Returned
Draco’s desire to return to Hogwarts stemmed from an overwhelming desire to…
…to what? Get a job? Who would hire the son of–no, an actual, honest-to-Merlin Death Eater?
No, but he told the meager returning Slytherins that. It was the easiest excuse and one they could all relate to. Of the five eighth years, all of them had been stripped of wealth by war reparations and they had little hope of ever reaching the same level of grandeur they had enjoyed as pointed-nosed children.
Rock bottom. They’d hit it hard and Draco and Pansy and Blaise had scraped something away on the unforgiving floor and crawled back out shredded and with their heads held low to avoid the fallout.
The others were still falling and hadn’t quite figured out the way of the world just yet.
No, Draco had decided to return to Hogwarts when he read Potter would be as well. The Prophet had published a full two page spread on the first page, three large photos of what had to be Potter if you squinted and knew the curl of his hair because otherwise books and papers and the hands of friends blocked out his face in jostling, aggressive movements, obscuring everything but a few telling features.
Draco flipped his quill between spider fingers, tiny drops of ink splattering and staining his parchment. A foot into his Potions essay and he knew he’d still receive poor marks. The new professor despised Slytherins and despite the fact that he did better than even that Mudb–than that know it all, Granger, he currently held a position at the bottom of his class.
Draco groaned, dropped his quill and buried his head in hands. He should quit, he should just go home.
He heard whispering off to the side and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rose sharply like they’d done a thousand times before.
Suddenly Draco’s ink pot tilted over, soaking his parchment in black before he even realized it had spilled. Snickering followed as he scrambled to salvage something of his essay, cursing and red faced and utterly involved on his own misery. He didn’t notice when everything went silent.
“You think that’s funny?” Draco’s head shot up just in time to see Harry bloody Potter of all people stalking towards the snickering students, three of them. Red and gold ties done up in lazy knots revealed them for the Gryffindors they were.
They stared, eyes so wide that a quick swat to the back of their heads would have knocked them right of out of their sockets. They didn’t answer and Potter turned away from them, dismissing them utterly before as he approached Draco, wand out. Draco stepped back.
“Tergeo.” Swiping his wand over the table, he siphoned away the ink, not acknowledging or simply not noticing Draco's little flinch. He looked up at Draco with a wry smile, shrugging as he said: “Sorry, I still haven’t found a charm to get the stuff out of parchment. Merlin knows it’d save Hermione some peace of mind if I did.”
“Why’s he helping him?”
“He knows he was a Death Eater, right?”
“You’d think he’d want the Slytherins gone like the rest of us.”
Potter shut his eyes and inhaled deeply before turning back to the table of Gryffindor’s.
“The Sorting Hat wanted me in Slytherin, did you know that?”
Draco gaped, he couldn’t help it.
“Mr. Potter!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know–quiet in the Library. It won’t happen again, Madame Pince.” The look Potter shot at his fellow Gryffindors was as black as Draco had ever seen; he would never tell a soul the way it made his heart race.
The students bolted, but not without mutinous glares tilted Draco’s way beneath halflids and hidden by their slumped shoulders.
“I didn’t need your help, Potter.”
Potter looked at him, green eyes assessing. “No, but I’m not letting that behavior stand unchallenged. Especially not in my House.” He looked away, shouldered his bag and then said almost too quietly to be heard. “I didn’t fight for that.”
He left before Draco could respond, but there was something so sad and warm stirring in Draco’s chest that he wasn’t sure what he’d have said if Potter had stayed.