Chapter 36
Draco barely made it to his dorm before his body betrayed him.
His fingers clenched around the doorframe, his breath sharp and uneven as his knees threatened to give out beneath him. Damn it. He squeezed his eyes shut, inhaling through his nose, forcing the trembling in his limbs to still.
It wasn’t working.
Something was wrong.
He could feel it—deep, curling inside his magic, moving when he wasn’t controlling it. Magic wasn’t supposed to move on its own.
Not like this.
His grip tightened. He could still feel the way Granger had looked at him, the way her sharp, calculating eyes had seen too much. She knew. Not everything—but enough.
He had to keep it together.
He forced his hands to unclench, straightened his spine, and stepped inside.
The Slytherin dorm was quiet. The common room was empty, the dim green light flickering against the black lake beyond the windows. He moved past the chairs, past the shadows stretching across the floor, past the faint hum of something in the air that shouldn’t have been there.
His bed was the only place that felt solid. He sank onto the edge of the mattress, elbows resting against his knees, fingers pressed into his temples.
The ache in his skull had been there since the Chamber.
The whispers hadn’t stopped.
They weren’t loud.
Not yet.
But they were there.
A slithering presence curling in the edges of his thoughts, a weight pressing against his ribs that hadn’t been there before.
And the worst part?
He couldn’t tell if it was coming from inside him.
His magic felt foreign.
Not gone.
Just… different.
Tenebris moved silently to his side, his golden eyes unreadable as he sat at Draco’s feet. He hadn’t spoken, hadn’t shifted into shadow as he normally did. He was simply watching.
Draco exhaled shakily, dragging a hand through his hair. “I don’t need a bloody audience,” he muttered.
Tenebris didn’t move.
Draco let his hand drop, fingers curling against the sheets. His chest felt wrong, like his magic wasn’t settling properly, like it was shifting in ways he couldn’t control. He needed to center himself. He needed to fix it.
He inhaled slowly, closing his eyes, reaching for the familiar pulse of his magic.
It was there.
Waiting.
But when he touched it—when he tried to draw it forward—it was cold.
And something else was there with it.
A flicker of something dark, something not his, curling at the edges of his magic like it had always been there.
Draco’s eyes snapped open.
His breath hitched.
His pulse pounded against his ribs.
No.
He shoved it down, forced his magic into submission, willed it back to its natural state. He wasn’t losing control. He wasn’t.
He couldn’t.
A sharp, shuddering breath escaped him. He pressed his palms to his eyes, blocking out the dim light, the shadows that were shifting when they shouldn’t be.
Tenebris let out a low sound. Not a growl. Not a warning. Just… a sound.
Draco dropped his hands.
Met his Eidolon’s gaze.
Tenebris didn’t look away.
Didn’t blink.
And Draco understood.
His Eidolon knew.
He knew something had changed.
He just wasn’t saying it.
Because he was waiting for Draco to say it first.
Draco clenched his jaw.
Not yet.
Not now.
He forced himself to lie back, staring up at the ceiling, pretending he didn’t feel the wrongness shifting under his skin.
Pretending he wasn’t afraid.
Pretending that whatever had touched him in the Chamber wasn’t still there.
Waiting.
Watching.
And whispering in a voice he refused to hear.
He lay back on the mattress, staring at the ceiling, his jaw tight.
Stillness.
But not peace.
Never peace.
And beneath it, a pulse. A whisper. A second heartbeat that wasn’t his.
Waiting.
Draco didn’t remember when his body finally gave in, when exhaustion dragged him under.
He must have slept.
Or maybe not.
It didn’t feel like sleep—more like slipping beneath the surface of something deep and black, his mind floating just outside of consciousness.
The dormitory was quiet.
Too quiet.
The castle breathed around him, its enchantments settling into the bones of the walls, pulsing in slow, steady waves. He felt them. Heard them. Like whispers humming just beneath the edge of his awareness.
He turned his head.
Or maybe he only thought he did.
The air was thick, pressing against his skin in a way that wasn’t entirely real, wasn’t entirely a dream. The room blurred at the edges, shadows stretching, curling toward him like ink bleeding into water.
He tried to move.
His body didn’t respond.
His magic did.
A flicker. A shift. A slow, unfamiliar hum that curled through his ribs, winding around his spine like something sentient, something waiting.
Something watching.
His breath hitched.
A whisper ghosted against his mind—not words, not even a voice, but a feeling. A presence sliding through the cracks in his consciousness, seeping into the places he had kept locked for so long.
It was patient.
It was expectant.
Like it was waiting for him to acknowledge it.
Draco squeezed his eyes shut, his heartbeat hammering in his ears.
No.
Not real.
Not real.
But his magic curled in response, drawn toward the presence like a tide pulled by the moon.
Like recognition.
Like belonging.
His pulse throbbed in his temples, his breath coming fast and uneven. He clenched his fists against the sheets, forcing himself to focus, to breathe, to ignore the way his skin burned with something unseen.
It wasn’t happening.
It wasn’t real.
It wasn’t—
The air shifted.
The presence stirred.
And Draco woke with a gasp.
The dormitory was silent.
Not peaceful.
Not restful.
Silent.
The kind of silence that pressed against him, thick and oppressive, curling into the corners of the room like smoke. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty, but waiting.
Draco lay still on his bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to ignore the weight in his chest.
But he could feel it.
A slow, steady pulse at the edges of his magic. Like the steady beat of a second heart.
It wasn’t natural.
It wasn’t his.
And yet—it was.
He exhaled sharply, forcing himself to close his eyes, willing the sensation away. But the moment his lids shut, the whispers returned.
Soft.
Curling.
Like fingers dragging against the edges of his mind.
“You called me.”
His breath hitched.
His fingers curled against the sheets, tightening into fists.
He didn’t call anything.
He didn’t want this.
But something deep inside disagreed.
Something in his magic—something foreign—was thrumming. Not in pain. Not in fear.
In recognition.
“You called me, and I answered.”
A shudder ran through him. His stomach twisted violently, his pulse hammering in his ears.
He wanted to reject it.
But gods—it felt good.
The power curling in his veins wasn’t his own. It was something older, something that had been waiting. Something that had recognized him the moment that thing in the Chamber had touched him.
It wasn’t forcing itself into him.
It was offering itself.
And his magic—his traitorous magic—wasn’t fighting it.
It was responding.
A sharp, electric pulse raced down his spine, and for a moment, everything felt sharper. His senses honed, his awareness stretching beyond the dorm, beyond the castle.
He could feel magic.
Not his own.
Everything.
The restless, old enchantments woven into the very walls of Hogwarts. The deep, slow thrum of the lake pressing against the castle foundation. The quiet, lingering traces of spells used over centuries—layered, forgotten, buried beneath time.
The world was alive with it.
It was always there.
He had just never heard it before.
And now?
Now, it was calling back to him.
His breath came out in a shaky exhale. His body was taut, locked in place, like something had pressed down on him, holding him in between something real and something not.
His mind screamed at him to pull away, to push it down, to reject the feeling before it swallowed him whole.
But something else—something lower, darker, more instinctive—told him to listen.
To accept.
To let go.
The magic was waiting.
He could reach for it.
He could take it.
A sharp snap cracked through his mind.
The air in the room shifted.
And then—
A presence.
A whisper, not in words, but in sensation.
It curled through his chest, into the hollow spaces of his ribs, into the places his father had tried to carve into a weapon, into the jagged cracks war had left in his bones.
It fit.
And that was the most terrifying part.
It wasn’t corrupting him.
It was aligning with him.
Like it had always been waiting.
Like it had always belonged to him.
Draco sat up so fast he nearly threw himself off the bed.
The moment he moved, the sensation vanished.
The weight was gone.
The presence was gone.
But something still lingered.
The dormitory was the same.
The torches still flickered low.
The sound of the Black Lake still murmured faintly beyond the windows.
But the magic—his magic—felt different.
Not wrong.
Not broken.
Just changed.
His hands trembled slightly as he exhaled. He pressed them against his thighs, trying to center himself.
Tenebris was watching him.
Not as a shadow.
Not hidden.
Fully solid. Fully real.
His golden eyes locked onto Draco’s, sharp, knowing.
He had felt it.
Draco knew it.
And he hated that he wasn’t surprised.
His Eidolon wasn’t wary.
Wasn’t afraid.
He was waiting.
Draco swallowed against the dryness in his throat. He didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to acknowledge whatever had just happened—but his own voice betrayed him.
“…You felt that.”
It wasn’t a question.
Tenebris blinked slowly.
A confirmation.
Draco clenched his jaw.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
His voice came out raw. Uncertain.
Lying.
Tenebris didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
But Draco felt the response anyway, slithering into his mind without words.
Didn’t you?
He inhaled sharply, looking away.
No.
No, he hadn’t.
He didn’t want this.
He didn’t.
But deep, deep inside—something in him wasn’t sure.
Something in him had recognized it.
And that was more terrifying than anything else.
He needed to fix this.
He needed to push it down, to bury it before it took root, before it became something he couldn’t fight.
He forced himself to breathe evenly. Forced his hands to stop shaking. Forced his body back into something normal.
This was nothing.
He was fine.
He would wake up in the morning, and this would be nothing.
It had to be.
Draco Malfoy wasn’t meant for dark magic.
He had spent his whole life being told what his magic should be. What it had to be. He had spent years clawing his way out of the path his father had laid for him, out of the expectations of a bloodline obsessed with purity and power.
He wouldn’t be pulled back into that.
He wouldn’t.
And yet—
Somewhere deep inside him—
Somewhere he didn’t dare acknowledge—
A part of him had never felt more alive.