Chapter Text
June was dawning ripe and hot. Draco Malfoy, on his twelfth birthday, laid sprawled out on a deck chair under the shade of a tall, thin evergreen, sunglasses slipping down his lengthy, pale face as he lazily sorted through all the letters and packages he’d received. He only really cared about two, though.
Firstly, his most recent letter— from Ron Weasley (nèe Weasel), which read thus:
Dear Draco,
Happy birthday! I’m writing this letter to you from our room in the Leaky Cauldron, cause Mum took us for a trip to London to shop for school supplies. It’s ruddy early for back-to-school, but she told us that ‘the early bird gets the worm’ whatever that means. Ginny, my little sister, starts this year. She’s kind of tiny, but bloody scary. Like Hermione, but instead of casting a spell on you, she’ll just beat you up. Anyways, any word from Harry? Hermione and I haven’t gotten anything either.
Write back soon,
- Ron
P.S, can you train your owl? He bit me when I took your last letter.
Draco chuckled as he read it through again. His eagle owl was a rather nasty bird, whom he didn’t truly like at all, but the image of him nearly snapping Ron’s fingers off with his great, sharp beak was a bit of a treat. He wasn’t really shocked when he read that Ron and Hermione still hadn’t gotten any letters from Harry— none of them had. It was as if he’d disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Trying not to think about it, Draco began to flip through the letters again till he found one written in a familiar messy, but exact, scrawl.
Dear Draco,
Happy twelfth! Does it feel any different for you? It didn’t feel much different for me, so I vowed to make it different. I’m going to study even harder, so good luck keeping up. By the way, Ronald hasn’t gotten any word from Harry, and neither have I. I’m beginning to think he’s developed a complex, and he believes himself too good for us. I hope not, though. I suppose we’ll find out come September. Anyhow, all of this to say, I hope your summer has been going as well as mine. I can’t wait to see you, and to practice magic again.
Happy birthday!
- Hermione J. Granger
There were eraser marks, scribbled-black cross-outs, and rewrites all over the page. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining Hermione hunched over a table, drafting and editing the letter, correcting her own grammar and such. But still, even with her endless changes, she managed to ramble. It was a sort of superpower, he supposed.
Draco sighed, setting his letters aside and standing up with a long, satisfying stretch, his lithe arms reaching for the sun as his muscles finally burst to life for the first time in hours. He strode inside, throwing open the sliding deck door, and approached his vanity, giving himself a good look-over in the mirror.
What he found himself staring back at was quite the different boy than he’d been on his birthday last year. His face was slightly longer, his eyes wider. They carried a certain brightness they hadn’t before. His scars had faded, too. They were still noticeable, though they were few and far-between on his face. The only really noticeable one was on the right side— striping vertically up and down his jaw from near the bottom of his ear to his neck. Most of the others were on his upper arms and torso, and some on his legs. He lifted his shirt, staring at the largest one. It still didn’t seem quite real— the thick, silvery, horizontal scar that slashed across his stomach. It was roughly three fingers wide, and reached from hip to hip in jagged little out-strikes.
“Draco,” came his mother’s voice.
He dropped his shirt with an undignified squeal, his fair face going bright pink as he turned to her.
It was almost unreal to see her standing in the doorway, after he hadn’t seen her face in weeks. She barely emerged from her study anymore, and when she did, it certainly wasn’t to speak to him. Her eyes were as warm and firm as they’d always been, her presence still holding that same ethereal glow.
“Happy birthday,” she smiled softly, stepping over the threshold as she took specific care to close the door and lock it.
Draco sat down on the bed, and she followed suit beside him, her arms tucked around her back to hide something.
“Thanks, mother,” he sighed wearily, a cautiously affectionate smile on his lips.
“What’ve you got there?”
She wiggled her eyebrows.
”Don’t tell your father I said this, but between you and I, you deserve a pet that doesn’t bite.”
Excitement bloomed in his chest as mother pulled out from behind her back an old black cat, with wide, yellow eyes like lamps. It meowed at him cautiously. Around its neck was a sleek green collar with an empty silver name tag.
“Oh, mother, he‘s gorgeous!” he crooned, gently taking the animal into his lap, stroking its fur with extra care.
“He’s an old cat, he was at that old shelter for years,” Mother explained.
”Apparently no one wanted to adopt him because he was a nasty, catty thing to everyone that tried, until me. The dear thing just took a liking to me, I suppose. Maybe it just found another senile old geezer, and decided we had enough in common.”
“Mother!” he cried, trying and failing not to cackle.
”You are not a geezer.”
She gave a wry smile.
”My son, who I had at twenty-four, turns twelve today. I think that officially puts me in the senile category.”
Draco shook his head.
”You’re thirty-six, not one-hundred-four.”
“Oh, they are one and the same, are they not?”
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
”Draco,” came his father’s stern, cold voice. Even on a happy day like this, it carried no warmth.
Mother leaned over to him as Father began to jiggle the door handle.
”Quickly, hide the cat. He mustn’t know.”
Wordlessly, Draco leaned over his bed, and gently placed the cat into the small hole he’d found beneath his floorboards as Mother opened the door.
”Draco, happy birthday,” Father said, his words dripping with meaningless honey.
”Begone, Narcissa, my son and I are going to speak privately.”
Fear struck him through the gut as Mother shot him a pitying look, and slipped from the room.
Father sat down on the bed beside him, staring around Draco’s bedroom with unmistakeable disdain.
“What is a Madonna?” he asked, wrinkling his nose.
”She’s a muggle music artist,” Draco explained cautiously. Over the summer, Hermione had sent him a ‘Walkman’— a muggle device that somehow played music right into your ears at the press of a button. On said Walkman, there was lots and lots of Madonna. So, as an early birthday present, she’d sent him a poster of her in a silvery, sequined mermaid dress with gems shining at the top of the corsage, her blonde hair styled up into the same perfect pin-curls women of high Wixen society often wore around the home, with the word ‘MADONNA’ scribed across the bottom in a large, thick font of black.
“But, I think she might be a witch in disguise,” he added quickly. Draco studied his father’s face. He still seemed quite disgusted and confused.
”I like her because.. she’s.. uhm..” he stammered, his ears going pink.
“She’s quite pretty, and, uhm, I like her.. her eyes.”
In truth, he’d never once given a thought to her looks. He liked Madonna because singing Material Girl at the top of his lungs alone on the roof of The Anthill in the middle of the witching hour was the best thing he’d ever done.
Father’s eyes flicked him up and down as he hummed suspiciously, but he made no remark.
”Well. Happy birthday, son. Soon, we’ll all go up to London to shop for your school things. Durmstrang will accept you with open arms.”
Cold panic took a grip around his neck.
”Durmstrang?!” he cried fretfully.
“Father, no! Please! Send me back to Hogwarts! I’ll do anything!”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his face wrinkled with regret.
”Anything?” his Father asked hopefully.
The tone of hope in his voice told him that he had a chance of going back to Hogwarts under whatever sick condition he had concocting in his mind.
”Anything,” Draco repeated nervously.
Father came back to sit down beside him.
”I want you to rejoin the.. erm.. right sort. And stay there. If I get even a word that you’ve broken away from them, you’ll be off to Durmstrang before you can say ‘Slytherin’. Understood?”
He understood, alright. It was simple enough. Re-befriend his old Slytherin gang, and he’d be fine. If there was one thing he’d learned he was good at, it was befriending those who hated him.
“Understood,” he nodded firmly.
Without another word, Father slipped from the room, his robes billowing out behind him, and Draco was alone again.
Carefully, he drew up the floorboard, and removed a very grumpy cat from the dusty, dank hole.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, as if the animal could answer.
”You’ve got to have a name, firstly.”
The old cat spun slowly around on his lap before settling comfortably, beginning to purr against him.
“How about.. Poppet.”
Something silver flashed against the sunlight streaming in from the deck. Draco reached down and pulled it upwards— Poppet’s label. Only now, it wasn’t empty, it had his name engraved across the front in a large font. And, it seemed, something had enchanted itself onto the back as well.
He turned it over, his eyes going wide with surprise. Engraved on the back in minuscule type was a.. paragraph, of some sort, but certainly not in French, or in English. It was lots of symbols, with the occasional letter that resembled something of modern language, only backwards.
‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi’
Draco sat up straight with a start as he recalled the inscription on the Mirror of Erised— backwards letters. This was ancient Wixen!
Following this revelation was one far heavier. His mother hadn’t spoken to him all summer, and now she just turns up with a message in an ancient language, attached to a cat that he wasn’t to show his father?
Whatever was written on that collar, it was something important. Something so important, it had to be written in code.
Draco reached down to unclasp Poppet’s collar, but no matter how long he finicked, it wouldn’t budge. He realized with a groan that it had been enchanted.
With a miserable sigh, he tucked Poppet under his shirt, and inched his way down to The Anthill’s library, the angry cat scraping and scratching him all the way there.
He reached the grand double doors, and slipped inside as quietly as he could. It seemed, Draco had his work cut out for him.