Chapter Text
One — Remus
Remus Lupin was tired. He had been tired, in one way or another, for the last thirteen years. Exhaustion was an old friend, a pet that curled up in his lap and fell asleep, mocking him for his eternal wakefulness.
He had known that his return to Hogwarts wouldn’t be an easy one. Those hallowed halls were haunted by memories of friends long passed — a reminder lurked around every corner, inspiring memories of the golden days of childhood.
He saw the past at every turn, with every step through the train and the castle. There was the favored compartment of Dorcas Meadowes and her entourage of Slytherins, Evan Rosier and the others, before Darkness had ripped them all apart. Here was where Peter had first smiled at him, offering friendship and sweets as if kindness were second nature. There was the place where James and Sirius had carved their names into the wooden frame of a door. Here was Lily’s favored seat in the Library, the table that she had allowed him to haunt alongside her. There was the tree under which Marlene McKinnon had taught Sirius to do a handstand. Here was the hallway where James had punched a boy square in the jaw for bullying Remus. There were the seats where they had sat at dinner, the secret passages that they had wandered like feral beasts, the places where they had laughed and loved and lost.
And worst of all, there were Lily Evans eyes, glinting under candlelight once again.
He tried not to make a habit of staring at Harry. It would look strange. It would make the boy uncomfortable. Remus made due with quick glances, up and away, checking that Harry was eating enough, checking that Harry was breathing.
The very sight of Harry made him ache. A grief, a longing, a feeling of failure. He was sure that James would be disappointed in him — Remus, his last free and living friend, should have known Harry better than this. Remus should have cared for him, should have been there to sooth his cries at night.
But it had been made clear a long time ago that Remus was not what was best for Harry. It was fair, he supposed — who in their right minds would place The Boy Who Lived in the scarred hands of a werewolf?
No, the boy was better off without Remus. He was once a child who had laughed at Remus, pulled his hair, fell asleep in his arms. Those days were over and Remus could never get them back. There would be no Uncle Moony, not every again. There would just be Professor Remus Lupin, who watched the world with careful eyes in case a monster came for him.
By the Thursday of his first week at Hogwarts, Remus has almost gotten used to the constant reminders, the constant assault on his heart. He’s able to smile when he sees Fred and George Weasley pull a prank. He’s able to spare a kind smile for Neville Longbottom and get the entire Gryffindor third year class laughing at the image of Severus Snape dressed like Augusta Longbottom. If his heart almost beats out of his chest at the sight of Harry laughing, there’s no one around to know about it. If it aches, and aches, and aches so hard he thinks its breaking, that’s only for him to know.
He’s able to pack away his aching heart and get on with it, able to throw himself of Harry Potter’s boggart before it can take a shape they all fear the most. It only takes a fleeting moment, with the moon hanging over his head, to banish the boggart back into the wardrobe.
His aching heart isn’t much in it, later that day, when the Slytherins get their turn. They’re serious faced and snickering in equal measure. Children, just children, who have been raised with so many of the wrong ideas in their head. They don’t respect him yet — they likely never will, this poor man with not a penny to his name, without the pure blood they look to like a beacon of righteousness. They don’t need to respect him, he just has to teach them.
He expects the class to be easy, in comparison to watching Harry face his fear. He expects it all to be commonplace. Pansy Parkinson fears vampires. Blaise Zabini is terrified of wasps. Daphne Greengrass hates spiders. On and on they go, fear after fear, laughter bursting out of their chests like it’s alien to them. They’re enjoying the class. They’re still laughing when Theodore Nott pushes Draco Malfoy forward.
They stop laughing when Lucius Malfoy forms, stern faced, and Draco’s face pales.
This was Narcissa Black’s son — the girl who had been Head Girl during Remus’s first year as a prefect. He remembers being fifteen and thinking that Narcissa Black was terrifying. She was cold and perfect. She was gentle with the first years. She was a powerful witch with a perfect record, raw power that you could practically taste in the air around her, like the crackling of electricity in the air before a storm.
(She had come to him, during the fight to end all fights he was having with Sirius, and strangely not spoken in her cousins favor yet somehow placed the blame on Remus regardless. ‘Whatever he did,’ she had told him, ‘you shouldn’t have been surprised. He’s a scorpion. It’s in his nature.’)
This was her son, with familiar grey eyes, who froze at the sight of his father.
And Remus should have known, really, that a class of Slytherins would have at least one case like this. He had shared a dorm with one of those pureblood elite for seven years, and been there the day that Professor Dodds put them in front of a Boggart, watching Walburga Black advance on her son with a face of fury.
The shadow of Lucius Malfoy had no face of fury. Only cold disapproval and the click of his cane on the worn wooden floor as he advanced on his son. Remus was prepared to move, ready to once again step in front of a boy’s worst fear today. He didn’t have to — it was a truth universally acknowledged that Slytherins took care of each other.
Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott both moved to step in front of Draco at the same time, and so throughly confused the Boggart that it became some grotesque and undefinable blob of horror. Remus moved it back to the wardrobe, and class was done.
With thirty minutes before lunch began in the great hall, Remus felt something overtake him. “A moment, Draco.” He called, stopping the stern-faced boy from leaving class with the others.
The third year Slytherins filed away, with Draco’s friends looking disapproving as Draco stayed in place. Remus gave him a kind smile inclined his head. “Lets have a cup of tea, shall we?”
Draco Malfoy blinked at him, some unreadable emotion passing over his face. “If you’d like, sir.” He agreed, though Remus could sense the reluctance in it.
Five minutes later, Draco was sipping scalding hot tea out of a chipped mug, sitting in Remus’s office. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, as Remus settled onto the armchair across from him.
“How’s your arm healing?” He asked, because all had heard of the disastrous first lesson Hagrid had given the third years.
Draco’s expression flickered. “Well.” He allowed.
“No scarring? Madam Pomfrey was worried.”
“A little bit, but it’s fine, really.”
“That’s good to hear, Draco.”
The boy sipped his tea. A delicate movement. When he looked back up at Remus there was a flash of something in his eyes. Familiar eyes.
“Can you get to the point of this, please, Professor?” He asked, posh voiced and impatient. It almost, almost, made Remus laugh. An imperious child. “If you’re going to do the concerned Professor song and dance, I’d rather you be straightforward about it.”
Remus nods his head, takes a slow sip of his own tea. “Alright,” He says, with slow consideration. “Is everything alright at home, Draco?”
“Splendid.” He replies. “I live a blessed life.”
“Why are you so deeply afraid of your father?”
“What son isn’t, at one time or another?”
“In this time, right now, I’m asking you why you are.”
“Oh, you know how it is.” A shrug of his young shoulder. “One would hate to disappoint one’s father.”
“One would.” A tilt of his own head, as he studies Draco. The set of his shoulders, the carefully blank expression on his face, his talent for talking around each and every problem. He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, hands folded together in front of him as he studies Draco. Draco meets his eyes, unflinching. “Does your father hurt you, Draco?”
It was a question no one had asked the Black Brothers — not soon enough to make a difference. The Draco that sits before him now is like Regulus reborn, stiff upper lip and stern faced, disapproving. Something glints in those grey eyes again, unreadable.
“Did your father hurt you?” Draco asks him, blunt and lacking all sense of tact.
Remus pauses. A lengthy one, before he carries on; “‘I don’t want to talk to you about that’ is an acceptable answer to questions such as these, Draco. I won’t force you to answer.”
The smile Draco fixes him with is a hollow one. “I don’t want to talk to you about that.”
“That’s alright, then.” He leans back in his seat. It may be a mistake, to waste his time trying to pry Draco Malfoy open — but it would be better, wouldn’t it, if he knew there was someone he could come and talk to if he ever needed to. “Lets talk about you instead. You play Quidditch.”
“I used to.”
“But not anymore?”
“No, not anymore. I’m focusing on my studies this year.”
“And how are you finding your course load?”
“It’s fine.” Draco told him, “I’m enjoying it so far, but i’ll probably regret my decisions when the assignments start building up.”
“I’m sorry to have added to your burdens already, in that case.”
Draco shakes his head, a slight movement. “It will be an interesting assignment to research.” A pause. “I did wonder something, Professor, if you’d indulge a more academic topic of conversation.”
“Please, wonder away.”
“Is there any other way to get rid of a Boggart? Other than the Riddikulus charm and laughter.”
“None as effective. Why do you ask?”
“I just think —” Another pause. “It’s silly.”
“Please, share.”
“Don’t they get scared? Does it hurt them? It takes so long, so drawn out… Wouldn’t something quick and clean be kinder?”
Remus took a long moment to consider this. “They’re not really creatures, not alive like you and I are. I don’t think they feel fear.”
“They can be confused, though.”
“Yes,” Drawn out, as if waiting for Draco to explain himself further.
“They can be confused. They can panic in indecision. If a Boggart can feel enough to get confused, or panicked, why couldn’t they feel fear? Their own fear, not ours. It seems to me like they just want somewhere dark and dim to hide away and we’re torturing them to get them to go away.”
“You’re trying to empathize with an amortal being, Draco. A creature that can’t die, because it isn’t really alive. A Boggart is fear manifest — that’s all it is.”
“But they don’t hunt us down and force themselves upon us. They hide away until we bother them. Their manifestation of our fears is a self defense mechanism. They hurt us to save themselves.”
Remus paused, he took a sip of his own tea. It was a smokey, spiced blend that Euphemia Potter had once favored. It brought him comfort in the way her presence used to, a steadying effect when faced with the strangeness of Draco Malfoy’s argument. “I have some philosophy and ethics texts that may be of great interest to you, Draco.” He said, finally, as if arming Draco with more weapons to use against him in arguments was the wise thing to do.
Two — Harry
Third Year was gearing up to be exactly as weird as every other year at Hogwarts had been. A mass murderer on the run, Dementors guarding the school, and Draco Malfoy in the midst of a full personality makeover. Harry really should have been spending more time worrying about the two former subjects, as opposed to obsessing over the latter.
“I still think he’s gone barking mad.” Ron said, gloomily gazing across the great hall at Draco and his gang of Slytherin friends. Pansy Parkisnon was laughing particularly hard at a joke Draco must have told — simpering and fawning as she always seemed to.
“Maybe,” Harry agreed, caught up in the sight of them just as intensely as Ron seemed to be. “I’m still not convinced he isn’t up to something.”
“Always up to something, that Malfoy.” Ron agreed in turn. They shared a dark look, remembering every negative interaction with Malfoy they’d had over the last two years.
Only, it wasn’t that easy anymore, was it? In the last week Draco had apologized several times, joked with Harry, remained more or less friendly. He had shaken Harry’s hands and agreed to let bygones be bygones.
“Honestly, you two.” Hermione sighed, and Ron and Harry both did a double take. Harry was fairly certain that Hermione hadn’t been sitting there a moment ago, but there she was now, slightly out of breath and loading her plate up with dinner. “If you spent half as much time studying as you spend obsessing over Draco, you’d be getting better marks than I am.”
“Draco?” Ron asked, slightly incredulous. “Since when are we calling him Draco?”
Hermione’s eyes rolled, giving Ron a condescending look. “He’s not our mortal enemy. He’s agreed to call me Hermione from now on, too. We just talked about it in the Library.”
“When did you get time to go to the library between classes and now?”
Harry wondered the same thing — but he did have one more important topic on his mind. He leaned in close, so the two of them could hear him. “Did you see his face when Seamus brought up Sirius Black during potions class today?”
“Super weird.” Ron agreed.
“It looked like he wanted to say something, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.”
Hermione frowned, looking back and forth between them. “What on earth could Draco know about Sirius Black that the rest of us don’t.”
“A fair bit, I’d say.” Neville Longbottom’s voice interrupted them, causing Harry to freeze for a moment. He sounded darkly glum as he spoke.
Hermione’s frown deepened. “What makes you say that?”
Neville gulped, and looked between the three of them. “Well, I—” He stuttered, and swallowed, before he shook his head. “I probably shouldn’t say.”
“Neville,” Harry leveled at the other boy, “What does Malfoy know about Sirius Black?”
Neville swallowed. “Well… there’s the family connection, isn’t there?”
“Family connection?” The words tumbled out of Harry’s mouth, half numb.
“They’re cousins, or something. Second cousins, I think. Gran had me memorizing half the family trees over the summer and, well — It’s his mum, right? Narcissa Malfoy was Narcissa Black before she was married. I think, I… I think her dad and Sirius Black’s mum were siblings, which makes Malfoys mum Sirius Black’s cousin, which makes Draco…”
“Which makes Draco his second cousin.” Hermione confirmed, wonder in her tone. “Oh my god.”
“Knew it.” Ron said, darkly. “Crazy runs in the family.”
“Ronald.” Hermione scolded.
But Neville came to Ron’s defence. “He’s right, Hermione. The Black Family are infamous for how many of them turned, well…”
“Incredibly, intensely insane.” Ron finished. “Blimey, I didn’t realise Malfoy was related. Mum’s not into tracking all that stuff. But it makes sense now.”
A soft gasp escaped Hermione, as if she had just realised something. “Oh no.”
“What?” Harry asked, grim, already expecting the worst.
“He said something weird, the first night we were back.” She explains, slow, as if she’s trying to make sure her own memory is accurate. “I didn’t think much of it at the time, but he said…”
“What?” Ron asked, more urgently. Neville looked equally as interested.
“He said that the Slytherins were teasing him about the dementors; about how it was his fault the dementors were here in the first place. What if —”
Harry thought about it. Lucius Malfoy with the diary that held a piece of Voldemorts soul. Lucius Malfoy who had clearly served Voldemort just as loyally as Sirius Black had, only Lucius knew how to worm out of it and Black didn’t. “His family could be helping Black now that he’s escaped.” He finished for her.
Ron looked pale. “He could be trying to get close to you, so he can lure you to Black. That’s what he’s up to.”
“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.” Hermione argued.
“The conclusion we shouldn’t have jumped to was the one where you walked around saying that Malfoy is warm and cuddly now, as if that could ever be true.” Ron argued back. “First that demented cat of yours, and now you’ve adopted a snake.”
“Crookshanks is not demented!”
“He’s evil!”
Their arguing continued, familiar background noise that washed over Harry as he considered the new information. Could Malfoy’s newfound niceness really be part of some ploy to lure Harry into danger? Could he really be helping Sirius Black? It was easier to believe than the alternative. They said that old dogs couldn’t learn new tricks, so maybe Malfoy was still up to all of his old nonsense, except now he had learned to take after his father.
He looked up, across the tables, toward the Slytherins. Draco was laughing again, so hard that his cheeks dimpled and his eyes lit up. What were they joking about that was so funny? Was he relaying all his tricks to his friends, letting them laugh over how thoroughly he had convinced Harry and Hermione of his innocence? After a moment of staring, Draco seemed to catch on — his eyes met Harrys, but there was nothing malicious in that gaze. He even raised a hand to give a little wave.
If Malfoy was helping Black, he had gotten a hell of a lot better at lying over the summer.
“Maybe its not all an act.” Neville said, trying to be comforting. “He helped me in potions today, and he doesn’t want to feed me to a murderer, I’m pretty sure.”
That was true. With Snape had set in and began bullying Neville, Malfoy and Hermione had been able to whisper enough help to him to save him by the end of class. There was no possible reason that Malfoy would need to be nice to Neville Longbottom just to get close to the boy who lived.
Harry gave his friend a small smile. “Thanks, Nev.”
Neville smiled back at him, and they chatted throughout dinner, Hermione and Ron arguing none stop beside them.
Three — Pansy
“Those Gryffindors are absolute beasts.” Pansy complained, slumping down into an armchair in the common room. She had needed to chase a group of upstart little firsties away from the spot that the third years had claimed this year.
Really, she was being kind by teaching them the way of things.
Slytherin House was built upon several different hierarchies. First years were the bottom of the heap. The Seventh years claimed the best seats, right beside the biggest fireplace, with some particularly gifted and popular sixth years amongst them. The older you were the more rights you had when it came to pushing other people around. Similarly, the purer are more respected your bloodline was, the more untouchable you became.
Of course, this meant that Pansy and her friends were particularly blessed. The fourth and fifth years were a bunch of no-names. Pureblood in the mildest sense. It wasn’t until you got to the sixth years that you started running into the truly pure families again. Ophelia Burke and Priscilla Rowle ruled that year with an iron fist, and Pansy looked up to them a great deal.
Her year, her friends, they were the blessed ones — the post war baby boom had done wonders for her social circle. Parkinson, Greengrass, Bulstrode, Nott — and then there was the gleaming jewel in the crown of Slytherin; Draco sodding Malfoy, heir to two houses, not to mention his marital relation to the Lestrange family. He was an inheritor through and through, rumor was that even Rodolphus Lestrange had named Draco his heir, should he had his brother fail to produce any themselves.
And he was lovely, on top of it all. Draco was beautiful, and clever, and so wonderful it almost ached. She loved him; he was her best friend. She only wished she could love him in the way her mother wanted. When she indulged in romantic fantasy, it wasn’t Draco she imagined riding in on a white horse to save her. Draco was too untouchable, too… too himself.
She loved him, but she could never be in love with him. It didn’t mean their friendship didn’t boarder on obsessive and intensely macabre at the worst of times. Twin flames who always pushed each other to burn a little too brightly.
“They’re awful,” She continued, gazing at the other armchair, where Draco was deep in a book. She wanted his attention. She’d do anything to get his attention. “I don’t know how you stand them, Draco.”
“Hm?” He hummed, looking up briefly from his book. “What’s that, Pans?”
“The Gryffindors. How can you stand them when they’re walking around gossiping about Professor Snape like that.”
A moody look flickered across his face. “Disrespectful lot.” He said, a lofty agreement, as his eyes flickered back down to the page. “If I was going to imagine Sev in woman’s clothes, I’d at least make sure they weren’t an eyesore.”
“Draco.”
He was doing that thing again — multitasking, where he thought he could read and talk to her and do either one of them well enough to pass muster. “Like my mothers gowns, he’d look fetching.”
“They’re blabbermouths.”
“Of the worst kind.”
“Where is their sense of house unity? Walking around talking about their biggest fears as if it can’t be used against them all? Professor Snape has been in a mood all week since hearing about Longbottom and that Boggart.”
“Such a bad mood.”
“Imagine if we walked around talking like that. Everyone would know about you and your—”
That got his attention. His book snapped closed, and he looked up at her with something deadly behind his eyes. “But you wouldn’t.”
“Of course not. Which makes us better people than them.”
“What are you trying to get at, Pansy?”
“You shouldn’t be friends with them.” She said, finally. It was the truth, the way she saw it. Befriending lions was a waste of time that was only going to tear apart their carefully crafted ecosystem.
“Because they’re gossips?” He asked, sitting up and setting the book aside fully. “No, we’re gossips. Because they’re reckless idiots who don’t know how to whisper?”
“If they found out about your father, the whole school would know the next day.”
“Shut up,” He said, a shake of his head. “I told you why I needed to do this. Don’t you remember.”
“I think its stupid.”
“Yes, you said.” A sigh. “You also said that you wouldn’t stand in my way.”
“That was before I realised how bad it could go.”
“More like: before Blaise started talking to you about it. You’d do anything to get him to like you.”
“Blaise likes me all on his own.”
“Blaise likes me. He likes Daphne. He tolerates you and Theo. Has done ever since you told him he wasn’t good enough in first year.”
It was true. Pansy had been utterly cruel to Blaise in first year. He wasn’t one of them, he was an outsider with a family name she had never heard of before. He was pure, yes, but that wasn’t the kind of boy her mother had told her to get close to.
“And you just want Potter to like you.” She snaps, a self defense mechanism. “You’ve been obsessed with him since you could walk. I remember, you know, when you were eight years old and you said that you wanted to marry Harry Potter when you grew up.”
“Every eight year old wanted to marry Potter.”
“Not like you did. And now you’ve seen a way to get in with him, and you’re going to change everything about yourself to make it happen. I hate it. I think its stupid.”
She watched as Draco’s throat worked. Watched as he swallowed past the anger that was clearly building up inside him. Draco had a fury that could overtake him if he wasn’t careful, a fire in his guts that almost killed him sometimes.
“I’m not changing.” He finally said. “I’m being myself, just with less bullying. Is that not okay?”
“You’ve been spending all your free time with Granger in the library. You would have set yourself on fire last year, rather than do that.”
“You can come with us, next time.” He said.
“I don’t want to study with her.” Pansy argued. “She’s a mudblood.”
Draco’s face shifted. He looked defeated. Pansy thought he was a fool if he thought his friends would just accept this, if they would sit back and let him damn himself. Most of them didn’t even know why he was doing it.
But Pansy knew. He had told her.
The future was a mystery to everyone normal. But Draco wasn’t normal. He had seen something that scared him, and now he was running and hiding and scrambling to change it. She could understand why. She didn’t want to hurt, she didn’t want to be in pain, and the world he described sounded awful. But she still thought his solution was wrong.
“It isn’t catching, you know?” He said. “Being a…”
“Mudblood.” She said, frustrated. That was part of the problem, another way that Draco had changed. He wouldn’t even say the word now.
“Well, yes. It isn’t contagious. You won’t catch impure blood by sitting near her in the library. You may even learn something.”
“Like what, how to be ugly and annoying?”
“That isn’t fair, Pansy.” He said, with that thinly veiled anger. She watched him, watched it process, watched his face flicker as someone approached.
Theo. Of course, he always shifted when Theo came into a room. If Draco was a sun, then Theo was his favourite planet to shine upon.
“What are you two arguing about this time?” The boy asked, slipping in to the last empty chair. Pansy watched him as he leaned to glance at the book Draco had been reading; it wasn’t one of their textbooks. Theo made a thoughtful sound as he plucked it from the side table and flicked through the pages.
“I was inviting Pansy to come and study with Granger and I tomorrow night.” Draco began, a brazen half truth that hid the facts of their arguments. She hated it, that way he had with words, the way his personality could shift on a dime when the situation demanded it. Draco was becoming a shapeshifter, learning how to blend in with everyone he saw.
Theo froze in his study of the book, gaze flicking back up. She watched his gaze fix on Draco, and then flicker over until he met her eyes. He was catching up to the off centre energy between them. They had always been a trio. Born together, grown together, and they always said they would die together too. The loyalty they had for each other was unflagging and unflinching, and it was the only reason that Pansy didn’t spill all of Draco’s secrets out right then and there.
She wanted to. She wanted to tell. But they had done their secret handshake, and that was final.
“And what did Pansy think of that?” Theo asks, cautious.
“Pansy thinks that Draco is insane.” Pansy said, on her own behalf.
Theo quirked a smile. “Theo agrees with Pansy on that topic.” He said.
“Draco thinks that people who talk in the third person should be burned at the stake.” Draco said, snatching the book from Theo’s hands and leaning back in his chair to begin reading it once again.
Theo and Pansy looked at each other, letting him begin to ignore them. His eyes were questioning when they met hers. He knew that they had been fighting about something far bigger than that. Pansy hated him too; because he could read her like a book. She was open when it came to him. All she could do was shake her head and slump back in her own armchair.
She hated fighting with Draco; but there was a comfort in it too, because she knew that no matter how vicious their fights were, Draco and her would always be friends again by breakfast.