Exile

The next day Draco crossed the threshold of the fourth floor for the first time. He didn't know what to expect, he had spent years fantasizing about that day, about who or what could be hiding up there, but nothing was as he had imagined, not even in his wildest dreams. 

Narcissa accompanied him to a door, but she would not enter, the Dark Lord had been clear: only Draco could enter. 

"Be careful, my dragon" his mother whispered before squeezing his shoulder and leaving him alone. 

Draco took a few moments to calm his mind, breathe deeply and count the orcs, one, two, a hundred, but nothing really helped him. 

He swallowed and knocked on the door. His heart was pounding in his chest. He waited, but no one answered. He knocked again, and then again for the third time. Nothing, only silence.

He hesitated, but there was nothing else he could do. Hoping to get out alive, he pushed open the door and went in. 

It was a bedroom, large, even larger than Draco's room, but it was so empty, so cold and impersonal. There wasn't a single book on the shelves, or clothes out of place, or any sign of life. Just furniture that looked immaculate. 

It looked like no one had ever really lived there. 

Draco's room was filled with personal junk, things he'd never had the heart to throw away, photos with Panty and Blaise, letters waiting to be mailed, Quidditch posters.

This room, on the other hand, just looked like a slightly fancier cell. 

"Hello…?" he dared to whisper after a few seconds, closing the door softly behind him. 

He ignored the shiver that ran down his spine. Again, no answer. 

And then he saw him.

Harry sat at his desk, his back stiff, staring into the large window in front of him. The light filtered through the glass and lit up his face, making him, if possible, even paler than the day before. He looked like a ghost. 

He didn't move. He didn't show any sign of having noticed his presence. 

Draco approached slowly. "Harry... I'm Draco Malfoy, I've been asked to teach you English" now he was beside him, standing awkwardly not knowing what to do.

Nothing.

"The Dark Lord has asked me to do this" he tried again. 

Finally Harry looked at him. Just like the day before, he tilted his head and said nothing. Draco's stomach did a few somersaults, ready to regurgitate everything. 

Draco cleared his throat, trying to ignore the anxiety coursing through his veins. He was just a boy. Nothing to be afraid of.

"Yes... ok, let's start, ok? I brought some books"

He put his bag with all his books on the floor and sat down in the only other chair near the desk. He felt as if he had suddenly lost all his grace. A Malfoy should never feel out of place. 

He picked up one of the books and started leafing through it. 

Harry stood still. Draco took a deep breath. 

“I think we could start with the basics, no grammar yet… what do you think?” 

No response. 

He gritted his teeth. It was going to be a long summer.

Two hours later, Draco wanted to scream.

He wanted to grab all the books and throw them at Harry's head and run out of that room. 

Unfortunately, he valued his life too much for that. 

Harry was no help at all, he hadn't spoken yet and wasn't even trying. He just stared at him with that blank expression the entire time. 

He had spent the entire night crammed into the family library looking for books and flashcards to help him with this task, and all for nothing. 

After initially turning his head, Harry had barely blinked. Draco found this terribly unsettling. 

He was trying to get Harry to recite the alphabet, but every effort seemed to be in vain. No matter how many times he repeated the letters or how softly he enunciated the sounds, the boy remained impassive.

After three hours, Draco gave up. They were making absolutely no progress. 

He rushed to gather up all the books, not bothering to put them away, he just needed to get out of that room as quickly as possible before he went mad. 

"I'll be back tomorrow," he snapped, standing up, "please try a little harder, I'd rather not be the Dark Lord's next victim."

He was one step away from the door when he heard it. A hiss. 

He immediately stopped his steps. 

"What?" he said. 

Harry was finally looking him in the eyes. He almost preferred it when Harry ignored his gaze. 

"What did you say?"

No response. But those green eyes... they almost looked amused. 

Draco grabbed his bag, nerves racing. He said nothing more and left. He ran down the stairs. 

His breath caught in his throat, he bumped into someone, he had to stop, it could have been anyone - his father, one of the Death Eaters, even the Dark Lord himself - but he couldn't. He had to leave, now. He had to get off that floor, put as many meters between them as possible.

He raced through Malfoy Manor like he was on a bolt of lightning, dodging the paintings of his ancestors that screamed at him. 

When he finally reached his room, which seemed so far away, he ran to the bathroom, slamming the door. Without her permission, his knees buckled, aching from the force with which he had fallen to the floor, kneeling against the toilet, vomiting up his breakfast. 

Shaking hands gripped the cold edge of the porcelain, squeezing it as another wave of acid rose in his throat. 

He didn't realize he was crying until someone brushed his sweaty hair from his forehead, a soft handkerchief drying his tears. 

Beside him was Narcissa. He hadn't cried in front of his mother in years. 

"Come on, darling, you can do this," Narcissa's voice whispered softly.

Draco closed his eyes and let the sweet sound carry him away. 

"No, you don't understand..." His voice broke. 

Suddenly he looked like a child again, seeking comfort from his mother after a bad nightmare, curled up in the middle of his parents' bed. But this was the reality.

 "It's just a game for him!" he shouted "he'll get me killed!" 

"You still have so much time, you can't give up like this, it's only the first day" Narcissa tried to hug him but Draco pushed aside, avoiding her. 

He didn't want comfort, he wanted answers, he needed them. He quickly wiped away the tears that continued to fall. 

"I know... do you know anything about Harry?" he asked desperately. 

Narcissa sighed. "No one was allowed up those stairs," she admitted, caressing his cheek in a delicate hesto. "But from what your father told me... Harry is one of the Dark Lord's Death Eaters, one of the most important, if not the most important."

There was something she wasn't telling him, Draco knew. 

"He's been on a few missions, but not often," Narcissa continued. "Lucius himself has only seen him in action twice."

Twice, yet it was enough to make her voice tremble. 

She shook her head, now giving way to desperate sobs. 

"I don't know what to do, Mother," she swallowed against the rock in her throat, "I'm afraid I'll do something wrong and he'll take it out on you." 

Narcissa squeezed his hands, trying to calm him through her sobs.

In the following lessons, the situation hadn't changed.

Every morning, Draco went to Harry's room, staying there for hours. Three, four, five hours spent trying to teach him something, to get him to react, to make him talk. But every time it was just empty words.

He was trying with all his might, but nothing seemed to go right, and it was all Harry's fault, who didn't seem to care at all that he was putting Draco's life at risk by behaving like such a jerk. In fact, he seemed to find it funny.

He didn't say anything, neither in Parseltongue nor in English. He remained still, his mouth closed and his gaze vacant.

Draco was so stressed that, halfway through the fifth lesson, he burst into tears. It was humiliating, he had never felt so embarrassed, but he couldn't stop. He tried and tried to make him repeat the words, to match the images, but nothing. As soon as the first tear escaped, he had already leapt to his feet and run away, ashamed of himself.

He was so exhausted.

He was supposed to meet the Dark Lord in two days to update him on his lessons and his progress, but what progress was he supposed to tell him about? His heart skipped a beat when he thought about it. He didn't want to, why did he have to?

Beside his bed, on the nightstand, was the growing pile of letters from his friends. Pansy continued to write to him, increasingly worried, and he didn't have the courage to answer her. She wouldn't understand.

He tried to distract himself by getting ahead with his schoolwork, trying in vain not to think about what horrible torture Voldemort would be subjecting him to in a few days. He didn't even think it was possible to abandon those thoughts.

He was almost at the end of his Transfiguration essay on the properties of transfigured materials when a house-elf burst into his room, startling him.

"Dobby!" Draco snapped with a hand to his chest "What do you want? Can't you see I'm busy?"

The elf began to pull his ears, shaking "the young master must come down for dinner!"

"I'm not hungry," Draco said and snubbed the elf with a disdainful wave of his hand, "leave me alone now."

“But Dobby can't!” He shouted, pulling his ears louder and louder «master Lucius has ordered to  take the young master to the dining room, or Dobby will be punished!»

Draco ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. He stood up and stomped downstairs. He couldn't disobey his father. It seemed that all he could do now was obey the orders of others.

His father was already waiting for him, his plate full of food but still untouched. Narcissa was not there. He slowly took his seat, preparing himself for the conversation he knew was coming.

His father looked at him for a long moment. “Draco, how are things going?”

Staring at the food in front of him, he didn’t dare look up. “Bad, Father, he’s making no effort to meet me,” he said, clenching his fists. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Do what you can. I don’t have to remind you of the consequences of failure, do I?”

"No, father" no, there was no need to remind her.

«I will make sure to be present when you meet the Dark Lord»

Lucius reached out to squeeze his shoulder «I will try to calm him if anything happens»

«But father, why? What’s the point of all this, what does he want to achieve?” Draco asked desperately.

“We don’t know, Draco, but you must learn that the Dark Lord doesn’t do anything by accident.” He withdrew his hand and began to eat.

Oh, Draco knew, and he also knew that there was more to this whole story, and that his parents knew more than they were letting on.

When Draco approached Harry's room the next morning, he stopped in his tracks. The door was open.

Something was wrong, the door was always closed.

He was tired of living with this constant anxiety.

He walked in slowly, searching for Harry with his eyes. The only clue that the boy could actually move was that he was always changing his position. One day sitting at the desk, the next day in the middle of the sofa, sitting on the bed or on the windowsill. Today he was sitting like a log in the armchair next to the dead fireplace.

"Good morning, Harry," he greeted as he always did, receiving silence as an answer.

He put the flashcards on the coffee table and took a seat opposite him, preparing himself for more hours of talking to himself.

"Maybe we could try the alphabet again..."

The first hour passed as usual, boring and repetitive.

But more suddenly, as Draco was once again trying to get Harry to repeat the images on the cards, another sound joined his voice.

A hiss.

Draco froze as if he had been hit by an impedimenta charm.

Harry had spoken.

Another hiss.

"Do you want to say something?" Draco ventured, pointing to the card on the table. He couldn't to let that opportunity slip away «this is the sea, can you tell? Sea»

«Sss-ea»

Draco's eyes almost fell to the floor. He tried not to get carried away by the excitement, not yet, it was too early to claim victory.

«Yes! Good, now can you tell me what this is?» he pointed to another card «It's the sun»

Harry's eyes never left his «ssun» it was more of a hiss than anything else, but it was something, it was something.

And, incredibly, Harry actually tried to learn. Draco didn't understand why, he didn't understand what had changed, but he was finally getting a reaction.

By the end of the lesson, Draco could consider himself satisfied. He had calmed down a little towards the end. He didn't think Harry actually understood what the words he was saying meant, but he was saying them, and for now that was fine.

"See you tomorrow." Standing in the doorway, Draco turned to the boy. "I know you won't understand, but thank you, you've probably extended my life expectancy by quite a bit."

And so it was.

The meeting with the Dark Lord was not easy, but they never were.

He knelt beside his father, head bowed, grateful not to have to look up. His voice trembled as he gave a detailed account of his last week.

To his surprise, Voldemort laughed.

The sound was anything but pleasant, creeping and nauseating, and Draco wished he'd never heard it again.

"Harry's a little brat, he likes to tease his victims." Draco wasn't looking at him, but he could hear the smile in his words. "He's a clever boy, you'll learn to understand that... you're dismissed. See you next week."

Draco walked out of the room on weak legs.

He knew the real nightmare had just begun.