Chapter Text
“You have to go, Draco. You have to represent the family, Draco. We can’t do it, Draco. It is your responsibility, Draco …” He scoffed.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” he sighed, giving Astoria a strained smile.
She returned it hesitatingly, some crinkles of doubt digging into the fair skin around her brown eyes. “It’ll be all right,” she said then, “in a couple of hours you’ll be back home. It’s just a couple of hours.”
A couple too many. But what he said was, “Yeah. Let’s go in, then.” Raising his chin and straightening his back, he led her into the huge ceremonial hall of the Ministry of Magic, his gaze instantly distracted from the decoration by heads turning towards them. Keep your expression neutral, no sneering, no smirking, just the hint of a smile. Nod at them … Yes, just like that. You know it’s an affront you’re here, they know it’s an affront you’re here, yet everybody and their mother wants you to be here. Even your mother wants you to be here. A token to show how well Death Eaters have been reintegrated into society. That’s exactly why everybody is staring bloody daggers at me!
“You’re hurting me, Draco.”
He winced and loosened his grip around Astoria’s arm, which was linked with his. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled at somebody, charming and endearing as always.
Merlin, he wished he could be as composed as she was! He really didn’t know why she decided to accompany him to this event. Yes, they had met once or twice, and their families were discussing the possibility of marriage, but so far, nothing was set in stone, she didn’t owe him anything. And if her sister had it her way, Astoria wouldn’t be here now to be gawked at like the latest attraction in a zoo.
“Maybe let’s get some drinks,” she suggested and pointed at the bar he hadn’t even noticed, mainly because he was still trying to politely glare everybody down who kept staring at him.
Really, why did he have to be the bloody token?! Wouldn’t it have sent a far stronger signal to have his parents show up at this memorial instead?
But six years since the end of the war probably hadn’t been enough to guarantee their safety. The chance that they’d give him the benefit of the doubt was probably a bit higher.
“Yes, fine,” he finally answered and let himself be led over to get something to calm his nerves. “Whisky, straight,” he said to the barman, and winced when sharp nails bore into his wrist. Astoria arched her eyebrows. “Um, I mean … elf-made wine,” he corrected himself and smiled falsely at the barman who scrutinised him from narrowed eyes.
“And for the lady?” he asked then, bored.
“The same, thank you, sir!”
She got a nod in response before he turned to get a bottle from behind him.
“Breathe,” Astoria admonished him while they waited, tracing her thumb over the back of his hand. When had she even taken his hand?
He brushed it off. “I’m fine.” Yet he gulped down half of his wine the moment he got hold of the glass. How much time had passed? Half an hour?
A melodious bell chimed, making the air around them vibrate. Thank Merlin! The call to take their places for the speeches.
“Do we have set places?” Astoria asked.
“I’m afraid we have.” The cards he’d shown at the entrance said they had been placed in row four. Not right in the front, but up front enough to be seen. Taking Astoria’s hand with his left and gripping his wine harder with his right, he headed for the aisle leading to the dais in the front of the hall, all around them nests of whispers like the humming of a wasp at your ear following them wherever they went. Draco kept his gaze fixed on the still deserted dais, trying hard to block out the voices and people surrounding them. But on the back of his neck, a bead of sweat was running into his collar, and he rolled his shoulders.
The crowd was growing thicker, several people jostled into him. He didn’t get a single apology, only glances asking him what he was even doing here. Some faces turned up that he recognised, Potter, of course, Granger’s mop of hair, several redheads, one of them pushing past him and Astoria with a cheeky smirk.
“Don’t spill that,” he even had the audacity to say and touched Draco’s hand holding the glass.
Hands off me! He pulled away from the touch, indeed spilling some wine over his dress robes. “Thank you,” Draco ground out, unable to stop his lips from curling a bit.
The redhead, one of the older sons—William? Charles? Not Percival, he wasn’t wearing glasses—huffed, amused, and went his way.
“Idiot,” Draco hissed.
“Row four,” Astoria then chimed in and gently pulled him along. “Which seats?”
“Um …” He gave her his glass to hold and fumbled the cards out of his pocket, rolling his shoulders again; he felt like somebody had put itching powder into the back of his robes. “Ten and eleven.”
They were at the end of the row, and that was the first good thing he’d heard tonight—he had an escape route.
After settling down, he spelt his robes clean and Astoria gave him his glass back. Draco took another sip, focusing his attention on the dais and ignoring the whispers and scandalised gazes surrounding him.
Only a couple of hours … I can do this.
He gave her another strained smile when Astoria squeezed his hand.
It was late when Draco returned to the Manor, yet—Ugh.—his father was still sitting in the salon and looked up from a book in his lap when he heard Draco’s steps approach.
“Father.”
“Draco.” He snapped the book shut and scrutinised him from grey eyes that had never lost the dullness the war and Azkaban had cast over them. Or maybe they’d always been like that, and Draco’s perception had just been warped by the blind adoration he’d had for his parents. Maybe his father had been this man underneath the layers of money and pride he’d swathed himself in since he’d been born. Maybe the man he’d thought was his father when he’d been a child had never existed.
Well, he doesn’t exist anymore. Not for me, at least.
“How was it?”
“We will see what the press makes of it.”
Lucius nodded slowly. “And how did you and Astoria get along?”
The only reason I didn’t fuck this up was her. Hidden from his father’s eyes, Draco rubbed his fingers against his aching palms. They were carrying indents of his nails, like a cluster of half-moons gathered to support him when nothing else could. “She was enchanting. The press would do well to focus on her.”
For a couple of seconds, they both were silent, Lucius sitting in his armchair in front of the fireplace, Draco standing in the doorway.
“Well,” the latter then ended the silence, “have a good night, father.”
“You as well.”
Draco lowered his eyes and left, failing to relax his hands until he’d reached the door to his room.
He planned to have a lie-in the next morning, but around seven, his room was so bright that he couldn’t compel his body to stay asleep any longer. Sullenly, he turned on his back and watched a ray of sunshine sneak across the ceiling, once again shocked by how quiet the Manor had become. When he’d been a child, the low hustle and bustle of house-elves organising events and going about their work had been a sound so ever-present that he hadn’t even heard it anymore. Now, they only had two house-elves left, and the last event taking place here had been the house search following the Dark Lord’s demise.
Fiercely rubbing his face, Draco forced himself to sit up and dangle his legs over the edge of his huge bed. Exhaling in a huff, he looked over to the windows, both of which were still covered by curtains, and scowled at the gap that had allowed that ray of sun to sneak in and wake him way earlier than he’d planned to return into the realm of the living.
He shuffled over to the bathroom and took a shower, not paying his reflection in the mirror over the sink any attention. He didn’t need a shave today; although there was a slight stubble on his chin, it was blond and nobody would notice yet.
And even if somebody does, they can go and fuck themselves.
“Language, Draco,” he mimicked the chiding voice of Madam Rutherford, the ancient woman who’d taught him manners about fifteen years ago. Unbelievable that it was still echoing in his mind today …
He returned to his bedroom, a towel slung around his hips, and finally opened the curtains and a window before he went to his wardrobe to get dressed. The clothes from last night were still lying thrown over the backrest of an armchair; he’d carelessly discarded them and crawled into bed, exhausted in a way he hadn’t been for a long time.
Birdsong was floating into the room, and a soft breeze, still cold enough to pepper his naked skin with goosebumps. Shivering, Draco pulled a shirt from the wardrobe, only twitching his eyebrows when he saw it was a dark green one. Eh, will do.
It was when he swung it around his shoulders that something he saw from the corner of his eye caught his attention.
Stopping, Draco frowned and turned his head to the huge mirror affixed to one of the wardrobe doors. He looked as wretched as he felt, even paler than usual, shadowed eyes, half hidden by too long blond hair. But that was not what had caught his attention.
Draco slowly turned his shoulder so he could see his back in the mirror—and his head began spinning.
“What the …”
Stepping closer, he dropped the shirt and pulled at the skin on his shoulder as if that would make the lines and curves disappear that were covering his whole back, neck to buttocks. His heart was thumping a mile a minute while he took in the colourful pattern as far as he could see it, and slowly it began to make sense and shifted into a picture. Whiskers, scales, sharp teeth, and a long tail curling around his whole left side, as he found when he whirled around in front of the mirror to get another glance.
His formerly pristine pale back was covered in a huge depiction of a bloody dragon!
“Are you fucking kidding me,” he murmured weakly, his eyes as huge as saucers. He still felt as if he were about to faint.
But slowly his mind began working again. He’d seen something similar on the back of his mother a couple of times, only that she was wearing a blend of flowers and the night sky. The dots connected, and with a sudden clarity, he knew what the hell it was that had blossomed on his back. “Nooo,” he whined, twisting his face into a combination of all five stages of grief at once.
He sneaked out of the Manor half an hour later and Apparated to London, wrinkling his nose when he noticed that he’d landed in something he didn’t want to inspect closer in that side alley. “Ew,” Draco muttered and vanished it with a flick of his wand, then—his lips still a bit curled in disgust—he looked around and left the alley, heading to a house down the street.
“What’re you doing here?” Theo muttered when he opened the door for him. Clad in boxers and a t-shirt, he blinked at him bleary-eyed.
“I’m wondering the same on a regular basis. So, will you let me in or …”
He huffed and stepped aside, yawning.
“Have you been partying yesterday?” Draco sneered.
“Sure.” He smirked and preceded Draco into the kitchen, padding along the corridor of his flat with naked feet.
“And did she leave already?”
“Who?”
“Whoever you’ve been chatting up last night.”
“Ah, I’ve been a good boy yesterday, went home alone. Tea?”
“I’d prefer whisky …” Sitting down, Draco rubbed his face.
“Sounds serious. Was the memorial so bad?”
“Yeah. No. I mean …” He sighed. “The memorial was the disaster everybody expected it to be, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“Astoria?” Theo inquired warily and cast him a glance while preparing two cups of breakfast tea.
“No,” Draco groaned.
“Listen, mate, you’ll have to give me something if this is supposed to lead anywhere. I won’t play twenty questions with you at this time on a Sunday morning.”
Grumbling under his breath, Draco scowled at him. “Why am I friends with you of all people again?”
“Because I’m the only one of us who isn’t dead or has disappeared.”
Unfortunately, that was true. Although Theo had always been part of Draco’s friend group in Hogwarts, somehow, it'd never been in a ride-or-die kind of way. He’d always been a loner, occasionally drifting closer for a while and disappearing back into his solitude again. That had only changed when all of them had been going through the trials following the Dark Lord’s demise. Theo’s and Draco’s hearings had overlapped sometimes, and one time, Theo had sat down beside him and chatted with him until Draco had been called in. He’d returned the favour the next time, and when they both had been acquitted—Draco because his father had paid a lot of money, Theo because he hadn’t done anything worth a sentence, not even taken the Dark Mark—they’d stayed in contact because there hadn’t been anybody else left. Goyle had been sentenced to three years in Askaban (the reformed one without Death Eaters), and Blaise had left the country as soon as they’d let him go. Draco didn’t even know where Goyle was today. Maybe he’d left England, too. Crabbe’s Death had hit him harder than Draco. And Graham … Draco had tried to reach out to him when everything had calmed down, but didn’t receive an answer.
Anyway, he was more or less dependent on that loser who was currently standing in front of two cups of hot water, making no move to add teabags because he was still half asleep, as it seemed. He didn’t have any other friends left.
“I got a soulmate mark,” Draco blurted into the silence, effectively snapping Theo out of his zoned-out state.
He yanked his head around, brown curls flying, blue eyes gawking. “You’re taking the piss.”
“Wish I were!” Draco scoffed and leaned back on his chair, his arms crossed.
Disregarding the tea, or rather hot water, for good, Theo sat down with him. “No way! And? Who is it?”
“Don’t know.”
He huffed a disbelieving laugh. Then he noticed that Draco wasn’t laughing with him. “Seriously?”
Draco shrugged miserably. “The hall was crowded, okay? Many people have touched me!” He shifted his shoulders, trying to get rid of the crawling feeling that thought gave him.
“Well, what is it? Maybe we can figure it out from that.”
Fuck. Rubbing his face again fiercely, Draco mumbled under his breath.
Theo arched his eyebrows. “So bad?”
“Worse.” For a few more seconds, Draco looked at him sullenly, then he decided that showing Theo would speed things up considerably. And who was he supposed to show if not his only friend?
Unbuttoning his shirt a bit, he shrugged it down his shoulders and turned so Theo could see the upper half of his newly acquired soulmate mark.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed. Then he began laughing in earnest. “Are you sure you’re not your own soulmate?”
“Oh, yeah, very funny,” Draco grouched and closed his shirt back up.
“Sorry.” But Theo was still chuckling. “Well, do you at least have an inkling whether it’s a woman or a man?”
“Will you stop this already?! I’m not gay!” He scowled at his friend, once again regretting the fact that a while ago he’d let himself get drunk enough to recklessly tell Theo that he’d never felt a difference between women and men regarding any kind of attraction. What he’d meant had been that he didn’t feel any, never had. While his classmates had mindlessly plunged into one sexual endeavour after the other as if it had been a contest, he’d never felt the desire to partake in that when he could achieve the same relief with his own hand and five minutes of solitude. He was fine with sex if it happened, mind! It just never seemed to be worth the effort to seek out someone else to do it with.
What Theo had understood, though, was that he was bisexual.
“All right, fine!” he now conceded and raised his hands. “Woman then, I guess.”
“It better is, yes! I very well cannot marry a bloke, can I?”
“Wow, we’re talking about marriage already …”
Draco felt his face grow warm and buried it in his hands, groaning. “Why me?” he groaned from behind them, “Why now? I never wanted to have a bloody soulmate! I can’t afford to have one!”
Theo patted his shoulder and got up. “It is what it is, Draco. But nobody is forcing you to try and find out who it is.”
He leaned back, watching his friend reheat the water and finally add some tea bags. “Could you ignore it?”
“Hell no!” he huffed. “It’s not like my life is overflowing with people I’m close with. I wouldn’t rest until I found out who it was …” He swallowed thickly.
And Draco grimaced. “Sorry.” He didn’t know an awful lot about Theo’s family, but he did know that his father was in Azkaban and would probably die there, and that his mother had died quite a while ago already; long enough ago that Theo had been able to see the Thestrals in their fifth year, and Draco was both curious to know and hesitant to ask how that had come about. How had his mother died that he’d witnessed it? Or had he seen someone else die instead? But he’d never felt like he deserved to know, so he’d never asked. He only thought that there had to be someone else left from his family; Theo surely hadn’t spent his summer after his father had been incarcerated in a children’s home.
Draco had just opened his mouth to ask about that when Theo muttered, “Never mind.” He brought the cups over to the table. “Do you want milk?”
“No. But some sugar?”
He got a pot from the cupboard and slumped back into the chair. “So … Do you want to find out who it is?”
Draco shrugged, pouring a teaspoon of sugar into his tea. “What if …” What if it’s not a woman? And what if it is? What if she’s somebody Father wouldn't approve of? How am I supposed to marry Astoria if …
“What if not?”
“You don’t even know what I’ve been about to say!”
“Not my fault if you stop talking.”
“Idiot.”
“Blighter. Who attended?”
“Everybody!” Draco huffed and steeped his teabag. “Felt like that at least.” And everybody had ogled him as if he’d had two heads.
“Well, who was there who would give you a dragon soulmate mark?”
“I don’t know, Theo!” He flung his hands up. “Everybody was there! Everybody who followed Dumbledore and some traitors who didn’t but were clever enough to keep that a secret! Everybody was there!”
“And who touched you?” Theo inquired further, his voice bored. He took his cup to sip his tea after vanishing the bag.
Draco almost blew his cup up when he did the same, the china vibrated dangerously when it was hit by his seething magic. “I pushed through the whole crowd several times, just trying to get Astoria in and out of there in one piece. Everybody could have touched me. The only one I do remember explicitly is—”
…
“Don’t spill that!”
… oh no.
Theo leaned closer until his chair cracked. “Yeah?” he pressed curiously.
Oh no, no, no, no, no. No. NO!
But it figured, didn’t it? Wasn’t he working with bloody dragons?!
“Nooo,” he whined again and let his head fall on the table.
His mother was in her ever-flowering rosarium when Draco returned home around lunchtime, snipping withered flower heads off with a pair of clippers. “I missed you at breakfast,” she said without a greeting when she noticed him approaching.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
Another flower head was snipped and landed in a basket at her feet. “Well, how did it go yesterday?” Snip, snip.
I met my soulmate.
“Hasn’t the Prophet told you already?”
Snip. “I prefer hearing it from you.” Snip.
I’m afraid it’s a man, Mum.
“It went as well as could be expected. Nobody killed me, nobody insulted Astoria, everybody got a good view of me and saw that I’m not throwing around killing curses …”
“Draco,” she chided him, emphasised by a sharp glance.
“Language, boy!”
He grimaced and blinked against the sun. “Did the Prophet claim anything else?”
“No. They took a lovely picture of Astoria and you sharing a moment during the speeches. She suits you.”
… what? “She’s not a cloak, Mother.”
“Oh, you know what I mean.” Snip, snip.
Yeah, I know. You want to see us married sooner rather than later, don’t you?
Snip.
That mark doesn’t change anything, right?
Snip.
Because it didn’t change anything for you either, right?
Snip.
You still abandoned her because she married a half-blood.
Snip.
And Charlie Weasley is a blood traitor, isn’t he?
He lowered his eyes, the words drowning in dread. He hadn’t even dared tell Theo, whom he suspected was his soulmate. Had just made a hasty departure and wandered through London until his reeling mind had quieted enough to face his parents.
Blinking, he looked at his mother again. “Do you want something for lunch as well?”
“No,” she said, not even bothering to return his gaze. “I had a full breakfast.”
Nodding, Draco turned and went back inside. But instead of stopping by the kitchen and asking for a snack to be delivered to his room, he went into the library and began browsing for soulmate reports.
Unsurprisingly, the Manor’s library was poorly equipped with books on soulmates, and it took Draco three more days to find an opportunity to go to the public library instead. His father had set his mind on training Draco so that he would already be involved in the Malfoy business when he would take it over one day.
Draco hated everything about it, especially where they got their money from. His father had become big in real estate. Buying, selling, renting, it was obscene how much money he was making off that. Only six years after the war, he’d regained everything he’d had to pay to keep himself, his mother, and Draco out of Azkaban.
Atoning for supporting a mad despot should take longer than six years, shouldn’t it?
But Draco swallowed all of those thoughts. He wasn’t a Slytherin for nothing. Speaking out against his father’s businesses now would only lead to arguments. He’d just wait until his father retired and reform the whole thing then. Maybe Astoria would like to help him do something else with it.
Astoria …
He gulped when he sat down at one of the tables and began browsing the books he’d found. He needed to know what it meant to have a soulmate. Needed to know what it meant to have one and not be in contact with them. Needed to know how high his chances of even meeting his had been, how much fate had messed with him.
But two hours later, he found that he might have rather not known.
How much comfort could he get from knowing that his chances of receiving a soulmate mark had been about one per cent? That wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing either. Working with a lot of money on a daily basis had taught him so much. One in a hundred people found their soulmate.
Okay, fine. The chances that he and his mother had had that dubious luck might be a bit lower, but he wouldn’t open that can of worms. Sometimes odd things just happened, right?
But how much comfort could he get from knowing that people who had lost their soulmate felt that loss for the rest of their lives? Or from the fact that he couldn’t find a single report of someone who had decided against being in contact with their soulmate in some form?
Maybe an outlier after all.
If he was strong enough to go through with that, that was.
He really shouldn’t have read the reports of people accepting who the magic had pointed them to.
“It isn’t that he’s the only important person for me, but everything feels a bit easier with him. I simply trust that he will understand what I feel, and if he doesn’t, I know we can work through it. There’s no doubt about it.”
“I know it sounds awfully tawdry, but my soul settled down when we met. I was roaming around constantly beforehand, stumbling in and out of relationships or one-night stands, but the moment we understood what we were for each other, I felt peace trickle into me. Like stepping into the sun for the first time in my life.”
“She gives me a purpose. I mean, my job does too, always has, I love what I’m doing! But there was also always that nagging thought of who I am when I’m not helping people, you know? Some form of ‘am I even real when nobody’s around to perceive me’. She answered that question the moment we met. I never spent another second questioning myself.”
Draco slammed the book shut with a huff and earned himself some scowls and hisses. Discarding his haul on the trolley that would charm them back to their places on the shelves, he left the library and began walking purposefully. Because he didn’t need a soulmate to have a purpose! He had one already! His purpose was to keep the Malfoy family alive! To marry Astoria and father an heir that one day would take over the family business from him! That was his purpose!
He nodded to himself, his face a grim mask of determination …
… until he remembered that he didn’t know where he wanted to go.
Home?
Merlin, no.
To Theo?
Nah.
Astoria?
… no. They hadn’t reached the stadium of unannounced visits yet.
So, roaming around London again?
He swallowed thickly when the words he’d just read resurfaced before his mind’s eye.
Bloody hell!
“Language!”
He balled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t kick the stupid rubbish bin he’d stopped at. And before he could question himself any further, he Apparated into the Ministry. He had to find out where that idiot was living!