning the world down.

The air reeked of ozone and shattered earth.

Draco picked through the ruins, ash puffing around his boots with every step. The arena’s dying tremors sent debris skittering across broken tile, but he barely heard it, his own heartbeat drowned out the distant alarms, the panicked shouts, the groan of failing stone.

A crater. A wound in the world and at its center: Harry.

Kneeling in Remus’ ashes, fingers gouged into the dirt, magic twisting the air around him into a visible tempest. The ground fractured with each exhale, cracks splintering outward like veins. His shoulders shook, every muscle taut, his entire body pulsing with magic, barely holding itself together.

Draco’s throat tightened.

He’d seen Harry furious before, had felt the crackle of his magic, had weathered the controlled simmer of his frustration. But this?

This was ruin.

The first step into that maelstrom stole his breath. Magic lashed at him, scorching, suffocating, a physical pressure that made his bones vibrate. It clawed down his throat, bitter as burnt metal.

“Harry.”

His voice barely cut through the storm.

Harry’s head jerked up.

Draco’s blood turned to ice.

Those weren’t his Alpha’s eyes.

Black swallowed the green whole, pupils blown unnaturally wide. No recognition, just rage, just agony, just hunger for annihilation.

When Draco reached for him, Harry moved.

One second he was yards away the next, Draco was airborne. His spine slammed into rubble, the impact punching a grunt from his lungs. Harry was on him before he could blink, fingers vise-tight around his wrists, the full weight of a feral Alpha pinning him down.

Draco’s pulse stuttered.

Up close, Harry’s breath came in ragged snarls, teeth bared too sharply. Sweat dripped from his jaw onto Draco’s cheek—hot as brandy.

Fear spiked through him, bright and primal.

For one fractured moment, Draco faltered before his resolve harden.

He tilted his chin up, exposing his throat.

“Do what you must,” he breathed.

Harry went statue-still.

Draco didn’t waste it. He twisted his wrists just enough to slide his palms up Harry’s arms, fingertips tracing the scars he knew by touch; the ridge above his elbow, the knot of tissue near his shoulder.

“I know,” he murmured, letting his scent unfurl, crisp against the wildfire of Harry’s rage. “I know you’re hurting.”

A shudder wracked Harry’s body.

Draco lifted his free hand, slow as honey dripping, and cradled Harry’s face. His skin burned, fever-damp as he dragged his thumb along the arch of Harry’s cheekbone, once, twice and felt the snap of tension breaking.

Harry’s breath caught. His grip slackened just a fraction. The crushing weight of his magic flickered, the air thinning enough for Draco to gasp.

A sound.

A raw, shattered thing.

Human.

Draco’s ribs ached.

He didn’t realize he was smiling until Harry’s forehead dropped against his, their noses brushing.

The void in Harry’s eyes receded like a tide, leaving only fractured green and something too vulnerable to name.

The Portkey flared to life between them.

As the world spiraled away, Draco clung to one certainty:

They’d stepped over a line tonight and nothing would ever be the same.

Reality crashed back into Harry with the force of a sledgehammer.

His knees struck frozen earth as his stomach revolted, a violent heave that left acid scorching his throat. Tremors wracked him, magic seething beneath his skin like caged lightning.

He dug his fingers into the dirt, nails splitting against roots and frost.

The scents clung to him, relentless; charred bone and bloodstained sand, the venomous bite of Riddle’s magic, and beneath it all, the ghost of Remus’ Peppermint scent that he'll never smell again.

A sound tore from him, half-snarl, half-scream.

His magic erupted again.

Windows exploded inward in a hail of glass, the earth heaved, cobblestones rippling like water. An ancient oak groaned, then shattered with a crack that echoed for miles.

Harry didn’t try to rein it in.

Couldn’t.

Glass shattered.

Draco flinched as the kitchen windows exploded inward, crystalline shards catching the dawn light as they rained onto the flagstones. One grazed his cheek, a fleeting sting, quickly soothed by Molly’s dittany-drenched fingers as she worked.

“Let him feel it, love,” she murmured, pressing the soaked cloth to his shoulder. Her hands were steady, but her voice wavered. “Bottling that kind of pain only makes it worse.”

Draco swallowed hard.

Through the jagged remains of the window, Harry knelt in the frosted grass, his magic a visible storm. The earth split beneath his fists. Ancient oaks groaned and splintered and Harry — his Harry — was screaming into the dirt like his ribs might crack from the force of it.

A tear slipped down Draco’s cheek, he didn’t wipe it away.

A crash from the hallway.

Hermione burst into the kitchen, wild-haired and breathless as she searched the room, her eyes locked onto Ron, alive, whole, despite the blood streaking his temple, and for a heartbeat, the world stilled.

Then, she was running.

Ron caught her mid-stride, lifting her clean off her feet. Their collision sent a chair toppling, but neither noticed. Hermione’s hands fisted in his ruined shirt, her sob muffled against his throat as Ron buried his face in her curls. When they finally pulled back, it was only far enough to kiss. Desperate, reverent, like drowning men finding air.

Draco looked away.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

Outside, his Alpha was coming apart at the seams. Inside, the an Alpha and Beta reunited in a sunlit kitchen, their joy as bright as the devastation beyond the glass.

Molly’s hand settled on his wrist, her thumb brushing his pulse point. “He’ll come back to you,” she whispered.

Draco watched another tree split down the middle.

Will he?

The world had crystallized in midnight’s grip.

Draco stood framed in the safehouse’s back doorway, fingers digging into splintered wood.

Before him stretched a graveyard of frosted grass, every blade rendered in monochrome by the moon’s merciless glow. Cold gnawed at his exposed skin with persistence, but the numbness went deeper than winter.

Movement caught his eye, a shadow at the property’s edge resolving into familiar lines.

Harry.

He lay where exhaustion had felled him hours ago, the wild grass swallowing his form like a shroud. Only the occasional tremor betrayed him as something more than another patch of darkness.

Draco stepped into the night.

Frozen earth cracked beneath his boots, each step a gunshot in the suffocating silence. Woodsmoke from the dying hearth clung to his sweater as he moved further from its warmth, the scent at odds with the frostbitten air.

Closer now, the details carved themselves into his vision: Harry’s hands fisted in dead grass, tendons standing stark. Dirt-streaked cheeks and the rabbit-quick flutter of his pulse beneath jawline stubble.

Draco sank to his knees beside him, the cold biting through wool trousers. Harry’s eyes were open but vacant, fixed on some void between constellations and soil.

"Alpha..."

His breath curled between them, ghostly.

The silence stretched.

Then, hollow as a rotted tree trunk:

"He’s gone."

The words landed like stones in still water. Draco’s throat constricted, he’d mourned before — his grandfather’s cold passing, a house-elf’s quiet disappearance — but this? This raw, gaping wound of loss? He couldn’t fathom its depths. 

His palm found the heat between Harry’s shoulder blades, burning even through damp cotton.

"Harry," He pressed gently, feeling vertebrae like knuckles beneath skin. "Come inside."

A full-body shudder, Harry’s breath stuttered, once, twice, but he allowed Draco to roll him onto his side. Clods of earth fell from his face, revealing patches of pallid skin.

Raising him upright was like lifting a felled oak, Harry’s weight dragged against Draco’s ribs as they staggered to their feet, his movements sluggish with grief. The return journey stretched interminably, each step synced to Harry’s uneven exhales.

The house greeted them with groaning stairs and the scent of extinguished candles. Somewhere below, a floorboard protested, perhaps Arthur checking the locks, perhaps Ginny seeking tea, but no one breached their fragile bubble.

The bedroom door clicked shut behind them, sealing in moonlight and unsaid words.

Draco managed three steps before his knees buckled and he passed out.

Harry didn’t remember moving.

One heartbeat he stood swaying by the door, the next he was kneeling on the quilt, his shaking hands arranging Draco’s limbs with methodical precision. Moonlight gilded the Omega’s lashes, his parted lips, the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Alive.

The fracture started behind his ribs, a splintering sensation that radiated outward.

His shirt hit the floorboards in a soiled heap, the bed creaked as he slid beneath the covers, his body moving on some primal instinct.

Arms encircled Draco’s waist, hauling him back until their bodies aligned from shoulder to thigh. Harry buried his face in the crook of Draco’s neck, nostrils flaring against warm skin.

Honey. Burnt sugar. Home.

The first tear fell hot as cursed fire.

Sobs wracked him, silent but violent, his teeth sinking into his own wrist to stifle the sounds.

Remus’ empty laugh. Sirius’ shattered mirror. The way the arena’s foundations had crumbled like sand beneath his rage. Memory after memory surged through him, a riptide dragging him under.

Draco murmured something unintelligible, his body curving instinctively into Harry’s. Sleep-clumsy fingers interlaced with his own, pressing their joined hands over the steady rhythm beneath Draco’s ribs.

Harry dragged air into his lungs like a drowning man breaching the surface.

Dawn painted the room in honeyed light, seeping through the thin curtains to gild the tangled sheets. Harry stirred to the sensation of fingers carding through his hair; hesitant at first, then more certain as he blinked awake.

Draco hovered above him, propped on one elbow, his platinum hair lit from behind like a tarnished halo. The usual sharpness of his features had softened into something that made Harry's chest ache.

Then, he saw it.

A jagged cut marred Draco's shoulder, the flesh around it an angry red. Harry's stomach twisted.

"Did I—?" His voice emerged raw, the words scraping his throat. The memories rushed back, the uncontrolled magic, the way his hands had scrabbled at Draco's clothes last night like he might drown without him.

Draco didn't answer immediately. His thumb brushed Harry's cheekbone, wiping away moisture Harry hadn't realized was there.

"You're okay," Draco murmured, his own voice thick with something between relief and exhaustion.

Then, he kissed him.

It was messy, their noses bumped, Draco's lips were cracked from the cold, and Harry could taste the copper tang of blood where he'd bitten his own tongue but Draco kissed him like it was the only thing keeping him sane, like if he stopped, Harry might shatter into a thousand pieces.

When they parted, Harry's fingers were already tracing the wound. "I'll—"

"I'll fix it later," Draco interrupted, waving a dismissive hand. Yet, his other hand remained fisted in Harry's shirt, the fabric stretched taut between them.

A quiet confession slipped out: "You scared me."

Harry swallowed hard, the haze of last night rushed back—the all-consuming rage, the way his magic had threatened to tear him apart from the inside. And through it all, one anchor: Draco's arms around him, Draco's voice cutting through the storm.

He caught Draco's wrist, pressing his lips to the pulse point there.

"I'm here," Draco whispered, "Talk to me."

The words spilled out like blood from a fresh wound: "He's dead."

Harry's fingers drifted higher, tracing unmarked skin above the injury. His touch lingered, hesitant. "He raised me and I —" His voice cracked. "I couldn't save him."

Draco didn't offer empty comforts. Instead, he pulled Harry closer until his forehead rested against Draco's collarbone. The steady rhythm of Draco's heartbeat thrummed against Harry's lips, a lifeline.

"I'm so sorry, Harry."

No platitudes. Just the warmth of Draco's body and the quiet understanding in his voice.

Harry exhaled shakily, his breath ghosting over Draco's skin. Then, Draco tilted his chin up and kissed him again, slow, deliberate, like he was rewriting their history with each brush of his lips. His fingers tangled in Harry's hair, anchoring him to the present.

The air between them shifted.

"I can't make the pain vanish but..." He trailed off, a hesitation that Harry rarely saw in the confident Omega.

Draco's fingers traced Harry's jawline, his gaze unwavering. Gray eyes locked onto green with an intensity that made the room feel too small.

"It's illegal for Alphas to mark Omegas," he said, voice low.

Harry stilled. He knew where this was leading.

"Yeah," he breathed. "Punishable by death. For both of us."

A slow, reckless smile curved Draco's lips. "We're already on the run."

A challenge. A dare.

Harry's pulse roared in his ears.

Draco tilted his head, exposing the smooth column of his throat, an offering and a demand, all at once.

"Bite me, Alpha," he whispered. "Make me yours."

Harry recoiled as if burned, turning to press his forehead against the cool wall. "Don't decide that so lightly," he growled. "Don't give me hope."

Undeterred, Draco closed the distance between them. "I want you."

"No Omega truly wants an Alpha's bite," Harry muttered, his voice rough. "That's just children's tales."

Draco's hand caught his chin, forcing Harry to meet his gaze. The fire in those silver eyes was unmistakable. "Then, let me be the first," he challenged. "Or are you afraid?"

The air between them crackled.

In one fluid motion, he pinned Draco beneath him, his body caging the Omega in. Draco didn't fight it, his breath hitched, but his eyes burned with defiance.

"You don't know what you're asking," Harry warned, his voice a low rumble.

Draco arched beneath him, baring his throat further. "I've never been more certain of anything in my life."

For a heartbeat, Harry hesitated. Then, he lowered his head, his lips brushing the scent gland at Draco's throat. He felt the Omega shiver beneath him.

"Last chance to back out," Harry murmured against his skin.

Draco's fingers twisted in his hair like vines seeking sunlight. "Harry," he breathed, pressing Harry's palm flat against his chest, "look at me."

The steady thrum of his heartbeat pulsed against Harry's skin. "You're it for me."

The world collapsed to the space between their lips.

He kissed Draco like a starved thing, all teeth and desperation. Draco gasped into his mouth, fingers tightening in Harry's hair hard enough to sting. He pulled Harry closer until their hips slotted together, until Harry could feel the rapid flutter of Draco's pulse beneath his lips.

Harry's hand slid under Draco's shirt, his calloused palm skating over the smooth plane of Draco's stomach. Draco arched into the touch with a sharp inhale, his skin pebbling beneath Harry's fingertips.

"More," Draco demanded against his lips, voice rough.

“Take everything off.” He tugged at Draco's shirt.

Draco swallowed hard, nodding as he lifted himself to his knees, sliding off his shirt and trousers hurriedly, bare for his viewing.

“Beautiful,” Harry breathed out, pink flushed over Draco's porcelain skin.

Harry reached out, sliding his hand down his inner thigh, grabbed hold of it, and lifted his legs up and outward. He could smell the fresh arousal beginning to bloom from between Draco's legs, the scent unmistakable to his alpha nose.

It sent a thrill through him, knowing that he had such an effect on the Omega. He slid his hand from Draco's jaw down to the side of his neck possessively, his grip tightening slightly.

His other hand drifted down to rest at the small of Draco's back, pressing him closer, holding him against the firm planes of the his body.

Hunger flared in Harry's eyes as Draco clung to him, burying his face against the alpha's broad chest to escape from the intensity of his gaze. Harry could feel the angling desperation in Draco's hold, the need to be anchored even as new, unfamiliar sensations threatened to overwhelm him.

Harry's piercing gaze, now molten with restrained lust, pinned Draco to the matress. His eyes drifted over the delicate lines and tender curves of his face with blatant hunger, a thrill of satisfaction in finally having this.

Harry's fingers dug into the supple flesh of Draco's ass as he rocked their hips together, letting the stiff ridge of his massive erection grind slowly against the omega's softer belly.

His other hand slid into Draco's hair, tangling through the silken platinum locks as he tilted the male's head back. His eyes drifted over the delicate lines and tender curves of his face with blatant hunger, a thrill of satisfaction in finally having Draco at his mercy.

"That's what you need... an alpha's cock buried deep inside, stretching you wide as it claims your most intimate depths. I can give you that and so much more..."

"Yes," Draco cried out as he felt his cock push against his front. “Harry, please!”

Draco's desperate cry fueled the flames of Harry's lust, his eyes blazing with an intensity that would have made most omegas tremble but Draco's eyes were fluttering shut, lost to the foreign sensations consuming his senses. Harry smiled indulgently, drinking in his needy little sounds.

"Shhh, I know."

Harry's hand drifted between their gyrating hips, his fingers deftly unbuttoning his fly with practiced ease. He slipped his hand inside to palm the growing bulge, squeezing his swollen cock.

Harry's long fingers stroked, coaxing his finger through the slick hole, Draco whimpered helplessly, grinding onto Harry's palm.

"That's it, let me feel how badly you want this... how badly you want me," Harry encouraged, voice a fierce growl.

 He eased his pants down his thighs, letting his cock spring free. It slapped against his own hip, flushed deep pink and leaking steadily, the swollen crown glistening with arousal.

Harry wrapped his arms around Draco's waist, pulling him flush against him as he thrusted and slid into Draco in one fluid motion.

“Harry!” Draco gasped out as he set a sensual pace, taking his time to unravel the Omega, his hips grinding against his ass.

“Fuck," Harry growled, his body trembling with the effort of holding himself still. Draco's needy cries filled the air as he adjusted to the intense stretch, the deep penetration that reached the very center of his being. "You feel...shit, you feel incredible, Draco, like you were made just for me.”

“Move,” Draco begged, his pushed against Harry, moaning as the cock slid in deeper.

His fingers tangled into the sheets as he thrusted into Draco with wild abandon, his thick cock slamming into Draco's sweet spot with devastating accuracy. Draco's answering cries of rapture spurred him on.

“Yes, yes, Alpha!”

The air between them crackled with something more than magic.

“Gonna fill you up,” Harry grunted, panted. “Give you the pups that you want so badly.”

He snapped his hips harder, driving into Draco just right as Draco's release slammed into him head-on.

Draco's mouth was open in a silent scream, his eye wide as Harry continued to pound into him. He could feel Draco pulsing, grasping, quivering around him intoxicatingly, a vice grip around his cock as he knotted him with a groan. 

Harry's chest rose rapidly as he grinded his knot into Draco, his head buried in his shoulder.

"Are you ready?"

Draco's fingers trembled where they gripped Harry's hair, not from fear, but from the weight of what they were about to do. His pulse fluttered visibly at his throat as he tilted his head, exposing the vulnerable curve where shoulder met neck.

"No going back," Harry's voice was rough, his breath warm against Draco's skin as he slowed his thrusts to a lazy move. Relishing in the sensation of their joined bodies.

In answer, Draco dragged Harry's mouth to the spot on his neck with a hand fisted in his hair. "Make them remember who I belong to."

Harry's teeth grazed the unmarked skin, once, twice, before biting down with careful precision. Draco gasped as he bit into Harry's neck, his back arching as the bond snapped into place with a surge of magic that made the lanterns flicker wildly.

Harry came again, his knot snagging at Draco’s hole with each thrust.

When Harry pulled back, his lips were stained crimson. Draco touched the fresh mark with reverent fingers, already feeling the magic knitting them together beneath his skin.

"Now, they'll never be able to deny it," Harry murmured, pressing their foreheads together as his own mark tingled.

Draco lay half-draped over him, his head pillowed on Harry's chest, one arm slung possessively across his waist. Their legs were interlaced beneath the sheets, skin still warm from sleep and the lingering heat of their mating.

The mating mark on Harry's neck pulsed faintly, a steady, comforting throb that echoed the rhythm of Draco's heartbeat beneath his palm.

The air smelled of them, of sweat and sex and the crisp, clean bite of honey that clung to Draco's skin. Underneath it all, something deeper, richer—the scent of their magic intertwined, settling into the very fabric of the room.

Harry breathed it in, his fingers tracing idle patterns along the dip of Draco's spine. He could feel the exact moment Draco began to wake again, the shift in his breathing, the subtle tensing of muscles before he relaxed again, pressing closer.

"We should get up," Harry murmured, his voice rough.

Draco made a noise against his chest, something between a grumble and a sigh, before tilting his head just enough to blink up at him. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his hair a mess of pale strands against the pillow.

"Still too early," he muttered, and Harry felt the words more than heard them, vibrating through his ribs.

He huffed a laugh, his thumb brushing the fresh mark at the base of Draco's throat. The skin was still pink at the edges, the imprint of his teeth stark against the pale canvas of Draco's neck.

A floorboard creaked somewhere downstairs, followed by the distant clatter of pans and the low murmur of voices. The scent of something savory, bacon, maybe, or sausage, drifted up through the floorboards, mingling with the remnants of their bonding pheromones.

Harry's stomach growled.

Draco's lips curved against his skin. "Hungry?"

"Starving," Harry admitted.

Before either could move, the door flew open with a bang that rattled the frame.

Theo stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the knob, the other clutching a steaming mug of what smelled like strong tea.

His gaze swept over them, over the sheets pooled around their waists, the fresh marks on display, the way Draco didn't so much as twitch from where he was sprawled across Harry's chest.

A beat of silence.

"Oh," Theo said flatly. "You're both absolutely naked, aren't you? Wonderful."

Draco sighed, long-suffering, and buried his face against Harry's sternum. "Theo, a bit of privacy, please?"

Theo took a pointed sip of his tea, his nose wrinkling. "Breakfast is ready," he announced, "and we've got a war meeting in twenty." His gaze flicked to Harry. "Try not to be disgusting by then."

He was gone before Harry could muster a response, the door clicking shut behind him with far more restraint than it had been opened.

Silence settled over the room once more, broken only by the distant sounds of the house coming alive around them.

Harry's fingers found their way back to Draco's hair, combing through the soft strands. "We should probably get up," he murmured, though he made no move to do so.

Draco hummed, noncommittal, his breath warm against Harry's skin. "Five more minutes."

Downstairs, a chorus of voices rose in argument; Ron's distinctive bellow, Hermione's sharp rebuttal, the twins' overlapping commentary. The scent of Molly's famous pepper-up pancakes grew stronger, cutting through the lingering musk of sex and bonding magic.

Harry watched through hooded eyes as Draco stretched against him, the sheets rustling softly. The sight of Draco's delicate form, a satisfied smile playing on his kiss-bruised lips, sent a flicker of possessive pride through his chest.

Draco was his now, truly and completely.

Harry sighed, his lips brushing the crown of Draco's head. "They're really not going to let us sleep in, are they?"

Draco lifted his head, his expression equal parts annoyed and resigned. "We did just become doubly illegal fugitives," he pointed out. "Priorities, Alpha."

The bond pulsed between them, a warm, golden thread of contentment and reluctant amusement.

Neither moved.

The kitchen thrummed with the electric energy of survivors, too many bodies crammed into too small a space, all vibrating with the aftermath of near-death.

Harry paused in the doorway, Draco's fingers laced through his, taking in the unfamiliar faces that filled the safehouse. The air hung heavy with competing scents: bitter coffee, sizzling bacon, the acrid bite of healing potions, and the sour tang of fear that no amount of washing could erase.

Morning light filtered through grease-smudged windows, illuminating dusts that danced above the crowded table like tiny rebels. At the head sat Ron, looking years older than when Harry had last seen him, with Hermione curled in his lap like she belonged there.

Her riotous curls were piled haphazardly atop her head, fingers absently tracing patterns on Ron's hand where it rested against her stomach. The easy intimacy between them made Harry's newly-bonded instincts prickle with something between envy and awe.

By the stove, Theo juggled pancake-flipping with animated storytelling, holding court with two redheads Harry recognized from stories - Bill  and Arthur, whose auburn hair had gone more salt than pepper.

Arthur leaned against the counter with the weary posture of a man who'd spent too long bending without breaking.

The rest of the kitchen was a study in contrasts, a dark-skinned alpha with a healing split lip paused his knife-sharpening to assess Harry with guarded eyes.

Nearby, a stocky blond alpha had his arm slung possessively around another alpha's shoulders,  their mingled scents a deliberate middle finger to Ministry doctrine.

By the window, a dreamy-eyed omega stirred something that smelled like lavender and nostalgia, her bare feet swinging just above the floorboards. When she caught Harry staring, she raised her steaming mug in silent salute.

"Well, well," The voice cut through the murmur like a blade through silk. "The prodigal martyr returns."

Harry turned to find an Asian omega inspecting him over the edge of a hunting knife, her dark eyes calculating his worth down to the ounce. Beside her, a freckled beta woman tapped her boot in a staccato rhythm that matched Harry's suddenly racing pulse.

Draco's thumb brushed his wrist, a silent question, a wordless promise. Harry squeezed back, their new bond humming between them, contently.

Theo chose that moment to slam a tower of pancakes onto the table with a flourish. "Now that Sleeping Beauty and his lesser have graced us with their presence," he announced, ignoring Hermione's warning glare, "shall we move this revolution along?"

The kitchen erupted into motion, chairs scraping, mugs clinking, maps unfurling across flour-dusted surfaces.

Hermione rose from Ron's lap with fluid grace, though her fingers lingered on his shoulder for balance. Morning light caught the fading bruises circling her wrists as she gestured to their ragtag assembly.

"Harry, meet our fellow fugitives," Her voice carried despite its roughness. "Blaise Zabini."

The knife-sharpening alpha inclined his head, ink-stained fingers still wrapped around his blade.

"Neville Longbottom."

A broad-shouldered man with soil under his nails and fresh whip marks peeking above his collar met Harry's gaze with steady calm.

"Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan."

The two alphas seated hip-to-hip didn't bother untangling. The blond , Seamus, flashed a grin that didn't reach his haunted eyes. "Heard you made quite the impression at the arena."

Before Harry could respond, Hermione continued. "And Cho Chang—"

The Asian omega finally sheathed her knife, her obsidian gaze sliding past Harry to land on Draco. "Ah, the Malfoy heir." Her lips curled. "I've heard... stories."

Draco stiffened. "You're an omega. What were you imprisoned for?"

Cho's smile turned lethal. She rolled up her sleeve to reveal an angry brand - a twisted 'R' that Harry recognized immediately. Rogue. "Breathing without permission," she said sweetly. "I was scheduled for execution yesterday. Your boyfriend's little tantrum postponed the festivities."

Draco's breath hitched. "That's — that's illegal! The Omega Protection Acts clearly state —"

Cho's laugh was a blade between the ribs. "Oh, you precious, sheltered thing," she crooned. "Do you really think the Ministry gives a damn about its own laws?"

Theo materialized between them wielding a plate of suspiciously charred pancakes. "Play nice, Chang. Draco's been living in a gilded cage his whole life," He thrust the plate at Harry. "Eat. You look like a dementor's wet dream."

Harry accepted the food automatically, his gaze locked on Cho's brand. The raised flesh glistened red and raw. Magic crackled in his veins, stirring the air around them.

"I must say," Neville spoke up, "Not alot of Alpha's can control their magic like you do, even accidental magic is rare."

Draco's cool fingers closed around his wrist, an anchor in the gathering storm.

Luna drifted over, her tea sloshing precariously as she beamed at Cho. "I told you the wrackspurts would intervene."

Against all odds, Cho's stern expression softened. "You and your damn wrackspurts."

The tension shattered like glass, the room exhaled collectively, conversations resuming in hushed tones. Harry watched as Cho permitted Luna to examine her brand, the fierce omega tolerating the attention with unexpected patience.

Draco leaned close, his whisper barely audible. "She's right, you know, about the Ministry," His thumb traced circles on Harry's pulse point. "I just... didn't want to see it."

Harry caught his hand, squeezing tight. They'd all been blind in different ways.

The clatter of forks against plates died mid-bite as Hermione's voice sliced through the breakfast noise.

She set her teacup down with surgical precision. "We should address the obvious," Her gaze zeroed in on the swollen bite mark visible above Draco's collar, the angry, half-healed claim that damned them both. "That just upgraded you from wanted to exterminate-on-sight."

Silence dropped like a guillotine.

Draco felt the collective stare like physical pressure; pity from Luna, calculation from Blaise, grim understanding from the scarred veterans. The toast in his hand turned to sawdust in his mouth.

He forced it down and lifted his chin.

"Don't care."

His voice carried farther than he'd intended, bouncing off the tin mugs and dented pots.

Across the table, Cho's knife stilled. A slow, feral grin spread across her face as she speared a piece of melon. "Took you long enough, princess."

Blaise stretched like a jungle cat, nodding toward where Dean had his nose buried in Seamus's curls. "Alpha pairs still top the Ministry's shit list," he drawled. "You two are just... spicy contraband."

Dean raised a middle finger without looking up. Seamus winked, teeth flashing.

"Difference is," Dean rumbled, nuzzling Seamus temple, "they've got no playbook for us," His smile was all wolf. "Drives those bureaucratic fucks spare."

Laughter erupted, nervous titters melting into genuine chuckles. Even Harry huffed beside him, though his grip on Draco's thigh under the table turned vise-tight.

Hermione didn't join in.

"They'll come for you first," she said, voice cutting through the humor like a scalpel. Her eyes never left Draco. "A Malfoy Omega willingly bonded to their most wanted Alpha? You're a walking provocation."

The toast crumpled in Draco's fist.

"Let them try."

The growl didn't come from him.

Harry's voice was ground glass and gunpowder, his magic crackling in the air like an approaching storm. Every hair on Draco's arms stood up.

For the first time since the arena, since the bond, Draco truly believed they might survive this.

The fire had burned low in the hearth when Ron leaned forward, his chair creaking under his weight. "We're missing something though," he said, rubbing at the stubble on his jaw. His eyes swept the room before landing on Draco. "You."

"Me?" Draco startled, nearly spilling his tea. The cup rattled in its saucer as he set it down too hard.

A charged silence fell over the safehouse's main room. Harry's hand found Draco's knee under the table, warm, grounding.

Hermione's breath caught. "Ron's right." Her notebook appeared in her hands as if by magic. "Draco, you've been the closest to Riddle's inner circle this whole time."

"I'm not a..." Draco's voice came out sharper than intended. He swallowed. "I'm not a traitor."

Cho rolled her eyes so hard it looked painful. "No, you idiot," she said, kicking her boots up on the table. "You might have actual intel," She picked at her nails with her knife. "Hasn't the Minister ever visited your father? Attended those fancy Omega parties of yours?"

The question hung in the air like smoke, Drraco felt every eye in the room boring into him, Harry's gaze the heaviest of all.

He took a slow breath. The scent of burning pine and stale coffee filled his nose. "Yes," he admitted at last. "Several times."

The silence became absolute. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pipe groaned. Outside, the wind rattled the shutters.

Hermione leaned forward, her curls casting shadows across her face in the firelight. "Tell us everything," she whispered. "Every detail, no matter how small."

Draco exhaled through his nose. The fire crackled as he gathered his thoughts, watching the embers dance.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than the flames.

"Riddle's inner circle isn't just political," he began, tracing the grain of the wooden table with one finger. "It's... cult-like."

A log shifted in the hearth, sending up a shower of sparks that reflected in Hermione's wide eyes.

"My father hosted private dinners for them," Draco continued. "No servants. Just Riddle and his chosen Betas and Omegas, all sitting in our dining hall like some twisted parody of a family."

The scratching of Hermione's quill was the only sound for a long moment.

Ron shifted in his seat. "What did they talk about?"

Draco's fingers stilled on the wood. "Mostly policy. Control." He hesitated. "But sometimes... Riddle would test them."

Harry went very still beside him. "Test them how?"

"With objects," Draco frowned, trying to recall the hazy memories from his childhood. "Jewelry, mostly. Rings. He'd pass them around the table and watch their reactions."

Hermione's head snapped up. "What kind of reactions?"

"Pain," Draco said simply. "Some would flinch. Others looked... euphoric."

A chill ran through the room. The fire seemed to burn lower.

"Did you ever touch one?" Harry asked, his voice tight.

Draco shook his head. "I wasn't allowed near them. Hell, the only reason I know whag went on was by sneaking and eavesdropping," His lips twisted. "The way they acted afterward..." He shuddered, the memory of his father's glazed eyes and too-wide smile surfacing unbidden.

Hermione was scribbling furiously now, the nib of her quill nearly tearing through the paper. "Anything else? Anything at all, no matter how insignificant it seemed."

Draco hesitated, the firelight played across his knuckles as he flexed his hands. "There was... one time."

He closed his eyes, calling up the memory, the way the candlelight had flickered in his father's study, how Riddle's shadow had stretched unnaturally long across the Persian rug.

"He came to the manor alone. Late." Draco's fingers twitched against the table. "Gave my father a small black book."

Hermione's quill stilled. "A book?"

"Plain-looking. Thin." Draco shrugged. "My father put it in his safe immediately. I only saw it for a second."

"Did Riddle say anything about it?"

"Just... 'Guard this with your life.'" Draco mimicked Riddle's smooth, cold tone perfectly. "Then, he patted my cheek and gave me a sweet."

Harry's growl vibrated through the table.

Hermione, however, had gone still. "What kind of sweet?" she asked, her voice oddly strained.

Draco blinked. "I, what?"

"The sweet he gave you," Hermione pressed. "What was it?"

"Just... a lemon drop," Draco frowned. "Why does that—"

"Because," Hermione interrupted, her eyes locking with Harry's in a look that sent ice down Draco's spine, "Tom Riddle hates sweets."

Hermiome's revelation hung in the air. Across the table, Neville’s brow furrowed. "How could you possibly know what Riddle hates?"

Hermione exhaled through her nose. "I’ve analyzed every Ministry speech and interview for the past two years," Her fingers tapped a rapid rhythm against her notebook. "He’s mentioned his distaste for sweets seven times, even ‘joked’ once that he disliked sweet Omegas too."

"What does this mean?" Ron asked, swallowing heavily.

Hermione shook his head, "I don't know, those sweets could be laced with a potion. There's no way someone as manipulative as Riddle would just hand out sweets like he's Father Christmas."

Harry nodded, "He definitely has an ulterior motive for it."

Cho’s knife thunked into the table. "So the entire Ministry elite is puppeted by candy?"

"Not just candy," Hermione countered. "Precisely calibrated potions. The Wizengamot archives list seventeen cases of —"

"Gilderoy Lockhart’s Amortentia scandal," Theo interrupted with a frown, "Love potions in chocolates, they only caught him because he reused the same damn ribbon pattern," His gaze sharpened.

Draco’s fingers tightened around his teacup. The porcelain trembled before he forced it still. The fresh bond at his neck pulsed warmth, Harry’s silent reassurance.

"My father kept peppermints in his desk," Theo continued. "Hated them. Only carried them to mask his mistress’s perfume," He met Draco’s eyes. "Powerful men always have reasons for their little habits."

Draco’s scent spiked, burnt honey. Harry’s hand found his under the table, their fingers lacing together.

"There's only way to find out is to get a piece, and check for any tampering," Neville said with thin lips. "We also need to get that book, it might be a clue."

They all turned to Draco.

"You want me to steal from my father’s private stores?" Draco’s voice was flatter than the dregs of his tea. He remembered the last time he’d touched Lucius’ cabinet, the cane’s sharp kiss across his knuckles. "Thievery is —"

"A survival skill," Blaise cut in, grave. "But if we risk breaking into Malfoy Manor for breath mints and a diary, we’d better be damn sure they’re more than sweets."

"The sweets thing is unimportant," Cho said, waving it away.

“The Wizengamot passes countless Alpha opression laws,” Hermione’s parchment crumpled in her grip. "I need to know if they're making choices or having them made for them."

Silence stretched like a noose.

Draco set down his cup with deliberate calm, the china clicking against wood. "I’ll need a vial," His thumb brushed Harry’s pulse point—once, twice. "And backup."

The crash outside shattered the tension like a hammer through glass.

Every wand in the kitchen flashed upward in unison. Harry’s magic surged before his brain caught up as he pulled out his own wand. The fresh bond at his neck burning white-hot as Draco’s honey scent turned acrid with alarm.

“Merlin’s beard — !” Molly burst through the swinging kitchen door, flour dusting her apron like snowfall. Her wand was already drawn, decades of wartime reflexes overriding maternal instinct.

Cho had the front door flanked, dagger and wand crossed in an X before her chest. “They found us?”

“Can’t have.” Hermione’s knuckles whitened around her wand. “Fidelius Charm. I’m the only —”

The pounding came again, not the staccato rhythm of an assault, but the weak, irregular thuds of someone barely conscious.

Harry wrenched the oak door open. Rain-scented wind rushed in, carrying the copper tang of blood. Moonlight spilled across the porch, illuminating —

“Mother!”

Draco’s scream tore through the night.

Narcissa Black Malfoy lay crumpled like a discarded doll, her constellation cloak now shredded and stained. Silver-blonde hair, always meticulously coiffed, tangled with twigs and dirt. One pearl-buttoned glove was missing, revealing nails broken to the quick.

The scent hit Draco like a curse, jasmine and parchment drowned in blood and something worse — the stench of dark magic.

He was on his knees before registering the movement, splinters biting through his trousers. Narcissa’s head lolled toward him at the sound of his voice. A jagged cut split her brow, the blood long dried. Her lips moved soundlessly.

Then, Harry saw it, the corner of a small black book clutched in her fist, its leather darkened with blood and sweat. Narcissa’s body curled around it like a shield.

“Inside. Now.” Molly’s healer instincts overrode the shock, her wand already tracing diagnostic spells.

As Harry moved to help, Narcissa’s hand shot out with surprising strength, her bloodied fingers clamping around Draco’s wrist. Her gray eyes burned with desperate urgency.

Then, nothing.

Her body went limp, the book slipping from her grasp to thud against the porch.

Hermione lunged forward, but Draco was faster. His fingers closed around the blood-slicked cover just as—

CRACK.

A distant apparition pop echoed through the street.

“They’re coming,” Theo breathed out.

Chapter Text

Harry’s fingers tightened around his wand as he and Theo stood frozen in the safehouse doorway, watching Riddle’s forces swarm the street. The Minister’s polished boots crushed a stray shard of Narcissa’s shattered pearl buttons as he stepped forward, his Beta enforcers fanning out like hounds on a scent.

"Where did that mutt go?" a Beta panted, armor gleaming under the flickering streetlamp. His nostrils flared, but the Fidelius Charm hid any scent that could've escaped.

His gaze slid right over Harry and Theo as if they were ghosts.

Riddle’s hand flexed around his wand, for the first time in Harry’s memory, the Minister looked unhinged; hair disheveled, finely stitched suit smeared with dirt.

"Find her," he growled. "Kill on sight, she took something of mine."

Theo nudged Harry’s arm, jerking his chin toward the house. They slipped inside, easing the door shut with a barely audible click.

Inside, Hermione paced like a caged wolf, curls a frenzied storm as she muttered up a storm.

The Alphas huddled near the fireplace, their scents sour with rage under the weight of Riddle’s magic pressing the wards.

Draco knelt beside Narcissa, his usually pristine hands streaked with blood as he sealed the gash across her ribs. Her breath came shallow, fingers clenched around a small black book pressed to her stomach.

"They can’t see us," Harry exhaled, his head hitting against the door.

Theo slammed the bolt shut, sighing in relief. "A small mercy,"

Across the room, Cho surged to her feet. "Fuck this!" Her knife flashed toward the ceiling. "We’re sitting ducks!"

Harry caught her wrist before she reached the threshold. "Are you mad?"

"You step out there, you’re dead. We don’t have the numbers."

Cho wrenched free, baring her teeth. "But we do have the diary," She gestured to Narcissa. "You think he’ll just walk away?"

Draco didn’t look up from his mother’s wounds. "Then, let him try," he said, voice like ice. 

A deafening crack echoed outside, apparition. Dozens of them.

Theo pressed his ear to the door. "Perimeter wards. More reinforcements. They aren't leaving, we need a plan, now."

Harry’s pulse hammered in his throat, his fingers brushed the jagged edge of Remus’ mirror shard in his pocket.

Narcissa seized Draco’s sleeve, her lips moved soundlessly before she managed a whisper: "The diary…it’s his soul."

The room went still.

Hermione’s quill clattered to the floor. 

"It's how he's able to live for so long," Firelight carved shadows into Narcissa’s face as she dragged herself upright. The black book trembled in her grip, leather slick with blood.

"I’ve waited years," she continued with anger in her eyes. "Played the dutiful Alpha so Lucius would take me places. At Ministry functions, dinners, galas just so I could listen to drunken Betas brag about Riddle’s experiments," Her nails dug into the diary. "There were always whispers. That he’d anchored his soul to objects. That he wasn’t just powerful, he was unnatural."

Silence. Even the wind outside stilled.

"Lucius never thought to hide it from me," she said, voice brittle. "He thought too low of me to even consider I held any type of intelligence."

Draco held her hands tightly as she continued. "He locked it in his vault like another heirloom years ago," Her gaze flicked to Draco. "When he left for the Alpha fights tonight, I knew it was my chance. The second I touched it, Riddle knew."

Draco’s throat worked. "That’s why they stopped chasing us. He didn’t give a damn about fugitives once this thing went missing."

Harry’s fingers closed around the mirror shard. The glass burned faintly against his palm like a dying ember.

"How do we destroy it? Fire?"

Narcissa exhaled, eyes locked on the diary. "Basilisk venom. Fiendfyre. Things that destroy irrevocably."

Bill's laugh was a dry crack. "The Ministry hoards the any type of venom, its extremely rare to find and Fiendfyre is unpredictable."

Neville snorted. "Of course."

Blaise leaned in, sharp-eyed. "What about the sweets Riddle offers? Granger says he hates them, so what’s the play?"

Narcissa’s lip curled. "Laced with a potion akin to Amortentia. It helps to keep his circle in line and not to question him," She glanced at Draco. "Lucius has been under its influence for years but his hatred of Alphas is… personal."

"It's power," Blaise muttered. "That’s the root, isn’t it?"

Narcissa met his gaze. "Lucius believes Omegas were meant to rule and Alphas are animals to be controlled, I don't even think Riddle even needs those sweets to keep him line."

Ginny barked out a laugh. "Sounds like someone’s overcompensating."

Draco’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t defend his father.

Harry rubbed the mirror shard absently again, warmth seeping into his skin as the voices around him faded away.

His thumb brushed the surface, smearing years of grime. What if...?

He considered the shard for a moment before he whispered, "Sirius Black."

His breath hitched as the shard began to shimmer —

"Harry?”

A touch jolted him, Draco’s fingers curled around his wrist, cool against his overheated skin. "You’re white as a sheet, are you okay?"

Harry blinked and the safehouse snapped back into focus; Hermione’s wild gestures, Narcissa’s blood on the floor, Theo balancing a knife on his knee.

"Fine," he muttered, shoving the mirror away. The hope in his chest curdled to ash.

Harry exhaled.

The mirror could wait.

The war wouldn’t.

Across the room, Ron slammed his fist on the table. "We’re not breaking into the bloody Ministry!"

They were breaking into the Ministry.

The silence that followed stretched thin enough to snap, thick with the weight of what they were about to attempt. Hermione paced, her restless movements drawing every eye in the room.

"There's no other way," she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. "Fiendfyre's too volatile, we'd burn the safehouse down around our ears before we even got close to that diary."

Cho flipped her blade absently, the edge catching the dim light as she scoffed. "Why overcomplicate it? Just Avada the damn thing and be done with it."

Neville frowned, rubbing at his temple like he could physically push the thought deeper. "But does the Killing Curse even work on objects? It's meant for living things, not paper and ink."

The question hung unanswered in the air between them, as heavy and ominous as the diary itself where it sat on the table, looking for all the world like nothing more sinister than an old, discarded notebook.

Hermione let out a sharp breath through her nose, the sound loud in the quiet room. "Basilisk venom, then.”

“The Ministry keeps stores of it in the Experimental Weapons Division - officially for 'rogue Alpha pacification,'" Narcissa's said, softly.

Hermione's eyes landed squarely on Draco. Every head in the room turned to follow her line of sight.

Draco stiffened immediately, his fingers rising unconsciously to brush the bond mark on his throat. "I'm mated," he said flatly. "They'll scent Harry on me the moment I step through the doors."

"That can be dealt with, scent patches conceal scents."

Theo moved with the lazy grace of a predator, circling Draco like a vulture eyeing carrion. "And you did spendan awful amount of time rubbing elbows with Riddle in the Minister's box. Tell me, what are the odds your fancy clothes here still have a hair or two of his clinging to them?"

Hermione's breath caught audibly in her throat. "Polyjuice," she whispered, the word dropping like a stone into still water.

Before Draco could protest, Theo and Ron had him by the arms, hauling him to his feet as Hermione descended on him, her fingers combing through the fabric of his collar with frantic precision then freezing suddenly.

"Here," she breathed, holding up a single, jet-black hair, its root still intact.

The room seemed to collectively hold its breath.

Harry's stomach turned over violently. It was too convenient, too perfect like the pieces were falling into place exactly as someone had arranged them.

As if in response, the diary pulsed faintly in Narcissa's grip, the movement almost imperceptible like it was laughing at them.

Draco took the strand of hair between two fingers, holding it up to the firelight where it glinted ominously. "This feels staged," he muttered, his mouth twisting in distaste. "I barely touched the man, if at all!"

Hermione snatched it back with barely restrained urgency, sealing it in a conjured vial with a decisive pop of magic.

"It very well could be a trap," she admitted, her fingers flying through quick calculations only she understood. "But we're out of time and options, Polyjuice takes thirty minutes to brew - Ginny can Floo to Diagon and get the ingredients faster than any of us."

"Absolutely not!" Molly protested, gathering Ginny into her arms. "She's fifteen!"

"She's an Omega," Narcissa said sharply, the firelight carving hollows beneath her eyes as she met Harry's gaze. "No one looks twice at an Omega buying potion supplies," Her nails tapped an uneven rhythm against the diary's cover, tick, tick, tick, like a detonator counting down to zero.

Harry's throat burned with unvoiced protests, Ginny was barely fifteen, all sharp elbows and sharper tongue, too young for this but Hermione was already nodding along.

"She's right,"she said, scrubbing a hand over her face. "Ministry's got every Alpha-sniffing ward up from here to Hogsmeade. An Omega's our best shot."

Ginny herself pushed off from the wall where she'd been leaning, rolling her eyes with all the dramatic flair of a teenager asked to do chores. Alright," she said, holding out her palm imperiously to Hermione. 

Hermione's lips thinned, but she scribbled the necessary ingredients onto a scrap of parchment with quick, efficient strokes. "Boomslang skin, lacewing flies, and knotgrass - but make sure it's the fresh cuttings, not the dried-"

"I know the ingredients, Hermione,” Ginny interrupted, snatching the list and stuffing it unceremoniously into her sleeve before grabbing a generous handful of Floo powder. Her grin, when she turned back to them, was all teeth and barely-contained excitement. "Try not to get yourselves murdered while I'm gone."

The green flames swallowed her before anyone could respond.

The silence that followed was brittle, fragile like the slightest breath might shatter it.

“You really going to send us on a death mission?” Blaise finally asked, incredulously.

“Do you have any other options?”

They fell into a eerie silence.

Theo, predictably, was the one to break it, slinging an arm around Draco's shoulders with exaggerated camaraderie.

"Cheer up, princess," he said, his grin sharp enough to draw blood. "If this is a trap, at least, you'll die wearing Riddle's face. That's got to count for something."

Draco pushed him off with practiced ease, but his free hand found Harry's sleeve almost unconsciously, fingers twisting in the fabric like an anchor, a silent plea for connection amidst the chaos.

"Three days," he said flatly, his voice carefully devoid of inflection. "We have to survive here for three full days while this brews."

The weight of those words settled over them like a physical thing; three days with Riddle's forces scouring every inch of the area, three days with the diary sitting in their midst like a rotten heart still somehow beating.

Hermione carefully sealed the vial containing Riddle's hair, her movements precise despite the tension in her shoulders.

"We can do this," she said, more firmly than any of them felt. "The Fidelius holds as long as I live," Her eyes swept the room, lingering on each face in turn. "So, no one leaves. No exceptions."

Ron cracked his knuckles loudly, the sound like gunshots in the quiet. "We've got food stores. Wards." He patted the radio they'd stolen from a Beta patrol last week, its surface still smeared with blood none of them had bothered to clean. "And we'll hear if something pops up on the wireless."

Cho kicked her feet up onto the table, the picture of forced nonchalance. "Seventy-two hours of quality bonding time," she bit out, but the restless tap of her fingers against her thigh betrayed her nerves. "Lovely."

"I think it'll be nice," Luna said brightly, her dreamy voice cutting through the tension like a knife through butter. "Like a sleepover."

Harry watched the firelight dance across Draco's face, catching on the tension in his jaw, the tightness around his eyes. 

Theo, sprawled across the threadbare couch like he hadn't a care in the world, "Anyone know any good parlour games?" he asked, grinning like a fox in a henhouse. "I vote for Truth or Dare. I've got some very creative dares planned."

Draco threw a cushion at his head with unerring accuracy. "We're not twelve, you absolute menace."

"Pity," Theo sighed, catching the cushion and tucking it behind his head. "I was looking forward to seeing who'd actually take their clothes off for a dare."

Narcissa rose gracefully from her seat, the diary clutched tight to her chest. "I'll take first watch," she announced, her voice leaving no room for argument. Her gaze met Harry's as she passed, heavy with unspoken meaning. "Someone should monitor... this."

Draco took the book without another word.

As she disappeared up the stairs, Harry felt the mirror shard in his pocket burn against his thigh - a persistent, nagging heat. Three days was plenty of time for answers to surface.

Plenty of time for everything to go catastrophically wrong.

Day 1

The safehouse kitchen hung heavy with the cloying scent of lacewing flies and crushed herbs, the air sticky with anticipation.

Hermione hunched over the cauldron like a scholar over some cursed text, her knuckles white around the stirring rod as the sluggish, mud-green potion resisted every turn. Boomslang skin floated in oily patches on the surface, and every few seconds, a bubble would rise and burst with a sound like a dying man’s last breath.

Three days.

The deadline pressed down on all of them, thick as the humidity from the simmering potion.

Theo lounged against the counter, his knife flashing as he peeled an apple in one long, unbroken spiral.

"Seventy-two hours," he mused, catching the peel just before it hit the floor. He examined it like a diviner reading tea leaves. "That’s… what, four thousand minutes of not getting our throats slit?"

"Optimistic of you to think we’re counting in minutes," Draco muttered from his perch on the windowsill. He hadn’t moved since dawn, his back pressed to the peeling paint, eyes darting between the street below and the tense tableau in the kitchen.

Theo’s grin widened. "Would you prefer seconds? Because that’s —"

"Theo," Harry’s voice carried just enough edge to cut through the chatter.

"— two hundred fifty-nine thousand of them," Theo finished, crunching into the apple with deliberate relish.

Hermione exhaled through her nose, the sound barely audible over the potion’s occasional wet blorp. "It’ll be ready when it’s ready, rushing it risks destabilizing the entire batch."

Ginny, perched on the table’s edge with her boots leaving mud on the wood, cocked her head. "And unstable Polyjuice does… what exactly?"

"Best case? Vomiting blood for six hours." Hermione didn’t look up from her stirring. "Worst case? Your organs liquefy."

A beat of silence.

Theo lobbed the apple core into the sink where it landed with a hollow clang. "Well. That’s one way to skip the Ministry’s visitor queue."

No one laughed. Least of all Draco, whose fingers had gone taut around the windowsill’s edge, his knuckles bleached white.

Cho stalked the length of the kitchen like a caged wolf, the blade in her hand scraping rhythmically against her thigh with each turn.

"Three days," she muttered under her breath. "Three bloody days playing house while they wait to slaughter us."

Ginny watched from the stairwell, arms crossed over her chest. "You'd rather be decorating the pavement with your brains?"

Cho whirled, the knife flashing in her grip. "I'd rather be carving it from someone else's skull!"

The tremor in her fingers betrayed her.

Harry caught Draco's eye across the room.

She's cracking.

Pale light filtered through the windows, painting the worn floorboards golden.

Below them, the muffled thuds of Ron and Ginny's sparring session echoed up from the cellar, bodies hitting mats, the occasional bitten-off curse.

Up here, the silence sat thick and suffocating, the kind that came from too many people trying not to think about the noose tightening around them.

Harry found Draco in the bathroom later, shirtless before the cracked mirror. The bonding mark stood out livid at his throat; magic and teeth-marks woven together in a claim that still looked raw.

For a breath, Harry just watched. The hesitant way Draco's fingers rose toward the mark but didn't quite make contact. The carefully constructed blankness of his reflection's expression.

"Alright?" Harry asked, shoulder propped against the doorframe.

Draco's gaze found his in the glass. "Just admiring the sheer brilliance of our situation."

Harry huffed a laugh. "Narrow it down for me."

"Take your pick." Draco turned, palms braced on the chipped sink. "The irreversible bond. The suicide mission. The fact our survival hinges on a potion that could melt our insides if Hermione sneezes wrong."

Harry closed the distance between them. "We'll make it work."

The corner of Draco's mouth twitched. "Your optimism is touching, Alpha."

Harry pressed his lips to the mark instead of answering, committing the warmth of Draco's skin to memory, the hitch of his breath, the way his shoulders finally relaxed under Harry's hands.

As the world burned quietly outside, in here, they had each other.

DAY 2

The attic smelled of old wood and damp insulation—Harry’s only refuge from the safehouse’s claustrophobic tension.

Dust swirled in the pale light bleeding through the cracked skylight, settling on his shoulders like ghostly fingertips as he knelt on the creaking floorboards.

The mirror shard burned against his palm, warmer today than it had been in three days of waiting. Harry traced the jagged edge with his thumb, watching his fractured reflection warp in the glass. Five years since he’d last said the name aloud. Five years of silence.

"Sirius Black," he whispered, voice cracking like the attic’s aged beams.

Nothing.

He exhaled sharply, stirring the dust at his knees. He shouldn’t have hoped — shouldn’t have let that old wound reopen — but the despair still crashed over him like a rogue wave, stealing his breath.

Then, the glass rippled.

Harry’s heart stuttered, the distortion spread like melting ice, revealing —

A face. Gaunt. Unshaven. Sirius’s once-handsome features were now all sharp angles and sunken hollows, his dark hair matted with grime. 

"Remus?"

Sirius’s voice was a broken thing, rough with disuse. His trembling fingers scraped against the glass from the other side, nails cracked and bleeding.

"It's me, Sirius," Harry croaked, his fingers clenching tightly around the mirror. "Harry."

"No… no, not again." A wet, shattered laugh. "I can’t—I can’t do this dream tonight."

Harry pressed his palm flat against the mirror, as if he could reach through dimensions. "It’s real," he said, "Padfoot, it’s me."

Sirius made a sound like a drowning man breaking surface—half gasp, half sob. His fingers spasmed against the glass.

"Merlin, Harry, is that really you?" A tear cut through the dirt on his cheek. "You were fifteen last time I saw you. Now you’ve got—fuck, you’ve got stubble."

Harry laughed, the sound tangled with tears. "You look like shit."

"Flatterer," Sirius’s grin was the same crooked slash Harry remembered. "Where are you? Are you safe?"

"Fidelius Charm," Harry said, wiping his face with his sleeve. "We’re—"

The attic door creaked open. Draco’s scent wrapped around Harry before his hand settled on his shoulder. "You’ve been up here for hours," he started, then froze. "Oh."

Sirius’s gaze snapped to Draco, his eyebrows shot up. "Well," A slow, knowing smirk. "Guess I missed some things."

Harry felt Draco’s grip tighten. "Sirius, this is —"

"Draco Malfoy," Sirius finished, surprisingly gentle. "Recognize the eyes. You’ve got your mother’s nose though, " His smirk turned wicked. "We're some type of cousins, I'm sure your Mother would know exactly,”

Draco made a strangled noise, Harry elbowed him, but couldn’t fight his own grin.

Sirius's expression faltered. "Harry… have you seen Remus?"

The air left the room, Harry watched Sirius read the answer in his face—in the way Draco’s fingers dug into his shoulder like an anchor.

Sirius’s breath hitched. "How?"

"Arena fight," Harry whispered. "I'm sorry, it was —"

"Stop," A muscle jumped in Sirius’s jaw. "Don't blame yourself."

He didn’t ask for details, they both knew what happened to captured Alphas. Instead, he pressed his forehead to the glass, his next words barely audible:

"Took me six months to find Remus after the raid. Six months of chasing whispers, anything," His voice broke. "Afterwards, we never stopped looking for you before he was captured again."

Harry’s vision blurred. "I know."

The laugh Sirius choked out was half sob. The wind howled through the broken skylight, but in this dusty attic, for the first time in five years, Harry felt something unknot in his chest.

The mirror's glow faded as dusk bled into night, Sirius' image flickering like a dying flame. His jaw tightened with each unstable pulse of magic, fingers twitching as if he could physically hold the connection together.

"I'm coming for you," he insisted, voice rough with urgency. "Just give me a location—"

"Impossible," Draco interrupted, his hand resting heavy on Harry's shoulder. "The Fidelius prevents it."

Sirius dragged a hand through his matted hair, the motion sending flakes of dried blood drifting from his scalp. "Then, name a rendezvous point outside the charm's protection. A park, an alley —"

"Every street's crawling with Beta units," Harry said, watching the way Sirius' image distorted at the edges like watercolor in rain. "They've got scent hounds and detection wards. We can't —"

Sirius nodded, "Okay, okay, I'm going to head to my mum's place and once I get there I'll open the floo and you can come through. I just need to see you with my own eyes."

Harry nodded. "We're brewing a Polyjuice and it a day we'll raid the Ministry."

Sirius' eyes locked onto his, comprehension flashing through his eyes. "You're going for Riddle."

Harry nodded, his throat tight.

"I'll be there." Then, the connection ended.

Harry remained motionless, the ghost of Sirius' face burned behind his eyelids. Draco's thumb found the tense muscles at the base of his neck, kneading in slow circles as the wind rattled the loose shingles overhead, its mournful wail seeping through the cracks in the old safehouse walls.

DAY 3

Cho hadn't slept in forty-eight hours.

The evidence carved itself beneath her eyes, twin smudges of exhaustion dark enough to bruise.

Her fingers danced along the hilt of her knife in a ceaseless rhythm, the blade catching thin slivers of light as it flipped between her fingers. Click. Click. Click. The metallic cadence sliced through the safehouse's stale air, a ticking bomb none of them acknowledged.

Harry watched her over the rim of his cold teacup. The safehouse had shrunk around them hour by hour, until even breathing felt like a challenge.

Cho's restless energy infected the space, her tension seeping into the walls like the ever-present scent of simmering potion. She wore her fury like armor, every movement sharp enough to draw blood.

Across the room, Hermione hunched over the Polyjuice cauldron like a scholar deciphering omens. The brew had thickened overnight, its surface swirling with ominous rainbows where the boomslang skin had dissolved. So close now. Three days of waiting distilled into these final hours.

Click. Click. Click.

Even Theo had abandoned his usual provocations, curled into himself on the threadbare couch with uncharacteristic stillness.

His eyes tracked Cho's pacing with the wary focus of a prey animal sensing a predator's mood shift.

Beside Harry, Ron's fingers drummed an uneven staccato against the tabletop, his gaze flicking to Cho every third heartbeat.

Draco's shoulder pressed warm against the wall near his chair. He looked deceptively relaxed, but Harry could feel the coiled tension in the way his fingers dug into his own biceps, the subtle pressure of a man bracing for impact.

"She's going to break," Draco murmured, the words barely stirring the air between them.

Harry didn't need to respond. The knowledge sat heavy in all their stomachs.

Cho's pacing hit a breaking point, her knife hand spasmed - click-click-CLICK - before she whirled toward the door, her boots scuffing angry marks into the floorboards.

"Fuck this!" The words tore from her throat raw and ragged.

The knife stilled. The safehouse held its breath.

"It's driving me mad," Cho snarled, her blade trembling in her white-knuckled grip. "Waiting for them to pick us off one by one."

Draco didn't even uncross his arms. "By all means," he drawled, "go die dramatically."

Her middle finger jabbed the air between them, lips peeled back in something too feral to be a smile.

Ron surged to his feet, chair shrieking against wood. "Cho, don't!"

She moved like lightning, Ron barely got his arm up in time to block her dash for the door. The knife sank into his forearm with a sickening crunch of parting flesh.

"Bloody hell!" Ron recoiled, his grip faltering just enough for her to slip past him as he bled.

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the window panes.

Silence pooled in Cho's wake.

Theo exhaled shakily. "Well... fuck."

They all pressed against the grimy window, breath fogging the glass as the chaos unfolded below. Cho moved like a shadow given form, a whirlwind of dark hair and flashing steel.

"What does she think she's doing?" Fred asked in awe.

Two Betas crumpled before their comrades noticed the attack, hands clutching at slit throats with wet, gasping sounds.

"She's a beast," George said, multiple murmurs of agreement were heard as two other betas fell.

"What's going on?" A beta shouted in alarm before his own throat was slit.

Then, Riddle stepped into the carnage.

All it took was just a single, graceful twitch of his wand and the crack of Cho's neck breaking echoed up to them, crisp as winter ice splitting underfoot.

Luna's scream tore through the safehouse as Cho crumpled in a heap at Riddle's feet.

Theo locked both arms around her waist as she lunged forward, her nails drawing blood from his forearms.

"They'll hear!" he hissed against her ear, but she kept thrashing, a wounded animal caught in a trap.

Harry yanked Draco back from the window as Riddle's gaze swept the street, slow, deliberate, a predator testing the wind.

"Aim where she appeared," he murmured, and the amusement in his voice made Harry's stomach turn. "We may not see them...but we know they're here."

The first curse hit the house with the force of a battering ram. Plaster rained from the ceiling as the entire safehouse shuddered, the wards screaming under the impact.

Narcissa shouted orders, her voice barely audible over the groan of straining magic. Draco's fingers dug into Harry's arm hard enough to bruise.

Another blast rocked the foundations, dust filled the air like fog, stinging their eyes and coating their tongues with the taste of crumbling stone and desperate fear.

The safehouse groaned under another magical bombardment, its foundations trembling as plaster snowed down in thick clouds. Narcissa strode through the debris like a specter untouched by chaos, her pale hands steady as they gripped the mantel.

"Grimmauld Place," she announced, tossing a handful of Floo powder into the fire. The flames turned emerald, illuminating the fine cracks spreading across the walls. "It's a Black family estate. The Fidelius there still holds, get everyone out, now!"

Hermione planted her feet, wand raised defensively. "How can we trust it —"

Narcissa turned with the lethal grace of a duelist, dust catching in her lashes like shattered stars. "Would you prefer to debate while buried in rubble?" Another explosion punctuated her words, sending a bookshelf toppling.

The silent standoff lasted only seconds, Hermione's throat worked, then she snatched the powder pouch and stepped into the fireplace. "Grimmauld Place!" she shouted, vanishing in a whirl of green flame.

One by one they disappeared, Ron dragging a shell-shocked Luna, Theo half-carrying Ginny, Alpha after Alpha refugee were herded into the fireplace by Neville until he and Draco were the last one left.

Draco lingered until Harry shoved him forward with a "Go!"

Alone now, Harry turned back.

Through the gaping hole where the front wall had been, he saw Riddle standing amidst the ruins, his usually immaculate robes streaked with dust.

The Minister's wand moved with terrible precision, carving molten trenches through cobblestones and brickwork alike. Every curse missed its invisible targets by inches, yet reduced another piece of the house rubble in the attempt.

The Fidelius held.

The safehouse didn't.

Harry dove into the fire as the ceiling collapsed behind him in a roar of splintered wood and twisted metal, Riddle's final curse searing the air where his shoulder had been a heartbeat before.

Harry stumbled from the fireplace in a shower of embers, coughing as soot coated his tongue.

The drawing room of Grimmauld Place was packed wall-to-wall with refugees; gripping wounded arms, huddled together, the air thick with sweat and burnt sugar from hastily-downed pain potions.

His gaze locked onto Draco immediately.

Near the crumbling mantel, Draco stood wrapped in Narcissa’s protective embrace, his usually immaculate appearance reduced to ash-streaked disarray. When their eyes met, Draco’s lips curved, just slightly, and the vise around Harry’s lungs loosened a fraction.

Sirius Black stood atop the Black family’s scarred dining table, boots scuffing decades of knife marks.

Time had whittled him sharper, more gray at his temples, more scars on his exposed forearms, his leather jacket replaced by a coat that smelled of gunpowder and damp earth.

But when his storm-cloud eyes found Harry, the years fell away.

The room vanished.

Sirius’ breath caught audibly.

Harry’s knees nearly buckled.

Theo’s voice sliced through the moment: "Who’s the stray?"

Sirius launched himself off the table, shoving through the crowd with single-minded intensity. "Harry," His voice cracked like dry kindling.

They collided with enough force to knock the air from Harry’s lungs. Sirius’ arms locked around him like iron bands, his familiar scent, leather and the faintest trace of Padfoot’s fur, flooding Harry’s senses after five years of absence.

"Sirius," Harry choked against his shoulder. “I thought I would never see you again.”

"They couldn't take me out that easily."

Theo cleared his throat pointedly. "As heartwarming as this is, we do have a homicidal Minister to overthrow."

Sirius pulled back just enough to glare. "Who’s this posh bastard?"

Theo made an offended noise.

“We had to evacuate the safehouse,” Harry said.

“I'm glad you're safe,” He pulled him back into a hug.

"Can we talk about our current situation?" Hermione asked, the words carried the weight of a gavel. "We are hunted, exhausted, and standing in a house that may still be compromised."

Sirius didn’t relinquish his grip on Harry, his calloused palm cradled the base of Harry’s skull, fingers tangled in his hair like he feared he might dissolve into smoke.

"Later," he growled.

For now, in this dust-choked sanctuary, the weight of his Father’s arms around him was enough.

The living room carried the scent of neglected parchment and wet sheepskin, that particular musk of a home left too long empty.

Sirius' grip on Harry's shoulder never eased, his fingers giving occasional squeezes between Harry's collarbone and neck as if checking he hadn't imagined the solid warmth of him.

Hermione was on Draco before his boots cleared the rug. "Did you...?"

"Honestly, Granger," Draco sighed, already digging in his coat pocket. He produced a vial of swirling gray-green liquid that caught the lamplight like dirty seawater. "Your lack of faith is—"

Hermione snatched it mid-sentence, bringing it close to her face. The relief that washed over her was palpable. "It's perfect."

Sirius leaned against the doorframe. "Someone tell me why we're all so excited about what looks like backwash from the Black Lake."

"Polyjuice," Harry said, watching Blaise steer a dazed Luna to the least moth-eaten armchair. "Our way into the Ministry."

Sirius let out a low whistle that stirred the dust motes. "Harry did tell me that, it's either brilliant or suicidal." His gaze traveled the ragtag group - the Weasleys forming their usual protective huddle, Theo making a show of examining the threadbare drapes, Narcissa standing guard like a silver-haired sentinel. "This is it? The great rebellion?"

"Unless you've got an army stuffed in your jacket," Draco said, settling on the arm of Harry's chair with deliberate casualness.

Sirius grinned,  "Just my winning charm and this." He tapped his wand against his thigh before sobering at the sight of the black diary in Narcissa's hands. "Now, what fresh horror is that?"

Harry met his storm-gray eyes. “It’s how we end this.”

The borrowed bedroom reeked of mothballs and mildew - clearly no one had aired out Grimmauld Place's spare rooms in decades. Moonlight cut through the grimy window, doing nothing to hide the peeling wallpaper as Draco flopped onto the lumpy mattress with a dramatic sigh.

"Ugh, these sheets are practically burlap," he complained, picking at the threadbare fabric with disdain, his fingers stilled when Harry sat beside him. "You're getting dust everywhere."

"Last day before the raid," Harry said quietly, ignoring the jab.

Draco's nose wrinkled, but his hand moved of its own accord, coming to rest over Harry's chest. His nails tapped an impatient rhythm before stilling against the steady heartbeat beneath.

"We'll survive this, buy a home and have all the babies to rival even the Weasleys," Draco's palm pressed closer, warmth seeping through Harry's shirt.

Harry covered Draco's hand with his own, grinning when Draco tried (and failed) to suppress a shiver at the contact. "Feels different when you say it out loud."

His thumb was already tracing absent circles over Harry's sternum. 

"Was thinking more about how we're gonna make it through."

"Obviously," Draco scoffed, rolling his eyes but when Harry leaned in, all his sharp edges softened - the haughty tilt of his chin dropping, the perpetual pout smoothing into something unbearably tender.

His fingers clutched at Harry's shirt as their lips met, clinging with a desperation that betrayed his carefully cultivated indifference.

"I love you." Harry whispered.

"I love you, too," Draco smiled against his mouth. "Knew you were a romantic under all that bravado."

Draco pulled back just enough to grin before he dragged Harry back down, his sigh melting into the kiss like ice cream in July.

The bed was too empty, the sheets still holding the ghost of Draco's warmth when Harry's hand slid across them. He blinked awake to the hollow silence of Grimmauld Place just the persistent drip-drip of a leaky faucet echoing through the pipes.

The bathroom door stood ajar. Inside, Draco knelt on the cracked tiles like a fallen aristocrat, his forehead pressed to the porcelain throne, fingers clutching the rim with white-knuckled intensity.

"Draco?"

A miserable groan. “Alpha, I'm dying."

Harry ignored the elbow aimed at his ribs as he crouched down. "How long have you been like this?"

"Long enough to contemplate drowning myself in this toilet, it's disgusting" Draco's voice was raw. He swiped at his mouth with a shaky hand. "Now, I want to vomit on your shoes."

Harry wet a washcloth with cool water. "You're not dying."

"It feels like it," Draco muttered, but leaned into the damp cloth when Harry pressed it to his nape. In the weak morning light, his sharp features looked almost translucent, dark smudges staining the space beneath his eyes.

Harry counted back. "Third day in a row."

Draco's gaze flicked up, defensive. "And? I'm nervous.”

"The great Draco Malfoy doesn't get stage fright," Harry caught his chin, thumb brushing over clammy skin. "Not like this."

"Perhaps, I'm evolving," Draco's attempt to stand ended with him swaying dangerously. He whined again when Harry steadied him. "I said I'm fine."

"Your hands are shaking."

"It's freezing."

Harry slid his palm under Draco's thin sleep shirt, finding the feverish skin of his abdomen. "You're burning up."

Draco went statue-still. Too still.

Harry's breath hitched. "Is it—"

"That rancid tinned meat," Draco snapped. "Theo's disgusting survival rations. I told you —"

"You'd rather starve than eat 'peasant slop,'" Harry finished, watching the way Draco's throat worked. 

Harry helped him up, lifting him in his arms.

"My knight in shining armor, my childhood fantasy came true," he hid his smile in Harry's neck, but his other hand came to rest low on his stomach, protective.

The kitchen of Grimmauld Place hummed with restrained chaos. Dawn light strained through grime-caked windows, illuminating three vials of Polyjuice that bubbled like swamp water on the table.

Hermione’s meticulous inventory — shackles, scent patches, a galleon etched with fresh runes lay arranged like surgical tools.

Harry flexed his wrists as Molly worked her magic on the last bolt of fabric. "The buttons are silver," he said, watching threads rearrange themselves. "Engraved with serpents so tiny you’d miss them unless —"

"— unless you were close enough to see them,” Draco drawled from the doorway. He strode forward, fingers trailing along the half-finished suit. "Which no one with self-preservation instincts would be," His nail tapped the left cuff. "Tighter here. He hates fabric brushing his wrists."

Sirius lowered his coffee with a grimace. "You’ve memorized his tailoring preferences. That’s not disturbing, at all."

Draco’s smile was all edges. "Power wears a uniform, Black. Learn to read it."

Hermione pushed a vial toward Draco. "You’re the only one taking Polyjuice, Harry will be..." She hesitated. "...visibly restrained. Muzzle included."

The glass cracked slightly under Draco’s grip. "Absolutely not!" He said, hotly.

"It's necessary," Hermione countered. "No Alpha prisoners enter the Ministry unrestrained, and we need you focused on playing Riddle, not reacting every time some Beta jostles him."

Harry caught Draco’s wrist before he could argue. "It’s temporary, its okay."

Draco’s jaw worked, but he gave a sharp nod. "One hour, not a minute more."

Theo, lounging against the icebox, twirled his wand. "And Granger?"

"Invisible," she said, tapping her thigh where her wand lay holstered. "Disillusioned from the moment we cross the wards."

Neville frowned at the shackles. "They’ll scan Harry for magic at intake. How—"

"Wooden restraints," Hermione cut in. "Non-conductive and the muzzle’s leather with iron fittings, it'll disrupt the scanner to make it seem like he has suppressors on," She tossed the galleon on the table. "Once the diary’s destroyed, this activates. Five seconds to grab hold before it ports everyone to the rally point."

"That’s our cue to storm the Ministry."

Draco unstoppered his vial with a pop. The kitchen held its breath as he raised it in mock toast. "To playing dress-up with tyranny."

He drank.

The transformation was visceral; bones snapping, skin rippling like disturbed water. Harry’s Alpha instincts roared at the wrongness of seeing Draco change right before his eyes.

When the figure before them straightened, even Molly recoiled.

"Fuck," Ron breathed.

"Language, Weasley," Riddle’s voice. Riddle’s cadence. Only the scent of his mate clinging to his collar kept Harry from hexing him on instinct.

Hermione stepped forward, pressing a scent patch to his neck with clinical efficiency. "Remember," she said as the last traces of Draco’s identity vanished, "Avoid talking to anyone, get in, Harry has the map memorized."

Draco caught her wrist, slow as a python uncoiling. "Anything else?" He murmured.

Harry’s shackles clinked as he surged forward then froze as Draco winked at him with a sweet smile that was unnerving to see on someone as cold as Riddle. 

"One hour," Harry ground out.

Draco nodded as he adjusted its cuffs with practiced elegance. "See you on the other side, Alpha."

The Ministry atrium gleamed like a mausoleum, all cold marble and harsh, artificial light.

Draco swept through the golden flames of the visitor's entrance without breaking stride, his borrowed boots striking the polished floor with precision.

Harry followed, the iron muzzle chafing his jaw raw, his shackled hands hanging loose enough for quick release. At his side, Hermione shuffled against him, unnoticed by everyone.

"Minister!" A Beta enforcer snapped to attention. "We weren't informed of your —"

"Am I required to clear my movements with you now?" The voice was Riddle's - honeyed arsenic dripping from every syllable.

The Beta paled. "N-no, sir."

"Then, return to your post." The dismissal cut like a scalpel.

Harry kept his head bowed but tracked every detail through his lashes. The layout matched their stolen blueprints exactly: gilded fountain to the left, security desk to the right, elevators dead ahead. Two more Betas flanked the golden gates, fingers twitching near their wands.

"Level Four," Draco commanded as they reached the elevators.

The nearest guard practically tripped over himself to press the button. "Immediately, Minister!"

The elevator doors slid shut with a soft chime, sealing them in a mirrored coffin. Harry caught their distorted reflections, Riddle's cold perfection, his own muzzled submission, Hermione's invisible presence between them. Draco's finger tapped an uneven rhythm against the brass railing, the only betrayal of his tension.

Hermione's breathing remained steady as the numbers climbed.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The doors opened on a deserted corridor lined with black-lacquered doors. Draco moved with Riddle's predatory grace, his polished shoes soundless on the obsidian tiles.

"Left," Harry muttered through the muzzle.

Draco's turn was seamless.

At the corridor's end, the Experimental Weapons Division door gleamed under torchlight. The lone guard snapped upright. "Minister! There's no scheduled —"

"Leave." The single word held the weight of an execution order.

The Beta hesitated. "Regulations require —"

Draco stepped into the man's space, close enough to share breath. "Do you imagine your regulations supersede my authority?"

The guard fled.

Draco pressed Riddle's palm to the runes. The mechanism whirred. Hesitated.

Harry's pulse thundered in his ears.

Click.

The door swung inward, revealing darkness.

As the vault sealed behind them with a final, echoing thud, the illusion dropped. Draco's shoulders slumped slightly as he turned to Harry, Riddle's face warring with Draco's exhausted expression.

"Now comes the hard part," he murmured in his own voice.

"I must admit, I'm disappointed."

Tom Riddle stood before them, wand resting lazily between his fingers, his polished shoes gleaming in the torchlight. He looked... amused.

"Of all my loyal followers, Lucius' son being the one to betray me is something I never expected."

Draco's Polyjuice disguise held, but Harry saw the way his fingers twitched at his sides.

"Did you truly think I wouldn't anticipate this?" Riddle sighed, shaking his head. "The famed Draco Malfoy with his mutt, charging in to save the day with... what? A stolen vial of poison?" His dark eyes flicked to Harry's shackles. "How predictable."

Behind them, Hermione, still disillusioned, edged along the shelves. Riddle's smile widened. 

Draco stalled. "I'm not the idiot who keeps what can kill him in a measly vault."

"You want to know why I keep the means to destroy me so close?" He took a step forward, his voice dropping into something dangerously soft. "Because you cannot destroy what is already perfect."

Harry's jaw clenched.

"My father," Riddle continued, "was a weak, sniveling Alpha who abandoned my mother the moment he learned she was pregnant. Left her to die in the filth of a Muggle hospital, mewling like a coward."

His fingers flexed around his wand. "The family that took me in made sure I understood the truth of this world: that Alphas should not exist. That Omegas are meant to be controlled. It became my destiny to ensure a world where Betas are supreme and Alphas no longer existed."

A beat.

"So, you see now? I can't due until I see I can fulfill my fate," Riddle's laughter crystallized in the air between them. "That is why I refined death into an art. Do you truly believe a snake's tooth could unravel my masterpiece?" He spread his arms in mocking invitation, the torchlight carving shadows across his throat. "Go on then. Plunge your fang into my chest, let's see which of us dies."

Draco's fingers twitched toward the basilisk fang at his belt. "The diary—"

"Was merely a canvas," Riddle purred, tilting his head with serpentine grace. "Do you think the Killing Curse could mar a Horcrux? That some... reptile's venom might succeed where magic itself failed?" His smile widened, all teeth and no warmth. "Try it. I do so love watching hope die."

The truth struck Harry like a curse to the chest; Riddle's arrogance wasn't just pride.

It was the unshakable certainty of a man who genuinely believed his soul couldn't be destroyed. That diary wasn't just protected; in his mind, it was invincible.

Hermione's hand closed around the vial.

Riddle's gaze snapped to her. "Ah, there you are."

The first Crucio shattered the air.

Harry braced for Hermione's scream but it was Draco's voice that shattered the air, raw and ragged, a split-second before the curse's crimson light even finished blooming from Riddle's wand.

Riddle watched on with glee, “You filthy traitor, this is why Omegas shouldn’t be in power!”

Draco’s back arched violently, his borrowed features melting away as the Polyjuice's hour ended.

His real face emerged, contorted in agony, platinum hair plastered to his sweat-slicked temples as he whimpered in pain, tears streakinv down his cheeks

The sound that ripped from him wasn’t human, it was the sound of bones splintering from the inside out.

Harry’s magic exploded before his conscious mind caught up. His shackles shattered as a wordless Stupefy erupted from his wand, the spell hitting Riddle square in the chest with enough force to crack stone behind him.

"Draco," Harry caught him as he collapsed, his body still seizing. The spasms wracked through him in awful waves, his fingers clawing at Harry’s arms hard enough to draw blood.

Hermione moved, the basilisk fang was in her hand before Riddle had finished sliding down the wall, her disillusionment charm shredding like cobwebs.

"Harry, now, the diary!"

Harry reached into Draco’s robes. The moment his fingers brushed the leather, the diary shrieked, a high, keening wail that made the torches shudder. It burned like a live coal in his grip, fighting him as he wrenched it free.

"Accio diary!"

The book tore from Harry’s grasp with enough force to skin his palms. Riddle caught it mid-air, his lip split open from Harry’s spell, blood dripping onto his perfect white collar. He didn’t seem to notice.

"Your magic," Riddle mused, licking the blood from his teeth, "is... fascinating for an Alpha," His thumb stroked the diary’s cover possessively. "I should thank you, this was growing tedious."

Draco sagged against Harry, each wet gasp muffled in his shoulder. His fingernails bit into Harry’s arm as Riddle unfolded to his full height.

Hermione stepped forward, basilisk fang glinting. "We don’t need the diary to end you."

Riddle’s smile turned indulgent. The diary fluttered in his grip like a dying moth. "Oh, child," he crooned, "you still haven’t—"

Splinters rained down as Sirius exploded through the door, curses already flying from his wand. Theo tumbled in after him, a Beta helmet dangling from one ear, his grin feral.

Behind them, the Ministry burned, enforcers scrambled through smoke, spells lit the atrium in strobing flashes, marble crumbled like stale cake.

“Hermione, go help the others!” Sirius shouted as he dodged a streak of green light.

"DOWN!" Sirius roared.

Harry dragged Draco flat as spellfire erupted, Sirius’ precise strikes, Theo’s wild hexes shattering the last torches. Riddle flowed between curses like ink in water, his retaliatory strike slamming Sirius into shelves. Shattered glass became a thousand falling stars.

Theo shoved Hermione. "Less gawping, more stabbing!"

Riddle’s laugh cut through the din. "This is your revolution? A failed mutt, a jester, and—" His eyes found Draco. "—a disappointment."

The diary screeched.

Not a magical chime. Not a metaphorical cry.

An ear-splitting, glass-shattering, physical wail that sent Riddle reeling, hands clutched to his temple like the sound lived inside his skull as he dropped the diary instinctively.

"Accio Diary!" Harry shouted, gritting his teeth as the screech blared into his ear. He almost blacked out as the diary fell in hos hands, liquid dripping from his ears.

"NOW!" Sirius bellowed.

Harry held the diary as Riddle’s curse seared his shoulder, white-hot agony, ignored—

Harry’s arm arced down.

The basilisk fang struck true.

For one suspended moment, the universe held its breath.

Then, black ink erupted from the diary like a severed artery, pulsing across the floor in viscous waves.

Riddle's scream wasn't human, it was the sound of ancient magic unraveling, a soul being flayed from existence. He clawed at his chest as if his ribs might burst open.

Harry moved before thought caught up, his equilibrium barely right as he stumbled forward.

His first punch shattered Riddle's nose with a wet crunch. The second split his lip against his teeth.

Blood sprayed hot across Harry's knuckles, but he barely felt it, all he saw was Remus's face in the arena flames, his last smile before the flames took him.

Again. Again.

Riddle's wand clattered to the floor as Harry drove him into the cemet, fists painting the Minister's perfect features in crimson.

That aristocratic nose flattened. Those cunning eyes swelled shut. Still Harry swung, knuckles splitting against cheekbones.

Invisible hands wrenched him backward, slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack plaster. His vision swam as Riddle rose, trembling like a live wire.

"You —" Riddle spat a glob of blood and something white. "Filthy mongrel—"

"Bombarda Maxima!" Draco's voice rang out.

The blast launched Riddle through a shelf of glass vials, which exploded like crystal fireworks. Harry staggered up as Draco pressed against his side, their shoulders knocking together.

Riddle emerged from the wreckage, his face a nightmare of gore. His wand flashed up—

"Avada Kedavra!" He snarled, his face a mangled mess as the green light left his wand.

Then, a translucent figure materialized between them, arms spread wide. Faded scars. That old knit sweater. The same quiet smile that had greeted Harry after every nightmare.

The Killing Curse struck Harry in the chest. For a heartbeat, his outline blazed gold then the curse ricocheted with a thunderclap, hurling Harry to his knees.

The rebounding spell struck Riddle in the chest before he could process it.

Riddle's eyes widened in genuine shock, his last expression before his body dissolved into smoke, leaving only an empty suit crumpling to the floor.

Then, the pain came—white-hot knives driving into Harry's skull and the world went black.

Consciousness returned in jagged fragments, acrid smoke stinging his nostrils, copper flooding his mouth, distant spellfire still echoing like phantom artillery.

Harry blinked against the throbbing in his skull, his vision doubling as he tried to rise. Warm blood trickled down his cheekbone.

"Easy, you idiot," Sirius's calloused hands trembled against his shoulders. The man's face was a mess of soot and dried blood, his storm-gray eyes suspiciously bright. "Fuck's sake, kid. Don't scare me like that."

Harry realized his head rested in Draco's lap, his mate's fingers carding through his hair with uncharacteristic gentleness. The last memory surfaced like a nightmare, green light, a spectral figure stepping forward, those familiar crow's feet around kind eyes—

"Remus," Harry croaked, clutching Sirius's leather jacket. "He was there, he protected me"

Sirius went statue-still. Something fragile flickered across his face before he schooled it into careful neutrality. "You're concussed," he murmured, swiping blood from Harry's brow. But his thumb lingered, trembling.

Harry tightened his grip. "I swear, I saw him! What does it mean?"

"Harry, you just survived a point blank killing curse," Sirius said, holding his cheeks,"We have other priorities!"

"Means that Alpha loved you enough to haunt your ass," Theo called from where he poked at Riddle's smoldering suit with morbid fascination. 

"Stop prodding it like a dead rat," Draco snapped.

Theo grinned. "What's the matter? Afraid he'll reconstitute if I—"

"If you finish that sentence, I'll hex your tongue to the roof of your mouth."

Harry's weak chuckle turned into a wince as the room tilted.

"You have a scar now," Draco whispered, running a hand gently across his forehead, "It's still bleeding, but it's jagged like a lightening bolt."

"Bloody Merlin, does anyone else realize Harry mught be the first person to survive the killing curse?" Sirius exclaimed, "It bloody rebounded."

The door opened.

Hermione stood framed in the wreckage, wild-haired and wide-eyed.

Behind her spilled the Resistance, dozens of faces Harry had last seen in safehouses and midnight meetings. Their collective breath caught at the scene: the ruined vault, the oozing diary, Harry bleeding but alive in the rubble.

Hermione's wand clattered to the floor as she spotted the smoking pile of clothes. "You did it, right?"

Theo dusted soot from his trousers. "Correction: Harry punched him so hard he —"

Draco's boot connected with his shin.

But Harry barely heard them. The phantom weight of Riddle's shadow was gone. The bastard was dead.

And for the first time since he could remember, Harry breathed freely.

The Ministry hallway lay in unnatural silence, broken only by the occasional moan from fallen enforcers. Hermione paced like a thundercloud given human form, her rapid-fire muttering echoing off the marble:

"...disband the Registry first, then judicial reform...perhaps a constitutional convention —"

Theo slumped against the wall with an exaggerated groan. "Granger, I’d rather take another Cruciatus than hear about legislative procedure right now."

Ron intercepted Hermione mid-stride, pressing his lips to her temple. "Save the revolution for after we’ve cleared the building, yeah?" She huffed but allowed herself to be steered away, though her fingers still twitched like she was drafting legislation mid-air.

Sirius, meanwhile, was being unbearable.

"Hold still—Merlin’s saggy left—!" He dabbed at Harry’s head wound with all the finesse of an overzealous nursemaid. Harry swatted at him, only to wobble dangerously.

"I’m fine!"

"You’ve got a concussion and who knows what the side effects of surviving the killing curse," Sirius growled. "Sit. Down."

The standoff was interrupted by doors slamming open.

Narcissa entered like a vengeance goddess, dragging a barely-conscious Lucius by his bloodied collar. His platinum hair was matted with grime, one eye swollen shut, his fine robes reduced to tattered rags. She dropped him at Draco’s feet with a thud that made Theo wince.

"Mother," Draco said carefully.

"Your father required...disciplinary action," Narcissa’s heel ground into Lucius’s wrist with surgical precision. He whimpered.

Theo whistled. "Damn,"

Draco sighed. "Couldn’t you have just cursed him like a normal person?"

Narcissa’s smile could have frozen hell. "Where’s the artistry in that?"

Lucius groaned, reaching toward Draco with trembling fingers. "My son —"

Narcissa kicked his hand away. "You forfeited that right when you sold him to the Alpha Force Unit, you disgraceful Omega.”

Sirius barked a laugh. "Merlin’s balls, Cissa."

Theo merely sighed happily, “Marry me."

"Over my dead body," she sniffed, adjusting her cuffs.

Sirius clapped. "Right! Priorities: Some firewhiskey, stitch up the wounded, dramatic retelling of Lucius’s well-deserved beatdown," He peered at the moaning heap on the floor. "Maybe a Healer for him, too?"

Narcissa considered this. "Three out of four." Her stiletto found Lucius’ ribs and pressed hard. "He’ll walk it off."

Harry decided he’d buy Narcissa the nicest Mother’s Day gift imaginable.

The Ministry's shattered atrium still smelled of ozone and blood, the golden statues of the Magical Brethren lying in broken pieces across the marble floor.

Moonlight streamed through the cracked dome, illuminating Draco where he leaned against a half-collapsed pillar, pressing a handkerchief to his bleeding lip.

Molly descended on him like a battle-worn angel, her singed apron flapping. "Let me see you, dear," she ordered, softly.

Draco waved her off. "It's just a scratch, Molly,"

Her diagnostic spell flared gold before he could finish, the light pulsing erratically as it traveled downward.

Molly gasped so loudly that several heads turned—Blaise paused in binding a unconscious Beta, while Ginny nearly dropped her stack of confiscated wands.

Harry looked up from helping Charlie secure prisoners, his brow furrowing. "Molly? What's—?"

"Sit," Molly commanded, conjuring an ornate chair from the wreckage. Her hands trembled as she guided Draco into it. "Deep breaths now."

Draco's face drained of all color as the diagnostic glow settled over his abdomen, shifting from gold to a soft, pulsing pink. His fingers dug into the armrests. "It's not, the curse didn't—?" His voice cracked in a way that sent Harry sprinting across the debris.

Harry skidded to his knees beside the chair, his  jeans tearing on broken glass. "What happened? Where's he hurt?"

Molly's stern expression melted into something radiant. "Omegas usually get symptoms quite early, you’re about three weeks along," she whispered, discreetly shielding them from nearby Betas with her body. "And perfectly healthy."

The broken wand in Harry's hand snapped completely.

Draco made a small, wounded noise not of pain, but overwhelming relief. His shoulders slumped forward as tears welled in his gray eyes. "Oh, thank Merlin," he breathed, pressing both hands to his stomach with reverent awe.

Harry's mouth moved soundlessly for three full seconds before he managed, "We're...? You're...?"

"Pregnant," Draco confirmed, his usual sharpness replaced by breathless wonder. He reached for Harry with trembling fingers. "I wanted, Merlin, Harry, I've wanted this since—"

Harry kissed him. Right there in the ruins of the Ministry, with their friends gasping and Molly sniffling behind them, Harry cradled Draco's face and kissed him like it was their first and last moment all at once.

When they parted, Draco's cheeks were flushed pink. "I told you you'd be the father of my children," he whispered even as he clung to Harry's robes.

"Shut up," Harry whispered against his lips, grinning like a madman.

Draco pressed his forehead to Harry's. "You're going to be insufferable about this, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," Harry promised, his hands already drifting protectively to Draco's waist.

Draco's answering smile was brighter than the rising sun through the broken dome. "Good."

Sirius stood frozen, his face doing something complicated between pride and oh gods, I’m going to be a grandfather.

Harry couldn’t stop grinning.

They’d won the war.

And now, they got to live.

Two Weeks Later

Sunlight poured through Grimmauld Place's windows, gilding the dust motes that danced above the dozing Resistance members.

The house itself seemed to exhale, coffee bloomed in the French press, crusty bread crackled as it cooled on the counter, and the mingled scents of bonded pairs had seeped into the very wallpaper.

Harry's fingers traced idle patterns across Draco's hip where his shirt had ridden up, his nose buried in the warm juncture of his mate's neck.

The steady pulse beneath his lips still felt like a miracle after months of anxiety and fear.

Soon, he realized with a jolt, he could kiss Draco in broad daylight. Could walk through Diagon with his arm around him without calculating escape routes.

The thought made his throat tighten.

Across the room, Hermione's quick scratching paused. "First priority is dismantling the Alpha Units entirely," she said, tapping her parchment with an ink-stained finger. "We'll need to restructure the Auror Office under new leadership, someone pro- Alpha. Every former Unit member will undergo mandatory psychological evaluation before considering reinstatement."

Ron squeezed her shoulder, his thumb brushing the claiming mark peeking above her collar. "Gonna be hell getting some of those pricks to unlearn years of conditioning."

"Then, we'll make it mandatory continuing education," Hermione said crisply. She flipped a page in her notes. "Next, the Omega Re-education Centers; we'll convert them into actual schools. Hire therapists instead of drill sergeants. Bring in bonded pairs to speak about healthy dynamics..."

Harry's chest ached as Draco shifted in his lap, their unborn child a secret warmth between them. 

Luna twirled her lavender sprig. "The heliopaths told me the old registry scrolls would make excellent confetti."

Theo snorted into his teacup. "We're burning them, Luna with prejudice."

"Second priority," Hermione continued, "is overturning the mating laws. No more Ministry-approved pairings. No more scent-matching algorithms." Her gaze flicked to Harry and Draco. "No more penalties for bonded pregnancies."

She turned to Seamus and Dean, "Or Alpha-Alpha relationships."

Draco's fingers tightened around Harry's wrist, his voice barely above a whisper. "Imagine that. Taking our child to the park without a dozen Ministry enforcers surrounding us."

Harry pressed his smile into Draco's shoulder, breathing in his scent he'd memorized in the dark.

"I'm going to take you everywhere," he murmured. 

Draco's quiet laugh vibrated against Harry's lips. 

He simply turned Draco's face toward him and kissed him properly - slow and deep and unashamed.

Around them, the twins whooped, Seamus wolf-whistled, and Narcissa rolled her eyes so hard it was audible.

Hermione cleared her throat. "As I was saying, third priority is reforming the judicial system. Starting with pardons for all Resistance members and proper trials for Riddle's inner circle."

Sirius, sprawled across an armchair with a bottle of firewhiskey, raised his glass. "Here's to seeing Lucius Malfoy in prison garments."

Narcissa's lips curved. "I'll send him care packages. Loaded with niffler feces."

The room erupted into laughter, warm and bright and alive with possibility.

A new world was being born from the ashes.

And Harry? Harry finally let himself believe he'd live to see it.

The kitchen garden remained untamed at its borders, where ivy crept over the stone path and brambles clung to the wooden fence. Harry knelt in the moist soil, pressing mint seeds into neat little graves with dirt-caked fingers.

Remus' favorite. 

Sirius leaned against the sun-warmed fence post, sleeves rolled to his elbows. The hollows beneath his eyes still held traces of sleepless nights, but his lips quirked when Harry wiped sweat from his brow with the back of a muddy hand.

"He'd hex you for planting memorial herbs," Sirius murmured. The morning light caught the silver strands in his hair. "Called it 'morbid sentimentality.'"

Harry snorted, patting the soil firm. "Then, he'd make tea with them anyway," His thumb brushed a stray seed clinging to his palm. "And complain it was too strong."

Sirius' chuckle was rough around the edges, like his leather jacket. "While drinking three cups."

The wind carried Theo's dry wit through the open kitchen window, punctuated by the clink of dishes and Luna's off-key humming.

Harry sat back on his heels. The mint wouldn't bloom for weeks, but the earth smelled promising.

The relentless scratch of Hermione's quill filled the kitchen like a metronome, keeping time with her racing thoughts. Ink bloomed across her fingertips as she drafted another amendment, her cramped script marching across the parchment in regimented lines.

Article 1: Immediate dissolution of all Alpha Unit patrols. Article 2: Repeal of mandatory bonding laws...

Ron's shadow fell across her work as he braced against the table.

"Hermione," he murmured, catching her wrist mid-sentence. His thumb brushed the faded scar from a long ago attack. "You'll rewrite the whole Ministry before lunch at this rate."

She blinked up at him, the morning light catching the ink smudged on her cheekbone. "That's rather the point," The quill trembled slightly in her grip. "Every hour these laws stand, someone's suffering..."

"Hey," Ron turned her palm upward, tracing the lifeline darkened with ink and old calluses. "We'll fix it. Together." His voice dropped to a whisper. "But even revolutionaries need to breathe, yeah?"

In the doorway, Harry watched sunlight gild Draco's profile as they leaned against the frame. 

Draco arched one pale brow as he watched Hermione draft another article, "I'd take a hundred exams over Granger's reform agenda," His gaze flicked to Hermione. "Though, I'll enjoy watching her eviscerate the Wizengamot."

Ron sighed dramatically but reached for a fresh parchment. "Right. Where do we start? Tearing down the Registry or burning the education decrees?"

Hermione's exhausted smile lit up the room. "Yes."

Outside, tender mint leaves unfurled through dark soil — small, green rebellions against the hardened earth.